Financial Integrity Act

GAO assessed federal agencies' implementation of the Financial Integrity Act (FMFIA) in annual management reports that accompany the President's budget, focusing on: (1) whether agencies reported automatic data processing (ADP) internal control weaknesses and how significant those weaknesses were to totals reported under FMFIA; (2) the types of ADP internal control weaknesses reported; (3) whether agencies continued to report weaknesses in evaluating ADP controls and security; and (4) the extent of and rationale for any delays in correcting the weaknesses.

GAO found that: (1) the 23 agencies reported 522 ADP internal control weaknesses under FMFIA between 1983 and 1987; (2) agencies reported 173 weaknesses as active in their 1987 reports; (3) 156 weaknesses were in areas of ADP organization and management controls and the methodology for evaluating ADP controls and security; (4) although agencies took steps to improve their methodologies for evaluating ADP controls and security, five agencies reported active methodology weaknesses at the end of 1987; (5) agencies had not corrected 55 active ADP internal control weaknesses, had not corrected 68 as planned, had inexplicably delayed 55, and had corrected timetables for 17; and (6) these conditions result in Congress not having complete and useful information on the status of agencies' weaknesses to fully evaluate funding requests for development of the effective ADP systems needed to accomplish their missions.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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