General Services Administration

Government program abuses, illegal activities, and management inefficiencies cost taxpayers billions of dollars each year and undermine public confidence in the government's ability to manage programs and safeguard valuable federal assets. Continuing revelations of such problems suggest that the federal government's internal and accounting controls are not working. Because of past abuses at the General Services Administration (GSA) and the scope of its operations, GAO looked into GSA's efforts to combat fraud, waste, and mismanagement. GAO identified eight GSA functions and activities that pose the greatest risk of losses and inefficiencies. Despite attempts by GSA to control the risks, some of these areas are inherently vulnerable and require constant vigilance. For others, the corrective actions have been less than fully successful or have been put into effect too recently to judge their effectiveness. Over the years, GSA management has made concerted efforts to bolster internal control systems, and progress has been made. Yet audits continue to spotlight many recurring management, operational, and oversight deficiencies. As a result, the agency's multibillion-dollar operations are not as fully protected as they should be. GAO believes that more improvements are needed to ensure that corrective action to control system weaknesses is both timely and effective.

GAO found that: (1) GSA functions and activities that are especially vulnerable to fraud, waste, or mismanagement include facility acquisitions, building repairs and modernization, telecommunications and automated data processing acquisitions, management information systems, procurements of common-use equipment and supplies, supply depot operations, dispositions of excess or federal property, and management of the government's motor vehicle fleet; (2) GSA internal control and financial management efforts are primarily focused on establishing and improving control structures and processes, rather than the actual implementation, use, and effectiveness of that framework in its activities; (3) the existing GSA audit followup and resolution process has not held GSA units accountable for fully correcting deficiencies identified during audits; and (4) the GSA annual FMFIA report failed to disclose new material weaknesses or nonconformances, and indicated that the agency had only one open material weakness from previous years.

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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