NASA Contract Payments
Gao ID: GAO-02-642R May 23, 2002This report examines whether the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had significant problems with overpayments to its contractors. GAO did not find that NASA had a significant or systemic problem with overpayments or underpayments during fiscal year 2001. The controls that NASA put in place to prevent and detect payment errors appeared to be properly designed.
GAO-02-642R, NASA Contract Payments
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GAO-02-642R:
United States General Accounting Office:
Washington, DC 20548:
May 23, 2002:
The Honorable Dan Burton:
Chairman:
Committee on Government Reform:
House of Representatives:
Subject: NASA Contract Payments:
Dear Mr. Chairman:
You asked us to determine whether the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) had significant problems with overpayments to its
contractors. The objectives of our review were to (1) survey
contractors and vendors to determine whether NASA had made significant
payment errors on its contracts and purchase orders and (2) review the
design of NASA‘s controls to prevent, detect, and correct payment
errors.
We selected 110 contracts and purchase orders on which NASA had made
$4.8 billion in payments during the first 9 months of fiscal year 2001
(the most recent data available at the time). During those 9 months,
NASA had disbursed about $8.7 billion on 6,815 contracts and purchase
orders. By the end of fiscal year 2001, NASA disbursed almost $11.7
billion on 8,141 contracts and purchase orders, of which about $11.5
billion pertained to the contracts and purchase orders included in the
9-month population from which we made our selection.
For the survey, we selected the 10 contracts and 10 purchase orders
with the highest total disbursements for the 9-month period and random
samples of 45 contracts and 45 purchase orders. NASA disbursed about
$6.3 billion during fiscal year 2001 on these 110 contracts and
purchase orders. For the selected items, we asked the contractors and
vendors to identify payments that were more than or less than the
amounts they had billed NASA during the year, with the exception of
advances and properly calculated progress payments.[Footnote 1] Our
survey was intended to identify whether NASA had a significant problem
with payment errors but not to project the amount or number of errors
to NASA‘s payment population. For our random samples, one or more
payment errors reported to us in the survey would indicate a
significant or systemic problem during the review period. For the 20
largest contracts and purchase orders, the dollar amounts of reported
errors would have to be evaluated individually to determine their
significance. Because the contractors and vendors self-reported these
overpayments and underpayments, the reliability of our survey results is
dependent upon the reliability of their responses.
We defined payment errors as payments that were more than or less than
what was owed to the contractor or vendor as of the payment date. We
did not consider billed amounts that NASA was disputing or billings
less than 30 days old as of September 30, 2001, to be underpayments.
Also, overpayments and underpayments that resulted from routine
retroactive adjustments by contractors and vendors to overhead or
general and administrative rates were considered errors only if they
were not resolved promptly.
We also reviewed information on some of the refunds that NASA had
received during fiscal year 2001 and other financial data from the
period to identify evidence of payment errors. Finally, we reviewed the
design of the controls that NASA implemented to detect and prevent
overpayments to contractors and vendors. Our scope and methodology is
discussed in more detail in enclosure I. We conducted our work from
October 2001 through March 2002 in accordance with generally accepted
government auditing standards. We provided a draft of this letter to
NASA officials and their comments are reprinted in enclosure II.
Results in Brief:
We did not find that NASA had a significant or systemic problem with
overpayments or underpayments during fiscal year 2001. Contractors and
vendors responded to our request for payment information on 108 of the
110 contracts and purchase orders we selected for review. Only one
respondent reported an overpayment that met our definition of a payment
error. The error occurred on a contract selected specifically because
of its high-dollar disbursements and resulted from an incorrect
calculation made by a NASA procurement official and a miscommunication
between NASA and the contractor. The error was identified by the
contractor and corrected promptly. The dollar amount of the error
($570,171) was insignificant”about 0.2 percent”relative to total
disbursements of almost $258 million on this contract in fiscal year
2001.
The controls that NASA put in place to prevent and detect payment
errors appeared to be properly designed. These controls ranged from
automated system edits to supervisory review and postpayment audits. At
our request, NASA officials told us of instances in which preventive
controls were circumvented by human error, but officials indicated that
those instances were infrequent and were usually resolved promptly. We
then reviewed certain NASA records related to refund payments and
amounts owed to the agency and found that most were not due to payment
errors on contracts and purchase orders. For those amounts that did
represent payment errors, it appeared that NASA‘s detective controls
had identified many of them. NASA centers that identified failures in
their preventive controls told us that they are taking actions to
improve the effectiveness of those controls, such as improving training
for the clerks who input payment information and for the examiners who
review the invoices and supporting documents before payments are made.
While the surveys and our other work did not disclose any significant
or systemic problems with payment errors during fiscal year 2001, the
controls implemented by both NASA and its contractors and vendors are
not infallible and are subject to change over time. In fact, NASA
officials informed us about a large overpayment that occurred after the
period of our review on a contract that was part of our sample. The
contractor quickly identified the overpayment, which was caused by a
problem in the contractor‘s billing system, immediately informed NASA
of the error, and offset the overpayment amount against its next bill.
Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) officials, who are responsible for
reviewing and approving contractors‘ billing systems, are working with
the contractor to identify the extent of its systems problems and the
necessary corrective actions. Meanwhile, NASA says that it has
increased its review of invoices from that contractor.
Background:
NASA‘s payment process primarily involves three parties”contractors and
vendors, NASA procurement officials, and NASA finance officials. Each
of these parties is responsible for a different part of the process,
and each has controls in place to prevent or detect payment errors.
* Contractors and Vendors: Contractors and vendors generate the bills
for goods and services and are responsible for ensuring that the bills
they send to NASA are correct. Effective February 19, 2002, the Federal
Acquisition Regulation was amended to add a paragraph to the
recommended ’prompt payment“ clauses of contracts to require the
contractor to notify the contracting officer if it becomes aware of a
duplicate payment or other overpayment on an invoice payment. The
contractor must request instructions on the disposition of the
overpayment.[Footnote 2]
* NASA Procurement: NASA procurement officials manage NASA‘s contracts
and purchase orders. Contracting officers authorize payment of invoices
and are responsible for confirming that the goods and services ordered
have been received and are satisfactory”or that acceptable progress is
being made on contracts”before authorizing payment. Contracting
officers also check contractor cost or price calculations and calculate
contract fee amounts. Contracting officers may delegate certain duties
to DCAA or the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA).[Footnote 3]
For instance, they may request that DCAA review contractor cost
vouchers on certain contracts and audit contractor billing systems,
incurred costs, and overhead rates. When the work on a contract or
purchase order is complete, procurement officials review the contract or
purchase order file to ensure that the proper amount has been paid for
the goods or services purchased, a process known as closeout.
* NASA Finance: NASA finance staff process the actual payments on
contracts and purchase orders. The finance office receives invoices
either from the procurement office or directly from contractors and
vendors.[Footnote 4] When an invoice arrives in finance, office
personnel ensure that it has the proper approval signatures and
appropriate supporting documentation, such as a receiving report. If
the invoice is acceptable, office personnel enter information into an
automated payment system, including the contractor or vendor taxpayer
identification code or name and address, contract or purchase order
number, invoice number, and payment amount. The system automatically
checks to ensure that the contract or purchase order is valid (i.e.,
the contract or purchase order number is in the system and an
obligation has been established) and funds are available to be
disbursed (i.e., the obligated amount is sufficient to cover the
payment as well as any previous payments). The system also checks to
see whether this invoice number has already been entered for payment on
this contract or purchase order. In addition to the system edits,
finance office supervisors review certain payments”such as particularly
large payments or payments being processed by less-experienced staff”to
ensure that they have been properly entered. Once an invoice has been
processed, personnel enter the payment information on a schedule that
is kept in the finance file for that particular contract or purchase
order. The automated payment information is then transmitted to the U.S.
Treasury, which makes the actual payment.
Overpayments and underpayments may occur because of various factors
that are an inherent part of the procurement process or because of
payment errors. For example, overpayments and underpayments may occur
as a result of routine retroactive adjustments to contract terms or
changes in overhead rates, items being returned, or other actions that
are a normal part of the procurement process. These overpayments and
underpayments do not represent problems unless they are not resolved
promptly.
Payment errors, on the other hand, occur when personnel involved in the
payment process make mistakes. For instance, payment errors may occur
if contracting officers approve payment of duplicate bills or if
finance personnel process payments to the wrong vendors. Payment errors
may also occur if finance personnel make errors or override controls
when entering information into the automated payment system.
Payment Errors Appear to Be Infrequent and Promptly Resolved:
For the NASA contracts and purchase orders that we selected, survey
respondents did not report significant problems with overpayments or
underpayments during fiscal year 2001 nor did they indicate that they
were aware of any systemic problems at NASA that could result in
significant undetected payment errors during that period. We performed
a limited review of NASA‘s controls for preventing and detecting
payment errors and found them to be properly designed. While NASA‘s
preventive controls are not infallible and some errors do occur, NASA
documentation indicated that these errors are usually promptly
identified and corrected.
One Erroneous Payment Reported in Sample:
For our selected 55 contracts and 55 purchase orders, we asked
contractors and vendors whether they had received any overpayments or
underpayments from NASA during fiscal year 2001. For our samples of 45
contracts and 45 purchase orders, one or more payment errors would have
indicated a significant problem at NASA. For the 20 largest contracts
and purchase orders, any reported payment errors would have to be
evaluated individually for significance. We received responses for 108
contracts and purchase orders, and only one respondent reported an
overpayment that met our criteria for a payment error. We defined an
error as a payment that was more than or less than what was owed to the
contractor or vendor as of the payment date, with the exception of an
advance or a properly calculated progress payment. We also provided the
following information to assist the respondents in identifying payment
errors.
* Erroneous overpayments result when NASA makes duplicate payments, pays
invoices without properly considering previous progress payments, or
improperly considers contract modifications, or from other situations.
* Erroneous underpayments result when NASA does not pay an invoice,
calculates discounts incorrectly, or incorrectly offsets a subsequent
invoice, or from other situations.
* Amounts that are under dispute or billings that are less than 30 days
old as of September 30, 2001, should not be considered underpayments
for purposes of the survey.
* Overpayments and underpayments that result from retroactive
adjustments by contractors and vendors to overhead or general and
administrative rates should be considered errors only if they are not
resolved promptly (i.e., within 30 days).
The error occurred on a contract we had selected because of its high
disbursement value and was the result of an incorrect calculation made
by a NASA official and a miscommunication between NASA and the
contractor. The contractor identified the error promptly and corrected
the overpayment problem by subtracting the erroneous amount from its
next bill. The amount of the error ($570,171) was not significant
relative to the almost $258 million disbursed on that contract during
fiscal year 2001.
Controls Appear to Be Designed Properly:
NASA has designed its payment systems and processes to include both
automated and human controls to prevent and detect payment errors.
These controls include:
* automated payment system edits designed to prevent payments from being
processed without adequate funding (the current payment plus previous
payments cannot exceed the obligated amount) and to prevent duplicate
payments (the same invoice number cannot be used more than once for a
given contract);
* various supervisory reviews in both the procurement and finance
offices, including reviews of invoices being processed for payment and
reviews of obligated and unobligated balances; and;
* NASA and DCAA postpayment audits, including annual incurred-cost
audits and contract closeout audits.
While the design of NASA‘s controls generally appeared to be effective,
no controls are infallible. For example, automated controls may be
willfully or mistakenly circumvented and supervisory reviews can fail
if they are not done properly. Nevertheless, when taken as a whole, the
controls appeared to be properly designed, and information we received
from NASA indicated that, in general, the controls were working as
intended.
While we did not test controls related to payment processing, we
reviewed cases in which the controls had functioned as designed during
the period. Six NASA centers provided us with information on payment
errors that had occurred and been resolved for contracts and purchase
orders not included in our sample. Although NASA‘s controls did not
prevent these errors from occurring, other controls enabled NASA to
detect them promptly as illustrated by the following examples.
* A duplicate payment was not detected by automated system edits
because, while processing the payment a second time, a finance clerk
made a typographical error when entering the invoice number”the clerk
entered the letter ’O“ instead of the numeral ’0.“ Because this invoice
number was not identical to the number entered the first time, the
system edit did not identify the invoice as a duplicate. Although the
preventive control failed in this instance, finance staff identified the
duplicate payments while reviewing a vendor disbursement report”a
detective control. As a result, NASA notified the contractor of the
payment error and recovered the funds within 20 days of identifying the
error.
* An overpayment was made because a finance clerk input an incorrect
dollar amount for payment, that is, the total value of the invoice was
entered even though only a partial payment was due. The contracting
officer detected the error when reviewing obligations, costs, and
disbursements for the contract. NASA planned to recover the funds by
deducting the overpayment amount from the amount to be paid on the next
contract invoice.
Based on the documents that we reviewed, when errors were identified,
NASA and its contractors or vendors usually corrected them quickly. In
some cases, contractors and vendors sent checks to NASA for overpayment
amounts. In others, contractors and vendors offset future payments on
the particular contract or purchase order to compensate for the error.
Centers that identified failures in their controls told us that they
are taking actions to improve the effectiveness of those controls, such
as additional training for finance clerks who input payment data and
for invoice examiners who approve items for payment.
Contractor Billing System Weakness Caused Large Overpayment:
While the surveys and our other work did not disclose significant or
systemic problems with payment errors during fiscal year 2001, we did
identify instances in which payment errors were made and later
corrected, as discussed in the previous section. In addition, NASA
officials told us about an overpayment that occurred after the period
of our review on a contract that was part of our sample. Because of
weaknesses in its billing system, one of NASA‘s largest contractors
overbilled NASA by $47 million on a multibillion dollar contract. At
the time the invoice was sent, according to both NASA and contractor
officials, neither party was aware of the error. However, upon receipt
of the overpayment amount, the contractor realized that it had made a
billing error, notified NASA of the mistake, and adjusted its next
monthly invoice appropriately.
NASA, in turn, informed DCAA of the billing error. DCAA, which was
already in the process of reviewing the contractor‘s billing system,
expanded the scope of its review. In February 2002, DCAA issued an
interim report that identified several weaknesses in the contractor‘s
billing system and recommended corrective actions to the contractor.
DCAA is continuing its review and will issue a final report when work
is completed. Meanwhile, NASA, DCAA, and the contractor are meeting at
least monthly to implement improvement actions for ensuring accurate
billings. The contractor‘s action plan identifies strategies and
improvement initiatives, interim goals and milestones, and major
delivery items.
Agency Comments:
In written comments on a draft of this report, NASA‘s Associate Deputy
Administrator for Institutions stated that the agency will continue to
strive to improve the effectiveness of its entire internal control
system and, as part of that effort, will emphasize the importance of
staff training and supervisory review. NASA‘s comments are reprinted as
enclosure II to this letter.
We are sending copies of this letter to the Chairmen and Ranking
Minority Members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and
Transportation, the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, and the
House Committee on Science, and to the Ranking Minority Member of the
House Committee on Government Reform. We are also sending copies to
NASA‘s Administrator and Chief Financial Officer. The letter will also
be available on GAO‘s home page at [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov].
If you or your staff have any questions concerning this letter, please
contact me at (202) 512-9505 or by e-mail at kutzg@gao.gov or Molly
Boyle, Assistant Director at (202) 512-9524 or by e-mail at
boylem@gao.gov. Major contributors to this letter were Kristi Karls,
Fannie Bivins, Thanomsri S. Piyapongroj, Maria Storts, and Carolyn
Voltz.
Sincerely yours,
Signed by:
Gregory D. Kutz:
Director, Financial Management and Assurance:
Enclosures:
[End of section]
Enclosure I: Scope and Methodology:
To determine whether NASA had a significant problem with payment
errors, we selected 110 contracts and purchase orders for which NASA
made disbursements during the first 9 months of fiscal year 2001 (the
most recent data available at the time). The items we chose for review
were the 10 contracts and 10 purchase orders on which NASA made the
largest total disbursements during the first three quarters of fiscal
year 2001 and 45 other contracts and 45 other purchase orders chosen at
random. These 110 items accounted for $4.8 billion of the $8.7 billion
that NASA disbursed on contracts and purchase orders during those 9
months. Our methodology was not intended to project the dollar amount
or number of overpayments and underpayments to NASA‘s payment
population. For our random samples, one or more payment errors reported
to us in the survey would indicate a significant or systemic problem
during the review period. For the 20 largest contracts and purchase
orders, the dollar amounts of reported errors would have to be
evaluated individually to determine their significance. Because the
contractors and vendors self-reported these overpayments and
underpayments, the reliability of our survey results depends on the
reliability of their responses.
To select the contracts and purchase orders, we used information from
NASA‘s Financial and Contractual Status (FACS) system for the first 9
months of fiscal year 2001. FACS contains summary-level disbursement
data for all of its contracts and purchase orders. While we did not
fully assess the reliability and completeness of these disbursement
data, we compared the disbursement totals from FACS to amounts in NASA‘
s report on budget execution and budgetary resources. For the 110
contracts and purchase orders we reviewed, we also compared the
disbursement data from FACS to data maintained in the NASA procurement
system and the Federal Procurement Data System to ensure that disbursed
totals did not exceed total contract value or total obligations.
Although our sample was selected using data for 9 months, our survey
pertained to payments made on our 110 sample items during the entire
fiscal year 2001. We asked contractors and vendors whether they
received any payments from NASA that were significantly more than or
less than the amounts billed on those 110 contracts and purchase orders
during fiscal year 2001. We considered individual overpayments or
underpayments of $500 or more to be significant. We defined
overpayments as occurring whenever NASA paid contractors and vendors
more than they were owed and underpayments as occurring whenever NASA
paid contractors and vendors less than they were owed, excluding items
for which NASA was disputing charges.
We received information from contractors or vendors on 108 of the 110
items we reviewed. Of the two contractors that did not respond to our
information requests, one had dissolved prior to the beginning of our
work and the other did not respond to our attempts to make contact.
Therefore, we obtained and reviewed billing and payment records for
these contracts from NASA for fiscal year 2001. That review did not
reveal any reason to suspect payment errors on these contracts.
For contractors and vendors that indicated they had received
overpayments or underpayments, we followed up with further discussions
with them or NASA, or both, to determine whether the overpayments or
underpayments were caused by errors or were the result of normal
procurement processes. Of 14 such responses, our follow-up work
indicated that only one of these items was a payment error, which we
discuss in our report. Because the error occurred in a contract that we
selected specifically because of its high-dollar disbursements total
and not in one of our randomly sampled items, we evaluated the error
individually for significance.
To determine what NASA was doing to detect and prevent payment errors,
we examined the design of the controls that NASA had in place. We did
not, however, test the operating effectiveness of the individual
controls and, accordingly, we express no opinion on their
effectiveness. We spoke with NASA staff at headquarters and three of
the centers”Johnson Space Flight Center in Houston, Tex.; Marshall
Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.; and Goddard Space Flight
Center in Greenbelt, Md. We reviewed how their payment processes
function and the design of the controls in place at different points in
the process to prevent and detect payment errors. We discussed the
roles and responsibilities of procurement and finance officials and of
DCAA and DCMA officials who support NASA operations. We also reviewed
relevant portions of the NASA Financial Management Manual, the Federal
Acquisition Regulation, and the NASA Federal Acquisition Regulation
Supplement.
Although we did not test the effectiveness of individual controls that
NASA has in place, we reviewed payment information that demonstrated
how the controls functioned collectively as designed. For the centers
we visited, we obtained information on the overpayments and
underpayments they had identified during fiscal year 2001. We also
obtained accounts receivable and accounts payable data. We reviewed
this information to see if there was evidence of payment errors
occurring or being corrected. We also obtained data from all of the
NASA centers on reported refunds to identify whether these refunds
related to contracts and purchase orders and whether they resulted from
payment errors. To the extent that we found evidence of such errors, we
spoke with center officials to discuss the causes and how the errors
were detected and resolved. We also discussed the actions that were
being taken to prevent similar errors from occurring in the future,
particularly at centers where certain types of errors were more
prevalent.
To understand the role that Department of Defense organizations have in
helping NASA prevent and detect payment errors, we spoke with DCAA
auditors who had reviewed NASA contractors and we obtained copies of
recent DCAA reports on NASA contractor billing systems and incurred
costs. We also spoke with DCMA staff members about the services they
may perform for NASA.
We conducted our fieldwork from October 2001 through March 2002 in
accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. We
requested comments on a draft of this letter from the NASA
Administrator. Written comments from NASA‘s Associate Deputy
Administrator for Institutions are reprinted in enclosure II.
[End of section]
Enclosure II: Comments from the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration:
National Aeronautics and Space Administration:
Office of the Administrator:
Washington, DC 20546-0001:
May 6, 2002:
Mr. Gregory D. Kutz:
Director, Financial Management and Assurance:
U.S. General Accounting Office:
441 G Street, NW:
Washington, DC 20548:
Dear Mr. Kutz:
We appreciate the opportunity to comment on the draft report, "NASA
Contract Payments."
We are pleased to note that GAO concluded that NASA did not have a
significant or systematic problem with overpayments or underpayments
during fiscal year 2001 and that NASA's controls to prevent and detect
payment errors appeared to be properly designed. We continue to strive
to improve the effectiveness of our entire system of internal controls,
and as part of this effort, we will emphasize to our Centers the
importance of staff training and supervisory review of payment
activities.
If you have any questions, or require additional information, please
contact me at 358-1820 or Stephen J. Varholy, Deputy Chief Financial
Officer, at 358-0978.
Cordially,
Signed by:
Michael D. Christensen:
Associate Deputy Administrator for Institutions:
[End of section]
Footnotes:
[1] Under certain circumstances, the Federal Acquisition Regulation
authorizes reductions in progress payments, which can be paid in
advance of work being accepted. Therefore, we did not consider any
reduced progress payments as underpayments.
[2] By its terms, this requirement does not apply to overpayments due
to errors in financing payments or contract administration actions.
Further, this requirement is binding on the contractor only if the
contracting officer includes the clause in the contract.
[3] NASA has an agreement with the Department of Defense stating that
the department will provide contract administration and audit services
in support of NASA contracts. DCAA provides contract audit services,
including audits of contractor billing systems and incurred costs. DCMA
provides contract administration services, including quality assurance
and engineering support. NASA determines, for each contract, which
functions are to be delegated to these Defense agencies.
[4] For contractors with DCAA-approved accounting and billing systems,
NASA procurement may allow the contractors to submit their invoices
directly to finance without going through procurement.
[End of section]
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