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Federal Bureau of Investigation: Actions Taken to Address Most Procurement Recommendations

GAO-11-794 Published: Sep 06, 2011. Publicly Released: Oct 06, 2011.
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Highlights

The FBI has spent over $900 million on the Trilogy and Sentinel information technology (IT) projects intended to provide FBI with an upgraded IT infrastructure and an automated case management system to support FBI agents and analysts. In February 2006 and July 2008, GAO reported on significant internal control weaknesses related to FBI's contract administration, processing of contractor invoices, and accountability for equipment acquired for these projects. GAO made 27 recommendations to the FBI to address these deficiencies. The FBI concurred with all 27 recommendations. This report provides an assessment of (1) the FBI's corrective actions to address GAO's 27 recommendations and (2) whether there were any indications of implementation issues related to the policies and procedures the FBI developed to address 17 of the 27 recommendations. GAO reviewed FBI policies and procedures, performed walk-throughs, and conducted detailed tests on statistically and nonstatistically selected samples of transactions.

Recommendations

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Federal Bureau of Investigation The Director of the FBI should direct the Chief Financial Officer to enhance the monitoring of the interagency agreements process to ensure that Determination and Findings forms are prepared, when applicable, in accordance with federal and agency requirements.
Closed – Implemented
FBI agreed with this recommendation. In September 2011 the FBI developed and issued a procurement section directive on the processing of interagency agreements. This directive reinforces the requirement that the requesting agency submits a signed Determination and Findings form when submitting its order; includes step-by-step instructions for the submission, review, approval, and maintenance of interagency agreement documentation; and credits the Procurement Section of the FBI for creating a system application that monitors and collects information and documentation pertaining to interagency agreements. Further, Procurement Section staff are required to review the information from the system application and ensure that all documents have been completed. We concluded that FBI's actions met the intent of the recommendation.
Federal Bureau of Investigation In the area of contractor invoice review and approval, the Director of the FBI should direct the Chief Financial Officer to (1) review agencywide implementation of the new or revised policies and procedures related to our prior recommendations to verify that invoice costs are in accordance with contract terms to determine if the indications of issues we identified in this report represent systemic, agencywide implementation deficiencies, and (2) take appropriate, cost-effective actions to better ensure agencywide compliance with the applicable policies and procedures.
Closed – Implemented
The FBI agreed with our recommendation. In December 2011, the FBI modified its training module for invoice review procedures and required all Contract Specialists and Contracting Officer's Representatives to attend the training. In addition, the FBI modified its Contract Specialist's file review checklist to include a review of invoiced labor categories and costs against the contract labor categories and costs. Based on our review of the training module and the revised file review checklist, we determined these two actions strengthened FBI's process over the review and approval of contractor invoices. We concluded that FBI's actions met the intent of the recommendation.
Federal Bureau of Investigation In the area of property accountability, the Director of the FBI should direct the Chief Financial Officer to (1) review agencywide implementation of the new or revised policies and procedures related to our prior recommendations to record specific data for acquired assets within specified time frames to determine if indications of issues we identified in this report represent systemic, agencywide implementation deficiencies, and (2) take appropriate, cost-effective actions to better ensure agencywide compliance with the applicable policies and procedures.
Closed – Implemented
The FBI agreed with this recommendation. After reviewing the implementation of its property management policies and procedures, the FBI decided to replace the existing property management application in October 2012. According to the FBI, the new Asset Management System was configured to incorporate lessons learned from our prior audit, including mandatory location fields. The FBI also held training for all of its accountable property officers on the importance of recording accountable property items within the time frame specified in its policies and procedures. We concluded that FBI's actions met the intent of the recommendation.

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Topics

AccountabilityAccounting proceduresContract administrationContractor paymentsDocumentationFederal procurementFederal procurement policyFederal property managementInformation technologyInteragency relationsInternal controlsInvoicesIT capital assetsMonitoringProcurement policyRisk managementAudit recommendationsCorrective actionPolicies and procedures