Improvements Needed in GSA's Second Year Implementation of the Financial Integrity Act
GGD-86-11
Published: Oct 11, 1985. Publicly Released: Oct 11, 1985.
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Highlights
GAO reviewed the General Services Administration's (GSA) fiscal year (FY) 1984 progress in evaluating the adequacy of its internal controls and accounting systems under the Federal Managers' Financial Integrity Act.
Recommendations
Recommendations for Executive Action
| Agency Affected | Recommendation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| General Services Administration | The Administrator of General Services should direct the Associate Administrator for Policy and Management Systems to work with various GSA services and staff offices to ensure that the evaluation criteria being developed by the services and staff offices identify appropriate control objectives and techniques as the basis for evaluating the adequacy of existing controls. |
Closed – Implemented
The GSA Internal Controls Division established an agencywide program to: (1) document control objectives and techniques; and (2) pretest services' and staff offices' use of this criteria to ensure that their evaluations yield appropriate results.
|
| General Services Administration | The Administrator of General Services should direct the Associate Administrator for Policy and Management Systems to work with various GSA services and staff offices to develop more explicit guidance covering automatic data processing (ADP) control evaluations to ensure that relevant general and application controls are appropriately evaluated. |
Closed – Implemented
The GSA Internal Controls Division published guidance on ADP control considerations for use by the services and staff offices during the FY 1986 evaluation cycle.
|
| General Services Administration | The Administrator of General Services should direct the Associate Administrator for Policy and Management Systems to work with various GSA services and staff offices to train managers so that they fully understand the evaluation requirements that they are expected to follow. |
Closed – Implemented
In April 1986, the GSA Internal Controls Division established a training program for conducting internal control evaluations.
|
| General Services Administration | The Administrator of General Services should direct the Associate Administrator for Policy and Management Systems to work with various GSA services and staff offices to ensure that managers are provided increased time to perform internal control evaluations. |
Closed – Implemented
Timing problems, caused by the late development of evaluation guidelines, were resolved. In October 1985, GSA issued an evaluation handbook establishing basic guidelines and sufficient time schedules.
|
| General Services Administration | The Administrator of General Services should direct the Associate Administrator for Policy and Management Systems to work with various GSA services and staff offices to establish quality control checks within the evaluation process to reinforce the need for managers to comply with evaluation requirements. |
Closed – Implemented
GSA officials agreed that, to overcome evaluation shortcomings, managers need better evaluation criteria, training, and increased time to do the evaluations. The actions taken, with respect to the previous recommendations, were designed to do this. Additionally, accountability for complying with evaluation requirements was established through quarterly briefings of senior management.
|
| General Services Administration | The Administrator of General Services should direct the Associate Administrator for Policy and Management Systems to work with various GSA services and staff offices to provide managers feedback on the results of the evaluation process and the benefits obtained. |
Closed – Implemented
GSA officials continue to believe that the decentralized evaluation process adopted in FY 1985 is responsive to this recommendation and that a formal program for providing feedback from outside sources is not needed. They do not plan to revise the evaluation process. Although GAO believes that GSA action is still not responsive, GAO will not perform additional monitoring on this recommendation.
|
| General Services Administration | The Administrator of General Services should direct the Associate Administrator for Policy and Management Systems to work with various GSA services and staff offices to ensure the timely completion of the internal control reviews (ICR) of identified highly vulnerable areas. |
Closed – Implemented
Key aspects of the corrective actions are: (1) requiring managers to commit themselves to completion dates; (2) centralizing agency responsibility for tracking the scheduling and completion on ICR; and (3) establishing accountability through quarterly management briefings.
|
| General Services Administration | The Administrator of General Services should direct the Comptroller to work with various services and staff offices to ensure that evaluation schedules for testing accounting systems in operation are adhered to. |
Closed – Implemented
GSA developed three basic review processes: (1) limited reviews; (2) detailed reviews; and (3) Office of Finance reviews. During FY 1985, detailed reviews were performed that included testing systems in operation.
|
| General Services Administration | The Administrator of General Services should direct the Comptroller to work with various services and staff offices to ensure that accounting system functions carried out by the regional offices are evaluated. |
Closed – Implemented
The GSA Central Finance Office is responsible for performing regional reviews on a biennial basis. During FY 1985, regional reviews were conducted in four regional finance offices.
|
| General Services Administration | The Administrator of General Services should direct the Comptroller to work with various services and staff offices to ensure that accounting system evaluations are reviewed for quality. |
Closed – Implemented
GSA assesses all reviews performed.
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Topics
Accounting systemsInternal controlsProgram evaluationReporting requirementsAgency evaluationsFederal agency accounting systemsFederal agenciesFederal supply systemsElectronic data processingInformation resources management