Improving Internal Controls and Accounting

GAO discussed the effectiveness of federal government internal controls since the passage of the Federal Managers' Financial Integrity Act. The act requires federal agencies to annually assess their internal control and accounting systems and report to the President and Congress on their assessments. GAO found that in the past 4 years, federal government agencies: (1) identified over 1,000 material weaknesses; (2) made extensive efforts to strengthen their systems and report on corrective actions taken on internal control weaknesses; and (3) placed additional emphasis on correcting long-standing problems. GAO concluded that the federal government still needs to test systems in operation to evaluate the adequacy of internal controls.