Budget Issues: The Importance of Increased Accuracy of Budget Outlay Estimates

AIMD-99-235R Published: Aug 30, 1999. Publicly Released: Aug 30, 1999.

Highlights

GAO provided information on how the Department of Education estimates, tracks, and reports on its budget outlays.

Recommendations

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected	Recommendation	Status
Department of Education	The Secretary of Education should direct the Office of Budget Service to systematically monitor budget outlay data available through GAPS and use this information to estimate and adjust spendout rates at the account level to reflect actual program level data.	Closed – Implemented FY2000 was the first year that the Department of Education was able to track actual rates of spending for each grant within an account rather than relying on a less accurate pooling method. Education revised spendout rates for three Elementary and Secondary Education accounts in its FY2001 budget request in whole or in large part because of this change.

Full Report

Full Report (8 pages)

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Topics

Budget and Spending

Budget outlaysFederal agency accounting systemsFinancial managementInternal controlsReporting requirementsBudgetsChief financial officersGrant administrationBudget enforcementBudget authority