GAO Says it Could Be Worse Than Even They Know...

Last May, when the Alaskan region of the FAA was discovered to have had a credit card accountability problem, the Government Accounting Office was asked to look into the rest of the agency, just to be on the safe side.

The FAA wasn't on the safe side.

What the GAO found were, "Weaknesses in FAA’s purchase card controls [that] resulted in instances of improper, wasteful, and questionable purchases, as well as missing and stolen assets. These internal control weaknesses included inadequate segregation of duties, lax supervisory review and approval, missing purchase documentation, inadequate training, and insufficient program monitoring activities, all of which created an environment vulnerable to fraud, waste, and abuse."

Like what? Like, for instance, PDAs, leather cases, keyboards, and so on, that totaled (in this limited study) some $66,684.

The GAO says it's probably a lot worse. "In addition, over half of the asset purchases -— such as computers and other equipment —- that GAO examined had not been recorded in FAA’s property system, increasing the risk of loss or theft. As a result, FAA could not locate or document the location of over a third of the 692 items that GAO attempted to observe. These missing items totaled almost $300,000. In separate internal reviews, one FAA location identified over 800 items, totaling almost $2 million, that were lost or stolen in fiscal years 2001 through 2002. Given systemic weaknesses in FAA’s property controls, the actual amount of missing or stolen equipment FAA-wide could be much higher."

FMI: www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-03-405