TOWARD MORE EFFECTIVE AND EFFICIENT AUDITING OF GOVERNMENT TRANSPORTATION BILLS: GSA OVERSIGHT. FIFTY-SEVENTH REPORT. 100TH CONGRESS 2ND SESSION

This Committee on Government Operations fifty-seventh report is based on a study made by its Government Activities and Transportation Subcommittee. The subcommittee's review of the General Services Administration's (GSA's) record with respect to the auditing of the Federal Government's transportation costs included a June 16, 1988, subcommittee hearing where testimony was received from GSA, the Department of Defense (DOD), and J. Kenneth Brubaker, a General Accounting Office transportation specialist on detail to the subcommittee. That subcommittee review, which forms the basis for this report, documented significant deficiencies concerning GSA's discharge of its auditing responsibilities. The Federal Government annually spends a minimum of $4 billion transporting persons and goods. Approximately three-quarters of that amount is incurred by DOD. GSA, regardless of which agency arranges for and pays for the transportation is responsible for auditing that transaction. Significant problems persist throughout GSA's entire audit operation. Those include GSA's failure to assure the timely submission of complete agency bills for audit and its inability to reduce delays and failures in collecting previously paid overcharges. To help remedy those and other problems, this committee helped enact legislation in 1986 that for the first time authorized the auditing of transportation bills prior to payment and then authorized GSA to delegate that authority to individual agencies. GSA delayed for 19 months the issuance of a regulation establishing criteria for the delegation of that preaudit authority, costing taxpayers millions of dollars. The final rule, issued in July 1988, although unnecessarily restrictive and cumbersome, has set the stage at last for the implementation of prepayment audits throughout the Federal Government. GSA must now, however, administer the rule in a fair and reasonable manner without undue regard to the transportation industry's opposition to prepayment audits and GSA's own bureaucratic sensibilities. That has not been the case to date with respect to GSA's prepayment audit activities.

• Corporate Authors:

  United States House of Representatives

  Committee on Government Operations
  Washington, DC  United States  20515
• Publication Date: 1988-8-18

Media Info

• Pagination: 20 p.

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Auditing; Expenditures; Federal government; Transportation
• Subject Areas: Administration and Management; Law; Transportation (General); I10: Economics and Administration;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00476038
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: Rept 100-885
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Sep 30 1989 12:00AM