What We Did:
The objective of this audit is to assess the effectiveness of the DoD’s management of data that remains after the retirement of financial management (FM) systems.
What We Found:
DoD management did not effectively manage the DDRS data that remained after the retirement of 10 FM systems, as of first quarter FY 2025. In addition, DDRS reported and adjusted data from 57 obsolete files during the same period. Those retired FM systems and obsolete files contained $4.2 trillion (net) in balances that were not required for Treasury reporting and, therefore, had no financial reporting purpose. This occurred because:
• DFAS personnel did not archive DDRS balances from retired FM systems and obsolete files that were not required for Treasury reporting,
• DFAS personnel and data owners did not support balances from retired FM systems and obsolete files that were still required for Treasury reporting, and
• data owners did not migrate all balances required for Treasury reporting from retiring FM systems into an active system.
Unnecessary and unsupported balances from retired FM systems and obsolete files further complicated the DoD’s already c omplex f inancial r eporting p rocess. W ithout b etter data integrity practices, the DoD will have difficulty achieving an unmodified (clean) audit opinion by FY 2028, as required by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024.
What We Recommend:
We made six recommendations to address the finding in this report. Among other recommendations, we recommend that the DFAS Director archive balances in DDRS that are not required for Treasury reporting.
We also recommend that the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller)/Chief Financial Officer, DoD, coordinate with stakeholders to support and migrate all balances required for Treasury reporting to an active FM system.