What We Did
The Director of Program Development and Implementation, Defense Procurement and Acquisition Policy, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition, Technology, & Logistics), requested this audit. Our objective was to determine whether Department of Defense Approving/Billing Officials adequately reviewed transactions that the Purchase Card On-Line System referred for being at-risk of noncompliance with applicable laws and criteria. In addition, we were to determine whether Department of Defense Approving/Billing Officials adequately reviewed cases in which they identified cards as lost or stolen.
What We Found
Neither we nor the Defense Procurement and Acquisition Policy could use the Purchase Card On-Line System to assess and determine whether DoD Approving/Billing Officials adequately reviewed 32,690 transactions that the system referred (during the period January through June 2012) as being at-risk of noncompliance with applicable laws and criteria, including lost and stolen cards.
This occurred because the automated system:
- did not contain sufficient capability to automatically retrieve and match the case disposition reviews with the universe of the at-risk Government Purchase Card transactions, and
- was unable to archive case history file data, which were maintained in a separate data warehouse.
As a result, the automated system cannot be employed for oversight reviews, such as assessments of Approving/Billing reviews and disposition of at-risk transactions.
Because of the information we requested to conduct the audit, the Defense Procurement and Acquisition Policy became aware the automated system lacked the capability to produce the data needed to complete the assessment of the Approving/Billing Officials’ reviews and initiated actions to improve the Purchase Card On-Line System. Thus, we are not making any recommendations in this report.
Management Comments and Our Response
We do not require a written response to this report.
This report is a result of Project No. D2012-D000DC-0200.000.