Travel charge cards were mandated in 1998 in an attempt to reduce costs and improve managerial oversight of employee travel expenditures, but audits of agency travel card programs since then have found varying degrees of waste, fraud and abuse, the Congressional Research Service has said.
The dollar volume charged to the cards has increased from $4.39 billion in 1999 to $8.28 billion last year, and CRS said audits indicate systemic weaknesses in agency travel card management policies and practices that cost the government millions of dollars annually.
Congress has held hearings and introduced legislation that would enhance travel card management and oversight and OMB has issued government-wide guidance that requires agencies to implement internal controls that are designed to minimize the risk of travel card misuse.
However, according to CRS, congressional oversight of agency travel card programs might be hindered by the lack of current, comprehensive information on program weaknesses.
Auditors have identified tens of millions of dollars of wasteful, fraudulent, and abusive travel card transactions, but CRS said these audit reports have examined a limited number of agencies and many are several years old.
CRS posed a number of questions for further review–for example, it asked why some agencies have such high delinquency rates, and how often do agencies fail to detect fraudulent travel. Its recommendation: more audits.
