DoD actions to reduce the risk of travel payment errors under the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act of 2010 “were not adequate,” leaving a high risk of overpayments, an IG report has said.
It noted that DoD itself estimates that improper payments in its Travel Pay program increased from 5 to 7 percent over 2012-2015, rates that “missed the improper payment reduction goals for each of those years.”
In 2014, it said, there were errors in $458 million of the $6.5 billion in travel payments made—more than nine-tenths of which were overpayments, the rest underpayments. Most commonly, errors involved per diem, reimbursement of expenses such as airfare, and lack of receipts for expenses such as lodging and rental cars.
“This occurred because the corrective actions that DoD components developed did not include steps to identify the reasons that authorizing officials approved deficient vouchers for payment. In addition, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service did not provide error reports to all DoD components that made improper payments. As a result, DoD will continue to be at high risk for making improper payments for travel,” it said.
It said DoD management agreed with recommendations to determine why authorizing officials approved the improper payments and to develop corrective actions to address the causes; include a summary of the root causes and associated corrective actions in the DoD financial report; and require DFAS to submit quarterly voucher detail error reports to each DoD component with identified improper payments.