DoD is understating the extent of misuse of purchase and travel cards issued to its employees and to military personnel, an IG audit has said.
The audit, focused on the department’s reporting to OMB under that agency’s guidance, follows earlier reports on identifying improper use of the cards and on DoD’s response. The IG concluded that DoD had “reported inaccurate, incomplete, and unsupported quarterly and semiannual purchase card information to OMB.”
For example, it said that in a report covering the second half of fiscal 2015, the military services disclosed more than 1,000 misuse transactions up to the department level, but the department reported only 47 to OMB. Further, reports for that year and the following year did not include over 51,000 delinquencies in purchase card payments, as required by OMB.
As a result, officials “will be unable to identify patterns of improper transactions, opportunities to improve the program’s efficiencies, or areas where program reviewers should focus their emphasis” on expenses that totaled more than $10 billion over those two years, it said. DoD also “significantly underreported to OMB the number of administrative or disciplinary actions taken for travel card misuse, including delinquencies,” the IG added.
The department concurred with the report’s recommendations, although the IG said that it considers a recommendation to review statistically valid samples monthly remains open.
