Although progress has been made reducing improper payments, they remain a widespread and significant problem in the federal government, GAO told the Senate federal financial management subcommittee recently.
The issue takes on greater significance given the huge amounts of money being distributed through the Recovery Act. For fiscal 2008 agencies reported improper payment estimates of $72 billion, which represented about 4 percent of the $1.8 trillion of reported outlays for the related programs.
Through the Improper Payments Information Act of 2002 some progress has been made. Of the 35 agency programs reporting improper payments under the act, 24 of them reported reduced error rates when comparing fiscal 2008 error rates to fiscal 2004 error rates.
Also, the number of programs with error rate reductions totaled 35 when comparing fiscal 2008 error rates to fiscal 2007 rates, GAO said.
Challenges remain, though. The total improper payment estimate does not yet reflect the full scope of improper payments across executive branch agencies, noncompliance issues with IPIA continue, and agencies continue to face challenges in the design or implementation of internal controls critical to identifying and preventing improper payments, according to GAO-09-628T.
