Ineffective oversight and management of the Department of
Defense’s travel card program have raised concern about
millions of dollars worth of unused airline tickets for
which it did not claim refunds, the General Accounting
Office has said.
It said control breakdowns over the centrally billed
accounts resulted in DoD paying for the un-refunded
tickets, and that DoD was not aware of the problem prior
to GAO’s audit, nor did it maintain data on unused tickets.
GAO said based on airline data it concluded that in fiscal
2001 and 2002 DoD had purchased about 58,000 tickets worth
about $21 million that remained unused and un-refunded as
of October 2003 — and that it identified over 81,000
partially unused tickets worth about $62 million, but that
additional analysis would be required to determine their
residual value. Based on the limited data, GAO said it was
possible DoD purchased at least $100 million in tickets
that it did not use and for which it did not claim refunds,
from fiscal 1997 through 2003.
DoD relied extensively on personnel to report unused tickets
to the travel offices, and although many unused tickets
were processed for a refund, it missed millions in unused
tickets because of insufficient internal controls, said GAO.
It said DoD did not systematically implement compensating
procedures to identify instances where personnel did not
report unused tickets, or reconcile the centrally billed
accounts to travel claims to determine whether airline
tickets were used.
Although some units put a process in place by fiscal 2002
to systematically identify unused tickets, the process was
not department-wide and could only monitor electronic tickets.
Among the recommendations that GAO made to DoD are that
it “evaluate the feasibility of requiring DoD personnel to
purchase airline tickets with their individually billed
travel cards, which would eliminate DoD’s risk of paying
for unused tickets; implement procedures to systematically
provide reasonable assurance that all unused tickets
purchased with the centrally billed accounts are refunded;
and submit claims to the airlines to recover the $21
million in known unused tickets–DoD might be able to
recover more than $100 million for unused tickets.”
DoD agreed and said that it was currently addressing those
recommendations or had plans to do so, according to GAO.
