For fiscal year 2014, 15 of the 24 Chief Financial Officers Act agencies did not comply with criteria in the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act of 2010, the largest number of CFO Act agencies reported as noncompliant under that law since the requirement for IGs to report on their agencies’ compliance was implemented in fiscal 2011, GAO has reported.
Improper payment estimates across the government meanwhile totaled $136.7 billion, over $30 billion higher than the estimated total for fiscal 2013.
The law set criteria related to the estimation of improper payments, including conducting risk assessments, publishing corrective action plans, and meeting annual reduction targets. Four more agencies were non-compliant than in fiscal 2013, and IG reviews reported 38 programs accounting for $100.6 billion in estimated improper payments as responsible for instances of noncompliance.
“Agency noncompliance for fiscal year 2014 was largely due to agencies failing to meet improper payment reduction targets or to report improper payment error rates at less than 10 percent for all programs,” it said. If the five agencies with programs exceeding 10 percent error rates had reported error rates under the threshold set in IPERA, the government-wide improper payment estimate would have been $23.1 billion, or 18.6 percent, lower.
Eighteen programs at nine agencies were reported as noncompliant with IPERA criteria by their agencies’ IGs for at least three consecutive years as of fiscal year 2014. In such cases the law requires agencies to submit proposals to Congress to reauthorize the programs or change the statutes that established them, but GAO found that only three agencies had done so.
