| GAO: VA'S FINANCIAL
REPORTING PROCESSES STILL IN SHAMBLES
Continuing serious deficiencies in
financial reporting leave VA at risk of processing errors and
misstatements in its financial statements.
NOTE from Larry Scott, VA
Watchdog dot Org ... All GAO reports about the VA can be found
on this page ...
http://www.vawatchdog.org/gaoreports.htm
Notice the mention of the FLITE
system in the report. Both the GAO and VAOIG have blasted VA
for making the same errors with FLITE that they made with their
1/3 of a billion dollar fiasco, CoreFLS.
More on FLITE here ...
http://www.yourvabenefits.org/sessearch.php?q=flite&op=and
More on CoreFLS here ...
http://www.yourvabenefits.org/sessearch.php?q=corefls&op=and
Below are the highlights of this
report ... notice the ongoing problems.
-------------------------
Department Of
Veterans Affairs: Improvements
Needed in Corrective Action Plans to Remediate Financial Reporting
Material Weaknesses
GAO-10-65, November
16, 2009 Summary
(HTML) Highlights
Page (PDF) Full
Report (PDF, 33 pages)
Highlights
Why GAO Did This Study
In fiscal year 2008, the
Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) identified three
material internal control
weaknesses over financial reporting—financial management system
functionality, IT security controls, and financial
 management
oversight. VA is developing a new financial system—FLITE—but full
implementation is not expected until 2014. Therefore, the
Subcommittee asked us to determine whether VA corrective action
plans and oversight are appropriately focused on near-term actions
to provide improved financial information.
This report addresses (1) the
nature of the internal control weaknesses identified in the VA
fiscal year 2008 financial audit report and how long they have
been outstanding, (2) whether VA had plans appropriately focused
on near-term corrective actions, and (3) whether VA had
appropriate oversight mechanisms in place to help assure that
near-term corrective action plans are implemented on schedule.
GAO reviewed corrective action
plans for significant deficiencies underlying 2 of the 3 material
weaknesses and performed additional analysis for two underlying
significant deficiencies.
What GAO Found
VA’s fiscal year 2008 material
weaknesses in financial management system functionality and
financial management oversight have been reported since fiscal
years 2000 and 2005, respectively. These two material
weaknesses are comprised of 16
underlying significant financial reporting control deficiencies.
Although VA had eliminated some significant deficiencies in prior
years, other deficiencies have emerged. As a result, continuing
serious deficiencies in financial reporting leave VA at risk of
processing errors and misstatements in its financial statements.
Although VA had corrective
action plans in place intended to result in near-term remediation
of the 16 fiscal year 2008 significant control deficiencies, many
of these plans did not contain the detail needed to provide VA
officials with assurance that the plans could be effectively
implemented on schedule. VA lacked documented policies and
procedures needed to assure the consistent and comprehensive
design of these corrective action plans, and 8 of 13 of VA’s plans
for correcting its financial reporting deficiencies lacked key
information regarding milestones for action steps and validation
activities.
 As of August 2009, VA had missed
milestones in 5 of the 13 corrective action plans. For example,
our analysis of plans for remediating deficiencies regarding the
capitalization of property, plant, and equipment and inadequate
benefit payment reconciliations showed that slipping milestones
could jeopardize VA’s timely completion of these plans, and
consequently may impair VA’s ability to obtain improved data
reliability within the time frames originally envisioned. VA
lacked documented policies and procedures for overseeing
implementation of the corrective action plans, but recently took
steps intended to better coordinate its oversight activities.
What GAO Recommends
GAO makes recommendations to the
Secretary of Veterans Affairs to improve the design and oversight
of corrective action plans. VA generally concurred with GAO’s
recommendations and identified related actions taken and planned.
-------------------------
TOPICS:
veterans, veterans' benefits, VA, Department of Veterans' Affairs,
GAO, financial reporting |
