Department Of Defense Financial Management Improvement And Audit Readiness Efforts Continue To Evolve

Department of Defense: Financial Management Improvement and Audit Readiness Efforts Continue to Evolve

This is a print on demand edition of a hard to find publication. As one of the largest and most complex organizations in the world, the DoD faces many challenges in resolving its pervasive and long-standing financial mgmt. and related business operations and systems problems. DoD is required by various statutes to: (1) improve its financial mgmt. processes, controls, and systems to ensure that complete, reliable, consistent, and timely info. is prepared and responsive to the financial info. needs of agency mgmt. and oversight bodies; and (2) produce audited financial statements. This statement provides a perspective on DoD's current efforts to address its financial mgmt. weaknesses and achieve auditability, including the status of its Enterprise Resource Planning system implementations. Charts and tables.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is an independent agency that works for Congress. The GAO watches over Congress, and investigates how the federal government spends taxpayers dollars. The Comptroller General of the United States is the leader of the GAO, and is appointed to a 15-year term by the U.S. President. The GAO wants to support Congress, while at the same time doing right by the citizens of the United States. They audit, investigate, perform analyses, issue legal decisions and report anything that the government is doing. This is one of their reports.

"As one of the largest and most complex organizations in the world, the Department of Defense (DOD) faces many challenges in resolving its pervasive and long-standing financial management and related business operations and systems problems. DOD is required by various statutes to (1) improve its financial management processes, controls, and systems to ensure that complete, reliable, consistent, and timely information is prepared and responsive to the financial information needs of agency management and oversight bodies, and (2) produce audited financial statements.DOD has initiated numerous efforts over the years to improve the department's financial management operations and ultimately achieve unqualified (clean) opinions on the reliability of reported financial information.The Subcommittee has asked GAO to provide its perspective on DOD's current efforts to address its financial management weaknesses and achieve auditability, including the status of its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system implementations.GAO's testimony is based on its prior work related to DOD's financial improvement and audit readiness strategy and related activities, including its ERP implementation..."

Pentagon spending has been the target of decades of criticism and reform efforts. Billions of dollars are spent on weapons programs that are later abandoned. State-of-the-art data centers are underutilized and overstaffed. New business systems are built at great expense but fail to meet the needs of their users. Every Secretary of Defense for the last five Administrations has made it a priority to address perceived bloat and inefficiency by making management reform a major priority. The congressional defense committees have been just as active, enacting hundreds of legislative provisions. Yet few of these initiatives produce significant results, and the Pentagon appears to go on, as wasteful as ever. In this book, Peter Levine addresses why, despite a long history of attempted reform, the Pentagon continues to struggle to reduce waste and inefficiency. The heart of Defense Management Reform is three case studies covering civilian personnel, acquisitions, and financial management. Narrated with the insight of an insider, the result is a clear understanding of what went wrong in the past and a set of concrete guidelines to plot a better future.

The DoD spends billions of dollars each year to maintain key business operations, including systems and processes related to the management of contracts, finances, the supply chain, support infrastructure, and weapon systems acquisition. A number of these areas are vulnerable to fraud, waste, abuse, and mis-management and because of opportunities to achieve greater efficiencies and free up resources for higher-priority needs. This study assessed the extent to which DoD has taken steps to: (1) implement management frameworks for business transformation; and (2) develop business transformation plans, supported by a strategic planning process, that enable them to align goals and planning efforts and measure progress. A print on demand report.