Tracing the Dollars

The Pentagon’s Inspector General wants the Air Force to improve its management and financial controls over supplemental funding provided by Congress for procurement and research, development, test, and evaluation activities for the Global War on Terror. The IG makes this recommendation in a recently issued report, the first work in a series of reports on the adequacy of financial controls across DOD for GWOT supplemental and bridge funding. In a survey of 28 samples covering $1.5 billion in supplemental funds that USAF received between August 2002 and December 2005 for procurement and RDT&E, the IG said it could not determine in 16 cases whether the Air Force spent the funds as stipulated by Congress. In 17 cases, it said it could not tell if the money actually supported GWOT. Specifically, the IG says Air Force comptrollers and budget officers have not always included emergency operations codes for these funds in their accounting classifications and thus did not have the means to ensure that they were applied as stipulated. The Air Force comptroller, responding to the IG, stated that these types of funds now are properly coded.