Opportunities to Improve Controls over Department of Defense's Overseas Contingency Operations Cost Reporting

Abstract

From September 2001 through January 2010, Congress provided about $1.023 trillion in supplemental and annual appropriations in response to Department of Defense (DOD) requests for funding to support overseas contingency operations (OCO).1 In March 2010, DOD reported obligations2 of about $825 billion attributed to OCO for the period September 2001 through January 2010.3 DOD uses available cost-related information, 4 along with other financial information, to evaluate OCO trends, formulate OCO funding requests, and monitor the costs of overseas operations. In addition, Congress considers this information in its deliberations on DOD requests for additional OCO funding. Our prior reviews have found the financial information in DOD's monthly OCO reports to be of questionable reliability.5 For example, we identified problems in DOD's processes for recording and reporting obligations, such as not including all OCO costs and the lack of a systematic process for ensuring that data are correctly entered into those systems.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 27, 2010
Accession Number
ADA522298

Entities

Organizations

  • United States Government Accountability Office

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Analysis Of Variance
  • Congress
  • Contingency Operations (Military)
  • Department Of Defense
  • Electronic Mail
  • Financial Management
  • Governments
  • House Of Representatives
  • Law
  • Marine Corps
  • Military Personnel
  • National Governments
  • Overseas
  • United States
  • United States Government
  • Websites

Readers

  • Life Cycle Cost Analysis
  • Public Financial Management and Budgeting