Defense Contract Audit Agency Audit Work Deficiencies and Abusive Work Environment Identified by the Government Accountability Office

Abstract

What We Did: We reviewed Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) audit documentation and interviewed auditors for the 13 cases at the 3 DCAA Western Region Field Audit Offices identified in the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report DCAA AUDITS: Allegations That Certain Audits at Three Locations Did Not Meet Professional Standards Were Substantiated. We also reviewed current audits replacing deficient audits identified by GAO. We visited 2 DCAA Western Region field audit offices and interviewed 68 audit employees, including supervisors and managers, to assess whether an abusive work environment existed. What We Found Employee concerns with (1) time pressures, (2) uncompensated overtime, (3) changes to audit results and opinions, and (4) unprofessional behavior created a work environment not conducive to performing quality audits. Additionally, we found a flawed audit may have allowed a contractor to recover $271 million in unallowable costs (Case 2). DCAA provided ineffective audit advice and services to a contracting officer (Case 3). DCAA has insufficient evidence to support a contractor s participation in the direct bill program (Case 4). Seventeen of 18 forward pricing audits did not comply with standards (Case 8). DCAA did not adequately qualify the audit results on a compensation system (Case 9). DCAA had insufficient evidence to support a purchasing system audit opinion (Case 10). DCAA did not have sufficient basis for dropping four findings (Case 11). DCAA did not report a contractor s uncompensated overtime practice and increased the risk of cost mischarging (Case 12).

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 31, 2009
Accession Number
ADA593042

Entities

Organizations

  • Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Defense

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Space
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Accountability
  • Administrative Personnel
  • Business Administration
  • Contract Administration
  • Contractors
  • Contracts
  • Control Systems
  • Department Of Defense
  • Fixed Price Contracts
  • Fringe Benefits
  • Governments
  • Management Personnel
  • Organizational Structure
  • Personnel Management
  • Program Management
  • Quality Control
  • United States

Fields of Study

  • Business

Readers

  • Defense Financial Management and Audit.
  • Government Contracting/Procurement.