Board Report: September 28, 2012
Our audit evaluated the effectiveness of the Board's controls over its Government Travel Card (GTC) program. The Board's GTC program provides employees with the resources to arrange and pay for official business travel and other travel-related expenses and to receive reimbursements for authorized expenses of such travel. The Board participates in the General Services Administration SmartPay2 program and contracts for GTC services with JPMorgan Chase. For the period of our review, April 30, 2010, to April 30, 2011, cardholders made 21,921 transactions totaling approximately $6.4 million.
While we did not identify many instances of improper use, we found that the Board needs to strengthen its internal control framework over the GTC program. We found that some cardholders made unauthorized transactions on their GTCs and that the Board had not blocked or flagged several merchant category codes that could potentially allow cardholders to use their GTCs for unauthorized transactions. We also found that the Board's Travel Office did not close GTC accounts for separating cardholders in a timely manner and approved employees' requests for reimbursement for international lodging based on per-diem instead of actual expenses as required by the Board's Travel policy.
In addition, we identified a number of GTC cardholders who had delinquent accounts, but the Travel Office did not retain documentation showing that notifications of delinquency were sent to Board employees. Payment delinquencies impact the integrity of the GTC program, so it is important to proactively monitor delinquencies, to include providing early notifications of delinquency.
Our report contained four recommendations designed to help the Board improve internal controls over administering, controlling, and closing GTCs. In comments on a draft of our report, the Director of the Management Division generally concurred with our recommendations and discussed the actions that have been taken, are underway, or are planned to address the report's recommendations.
