LoginDoD’s plan to track contractor-held property is failing, putting 2028 audit goal at risk
The Pentagon’s plan to fix its decades-old material weaknesses — its inability to reliably track government property in the possession of contractors — is failing, a new inspector general evaluation finds.
The Pentagon IG concluded that the department’s corrective action plan — which calls on DoD components to use a software application called the Government Furnished Property Module within the Procurement Integrated Enterprise Environment — has stalled due to a lack of enforcement from the Office of the Secretary of Defense and slow adoption by the military services.
Auditors warn that if DoD components don’t implement the GFP module, the department risks missing its goal of achieving a clean audit opinion by 2028.
“The implementation of that GFP module is the key to getting this to work,” Mark Thomas, DoD IG’s supervisory auditor, told Federal News Network.
One of the technical challenges, Thomas said, is that each military service uses its own accountable property system of record, or APSR, to track government assets in the hands of contractors. The office of the secretary of defense, however, wants the services to connect their systems to the GFP module.
“That is something that the components have not been able to do yet. They’re still working to implement that. Each of the components has corrective action dates for that that are still into the future,” Thomas said.
“The goal would be to complete everything by 2028, preferably before 2028 so that the auditors, as they come in to do the work, that control environment has been established and been working before the auditors come in and start to do some of the work. That would be the best way to do it,” he added.
But some of the timelines to remediate this weakness stretch beyond the 2028 deadline.
“Unless there’s a change in those dates, then they’ll be at risk for missing the deadline,” Thomas said.
Each military service has its own reasons for lagging in implementing the department-wide solution, but most of those reasons center around the same issue — every component is grappling with its own longstanding material weakness in accounting for government property in the possession of contractors.
“They have their own systems which differ from component to component. So they have their own technical challenges and how their particular system in the Air Force functions and how it accounts for property versus how the Navy does it. Each group is kind of working on their own technical challenges and how they’re going to report this into their own APSR — they are busy doing that and they’re actively trying to clean that up so that they can all get opinions on their financial statements,” Thomas said.
But the IG found that this component-level focus has come at the expense of the broader, department-wide effort.
Thomas said the services have been receptive to adapting the department-wide solution, but each faces a number of technical challenges connecting their systems to the GFP module.
“They understand the importance of it, and they understand what this really would give us if there is a functioning GFP module across the department. This would really give the department a larger bird’s eye view of all of the property that they have in the possession of contractors. And it would provide that enterprise level look and ability to tell we have so much property at contractor x,” Thomas said.
Meanwhile, DoD leaders have not mandated the use of the GFP module, which is stalling the department’s efforts to remediate this material weakness. The audit found that the OSD could be “more forceful” in recommending and implementing the department-wide solution.
“They need to be more direct in saying that we will use this module, all the components will use this module. That was one of the areas that we thought was weak, that the department could improve their messaging, and they could improve to be more direct and require the use of this module,” Thomas said.
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© The Associated Press
