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DOD-wide
Air Force
Army
Navy
Click the arc of an unkept promise to show the details.
DOD-wideOctober 2003 — House Budget Committee
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We anticipate having a clean audit by 2007.
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Dov S. Zakheim
Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller)
Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller)
RESULT: There has still been no clean audit of the Defense Department.
RESPONSE: “The further we dug into the details of what needed to be found, the more difficulties turned up,” said Zakheim.
Air Force ArmyApril 2005 — Senate Armed Services Committee
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Two of the military departments (Air Force and Army) are ready for audit confirmation” of critical budget accounts.
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Robert J. Henke
Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller)
Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller)
RESULT: The Army and Air Force accounts would not be ready for audit until FY2009 and FY 2013, respectively, according to a plan published in 2008.
RESPONSE: Mr. Henke did not return calls for comment left on his home answering machine.
DOD-wideJuly 2007 — House Budget Committee
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The goal is that by 2010, 72% of the Department’s assets… will receive clean audit opinions.
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Gordon England
Deputy Secretary of Defense
Deputy Secretary of Defense
RESULT: A Defense Department report said in 2013 that only 53 percent of the Defense Department’s assets “are under examination, [or] have been validated as audit ready” by then.
RESPONSE: Mr. England did not return calls for comment left on his home answering machine.
Army Navy Air ForceSeptember 2008 — Defense Financial Improvement and Audit Readiness Plan
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The Department forecasts achieving audit readiness for Real Property” — for example, land, structures, buildings, and utilities — “by FY2014 for the Army, Navy, [and] Air Force.
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Douglas A. Brook
Acting Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller)
Acting Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller)
RESULT: A Defense Department report in 2014 predicted that real property of the Army, Navy, and Air Force won’t be validated as audit ready until FY2015, FY2018, and FY2016, respectively.
RESPONSE: “Notwithstanding the ‘failure’ of the real property prediction, my overall sense is that DoD has made much more progress toward audit readiness in the last couple of years than in previous periods,” said Brook in an emailed statement.
DOD-wide“
By fiscal year 2012, “We plan a DoD-wide examination and validation of our... ‘appropriations received’”: the funds appropriated to the Defense Department through the federal budgeting process.
”
Robert Hale
Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller)
Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller)
RESULT: Audit readiness for Appropriations Received was achieved for the entire DOD in fiscal year 2013, one year later than Hale had promised.
RESPONSE: “All of this was, frankly, harder than I expected and than many of my staff expected. I don’t think there was any other reason [that it took a year longer than expected],” said Hale.
Army“
The Army will be ready for an audit in fiscal year 2014 “of the existence and completeness of mission critical assets, which includes nearly 700,000 general equipment, military equipment, and real property end items, as well as several million missiles and ammunition assets.
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Mary Sally Matiella
Assistant Secretary of the Army,Financial Management and Comptroller
Assistant Secretary of the Army,Financial Management and Comptroller
RESULT: “The Army remains confident in achieving existence and completeness audit readiness for all mission critical assets by June 30, 2016,” according to the November 2014 Defense Financial Improvement and Audit Readiness Plan.
RESPONSE: “This was more of an internal deadline, not a legislative deadline. It ended up slipping because of the inventory sytems not being in place the way we anticipated,” said Matiella.
Air ForceOctober 2011 — House Armed Services Committee
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The Air Force told Congress in February 2011 that it expected 240 outdated Air Force computer systems to be replaced by a single system that would begin to “control and account for $122 billion of inventory” by October 2013.
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David Tillotson
Deputy Chief Management Officer,Office of the Undersecretary of the Air Force
Deputy Chief Management Officer,Office of the Undersecretary of the Air Force
RESULT: The Air Force’s work on the system “took about 9 years, 2 months, and expended about $1.03 billion before it was canceled and... shutdown activities (e.g., contract closeout activities) were complete,” the Government Accountability Office reported in 2015.
RESPONSE: When an inquiry was sent to Tillotson, who currently works for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Defense Department spokesman William Urban wrote in an email that, “We want the Air Force to decide who will talk about [the program]. It is their program and Mr. Tillotson doesn’t work for them anymore.” U.S. Air Force spokeswoman Melissa Milner promised to “check into it” but did not respond with a comment about the program.
DOD-wideOctober 2011 — House Armed Services Committee
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The Department has made significant progress toward meeting the Congressional deadline for audit ready financial statements by 2017.... But I want us to do better — and we will. Today I am announcing that I have directed the Department to cut in half the time it will take to achieve audit readiness for the Statement of Budgetary Resources, so that in 2014 we will have the ability to conduct a full budget audit.
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Leon Panetta
Secretary of Defense
Secretary of Defense
RESULT: “Although the Department did not achieve the September 30, 2014, SBR deadline, significant progress was made,” the November 2014 Defense Financial Improvement and Audit Readiness Plan said.
RESPONSE: “I regret that the Defense Department has not met the deadline to achieve full audit readiness. I understand it is a complicated challenge, but there is no reason why the Defense Department should not be able to conduct a full budget audit,” said Panetta in an emailed statement on May 12, 2015.