Pentagon Fails Its Second Audit — But Not As Badly – By Courtney Bublé (Defense One) / Nov 19 2019
The comptroller’s report said the Defense Department had fixed more than 550 problems — about one-quarter of them — listed in the 2018 audit.
The Pentagon on Friday announced that it had failed its financial audit for the second year in a row, although the department showed it is making progress.
The Defense Department’s fiscal 2019 audit—its second ever—covered over $2.9 trillion in assets and $2.8 trillion in liabilities. Of the 24 individual audits, the department-wide mark is composed of: six components that received an unmodified opinion, one that received a qualified opinion, three that are pending and the remainder with a disclaimer of opinion, meaning the auditors could not obtain appropriate evidence to make a decision. This is “consistent with the experiences of other large and complex federal agencies during their initial years under financial statement audit,” according to the audit.
“We made progress in our priority areas while focusing on the importance of sustainable solutions,” said Elaine McCusker, the Pentagon’s acting comptroller. “But as expected, we will receive an overall disclaimer again this year,” which means the results did not come back clean.
The department said it sustained the achievements noted in the 2018 audit, the first time the agency was audit-ready since Congress made government audits a requirement in 1990. These successes included: no evidence of fraud, no major issues with payments to civilian or military members and “existence and completeness of major military equipment.”
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