Army National Guard: Inefficient, Error-Prone Process Results in Travel Reimbursement Problems for Mobilized Soldiers Page: 4 of 36
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Guard soldier traveling on official business with transportation, lodging,
and food, or to reimburse the soldier for reasonable and necessary
authorized expenses if the soldier purchases them. In short, the soldier is
to be made whole for authorized out-of-pocket expenses, with timely and
accurate reimbursements for travel expenses.
Within the United States, Army Guard soldiers have guarded the Pentagon,
airports, nuclear power plants, and domestic water supplies as part of the
homeland security effort. Overseas, they continue to perform highly
dangerous peacekeeping missions and force protection operations in Iraq,
Afghanistan, and other countries. When government-provided meals and
housing were not available to some Guard soldiers, they lived off the local
economy-purchased food at restaurants and groceries, and housing at
hotels-and later submitted requests to the Army for reimbursement of
their out-of-pocket expenses.
Because our preliminary assessment determined that the current
authorization, request, review, and approval processes used to pay travel
reimbursements to active service Army Guard soldiers relied extensively
on paper-intensive, nonintegrated systems, and error-prone manual
transaction entry that did not provide an adequate audit trail or a reliable
population of transactions, we could not effectively statistically test
current processes and controls. Instead, we systematically assessed the
effectiveness of the overall design of controls at work in the key areas of
processes, people (human capital), and automated systems through case
studies of 10 selected units of Army Guard soldiers mobilized to active
service in support of Operations Iraqi Freedom, Noble Eagle, and
Enduring Freedom during the period from October 2001 through
November 2003. In addition, we audited a nonrepresentative selection of
individual travel vouchers that were paid 120 days or more from the date
the travel ended and travel vouchers selected from the unit case studies.
We used this approach to provide a more detailed perspective on the
design of controls and the nature of deficiencies in the three phases of the
travel and reimbursement process: (1) authorization; (2) travel voucher
preparation, unit review, and transmission; and (3) computation office
review and payment. Further details on our scope and methodology and
the results of the case studies can be found in our related report.GAO-05-400T
6 Joint Federal Travel Regulation (JFTR)/Joint Travel Regulation (JTR), app. O,
para. T4020.B.2, change 203/457, November 1, 2003.Page 2
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United States. Government Accountability Office. Army National Guard: Inefficient, Error-Prone Process Results in Travel Reimbursement Problems for Mobilized Soldiers, text, March 16, 2005; Washington D.C.. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc291499/m1/4/: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.