GAO Reviews NASA Payment Systems

Improper Payments: Weaknesses in USAID’s and NASA’s Implementation of the Improper Payments Information Act and Recovery Auditing, GAO

“While both USAID and NASA took steps to assess their payment activities for risk, including conducting a review of select payment streams for improper payments, we identified numerous deficiencies in their procedures. USAID and NASA lacked a systematic method to review and analyze program operations to determine if risks exist, what those risks are, and the potential or actual impact of those risks on program operations. For example, neither USAID nor NASA had developed a process to (1) identify risks that exist in their payment activities or (2) evaluate the results of their payment stream reviews, such as weighting and scoring the effectiveness of existing internal control over payments made and results from external audits.”