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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Office of Inspector General
At a Glance
11-P-0223
May 10, 2011
Why We Did This Review
The Office of the Inspector
General (OIG) became aware
I that an OIG employee could
authorize his/her own travel
despite not meeting the criteria
to do so under the U.S.
Environmental Protection
Agency's (EPA's) Travel
Policy. Therefore, we sought to
determine whether necessary
control procedures were in place
for the approval of travel
authorizations and routing
changes, and whether the
redelegation of authority for
self-approval of travel was
consistent Agency-wide.
Background
GovTrip is the EPA travel
management system that
provides federal travelers with
completely automated travel
planning and reimbursement
capabilities. The General
Services Administration
authorized the use of GovTrip,
which is a Northrop Grumman
Internet-based system. EPA's
Office of the Chief Financial
Officer manages GovTrip for
EPA.
For further information,
contact our Office of
Congressional, Public Affairs and
Management at (202) 566-2391.
The full report is at:
www.epa.gov/oiq/reports/20117
20110510-11-P-0223.pdf
Catalyst for Improving the Environment
EPA Needs to Strengthen Management
Controls Over Its Travel Authorization Process
What We Found
The EPA travel program lacks sufficient management controls to ensure that
travel documents are properly routed and authorized. Current travel controls do
not prevent prohibited employees from self-authorizing their travel. Also, the
EPA travel system allows unauthorized personnel to self-approve travel, and
does not ensure that GovTrip routing lists are controlled to ensure an
independent review of travel. We did not identify any instances of fraud during
our review. However, the lack of sufficient management controls to ensure that
travel documents are properly routed and authorized leaves the Agency's travel
system vulnerable to fraud, waste, and abuse that may go undetected.
What We Recommend
We recommend that the Chief Financial Officer revise the Agency's current
Delegations Manual to prevent the self-authorization of travel at any level within
the Agency. This revision should require the program and regional offices to
delete outdated routing lists, fix those that are incorrect, and create new routing
lists to match current organizational structures. We also recommend that the
Chief Financial Officer require that personnel not be on routing lists that give
them the authority to authorize travel, and ensure that routing list managers
notify the Cincinnati Financial Management Center when personnel or
organizational changes require routing list changes. We further recommend that
the Chief Financial Officer request that the General Services Administration
change GovTrip to prevent self-authorization of travel and include audit trails to
determine who made changes to routing lists. Finally, we recommend that the
Chief Financial Officer require Agency program and regional offices to assist the
Office of the Chief Financial Officer in developing policy to effectively manage
routing lists, and that computer programs be run monthly to determine whether
travelers are in compliance with policy, and investigate any exceptions.
The Agency's response to our draft report did not specifically state concurrence
or nonconcurrence with our audit findings. We noted that the Agency response
did include an attachment that addressed each of our recommendations, along
with proposed corrective actions and completion milestones.
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