Why We Performed This Audit
Office of Management and Budget Memorandum M‐13‐21, Implementation of the Government Charge Card Abuse Prevention Act of 2012, requires periodic risk assessments of agency travel card programs to analyze the risks of illegal, improper, or erroneous purchases. The Government Charge Card Abuse Prevention Act of 2012 (Pub. L. 112‐194) requires a full audit of travel card programs when the total transactions exceed $10 million. GSA’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 travel card program had a total of $10.3 million in travel card transactions.
The objectives of our audit were to determine if, in FY 2023: (1) GSA’s travel card program had controls in place to ensure compliance with GSA, Office of Management and Budget, and federal guidelines; and (2) GSA travel card transactions were properly and fully supported, reported, and approved.
What We Found
During our audit, we found issues with GSA’s FY 2023 travel card program. Specifically, we found that:
- GSA employees used their travel cards to pay for personal rideshare app charges and to pay for state taxes when they were tax‐exempt;
- Most FY 2023 travel card charges were not screened for misuse or fraud;
- The GSA Office of Administrative Services’ (OAS’s) resolution process for questionable charges did not ensure that cardholder misuse or fraud was addressed and resolved; and
- OAS did not ensure the questionable charges report contained complete information on how questionable charges were resolved.
What We Recommend
We recommend that the GSA Chief Administrative Services Officer:
- Work with GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service program officials to implement messaging to travel cardholders on the proper use of government rideshare contracts.
- Continue training related to use of the government travel card in rideshare applications.
- Continue to remind travelers in training and in the Concur travel system to not pay sales or occupancy taxes in tax‐exempt states.
- Create the questionable charges report according to the requirements of GSA’s Charge Card Management Plan to ensure that all charges are screened and that questionable charges are identified and investigated.
- Update the questionable charges report to ensure the results are complete. These updates should include a higher level of detail to ensure timely resolution and response, and capture employee name changes or separations from the Agency.
The GSA Chief Administrative Services Officer agreed with our findings and recommendations. GSA’s full response can be found in Appendix B.
