Jan. 10 (UPI) -- The House Armed Services Committee will hear testimony on the Pentagon's financial improvement and audit remediation, or FIAR, plan on Wednesday morning at 10 am EST as the agency undergoes a defense-wide audit amid years of financial management concerns.
The Under Secretary of Defense and Chief Financial Officer David L. Norquist will update the committee on the Pentagon's FIAR plan, which illustrates to Congress the audit readiness of the Department of Defense.
The goal of being "audit ready" inside the Pentagon means that any Defense Department entity is able to have an auditor inspect the full financial statements, resulting in creditable feedback.
Last month, Defense Department officials announced they had received notification from the department's inspector general that the financial statement audit had begun.
This is the first time the Department of Defense has been audited, with Norquist telling reporters last month that, "Beginning in 2018, our audits will occur annually, with reports issued Nov. 15," adding that, "It is important that the Congress and the American people have confidence in DoD's management of every taxpayer dollar."
In 2007, the Defense Department projected that their full financial statements would be ready for inspection by September 2017. With the passing of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010, Congress bolstered the Pentagon's 2017 audit-ready projections by mandating monthly FIAR plan reports, and for the Pentagon to continue preparing for the 2018 audit.
Every two years at the start of a new Congress, the Government Accountability Office highlights agencies and programs it deems at high risk for fraud, waste, abuse, mismanagement and in need of transformation. The Pentagon has been on GAO's High Risk List since 1995.
GAO's 2017 High Risk List includes a total of 34 areas across the U.S. government that are vulnerable.
The Defense Department accounts for eight of those areas, including the Pentagon's supply chain management, weapons systems acquisition, financial management, business systems modernization, and support infrastructure management, among others.
