USDOE Continues 12 Outstanding Issues

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The US Department of Education says its encouraged by ASG’s continued efforts in addressing outstanding issues in the High Risk Corrective Action plan however it has determined that ASG was not able to make significant progress towards completing or implementing all necessary actions for the outstanding items.

Therefore USDOE has determined that all outstanding items in American Samoa’s corrective action plan shall remain open.

ASDOE has been under high risk since 2003 and this designation subjects DOE, Treasury, procurement and other departments which deal with finances and procurement for DOE to more stringent reporting requirements and justification for drawdowns of federal funds.

The decision by USDOE to leave open the outstanding items came after the federal agency reviewed ASG’s high risk correction action plan report for the period ended March 31, 2016.

Most of the outstanding items relate to ASG’s management of federal grants, procurement processes and staff capacity.

Among the 12 outstanding items are lack of progress on hiring of a Deputy Director of Finance and Administrative Services for DOE, inadequate standard operating procedures relating to code of conduct and procurement, lack of controls to prevent ASG agencies from bypassing the central  procurement office for purchases, incomplete inventor of property and equipment, repeated budget overruns and not meeting stated timelines.

In its response to the report by ASG, USDOE noted that ASG’s core financial and counting system IFAS needs to be upgrades, in order to facilitate ASG’s full compliance with federal grant administration requirements.

It looks forward to ASG’s success in its IFAS upgrade to accomplish significant improvement in grants administration and fiscal accountability.

ASG got positive remarks from USDOE on its plan to address long standing challenges pertaining to periodic accounting for and reconciling the actual property and equipment data to general ledger and to comply with federal capital assets management requirements.

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