Redstone Government Consulting Blog | DCAA Audit Support (22)

DCAA employees have now received their long-awaited letters proposing an 11 day furlough - one day a week from July through September of 2013.   Since this furlough is cumulatively over 80 hours, employees will also lose an accrual of sick and vacation pay.  In addition, according to Jessica Wright, acting undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, furloughs may not end in September.  She stated that looking at the FY 2014 budget numbers suggested by the White House and both sides in Congress, DoD may very well have to plan for another round of sequestration and furloughs.  Under the federal process, once an employee receives a proposal for furlough, an individual can present a case to the deciding official on why they feel like they should be excepted from the furlough. Then the deciding official will make a final decision.  Since this is a DoD initiative and exceptions apply to very few DCAA employees, the furloughs are expected to be upheld.

DCAA issued its long awaited audit programs for accounting system internal controls.  In March of this year it issued audit programs for its billing system, and the two facets of its accounting system; the control environment and the accounting system or accounting controls.  A significant portion of the control environment audit program is devoted to assessing a company’s “Management’s philosophy and operating style, commitment to competence, and human resource policies and procedures.”  DCAA informs its auditors that this is a very subjective area and in conjunction with their risk assessment procedures and attendance at audit entrance conferences and system demonstrations they should be aware of positive and negative signs.  Leaving the disclosure and development of these positive and negative signs up to the judgment and discretion of the auditor DCAA, HQs decides not to give any illustrations or examples of either, save one.  It very subjectively asserts that excessive turnover may be a possible negative indicator regarding management’s philosophy and operating style.  However, it doesn’t provide any type of a benchmark or barometer as to what is excessive.  It then instructs the auditors to request a listing of management or supervisory personnel in key functions such as operations and program management, accounting, or internal audit that have either retired, quit, or been terminated.  The auditor is then told that if the turnover appears to be excessive, obtain explanations of the reason for management or supervisory personnel leaving the organization. 

In a recent DCAA audit policy, DCAA makes note of the 2013 NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) which requires DCAA to track requests and contractor responses for internal audits and to ensure that DCAA does not use contractor internal audit reports for any purpose other than evaluating and testing the efficacy of contractor internal controls and the reliability of associated contractor business systems.  The reason the NDAA mentions this “limited use” is to diffuse contractor concerns and allegations that DCAA will misuse access to internal audits for so called fishing expeditions.

Loss of Memory or In-Denial?

As most contractors (subject to DCAA incurred cost audits) are aware, DCAA and DCMA were soundly “defeated” in terms of ASBCA rejections of DCAA FAR 31.205-6(b) compensation reasonableness challenges (Reference to J.F. Taylor, ASBCA Cases 56105, 56322 and Metron, ASBCA Cases 56624, 56751, 56752).

Has the Government Learned Its Lesson?  Your Feedback is requested.

Perhaps the most subjective cost allowability determination process utilized by the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) is that associated with determining reasonableness of Government contractor employee compensation, more specifically the wages and benefits of senior managers and executives. Government contractors more likely to endure examination and challenging of such compensation are those with cost reimbursable contracts which invoke the audit of annual incurred cost proposals (ICP) via contract payment clauses. The audit review is a highly subjective process with the purpose of determining if annual compensation exceeds a hypothetical “reasonableness” benchmark, using ambiguous criteria contained in FAR 31.205-6(b)(2), i.e., measured to wage surveys reflecting compensation for same job position within companies of same size, same industry, same geographic area, and engaged in same type of non-government work as performed under government contracts. 

The continuing trend toward the diminution of pay and benefits for Government employees will have a negative impact on DCAA for many years to come.  Over recent years, and especially the past few, DCAA has lost and will continue to lose its experience and knowledge base.  Once those who can retire and those who can find employment elsewhere do so, the “preeminent” government audit agency with the primary goal of contract audits will be a mere shell of its former self, and many would argue that has already come to pass.  Pay freezes, furloughs, changes in retirement benefits, and overall lack of leadership have had devastating effects on the DCAA auditor rolls and contractors are now seeing the impact of this “Brain Drain.”  These actions, coupled with the Agency’s overreaction to recent GAO and DoD-IG criticism, have resulted in at best inappropriate interpretations and at worst inaccurate uses of government regulations and internal DCAA guidance by auditors with very little experience or direction that in past years was provided by more senior people.

As one more indication that DCAA is the puppeteer and the DAR Council are the puppets, the DFARS Final Rule (DFARS Case 2011-D042) requiring a proposal checklist was issued on March 28, 2013.  The proposed checklist and the substance of the final checklist were eerily similar to DCAA’s proposal checklist, which “was” an unconstrained embellishment of anything actually required in the regulations.  The checklist is form over substance and just one more unnecessary document solely to make life easy for DCAA (although not quite as bad as FAR requirements for contractors to provide DCAA with SEC filings as if DCAA auditors are incapable of retrieving these from the readily accessible internet).  The absurdity of the DFARS proposal adequacy checklist rule is self-evident in one public comment and the DAR Council response:

In 2012, DCAA reported to Congress that its 2011 average elapsed days for completing 349 Incurred Cost Proposal audits was 965 days.  As it relates to incurred cost proposal audits, DCAA’s FY2012 audit plan acknowledged its increasing backlog of unaudited incurred costs and also its use of dedicated audit resources (“virtual FAOs”) to reduce the unaudited incurred costs.

DCAA recently published its 2012 Year in Review which highlighted the fact that DCAA’s net savings was $4.2 billion (the highest in Agency history) and representing a ROI of $6.70 for every dollar “invested”.  The terminology and the 30 page report are written as if taxpayers are stockholders and DCAA is reporting to those stockholders.   For the record, DCAA’s net savings are unaudited as are every other statistic included in the report.

The Department of Defense Inspector General(DOD IG) issued a March 7, 2013 report charging that the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) failed to “exercise sufficient professional judgment” while performing certain audits between 2006 and 2010 signaling another bump in the long road ahead for the Agency's return to compliance with GAGAS.