12.02.19

Sullivan Chairs Armed Services Subcommittee Hearing on DOD’s Agency-Wide Audit

WASHINGTON, DC – Recently, U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) chaired a Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support hearing to discuss the Fiscal Year 2019 Department of Defense (DOD) agency-wide audit with Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist. The hearing focused on the department’s progress from its first-ever audit last year and its importance to U.S. national security and maintaining the trust of Congress and American taxpayers.

“The completion of this audit represents a critical piece of executing the 2018 National Defense Strategy, ensuring the Department of Defense gains full value from every taxpayer dollar,” said Senator Sullivan. “Maintaining our military’s fiscal responsibilities enables Congress to provide the military with the resources it needs to combat threats around the world, particularly our near-peer competitors: Russia and China. I congratulate Deputy Secretary Norquist on his efforts to complete this year’s DOD audit and look forward to continued improvement next year. I hope to see the department again build off of this year’s audit – as they did off of last year’s – to create a more efficient and effective military going forward.”           

FY19 DOD Audit Background:

  • The Department of Defense maintains $2.9 trillion in assets and $292 billion in inventory (more than six times the size of Walmart’s inventory) making this one of the largest audits ever attempted.
  • Of the 24 agencies within the department audited this year, one additional agency’s audit came back with a clean opinion, bringing the total to seven agencies with clean audits.
  • 23 percent of the unfavorable findings identified in FY18 were closed out.

Congressional actions:

  • Congress mandated that the Department of Defense complete an audit in 1990 under the Chief Financial Officers Act. Since then, the Department of Defense has been attempting to become “audit ready” for nearly three decades.
  • The 2010 National Defense Authorization Act mandated that the DOD be audit ready by September 30, 2017. Under the leadership of Deputy Secretary  Norquist, the department completed its first ever audit in 2018 and went on to complete its second on November 15, 2019.

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