Sneak Preview: GAO Scrutinizes FAC Functionality, Lack of Single Audit Quality Review
(The following was excerpted from a recent Thompson Grants Compliance Expert article.)
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently issued a highly critical report about status of information submitted and maintained at the General Services Administration’s (GSA) Federal Audit Clearinghouse (FAC), particularly in light of the massive amount of federal relief funding issued in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The report, which contained numerous recommendations, also called for the scheduling of a governmentwide single audit quality review.
The Single Audit Act and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) uniform guidance (§200.501(a)) requires nonfederal entities that spend $750,000 or more in federal awards in a year to undergo a single audit. This threshold will be increased to $1 million under the 2024 revisions to the uniform guidance published April 22, which become effective for awards issued on or after Oct. 1, unless federal agencies elect to implement them earlier. Audit results must be submitted to the FAC, which had been maintained by the U.S. Census Bureau until October 2023, at which time the GSA assumed responsibilities (see ¶650 in the Single Audit Information Service Module). OMB told GAO that it expected GSA to modernize the FAC in a phased approach over time to improve usability and increase transparency over federal award spending.
After analyzing FAC data from 2015 through 2021, GAO determined that the data are generally reliable enough to allow federal agencies to oversee award spending. However, it did find issues such as inaccurate identification of federal programs, inconsistent recordings of audit opinions and incomplete information on single audit findings. For example, GAO identified 119 audits with an award expenditure that included Coronavirus Relief Fund as the program name, but did not use the associated Assistance Listing number (21.019) or another valid Assistance Listings number from a complete list obtained through SAM.gov.
“When recipients label expenditures under another federal program or an invalid [Assistance Listings] number, federal agencies could fail in their FAC searches to identify audit findings related to those expenditures,” GAO explained. “This could hinder federal agencies’ ability to monitor recipients of federal awards, identify issues with the recipients’ spending of funds and ensure that recipients resolve their deficiencies.”
GAO also expressed concerns with using the FAC, such as difficult search functionality, variations in recipient names, incomplete texts fields and download restrictions. “The lack of modernization in the FAC makes accessing and using FAC data more challenging for federal agency officials and public users,” GAO added. “This could cause FAC users to expend resources on preparing data to use single audit results for further analyses.”
(The full version of this story has now been made available to all for a limited time here.)
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