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Audit of AmeriCorps’ Fiscal Year 2022 National Service Trust Fund Financial Statements

Date Issued
Report Number
OIG-AR-23-02
Report Type
Audit
Description
The National Service Trust holds the funds set aside to pay the education awards of national service members who successfully complete their service terms. Responsibility for the education awards that have been earned or will be earned in the near future is the largest liability on AmeriCorps’ financial statements at $340 million. AmeriCorps has been unable to produce auditable financial statements for the last six years. This year, independent auditors again issued a disclaimer of opinion, reporting six material weaknesses and one significant deficiency. Five of the material weaknesses are recurring, three of them since FY 2017, one since FY 2018, and one since FY 2021. The auditors reported a new material weakness, Knowledge Gap throughout Financial Management Operations. Further, the financial statements and accompanying notes were not in accordance with U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and Office of Management and Budget Circular A-136 and contained mathematical errors and inconsistencies. The repeated audit opinion disclaimers reflect AmeriCorps’ lack of leadership with relevant Federal financial management knowledge and skills. In recognition of the pervasive weaknesses, AmeriCorps included in its Annual Management Report (AMR) a Statement of No Assurance, acknowledging that the agency could not provide reasonable assurance as to the effectiveness of internal control over financial reporting, operations, including programmatic operations, and compliance with laws. This is the third year that AmeriCorps has issued a No Assurance statement. Remedial actions by AmeriCorps have closed six of the 37 prior year recommendations. The remaining 31 recommendations continue to be valid, one of them in modified form. The auditors also made 11 new recommendations, for a total of 42. AmeriCorps’ response to the audit report did not address the findings and recommendations in detail but reiterated the agency’s commitment to strengthening financial management. The independent accounting firm RMA Associates LLC performed the audit of the AmeriCorps FY 2022 National Service Trust Fund financial statements, under contract with AmeriCorps-OIG.
Joint Report
No
Agency Wide
Yes
Questioned Costs
$0
Funds for Better Use
$0
View report on Oversight.gov

Open Recommendations

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Complete a detailed performance diagnostic and gap analysis on AmeriCorps’ financial management personnel, processes, and systems, including a root cause analysis, and then develop, design, and implement a plan toward short- and long-term goals.

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Perform intermediate assessments of the effectiveness of its executed plans and final evaluations of its financial management operations to ensure desired results are achieved.

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Develop a process to understand the root causes and conditions behind each control deficiency and the discrepancies between the control deficiencies identified by AmeriCorps’ internal control testing and those reported by the external auditors. The document should consider the information presented to the Risk Management Council and their decisions, as well as any other considerations used in determining the classification of the control deficiency. Furthermore, this understanding should be used to develop and implement CAPs to address the deficiencies.

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Require each department head to be responsible and accountable for timely developing and implementing CAPs and require each department’s staff to test the design and effectiveness of each CAP as implemented to ensure that it achieves the desired results.

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Revise the Business Process Narratives to incorporate significant changes in the current financial and control environment.

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Develop and implement effective controls, including a quality assurance process, necessary to ensure that: (New)

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accounting and reporting are in accordance with U.S. GAAP and financial information is presented in compliance with OMB A-136.

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account balances are accurate as of and through the reporting period.

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the proper validation, review, and approval over financial reporting and the AMR compilation.

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Develop, identify and make available the training necessary to ensure that staff obtain and update the skills necessary to ensure compliance with: (New)

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FASAB concept and accounting standards.

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OMB A-123.

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OMB A-136.

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GAO Disclosure checklist.

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Treasury’s U.S. Standard General Ledger annual update.

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the correct use of the Business Event Transaction Codes (BETC) when submitting transactions to Treasury.

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Develop and implement financial reporting internal controls to analyze and address the root causes of the need for journal entries and the corrective actions in financial management systems to reduce the necessity of future journal entries.

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Verify and validate the underlying input data to the TOLM.

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After the verification and validation, reassess its assumptions and consider expanding the subjective elements of the calculation (i.e., those based on changes to the economy and the job market) to include changes in the way awards are utilized.