Civil Debt Collection Reconciliation Process

Report No. 02-08
March 2002
Office of the Inspector General

OBJECTIVES, SCOPE, AND METHODOLOGY

The purpose of this audit was to follow up on the OIG's Audit of the Office of Debt Collection Management's Implementation of the Collection Litigation Automated Support System. That audit identified discrepancies between: (a) civil debt amounts reported as collected by the USAOs, the NCIF, and the litigating divisions versus civil debt reported as deposited in the Department's account at Treasury for FY 1998 and FY 1999, and (b) the fiscal year ending balance and subsequent year beginning balance of civil debt reported by the EOUSA for FY 1998, FY 1999, and FY 2000.

The scope of the audit was limited to identifying the reasons for these discrepancies. As such, we excluded from the scope of the audit a review of compliance with laws and regulations since this was not significant to address the audit objectives. Therefore, we reviewed:

• the reporting and reconciliation process for civil debt collection performed by the USAOs, and the litigating divisions for FY 1998 and FY 1999;
• the Department-wide FLRs and supporting worksheets for FY1998 and FY 1999, obtained from the DCM;
• the FLRs for FYs 1998, 1999, and 2000 obtained from the EOUSA, the NCIF, and the litigating divisions; and
• the monthly reconciliation worksheets prepared by the DAOG for FY 1998 and FY 1999.

We also interviewed officials from the DCM, the EOUSA, the NCIF, and the litigating divisions, to obtain information on their reporting polices and reconciliation practices, and to identify potential causes for the differences between their reported cash collections and the collections reported as deposited by the DAOG.

We performed our audit in accordance with Government Auditing Standards and, accordingly, included such tests of the records and procedures as we deemed necessary to achieve our objectives.