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GAO-02-1082R 1 (2002-09-18)

handle is hein.gao/gaobaambl0001 and id is 1 raw text is: I Accountability * Integrity * Reliability United States General Accounting Office Washington, DC 20548 September 18, 2002 The Honorable Van Zeck Commissioner Bureau of the Public Debt Subject: Bureau of the Public Debt: Areas for Improvement in Computer Controls Dear Mr. Zeck: In connection with fulfilling our requirement to audit the U.S. government's fiscal year 2001 financial statements,' we reviewed the general and application computer controls over key financial systems maintained and operated by the Department of the Treasury's Bureau of the Public Debt (BPD). This report for public release summarizes the results of our fiscal year 2001 work, including our follow-up on previous years' recommendations. The Department of the Treasury is authorized by Congress to borrow money on the credit of the United States to fund operations of the federal government. Within Treasury, BPD is responsible for prescribing the debt instruments, limiting and restricting the amount and composition of the debt, paying interest to investors, and accounting for the resulting debt. BPD is also responsible for issuing Treasury securities to trust funds for trust fund receipts not needed for current benefits and expenses. We used a risk-based and rotation approach for testing general and application controls. Under that methodology, every 3 years the data center and all key applications are subjected to a full-scope review, which includes testing in all the computer control areas defined in the Federal Information System Controls Audit Manual.2 The scope of our work for fiscal year 2001 was to follow up on vulnerabilities identified in our prior years' reports and to perform a full-scope review of BPD's entitywide computer control security program, access controls, application software development and change controls, systems software, segregation of duties, and service continuity. We also performed full-scope application controls reviews over two key applications and limited-scope reviews of another four key applications. We performed our work at the BPD data center from September 2001 through '31 U.S.C. 331(e) (2000). 'U.S. General Accounting Office, Federal Information System Controls Audit Manual, Volume I, Financial Statement Audits, GAO/AIMD-12.19.6 (Washington, D.C.: June 2001). GAO-02-1082R Computer Controls at BPD Page 1

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