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GAO-20-690R 1 (2020-08-14)

handle is hein.gao/gaobaebnz0001 and id is 1 raw text is: cAO U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 441 G St. N.W. Washington, DC 20548 August 14, 2020 Congressional Committees GAO Audits Involving DOD: Status of Efforts to Schedule and Hold Timely Entrance Conferences GAO's agency protocols govern GAO's relationships with audited entities. These protocols, coordinated with federal agencies including the Department of Defense (DOD), assist GAO in scheduling an entrance conference within 14 days of receiving notice of a new audit. 1 Entrance conferences provide GAO an opportunity to communicate its audit objectives and enable agencies to assign key points of contact to support its work. In past years, DOD has experienced difficulty in meeting the protocol target for the timely facilitation of entrance conferences. In Senate Report 116-48 accompanying a bill for the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020, the Senate Armed Services Committee included a provision for GAO to review DOD's timely scheduling and holding of entrance conferences. In our report, we evaluate the extent to which DOD scheduled entrance conferences within 14 days, consistent with GAO protocols, and also held those conferences within 30 days. This is the third of four quarterly reports that we will produce on this topic for fiscal year 2020.2 In the first two quarterly reports, we found that DOD had improved its ability to meet the protocol target.3 To address our objective, we collected and analyzed data on GAO audits involving DOD that were initiated in the third quarter of fiscal year 2020, April 1, 2020, through June 30, 2020. Specifically, we determined the number of notification letters requesting entrance conferences that GAO sent to DOD during that time period. We also reviewed data collected by DOD on entrance conference requests to ensure data consistency. We defined the date an entrance conference was scheduled as the date the relevant GAO team had received a communication, such as an email, appointment, or phone call from DOD, stating that an entrance conference had been scheduled. We then analyzed the data to determine the number of days between the date that DOD had received the notification letter for each new audit and the date that DOD had scheduled the entrance conference for that audit and assessed whether DOD had scheduled entrance conferences within 14 days of notification, which is the time frame identified in GAO's 1GAO, GAO's Agency Protocols, GAO-1 9-55G (Washington, D.C.: Jan. 23, 2019). For purposes of this report, we define days as all days of the week, including Saturday and Sunday. 2We issued the first two quarterly reports earlier this fiscal year. See GAO, GAO Audits Involving DOD: Status of DOD's Efforts to Schedule and Hold Timely Entrance Conferences, GAO-20-391 R (Washington, D.C.: Feb. 12, 2020) and GAO Audits Involving DOD: Status of DOD's Efforts to Schedule and Hold Timely Entrance Conferences, GAOo20-547R (Washington, D.C.: May 22, 2020). 3During the first quarter of fiscal year 2020, we found that of the 35 requested entrance conferences, DOD scheduled 25 within 14 days of notification and held 23 within 30 days of notification. DOD improved its ability to schedule and hold entrance conferences in a timely manner during the second quarter of fiscal year 2020. Specifically, of the 49 requested entrance conferences, DOD scheduled 45 within 14 days of notification and held 48 within 30 days of notification. GAO-20-690R GAO Audits Involving DOD Page 1

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