Internal Controls Over United States Marine Corps Commercial and Miscellaneous Payments Processed Through the Deployable Disbursing System

The objective of the audit was to determine whether the internal controls over transactions processed through the Deployable Disbursing System DDS were adequate to ensure the reliability of the data processed. The audit included financial information processed by disbursing stations supporting the Operation Iraqi Freedom and included the recording of related obligations. We focused our review on United States Marine Corps USMC commercial and miscellaneous payments. The USMC processed more than 22,870 payments of at least 520 million during FYs 2006 and 2007. USMC internal controls over payments processed through DDS were not adequate to ensure the reliability of the data processed. Specifically, USMC did not properly authorize 9,675 payment vouchers, totaling 310.4 million separate authorization and payment duties adequately control access because it used 14 multiple user accounts and 14 generic user accounts to process a combined total of 52.7 million in payments and maintain a centralized database of the transactions processed through DDS. In addtion, the USMC made 32 duplicate payments, totaling 2.5 million that if collected, could be funds put to better use.