ALEXANDRIA, Va.—NCUA’s Office of Inspector General has reviewed the agency’s 2013 purchase and travel card transactions, determining the programs pose a low risk for illegal, improper, or erroneous purchases and payments.
The OIG conducted the review as required by the Government Charge Card Abuse Prevention Act of 2012. The Government Services Administration (GSA) SmartPay 2 program provides charge cards to U.S. government agencies through master contracts that are negotiated with major national banks. NCUA has established three government charge card programs through GSA SmartPay 2 contracts with JP Morgan Chase. Those charge card programs are: purchase card – centrally billed accounts (CBA); travel card – centrally billed accounts; and travel card – individually billed accounts (IBA).
NCUA issues travel cards to most of its approximately 1,260 employees. Federal employees are required to use their federal travel charge cards for all expenses related to official government travel where merchants accept the card for payment.
“Based upon our assessment, we did not perform an audit of NCUA’s CBA purchase card or CBA travel card programs,” the OIG stated in its report. “However, because NCUA exceeded the Act’s $10-million threshold for IBA travel card usage by approximately $2 million, we performed an audit of NCUA’s IBA travel card program.”
The OIG determined that NCUA could improve aspects of its IBA program for travel cards. “Specifically, we identified 37 transactions related to our testing of specific IBA accounts that we determined to be questionable charges. In addition, we also identified 108 transactions related to our testing of non-travel related transactions by MCCs (merchant category code) totaling approximately $9,700.”
The OIG conducted two separate tests over IBA travel cards, with the initial test consisting of a random sample of 67 IBA travel card accounts. The second test included an agency-wide review of all activity of non-travel related transactions by merchant category code.
“For each of these testing efforts, we obtained a listing of all transaction related activity from JP Morgan Chase,” wrote the OIG. “For our random sample of 67 IBA travel card accounts, we downloaded all transactions (travel and non-travel) for review and analyses. For our MCC testing effort, we downloaded all non-travel MCC transactions for review and conducted reasonableness testing over these transactions. When we identified questionable transactions within either testing effort, we inquired with the cardholder(s) to obtain supporting documentation.”