WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Fourteen US agencies do not keep any organized inventory of their telecommunications devices for staff members in a government program costing $1.2 billion per year, according to a new US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.
"Most of the 15 agencies… reviewed did not have an inventory of mobile devices and associated services that can be used to assess device usage," GAO said on Thursday.
According to the report, only five of the 15 US federal agencies had complete service and device inventories. The remaining agencies either did not have inventories or incomplete ones that did not account for all devices and services.
"[O]nly one of the 15 agencies GAO reviewed had documented procedures for monitoring spending by reviewing devices and associated service plans for overuse, underuse, or zero use," the GAO found.
According to the most recent estimate from the US Office of Budget Management, the US federal government spends about $1.2 billion annually on about 1.5 million mobile devices and associated services.
The Government Accountability Office is an independent, nonpartisan agency that works for the US Congress. It investigates how the US government spends taxpayer dollars.
