To determine whether U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) bureaus responded efficiently to the post-2010 regulations and guidance, we contacted DOI to request a list of fiscal year 2013 bureau conferences with estimated costs exceeding $20,000, a reporting requirement for bureaus outlined by Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance. For the 90 conferences on this list, we sampled 10 conferences from different bureaus and found significant differences between estimated and actual costs.
Numerous discrepancies in reporting also showed up, including those pertaining to the OMB requirement that Federal agencies provide the “total number of individuals whose travel expenses or other conference expenses were paid by the agency.” OMB requires Federal agencies to post this information on their official websites. We found DOI to be inconsistent with the information they provide on their website, providing estimated expenses rather than actual costs in the fiscal year after the conferences have occurred.
We made two recommendations that, if implemented, should help DOI meet the conference tracking and reporting policies established by OMB.