Summary

To further efforts to develop a consistent legislative approach for uniform financial audit requirements for recipients of Federal assistance and consolidate the multiple statutory financial audit provisions, GAO described the content and applicability of existing financial audit provisions.

As of June 1983, there are 30 statutory provisions contained in Federal legislation which expressly authorize or require financial audits of assistance programs. Seventeen provisions assign responsibility to the grantee and vary as to the audit scope and frequency as well as the standards to be followed. The other 13 provisions generally place this responsibility on the Federal grantor agency or GAO and afford them discretion in making such determinations. In total, 1 or more of the 30 provisions apply to 86 Federal programs which accounted for about 44 percent of fiscal year 1982 obligations for the 574 programs which GAO examined.