Summary

This report provides information on the stipends and expenses of the boards of trustees and other management advisory personnel who served in fiscal year (FY) 1993 at DOD's Federally Funded Research and Development Centers. Specifically, GAO discusses (1) the extent to which the centers used federal funds to pay these costs; (2) the range and highest daily stipends paid to individual trustees and other management advisory personnel; (3) the center advisers' costs and, where applicable, the Defense Science Board's limits on paying for such expenditures; (4) the total and average daily center costs for their trustees and advisory personnel; and (5) individual stipends and total expenditures for each of the 186 center trustees and other management advisory personnel in 1993.

GAO found that: (1) the CNA Corporation, Institute for Defense Analyses, and Software Engineering Institute operate solely with federally derived funds; (2) the FFRDCs operated by the Aerospace Corporation, Lincoln Laboratory, Logistics Management Institute, MITRE Corporation, and Rand Corporation used both federal and non-federal funds to pay trustee and adviser expenditures; (3) according to these FFRDCs, the use of non-federal funds in fiscal year (FY) 1993 was about 28 percent for Lincoln Laboratory, 14 percent for the Rand Corporation, about 5 percent for the MITRE Corporation, 2 percent for the Aerospace Corporation, and about 1 percent for the Logistics Management Institute; (4) the average daily stipends paid to the 186 trustees and advisory personnel ranged from $0 (for 27) to $7,200 (for 1); (5) of those that were paid a stipend (159 of the 186), 40 percent received $1,501 or more a day, and the 11 highest daily stipends ranged from $3,038 to $7,200; (6) the Defense Science Board (DSB) reimburses its members for travel expenses in accordance with federal travel regulations and pays stipends limited by title 5 U.S.C.; (7) specifically, DSB's FY 1993 maximum daily limits were $333 for stipend, $140 for lodging (for New York City), and $38 for meals; (8) there are no set limits on airfare costs, and expenditures for gifts, entertainment, and spouses are generally not allowable; (9) although most of the average daily costs for trustees and advisers, excluding stipends, were small, there were some larger expenditures that exceeded DSB limits; (10) there was significant variation in the total trustee and management advisory personnel expenditures paid by FFRDCs; and (11) the total expenditures ranged from $4,763 at the Software Engineering Institute to $496,951 at the MITRE Corporation, while average daily stipends paid (the Software Engineering Institute paid no stipends) ranged from $370 at Lincoln Laboratory to $2,057 at the Rand Corporation.