FROM THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

WASHINGTON, DC -- The President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency (PCIE) today conferred its first-ever Alexander Hamilton Award to the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) for its accelerated audit of the Treasury Department’s fiscal year 2002 consolidated financial statements.  The Hamilton Award is the highest honor the PCIE can bestow, recognizing “outstanding achievements in improving the integrity, efficiency or effectiveness of Executive Branch agency operations.”

“We are pleased to accept this award on behalf of the professionals at OIG as well as those at the U.S. General Accounting Office, the financial managers at Treasury’s Bureaus and offices, and the contract audit service providers that worked so hard to make this accomplishment possible,” stated Treasury Inspector General Jeffrey Rush, Jr.

The Treasury OIG audit team, under the executive leadership of Marla Freedman, Assistant Inspector General for Audit and William H. Pugh, Deputy Assistant Inspector General for Financial Audits and directly managed by Audit Director Michael Fitzgerald, completed their audit within just 45 days of the fiscal year-end, three and a half months sooner than the 5 months required to complete the same audit the previous year.  An ambitious goal established by the Secretary of the Treasury, the Department’s accelerated financial reporting for FY 2002 was cited by the Office of Management and Budget as one of the most significant achievements in furthering the President’s Management Agenda for Improved Financial Performance.  The innovative audit techniques employed by OIG have served as a model for other federal agencies in improving audit efficiency and the quality and timeliness of annual reports.

In addition to the Hamilton Award, three other Treasury OIG audit teams today received PCIE Awards for Excellence for their work related to Treasury’s Plastic Card Network (PCN) and two failed banks that resulted in estimated material losses of over $475 million to the Bank Insurance Fund.  The auditors of the PCN identified $3.6 billion in funds that could be better used by changing the way PCN financial agents are compensated for their services and by charging PCN costs back to the participating agencies.  The auditors of the two failed banks (Hamilton Bank, N.A., and NextBank, N.A.) identified a number of actions that Treasury banking regulators could take to avoid similar failures in the future.

Treasury OIG audit reports are available at www.treas.gov/offices/inspector-general/.