A key team in the Defense Logistics Agency’s Audit Readiness efforts was recognized for its work as one of five winners of the agency’s inaugural Strategic Goals Awards Oct. 9 during a Director’s Call with DLA Director Navy Vice Adm. Mark Harnitchek at the McNamara Headquarters Complex.
DLA Finance’s Appropriations Received Audit Readiness Team, led by Simone Reba, deputy director of DLA Finance and program manager for the audit readiness effort, helped DLA reached its first milestone in the audit readiness process in June by meeting requirements set forth in the first phase of the Defense Department’s auditability requirements. For its accomplishment, it was awarded the “Achieve Audit Readiness: Prove It” award.
Reba, fresh off a nationwide tour highlighting audit readiness efforts to agency employees and senior managers, said winning the award not only acknowledges her team’s efforts but also emphasizes the importance of agency leaders’ support in achieving the first of many audit readiness goals.
“It acknowledges all the hard work of the team, and it also is the first step in proving to the agency and the Defense Department that DLA audit readiness is achievable,” Reba said. “It demonstrated that it will take a village to correct our deficiencies to get across the finish line. It demonstrated that we need strong support from the top and for all leaders to provide direction and ensure corrective actions were completed.”
Planned as quarterly awards by Harnitchek, the Strategic Goals Awards recognize individuals or teams that have advanced the success of the director’s “Big Ideas:” improve customer service, decrease direct material costs, decrease operating costs, reduce inventory and achieve audit readiness.
The Appropriations Received Audit Readiness Team prepared an assertion package, delivered it to the Office of the Secretary of Defense Comptroller before the June 30 due date, and received confirmation that DLA provided everything required, marking the first milestone achieved in this effort.
Reba said the assertion process was a learning process for the agency.
“This first assertion helped us learn a lot about the process,” Reba said. “Our future endeavors will build from lessons learned to ensure that our future assertions are equally or more successful.”
At the Director’s Call on Oct. 9, Harnitchek congratulated the award winners, calling the audit readiness task exceptionally hard.
“Part of the efficiency is you have to be able to prove what it is that you did,” Harnitchek said. “And you need to be able to prove it to an outside auditor. And you need to be able to prove it pretty easily. An auditor will come in and say, ‘Hey, see this big contract? Prove to me that you got all the stuff you ordered, prove to me you paid it and show me all the invoices.’”
Harnitchek, who introduced his Big Ideas in a March 20 blog post, reminded employees to be mindful of certain things, emphasizing the need for oversight in spending.
“We got two big things we got to do here,” Harnitchek said. “Every day, we have to be effective. On the back end of that, we need to be mindful of how much things cost. We’re out there spending the taxpayer’s money, the services’ money; we’re writing checks the services need to cash. It’s pretty simple stuff, but we in the government at large – DoD specifically – have not been very good at being able to prove it to an outside auditor, and be able to prove it in 10 or 15 minutes, not, ‘I’ll get back to you next year when I get all my records together and I concoct all this stuff.’”
Good stewardship, one of the major key to ensuring audit readiness, is a responsibility all employees have, Harnitchek added.
“It’s a big deal,” he said. “Everybody is making decisions that result in us expending some resources, people, money, stuff, you name it. Everybody has a little part of that. I need you to help me be audit ready. It’s a stewardship issue. Your gray-haired grandmother, your parents, you need to be able to prove to them that ‘Hey, I’m good stewards of your hard earned tax dollars.”