Defense Audit Provides Improved Accounting for Spending, Inventories

By Jim Garamone, DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department audit that is underway will allow leaders in the White House, the Pentagon and Congress to find better ways to account for taxpayers’ dollars, DoD’s chief financial officer said yesterday.

In an interview with WGAN radio in Portland, Maine, Pentagon Comptroller David L. Norquist said the audit’s results should be available in the fall.

“We normally have audits of individual programs, but this one is the entire department, so it verifies account, location, condition of our inventory, all the equipment, test for security vulnerabilities and validating personnel records and payments,” he said.

Next year’s fiscal year defense budget, for example, is set at $717 billion. The audit looks at all property, all equipment and all personnel, and it ensures accountability and provides transparency for the American taxpayer, the chief financial officer said.

Annual Audit

Thousands of DoD auditors worldwide are involved in the process, Norquist said, and the department will do this every year. He said the audit invariably will find faults that will need to be corrected. Having an audit allows leaders to make changes and then ensure those changes are doing what is intended, Norquist said.

“One of the things that often happens with audits is the public goes, ‘Well, what became of it?’” he said. “‘What did people do?’” Each year, he said, the public will see what the findings were, what was fixed and what remains to be done. “So it’ll be an annual process, and as I like to say to the workforce, it will go on as long as we both shall live,” Norquist said.

Audits are valuable in that they find challenges, he said. “Often, those are areas where people are doing things manually or the data is not compatible,” he added, “and when you streamline them, you get more efficiencies [and] you get more savings.”

Navy Savings

Already, he said, the Navy saved $65 million by transmitting things in a more automated and complete format. “We expect to see more of that across the organization,” Norquist said.

Another result, he said, is the organization gets better data quality for decision making.

“When getting ready for the audit, the Army identified 39 Black Hawk helicopters that were not properly in its property system,” Norquist said. “Now, the person who had them knew they were there, but if the department was looking across its inventory, it would not have seen [them].”

The audit also is part of implementing the new National Defense Strategy, Norquist said, noting that the strategy shifts DoD’s focus to developing the capabilities needed to prevail in high-end conflicts against China and Russia.

“And so, you’ll see a series of investments that followed in that,” Norquist said, “and this received a great deal of bipartisan support.”

Mattis Comments on DoD Role in Election Security, Space as Warfighting Domain

By Jim Garamone, DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department will provide all support necessary to the Department of Homeland Security and law enforcement agencies to protect U.S. elections from Russian interference and other bad actors, Defense Secretary James N. Mattis told reporters today.

The secretary also said the U.S. military must address space as a developing warfighting domain that may lead to creation of a new combatant command.

The Russian government was responsible for the attacks on the U.S. election process in 2016, Mattis told reporters. “We all saw what happened in 2016 when the Russians – and possibly others, but the Russians for certain – tried to do both influence operations and actually get in to try to corrupt some of the process,” he said.

Engaged and Supporting

DoD agencies know what to look for, and they are engaged is supporting Homeland Security and state and local election officials to protect the integrity of the midterm elections, the secretary said, but he would not get more specific about what U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency are doing.

Mattis emphasized that DoD is not focused on one country, but on protecting the election process itself. DoD is guarding against influence operations and on attempts to corrupt the process, he said.

The secretary said he is in favor of establishing a combatant command covering space and that a process is in progress.

DoD is “in complete alignment” with President Donald J. Trump’s concern about protecting America’s assets and interests in space, Mattis said. “We are going to have to address it as other countries show the capabilities to attack those assets,” he added.

Mattis said Vice President Mike Pence is the “point man” on space and that DoD is working closely with him and with the relevant committees on Capitol Hill. “We are still putting it together,” he said. “We’ll get it right. We’ll work it though the Congress. We have the direction from the president, and we are underway.”

Mattis Welcomes British Counterpart to Pentagon

WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary James N. Mattis met with British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson today at the Pentagon.

In a statement, chief Pentagon spokesperson Dana W. White said Mattis and Williamson met to reaffirm the long-standing and special defense relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom.

The leaders discussed a broad range of defense issues, White said, including strengthening the defense trade relationship and coordinating deployments in the Indo-Pacific region.

“The secretary also thanked Secretary Williamson for nearly doubling U.K. contributions toward the NATO mission in Afghanistan and reaffirmed U.S. support for U.K. defense modernization efforts,” White said.