Audit Ready

Panetta told senators today that if confirmed as the next defense secretary one of the first things he plans to do is find a way to speed up the Pentagon's push to become audit-ready.

The Defense Department has failed to comply with a 1990 law mandating all federal agencies be audited. Congress has recently mandated that DOD become audit-ready by 2017.

During his confirmation hearing this morning before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Panetta said he was concerned when he found out the Pentagon wouldn't reach its audit-readiness goal for another six years.

“We should be able to audit the department,” Panetta said. “If confirmed, one of the first things I'm going to do is see if we can't take steps to improve upon that time table.”

His comments in the hearing echoed his response to policy questions sent to him in advance. In his response, Panetta wrote that “achieving clean-audit opinions is one of my top management improvement priorities. A clean financial audit opinion is important to demonstrate that DOD is a responsible steward of public funds and to ensure management has accurate and timely information for decision making.”

Panetta wrote that he expects senior leaders to work together to achieve audit readiness by the congressionally mandated deadline.