Summary: Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of the Interior's progress in replacing its bureaus' and major offices' accounting systems with the departmentwide Federal Financial System (FFS).
GAO found that: (1) FFS was a new, single, standard accounting system; (2) Interior originally planned to install FFS in its bureaus and major offices by October 1990, but by that date had only installed the system at six bureaus, due to unanticipated delays; (3) Interior rescheduled system replacement completion for 1992; (4) Interior estimated that, by the end of fiscal year 1991, FFS implementation will cost about $39 million; (5) overall, Interior effectively managed FFS implementation and efficiently resolved problems encountered by the bureaus and major offices; (6) Interior bureaus experienced such implementation problems as FFS feature deferrals and system testing and user training delays; and (7) Interior could have lessened such difficulties by completing studies and analyses prior to initiating FFS.
