Summary: Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO examined the U.S. Customs Service's use of inspectional overtime.
GAO found that: (1) Customs did not comply with federal regulations and its own procedures governing the use and payment of overtime for inspection services; (2) internal control weaknesses at five ports reviewed resulted in errors in work ticket preparation and certification, and in data entry in the overtime system; (3) local Customs policies and procedures for implementing overtime varied widely; (4) some inspectors scheduled and approved their own overtime, violating basic internal control requirements to discourage abuse and fraudulent activity; (5) Customs identified 184 apparent duplicates out of 790,767 work tickets processed in fiscal year (FY) 1989, resulting in about $18,500 in overpayments; (6) overtime pay for Customs inspectors increased from $56.8 million in FY 1985 to $102.8 million in FY 1990; (7) Customs focused on ensuring that inspectors did not exceed the $25,000 annual cap, rather than efficiently managing individual overtime assignments; (8) Customs management adopted such inefficient overtime practices as inconsistently adjusting shifts, using staggered hours to schedule work, using callbacks inefficiently, overstaffing on Sundays and holidays, and using incorrect rates for assignments lasting less than 1 hour; (9) Customs could save $22 million annually if it extended the regular work-day schedule by 2 hours; and (10) the 1911 Act establishing overtime provisions hindered efficient overtime management, since the special payments provided were premised on conditions that no longer existed.
