Congressional investigators say Interior makes progress with
Indian accounting system
The Associated Press
By: Matt Kelley
Associated Press Writer
September 18, 2000
The Interior Department has improved its problem-plagued development of a computer system to better manage more than $3 billion in American Indian trust funds, congressional investigators said.
But the $40 million software project remains behind schedule and threatened by continuing management flaws, the General Accounting Office reported.
Still, the GAO report is the first in more than a year to offer any significant praise to the department’s efforts to clean up more than a century of mismanagement of trust funds for tribes and individual Indians. A federal judge in December called the handling of individual accounts “government irresponsibility in its purest form” and ruled he would oversee reform efforts. An appeal of that decision is pending.
Interior Department spokeswomen did not return telephone calls seeking comment Monday. In the department’s formal comments on the report, Assistant Interior Secretary John Berry wrote that “We are pleased by your recognition of our progress” with the computer system.
The department’s critics were unimpressed.
“If they are making progress, if there is evidence of that, we would celebrate that fact. But we don’t see the evidence yet,” Native American Rights Fund lawyer Keith Harper said Monday. Harper is one of the lawyers representing the 500,000 individual Indian account holders suing the government.
Senate Indian Affairs Committee Chairman Ben Nighthorse Campbell believes that outside pressure is the reason that the Interior Department is making progress, said spokesman Chris Changery. Campbell, a Northern Cheyenne who is the only Indian in the Senate, has been a harsh critic of the trust funds’ mismanagement.
“Yes, it appears they’re finally getting something right. It’s a hundred years too late, but it’s happening,” Changery said. “It’s taken numerous congressional hearing and almost full-time oversight by the GAO and a federal court to get the Interior Department (officials) to do their jobs.”
The GAO report focused on the Trust Asset Accounting and Management System, a computer program that will replace and update a web of old computer and paper record-keeping systems for the trust accounts. Original plans had called for the system to be nearly complete by now, but problems in developing it have meant that only a part of it is running in a regional office in Montana.
Earlier GAO reports had criticized Interior for poor planning, such as not creating a “systems architecture” – a blueprint stating what functions the computer program will perform. The department is now working on an architecture, as well as improved testing procedures and other plans that should help develop a workable system, said the latest GAO report, released Friday.
The report said remaining problems include:
– The lack of written, consistent policies and procedures for the data to be put into the computer system. In 1998, the department planned to have those policies in place by this month; now they will not be complete until 2004.
– Slow progress in developing security measures and other “internal controls” to prevent data tampering.
– Continuing problems with inaccurate, incomplete and missing records.
On the Net:
General Accounting Office: http://www.gao.gov
Interior Department TAAMS site: http://www.TAAMS.com
Native American Rights Fund: http://www.narf.org
Link to GAO Report: GAO Report
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