Public Health Service Contract Pre-Award Audits Issued During Fiscal Year 1991

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

This final report summarizes 50 contract pre-award audit reports issued by the Office of Audit Services in Fiscal Year (FY) 1991. A majority of the proposals we reviewed contained overstated and unsupported projected costs of approximately $85 million. The Public Health Service (PHS) contains to sustain a significant amount of the findings of overstated or otherwise unreasonable costs. Where proposals were eventually awarded, the PHS concurred in about $4.8 million of recommended audit adjustments and reduced funding $4.8 million of recommended audit adjustments and reduced funding by about $12.6 million because of costs set aside (costs which were undocumented) by our audits. Further, regarding proposals in our review which were not funded by PHS, there were $8 million in audit adjustments and about questionable proposed charges were justified by additional documentation or other evidence or allowability or reasonableness.