Audit finds CDC misplaced

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Audit finds CDC misplaced $8 million in equipment

By MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer Mike Stobbe, Ap Medical Writer –

Thu Dec 30, 2:09 am ET

ATLANTA – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lost or

misplaced more than $8 million in property in 2007, losing track of items

including computer and video equipment, government auditors say.

Agency officials said Wednesday they have corrected the lapses that led to that

amount of waste.

The report was released this week by the inspector general for the Department of

Health and Human Services, the parent agency of the CDC. In 2007, the auditors

checked on 200 randomly sampled items and found 15 were lost or not inventoried,

including a $1.8 million hard disk drive and a $978,000 video conferencing

system.

CDC Director Dr. Frieden wrote the inspector general that the CDC agrees

with the report's conclusions and has now instituted better controls. He wrote

that 99 percent of the agency's property was accounted for in 2009. And the

agency says all of its property this year is accounted for.

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The agency still hasn't explained what happened to the 15 pieces of missing

equipment from 2007, auditors said. But a CDC spokeswoman on Wednesday said all

but four of the items — including the two most expensive ones — have since

been accounted for.

CDC officials were tsk-tsked by Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against

Government Waste.

" It's just a good thing they haven't lost any diseases, " Schatz said.

The Atlanta-based CDC often gets high marks for how well it does at its core

mission of promoting health and investigating outbreaks of illness. But it has

less incentive to keep track of its computer equipment or take care of other

concerns that would seem important to a private business, Schatz said.

" There are a lot of agencies that do their job well, but they don't manage the

'little things' very well. The Defense Department is notorious for losing all

kinds of equipment, but they do a pretty good job defending the country, " Schatz

said.

The CDC is the only HHS agency to have had such an audit — the National

Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration have not.

This is the CDC's second audit. A 1995 audit found the agency was unable to

account for more than $5.5 million in property, including computers, microscopes

and even vehicles.

In 2007, two House Republicans — Joe Barton of Texas and Greg Walden of Oregon

— asked the inspector general to take a new look at how CDC inventories and

tracks its property, following allegations that as much as $22 million in CDC

equipment had been lost or stolen.

The audit focused on the $350 million in equipment CDC had in fiscal year 2007.

The report was delayed until now partly because of personnel changes within the

inspector general's office, auditors said.

The IG report http://www.oig.hhs.gov/oas/reports/region4/40701054.asp 

Their first paragraph says a lot about CDC in general.

As a result of a congressional request, we audited CDC's Property Management

System (property system) and found that it was neither accurate nor complete.

Based on our sample results, we estimated that CDC had lost or misplaced

approximately $8.2 million worth of Government property as of September 30,

2007.

 

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