DOE Management: DOE Needs to Improve Its Analysis of Carryover Balances
(Chapter Report, 04/12/96, GAO/RCED-96-57).

GAO reviewed the Department of Energy's (DOE) approach for identifying
carryover balances from previous years' budgets that may be available to
reduce budget requests for new fiscal years.

GAO found that: (1) DOE does not use a uniform, effective method of
identifying carryover balances; (2) DOE makes separate, general
estimates of excess funds in its individual programs; (3) some DOE
programs have reduced their carryover balance while others have allowed
their carryover balances to increase; (4) DOE annual report on uncosted
obligations is not used to identify potential carryover balances because
it does not identify all of the carryover balances, identify all of the
uncosted obligations that are available to reduce DOE budget request, or
include enough information to be useful during the formulation of DOE
budget; (5) within DOE, the Office of Waste Management has studied the
operations of DOE programs and developed standard expectations for their
levels of uncosted obligations; (6) the Office of Waste Management has
determined that balances in excess of 1 month's worth of operating
activities funding may indicate carryover balances and should be
investigated; (7) within DOE, the Office of the Chief Financial Officer
has suggested estimating the uncosted obligations at the start of each
fiscal year using estimates of yearly costs or past costs; and (8) the
various plans developed in DOE have not been implemented department-wide
and would need to be altered to fit individual programs.

--------------------------- Indexing Terms -----------------------------

 REPORTNUM:  RCED-96-57
     TITLE:  DOE Management: DOE Needs to Improve Its Analysis of 
             Carryover Balances
      DATE:  04/12/96
   SUBJECT:  Budget administration
             Accounting procedures
             Federal agency accounting systems
             Budget reapportionment
             Budget deficit
             Deficit reduction
             Obligated budget balances
             Presidential budgets
IDENTIFIER:  DOE Environmental Management Program
             DOE Nuclear Energy Program