[Management Issues Identified During the Audit of the Bureau of Land Managementâs Fiscal Year 2002 Financial Statements (No.2003-I-0036)]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office, www.gpo.gov]

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Date:  December 16, 2002


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December 16, 2002 

The Director of the Bureau of Land Management 
and the Inspector General of the Department of the Interior: 

We have audited the financial statements of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for the year ended 
September 30, 2002, and have issued our report thereon dated December 16, 2002. In that report, our 
opinion on the financial statements referenced a change in the BLMï¿½s method of accounting for allocation 
transfers as of October 1, 2001. In planning and performing our audit of the financial statements, we 
considered internal control in order to determine our auditing procedures for the purpose of expressing our 
opinion on the financial statements. An audit does not include examining the effectiveness of internal 
control and does not provide assurance on internal control. The maintenance of adequate internal control 
designed to fulfill control objectives is the responsibility of management. Because of inherent limitations in 
internal control, errors or fraud may nevertheless occur and not be detected. Also, controls found to be 
functioning at a point in time may later be found deficient because of the performance of those responsible 
for applying them, and there can be no assurance that controls currently in existence will prove to be 
adequate in the future as changes take place in the organization. We have not considered internal control 
since the date of our report. 

During our audit we noted certain matters involving internal control and its operation that we consider to 
be reportable conditions or material weaknesses under standards established by the American Institute of 
Certified Public Accountants. These matters have been reported to management in our report on the 
financial statements of the BLM for the year ended September 30, 2002, dated December 16, 2002. In that 
report we identified the following matters as reportable conditions: 
A. Accounting for Property 
B. Accruing for Year-end Payables 
C. Security and Internal Control Over Information Technology Systems 
D. Accounting for Intra-departmental Transactions 
E. Internal Control Over Charge Cards 
F. Timely Deobligation of Undelivered Orders 

We considered reportable conditions A and B, listed above, to be material weaknesses. 
Reportable conditions are matters coming to our attention relating to significant deficiencies in the design 
or operation of the internal control over financial reporting that, in our judgment, could adversely affect the 
BLMï¿½s ability to record, process, summarize, and report financial data consistent with the assertions by 
management in the financial statements. Material weaknesses are reportable conditions in which the design