United States Government Publishing Office publisher pbl distributor dst United States Government Accountability Office author aut Government Organization text government publication eng GAOREPORTS Legislative Agency Publications gao legislative 2010-08-12 U.S. Government Printing Office 2003-07-22 monographic deposited born digital 12 p. GA 1.13:GAO-03-827R https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GAOREPORTS-GAO-03-827R P0b002ee180374426 f:d03827r DGPO 2010-08-12 2011-03-28 GAOREPORTS-GAO-03-827R machine generated eng fdlp REPORT GAOREPORTS-GAO-03-827R GAO-03-827R Accountability Accounting standards Allocation (Government accounting) Federal employee retirement programs Government retirement benefits Losses Records management Thrift Savings Plan Correspondence A07668 The Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) is a retirement savings and investment plan for federal employees, governed by the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board (Board). The TSP is a defined contribution retirement plan available to eligible federal employees. The TSP had about 2.6 million participants and held about $100.6 billion in Net Assets Available for Benefits as of December 31, 2001, and about 3 million participants and $102.3 billion in Net Assets Available for Benefits as of December 31, 2002. In 1997, the Board awarded a contract to American Management Systems, Inc. (AMS) to develop and implement a new record-keeping system for the TSP. In 2001, after several implementation delays, the Board terminated the contract, and the Board's former Executive Director filed a lawsuit against the contractor on behalf of the TSP. On June 20, 2003, 2 days after we provided a draft of this report to the Board for its review, a settlement between the parties was reached. Then, on June 23, 2003, the net unrecovered cost from the system development failure was allocated to participant account balances as recommended in our draft report. While the loss has now been allocated to participant accounts, albeit on a belated basis, we believe there is value associated with issuing this product in response to the request to illustrate the operative principles and concepts that should govern allocation of costs in the future. Since the TSP is an important component of retirement income for many federal employees, participants must be assured of proper accounting of their funds. Therefore, Congress asked us to examine federal oversight of the TSP and the TSP's accounting for its failed system development costs. Our report on federal oversight of the TSP was issued in April 2003. This report addresses whether (1) the TSP's management followed U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) in accounting for the costs associated with the failed development of the new record-keeping system and (2) the TSP should have allocated the costs to participants' accounts when the loss occurred. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-GAO-03-827R/html/GAOREPORTS-GAO-03-827R.htm https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-GAO-03-827R/pdf/GAOREPORTS-GAO-03-827R.pdf GAO-03-827R https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GAOREPORTS-GAO-03-827R Correspondence GAO-03-827R; Thrift Savings Plan: Delayed Allocation of Failed System Development Costs to Participant Accounts; Accountability Accounting standards Allocation (Government accounting) Federal employee retirement programs Government retirement benefits Losses Records management Thrift Savings Plan Volume 100 Page 514 100 Stat. 514 Public Law 99-335