DOD awards contracts for auditing services

By Dawn S. Onley

By Dawn S. Onley

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KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte & Touche are among a score of contractors the DOD hopes can help the department improve its financial record-keeping.

Another way the DOD is attempting to improve its financial records is to consolidate more than 4,700 redundant and interoperable business systems under an overarching business enterprise architecture. DOD spends billions of dollars each year to operate, maintain and modernize its accounting, acquisition, logistics and personnel systems.The overall goal is an unqualified auditing opinion. The department is shooting for a clean financial audit by 2007?which would be DOD's first unblemished financial review ever.

KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte & Touche are among a score of auditing and IT firms the Defense Department's inspector general is paying nearly $1 billion to for assistance in improving the DOD's financial systems.

The three-year, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contracts, totaling $977.5 million and announced last month, are for the procurement of professional auditing services to support DOD's Office of Inspector General. Under the multiple-award contracts, each contractor will compete for task orders.

"Our auditors, working closely with auditors and accountants from the firms which received contracts today, will be focusing on accountability and transparency in the way we manage our finances within the Department of Defense," said Joseph E. Schmitz, DOD's inspector general. "The taxpayers have every right to expect it and our men and women in uniform depend upon it."

Last July, Defense officials announced they would use direct-hire authority to recruit more than 100 auditors to work in the IG's office to improve the reliability of financial statements.

This latest flurry of contracts is consistent with the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990, which requires inspectors general to conduct independent audits of the financial statements for their agencies to verify reliability, officials said.

The winning contractors include:


  • G&B Solutions of McLean, Va.

  • L.F. Harris & Associates, Certified Public Accountants, of Orlando, Fla.

  • Acuity Consulting Inc. of Alexandria, Va.

  • Owusu & Co. of Washington

  • Gardiner, Kamya & Associates of Washington

  • Morgan Franklin of Herndon, Va.

  • Deloitte & Touche LLP of New York

  • PricewaterhouseCoopers of New York

  • Grant Thornton of Chicago

  • Ernst & Young of New York

  • Kearney & Co., P.C., of Alexandria, Va.

  • KPMG of New York

  • Reznick, Fedder & Silverman, Certified Public Accountants, of Bethesda, Md.

  • Urbach, Kahn & Werlin LLP of Washington

  • McConnell, Jones, Lanier & Murphy LLP of Houston

  • Regis & Associates of Washington

  • Brown & Co. of Largo, Md.

  • William Adley & Co. LLP of Washington

  • Walker & Co. LLP of Washington

  • Cotton & Co. LLP of Alexandria, Va.







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