The Department's Intragovernmental Account Balances

FHWA

FHWA continued to identify and reconcile all trading partners, including fund balances with all entities. As part of its corrective actions, FHWA, with contractor assistance, began preparing a policy and supporting procedures to document the process for reimbursable agreements (RA) from cradle (preparing and obtaining approval) to grave (RA closeout) to ensure better accountability and reporting. This will also include approval of RAs, procedures for maintaining RA information and special coding practices to more easily identify RAs in the accounting system. These procedures will ensure more accurate reporting of eliminations on the HTF financial statement. FHWA anticipates completing this initiative in FY 2005.

FMCSA

FMCSA maintained a log of all reimbursable and interagency agreements and actively interacted with applicable trading partners to ensure accurate recording of these agreements. FMCSA began the process of developing and implementing an improved numbering mechanism to more easily identify agreements as either payables or receivables. In an effort to enhance reporting, FMCSA began drafting an Intragovernmental Policy memorandum for internal use.

FTA

FTA updated its records on RAs to ensure an accurate count of active agreements. FTA coordinated with other Department modes on this effort. Finally, FTA began putting in place new procedures on executing RAs. This effort will be completed during FY 2005.

NHTSA

NHTSA worked with FAA to identify and track its intragovernmental transactions and trading partners. NHTSA assigned one individual with responsibility to maintain detailed information for each RA, including quarterly reconciliations of RA activity to the financial information in the accounting system.