Buy Now, Lie Later: Corruption risks in the management of government issued purchase cards

Summary

The report's own summary: Commissioner’s foreword, page 5

In the body's own words

1. Conclusion

   While the Department’s policies and procedures are sound, they alone are not sufficient to prevent or detect purchase card misuse.

   Report, page 10

2. Recommendation

   However, all public sector agencies should review the effectiveness of their own purchase card corruption prevention and detection strategies.

   Report, page 13

Findings, opinions and statements

Allegations are not findings. A commission's finding or opinion of corrupt conduct or misconduct is not a finding that a person is guilty of a criminal offence, and the commissions say so in their reports.

No findings are reproduced in this record. This does not establish that the report contains none.

Recommendations 5

1. Recommendation 1

   Reassess the business need for issuing employees with purchase cards. Purchase cards should only be provided where there is a genuine need. Alternative methods for purchasing goods and services should be utilised where possible to limit the number of purchase card holders in the Department.

   Report, page 12

2. Recommendation 2

   Review the internal audit program for purchase card transactions to identify opportunities to improve the detection of inappropriate purchases. This could include a system for auditing (including randomly auditing) the documentation provided to substantiate transactions, and for verifying the business need for items purchased.

   Report, page 12

3. Recommendation 3

   Develop a process for the regular review of card holders and an assessment of need.

   Report, page 12

4. Recommendation 4

   Provide card holders with guidance as to the types of goods and services for which the card is intended to be used. Further to policy advice that card holders are to ‘only purchase goods or services to carry out departmental duties,’9 cardholders must be clear about why they have been issued with a purchase card, and the circumstances where it should be used as it relates to their role.10

   Report, page 12

5. Recommendation 5

   Review the Asset Classes, Registers and Stocktakes Policy to clarify the processes required for the receipting, labelling and recording of items purchased that ‘would not normally be held on the Department’s corporate asset register due to having an acquisition cost of less than $10 000’.11

   Report, page 12

Published responses

No published response was found.

Notes on this record

• The report states it makes 5 recommendations; the Commission's web page states 6. The report's own count is used.

Coverage

This publisher

• Office for Public Integrity: publishes only its annual reports (excluded); no OPI report or statement records.
• Since October 2021 the Commission does not make findings of corrupt conduct; most records have no findings.
• Government and agency responses are recorded only where the Commission's page links them or the report reproduces them; implementation status is not published by the Commission as structured data.
• Scanned reports without a text layer are not read (no OCR); their recommendations stay not_extracted.
• Recommendations are extracted only from numbered 'Recommendation N' lists; reports that set out recommendations in prose, tables or unnumbered lists keep recommendations_status not_extracted.
• Findings are extracted only from investigation reports that state them in the Commissioner's own words (Oakden 2018, Gillman 2015); public statements are not read for findings.