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The Justice Department, for example, has five accounting systems that currently do not interact with each other. Overall, 21 of 26 agencies reported widespread use of manual processes to transfer data between systems.

Some agencies have attempted sweeping overhauls of their accounting systems only to get caught up in the consolidation of hundreds of distinct processes and networks. These updates almost always end up sprawling well beyond their original budget and timeframe.



One of former Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra's signature initiatives was to put a halt to several updates of agency financial management systems, citing cost, among other factors.



But the decision to kills those projects left federal agencies where they were before, relying on a variety of disparate, aging accounting systems.



The committee also criticized agencies for failing to post financial information online for public consumption, particularly regarding loans and contracts. Issa has generally supported the work of the Obama administration through sites like the IT Dashboard to make more data on government spending public.

However, the committee cited a report from transparency watchdog the Sunlight Foundation, noting only 35 percent of the grant data on the federal transparency site USASpending.gov is accurate. The site has been the target of frequent criticism, thanks to errors in the data submitted by agencies.