The Corps began using REMIS, the official real property inventory database, in 1992. The Corps modified REMIS several times over the years to track real estate matters such as revenues from sales of real property, property locations by congressional district, and properties that are civil works. About 1,000 REMIS users located in 32 of the 38 Corps districts access the database through the Internet. District users are responsible for collecting data from real estate documents and entering data into REMIS. The Corps established RESNC at its Mobile, Alabama, District office in October 2003 to serve as the center for the Corps’ real estate automated information systems, including REMIS. Among other things, RESNC officials serve as real estate subject matter experts, issue guidance to process land disposals in REMIS, train district users, and manage REMIS. RESNC also oversees a contractor who performs maintenance on REMIS, runs database queries, helps REMIS users through a hotline, and makes numerous changes to REMIS. Although the contractor did not design the previous REMIS disposal module (a software application that captures data entered into REMIS by a user), it redesigned the REMIS disposal module to automatically provide the Corps’ financial management system with the amounts of disposed acreage, as well as to automate other tasks when users completed the disposal process in REMIS. The Corps implemented the redesigned module in October 2007. Corps headquarters carries out the overall management of civil works real property related to navigation, hydropower, recreation, and flood control projects, among others. Figure 1 shows one of many dams owned by the Corps. Headquarters officials coordinate with eight civil works divisions and 38 districts around the country on matters that include developing future funding requirements using real property data from REMIS. For example, REMIS disposal data from past years are to allow Corps managers to estimate future disposal costs. Besides the headquarters team, real estate officials at each of the divisions oversee the civil works projects and activities of their constituent districts. District real estate chiefs, specialists, and systems administrators, among other district officials, provide daily management of real property, including land acquisition for new civil works projects, operations and maintenance of existing projects, disposal of unneeded civil works land, and recording of data on land acquisitions, disposals, and other actions. Executive Order 13327 of February 2004 required federal landholding agencies, including the Corps, to determine what they own, what they need, and what it costs to manage their real property; develop and implement asset management plans; and dispose of unneeded properties. The executive order established the interagency Federal Council to develop the guidance necessary to implement the order and serve as a clearinghouse for best practices, among other things. The Federal Council developed and published in December 2004 Guidance for Improved Asset Management that identified, defined, and listed 23 data elements that federal agencies must report to the General Services Administration (GSA) for the annual Federal Real Property Profile. In August 2006, the Federal Council added disposal as the 24th data element that federal agencies must report for the annual profile beginning in fiscal year 2006. OMB, the Federal Council, and agencies use disposal data to help track how much property that the federal government has disposed of, measure the government’s progress in disposing of its unneeded property, and estimate the costs of future disposals. The Federal Council guidance specifically requires the Corps and other federal landholding agencies to report, among other things, disposal dates based on the type of disposal; that is, land sales should record deed dates, land transfers between federal agencies should record the dates of transfer letters, and public benefit conveyances to nonfederal entities should record the date of the assignment letter to the sponsoring agency and the subsequent date of the deed’s transfer to the grantee. In addition, the guidance requires the agencies to report the disposal date in the fiscal year that the property exited the agency’s inventory. On the administration’s agency scorecard for real property management—established in fiscal year 2004 to measure each agency’s progress toward implementing Executive Order 13327—the Corps has achieved a “yellow” status, indicating that it has made progress in strategically managing real property by taking the following actions: designating a senior real property officer who is held accountable for the effective management of the Corps’ real property; developing an OMB-approved asset management plan; developing an OMB-approved 3-year time line; establishing some asset management performance measures; completing and maintaining an inventory and profile of the Corps’ real property; and providing timely information for inclusion into the annual Federal Real Property Profile. REMIS did not provide reliable information on the Corps’ civil works land disposals from fiscal year 1996 through fiscal year 2006, or on the land that the Corps owned as of September 30, 2006, for several reasons. These reasons include poorly maintained internal controls over REMIS disposal data at various levels of the Corps’ organization, a database design that did not follow a software engineering best practice, and land disposal dates that did not accurately indicate when the disposal took place. In addition, unclear guidance for processing land disposals in REMIS coupled with a limited user-training program contributed to the unreliability of the disposal data. These unreliable data impair the usefulness of REMIS as a record of current inventory and as a source of data that would be useful to Corps decision makers for budgeting and strategic land management purposes. Real estate officials in districts and divisions did not maintain effective internal controls over REMIS disposal data. Maintaining effective internal controls throughout an organization is an ongoing effort that helps to detect and prevent errors in data, such as real property data in REMIS. The standards for internal control in the federal government provide the overall framework for federal managers to establish and maintain effective internal control. Internal control activities include assigning different people to check data from those who record it—referred to as segregation of duties—recording transactions in a timely manner, and reviewing the data for reliability. The Corps’ policy requires real estate officials to be accountable for the reliability (i.e., accuracy, completeness, and timeliness) of REMIS data related to land located in their districts. Officials in two districts, including one district that made about 300 disposals accounting for over 34,000 acres of land during fiscal years 1996 through 2006, told us that the same person who recorded land disposal data in REMIS was also the one who checked that the data matched the real estate documentation, such as deeds, titles, and transfer forms. Making one individual responsible for both recording and checking data can contribute to errors. Corps officials in a third district told us that they divided these responsibilities and provided documentation of recent efforts to independently check the REMIS disposal records against the real estate documentation. In addition, some districts did not always record the disposal in REMIS in a timely manner as the standards for internal control in the federal government and the Corps’ policy require. For example, when we compared REMIS disposal dates against the dates when the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army approved the disposals, we found instances in which districts recorded land disposals more than 2 years after the disposal transaction had occurred. One district, for instance, recorded the disposal of a 3-acre land parcel near York, Pennsylvania, in March 2006. The disposal had occurred in February 2004—more than 2 years earlier. Another district recorded a land disposal in Georgia as November 2005, but the disposal occurred 16 months earlier. Although the Corps’ policy requires division officials to provide the oversight necessary to ensure that their constituent districts recorded reliable real property data, officials we contacted in all three divisions did not perform activities that would ensure the reliability of REMIS disposal data. The Northwestern Division, for example, experienced prolonged staffing shortages that hindered it from reviewing any disposal records. According to the division’s Acting Chief of Real Estate, a team consisting of a Chief of Real Estate and four other real estate officials oversees the real property activities of the division’s five constituent districts—Kansas City, Omaha, Walla Walla, Portland, and Seattle. Specifically, the four real estate officials oversee (1) acquisitions, (2) appraisals, (3) recruiting, and (4) management and disposal activities, respectively. However, because the management and disposal position remained vacant for nearly 2 years, the division did not review any REMIS disposal data during that period. Corps officials at headquarters confirmed in December 2007 that the position remained vacant. Officials in the North Atlantic Division also said they did not review any REMIS disposal data from their five constituent districts (New England, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Norfolk). They said that during their annual visits to each of their districts, they reviewed real estate documentation for completeness and compliance with applicable statutes, but relied solely on verbal assurances from district officials that they had accurately recorded all disposals in REMIS. In the view of North Atlantic Division officials, Corps-wide organizational changes have affected their reviewing practices. Specifically, the Corps’ strategic plan through 2012 called on the divisions to establish multiple district support teams to provide technical assistance to the districts, such as quality control and assurance activities. However, the North Atlantic Division was only provided sufficient staff for one team. Instead of reviewing all district disposal records for completeness and accuracy, as district officials once did, they now review only some of the records. The officials acknowledged that this change could affect the reliability of the disposal data, yet they believed that the DOD Inspector General, the Army Audit Agency, or the Corps headquarters auditors would identify and resolve any errors. Officials in the Southwestern Division also visited their four constituent districts (Little Rock, Tulsa, Fort Worth, and Galveston) each year to review disposal records but did not review REMIS disposal data. As part of their annual review, division officials requested that each district complete a quality assurance questionnaire focusing on financial aspects, compliance with statutes, and revenue collections, among other things.