IDEA recovers more than $2 million

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A discovery by an Air Force Research Laboratory employee here has led to the recovery by the Air Force of more than $2 million in hidden funds.

Susan Hluska, a procurement analyst at AFRL's information directorate, has earned a $10,000 award from the Air Force Innovative Development through Employee Awareness program, for submitting a solution to recover the funds.

The suggestion focused on accounts established under the government purchase card program -- credit cards used for purchases of less than $2,500. Many of these accounts were terminated at the end of a fiscal year because of lack of funding, and a new government card account opened with subsequent fiscal year funds.

After an account was terminated, any vendor refunds, bank rebates or other credits were posted to the inactive accounts.

"It was purely by accident that I spotted it buried in a report generated by (a bank)," Hluska said, of funds being held in hundreds of inactive accounts. "The bank was reporting quarterly credits to Air Force GPC agency program coordinators for credits applied to active accounts; however, it was not automatically refunding these credit balances on inactive accounts. Some of the credits had been there for years.

"Information that money was sitting there was well documented, but it was not information the bank gave out freely," Hluska said. "If the credit balance came at the end of a fiscal year, it was never rebated and the funds sat inactive."

Implementation of Hluska's suggestion recouped at least $20,000 during fiscal 2003 for the research laboratory’s GPC program, and more than $2 million Air Force-wide. The Air Force has about 48,000 GPC accounts. Based on historical government card data, Air Force officials estimate they will recover at least $10 million in credit balances on government cards Air Force-wide during the next five years.

Additional money may be recovered by the federal government, since the government card is used throughout the Department of Defense.