Excerpt from the Audit's Executive Summary:

We examined Forest Service's (FS) implementation of prior Office of Inspector General (OIG) recommendations to strengthen the controls for maintaining the agency's infrastructure.¹ This also included evaluating FS' controls for maintaining its infrastructure and for compiling and reporting maintenance backlog information. We found that due to the lack of effective processes and controls, FS has reduced assurance regarding the reliability and validity of the deferred maintenance costs recorded in the infrastructure (INFRA) database. As a result, FS officials do not have the information needed to manage the agency's infrastructure and to communicate information about it to oversight bodies. For fiscal year (FY) 2005, FS reported almost $6 billion in deferred maintenance for general property, plant, and equipment.²