Insane: Over One-Third of Payments Issued by Treasury Cannot Be Tracked Back to Appropriation

MSG Billy Brumfield - Just saying. It's not a new problem, and it must not be a pressing issue if years of IG reports haven't resulted in a huge meltdown at Treasury and Congress. And this is not the first time I have pointed that out on this site.
They fact that they can use the rest of the info; payee, amount, date, purpose, etc to trace back to an appropriation like they did before they created the TAS, and because IGs in every agency have still been able to effectively audit and determine over, under and improper payments (with and without a TAS) tells me that the TAS use issue is a problem of policy.

Even your article doesn't state that a missing TAS is an indicator of fraud.

SGM Jeff Mccloud - True enough. However, I had to laugh at the comment "it must not be a pressing issue if years of IG reports haven't resulted in a huge meltdown at Treasury and Congress." Perhaps, ONLY because of considering the priorities of Congress and Treasury. Consider in the past decade, alone. It has more or less been in crisis managment mode, respsonding to spur of the moment and fickle administration demands that undermine good planning.
"With so much going on these days — on multiple fronts — it's difficult to keep up with it all" - an intentional tactic, imho, from an administration that is dedicated to overstepping its authority in ways determined to overwhelm public attention so that it is as scattered and focuses on the way the administration has been functioning, as a way to redirect attention from what is not being promoted in the news that we need to know.
IF it is not an intentional tactic, then it absolutely suggests disorganized ineffectiveness. Either way, what it does reflect is that the way the executive branch is functioning looks exploiting and easily exploitable in a variety of ways.

SGT Mary G. - Considering that their accounting process worked for decades prior to the TAS requirement, and still works when the TAS is missing today, a missing TAS on a line doesn't necessarily make a fraudulent payment any easier to hide,

If you read back through the older OIG reports, (plenty of agencies had this discrepancy) the severity of the problem hovers higher than "proper use of the subject line in emails", and well below "threat vector for fraud".

SGM Jeff Mccloud - Lol. For once e-mail issues didn't take priority, eh? I can only imagine the initial integration of e-mail, and internet use service wide - the scramble associated with security concerns and additional worries for NCOs to make sure were implemented! Use of "the internet" having started in the military, and already routine in the 80s (in 3rd shop we submit daily reports via dial up as I recall), widespread usage was inevitable. So at least policies were likely already in place for those already using e-mail.