10 U.S.C. § 240a: Audit of Department of Defense financial statements

The Secretary of Defense shall ensure that a full audit is performed on the financial statements of the Department of Defense for each fiscal year as required by section 3521(e) of title 31 . The Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Army, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Secretary of the Air Force shall encourage, to the greatest extent practicable, the use of technology that uses artificial intelligence or machine learning for the purpose of facilitating audits of the financial statements of the Department of Defense. The Director of the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office of the Department, in coordination with the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering and the Inspector General of the Department, shall oversee the adoption of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies in support of financial management and enterprise business operations.” The Secretary of Defense may establish within the Department of Defense a team of distinguished, private sector experts with experience conducting financial audits of large public or private sector organizations to review and make recommendations to improve the efforts of the Department to obtain an audit opinion on its full financial statements. identify impediments to the progress of the Department in obtaining an audit opinion on its full financial statements, including an identification of the organizations or elements that are lagging in their efforts toward obtaining such audit opinion; estimate when an audit opinion on the full financial statements of the Department will be obtained; and consider mechanisms and incentives to support efficient achievement by the Department of its audit goals, including organizational mechanisms to transfer direction and management control of audit activities from subordinate organizations to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, individual personnel incentives, workforce improvements (including in senior leadership positions), business process, technology, and systems improvements (including the use of data analytics), and metrics by which the Secretary and Congress may measure and assess progress toward achievement of the audit goals of the Department. If the Secretary takes action pursuant to subsection (a), the Secretary shall, not later than September 30, 2019 , submit to the congressional defense committees [Committees on Armed Services and Appropriations of the Senate and the House of Representatives] a report on the team established pursuant to that subsection, including a description of the actions taken and to be taken by the team pursuant to subsection (b). If as of June 1, 2019 , the Secretary has determined not to establish a team authorized by subsection (a), the Secretary shall submit to the Committees on Armed Services of the Senate and the House of Representatives on that date a report on the determination, including an explanation and justification for the determination.”