Library of Congress Clears Control Findings, First Since 2015
Summary
The Library of Congress has posted an unmodified audit opinion every year since 1996, but that clean opinion coexisted for years with flagged gaps in the internal controls behind it -- most recently a significant deficiency in FY2024's review controls. The FY2025 audit, released June 5, 2026, found none. The Library's own written response to its auditors calls it the first time since 2015 that no material weakness or significant deficiency was reported.
Thirty years of clean opinions, a shorter streak on controls
Two different things get audited every year, and they had different track records. The opinion -- whether the financial statements are fairly presented -- has been unmodified every year since fiscal 1996⧉; FY2025 is the thirtieth consecutive clean opinion⧉. The internal controls behind that opinion -- the review processes that are supposed to catch errors before the numbers go out -- are a separate finding, and the Inspector General has kept financial management and reporting on its list of top management challenges since September 2018⧉, specifically because a clean opinion doesn't guarantee the controls behind it are reliable.
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What broke in FY2024
The FY2024 audit -- the year immediately before this one -- still came back with a clean opinion, but KPMG's review of internal controls found a significant deficiency: a lack of effective review controls over financial reporting⧉. The traced it to process, not fraud: the Library's financial-statement preparation remained largely manual, which introduced version-control risk and made errors more likely to slip past review⧉. The Inspector General's own semiannual message to Congress put it plainly: "given the number of manual controls used to produce the financial statements, there is a heightened risk that errors will not be prevented, detected, or corrected"⧉.
The fix: a system upgrade delivered on schedule
In response to the FY2024 finding, the Library described a multi-year effort to overhaul its financial-reporting systems⧉, centered on updating the Legislative Branch Financial Management System (LBFMS) and the Library of Congress Reporting System to align with the U.S. Standard General Ledger and 's financial-reporting rules. By FY2025's close, the Library reports the LBFMS upgrade was delivered in April 2025, on time and within budget, with 87% of high- and critical-severity issues resolved by September 30, 2025⧉ -- the same fiscal year KPMG's review came back clean.
- FY2025: KPMG's review of the Library of Congress's internal controls over financial reporting found no significant deficiencies or material weaknesses -- the first time since 2015, per the Library's own written response to the auditor's report -- while the underlying audit opinion (financial statements fairly presented) extended an unbroken streak to 30 consecutive years, dating to FY1996.
- FY2024, the year before, still carried a clean opinion but came with a significant deficiency: ineffective review controls, compounded by manual financial-reporting processes. has listed financial management and reporting as a Library top management challenge since September 2018.
- The Library's own remediation plan centered on upgrading its Legislative Branch Financial Management System (LBFMS); it reports the upgrade was delivered in April 2025, on time and within budget, resolving 87% of high- and critical-severity issues by the close of FY2025 -- the same year the audit came back clean.
- The books at stake: $1.02 billion in net cost of operations across six program areas and $1.37 billion in total budgetary resources for FY2025 -- the numbers the review-control gap, and now its absence, apply to.
Method notes. Figures come from two Library of Congress documents: the FY2025 Agency Financial Report (Report No. 2025-FN-101, released June 5, 2026) and the 's semiannual report to Congress for the period ending September 30, 2025. The "first time since 2015" framing is the Library's own characterization in its written management response to the FY2025 auditor's report; this article independently corroborates the FY2024 finding (a significant deficiency, per the 's own September 2025 semiannual report) and the FY2025 finding (no deficiency, per the FY2025 Agency Financial Report) but did not re-verify each individual audit year between 2016 and 2023. The net-cost-by-unit figures sum exactly to the Library's own reported total net cost of operations ($1,023,601 thousand), cross-checked in this article's computed analysis. Map pin: the Library's Thomas Jefferson Building, its historic headquarters on Capitol Hill, approximate to the agency rather than to any one financial-management office.
Sources(2) ▾
- Library of Congress Office of the Inspector General, Library of Congress Agency Financial Report for the Fiscal Year 2025 (includes Independent Auditor's Report, No. 2025-FN-101) (2026-06-05) — The Library's full FY2025 Agency Financial Report, publicly released June 5, 2026. Contains the Acting Librarian's May 5, 2026 transmittal letter to Congress, KPMG's Independent Auditor's Report (dated May 5, 2026) with the Report on Internal Control, the Inspector General's own May 28, 2026 transmittal memo on Report No. 2025-FN-101 stating KPMG's review found no significant deficiencies or material weaknesses, the Library's May 26, 2026 management response calling this the first such result since 2015, the audited financial statements (balance sheet, statement of net cost, statement of changes in net position, statement of budgetary resources), and Management's Discussion and Analysis covering the FY2025 upgrade of the Legislative Branch Financial Management System (LBFMS). loc.gov · original document
- Library of Congress Office of the Inspector General, Library of Congress Office of the Inspector General Semiannual Report to Congress, September 2025 (period ending September 30, 2025) (2025-09-30) — The 's statutory semiannual report covering April 1-September 30, 2025. Its Top Management Challenges section on Financial Management and Reporting recounts that the Library has held an unmodified 'clean' opinion every year since FY1996, but that has separately flagged financial management and reporting as a top management challenge since September 2018; it details the FY2024 financial-statements audit result (unmodified opinion, but a significant deficiency for 'a lack of effective review controls over financial reporting,' compounded by manual processes) and the Library's stated multi-year remediation plan centered on the LBFMS/LCRS system upgrade. loc.gov · original document
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KPMG's audit of the Library of Congress's FY2025 financial statements found no significant deficiencies or material weaknesses in internal controls over financial reporting⧉, the Library's own Inspector General confirms in the transmittal memo for Report No. 2025-FN-101⧉. That's a change: the year before, KPMG's FY2024 review found a significant deficiency in review controls⧉, and the Library's own response to the FY2025 report calls the clean result "the first time since 2015" with no such finding⧉.