Department of Commerce

The Office of Inspector General is required by statute to report annually the most serious management and performance challenges facing the Department of Commerce. Attached is our final report on the Department’s top management and performance challenges for fiscal year 2022.

The Office of Inspector General is required by statute to report annually the most serious management and performance challenges facing the Department of Commerce. Attached is our final report on the Department’s top management and performance challenges for fiscal year 2021.

Our objective was to determine whether NIST is complying with the requirements of the CARES Act. Specifically, we determined (1) what steps NIST took to implement and comply with the CARES Act, (2) challenges NIST faced during implementation, and (3) NIST’s status in the processing of applications...

Our objective was to assess the cost, schedule, and technical performance of the Program’s acquisition and development effort for selected instruments. We found the following: (1) The Program exceeded contract definitization timelines and conducted late and abbreviated baseline reviews. (2) JPSS-2...

The objectives were to determine whether USPTO (1) achieved its small business utilization goals, (2) contracting officials provided small businesses with adequate contract award opportunities, and (3) took appropriate actions to ensure contracting officials met small business contracting goals. We...

The objective of our audit was to determine whether the Department’s fleet program operates in accordance with applicable federal fleet requirements for vehicle operations, acquisitions, and utilization. We found that the Department is not operating its fleet program in accordance with federal fleet...

The objective of this audit was to determine the effectiveness of security measures for select IT systems that support the 2020 Census. Our audit scope included the Bureau’s risk management program, security operations center (SOC) capabilities, security of Active Directory, and implementation of...

For our final report on the audit of the U.S. Census Bureau's (the Bureau's) incident response process, our audit objective was to assess the adequacy of the Bureau's process to respond to cybersecurity incidents according to federal and U.S. Department of Commerce requirements. We found the...

For our final report on the audit of the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) efforts to improve the accuracy of the trademark register, our audit objective was to determine whether USPTO’s trademark registration process is effective in preventing fraudulent or inaccurate...

For our final report on the evaluation of the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) and Patent Term Extension (PTE) processes, our objectives were to determine whether USPTO (1) calculates and awards PTA and PTE in compliance with relevant statutes...