Outside Employment Related to Small Business Administration Loans

Our office, through a partnership with the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, obtained data from the United States Small Business Administration (SBA) related to their Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. We scheduled this audit after identifying potential matches between the SBA data and TVA employees. Our audit objective was to determine if TVA’s policies and procedures are effective in assuring outside employment of TVA employees is properly approved. Our audit scope was limited to TVA employees identified as having potential outside employment or business ownership through review of EIDL and PPP loan data received from the SBA. We found TVA’s policies and procedures are not effective in assuring outside employment of TVA employees is properly approved. Specifically, we found TVA employees are not consistently submitting their outside employment or business ownership on TVA Form 15570 prior to accepting outside employment or opening a business. In addition, we found TVA’s (1) review for potential conflicts of interest and (2) application of 5 CFR § 7901 requirements could be improved. We also found (1) the TVA Forms 15570 on file were not updated as required and (2) roles and responsibilities in the outside employment approval process could be clarified.