Semiannual Report

As reflected in this semiannual report to Congress, the OIG continues to better enable TVA to prepare for expected changes in its business environment. TVA’s strategic plan has identified four key areas that are essential to success in a more competitive market: (1) developing new price structures, services, and contract terms that are better suited for a more competitive market; (2) addressing issues that affect TVA’s transmission business, including how to interface with surrounding markets to ensure reliability and how to charge for transmission services when distributors can choose other suppliers; (3) accelerating TVA’s debt reduction to provide increased financial flexibility in a more dynamic, competitive market; and (4) maintaining and operating the TVA power system so customers can count on having a safe and reliable power supply. These four key areas are impacted by the audits, investigations, and inspections conducted by the TVA OIG. We are charged in the Inspector General Act to “provide leadership and coordination and recommend policies for activities designed to promote economy, efficiency, and effectiveness . . . and to prevent and detect fraud and abuse.” This semiannual report to Congress demonstrates a concentration of effort by the OIG to identify areas where TVA can improve efficiency and better protect its operations from fraud and abuse. The nature of the work of the OIG is to naturally focus on aberrations. We focus our efforts based on risks to the organization and we then look for vulnerabilities. Our semiannual reports to Congress therefore appear to reflect a compendium of “problems.” What they do not fairly represent are all the many programs and processes that are working well at TVA. Neither do our reports fully capture the cooperative spirit of TVA management who year after year implement our recommendations because they truly want TVA to be better. In this semiannual reporting period perhaps nothing exemplifies this more than the way in which Jacky Preslar, General Manager of Fossil Fuel Supply, and his team implemented the first fraud risk assessment at TVA. While the OIG introduced this process to TVA, Fossil Fuel Supply embraced it as their own and enthusiastically identified fraud vulnerabilities and provided the necessary remediation. While I am immensely proud of the financial savings realized by TVA this reporting period because of the hard work of our OIG staff, I am equally proud of the healthy professional relationship that exists between our office and TVA management. The TVA Board continues to demonstrate an appreciation for the work of the OIG which engenders this spirit of cooperation. I am grateful for the opportunity we all have to work together to build a better TVA.