VA’s Compliance with the VA Transparency & Trust Act of 2021

In November 2021, Congress passed the VA Transparency & Trust Act of 2021 to oversee VA’s spending of emergency relief funding related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The law requires VA to report to Congress how it will spend the funding and provide biweekly updates thereafter. The law also requires the VA OIG to report within 120 days on whether VA is spending the funds according to its plan and must address waste, fraud, and abuse. This inaugural report focuses on whether the spend plans VA provided to Congress on December 22, 2021, satisfy the requirements of the Transparency Act. VA’s spend plans generally outlined how it intended to use the supplemental funds. The OIG found, however, that the National Cemetery Administration’s planned use of funds included a shrine project to raise and realign over 17,000 headstones, replace irrigation, and repair turf in the historical sections of a cemetery. The $3.6 million used for the Beaufort National Shrine project may have violated the law because the work did not appear to be directly related to COVID-19. Further, the team identified a planned use of funds that did not include a projected cost related to maintaining information technology projects. As a result, it is unclear if all planned uses are captured in VA’s obligations reported in the ARP Act plan submitted to Congress. The OIG made two recommendations to the assistant secretary for management/chief financial officer to improve the quality and sufficiency of information reported to Congress: (1) consult with appropriate VA financial and legal officials to determine whether the use of emergency funds for the shrine project violates the law and correct if necessary, and (2) determine obligations for sustaining essential information technology investments, provide an updated spending plan to Congress, and include this information in future biweekly updates.