Why We Did This Report
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Inspector General conducted this audit to determine whether the EPA complied with the Payment Integrity Information Act for fiscal year 2024 reporting and to review the EPA’s implementation of its corrective action plans for prior audit recommendations.
Summary of Findings
The EPA did not comply with applicable Office of Management and Budget requirements for the Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019 for its fiscal year 2024 reporting. Specifically, for its grants payment stream, the EPA published a 0.77 percent improper payment estimate with no unknown payments. The Agency’s estimate was not based on an accurate sampling and estimation methodology plan, referred to as a statistical sampling plan. Therefore, we could not determine whether the published estimate is valid and representative of the grant program characteristics. In addition, the EPA needs to improve its documentation to ensure compliance with policies and procedures. The Office of the Chief Financial Officer does not require staff to document who performed the risk assessment review and what information staff considers in the qualitative risk assessment reviews.
We found that the Agency completed corrective actions for the three recommendations from our FY 2023 audit report and for one recommendation from our FY 2021 audit report.
