U.S. Department of Education’s Compliance with Improper Payment Reporting Requirements for FY 2021

The objective of our audit was to determine whether the U.S. Department of Education complied with the Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019 (PIIA) for fiscal year (FY) 2021.The Department did not comply with the PIIA because it did not meet one of the six compliance requirements. The Department published unreliable improper payment estimates for three programs that required an estimate for FY 2021: Title I, Part A; Pell; and Direct Loan. We reviewed the corrective action plans and found the Department’s Title I, Part A proposed corrective actions to be inadequate and ineffective in addressing the true root cause of the reported improper payments.