Federal Reports

As part of the Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) oversight responsibility, we reviewed the results of prior OIG engagements that were relevant to the funded trade programs. We identified areas with reported past weaknesses and recommendations that may provide the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) insight when disbursing funds under these programs.

This report provides information about the processes that the Food and Nutrition Service uses to disburse Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits using the EBT system, as well as the related oversight activities.

This inaugural disaster recovery biannual report and subsequent reports will provide curated information regarding the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and its grantees’ use of the more than $109 billion in disaster recovery funds approved by Congress since the 2001 World Trade Center attack, as well as information on new or completed HUD OIG oversight work related to HUD’s disaster recovery program.

HUD’s grantees use these essential funds to assist impacted communities and low- and moderate-income families in recovering from disasters and to mitigate damages from future disasters, including damage from water, wind, and fire. For our first report, we have benchmarked disaster recovery funding, grantee spending, and spending by activity type to help our stakeholders better understand HUD’s disaster recovery portfolio.

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This report presents the results of our audit of Efforts to Reduce Workhours in Mail Processing.

The U.S. Postal Service’s mail processing function involves the sortation and distribution of mail for dispatch and delivery. During fiscal year (FY) 2024, more than 107,000 employees worked in the mail processing function. Based on workhour plans, which the Postal Service develops as part of its annual budget process, the Postal Service planned to reduce mail processing workhours by more than 28 million hours between FYs 2022 and 2024.

Our objective was to assess the Postal Service’s efforts to reduce workhours in mail processing. We analyzed trends in mail processing workhours, volume, and productivity, and we compared actual workhours to workhour plans during FYs 2022 through 2024. Also, we interviewed headquarters personnel to gain an understanding of the workhour planning process and workhour reduction efforts. Further, we interviewed personnel at nine judgmentally selected mail processing plants, and 10 judgmentally selected processing divisions regarding mail processing workhour management.

Although management reduced workhours in mail processing facilities by more than 17 million hours during FYs 2022 through 2024, there may be opportunities to further reduce workhours by stabilizing or improving productivity. The workhour reductions included a 5 percent decrease in overtime hours; however, mail processing facilities used 10.8 million more hours than planned, which resulted in at least $174.8 million in additional cost. While productivity slightly increased during FY 2024, some mail processing facilities still saw declines in productivity during that year. Opportunities exist for management to more effectively plan for workload shifts and operational challenges during initial workhour planning and to improve mail processing productivity. The Postal Service spent an additional $63.6 million in FY 2024 to cover the additional workhours.

The Tennessee Valley Authority's (TVA) transmission planning process includes assessing the capacity of the transmission system to reliably deliver power from generation resources to customer loads.  Due to the importance of ensuring TVA’s transmission system can accommodate its generation strategy and ensure adequate system margins to allow for reliable customer supply, we performed an evaluation to determine if TVA’s plans for transmission capacity support (1) planned generation additions and (2) demand growth.  We determined TVA’s plans for transmission capacity account for generation additions and demand growth; however, we identified an increased risk to Transmission Planning and Projects’ ability to execute these plans.  These included (1) gaps between budgeted funding levels and forecasted spending needed to support TVA’s planned generation and demand growth through fiscal year 2029 and (2) some transmission projects that were forecast to exceed approved cost and/or time frames, which could impact the ability of Transmission Planning and Projects to support generation additions or demand growth. 

The overall objective is to identify AbilityOne Program data generated or maintained by Central Nonprofit Agencies (CNA) and/or Nonprofit Agencies (NPA), that is not currently available to the Commission.  

This Office of Inspector General (OIG) Healthcare Facility Inspection program report describes the results of a focused evaluation of the care provided at the VA Western Colorado Healthcare System in Grand Junction. 

This evaluation focused on five key content domains:
   •    Culture
   •    Environment of care
   •    Patient safety
   •    Primary care
   •    Veteran-centered safety net

The OIG issued eight recommendations for improvement in two domains:
  1.    Environment of care
   •    Toxic exposure screenings
   •    Fire extinguisher inspections
   •    Preventive maintenance inspections 
   •    Wheelchair disinfection, ceiling vent dust removal, and wall repair
   •    Equipment and supply access and storage 
   •    Video monitoring
   •    Veterans Integrated Service Network oversight of the environment of care program
  2.    Patient Safety
   •    Patient test result notification process