Federal Reports

The United States Coast Guard (Coast Guard) has begun to expend Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) funds for the procurement, construction, and improvements projects identified in its fiscal year 2022 IIJA Spend Plan. At the time of our review, Coast Guard had only spent approximately 1 percent ($5.76 million) and committed and obligated an additional 10.9 percent ($46.8 million) of the $429 million in IIJA funds, limiting our ability to assess whether IIJA funding was used in accordance with Federal requirements. This occurred because Coast Guard did not implement effective planning for its IIJA efforts. For example, it did not complete planning documentation before including projects on its unfunded priorities list; did not promptly finalize its program management plan for IIJA projects; and did not conduct the necessary staffing assessment to execute IIJA projects in a timely manner.

We determined that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Office of Field Operations used overtime in accordance with policies and procedures. The Customs Officer Pay Reform Act provides guidance on the use of overtime and premium pay for CBP officers and sets a statutory fiscal year maximum on overtime and premium pay earnings (pay cap). Per the Act, an officer may not exceed the pay cap unless the pay cap is waived.

This report presents the results of the System and Organization Controls 1 Type 2 examination conducted in accordance with relevant attestation standards established by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants for the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Finance Center (NFC) description of its payroll and personnel systems used to process user entities payroll and human resource transactions throughout the period October 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024. The report contains an unmodified opinion on the description and controls that were suitably designed to provide reasonable assurance that the control objectives would be achieved.

This report presents the results of the System and Organization Controls 1 Type 2 examination conducted in accordance with relevant attestation standards established by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants for the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) description of its data center hosting and security systems used to process user entities’ transactions throughout the period October 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024. The report contains an unmodified opinion on the description and controls that were suitably designed to provide reasonable assurance that the control objectives would be achieved.

We performed an audit of costs billed to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) by Wesco Distribution, Inc., (Wesco) for operations materials and industrial equipment as part of TVA’s integrated supply program under master Contract No. 13421. Under the contract, TVA pays Wesco the established rates in the contract’s pricing schedules for inventory items that have a unique item number assigned. For items that were not established in the contract’s pricing lists or items that do not have a unique item number, TVA pays Wesco the cost of the item plus applicable markups established in the contract. Our audit objective was to determine if the costs billed to TVA under Contract No. 13421 were in accordance with the contract terms. Our audit scope included approximately $190.2 million in costs paid by TVA from January 1, 2021, through September 30, 2023. In summary, we determined Wesco overbilled TVA $149,246, including (1) $88,556 in unsupported costs, (2) a net $37,870 in costs for items whose rates billed exceeded the contract rates, and (3) $22,820 in costs for items that did not have a unique item number and whose rates billed exceeded the cost of the items plus applicable markups established in the contract. In addition, we determined several items should have been added to the contracts’ pricing lists based on how frequently they were purchased. Specifically, we identified 964 transactions with unique item numbers not on a contract pricing list, totaling $17,796,594, that were purchased four or more times in a year.

The Office of the Inspector General conducted an audit of the U.S. Government Publishing Office’s (GPO) management ofexcess and obsolete paper and secure documents. Our objective was to determine if management uses effective processes toaccount for, store, and destroy secure intelligent documents and products. The audit focused on U.S. passport production.