Federal Reports

To address occupational shortages and support hiring efforts, VA leverages federal regulations that allow agencies to offer recruitment, relocation, and retention incentives to encourage candidates to accept positions that are difficult to fill or to keep high-quality staff. The OIG conducted this audit to evaluate VA’s controls over and governance of the use of these incentives for VHA positions. Although these types of incentives were used mostly for positions on staffing shortage lists, VA did not effectively govern the incentive process to ensure responsible VHA officials consistently captured mandatory information necessary to support an incentive award. The OIG team estimated 30 percent of incentives paid during fiscal years 2020 through 2023 were missing forms, lacked a sufficient justification, or were missing signatures. As a result, VHA paid employees about $340.9 million in incentives that were not adequately supported. Furthermore, the OIG team found VHA did not consistently include sufficient workforce and succession plan narratives for an estimated 20 percent of retention incentives, note employee performance ratings for 7 percent of relocation incentives, or obtain self-certifications for about 71 percent of employees who relocated. The team also identified 28 employees who received retention incentive payments up to an additional 11 and a half years after their award period had expired. VA improperly paid about $4.6 million to these employees for incentives that should have been terminated. The OIG made eight recommendations to improve the oversight of these incentives.

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 Atlanta Healthcare System in Decatur, Georgia. 

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

The OIG issued seven recommendations for improvement in five domains:
   1.    Culture
     •    Infrastructure issues
     •    Unanswered veteran phone calls
   2.    Environment of care
     •    Parking garage emergency call boxes
   3.    Patient safety
     •    Local test result policies and memorandums
     •    Institutional disclosures for adverse events
   4.    Primary care
     •    Panel sizes and access to care
   5.    Veteran-centered safety net
     •    Medical clearances for veterans in the Compensated Work Therapy program

During the week of January 13, 2025, we performed a self-initiated audit at the Phoenix and West Valley Processing and Distribution Centers (P&DC) and five delivery units serviced by the P&DCs. The delivery units included the Boulder Hills, Mesa Four Peaks, and Scottsdale Stations; Avondale Goodyear Main Post Office; and Sunnyslope Carrier Annex in the Phoenix, AZ area.

We issued individual reports for the five delivery units and two P&DCs. We will also issue another report summarizing the results of our audits at all five delivery units with specific recommendations for management to address.

Why We Did This Report

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Inspector General conducted this evaluation to determine South Carolina’s capacity to manage and use Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act funds for its Clean Water State Revolving Fund program.

Summary of Findings

South Carolina’s Clean Water State Revolving Fund, or CWSRF, program sufficiently meets two of the four dimensions of capacity: financial and organizational. South Carolina faces challenges related to stakeholder and human capital capacity. If South Carolina does not take steps to address those challenges, millions of IIJA dollars intended for water infrastructure improvements may not reach the state’s communities.

This report presents the results of our audits of delivery operations and property conditions in the Arizona-New Mexico District in the WestPac Area.
This report presents a summary of the results of our self-initiated audits of delivery operations and property conditions at five delivery units, as well as district-wide delivery operations in the Arizona-New Mexico (AZ-NM) District in the WestPac Area (Project Number 25-046). The delivery units included the Boulder Hills Station, Mesa Four Peaks Station, Avondale Goodyear Main Post Office (MPO), Scottsdale Airpark Station, and Sunnyslope Carrier Annex in Arizona.

For our evaluation of the Bureau of Industry and Security’s (BIS's) detection of and response to cyber incidents, our objective was to assess the adequacy of actions taken by BIS when detecting and responding to cyber incidents in accordance with federal and departmental requirements. We found that (1) BIS lacked effective detection and response capabilities to handle our simulated malicious activities; (2) BIS misconfigured critical security controls for its export control networks; and (3) BIS mishandled classified and other privileged credentials.