Federal Reports

The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) conducted a risk assessment of VA’s charge card program evaluating the transactions of the three types of charge card business lines—purchase cards (including convenience checks), travel cards, and fleet cards—for fiscal year 2018. The team reviewed applicable VA policies, procedures, and other controls. The team also compared FY 2017 with FY 2018 charge card data to identify transactions or patterns of activity that represent potentially illegal, improper, or erroneous charge card purchases. The OIG determined that the purchase card program remains at medium risk of illegal, improper, or erroneous purchases, as previously assessed for FY 2017. Data mining of purchase card transactions identified potential misuse of purchase cards. OIG investigations, audits, and reviews continue to identify patterns of purchase card transactions that do not comply with the Federal Acquisition Regulation and VA policies and procedures. The OIG also found that VA’s Travel Card Program and Fleet Card Program both remain at low risk for illegal, improper, or erroneous purchases. The risk assessment team assigned a low risk level to both programs primarily because data mining established a low percentage of potential duplicate and split purchases. Travel card transactions represented only about 2.7 percent of the approximately $4.8 billion spent by VA on charge card transactions during FY 2018. Fleet card transactions represented only about 0.4 percent of that amount.

The Cedar Elm Station is in the Rio Grande District of the Southern Area. This delivery unit has 61 delivery routes (39 city and 22 rural) delivered by 89 carriers (52 city and 37 rural). We selected this unit based on our analysis of Enterprise Customer Care (eCC) complaint cases. Our objective was to evaluate the package delivery scanning process on select routes at the Cedar Elm Station in San Antonio, TX.

This management alert presents issues identified during our ongoing audit of Postal Service Transportation Network Operations and Cost Optimization Practices. The purpose of this management alert is to provide Postal Service officials immediate notification of the issues identified during our ongoing audit. The issues outlined in this report require immediate attention and remediation.

A former Amtrak Maintainer was sentenced to 12 months of probation on July 19, 2019, in the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas for advertising the sale of drug paraphernalia. A joint investigation by Amtrak OIG and the Drug Enforcement Agency determined that the company employee was involved in a scheme where chemicals were ordered from China, manufactured into steroids, and then distributed throughout the Bucks County area.

We evaluated the National Park Service’s (NPS’) right-of-way (ROW) permitting process and how revenues for commercial cellular facilities are collected and accounted for.We found that the NPS was not properly collecting and accounting for revenues for commercial ROW permits, including the collection of land use fees and cost recovery. Overall, the management of the commercial ROW program and the implementation of governing NPS policy need improvement.Specifically, the NPS could improve its management of the permitting process, collect additional revenue, recover costs, and increase compliance with NPS policy by:• Preparing and issuing accurate and timely bills for collection to ROW permit holders• Documenting employee time and costs associated with ROW permits for cost recovery• Completing and updating its cellular facilities inventory, including evaluating the appropriateness of currently unpermitted facilities• Developing an action plan to ensure compliance with NPS policyWe made six recommendations to help the NPS improve its commercial ROW program. The NPS concurred with all six recommendations and has started implementing some.

The OIG investigated an allegation that U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) senior leaders may not have been forthcoming to the USGS Director about their knowledge of violations identified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). In 2018, the NRC issued the USGS a civil penalty for infractions identified during an inspection of a USGS test reactor facility. Reportedly, USGS senior leaders denied they had any knowledge of the matter at the time, and the USGS requested the OIG’s assistance in determining whether information had been communicated to them by their staff.We did not find evidence showing that senior leaders withheld information on the issue. We did find that for approximately 1 month, the two staff members involved corresponded exclusively with one another and the NRC about the violations before informing their superiors and others at the USGS in mid-October 2018. One of the staff members subsequently left the Department and the other changed positions.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), did not resolve audit recommendations in a timely manner during Federal fiscal years (FYs) 2015 and 2016. SAMHSA resolved 104 of the 292 audit recommendations that were outstanding during FYs 2015 and 2016. However, it did not resolve any of the 104 recommendations within the required 6-month resolution period. In addition, as of September 30, 2016, SAMHSA had not resolved 188 audit recommendations that were past due for resolution. These 188 past-due recommendations were procedural in nature; none of them involved dollar amounts such as recommended disallowances.