Federal Reports

Our Objective(s)
To assess the extent to which the Office of the Secretary of Transportation's (OST) use of working capital funds aligns with advance funding agreements for costs and types of services provided to customers.

Why This Audit
The Department of Transportation (DOT) budgeted approximately $764.2 million in fiscal year 2023 and $746.2 million in fiscal year 2024 for its Working Capital Fund (WCF). DOT's WCF is designed to be self-sustaining and achieve full cost-recovery as its expenses are recovered through funds collected from customers. Our prior work identified issues with OST's management of the WCF, including transparency and accountability concerns related to billing procedures and transaction oversight for information technology services. Given these previous findings, and the magnitude of dollars involved, we initiated this audit.

What We Found
OST's WCF service descriptions are not clear about what customers receive for their advance payments.
These descriptions are vague and lack detail to allow customers to understand what OST will provide for their advance payments.
OST does not fully update the descriptions each year to account for or explain changes in advance funding levels and business operations.

OST's WCF customer bills lack expense details and support for charges and may not promote economy and efficiency.
OST uses set billing methodologies that it provides to the customer at the beginning of each fiscal year. However, these billing methodologies often rely on outdated information.
Because OST's monthly customer bills only provide lump sum amounts for each service, they do not provide customers visibility into the specific services and expenses making up their total allocated share of the cost.

OST's WCF customer bills include errors.
These errors prevent customers from having an accurate and clear portrayal of how and at what amount OST uses their funds.

OST does not accurately account for WCF-funded DOT employees.
Specifically, we identified employees no longer working in OST, working outside their designated WCF service, and in unapproved positions or grades.
DOT has inconsistent practices and controls for listing WCF-funded employees and obtaining the required approvals to hire such employees.

Recommendations
We made 7 recommendations to improve DOT's WCF's transparency regarding OST's use of customers' advance funding-specifically costs and types of services provided to customers.

Ajmal Atherton of Brooklyn, New York, pleaded guilty on August 30, 2025, in Brooklyn District Court to one count of grand larceny in the third degree and one count of offering a false instrument for filing in the second degree. Our investigation found that Atherton fraudulently obtained New York State unemployment benefits. Atherton’s conduct was identified during an investigation into an alleged financial fraud involving a former Amtrak electrician.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issues patents based on its examination of applications for compliance with Patent Act statutes and relevant case law.

USPTO’s Office of Patent and Quality Assurance (OPQA) performs independent quality reviews of examiner office actions to ensure decisions to either allow or reject a patent claim comply with all legal requirements. OPQA’s reviews are used to generate and report USPTO’s statutory compliance measures for quality. Our objective was to determine the effectiveness of quality reviews of continuing patent applications completed in FYs 2021–2023.

We found that USPTO needs to strengthen its quality review program to be more effective at improving patent quality. Specifically, (1) USPTO did not consistently use the results of OPQA reviews to improve the quality of continuing application examination, (2) OPQA did not ensure quality assessments were performed on compliant quality review findings, and (3) USPTO did not report certain patent examination quality errors in its annual performance reports.

These issues resulted from incomplete and insufficient policies and procedures. We made six recommendations to help USPTO strengthen its quality review program and promote high-quality patent examination and improved patent quality.