Federal Reports

The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has three regional procurement offices (RPOs) that acquire supplies and services to support the medical facilities within their regions (Central, East, and West). In FY 2020, the VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) published a report on contract closeout compliance at RPO East. Because of problems identified there, the OIG conducted this review to determine whether RPO Central and RPO West contracting officers adequately performed and documented contract closeout requirements. When contracting officers do not follow the necessary steps to close out contracts, they increase future financial and legal risk to the government and may prevent it from obtaining the maximum benefit of any unused funds. Therefore, to protect veterans and taxpayer dollars, contracting officers must maintain the necessary evidence to demonstrate contractor compliance with contract terms and conditions.The team reviewed a random sample of 55 RPO Central contracts and 40 RPO West contracts, each valued at over $500,000, that were closed between June 1 and December 31, 2020. Based on the team’s review, the OIG found that RPOs Central and West contracting officers did not perform required contract closeout duties. Reasons included unclear policies and systems, as well as ineffective oversight of the closeout process. Contracting officers also informed the team that a heavy workload and the prioritization of awarding contracts affected their ability to comply with contract administration requirements.The OIG recommended the executive directors for RPO Central and RPO West establish consistent quality assurance reviews, balance contracting officer workload, update guidance on the use of simplified acquisition procedures, consider additional strategies to ensure contract closeout compliance, and verify that the contract files for the 81 sampled contracts have complete closeout documentation.

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) operates three nuclear plants capable of generating 7,800 megawatts of electricity. Groundwater contamination can result from routine nuclear plant activities such as wet storage of spent fuel, leaks from liquid waste pipelines and tanks, and leaks of contaminated cooling water. TVA Nuclear Power Group, Standard Programs and Processes 05.15, Fleet Groundwater Protection Program, establishes a long-term groundwater-monitoring program with the purpose of minimizing the potential for inadvertent releases to the environment from plant activities. Due to risks associated with potential groundwater contamination, we performed an evaluation to determine if TVA Nuclear has taken actions to address issues related to groundwater at nuclear plants, identified during fiscal years 2017 through 2021, in internal assessments, external assessments, consultant reports, and condition reports. We determined TVA Nuclear has taken actions, or no further actions were needed, to address the majority of issues and/or recommendations made. However, two recommendations from 2015 have not been addressed and likely affected TVA’s corporate insurance premiums.

This interim report presents the results of our self-initiated audit of mail delivery, customer service, and property conditions at the Marian Oldham Station in St. Louis, MO (Project Number 22-115-4). The Marian Oldham Station is in the Kansas-Missouri District of the Central Area and services ZIP Codes 63106 and 63108,1 which serve about 32,922 people and are considered to be urban. We judgmentally selected the Marian Oldham Station based on the number of customer inquiries per route that the unit received. From December 1, 2021 through February 28, 2022, the unit received 13.03 inquiries per route, which was more than the average of 7.02 inquiries per route for all sites serviced by the St. Louis Processing and Distribution Center (P&DC).

This interim report presents the results of our self-initiated audit of mail delivery, customer service, and property conditions at the Saint Peters Main Post Office (MPO) in Saint Peters, MO (Project Number 22-115-1). The Saint Peters MPO is in the Kansas-Missouri District of the Central Area and services ZIP Code 63376, which serves about 71,535 people and is considered to be urban. We judgmentally selected the Saint Peters MPO based on the number of customer inquiries per route the unit received. From December 1, 2021 through February 28, 2022, the unit received 12.54 inquiries per route, which was more than the average of 7.02 inquiries per route for all sites serviced by the St. Louis Processing and Distribution Center (P&DC).

Our objective for this report was to assess the company’s efforts to address challenges in recruiting and retaining skilled engineering managers as it recovers from the pandemic and builds for the future.We found that the company is fully aware of the difficulties of recruiting and retaining skilled engineering managers in today’s labor market and has taken steps to address them. These steps include establishing meaningful pay differences between managers and subordinates, benchmarking management compensation with market rates, increasing salaries for field engineers, and offering one-time bonuses to entice agreement employees to move into management positions. In addition, the company recently commissioned a compensation analysis that will benchmark its salaries and determine appropriate rates for management positions company-wide. The analysis, scheduled to be completed this summer, is the first such review since 2014. We also found that the company has additional opportunities to build on these efforts, to include codifying existing policies on compensation and using workforce data to assess the effectiveness of its recruitment and retention effort for engineering managers.To address the report’s findings, we recommended that the company 1) establish formal compensation policies that define a schedule for regularly conducting analyses to identify whether the company is offering market-competitive salaries and communicate the policy to all relevant parties, 2) routinely analyze common workforce metrics such as employee turnover and share the metrics with relevant departments through existing workforce management tools, and 3) Use the common workforce metrics to assess the effectiveness of recent efforts to address compensation or work-life balance issues and determine whether further adjustments are needed.