Federal Reports

We audited the Boston Housing Authority’s public housing program to determine whether the physical condition of the Authority’s program units complied with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) and the Authority’s requirements.  The audit was initiated based on our assessment of risks associated with public housing agencies’ program units and recent media attention and public concern about the condition of subsidized housing properties.The Authority’s public housing program units were not consistently maintained in a decent, safe, and sanitary condition and in good repair.  Specifically, we reviewed a sample of 36 units and determined that 31 units had 113 deficiencies.  Of the 31 units, 61 percent had 37 deficiencies that existed at the time of the Authority’s last inspection, and 35 percent had 18 life-threatening deficiencies that needed to be corrected within 24 hours.  Further, we reviewed the site, exterior, systems, and common areas of 29 of the Authority’s public housing buildings and determined that 24 buildings had 105 deficiencies, which included 31 life-threatening deficiencies that needed to be corrected within 24 hours.  Of the 24 buildings, 6 buildings had 18 deficiencies that existed at the time of the Authority’s last inspection.Additionally, the Authority did not consistently perform annual self-inspections for all public housing units and correct deficiencies in a timely manner. Specifically, for 55 units reviewed, the Authority did not perform 37 of the 103 required inspections, collectively, for the Authority’s 2022 and 2023 fiscal years. Additionally, we reviewed 71 deficiencies that the Authority identified during its annual inspections, consisting of 31 life-threatening and 40 non-life-threatening deficiencies.  We determined that the Authority did not correct (1) more than 22 percent of the life-threatening deficiencies within 24 hours, including six deficiencies that were miscategorized as non-life threatening and (2) more than 87 percent of the non-life-threating deficiencies within the Authority’s 20-day requirement.  See table 1 below.Table 1.  The Authority’s annual inspection deficiencies were not corrected in a timely mannerCategoryCorrection timeframeDeficiencies reviewedDeficiencies reported as corrected by the Authority after required timeframesLacked support of corrective actionsLife threatening 24 hours317-Non-life threatening 20 days40356Totals 71426The Authority also did not consistently correct life-threatening, non-life-threatening health and safety, and non-health and safety deficiencies identified during HUD’s Real Estate Assessment Center’s (REAC) inspections in a timely manner.  We reviewed a sample of 41 life-threatening, 35 non-life-threatening health and safety, and 86 non-health and safety deficiencies and determined that the Authority did not consistently correct the deficiencies within HUD’s or the Authority’s established timeframes.  It also did not consistently support that deficiencies had been corrected.  Further, of the 162 deficiencies, we determined that 66 still existed at the time of our observations, or we could not confirm whether the Authority had corrected the deficiencies.  See table 2 below.Table 2.  The Authority did not correct REAC inspection deficiencies in a timely mannerCategoryCorrection timeframeDeficiencies reviewedDeficiencies reported as corrected by the Authority after required timeframesLacked support of corrective actionsUncorrected or unverified at the time of our observationLife threatening24 hours412384Non-life threatening20 days35292314Non-health and safety25 days86735048Totals 1621258166Further, the Authority did not certify to HUD, within 3 business days, that the 41 life-threatening deficiencies had been corrected, remedied, or acted upon to abate within 24 hours.These conditions occurred because the Authority did not ensure that its (1) inspectors thoroughly inspected units in a consistent manner and (2) policy requiring quality control inspections of units and buildings was fully and consistently implemented.  Additionally, after HUD’s COVID-19 waiver of the requirement for annual inspections expired and the Authority resumed performing inspections, the Authority lacked staffing resources to inspect all units, create work orders, correct the deficiencies identified in the Authority’s properties during its own inspections and REAC’s inspections in a timely manner, and report and certify in HUD’s Physical Assessment Subsystem that life-threatening deficiencies identified through a HUD REAC inspection had been corrected in a timely manner.As a result, families resided in units that were not decent, safe, sanitary, and in good repair for longer periods, and HUD did not have timely information to monitor whether the Authority corrected life-threatening deficiencies in accordance with HUD’s 24-hour requirement.  If the Authority does not improve the quality of its inspections and address its increasing backlog of work orders, there is a risk of additional families’ residing in units that are not decent, safe, sanitary, and in good repair. We recommend that the Director of HUD’s Boston Office of Public Housing require the Authority to (1) develop and implement a plan to correct the deficiencies identified for its public housing program units and buildings, including the remaining outstanding deficiencies noted during HUD’s REAC inspections, and (2) implement quality control procedures for its inspection and work order processes and mitigation of noted deficiencies to enhance the effectiveness of its unit inspections and ensure that all units meet HUD’s and its own requirements. 

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) inspected two U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) offices to assess inventory and information security controls for excessing USDA’s computer equipment. OIG’s objectives were to determine whether USDA is effectively managing excess equipment in its inventory and whether controls exist to provide reasonable assurance that USDA has adequate security over its excessed equipment.

What the OIG Found

According to GAO’s strategic plan, it will reduce costs of operations, in part, by leveraging cloud-based technologies. Transferring data into the cloud (data ingress) is often free to users; however, some providers charge data egress fees for accessing data or transferring it out of the cloud. Despite the minimal costs GAO has incurred for data egress, opportunities exist for GAO to improve its monitoring and cost estimating processes for cloud services.

The OIG found that, due to other priorities, GAO did not establish formal procedures implementing cloud cost management policies such as instituting and reviewing budget threshold alerts and cloud service usage reports. Due to the lack of procedures, GAO may not fully meet its strategic objective related to managing and reducing the cost of its cloud-based technologies in the future.

The OIG also found that GAO officials did not include data egress fees in a major system’s cost estimate and did not document the exclusion because they deemed data egress fees minimal. As a result, GAO may not be fully aware of the total costs for its cloud initiatives, which could impact its ability to implement new projects and the operation and maintenance of existing initiatives.

Why the OIG Did This Audit

The OIG conducted this audit to (1) describe GAO’s efforts to address data egress fees in procuring cloud services and (2) assess the extent to which the estimated costs of GAO’s cloud services programs quantify data egress fees.

Recommendations

GAO concurred with the OIG’s recommendations to (1) establish cost management procedures for its cloud systems, including addressing data egress fees and the implementation and review of alerts and reports, and (2) develop an oversight mechanism to ensure that all fees, including data egress fees, are quantified in the cost estimate, or the exclusion of any costs is documented.

We audited the project activity status for 12 grantees that received funds under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) National Disaster Resilience (NDR) grant to determine whether the grantees have accomplished or are on track to accomplish the goals of the activities outlined in their action plans. 

We found that NDR grantees should be able to accomplish their program goals by leveraging deadline flexibilities that HUD offered. Grantees had spent more than 70 percent of their grant funds since program implementation in 2016. Grantees were working toward disbursing their remaining $250 million in grant funds for 75 project activities planned or underway by the revised program expenditure deadline.  Of the 12 NDR grantees, 4 had progressed well with accomplishing program goals. The other eight grantees experienced challenges related to one or more of their project activities. The 8 grantees that experienced challenges had a combined total of 24 project activities, of which 21 activities had been underway between 4 and 8 years from their original planned start dates, and the grantees had disbursed less than one-third of the funds allocated, with 3 activities still in “planned” phase, even though the grant agreements were executed more than 7 years ago. The grantees cited a variety of reasons for the delays, such as COVID-19, the newness of the program, and various other issues. Our review also found that grantees lacked adequate policies and procedures for the timely expenditure of funds and had staffing and partner capacity issues, which may have contributed to delays. In addition, HUD could improve its use and design of quarterly performance and action plan review checklists to be more effective in its regular monitoring and oversight of the grantees. 

These projects are vital to the communities they serve. Although the grantees were progressing in the implementation of their project activities, the slow pace of completing projects and deadline flexibilities provided by HUD resulted in delayed benefits to program beneficiaries and continued exposure to future damage to their communities. 

Our recommendations to assist in improving oversight of the NDR grantees include recommending that HUD (1) work with Connecticut and Shelby County grantees to create a plan of action to fully realize program benefits; (2) conduct onsite monitoring for the City of Minot and Tennessee grantees, which have not been monitored; (3) require the eight grantees with delayed activities to provide a detailed timeline for completing their projects to ensure that grantees stay on schedule; (4) revise and abbreviate the action plan and quarterly performance checklists for more effective use; and (5) require grantees to provide documentation showing that they have upfront collaboration with partnering entities.