Federal Reports

The Office of the Inspector General audited the savings guaranteed to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) by DeWolff, Boberg & Associates, Inc., (DBA) for work management improvement services. DBA guaranteed efficiency and productivity gains would result in minimum total cost savings to TVA of $17,971,760. Our objective was to determine if DBA complied with the terms of the contract and achieved the guaranteed cost savings. Although we did not find evidence of noncompliance with the contract, we could not determine if DBA achieved the guaranteed cost savings. We could not determine if the metrics used to measure improvements were valid, because TVA did not have management controls in place to ensure consistency. Accordingly, we could not determine the value TVA received from the $16.17 million it paid to DBA. Summary Only

There are ongoing debates regarding what role the Postal Service could and should play in meeting modern communications needs. These discussions often include Postal Service management, the postal regulator, postal employees and customers, members of Congress, and other stakeholders. Largely absent from the debate, however, has been the voice of the American public — the very people that the Postal Service exists to serve. To begin to understand America’s changing communications needs, the OIG commissioned a study to better understand how Americans view the Postal Service now, as well as what role it could play in their lives in the future. This paper provides the results of that survey and is intended to be the basis for more in-depth follow-up research into topics this initial survey identifies as important.

We issued a special report on a specific issue of concern in California that we identified during the course of our nationwide review. We determined that the California Department of Education instructed LEAs that had not previously met the MOE compliance requirement with local-only special education expenditures that they may use local-only special education expenditure information from an improper base year to demonstrate compliance with the LEA MOE requirement. We found two actual instances in which the California Department of Education allowed LEAs to demonstrate MOE compliance by using improper expenditure information. These two LEAs spent less than they should have on special education programs and were not penalized for doing so. It is possible that additional LEAs in California incorrectly represented that they complied with the MOE compliance requirement by also using an improper base year. Based on our findings, we made a number of recommendations, including that the Department revise its regulations as needed to ensure that LEAs are not permitted to reduce the amount of local funds spent on educating children with disabilities below levels required by IDEA, and determine the amount the California Department of Education is required to remit to the Department as a result of the LEAs using an improper year to meet the actual MOE compliance requirement. The Department partially agreed with our concerns, and said it would consider regulatory change and subsequently published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on LEA MOE in September 2013.