Federal Reports

The Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) required states to establish an interest-earning election fund, in to which grant funds are deposited and maintained. OIG, through the independent public accounting firm of McBride, Lock & Associates, LLC, audited compliance with these requirements. The audit included open Election Security and Section 251 grants at 34 states and territories, as of September 30, 2022.

Why We Did This Report We conducted this evaluation to determine whether the EPA’s oversight and implementation of institutional controls will support effective use of Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, or IIJA, funding at the American Creosote Works Inc. (Pensacola Plant) Superfund site in Pensacola, Florida. The EPA allocated approximately $40 million in IIJA funds for the final remediation of this site. Summary of Findings The institutional controls that the EPA has established at the American Creosote Works Inc. (Pensacola Plant) Superfund site in Pensacola, Florida, related to contaminated groundwater and soil are not sufficient to prevent potential exposure to contamination. For contaminated groundwater, the institutional control that the EPA relied on did not prevent well drilling or require groundwater well plugging and abandonment. The EPA also did not plan to secure permission from private property owners to plug and abandon any wells that the EPA encountered during remediation, potentially wasting at least $1.3 million in remediation funds from the IIJA. For contaminated soil, the EPA did not implement institutional controls to prevent potential exposure to off-facility parcel contamination or to inform the wider public of the extent of contamination. Further, the EPA does not plan to implement institutional controls on these parcels after remediation to prevent the disturbance of unremediated soil, potentially wasting $5.4 million in IIJA funds allocated for the parcels’ remediation.

Our office remains committed to investigating and prosecuting fraud cases, and identifying opportunities to improve related internal controls. Ultimately, the company is responsible for preventing, detecting, and reporting fraud and instituting the controls necessary to do so. To help inform the company’s efforts to combat this persistent threat, we issued a report in May 2023 that identified four fraud risk areas facing the company: contracts and procurements, health care, employee wrongdoing, and cybercrime. That report highlighted indicators of potential fraud as well as mitigation activities the company could undertake to address these risks. This follow‐on report provides deeper insights on a specific fraud risk area—contracts and procurements—for the company’s consideration as it continues its unprecedented expansion in mission and federal funding. Accordingly, the purpose of this report is to share insights from industry practices and our own observations about collecting and analyzing data to monitor for and detect contract and procurement fraud.

The audit objectives were to determine whether program funds were managed in accordance with the ARC and Federal grant requirements.

This Office of Inspector General (OIG) Comprehensive Healthcare Inspection Program report describes the results of a focused evaluation of the quality of care delivered in the inpatient and outpatient settings of the Bay Pines VA Healthcare System, which includes the C.W. Bill Young VA Medical Center and eight outpatient clinics in Florida. This evaluation focused on five key operational areas:• Leadership and organizational risks• Quality, safety, and value• Medical staff privileging• Environment of care• Mental health (suicide prevention initiatives)The OIG issued eight recommendations for improvement in four areas:1. Leadership and organizational risks• Institutional disclosures for sentinel events2. Quality, safety, and value• Root cause analysis for patient safety events3. Environment of care• Clean and orderly patient care areas• Furnishings and walls in good repair• Solid bottom shelves in storage areas• Medical equipment inspection, testing, and maintenance • Mental health inpatient unit panic alarm testing4. Mental health• Monthly reporting of suicide events to quality management staff

The U.S. Postal Service is working to leverage technology to improve visibility and tracking of mail and packages in near real time for the Postal Service, its customers, and mailers. As it moves through the surface transportation network, mail and packages are assigned to a container equipped with barcodes. Surface Visibility provides real-time scanning of barcodes and reports mail movement from origin to final destination allowing the Postal Service to measure its performance. Oversight of scanning processes performed by logistics and processing employees helps ensure all scans are performed accurately. Scanning accuracy is critical to achieving real-time visibility and providing the Postal Service with a competitive market advantage and long-term stability within the mailing industry.

The Postal Service deployed a major change to operations within the Richmond, VA, area on October 28, 2023, when it implemented its Local Transportation Optimization initiative. The initiative is designed to reduce the overall number of transportation trips to and from select Post Offices and increase the amount of mail transported on each trip. In this new initiative, the Postal Service will no longer transport mail collected at select delivery units to the Richmond Regional Processing and Distribution Center (RPDC) the same day it is collected. Rather, the mail will remain at the unit until the next day, delaying its entry into sorting operations.

Semiannual Report to the Congress, October 1, 2023 through March 31, 2024