Federal Reports

For our final report on our audit of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES)–R series program (the Program), our objective was to assess the Program’s progress in achieving launch readiness for the GOES-T mission. To satisfy our objective, we examined technical performance challenges and changes to technical, schedule, and cost baselines since GOES-S launched in March 2018. We found the following: I. The Program works toward the earliest achievable launch dates at potentially increased development risk; II. the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) is planning GOES launches sooner than its policy requires without analyzing the costs; and III. NESDIS assumes ground storage of satellites is not viable, but has not formally studied tradeoffs.

The objective of our review was to evaluate the Department of Education’s plans and processes to ensure Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education (TEACH) grantees receive full-time credit toward their service obligations for part-time and temporarily interrupted service due to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). We found weaknesses in FSA’s development and implementation of plans and processes to ensure TEACH grantees receive full-time credit towards their service obligations for part-time or temporarily interrupted service due to COVID-19. Additionally, we found that FSA did not effectively develop or oversee the implementation of the TEACH Grant servicer contract modification.

We found that the BLM did not review the Federal exclusions to determine if mineral lease recipients were suspended or debarred before issuing leases.

We found that ONRR needs to strengthen its internal controls and processes to ensure accurate royalty reporting for adjustments.

We substantiated that an unknown individual fraudulently represented themselves as a DOI official and misdirected $64,097 of the official’s pay.

We audited the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s Continuum of Care (CoC) program. The audit was initiated because of the homelessness crisis in the City of Los Angeles, which has the highest number of unsheltered people in the United States. In addition, the Los Angeles city controller issued a report in 2019, criticizing the Authority for falling short of City of Los Angeles homeless outreach goals. (See Background and Objectives.) Our audit objectives were to determine whether the Authority met the goals and objectives of housing and helping the homeless become self-sufficient through its CoC program and administered the program in accordance with HUD requirements.The Authority did not fully meet the goals and objectives of the program and did not always follow program requirements. Specifically, it (1) did not use $3.5 million in CoC grant awards and left the funds to expire, (2) did not support Homeless Management Information System and planning grant costs, and (3) did not submit timely annual performance reports (APR). As a result, the unused CoC funds represent a missed opportunity to meet the program’s goals of assisting the homeless, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) does not have assurance $879,847 in salary and rent costs were for the CoC grants, and CoC funds may have unnecessarily sat idle and unavailable for future awards.We recommend that the Director of HUD’s Los Angeles Office of Community Planning and Development require the Authority to (1) develop and implement policies and procedures to ensure that grant agreements are executed in a timely manner and effective monitoring is performed to prevent similar occurrences of grant funds going unused, (2) support payroll and rent costs or repay its CoC grants $879,847 from non-Federal funds, and (3) develop policies and procedures to ensure APRs are submitted in a timely manner and personnel are routinely trained on the grant closeout process.