Federal Reports

Congress passed three coronavirus relief acts within a 1-year period that provided more than $275 billion for an Education Stabilization Fund to prevent, prepare for, and respond to the coronavirus, including $189.5 billion for the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER). The American Rescue Plan Act (ARP) provided $122 billion for ESSER to help State educational agencies (SEA) and local educational agencies (LEA) safely reopen and sustain the safe operation of schools and address the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on students. Ensuring that ARP ESSER funds are used effectively by grantees and achieve the intended impact is critical to help address the needs of students and educators. The Puerto Rico Department of Education (Puerto Rico DOE) was allocated about $3 billion in ARP ESSER funds to support 860 schools serving about 261,000 students. The objective of our inspection was to determine whether Puerto Rico DOE ensured that (1) services contracted for and paid with ARP ESSER funds to measure students’ academic progress were provided as required and (2) results were used as intended to modify individual students’ instructional plans and help prevent academic failure.

We found that Puerto Rico DOE did not ensure that the services contracted for and paid with ARP ESSER funds to measure students’ academic progress were provided in accordance with the executed contract. It also did not ensure that teachers used the results of the contractor-administered student academic proficiency assessments as intended to modify individual students’ instructional plans and help prevent academic failure. As a result, Puerto Rico DOE used $3.9 million in ARP ESSER funds to pay for student academic proficiency interim assessments that a contractor did not administer timely (10- and 20-week assessments) or at all (30- and 40-week assessments), and that did not achieve the intended purposes of helping teachers develop differentiated work plans based on each student’s academic lag, diagnose students’ immediate learning needs, and implement targeted re-teaching strategies effectively. We made four recommendations to ensure that the $3.9 million in ARP ESSER funds are not wasted, future contract work is adequately supervised by Puerto Rico DOE, and contractors are not paid for services they did not perform or that were outside the scope of the contract

The Office of Inspector General performed an inspection of four mission areas within the U.S.Department of Agriculture (USDA) to determine if the USDA and its mission areas are effectively identifying and mitigating security vulnerabilities on their publicly accessible web applications and websites.

This report contains sensitive content. It is being withheld from public release due to concerns about the risk of circumvention of law.

This report presents the results of our audits of mail delivery operations in the Ohio 1 District in the Central Area.

The U.S. Postal Service’s mission is to provide timely, reliable, secure, and affordable mail and package delivery to over 160 million residential and business addresses across the country. To fulfill this role, the Postal Service is committed to ensuring its delivery platform and services are always a trusted, visible, and valued part of America’s social and economic infrastructure. This includes leveraging people, technology, and systems at approximately 300 processing facilities and 31,100 post offices, stations, and branches in the nation to provide worldclass visibility of mail and packages as they move through the Postal Service’s integrated system. The U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General (OIG) reviews delivery operations at facilities across the country and provides management with timely feedback in furtherance of this mission.

This report presents a summary of the results of our self-initiated audits of delivery operations and property conditions at three delivery units, as well as district-wide delivery operations in the Ohio 1 District in the Central Area (Project Number 25-141). The delivery units included Station B and Shaker Heights Station in Cleveland, OH, and the Cleveland Heights Branch in Cleveland Heights, OH.

The Office of the Inspector General contracted with Sikich CPA LLC (Sikich) to determine whether contract modifications for the Pod 6 construction contract were reasonable, necessary, within the scope of the contract, and effectively awarded and administered.  Sikich found that the Smithsonian did not consistently administer contract modifications in accordance with the terms of the contract.

BIE did not ensure deficiencies were addressed timely; schools did not consistently implement mitigating measures or close corrected work orders.

The 2026 Census Test is the bureau’s next major test to prepare for the 2030 census. The bureau planned in-field operations at multiple sites to evaluate new and enhanced processes and methods for improving the design of the census, and bureau officials stated that they used a new, innovative data-driven process to select the test sites. 

Our objective was to assess the bureau’s test site selection methodology. However, the bureau could not provide supporting documentation of the judgments, methodologies, and assumptions used to plan, execute, and provide oversight of the selection process. As a result, we could not verify how the bureau selected the sites. 

Without establishing a formal, documented methodology as a solid foundation, as specified by its own statistical quality standards, the bureau risks inefficiencies or suboptimal site selections that could compromise overall readiness for the 2030 census and beyond. We made two recommendations to the bureau to strengthen its processes for reviewing and documenting site selections for future census tests.