Federal Reports

We reviewed prior oversight reports and identified lessons to help the EPA’s administration and oversight of IIJA grant awards. With IIJA appropriations, the EPA will receive approximately $55 billion in additional funding for grants over a five-year period.

SIGTARP recommends that Treasury complete an assessment to determine the extent to which current economic conditions, particularly increased inflation and essential living costs, are impacting HAMP homeowners. SIGTARP also recommends that Treasury take action, within its authority, to address any findings from its assessment that indicate economic conditions are impacting HAMP homeowners and increasing the risk that the program will not achieve its goal of preventing avoidable foreclosures.

The objective was to determine the extent to which DHS is positioned to prevent and reduce domestic terrorism in the United States. We determined that DHS has taken steps to help the United States counter terrorism, but those efforts have not always been consistent. This occurred because the Department has not established a governance body with staff dedicated to long-term oversight and coordination of its efforts to combat domestic terrorism.

We closed this evaluation because the DOI detected and responded to our simulated attacks against bureau public-facing systems.

EAC OIG, through the independent public accounting firm of McBride, Lock & Associates, LLC, audited funds received by the State of Arizona under the Help America Vote Act, including state matching funds and interest earned, totaling $27.6 million.

EAC OIG, through the independent public accounting firm of McBride, Lock & Associates, LLC, audited funds received by the State of Ohio under the Help America Vote Act, including state matching funds and interest earned, totaling $45.2 million. This included Election Security and Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act grants.

Given the importance of accurately and consistently deciding veterans’ claims for disability benefits, the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) includes in its quality assurance efforts special-focused reviews that target specific topic areas, such as military sexual trauma. The Office of Inspector General (OIG) reviewed VBA’s design and implementation of its special-focused review process, including applying Government Accountability Office (GAO) standards. The OIG team assessed 10 special-focused reviews completed from January 2019 through April 2021 and identified weaknesses in all five of GAO’s internal control components. The OIG also found the VBA Compensation Service’s standard operating procedure related to these special-focused reviews does not provide sufficient guidance to fully support disability claims-processing improvement. For example, the procedure does not specify that final reports flowing from special-focused reviews must discuss the causes for errors. Without this “root cause” information, leaders are not well-positioned to reduce the risk of continued errors or deficiencies.The OIG made six recommendations to the under secretary for benefits, who submitted responsive corrective action plans to all. VBA agreed to recommendations to update the special-focused review standard operating procedure to require an analysis of why errors occurred, to establish controls for ensuring reports communicate both benefit entitlement and procedural errors, and to convey information on all errors identified at both the national and regional office levels. The OIG also recommended VBA measure the effectiveness of actions taken in response to each special focused review and determine whether a follow-up review is needed. Finally, VBA was called on to reassess special-focused review errors marked as “corrected” to determine whether sufficient actions were taken and assess whether an enhancement to the Quality Management System could help prevent claims processors from closing errors without correction and ensure corrective actions are taken on all errors.