Federal Reports

As part of its mission to protect human health, the EPA communicates risks from contaminated sites to the public. Without accurate, clear, and timely information, residents living on or near contaminated sites cannot take precautions, if necessary, to protect their health and safety.

ICE has taken various actions to prevent the pandemic’s spread among detainees and staff at their detention facilities. At the nine facilities we remotely inspected, these measures included maintaining adequate supplies of PPE such as face masks, enhanced cleaning, and proper screening for new detainees and staff. However, we found other areas in which detention facilities struggled to properly manage the health and safety of detainees. For example, we observed instances where staff and detainees did not consistently wear face masks or socially distance. In addition, we noted that some facilities did not consistently manage medical sick calls and did not regularly communicate with detainees regarding their COVID-19 test results. Although we found that ICE was able to decrease the detainee population to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19, information on detainee transfers was limited. We also found that testing of both detainees and staff was insufficient, and that ICE headquarters did not generally provide effective oversight of their detention facilities during the pandemic. Overall, ICE must resolve these issues to ensure it can meet the challenges of not only the COVID-19 pandemic, but future pandemics as well. We made six recommendations to improve ICE’s management of COVID-19 in its detention facilities. ICE concurred with all six recommendations.

Our objective was to determine if the Postal Service has adequate controls over awarding noncompetitive contracts and whether business scenario justifications were adequately supported.The goal of the Postal Service’s supply chain activities is to obtain the best value, which is generally achieved through competition. Competition brings market forces to bear and helps purchase/supply chain management teams compare the relative value of proposals and prices. Competition also encourages the adoption of innovative ideas and solutions and promotes fairness and openness that leads to public trust. However, there are business situations when the noncompetitive purchase method better suits or is needed to meet the business objectives of the Postal Service.

As a part of our IT Audit program, the OIG reviewed a Postal Service IT system to assess the security posture. This audit involved a technical review to identify potential issues and provide recommendations. The technical details of our work are shared directly with Postal Service management. Due to the sensitive nature of this information, we did not post details of our work.