Federal Reports

What We Looked AtThe Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) oversees about $52 billion in Federal-aid Highway Program funds for fiscal year 2022. The Agency makes these funds available to State Departments of Transportation for highway and infrastructure projects. Modifications to a project’s contract specifications are frequently done through change orders, which are an important component of the Federal-aid Highway Program since they can affect projects’ cost, schedule, design details or specification requirements, or a combination of these key elements. Given the possible risks to program oversight posed by change orders, we initiated this audit to assess FHWA’s oversight of contract change orders. What We FoundWe found data limitations that could impact FHWA’s ability to monitor and oversee change orders. Furthermore, FHWA’s methodology for its compliance assessment program (CAP) reviews can lessen the reviews’ usefulness for oversight and monitoring of change orders. The Agency also lacks a consistent definition of change order as well as clear guidance on what constitutes a major change. Lastly, FHWA’s policy and guidance on change orders in its Contract Administration Core Curriculum (CACC) Manual are outdated, and its guidance for monitoring and tracking its change order reports and associated findings lacks clarity. RecommendationsWe made recommendations to help FHWA strengthen its oversight role and help to mitigate potential exposure to risks related to change orders. FHWA concurred with four recommendations and partially concurred with the other two. We consider all six recommendations resolved but open pending completion of planned actions.

Deficiencies and a lack of transparency in the 1,3 D pesticide cancer assessment process has undermined scientific credibility and public confidence.

As SBA shifts from reviewing applications to servicing COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) and Targeted EIDL Advances, the potential for identifying additional fraudulent loans increases significantly as borrowers default. The ability to recover funds and prosecute fraud relies on having continued access to loan and grant data, especially regarding evidential matter for audits and investigations.In February 2022, OIG found that SBA had been migrating data from its software provider without a data migration plan. This software service provider is an outside company contracted to provide cloud-based software solutions. Without advance planning for data migration and defined acceptance criteria, SBA took reactive measures to prevent the loss of vital program data when the contract ended on June 30, 2022.To address concerns about data migration challenges for SBA’s COVID-19 EIDL pandemic relief program, we suggest the SBA design and implement a comprehensive migration plan for the COVID-19 EIDL program, to include defined acceptance criteria and robust testing, with detailed project milestones and defined areas of responsibility for program management, information technology, and procurement groups so that data is preserved to meet the needs of all stakeholders.SBA managers stated they were working to modify the software service provider contract to ensure data will remain available for future litigation efforts. Management’s plan to modify the contract would ensure data is preserved. Once the contract modification is complete, the risk of data loss will be mitigated. Safeguarding the data from destruction beyond the June 30, 2022 contract expiration will allow SBA to support legal proceedings for the immediate future.

This interim report presents the results of our self-initiated audit of the efficiency of selected processes at the Stone Mountain Post Office in Stone Mountain, GA (Project Number 22-124). This audit was designed to provide U.S. Postal Service management with timely information on potential financial control risks at Postal Service locations. The Stone Mountain Post Office is in the Georgia District of the Southern Area. We judgmentally selected the Stone Mountain Post Office for our audit.

This interim report presents the results of our self-initiated audit of the efficiency of selected processes at the Marietta Main Post Office (MPO) in Marietta, GA (Project Number 22- 123). This audit was designed to provide U.S. Postal Service management with timely information on potential financial control risks at Postal Service locations. The Marietta MPO is in the Georgia District of the Southern Area. We judgmentally selected the Marietta MPO for our audit.