Federal Reports

We investigated whether career U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) staff were directed to delay releasing documents responding to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that was being litigated in U.S. district court, and whether withholding these documents conflicted with the court’s order to the DOI to review a certain number of potentially responsive pages every month.We found that after David Bernhardt’s nomination for Interior Secretary was announced on February 4, 2019, then Counselor to the Secretary Hubbel Relat directed career DOI staff to temporarily withhold documents related to Bernhardt from a release of FOIA documents scheduled to occur under the court order. As a result, 253 pages of information were not included in the scheduled release, but most of those pages were released later in 2019. Accordingly, we have determined that this matter does not warrant further investigation and that the court is the proper venue to determine whether the DOI met its obligations under the court order.

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.

Under the Medicare home health prospective payment system (PPS), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services pays home health agencies (HHAs) a standardized payment for each 60-day episode of care that a beneficiary receives. The PPS payment covers intermittent skilled nursing and home health aide visits, therapy (physical, occupational, and speech-language pathology), medical social services, and medical supplies.

The DHS Chief Information Officer (CIO) and most component CIOs had conducted strategic planning efforts to help prioritize legacy Information Technology (IT) systems and infrastructure to better accomplish mission goals. However, due to a lack of standard guidance and funding, not all components have complied with or fully embraced Department-wide IT modernization initiatives to adopt cloud-based computing, and to consolidate data centers. Meanwhile, DHS continues to rely on deficient and outdated IT systems to perform mission-critical operations. Additionally, DHS has not yet leveraged the Modernizing Government Technology Act mandate to accelerate ongoing IT modernization efforts, as DHS and its components questioned whether the benefits of the Act outweighed the additional effort needed to use the resources provided under the Act. Until DHS addresses these issues, it will continue to face significant challenges to accomplish mission operations efficiently and effectively. We made three recommendations for the DHS OCIO to develop guidance for implementing cloud technology and migrating legacy IT systems to the cloud, coordinate with components to develop and finalize a data center migration approach, and establish a process to assign risk ratings for major legacy IT investments. The Department concurred with all three recommendations.