Federal Reports

The paper recommends the Postal Service consider opportunities for public-private partnerships (PPPs) to reduce its costs, make its outlays flexible so that they vary along with volume, and leverage private sector expertise in developing new products for the digital age. The paper reviews lessons learned from PPPs in the postal sector and from nonpostal government agencies in the United States. Over the years, government agencies have developed a set of best practices to ensure that a PPP is a good deal for the public. There are significant benefits to creating a central office to facilitate PPPs, coordinating with private entities, and collecting and sharing best practices throughout an agency.

Our audit to determine whether the Department effectively monitored and tracked 21st Century Community Learning Centers program performance measures and controls at four SEAs identified areas needing improvement. The four SEAs reviewed were the Alabama State Department of Education, the Florida Department of Education, the Mississippi Department of Education, and the Puerto Rico Department of Education. We found that although the Department tracked program performance measures at the SEAs, neither the Department nor three of the SEAs (Alabama, Mississippi, and Puerto Rico) validated the performance data that the subgrantees submitted. As a result, the Department was unable to ensure that grantees met program objectives. We also found that although the Department monitored the SEAs’ processes to award and monitor subgrants and reported some deficiencies it identified, it did not identify the internal control weaknesses that we found at the selected SEAs. Based on our findings, we made a number of recommendations, including that the Department ensure that SEAs implement written policies, procedures, and monitoring instruments to sufficiently test 21st Century Community Learning Centers performance data and provide reasonable assurance of the accuracy, reliability, and completeness of data reported to the Department. We also recommended that the Department provide sufficient monitoring and oversight of SEAs’ processes to award and monitor 21st Century Community Learning Centers grants to subgrantees.