Federal Reports

This report presents the results of our inspection to assess the U.S. Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Shuttered Venue Operators Grant (SVOG) controls to prevent disbursements to ineligible entities. Specifically, our review focused on general eligibility requirements applicable to all SVOG applicants and venue-specific requirements applicable to live venue operators.SBA delayed launching the SVOG application portal for over 2 weeks in April 2021 because of technical issues. In June 2021, SBA officials made program changes, which SBA called a “program refresh,” to accelerate application processing and to expedite the release of program funds. SBA stopped using the application portal to track applicant compliance with each eligibility requirement, switching instead to a manual checklist. SBA staff were instructed to presume applicant assertions to be true unless a clear indication of fraud was present. SBA also placed a strict 4-hour review time limit per application. Additionally, SBA limited or eliminated certain verification procedures.We recommended SBA management 1) reevaluate eligibility for the 47 SVOG applicants we reviewed and to recover funds from applicants determined to be ineligible and 2) implement additional controls for the monitoring, auditing, and compliance phases to prevent ineligible entities from receiving grants.

Our objective was to assess the United States Postal Service’s processes and systems over retroactive pay. To accomplish our objective, we reviewed timelines for three collective bargaining agreements (labor contracts) from contract ratification to issuing retroactive payments to affected employees.

This Office of Inspector General (OIG) Comprehensive Healthcare Inspection Program report describes the results of a focused evaluation of the care provided at the Royal C. Johnson Veterans’ Memorial Hospital in Sioux Falls and multiple outpatient clinics in Iowa and South Dakota. This evaluation focused on five key operational areas:• Leadership and organizational risks• Quality, safety, and value• Medical staff privileging• Environment of care• Mental health (focusing on suicide prevention initiatives)The OIG issued one recommendation for improvement in the mental health review area regarding completing Comprehensive Suicide Risk Evaluations.

We found that a full-time NPS employee wrongfully obtained State unemployment insurance and Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation.