Federal Reports

Our objective for this report was to assess the effectiveness of the company’s efforts to identify the technology needs of its business departments and implement projects in response to those needs.We found that the company has implemented a process for more effectively identifying the business departments’ technology projects. Nevertheless, the company can do more to systemically gather and robustly define a project’s technology requirements. Three factors contributed to unclear or incomplete requirements. First, business department staff did not understand their responsibilities in working with IT to clearly define project requirements. Second, some project requirements were not clear or complete because the company did not resource projects with sufficient IT staff, business staff, or both. Third, some project requirements were incomplete because IT project teams did not include staff from the appropriate business departments to ensure that the requirements included all their needs.To improve the effectiveness of implementing technology projects, we recommend that the Chief Information Officer (CIO) clarify roles to ensure that staff assigned to these projects understand their responsibilities. We also recommend that the CIO coordinate with the business departments to develop a process to identify and plan for the company’s technology resource needs beyond the upcoming year. The company agreed with our recommendations and plans on taking corrective action.

The US Office of Special Counsel referred a whistleblower disclosure to VA on July 19, 2021. The whistleblower alleged that the Houston National Cemetery’s equipment, headstones, gravesites, and other cemetery features were not maintained as required. VA referred the disclosure to the VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) to assess these allegations. Although the Houston National Cemetery was generally well maintained, the OIG substantiated some of the whistleblower’s allegations. Four pieces of motorized equipment were not maintained in accordance with National Cemetery Administration standards because the cemetery staff stopped conducting routine preventive maintenance checks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some gravesites were also improperly maintained, and one water feature had a pump that was not working. None of the substantiated allegations at the Houston National Cemetery were pervasive issues, and cemetery staff were working to fix all of them. The OIG recommended that the cemetery director revise the equipment policy to ensure that routine activities, such as preventive maintenance checks, are resumed after natural disasters or emergencies and provide an action plan to repair the gravesites that the OIG team identified as improperly maintained. VA concurred with the recommendations and recognizes that maintenance of cemetery equipment and gravesites is essential to honor veterans and their eligible family members with lasting tributes commemorating their service and sacrifices. VA provided sufficient evidence to close the first recommendation as implemented and has taken action on the second, which will be closed when additional documentation has been received.

The objective of the review is to determine the effectiveness of the Commission’sinformation security program and practices. The review will assess information security program controls to support the OIG’s reporting of FISMA metrics into the Department ofHomeland Security’s Cyberscope application.