Federal Reports

The OIG assessed the oversight and stewardship of funds and identified opportunities for cost efficiency at the Miami VA Healthcare System in Florida. The review focused on four areas:1. Use of the Medical/Surgical Prime Vendor-Next Generation Program. The program is a collection of contracts that streamlines purchasing and distribution for certain supplies. The team found that the healthcare system was unable to fully achieve the program’s cost savings because the prime vendor did not have enough stock to fill orders consistently. In addition, staff did not always use available tools to report issues with prime vendor performance.2. Purchase card use. The healthcare system did not always maintain supporting documentation for transactions, conduct quarterly audits of the purchase card program on time, and consider contracts instead of purchase cards for ongoing, repetitive orders of goods or services. Using contracts can help VA leverage purchasing power and obtain competitive pricing.3. Administrative staffing and labor costs. The healthcare system had higher administrative staff levels than similar facilities and did not ensure all administrative labor costs were recorded correctly. A difference in the number of personnel should be a starting point for deeper examination and in itself is not a determining factor.4. Pharmacy efficiency. The healthcare system improved pharmacy inefficiencies, but it could avoid end-of-year purchases and increase the number of times inventory is used during the year. End-of-year purchases can reduce the inventory turnover rate, increase the cost to store inventory, and potentially lead to overstocking and spoilage.The OIG made 12 recommendations for improving cost efficiency to the healthcare system director. The number of recommendations should not be used, however, to gauge the system’s overall financial health. The intent is for system leaders to use these recommendations as a road map for improvement in the areas reviewed.

For our final report on the audit of the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) efforts to improve the accuracy of the trademark register, our audit objective was to determine whether USPTO’s trademark registration process is effective in preventing fraudulent or inaccurate registrations. To address this objective, we assessed whether USPTO prevents inaccurate trademark applications from entering and being maintained on the trademark register, as well as whether USPTO is adequately managing fraud risk.Overall, we found that USPTO’s trademark registration process was not effective in preventing fraudulent or inaccurate registrations. Specifically, we found the following:I. USPTO lacks controls to effectively enforce the U.S. counsel rule; II. USPTO approved trademark filings with digitally altered or mocked-up specimens; III. USPTO did not ensure accurate identification of goods and services; andIV. USPTO lacks a comprehensive fraud risk strategy.

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What We Looked AtMuch of the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) safety oversight work is performed by its aviation safety inspector workforce, whose responsibilities include overseeing the maintenance practices of air carriers and other operators, certifying the airworthiness of new aircraft, and monitoring the work performed by individual and organizational designees. To help determine its future needs, FAA uses its inspector staffing model to produce annual forecasts of up to 10 fiscal years of inspector staffing levels. The FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018 directed FAA to update its safety-critical staffing model and our office to conduct an audit to determine the staffing model’s assumptions and methodologies and whether it accounts for FAA’s authority to fully use designees, which handle certification reviews and approvals on FAA’s behalf. Our audit objectives were to (1) assess the changes FAA made to update the inspector staffing model, (2) review the assumptions and methodologies the model uses to predict the number of aviation safety inspectors FAA needs to meet its current and future oversight responsibilities, and (3) determine how FAA’s model accounts for the use of designees. What We FoundSince 2013, FAA has taken constructive steps to improve the model but has not taken substantive action on three recommendations from the National Research Council, including developing performance measures to assess the accuracy of the model’s staffing estimates. Further, FAA has yet to implement two new models that would reflect organizational changes, and only uses the model to produce a single, national inspector staffing figure. Finally, the model accounts solely for the time inspectors spend overseeing individual and organizational designees, not the work these outside parties perform on FAA’s behalf or may perform in the future. Our RecommendationsWe made seven recommendations to improve the accuracy of FAA’s inspector staffing projections and enhance the capabilities of the staffing model. FAA concurred with five of our seven recommendations and partially concurred with two. We consider six recommendations resolved but open, pending completion of planned actions and have asked FAA to reconsider its action for one partially concurred recommendation.

We audited costs claimed and grant compliance by the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife under grants awarded by the FWS.