Federal Reports

The contractor did not fully comply with Indian Preference requirements in the original contract and failed to document some employees’ training.

The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) contracted with the independent public accounting firm CliftonLarsonAllen LLP (CLA) to provide consulting services related to the deployment of VA’s new general ledger system known as the Integrated Financial and Acquisition Management System (iFAMS) and potential risks to the auditability of future VA financial statements. CLA did not perform an audit of iFAMS, and this engagement was not a financial statement audit. CLA expressed neither an opinion nor a conclusion on the effectiveness of VA’s controls over any part of its financial statements or the internal controls of iFAMS. However, CLA’s observations include that VA has not adequately described how the roles and responsibilities of two contractors relate to VA management’s control objectives; has not documented procedures describing controls to ensure the completeness and accuracy of financial data transmitted from iFAMS to the Management Information Exchange (MinX) system, an application used to consolidate general ledger activities from the Financial Management System and iFAMS for external financial reporting; is not periodically reconciling various reports to the iFAMS general ledger; has not prepared a risk assessment of financial statement auditability focusing on the iFAMS implementation; and continues to rely on lump sum adjustments by financial personnel as an interim fix to correct balances in iFAMS. The OIG generally releases a management advisory memorandum to provide information on matters of concern that the OIG has gathered as part of its oversight mission. In this instance, the consulting engagement resulted in information that OIG leaders felt should be brought to VA’s attention. The OIG will use the information gained from this engagement when planning future audits of VA’s financial statements.

This Office of Inspector General Comprehensive Healthcare Inspection Program report describes the results of a focused evaluation of the inpatient and outpatient care provided at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, which includes the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center and multiple outpatient clinics throughout California. 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 emergency department and urgent care center suicide prevention initiatives)The OIG issued nine recommendations for improvement in three areas:1. Quality, Safety, and Value• Peer review improvement actions• Patient safety event root cause analysis2. Medical Staff Privileging• Focused Professional Practice Evaluation time frames• Ongoing Professional Practice Evaluation service-specific criteria• Privileging request recommendations in Medical Executive Council meeting minutes3. Environment of Care• Inspecting, testing, and maintaining medical equipment• Maintaining equipment and furnishings and keeping patient care areas clean and safe• Using breathable shower curtains in mental health inpatient unit bathrooms• Recording and accessing video or audio monitoring equipment

Components within the Department of Homeland Security protect High Value Asset (HVA) systems with security and privacy controls designed to keep sensitive information safe. We determined that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) implemented most security and privacy controls tested for the selected HVA system, in compliance with applicable Federal and DHS requirements.

Objective: To determine whether the Social Security Administration issued payments to beneficiaries who were deceased according to Oregon records.