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Brought to you by the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency
Federal Reports
Report Date
Agency Reviewed / Investigated
Report Title
Type
Location
Environmental Protection Agency
The EPA’s Fiscal Years 2021 and 2020 (Restated) Hazardous Waste Electronic Manifest System Fund Financial Statements
We conducted this review to provide considerations for the EPA to strengthen its corrective action certification process. When the Agency certifies to the completion of corrective actions that have not been completed, it leads to inaccurate data in the Agency’s audit tracking system, limits the OIG’s assurance that the corrective actions reported by the Agency are reliable, and may give the public and Congress the wrong impression regarding the EPA’s progress in addressing OIG recommendations.
This report contains information about recommendations from the OIG's audits, evaluations, reviews, and other reports that the OIG had not closed as of the specified date because it had not determined that the Department of Justice (DOJ) or a non-DOJ federal agency had fully implemented them. The list omits information that DOJ determined to be limited official use or classified, and therefore unsuitable for public release.The status of each recommendation was accurate as of the specified date and is subject to change. Specifically, a recommendation identified as not closed as of the specified date may subsequently have been closed.
We reviewed the U.S. Small Business Administration’s (SBA) process for handling complaints, or protests, filed to request review of contracts awarded to businesses that may not have been eligible in size or certification status, as required by the offer terms. The small business protest process was created to allow self-interested offerors to police themselves and prevent awards from going to ineligible businesses. The process was intended to protect the integrity of set-aside awards and of SBA’s small business contracting certification programs.Congress authorized small business set-asides to ensure federal agencies award a fair proportion of goods and service contracts to small businesses in each industry to diversify and strengthen the American economy. In Fiscal Year (FY) 2021, federal agencies awarded over $154 billion to small businesses. The objectives of this audit were to determine whether SBA had effective controls in place to ensure protest decisions were properly enforced and to monitor the protest process.We found SBA had effective controls in place to ensure protest decisions were properly enforced and used to monitor the protest process. We found that only 4 percent of the small businesses protested in FY 2021 did not update their proper status in their company profile after SBA found they did not qualify for set-aside awards. We also found program officials decided 80 percent of small business protests within the required 15 business days, or within extension dates approved by the contracting officer.We made one recommendation for SBA management to strengthen controls to consistently document and monitor required protest information to ensure decisions are made in a timely manner. SBA Management agreed with the recommendation.