Federal Reports

Despite a continuous focus on improving its Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act of 2010 (IPERA) compliance program, the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) remains unable to reliably estimate the amount or the rate of improper payments in the AmeriCorps State and National Program (AmeriCorps), Foster Grandparent Program (FGP), Retired and Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP), and Senior Companion Program (SCP). Also, the improper payments information reported in CNCS’s fiscal year (FY) 2018 Annual Management Report is unreliable and incomplete.CNCS implemented corrective actions to address findings noted in the FY 2017 IPERA audit report and made improvements that resulted in the elimination of certain prior-year findings. As a result of this progress, we are pleased to report that CNCS met an additional Office of Management and Budget (OMB) criterion on conducting program-specific risk assessment for IPERA compliance and fully resolved three prior audit findings in FY 2018.However, CNCS still failed to meet three of the six OMB IPERA compliance criteria, all of which are recurring from the prior year. Specifically: CNCS did not properly identify improper payments, and the published improper payment estimate is not complete or accurate. Specifically, we noted issues with both the population that CNCS used to select IPERA samples and the manner in which CNCS processed the sample items. CNCS did not meet its annual improper payment reduction targets for the programs. In fact, the rate of improper payments for the four programs in FY 2018 was substantially higher than the rate for FY 2017. CNCS published an improper payment estimate that was greater than the acceptable threshold for IPERA compliance, or ten percent, for these programs.In summary, we recommend that CNCS fully implement planned programmatic corrective actions in the AmeriCorps, FGP, RSVP, and SCP grant programs; develop a detailed plan to establish realistic reduction targets and implement actions to reduce the improper payment rates below ten percent for FY 2019; and update its sampling and estimation methodology to ensure that its future improper payment estimates are complete and accurate. Overall, CNCS agreed with our recommendations and their proposed corrective actions will address the intent of our recommendations.

We conducted this review to determine the Department’s FY 2018 compliance with Improper Payments Information Act of 2002, as amended by the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act of 2010 and the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Improvement Act of 2012. In determining compliance, we also evaluated the accuracy and completeness of the Department’s improper payment reporting in the U.S. Department of Commerce FY 2018 Agency Financial Report and its performance in reducing and recapturing improper payments.

We audited the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) fiscal year 2018 compliance with the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act of 2010 (IPERA). Our audit objective was to determine whether HUD complied with IPERA reporting and improper payment reduction requirements according to guidance from Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-123, appendix C.Fiscal year 2018 marked the sixth consecutive year in which HUD did not comply with IPERA. In 2018, HUD complied with three of the six IPERA requirements, did not comply with two requirements, and one requirement was not applicable. Specifically, HUD did not always (1) publish improper payment estimates for all required programs and (2) report an improper payment rate of less than 10 percent. These conditions occurred because HUD was continuing to revamp its program to address many of the prior-year IPERA compliance issues.New recommendations were not made because prior-year audit recommendations that remain open will help HUD remediate repeat findings identified in this year’s report if implemented.

We were engaged by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC"), Office of Inspector General ("OIG"), to conduct a performance audit of the EEOC charge card program, which includes both purchase and travel cards. EEOC uses purchase cards to reduce the administrative cost of processing small dollar purchases and travel cards to reduce the cost of official travel and for the convenience of the traveler.