Federal Reports

In its fiscal year (FY) 2010 Facilities and Administrative (F&A) cost proposal, the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) included $8.6 million in chilled water costs that were not in accordance with Federal requirements that costs must be reduced by applicable credits. As a result, UAB’s negotiated F&A rate was inflated by 1 percent per year for FYs 2012 through 2015, and it potentially received as much as $5.9 million in overpayments from the Federal Government.

The Postal Service is experiencing increased parcel volumes because of the trend toward online shopping and e-commerce. The number of Sunday hubs nationwide has increased from 459 in March 2014 to 2,349 at the end of fiscal year (FY) 2017. The San Francisco District had no hubs in March 2014, but had 39 Sunday hubs as of June 30, 2017. Sunday parcel volume in the San Francisco District increased 19 percent between FYs 2016 and 2017. We selected the San Francisco District for this audit based on the usage of regular full-time city carriers working on Sundays in FY 2017.

During this semiannual reporting period, we completed congressionally mandated audits of the NEA’s information systems security, financial data reported to the Treasury and the Office of Management and Budget, and NEA’s financial statements. These audits resulted in recommendations that will help NEA continuously improve information systems security and financial reporting accuracy and transparency. In addition, we addressed 23 hotline complaints, enabling us to help citizens avoid scams by individuals fraudulently representing themselves as NEA employees. Furthermore, we issued two audit reports with $205,093 in questioned cost and 24 recommendations to improve awards management. Finally, through our audit follow-up process, we collaborated with NEA managers to clear 23 recommendations, which will help improve stewardship of NEA funds by awardees.

NGA OIG Spring FY 2024 Semiannual Report to Congress, 1 October 2017 - 31 March 2018

I am pleased to submit our latest Semiannual Report to the United States Congress. This report highlights the activities of our office for the six months ending March 31, 2018, pursuant to the Inspector General Act of 1978, as amended.During this period, our office continued to pursue our vision of operating as a model OIG by independently generating objective, sophisticated, and timely products that address high-risk and high-impact areas among the company’s programs and operations. Our audit work examining the $1.6 billion Acela Express 2021 program identified potential oversight issues among 10 related infrastructure projects, four of which must be completed prior to 28 new trainsets being brought into revenue service. Also of note, a report on medical claims contracts found the company could improve medical claims fraud prevention and detection by including key fraud prevention requirements in its contracts.Our investigative team continued to address criminal activity, ethical misconduct, and violations of company policies. Notably, we investigated an ethical transgression in which an executive wrongly accepted gifts from the owner of a company doing business with Amtrak and a case involving multiple employees’ theft of cash obtained from fraudulently refunded tickets. Additionally, a former employee was sentenced in federal court for making false statements to our agents after steering a contract to a family member for personal gain, and we continued to support a multi-year health care fraud investigation in Florida that has resulted in 18 convictions of individuals for health care fraud-related crimes.