Federal Reports

The objective of this report was to assess the maturity of the U.S. Postal Service Ethics Program in three areas: (1) agency goals and metrics, (2) accountability and consistency, and (3) cause and prevention. We discuss these areas using a maturity model framework to demonstrate the value of approaching an organization’s ethical efforts in a comprehensive, integrated manner that actively contributes to the organization’s mission.

Although Northwestern claimed allowable expenditures on subawards it awarded and received, it did not always perform required subaward risk assessments. For 24 of the 30 grants to subrecipients, Northwestern did not perform a risk assessment on 1 or more of the subrecipients. The 30 grants had subawards to 61 subrecipients, 48 of which should have had a risk assessment, but did not. The remaining 13 subrecipients either had a risk assessment or were not required to have a risk assessment. As a result, Federal funds of approximately $9.7 million were awarded to subrecipients without performing the required risk assessment.

The audit objectives were to determine whether program funds were managed in accordance with the ARC and Federal grant requirements