Federal Reports

What Office of Inspector General Evaluated

The objectives of this engagement were to:

• Determine compliance with the requirements for grant awards issued to Waynesburg University, Illinois State University, and Metropolitan State University of Denver.
• Determine whether these universities are administering, awarding, and monitoring subawards in compliance with the Uniform Guidance, program requirements, and their respective requirements.

What Office of Inspector General Found

• Inadequate procedures to continue Teaching with Primary Sources awards.
• Ineffective controls for indirect cost approval and monitoring.
• Non-compliance with matching requirements.

What Office of Inspector General Recommends

We recommend that the Library:

• Update its Grants and Cooperative Agreements Guidelines and Procedures to limit the number of times the Library can continue the cooperative agreements, taking into consideration subgrantees’ record retention requirements.
• Update its policies and procedures to require Contracts and Grants Directorate to perform an annual review of relevant policies and procedures (e.g., Grants and Cooperative Agreements Guidelines and Procedures and Teaching with Primary Sources Administrative Requirements), including identifying any significant changes to the process (such as incorporating indirect costs into the budget proposal) that would require Contracts and Grants Directorate to update—or develop— control activities to help ensure that the Library and the regional partners are meeting the Teaching with Primary Sources objectives and appropriately mitigating risks.
•  Update Grants and Cooperative Agreements Guidelines and Procedures to address the monitoring of indirect costs, including: 
• Adding a requirement for Contracts and Grants Directorate to review the documentation supporting the basis for any changes in a regional partner’s indirect cost rate percentage. The procedures should include how Contracts and Grants Directorate will conduct and document this review. 
• Adding periodic reviews of regional partners’ application of their indirect cost rates to ensure that the application of the rate is in accordance with the approved indirect cost plans, and costs used to calculate indirect costs are allowable, reasonable, and allocable under the grant requirements and regional partners are not claiming indirect costs as both direct and indirect costs. 
• Review regional partners’ indirect cost plans to substantiate the basis for their proposed indirect cost rates or confirm that an approved negotiated rate exists before approving the cooperative agreements and any continuances, as well as maintain documentation supporting that Contracts and Grants Directorate performed this review. The review should help to ensure that the costs used to calculate indirect costs are allowable, reasonable, and allocable under grant requirements. 
• Update Contracts and Grants Directorate's procedures to ensure that the Request for Advance or Reimbursement form identifies indirect costs as a cost category.
• Update Contracts and Grants Directorate's procedures to clearly indicate how regional partners should document their indirect costs on their Federal 
• Financial Reports and include a requirement for Contracts and Grants Directorate to perform periodic monitoring of the regional partners’ compliance in maintaining support for the indirect costs claimed on their Federal Financial Reports.
• Create guidance for the regional partners that demonstrates how to calculate the matching requirement in accordance with the cooperative agreements. 
• Create procedures/internal controls to ensure that personnel comply with the defined methodology during the budget approval process, including budgeting matching costs as a separate line item to facilitate review and approval of the budget from a compliance standpoint.
• Create guidance and associated procedures/internal controls to help ensure that Contracts and Grants Directorate sufficiently reviews matching costs using Federal Financial Reports to provide a basis for determining reasonableness and allowability in accordance with 2 Code of Federal Regulations Part 200 and the cooperative agreements. This should include defining and documenting the methodology used for reviewing the underlying support, such as expenditure receipts and invoices, in substantiating the reasonableness and allowability of the matching costs. 
• Assist the regional partners by communicating clear monitoring procedures for them to use in ensuring that they have sufficiently reviewed subgrantees’ matching costs to provide a basis for determining reasonableness and allowability in accordance with 2 Code of Federal Regulations Part 200 and the subgrantee awards. This should include: 3.
• Defining and documenting the methodology the regional partners should use in reviewing the underlying support, such as expenditure receipts and invoices, to help substantiate matching costs. 
• Establishing a financial reporting protocol that clearly identifies the match cost incurred.
• Identifying corrective actions the regional partners should take if they determine that subgrantees do not meet the match requirements.

As directed under the MISSION Act, VA created clinical resource hubs to improve healthcare access for veterans in underserved areas. The hubs backstop medical facilities in each regional Veterans Integrated Service Network (VISN) that do not have enough clinical staff due to attrition, recruiting difficulties, or growth in the veteran population. Hub physicians see most patients virtually. Encounters increased from almost 482,000 in fiscal year (FY) 2021 to about 1.2 million in FY 2024.

The OIG team found that despite the increase in patient encounters, physicians in some hub primary care and specialty group practices—such as cardiologists, dermatologists, and psychiatrists and psychologists—generally did not appear to meet established minimum productivity thresholds. The apparent failure to meet these thresholds may have been caused by gaps and inaccuracies in the data used to measure productivity. The available data did not consistently give physicians credit for work documented at a spoke site (where a veteran presents for care), recognizing only work documented at the facility to which the hub physician’s labor is mapped. Moreover, VHA lacked formal guidance on how hubs should measure and monitor specialty physician productivity. Hub officials simply relied on indicators like the number of patient encounters and veterans served, instead of using standardized productivity metrics that factor in the complexity of each visit. The lack of guidance also prevented VHA from identifying and remediating underperforming hub services.

The OIG recommended VHA improve data, issue guidance on which productivity measures apply to hub physicians, and clarify who should monitor productivity and take corrective action when targets are not met. These steps will help VHA evaluate whether the ever-increasing investment in hubs is justified and the number of veterans served is optimized. VHA agreed with the recommendations.

Our Objective(s)
To assess the Maritime Administration's (MARAD) actions to address the 24 recommendations from National Academy of Public Administration's (NAPA) 2021 report specified by Congress. Specifically, we assessed MARAD's progress in addressing the 24 specified recommendations and identified challenges to fully addressing them.

Why This Audit
The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2020 directed the Secretary of Transportation to enter into agreement with NAPA to conduct an independent, comprehensive assessment of U.S. Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA or Academy). The NDAA for fiscal year 2023 required us to assess MARAD's actions to address 24 of the 67 recommendations in NAPA's 2021 report.

What We Found
MARAD made progress on 21 of the 24 NAPA recommendations subject to OIG review before terminating actions on 5 due to an Executive Order.
The recommendations were in areas such as USMMA's facilities and infrastructure, institutional culture and learning environment, and sexual assault prevention and response policies and program.
The Agency completed two and partially completed five of eight recommendations to improve Academy facilities and infrastructure.
MARAD also partially completed 9 of 10 recommendations related to improving the Academy's institutional culture before terminating actions on 5 of these recommendations due to an Executive Order.
MARAD completed one and partially completed four of six recommendations on the Academy's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Program and policies.

Funding, staffing, and management challenges impacted MARAD's ability to fully address the recommendations.
For example, USMMA staff and officials described plans to develop or identify specific metrics required by some recommendations, but none of these metrics had been established in part because funding requested for assistance in this area has not been enacted.
In addition, MARAD had not designated a senior official with the authority to hold the various offices accountable, hindering collaboration among DOT, MARAD, and USMMA, which all had responsibilities for addressing recommendations.

Recommendations
We made 1 recommendation to facilitate MARAD's progress addressing NAPA recommendations.

This report presents the results of our audit of Network Changes: Regional Transfer Hubs.

The U.S. Postal Service implemented the Regional Transfer Hubs (RTH) initiative nationwide as part of its efforts to streamline and modernize its network. The initiative reduces origin separations and moves mail across the country to RTH operations where it is then sorted for destinating facilities. The Postal Service expects this initiative to reduce the overall number of trips needed and transportation costs. As of March 2025, the Postal Service had 18 active RTHs located throughout the country with plans to activate more.

Our objective was to evaluate the implementation and effectiveness of the Postal Service's RTH initiative. We reviewed and analyzed transportation and service performance data from October 2023 through March 2025. Additionally, we conducted site observations and interviewed Postal Service personnel at five RTH facilities during April and May 2025.

In August 2024, we conducted unannounced inspections of four 3 U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) short-term holding 4 facilities in the San Diego area — two Border Patrol facilities and 5 two Office of Field Operations ports of entry.  We found that CBP 6 facilities generally met the National Standards on Transport, 7 Escort, Detention, and Search for food and beverages, supplies 8 and hygiene items, bedding, and medical care.  We also found 9 areas of noncompliance at the facilities, including: 10  11 • One Border Patrol facility did not comply with duration of 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 detention standards, which generally limit time in custody to 72 hours.  The facility held more than half of its detainees longer than this standard.    • CBP did not comply with relevant standards of processing, documenting, and storing detainees’ personal property.    • All facilities could not always provide U.S.-equivalent medication to detainees in a timely manner.    22 • One Border Patrol station did not meet cleanliness and 23 24 sanitation standards.