Federal Reports

CBP took sufficient steps to resolve the January 2, 2017 outage on the same day it occurred. CBP’s initial actions to resolve this outage were unsuccessful for several hours. Ultimately, the CBP Assistant Commissioner of the Office of Information and Technology (OIT) decided to revert system queries from the TECS Modernization server environment to the TECS Legacy mainframe environment. As a result of this action, airports began to report that they could process passengers again. After 4 hours, airports began reporting that they were back online. The transition back to the legacy environment worked to resolve the January 2, 2017 system outage. Nevertheless, underlying causes that might result in future outages were not addressed and persist today in the CBP environment. we identified inadequate CBP software capacity testing, leaving the potential for the recurrence of processing errors; deficient software maintenance, resulting in high vulnerabilities that remain open; ineffective system status monitoring to ensure timely alerts in case of mission-business disruptions; and inadequate business continuity and disaster recovery processes and capabilities to minimize the impact of system failures on the traveling public. Until such deficiencies are addressed, CBP lacks a means to minimize the possibility and impact of similar system outages in the future.

A limited number of prescription drugs—generally those that are injected or infused in physicians' offices or hospital outpatient settings—are covered under Medicare Part B. With certain exceptions, Part B does not cover drugs that are self-administered by patients, including drugs administered by self-injection. However, in a small number of cases, self-administered drugs that typically would be used in situations not covered under Part B are being included by CMS when setting payment amounts.

To request the Army schedule, the independent auditor's report, and our transmittal, please contact Natasha Anderson, Director, General Fund Audit Readiness, at natasha.n.anderson7.civ@mail.mil.