Federal Reports

In October 2023, we conducted on-site, unannounced inspections at five U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) facilities in the ElPaso area, specifically three U.S. Border Patrol (Border Patrol) facilities and two Office of Field Operations ports of entry. At the time of our on-site inspection, CBP held 1,426 detainees in custody in the five facilities. We found that Border Patrol held some detainees in both the El Paso Hardened Facility and Santa Teresa station longer than specified in the National Standards on Transport, Escort, Detention, and Search, which generally limits detention to 72 hours. Additionally, Border Patrol experienced challenges staffing El Paso sector centralized processing centersduring migrant surges. Overall, CBP generally met other applicable standards related to food, water, hygiene items, and availability of bedding, toilets, sinks, showers, and medical support to detainees. However, we found a few instances of non-compliance related to medical support, hygiene, and bedding. For example, at the Santa Teresa station, we found Border Patrol did not always refer detainees to onsite contract medical staff, make hygiene items available, or provide clean sleeping mats. In addition, we found data integrity issues with information in Border Patrol’s electronic system of record, e3.

Front-line supervisors are the first layer of management directly above craft employees and are the leaders who oversee day-to-day operations. Their interactions with employees and customers can influence productivity and morale. Additionally, they significantly contribute to the accomplishment of Postal Service goals, including ensuring customers receive quality service and their mail and parcels on time. When supervisor vacancies are not filled timely, there are risks of an increase in staff shortages — negatively affecting operations — and additional workload may strain existing supervisors.

What We Looked At The Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Next Generation Air Transportation System aims to modernize the Nation’s air traffic system and provide safer and more efficient air traffic management. The Terminal Flight Data Manager (TFDM) program, an almost $1 billion part of this modernization effort, will address a top FAA and industry priority to improve airport surface operations. FAA is currently testing and implementing key TFDM capabilities at airports across the Nation, introducing electronic flight strips and surface management tools to improve efficiency at airports. Given the large investment in TFDM, as well as concerns about program deployment cost and schedule, the Chairmen and Ranking Members of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and its Subcommittee on Aviation requested that we review FAA’s current implementation plan for TFDM. Specifically, we assessed FAA’s progress in implementing TFDM, including its core capabilities. What We Found While FAA has begun to deploy TFDM, it has experienced significant delays of nearly 3 years in its deployment. A nearly 20 percent cost increase since 2016 has also caused a reduction in deployment sites from 89 to 49; therefore, increasing the estimated cost per site while decreasing planned system consolidations and functionality. Although FAA significantly reduced the program’s scope, the Agency retained the large deployment sites that are expected to provide over 90 percent of the original anticipated monetized benefits. However, funding uncertainty will remain which could impact the number of future deployment sites. Additionally, FAA and airspace users will not realize major benefits, such as fuel and carbon emissions savings, until at least 2025 and FAA continues to face implementation risks in areas such as system integration, airline participation, future cybersecurity requirements, and air traffic controller human factors and training.  Our Recommendations We made three recommendations to improve FAA’s TFDM program. The Agency concurred with all three of our recommendations and provided appropriate planned actions and completion dates. 

District of Columbia Workmen’s Compensation Act Special Fund Financial Statements and Independent Auditors’ Report September 30, 2023, and 2022

As part of its Delivering for America plan, the U.S. Postal Service is purchasing and deploying approximately 66,000 electric vehicles and charging stations to support its delivery fleet modernization. The Postal Service generally combined this rollout with its efforts to convert plants into consolidated sorting and delivery centers. It planned to use excess power from converted plants to reduce power upgrades and scheduling risks. The Postal Service expects to complete construction at 130 sites by the end of 2024 and to deploy electric vehicles at an estimated 800 sites by 2028. As of March 26th, 2024, the Postal Service confirmed it completed construction and commissioning at six sites.