Federal Reports

We audited the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Section Eight Management Assessment Program (SEMAP) based on our report on HUD’s top management challenges for fiscal years 2020 through 2022 and HUD’s strategic goals and objectives reported in its strategic plan for 2018 through 2022. Our audit objective was to assess the effectiveness of HUD’s SEMAP as a performance measure for the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Program.HUD has an opportunity to improve its process for evaluating the performance of public housing agencies’ (PHA) HCV Programs. HUD uses SEMAP to evaluate the performance of PHAs’ HCV Programs remotely. However, (1) the information reported by PHAs in SEMAP may not have accurately represented the performance of their HCV Programs and (2) HUD’s process for verifying the information PHAs use for SEMAP reporting did not effectively assist HUD in evaluating and identifying PHAs’ HCV Programs that may have needed improvement. These conditions occurred because (1) SEMAP uses performance indicators that are based on PHAs’ self-certifications and self-reported data and (2) HUD’s verification process did not capture the performance of all PHAs’ HCV Programs. Without an effective performance measurement process, HUD lacked assurance that PHAs’ HCV Programs met their intended objectives, which include assisting the maximum number of eligible families with obtaining affordable and decent rental units at the correct subsidy cost. In addition, HUD may have missed opportunities to identify PHAs experiencing difficulties in managing their HCV Programs.We recommend that HUD’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Housing and Voucher Programs enhance SEMAP or develop a new performance measurement process that would identify PHAs with underperforming HCV Programs. We also recommend that HUD’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Field Operations provide training and guidance to its program staff on SEMAP scoring, rating, and verification procedures, including confirmatory reviews, quality control reviews, and adjustments for the current and revised SEMAP processes.

A Labor Relations Specialist, based in Washington, D.C., violated policies when she shared access to folders and files on her company OneDrive account with her personal Gmail account. Many of the folders and files contained information of a sensitive nature. While our investigation found that the employee did not distribute these files beyond her Gmail account and she was taking these actions for a legitimate business purpose, she also did not obtain prior approval nor an exception from company policy, as is required. As a result of this investigation, we provided observations that may help the company better protect its data as it relates to the use of third-party accounts.Amtrak Management provided a response on March 3, 2023, stating that the employee had been counseled. In addition, the company implemented corrective action plans in response to our observations.

We audited the Office of Community Planning and Development’s (CPD) monitoring and oversight of the Community Development Block Grant - Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program. The objective of the audit was to determine whether CPD had effectively and efficiently designed its CDBG-DR program requirements and monitoring to ensure that the grantees meet statutory and other Federal low- and moderate-income (LMI) requirements. Generally, CPD had effectively and efficiently designed its CDBG-DR program requirements and monitoring to ensure that the grantees met the various LMI requirements. Almost all (98 percent) of the closed grants met the requirements, and a majority (80 percent) of the active grants were meeting the requirements. Of the 193 grants reviewed, 1 closed grant did not meet the requirements, and 28 active grants needed to budget funds to meet the requirements. We identified opportunities for CPD to improve its monitoring and oversight of its grantees’ compliance with the requirements, such as (1) including an additional overall LMI benefit calculation in quarterly performance reports (QPRs) and (2) establishing budgeting benchmarks. If CPD implements the recommended improvements, it could potentially prevent other grants from becoming noncompliant and reduce the number of grantees that need to budget sufficient funds to LMI activities. The changes could also improve the accuracy of reporting.