Federal Reports

The Office of Inspector General is required by statute to annually identify what it considers to be the most significant management challenges facing the Department of Energy. The Office of Inspector General’s goal is to focus attention on significant issues with the objective of working with Department officials to enhance the effectiveness of agency programs. 

This year’s management challenges report provides a high-level view of five challenge areas with specific challenges facing the Department in each area. We identified the different challenges based on our completed and ongoing work, including audits, inspections, investigations, our prior Management Challenges reporting, our risk assessments, and our assessment of ongoing national and Congressional interest. Our intent is to provide the Secretary, other policymakers, and the public with a brief overview of the challenges facing the Department and a starting point to learn more. 

This report should assist the Secretary and senior Department officials in addressing its challenges, as well as illustrate the progress that the Department has made to address the challenges.

The U.S. Postal Service’s mission is to provide timely, reliable, secure, and affordable mail and package delivery to more than 160 million residential and business addresses across the country. The U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General reviews delivery operations at facilities across the country and provides management with timely feedback in furtherance of this mission. 

This interim report presents the results of our self-initiated audit of delivery operations and property conditions at the Cleveland Heights Branch in Cleveland Heights, OH. The Cleveland Heights Branch is in the Ohio 1 District of the Central Area and serves about 59,123 people in ZIP Codes 44112 and 44118, which are considered urban communities.

Our Objective(s)To assess FHWA's process for approving Advanced Transportation Congestion Management Technologies Deployment Reimbursements grant program (ATCMTD) disbursements by reviewing and verifying that program disbursements are supported and valid.
Why This AuditFHWA's ATCMTD grant program reimbursed its grant recipients approximately $89 million from fiscal years 2021 to 2023 to improve safety, efficiency, system performance, and infrastructure return on investment. To protect Federal grant funds from misuse, it is key that FHWA has strong financial management and sufficient oversight of the ATCMTD program.
What We FoundFHWA approved direct recipients' ATCMTD reimbursement requests without always validating the sufficiency of supporting documentation.

The effectiveness of FHWA's ATCMTD financial oversight relies on the Agency reviewing direct recipients' supporting documentation prior to approving reimbursement requests for payment.
For one ATCMTD direct recipient in our sample, there was not enough detail in the supporting documentation to support almost $1.9 million in reimbursements.
FHWA's quarterly reports, used to validate ATCMTD direct recipients' supporting documentation for reimbursement requests, did not identify that $1.9 million in costs were not adequately supported.
FHWA's Office of Acquisition and Grants Management made $1.9 million in payments for unsupported costs.

FHWA does not sufficiently monitor State DOTs' oversight and internal controls for validating ATCMTD reimbursement requests.

FHWA's Stewardship and Oversight agreements largely delegate financial oversight to State DOT ATCMTD grant recipients but the Agency must maintain sufficient internal control processes to validate State DOTs are adhering to fiscal expectations.
However, FHWA was not aware there was insufficient information for approving officials to verify costs State DOTs submitted for our six sampled reimbursements. Also, State DOTs in our sample were not maintaining supporting documentation on all ATCMTD reimbursement requests as required by their Stewardship and Oversight Agreements.

RecommendationsWe made 5 recommendations to strengthen FHWA oversight of ATCMTD reimbursement requests.

The U.S. Department of Education administers the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which authorizes formula grants to States under Part B to assist them in meeting the excess costs of providing special education and related services (services) to children ages 3 through 21 with disabilities. Most of the Federal funds provided to States must be passed on to local educational agencies (LEA). Federal funds are combined with State and local funds to provide a free appropriate public education to children with disabilities. Under IDEA, a free appropriate public education is provided through an individualized education program (IEP) based on the individual needs of the child. Omaha Public Schools (Omaha), the largest LEA in Nebraska, was awarded approximately $15.3 million in IDEA Part B funds for school year 2023–2024. We conducted an inspection to determine whether Omaha designed and implemented sufficient processes for overseeing the development of IEPs for children with disabilities and ensuring that those children receive the services described in their IEPs. The inspection covered Omaha’s processes in these areas from July 1, 2023, through June 30, 2024. We found that Omaha generally designed and implemented sufficient processes for overseeing the development of IEPs and ensuring that children with disabilities receive the services as described in their IEPs. However, there were a small number of instances where IEPs and related documentation did not show that all applicable IEP requirements were met or that students received all of the services described in their IEPs.  When documentation is lacking or does not exist, stakeholders do not have sufficient assurances that the IEP teams considered all required elements when developing the IEPs, the IEPs contained all required information, or all services described in the IEPs were provided to children with disabilities. We made two recommendations to improve Omaha’s oversight of IEP development and documentation of IEP services provided.