Federal Reports

According to 20 U.S.C. § 44, each member of the Smithsonian Institution’s Board of Regents shall be paid for necessary travel and other actual expenses to attend meetings of the Board. The law also assigns the Board’s Executive Committee the responsibility of auditing these expenditures. Since 2008, at the request of the Executive Committee, the Smithsonian’s Office of the Inspector General has conducted audits of the Regents’ travel expenses. 

The objective of this audit was to determine whether Regents’ travel expense reimbursements for fiscal years 2023 and 2024 complied with the Travel Reimbursement Policy specified by the Office of the Regents.  

 

The OIG contracted with Sikich CPA LLC to conduct the Performance Audit of the NRC’s Implementation of the Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2014 for Fiscal Year 2024 Region III: Naperville, Illinois. The objective was to assess the effectiveness of the information security policies, procedures, and practices of the NRC Region III facility. The findings and conclusions presented in this report are the responsibility of Sikich. The OIG’s responsibility is to provide oversight of the contractor’s work in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.
The agency’s staff indicated that they had no formal comments for inclusion in this report.
For the period March 2024 through November 2024, Sikich found that although the NRC generally implemented effective information security policies, procedures, and practices for Region III, the agency’s implementation of a subset of selected controls was not fully effective. There are weaknesses in Region III’s information security program and practices. As a result, one recommendation was made to assist Region III in strengthening its information security program.

The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) conducted a national review to evaluate the governance structure and responsibilities related to the Veterans Integrated Service Network (VISN) Chief Mental Health Officer (CMHO) role. 

The OIG found that VHA communicated inconsistent mandatory and discretionary VISN staffing requirements. Failure to provide consistent staffing requirements likely contributes to VISN leaders’ inadequate understanding of priority positions and lack of standardization.

VISN leaders did not consistently utilize the standardized organizational chart and used a variety of titles to represent the CMHO role; the OIG identified inaccuracies within VISN-provided organizational charts. The absence of consistent information regarding organizational governance structure and staffing may result in inequities in resources and oversight of VISN and facility mental health staff and services.

The OIG determined that Office of Mental Health leaders established multiple avenues to facilitate communication with CMHOs. 

The OIG found that CMHO functional statements varied in format and content and did not consistently align with performance plan elements. While flexibility based on unique VISN needs is important, the OIG would expect the inclusion of critical responsibilities to be identified consistently in both CMHO functional statements and performance plans.

All CMHOs reported providing oversight of specific mental health programs and services; however, half of the CMHOs described lack of authority as a major barrier to effectively overseeing and implementing actions for facility-level mental health services. Office of Mental Health and Office of Suicide Prevention leaders suggested that standardization of the CMHO position description would be helpful in increasing the effectiveness of the role. 

The OIG made five recommendations to the Under Secretary for Health related to VISN staffing requirements, the use of the VISN organizational chart, alignment of CMHO functional statements and performance plans, and CMHO role authority.

This review determined that the Peace Corps complied with the Payment Integrity Information Act for FY 2024. The agency provided payment integrity information through the Office of Management and Budget’s FY 2024 annual data call; published its improper payment information in the Agency Financial Report for FY 2024; and posted that report on the Peace Corps’ website.

We received a hotline complaint in April 2024 from an individual asking the Office of Inspector General (OIG) to investigate why their conditional offer of employment with the U. S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) was withdrawn. Based on what we learned during our initial investigation, we broadened our investigation to include a review of the CPSC’s compliance with
laws and regulations regarding all prescreen waivers accomplished during the time period defined below. 

This investigation covers events that occurred between July 2021 and June 2024. These events included the withdrawal of Complainant’s conditional offer of employment in October 2023.

The objective of our audit was to determine whether the U.S. Department of Education (Department) Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE) implemented processes to provide reasonable assurance that it awarded School-Based Mental Health (SBMH) Grant Program grants in accordance with grant requirements and Department policy and monitored grantee performance. Our audit covered OESE’s processes for awarding grants during the fiscal year 2022 SBMH Grant Program competition and for monitoring the performance of the seven grantees included in the fiscal years 2020 and 2021 cohorts. We found that OESE generally implemented processes that provided reasonable assurance that it awarded SBMH Grant Program grants in accordance with grant requirements and Department policy. It completed processes for peer review in accordance with Department policy; however, OESE did not screen grant applications to ensure that they met all application requirements before entering them into the peer review process. Additionally, OESE assessed applicant risk before awarding grants; however, it did not retain all risk assessment records that Department policy requires. In addition, we found that OESE did not always implement post-award activities as designed. Specifically, OESE did not design, finalize, and implement SBMH Grant Program monitoring plans. Additionally, its reviews of grantees’ annual performance reports (APR) were limited to ensuring that the APRs included information in each section. Finally, while OESE designed risk mitigation strategies for fiscal year 2020 grantees with elevated risk, it did not keep records showing that it implemented the strategies as designed.

We performed this review to determine whether Douglas County School District (Nevada) expended Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) grant funds for allowable purposes in accordance with applicable requirements. We determined that of the 16 expenditures that we reviewed, 12 were allowable and in accordance with applicable requirements. Four expenditures totaling $5,416 were unallowable because they were for advertising and public relations costs prohibited under the Uniform Administrative Requirements, Cost Principles, and Audit Requirements for Federal Awards (2 Code of Federal Regulations part 200). 

Additionally, we found that the Douglas County School District complied with key Federal procurement requirements, including those covering the procurement methods to be followed and contract cost, price, and provisions, when procuring the goods or services associated with each ARP ESSER expenditure we reviewed.

We performed this review to determine whether Lincoln County School District (Lincoln) expended ESSER grant funds for allowable purposes in accordance with applicable requirements. We determined that all the ESSER expenditures we reviewed for Lincoln were allowable and in accordance with applicable requirements. We also found that Lincoln complied with key Federal procurement requirements, including those covering the procurement methods to be followed and contract cost, price, and provisions, when procuring the goods or services associated with each ARP ESSER expenditure we reviewed. Because we identified no exceptions for the ARP ESSER expenditures that we reviewed, our report does not include recommendations.