Federal Reports

In November 2015, the VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) received an anonymous Hotline complaint alleging that the VA National Work Queue (NWQ) did not perform in a production environment because VA did not test the system to specification. In addition, the complaint claimed that the Veterans Benefits Management System (VBMS) Release 9.1 deployment prevented the processing of 4,000 disability claims. We did not substantiate that NWQ failed to perform in a production environment. At the time of the allegation, NWQ was still in testing and was not processing claims. Moreover, we noted that seven of eight VA Regional Office (VARO) pilot sites reported that NWQ functionality worked when they first started using it to process disability claims in February 2016. One site reported that claims did not automatically route from NWQ into employee queues on the first day. We determined that VA tested NWQ functionality to specification. We reviewed applicable VBMS development artifacts that supported NWQ functionality to include system deployment requirements, configuration control records, test plans, and test cases. From February through June 2016, we noted that the average time for the actual NWQ claims distributions was one hour and 57 minutes; better than the four hour performance standard. We did not find that NWQ functionality had a negative effect upon disability claims processing. Specifically, we noted that none of the eight pilot sites reported lost disability claims resulting from the NWQ implementation. At the time of the allegation, NWQ was not yet used to process claims. We did not find that VBMS Release 9.1 had a significant adverse effect on claims processing, such as preventing the processing of 4,000 disability claims. Accordingly, we made no recommendations for improvements.

Congress authorized the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to receive $48 billion in funding for the 5-year period beginning October 1, 2008, to assist foreign countries in combating HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. Congress authorized additional funds to be appropriated through 2018.

TrailBlazer Health Enterprises, LLC, claimed $228,000 of unallowable Medicare pension costs on its Incurred Cost Proposals for calendar years 2008 through 2013.

In November 2016, we issued our review of the Peace Corps' Sexual Assault Risk Reduction and Response Program as required by the Kate Puzey Peace Corps Volunteer Protection Act of 2011. As part of this evaluation, we reviewed 138 cases files for sexual assaults reported to the Peace Corps. Upon review of a sample of recently unredacted documents, we were able to verify the accuracy of our original 2016 analysis. This memorandum has been appended to the original 2016 report.

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) initiated a survey of the United States Capitol Police (USCP or Department) Containment Emergency Response Team (CERT). Our objective was to solicit and assess feedback from senior officials related to CERT's operations; thereby identifying areas of concern for future work.