Federal Reports

Our objectives were to determine whether WPRFMC (1) claimed allowable, allocable, and reasonable costs under the financial assistance awards and (2) received the goods and services paid for by the awards.

Objective: To fulfill our responsibilities under the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990 (CFO Act) and related legislation, we monitored Grant Thornton LLP’s audit of the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 financial statements to ensure the quality of the audit work performed was adequate.

This report communicates considerations for company management if it reinstates the annual physical exam requirement for locomotive engineers, which the company suspended in August 2021 in part because of the COVID-19 pandemic.Prior to the suspension, we found that about one-third of locomotive engineers did not meet the company’s self-imposed requirement to pass an annual physical exam. Company reports showed, however, that they had passed a triennial exam to meet related Federal Railroad Administration requirements. Several factors likely contributed to engineers not fulfilling the annual requirement, including that the company had not yet designated in policy a senior accountable official or developed processes to fully enforce it.We provided two considerations for management if the company reinstates the requirement, including adopting more rigorous processes to enforce it and designating in policy a senior accountable official to ensure supervisors enforce it.

Each year, OIG identifies what we believe are the most serious management and performance challenges facing SSA. We provide this information to Congress, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), SSA, and key decision makers.

The lack of board members continues to be the biggest risk to CSB operations.

In accordance with the Reports Consolidation Act of 2000, the Federal Election Commission Office of Inspector General identifies the most serious management and performance challenges facing the Commission and provides a brief assessment of the Commission’s progress in addressing those challenges.

In accordance with the Reports Consolidation Act of 2000, this report provides a summary of the top management and performance challenges facing the Commission, noting management’s progress in addressing these challenges.

The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) assessed whether the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) and the Office of Electronic Health Record Modernization (OEHRM) effectively implemented the patient scheduling component of VA’s new electronic health record system at two sites in 2020. They were the Chalmers P. Wylie VA Ambulatory Care Center in Columbus, Ohio, and the Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center in Spokane, Washington.The new scheduling system is part of VA’s $10 billion electronic health record contract with Cerner and has the potential to transform VHA scheduling. However, the OIG found that VHA and OEHRM knew of but did not fully resolve significant limitations before and after implementing the system at the Columbus and Spokane facilities, leading to reduced effectiveness and increased risk of patient care delays.With limited guidance and inadequate training on how to respond to unresolved issues, schedulers developed work-arounds. VHA employees also worked with Cerner to try to correct issues using a ticketing process that was ineffectively managed; OEHRM did not assess Cerner’s compliance with contract terms for handling tickets.VA planned to implement the system at all (11) Veterans Integrated Service Network 20 facilities by December 2021. However, OEHRM paused future deployment in March 2021 to conduct a strategic review of the full electronic health record program.VA needs to ensure VHA and OEHRM take appropriate steps to resolve issues with the new scheduling system as soon as possible. The OIG issued eight recommendations: (1) improving training for scheduling, (2) better engaging schedulers in testing and improvements, (3) issuing guidance on measuring patient wait times, (4) tracking help tickets consistent with contract terms; (5) developing a strategy to promptly resolve identified issues, (6) developing oversight of schedulers’ accuracy, (7) evaluating patient care timeliness, and (8) providing guidance to consistently address system limitations.