Federal Reports

The purpose of this memorandum is to provide the Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) comments on the Wildland Fire Response Plans (WFRP) that were developed in order to more safely and effectively combat wildland fires during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic

Prior Office of Inspector General audits of State Medicaid agencies that used random moment timestudies (RMTSs) to allocate costs for school-based administrative (SBA) costs determined that States did not always correctly claim Federal Medicaid reimbursement for SBA services. Nebraska, whose SBA costs we have not previously audited, uses RMTSs to allocate those costs.

We determined that children brought to Port Isabel on July 15, 2018, waited extended periods, and in many cases overnight, to be reunited with their parents. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was not prepared to promptly reunify all children who arrived at Port Isabel on the first day of attempted mass reunifications. ICE and U.S. Health and Human Services had fundamentally different understandings about the timing and pace of reunifications, and ICE personnel at Port Isabel underestimated the resources necessary to promptly out-process the parents of arriving children. As a result, some children waited in vehicles at Port Isabel, while others waited in unused detention cells, though all children were in climate-controlled environments and had continuous access to food, water, and restrooms. As the mass reunifications continued, ICE personnel responded to processing and space issues, which generally resulted in shorter wait times for children who arrived at Port Isabel closer to the court’s July 26, 2018 deadline. The report contains no recommendations.

ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) is effectively contributing to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) counterterrorism efforts by leveraging its authorities, experience, skills, and staffing. However, existing agreements and guidance on HSI’s participation in the JTTF and its terrorism financing investigations are outdated. Additionally, we determined existing agreements and policy impose restrictions that delay and hinder sharing and access to information in the JTTF. We recommended DHS JTTF contributors evaluate and update agreements governing JTTF participation as needed. HSI should renegotiate and update the 2003 agreement on terrorism financing, as well as update its related guidance accordingly. We also recommended DHS coordinate with Department of Justice and Department of State, as well as within the DHS, to develop agreements to allow for the more direct sharing of critical investigative information. We made five recommendations that aim to improve counterterrorism efforts and information sharing. DHS concurred with two recommendations and non-concurred with three.

At the request of the Tennessee Valley Authority's (TVA) Supply Chain, we examined the cost proposal submitted by a company for engineering, design, and construction support services. Our examination objective was to determine if the company's cost proposal was fairly stated for a planned 5-year, $90 million contract.In our opinion, the company's cost proposal was overstated. Specifically, we found the methodology the company used to calculate its proposed labor markup rates was not reflective of the divisions that would be performing the anticipated scopes of work. We estimated TVA could avoid about $5.17 million over the planned $90 million contract by negotiating reductions to the labor markup rates to more accurately reflect the costs from the company divisions who would be performing work under the potential contract.(Summary Only)

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