Federal Reports

The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a management advisory memorandum to the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) to request VBA examine a relatively small number of apparent overpayments by the Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment Program. The payments made to schools covered veterans’ tuition. The OIG analyzed the data on 1.8 million payments and determined that the program potentially made 360 errors from January 1, 2014, through December 30, 2019, totaling $554,998 in overpayments. The potential overpayments ranged from $18 to $237,762 and averaged $1,542. The OIG in alerting VBA did not determine if the program corrected or recovered the overpayments. The errors appeared to have resulted from program staff transposing numbers or adding one or more digits to the invoice amounts: • In February 2018, a program participant was invoiced $3,614 by a university in California, but program staff paid the university $6,314. Staff apparently transposed the three and the six in the invoice amount when entering it into the system for payment. • In October 2017, a program participant was invoiced $4,495 from another university in California, but program staff paid the university $44,950. Staff apparently added a zero to the invoice amount when entering it into the system. • In July 2016, a program participant was invoiced $238 from a Missouri university, but program staff paid the university $238,000. Staff apparently added three zeros to the invoice amount when entering it into the system. Due to the small percentage of errors, the OIG did not initiate an audit or investigation. However, it provided the potential errors to VBA to allow it to investigate and take actions when appropriate to recover any overpayments. The OIG asked VBA to provide updates for any actions it takes on the potential errors and the outcome of the actions.

The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) conducted a healthcare inspection at the Atlanta VA Health Care System in Decatur, Georgia (facility), to review allegations and concerns of delays in care related to three patients’ non-VA community care (NVCC) consult appointments. The OIG confirmed these three patients experienced delays in the scheduling of their consults but did not identify an increase in risk of or an adverse clinical outcome for these patients.The OIG performed an expanded review of 221 consults and found that delays occurred. The OIG determined two patients had increased risks of an adverse clinical outcome due to delays in scheduling their appointments. Although the delays placed patients at increased risk, both patients received care and neither patient experienced an adverse clinical outcome. The OIG did not identify risks of or adverse clinical outcomes for the other patients. The facility had a backlog of open NVCC consults, and the OIG found deficiencies in processing, scheduling, and timeliness of these consults. Contributory factors also included, but were not limited to, inconsistent scheduling processes, inconsistent oversight, and deficiencies with third-party administrator scheduling oversight; shortages o f facility NVCC staff; and lack of training and supervision for facility NVCC scheduling staff. The facility did not consistently meet facility process requirements for scheduling audits and lacked a process to identify consults that were missing documentation after administrative closure. The OIG made six recommendations to the Facility Director related to consult performance measurements, backlog and monitoring of open NVCC consults, hiring and training of NVCC staff, patient case reviews, and NVCC policy.

An Amtrak Customer Service Representative in Reno, Nevada, was terminated from employment on July 20, 2020, following his administrative hearing. Our investigation found the employee stole funds from credit cards presented to him by Amtrak customers purchasing train travel. The cards, known as J-Pay Release cards, were pre- loaded with $200 in funds and were issued by the California Department of Corrections to inmates upon their release from custody. The former employee surreptitiously switched out fully-loaded J-Pay cards presented to him by those customers after debiting for the requested travel and returned completely depleted J-Pay cards instead. It is estimated that the former employee stole over $100,000 in stored value from the stolen J-Pay cards.

We contracted this audit with Cotton & Company LLP, which found that FEMA did not ensure the Florida Department of Emergency Management (FDEM) monitored the Polk County School Board (PCSB) to ensure it established and implemented policies, procedures, and practices to account for and expend PA grant funding in accordance with Federal regulations and FEMA guidance. For example, PCSB was unable to support $46,168 in food spoilage costs; requested and received funding through a Florida Public Assistance grant for ineligible contract costs incurred under Project 2658 for debris removal and related costs; and charged $897 in unallowable costs associated with ineligible fringe benefits for substitute employees. We made 13 recommendations that, when implemented, should improve PCSB’s management of FEMA Public Assistance funds. FEMA concurred with our 13 recommendations.

U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) does not follow its written policy when conducting disciplinary reviews of Senior Executive Employees (SES) employees, which risks creating an appearance that SES employees receive more favorable treatment than non-SES employees. We reviewed the disciplinary proceedings of the former SES official to evaluate whether ICE’s deviation from the written policy, or any other evidence, in that case indicated that the official received favorable treatment, as alleged. We did not find evidence of actual favoritism or inappropriate influence in the official’s disciplinary or security clearance review processes. We recommended that ICE finalize and issue its draft policy documenting the process for disciplining SES members. We made one recommendation that will enhance transparency in ICE’s disciplinary program. ICE concurred with our recommendation and took action to resolve and close it.

The objective of our audit was to determine whether the Department’s fleet program operates in accordance with applicable federal fleet requirements for vehicle operations, acquisitions, and utilization. We found that the Department is not operating its fleet program in accordance with federal fleet requirements. Specifically, we identified issues in the following areas: (1) Operations—The Department’s fleet inventory data is unreliable due to inaccuracies and incompleteness. (2) Acquisitions—The Department’s Personal Property Management Manual lacks commercial lease guidance for the Office of the Secretary, which did not document justifications for vehicle specifications or upgrades. (3) Utilization—The Department does not consistently document vehicle usage, conduct comprehensive utilization reviews, and determine its optimal fleet inventory. We recommend that the Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Secretary for Administration do the following: (1) Periodically review and ensure all bureau vehicle information is complete and accurate in the Department’s FMIS. (2) Update the PPMM to include guidance for OS commercial leasing. The Department should ensure other PPMM requirements do not similarly exclude OS. (3) Document justifications for mission-essential vehicle specifications when not obtaining leased vehicles through GSA. (4) Update policies and procedures to include requirements for bureaus to maintain adequate documentation of vehicle usage. (5) Provide refresher training to fleet managers to ensure they are aware of all federal and updated Departmental fleet management requirements. (6) Direct Departmental / bureau fleet managers to perform and document an annual analysis of fleet utilization in accordance with Departmental policy and Congressional direction. (7) Perform a VAM study at least every 5 years, to produce a profile of its optimal fleet inventory, and periodically monitor results between VAM studies.