Federal Reports

Reliable, affordable, universal mail delivery is the Postal Service’s mission. In fiscal year (FY) 2018, the Postal Service delivered more than 140 billion letters and flats and 6.4 billion packages to over 158 million delivery points on more than 231,000 routes. The Postal Service carries out these operations each day in over 29,000 delivery units across the country. Our objective was to assess the Postal Service’s Customer Service and Delivery Operations to identify opportunities for savings and streamlining operations.

This is the Office of the Inspector General’s FY 2019 independent evaluation of the effectiveness of the National Credit Union Administration’s (NCUA) information security program and practices. The OIG engaged CliftonLarsonAllen LLP (CLA) to perform this evaluation, and monitored CLA’s performance under this contract.

Between 2011 and 2018, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) processed an average of $896 million in drawback claims annually; however, a lack of internal controls could affect the validity and accuracy of the drawback claims amount. This occurred, in part, because CBP did not address internal control deficiencies over drawback claims. The Department of Homeland Security Fiscal Year 2018 Independent Auditor’s Report on Financial Statements and Internal Control over Financial Reporting identified reoccurring CBP internal control deficiencies over drawback claims. CBP has outlined plans to correct these deficiencies by implementing an updated data processing system and revising legislative procedures. Without correcting these repeated control deficiencies, CBP cannot determine drawback claims’ validity and accuracy. These corrective actions are ongoing; therefore, we could not verify during our audit whether CBP remedied the identified internal control deficiencies. Our report contains no recommendations.

The Office of Inspector General examined $22 million in NASA grants awarded to the Space Science Institute (SSI), a nonprofit research and education corporation based in Boulder, Colorado.

This Comprehensive Healthcare Inspection Program provides a focused evaluation of the quality of care delivered at the Kansas City VA Medical Center, covering leadership, organizational risks, and key processes associated with promoting quality care. For this inspection, the areas of focus were Quality, Safety, and Value; Medical Staff Privileging; Environment of Care; Medication Management: Controlled Substances Inspections; Mental Health: Military Sexual Trauma Follow-Up and Staff Training; Geriatric Care: Antidepressant Use among the Elderly; and Women’s Health: Abnormal Cervical Pathology Results Notification and Follow-Up; and High-Risk Processes: Emergency Department and Urgent Care Center Operations. The executive leaders were permanently assigned. Selected survey scores related to employees’ satisfaction were generally similar to or better than VHA averages. However, opportunities exist for the associate director for Patient Care Services to improve employee satisfaction. The leaders appeared to support efforts to improve and maintain patient safety and quality care. The OIG’s review of the facility’s accreditation findings, sentinel events, and disclosures did not identify any substantial organizational risks. The leaders were knowledgeable within their scope of responsibility about selected Strategic Analytics for Improvement and Learning (SAIL) metrics but should continue to take actions to improve performance contributing to the facility’s SAIL “2-star” quality rating. The OIG issued 14 recommendations: (1) Quality, Safety, and Value • Peer review of applicable deaths and suicides • Interdisciplinary review of utilization management data (2) Environment of Care • Safety, infection prevention, and emergency management processes • Locked inpatient mental health unit security (3) Controlled Substances Inspections • Controlled substances reconciliation (4) Military Sexual Trauma Follow-up and Staff Training • Military sexual trauma mandatory training (5) Geriatric Care • Patient/caregiver education on medications • Medication reconciliation (6) Abnormal Cervical Pathology Results Notification and Follow-up • Women Veterans Health Committee membership and reports to leadership (7) Emergency Department and Urgent Care Center • Backup call schedule for providers

The National Security Agency Office of the Inspector General (NSA OIG) announced its release of an unclassified summary of its Special Study of NSA Controls to Comply with Signals Intelligence Retention Requirements. A classified version of the report that was completed earlier this year formed the basis for the unclassified summary.

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