Federal Reports

The U.S. Postal Service’s mission is to provide timely, reliable, secure, and affordable mail and package delivery to more than 160 million residential and business addresses across the country. The U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General reviews delivery operations at facilities across the country and provides management with timely feedback in furtherance of this mission. 

This interim report presents the results of our audit of delivery operations and property conditions at the Clayton Branch in St. Louis, MO. We selected the St. Louis area based on a congressional inquiry issued April 1, 2025, from the U.S. senators and representatives from Missouri to conduct an audit of post offices and distribution centers in the St. Louis metro area. The Clayton Branch is in the Kansas-Missouri District of the Central Area and serves about 28,786 people in ZIP Codes 63105 and 63117, which are considered urban communities.

The U.S. Postal Service’s mission is to provide timely, reliable, secure, and affordable mail and package delivery to more than 160 million residential and business addresses across the country. The U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General reviews delivery operations at facilities across the country and provides management with timely feedback in furtherance of this mission. 

This interim report presents the results of our audit of delivery operations and property conditions at the Ballwin Main Post Office (MPO) in Ballwin, MO. We selected the St. Louis area based on a congressional inquiry issued April 1, 2025, from U.S. senators and representatives from Missouri to conduct an audit of post offices and processing facilities in the St. Louis metro area. The Ballwin Main Post MPO is in the Kansas-Missouri District of the Central Area and serves about 94,150 people in ZIP Codes 63011 and 63021, which are considered a predominantly urban area. Specifically, 92,390 (98 percent) live in urban communities and 1,760 (2 percent) live in rural communities.

The U.S. Postal Service needs effective and productive operations to fulfill its mission of providing prompt, reliable, and affordable mail service to the American public. It has a vast transportation network that moves mail and equipment among approximately 315 processing facilities and 31,200 post offices, stations, and branches. The Postal Service is transforming its processing and logistics networks to become more scalable, reliable, visible, efficient, automated, and digitally integrated. This includes modernizing operating plans and aligning the workforce; leveraging emerging technologies to provide world-class visibility and tracking of mail and packages in near real time; and optimizing the surface and air transportation network. The U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General reviews the efficiency of mail processing operations at facilities across the country and provides management with timely feedback to further the Postal Service’s mission. 

This report presents the results of our audit of the efficiency of operations at the St. Louis Network Distribution Center in Hazelwood, MO. We selected the St. Louis area based on a congressional inquiry issued April 1, 2025, from U.S. senators and representatives from Missouri and Illinois to conduct audits of post offices and distribution centers in the St. Louis metro area. 

This Office of Inspector General (OIG) Healthcare Facility Inspection program report describes the results of a focused evaluation of the care provided at the VA Spokane Healthcare System in Washington. 

This evaluation focused on five key content domains:
     •    Culture
     •    Environment of care
     •    Patient safety
     •    Primary care
     •    Veteran-centered safety net

The OIG issued one recommendation for VA to correct identified deficiencies in one domain:
   1.    Environment of care
     •    Clean and soiled utility item storage, cleanliness, and expired item disposal
 

VA can authorize veterans to receive care in the community in specific circumstances. After the care occurs, the community provider must return associated medical records to VHA and community care staff close the consult. If records are not received, staff must administratively close consults (that is, update the status from “open” to “complete”) to indicate the veteran received care and make three requests for the records within 90 days of the appointment. The VA OIG reviewed whether VHA staff took appropriate action to retrieve and document medical records from community providers and import the records into veterans’ electronic health records.

The OIG found that, as of December 16, 2024, VHA closed nearly 3 million community care consults for appointments scheduled to occur between October 1, 2023, and April 1, 2024. Among these, over 2.4 million (82 percent) had medical records attached, and nearly 1 million were administratively closed (34 percent). In addition, for the same period, VHA had 71,447 open consults, virtually all of which were more than 90 days beyond the scheduled appointment date.

According to the OIG’s analysis, 62 facilities imported 90 percent or more of medical records for completed community care consults into veterans’ electronic health records. However, 11 facilities imported the records less than 60 percent of the time.

Staff said competing priorities reduced the amount of time available to request and process incoming records. Once records were received, community care staff did not always use the Consult Toolbox to document the receipt, and related policy was both unclear and inconsistently used. Furthermore, VHA facilities varied in meeting timeliness metrics.

VHA concurred with the OIG’s 10 recommendations (including concurrence in principle to recommendation 2) to direct the Office of Integrated Veteran Care to correct identified deficiencies related to processes, internal controls, timeliness, and oversight.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) OIG retained Williams, Adley, & Co.-DC LLP (Williams Adley, we), an independent public accounting firm, to perform the independent assessment of the CPSC’s implementation of FISMA for FY 2025 and to determine the effectiveness of its information security program. This report documents the results of the OIG’s FISMA evaluation. Specifically, we assessed the CPSC’s compliance with the annual Inspector General (IG) FISMA reporting metrics set forth by the DHS and OMB.