Federal Reports

A Labor Relations Specialist, based in Washington, D.C., violated policies when she shared access to folders and files on her company OneDrive account with her personal Gmail account. Many of the folders and files contained information of a sensitive nature. While our investigation found that the employee did not distribute these files beyond her Gmail account and she was taking these actions for a legitimate business purpose, she also did not obtain prior approval nor an exception from company policy, as is required. As a result of this investigation, we provided observations that may help the company better protect its data as it relates to the use of third-party accounts.Amtrak Management provided a response on March 3, 2023, stating that the employee had been counseled. In addition, the company implemented corrective action plans in response to our observations.

We audited the Office of Community Planning and Development’s (CPD) monitoring and oversight of the Community Development Block Grant - Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program. The objective of the audit was to determine whether CPD had effectively and efficiently designed its CDBG-DR program requirements and monitoring to ensure that the grantees meet statutory and other Federal low- and moderate-income (LMI) requirements. Generally, CPD had effectively and efficiently designed its CDBG-DR program requirements and monitoring to ensure that the grantees met the various LMI requirements. Almost all (98 percent) of the closed grants met the requirements, and a majority (80 percent) of the active grants were meeting the requirements. Of the 193 grants reviewed, 1 closed grant did not meet the requirements, and 28 active grants needed to budget funds to meet the requirements. We identified opportunities for CPD to improve its monitoring and oversight of its grantees’ compliance with the requirements, such as (1) including an additional overall LMI benefit calculation in quarterly performance reports (QPRs) and (2) establishing budgeting benchmarks. If CPD implements the recommended improvements, it could potentially prevent other grants from becoming noncompliant and reduce the number of grantees that need to budget sufficient funds to LMI activities. The changes could also improve the accuracy of reporting.

Attached for your action is our final report, Secret Service and ICE Did Not Always Adhere to Statute and Policies Governing Use of Cell-Site Simulators – Law Enforcement Sensitive. We incorporated the formal comments provided by your office.