Federal Reports

Like other federal agencies, NASA collects personally identifiable information, or PII. The Agency’s high-profile mission and broad connectivity with the public make it susceptible to increased privacy risks. While it has a comprehensive privacy program, NASA needs to take additional steps to better protect individuals’ personal information that it collects, uses, and maintains.

The purpose of this report is to bring to your attention needed improvements that the Office of Inspector General (OIG) identified while reviewing Peace Corps’ response process for cybersecurity incidents and its adherence to Federal and agency requirements. We reviewed the agency’s actions taken during three separate cybersecurity incidents from June 2022 through July 2023.

We reviewed the actions of the NPS and USPP in preparing for WFAF’s demonstration at the Ellipse on January 6, 2021.

Management Letter Fiscal Year 2023 Financial Statement Audit

An Amtrak supervisor based in Philadelphia violated company policies by using his company‐leased vehicle and, occasionally, his company fuel card to travel to his vacation home at least thirteen times over a nine‐month period. The employee admitted to these actions during his interview with our agents. He was removed from his supervisory position on December 18, 2023.

What We Looked AtThe U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) has a fleet of 38 aircraft that are operated and maintained by the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Flight Program Operations within the Air Traffic Organization. FAA uses these aircraft for a variety of missions, including critical event response and transportation for DOT executives, such as the Secretary of Transportation, and other Government agency officials. The Office of Management and Budget’s guidance to Executive Department heads allows Federal officials to travel on Government aircraft but with restrictions. Several Members of Congress requested we review DOT executives’ use of Government aircraft. Our objective was to determine whether the Office of the Secretary (OST) complied with Federal regulations, policies, and procedures regarding executive travel on DOT aircraft. What We FoundOST complied with Federal regulations, policies, and procedures for the Secretaries’ travel on DOT aircraft from January 2017 to June 2023. Records for each of the 15 trips contained the required authorizations, justifications, and approvals for use of the DOT aircraft, including documentation such as trip memos and cost comparisons, as appropriate. However, in evaluating OST’s cost comparisons, we determined that FAA did not consistently update the DOT aircraft flight hour cost rates OST uses to determine the cost effectiveness of Secretarial transportation. As a result, FAA’s flight hour rates may not have reflected the most current operating costs. We also identified three instances in which FAA did not use the correct flight hour rate for its cost estimates. While the incorrect cost estimates did not negatively impact cost effectiveness in these instances, this control weakness could result in incorrect cost comparisons. Our RecommendationsDOT concurred with our two recommendations to improve FAA’s aircraft rate update process and provided documentation of FAA’s actions taken in response. We consider both recommendations resolved but open pending OIG review of FAA’s documentation.