Federal Reports

The U.S. AbilityOne Commission's Office of the Inspector General has issued an OIG Alert to inform Program stakeholders of recent activities of a third party. Specifically, the third party entity has published incorrect and misleading information regarding OIG activities and has insinuated that they have confidential OIG information. 

Our Objective(s)To assess the Special Crash Investigations (SCI) Program's (1) selection of crashes for investigation, (2) collection and analysis of special crash investigation data, and (3) use of this data to improve vehicle safety.
Why This AuditNHTSA estimates that 40,990 people died in motor vehicle crashes in the United States in 2023. A key component to reduce these fatalities is the SCI Program. The purpose of the SCI Program is to save lives and prevent injuries by collecting timely crash investigation information for the automotive safety community to improve the performance of advanced safety systems.
What We FoundNHTSA's SCI Program lacked a documented process to select and prioritize crashes for investigation.

The SCI Program has been successful in conducting crash investigations but lacked a documented process for selecting crashes for investigation.
The SCI Program lacked written procedures for prioritizing the crash types it investigates.

NHTSA's SCI Program procedures for collecting and analyzing special crash investigation data were insufficient.

NHTSA established an overall goal to conduct timely crash investigations and provide data that improves the performance of advanced driver safety systems. However, the Agency did not meet its timeliness goals for completing special crash investigation reports, partially due to delays in collecting crash data for analysis.
The SCI Program's procedures for retaining collected crash investigation documents did not comply with Federal Records Retention requirements.

NHTSA's SCI Program did not have a process to assess how investigation reports improve vehicle safety.

SCI Program officials pointed to examples of the positive impacts the program's investigations have had.
However, NHTSA did not have a process to formally document the extent to which special crash investigations played a role in addressing specific safety issues.

RecommendationsWe made 3 recommendations to improve NHTSA's SCI Program.

Our investigation determined that between 2022 and 2023, two Amtrak Supervisors based in Philadelphia and several other employees violated company policy by not swiping out on a Time Entry Device (TED) after their shifts and, subsequently, swiping out and immediately back in when they returned to work. This resulted in the recording of significant consecutive TED hours. The employees used this swiping protocol to inaccurately claim a full eight hours of regular pay in Amtrak’s timekeeping system, instead of correctly recording seven hours of regular pay and one hour of Code 29 pay (hours paid but not worked) to which they were actually entitled.

We also found that one of the supervisors collected additional Code 29 hours to which he was not entitled, in violation of the Infrastructure Management and Construction Services’ (IMCS) internal hours‐of‐service policy. We further found that an Engineer, based in Philadelphia, violated the internal hours‐of‐service policy by allowing and encouraging employees to claim Code 29 pay after working only 14 hours, which resulted in the company paying for hundreds of unnecessary Code 29 hours. The supervisors were terminated after their disciplinary hearings in July 2025. They are not eligible for rehire.

Our objective was to assess National Weather Service (NWS) tornado forecasting and warning performance and identify potential opportunities for enhanced effectiveness. We contracted with the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), an independent firm, to perform this evaluation. Our office oversaw the evaluation’s progress to ensure that IDA performed it in accordance with the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency’s Quality Standards for Inspection and Evaluation (December 2020) and contract 
terms.

Since fiscal year 2011, the NWS has achieved its Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) performance goal for false alarm ratio in 9 of the last 12 years. However, the NWS has consistently fallen short of meeting performance goals for probability of detection and warning lead times for this same time period. In addition to the NWS’s limited effectiveness in forecasting and warning performance, NOAA lacks official outcome metrics to assess progress toward the Tornado Warning Improvement and Extension Program's goal of reducing the loss of life and economic losses from tornadoes, leaving this goal unmet without further improvements.