Federal Reports

The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST’s) Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) is a national network of 51 MEP Centers—in all 50 states and Puerto Rico—providing any U.S. manufacturer with resources to improve production processes, upgrade technological capabilities, and facilitate product innovation. NIST makes federal financial assistance awards in the form of cooperative agreements to state, university, and nonprofit organizations to operate the Centers.

This report provides additional results identified during our evaluation of MEP economic impact reporting (OIG-24-037-I), as well as actions taken by NIST in response to our work. Specifically, the report provides details on two specific instances in which our work prompted NIST to conduct its own review and issue notices of material noncompliance to Centers.

First, we found that the California Center and its subrecipient did not accurately report program income. Second, we found that the Maryland Center’s use of state grant funds was unallowable and not properly reported. Our findings in both cases led to NIST issuing the Centers notices of material noncompliance.

We made four recommendations to help NIST recover amounts owed by these Centers, ensure that the California Center and its subrecipients accurately report program income, and ensure that the Maryland Center correctly uses funds on other NIST awards.
 

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) inspected two U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) offices to assess inventory and information security controls for excessing USDA’s computer equipment. OIG’s objectives were to determine whether USDA is effectively managing excess equipment in its inventory and whether controls exist to provide reasonable assurance that USDA has adequate security over its excessed equipment.

What the OIG Found

According to GAO’s strategic plan, it will reduce costs of operations, in part, by leveraging cloud-based technologies. Transferring data into the cloud (data ingress) is often free to users; however, some providers charge data egress fees for accessing data or transferring it out of the cloud. Despite the minimal costs GAO has incurred for data egress, opportunities exist for GAO to improve its monitoring and cost estimating processes for cloud services.

The OIG found that, due to other priorities, GAO did not establish formal procedures implementing cloud cost management policies such as instituting and reviewing budget threshold alerts and cloud service usage reports. Due to the lack of procedures, GAO may not fully meet its strategic objective related to managing and reducing the cost of its cloud-based technologies in the future.

The OIG also found that GAO officials did not include data egress fees in a major system’s cost estimate and did not document the exclusion because they deemed data egress fees minimal. As a result, GAO may not be fully aware of the total costs for its cloud initiatives, which could impact its ability to implement new projects and the operation and maintenance of existing initiatives.

Why the OIG Did This Audit

The OIG conducted this audit to (1) describe GAO’s efforts to address data egress fees in procuring cloud services and (2) assess the extent to which the estimated costs of GAO’s cloud services programs quantify data egress fees.

Recommendations

GAO concurred with the OIG’s recommendations to (1) establish cost management procedures for its cloud systems, including addressing data egress fees and the implementation and review of alerts and reports, and (2) develop an oversight mechanism to ensure that all fees, including data egress fees, are quantified in the cost estimate, or the exclusion of any costs is documented.

We audited the project activity status for 12 grantees that received funds under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) National Disaster Resilience (NDR) grant to determine whether the grantees have accomplished or are on track to accomplish the goals of the activities outlined in their action plans. 

We found that NDR grantees should be able to accomplish their program goals by leveraging deadline flexibilities that HUD offered. Grantees had spent more than 70 percent of their grant funds since program implementation in 2016. Grantees were working toward disbursing their remaining $250 million in grant funds for 75 project activities planned or underway by the revised program expenditure deadline.  Of the 12 NDR grantees, 4 had progressed well with accomplishing program goals. The other eight grantees experienced challenges related to one or more of their project activities. The 8 grantees that experienced challenges had a combined total of 24 project activities, of which 21 activities had been underway between 4 and 8 years from their original planned start dates, and the grantees had disbursed less than one-third of the funds allocated, with 3 activities still in “planned” phase, even though the grant agreements were executed more than 7 years ago. The grantees cited a variety of reasons for the delays, such as COVID-19, the newness of the program, and various other issues. Our review also found that grantees lacked adequate policies and procedures for the timely expenditure of funds and had staffing and partner capacity issues, which may have contributed to delays. In addition, HUD could improve its use and design of quarterly performance and action plan review checklists to be more effective in its regular monitoring and oversight of the grantees. 

These projects are vital to the communities they serve. Although the grantees were progressing in the implementation of their project activities, the slow pace of completing projects and deadline flexibilities provided by HUD resulted in delayed benefits to program beneficiaries and continued exposure to future damage to their communities. 

Our recommendations to assist in improving oversight of the NDR grantees include recommending that HUD (1) work with Connecticut and Shelby County grantees to create a plan of action to fully realize program benefits; (2) conduct onsite monitoring for the City of Minot and Tennessee grantees, which have not been monitored; (3) require the eight grantees with delayed activities to provide a detailed timeline for completing their projects to ensure that grantees stay on schedule; (4) revise and abbreviate the action plan and quarterly performance checklists for more effective use; and (5) require grantees to provide documentation showing that they have upfront collaboration with partnering entities.