Federal Reports

Our Objective(s)To inform FHWA's guidance for preventing and detecting anticompetitive practices. Specifically, we (1) assessed competition in procurement for Federal-aid highway projects using statistical methods, (2) provided estimates of the effects on contract costs when certain anticompetitive practices occur, and (3) identified opportunities to improve FHWA's guidance for preventing and detecting anticompetitive practices.
Why This AuditFederal law generally requires States to award contracts for Federal-aid highway projects through competitive bidding. However, concerns about anticompetitive bidding practices in highway procurements have existed for decades. Because of the importance of competition in highway procurement and the low number of studies that have attempted to assess it, we undertook this audit.
What We FoundOur analyses found significant indications of potential complementary bidding on highway procurements.

At least a third of the contracts we analyzed using machine learning in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina were potentially affected by complementary bidding.
Our conservative, econometric method also flagged significant potential complementary bidding in most States we examined, affirming the machine learning results.

Contracts identified as potentially affected by complementary bidding had higher costs, but separate analysis of firms in flagged pairs found limited evidence of their affecting costs.

We estimated that the costs of flagged contracts ranged from an average of 5.2 percent to 10.2 percent higher, depending on the State, than for comparable potentially competitive contracts.
Cumulatively, these estimated cost increases amount to $1.19 billion (in 2021 dollars), or a 6.9 percent cost increase in the Federal-aid highway contracts flagged by our analyses across the six States.

While FHWA has improved its guidance for preventing anticompetitive practices, our analysis shows a more systematic approach to detection is needed.

FHWA's guidance during our review period did not adequately support State DOTs' prevention or identification of anticompetitive practices.
Although improved, FHWA's current guidance continues to lack explicit direction for frequent, regular, and systematic analysis.

RecommendationsWe made 1 recommendation to improve State DOTs' capabilities to detect and mitigate anticompetitive bidding.

EPA guidance generally addresses IIJA Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, or DWSRF, emerging contaminants provisions. These provisions include focusing on projects that address per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. However, the EPA's guidance does not detail allowable ranking and funding levels of non-PFAS projects. Further, the EPA guidance does not adequately describe how to process transfers between different state revolving funds.

Without adequate guidance, states may inconsistently process transfers between their state revolving funds.

This report presents the results of our audit of delivery operations and property conditions at the Warner Robins Main Post Office in Warner Robins, GA.

This report presents the results of our audit of delivery operations and property conditions at the Zebulon Branch, Macon, GA.

This report presents the results of our audit of the Efficiency of Operations at the Macon Local Processing Center.

This report presents the results of our audit of delivery operations and property conditions at the Gray Main Post Office in Gray, GA.

This report presents the results of our audit of delivery operations and property conditions at the Perry Administrative Post Office in Perry, GA.

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 Salem Healthcare System in Virginia. 

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

The OIG issued two recommendations for improvement in one domain:
1.    Environment of care
   •    Mitigating the impact of construction on patient care in the Emergency Department
   •    Ensuring the toxic exposure screening navigators verify data to track veterans waiting for secondary screenings and address any backlog