Federal Reports

The Office of the Inspector General audited TVA’s backup verification of mission essential data to determine if TVA’s backups were being performed in accordance with business requirements and industry best practice. In summary, we determined that TVA’s backups of mission essential data included industry best practice in their business requirements. However, we found three business requirements were not being met. Specifically, we found (1) TVA was not using the enterprise authentication solution as required by their common control catalog, (2) test restores were not performed for essential backup and infrastructure components, and (3) backup data in transit was not encrypted. TVA management agreed with our findings and recommendations.

To report internal control weaknesses, noncompliance issues, and unallowable costs identified in the single audit to the Social Security Administration (SSA) for resolution action.

We investigated allegations that a National Park Service (NPS) prime contractor failed to pay its subcontractors on two NPS construction contracts.We found that the NPS prime contractor violated the Federal Acquisition Regulation’s prompt payment requirements when it failed to pay two subcontractors for work within 7 days of receiving a payment from the NPS. The prime contractor wrongfully withheld the full payment to a subcontractor for over 18 months for work completed in November 2017 at Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site. In the second case, the company withheld partial payment to another subcontractor for work completed at Voyageur National Park in September 2017.