Federal Reports

The Postal Service began implementing the Dynamic Route Optimization (DRO) initiative in fiscal year (FY) 2016. The initiative allows for morning Highway Contract Routes (HCR) to change from a fixed-price contract with set routes (static) to a rate per mile (RPM) contract with varying departure times, lines of travel, and mail types transported based on mail volume (dynamic) to optimize routes thus reducing mileage and transportation costs. Our objective was to evaluate the cost savings for implementing DRO.

News reports have raised concerns about foreign threats to the United States biomedical research enterprise. In a letter to institutes receiving National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding, the Director of NIH highlighted concerns about diversion of intellectual property; sharing of confidential information from grant applications; and the failure by some NIH funded researchers to report substantial financial support from other organizations, including foreign governments. Our objective was to determine whether NIH has policies, procedures, and controls in place for helping to ensure that institutions report all sources of research support, financial interests, and affiliations.

This evaluation issued nine recommendations to address findings in the areas of leadership, Volunteer health support, Volunteer safety and security support, training, and site management. Recommendations were directed to staff at the post with the exception of one recommendation that was directed to the regional director. We did not have any findings in the areas of Volunteer administrative support and programming.