Federal Reports

In two of the four areas – training and collaboration – Washington’s Emergency Management Division (EMD) and FEMA complied with applicable policies, procedures, and regulations.  In the third functional area – project execution, monitoring and oversight – we did not identify any significant deficiencies.  We found, however, EMD lacked position-specific guidance for all personnel with programmatic responsibilities.  In the last functional area – project and grant closeout – neither EMD nor its subrecipients submitted timely project closeout requests.  In addition, FEMA did not enforce compliance with its own guidance for processing closeouts.  We recommended FEMA ensure EMD complies with its State Administrative Plan by issuing and regularly updating desk manuals.  In addition, we recommended FEMA coordinate with EMD to initiate closeout on behalf of subrecipients for all open, large projects whose period of performance end dates exceed the 90-day regulatory requirement, and submit closeout requests to FEMA for projects exceeding the 180-day requirement.  We made five recommendations to strengthen EMD’s internal controls to improve its oversight of FEMA’s Public Assistance grant program.  FEMA concurred with all five of our recommendations. 

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This report presents the results of our self-initiated audit of package delivery scanning issues at Gardena Post Office, Gardena, CA. The Gardena Post Office is in the Los Angeles District of the Pacific Area. This audit was designed to provide U.S. Postal Service management with timely information on potential delivery scanning risks at the Gardena Post Office. The Gardena Post Office has 56 city delivery routes and one combination route delivered by 91 city carriers. We used geolocation data to identify units with stop-the-clock (STC) scans that occurred at the delivery unit property instead of the intended delivery address. The unit had 29,602 STC scans at the delivery unit between April and June 2019. These scans occurred on multiple routes and were intended for multiple delivery addresses throughout the timeframe.

The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) reviewed four allegations originating from an October 2017 hotline complaint about potential mismanagement of several construction projects at the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center in Charleston, South Carolina. The OIG substantiated two of the allegations—that construction for some nonrecurring maintenance projects took years to begin after contract awards, resulting in increased project costs of at least $441,000, and that engineering service staff had planned to spend about $74,000 to create separate drawings from a single rendering completed for a project. Regarding the first allegation, the OIG reviewed four construction projects—the specialty clinic renovation, the gastrointestinal clinic refurbishment, the emergency department expansion, and an upgrade for the induction unit system for the 5B South Ward area. Construction for these projects started an average of 743 days after the contracts had been awarded. The OIG recommended the medical center director ensure a process is established to inform the Veterans Integrated Service Network 7 capital asset manager in advance if construction is not planned to start within 150 days after contract awards. The process will make certain that prudent decisions can be made regarding project funds in a timely manner. The project related to the second allegation was initially planned as a single multiphase project but was subsequently separated into two. However, because the original drawing was never split and used for both projects, which would have improperly increased rendering costs, the OIG did not make any recommendations. The OIG did not substantiate other allegations that construction items were inappropriately removed from the solicitation on the intensive care unit project to reduce the contract price, or that a construction project was inappropriately classified.

The Fiduciary Program oversees individuals tasked with managing VA benefits for recipients unable to do so themselves. These fiduciaries are expected to make financial decisions in their beneficiaries’ best interest, but because there is the potential for misuse of those funds, employees at VA’s six fiduciary hubs must provide appropriate oversight. The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) investigated allegations that the Salt Lake City, Utah, Fiduciary Hub had hundreds of annual accounting reports (accountings) of beneficiaries’ income and assets that were overdue for review, and a significant number of pending electronic tasks associated with incoming mail that required action. The OIG also investigated whether fiduciary hub managers hid pending accountings to make it seem the work was completed more quickly. The OIG analyzed pending accountings data from January 2018 through April 2019 and determined there were more than 1,500 overdue accountings pending review as of August 1, 2018. By April 2019, that had been reduced to less than 100 after managers hired and trained additional staff. Based on an analysis of data for pending electronic tasks associated with action mail items from August 2018 through March 2019, the OIG substantiated that there were more than 3,000 pending action mail tasks as of February 2019. The fiduciary hub’s workload management plan did not specify how to prioritize action mail tasks and did not require review and resolution of duplicate tasks. The OIG recommended the Salt Lake City VA regional office director ensures the fiduciary hub workload management plan establishes timeliness goals for action mail tasks and a requirement for routinely reviewing and resolving duplicate tasks. The OIG also recommended the director ensure managers measure performance and monitor adherence to those goals. The OIG did not substantiate that fiduciary hub managers manipulated workload to hide pending accountings.

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