Federal Reports

TFC Consulting, Inc. (TFC), an independent licensed Certified Public Accounting firm, was contracted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Office of Inspector General (OIG), to conduct an agreed-upon procedures engagement to assess selected aspects of the State of Iowa’s compliance with the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) regulations.

This report responds to a request from Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota about employee issues at the Dickinson Post Office. In response to that request, our objectives were to determine whether the U.S. Postal Service complied with employee payment requirements and assess employee engagement and staffing levels at the Dickinson, ND, Post Office.

We determined that not all forms DHS and its components use to create Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA) include the required Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (WPEA) statement. Further, although many of the settlement agreement templates and settlement agreements in the sample we reviewed included provisions that might restrict or prevent disclosure of information, nearly three-fourths of these documents did not contain the WPEA statement. Omitting the statement in NDAs and personnel settlement agreements could lead to confusion about what information may be disclosed to permissible recipients, which could deter reporting of fraud, waste, or abuse and impede DHS Office of Inspector General activities.

FEMA needs to continue providing technical assistance to and monitoring of California’s Public Assistance grant funding management. This helps avoid the risk of exposing millions of taxpayer dollars to fraud, waste, or mismanagement and violating the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act. In doing so, FEMA can assist California in providing reasonable, but not absolute assurance that Public Assistance subgrant funds are spent in accordance with Federal regulations and FEMA guidelines.

The objective of this Management Advisory Report was to create an understanding of how drug use among Volunteers has affected the agency and its Volunteers since 2015, and how challenges in enforcement and data gathering have impeded agency efforts to address the problem. This report included six recommendations.