Federal Reports

The OIG examined whether the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), in its management of the Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment (VR&E) program, ensured that accurate and timely subsistence allowance payments were made to eligible veterans. Veterans participating in the VR&E program receive a monthly subsistence allowance while they attend educational and training programs. The OIG found VR&E subsistence allowance payments were generally accurate and timely. In a sample of 120 subsistence allowance payments reviewed from November 2016, the OIG identified only four errors of overpayments and underpayments at two of the four VA regional offices the OIG visited. The four errors stemmed from a failure to update files and constituted a 3.3 percent incidence of error. The cumulative monetary impact to VA was $12,532 for the duration of the errors for the four cases involved. In March 2017, VR&E conducted refresher training for field employees, which partially focused on updating dependent information—the cause of three of the four errors. The OIG identified no significant issues of timeliness with respect to the initial payment. The OIG ensured the first subsistence allowance payment occurred in the month that followed the education/training start date. When this was a veteran’s first-time award, the OIG reviewed the timeliness of the award as well as how promptly the school/training facility was notified of the veteran’s authorization to attend following the approved written rehabilitation plan. The OIG advised the applicable VA regional offices’ management to review and correct the errors it had identified during site visits. Because of the relatively small monetary impact reflected in the errors identified, the OIG curtailed the scope of this audit and made no recommendations. The Executive in Charge for VBA concurred with the findings and provided no comments to the report.

Although Washington State performed the required onsite monitoring at all 20 of the group care facilities that we reviewed, this monitoring did not ensure that these facilities complied with State licensing requirements related to the health and safety of children in foster care, as required by Federal law. We determined that all 20 group care facilities did not comply with 1 or more State health and safety requirements. Specifically, these facilities did not comply with requirements related to medical safety (20 facilities); environmental, space, and equipment safety (18 facilities); background checks (16 facilities); food safety (11 facilities); and fire safety and emergency practices (7 facilities).

The purpose of the audit was to (1) assess the adequacy of the Institute of Education Sciences’ (IES) Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS) grant requirements and monitoring of States to ensure internal controls are in place to prevent, detect, and report unauthorized access and disclosure of personally identifiable information in SLDSs; and (2) determine whether selected States have internal controls in place to prevent, detect, report, and respond to unauthorized access and disclosure of personally identifiable information in their SLDSs. We found that IES’s grant requirements were adequate to ensure the protection of personally identifiable information. We also found that the grantees that we audited addressed these requirements in the approved grant applications by identifying and noting that they would comply with specific State requirements pertaining to data and system security. However, we found that IES had inadequate controls for monitoring its grantees’ adherence to State system security requirements. Specifically, IES did not ensure that its grantees met the minimum State system security requirements. We identified internal control weakness at all three grantees audited that increased the risk that these grantees would be unable to prevent or detect unauthorized access and disclosure of personally identifiable information in their SLDSs.

The OIG investigated approximately $1,600 in fraudulent charges that were made on several Government charge cards issued to a U.S. Geological Survey employee.We found no evidence that the employee made the fraudulent charges and we discovered that a friend of the employee may have been responsible. As a result, we closed our investigation and referred this matter to the local police department.