Federal Reports

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service’s mission is to support and protect the U.S. Postal Service and its employees, infrastructure, and customers; enforce the laws that defend the nation’s mail system from illegal or dangerous use; and ensure public trust in the mail. According to the Postal Inspection Service strategic plan, the key mission and business priorities were developed through research and represent critical and emerging issues affecting the Postal Service’s employees, infrastructure, and products, as well as the success of the Postal Inspection Service’s mission. 

DOI’s OCIO was provided recommendations to improve DOI’s enterprise-wide threat hunting capability and strengthen DOI’s IT security program. 

In November 2024, we conducted onsite, unannounced inspections at four U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) facilities in Southern Arizona and California:  • Two U.S. Border Patrol (Border Patrol) facilities — Yuma soft- sided facility (SSF) and Wellton station — housed 510 detainees  at the time of our inspection.   • Two Office of Field Operations (OFO) ports of entry (POE) —  Calexico West and San Luis — housed 21 detainees at the time of  our inspection.   

The VA Nebraska–Western Iowa Health Care System has a graduate medical education affiliation agreement with a local university. Under the agreement, the university provides the services of health professions trainees (residents) to the Omaha VA Medical Center, and VA reimburses the university for the residents’ services. Reimbursement is based on daily rates and fringe benefits provided by the medical center, which must document and certify VA-approved educational activities in educational activity records.

The medical center received a complaint alleging that a university official falsified records to inflate the time worked and signed the records as the VA site director, an act that would constitute a conflict of interest. The VA Office of Academic Affiliations asked the OIG to review six years of potential overbillings of residents’ time totaling about $1.9 million and examine the potential conflict of interest.

The OIG found the medical center did not have educational activity records for July 1, 2016, through June 30, 2020, as required. The OIG attempted to verify the progress notes the medical center used in the place of educational activity records but found them unreliable. Without reliable records, the audit team could not verify the attendance of the residents and could not determine whether the invoices were supported as required. Therefore, VA has no assurance that the residents participated in clinical and educational activities from July 1, 2016, through June 30, 2020, and may have overpaid for resident services.

For the period when the medical center did keep educational activity records, beginning July 1, 2020, the OIG was able to verify residents’ attendance and found no overbillings. Further, the OIG team did not find any conflicts of interest. Because educational activity records were implemented in July 2020, the OIG did not have any recommendations for the medical center.

The audit objectives were to determine whether program funds were managed in accordance with the ARC and Federal grant requirements.

We evaluated the Department of Homeland Security’s enterprise-wide security program for Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information intelligence systems.