Federal Reports

We contracted with Williams, Adley & Company-DC, LLC, an independent certified public accounting firm (CPA firm), to audit the National Endowment for the Arts’ (Arts Endowment’s) compliance with the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 for the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2019. The objectives of the audit were to assess (1) the completeness, accuracy, timeliness, and quality of the first quarter Fiscal Year 2019 financial and award data submitted by the Arts Endowment for publication on USASpending.gov and (2) the Arts Endowment’s implementation and use of the Government-wide financial data standards established by the Office of Management and Budget and the Department of the Treasury. The audit was conducted in accordance with applicable Government Auditing Standards, 2011 Revision, issued by the Comptroller General of the United States. The audit concluded that the information submitted for inclusion in USASpending.gov for FY 2019, Quarter 1, was accurate, timely, complete, and in accordance with data standards. However, we did note an issue related to accurate implementation and use of the data standards in File D2.

OIG audited the financial statements of FCIC/RMA for fiscal years 2019 and 2018.

OIG audited the consolidated financial statements of Rural Development for fiscal years 2019 and 2018.

The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 (DATA Act) requires Federal agencies to submit quarterly financial and award data for publication on USASpending.gov. The Office of Management and Budget and Department of Treasury established standards for Federal agencies to use 57 data elements in reporting its financial and award information. The DATA Act also requires the Office of Inspector General (OIG) of each Federal agency to audit a statistically valid sample of the data elements that support the data submitted by its Federal agency. Lastly, the OIG is required to submit a publicly available report to Congress assessing the completeness, accuracy, timeliness, and quality of the data elements sampled; and the implementation and use of the Government‐wide financial data standards by the Federal agency. The Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) was not in compliance with the DATA Act requirements. Its submission of the CNCS’s Fiscal Year 2019 quarter 1 financial and award data to USASpending.gov was not complete as it relates to financial and grant award data elements supporting the submission. CNCS’s financial data records contained errors in certain data elements, as some were incomplete, inaccurate or did not meet required reporting schedules. We also continued to observe internal control issues and errors that CNCS needs to address to improve the quality of its data and comply with DATA Act requirements. CNCS management concurred with our recommendations to improve those internal control deficiencies.

We audited the U.S. Department of the Interior’s (DOI’s) fiscal year (FY) 2019 first quarter financial and award data submission in accordance with the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 (DATA Act) and submission standards developed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).We assessed the data and found that, while they contained most of the required information and conformed to the OMB and Treasury standards, there were small deficiencies in completeness, timeliness, and accuracy of the data we sampled. Specifically, we found in the 57 data elements for each of the 385 transactions that 3.45 percent were incomplete, 2.84 percent were not timely, and 11.34 percent were not accurate. These results were projected to the DOI’s FY 2019 first quarter submission, and the deficiencies were small enough to still meet the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency Federal Audit Executive Council’s “higher” quality standard.We offer three recommendations to help the DOI improve its submissions and comply with standards. In response to our draft report, the DOI concurred with all three recommendations. Based on this response, we consider all three recommendations to be resolved but not implemented. We will refer the recommendations to the Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget for implementation tracking.