Federal Reports

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.

We issued this to determine whether overpayments were improperly posted under Social Security numbers (SSN) where the Social Security Administration (SSA) suspended or terminated Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance (OASDI) benefits.

We audited Summit Construction and Environmental Services, LLC, because we received an anonymous complaint alleging that Summit Construction (1) did not perform lead-based paint evaluations in a timely manner, (2) did not produce adequate lead-based paint inspection reports in accordance with applicable requirements, and (3) showed favoritism toward certain contractors performing lead-paint inspections. Our objective was to determine whether the allegations in the complaint had merit. We focused the audit on determining whether Summit Construction (1) performed timely lead-based paint evaluations, (2) produced adequate lead-based paint evaluation reports, and (3) properly procured lead-based paint inspection services in accordance with its contract and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requirements.The allegations in the complaint had no merit. Summit Construction generally performed timely lead-based paint evaluations and produced adequate lead-based paint evaluation reports in accordance with its contract and HUD requirements. Also, Summit Construction was not required to follow Federal procurement requirements when procuring subcontractors for lead-based paint inspection services. This report contains no recommendations.

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This report presents the results of the Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements No.18 examination for the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National FinanceCenter (NFC) description of its payroll/personnel and application hosting services used toprocess customer agencies’ transactions throughout the period October 1, 2018 to July 31, 2019.

What We Looked AtThe Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act of 2015 (FAST Act) directed the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) to commission the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to evaluate the methodology and data it uses to identify carriers that are not fit to operate commercial motor vehicles, and develop a corrective action plan in response. The FAST Act also directed our office to assess FMCSA's plan and its responses to our prior recommendations, as well as those from NAS and the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Accordingly, our audit objectives were to (1) assess the extent to which FMCSA's corrective action plan addresses the NAS recommendations and relevant OIG and GAO recommendations and (2) identify challenges FMCSA may face when implementing the corrective action plan.What We FoundWhile FMCSA's corrective action plan addresses motor carrier safety interventions, it lacks implementation details for improving transparency and its assessment of carrier safety rankings. For example, in response to recommendations from NAS and GAO, the Agency is testing an Item Response Theory (IRT) statistical model to gauge how it prioritizes motor carrier safety interventions. Regarding the NAS recommendation on collecting more accurate and diverse types of data, FMCSA determined that much of the data either do not exist. As a result, FMCSA no longer plans to collect additional data. Similarly, the plan describes putting datasets on a publicly available website but does not discuss making them user-friendly, or outline costs and implementation steps--hindering FMCSA's efforts to make its data, safety measures, and rankings more transparent. Finally, the complexity of the IRT model may make implementation and public outreach difficult.Our RecommendationsWe made two recommendations to improve the corrective action plan FMCSA developed in response to the NAS study. FMCSA partially concurred with both recommendations. We consider the recommendations resolved but open pending completion of planned actions.