Federal Reports

What We Looked AtSince 2003, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has identified Federal real property management as a high-risk area, prompting reform efforts across the Federal Government. The Department of Transportation (DOT), excluding the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), maintains approximately 300 office properties across the country, through ownership, lease, or an occupancy agreement with another agency, primarily the General Services Administration (GSA). In fiscal year 2018, DOT (excluding FAA) reported expending over $101 million for just the office space it occupies through GSA. We initiated this review in response to these factors, as well as our recent audit of FAA's office and warehouse leases and the potential to improve the efficiency of departmental expenditures. Accordingly, our audit objective was to assess DOT's utilization of its office spaces, focusing on the degree to which its office spaces comply with the Agency's utilization standard.What We FoundThe Department's May 2016 Office Space Design Standard Policy (Policy) only requires DOT to apply the Agency's utilization standard to office space renovations and new acquisitions, which comprise a very small percentage of the total office space. While allowable, this approach limits the effect of Governmentwide initiatives to promote more efficient use of Federal office space. It also does not fully support DOT's own stated Policy goals of ensuring efficient use of all office space and regularly reviewing space to act on efficiency opportunities when possible. The Department also lacks controls to ensure that its Operating Administrations (OA) document justifications if they deviate from the Agency's standard; does not verify that OAs properly calculate their office space utilization rates; and does not have a complete and accurate system for tracking DOT office spaces. Finally, DOT lacks an overall strategic approach for reviewing its entire office space portfolio to find potential efficiency opportunities and cost savings. Based on our findings, we estimate that DOT could put $2.1 million to better use because it is paying for office space in excess of the Agency's utilization standard.Our RecommendationsWe made five recommendations to improve DOT's achievement of efficient office space utilization. The Department concurred with four and partially concurred with one.

The Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA) requires that the Office of Inspector General (OIG) reviews the Small Business Administration’s (SBA’s) information security program. To determine SBA’s compliance with FISMA, OIG contracted with an independent public accountant, KPMG, to perform review procedures relating to FISMA. OIG monitored KPMG’s work and reported SBA’s compliance with FISMA in the Agency FISMA filings in October 2018. We also assessed the Agency’s progress in implementing open recommendations and compared our current year assessment with our fiscal year 2017 FISMA evaluation. In addition to the 5 open FISMA recommendations noted in appendix II, OIG made 18 new recommendations to address FISMA-related vulnerabilities. SBA fully agreed with all 18 recommendations.

When evaluating options for new information technology (IT) deployments, agencies are required to default to cloud-based solutions whenever a secure, reliable, cost-effective cloud option exists. Cloud computing allows users to access and use shared data and computing services. The cloud also provides users access to resources without agencies having to build additions to their infrastructure. Our evaluation identified that the Small Business Administration (SBA) needs to improve its cloud migration and oversight controls in risk management, security, data mobility, and IT investments to meet federal guidance and standards. Our scope included SBA’s cloud systems inventory, as well as SBA’s cloud migration efforts and oversight from fiscal years 2017 through 2018. We provided eight recommendations to improve SBA’s cloud migration and oversight efforts. SBA management fully agreed with four recommendations and partially agreed with four recommendations. We found that the planned corrective actions resolved each of the eight recommendations.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Office of Inspector General audited Bank of America because it has released more than 47,000 Federal Housing Administration (FHA)-insured loans into the Distressed Asset Stabilization Program (DASP) note sales program. Since its inception, DASP has facilitated the sale of more than 108,000 FHA loans, which means that Bank of America accounts for nearly half of the entire program. This is the fourth in a series of audits on DASP. The first three audits (2017-KC-0006, 2017-KC-0010, and 2018-KC-0003) examined HUD and focused on the program’s requirements, processes, controls, and oversight. Our audit objective for this audit was to determine whether Bank of America properly followed all loss mitigation requirements for loans released into DASP.We found that Bank of America followed the loss mitigation requirements for all of the loans we reviewed. For those loans without a completed loss mitigation process, the main reasons loss mitigation was not performed related to a lack of homeowner participation or homeowner documentation.This report contains no recommendations.

Quarterly Summary Memorandum for the Lead Inspector General, Department of Defense