Federal Reports

The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) Vet Center Inspection Program provides a focused evaluation of aspects of the quality of care delivered at vet centers. This inspection report evaluated four randomly selected vet centers throughout Midwest district 3 zone 2: Evanston, Illinois; Gary Area, Indiana; and La Crosse and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

This OIG inspection focused on four review areas: suicide prevention; consultation, supervision, and training; outreach; and environment of care. The suicide prevention review evaluated vet center staff participation on VA medical facility mental health executive councils, resulting in one recommendation across three of the four vet centers inspected. The consultation, supervision, and training review identified concerns with external clinical consultation, monthly client record reviews, and completion of select trainings, resulting in three recommendations across all four vet centers inspected. The outreach review evaluated outreach plan completion, inclusion of strategic components, and tailoring of outreach activities to eligible individuals, which resulted in one recommendation across three of the four vet centers inspected. The environment of care review evaluated vet centers’ physical environment and general safety, resulting in one recommendation at one of the three vet centers inspected. One vet center was closed and had a temporary location; therefore, an environment of care review was not completed at this site. However, the inspection did result in additional findings related to the vet center’s closure and relocation, resulting in two recommendations.

The OIG issued a total of eight recommendations for improvement.

The objective of our audit was to determine whether the U.S. Department of Education (Department) complied with the Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019 (PIIA) for FY 2024. We found that the Department complied with the PIIA for the FY 2024 reporting period because it met all six compliance requirements as described in Finding 1. However, we found that the Department could improve its processes for implementing its methodologies for estimating improper payments and unknown payments. While we found that the point estimates for the Federal Pell Grant (Pell) and William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan (Direct Loan) programs reflect the programs' annual improper payments and unknown payments, we found that the Department’s improper payment and unknown payment estimates for these programs were not reliable because of issues in the calculation of the confidence intervals, as described in Finding 2. Specifically, the improper payment sampling and estimation plans for the Pell and Direct Loan programs included nonrandom student-level sampling from some of the compliance audits Federal Student Aid (FSA) used to calculate the estimates, which affected the accuracy and appropriateness of the confidence intervals used in the calculation of the improper payment and unknown payment estimates. The nonrandom student-level sampling issue has been a repeat finding since our report on the Department’s compliance with improper payment reporting requirements for FY 2019. We recommend that FSA develop sampling and estimation plans for the Pell and Direct Loan programs that will produce reliable estimates. 

The Payment Integrity Information Act (PIIA) requires agencies to annually review and identify programs and activities that may be susceptible to significant improper payments, estimate the improper payment rates in agency programs, and report on their actions to reduce and recover those payments. For FY 2024, AmeriCorps met eight of ten PIIA compliance requirements. We made three findings relating to the two remaining requirements.  We found that: (1) AmeriCorps reported an improper payment rate above the ten percent compliance threshold for one program, the Foster Grandparent Program (FGP); (2) AmeriCorps’ published improper payment estimates for AmeriCorps State and National (ASN) and FGP are not accurate, reliable, or consistent with OMB guidance; and (3) AmeriCorps’ published improper payment estimates for the National Service Trust (NST) are not accurate, reliable, or consistent with OMB guidance. AmeriCorps concurred with the first finding and agreed to continue to develop and implement actions to reduce improper payment rates below ten percent. AmeriCorps did not concur with our second and third findings. We made six new recommendations related to our second and third findings in this report on unmatched reporting errors, payments to ineligible recipients, and published improper payment estimates for the NST. AmeriCorps declined to implement all six recommendations. We will keep open the two prior year recommendations related to the first finding until AmeriCorps submits documentation to demonstrate the completion and sufficiency of the corrective actions. The six recommendations related to the second and third findings will remain open and be classified as unresolved (disagreed) in our Semiannual Report to Congress.

HUD’s Office of Single Family Housing did not consistently monitor its Field Service Management (FSM) contractors’ property preservation and protection services.  Specifically, HUD provided inconsistent monitoring for 34 of the 79 statistically sampled records we reviewed, and these involved discrepancies between HUD’s assessment, the support, and the performance work statement.  HUD did not develop and apply a clear and uniform review framework to ensure that its process and procedures provided for effective FSM contract monitoring.  As a result, HUD (1) cannot ensure its REO inventory is being maintained in an adequate condition and (2) is not aware of whether contracting actions are needed to address deficient performance.  

We recommend that HUD (1) develop and implement uniform procedures for the FSM desk monitoring review, including a second level review for the FSM monitoring reviews and process for each inspection type; (2) update the FSM monitoring plan and FSM qualitative monitoring database to (a) clearly define the monitoring questions, (b) include a section for Q7 New Not Ready to Show properties, (c) define which routine inspection reports will be reviewed to conduct the routine inspection monitoring reviews and (d) develop a monitoring question to evaluate photo date stamps; and (3) ensure that program officials periodically provide all FSM CORs and staff involved in the monitoring process uniform property inspection training.

The Railroad Retirement Board Complied with the Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019 for Fiscal Year 2024

OIG reviewed USDA’s compliance with improper payment and high-dollar overpayment requirements for FY 2024.

The Inspector General Act of 1978 requires the Inspector General to prepare semiannual reports summarizing the activities of the Office of Inspector General for the preceding six-month period. The semiannual reports are intended to keep the Secretary and Congress fully informed of significant findings, progress the Agency has made, and recommendations for improvement.

The FCC OIG’s audit concluded that FCC was compliant with respect to 10 Phase 1 programs and one Phase 2 program. However, FCC was non-compliant with PIIA overall because for two of the 13 assessed FCC programs (the USF-LL and the USF-HC Legacy programs), FCC complied with nine of the 10 required PIIA criteria.  The FCC OIG issued three findings and offered eight recommendations to improve FCC’s PIIA reporting.