Federal Reports

This report was submitted to the Comptroller General in accordance with Section 5 of the Government Accountability Office Act of 2008. The report summarizes the activities of the Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the second reporting period of fiscal year 2017. During this reporting period, OIG continued fieldwork on four audits and started an additional audit. We also closed five investigations and opened five new investigations. In addition, we processed 49 hotline complaints, which generally did not involve GAO’s programs and operations. We remained active in the GAO and OIG communities by briefing new GAO employees on our audit and investigative missions, and participating on Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency committees and working groups. Details of these activities and other OIG accomplishments are provided in the report.

In accordance with the Reports Consolidation Act of 2000 (P.L. 106-531), the Office of Inspector General (OIG) is submitting what it determined to be the top management and performance challenges facing the U.S. AbilityOne Commission (Commission), for inclusion in the Commission’s “Agency Performance and Accountability Report” for fiscal year 2017.

We determined that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) site visits provide minimal assurance that H-1B visa participants are compliant and not engaged in fraudulent activity. These shortfalls exist for various reasons. USCIS does not ensure that petitioners who previously abused the program are denied new petitions. USCIS could also do more to prevent approving petitions for recurring violations and collaborate more with external stakeholders. The agency does not provide comprehensive guidance for how USCIS personnel resolve site visit findings. USCIS does not have a process to collect and analyze key data elements to help guide the H-1B site visit program. The agency lacks performance measures to show how site visits contribute to improving the H-1B Program. We recommended that the USCIS Deputy Director: (1) develop processes to collect and analyze H-1B site visit data, (2) share appropriate site visit data with external stakeholders, (3) re-assess the H-1B ASVVP, and (4) develop policies to ensure adjudicative action prioritizes fraudulent or noncompliant results from H-1B ASVVP and targeted site visits. We made four recommendations that will help USCIS improve the H-1B site visit program. USCIS concurred with all four recommendations and has begun corrective actions to address the findings in this report.