Federal Reports

We found that controls existed to ensure Ohio did not use SNAP administrative funds for participant benefits; however, our analytics of FY 2024 participant data identified 17,000 out of 917,000 households had anomalous data, representing $13.3 million in questioned costs.

Identifying and resolving security flaws and weaknesses in IT infrastructure—known as vulnerability management—helps prevent cyberattacks, data breaches, and system disruptions. The National Vulnerability Database (NVD), maintained by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), provides data for vulnerability management to cybersecurity professionals in the public and private sectors. A backlog of unprocessed vulnerabilities began in February 2024 and continued to grow, undermining the NVD’s utility and public trust.

Our objective was to evaluate the effectiveness and sustainability of NIST’s processes for managing cybersecurity vulnerabilities submitted to the NVD, including the long-term effectiveness of NIST’s strategy for reducing its vulnerability backlog and its measures to prevent future processing delays. NIST considers the NVD a key piece of the U.S. cybersecurity infrastructure, but its actions to resolve the growing backlog did not reflect that characterization. We found that NIST did not have sustainable processes to manage NVD submissions and would be unable to clear the backlog of unprocessed vulnerabilities or prevent future processing delays without significant changes.

We made six recommendations to help NIST manage and establish priorities for the NVD, improve the efficiency and sustainability of enrichment processes, and ensure the best use of government resources.

The audit objectives were to determine whether program funds were managed in accordance with the ARC and Federal grant requirements.

This statutory report presents the activities and accomplishments of the OIG from October 1, 2025, through March 31, 2026. The audits, investigations, and related work highlighted in the report are products of our mission to identify and stop fraud, waste, and abuse; and promote accountability, efficiency, and effectiveness through our oversight of the Department’s programs and operations.

The independent public accounting firm of Allmond & Company, LLC, under contract with the Office of Inspector General, audited Help America Vote Act (HAVA) grants administered by the Mississippi Secretary of State's Office, totaling $15.07 million. This included federal funds, state matching funds, and interest income earned on the Election Security and Reissued Section 251 grants.