Federal Reports

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During this semiannual period, we issued several reports, including two that focused specifically on the Library’s information technology (IT) challenges. The reports benchmarked the Library’s IT-related budget obligations and human capital against those of other federal government agencies, analyzed the migration of the Library’s financial system (Momentum) to the cloud, and analyzed a high-risk contract. The Office of the Inspector General also oversaw the completion of the audit of the Library’s financial statements and, for the twentieth consecutive year, the Library received an unmodified (clean) opinion.

This report summarizes work we initiated and completed during this semiannual period on a number of critical Departmental activities. Over the past 6 months—in addition to issuing our annual Top Management Challenges—our office completed 19 audits, inspections, and responses to Congressional requests.

Recent investigations by the Office of Inspector General have shown a number of instances in which hospices inappropriately billed Medicare for hospice general inpatient care (GIP). Misuse of GIP includes care being billed but not provided and beneficiaries receiving care they do not need. Such misuse has human costs for this vulnerable population as well as financial costs for Medicare. The goals of hospice care are to help terminally ill beneficiaries with a life expectancy of 6 months or less to continue life with minimal disruptions and to support beneficiaries' families and other caregivers. The care is palliative, rather than curative. Hospices must establish an individualized plan of care for each beneficiary. GIP is the second most expensive level of hospice care and is intended to be short-term inpatient care for symptom management and pain control that cannot be handled in other settings.

ARC grant management system and available Basic Agency Monitoring Reports (BAMR) received from States administering construction related grants and consideration of ARC guidelines that permit States requests to revise or revoke commission approval of grants if the work intended to be assisted is not underway within 18 months of grant approval

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Cornerstone Hospital of Bossier City (The Hospital), in Bossier City, Louisiana, did not comply with Medicare requirements for billing Kwashiorkor on any of the 73 claims that we reviewed. The Hospital used diagnosis code 260 for Kwashiorkor but should have billed for other forms of malnutrition. For 25 of the inpatient claims, substituting a more appropriate diagnosis code produced no change in the diagnosis-related group or payment amount. However, for the remaining 48 inpatient claims, the errors resulted in overpayments of $322,000. The Hospital believes that all claims identified by the Office of Inspector General were appropriately submitted for payment.

Saint Louis University Hospital (the Hospital) (operating in Saint Louis, Missouri) complied with Medicare billing requirements for 243 of the 261 outpatient and inpatient claims we reviewed. However, the Hospital did not fully comply with Medicare billing requirements for the remaining 18 claims, resulting in net overpayments of $119,000 for calendar years 2011 and 2012. Specifically, 4 outpatient claims had billing errors, resulting in overpayments of over $65,000, and 14 inpatient claims had a billing error, resulting in net overpayments of over $53,000. These errors occurred primarily because the Hospital did not have adequate controls to prevent the incorrect billing of Medicare claims within the selected risk areas that contained errors.

The OIG assessed operational and cultural strengths and areas for improvement that could impact Bull Run Fossil Plant's (BRF) organizational effectiveness. We determined, overall, BRF has significant opportunity to improve its effectiveness. While we identified strengths associated with trust of first-line supervisors and teamwork, BRF's performance in fiscal year 2015 was mixed, and the morale of the workforce was low primarily due to the impacts of corporate decisions and limited trust between plant management and employees. The specific areas identified for operational improvement included: (1) plant performance, (2) equipment condition, (3) work management, (4) safety, and (5) staffing. In addition, we found a number of factors that impacted trust and employee morale, including: (1) corporate decisions, (2) behaviors displayed by a manager, (3) an increase in contractor usage, and (4) ineffective communication between plant management and employees. These operational and work environment issues, if left unresolved, could increase the risk that BRF employee engagement and performance levels will not be sufficient for the plant to meet its mission.

We found that the Tennessee Department of Education did not ensure that the Achievement School District developed and implemented adequate internal control activities over retaining documentation, contracting, approving purchases, using credit cards, recording adjusting journal entries, and classifying expenditures. In addition, we found that the Tennessee Department of Education and the AchievementSchool District did not spend Race to the Top funds only on allowable items and activities and in accordance with program requirements and the approved grant application. Our review identified more than $100,000 in Race to the Top funds that were spent on unallowable items and activities.

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ARC grant was provided for a major components of the county's plan is to assist in the development of a network of equestrian trail linking important destinations, including environmental features, public facilities, town centers and businesses.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has not issued guidance instructing States on the appropriate extent and timing of Medicaid withdrawals. Specifically, CMS has not issued guidance that clarifies the "as needed" language in 42 CFR § 430.30(d)(3) that would educate States on the application of 31 CFR part 205 in Medicaid. Such guidance and education would help prevent States from withdrawing more Medicaid funds than necessary. All three States that we audited withdrew more funds than necessary to meet immediate cash needs. At the time of our reviews, Alabama and Maryland had overdrawn more than $130 million in Medicaid funds that they had not refunded to the Federal Government. Although Illinois refunded overdrawn Medicaid funds, its withdrawals exceeded its expenditures by an average of $60 million a quarter.

The payments that First Coast Service Options (FCSO) made to providers in Jurisdiction N (Florida, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands) for hospital outpatient dental services generally did not comply with Medicare requirements. Of the 100 dental services in our stratified random sample, 95 did not comply with Medicare requirements. Using our sample results, we estimated that FCSO improperly paid providers in Jurisdiction N at least $1 million from January 1, 2012, through August 31, 2014.

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As part of its annual audit plan, the OIG audited $16.7 million in costs billed to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) by EnergySolutions, LLC (ES) under Contract No. 69836. The contract provided for ES to furnish personnel, equipment, chemicals, and consumables necessary to process liquid radioactive waste for all three TVA nuclear operating sites. Our objective was to determine if the costs billed to TVA were in accordance with the provisions of TVA's Contract No. 69836 with ES. In summary, we determined ES overbilled TVA $85,246, including: (1) $42,229 in ineligible and unsupported supply, per diem, and travel costs for spent fuel pool cleanout work; (2)$28,967 in ineligible equipment costs; (3) $11,500 in unauthorized waste shipments; and (4) $2,500 in ineligible dewatering and cask costs. ES agreed the ineligible equipment costs were overbilled and issued a credit to TVA on January 14, 2015. In addition, we found $68,898 in costs paid under Contract No. 69836 that should have been paid under Contract No. 69885. We recommended TVA management take action to (1) recover the remaining $56,279 in overbilled costs from ES and (2) ensure future costs paid to ES are paid under the correct contract.(Summary Only)

The Office of Inspector General examined NASA's efforts to develop software that will launch the SLS rocket and Orion capsule from the Kennedy Space Center.

Advertising mail, an important tool for businesses and nonprofit organizations, is critically important to the U.S. Postal Service’s bottom line, generating $19.4 billion in revenue in FY 2015. Most ad mail is sent as Standard Mail, which declined 20 percent in volume during the Great Recession and has not fully rebounded, unlike before when it kept pace with growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Both general economic factors and digital deflation (the pressure for lower prices driven by low-cost technologies) have adversely affected ad mail. However, ad mail itself offers many strengths and some areas of opportunity for the Postal Service.

Our audit objective was to assess GAO’s compliance with Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 (FISMA) requirements.Due to the sensitive nature of our findings, a full report on the results of our audit was prepared for internal GAO use only.

We concluded that the Department had developed and implemented control activities that provided reasonable assurance that States submitted reliable Perkins IV program performance data to the Department. We also reported that the Department had developed and implemented control activities that provided reasonable assurance that States and subrecipients took corrective action when the Department or others identified unreliable Perkins IV program performance data or inadequate Perkins IV program performance results. However, we alsofound that the Department could strengthen its control activities by ensuring that it adheres to Department policies and procedures for obtaining and retaining monitoring and oversight documentation.

An anonymous hotline complainant alleged AmeriCorps members were not paid their stipends due to timesheets their supervisor lost. The complainant also alleged the program was mismanaged and members were treated poorly by their supervisors.

A former AmeriCorps member contacted the hotline alleging that CNCS Management and grantee personnel failed to follow proper grievance procedures when they improperly terminated the member.

A hotline complainant alleged that a Florida Senior Corps grantee (1) inaccurately allocated staff time between the Senior Companion Program (SCP), Foster Grandparent Program (FGP), and Retired and Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP) grants; and (2) improperly used of Senior Corps volunteers (volunteers) assigned to SCP, resulting in inaccurate charges to the Senior Corps grants and noncompliance with program requirements. During the investigation CNCS-OIG investigators determined management staff allowed a majority of their volunteers to serve without a properly completed National Sex Offender Public Website (NSOPW) check.

The objective of this audit was to evaluate the security of NARA’s publicly-accessible websites. We also evaluated NARA’s progress toward implementing Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure on all of its websites as required by Office of Management and Budget Memorandum M-15-13, and verified NARA conducted a review of security assessments associated with its cloud web hosting initiative.

For fiscal years (FYs) 2012 and 2013, the South Carolina Office of Economic Opportunity (State agency) claimed costs on behalf of Wateree Community Actions, Inc. (Wateree), for Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) and Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) grants that were allowable under the terms of the grants and applicable Federal regulations. However, Wateree used approximately $700,000 of CSBG and LIHEAP funds to lend money to its Head Start program and inappropriately carried forward unused LIHEAP funds totaling approximately $1.2 million and $850,000 in FYs 2011 and 2012, respectively. Additionally, Wateree did not resolve prior audit findings that were repeated year after year with the same management response and did not submit to the State agency the required independent audit report on time for 2013. These instances of improper management of Federal funds occurred because the State agency (1) was not aware of the regulation to notify the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services of unobligated LIHEAP funds and request that these funds be carried over into the next FY and (2) did not adequately monitor Wateree's management of Federal funds that it received from the State agency.

We found that the Department needs to improve its implementation of the minimum requirements related to identifying and preventing fraud, waste, and abuse in the SBIR program. Although the Department is not required to establish its own overall operating procedures and regulations for the SBIR program, it is required to implement the minimum requirements related to fraud, waste, and abuse established in the SBIR Program Policy Directive. We found that the Department did not adequately implement 7 of the 10 minimum requirements.