Federal Reports

What We Looked AtIn support of its mission to operate the National Airspace System, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) relies on an expansive portfolio of capital assets—including infrastructure, technology, and systems. These capital investments contribute to the multibillion-dollar acquisition portfolio that FAA manages each fiscal year. Over the years, various stakeholders have identified significant issues with the Agency’s acquisition processes and practices. Citing those concerns, Representative Bill Shuster, then Chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, asked us to conduct a review. Accordingly, our audit objective was to assess FAA’s competitive award practices for its major acquisition program contracts, including safeguards against conflicts of interest (COI) on the part of FAA officials involved in the award process. What We FoundFAA’s competitive award practices for its major program contracts expose the Agency to cost and performance risks. First, FAA’s actions to establish fair, reasonable, and realistic contract pricing lack sufficient support—specifically, independent Government cost estimates (IGCE) and price analyses, both of which are key to efficient pricing. Second, FAA’s award practices for its major program contracts do not always promote competition, which could contribute to the Agency’s continued reliance on the same small pool of contractors. Third, FAA is putting the integrity of its procurement process at risk because it does not consistently take required actions to prevent COI. For example, FAA could not provide complete COI agreements for all the officials involved in the selection process for five contracts with a total value of over $1 billion. Finally, FAA lacks complete award documentation and a tracking process for its major program contracts, which impacts its ability to manage potential cost and schedule risks. We determined that FAA put up to $4.9 billion in Federal funds at risk because it did not have required IGCEs before it awarded three competitive contracts and did not provide a sound rational basis for awarding another three contracts noncompetitively. Our RecommendationsFAA concurred with all 10 of our recommendations to improve its major program contract award practices and provided appropriate completion dates.

Our objective was to determine whether Social Security Administration (SSA) processing center (PC) employees correctly processed Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance (OASDI) post-entitlement alerts produced by the Title II Redesign (T2R) system.

We selected the Tucson P&DC for review based on our analysis of manual flats productivity as measured by the Management Operating Data System (MODS). The Tucson P&DC’s FY 2019 manual flats productivity of 992 mailpieces per hour was significantly higher than the national average productivity of 332 mailpieces per hour. Our objective was to assess manual flats processing operations at the Tucson P&DC.

This Management Advisory Memorandum (MAM) was originally issued to then-Director Kathleen Sawyer, and posted on March 2, 2020. Consistent with the OIG’s usual practices, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) was provided the opportunity to review the MAM for factual and legal accuracy before the March issuance, and it raised no concerns to the OIG at that time. After the March issuance, the BOP notified the OIG of concerns, primarily about language in the MAM relating to the applicability of certain provisions of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) to contracts below a threshold amount. After considering those concerns, the OIG modified the MAM and is reissuing it as modified and removing the original MAM from our website. The modifications do not substantially affect the OIG’s recommendations.

In 2016, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) updated its life safety and emergency preparedness regulations to improve protections for all Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries, including residents of long-term-care facilities (commonly referred to as nursing homes). Updates included requirements that nursing homes have expanded sprinkler systems and smoke detector coverage; an emergency preparedness plan that is reviewed, trained on, tested, and updated at least annually; and provisions for sheltering in place and evacuation.

We determined that Texas’s system of internal control over displaced student count data did not ensure that the data provided to the Department were accurate and complete because it did not always prevent or detect inaccurate displaced student counts reported by LEAs. The displaced student count data for the three LEAs that we reviewed were inaccurate and incomplete. As a result, Texas reported inaccurate displaced student count data to the Department for school year 2017–2018, and its Emergency Impact Aid program grant allocations to these three LEAs were incorrect. We estimate that $10.55 million of the $23.1 million in Emergency Impact Aid program funds that the three LEAs received was not supported because of the inaccurate and incomplete displaced student count data. We also determined that Texas’s system of internal control over LEAs’ use of Emergency Impact Aid program funds did not ensure that (1) LEAs accounted for Emergency ImpactAid program funds received for students reported as children with disabilities in accordance with Federal requirements and (2) LEAs used Emergency Impact Aid program funds to pay salaries only for employees who supported schools with displaced students. We identified about $1.94 million in unsupported costs for students reported as children with disabilities at the three LEAs we reviewed and $750,088 in unsupported costs for employees who worked at schools for which no displaced students were reported at two of the three LEAs we reviewed.