Federal Reports

What We Looked AtWe performed a quality control review (QCR) on the single audit that CliftonLarsonAllen LLP (CLA) performed for the Valley Metro Regional Public Transportation Authority's (Authority) fiscal year that ended June 30, 2018. During this period, the Authority expended approximately $51 million from the U.S. Department of Transportation's (DOT) grant programs. CLA determined that DOT's major program was the Federal Transit Cluster.Our QCR objectives were to determine (1) whether the audit work complied with the Single Audit Act of 1984, as amended, and the Office of Management and Budget's Uniform Guidance, and the extent to which we could rely on the auditors' work on DOT's major program; and (2) whether the Authority's reporting package complied with the reporting requirements of the Uniform Guidance.What We FoundCLA's audit work complied with the requirements of the Single Audit Act, the Uniform Guidance, and DOT's major program. We found nothing to indicate that CLA's opinion on DOT's major program was inappropriate or unreliable. We did not identify any deficiencies in the Authority's reporting package that required correction and resubmission.

NIH awards more than 70 percent of its $37 billion budget to universities and other extramural grantee institutions (institutions). Identifying and managing investigators' financial conflicts of interest (financial conflicts) is critical to safeguarding the integrity of NIH-funded research. In 2008, OIG identified serious gaps in NIH's oversight of investigators' financial conflicts. More recently, failures by some investigators to disclose substantial contributions of resources from other organizations-including foreign governments-have raised new concerns about threats to research integrity. This report focuses on the need for robust oversight, follows up on OIG's prior work, and seeks to determine whether NIH has addressed the gaps that OIG previously identified in the oversight of investigators' financial conflicts. It also provides-for the first time-information about the total number and types of financial conflicts that institutions are reporting to NIH.

Congress, NIH, and Federal intelligence agencies have raised concerns about foreign threats to the integrity of U.S. medical research and intellectual property. In August 2018, Dr. Francis Collins, Director of NIH, raised concerns that peer reviewers were, in some cases, inappropriately sharing confidential information with others. Subsequently, in 2018 Congress provided OIG with $5 million for oversight of NIH grant programs and operations, including the effectiveness of NIH's efforts to protect intellectual property derived from NIH-supported research. This study assesses the strengths and limitations of NIH's Center for Scientific Review (CSR)'s vetting of peer reviewer nominees before they begin reviewing applications for research grants. These peer reviewers have a unique opportunity to access confidential information in grant applications. Because of this access, it is important for NIH to ensure that peer reviewers do not inappropriately disclose or divert confidential information, including intellectual property.

Researchers have estimated that over 200,000 people die each year because of medical errors in hospitals. Learning from those and other, nonfatal events to improve patient safety is the goal of AHRQ's voluntary Patient Safety Organization (PSO) program. Hospitals' descriptions of their experiences with the program provide insight into the program's progress toward facilitating national learning from patient safety events. This review is the first to explore the extent to which hospitals participate in the PSO program and their perspectives on its value and challenges.

Our objective was to determine the amount of Social Security benefits misdirected because of unauthorized my Social Security direct deposit changes through May 2018.

PBGC has made progress in eliminating the unnecessary collection, maintenance, and use of customer social security numbers. However, additional steps are necessary given the volume of legacy documents containing SSNs, the Corporation’s continued acquisition of trusteed plan documents containing SSNs and known risks and limitations in PBGC information systems. We issued four recommendations related to PBGC’s policies and planning for continued reduction in the collection, maintenance and use of Social Security Numbers. PBGC agreed with the recommendations and plans to complete corrective actions by September 30, 2020.

Richland County did not always properly account for and expend Federal funds according to Federal regulations and FEMA guidelines. FEMA did not hold North Dakota accountable for fulfilling its grant management responsibilities, and North Dakota did not adequately manage the FEMA grant by monitoring the County to ensure it complied with applicable regulations and guidelines. The County failed to follow all Federal procurement regulations when awarding about $1.9 million in disaster-related contracts. We recommended that FEMA disallow $1,146,921 in ineligible contract costs and direct North Dakota to work with the County to verify that the County complies with all Federal grant requirements and establishes effective accounting systems. FEMA concurred with our three recommendations for improving County compliance in managing future Federal grants.