Federal Reports

What We Looked AtTo support transportation-related recovery and relief efforts in areas damaged by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012, the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 2013 (DRAA) appropriated $10.9 billion to the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). Recognizing it needed to be especially diligent with DRAA funds, FTA required grantees that received over $100 million to hire independent integrity monitors as a safeguard against fraud, corruption, and cost abuse. DRAA also directed our office to support oversight of the funds. Accordingly, our audit objective was to assess FTA's policies for the use of integrity monitors and evaluate FTA's oversight of integrity monitors.What We FoundWhile FTA performs ongoing collaborative reviews of grantee integrity monitor plans, it lacks formal processes for identifying known risks and determining integrity monitor independence. As a result, internal staff who serve as integrity monitors may have self-interest concerns. For example, integrity monitors participated in settlements that could have included Federal funds and did not always notify FTA of these settlements until late in the process or after the settlements were completed. FTA also has an opportunity to improve the way grantees manage integrity monitor performance. For example, Agency officials did not make sure that grantees resolved integrity monitor recommendations or developed controls to prevent problems from reoccurring--in part because FTA viewed the integrity monitor program as a grantee internal control. Still, FTA recently improved its guidance on the amount of detail grantees should include in their quarterly reports. Until this guidance is implemented by all DRAA grantees, however, FTA may not realize the full benefits of the integrity monitor program, and Hurricane Sandy funds may be at risk.Our RecommendationsWe made eight recommendations to improve FTA's oversight of Hurricane Sandy relief funds, including a recommendation to recover an estimated $1.1 million in settlement funds. FTA concurred with seven and partially concurred with one.

We issued this to determine whether the Social Security Administration (SSA) suspended benefits to non-citizen beneficiaries who had not met their 5-year residency requirement and resided outside the United States for longer than 6 consecutive months.

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This report presents the results of our self-initiated audit of U.S. Postal Service Processing Network Optimization. The objective of our audit was to evaluate trends and practices used to optimize the Postal Service’s processing network. The Postal Service’s processing network includes 285 facilities that processed about 301 billion mailpieces in fiscal year (FY) 2018, with an average staffing complement of 82,065. These facilities are responsible for processing mail for delivery to 159 million addresses.