Federal Reports

We audited the costs claimed by the New Jersey State Department of Environmental Protection, Division of Fish and Wildlife, under grants awarded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) through the Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program. The audit included claims totaling $50.9 million on 35 grants that were open during the State fiscal years that ended June 30, 2015, and June 30, 2016. The audit also covered the Division’s compliance with applicable laws, regulations, and FWS guidelines, including those related to collecting and using hunting and fishing license revenue and reporting program income.We found that the Division generally complied with applicable grant accounting and regulatory requirements, but did not (1) report losing control of real property purchased with grant funds and license revenue, (2) submit Federal financial reports (SF-425s) in a timely manner, (3) properly manage its personal equipment inventory, or (4) provide adequate support for the in-kind hours claimed as a portion of the grant match requirement.Both the FWS and the Department agreed with our six recommendations, and they will work together to implement corrective actions.

The OIG investigated an allegation that a senior official with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) committed perjury while testifying in an official capacity at a Federal trial in 2017. In a motion to dismiss, the defense quoted a 2008 letter signed by the official that, according to the defense, proved the official’s testimony was untruthful.We confirmed that some of the official’s testimony contradicted the letter, but we found no evidence that the official knowingly provided false information during the testimony. While the official did sign the 2008 letter quoted in the defense’s motion to dismiss, she did not write the letter, nor did she review or discuss it before providing her testimony in 2017.

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.

The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) reviewed reexamination requests by the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) and estimated that, from March through August 2017, VBA spent $10.1 million on unwarranted reexaminations. The OIG estimated that VBA would waste an additional $100.6 million over the next five years unless it ensures that VBA employees only request reexaminations when necessary.According to VBA policy, employees can request reexaminations for veterans when there is a need to verify the continued existence or current severity of a disability, and when there is no exclusion from reexamination. However, before requesting a medical reexamination, VBA policy requires a Rating Veterans Service Representative to review the veteran’s claims folder and determine whether the reexamination is needed. This pre-exam review serves as an internal control to prevent unwarranted reexaminations. The OIG estimated that 15,500 of 19,800 unwarranted reexaminations (78 percent) lacked a pre-exam review, indicating that VBA management routinely bypassed this internal control. Instead, VA Regional Office managers routed these cases directly to a Veterans Service Representative for scheduling the reexamination. Bypassing the pre-exam review caused the unwarranted reexaminations. About 14,200 veterans saw no change to their disability evaluations as a result of these reexaminations. The OIG estimated that the reexaminations resulted in proposed benefit reductions for about 3,700 veterans. Unwarranted reexaminations also created unnecessary work for VA employees by reducing VBA’s capacity to process benefits claims and the Veterans Health Administration’s capacity to provide healthcare services.The OIG made four recommendations including establishing internal controls to ensure that a reexamination is necessary, prioritizing the design and implementation of system automation to minimize unwarranted reexaminations, enhancing VBA’s quality assurance reviews of requested reexaminations, and conducting a focused quality improvement review of cases with unwarranted reexaminations to understand and redress the causes of avoidable errors.