Federal Reports

Reports dealing with older grants administered by ARC and State agencies for which no ARC payments have been made, grants with smaller balances and grants with expired end dates and ARC balances and grants with zero balances

A need to emphasize and implement ARC policies with respect to performance periods including ineligible expenditures after the identified performance period.

This report updates prior reports dealing with grant management activities

September 30, 2017 Semiannual Report

We conducted this investigation in response to allegations that a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer at the Detroit Port of Entry, received a letter of reprimand prompted by his supervisor in reprisal for Complainant's attempt to report perceived Fourth Amendment and racial profiling violations to CBP's Office of Chief Counsel . The Complainant claimed the formal reprimand caused him to be denied a temporary duty assignment.

We determined that due to changes DHS made to the process, political appointees do not influence FOIA processors to delay or withhold the release of FOIA information. Unlike the former process, the new process does not provide opportunities for political appointees in headquarters to inappropriately interfere with releases of significant FOIA information, and we did not identify any instances in which headquarters officials used the process to engage in those activities. However, because DHS has not issued final guidance for the process, it is vulnerable to misuse in the future. We recommended that the Chief FOIA Officer/Chief Privacy Officer issue final guidance on the 1-Day Awareness Notification Process. The guidance should state: 1. the purpose of the process is to inform senior officials of the imminent release of information that may raise public interest; 2. FOIA staff determine whether information should be released or withheld under FOIA’s exceptions and exemptions.