Federal Reports

This Office of Inspector General’s semiannual report summarizes our activities and accomplishments for the period April 1, 2017, through September 30, 2017. During this period, the OIG issued one final audit/evaluation report, completed one investigation, published one Management Advisory and received 302 hotline inquiries, of which 117 were charge processing issues, 82 were complaints related to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,as amended, and 93 were other investigative allegations.

We determined that FEMA did not manage disaster relief grants and funds adequately and did not hold grant recipients accountable for properly managing disaster relief funds. We identified persistent problems such as improper contract costs and ineligible and unsupported expenditures as examples of this continued failure. During FY 2016, we identified $155.6 million, or 23 percent, in questioned costs out of the $686 million that we audited, which we recommended FEMA disallow as ineligible and unsupported costs. Further, FEMA still does not hold grant recipients accountable for failing to provide adequate monitoring or technical assistance to subgrantees.

The Postal Service’s scanned package volume increased from 3.5 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2015 to 4.3 billion in FY 2016 – an increase of 22 percent. From July 1 through December 31, 2016, the Postal Service scanned over 2 billion packages sent to over 136 million delivery locations on over 227,092 routes throughout the country. This audit was self-initiated based on our data analytics indicating an increasing number of questionable or improper delivery scans occurring at delivery units and about 1.4 million customer complaints in FY 2017 related to delivery.