Federal Reports

Logistics is emerging as a prime means for posts and their partners to enhance their offerings, which could be critical in the face of changing and declining mail volumes. The continued growth of ecommerce packages is stretching the capacity of the logistics and transportation systems. The logistics industry is quickly growing and represents significant opportunities and risks to the Postal Service. Many aspects of the logistics industry are central to the Postal Service’s core business. By expanding its logistics offerings, the Postal Service could better retain or grow its package delivery business.

During our audit of the Alabama Medicaid Agency's (State agency) hospital certified public expenditures (CPEs) program for fiscal year (FY) 2010, we noticed that the State agency had claimed, for FYs 2010 and 2011, more than $5 million in Federal funds related to CPEs for three hospitals that appeared to be private hospitals. The three hospitals were owned but not operated by State or local governments.The State's definition of a public hospital indicates that a facility only has to be owned by a public entity, regardless of whether the facility is operated by a public entity or whether State or local government funds are used in its operation. As a result, the State agency received more than $5 million in Federal funding by claiming CPEs from the three hospitals, even though no State or local government funding was used to operate the hospitals.We are concerned that (1) the Federal Government is matching funds from private entities with no true State or local government funds involved and (2) State Governments can benefit financially from publicly owned but privately operated entities because the Federal Government has not provided a clear definition of "public funds" or "contributing public agency."We suggest that CMS consider requiring that, to certify public expenditures as the State's share of Medicaid expenditures, an entity be operated by a unit of government.

The Office of the Inspector General previously conducted a review of Corporate Accounting (Evaluation Report 2015-15313, issued November 5, 2015) to identify operational and cultural strengths and areas for improvement that could impact Corporate Accounting's organizational effectiveness. Our report identified several operational and cultural areas for improvement and included recommendations to address this. In response, we received Corporate Accounting's management decision on January 4, 2016. The objective of this follow-up review was to assess management's actions taken to address areas for improvement since our initial review. In summary, we determined actions taken by Corporate Accounting appear to have addressed the areas for improvement identified during our initial organizational effectiveness review. In addition, employees felt management's actions taken to date have resulted in positive change

ARC initiated actions such as including all projects in metrics determinations, identification of performance measures for all grants emphasizing relevant documentation to support evidence of performance measures, inclusion of all grants as subject to validation visits and dissemination and discussion of performance measure results at the annual Development District of Appalachia Conference