Federal Reports

As part of its annual audit plan, the OIG audited $16.7 million in costs billed to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) by EnergySolutions, LLC (ES) under Contract No. 69836. The contract provided for ES to furnish personnel, equipment, chemicals, and consumables necessary to process liquid radioactive waste for all three TVA nuclear operating sites. Our objective was to determine if the costs billed to TVA were in accordance with the provisions of TVA's Contract No. 69836 with ES. In summary, we determined ES overbilled TVA $85,246, including: (1) $42,229 in ineligible and unsupported supply, per diem, and travel costs for spent fuel pool cleanout work; (2)$28,967 in ineligible equipment costs; (3) $11,500 in unauthorized waste shipments; and (4) $2,500 in ineligible dewatering and cask costs. ES agreed the ineligible equipment costs were overbilled and issued a credit to TVA on January 14, 2015. In addition, we found $68,898 in costs paid under Contract No. 69836 that should have been paid under Contract No. 69885. We recommended TVA management take action to (1) recover the remaining $56,279 in overbilled costs from ES and (2) ensure future costs paid to ES are paid under the correct contract.(Summary Only)

The Office of Inspector General examined NASA's efforts to develop software that will launch the SLS rocket and Orion capsule from the Kennedy Space Center.

Advertising mail, an important tool for businesses and nonprofit organizations, is critically important to the U.S. Postal Service’s bottom line, generating $19.4 billion in revenue in FY 2015. Most ad mail is sent as Standard Mail, which declined 20 percent in volume during the Great Recession and has not fully rebounded, unlike before when it kept pace with growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Both general economic factors and digital deflation (the pressure for lower prices driven by low-cost technologies) have adversely affected ad mail. However, ad mail itself offers many strengths and some areas of opportunity for the Postal Service.

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.