Federal Reports

The OIG audited electronic communications by the TVA Board of Directors. The objective was to evaluate controls over the electronic distribution of TVA business information to and from the Board by non-TVA managed mediums. We determined current Board email practices were consistent with the Presidential and Federal Records Act Amendments of 2014. In addition, we found the third-party service used to distribute sensitive documents to the Board had appropriate processes and controls in place as reported by another independent audit company. However, improvements could be made to reduce the risk of exposing TVA business information. The Board of Directors agreed with the findings and will continue to explore options around the recommendations.

The OIG evaluated the efficiency of TVA's hiring process from when the need to hire an annual employee was identified until the position was filled. We determined the process was inefficient due to the following: (1) a lack of training in (a) the use of the People Lifecycle Unified System (PLUS) to initiate a vacancy, (b) requesting a recruiting strategy, and (c) policies for obtaining approvals and posting vacancies within and outside TVA; delays in receipt of documentation by the hiring manager and fingerprinting potential candidates; a lack of defined job requirements for job codes; redundancy in the application and background investigation process; lack of a repository to capture feedback on Human Relations' performance; and deficiencies in PLUS that hinders updating of data by applicants, running queries, and issuance of unique employee identification numbers; and (2) issues impacting the usefulness of the time-to-fill metric as a reliable performance measure. In addition, we identified two areas where TVA does not comply with the Office of Personnel Management requirements related to Selective Service registration and internal requirements for psychological evaluations for system operators and dispatchers. Three additional matters came to our attention during the audit related to completing psychological evaluations and motor vehicle checks for certain positions. These three matters were not directly related to our audit objectives but were included in the report for management's consideration and action, as necessary.Except for suggested actions to assess the risk of having armed guards without psychological evaluations and use a single application to reduce redundancy in the application process, TVA management generally agreed with our recommendations.

Nuclear Power Group (NPG) Business Practice (BP) 247, Revision 9, Emerging Regulatory Issues Management Process, "establishes a process to identify, categorize, manage, monitor and provide statuses to senior management on issues that may have regulatory impacts on Nuclear Power Group (NPG) or NPG managed material licenses." The OIG determined the process for addressing nuclear emerging regulatory issues (ERI) is generally effective.During the period of our review, September 26, 2009, through September 26, 2014, we identified no instances where TVA overlooked an ERI related to NRC-proposed rulemaking; however, we did identify areas where the BP 247 was not being followed. Specifically, (1) the ERI Monitoring Table was not being filled out completely and consistently, (2) formal executive briefings were not consistently occurring, and (3) executive sponsors were not being assigned to ERIs with significant impacts on NPG resources. As a result of our audit, TVA began taking corrective action by issuing a revision to BP 247, with an effective date of December 12, 2014.