Federal Reports

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act (IIJA) Funding Dashboard allows stakeholders to explore USDA programs that received IIJA funding, as well as IIJA monies awarded through USDA.

The PRAC along with 10 of our member Offices of Inspectors General began a case study-based review, in part, to learn more about how much pandemic relief funding went to recipients within six randomly selected communities. Using a combination of federal, state, and local data sources, we identified that 10 federal agencies provided approximately $2.65 billion in pandemic relief funds to the six communities through approximately 89 pandemic relief programs and subprograms during the first 18 months of the pandemic (March 2020 through September 2021). We also found that tracking pandemic funds to the community level required the use of multiple non-public federal, state, and local data systems. In addition, we found that data collection and system limitations at the federal, state, and local levels impacted our efforts to obtain consistent data or data reports. This is the first in a series of reports to be issued under this review.

We determined the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) coal plants have taken steps to reduce combustible coal dust since dedicated Combustible Dust Program funding was provided by TVA in 2018. Specifically, coal plants have dedicated combustible dust housekeeping crews to help mitigate combustible dust accumulations, and projects were completed to improve conditions at the plants. However, we identified areas of noncompliance with TVA Technical Safety Procedure 18.1205, Combustible Dust (Combustible Dust TSP), related to (1) coal dust accumulation, (2) documentation of combustible dust daily inspections, and (3) training. In addition, we identified an area for improvement related to inconsistent language in the Combustible Dust TSP and site combustible dust programs.

EAC OIG issued this advisory to advise EAC’s Executive Director on recent Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) board costs, which were incurred without appropriate policies and procedures to ensure that federal regulations were followed and costs were minimized.

We inspected the U.S. Small Business Administration’s (SBA) administrative process used to review potentially fraudulent Restaurant Revitalization Fund (RRF) applications and recover funds.Program officials designed the RRF application validation and approval processes using the Government Accountability Office’s A Framework for Managing Fraud Risks in Federal Programs. However, 3,790 applications submitted through a point-of-sale partner were processed without verifying gross sales, a key control designed to prevent ineligible entities from receiving awards.As a result, SBA’s RRF application processing system approved almost all 3,790 applications for awards, totaling $557 million, despite not having gross sales verified. Once notified, SBA took quick action and prevented $278.4 million from being disbursed to 1,618 of the 3,790 applicants, including 946 of the 1,056 potentially fraudulent awards which had been reported to the OIG Hotline. However, SBA has not reviewed the remaining 2,172 awards, totaling $278.6 million, which included the remaining 110 potentially fraudulent awards reported to OIG, totaling $20.7 million.We made one recommendation to prioritize and complete the review of 2,172 RRF awards, which includes 110 RRF awards that were suspected of fraud and referred to the OIG Hotline. These awards were flagged for having unsupported gross sales. SBA should take appropriate administrative actions to recover improper payments.SBA agreed with the recommendation. SBA managers planned to review all 2,172 RRF awards during the post-award process and resolve the recommendation.

We conducted this work as part of our ongoing, integrated oversight of the funding provided to Forest Service's Collaborative Aquatic Landscape Restoration (CALR) program by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA).