Federal Reports

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) did not always implement effective internal controls to provide oversight of COVID-19 Funeral Assistance. FEMA’s funeral assistance program greatly expanded the universe of reimbursable expenses for deaths related to COVID-19, even beyond those specifically identified as ineligible under established FEMA policy, without establishing guardrails to ensure relief was limited to necessary expenses and serious needs as required by statute.

The objectives of our audit were to determine whether the University of Southern California (1) applied and documented its use of professional judgment, including dependency override, in accordance with sections 479A and 480(d) of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended and (2) reported its use of professional judgment, including dependency override, in accordance with the Federal Student Aid Handbook, Application and Verification Guide. This was the third in a series of audits on this subject. Prior two audits can be found here: https://oig.ed.gov/search?keys=professional+judgment.

The contractor did not fully comply with Indian Preference requirements in the original contract and failed to document some employees’ training.

The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) contracted with the independent public accounting firm CliftonLarsonAllen LLP (CLA) to provide consulting services related to the deployment of VA’s new general ledger system known as the Integrated Financial and Acquisition Management System (iFAMS) and potential risks to the auditability of future VA financial statements. CLA did not perform an audit of iFAMS, and this engagement was not a financial statement audit. CLA expressed neither an opinion nor a conclusion on the effectiveness of VA’s controls over any part of its financial statements or the internal controls of iFAMS. However, CLA’s observations include that VA has not adequately described how the roles and responsibilities of two contractors relate to VA management’s control objectives; has not documented procedures describing controls to ensure the completeness and accuracy of financial data transmitted from iFAMS to the Management Information Exchange (MinX) system, an application used to consolidate general ledger activities from the Financial Management System and iFAMS for external financial reporting; is not periodically reconciling various reports to the iFAMS general ledger; has not prepared a risk assessment of financial statement auditability focusing on the iFAMS implementation; and continues to rely on lump sum adjustments by financial personnel as an interim fix to correct balances in iFAMS. The OIG generally releases a management advisory memorandum to provide information on matters of concern that the OIG has gathered as part of its oversight mission. In this instance, the consulting engagement resulted in information that OIG leaders felt should be brought to VA’s attention. The OIG will use the information gained from this engagement when planning future audits of VA’s financial statements.