Federal Reports

Independent Public Accountants (IPA) Audit Report of the FEC’s Human Capital Management Program.

Our objective was to evaluate the U.S. Postal Service’s management of the HCR late trip payment process. To accomplish our objective, we selected three samples of late trip payment transactions to review for accuracy of the payments. The first was a statistical sample of 208 of the 52,446 payment transactions for FY 2021 and FY 2022. The second was a judgmental sample of 55 transactions greater than 200 hours late. The last was a judgmental sample of 163 of the 1,629 lump sum payment transactions.

For our evaluation of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA’s) plans for implementation of three new broadband grant programs under the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (CAA or the Act), our objective was to determine whether NTIA complied with the requirements of the Act. Specifically, we determined (1) what steps NTIA took to award and disburse funds, (2) the challenges faced during implementation, and (3) the status of awarding and disbursing funds under the CAA. We found that NTIA took steps to implement the CAA requirements and mitigate the impact of the challenges faced. As of March 2, 2023, NTIA awarded $1,528,642,673—or approximately 96 percent of the funds appropriated by the CAA.

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) program objective is to accelerate the establishment of a reliable non-highly enriched uranium-based Mo-99 production capability in the U.S. sufficient to supply the U.S. Mo-99 demand as soon as possible. The supply should rely on diversified technologies that utilize a variety of facilities to ensure that patients in the U.S. have access to the Mo-99 they need without interruption. To achieve this objective, in 2018, a new Funding Opportunity Announcement was issued by NNSA’s Office of Material Management and Minimization for Mo-99 production without the use of highly enriched uranium for a 50-50 percent cost-sharing arrangement between the U.S. Government and each recipient of Federal funding in support of commercial application demonstration projects. Based on NNSA’s review of the awardees’ technical capacity and ability to adequately fund their cost share to bring their projects to commercial production and become long-term producers in the U.S., it awarded four cooperative agreements.We initiated this audit to determine if NNSA administered the Mo-99 cooperative agreements with commercial companies in accordance with applicable program requirements.We reviewed four cooperative agreements and found that NNSA generally administered the agreements in accordance with applicable requirements. However, NNSA did not always ensure that compliance audits were performed, as required, when expenditures exceeded $750,000. Specifically, an awardee with expenditures totaling $10,258,447.83 did not have an audit completed, as required; therefore, these costs are pending the completion of compliance audits. In addition, we found that NNSA has an opportunity to improve its internal controls related to the invoice approval process by ensuring that alternate personnel assigned to the task understand and follow the established process. We are questioning approximately $34,313 of costs paid to the awardee due to erroneous charges. Finally, we found that NNSA did not document its risk evaluation of an awardee to include how the results of the pre-award survey factored into the risk evaluation.These issues occurred because (1) NNSA does not have a policy to monitor and ensure that awardees are complying with audit requirements; (2) an alternate Contracting Officer did not follow NNSA’s internal invoice approval process and approved the invoice without a thorough invoice review; and (3) NNSA does not have a policy for formally documenting high-risk recipients and any special award conditions.To address the issues identified in this report, we have made three recommendations that, if fully implemented, should help ensure that NNSA’s administration of cooperative agreements complies with applicable regulations and policies. Management fully concurred with two of the three recommendations and concurred in principle with the other recommendation. Management also identified responsive corrective actions to address the associated report issues.

This letter to Congress reports on NCUA OIG's assessment of the NCUA's 2022 compliance under the Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019 (PIIA).