Federal Reports

Our objective was to identify the remaining Department Active Directories, which have not been reviewed by the Office of Inspector General (OIG), and summarize past OIG work related to the management of Active Directories. We found that a lack of adequate Active Directory security reviews caused similar issues across multiple Department bureaus and that the Department does not have a policy for regular Active Directory security reviews. Without effective security reviews, deficiencies will likely continue to exist within the Department, providing threat actors with additional potential attack paths to undermine the sensitive data and applications that are supported by Active Directories.

VA must submit an annual report to Congress documenting its capacity to provide specialized treatment comparable to that available as of October 9, 1996, for veterans with spinal cord injuries and disorders, traumatic brain injury, blindness, prosthetics and sensory aids, or mental health issues. Congress legislated this requirement to ensure that the decentralization of the Veterans Health Administration’s field management structure in the late 1990s did not adversely affect VA’s ability to care for veterans with disabilities. Each year, the VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) is required to report to Congress on the accuracy of VA’s special disabilities capacity report. While the review found nothing that would lead the OIG to believe the information in the fiscal year (FY) 2021 capacity report was not fairly stated and accurate, it did identify some minor errors and data omissions that have persisted from the OIG’s FY 2020 review. For example, VA is unable to report mental health capacity data comparable to that from 1996 as required by law because of changes in how treatment outcomes of veterans with mental illness are defined and tracked. The capacity report also does not capture data on the services veterans receive through community care or changes in bed capacity at VA’s centers for spinal cord injuries and disorders. Congress would be better served by modernizing the reporting metrics to assess VA’s capacity to provide care for these veterans. The under secretary for health concurred with the OIG’s report.

The EPA did not follow the typical intra-agency review and clearance process during the development and publication of the January 2021 perfluorobutane sulfonic acid, or PFBS, toxicity assessment.