Federal Reports

A Trackman/Watchman based in New York resigned on April 12, 2022, prior to his disciplinary hearing. The former employee failed to report his two alcohol related arrests in August 2017 and August 2019 and their corresponding convictions in July 2019 and April 2021.

We evaluated the U.S. Small Business Administration’s (SBA) controls to flag or prevent potentially fraudulent Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) applications submitted from foreign Internet Protocol (IP) addresses.Although the agency implemented several layers of controls to prevent or reduce fraud from foreign countries, individuals at foreign IP addresses were able to access the COVID-19 EIDL application system. SBA received millions of attempts to submit COVID-19 EIDL applications from foreign IP addresses and stopped most of them; however, the agency processed more than 233,000 of these applications from March 20, 2020 to November 12, 2021, our review period. Of this amount, SBA approved and disbursed 41,638 COVID-19 EIDLs, advances, and grants for $1.3 billion.The numerous applications submitted from foreign IP addresses are an indication of potential fraud that may involve international criminal organizations. OIG has ongoing investigations into international organized crime operations that applied for and stole pandemic relief funds. SBA officials were aware of and concerned about the potential fraud from overseas.We recommended the agency thoroughly review the loans in our test sample and the $1.3 billion disbursed to applicants from foreign IP addresses. The agency should stop any further or future disbursements to any applicants deemed to be ineligible or fraudulent. We also recommended SBA recover any disbursed loans and advances determined to be ineligible or fraudulent. Additionally, we recommended that the agency examine controls related to foreign IP addresses and ensure these controls are more effective in future disaster processing systems.Management partially agreed with recommendation 1, stating they would conduct a proactive review of COVID-19 EIDL applications that received funds for potentially ineligible or fraudulent businesses. They will attempt recovery and continue to refer suspected fraud to the OIG. SBA agreed with recommendation 2, stating the agency will examine controls related to foreign IP addresses and ensure these controls are more effective in future disaster processing systems.

A distribution and routing (D&R) tag is a self-adhesive barcoded label attached to a handling unit, which is a piece of mail or a sack that contains multiple mail pieces. Proper preparation of handling units includes removing old tags before applying new ones and verifying that tags are accurately formatted and legible.The U.S. Postal Service is contractually required to pay an additional relabeling fee of [redacted] per handling unit for [redacted] to replace D&R tags when units arrive at a [redacted] facility and tags are missing or illegible. Handling units with unreadable or missing D&R tags are redirected to a designated area where [redacted] employees conduct the relabeling process. From fiscal year 2019 to 2021, [redacted] created about [redacted] D&R tags, and the number of relabeled tags has steadily increased year over year since 2019.

The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) conducted a healthcare inspection related to community care coordination delays for a patient with oral cancer at the Veterans Health Care System of the Ozarks (facility) in Fayetteville, Arkansas.The OIG determined that the facility’s Office of Community Care (OCC) staff failed to schedule radical resection surgery within 30 days of an initial consult and failed to act or delayed taking action on five community care consults for the patient’s surgery. As a result, the patient’s surgery took place 205 days after the first consult was placed. Facility OCC staff could not provide an explanation for the failure to act or the delays.The OIG substantiated that facility OCC staff failed to coordinate radiation therapy and delayed coordinating chemotherapy to begin within six weeks after surgery, as requested. Community hospital staff did not use a request-for-services form when seeking approval for the patient’s radiation therapy and chemotherapy evaluation appointment. Facility OCC staff denied the referral for radiation therapy at the community hospital, citing a lack of Veterans Health Administration OCC guidance on community care referrals. Although facility OCC staff entered a consult for chemotherapy at the facility, they failed to communicate the urgency of the care to facility oncology providers.A facility oncology provider saw the patient nine weeks after surgery and documented changes to the patient’s oral cancer and that radiation therapy would not be beneficial. The patient was placed on palliative care and died.The OIG made one recommendation to the Under Secretary for Health related to standardizing community care coordination for follow-up requests from the community provider and two recommendations to the Facility Director related to completing consults within the 30 days and coordinating oncology care in the community.

Objective: To determine whether the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) Information Technology Investment Process (ITIP) supports strategic decision making and allows the Agency to plan for, manage, and implement information technology (IT) investments as projected.