Federal Reports

In November 2021, Congress passed the VA Transparency & Trust Act of 2021 (Transparency Act) to provide oversight of VA’s spending of COVID-19–related emergency relief funding. To comply, VA must provide a detailed plan to Congress outlining its intent and justification for obligating and expending funds covered by the act. Additionally, the act requires VA to submit biweekly reports to Congress detailing its obligations, expenditures, and planned uses, as well as justification for any deviation from the plan. The act also requires the VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) to submit semiannual reports comparing how VA is obligating and expending covered funds to the planned obligations and expenditures.In an inaugural report, the OIG focused on whether VA’s spend plans provided to Congress on December 22, 2021, satisfied the act’s requirements. The two recommendations from that report remain open as of September 15, 2022, despite VA’s request to close the first: (1) consult with appropriate VA financial and legal officials to determine whether the use of CARES Act funds for the Beaufort National Shrine project violates the Purpose Statute and take remedial steps if a violation is found, and (2) determine the obligations to sustain essential information technology investments, update the obligation schedule as necessary, provide an updated spend plan to Congress, and include this information in future biweekly updates. In this second report, the OIG found that VA generally complied with the Transparency Act, but VA’s spend plan and biweekly reports to Congress could be improved. VA responded it was working on changes to the spend plan, expected in September 2022, and recognized manual adjustments can lead to reporting errors, but as VA implements a modern financial system management solution, it anticipates manual adjustments will decrease, thereby reducing potential errors.

The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) conducted an audit to assess if the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) effectively managed the Home Improvements and Structural Alterations (HISA) Program to provide benefits to eligible veterans.The HISA program provides payments for certain medically necessary improvements and alterations to primary residences. Generally, veterans with qualifying service-connected disabilities, or qualifying exceptions, are eligible for a lifetime benefit of $6,800, and veterans with qualifying non-service-connected disabilities are eligible for $2,000. The OIG audit team looked at VHA spending on the program from fiscal year (FY) 2017 through FY 2021.The audit team determined the HISA program overpaid roughly 2,600 veterans by an estimated $10.6 million out of $206 million total (about 5 percent). In addition, the team determined the program paid approximately $935,000 for improvements that were not supported by diagnostic or medical justification. These errors in payments occurred because eligibility requirements for the $6,800 lifetime benefit were not always followed or the disability was not documented correctly. In some cases, eligibility information for the full service-connected benefit is confusing. For example, VHA’s Rehabilitation and Prosthetic Services public website states that some non-service-connected disabilities may be rated as service-connected, which is incorrect. VHA also did not create procedures to effectively monitor medical facilities’ adherence to program timelines to ensure veterans received final payments on schedule.The OIG made five recommendations to the under secretary for health to improve oversight of this program by issuing guidance on eligibility requirements; updating eligibility information on the public website; and creating procedures to ensure medical facility staff correctly approve, justify, and document improvements and alterations.

Our overall objective is to determine if data that is generated to monitor and report on program growth and program employment is reliable, available, and accessible by the Commission to better inform decision-making and ensure achievement of strategic objectives.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) must improve its oversight of the National Board’s (Board) administration of the Emergency Food and Shelter Program (EFSP) to ensure individuals receive aid in a timely manner and that program funding is used in accordance with Federal requirements.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) did not implement controls that may have prevented the 21 state workforce agencies (SWA) in our review from distributing more than $3.7 billion in improper payments through its Lost Wages Assistance (LWA) program.

EAC OIG, through the independent public accounting firm of McBride, Lock & Associates, LLC, audited funds received by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania under the Help America Vote Act, including state matching funds and interest earned, totaling $53.4 million. This included Election Security, reissued Section 251, and Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act grants.

For our final report on our audit of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s (the Department’s) collection, production, acquisition, maintenance, distribution, use, and preservation of geospatial data, our objective was to assess the Department’s progress toward compliance with Geospatial Data Act requirements under 43 U.S.C. § 2808(a). We found the Department has generally made progress toward complying with 10 of the 13 requirements under this section. However: I. The Department’s geospatial metadata is inconsistent with best practices from FGDC Technical Guidance: Data.gov and The GeoPlatform Metadata Recommendations Including Guidelines for National Geospatial Data Assets (NGDA); and II. Technical challenges on GeoPlatform are still causing metadata harvesting issues.

For our final report on our audit of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s (theDepartment’s) working capital funds (WCFs) operated by the Office of the Secretary(Departmental) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), our auditobjectives were to determine whether (1) the Departmental and NIST WCF billing methodsused to allocate costs for internal Department support services are valid, reasonable, andconsistently applied in accordance with applicable Department policies and (2) the internalDepartment support services costs billed through the WCFs are reasonable, allowable, andsupported with documentation in accordance with applicable laws, regulations, and policies. We contracted with KPMG LLP—an independent certified public accounting firm—to perform this audit in accordance with Government Auditing Standards and contract terms. Our officeoversaw the progress of this audit; however, KPMG is solely responsible for the attachedreport and conclusions expressed in it.

DFC OIG contracted with RMA Associates, LLC (RMA) to audit DFC’s compliance with the BUILD Act. Our audit objectives were to: (1) assess DFC’s actions to implement 118 BUILD Act provisions; (2) assess the status of planned actions for those provisions DFC has not yet implemented; and (3) identify challenges that could affect DFC’s timely implementation of those planned actions. In addition, to evaluate steps DFC has taken to prioritize investments in LICs and LMICs, we compared OPIC investments to DFC investments. We also created scorecards for each BUILD Act provision.