Federal Reports

Our objective was to evaluate how DHS determined employee status for placement into vaccine distribution priority groups; determine how DHS, in conjunction with VHA, planned to triage and distribute available vaccine inventory and vaccinate frontline, mission-critical DHS staff; and evaluate how DHS executed its plan.

Several challenges limited our ability to fulfill by audit the mandate in Section 1216 of the DRRA. For instance, FEMA’s data system does not capture Individuals and Households Program (IHP) assistance data in a manner that allows us to accurately calculate a percentage of distributions made in error in any 12-month period. In addition, the amount of data required to conduct the audit represents millions of rows of data, as well as underlying supporting documents. These efforts require considerable resources for FEMA to provide, and the Office of Inspector General to review, the IHP information. Facing these limitations, we adopted an alternate approach to estimate FEMA’s percentage of distributions made in error. Specifically, we analyzed FEMA’s IHP Recoupment Processing Executive Summary for fiscal years 2015 through 2019 and concluded that, for these fiscal years, FEMA’s percentage of distributions identified for recoupment was, on average, less than 1 percent — well below the DRRA’s 4 percent threshold.

Objective: To determine whether the Social Security Administration (SSA) had adequate controls over mail processing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The U.S. Postal Service’s International Service Center in San Francisco, CA (SFO ISC) houses select international and military mail processing functions and a retail unit. In April 2020, the lessor notified the Postal Service that they were discontinuing the facility lease and subsequent discussions about potential on-airport facility alternatives proved unsuccessful. As a result, the Postal Service decided to permanently relocate processing operations to local and regional facilities and temporarily suspend retail services, steering customers to nearby post offices pending a final Postal Service decision on the unit. This report responds to a September 2021 congressional request regarding closure of the SFO ISC.

The tribal official profited from awarding contracts that resulted in his company receiving subcontracts, but no policy prohibited his actions.