Federal Reports

The U.S. Postal Service and the Board of Governors released their 10-year strategic plan, called Delivering for America: Our Vision and Ten-Year Plan to Achieve Financial Sustainability and Service Excellence (the Plan), on March 23, 2021. The Plan outlines steps to achieve a positive net income within three years and break-even operating performance over the next 10 years. To achieve these objectives, the Postal Service identified 13 strategic focus areas, which are supported by 175 initiatives designed to eliminate a 10-year projected loss through additional revenue and cost savings opportunities, totaling $160 billion.Our objective was to evaluate the Plan to determine if the underlying assumptions and projections were supported and whether metrics were established and reasonable. We reviewed 58 key initiatives, their risks and interdependencies, as well as methods of communication for internal and external stakeholders.

We inspected the U.S. Small Business Administration’s (SBA) award and payment practices used to administer the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant (SVOG) program.Even after determining multiple disbursements would better protect grant funds from fraud or misuse, SBA switched to a riskier single advance payment for all grantees. This payment method may have hastened award disbursement, but the agency removed internal controls that would have better protected taxpayer funds. Multiple disbursements enable program officials to verify that grant recipients used award funds for allowable activities before disbursing additional funds.We selected 10 awards, totaling $33.2 million, to use as a sample to test SBA’s disbursement and budget approval practices. None of the 10 awards reviewed had the proper documentation signed by an authorized government official. The authorizing agency signature on the notice of award demonstrates that the proper procedure has been followed and the obligation has been officially recorded. Without the proper official documentation, all 10 awards we reviewed, totaling $33.2 million, are unauthorized commitments.Program officials did not ensure it had adequate support for the grant amounts in 3 of the 10 awards we reviewed. SBA awarded these three recipients $2.6 million above amounts that were requested. The higher grant award amounts did not correspond to their budgets, nor was there supporting documentation to show why SBA awarded the higher amounts. In addition, SBA did not consistently ensure the recipient’s budget accurately summarized the financial plan for the award amount. Awards made to 1,849 recipients, totaling $1.49 billion, did not have a budget that reconciled to the award amount.We made six recommendations for SBA management to ensure SBA properly safeguards program funds and improves disbursement and award procedures while administering the SVOG program. SBA management agreed or partially agreed with four recommendations and disagreed with two. Management’s planned actions resolve all six recommendations.

The objective was to conduct an unannounced inspection of Folkston Processing Center and Folkston Annex to monitor compliance with select ICE detention standards.

The USPP failed to record all its radio communications in the WMA for more than 2 years, but now has a functioning recorder.

SIGPR Quarterly Report to Congress