Federal Reports

Results of the FEC OIG FY21 annual review of the FEC's compliance with the PIIA.

Our evaluation was conducted as part of a series of reviews to determine whether the Bureau’s planning and execution of 2020 Census peak operations successfully reduced the risk to decennial census data quality and costs. Overall, we found that the Bureau continues to face longstanding challenges in providing sufficient governance for its personnel suitability program, which is necessary to ensure that background investigation requirements are met at its facilities. Specifically, we found the following:I. The Bureau continues to have a significant backlog of post-employment cases requiring adjudication and the actual number of cases requiring adjudication is questionable.II. Inadequate documentation and oversight have allowed quality problems regarding post-employment background investigations to persist.III. Census Investigative Services did not properly adjudicate results for an estimated 7 percent of temporary 2020 Census pre-employment, fingerprint-only investigations.IV. The Census Hiring and Employment Check system data is incomplete and, insome instances, inaccurate.

In this semiannual report, we discuss both the major accomplishments and activities of OIG from October 1, 2021 through March 31, 2022, as well as its goals and future plans.

The Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is part of the National Nuclear Security Administration nuclear security enterprise. LANL’s primary mission is to ensure the safety, security, and reliability of the Nation’s nuclear stockpile. Department orders and guidance reflect the Department’s commitment to operating its nuclear facilities and conducting work activities in a manner that ensures compliance with environmental, safety, and health requirements.We conducted this followup audit to determine whether: (1) LANL took corrective actions related to the recommendations in our prior report on Issues Management at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (DOE-OIG-16-07, February 2016), and (2) actions taken to correct the deficiencies in our prior report resulted in an issues management program compliant with Federal requirements.We found that LANL took corrective actions related to Recommendations 1 through 3 in our prior report. Specifically, our current review did not reveal significant issues with LANL’s Issues Management program’s compliance with Federal requirements However, we found that LANL’s corrective actions related to Recommendation 4 did not always ensure all applicable subcontracts contained the Differing Professional Opinion requirement. By not including Exhibit F documents and the mandatory Differing Professional Opinion language into subcontracts for offsite work that LANL categorized as medium- and low-hazard, subcontractor employees may not know a process exists to report differing professional opinions involving technical issues that have a potentially adverse environmental, safety, or health impact.The issues we identified occurred, in part, because LANL’s process to include Differing Professional Opinion requirements in subcontracts did not always ensure all applicable subcontracts contained this mandatory requirement. Management agreed with our finding and recommendation, and its proposed corrective action is consistent with our recommendation.