Federal Reports

VA is replacing its aging electronic health record system with a new one intended to be interoperable with the Defense Department to give healthcare providers a continuous and comprehensive medical history for veterans. The Electronic Health Record Modernization (EHRM) program is expected to take about 10 years to implement across VA facilities, with projected completion in fiscal year 2028.The Office of Inspector General (OIG) audited the EHRM program’s master schedule as part of its continued oversight of this costly and complex effort and identified reliability weaknesses. The audit team found VA lacked a reliable integrated master schedule consistent with scheduling standards, which increases the risk of missing milestones and delaying the delivery of a system to support prompt quality care to veterans. Schedule delays that extend the program are also likely to result in about $1.95 billion in cost overruns per year and may undermine VA’s other modernization efforts on supply chain and financial management systems.Additional deficiencies included known tasks not being reflected on schedules, no risk analysis, lack of longer-term actions scheduled, and no complete baseline schedule or overall schedule that fully integrated individual project schedules. VA also did not comply with federal regulations when it paid its contractor for deliverables before accepting them (reviewing for compliance with contract requirements).VA concurred with the OIG recommendations for the EHRM program office to comply with internal guidance and develop an integrated master schedule that meets standards, improve stakeholder coordination to ensure activities from all relevant VA entities are included, implement procedures for performing schedule risk analyses, make contract language and program office plans or other guidance consistent, evaluate and modify contract requirements for schedule management to clarify roles for further schedule development and maintenance, and issue guidance to accept deliverables not separately priced before invoice payment.

As part of our annual audit plan, we performed an audit of costs billed to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) by Voith Hydro, Inc. (Voith) under Contract No. 9000, for hydro modernization, unit rehabilitation, and functional support services in support of TVA's hydro facilities, including Raccoon Mountain Pumped Storage Plant. The contract provided for TVA to compensate Voith for these services on either a fixed price, time and material, and/or target price estimate basis. Our audit objectives were to determine if (1) costs were billed in accordance with the terms and conditions of the contract and (2) tasks were issued using the most cost efficient pricing methodology. Our audit scope included about $119.6 million in costs TVA paid to Voith from August 20, 2014, through December 31, 2020. This included $118.2 million for fixed price projects and $1.4 million for time and material projects. In summary, we determined Voith billed TVA (1) at least $2,435,353 for labor classifications that did not have a corresponding labor rate in the contract and (2) $12,606 in excessive labor rates due to ineligible rate adjustments. In addition, based on the limited fixed price information we reviewed, it did not appear TVA was paying excessive prices by compensating Voith on primarily a fixed price basis. (Summary Only)

In planning and performing our audit of the financial statements of the United States Capitol Police (USCP or the Department) as of and for the year ended September 30, 2021, in accordance with auditing standards generally accepted in the United States of America, we considered USCP's internal control over financial reporting as a basis for designing audit procedures that are appropriate in the circumstances for the purpose of expressing our opinions on the financial statements and on internal control over financial reporting.