Federal Reports

What We Looked AtThe Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is responsible for managing and operating the busiest and most complex airspace system in the world. The FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018 (Act) required the Secretary of Transportation to establish metrics for evaluating FAA’s management and performance related to (1) the timely and cost-effective completion of projects and (2) the effectiveness in achieving the goals for an expedited, coordinated environmental review process for major safety, security, and capacity projects. Also, the Act required our office to report on FAA’s progress. Our objectives were to determine FAA’s progress in meeting the performance targets for (1) the timely and cost-effective completion of projects and (2) the achievement of an expedited, coordinated environmental review process. What We FoundFAA did not meet its major system targets in fiscal years 2019 and 2020, and full accountability and transparency in reporting is limited. Specifically, FAA did not meet its performance measure for 90 percent of major baselined acquisition programs to be within 10 percent of the current cost, schedule, and performance baselines. Also, we found weaknesses in FAA’s reporting that limited transparency and accountability. For example, FAA does not disclose when it removes programs from the measure that exceed baselines by over 10 percent and no longer reports them. In contrast, FAA reported meeting the environmental performance target to achieve on-schedule performance for 90 percent of FAA-led major transportation projects and to reduce the average time to complete environmental reviews. However, FAA’s actual results are unclear because the Agency may not have included all major projects or captured when project milestones were late in the measure. As a result, FAA’s reporting may not provide an accurate picture on how major system investments are performing or the extent to which the Agency meets its goals in the environmental measure. Our RecommendationsWe made three recommendations to improve FAA’s reporting on performance measures for major system investments and environmental review processes. FAA concurred with one recommendation and partially concurred with two. FAA proposed appropriate planned actions.

The NASA Office of Inspector General examined whether NASA has implemented an effective insider threat program in accordance with federal policies, its own Agency policies, and cybersecurity leading practices.

In accordance with our Annual Performance Plan Fiscal Year 2022, dated November 2021, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) conducted a review of the United States Capitol Police (USCP or the Department) Post-January 6, 2021, Overtime Usage and Status of the Emergency Security Supplemental Appropriation. OIG objectives were to determine (1) how the Department had utilized overtime post January 6, 2021, and (2) the status of the emergency security supplemental appropriation. The scope of the review included the period January 7, 2021 through September 30, 2021.

A General Foreman based in Washington, D.C., was terminated from the company on March 12, 2022. Our investigation found that from July 14, 2021, to January 12, 2022, the former employee violated company policies by falsely claiming and accepting payment for hours he did not work while attending an in-person class and virtual classes. In addition, we found that the former employee also misused his company-owned computer to attend classes, access school websites, conduct research, and access non-work-related websites, such as YouTube, NFL Game Access, Facebook, and various other shopping sites during company time, thereby failing to attend to his work duties and responsibilities. We interviewed the employee who admitted to using his company-owned computer to attend virtual classes and to attending one class in-person during his shift. The former employee is not eligible for rehire.

Our objective for this report was to assess the effectiveness of the company’s efforts to identify the technology needs of its business departments and implement projects in response to those needs.We found that the company has implemented a process for more effectively identifying the business departments’ technology projects. Nevertheless, the company can do more to systemically gather and robustly define a project’s technology requirements. Three factors contributed to unclear or incomplete requirements. First, business department staff did not understand their responsibilities in working with IT to clearly define project requirements. Second, some project requirements were not clear or complete because the company did not resource projects with sufficient IT staff, business staff, or both. Third, some project requirements were incomplete because IT project teams did not include staff from the appropriate business departments to ensure that the requirements included all their needs.To improve the effectiveness of implementing technology projects, we recommend that the Chief Information Officer (CIO) clarify roles to ensure that staff assigned to these projects understand their responsibilities. We also recommend that the CIO coordinate with the business departments to develop a process to identify and plan for the company’s technology resource needs beyond the upcoming year. The company agreed with our recommendations and plans on taking corrective action.