Federal Reports

This flash report presents our finding concerning duplicate Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) grant awards to institutions of higher education.1 This report includes a recommendation to enhance the U.S. Department of Education’s (Department) ability to prevent, identify, and correct duplicate HEERF grant awards.We identified 25 duplicate HEERF grant awards that OPE made to 24 schools, totaling about $73 million, which had not been corrected and documented in G5 as of August 2021. OPE officials stated that their processes for reviewing and approving HEERF applications and awards, which evolved over time, resulted in OPE identifying and correcting many duplicate HEERF grant awards. However, we found that OPE’s processes did not always prevent or timely identify and correct duplicate HEERF grant awards, and that OPE did not consistently document activities taken to correct duplicate awards.

External peer review of the Farm Credit Administration Office of Inspector General's audit organization, conducted by the Federal Trade Commission Office of Inspector General.

This follow-up evaluation was conducted to assess whether inspection rates of treatment, storage, and disposal facilities have changed since our earlier 2016 report on the same topic: OIG Report No. 16-P-0104, EPA Has Not Met Statutory Requirements for Hazardous Waste Treatment, Storage and Disposal Facility Inspections, but Inspection Rates Are High, issued March 11, 2016.

International mail is primarily processed through the U.S. Postal Service’s International Service Centers (ISC). ISC operations focus on the timely and secure movement of international mail and packages. ISC staff use equipment to perform processing scans for events such as mail arrival and departure and customs clearance. Scan data is recorded in the Product Tracking and Reporting (PTR) system and converted to message scripts for customers tracking packages on USPS.com. Our objective was to assess the Postal Service’s international mail operations and performance data. We reviewed key international operations and data, including analyzing 543 packages judgmentally selected at ISCs from May-December 2021.

Given the importance of medical exams to disability claims and the high cost of VA’s contracts with exam vendors, the VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) set out to determine whether the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) oversaw contract medical disability exams to ensure they met quality standards and contractual requirements, established procedures for correcting errors, and gave feedback to vendors to improve exam quality.VBA’s governance of and accountability for the exam program needs to improve. The identified deficiencies appear to have persisted, at least in part, because of limitations with VBA’s management and oversight of the program at the time of the review. The OIG found VBA’s program was deficient because it hindered the ability to hold vendors accountable for correcting errors and improving exam accuracy. VBA should improve the program to help ensure vendors produce accurate exams to support correct decisions for veterans’ claims.Contract exams are a significant investment, and VA has spent nearly $6.8 billion since fiscal year 2017. Some of the exams produced by vendors have not met contractual accuracy requirements. As a result, claims processors may have used inaccurate or insufficient medical evidence to decide veterans’ claims. Therefore, it is vital for VBA to improve the governance and accountability of the program.The OIG made four recommendations to the acting under secretary for benefits, including ensuring vendors can be held contractually accountable for unsatisfactory performance and establishing procedures for vendors to correct errors. The OIG also recommended requiring the Medical Disability Examination Office to communicate vendor exam errors to the Office of Field Operations and the regional offices and demonstrate progress in correcting them, and analyze all available data to identify systemic errors and provide systemic exam issues and error trends to vendors.

The PRAC works with dozens of IGs across the federal government to oversee pandemic relief funds. These collaborative efforts have led thus far to ten lessons learned across the pandemic response, which we outline here in our Lessons Learned Report. This report is intended as a living document that we’ll update as we continue our mission.