Federal Reports

We audited the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) oversight of its public housing agencies’ (PHA) reasonable accommodation policies and procedures. We initiated this audit because we identified an increase in housing discrimination complaints based on a failure to provide a reasonable accommodation, even as the total number of all housing discrimination complaints was decreasing. Our audit objective was to determine whether HUD had adequate policies and procedures for ensuring that PHAs properly addressed, assessed, and fulfilled requests for reasonable accommodation, including COVID-19 related requests. HUD did not have adequate policies and procedures for ensuring that PHAs properly addressed, assessed, and fulfilled requests for reasonable accommodation. HUD also did not perform civil rights front-end reviews as required. These conditions occurred because HUD (1) did not include in its compliance monitoring guidance a requirement for personnel to review PHAs reasonable accommodation policies and procedures, (2) had not updated its guidance to ensure that it was centralized, and (3) did not believe it was responsible for conducting civil rights front-end reviews. As a result, PHAs did not receive consistent oversight in this area nationwide and may not be properly implementing existing requirements or not understand all their responsibilities related to requests for reasonable accommodation. Also, HUD’s Office of Public and Indian Housing (PIH) did not have the benefit of the information the reviews would have collected and HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (FHEO) could not use the information to address issues that may have been identified or to pursue any corrective action. We recommend that HUD’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Housing and Voucher Programs (1) update its compliance monitoring guidance to include a requirement for personnel to review PHAs reasonable accommodations policies and procedures (2) update and consolidate its reasonable accommodation policies and procedures to ensure that there is centralized guidance available for the field offices and PHAs; (3) conduct additional outreach efforts to educate tenants and PHAs on their rights and responsibilities related to requests for reasonable accommodation; (4) require that PHAs track requests for reasonable accommodation, including the date of the request, the type of request, and the disposition and date of any action taken that should be made available to HUD at its request; (5) review the joint agreement with HUD FHEO, and related Section 504 checklist, and modify, update, or recommit to it to ensure that the roles and responsibilities of the Office of Public and Indian Housing for conducting civil rights front-end reviews is clearly defined; and (6) ensure that personnel receive training on how to conduct the civil rights front-end reviews, including a review of PHAs reasonable accommodation policies and procedures.

Our objective for this report was to assess the extent to which the company has a program management framework to govern how it will complete its current and future work across the Gateway projects.While the company has started hiring staff and building a schedule, among other things, to manage the volume of work it will soon encounter on Gateway, we found that the company has not fully developed a thorough program management framework that describes the processes its departments will follow and the tools they will use to manage the program now and in the years ahead. The company is facing three challenges on Gateway without this framework. First, although Amtrak has recently added staff to the Gateway program team, it has been overtasked because the company has not assessed the resources that the team and departments providing major support to Gateway need to manage current and future work. Second, while the company has some mechanisms in place to update certain key stakeholders, it has not determined how it will collect and provide comprehensive and consolidated information on the program’s overall status—including budget and schedule—to all internal company stakeholders with responsibilities for Gateway. Third, although the company has assessed risks to individual projects in coordination with its partners, it has not assessed the broader program-wide risks it may face managing its Gateway commitments, such as potential impacts to other company acquisitions or projects. To build a thorough program management framework for Gateway, we recommended that the company (1) build out its program management plan, (2) assess its current and future resource needs, (3) implement communication protocols to manage how it will generate, collect and distribute program information to internal company stakeholders, and (4) develop a process to identify and mitigate its program risks.

This interim report presents the results of our self-initiated audit of mail delivery, customer service, and property conditions at the Parkrose Station in Portland, OR (Project Number 22-029). The Parkrose Station is in the Idaho-Montana-Oregon District of the WestPac Area. The station services ZIP Codes 92720, 97230, and 97233. There are about 108,739 people living in these ZIP Codes, which are considered urban communities. We judgmentally selected the Parkrose Station based on the number of customer inquiries the unit received per route. From June 1, 2021, through August 31, 2021, the unit received about 39.96 inquiries per route, which was larger than the average of 10.62 inquiries per route for all sites serviced by the Portland Processing and Distribution Center (P&DC).

The U.S. Postal Service owns over 8,400 facilities where it provides services, which includes maintaining proper ventilation and filtration in these facilities to ensure they are clean and safe. Ventilation and filtration are often provided by heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems in a facility. Industry standards recommend minimum ventilation rates and inspection and maintenance activities.Our objective was to assess Postal Service efforts to ensure proper ventilation and filtration in facilities and identify opportunities for improvement. For this audit, we statistically sampled 193 Postal Service-owned retail and delivery facilities with an interior size ranging from 1,000 to 100,000 square feet from a universe of 6,709 facilities.

Lack of consistent oversight and persistent Title V fee challenges may undermine Title V program implementation.

For our final report on the audit of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) management of its Active Directories, our audit objective was to determine whether NOAA has adequately managed its Active Directories to protect mission critical systems and data. To address this objective, we utilized a specialized Active Directory assessment tool and evaluated fundamental security practices, relationships, and configurations to determine whether any deficiencies existed within each Active Directory. Overall, we found that NOAA inadequately managed its Active Directories. Specifically, we found the following: I. excessive privileges could increase the risk of a successful compromise; II. inadequately managed accounts provided more opportunities for cyberattacks; and III. end-of-life operating systems were vulnerable to security exploitation.

This Office of Inspector General (OIG) Comprehensive Healthcare Inspection Program report provides a focused evaluation of the quality of care delivered in the inpatient and outpatient settings of the Durham VA Health Care System in North Carolina. The inspection covered key clinical and administrative processes that are associated with promoting quality care. It focused on Leadership and Organizational Risks; COVID-19 Pandemic Readiness and Response; Quality, Safety, and Value; Registered Nurse Credentialing; Medication Management: Remdesivir Use in VHA; Mental Health: Emergency Department and Urgent Care Center Suicide Risk Screening and Evaluation; Care Coordination: Inter-facility Transfers; and High-Risk Processes: Management of Disruptive and Violent Behavior.At the time of the review, the executive team had worked together in a permanent capacity for four months; however, the Executive Director and the Chief of Staff had served in their positions for over three years. Healthcare system leaders had recently received approval and started recruiting for a second assistant director. Employee survey data revealed satisfaction with leadership, but highlighted opportunities to reduce employees’ feelings of moral distress at work. Selected patient survey results implied lower satisfaction than the VHA average and highlighted opportunities to improve inpatient and outpatient care experiences.The OIG’s review of the healthcare system’s accreditation findings, sentinel events, and disclosures of adverse patient events did not identify any substantial organizational risk factors. Executive leaders were generally knowledgeable about selected data used in Strategic Analytics for Improvement and Learning models and should continue to take actions to improve performance.The OIG issued eight recommendations for improvement in four areas:(1) Registered Nurse Credentialing• Primary source verification of licenses(2) Mental Health• Suicide prevention training(3) Care Coordination• Transfer monitoring and evaluation• Transfer form completion• Medication list transmission(4) High-Risk Processes• Disruptive behavior committee attendance• Patient notification of Orders of Behavioral Restriction• Staff training