Federal Reports

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) is initiating a risk assessment of the Commission’s Government Charge Card Programs. Our overall objectives are to 1) assess, identify and analyze the risks of illegal, improper or erroneous purchases and payments; and 2) determine whether the results of the risk assessment justify performing an audit in compliance with the Government Charge Card Abuse Prevention Act of 2012.

This Office of Inspector General (OIG) Comprehensive Healthcare Inspection Program report provides a focused evaluation of VHA facilities’ selected requirements and guidelines for medication management. This evaluation focused on compliance with program requirements and processes related to long-term opioid use for pain.This report describes medication management findings from healthcare inspections initiated at 36 VHA medical facilities from November 4, 2019, through September 21, 2020. Each inspection involved interviews with facility leaders and staff and reviews of clinical and administrative processes. The results in this report are a snapshot of VHA performance at the time of the fiscal year 2020 OIG reviews.The OIG found general compliance with many of the selected requirements. However, the OIG identified weaknesses with• aberrant behavior risk assessments,• concurrent benzodiazepine therapy,• urine drug testing,• informed consent,• patient follow-up, and• quality measure oversight.

Letter to Shalanda Young, Acting Director, Office of Management and Budget

For our final report on our audit of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES)–R series program (the Program), our objective was to assess the Program’s progress in achieving launch readiness for the GOES-T mission. To satisfy our objective, we examined technical performance challenges and changes to technical, schedule, and cost baselines since GOES-S launched in March 2018. We found the following: I. The Program works toward the earliest achievable launch dates at potentially increased development risk; II. the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) is planning GOES launches sooner than its policy requires without analyzing the costs; and III. NESDIS assumes ground storage of satellites is not viable, but has not formally studied tradeoffs.

The objective of our review was to evaluate the Department of Education’s plans and processes to ensure Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education (TEACH) grantees receive full-time credit toward their service obligations for part-time and temporarily interrupted service due to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). We found weaknesses in FSA’s development and implementation of plans and processes to ensure TEACH grantees receive full-time credit towards their service obligations for part-time or temporarily interrupted service due to COVID-19. Additionally, we found that FSA did not effectively develop or oversee the implementation of the TEACH Grant servicer contract modification.

We found that the BLM did not review the Federal exclusions to determine if mineral lease recipients were suspended or debarred before issuing leases.

We found that ONRR needs to strengthen its internal controls and processes to ensure accurate royalty reporting for adjustments.