Open Recommendations

Direct U.S. Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (SAPR) Program officials to work with appropriate USMMA IT officials to ensure that data collected and used for tracking claims and incidents of sexual assault and sexual harassment is secure in accordance with NDAA requirements.

Direct the Maritime Administration's Privacy Officer to complete a privacy impact analysis to ensure personally identifiable information used by the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (SAPR)s Program is secure based on Federal requirements and verify completion.

Direct U.S. Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (SAPR) Program officials to work with the USMMA's IT officials to implement the necessary security controls in the following areas: access control, encryption, audit logging, data exfiltration, data integrity, and backup, to mitigate possible cybersecurity risks to the SAPR Programs sensitive information in the interim to the extent possible until a new system is implemented and verify completion.

Direct U.S. Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (SAPR) Program officials to update its spreadsheet system to include all information available that is required by the statute and verify completion.

Treasury OIG should follow-up with Pennsylvania management if the transactions noted as unsupported or ineligible expenditures within the Grants greater than or equal to $50,000, Transfers greater than or equal to $50,000, Direct Payments greater than or equal to $50,000, and Aggregate Reporting less than $50,000 payment types can be supported. If support is not provided, Treasury OIG should recoup the funds or request that Pennsylvania management provide support for replacement expenses, not previously charged, that were eligible during the CRF period of performance. Further, based on Pennsylvania's responsiveness to Treasury OIG's requests and its ability to provide sufficient documentation…

Conduct a file review of the reopened Dependency and Indemnity Compensation claims granted under the PACT Act from January 1 through August 31, 2023, and take appropriate actions to ensure monetary benefits and notification letters are accurate.

Reduce examination and medical opinion overdevelopment by establishing a plan to continue the development of examination request tools and evaluate the effectiveness of these efforts for any future enhancements.

(U) Rec. 3: This recommendation is Controlled Unclassified Information

(U) Rec. 3: This recommendation is Controlled Unclassified Information

Establish Supervision’s objectives for the onboarding process for transitioning depository institutions.

Establish clear roles and responsibilities at the headquarters level for overseeing Supervision’s onboarding process.

Develop and implement an officewide policy that describes management’s expectations for onboarding depository institutions that transition to the CFPB’s supervisory oversight. The policy should articulate
a. key onboarding steps that OSE should take before and after a depository institution transitions.
b. expected time frames for completing the key steps.
c. guidance on coordinating with the prudential regulator of the onboarding institution, including discussion topics; documentation needs; and the process for managing preexisting supervisory issues, such as MRAs and enforcement actions.

Develop methods to monitor OSE’s execution of the onboarding process, including
a. a tracking mechanism to determine whether the key onboarding steps have been completed.
b. a process for obtaining feedback from the depository institutions that transitioned regarding the effectiveness of the onboarding process.
c. a forum for the regional offices to share their experiences regarding the onboarding process to drive continuous improvement.

The Chief, Taxpayer Services, and Chief, Tax Compliance Officer, should update internal guidance and develop more robust training to ensure that employees perform adequate research of tax accounts to identify outstanding tax debt prior to initiating manual refunds or credit elects.

The Chief, Taxpayer Services, and Chief, Tax Compliance Officer, should request the necessary programming changes to ensure that the duplicate return freeze and the telephone excise tax freeze code function appropriately. In addition, request programming changes to ensure that overpayments from undelivered refunds and interest offset appropriately.

The Chief, Taxpayer Services, and Chief, Tax Compliance Officer, should verify that the programming changes associated with overpayments offsetting to tax debt on Form 720, the offset overflow freeze, and to payments associated with the Notice of Federal Tax Lien or Levy, are operating correctly.

The Chief, Taxpayer Services, and Chief, Tax Compliance Officer, should analyze the 8,452 individual and 31,967 business cases that we identified and determine whether additional programming or procedural errors exist in the process of offsetting refunds and credit elects. Take appropriate corrective action to prevent erroneous refunds and credit elects in the future.

The Chief Information Officer should ensure that the requested programming changes are implemented by January 2026.

The Chief, Taxpayer Services, and Chief, Tax Compliance Officer, should remove the erroneous LLC indicator from the 76 sole proprietorship accounts.

We recommend that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services instruct the SSAs to follow up with the five nursing homes (three nonprofit and two Government-owned) that may not have complied with Federal requirements to verify that they have taken corrective actions.

We recommend that the Health Resources and Services Administration require the OPTN IT system contractor to remediate the 22 vulnerabilities identified and verify that the 22 vulnerabilities identified were remediated.

We recommend that the Health Resources and Services Administration require the OPTN IT system contractor to improve network monitoring by implementing NIST SP 800-53, Revision 5, for the OPTN IT system, to include data loss prevention technology to prevent unauthorized exfiltration of information (Control SC-7(10)) and red-team exercises to simulate attempts by adversaries to compromise organizational systems (Control CA-8(2)).

We recommend that the Health Resources and Services Administration implement procedures to help ensure that the OPTN IT system contractor maintains compliance with federally required cybersecurity controls policies and standards on a continuing basis.

Castro recommends Treasury OIG follow-up with Guam's management to confirm the transactions noted as unsupported expenditures within the Direct Payments greater than or equal to $50,000, Aggregate Reporting less than $50,000, and Aggregate Payments to Individuals can be supported. If support is not provided, Treasury OIG should recoup the funds or request that Guam management provide support for replacement expenses, not previously charged, that were eligible during the CRF period of performance. Further, based on the Government of Guam's responsiveness to Treasury OIG's requests and its ability to provide to provide sufficient documentation and/or replace unsupported and ineligible transactions charged…

We recommend that USAID/Tanzania verify that Tanzania Women Lawyers Association corrects the one material weakness in internal control detailed on page 23 of the audit report.