Open Recommendations

OIG recommends that the Bureau of Administration, in coordination with the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), update Department of State (Department) trafficking in persons (TIP) training to clarify that TIP monitoring is required for all applicable contracts, not just those that employ third-country national or migrant labor.

OIG recommends that the Bureau of Administration, in coordination with the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), update Department of State (Department) trafficking in persons (TIP) training to include discussions of Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 52.222-50(h) requirements for contractors to maintain TIP compliance plans and Department guidance and requirements for reviewing the plans and using them to inform TIP contract monitoring strategies established in accordance with Recommendation 3.

OIG recommends that the Bureau of Administration instruct Contracting Officers (CO) with oversight responsibility for active contracts in OIG’s nonstatistical subsample, listed in Table A.4, to review contractor trafficking in persons (TIP) compliance plans associated with these contracts and determine whether to apply any of the remedies outlined in Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 52.222-50(e) based on contractors’ failure to adhere to FAR 52.222-50(h) requirements.

Rec. 1: The DoD OIG recommended that the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness review the race codes and categories used in DoD personnel databases and update those databases to ensure compliance with DoD regulations.

Establish controls to ensure staff and contractors follow existing requirements to test single adults for COVID-19 before transfer usingdomestic commercial flights.

Clarify existing COVID-19 testing policies to include modes of transportation and timeframes for mandatory testing beforetransport.

We recommend that the FWS resolve the questioned costs related to unsupported indirect costs totaling $435,624.

We recommend that the FWS work with the Department to develop and implement a mechanism to hold its staff accountable for following Federal regulations related to indirect costs and record retention, and its own SOPs.

We recommend that the FWS resolve the questioned costs related to unsupported other direct costs totaling $201,708.

We recommend that the FWS work with the Department to develop a mechanism to hold staff accountable for following its SOPs related to purchase requests and documentation retention.

We recommend that the FWS resolve the questioned costs related to drawdowns totaling $169,989.

We recommend that the FWS work with the Department to develop a mechanism to hold staff accountable for following its SOPs for conducting drawdowns and maintaining adequate documentation for expenditures in the accounting system.

We recommend that the FWS resolve the questioned costs related to unallocated leave payouts totaling $6,480.

We recommend that the FWS require the Department to update and implement its SOPs to ensure that leave payouts are properly allocated in accordance with Federal regulations.

Evaluate recently implemented recruitment and retention initiatives and document lessons learned.

Adopt and execute strategic workforce planning.

Conduct an environmental scan of the private sector and other government publishing entities to discover newly available technology to potentially implement at GPO.

Establish and implement clear customer satisfaction standards and metrics for all GPO organizational units. Include customer satisfaction standards and metrics in all organizational unit strategic plans. Identify, document, and implement improvements based on customer feedback.

Incorporate business unit-level progress toward execution of strategic plans in an Executive-level monitoring tool, such as the GPO Executive Dashboard.

Develop for Acquisition Services and Human Capital, an automation plan outlining GPO's ongoing efforts and way-forward to make processes more efficient, effective and accountable.

Add a running list of pending procurement actions, by stage, to the GPO Executive Dashboard to increase accountability and awareness of processing time for various actions.

Conduct a strategic, enterprise-wide, and forward-looking forecasting initiative to discern where GPO needs to be in the next decade and beyond.

On June 15, 2021, we alerted IRS management of our concerns with the systemic calculation of the allowable RRC amount. We recommended that IRS management review the returns we identified and provide us with any corrective actions they intended to take.

The PMF Program should utilize applicant flow data to conduct organizational analyses in compliance with program regulations and develop robust policies and procedures for this process. The results of this work should be made publicly available.

The PMF Program Director and program leaders should maintain demographic analyses on a shared network drive in order to establish and promote cognitive awareness amongst PMF team members, and develop policies and procedures surrounding this practice.