Open Recommendations

We recommend that the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute strengthen its internal controls for OTs by updating its policies and procedures to require that OT justification memos include explicit statements as to why a traditional award instrument could not be used for a project.

We recommend that the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute strengthen its internal controls for OTs by updating its policies and procedures to require that justifications for the continued use of OT authority be documented throughout the life of OT agreements with reconsideration required at a defined frequency.

We recommend that the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute strengthen its internal controls for OTs by updating its policies and procedures to specify requirements for determining and documenting the fairness and reasonableness of award amounts or cost estimates provided by OT award applicants.

We recommend that the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute strengthen its internal controls for OTs by updating its policies and procedures to specify requirements for determining and documenting the allowability of costs charged to OT awards.

We recommend that the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute strengthen its internal controls for OTs by updating its policies and procedures to specify requirements for determining and documenting its compliance with Federal funding requirements including the proper establishment of bona fide needs through specific work requirements prior to the obligation of OT funds.

The Office of Policy, Planning, and Resources, in coordination with the Foreign Service Institute, should develop and implement a training plan with short-, medium-, and long-term objectives that address how to train public diplomacy officers and locally employed staff in core competencies based on new position descriptions for Public Diplomacy Staffing Initiative implementation.

Review the modified National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System mining permits issued by West Virginia based on the 2019 revisions to its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System program to ensure that no backsliding has occurred, including for discharges of ionic pollution, in accordance with EPA Region 3’s approval letter dated March 27, 2019. If a permit does not contain record documentation for the reasonable potential analysis or otherwise allows backsliding, alert West Virginia of the permit inadequacies.

Review the modified National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System mining permits issued by West Virginia based on the 2019 revisions to its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System program to determine whether the permits contain effluent limits for ionic pollution and other pollutants that are or may be discharged at a level that causes, has the reasonable potential to cause, or contributes to an excursion above any applicable water quality standard, as required by Clean Water Act regulations. If a permit lacks required effluent limits, take appropriate action to address such deficiencies.

Develop a formal internal operating procedure to facilitate timely permitreviews and transmission of EPA comments to states.

Review and provide written input on any National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit prepared for reissuance by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency for the PolyMet Mining Inc. NorthMet project, if applicable, as appropriate pursuant to the requirements of the Clean Water Act, National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System regulations, the Region 5 National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit review standard operating procedure, and the memorandum of agreement between EPA Region 5 and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

Rec. 1.e: The DoD OIG recommended that the Principal Director, Defense Pricing and Contracting clarify its policy for determining the approval level required for project awards when using consortiums and ensure the guidance is uniformly applied and implemented by contracting personnel.

Rec. 1.g: The DoD OIG recommended that the Principal Director, Defense Pricing and Contracting establish Department of Defense-level training specific to awarding other transactions through consortiums that ensures Agreements Officers receive training to demonstrate expertise in executing, managing, and administering complex acquisition instruments, and can function in a less structured environment where prudent judgment is essential.

Rec. 1.j: The DoD OIG recommended that the Principal Director, Defense Pricing and Contracting establish requirements to vet consortium members upon membership to identify which members meet applicable security requirements for future opportunities.

Rec. 1.m: The DoD OIG recommended that the Principal Director, Defense Pricing and Contracting develop procedures to require security reviews of solicitation and supplementary information, including the aggregate of all information being provided in the solicitations to ensure potential sensitive information is not revealed by the compilation of information.

We recommend that Humana, Inc. refund to the Federal Government the $197,720,651 of net overpayments

We recommend that Humana, Inc. enhance its policies and procedures to prevent, detect, and correct noncompliance with Federal requirements for diagnosis codes that are used to calculate risk-adjusted payments.

Establish a data strategy implementation project plan with milestones that consider mission priorities and current and expected staffing levels to track the progress of the data management program maturation against the current Data and Analytics Strategy Implementation Plan.

Develop and implement a Data Quality Plan that supports the collection and maintenance of data related to identified key CPSC open data sets.

Identify and assign responsibilities to all of the resources who have data governance roles and responsibilities. These resources should include, at a minimum, data owners and data stewards, and those resources should be trained on their responsibilities.

Dedicate resources to the data management program based on a needs assessment, which should be revisited as the FDS action plans are published. Supplementary resources to consider adding may include data architects, data scientists, data analysts, and training resources.

Update information security procedures to make them consistent with current federal directives, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology Special Publication 800-53, Revision 5, Security and Privacy Controls for Information Systems and Organizations.

OIG recommends that the Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs develop and execute an action plan that dedicates appropriate resources to implement Recommendations 1, 2, and 4 from OIG report Audit of the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs Selection and Management of Contract Oversight Personnel in Iraq (AUD-MERO-19-10, November 2018). The plan should outline the steps and resources necessary to determine the technical expertise in the contract subject matter for Contracting Officer's Representatives (COR) and Government Technical Monitors (GTM), provide those determinations and requirements to Contracting Officers, and ensure only CORs and GTMs that meet the requirements…

We recommend that the Georgia Department of Community Health remind nursing facilities of Federal and State requirements for reporting incidents of potential abuse or neglect.

We recommended that the Georgia Department of Community Health strengthen its procedures for monitoring nursing facilities and follow up with those that may not be following required policies and procedures.

We recommended that the State agency ensure that it documents actions it takes when nursing facilities fail to report incidents and fail to report incidents on time.