Open Recommendations

We recommend that the Director of Acquisition and Contract Management ensures that contracting officers review the contracting officer representative files annually and develop a checklist for the review.

We recommend that the Director of Acquisition and Contract Management ensures that contract management personnel have access to Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System and develops and implements standard operating procedures for performance assessments to be submitted into Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System at the time the work under the contract or order is completed.

We recommend that the Director of Acquisition and Contract Management ensures contracts are closed out within the specified Federal Acquisition Regulation timeframes and backlogged contracts are properly closed.

We recommend that the Director of Acquisition and Contract Management works with the contracting officer representative to establish processes and standard operating procedures that ensure de-obligations are completed when the period of performance ends and the final invoice is paid.

The Bureau of Political-Military Affairs should implement a detailed plan for the coordinated performance of all program evaluation requirements bureau-wide, including systematic briefings to bureau leadership on evaluation results.

The Bureau of Political-Military Affairs should bring licensing reviews into compliance with federal standards.

The Bureau of Political-Military Affairs should implement a centralized contract tracking system in compliance with federal acquisition regulations.

The Bureau of Political-Military Affairs should bring the contracting officer's representative program into compliance with Department standards.

The Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, in coordination with the Bureau of Administration, should bring its contract and contracting officer's representative files into compliance with Department and federal guidance.

The Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, in coordination with the Bureau of Information Resource Management, should complete the assessment comparing bureau assets and inventory against Bureau of Information Resource Management data and correct any discrepancies.

1. We recommend that the Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security, Bureau of Industry and Security take proactive actions, such developing a comprehensive mitigation plan or alternative actions, to minimize the risk of unauthorized release of U.S. -controlled advanced computing and semiconductor manufacturing technology and software source code to China.

Review and take corrective action for the 222 cases we identified where the Social Security Administration (SSA) may have incorrectly applied a waiting period and delayed Medicare coverage, if applicable.

Review and take appropriate corrective action on the remaining population of 2,269 beneficiaries with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, beneficiaries entitled to Childhood Disability Benefits, and beneficiaries re entitled within 5 years for whom SSA may have incorrectly applied waiting periods.

Determine whether it should review and take appropriate corrective action on the remaining population of 28,877 beneficiaries entitled to Disabled Widow(er) Benefits and have Supplemental Security Income credit.

Update all policies referring to the 5-month waiting period exclusion to include all applicable scenarios and clear instructions on how to process claims when the waiting period should not be applied.

Create integrity checks within SSA systems that result in alerts or exceptions for scenarios where the 5-month waiting period was applied incorrectly.

The Director, Collection Policy, SB/SE Division, should revise the Internal Revenue Manual (IRM) to require revenue officers to check their mail and faxes for any CDP levy hearing requests prior to issuing levies.

The Director, Field Collection, SB/SE Division, should ensure that the following instances identified in this report are discussed with responsible employees and their managers so that they understand the difference and can protect taxpayer’s rights: instances associated with CDP hearings being input as equivalent hearings; instances associated with cases being transferred to a new revenue officer before the prior revenue officer had processed a timely CDP levy hearing request; instances associated with new employees and CDP hearings; instances associated with revenue officers improperly processing ICS systemic levies as other, incorrect types of levies; and instances associated with taxpayers not receiving…

The Director, Collection Policy, SB/SE Division, should provide training to remind revenue officers that for manually created balance due modules within the ICS, they must manually verify the CDP levy notice was timely issued and that the modules are not part of an open CDP hearing prior to levy. In addition, revise the IRM to require that revenue officers document the ICS history with confirmation that required notices were provided prior to issuing a levy on a manually created balance due module.

The Director, Collection Inventory and Delivery and Selection, SB/SE Division, should submit programming maintenance fix requests to ensure that: (1) the ICS does not allow modules to be included on a levy unless a CDP levy notice has been issued, even if both the notice generation tool and the levy generation tool are open at the same time and (2) the ICS systemic levy check does not allow levies to be sent until 31 days after the CDP levy notice date rather than 30 days.

The Director, Field Collection, SB/SE Division, should ensure that the taxpayers who were not given the opportunity for a CDP hearing are given their CDP rights, if appropriate; and obtain authorization to retain any improper levy proceeds or refund the proceeds to the taxpayer.

The Director, Field Collection, SB/SE Division, should ensure that the instances identified in this report that are associated with unauthorized representatives receiving CDP levy notices due to various revenue officer errors are discussed with the responsible employees and their managers so that they can protect taxpayer’s rights and prevent unauthorized disclosures. These employee’s managers should consider the failure to observe written regulations, orders, rules, or procedures that result in the violation of improper disclosure of tax return information when evaluating employees’ performance or for misconduct if such action on the part of the employee is intentional.

The Director, Field Collection, SB/SE Division, should ensure that for the instances identified in this report that are associated with representatives not receiving CDP levy notices when they were authorized, a Letter 5427 is sent to the taxpayer notifying them that their representative is not receiving notices, if appropriate.

Establish procedures for Appeals officers to verify and document, as part of the law and administrative review, whether any prohibited levy action was taken on the subject tax modules for which a taxpayer requests a levy CDP hearing.

Establish procedures for Appeals managers conducting case reviews to specifically review the law and administrative review performed by the Appeals officer to determine if it was conducted appropriately.