Open Recommendations

Leverage existing System resources to develop and implement a process to provide pretravel briefings covering threat and risk awareness to employees traveling on official business trips or taking Board devices to high-risk and restricted countries, at a minimum.

Leverage existing System resources to develop and implement a process to provide Board-specific travel threat awareness trainings for employees in high international travel or senior positions and employees in high traveling divisions, at a minimum.

Leverage existing System resources to develop an optional post-travel questionnaire and establish a process to provide the questionnaire to Board employees who are required to report international travel based on the implementation of recommendation 6, at a minimum.

Establish a program that consolidates and assesses international travel data available to Board divisions regarding employee international travel, including
a. creating capabilities to aggregate and analyze foreign travel data from available sources, including the travel reimbursement platform, the security clearance holder reporting application, and the travel device request platform.
b. developing a process to reconcile clearance holder unreported travel data.
c. expanding foreign travel data analysis beyond risks related to travel with devices and developing a process to conduct travel trend analysis including indicators of suspicious travel patterns, define levels of organizational risk tolerances for suspicious travel activity and follow-up…

Strengthen travel reporting requirements by
a. determining which Board positions or division employees should be required to report personal international travel before departure based on access to System sensitive information.
b. updating policies and procedures detailing travel reporting requirements for relevant positions and divisions with access to
System sensitive information.
c. designating a program to monitor reported travel and defining risk monitoring and threat awareness reporting expectations for that program.

Develop a process to ensure all division designated travel reviewers are informed of country-specific risks at least annually and provide training when updates occur to the international travel with mobile devices process.

We recommend the Vice President, Projects and Outages, update the Nuclear project management procedure to define rework and provide guidance for documenting and tracking rework.

Ensure Congress is made aware of the continued need to mandate the use of systems designated by the U.S. Secretary of Labor, such as the Prisoner Update Processing System (PUPS), for cross-matching federal incarceration data.

Work with the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Bureau of Fiscal Services, Bureau of Prisons, and UI Integrity Center to facilitate states’ streamlined access to federal incarceration data leveraging the Do Not Pay initiative and the Integrity Data Hub.

Develop and implement controls to ensure more efficient use of statutory grant funds, which should include performing data analytics on grant spending and performance data.

Establish and implement procedures to collect and analyze detailed financial data on career services expenditures, which should include identifying the reason for the growth in career services.

Develop and implement controls to ensure ETA leadership and other stakeholders are aware of the complete administrative costs—including those of workforce entities currently exempt from reporting administrative costs—incurred by the WIOA statutory grant programs.

Develop guidance for grant recipients and subrecipients to clarify how to determine if an expenditure materially increases the value or useful life of a capital asset.

Establish a dollar threshold for construction projects over which grant recipients need to obtain approval from ETA.

Remedy the $998,253 in questioned costs associated with construction.

Remedy the $23,718 in questioned costs due to not reconciling the provisional rate with the final indirect cost rate.

Remedy the $14,581 in questioned costs associated with the Texas State Board director’s salary expense charged directly to the statutory grant programs.

Develop guidance that clarifies what documentation is required to support individualized career services provided to participants by grant recipients and subrecipients.

Ensure ETA officials responsible for monitoring grant recipients enforce the documentation requirements in their grant agreements.

The Chief, Taxpayer Services and Commissioner, Small Business/Self-Employed Division should revise IRM 21.1.1, Accounts Management and Compliance Services Overview, to require representatives to document all types of dropped or disconnected calls, or calls that were not properly transferred, including the circumstances of the disconnection when known.

The Chief, Taxpayer Services and Commissioner, Small Business/Self-Employed Division should emphasize to all representatives the importance of following hold time requirements, handling calls properly (e.g., using appropriate tone, avoiding jargon, etc.) and asking probing questions to ensure compliance with procedures and ensure that callers receive good customer service.

The Chief, Taxpayer Services and Commissioner, Small Business/Self-Employed Division, should evaluate recurring quality of service issues identified by Taxpayer Services’ internal quality reviews, identify areas of improvement, and implement procedural changes or additional training to reduce their recurrence.

Seek reimbursement of the $60,359 overpayment to Allied for PSP2 financial assistance.

Review Allied's requested amount for unallowable expenses under PSP3 and seek reimbursement for the overpayment.

The Acting Commissioner of Fiscal Service should update the PAM Access Management standard operating procedure to include procedures for modifying users' access to the PAM database.