Open Recommendations

Develop a marketing plan to initiate contact with those agencies not currently doing business with GPO.

Develop specific and measurable annual targets for customer and revenue growth.

Revise policies and procedures to ensure accurate, current, and complete financial results are reported on all Federal awards.

Work with ARC to revise the non-ARC matching cost share amount final BAMR to include the costs incurred of $2,381,000 for A&E fees and the in-kind land acquisition, if requested.

Revise policies and procedures to include procedures for determining the allowability of costs to comply with the Uniform Guidance and ensure costs incurred under Federal awards are allowable and allocable.

Review the 17,568 COVID-19 EIDLs and Emergency EIDL Advances identified with business establishment dates after January 31, 2020, to determine eligibility and to seek recovery of funds from ineligible recipients.

Assess the automated controls within the agency’s new lending platform, the Unified Lending Platform (ULP), to ensure they align with clearly defined disaster assistance criteria.

Implement a control in the Consolidated Claims Experience (CCE) to help ensure Supplemental Security Income (SSI) claimants and recipients are given the option, where appropriate, to file a SNAP application with the SSA office when they are in a pure SSI household.

Review the SNAP training material and update, as needed, to emphasize the requirement for SSA employees to correctly record information in CCE.

Reinforce the New Jersey Small Business Development Center’s adherence to requirements that costs spent on consultants are reasonable and supportable as prescribed in 2 CFR § 200.459.

Remedy $164,088 in unsupported expenses for consultant costs that are without established rate agreements.

Reinforce the New Jersey Small Business Development Center’s adherence to requirements on allowable types of hospitality cost under 13 CFR § 130.465 and Program Terms and Conditions, Section 7. Compare the $8,217 in unallowable costs to any overmatch funds per 13 CFR § 130.450(g) and recover costs as appropriate.

Instruct the New Jersey SBDC to submit an updated budget that reflects the $420,700 impact of the service center closure to evaluate whether funds are allowable in accordance with 2 CFR § 200.308(c)(5)(7).

Update the SBA resource partner website to reflect active New Jersey Small Business Development Center service centers.

Instruct the New Jersey Small Business Development Center to reconcile $75,247 of program income across the network to ensure generated income and expenses are accounted for and reported accurately in accordance with 13 CFR § 130.480.

Enforce the requirement for the New Jersey Small Business Development Center to timely adhere to export certification requirements and regularly report on its compliance status to SBA in accordance with Notice of Funding Section 5.1.4.4.

Ensure the New Jersey Small Business Development Center is maintaining sufficient accessibility to its facilities and appropriate staff levels and notifying clients of service centers’ hours of operation in accordance with 15 USC § 648(c)(2).

Ensure the New Jersey Small Business Development Center implements a process to ensure all personnel funded by federal grant funds are notified of their whistleblower protection rights in accordance with 41 U.S.C § 4712.

Ensure the New Jersey Small Business Development Center relates financial data and program accomplishments toward meeting the performance goals for the entire performance period as 2 CFR § 200.329(b) requires.

Ensure ICE staff respond to all detainee requests within the required 3 business days.

Develop and implement a policy that clearly defines roles and responsibilities for Office of Multifamily Housing Programs' staff for EBLL-related requirements, including the oversight of property owners' compliance with these requirements.

Establish processes to track reported EBLLs for the Office of Multifamily Housing Programs to easily identify the status of owners' remediation efforts for units that were the source of the confirmed EBLL.

We recommend that the Acting Chief Program Officer of the Treasury Office of Capital Access works with the OIG to ensure that the State of Oregon returns to Treasury the $32,554 of CRF proceeds that were used by the City of Lakeside, Oregon in violation of subsection 601(d) of the Social Security Act, as amended (42 U.S.C. 801(d)), as well as Treasury’s Guidance and FAQs.

We recommend the Vice President, Power Operations, take steps to resolve fire-protection system issues in a timely manner.

We recommend the Vice President, Power Operations, take steps to assign a priority level to each impairment as required by Power Operations Standard Programs and Processes 18.119.