Open Recommendations

This recommendation is Sensitive But Unclassified.

Office of Capital Access management should require Houston's and Harris County's management to take appropriate and timely corrective actions to (a) determine if payments related to the total population of 1,797'ERA1 household address groupings with potential duplicative assistance totaling approximately $20'million as of December 31, 2021, from which TOIG identified $98,242 in questioned costs from a sample, were made to eligible beneficiaries in the correct amounts, (b)'identify whether additional ERA1 ineligible and duplicate payments occurred after December 31, 2021 and, if applicable, provide the amount of such payments, and (c)'identify whether ineligible and duplicate payments were made during the entire…

Office of Capital Access management should develop, document, and communicate to TOIG OCA's processes to monitor grantees for overpayments and duplicate payments, track grantees' recharacterizations, and ensure data quality for household addresses provided by grantees.

Office of Capital Access management should provide technical advice and counsel to all grantees and TOIG about the use of funds in circumstances where a landlord and a tenant are related. While OCA concurred with our recommendations and its planned corrective actions meet the intent of our recommendations, management did not provide an implementation date for its planned corrective action for our third recommendation regarding familial tenant/landlord relationships.

Review and take corrective action as needed for the 83 beneficiaries whose payee applications the Social Security Administration had not resolved in the electronic Representative Payee System; 65 beneficiaries who have payees in the payment record that the Social Security Administration had not recorded in the electronic Representative Payee System; and 63 beneficiaries whose payees’ Social Security numbers were missing on the payment records.

Evaluate the results of its review for the beneficiaries in Recommendation 1 and determine whether it should review the remaining populations.

Improve controls to ensure employees resolve electronic Representative Payee System alerts, resolve pending representative payee applications in the electronic Representative Payee System, and properly establish or record the payees in the electronic Representative Payee System, such as establishing a timeframe for resolving alerts and management controls such as supervisory review to monitor unresolved alerts.

Conduct training and issue reminders to ensure employees resolve alerts and record payees’ Social Security numbers on the payment records.

Note: We did not make a formal recommendation for this report. However, we are claiming cost savings. The following is the language we used in the Tracking Sheet we submitted to the agency. We identified 189 beneficiaries in current, suspended or terminated payment status whose names and ages were consistent with individuals listed as missing persons in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs). SSA issued the beneficiaries approximately $11.9 million in payments after the individuals’ dates of last contact reported in NamUs and we estimate SSA will issue an additional $2.1 million in payments to the beneficiaries in…

Implement controls requiring that teams adhere to the Agency’s policies for backlog refinement and sprint planning, including effective prioritization and ensuring a proper hierarchy. This should include updated backlog refinement checklists and/or quality assurance reviews.

Use Portfolio Kanban to perform release planning, conduct backlog refinement above the team level, and manage cross team dependencies and coordination.

Specify that naming conventions for work items should not include team names.

Specify that sprint names should include the release to differentiate them in lists and reports.

Revise its risk-management policy to include specific guidelines requiring that Agile teams manage risks at the team, workstream, and product levels. The policy should align with the principles of transparency, traceability, and responsiveness that are essential for Agile methodologies. The Agency should place special emphasis on ensuring the timely and accurate dissemination of emerging risks throughout the project.

Ensure teams use the risk management capabilities in the Agile project management software to cover all identified risks and provide comprehensive access and a view of all risks identified in the Investment Management Tool to all team members.

Evaluate and update Agile quality assurance checklists to include product backlog health, risk/issue traceability, and data integrity in the Agile project management software. Checklists should focus on quality assurance indicators for all areas, including user stories, that are more outcome-based and drive continuous improvement.

Update its guidance for Scrum sprint planning to indicate that all tasks in the Agile project management software should be assigned to one, and only one, owner, except in the case of pair or group work.

Update the quality assurance checklist for sprint planning to review low-level tasks for multiple owners if they occur frequently. This does not apply to other product backlog item types, such as user stories.

VHA chief financial officer establish and implement guidance for quality assurance measures over the data used to develop and justify the ambulatory care budget estimate.

The under secretary for health ensure the deputy under secretary for health provides oversight and holds the Office of Finance accountable for developing, documenting, and implementing standard operating procedures to include defining roles and responsibilities and requirements for oversight and quality assurance for development of the ambulatory care budget estimate.

The under secretary for health implement the Veterans Health Administration Data Governance Council, to include developing policies and processes for data management across the Veterans Health Administration.

The under secretary for health ensure Veterans Health Administration Data Governance Council identifies authoritative data sources and nominates data stewards for approval by the VA Data Governance Council.

Recover approximately $3.7 million from the contractor for transportation overcharges.

Develop a training for all sorting and delivery center supervisors specific to the network changes/impacts, including techniques to properly supervise route performance, and require all sorting and delivery center supervisors to complete.

Develop an automated process within the Rural Route Evaluation Compensation System to make necessary adjustments to reduce the number of overburdened rural routes.