Open Recommendations

CDC should expand its efforts both to improve racial and ethnic data associated with COVID-19 and to supplement them with additional data sources.

Develop and implement internal controls to ensure that officials and staff responsible for gathering data used for Federal reporting requirements obtain an understanding of the rules and regulations surrounding the grant programs they are tasked with overseeing.

Develop and implement effective written policies and procedures and sufficient information system controls to ensure that accurate student enrollment and withdrawal data are entered in its student information system in a consistent manner.

Provide support for the inaccurate and unsupported displaced student counts or return $6.5 million in Emergency Impact Aid program funds received based on estimated inaccurate and unsupported displaced student counts.

Ensure mitigation actions for ICT products, especially mission-critical ICT products or services, are descriptive, actionable, and tailored to the user environment and operational contexts (including its anonymity of procurement statement); and work with OCIO and the SCRM Unit to create and resource a continuous monitoring program that monitors C-SCRM risks across the FBI, ensures that users understand and follow C-SCRM mitigations identified in the product vulnerability and procurement risk assessments, and develops procedures to periodically monitor and assess user compliance with its C-SCRM mitigation actions.

Enhance its policies, procedures, training and communication, and/or internal controls for the requisition and government purchase card systems to better ensure that purchasing officials understand the C-SCRM requirements and so that applicable requisitions and purchase requests undergo C-SCRM procedures, as required; and develop policies, procedures, and/or internal controls to periodically monitor FBI compliance by identifying and remedying purchases that improperly bypassed the process.

We recommend the Counterterrorism Coordinator use the results of the needs assessment to establish a long-term governing body to oversee and coordinate the Department’s efforts to counter domestic terrorismby creating:• a charter with business rules and roles and responsibilities for longterm action;• a formalized documented process to monitor and track completion ofaction items; and• a formalized documented feedback process to review, update, andmeasure the impact of priority actions taken in response to changesin the domestic terrorism threat environment.

We recommend the Deputy Under Secretary for Intelligence Enterprise Operations finalize and implement an overarching policyand standard operating procedures to guide the timely, complete, and accurate review and release of open source intelligence reports.

We recommend the Deputy Under Secretary for Intelligence Enterprise Operations establish a standard process to determinewhether additional oversight or review is needed for open source intelligence reports before their dissemination

Recover the $1.9 million of overpayments to a grant recipient in accordance with 2 CFR § 200.345-346.

Require the reconciliation of the grant recipient’s budget to the final award amount prior to awarding a grant, including ensuring receipt of revised budgets, when changes are needed, prior to disbursing grant awards. Furthermore, discontinue the disbursement of grant awards prior to the receipt of a revised budget.

ACF should encourage all States to evaluate the value of adding an assessment of risk for sex trafficking when children return to foster care after going missing.

ACF should conduct oversight activities to identify States that may not screen all children for sex trafficking when they return to foster care after going missing.

Direct EDC to establish clear guidance regarding the allowable uses of participant support cost funding. This guidance should address how to segregate, identify, and account for costs that are covered with participant support cost funding. Specifically, this guidance should address how EDC verifies it does not use participant support costs to cover non-participant or other unallowable costs, such as costs budgeted for within non-participant support costs budget categories, costs incurred for EDC employees, and expenses associated with no-show participants.

Direct EDC to strengthen its administrative and management processes related to the approval of conference registration fees. Updated processes should require EDC to verify that individuals either have dedicated or will be dedicating effort to an NSF award prior to allowing their conference registration fees to be charged to the NSF award.

Direct EDC to strengthen its administrative and management processes to ensure advertising costs associated with sponsoring conferences are not charged to federal awards unless specifically approved by the award sponsor.

Direct EDC to strengthen its policies and procedures for creating and retaining documentation, including introducing additional controls to help ensure that it appropriately creates and maintains all documentation necessary to support the allowability of costs claimed by consultants. Updated procedures could include: • Requiring consultant agreements to specifically note whether the consultant is permitted to invoice EDC for travel costs incurred as a result of performing the requested consulting services. • Requiring invoice approvers to review consulting agreements to determine the allowability of travel expense reimbursement submitted by consultants prior to approving consultant travel expenses.

Direct EDC to strengthen its administrative and management procedures for travel reimbursements to ensure that its employees utilize the Deltek Expense Report Summary for travel reimbursements.

The Bureau of Fiscal Operations and the Office of Programs should work together to develop and document written policies and procedures for the Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act process for debts identified for recovery from Railroad Retirement Act benefit payments, across all applicable organizational units involved in the process (both the automated and manual processes).

The Bureau of Fiscal Operations and the Office of Programs should work together to create and document flowcharts for the Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act process for debts identified for recovery from Railroad Retirement Act benefit payments, across all applicable organizational units involved in both the automated and manual processes.

The Bureau of Fiscal Operations and the Office of Programs should work together to determine if there are additional missing or ineffective controls in the automated and manual processes (for the Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act debts identified for recovery from Railroad Retirement Act benefit payments) which would decrease the likelihood of recoveries, and develop and implement the necessary internal controls.

The Bureau of Fiscal Operations and the Office of Programs should work together to research the unrecovered debts identified in this audit and take action to: recover them; properly record the recoveries in the Financial Management Integrated System and other applicable agency systems; and/or record the reasons why they were not recovered, and if there are legitimate reasons why they should no longer be recovered.

The Bureau of Fiscal Operations and the Office of Programs should work together to identify the organizational unit with debtor notification responsibility and take the necessary actions to ensure that the debt notification process addressed in this audit is properly documented and maintained in agency records.

The Bureau of Fiscal Operations and the Office of Programs should work together to ensure that Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act debtors for the debt process addressed in this audit are properly notified of the debt, as required.

The Bureau of Fiscal Operations should implement a process to periodically monitor the status of each Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act debt transaction (adjustment type code 41) and prepare a report that contains the status of each Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act debt recoverable from Railroad Retirement Act benefits that is also to be provided to the Office of Programs to aid in their monitoring efforts of these Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act debts.