Open Recommendations

The Railroad Retirement Board's Bureau of Information Services should identify, and document detailed project plans for their Information Technology Modernization initiatives through the Information Resources Management Strategic Plan, which should include the agency's goals, project milestones, and a description of the work necessary, as required by the Office of Management and Budget Circular A-130.

Resolve the $66,270 in questioned participant support for which EDC has not agreed to reimburse NSF and direct EDC to repay or otherwise remove the sustained questioned costs from its NSF award.

Direct EDC to provide documentation supporting that it has reimbursed or otherwise credited the $8,375 in questioned participant support, conference, and consultant travel costs for which it has agreed to reimburse NSF.

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.

Resolve the $117,804 in questioned indirect costs, travel allowances, and gift card expenses for which BSCS has not agreed to reimburse NSF and direct BSCS to repay or otherwise remove the sustained questioned costs from its NSF award.

Resolve the $334 in questioned salary expenses for which BSCS has not agreed to reimburse NSF and direct BSCS to repay or otherwise remove the sustained questioned costs from its NSF award.

Rec. 2.a: The DoD OIG recommended that the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller)/Chief Financial Officer, DoD, in coordination with the Deputy Director of Enterprise Accounting and Audit Support for the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, use a sufficient sample size to support the improper payment estimate by calculating the sample size based on improper payment amounts instead of only using the paid amount. To reduce the required sample size, we recommend considering alternative improper payment estimation methodology, and conducting risk assessments of the payment types for each program.

Develop a detailed review process, such as a checklist or job aid, outlining the review procedures performed by the Quality Assurance Division within the reporting process for overpayments from sources other than recapture audits to ensure that the primary reviewer and the supervisory quality control reviewers are performing a thorough review of the aggregated submissions of overpayments. Necessary review steps include ensuring overpayments are not reported twice, capturing issues with overpayments submitted for the incorrect period, and tracking identified and collected portions that occur in different fiscal years for accurate reporting.

We recommend that the Deputy Chief Financial Officer"|In collaboration with all involved program offices, develop and implement a sampling methodology that allows for a sample size that reasonably allows for the testing of the complete payment cycle within the PIIA reporting timeframe. Status

Develop and implement a plan that ensures the continuity of adequate internal controls over the PIH-TBRA program to detect and prevent improper payments, which can be implemented in a virtual environment. This plan should include how HUD can review tenant files or other information that validates tenant data remotely without compromising PII.

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.

The Office of Programs should develop and implement a process to periodically monitor the new report that the Bureau of Fiscal Operations will provide, (that will identify adjustment type code 41 Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act debts) to determine if any of the Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act debts need further action to recover them from the annuitants’ Railroad Retirement Act benefits.

We recommend that the Food and Drug Administration identify and implement additional ways to improve the timeliness of its foreign for-cause drug inspection process

We recommend that the Food and Drug Administration consider streamlining the process for writing and reviewing EIRs to minimize potential delays due to unexpected events.

We recommend that the Food and Drug Administration conduct an analysis of the workloads of individuals responsible for: (1) determining final classification, (2) issuing warning letters, and (3) holding regulatory meetings, and address any potential issues identified by this analysis.