Open Recommendations

We recommend that the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of USPTO direct the Commissioner for Patents to develop and document a methodology for OPQA consistency audits that ensures quality reviewers with low levels of noncompliant findings are identified and evaluated.

We recommend that the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of USPTO direct the Commissioner for Patents to ensure results of OPQA’s random and robust quality reviews, including double patenting errors, are included in USPTO’s annual performance reports.

We recommend that the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of USPTO direct the Commissioner for Patents to regularly evaluate OPQA quality review results to ensure pertinent patent examination quality information is included in USPTO’s annual performance reports.

Establish and use agreements with other VA medical facilities to help identify and schedule direct care when services are unavailable at a veteran’s local VA facility.

At least annually, emphasize to schedulers the proper methods (including the use of codes) to document when veterans opt out of community care.

Require medical facility directors in Veterans Integrated Service Network 12 to review and process consults initiated in the first quarter of fiscal year 2024 that remain in a pending, active, or scheduled status.

Reiterate policies to ensure refunds and voids are warranted and unit management is reviewing the Postal Service Form 1412 and supporting documentation.

Update to ensure the Retail Systems Software receipts used to support the amount of voided postage include the dollar amount of the postage that was voided.

Verify and ensure retail unit management is properly performing the monthly arrow key certification.

Reiterate to unit management the policies for providing adequate security for all accountable items.

FHFA’s SAOP in coordination with the System Owner, should conduct a review of all current privileged user accounts in the FHFA.gov production environment to ensure that each privileged user account has documented access requests and approvals.

FHFA’s SAOP in coordination with the System Owner, should update FHFA’s FHFA.gov Customer Controls to document account management requirements for non-privileged users to include account creation and authorization procedures.

FHFA’s SAOP in coordination with the System Owner, should evaluate and implement additional FHFA.gov audit logging capabilities to ensure the FHFA.gov audit logs captures access and deactivation events for all user accounts.

Develop and implement formal written policies and procedures to ensure all subaward agreements fully comply with federal requirements, including the inclusion of the Federal Award Identification Number. These procedures should also require that subrecipients provide final written certification to the federal awarding agency or pass-through entity at the conclusion of each federal award, confirming that the project or activity was completed or that the agreed-upon level of effort was expended.

Provide staff training on these policies and procedures, and establish a process for periodic internal reviews or monitoring to verify compliance.

Establish and implement policies and procedures to ensure timely preparation and submission of financial and progress reports in accordance with the Uniform Guidance and ARC grant agreement requirements.

Develop an automated process to validate the accuracy of monthly recycling reports, invoices, and checks submitted by contractors, including a process to validate supporting documentation maintained by contractors.

Provide oversight of cardboard mail transport equipment inventory to ensure processing facilities only maintain a seven-day supply, and document facilities with exceptions to the policy.

Require processing facility management to annually certify proper cardboard mail transport equipment recycling and reuse business practices are in place and employees are aware of and following these practices.

Direct Plant Managers to enforce proper cardboard mail transport equipment recycling and reuse practices.

1) Perform a cost benefit analysis for baling cardboard at all processing facilities, 2) provide balers for facilities identified to have a positive benefit, and 3) for the facilities that cannot accommodate a baler, document the approved deviations.

We recommend that USAID/Kenya and East Africa determine the allowability of $86,105 in questioned costs ($54,080 ineligible, $32,025 unsupported) on pages 20 and 26 of the audit report and recover any amount that is unallowable.

We recommend that USAID/Kenya and East Africa verify that TradeMark Africa Limited corrects the four material weaknesses in internal control detailed on pages 30 to 37 of the audit report.

We recommend that USAID/Kenya and East Africa verify that TradeMark Africa Limited corrects the one instance of material noncompliance detailed on pages 50 and 51 of the audit report.

We recommend that DRP management update policies and internal guidance to (a) require that staff document the reasons and relevant risk factors for conducting elective annual report reviews, (b) provide clear direction for scoping annual report reviews, and (c) require that staff document scoping decisions.