Open Recommendations

Embassy Athens, in coordination with Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations, should evaluate all mission residential properties for seismic risk in accordance with Department standards.

Embassy Athens, in coordination with the Bureau of Information Resource Management, should complete the systems authorization process for its locally developed applications.

Strengthen information system controls to make certain that complete and accurate claims information is transferred between applicable current and future Community Care payment systems and the Consolidated Patient Account Centers’ workflow tool and VistA patient treatment files.

Conduct an assessment to determine if staffing resources and workload are sufficiently aligned to process the anticipated volume of claims to be billed to veterans’ private health insurers and make adjustments as needed.

OIG recommends that the Bureau of Administration update guidance to clearly communicate to Department of State contracting personnel which training courses are approved and available to meet the annual trafficking in persons (TIP) training requirement.

OIG recommends that the Bureau of Administration update Department of State guidance including the Foreign Affairs Handbook (FAH) and applicable Procurement Information Bulletins (PIB) to clarify that trafficking in persons monitoring, including developing and implementing trafficking in persons (TIP) monitoring strategies, is required for all applicable contracts, not just those that employ third-country national or migrant labor.

OIG recommends that the Bureau of Administration develop and implement guidance that Contracting Officers (CO) and Contracting Officer’s Representatives (COR) review contractor trafficking in persons compliance plans to determine whether their content meets requirements of Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 52.222-50(h) and to inform required trafficking in persons (TIP) monitoring strategies.

OIG recommends that the Bureau of Administration, in coordination with the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), update Department of State (Department) trafficking in persons (TIP) training to clarify that TIP monitoring is required for all applicable contracts, not just those that employ third-country national or migrant labor.

OIG recommends that the Bureau of Administration, in coordination with the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), update Department of State (Department) trafficking in persons (TIP) training to include discussions of Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 52.222-50(h) requirements for contractors to maintain TIP compliance plans and Department guidance and requirements for reviewing the plans and using them to inform TIP contract monitoring strategies established in accordance with Recommendation 3.

OIG recommends that the Bureau of Administration instruct Contracting Officers (CO) with oversight responsibility for active contracts in OIG’s nonstatistical subsample, listed in Table A.4, to review contractor trafficking in persons (TIP) compliance plans associated with these contracts and determine whether to apply any of the remedies outlined in Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 52.222-50(e) based on contractors’ failure to adhere to FAR 52.222-50(h) requirements.

Rec. 1: The DoD OIG recommended that the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness review the race codes and categories used in DoD personnel databases and update those databases to ensure compliance with DoD regulations.

Establish controls to ensure staff and contractors follow existing requirements to test single adults for COVID-19 before transfer usingdomestic commercial flights.

Clarify existing COVID-19 testing policies to include modes of transportation and timeframes for mandatory testing beforetransport.

We recommend that the FWS resolve the questioned costs related to unsupported indirect costs totaling $435,624.

We recommend that the FWS work with the Department to develop and implement a mechanism to hold its staff accountable for following Federal regulations related to indirect costs and record retention, and its own SOPs.

We recommend that the FWS resolve the questioned costs related to unsupported other direct costs totaling $201,708.

We recommend that the FWS work with the Department to develop a mechanism to hold staff accountable for following its SOPs related to purchase requests and documentation retention.

We recommend that the FWS resolve the questioned costs related to drawdowns totaling $169,989.

We recommend that the FWS work with the Department to develop a mechanism to hold staff accountable for following its SOPs for conducting drawdowns and maintaining adequate documentation for expenditures in the accounting system.

We recommend that the FWS resolve the questioned costs related to unallocated leave payouts totaling $6,480.

We recommend that the FWS require the Department to update and implement its SOPs to ensure that leave payouts are properly allocated in accordance with Federal regulations.

Evaluate recently implemented recruitment and retention initiatives and document lessons learned.

Adopt and execute strategic workforce planning.

Conduct an environmental scan of the private sector and other government publishing entities to discover newly available technology to potentially implement at GPO.

Establish and implement clear customer satisfaction standards and metrics for all GPO organizational units. Include customer satisfaction standards and metrics in all organizational unit strategic plans. Identify, document, and implement improvements based on customer feedback.