Open Recommendations

6. We recommend the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office direct the Commissioner for Trademarks to develop and implement a Trademarks workforce action plan that includes strategies to address challenges in recruitment and retention, milestones, roles of key organization components, measures of success, and a process to continuously assess and revise the plan.

We recommend that the Massachusetts Department of Public Health follow up with the two ICF/IIDs to verify that they have taken corrective actions on the life safety and emergency preparedness deficiencies identified during the audit.

We recommend that the Massachusetts Department of Public Health work with CMS to develop standardized life safety training for ICF/IID staff.

We recommend that the California Department of Aging refund the estimated $1,087,459 of CARES Act funds that were not in compliance with Federal and State requirements.

We recommend that the California Department of Aging work with ACL to determine the allowability of the estimated $2,484,631 in local service provider expenses and refund any amount determined to be unallowable.

We recommend that the California Department of Aging clarify in the Standard Agreement that AAAs review local service provider expenses to ensure they are documented and supported.

We recommend that the California Department of Aging update procedures to include approving advanced payments as close as administratively feasible to when the AAAs will expend the funds.

Update and formalize the Agency's standard operating procedures for collecting, processing, and disseminating airline on-time performance data and make sure that these procedures are disseminated internally and available to all relevant staff.

Conduct an assessment of whether the BTS Data Administrator position and any other position should be designated as mission critical.

Develop succession plans for any mission-critical positions.

Develop and implement a process to verify that carriers are reporting on-time performance data for all flights.

Evaluate the Agency's technical directives to identify areas where it could provide clarifying or additional guidance to promote consistency in the data reported by carriers.

Work with FAA to understand no-matches in the National Airspace System (NAS) delay data between BTS' Airline Service Quality Performance (ASQP) and FAA's Aviation System Performance Metrics (ASPM) databases; and improve the consistency of air-carrier reported NAS delay data by providing additional carrier guidance as applicable.

Develop and implement a process to assess the consistency across air carriers' reporting of causes of delay data.

Castro recommends Treasury OIG follow-up with Baltimore County's management to confirm the transactions noted as unsupported expenditures of $620,189 within Aggregate Reporting less than $50,000 are recouped or replaced by other eligible expenditures, not previously charged to CRF, that were incurred during the period of performance. Based on Baltimore County's responsiveness to Treasury OIG's requests and its ability to provide sufficient documentation, Castro recommends that Treasury OIG determine the feasibility of conducting an audit for Aggregate Reporting less than $50,000.

Treasury OIG should confirm the transactions noted as unsupported expenditures within the Transfers greater than or equal to $50,000 and Aggregate Payments to Individuals are recouped or replaced by other eligible expenditures, not previously charged to CRF, that were incurred during the period of performance. Further, based on the State of North Carolina's responsiveness to Treasury OIG's requests and its ability to provide documentation, Treasury OIG should determine if a focused audit is feasible for Transfers greater than or equal to $50,000 and Aggregate Payments to Individuals. Additionally, Treasury OIG should 1) Determine the feasibility of performing additional follow-up with…

The Deputy Commissioner should establish a Service-wide process where representatives from key functional areas including CFAM, RAAS and Accounts Management officials are responsible for expeditiously reviewing and addressing emerging/ongoing fraud schemes where advanced analytics and matching to IRS sourced information proactively identifies a scam.

We recommend that USAID/Zimbabwe determine the allowability of $19,152 in ineligible questioned costs on pages 12 and 14 of the audit report and recover any amount that is unallowable.

We recommend that USAID/Zimbabwe verify that Hospice and Palliative Care Association of Zimbabwe corrects the two instances of material noncompliance detailed on pages 27 to 30 of the audit report.

We recommend that USAID/Zimbabwe verify that Hospice and Palliative Care Association of Zimbabwe provides Union Zimbabwe Trust with a copy of the audit report for their review to determine the allowability of $2,995 in ineligible and $3,100 in unsupported questioned costs identified on page 14 related to the subaward and recover the amounts determined to be unallowable.

We recommend that USAID/Rwanda verify that Young Women Christian Association of Rwanda corrects the one instance of material noncompliance detailed on page 25 of the audit report.

USAID/Philippines determine the allowability of $303,925 in questioned costs, ($1,467 of ineligible costs and $302,458 of unsupported) on pages 30 to 63 of the audit report and recover any amount that is unallowable.

USAID/Philippines verify that ADMU corrects the 8 material weaknesses in internal control detailed on pages 30 to 44 of the audit report.

USAID/Philippines verify that ADMU corrects the 5 instances of material noncompliance detailed on pages 32 to 33, and 36 to 44 of the audit report.

Rec. 1: The DoD OIG recommended that the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, in coordination with the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Health Affairs), Defense Health Agency Director, Surgeon General of the U.S. Navy, and Command Surgeon of the U.S. Special Operations Command, review, update, and implement as needed drug testing policies related to performance?enhancing drugs, including DoD Instruction 1010.16, Technical Procedures for the Military Personnel Drug Abuse Testing Program.