Federal Reports

This report presents the results of our audit of delivery operations and property conditions at the Avondale Goodyear Main Post Office in Goodyear, AZ.

This report presents the results of our audit of delivery operations and property conditions at the Scottsdale Airpark Station in Scottsdale, AZ.

This report presents the results of our audit of the West Valley Processing and Distribution Center.

This letter to Congress reports on NCUA OIG's assessment of the NCUA's 2024 compliance under the Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019 (PIIA).

This is the third report of the fiscal year 2024 financial statement audits of the Smithsonian Institution performed by the independent accounting firm of KPMG LLP.
 

According to 20 U.S.C. § 44, each member of the Smithsonian Institution’s Board of Regents shall be paid for necessary travel and other actual expenses to attend meetings of the Board. The law also assigns the Board’s Executive Committee the responsibility of auditing these expenditures. Since 2008, at the request of the Executive Committee, the Smithsonian’s Office of the Inspector General has conducted audits of the Regents’ travel expenses. 

The objective of this audit was to determine whether Regents’ travel expense reimbursements for fiscal years 2023 and 2024 complied with the Travel Reimbursement Policy specified by the Office of the Regents.  

 

The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) conducted a national review to evaluate the governance structure and responsibilities related to the Veterans Integrated Service Network (VISN) Chief Mental Health Officer (CMHO) role. 

The OIG found that VHA communicated inconsistent mandatory and discretionary VISN staffing requirements. Failure to provide consistent staffing requirements likely contributes to VISN leaders’ inadequate understanding of priority positions and lack of standardization.

VISN leaders did not consistently utilize the standardized organizational chart and used a variety of titles to represent the CMHO role; the OIG identified inaccuracies within VISN-provided organizational charts. The absence of consistent information regarding organizational governance structure and staffing may result in inequities in resources and oversight of VISN and facility mental health staff and services.

The OIG determined that Office of Mental Health leaders established multiple avenues to facilitate communication with CMHOs. 

The OIG found that CMHO functional statements varied in format and content and did not consistently align with performance plan elements. While flexibility based on unique VISN needs is important, the OIG would expect the inclusion of critical responsibilities to be identified consistently in both CMHO functional statements and performance plans.

All CMHOs reported providing oversight of specific mental health programs and services; however, half of the CMHOs described lack of authority as a major barrier to effectively overseeing and implementing actions for facility-level mental health services. Office of Mental Health and Office of Suicide Prevention leaders suggested that standardization of the CMHO position description would be helpful in increasing the effectiveness of the role. 

The OIG made five recommendations to the Under Secretary for Health related to VISN staffing requirements, the use of the VISN organizational chart, alignment of CMHO functional statements and performance plans, and CMHO role authority.

To determine whether all the unexpended obligations of HUD are valid and meet funding guidelines, the Office of the Chief Financial Officer (OCFO) coordinates annually an Open Obligation Review (OOR) of all program and administrative funds. This review determines which funds are still needed and certifies to Treasury that the funds remaining in its obligation balance at the end of the fiscal year represent future obligations for the department. Historically, HUD OIG has audited the OOR as part of the annual financial statement audit. We have not reported findings in this area as part of the financial statement audit for the last six years because the amounts identified for deobligation have remained below the materiality set for audit.

We conducted our review to identify HUD’s open obligations marked for deobligation during the fiscal year 2024 OOR that had not been deobligated as of February 28, 2025. We found 835 administrative obligations totaling $38.5 million ($38,525,837) and 101 program obligations totaling just under $2 million ($1,967,991) were identified for deobligation but had not been deobligated.   

A careful review of open obligations strengthens HUD’s internal controls by removing balances from the accounting system that are no longer required for future payments, identifies funds that could be used for current requirements, and supports HUD’s formal year‐end certification to the Department of Treasury. While HUD has completed that careful review, the objective is not met if obligations that are no longer needed are not timely deobligated. While these amounts represent a small percentage of HUD’s total open obligations, it is important that all funds identified as no longer needed are promptly deobligated so they can be used to meet other HUD requirements or returned to Treasury for other needs.  We recommended HUD deobligate the 835 administrative obligations and the 101 program obligations identified for deobligation during the fiscal year 2024 OOR that had not been deobligated as of February 28, 2025.

We performed this review to determine whether Douglas County School District (Nevada) expended Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) grant funds for allowable purposes in accordance with applicable requirements. We determined that of the 16 expenditures that we reviewed, 12 were allowable and in accordance with applicable requirements. Four expenditures totaling $5,416 were unallowable because they were for advertising and public relations costs prohibited under the Uniform Administrative Requirements, Cost Principles, and Audit Requirements for Federal Awards (2 Code of Federal Regulations part 200). 

Additionally, we found that the Douglas County School District complied with key Federal procurement requirements, including those covering the procurement methods to be followed and contract cost, price, and provisions, when procuring the goods or services associated with each ARP ESSER expenditure we reviewed.