Highlights of Our Report to Congress

The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC) submitted its first-ever Semiannual Report to Congress, covering the period of April 1 to September 30, 2020. The report is required by the CARES Act and summarizes our work since the PRAC was founded in spring 2020. We wrote this report to update Congress on our efforts to promote public transparency and ensure coordinated oversight of $2.6+ trillion in pandemic response spending. The report is a resource for the public, the press, and federal, state, and local policymakers, with information on the PRAC’s structure, our members, our strategic goals, and how our work supports those goals.

Diagram of accomplishments that lists the four goals: 1 promote transparency, connected to our public website, 2 promote coordinated, comprehensive oversight connected to coordinating with OMB guidance and virtual listening forums, 3 preventing and detecting fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement connected to sufficiency analysis of CARES act data reporting and our top challenges report, and 4 ensuring effective and efficient PRAC operations connected to the strategic plan — PRAC’s strategic goals linked with the PRAC’s accomplishments to date

The report is organized into three main sections:

The PRAC’s work to date
Results of investigations of CARES Act fraud conducted by our member Offices of Inspectors General
Highlights of oversight reports published by member OIGs

The report’s appendices have a full catalog of the 89 pandemic-related reports published by OIGs from April 1 to September 30, and information on the communications we’ve received through our hotline. Our hotline is an avenue for concerned citizens to report potential fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement related to pandemic spending and programs.

Highlights

	On July 23, 2020, the PRAC released its Strategic Plan for 2020 through 2025 that identifies four goals to carry out its mission and vision.
	To support greater transparency of covered funds activity and the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we established a public-facing website on April 27, 2020 and launched an enhanced version on September 10, 2020.
	In June 2020, we issued a Top Challenges Report to provide insight into top management challenges for agencies that received pandemic response funds, as identified by OIGs.
	For this reporting period, 12 OIGs publicly reported 141 investigations, 241 indictments/complaints, 163 arrests, and 10 convictions related to the Federal Government’s COVID-19 pandemic response.
	For the current reporting period, 26 OIGs issued a total of 89 oversight reports related to the Federal Government’s COVID-19 pandemic response.

We encourage you to read the full report.