Reports

This management information report provides the Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) perspective on challenges the U.S. Department of Education (Department) may face as it implements and oversees the Coronavirus, Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. In preparing this report, we reviewed recent audit work performed by OIG and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) as well as OIG’s annual Management Challenges reports. We also reviewed challenges that the Department faced when administering education-related grant programs funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act...

This insights report provides a contextual understanding of the cross-cutting challenges states faced within their unemployment insurance (UI) programs and highlights the substantial work that has been done by State Auditors to ensure their states’ UI programs are functioning effectively. This report examines four common insights across 16 State Auditor Offices: (1) UI workloads surged for states; (2) the claims surge exploited internal control weaknesses; (3) uncommon and varying fraud schemes began to occur as the amount of federal funding expanded; and (4) state workforce agencies...

The COVID-19 pandemic put an unprecedented strain on the nation’s federal healthcare systems. The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC) Health Care Subgroup surveyed more than 300 facilities across four federal healthcare programs to determine if the facilities had sufficient medical staff during the pandemic. The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) reviewed staffing at Veterans Health Administration facilities, the Department of Justice OIG reviewed Federal Bureau of Prisons facilities, the Department of Defense OIG reviewed medical treatment facilities, and the Health and Human...

The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) conducted a review to assess Veterans Health Administration’s (VHA) virtual primary care response to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the use of virtual care by primary care providers and their perceptions of VA Video Connect (VVC) between February 7 and June 16, 2020.The COVID-19 pandemic presented significant challenges to health care delivery worldwide. One strategy initiated by VHA, in accordance with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendation to social distance, included expanding the delivery of primary care via virtual care...

During the pandemic, the contracts and grants workforce played a critical role in providing support to taxpayers, local governments, and other recipients through pandemic relief programs. The CARES Act directed the PRAC to review the sufficiency of contract and grant staffing and other resources from agencies across the federal government to determine if they had the resources necessary to adequately perform their duties. The PRAC conducted a survey of 29 agencies, and each provided their experiences on the impact the pandemic had on their agency’s ability to effectively perform their work...

This Insights Report highlights identity fraud related challenges in federal programs during the COVID-19 pandemic. By evaluating previous oversight work in this space from members of the PRAC’s Identity Fraud Reduction and Redress Working Group, this report presents best practices to reduce identity fraud before it occurs and to assist victims of identity fraud if it does occur. These best practices may be helpful for federal agencies to utilize moving forward. This report also identifies that across the federal government there is a larger focus on reducing identity fraud up front, while...

UI was already a strained system, but the pandemic exacerbated existing challenges and created new ones which lead to massive fraud. We sampled 45 cases and learned about the schemes and methods fraudsters used. Find out what can be done to improve UI for the future. Read our report to find out more.

While personnel shortages existed in the health care community before the pandemic, the pandemic exacerbated these shortages. Maintaining an appropriate level of personnel in health care facilities is essential to providing a safe work environment for health care personnel and safe care to patients. The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee’s (PRAC) Health Care Subgroup developed this report to share insights into personnel shortages across four select federal health care programs, or the providers they reimburse. Together, these four programs provide health care services to approximately...

A commissioned study by MITRE that identifies gaps in federal data sources and how we can close them to improve the quality of the information we provide to the public.