Reports

The PRAC’s Pandemic Analytics Center of Excellence (PACE) data scientists identified $5.4 Billion in potential identity fraud associated with over 69,000 questionable Social Security Numbers (SSNs) used on applications across disbursed loans in the Small Business Administration’s COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program and Paycheck Protection Program. Through collaborative verification methods with the Social Security Administration, we identified that these SSNs were used in connection with over 99,000 applications and warrant further scrutiny. The results of this Fraud Alert...

Recognizing how critical telehealth has been to the federal COVID-19 response, the PRAC Health Care Subgroup—which includes six Federal Offices of Inspectors General—worked together to provide insights on the use of telehealth and its associated program integrity risks.

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...

The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC) is charged with conducting oversight of pandemic-related spending to prevent and detect fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. In May 2021, we engaged MITRE, a not-for-profit federally funded research and development center, to conduct an independent study of lessons learned from the administration of pandemic-related emergency funding for unemployment insurance (UI) benefit programs in a sample of states. The objective of this study was to increase understanding of how states implemented pandemic UI benefit programs and how their...

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 Auditor’s Office follows up on audit recommendations to support county government’s accountability. The county implemented most of the Auditor’s recommendations from the first audit report on the county’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However. the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office did not implement our recommendation to expand the use of free-phone calls or modify lobby video visit operations to allow for safe use. Also, for Library locations, the county did not implement our recommendation to add COVID-19 specific cleaning and disinfecting requirements into its contracts with...

This report summarizes the results of the Survey of Employee Experiences During the Pandemic, issued by the Auditor’s Office in September 2020. Responses overall were generally positive. However, in analyzing the data and reading over 8,000 written comments, it is clear that employees have had very different experiences.