Key Financial Management Positions Lack Nominees

 

The Washington Post and Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, are tracking more than 500 key executive branch nominations through the confirmation process. These positions include Cabinet secretaries, deputy and assistant secretaries, chief financial officers, general counsel, heads of agencies, ambassadors and other critical leadership positions. These are a portion of the roughly 1,200 positions that require Senate confirmation.

The Senate can only act on nominations that have been formally submitted by the Trump administration.

There are several agencies lacking nominees for key financial management positions as listed below.

 

Agencies without a nominee for Chief Financial Officer:

• Department of State
• Department of Agriculture
• Department of Commerce
• Department of Education
• Department of Energy
• Department of Homeland Security
• Department of Housing and Urban Development
• Department of Labor
• Department of Transportation
• Department of Veterans Affairs
• Department of the Treasury
• Environmental Protection Agency
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Agencies without a nominee for Inspector General:

• Department of Defense
• Department of Energy
• Department of the Interior
• Central Intelligence Agency
• Small Business Administration
• Export-Import Bank
• Office of Personnel Management
• Social Security Administration

  

 

IG: Justice Department shows leadership for DATA Act rollout, but gaps remain

The Justice Department is on schedule to meet the DATA Act implementation deadline — sort of.

DOJ’s Office of Inspector General recently issued a review of the department’s progress toward standardizing its financial spending  reports, and according to the internal watchdog, “nothing came to our attention that caused us to believe that a material modification should be made” to Justice’s plans to meet the May 2017 deadline.

But the IG did note “areas of concern that potentially could impact the department’s ability to most effectively meet all the requirements within the requisite timeframe.”

Those areas of concern range from completing a full inventory, mapping and gap analysis of the department to an incomplete data extraction standard.

The inspector general looked at the first four steps of the eight-step plan recommended by the Treasury Department for DATA Act implementation. Treasury and the Office of Management and Budget are the agencies spearheading the work.

Within the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act is a requirement that agency IGs report on the law’s implementation. The first set of reports was due in November, however, the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE) recommended last December that because the spending data would not be available for November 2016, that the first required reports be due November 2017, with additional reports in 2019 and 2020.

According to the review, the Department has three financial systems: the Unified Financial Management System (UFMS); the Financial Management Information System 2 (FMIS2), a legacy financial system; and the Systems, Applications, and Products (SAP) system.

Instead of inventorying these systems, DOJ inventoried the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) procurement information in UFMS and an initial inventory of the Office of Justice Programs’ (OJP) grant award information in FMIS2 — with the hope that the lessons learned could be applied to the other financial systems.

-Meredith Sommers, FederalNewsRadio.com

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Why agencies break the law on improper payments

Despite an attempted crackdown by the Obama administration, agencies are increasingly likely to make payment mistakes. The error rate rose from 3.53 percent in fiscal 2013 to 4.02 percent in fiscal 2014. In other words, the government misspent about $10 billion more last year than the year earlier.

That we knew, thanks to a Government Accountability Office report issued a few months back. But recent inspector general reports round out the picture by showing where agencies go wrong.

Of the 24 CFO Act agencies — those required to have audited financial statements —about half failed to comply with the law on improper payments, according to a preliminary analysis of the IG reports by the accounting firm Grant Thornton. The low scorers include the agencies that misspent the most money: the departments of Health and Human Services, Treasury, Agriculture and the Social Security Administration.

The overall picture seems, at first glance, worse than in past years, when inspectors general evaluated agencies on a multilevel scale that ranged from "compliant" to "noncompliant." While agencies have made strides in some of their programs, complying with the improper payments law is now pass-fail, thanks to guidance the White House issued in October.

"They're trying to say, ‘No more wiggle room. You're either compliant or not compliant,'" said Grant Thornton Principal Robert Shea.

-Emily Kopp, FederalNewsRadio.com
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Auditors Say Feds Needlessly Wasted $43 Billion

Every year, tens of billions of tax dollars are lost to waste, fraud and abuse within the federal government. But much more could be lost if it wasn't for a team of federal watchdogs tasked with flagging any inefficiencies or wrongdoing within all government programs and projects.

That's according to the Special Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE)—the group in charge of overseeing the 15 presidentially appointed IG's. The group consistently reminds lawmakers of out how the auditors' work saves the federal government billions of dollars each year—despite their annual collective operating budget of over $1 billion. 

This year, CIGIE said that taken together, all of the auditors' recommendations this year would result in about $32 billion in savings, The Washington Examiner first reported. Recommendations typically include telling agencies to ramp up their oversight or come up with a new policy that will help them run more efficiently.

The investigations this year have already resulted in $11 billion that was returned to the Treasury. 

The IG's total operating budget for 2014 was about $1.6 billion, according to CIGIE's financial audit for 2014.

-Brianna Ehley, CNBC.com
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OMB to Alter Guidance for Reducing Improper Payments

Inspectors general are the “best friends” of program managers and the White House budget office when it comes to catching fraud and reducing agency improper payments, the deputy U.S. controller said on Wednesday.

Mark Reger, now in his third month as the No. 2 at the Office of Federal Financial Management, said his team is reworking  Circular A-123 guidance on controlling for financial integrity “to make it less prescriptive and to rely on the people on the ground,” particularly inspectors general.

Reger, a former Maryland State Treasury official, noted that the rate of bad payments has dropped steadily over the past four years, thanks in part to Congress’s enactment of the 2012 Credit Card Fraud Prevention Act and the 2012 Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act. “The most important tool is the education of agency enforcers in the field,” he said, praising the watchdogs for gathering better data, working together and sharing information. “I don’t know a single inspector general who isn’t thrilled to find additional money.”

The increasing use of data analytics has allowed progress in such areas as federal employee misuse of credit orthat it’s not okay to steal from federal government, it’s not sexy,” Reger said. purchasing cards, the deputy controller said. “The data is now generated back to the agencies every day,” he said. “Employees found to have committed fraud have had their cards cancelled, or been fired, or disciplined in some fashion.”

Coming changes to the financial controls circular will include requiring fewer reports and more-detailed categories of fraud, or “bucketing,” to distinguish, for example, between an unmerited payment and a claim lacking proper documentation, he said.

Reger urged IGs, program managers and vendors to report fraud to the Government Accountability Office’s fraud line at fraudnet@gao.net, and to peruse their own Medicare bills in search of bad charges.  “Please reinforce that it’s not okay to steal from federal government, it’s not sexy,” Reger said.

- Charles S. Clark, GovExec.com
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DHS faces stiff acquisition, IT management challenges, IG says

The Department of Homeland Security is facing major challenges ensuring employee accountability, streamlining acquisitions and managing its IT projects, according to an annual report released Nov. 18 by the DHS inspector general.

The IG received over 29,000 complaints against DHS employees and opened more than 1,000 investigations — achieving 300 convictions and affecting 100 personnel action. DHS must quickly recognize poor performers and illegal acts and move to stop them, the IG said.

The agency also struggles with delivering its acquisitions on time and on budget with the right capabilities, according to the report. While DHS has made some efforts to better manage its acquisitions it needs to continually improve and assess its efforts, the IG said.

DHS should also work on other management issues, including:

• Financial management: While the agency was able to obtain a clean financial audit for the second year in a row, it required considerable manual effort by the agency to overcome flaws in its financial IT systems, according to the IG. The agency needs to strengthen its financial management programs to eliminate these issues and make it easier to produce a clean audit.

• Grants management: Most of the challenges in grant management rest with the Federal Emergency Management Administration, which did not properly spend and document about 23 percent of disaster-assistance grants.

• Operations integration: The IG identified projects and programs shared between agencies that had weak levels of oversight, and that the agency does not have adequate systems to centrally track some of these shared programs. DHS spent more than $35.3 million on a fleet of cars shared between components that were underused, the IG said.

DHS agreed with many of the IG findings and said that many of the issues are being addressed by the agency-wide effort to coordinate and combine a diverse set of legacy agencies into one cohesive unit. The “Unity of Effort” initiative is building important bridges in DHS’ planning, programming and budgeting processes, according to Jim Crumpacker, the director of the departmental IG liaison office.

-Andy Medici, FederalTimes.com
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IGs overburdened by congressional mandates, survey finds

Few agencies host blow-out conference extravaganzas. And few feds swipe their government charge cards when paying for personal stuff. But all federal inspectors general spend more of their time worrying about that sort of wrongdoing, thanks to new congressional mandates.

IGs say those must-do's are distracting them from enterprising work that could shed light on riskier agency behavior.

A new survey of 28 inspectors general by the Association of Government Accountants and Kearney & Company P.C. shows IGs are concerned about their effectiveness, as they balance work requirements against tight budgets and difficulties in getting needed information.

Along with the online survey, conducted in June, the researchers interviewed a mix of staff at federal IG offices. The researchers delved more deeply into problems uncovered in a similar survey done a year ago.

-Emily Kopp, FederalNewsRadio.com
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IGs warn of potential threats to all inspectors general

Inspectors general from 47 agencies are backing three fellow auditors from the Justice Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Peace Corps over what they say are limits on access to information put on them by agency senior officials.

In a letter to the leaders of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the IGs say auditors from those three agencies recently faced restrictions on their access to certain records.

"In each of these instances, we understand that lawyers in these agencies construed other statutes and law applicable to privilege in a manner that would override the express authorization contained in the IG Act," the IGs wrote. "These restrictive readings of the IG Act represent potentially serious challenges to the authority of every Inspector General and our ability to conduct our work thoroughly, independently, and in a timely manner."

In the letter to the oversight committees, the IGs detail their concerns for each of the three agencies.

The IGs asked for members of Congress to provide a strong reaffirmation of the powers granted them under the IG Act.

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) released the letter as part of his long-standing support of IG independence.

Congress has sought to empower IGs even more over the last few years. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) is drafting a bill to give small agency auditors more power.

At a hearing January before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, three agency IGs &mash; Justice, Peace Corps and the Small Business Administration — told lawmakers that slashed budgets and dwindling staff sizes are hindering their ability to conduct robust oversight.

Additionally, the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE) wants Congress to give IGs more authority to use computer matching programs to root out waste, fraud and abuse.

IGs as a group last received a boost in 2008 when Congress passed and then- President George W. Bush signed into law the Inspectors General Reform Act.

-Jason Miller, FederalNewsRadio.com
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Government made $100B in improper payments

WASHINGTON (AP) -- By its own estimate, the government made about $100 billion in payments last year to people who may not have been entitled to receive them -- tax credits to families that didn't qualify, unemployment benefits to people who had jobs and medical payments for treatments that might not have been necessary.

Congressional investigators say the figure could be even higher.

The Obama administration has reduced the amount of improper payments since they peaked in 2010. Still, estimates from federal agencies show that some are wasting big money at a time when Congress is squeezing agency budgets and looking to save more.

Some improper payments are the result of fraud, while others are unintentional, caused by clerical errors or mistakes in awarding benefits without proper verification.

In 2013, federal agencies made $97 billion in overpayments, according to agency estimates. Underpayments totaled $9 billion.

The amount of improper payments has steadily dropped since 2010, when it peaked at $121 billion.

The Obama administration has stepped up efforts to measure improper payments, identify the cause and develop plans to reduce them, said Beth Cobert, deputy director of the White House budget office. 

Agencies recovered more than $22 billion in overpayments last year.

-Stephen Ohlemacher, Associated Press/FederalNewsRadio.com
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Outdated DHS Financial Systems May Be Inhibiting Internal IT Controls, OIG Audit Says

In recent years, said a new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) IT management report for the Fiscal Year 2013 DHS financial statement audit, “DHS’s financial system functionality may be inhibiting the agency’s ability to implement and maintain internal controls, notably IT applications controls supporting financial data processing and reporting at some components.”

“At most components,” OIG report, “the financial systems have not been substantially updated since being inherited from legacy agencies several years ago. Therefore, in FY 2013, we continued to evaluate and consider the impact of financial system functionality over financial reporting.”

In FY 2013, a total of 103 findings were issued, of which approximately 69 percent are repeated from last year.

According to the audit, approximately 35 percent of repeat findings were for IT deficiencies that management represented were corrected during FY 2013. The new findings in FY 2013 resulted both from additional IT systems and business processes within the scope of the audit this year and from control deficiencies identified in areas which were effective in previous years, and were noted at all DHS components.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) had the greatest number of new findings.

OIG reported that “many key DHS financial systems are not compliant with the financial management systems requirements of the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act of 1996 and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular Number A-127, Financial Management Systems, revised. DHS financial system functionality limitations add substantially to the department’s challenges of addressing systemic internal control weaknesses and limit the department’s ability to leverage IT systems to effectively and efficiently process and report financial data.”

With respect to DHS and its components’ financial systems’ IT controls, the audit “noted certain matters in the areas of security management, access controls, configuration management, segregation of duties and contingency planning.”

During the audit, “certain matters involving financial reporting internal controls (comments not related to IT) and other operational matters, including certain deficiencies in internal control” were discovered that are considered “to be significant deficiencies and material weaknesses,” and were communicated in writing to management and those charged with governance in KPMG’s Independent Auditors’ Report and in a separate letter to the Office of Inspector General and the DHS Chief Financial Officer.

-Anthony Kimery, HStoday.us
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Whistleblower hotlines changing the way IGs respond to waste, fraud and abuse

As recently as a year ago, if a lower-priority report of waste, fraud or abuse arrived via the Defense Department's inspector general hotline, it could potentially sit in a processing queue for several months before receiving attention from investigators. But as of this March, the backlog is entirely gone, and even "priority three" cases are handled well within 30 days.

The department of Health and Human Services, which runs another of the government's busiest IG hotlines, has a similar story. A few years ago, the average processing time for incoming complaints was approximately six months. Today it's inside 30 days.

Federal officials who spoke to Federal News Radio as part of our special report, Trust Redefined: Reconnecting Government and Its Employees , said agencies, large and small, across government are improving their hotline programs, partially by embracing new technologies and partially through simple business process improvements — moving cases through the system more quickly and, in turn, more effectively meeting their core mission of allowing federal employees and members of the public to blow the whistle on fraud and threats to life and safety.

-Jared Serbu, FederalNewsRadio.com
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Government charge card abuse a firing offense under new OMB guidelines

Federal employees who make illegal or improper purchases with government charge cards could face dismissal under new guidelines from the Office of Management and Budget.

In a memo to the heads of agencies, OMB Director Sylvia Burwell laid out new steps to curb charge-card violations as part of the implementation of the 2012 Government Charge Card Abuse Prevention Act.

The law, approved by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama last fall, ordered agencies to firm up internal safeguards for identifying and stopping unauthorized purchases.

By Sept. 30, agencies need to certify to OMB that they have internal controls in place, according to the memo. Agencies are expected to develop specific penalties for employees who violate charge card policies. Employees who make "illegal, improper or erroneous" purchases with government cards should face disciplinary actions, including dismissal, the memo stated.

Burwell has tasked agency human resources and charge card management officials with developing the proper penalties for violations.

OMB's guidelines also instruct agencies to report government charge card violations at least twice a year. The new reporting requirements go into effect this year for agencies that spend more than $10 million annually on charge cards. The semi-annual reports will have to detail all purchase card violations as well as the disciplinary actions taken. The first report is due Jan. 31.

The 2012 law also instructed agency inspectors general to conduct periodic risk assessments on the use of agency charge cards. Agency IGs are now required to compile an annual status report on charge card audit recommendations.

-Jack Moore, FederalNewsRadio.com
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Largest USDA overpayments go toward farm subsidies, report says

The Department of Agriculture doled out more than $20 million in excess financial assistance last year, with the largest overpayments coming in the form of farm subsidies for crop insurance.

In a report released this week, the USDA inspector general said the agency spent nearly $15 million on undue payouts through the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation while issuing no major overpayments for nutrition assistance, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — formerly known as food stamps.

Overpayments are defined as payouts that rise at least 50 percent higher than the correct amount while totaling at least $5,000 per individual or $25,000 per organization, according to the analysis.

The watchdog analysis, released Wednesday, focused on the USDA’s compliance with reporting requirements under an executive order President Obama issued in 2009 to reduce high-dollar overpayments.

The Department of Agriculture reported 239 overpayments worth a combined $20.3 million during the 2012 fiscal year, compared to 143 payouts totaling $11.7 million during the previous cycle, according to the review.

Excess payments through the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation averaged excesses of $209,000 per payout. The next highest amount came from a wildland firefighting program that sent out overpayments of $58,000 apiece on average.

The inspector general said the USDA could decrease its overpayments through better control over bookkeeping and stricter adherence to reporting guidelines, including the deadlines for producing quarterly numbers.

The Agriculture Department said in its response that “agencies misinterpreted or deviated from the requirement of the Office of Management and Budget and the [Office of the Chief Financial Officer].” The agency said its CFO would issue a memo directing each department to certify that its reporting processes comply with the established standards.

-Josh Hicks, WashingtonPost.com

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Senate poised to confirm first DoD IG in nearly two years

The Senate Armed Services Committee took the next step to fill four vacancies in the Defense Department, including one that has been vacant for almost two years.

The department has been without a Senate-confirmed inspector general since December 2011.

President Barack Obama nominated current Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation IG Jon Rymer for the job. Rymer made his case Thursday during his confirmation hearing before the committee. Rymer has been the FDIC IG since 2006. He recently retired from the Army Reserve with more than 30 years of service between his active and reserve duty. He is a graduate of the Army's Inspector General School. His experience in the private sector includes seven years in consulting and interval auditing at a major accounting firm and 15 years as a senior manager in the banking industry.

While very familiar with the Army's prevention programs, Rymer said he believed the role of the IG is to provide oversight for the effectiveness of the programs in place and an analysis of the money spent by each of the services.

-Lauren Larson, FederalNewsRadio.com
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Fed watchdogs in their own catfight

The federal government’s inspector generals are usually seen as the watchdogs who investigate allegations of mismanagement, waste, fraud and abuse by government agencies and then demand the agencies shape up.

The IG’s also periodically review each other’s work to ensure that everyone’s following appropriate procedures in conducting agency audits.

It seems a most unusual — in fact, downright nasty — catfight erupted last week between two inspector generals when the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) reviewed some work of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation IG (PBGC- OIG).

Obviously we’re not going to get involved in the gory details, save to say that the battle is over proper compliance with government accounting standards (GAGAS).

The SIGAR team reviewed two of the PBGC team’s audits and graded them in a report on May 15 with a “pass with deficiencies.”

That sparked what became a bench-clearing brawl, most of which is laid out here.

-Al Kamen, WashingtonPost.com
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IRS issued billions in improper refunds, report says

The Internal Revenue Service issued more than $11 billion in improper payments through its Earned Income Tax Credit program last year, according to an inspector general’s report released this week.

Treasury Department deputy inspector general Michael McKenney found that the IRS has failed to comply for two consecutive years with the Improper Payments Elimination Act, which President Obama signed in 2010. The law requires federal agencies to reduce erroneous payments to a rate of less than 10 percent.

The IRS estimates that at least 21 percent of its EITC payments in 2012 were faulty. That rate showed a decline compared to the previous nine years, but improper payments over the same period increased about 22 percent, rising to at least $11.6 billion, according to the inspector general’s report.

-Josh Hicks, WashingtonPost.com
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OMB clarifies agency authorities for implementing sequestration cuts

The Office of Management and Budget has directed agencies to take full advantage of the funding flexibilities they have under the law as they implement the automatic budget cuts, known as sequestration, that went into effect March 1.

In an April 4 memo, OMB Controller Danny Werfel also directed agency and department leaders to be mindful of certain types of performance awards and to work with agency inspectors general before making cuts to IG offices.

Many agencies' hands are tied when it comes to implementing the cuts because of their across-the-board nature.

"However, depending on an agency's account structure and any existing flexibilities provided by law, some agencies may have a limited ability to realign funds to protect mission priorities," Werfel wrote.

In fact, the 2013 appropriations bill passed by Congress last month blunted some of the impact of the cuts by shifting funding priorities and, in some cases, granting new increases.

"Agencies with reprogramming or transfer authority should continue to examine whether the use of these authorities would allow the agency to minimize the negative impact of sequestration on core mission priorities," Werfel wrote in the memo.

He told agencies to consider long-term mission goals when making decisions about how to implement the cuts.

The memo reiterated that funding for agencies' independent inspector general offices is subject to sequestration.

"To the extent an agency has discretion in implementing reductions to IG funding due to sequestration, agency heads should be mindful of the independence of the Office of Inspector General and should consult with the IG on a pre-decisional basis on matters that may impact IG funding," the memo stated.

In fact, in cases where IG funding is its own budget line-item (and not "intermingled" with other types of funding), the IGs themselves should be granted the discretion to implement the cuts, Werfel said.

Werfel said the administration continues to urge Congress to eliminate sequestration "as part of a balanced agreement on deficit reduction."

- Jack Moore, FederalNewsRadio.com
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New data analytics tool gives Postal Service IG head start on cases

Investigators and auditors in the Postal Service's Office of Inspector General didn't jump at the chance to use new tools for analyzing data. They were unsure and skeptical the new approach would really make a difference or if it would just waste their time.

But once the Counter Measures and Performance Evaluation (CAPE) team in the OIG developed the first dashboard to help investigators visualize the data more easily, they overcame that initial resistance.

Bryan Jones, the director of the CAPE team, said the IG's office had to understand the mind of an investigator and what would be compelling to them.

"It's a web-based interface, a map of the U.S. with hot spots," Jones said. "These are all hyperlinks ... If you are an investigator responsible for a certain area, your eyes are drawn to that area, there are circles that are red or green, depending on what's going on there; there are hyperlinks so you can drill into the details. Once you get behind the map, then the power of the analytics is right in front of you. You have a link analysis tool. It may link one contractor with another contractor. There are copies of invoices. There's risk scores that are assigned to whatever it is we are measuring. We are able to model every single contract or every single transaction or every single whatever it is that's being investigated. In the past, you'd have to do a statistical sample or you may have to wait until someone calls to look for something. It puts a lot of information in front of the investigator."

- Jason Miller, FederalNewsRadio.com
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As sequestration cuts loom, unimplemented IG recommendations could save billions

Over the past few years, unimplemented agency inspector general recommendations that could potentially save the government billions of dollars have piled up.

Now, with $85 billion in automatic budget cuts kicking in, lawmakers on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are telling agencies there's no excuse for them to further delay implementing the cost-saving measures and best practices identified by their IGs.

In 2009, there were 10,894 open IG recommendations, according to a report released by the oversight committee ahead of a hearing Tuesday. But by 2012, that number had grown to 16,906, representing a potential $67 billion in savings.

And if agencies won't act on those recommendations, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the oversight committee, said he will.

Issa's committee has sought to forge close ties with agency watchdogs. In January, a letter from both the House and Senate oversight committees called on the Obama administration to fill persistent vacancies in the IG ranks.

The IG community is also beset by a spate of longstanding vacancies including those at six large agencies: the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Interior, Labor and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

According to the committee, there's a connection between vacancies and unimplemented recommendations. Among the agencies with most unfulfilled recommendations are those with long-term vacancies in their IG offices.

Long-term vacancies "weaken the office of the Inspector General," the report stated. "A permanent IG has the ability to set a long-term strategic plan for the office, including setting investigative and audit priorities. An acting official, on the other hand, is known by all OIG staff to be temporary."



-Jack Moore, FederalNewsRadio.com
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Federal News Radio coverage of the 2013 AGA National Leadership Conference

The Association of Government Accountants' National Leadership Conference brings together financial-management experts from across government to share best practices and to discuss the latest management and accountability techniques.

The 2013 Association of Government Accountants National Leadership Conference was held Feb. 12-13 in Washington, D.C. Federal News Radio attended the event and spoke with several of the key speakers ahead of their respective panel discussions.

- FederalNewsRadio.com
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