^tDSr^ U.S. Environmental Protection Agency	15-P-0042
'ro Office of Inspector General	December 23,2014
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At a Glance
Why We Did This Review
The U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) Office
of Inspector General received a
hotline complaint that alleged
possible contractor fraud on an
Office of Environmental
Information (OEI) contract, or
mismanagement by the
contractor and/or OEI. The
contractor billed the EPA
$11,490,228 for call center and
related services through
September 2014. Our objective
was to determine whether the
contractor is incorrectly billing
the EPA, resulting in
overbillings to the government.
This report addresses the
following EPA goal or
cross-agency strategy:
• Embracing EPA as a high-
performing organization.
Call Center: Contract Management Needs
Improvement to Reduce the Risk of Overbilling
Send all inquiries to our public
affairs office at (202) 566-2391
or visit www.epa.gov/oia.
The full report is at:
www.epa.gov/oig/reports/2014/
20141223-15-P-0042.pdf.
The EPA was
overbilled by
$910,776 for
helpdesk services.
What We Found
The EPA does not have assurance that the pricing of the
task order related to a contract was reasonable. In one
contract modification, the number of calls and emails to a
helpdesk (contact volume) was used to justify increasing
the total fixed price amount. In a subsequent modification,
ticket volume, which represents reported issues that may be the result of one or
more calls and emails, was used to justify changes that led to a decrease in
price. Inconsistent application of vague contract methodology increases the risk
that the EPA may be overcharged for call center services.
The contractor was not able to provide the details we requested regarding
contact volume and there is no evidence that the EPA requested or received the
information prior to increasing the task order price. This increases the EPA's risk
of being overcharged for call center services. If the EPA periodically requested
and verified detail data for "contact volume" used to justify increases in billing, it
would be more apt to timely detect potential fraud, waste, abuse and
mismanagement.
Recommendations and Planned Agency Corrective Actions
We recommend that the Assistant Administrator for Administration and
Resources Management:
•	Require, in negotiation with the contractor, modification of the task order to
provide an explicit definition of call volume and explicitly define the basis on
future modifications.
•	Eliminate the conflict between clause 1 and clause 24 in the task order and
require the contracting officer to recover $910,776 of unsupported charges.
•	Require the contracting officer to negotiate with the contractor to modify the
task order to require, as a monthly deliverable from the contractor, detailed
data supporting the call volume used for billing.
We also recommend that the Assistant Administrators for the Office of
Administration and Resources Management and OEI ensure periodic review of
detailed call volume information and information on the number of tickets
received in order to verify the accuracy of the summary information included in
the monthly progress report. The EPA agreed with our recommendations and
provided a corrective action plan with dates for each recommendation.
Noteworthy Achievements
OEI improved communication with program offices about increases in call center
costs. To address unexpected year-end increases in costs, OEI now provides
customers with a Monthly Utilization Report to inform them of actual usage. Also,
beginning in fiscal year 2014, OEI now allocates call center costs and bills
customers monthly based on actual usage, rather than estimated usage.

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