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*. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency	13-P-0177
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Office of Inspector General
At a Glance
Why We Did This Review
The Office of Management and
Budget's (OMB's) guidance for
implementation of the 2010
Improper Payments Elimination
and Recovery Act (IPERA)
specified responsibilities of
agencies and inspectors
general. Agencies are required
to report on improper payments,
and inspectors general are
required to determine whether
the agency complies with
IPERA. As the inspector general
for the U.S. Chemical Safety
and Hazard Investigation Board
(CSB), the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency Office of
Inspector General undertook this
review of CSB's compliance with
IPERA.
This report addresses the
following CSB Goal:
• Preserve the public trust by
maintaining and improving
organizational excellence.
U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board
Complied With Reporting Requirements of the
Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act
What We Found
CSB is fully compliant with the reporting requirements of IPERA, which require
all agencies to periodically review all programs and activities that may be
susceptible to significant improper payments. As required, CSB has published
its fiscal year 2012 Performance and Accountability Report on its website, and
we have determined that CSB programs do not meet the minimum risk
assessment threshold that would require the CSB to perform a risk assessment.
OMB Memorandum M-11-16, Part I B, requires agencies to make a
determination on cost effectiveness of performing recovery audits on those
activities that expend $1 million or more annually. In February 2012, CSB
performed an analysis, as stipulated in the OMB memorandum, and found that it
would not be cost effective to perform recovery audits.
In evaluating the accuracy and completeness of CSB's reporting and
performance in preventing, reducing, and recapturing improper payments, we
determined that CSB should improve its review of the Bureau of the Public
Debt's (BPD's) testing results of CSB's improper payments. BPD provides
reimbursable administrative and information technology services to government
agencies through its Administrative Resource Center. In addition, BPD helps
government agencies reduce the number of improper payments issued. CSB
considers improper payments a low-risk item and relies on BPD to ensure
payments are correct. BPD has a performance metric of less than 1 percent for
improper payments for all of its customer agencies, which is stated in its
interagency agreement with CSB. Although the amount may be minimal, CSB
should have knowledge of BPD's analysis for improper payments and whether
these improper payments are correctly handled by BPD.
Recommendation and Planned Corrective Action
For further information, contact
our Office of Congressional and
Public Affairs at (202) 566-2391.
The full report is at:
www.epa.qov/oiq/reports/2013/
20130312-13-P-0177.pdf
We recommended that the CSB Chairperson receive and review the results of
BPD's testing for CSB improper payments on, at a minimum, a semiannual
basis. CSB concurred with our recommendation and stated that BPD will be
providing its testing results to CSB every 6 months, although the actual start
date for when this will commence has not been provided. Until CSB establishes
a date to begin review of BPD's testing for CSB improper payments, the
recommendation remains unresolved. We evaluated CSB's intended planned
action for this recommendation and concluded that the planned action should
correct the concern identified.

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