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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency	21-E-0031
^	T>	^ffl/v/\ /\f InpnA^Af	December 1, 2020
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\ Office of Inspector General
At a Glance
Why We Did This Evaluation
The U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency's Office of
Inspector General received a
hotline complaint in September
2019 regarding a $12 million
contract for information
technology support services
performed by Attain, the
Agency's contractor for
information technology support.
The objective of this evaluation
was to determine whether the
EPA paid Attain for services
that were either not performed
or performed by other EPA
contractors.
This evaluation addresses the
following:
•	Operating efficiently and
effectively.
This evaluation addresses a top
EPA management challenge:
•	Complying with key internal
control requirements (policies
and procedures).
EPA Needs to Improve Oversight of Invoice
Reviews and Contractor Performance
Evaluation
Effective contract
management
practices safeguard
the EPA from
remitting costs that
are not allowable,
allocable, and
reasonable.
What We Found
We did not find evidence that the EPA paid Attain for
information security services that were either not
performed or performed by other EPA contractors. We
found, however, that the EPA did not perform certain
contract management duties for the Attain contract. In
particular, the multiple contracting officers overseeing
the Attain contract did not complete (1) the required
invoice review during the task order's base year
period and (2) the contractor performance evaluation. EPA directives prescribe
the requirements for performing these key management oversight activities.
These activities were not completed because the outgoing contracting officers did
not complete the contract transition checklist and transition memorandum, which
would have notified the incoming contracting officer about critical contract
monitoring tasks that needed to be completed. Further, the EPA lacked
processes to notify contract management when contracting officers did not
review invoices periodically or initiate the contractor performance evaluation in
the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System.
Recommendations and Planned Agency Corrective Actions
We recommend that the assistant administrator for Mission Support
(1) implement controls to alert the Office of Acquisition Solutions management
when required annual invoice reviews are not completed and contractor
performance evaluations are not initiated; (2) review all Attain task order invoices
commencing with the base year and recoup any overpayments; (3) remind
contracting officers to complete contract transition checklists and transition
memorandums when transferring task orders, including contracts, between
contracting officers; and (4) require the contracting officer to complete the base
year performance evaluation.
The Agency concurred with all recommendations and provided acceptable
corrective actions and estimated milestone dates. The Agency completed
corrective actions for one of the recommendations. The remaining four
recommendations are resolved with corrective actions pending.
Address inquiries to our public
affairs office at (202) 566-2391 or
OIG WEBCOMMENTS@epa.gov.
List of OIG reports.

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