At a Gla 23-N-0025 July 27, 2023 Compendium of Open and Unresolved Recommendations: Data as of May 31, 2023 Why We Published This Compendium The Inspector General Act of 1978, as amended, requires each inspector general to prepare semiannual reports for Congress. As part of that reporting, the inspector general must identify all recommendations from the prior reporting period for which corrective actions have not been completed by the agency, as well as any management decisions with respect to audit, inspection, or evaluation reports issued during that prior reporting period. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Inspector General is publishing this Compendium to analyze the open recommendations listed in the semiannual report covering our work from October 1, 2022, through March 31, 2023, and the recommendations that remained unresolved through May 31, 2023. We produce the Compendium annually. Open recommendations, also called resolved recommendations, are those on which the EPA and the OIG agree, but the agreed-upon corrective actions have not yet been completed, regardless of whether their expected due dates are in the past or the future. Unresolved recommendations are those that the EPA disagrees with; has not provided a formal, complete, written response to; or has proposed corrective actions for that the Agency and the OIG have not agreed upon. What We Found This Compendium focuses on 91 recommendations identified as open in Report No. EPA-350-R-23-001. Semiannual Report to Congress: October 1, 2022- March 31, 2023, issued May 2023, and 22 recommendations that remained unresolved through May 31, 2023. Our analysis recognizes changes in the statuses of recommendations that occurred after the issuance of the semiannual report but not later than May 31, including the implementation of corrective actions for seven of the 98 open recommendations in that Implementing corrective actions on the open and unresolved recommendations contained in this Compendium could have potential monetary benefits of $74.6 million. report. The 113 recommendations we address in this Compendium represent $74.6 million in potential monetary benefits. In this Compendium, we also discuss the following: • A breakdown of the 22 unresolved recommendations. • The relationship of the open and unresolved recommendations to the EPA's fiscal year 2023 top management challenges, which we identify in the our EPA's Fiscal Year 2023 Top Management Challenges report, issued October 28, 2022. • Fifteen open or unresolved recommendations that the OIG deemed high priority. • A breakdown of the 91 open recommendations by program office and region. Seven of these open recommendations previously were reported by the Agency as closed, but upon further review, we disagreed with the Agency's assessment and reopened them. • Sixty-seven open recommendations that are designed to improve human health and the environment, and 24 open recommendations that are designed to improve administrative and business operations. • Fifty-two open recommendations that are at least three years old or that have corrective actions scheduled to be completed more than three years after the associated report's issuance. Address inquiries to our public affairs office at (202) 566-2391 or OIG.PublicAffairs@epa.gov. List of OIG reports. ------- |