. M>sp«r0<, At a Gla Report No. 24-N-0053 August 7, 2024 Compendium of Open and Unresolved Recommendations: Data as of May 31, 2024 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, 2023, through March 31, 2024, and the recommendations that remained unresolved through May 31, 2024. We produce the compendium annually. Open recommendations, also called resolved recommendations, are those on which the responsible office 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 responsible office disagrees with; has not provided a formal, complete, written response to; or has proposed corrective actions for that the responsible office and the OIG have not agreed upon. Address inquiries to our public affairs office at (202) 566-2391 or OIG.Publ icAffairs@epa.gov. What We Found This compendium focuses on a total of 90 recommendations to the EPA that remained unimplemented—79 open and 11 unresolved—as of May 31, 2024. This is an update to the 79 recommendations identified as open in Report No. EPA-350-R-24-001. Semiannual Report to Congress: October 1, 2023-March 31, 2024, issued May 2024. 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 two of the 81 open recommendations in that report. This year we provide a separate analysis of the five unresolved OIG recommendations made to the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board as of May 31, 2024. There were no recommendations to the CSB identified as open in Report No. EPA-350-R-24-001. Implementing corrective actions on the open and unresolved recommendations contained in this compendium could have potential cost savings of $74.5 million. The 90 recommendations we address in this compendium represent $74.5 million in potential cost savings. In this compendium, we also discuss the following: • A breakdown of the 11 unresolved recommendations to the EPA and the potential impact on human health and the environment and the administrative and business functions. • The relationship of the open and unresolved recommendations to the EPA's fiscal year 2024 top management challenges, which we identify in the our Report No. 24-N-0008. The EPA's Fiscal Year 2024 Top Management Challenges, issued November 15, 2023. • Seventeen open or unresolved recommendations that the OIG deemed high priority. • A breakdown of the 79 open recommendations by EPA program office and region. One of these open recommendations previously was reported by the Agency as closed, but upon further review we disagreed with the Agency's assessment and reopened it. • Sixty-four open recommendations that are designed to improve human health and the environment, and 15 open recommendations that are designed to improve administrative and business operations. • Fifty-three open recommendations that are at least three years old or that will be at least three years old on the scheduled completion date the Agency provided for the associated corrective actions. • Five unresolved recommendations made to the CSB. List of OIG reports. ------- |