Some Recent OIG Reports on the Forest Service

It seems important to me to note that concern about where the money is going is not just something for a few retirees. Also, to be fair to FS employees, including leadership, maybe Congress shouldn’t expect agencies to do well with short-term pulses of ginormously increased funding. One strategy is getting large amounts out the door for grantees, such that they, in turn,  hire people to do the work without federal salaries and other benefits, and without OPM-required qualifications.  This has obvious impacts on the role and number of federal employees.   The other possibility is  the agencies hiring more people themselves on temporary appointments, which runs into USAJobs and timing problems.  Or the agencies can hire more permanents and have too many on the books when the funding dries up. There are no optimal solutions.. only trade-offs constrained by unbreachable bureaucratic barriers like USAjobs.

IG seems to focus on records and record-keeping, which is helpful.  Perhaps they have not been asked to look at accomplishments, nor accomplishments per dollar expended, nor what we might call the Bubba Criterion- least overhead taken off above the salary of the person doing the work.  Or maybe that’s not something they traditionally do.

Anyway, lots of interesting stuff here. Translation: IIJA is the same as what the FS often calls the BIL or Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

Here’s a link to the R6 report.

In November 2021, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) provided Forest Service approximately $250 million to establish the IIJA Legacy Road and Trail Remediation Program (LRT). While we recognize that Region 6 had limited time to implement LRT, we were unable to validate that Region 6 selected projects based on IIJA requirements and Washington Office guidance. This occurred because Region 6 did not document information reviewed and decisions made when determining project eligibility, nor did it use the Washington Office criteria to assign prioritization points to select LRT projects. As a result, Forest Service has reduced assurance that Region 6 considered all eligible projects and then properly prioritized and selected the most meritorious LRT projects. Therefore, we questioned Region 6’s fiscal years (FYs) 2022 and 2023 LRT costs, totaling more than $13.8 million.

Additionally, we identified that Region 6 approved and allocated LRT funds to 11 ineligible tasks within 2 approved projects. This occurred because Region 6 lacked sufficient internal controls to ensure that LRT funding was allocated only to eligible tasks. As a result, Region 6 held more than $630,000 in LRT funds for ineligible tasks within approved projects, thus making these funds unavailable for other eligible LRT projects or tasks. These questioned costs are fully included in the total $13.8 million discussed above. Forest Service officials generally agreed with our findings and recommendations, and we accepted management decision on all recommendations.

There was also a report for R-3. Perhaps someone knows if there were investigations of other regions, or if R-6 and R-3 were unique for some reason.

Here’s the “What OIG Found” from the IIJA Collaborative Aquatic Landscape Restoration Program

We found that the agency did not always properly track its allocated funds for salaries and expenses (S&E).  While FS had controls for budgeting and selecting projects for CALR funds, the agency did not design specific controls to track its fiscal year (FY) 2022 CALR S&E separately from other IIJA S&E funds. As a result, FS cannot accurately report how it expended the funds  allocated for CALR S&E in FY 2022, resulting in more than $5.7 million in questioned costs. Furthermore, FS did not establish a process to ensure selected proposals were tracked and completed timely. Without a process to track and monitor CALR rehabilitation projects, FS could be noncompliant with the Act’s requirement to discontinue funding for a project that fails to achieve results for more than 2 consecutive years. FS officials generally concurred with the findings and recommendations, and we accepted management decision on all recommendations.

For IIJA Hazardous Fuel Management Activities, amount 205,600,000

In support of wildfire risk reduction, FS received $205.6 million from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) for fiscal years (FYs) 2022 and 2023 to conduct hazardous fuels management activities. We determined that FS did not separately track FYs 2022 and 2023 IIJA, Division J Hazardous Fuels Management funds. As a result, FS could not accurately report how much it spent for FYs 2022 and 2023 hazardous fuels management, resulting in $205.6 million in questioned costs.
Additionally, we found that FS did not fully document its rationale for prioritizing and selecting projects. As such, FS’ decision-making process is not transparent, resulting in reduced assurance that the most critical projects were selected. FS generally agreed with our findings and recommendations, and we accepted management decisions for the two recommendations

I’d just say that the “most critical projects” are in the eye of the beholder, and it would be odd for OIG to second-guess priorities. But in the interests of transparency, to my mind, it wouldn’t hurt to document the reasons for prioritizing certain projects, even acknowledging that there’s some chance of employees spending time on post-hoc rationalizations.

IIJA- Community Wildfire Defense Grant Program for At-Risk Communities</strong>

We found that FS may have exceeded the $9,160,800 spending limit on salary, expense, and administrative costs in FY 2022. We found that FS transferred or obligated more than $46.2 million in CWDG funding related to salary, expense, and administrative costs. Specifically, it transferred more than $32.6 million to its FS Operations account, obligated more
than $5.9 million for CWDG-specific salaries and expenses, and awarded more than $7.6 million to State agencies to help FS administer the program, which exceeded the $9,160,800 limit by more than $37 million. We also found that FS did not track how CWDG funding that it transferred into its FS Operations account was spent, which puts the agency at risk of spending CWDG funding on expenses that were not allowed under IIJA. These conditions occurred because FS did not consider all salary, expense, and administrative-related costs we identified to be subject to the IIJA limitation. As a result, FS is at an increased risk of violating the Antideficiency Act. FS officials disagreed with our interpretation of this IIJA provision and maintained that the agency used the funding in accordance with IIJA.

Lastly, while we noted that FS appropriately prioritized IIJA projects and did not exceed award limitations, FS did not have grant agreements in place for 5 of our 10 sampled
applications as of September 20, 2023, even though the application period had closed on October 7, 2022. FS officials disagreed with Findings 1 and 2 and Recommendation 1.
FS agreed with Finding 3 and Recommendation 2. We did not accept management decision on Recommendation 1

*******************************

Firefighter Pulse Survey

This one’s interesting. It didn’t seem to me like something OIG would usually do.

The OIG’s Office of Analytics and Innovation (OAI) conducted a survey of Forest Service Firefighters to better understand the perceived impact of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) on firefighters, including authorized pay increases, occupational series changes, and programs relevant to firefighters.

*****************

Potential Anomalies Related to Locality Pay

To conduct our analysis, we used Enterprise Human Resources Application (eHR Apps), which is the Department’s system for all telework and remote work information and source for personnel data. Of the USDA employees in the eHR Apps as of September 21, 2023, we identified 8,889 employees with a duty station code in the DC locality area. 6 Of those 8,889 employees, 86 had a remote work location outside the DC locality area.

We performed analysis on the 86 employees using updated personnel data as of April 11, 2024 and found that the remote work agreements for 37 of the 86 USDA employees still did not match their duty stations and were potentially pay impacting.

Good news.. FS with many employees only had 6 who did not match, whereas FNS (Food and Nutrition Service) with many fewer people (couldn’t find table of USDA agencies and employment figures). So percentage wise, the FS was doing very well.  On the other hand, the Office of the Chief Financial Officer,  had four, which seems a bit ironic. and the Office of the Secretary had one.

Industrial Control Systems

I didn’t know that the FS had any, but sure enough ARS, APHIS, and the FS apparently have them. Does anyone know what the Forest Service’s is?

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) performed an inspection of multiple USDA agencies to assess the security posture of USDA’s Industrial Control Systems (ICS) to determine whether proper controls were implemented to minimize the risk of compromise. We reviewed NIST guidance for ICS and USDA policies and procedures and interviewed agency officials to identify relevant criteria and determine how agencies implemented security controls and configurations, tracked and authorized changes to their ICS devices, and identified and mitigated security vulnerabilities for ICS devices. We also reviewed vulnerability scans at one agency to determine whether vulnerabilities had been addressed in accordance with USDA policy. This report contains sensitive content. It is being withheld from public release due to concerns about risk of circumvention of law.

IIJA-Restoration Projects on Federal/Non-Federal Land: Project Selection

Some interesting things..

 NFWF planned to work with its existing partner networks to raise additional funding to benefit the goals of the grant, providing a minimum 1:1 match of FS funds.

It would be interesting to see a table of which grants by which authorities had which match requirements.  Also,

With the grant awarded to NFWF, FS reduced its administrative burden by utilizing NFWF’s grants management expertise and processes to establish subaward agreements and to monitor sub-recipient outcomes. After the solicitation process and its initial evaluation, NFWF consults with the FS program manager prior to selection to ensure potential project sub-awards align with FS’ program goals and priorities. Furthermore, NFWF will solicit projects that are in counties with persistent poverty and/or that engage underserved and socially disadvantaged landowners. According to FS, after NFWF’s consultation, the FS program manager must agree with the final determination of the sub-award projects.
As of October 2023, NFWF awarded five project sub-awards totaling more than $1.55 million to support revegetation of mined lands in Central Appalachia and the Cumberland Plateau. Figure 7 below shows  FYs 2022 and 2023 approved project sub-awards by location and obligated amount.

As we’ve discussed one person’s reducing “administrative burden” is another person”s “reducing federal employees work, including (possibly) inspection of results.”

We conducted this work as part of our ongoing inspection with the objective to conduct integrated oversight of the funding provided to FS’ Restoration Projects on Federal and Non-Federal Land from IIJA. Specifically, we announced we would review program information for transparency and disclosure, perform data analytics on relative data sets for integrity and quality, inspect key aspects of the internal control environment, and review the implementation of the program. This report provides information related to reviewing program information for transparency and disclosure as well as program implementation.