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Office of the Inspector General: 
U.S. Government Accountability Office: 

Semiannual Report: 

October 1, 2012 – March 31, 2013: 

April 2013: 

OIG-13-2SP: 

OIG: 
Office of the Inspector General: 
United States Government Accountability Office: 

Memorandum: 

Date: April 26, 2013: 

To: Comptroller General Gene L. Dodaro: 

From: [Signed by] Inspector General Adam Trzeciak: 

Subject: Semiannual Report—October 1, 2012, through March 31, 2013: 

I am submitting this report in accordance with Section 5 of the 
Government Accountability Office Act of 2008 (GAO Act).[Footnote 1] 
The report summarizes the activities of the Office of the Inspector 
General (OIG) for the first reporting period of fiscal year 2013. 

The act requires that you transmit the report to Congress within 30 
days after receipt. Your transmittal should also include any comments 
you consider appropriate. 

I appreciate management’s support and want to thank GAO’s management 
and staff for their cooperation during our reviews. The OIG’s team of 
dedicated professionals remains committed to helping GAO improve the 
services it provides for American taxpayers. The accomplishments 
reported in this letter are the direct result of their efforts. 

Introduction: 

The United States Government Accountability Office: 

GAO is the audit, evaluation, and investigative arm of the Congress. 
It supports congressional oversight by (1) auditing agency operations 
to determine whether federal funds are being spent efficiently and 
effectively; (2) investigating allegations of illegal and improper 
activities; (3) reporting on how well government programs and policies 
are meeting their objectives; (4) performing policy analyses and 
outlining options for congressional consideration; and (5) issuing 
legal decisions and opinions, such as bid protest rulings and reports 
on agency rules. 

The Office of the Inspector General: 

Established as a statutory office by the GAO Act of 2008,[Footnote 2] 
The OIG independently conducts audits, evaluations, and other reviews 
of GAO programs and operations and makes recommendations to promote 
the agency’s economy, efficiency, and effectiveness. We also 
investigate allegations of fraud, waste, abuse, mismanagement or other 
serious problems in GAO's programs and operations, including the 
possible violation of law or regulation. 

Activities of the Office of the Inspector General: 

Audits and Evaluations: 

We issued a report evaluating GAO’s information security program and 
practices for fiscal year 2012. (See the attachment for a report 
summary.) In addition, we began fieldwork to assess the extent to 
which GAO has implemented an effective process for reviewing and 
validating security clearance requirements and initiated an audit of 
GAO’s purchase card program. 

Complaints and Investigations: 

The OIG hotline continues to be our primary source of complaints or 
information for identifying suspected fraud and other serious 
problems, abuses, and deficiencies relating to the administration of 
GAO’s programs and operations. As shown in table 1, we processed a 
total of 212 complaints during the period. 

Table 1: Summary of OIG Hotline Complaint Activities, October 1, 2012, 
through March 31, 2013: 

Hotline complaints open at the start of the reporting period: 3; 
New hotline complaints received this reporting period: 212; 
Total hotline complaints: 215. 

Complaints closed (referred to GAO, or external agency components): 4; 
Complaints closed (referred to FraudNet[A]): 11; 
Complaints closed (insufficient information/no basis): 171; 
Complaints closed (no jurisdiction and referred to appropriate agency 
OIG or other law enforcement offices): 12; 
Complaints closed (converted to investigations): 10; 

Total hotline complaints open at the end of the reporting period: 7. 

Source: OIG. 

[A] FraudNet is a government-wide hotline operated by GAO staff that 
receives complaints of fraud, waste, and abuse of federal 
funds spent by other federal agencies. 

[End of table] 

Table 1 identifies 171 complaints that were closed due to insufficient 
information or no basis upon which to open an investigation. Virtually 
all of these complains involved other federal and state programs, not 
GAO programs and operations. We report them here because the OIG 
expends considerable effort responding to the complaints and providing 
them with contact information at other federal, state, and local 
agencies with appropriate jurisdiction. Often, it is difficult to 
pinpoint the complainant’s concerns so we’ve determined to guide the 
complainant rather than refer these matters ourselves. 

As shown in table 2, we opened 10 new investigations and closed 11 
investigations that were opened in the current and prior periods. At 
the end of the reporting period, 16 investigations remained open. 

Table 2: Summary of OIG Investigative Activity, October 1, 2012, 
through March 31, 2013: 

Investigations open at the start of the reporting period: 17; 
New investigations initiated this reporting period: 10; 
Total investigations: 27; 
Investigations closed this reporting period: 11; 
Total investigations open at the end of the reporting period: 16. 

Source: OIG. 

[End of table] 

One of the investigations we closed involved a GAO employee who 
submitted travel vouchers over a three-year period that allegedly 
contained false claims. The matter was declined by the Department of 
Justice for criminal prosecution. It was then referred to the GAO 
Human Capital Office for consideration of administrative action. We 
reported in our previous Semiannual Report to Congress that the 
employee was suspended for a period of 60 days without pay.[Footnote 
3] In this reporting period, the employee agreed to reimburse GAO 
$2,569 as restitution. 

Other Activities: 

In addition to our audit and investigative activities, we processed 
two Freedom of Information Act requests in accordance with procedures 
set forth in 4 C.F.R. Part 81; responded to a congressional request 
for information on open recommendations more than 1 year old; and 
issued the OIG’s annual audit plan. We also actively participated in 
the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency 
activities. 

GAO’s OIG is also the Inspector General for the United States 
Commission on Civil Rights as directed by the Consolidated and 
Continuing Appropriations Act of 2012 (Pub. L. No. 112-55, 125 Stat. 
552, 628). Those activities are reported to Congress under separate 
cover. 

GAO Actions on Recommendations Made in Prior OIG Reports: 

Timely resolution of outstanding audit recommendations continues to be 
a priority for both our office and the agency. During the period, we 
closed 13 recommendations made in prior reporting periods and GAO made 
substantive progress on the remaining three open recommendations. 
These three recommendations, and their implementation status, are 
presented below: 

Table 3: GAO Actions on Recommendations Made in Prior OIG Reports, 
October 1, 2012, through March 31, 2013: 

OIG audit and other reports: 
Recommendation: 
Status of actions planned and taken by GAO in response to the 
recommendation: 

Information Security: Evaluation of GAO’s Information Security Program 
and Practices for Fiscal Year 2009, OIG-10-3 (Jan. 4, 2010); 
1. Continue efforts to implement additional requirements for the 
agency’s privacy program; 
Recommendation open: GAO is in the final phase of requiring the 
establishment of a privacy program for protecting the privacy of all 
personally identifiable information under the agency’s control or 
authority. 

Human Capital: Opportunities Exist to Strengthen Controls over 
Recruitment, Relocation, and Retention Incentives, OIG-12-5 (Aug. 28, 
2012); 
2. Update GAO’s recruitment, relocation, and retention incentive 
policy contained in GAO Order 2575.1 to: 
a. strengthen justification factors for the continuation of retention 
incentive payments by requiring a timeline or strategy for eliminating, 
as appropriate, the need for future payments, and; 
b. include a requirement for periodically reporting to GAO management 
and executives on the agency’s use of these incentives; 
Recommendation open: GAO is in the final phase of revising its policy 
to strengthen justification factors for requesting and approving a 
retention incentive. Among the updated justification factors is a 
requirement to identify a timeline or strategy for minimizing, as 
appropriate, the likelihood that a retention incentive would be paid to 
an individual over an extended period. Periodic reporting to agency 
executives and management on the use of these incentives was also 
added as a policy requirement. 

Human Capital: Opportunities Exist to Strengthen Controls over 
Recruitment, Relocation, and Retention Incentives, OIG-12-5 (Aug. 28, 
2012); 
3. Incorporate the use of recruitment, relocation, and retention 
incentives into GAO’s strategic human capital planning to specify a 
plan for their use, the results GAO expects to achieve, and the 
measures that will be used to assess their effectiveness; 
Recommendation open: GAO continues efforts to update its strategic 
human capital plans to incorporate the use of recruitment, relocation, 
and retention incentives and to identify specific measures for 
assessing their effectiveness in supporting human capital goals and 
objectives. 

Source: OIG. 

[End of table] 

[End of section] 

Attachment: 

Summary of OIG Reports and GAO Actions Reports Issued October 1, 2012, 
through March 31, 2013: 

Information Security: Evaluation of GAO’s Program and Practices for 
Fiscal Year 2012, [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/OIG-13-2], 
(Feb. 13, 2013). 

Findings: The Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 
(FISMA) requires that many federal agencies establish an agency-wide 
information security management program for the information and 
information systems that support the agency’s operations and assets. 
GAO is not obligated by law to comply with FISMA or Executive Branch 
information policies, but has adopted them to help ensure physical and 
information system security. Our prior year evaluations have shown 
that GAO has established an overall information security program that 
is generally consistent with the requirements of FISMA, OMB 
implementing guidance, and standards and guidance issued by the 
National Institute of Standards and Technology. For example, GAO has 
well defined operational and technical controls for remote access to 
its network. Its telecommunications policy requires users to comply 
with rules of behavior and user agreements that acknowledge their 
responsibility and accountability. GAO also has procedures in place to 
report and disable lost or stolen devices to prevent unauthorized 
access. In addition, GAO has continued its focus on closing prior-year 
security-related recommendations. 

Our fiscal year 2012 limited evaluation reinforced our prior 
conclusion. However, using 18 new FISMA reporting metrics for federal 
inspectors general, we identified areas for improvement in the 
contingency planning process. We also identified resource challenges 
that affect GAO’s ability to implement security upgrades and 
strategies identified by GAO managers and the OIG. 

Recommendations and GAO actions: To help strengthen GAO’s overall 
information security program, we recommend that the Chief Information 
Officer take the following two actions: (1) implement measures to 
increase the redundancy and availability of GAO mission-essential 
applications and (2) develop and provide, for GAO senior management 
consideration, a proposed strategy to ensure power redundancy for GAO 
servers and provide a long-term alternate power supply. GAO concurred 
with these recommendations. 

[End of section] 

Footnotes: 

[1] 31 U.S.C. § 705 (2012). 

[2] 31 U.S.C. § 705 (2012). 

[3] GAO, Office of the Inspector General, Semiannual Report: April 1, 
2012-September 30, 2012, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/OIG-13-01] (Washington, D.C.: Nov. 7, 
2012). 

[End of section] 

Reporting Fraud, Waste, and Abuse in GAO’s Internal Operations: 

To report fraud, waste, and abuse in GAO’s internal operations, do one 
of the following. (You may do so anonymously.) 

* Call toll-free (866) 680-7963 to speak with a hotline specialist,
available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. 

* Online at: [hyperlink, https://OIG.alertline.com]. 

Obtaining Copies of OIG Reports and Testimony: 

To obtain copies of OIG reports and testimony, go to GAO’s Web site: 
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/about/workforce/ig.html]. 

Congressional Relations: 

Katherine Siggerud, Managing Director, siggerudk@gao.gov,
(202) 512-4400, U.S. Government Accountability Office, 441 G Street
NW, Room 7125, Washington, DC 20548. 

Public Affairs: 

Chuck Young, Managing Director, youngc1@gao.gov, (202) 512-4800
U.S. Government Accountability Office, 441 G Street NW, Room 7149,
Washington, DC 20548. 

[End of document]