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Open Recommendations (32 total)

Child Trafficking: Addressing Challenges to Public Awareness and Survivor Support

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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status Sort descending
Department of Justice The Attorney General should ensure that OVC, in coordination with OTIP, establishes a mechanism—aligned with leading collaboration practices—to guide the offices' collaboration efforts to combat child trafficking. (Recommendation 1)
Open
As of February 2024, DOJ reported that a draft memorandum of agreement is under review that formalizes collaboration plans between DOJ's Office for Victims of Crime and HHS's Office on Trafficking in Persons to combat child trafficking. DOJ also reported that in November 2023, the two offices began convening bimonthly meetings focused on the agencies' efforts to combat child trafficking. We will close this recommendation once DOJ provides a copy of its finalized memorandum of agreement with HHS, as well as documentation of the offices' bimonthly meetings on child trafficking.

Privacy: Dedicated Leadership Can Improve Programs and Address Challenges

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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status Sort descending
Department of Justice The Attorney General should establish a time frame and fully develop and document a privacy continuous monitoring strategy. (Recommendation 26)
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The Department of Justice did not concur with this recommendation, stating that DOJ components must assess all security and privacy controls employed by an information system during initial authorization and assess a subset of controls during continuous monitoring on an ongoing basis. However, documentation provided by DOJ did not specify the frequency with which the department plans to assess each privacy control at the various risk management tiers. Accordingly, we continue to believe our recommendation is warranted. As of February 2023, the department had not provided further updates on actions taken to address this recommendation. Once the department states that it has taken action, we plan to verify whether implementation has occurred.

Child Trafficking: Addressing Challenges to Public Awareness and Survivor Support

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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status Sort descending
Department of Justice The Attorney General should ensure that OVC develops achievable performance goals for its anti-trafficking programs for children that reflect leading practices, such as being objective, measurable and quantifiable. (Recommendation 3)
Open
As of November 2023, DOJ reported that by July 2024, it would analyze its strategic goals and performance data to establish performance goals for its child-serving anti-trafficking programs. DOJ's Office for Victims of Crime anticipates that these performance goals will be reflected in its fiscal year 2025 funding opportunities focused on anti-trafficking programs for children. While these are positive steps, we will close this recommendation once DOJ has established performance goals for its child-serving anti-trafficking programs.

Department of Justice: Actions Needed to Better Track and Monitor Responses to Congressional Correspondence

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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status Sort descending
Department of Justice The Attorney General should ensure that ExecSec and OLA maintain readily available, accurate, and complete congressional correspondence data to track responses in DOJ's department-wide correspondence management system. (Recommendation 1)
Open
DOJ reported in June 2023 that ExecSec and OLA launched a new system for tracking congressional correspondence starting with the 118th Congress. According to DOJ, the new system allows the Department to better track its congressional response process by showing the steps in the process-from initial drafting to finalization and transmittal. The system also tracks where draft responses are in that process, according to DOJ. DOJ officials noted that the new system also shows the employee with responsibility for ensuring that a particular response is finalized and transmitted, and it allows the department to generate regular reports for managers and supervisors to monitor progress as needed. In October 2023, OLA officials stated that they have held meetings with key stakeholders (including ExecSec) to assess internal correspondence processes, standardized the data entry process, and have established goals. OLA officials also stated that they have developed checklists for accuracy, formatting, and context that attorneys are to use as part of their tracking process and have begun to offer trainings to OLA attorneys. According to these officials, OLA is on step three of eight in their problem solving process.

Federal Software Licenses: Agencies Need to Take Action to Achieve Additional Savings

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2 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status Sort descending
Department of Justice The Attorney General should ensure that the Department of Justice consistently tracks software licenses that are currently in use for its widely used licenses by, at a minimum, developing and implementing procedures for tracking license usage. (Recommendation 7)
Open
The Department of Justice agreed with this recommendation. When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
Department of Justice The Attorney General should ensure that the Department of Justice consistently compares the inventories of software licenses that are currently in use with information on purchased licenses to identify opportunities to reduce costs and better inform investment decision making for its widely used licenses on a regular basis. At a minimum, it should develop and implement procedures for comparing the inventories of licenses in use to purchase records. (Recommendation 8)
Open
The Department of Justice agreed with this recommendation. As of March 2024, the department had no comments on the implementation status of this recommendation. Until the department consistently compares their inventories of software licenses in use to known purchases for each of their five most widely used software licenses, it is likely to miss opportunities to reduce costs on duplicative or unnecessary software licenses. We will continue to monitor the department's efforts to fully implement this recommendation.

Department of Justice: Actions Needed to Better Track and Monitor Responses to Congressional Correspondence

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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status Sort descending
Department of Justice The Attorney General should ensure that ExecSec and OLA develop guidance on correspondence management system data quality. (Recommendation 2)
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DOJ reported in June 2023 that ExecSec and OLA have developed standard operating procedures for congressional correspondence as part of the new system for tracking and monitoring correspondence. DOJ also provided a copy of the Standard Operating Procedures Manual for Priority Correspondence. In October 2023, OLA officials told us that they were in the beginning stages of conducting outreach to DOJ components on standardizing guidance.

Environmental Justice: Federal Efforts Need Better Planning, Coordination, and Methods to Assess Progress

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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status Sort descending
Department of Justice The Attorney General of the United States should update the department's environmental justice strategic plan. (Recommendation 6)
Open
In May 2022, department leadership launched a new Office of Environmental Justice and announced a new comprehensive environmental justice enforcement strategy to guide the Department's work. In April 2023, the White House issued Executive Order 14096, "Revitalizing Our Nation's Commitment to Environmental Justice for All." Executive Order 14096 builds on the foundational 1998 environmental justice Executive Order 12898 and reiterates a requirement for each federal agency to submit an environmental justice (EJ) strategic plan, to the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) within 18 months of the April 2023 order and every 4 years thereafter. According to the order, each EJ strategic plan shall outline the agency's vision, goals, priority actions, and metrics to address and advance environmental justice, among other directives, based on guidance to be provided by CEQ. As of July 2023, the department was planning to update its EJ strategic plan. We will continue to review the department's actions and provide updated information.

Information Management: Agencies Need to Streamline Electronic Services

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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status Sort descending
Department of Justice The Attorney General should establish a reasonable time frame for when the Department of Justice will be able to accept remote identity proofing with authentication, digitally accept access and consent forms from individuals who were properly identity proofed and authenticated, and post access and consent forms on the department's privacy program website. (Recommendation 5)
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As of June 2023, Justice noted that any solution to implement remote identity proofing with authentication consistent with the CASES ACT and the Office of Management and Budget implementation guidance (M-21-04) must meet NIST's technical standard known as "Identity Assurance Level 2" (IAL2). In addition, the Department stated that they had been exploring acquiring the remote identity proofing services known as Login.gov offered by the General Services Administration (GSA), as a means of complying with the requirements of the CASES Act and M-21-04. Further, Justice stated the concerns identified in the GSA Inspector General report have contributed to challenges that the Department has faced in finding a solution to facilitate CASES Act compliance.

Anti-Money Laundering: Better Information Needed on Effectiveness of Federal Efforts

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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status Sort descending
Department of Justice The Attorney General should lead an effort, in coordination with the Departments of Homeland Security and the Treasury, to develop a methodology for producing government-wide data on the outcomes of anti-money laundering investigations. This effort could be conducted in conjunction with the interagency working group DOJ was directed to form in the joint explanatory statement accompanying its fiscal year 2023 appropriation. (Recommendation 3)
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DOJ agreed with our recommendation. We will update the status of this recommendation when DOJ provides its 180-day letter, which is due in September 2024.