The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 (DATA Act), and implementing guidance provided in the Office of Management and Budget Memorandum M-15-12, is a mandate that Federal agencies must follow to report their financial, budgetary and programmatic information to the USASpending.gov web site.  We have reviewed the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) compliance efforts as of July 15, 2016.  To...

We audited the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) oversight of the Government National Mortgage Association’s (Ginnie Mae) contract for financial industry and media marketing services with public relations and communications firm Burson-Marsteller.  We initiated the audit after we became aware of potential issues regarding the amount of funds used for services, which may not have been reasonable or necessary. ...

Due to deficiencies found in prior reviews of two Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA or Act) assignments, we audited the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) implementation and oversight of the IPA mobility program. The audit objectives were to determine whether (1) HUD’s use of IPA agreements met the purpose and intent of the IPA mobility program, (2) HUD’s policies and procedures related to IPA agreements were adequate...

Contractors comprise around half of HUD’s workforce. We reviewed progress HUD had made in addressing previously identified background investigation issues. Personnel Security Division (PSD) had reduced the backlog of suitability adjudication cases, but on average it took about four times longer than the Office of Personnel Management standard of 90 days to complete a case—resulting in several hundred contractor employees working at HUD without...

We assessed the HUD Office of the Chief Procurement Officer’s acquisition improvement initiatives. HUD has faced many acquisition challenges over the years and we found HUD had made progress in addressing those challenges. We observed that HUD had not developed a sound, cohesive strategy to address improvement initiatives, offices did not communicate or coordinate effectively, and offices did not agree on the best way to address acquisitions...

We reviewed the general and application controls over the Federal Housing Administration’s (FHA) Single Family Insurance System (SFIS) and Single Family Insurance Claims subsystem (Claims) as part of the internal control assessments required for the fiscal year 2015 financial statement audit under the Chief Financial Officer’s Act of 1990.  Our objective was to evaluate the general and application controls over SFIS and Claims for...

The Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2014 (FISMA) directs the Office of Inspector General (OIG) to conduct an annual evaluation of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) information security program.  FISMA, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) establish information technology (IT) security guidance and...

We reviewed information system controls over the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) computing environment.  This review was conducted as part of the Office of Inspector General’s audit of HUD’s financial statements for fiscal year 2015 under the Chief Financial Officer’s Act of 1990. The OIG has determined that the contents of this report would not be appropriate for public disclosure and has therefore limited its...

Office of Evaluation, IT Evaluation Division (iTED) conducted an evaluation of HUD’s IT Modernization program, which included reviews on the implementation and maturity of HUD’s capital planning and investment control (CIPIC) process and Enterprise Architecture (EA) program. With the corroboration of HUD’s Office of Chief Information Officer (OCIO), the report focuses on three major IT programs and policies within the CPIC and EA programs: IT...

The Office of Evaluation performed preliminary research of the HUD Office of the Chief Information Officer’s (OCIO) management of the agency’s reporting of financial and project information on the Federal IT Dashboard (Dashboard).  The objective of the evaluation was to determine if OCIO processes ensured accurate IT investment information was reported on the Dashboard.  We found that project managers did not consistently follow...

We reviewed information system controls over the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) computing environment.  This review was conducted as part of the Office of Inspector General’s audit of HUD’s financial statements for fiscal year 2014 under the Chief Financial Officer’s Act of 1990. The OIG has determined that the contents of this report would not be appropriate for public disclosure and has therefore limited its...

The Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 (FISMA) directs the Office of Inspector General (OIG) to conduct an annual evaluation of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) information security program.  FISMA, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) establish information technology (IT) security guidance and...

Federal organizations have a fundamental responsibility to protect the privacy of individuals and their personally identifiable information (PII) that is collected, used, maintained, shared, and disposed of by agency programs and information systems. The management of U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) programs demands the availability and use of extensive amounts of financial, demographic, and personal information. HUD is...

We reviewed the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) violation report regarding the misuse of a government purchase card in accordance with the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) implementing guidance and the Government Charge Card Abuse Prevention Act of 2012.   HUD is responsible for the violation report and the conclusions expressed in the report.  Our objective was to evaluate the fairness of the...

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD), Office of Inspector General reviewed HUD’s oversight of contracting for architectural and engineering contracts due to a referral involving a multi-State manufactured home inspection contract awarded by HUD in which the contractor received excessive payments.  Our audit objective was to determine whether HUD properly procured and made reasonable payments for its manufactured...

The Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 (FISMA) directs the Office of Inspector General (OIG) to conduct an annual evaluation of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) information security program.  FISMA, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) establish information technology (IT) security guidance and...

We conducted an evaluation of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) toll free phone lines.  Our objective was to determine whether HUD’s phone lines were functioning at optimal levels with regard to phone line operations and the level of customer service provided to the public. Our review disclosed that HUD could not determine (1) whether its toll free phone lines were functioning at an optimal level and (2) the...

We audited the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD)’s plans and procedures for data conversion of the HUD Integrated Core Financial System (ICFS). Our audit objective was to review HUD’s readiness to fully implement ICFS and determine whether HUD had properly managed the payments related to data conversion activities. We determined that OCFO incorrectly paid the Integrated Financial Management Improvement Project contractor...

We have completed a review to determine whether HUD followed proper policies and procedures in responding to a breach of personally identifiable information which occurred on September 21, 2012. Specifically, for this incident, we identified what actions were taken and any deficiencies within HUD policies, plans, or current practices. We determined that HUD responded to the incident properly, following United States Computer Emergency...

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Office of Inspector General audited the Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer based on concerns about security risks of hard drives in multifunction devices. Our objective was to determine whether HUD had documented and implemented procedures to effectively remove sensitive data from the hard drives of multifunction devices before disposing of them. HUD did not monitor or test the...