Reports - Inspection / Evaluation

We initiated the subject inspection to determine whether contractors importing select goods complied with trade laws and that claims submitted for any tariff and duty expenses reimbursed were properly supported.

We determined that FNA did not have a process to ensure participating States, territories, and Indian Tribal Organizations that received an estimated $2.5 billion in fiscal year 2025 administered the Summer EBT program in accordance with eligibility and timeliness requirements.

We determined that Rural Development allocated approximately $335.7 million in ARA DAF funding without a documented framework for evaluating and prioritizing 160 competing submissions totaling approximately $754.6 million of the $362.5 million authorized.

We found the selected nonstatistical sample of the FSA’s ECAP applications contained accurate information, but determined FSA should establish additional oversight activities for commodity information for self-certified applications the agency considered low risk.

We found that controls existed to ensure Ohio did not use SNAP administrative funds for participant benefits; however, our analytics of FY 2024 participant data identified 17,000 out of 917,000 households had anomalous data, representing $13.3 million in questioned costs.

We determined that the Rural Housing Service did not consistently perform timely servicing of multi-family housing projects we reviewed in the Midwest Region, which is essential to ensure that borrowers provided rental residents with safe and sanitary housing.

We determined that USDA has not fully implemented cybersecurity and governance controls within Artificial Intelligence systems in compliance with federal standards, leaving the agency at risk of data breaches or reputational harm.

We determined that the Forest Service did not fully comply with Federal laws and regulations when executing the pre-award contracting process for the sampled contracts from November 15, 2021, to March 31, 2025, resulting in more than $48.2 million in unsupported costs.

We determined that USDA’s IT security directives are not sufficiently relevant and effective to address recent threats, as they are not consistently updated and some are similar in content or function, resulting in potential risks to USDA’s IT security posture.