Semiannual Reports

These challenges illustrate the most significant areas the Office of Inspector General (OIG) believes need improvement for the Peace Corps to effectively manage its resources and minimize the potential for fraud, waste, and abuse occurring in its operations. Addressing the issues related to these challenge areas will enable the agency to increase operational efficiencies and improve mission effectiveness.

The objectives of this performance audit were to assess the completeness, timeliness, quality, and accuracy of Fiscal Year 2017, Second Quarter financial and award data submitted for publication on USAspending.gov in accordance with the DATA Act and to assess the Peace Corps’ implementation and use of the Government-wide financial data standards established by the Office of Management and Budget and the Department of the Treasury. While the Peace Corps took steps to implement and use the Government-wide data standards, problems with completeness and accuracy hinder the Peace Corps’ ability to provide reliable data, achieve full transparency to the public, and comply with Federal accountability requirements.

The objective of this review was to perform an independent assessment of the Peace Corps’ information security program, including testing the effectiveness of security controls for a subset of systems as required, for FY 2017. Our results demonstrate that the Peace Corps lacks an effective information security program because of problems related to people, processes, technology, and culture. The Peace Corps needs to embrace a risk-based culture and place greater emphasis on the importance of a robust information security program by involving senior leadership, ensuring agency policies are comprehensive, and prioritizing the time and resources necessary to become fully compliant with Federal laws and eliminate weaknesses.

We issued 12 audit recommendations in the 2013 audit report of Peace Corps/Zambia, all of which the post and the Office of the Chief Financial Officer implemented and we closed. However, during the follow-up audit we noted that the internal controls over the post’s financial and administrative operations required significant improvement to comply with agency policies and applicable Federal laws and regulations. Our report contains 21 recommendations directed to both the post and headquarters. At the post, our recommendations include implementing controls over fuel purchase and use, imprest funds, staff health insurance, disbursements, and security clearance for staff. We also recommend putting in place a contract with the auctioneer and enhancing controls over Volunteer allowances. We recommend that headquarters issue guidance on implementing internal controls over fuel purchase and use.

The Fiscal Year 2018 – 2020 Strategic Plan includes the long-range goals and objectives designed to enhance OIG oversight in support of the Peace Corps and its three goals.

We found that the post’s financial and administrative operations required improvement to comply with agency policies and applicable federal laws and regulations. Our report contains 19 recommendations directed to the post and headquarters, including that the post strengthen controls over the processes for managing imprest funds, modifying contracts, creating bills of collection, collecting Volunteer overpayments, and closing grant projects. In addition, we recommend that the post work with Global Accounts Payable to obtain a waiver for the sub-cashiers when exceeding the maximum amount for a cashier advance, and that Global Accounts Payable publish guidance for mobile banking.

In November 2016, we issued our review of the Peace Corps' Sexual Assault Risk Reduction and Response Program as required by the Kate Puzey Peace Corps Volunteer Protection Act of 2011. As part of this evaluation, we reviewed 138 cases files for sexual assaults reported to the Peace Corps. Upon review of a sample of recently unredacted documents, we were able to verify the accuracy of our original 2016 analysis. This memorandum has been appended to the original 2016 report.

This document provides information concerning the negative impact of personnel turnover on agency operations, drawing on an analysis of interviews conducted by OIG evaluators from 2010 through 2015 in 27 country program evaluations. In addition, we have included highlights from 34 audit and evaluation reports over the same period that referenced challenges related to position vacancies and staff turnover.