Report Contents
What Was Audited
In FY 2023, improper and unknown federal payments government-wide totaled approximately $236 billion. The Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019 (PIIA) requires Inspectors General to annually determine whether agencies complied with the Act and established requirements for agencies that were deemed noncompliant.
Kearney & Company, P.C., (Kearney) acting on the Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) behalf, conducted this audit to determine whether the Department of State (Department) complied with PIIA for FY 2023. As part of this objective, Kearney also evaluated the Department’s efforts to prevent and reduce improper and unknown payments.
What OIG Recommends
Because the Department was found to be in compliance with PIIA requirements for FY 2023, OIG is not offering any recommendations as a result of this audit. The Bureau of the Comptroller and Global Financial Services’ response to a draft of this report is reprinted, in its entirety, in Appendix B.
What Was Found
For the FY 2023 reporting period, Kearney found that the Department had complied with payment integrity requirements, as presented in Table 1.
Kearney found that the Department published the FY 2023 financial statements and accompanying material, which included all applicable payment integrity information, on its website. In addition, the Department conducted program-specific risk assessments and made appropriate conclusions related to the risk assessments. Specifically, the Department performed risk assessments for eight programs as part of its 3-year risk assessment approach. The programs subject to risk assessments during FY 2023 are listed in Table A.1.
During the evaluation of the Department’s efforts to prevent and reduce improper payments, Kearney did not identify any needed improvements involving improper and unknown payments determination, the associated estimation methodology, or actions to improve prevention and reduction.