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AmeriCorps' Compliance with the Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019 for Fiscal Year 2024

Date Issued
Report Number
OIG-AR-25-04
Report Type
Audit
Description
The Payment Integrity Information Act (PIIA) requires agencies to annually review and identify programs and activities that may be susceptible to significant improper payments, estimate the improper payment rates in agency programs, and report on their actions to reduce and recover those payments. For FY 2024, AmeriCorps met eight of ten PIIA compliance requirements. We made three findings relating to the two remaining requirements.  We found that: (1) AmeriCorps reported an improper payment rate above the ten percent compliance threshold for one program, the Foster Grandparent Program (FGP); (2) AmeriCorps’ published improper payment estimates for AmeriCorps State and National (ASN) and FGP are not accurate, reliable, or consistent with OMB guidance; and (3) AmeriCorps’ published improper payment estimates for the National Service Trust (NST) are not accurate, reliable, or consistent with OMB guidance. AmeriCorps concurred with the first finding and agreed to continue to develop and implement actions to reduce improper payment rates below ten percent. AmeriCorps did not concur with our second and third findings. We made six new recommendations related to our second and third findings in this report on unmatched reporting errors, payments to ineligible recipients, and published improper payment estimates for the NST. AmeriCorps declined to implement all six recommendations. We will keep open the two prior year recommendations related to the first finding until AmeriCorps submits documentation to demonstrate the completion and sufficiency of the corrective actions. The six recommendations related to the second and third findings will remain open and be classified as unresolved (disagreed) in our Semiannual Report to Congress.
Joint Report
No
Agency Wide
Yes
Questioned Costs
$0
Funds for Better Use
$0
View report on Oversight.gov

Open Recommendations

Body

Reconcile the differences between grantees’ internal accounting records and FFRs to determine the propriety of the component payments or require grantees to perform this reconciliation. Additionally, AmeriCorps should test and include the unmatched reporting errors as unknown payment errors in the projection of the improper payment estimate.

Body

Determine whether awardees associated with FFRs submitted for Seniors awards were submitted by eligible organizations during the FFR data pull process. If it is determined that any AmeriCorps Seniors grantees were ineligible to receive the grant, AmeriCorps should include the entire FFR as an improper payment.

Body

Implement additional quality control steps, proposed in response to NFR 2, to its improper payment data pulling and sampling process to ensure that all payments included are appropriate for the programs determined to be susceptible to improper payments. 

Body

Publish improper payment and unknown payment estimates for NST in the accompanying materials provided with the FY 2025 annual financial statements in accordance with OMB guidance. 

Body

Update its NST test plan to require the tester to verify that sampled education awards were only used to cover allowable COA expenses for members who earned the award (unless appropriately transferred).

Body

Improve its quality control procedures to ensure AmeriCorps selects its NST sample and extrapolates its NST improper payment estimates consistent with its NST SEMP. Specifically, its quality control procedures should ensure AmeriCorps:
a. Excludes only records in the payment population that do not represent applicable disbursements, as justified in its SEMP.
b. Extrapolates its improper payment estimate only on the payments included within the sampling frame, unless otherwise justified and approved by OMB.
c. Documents the methodology used to extract the NST payment population used for sampling and the procedures used to verify the payment population is complete and accurate.