Improper payments

The inspector general at the Office of Personnel Management said the uncertainty surrounding the agency’s proposed merger with the General Services Administration is continued concern headed in 2020.

VA Inspector General Michael Missal joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin to share what the department found when looking into the status of last year’s improper payments.

GAO estimates agencies could save billions of dollars by reducing the number of agency programs with overlapping missions, but the OMB has yet to complete a comprehensive inventory of agency programs nearly a decade after Congress mandated it. 

In today’s Federal Newscast, the Merit Systems Protection Board finds between 1999 and 2016, only about 7 for ever 1000 new supervisors faced consequences for failing their probationary period.

Every year the federal government reports levels of improper payments of around $140 billion. The problem seems impervious to efforts to end it.

One of the biggest culprits of improper payments in the federal government — the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — is making progress to combat the issue.

In today’s Federal Newscast, The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said it avoided handing out more than $4.5 billion in improper payments under one of its signature programs in fiscal 2018.

The CFO Council and the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Fiscal Service give agencies a guide to address an area of improper payments that has long been overlooked.

The Voice of America has fired or proposed to terminate 15 individuals following investigations that found the individuals had accepted improper payments from a foreign official. 

When it comes to distribution of humanitarian aid, money sometimes goes to the wrong hands or it buys less that expected.