The FCC’s Office of Inspector Gen. (OIG) targeted $11.5 million i...
The FCC’s Office of Inspector Gen. (OIG) targeted $11.5 million in potentially improper payments made in the E-rate program, according to the OIG’s report to Congress on the 6 months ending Sept. 30. “The process to recover these funds…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
is underway,” Inspector Gen. Kent Nilsson said in the report. Audits of 53 recipients of e-rate discounts, mostly school districts, found several ways they hadn’t followed FCC rules. Among them: (1) Not having enough budgeted to pay the proper share of costs of E-rate funded services or equipment. (2) Inability to account for the funded equipment. (3) Incorrectly calculating eligibility for the discount percentage it received. (4) Billing inaccurately or without preparation. (5) Lacking documentation. The OIG expanded audits during the 6-month reporting period to other Universal Service Fund programs, such as high cost, rural health care and low-income programs. The FCC didn’t get money from Congress in the fiscal 2007 budget to beef up its auditing staff, but the agency will again ask for more funds for the FY2008 budget. “The primary obstacle to an effective, independent oversight program has been, and continues to be, inadequate audit and investigative resources so that OIG can conduct its own audits and provide adequate audit support to investigations,” the report said. OIG modernized its office technology during the 6-month reporting period because it had “lagged behind the rest of the Federal government.”