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Audits of the Universal Service Fund show a high ‘erroneous payme...

Audits of the Universal Service Fund show a high “erroneous payment rate,” though the fund’s operation generally complies with FCC rules, the agency’s inspector general reported Wednesday. “Erroneous payments” can be high or low, said the inspector general’s office.…

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Some error reports resulted from the way auditors traditionally account for lack of information, Inspector General Kent Nilsson said in the report. When an agency can’t determine whether a payment is proper because it doesn’t have enough information, the Improper Payments Information Act requires that the payment be considered in error, said the inspector general. Even so, the erroneous payment rates were 16.6 percent for the High Cost Program, 12.9 percent for the Schools and Libraries Program, 9.5 percent for the Low Income Program and 20.6 percent for the Rural Health Care Program. Where auditors could give an opinion, frequent causes of noncompliance included inadequate documentation, inadequate internal auditing processes and lack of proper data collection, reporting and monitoring.