Reports

This report concludes that the five courts we reviewed for this audit—the superior courts in Alameda, Contra Costa, Lake, Orange, and San Bernardino counties—adhered to most of the required and recommended procurement and contracting practices that we evaluated, but they could improve in certain areas.

Since the surge in pandemic‑related California unemployment claims began in March 2020, individuals, news organizations, and law enforcement officials have reported many cases of potential and actual UI fraud. Not surprisingly, the pandemic conditions increased EDD’s UI workloads and also resulted in changes to federal UI benefit programs, both of which have created a greater risk of fraud.

These challenges illustrate the most significant areas the Office of Inspector General (OIG) believes need improvement for the Peace Corps to effectively manage its resources and minimize the potential for fraud, waste, and abuse occurring in its operations. Addressing the issues related to these challenge areas will enable the agency to increase operational efficiencies and improve mission effectiveness.

This letter report identifies 18 state agencies that will each be responsible for managing a portion of the federal COVID‑19 funds. Before finalizing our determination to add this issue to the state high risk list, we notified the 18 responsible state agencies about our preliminary determination and invited them to provide their perspective on the issue. We received responses from 12 of the 18 state agencies, and we summarize those responses at the end of this letter.

The Office of Inspector General's annual plan revision outlines changes to our FY 2020 Annual Plan due to the COVID-19 pandemic.