Federal Manager's Daily Report

The EPA has strengthened controls on conference spending in response to laws and OMB memos of recent years but still needs to improve controls in some areas, an IG report has said.

It said that in 2014, the EPA spent $11.3 million on 227 conferences with costs exceeding $20,000. One of the changes in law requires an agency to notify its IG within 15 days of any conferences exceeding that threshold and to provide certain other information, including the number of agency employees in attendance.

In a review of nearly $1 million spent on eight conferences reviewed, auditors found about $7,000 in inappropriate spending related to two of them. Those costs, which the IG noted amounted to less than 1 percent of the total, involved matters such as improperly reimbursing meals and similar costs for non-federal employees, and paying an employee mileage reimbursement for driving a nearly 4,000-mile round trip when flying would have been cheaper.

In addition: the EPA required the use of conference project codes to track and monitor conference spending, but this did not always occur; conference costs were underreported; two conferences totaling $350,782 were in the EPA conference spending tool but were not reported publicly as required; and 64 percent of the 227 fiscal year 2014 conferences were reported late or not reported to the OIG as required. Two of the eight conferences sampled were not reported to the OIG at all.

It said the agency has “proactively taken steps to improve the conference spending tool for conference reporting. In addition, refresher training sessions were held to address recent changes to the conference spending tool as well as concerns raised by the OIG during this audit.”