Federal Manager's Daily Report

The EPA needs to improve the oversight of its spending on audio conference services, on which it spent more than $8 million over 2015-2016, an IG report has said.

A report said the agency lacks controls to assure the efficient use of such services and did not effectively monitor costs or have documentation to determine whether cost estimates were reasonable and accurate. Further, two regions spent $260,000 to contract for services already provided by the agency.

One result was that the agency used services that were unnecessarily, for example spending $1.2 million for calls with six or fewer participants that “could have been avoided by using other less costly conference call services.”

The IG said the agency concurred with all its recommendations although it said the planned corrective actions do not fully meet them.