Certain agencies within the USDA need to do more to prevent improper payments to deceased individuals, GAO has said.
It praised the Farm Service Agency for implementing procedures to prevent these payments by, for example, matching payments to program participants with the Social Security Administration’s data on deceased individuals each quarter. (Legislation recently passed the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to make this data more readily available to throughout the federal government as part of a wider effort to curb improper payments.)
The FSA through its relatively proactive efforts was able to identify thousands of deceased individuals who were paid $3.3 million in improper payments after their dates of death, and recovered about $1 million, according to GAO-13-503.
It said that on the other hand, the Natural Resources Conservation Servicedoes not have procedures to prevent potentially improper payments to deceased individuals, and the USDA Risk Management Agency lacks sufficient procedures to prevent potentially improper subsidies on behalf of deceased individuals.
GAO estimates that in 2008 – 2012 the NRCS made $10.6 million payments on behalf of 1,103 deceased individuals one year or more after their death.
The FSA agreed to further strengthen its verification of payments to deceased individuals, while the NRCS agreed to develop and implement procedures to prevent improper payments to deceased individuals, and the RMA agreed to develop and implement procedures to prevent improper crop insurance subsidies on behalf of deceased policyholders and to improve the effectiveness of its data mining.
