The Office of Management and Budget has issued guidance to
agencies seeking to speed up the process of distributing
benefits to hurricane victims without leaving the programs
vulnerable to fraud and waste.
The guidance is the result of information on best practices
agencies are employing to streamline benefit delivery and
apply compensating controls, according to OMB. The guidance
reminds agencies to assist individuals in re-acquiring
personal documents and speed the delivery of assistance by
waiving traditional enrollment criteria that require such
documents, since many evacuees’ personal belongings were
destroyed or are unavailable.
Federal agencies must also give hurricane victims the
opportunity to avoid filling out multiple and duplicative
applications for different agencies’ benefit programs by
allowing victims to authorize the sharing of personal
information among agencies.
As a guard against abuse, OMB also told agencies to sunset
the procedures and step up post-payment verification
procedures. To compensate for front-end controls that have
been limited or waived, federal agencies will increase
post-payment audits, offset the amount of future payments
where overpayments have been identified, and increase the
number of post-payment auditors, OMB said.