Take corrective action for the subrecipient monitoring and agreement issues cited for eight of the ESG-CV grantees reviewed, and provide additional guidance and technical assistance as needed to ensure that they understand requirements.

Develop and implement additional subrecipient monitoring training and guidance for all ESG grantees.

Improve or enhance its antifraud efforts for the ESG program and incorporate fraud risk management practices that are consistent with the best practices identified in the Government Accountability Office’s A Framework for Managing Fraud Risks in Federal Programs and Chief Financial Officers Council and Treasury Bureau of the Fiscal Services’ Antifraud Playbook.

Obtain training or technical assistance as needed on the implementation of fraud risk management practices.

Establish a separate fraud risk management framework or evaluate and build upon its ERM framework by incorporating fraud risk management practices that are consistent with the principles of GAO’s Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government (Green Book), including developing a fraud risk management framework in alignment with best practices identified in GAO’s A Framework for Managing Fraud Risks in Federal Programs and the Chief Financial Officers Council’s Antifraud Playbook.

Obtain training or technical assistance on the implementation of fraud risk management practices consistent with the principles of GAO’s Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government (Green Book).

Provide technical assistance to the State and the staff to ensure that they understand the requirements for conducting a monitoring review in accordance with regulations.

Instruct the State to update and implement the CDBG-DR standard operating procedures, which clearly outline what activities, including the frequency, will be reviewed by its monitoring and internal audit function.

Instruct the State to conduct monitoring reviews of its CDBG-DR HIM activities and subrecipients that satisfy monitoring requirements.

Work with the State to develop and implement policies and procedures to ensure that monitoring is conducted remotely in the event that it cannot be conducted onsite.

Instruct the State to update and implement policies and procedures to ensure that the results of the CDBG-DR internal audits are shared by the State’s Commissioner with CDBG-DR program staff to allow for the resolution of any findings and required corrective actions.

Monitor the State’s CDBG-DR program to ensure that performance expectations are achieved.

Complete and update the system security plans for GMP and DRGR and issue an SSN justification memorandum.

Identify and provide additional role-based training, guidance, and instructions to CPD employees on how to appropriately handle and safeguard PII encountered during monitoring.

Reinforce the use and admissibility of photographs and videos for evidence collection while remote monitoring.

Identify strategic opportunities to use remote monitoring early in the FY to maximize its responsibility to oversee and monitor its grantees and then use remote monitoring when those opportunities arise.

We recommend that the Director of CPD’s Office of Disaster Recovery review the one grantee with a grant totaling $666,666 that did not meet the overall LMI requirement and address the noncompliance.

We recommend that the Director of CPD’s Office of Disaster Recovery update DRGR’s QPR to include information on the progress towards compliance with the overall LMI benefit based on the total amount of the grant.

We recommend that the Director of CPD’s Office of Disaster Recovery adopt LMI benchmarking to ensure that grantees budget adequate funds to LMI at significant milestones in the grant lifecycle.

We recommend that the Director of CPD’s Office of Disaster Recovery make changes to the action plan process so that the action plan calculates an overall LMI percentage.