The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Office of Inspector General (OIG) released its six-month report detailing their activities from October 1, 2006 – March 31, 2007. The OIG’s office concluded “Our involvement…in beneficiary audits and investigations has not lessened our concerns about fraud, waste and abuse in USF programs.” Due to this continued concern, the FCC has requested that Congress give them the authority to use $20.4 million from Universal Service Funds for additional oversight activities.
The OIG and KPMG have finalized 95 of the 100 initial schools and libraries audits. The OIG released 44 audit reports in this six month period and identified close to $60 million of “apparently improper payments.” The beneficiaries audited and the amount for possible collections is identified in the OIG report. The FCC OIG’s office is now conducting additional audits of E-rate program beneficiaries.
Funds For Learning has collected and catalogued these audit reports and E-rate Manager Services subscribers can view them under the “tools” tab. The audits can be viewed based on whether an applicant was “compliant,” “generally compliant” or “non-compliant.”
