Highlights
Volume 1, September 2003

Legal Review

The Inspector General Act of 1978, as amended, mandates that our office monitor and review legislative and regulatory proposals for their impact on the Office of Inspector General (OIG) and the National Science Foundation's (NSF) programs and operations. We perform these tasks for the purpose of providing leadership in activities that are designed to promote economy, effectiveness, efficiency, and the prevention of fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement. We also keep Congress and NSF management informed of problems and monitor legal issues that may have a broad effect on the Inspector General community. During this reporting period, we reviewed 9 bills that either affected NSF, OIG, or both. The following bill merits discussion in this section.

Program Fraud Civil Remedies Act of 1986 (PFCRA) (31 U.S.C. §§ 3801-3812)

A legislative priority that we support is amending PFCRA to include NSF and the 27 other Designated Federal Entity (DFE) agencies that are currently excluded from participation under PFCRA's enforcement provisions. The OIG's concern involves the ability of DFE agencies to fully implement their statutory mission to prevent fraud, waste and abuse by availing themselves of the enforcement capabilities contained within PFCRA. We have raised the issue of NSF's inclusion under PFCRA in several prior semiannual reports.

The DFEs are generally smaller agencies that intrinsically are more likely to have cases involving smaller dollar amounts. PFCRA sets forth administrative procedures that enable defrauded agencies to proceed administratively to recover double damages and penalties when the amount of loss is less than $150,000.00. Using the enforcement provisions of PFCRA will enhance NSF and other DFE agencies recovery efforts in instances of fraud that fall below PFCRA's financial cap of $150,000.00. We believe that by not including DFE agencies, PFCRA fails to maximize its potential. Amending PFCRA to include NSF and the other DFE agencies will strengthen the OIG community's statutory mission to deter fraud, waste and abuse.

 Jul 08, '04