2025-001 - Suspension and Debarment Cluster: Research and Development Grantor: Social Security Administration, National Science Foundation Award Name: Center for Retirement Research at Boston College and Affiliated Institutions: Retirement and Disability Research Consortium, Building a Youth-Led Lea...
2025-001 - Suspension and Debarment Cluster: Research and Development Grantor: Social Security Administration, National Science Foundation Award Name: Center for Retirement Research at Boston College and Affiliated Institutions: Retirement and Disability Research Consortium, Building a Youth-Led Learning Community through Automating Hydroponic Systems, Empowering Youth in STEM and Technological Careers through Al-Enhanced Sustainable and Community-Focused Urban Gardening Award Number: 6 RDR23000010, 2048994, 2241766 Award Year: FY2025 Assistance Listing Numbers: 96.007, 47.076, 47.076 Assistance Listing Titles: Social Security Research and Demonstration; STEM Education (formerly Education and Human Resources) Pass-Through Entities: None - Direct Management's View and Corrective Action Plan The University concurs with this finding. On June 25, 2024, the University encountered multiple job failures due to the expiration of a Java Security Certificate. As a result, the file which was to be submitted to the University's third-party servicer for new vendor suspension and debarment screening was not transmitted. The University's Data Center has procedures in place which should have ensured that the vendor file was resubmitted to the third-party servicer once the University's server-related issues were resolved. Unfortunately, due to incorrect documentation in the production operations system (a.k.a. runbook) the vendor file was not resubmitted. Upon further review it was determined that over the course of the fiscal year this was the only incident where the file failed to be transmitted to the servicer. The 25 vendors not screened as a result of the job failure represented less than 1 % of the 3,860 new vendors successfully transmitted and screened by the third-party servicer during the 2025 fiscal year. To ensure that any system issues affecting the daily transmission of the vendor files to the third-party servicer are promptly resolved and new vendors are checked for suspension and debarment, the Information Technology team will enhance the procedure documentation (runbook) and team members will receive cross training. Both the update to the runbook and cross training of team members will be completed by the end of November 2025. University Contact Lyndsay King Associate Vice President, Finance and University Controller Office of the Controller 617-552-3363