Corrective Action Plans

Finding: 2024-032 - During FY 24, Department of Commerce, Community, and Economic Development (DCCED) staff did not sufficiently monitor the subrecipient tasked with administering the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF) Tourism and Other Businesses program. Furthermore, DCCED management did not take action with respect to the subrecipient’s noncompliance with requirements to obtain a single audit. Questioned Costs: None Assistance Listing Number: 21.027 Assistance Listing Title: SLFRF - COVID- 19 Views of Responsible Officials (state whether your agency agrees or disagrees with the finding; if you disagree, briefly explain why): DCCED agrees with this finding. Corrective Action (corrective action planned): Division of Finance presented subrecipient monitoring training to DCCED grant management staff in December 2024. DCCED will continue to work with department grant staff to ensure compliance with federal subrecipient monitoring requirements by strengthening grant management procedures. DCCED is working with the subrecipient to obtain single audits for outstanding periods. DCCED and the Division of Finance worked collaboratively to address previously unidentified communication gaps when subrecipients are notified of outstanding single audit requirements, and have made adjustments to communication procedures to ensure departments are notified of outstanding single audits for grantees. Completion Date (list anticipated completion date): 12/31/2025 Agency Contact (name of person responsible for corrective action): Lisa Van Bargen

PDOA: 1. Designing a means to follow-up and ensure timely action of deficiencies through an audit tracking log to monitor reporting submissions, document when they were received, initiated, findings requiring follow-up, and subsequent steps to finalize the audit. 2. Management decisions for applicable findings will be issued and tracked. 3. Improvements have been made with regards to regularity in reporting to more effectively monitor activities of subrecipients consistently with respect to Federal statutes and regulations. 4. PDOA is looking to fill a vacant position with a focus of tracking subrecipient expenditures in the aggregate and tracking single audit submissions on a Commonwealth-wide basis since the Aging Cluster program is material and has material sub-granted expenditures in NSIP and Title III. 5. It is PDOA’s impression that having increased oversight of the SEFA will allow for timely dissemination of management decision letters (MDL) in the six-month timeframe for making a management decision for federal award findings. 6. Discussions have started regarding considerations to take enforcement action against noncompliance by building language into the terms and conditions of the Cooperative Block Grant Agreements to exercise ability to withhold funding as approved in the Cost Allocation Plan. 7. PDOA has reached out to the BAFM to verify all outstanding audit items for PDOA since action is required within six months of receipt. 8. Follow-up procedures resulting from this finding will be reviewed and adjusted as needed to deliver optimal outcomes. Anticipated Completion Date: 06/30/2025 Contact Name: Jennifer Cave, Fiscal Management Specialist, PDOA Audit Liaison PDA: PDA has added a Financial Management Specialist 1 (FMS1) to its complement with the primary duty of agency audit liaison. The FMS1 will report to the PDA’s Budget Office. This is a new position and role within the department and has training and certification requirements to complete which will allow the position to: 1. Evaluate single audit report submissions received from BAFM to determine program purpose acceptability by verifying, at a minimum, that all agency-funded programs are properly included on the applicable financial schedules; that findings affecting the agency contain sufficient information to facilitate a management decision; and that the subrecipient has submitted an adequate corrective action plan. 2. Issue management decisions relative to audit findings and crosscutting findings assigned to the agency for resolution, as required by 2 CFR §200.521. If responsible for the resolution of crosscutting findings, notify the affected agency or agencies upon resolution of such findings. 3. Impose or coordinate the imposition of remedial action in accordance with 2 CFR Part 200.339 and Management Directive 325.08 Amended, Remedies for Recipient Noncompliance with Audit Requirements, when subrecipients fail to comply with the provisions of Subpart F. The new FMS1 will help ensure effective and efficient audit resolutions. This newly created position will also be responsible for the department wide audit tracking log that is in development. Anticipated Completion Date: 06/30/2025 Contact Name: Nichole Nedinsky, Fiscal Management Specialist, PDA Audit Coordinator PDE: The PDE Audit Section is working with divisions to develop processes to ensure timely responses. A training will be conducted by April 2025 on audit procedures, best practices, and federal regulations governing single audit management decisions. Anticipated Completion Date: 04/30/2025 Contact Names: Clayton P. Carroll II, Audit Coordinator; Jessica Sites, Director, Bureau Financial Operations DEP: DEP has updated the concur subrecipient letter to include the specific language related to the management decision that was previously in our non-concur letters. This ensures whichever template is used, the management decision and related finding information will be included in the subrecipient letter. Revised letters were sent to both subrecipients, in which DEP was the lead agency and had findings for in the audited timeframe. Staff are reviewing all the steps of our standard operating procedures to ensure we will be in compliance regardless of whether DEP is or is not the lead agency and regardless of whether we are preparing a concur or non-concur letter for the subrecipient. Anticipated Completion Date: 06/30/2025 Contact Names: Jennifer Brandt, Senior Fiscal Mgmt. Specialist; Kristen Szwajkowski, Lead Fiscal Mgmt. Specialist DHS: As stated in the DHS finding response, this was the result of human oversight, and not a systemic issue with internal controls. We have reminded staff to make sure that a management decision is timely communicated to subrecipients at the time of making the management decision. Anticipated Completion Date: Completed Contact Names: David Bryan, Mgr., Audit Res. Section; Alexander Matolyak, Dir., Div. of Audit & Rev.

PDA: PDA will be hiring a complement position to develop and maintain an audit tracking report to ensure that all single audits are properly logged and processed. In addition, this position will review the financial information in each audit report to determine if all pass-through funding is properly included and subject to audit. This position will coordinate with the bureaus within PDA to ensure all required follow-up is completed in a timely manner. Anticipated Completion Date: 06/30/2024 Contact Name: Tracee Gotwalt, Audit Coordinator PDOA: The PDOA is looking to improve management decision communications in addition to more thorough evaluations as a new Comprehensive Monitoring Process pilot is starting in April 2024 to address the noncompliance of subrecipient monitoring. This has resulted in management designing control activities to achieve timely submissions in the future by initiating the following: 1. An audit tracking log has been established to track report submissions, document when they were received, initiated, findings requiring follow-up, and subsequent steps to finalize the audit. 2. A separate tracking mechanism is in place to ensure the monitoring of subrecipient activities for compliance with federal statutes, regulations, and the terms and conditions of the Agreement for the 52 Area Agency on Aging subrecipients. 3. PDOA is looking to fill a vacant position with a focus of tracking subrecipient expenditures in the aggregate and tracks Single Audit submissions on a Commonwealth wide basis since the Aging Cluster is material and has material sub-granted expenditures. 4. Since receiving the finding, PDOA has reached out to the resource account where Subrecipient Single Audit reports are received by the Federal Audit Clearinghouse (FAC) to verify all outstanding audit items for PDOA, as action is required within six months of receipt. 5. It is PDOAs impression that having increased oversight of the Schedule of Expenditures of Federal Awards (SEFA) will allow for timely dissemination of Management Decision Letters (MDL) in the six-month timeframe for making a management decision for federal award findings. 6. Additionally, PDOA will confirm a closure letter was sent to the Philadelphia Corporation for Aging documenting PDOA’s management decision regarding federal award findings, as included in their FYE 06/30/2021 Single Audit report. 7. Follow-Up procedures resulting from this finding will be reviewed and adjusted as needed to deliver optimal outcomes. Preliminary procedures will be directed to the agency’s audit review committee for resolution of completeness. 8. In the event the audit review committee determines additional steps beyond the monitoring efforts outlined above are insufficient, additional efforts will be communicated to the AAA network. Anticipated Completion Date: 06/30/2024 Contact Name: Jennifer Cave, Fiscal Management Specialist, PDOA Audit Liaison DOH: DOH’s subrecipient single audit tracking report now includes a mechanism to monitor management decision deadlines related to each entity’s FAC submission date. The process for tracking subrecipient audit reports with findings has been updated to include and highlight subrecipients’ audit reports where DOH is the lead agency for finding resolution or the report contains findings that relate to the Department. Anticipated Completion Date: 03/31/2024 Contact Name: Steven Marsden, Chief, Audit Resolution Section PDE: PDE has implemented weekly, monthly and quarterly checks to ensure that all single audits are properly logged and processed. The clerk typist will conduct a weekly review and provide confirmation to the audit coordinator by signature. Bi-weekly, the clerk typist will follow up on any single audits that remain open. Anticipated Completion Date: Completed Contact Names: Clayton Carroll, Audit Coordinator, Bureau of Budget & Fiscal Management; Jessica Sites, Director, Bureau of Budget & Fiscal Management

PDE: Audits retrieved from the Federal Audit Clearinghouse are now reviewed after entry into PDE?s SharePoint website, to ensure PDE remains compliant with federal guidelines to respond to any and all findings pertaining to federal dollars it passes to subrecipients. Likewise, PDE Audit Section continues to improve upon its processes for timely determinations of those single audits with findings by multiple means, including periodic SharePoint enhancements designed to aid in timely review of single audit packages, working closely with PDE program areas to assist in timely responses and quickly addressing SharePoint access issues as they arise. Anticipated Completion Date: 06/30/2023 Contact Person and Title: Clayton P. Carroll, II, Audit Coordinator; Jessica Sites, Director, Bur. of Budget and Fiscal Mgmt DEP: BAFM now provides agencies with single audit reporting packages that have findings each week that have been accepted by the Federal Audit Clearinghouse (FAC). This allows for us to start our management decision process in a timelier manner and meet the six-month deadline for issuing our decision. This information first appeared in our notifications starting April 30, 2021. In addition, the DEP program that had been previously identifying agreements as contracts rather than subrecipient agreements has corrected this issue and all subrecipients have been notified in writing of this correction and provided the information for submitting their single audits (if necessary). The letters were sent to subrecipients on approximately May 31, 2022. DEP Fiscal Management staff will continue to monitor the BAFM SharePoint site and FAC for additional filings to attempt to avoid this issue in the future. DEP is also hiring additional staff for the oversight and monitoring of the subrecipient single audits to ensure compliance with all requirements. These positions are currently in the filing process, and we are hopeful that they will be filled, and staff trained by September 30, 2023. Anticipated Completion Date: 09/30/2023 Contact Person and Title: Jennifer L. Brandt, Senior Fiscal Management Specialist, Federal Grants and Audits DOH: NORTH Inc.?s Single Audit report for the period ending 9/30/2020 was officially submitted and showing on the FAC on 2/9/2023. Bureau of WIC staff reached out to the Director and CFO of NORTH Inc. by phone and email. Emails were sent with instructions on how to submit the report as well as the importance of submitting the report timely per their grant agreement. Each follow-up phone call included discussion on the importance of submitting their single audit as soon as possible. Moving forward the Bureau of WIC will implement the following procedure: 1 .Three months after the end of the audit period (Federal Fiscal Year), Project Officers will send an email that outlines the process for submitting a single audit reporting package to the FAC to their respective WIC local agencies. This email will provide a date that the single audit is due to be submitted to the FAC in order to stay in compliance with their current WIC grant agreement. 2. Six months after the end of the audit period (three months from the due date of the single audit reporting package) an official letter from the Bureau Director will go out to the WIC local agencies that are due to submit a single audit. The letters will include instructions on how to submit the single audit in FAC and the Audit Requirements link referenced in their grant agreement. 3. If the WIC local agency notifies the Bureau of WIC that their auditor will not be able to submit their agency?s single audit by the due date, then the Project Officer will work with the local agency to get a projected date of completion and a timeline on when the local agency?s auditor is able to finalize the audit and submit it to the FAC. The Bureau of WIC will then notify DOH?s Audit Coordinator and OB-BAFM of this information, so they are able to track it. 4. If the WIC local agency does not submit the report by the due date and fails to notify their project officer; a notice to cure letter will be sent to the agency. Concerning NORTH Inc.?s Single Audit report for the period ending September 30, 2021: 1. The Bureau of WIC will contact NORTH Inc. and request a meeting with their auditor. 2. Following the meeting with NORTH Inc.?s auditor, the Bureau Director will send an official letter to NORTH Inc. The letter will include the instructions on how to submit the single audit in the FAC and the Audit Requirements link referenced in their grant agreement. They will also be made aware of the actions that could result from them not submitting this audit by the agreed upon date. 3. If the single audit is not received by the agreed upon date, then the Bureau of WIC will send a notice to cure letter. Anticipated Completion Date: 03/24/2023 Contact Person and Title: Sally Zubairu-Cofield, Director, Bureau of WIC DHS: Regarding the timeliness of finding resolution and procedures related to the SEFA reviews, the Audit Resolution Section (ARS) hired an additional staff member in August 2021 and hired two additional staff members in February 2022, and an additional staff member in January 2023. Finally, the ARS worked with Office of the Budget, Bureau of Accounting and Financial Management to develop a risk-based approach for single audit reviews, which will greatly streamline the process of single audit reviews to gain substantial efficiencies. Regarding late audit report submissions, we will continue to follow the requirements of 2 CFR ?200.339 and Commonwealth Management Directive 325.8. We will continue to work with counties and their independent auditors to obtain any late Single Audit reports. Anticipated Completion Date: 06/30/2023 Contact Person and Title: David Bryan, Manager, ARS; Alexander Matolyak, Director, Division of Audit & Review