Finding 503768 (2024-001)

Section III – Federal Awards Findings and Questioned Costs Finding No. 2024-001 – Deficiency in controls on checking suspended and debarment status of vendors Finding # 2024-01 Assistance Listing # 47.050 47.075 47.078 Program (or Cluster) Name Research and Development Cluster Compliance Requirement Procurement and Suspension and Debarment Criteria or specific requirement: The Uniform Guidance requires management to establish internal controls to ensure that management avoids procuring goods or services with organizations that are suspended and debarred. Condition: During our testing of the suspension and debarment compliance requirement, we selected a contractor, Daniel Uhlmann, whose fees totaled $27,500 in 2024. BGC was not able to produce documentation to support that the contractor was not suspended or debarred at the time of entering into the contract, and only performed the search when the auditors requested such documentation during fieldwork. The search in SAM.gov did not result in the contractor being suspended or debarred. Effect: BGC may have been conducting business with a contractor that was listed as suspended or debarred in SAM.gov, which would result in a non-compliance with the suspension and debarment compliance requirement. Context: Only two (2) vendors exceeded the $25,000 criteria for the suspension and debarment requirement of verifying that vendors are not suspended or debarred. Auditors noted one (1) instance where BGC did not verify the status of the vendor at the time of contract. Questioned costs: None. Cause: The part of BGC’s grants manual where there’s a requirement to check debarment is in its sub-awards section, where it states that one of the grant manager’s responsibilities was to validate the debarment status of their sub-awardees. The manual does not include the requirement to check the suspension and debarment status of vendors when procuring goods and services. Moreover, the manual does not outline the actual process and control of validation, such as when BGC should check the suspension and debarment status of their vendors and, what documents BGC should maintain to support the vendor’s status and control over this process. Repeat finding from prior year: No. Recommendation: Management should consider reviewing their policies and procedures and update it to specify that suspension and debarment status should be checked prior to purchasing or contracting with vendors to ensure that it has not been suspended or debarred by the federal government, and not just during the subaward process. Management can also consider including a clause in their contracts for the requirements relating to suspension and debarment and require the contractor to certify that it and its principals are not suspended or debarred from doing business with the federal government. Views of responsible officials and planned corrective actions: The hiring of Daniel Uhlmann was funded by a National Science Foundation grant whose short title is “Wilkes Basin”. This grant was for a collaborative project with multiple institutions and Principal Investigators. The hiring was initiated by Dr. Claire Todd on behalf of all of the collaborating institutions because she had hired him successfully for previous, similar projects in Antarctica. Mr. Uhlman was presented to BGC as a European Mountaineer from France. Because of his French address, we assumed that his business was French and therefore we did not ask for proof of his not being suspended by the Federal government through a check on SAM.gov, as required in our policy and reflected in our PO forms. It is true that the BGC Grants Manual as well as our Accounting Manual did not state the requirement to check for suspension and debarment. This was immediately corrected in our Accounting Manual on which our Grant's manual is based, and a clause requiring all vendors and their principals to certify they are not suspended or debarred from doing business with the U.S. Federal Government will be added to all contracts starting now. Whether sampling was statistically valid Sampling was not statistically valid for this finding.