We completed a review of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Office of Native American Programs’ (ONAP) annual audit reporting process primarily in response to complaints that ONAP did not take appropriate enforcement action for two grantees that failed to submit required annual audits. Our objective was to determine whether ONAP provided adequate oversight of its grantees nationwide to ensure grantee compliance with the annual audit report submission requirements.

We found that ONAP did not implement consistent procedures to ensure compliance with the annual audit report submission requirements. Specifically, it did not: (1) implement controls to consistently monitor grantees’ audit reporting compliance; (2) obtain required audit reports from tribally designated housing entities when an associated tribe submitted an audit, and (3) consistently enforce the statutory audit submission deadline.

We recommend that the Deputy Assistant Secretary, Office of Native American Programs: (1) pursue enforcement or corrective action for delinquent audit reports, (2) update the Performance Tracking Database (PTD) system to ensure audit reporting compliance for all grantees, (3) review reports not reported in the PTD system, (4) implement controls to ensure adequate oversight of grantee audit reporting, (5) discontinue the practice of accepting tribe audits in lieu of required tribally designated housing entity audits, and (6) begin enforcing the required audit submission deadline.