We recommend that the Director of HUD’s Newark, NJ, Office of Community Planning and Development require the County to strengthen its policies and procedures to ensure that activity address information in IDIS is current as required.

Update and revise the CPD Notice to further improve the code enforcement guidance.

Provide mandatory training on the revised Notice to the local field offices and to grantees that use CDBG funds for the code enforcement program to ensure compliance with requirements.

Ensure that the updated and revised notice is issued with the appropriate clearance.

Perform a complete agency-wide fraud risk assessment (which incorporates the fraud risk assessments performed at the program level) and use the results to develop and implement an agency-wide plan to move HUD’s fraud risk management program out of the ad hoc phase. Status HUD Read More

Develop and implement a procedure to collect and analyze reported suspected instances of fraud, along with other relevant data points, that can be leveraged to develop more robust antifraud risk mitigation tools.

Communicate to HUD program staff the differences between HUD’s enterprise risk management, PIIA, and financial risk management risk assessment processes to ensure an understanding of their roles and responsibilities within HUD’s fraud risk management program.

Develop and implement activities to raise awareness of fraud, such as participating in organized antifraud conferences or a newsletter that includes instances of recent fraud in Federal programs.

Develop and implement a strategy for collecting and analyzing agency-wide data, to include subrecipient and beneficiary data, to identify trends and potential indicators of fraud across programs.

Collaborate with the Chief Risk Officer to conduct a workforce assessment to determine the level of dedicated full-time staff resources needed by the Chief Risk Officer to effectively (1) administer HUD’s enterprise and fraud risk management programs and (2) support program risk officers by Read More

If the workforce assessment determines that additional staff are needed, work with the Chief Risk Officer to staff the necessary positions.

Update HUD regulations, policies, and procedures following the regulatory process required by the amended Lead Safe Housing Rule, in consideration of CDC’s lowered BLRV of 3.5 ug/dL. Status On June 12, 2024, the Office of Lead Hazard Control and Healthy Homes informed HUD OIG that the draft Read More

Create a plan and timeline that outlines OFO’s proposal to make necessary improvements to the EBLL tracker, such as moving it to a different platform.

Provide field office staff access to historical data in the EBLL tracker to be readily available as needed, with adequate protection of PII.

Update the EBLL tracker to show whether one or multiple children have an EBLL and whether the unit, building, or development previously had an EBLL reported.

Update the EBLL tracker by including which data fields are required, establishing what type of information can be entered into each data field, and disallowing case closure if required information is missing.

PIH in coordination with other HUD offices as necessary, research and address potential causes of the variance in the number of EBLL cases among States on the EBLL tracker and identify solutions that are within HUD's control. Status On May 7, 2024, the Office of Field Operations (OFO) Read More

Create a plan and timeline that outlines OFO’s proposal to move the LBPR tracker to a different platform.

Develop a timeliness standard in the LBPR tracker to establish expectations for how often field office staff must reach out to PHAs on the LBPR tracker to discuss measures that will resolve cases in a timely manner.

Request sufficient monetary resources to upgrade HUD’s many legacy and financial systems so its technologies and data elements no longer differ and can perform the necessary data inventory and mapping to report HUD’s information in USASpending.gov accurately and in a timely manner.