[Senate Report 114-86]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
Calendar No. 156
114th Congress } { Report
SENATE
1st Session } { 114-86
_______________________________________________________________________
FEDERAL IMPROPER PAYMENTS ACT
__________
R E P O R T
of the
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
to accompany
S. 614
TO PROVIDE ACCESS TO AND USE OF INFORMATION BY FEDERAL
AGENCIES IN ORDER TO REDUCE IMPROPER PAYMENTS, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
July 21, 2015.--Ordered to be printed
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
49-010 WASHINGTON : 2015
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin, Chairman
JOHN McCAIN, Arizona THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware
ROB PORTMAN, Ohio CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri
RAND PAUL, Kentucky JON TESTER, Montana
JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin
MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming HEIDI HEITKAMP, North Dakota
KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey
JONI ERNST, Iowa GARY C. PETERS, Michigan
BEN SASSE, Nebraska
Keith B. Ashdown, Staff Director
Christopher R. Hixon, Chief Counsel
Patrick J. Bailey, Chief Counsel for Governmental Affairs
Gabrielle D'Adamo Singer, Deputy Chief Counsel for Governmental Affairs
Courtney J. Allen, Counsel
Gabrielle A. Batkin, Minority Staff Director
John P. Kilvington, Minority Deputy Staff Director
Mary Beth Schultz, Minority Chief Counsel
Peter P. Tyler, Minority Senior Professional Staff Member
Laura W. Kilbride, Chief Clerk
Calendar No. 156
114th Congress } { Report
SENATE
1st Session } { 114-86
======================================================================
FEDERAL IMPROPER PAYMENTS ACT
_______
July 21, 2015.--Ordered to be printed
_______
Mr. Johnson, from the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs, submitted the following
R E P O R T
[To accompany S. 614]
The Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs, to which was referred the bill (S. 614) to provide
access to and use of information by Federal agencies in order
to reduce improper payments, and for other purposes, having
considered the same, reports favorably thereon without
amendment and recommends that the bill do pass.
CONTENTS
Page
I. Purpose and Summary..............................................1
II. Background and Need for the Legislation..........................2
III. Legislative History..............................................6
IV. Section-by-Section Analysis......................................6
V. Evaluation of Regulatory Impact..................................7
VI. Congressional Budget Office Cost Estimate........................7
VII. Changes in Existing Law Made by the Bill, as Reported............8
I. Purpose and Summary
S. 614 seeks to reduce improper payments made by federal
agencies, which are payments that the government makes in
erroneous amounts, or payments that should not be made at all.
The bill would improve the sharing and use of key data to
combat improper payments, and would encourage the use of data
analytics by federal agencies for government-wide waste and
fraud reviews.
II. Background and the Need for Legislation
This Committee has long been concerned with the federal
government's persistent improper payment problem--that is,
executive branch agencies' too common mistake of sending money
to people or companies, whether for benefits or under
contracts, either in an incorrect amount or when no money
should be paid to the recipient at all. Improper payments
include remittances to ineligible recipients, duplicate
payments, payments for a good or service not received, payments
that do not reflect credits for applicable discounts, and in
some cases payments to the deceased.\1\ Improper payments by
federal agencies impose a significant cost on taxpayers, with
the United States Treasury losing tens of billions of dollars
annually to overpayments, including, at times, fraudulent
payments to government contractors, program beneficiaries, and
others. For fiscal year (FY) 2014, for example, federal
agencies reported an estimated total of $124.7 billion in
improper payments, an increase of $19 billion from the prior
fiscal year.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\Congressional Research Service (CRS), Improper Payments and
Recovery Audits: Legislation, Implementation, and Analysis, R42878, 1
(Jan. 2, 2013).
\2\Pursuant to an executive order, the Secretary of the Treasury in
consultation with the Attorney General and the Office of Management and
Budget (OMB) maintains a website on improper payments reporting at
http://www.paymentaccuracy.gov/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Errors in carrying out federal health care entitlements are
the largest contributor to improper payments.\3\ Medicare,
Medicaid, and the Children's Health Insurance Program account
for approximately $78 billion in improper payments in 2014.\4\
The expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and the
increased utilization of the Medicare programs due to an aging
population will result in increased spending on these programs
in future years.\5\ Indeed, Medicaid spending is expected to
increase from $270 billion in 2014 to $529 billion in 2025.\6\
During that same period, Medicare spending is expected to grow
from $600 billion to nearly $1.2 trillion.\7\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\Id.
\4\Id.
\5\Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, National Health
Expenditure Projections 2013-2023, http://www.cms.gov/Research-
Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/
NationalHealthExpendData/Downloads/Proj2013.pdf.
\6\Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Medicaid Baseline
Projections. (Mar. 09, 2015),
https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/44204-
2015-03-Medicaid.pdf.
\7\Congressional Budget Office, Medicare Baseline Projections,
(Mar. 09, 2015).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
As spending on Medicare and Medicaid continues to grow--
nearly doubling over ten years--it is imperative that the rate
of improper payments is brought under control and dramatically
reduced. If the improper payment rates for these two programs
remain the same, by 2025 just these two programs could account
for $150 billion in improper payments based on the projected
outlays.
For over a decade, a series of laws have attempted to
identify, prevent, and recover improper payments.\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\CRS, Improper Payments and Recovery Audits: Legislation,
Implementation, and Analysis, R42878, 1 (Jan. 2, 2013).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Improper Payments Information Act of 2002 (IPIA).\9\
Agencies began to deal comprehensively with improper payments
following the enactment of IPIA, which required each agency
subject to the requirements of the Chief Financial Officers Act
of 1990\10\ to annually review all programs and activities that
it administers, identify those that may be susceptible to
significant improper payments, develop improper payments
estimates for those programs deemed susceptible, and report the
estimates annually.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\Pub. L. No. 107-300, 116 Stat. 2350, 31 U.S.C. Sec. 3321 note
(2002).
\10\The list of the 24 agencies covered by this mandate is found at
31 U.S.C. Sec. 901(b)(1)(2004).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act of 2010
(IPERA).\11\ In July 2010, Congress passed, and the President
signed, IPERA to enhance the reporting and reduction of
improper payments. IPERA amended IPIA by expanding on the
previous requirements for identifying, estimating, and
reporting on programs and activities susceptible to significant
improper payments and expanding requirements for recovering
overpayments across a broad range of federal programs. IPERA:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\11\Pub. L. No. 111-204, 124 Stat. 2224 (2010).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Added a requirement that any program with
estimated improper payments exceeding specific dollar
amounts and error rate thresholds set out in the law
must report on the actions the agency is taking to
reduce improper payments;
Imposed a new requirement for agencies to
conduct audits to recover improper payments, where cost
effective, for each program and activity with at least
one million dollars in annual program outlays;
Established incentives and budgetary
penalties for programs that fail to comply with the
requirements of the law over a reasonable number of
years; and
Required each federal agency's inspector
general to determine annually whether his or her agency
is in compliance with certain IPERA requirements and to
report on that determination.
IPERA Improvement Act of 2012 (the ``Improvement
Act'').\12\ Building on the previously enacted legislation, the
Improvement Act required agencies to take additional steps to
curb improper payments. Specifically, the Improvement Act:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\Pub. L. No. 112-248, 126 Stat. 2390, 31 U.S.C. Sec. 3321 note
(2013).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Expanded requirements for agencies to
estimate improper payments, forcing agencies to improve
previously weak efforts at estimating such payments.
For example, the Act prevents agencies from relying
only on voluntary disclosure of improper payments by
contractors and requires agencies to produce
documentation to prove a payment was correct.
Codified the government-wide Do Not Pay
program (previously established through a 2010 White
House memorandum) that requires agencies to check
against a central, comprehensive database of entities
ineligible to receive federal funds before making
payments, including the Social Security
Administration's (SSA) Death Master File (DMF) and the
other databases specified in the White House
memorandum.\13\ The law also addressed some of the
challenges encountered by the Administration as it
attempted to implement its Do Not Pay program, such as
the need for multilateral data sharing agreements among
agencies.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\13\Memorandum on Enhancing Payment Accuracy Through a ``Do Not Pay
List,'' (June 18, 2010), http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/
presidential-memorandum-enhancing-payment-accuracy-through-a-do-not-
pay-list. The Do Not Pay list was established to allow screening
against the following databases: the SSA DMF, which lists all deaths
reported to the agency since 1936; the General Services
Administration's Excluded Parties List System, which lists entities
debarred from receiving federal contracts; the Department of the
Treasury's Debt Check Database, which contains information on
individuals who owe delinquent child support or non-tax debt that might
exclude them from certain federal loans, loan insurance, or loan
guarantees; the Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD)
Credit Alert Verification Reporting System, which provides information
on individuals who are in default or have had claims paid on direct or
guaranteed federal loans, or are delinquent on other debts owed to
federal agencies; and the Department of Health and Human Services'
Office of Inspector General's (HHS-OIG) List of Excluded Individuals/
Entities, which identifies those barred from federally-funded health
care programs.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Required that the Office of Management and
Budget (OMB), within 120 days of enactment, issue a
plan for curbing improper payments to deceased
individuals.
The creation of the Do Not Pay list and these legislative
efforts have resulted in an increased focus across the
government in preventing, identifying, and reducing improper
payments. Total improper payments made by the federal
government dropped from $120.6 billion in FY 2010 to $106
billion in FY 2013.\14\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\14\Payment Accuracy, Government-wide Improper Payments Targets,
http://www.paymentaccuracy.gov/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
However, as noted above, improper payments in FY 2014 rose
to nearly $125 billion. That increase is attributed to
increased error rates in three major programs: Medicare Fee-
for-Service, Medicaid programs, and the Earned Income Tax
Credit. These three programs accounted for approximately 65
percent of total government-wide improper payments for FY
2014.\15\ As outlays continue to increase, the growth in
improper payments will also increase unless action is taken.
Clearly, additional efforts are needed to return to a downward
trajectory in improper payments.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\15\Testimony of Beryl Davis, Government Accountability Office
before the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs,
``Examining Federal Improper Payments and Errors in the Death Master
File,'' Mar. 16, 2015.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
During the 113th Congress, the Committee held a hearing to
examine the implementation of IPERA and the IPERA Improvement
Act, and to explore potential next steps for similar
initiatives, such as improving the sharing and accuracy of data
to prevent improper payments to dead people. At the hearing,
Daniel I. Werfel, Controller, OMB's Office of Federal Financial
Management, highlighted federal efforts to prevent improper
payments. Both his testimony and that of Richard L. Gregg,
Fiscal Assistant Secretary at the Department of the Treasury,
provided an update on the progress made in implementing the Do
Not Pay initiative, acknowledging that there was much to be
done to ensure that the initiative provided a comprehensive
solution to payment integrity.\16\ Patrick P. O'Carroll, Jr.,
SSA Inspector General and Daniel Bertoni, a Government
Accountability Office Director for Education, Welfare, and
Income Security, and Marianna LaCanfora, the SSA Acting Deputy
Commissioner for Retirement and Disability Policy, also gave
testimony.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\16\``Curbing Federal Agency Waste and Fraud: New Steps to
Strengthen the Integrity of Federal Payments;'' Hearing Before the
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, 113th Cong.
(2013), http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/hearings/curbing-federal-agency-
waste-and-fraud-new-steps-to-strengthen-the-integrity-of-federal-
payments.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
On February 11, 2015, GAO Comptroller General Gene Dodaro
testified before the Committee regarding the release of GAO's
bi-annual ``High Risk'' list of government programs most at
risk of waste, fraud, or abuse. The testimony and deliberations
of this hearing included discussions of the level of federal
improper payments, as well as causes and potential
solutions.\17\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\17\``Risky Business: Examining GAO's 2015 List of High Risk
Government Programs;'' Hearing Before the Committee on Homeland
Security and Governmental Affairs, 114th Cong. (2015). http://
www.hsgac.senate.gov/hearings/risky-business-examining-gaos-2015-list-
of-high-risk-government-programs.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Committee has continued to examine this issue following
consideration of S. 614. On March 16, 2015, the Committee held
a hearing titled ``Examining Federal Improper Payments and
Errors in the Death Master File'' which examined the $19
billion increase in improper payments in 2015.\18\ The hearing
also uncovered problems with the DMF, the key database used by
agencies to screen payments in an effort to prevent improper
payments to the deceased.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\18\``Examining Federal Improper Payments and Errors in the Death
Master File;'' Hearing Before the Committee on Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs, 113th Cong. (2013).
http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/hearings/examining-federal-improper-
payments-and-errors-in-the-death-master-file.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
On March 17, 2015, Committee Chairman Ron Johnson wrote to
the Department of Health and Human Services, requesting
information regarding, as stated by the letter, improper
payments of advanced premium assistance tax credits and cost-
sharing subsidies under the Affordable Care Act to 200,000
individuals who were not eligible to receive them because they
did not verify legal residency in the United States.\19\ On May
21, 2015, the Chairman also sent a letter to the Internal
Revenue Service, the agency responsible for recovering those
improper payments.\20\ The Chairman estimates that the loss to
taxpayers could be as high as $400 million and neither agency
has responded that they have a plan to recoup these payments.
IPERA, as noted above, requires agencies to establish a plan
for the identification, prevention, and recoupment of improper
payments when doing so would result in a recovery of
overpayments greater than the administrative cost of pursuing
such recovery.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\19\Letter from Chairman Ron Johnson, S. Comm. On Homeland Security
& Governmental Affairs, to Sylvia Burwell, Secretary of the Department
of Health and Human Services (Mar. 17, 2015).
\20\Letter from Chairman Ron Johnson, S. Comm. On Homeland Security
& Governmental Affairs, to John Koskinen, Commissioner of the Internal
Revenue Service (May 21, 2015).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
S. 614, the Improper Payments Coordination Act, reflects
lessons learned through the Committee's hearings, as well as
the Committee's other ongoing oversight of federal agency
improper payments, which includes reviews of annual agency
reports on improper payments as well as extensive discussions
with agency inspectors general regarding their body of work
related to improper payments.
S. 614 takes additional key steps to address improper
payments made by government agencies. The legislation extends
access to the Do Not Pay initiative to the judicial and
legislative branches of the federal government, as well as the
state government agencies that manage federal funds, to expand
use of this tool to prevent improper payments. The legislation
also requires the Department of State and Department of Defense
to report death data to other agencies to prevent improper
payments to deceased individuals. Additionally, the bill
improves the Do Not Pay initiative by requiring OMB to issue
guidance clarifying rules and procedures for agencies to share
information.
Finally, the legislation seeks to expand and improve the
use of data analytics by federal agencies for federal-wide
waste and fraud reviews. As part of the Do Not Pay initiative,
the Department of Treasury established a center within the
Department to identify payments that are improper or
potentially fraudulent. This analysis involves payments across
a wide range of federal agencies and programs. However, the
roles and responsibilities of the analysis center are not well-
defined. For example, the center's interaction with similar
efforts by federal agency inspectors general is not yet
defined, and there is no timetable for the continuing
development of the center. Therefore, the bill requires the
Secretary of the Treasury to prepare a report describing data
analytics performed, the metrics used in determining whether
these analytics help reduce improper payments, and target dates
for implementing the data analytics operations performed as
part of the Do Not Pay initiative.
III. Legislative History
Ranking Member Carper and Chairman Johnson introduced S.
614 on February 7, 2015 and the bill was referred to the
Committee.
The Committee considered S. 614 at a business meeting on
March 4, 2015. The Committee ordered the bill reported
favorably by voice vote en bloc. Members present for the vote
on the bill were Senators Johnson, Portman, Lankford, Ayotte,
Ernst, Carper, McCaskill, Baldwin, Heitkamp, and Peters.
IV. Section-by-Section Analysis of the Bill, as Reported
Section 1--Short title
This section establishes the bill's title as the ``Improper
Payments Coordination Act of 2015.''
Section 2--Availability of the Do Not Pay Initiative to the Judicial
and Legislative Branches and States
This section amends Section 5 of the Improper Payments
Elimination and Recovery Improvement Act of 2012 to expand the
Do Not Pay initiative from use by just Executive branch
agencies, to also allow use of the Do Not Pay Program by the
Judicial and Legislative Branches, as well as state government
agencies that manage federal programs.
Section 3--Improving the sharing and use of data by Government agencies
to curb improper payments
This section amends Section 5 of the Improper Payments
Elimination and Recovery Improvement Act of 2012 to:
(1) Replace the use of the words ``Death Master File'' with
``death records.'' This is a technical correction.
(2) Improve the sharing of information regarding overseas
deaths. Currently, there are no clear procedures for agencies
such as the Department of Defense and Department of State to
share their notices of overseas deaths of United States
citizens (as opposed to deaths that occur within the United
States) to update federal agency lists of deceased individuals.
These lists are used to ensure that beneficiaries, retirees,
and others do not receive improper payments when deceased. The
section requires OMB to provide guidance that the two agencies
should share notices of overseas deaths.
(3) Provide guidance for agencies to share data with the Do
Not Pay program. Currently, six key databases are required by
law to be included in the Do Not Pay program. However, some
agencies have been slow to share key data, often due to a lack
of clarity on rules and procedures. This section requires OMB
to provide guidance addressing this problem.
Section 4--Data analytics
The Department of Treasury has an analysis center to help
federal agencies identify and prevent improper payments. This
section amends Section 5 of the IPERA Improvement Act of 2012
(31 U.S.C. Sec. 3321 note) by adding subparagraph (h).
Subparagraph (h) requires the Secretary of the Treasury to
submit a report to Congress describing how the Do Not Pay
Initiative data analytics center incorporates: (1) comparisons
of payment and beneficiary enrollment lists for state programs
that use federal funds to identify improper payments; (2)
reviews of payments across federal programs to identify payment
duplication; and (3) reviews of other information determined to
be effective. The report, due within 180 days after enactment,
must also describe the metrics used to determine if the
analytic and investigatory efforts have helped reduce improper
payments.
V. Evaluation of Regulatory Impact
Pursuant to the requirements of paragraph 11(b) of rule
XXVI of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the Committee has
considered the regulatory impact of this bill and determined
that the bill will have no regulatory impact within the meaning
of the rules. The Committee agrees with the Congressional
Budget Office's statement that the bill contains no
intergovernmental or private-sector mandates as defined in the
Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) and would impose no costs
on state, local, or tribal governments.
VI. Congressional Budget Office Cost Estimate
June 18, 2015.
Hon. Ron Johnson, Chairman,
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs,
U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
Dear Mr. Chairman: The Congressional Budget Office has
prepared the enclosed cost estimate for S. 614, the Federal
Improper Payments Coordination Act of 2015.
If you wish further details on this estimate, we will be
pleased to provide them. The CBO staff contact is Matthew
Pickford.
Sincerely,
Keith Hall.
Enclosure.
S. 614--Federal Improper Payments Coordination Act of 2015
S. 614 would amend federal law with an aim to reduce
improper payments made by the federal government. Improper
payments occur when funds are paid to the wrong recipient, the
recipient receives the incorrect amount of funds, documentation
is not available to support a payment, or the recipient uses
funds in an improper manner.\1\ Specifically, the legislation
would authorize the judicial and legislative branches, as well
as state government agencies that manage federal programs, to
use the Treasury Department's Do Not Pay (DNP) Program.
(Agencies use that program to check various databases before
making payments or contract awards in order to identify
ineligible recipients and to prevent other payment errors.) S.
614 also would direct the Secretaries of State and Defense to
improve the accuracy of their payment systems by sharing
information relating to the deaths of individuals. Finally, the
Secretary of the Treasury would be required to submit a report
to the Congress on efforts to reduce improper payments.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\A fraudulent payment (the intentional misuse of funds) may be
related to an improper payment, but they are not necessarily the same.
Efforts to curtail improper payments do not exclusively target fraud
prevention. For additional information see: Congressional Budget
Office: How Initiatives to Reduce Fraud in Federal Health Care Programs
Affect the Budget (October 2014).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) reports that
about $125 billion in improper payments were made by the
federal government in 2014, which represented about 4 percent
of the $3 trillion in government-wide spending that year.
Although implementing the bill would probably result in fewer
improper payments, any subsequent budgetary savings would not
be significant for several reasons:
Most improper payments result from
incomplete documentation related to the payment and
correcting that documentation usually does not alter
the amount of the payment;
Over 80 percent of improper payments stem
from the larger federal entitlement programs such as
Medicare, Medicaid, Unemployment Insurance, and
Supplemental Security Income. The bill would not
provide any new authorities to help those programs
reduce improper payments;
The judicial and legislative branches of the
government can already access the DNP program under
current law, according to Treasury Department
officials;
Spending by those branches represents less
than 1 percent of total federal spending and most of it
is for salaries and expenses. Such spending generally
does not result in large numbers of improper payments;
State and local governments already use
databases similar to the DNP to detect improper
payments.
In fact, no measures used by OMB or evidence from the
Government Accountability Office (GAO) indicate that focusing
on correcting improper payments would lead to a significant
reduction in federal spending.
Because enacting the bill could affect direct spending for
federal entitlement programs, pay-as-you-go procedures apply.
However, CBO estimates that any change in direct spending would
not be significant for the reasons stated above. We also
estimate that implementing S. 614 would not result in
significant additional administrative costs for the Departments
of Defense, State, and the Treasury.
S. 614 contains no intergovernmental or private-sector
mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act and
would impose no costs on state, local, or tribal governments.
The CBO staff contact for this estimate is Matthew
Pickford. The estimate was approved by Theresa Gullo, Assistant
Director for Budget Analysis.
VII. Changes in Existing Law Made by the Bill, as Reported
In compliance with paragraph 12 of rule XXVI of the
Standing Rules of the Senate, changes in existing law made by
S. 614 as reported are shown as follows (existing law proposed
to be omitted is enclosed in brackets, new matter is printed in
italic, and existing law in which no change is proposed is
shown in roman):
TITLE 31--MONEY AND FINANCE
* * * * * * *
Section. 3321. Disbursing authority in the executive branch
* * * * * * *
Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Improvement
* * * * * * *
SEC. 5. DO NOT PAY INITIATIVE
(a)
(1) * * *
(2)
[(A) The Death Master File of the Social
Security Administration.] (A) The death records
maintained by the Commissioner of Social
Security.
(b)
(1) * * *
(2) * * *
(3) Access and review [by agencies].--For purposes of
identifying and preventing improper payments, each
agency shall have access to, and use of, the Do Not Pay
Initiative to verify payment or award eligibility in
accordance with subsection (a) when the Director of the
Office of Management and Budget determines the Do Not
Pay Initiative is appropriately established for the
agency. States and any contractor, subcontractor, or
agent of a State, and the judicial and legislative
branches of the United States (as defined in paragraphs
(2) and (3), respectively, of section 202(e) of title
18, United States Code), shall have access to, and use
of, the Do Not Pay Initiative to verify payment or
award eligibility for payments (as defined in section
(2)(g)(3) of the Improper Payments Information Act of
2002, 31 U.S.C. 3321 note) when, with respect to a
State, the Director of the Office of Management and
Budget determines that the Do Not Pay Initiative is
appropriately established for that State and any
contractor, subcontractor, or agent of the State, and,
with respect to the judicial and legislative branches
of the United States, when the Director of the Office
of Management and Budget determines that the Do Not Pay
Initiative is appropriately established for the
judicial branch or the legislative branch, as
applicable.
(c) * * *
(d)
(1) * * *
(2)
(A) * * *
(B) shall include not less than 3 agencies as
users of the system; [and]
(C) shall include investigation activities
for fraud and systemic improper payments
detection through analytic technologies and
other techniques, which may include commercial
database use or access[.]; and
(D) may include States and their quasi-
government entities, and the judicial and
legislative branches of the United States (as
defined in paragraphs (2) and (3),
respectively, of section 202(e) of title 18,
United States Code) as users of the system in
accordance with subsection (b)(3).
* * * * * * *
(h) Report on Improper Payments Data Analysis.--Not later
than 180 days after the date of enactment of the Federal
Improper Payments Coordination Act of 2015, the Secretary of
the Treasury shall submit to Congress a report which shall
include a description of--
(1) data analytics performed as part of the Do Not
Pay Initiative for the purpose of detecting,
preventing, and recovering improper payments through
pre-award, post-award pre-payment, and post-payment
analysis, which shall include a description of any
analysis or investigations incorporating--
(A) review and data matching of payments and
beneficiary enrollment lists of State programs
carried out using Federal funds for the
purposes of identifying eligibility
duplication, residency ineligibility, duplicate
payments, or other potential improper payment
issues;
(B) review of multiple Federal agencies and
programs for which comparison of data could
show payment duplication; and
(C) review of other information the Secretary
of the Treasury determines could prove
effective for identifying, preventing, or
recovering improper payments, which may include
investigation or review of information from
multiple Federal agencies or programs;
(2) the metrics used in determining whether the
analytic and investigatory efforts have reduced, or
contributed to the reduction of, improper payments or
improper awards; and
(3) the target dates for implementing the data
analytics operations performed as part of the Do Not
Pay Initiative.
SEC. 6. * * *
SEC. 7. IMPROVING THE USE OF DATA BY GOVERNMENT AGENCIES FOR CURBING
IMPROPER PAYMENTS.
(a) Prompt Reporting of Death Information by the Department
of State and the Department of Defense.--Not later than 1 year
after the date of enactment of this section, the Secretary of
State and the Secretary of Defense shall establish a procedure
under which each Secretary shall, promptly and on a regular
basis, submit information relating to the deaths of individuals
to each agency for which the Director of the Office of
Management and Budget determines receiving and using such
information would be relevant and necessary.
(b) Guidance to Agencies Regarding Data Access and Use for
Improper Payments Purposes.--
(1) In general.--Not later than 6 months after the
date of enactment of this section, and in consultation
with the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and
Efficiency, the heads of other relevant Federal, State,
and local agencies, and Indian tribes and tribal
organizations, the Director of the Office of Management
and Budget shall issue guidance regarding
implementation of the Do Not Pay Initiative under
section 5 to--
(A) the Department of the Treasury; and
(B) each agency or component of an agency--
(i) that operates or maintains a
database of information described in
section 5(a)(2); or
(ii) for which the Director
determines improved data matching would
be relevant, necessary, or beneficial.
(2) Requirements.--The guidance issued under
paragraph (1) shall--
(A) address the implementation of subsection
(a); and
(B) include the establishment of deadlines
for access to and use of the databases
described in section 5(a)(2) under the Do Not
Pay Initiative.
[all]