Reports

On March 27, 2020, the President signed into law the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act). Among its provisions, the CARES Act provided the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) with $756 million to support the needs of DOI programs, bureaus, Indian Country, and the Insular Areas. This report presents the DOI’s progress as of May 31, 2020, in spending CARES Act appropriations.

We investigated an allegation that a National Park Service (NPS) employee assisted inmates from a prison work detail to smuggle contraband into a Federal penitentiary. We determined that during the prison work detail at a national park, inmates—whose criminal histories included firearms- and drug-related convictions—were found with contraband after they had been left working unsupervised in the park’s campground for approximately 2 hours. We found insufficient evidence to prove or disprove that the employee assisted the inmates who smuggled contraband into the penitentiary.

During a recent OIG investigation, we found that the National Indian Gaming Commission (NIGC) has an internal policy that permits authorized senior staff to obtain access to employee emails to ensure “efficient and proper operation of the workplace,” or to search for “suspected misconduct.” We found, however, that the NIGC has no systems, processes, or procedures in place to approve, track, or account for internal email queries of employees’ emails. While we found no U.S.