The Office of Justice Programs Convicted Offender
DNA Sample Backlog Reduction Grant Program

Report No. 02-20
May 2002
Office of the Inspector General

APPENDIX V
OJP COMMENTS ON THE AUDIT RECOMMENDATIONS

OIG Comment: OJP's response included two attachments that have been omitted. See Appendix VI for additional information.

		U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs
Office of the Assistant Attorney General		Washington, DC 20531 April 08, 2002

MEMORANDUM

TO:	Guy K. Zimmerman Assistant Inspector General for Audit
FROM:	Deborah J. Daniels (original signed) Assistant Attorney General
SUBJECT:	Office of Justice Programs' Response to the Draft Audit Report on the Convicted Offender DNA Sample Backlog Reduction Grant Program

This memorandum is in reference to your correspondence dated March 8, 2002, requesting comments on the Office of the Inspector General's (010's) draft audit report on the Convicted Offender DNA Sample Backlog Reduction Grant Program. The report includes two recommendations to the Office of Justice Programs (OW). Since the time of the audit, the National Institute of Justice (Nil) has begun implementing appropriate corrective action. For ease of review, the recommendations are restated in bold, followed by our responses.

Recommendation 1

We recommend that the Assistant Attorney General, Office of Justice Programs, ensure that the data being collected and monitored accurately gauges whether the Program is meeting its mission to reduce and ultimately eliminate the convicted offender DNA sample backlog awaiting analysis and entry into NDIS.

We agree with the underlying concern. Effective April 2002, we revised the mission statement to better reflect the mission of the Convicted Offender DNA Sample Backlog Reduction Grant Program. The revised mission is to reduce and ultimately eliminate the convicted offender DNA sample backlog awaiting analysis and increase the number of samples available for entry into the National DNA Index System (NDIS) (see Attachment A).

In light of the revisions we made to the Program's mission, we believe that the data we are collecting and monitoring (i.e. number of samples analyzed and number of states experiencing an increase in the number of samples contributed) appropriately measures our efforts toward meeting the Program's mission. Therefore, we consider this recommendation to be closed.

Recommendation 2

We recommend that the Assistant Attorney General, Office of Justice Programs, develop and implement written procedures to ensure that OJP grant officials follow up when grantees fail to comply with grant requirements or fail to file grant reports on a timely basis.

We agree with this recommendation. To strengthen efforts to ensure that grant recipients submit required programmatic reports, we changed our business practices with regard to grantee submission of progress reports. Beginning with reporting periods on or after June 30, 2002, grant payment requests will be withheld if progress reports are delinquent. This has been an effective practice in OJP as it relates to financial reports. We will revise the OJP Financial Guide to notify grant recipients regarding this change in the next update to the guide expected in May 2002.

In June 2001, NIJ implemented a tracking system that identifies when reports are due for each grant in the Convicted Offender DNA Backlog Reduction Program. Dates of submission of quarterly financial reports, semi-annual progress reports, and Offender Quality Assurance Standards test results are recorded in the system. Summary reports (see Attachment B) are generated from the tracking system on a weekly basis and the grant managers contact the grant recipients by telephone or in writing for reports that are over two weeks past due. The NIJ will supplement OJP's written procedures for following up on delinquent progress reports and resolving issues with grant recipients that do not comply with grant requirements with internal written procedures by the end of April 2002.

We appreciate the opportunity to comment on the draft report. If you have any questions or need additional information about this response, please contact me on (202) 307-5933 or LeToya Bryant, OJP Audit Liaison, on (202) 514-0692. Thank you for your continued cooperation and assistance.

Attachments