Management of the Office of Justice Programs’ Grant Programs for Trafficking Victims

Audit Report 08-26
July 2008
Office of the Inspector General


Appendix IV
Office of Justice Programs’ Response to the Draft Audit Report

MEMORANDUM TO: Glenn A. Fine
Inspector General
United States Department of Justice

THROUGH: Raymond J. Beaudet
Assistant Inspector General for Audit
Office of the Inspector General
United States Department of Justice

FROM: Jeffrey L. Sedgwick
Acting Assistant Attorney General

SUBJECT: Response to Office of the Inspector General’s Draft Audit Report, Management of the Office of Justice Programs’ Grant Programs for Trafficking Victims

This memorandum provides a response to the recommendations directed to the Office of Justice Programs (OJP) included in the Office of the Inspector General’s (OIG’s) draft audit report entitled, Management of the Office of Justice Programs’ Grant Programs for Trafficking Victims. The report contains 15 recommendations and no questioned costs directed to the OJP.

In general, the Office of Justice Programs agrees with the draft audit report recommendations, and is fully committed to implementing corrective actions to strengthen our administration of the human trafficking grant programs. For ease of review, the draft audit report recommendations are restated in bold and are followed by our response.

  1. Develop and implement procedures to ensure that the BJA task forces either report only actual trafficking victims identified, or report both actual and potential victims identified.

  2. The Office of Justice Programs agrees with the recommendation. The OJP is in the process of revising its human trafficking performance measures for the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) funded task forces and is exploring options for collecting and reporting on such measures. As such, the OJP is considering that the BJA fund task forces collect detailed incident level data rather than the current aggregate level metrics.

    Additionally, by January 31, 2009, the OJP will develop and implement procedures whereby the status of all victims who have been identified by the BJA funded task forces as potential human trafficking victims in each investigation will be monitored and reported. By employing a regularly updated incident based information system, the OJP should be able to collect information on all identified potential victims as soon as an investigation is initiated and track their status throughout the investigation. Initially, all of these individuals would be recorded as potential victims but as the investigation uncovers more evidence about the status of the victim, the BJA funded task forces will update victim reports to indicate whether arrests are made or whether the victim is granted Continued Presence or a T-visa. A summary sheet for each incident will allow task forces to regularly update the status of the incident and victims to indicate whether they are a confirmed victim of trafficking, not a confirmed victim of trafficking or whether confirmation is pending. This will allow task forces to provide the most up-to-date and accurate information on the number of both potential and confirmed human trafficking victims.

  3. Ensure the BJA task forces either exclude domestic trafficking victims when reporting the number of victims identified under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act or separately identify the domestic and alien victims in the numbers reported.

  4. The Office of Justice Programs agrees with the recommendation. As stated in our response to Recommendation Number 1, the OJP is in the process of revising its human trafficking performance measures and will take appropriate steps to separately identify the domestic and alien victims in the numbers reported.

    Specifically, the OJP proposes to collect information on the residency status of all identified victims, categorizing them as either Foreign (Undocumented Alien, Qualified Alien), Domestic (U.S. Citizen, U.S. National, Permanent Resident), or Unknown. As previously stated, by January 31, 2009, the OJP will develop and implement procedures to ensure that the BJA task forces collect information about whether a continued presence application or T-visa application has been filed for each victim.

  5. Require the BJA task forces to maintain documentation to support the number of trafficking victims reported.

  6. The Office of Justice Programs agrees with the recommendation. The OJP plans to emphasize the importance and need to maintain documentation to support the number of victims reported at the next human trafficking conference, to be held on September 9-10, 2008, in Atlanta, Georgia. Additionally, BJA recently developed an “Immersion Program” among the funded task forces. The Immersion Program allows the three top performing task forces to provide hands on technical assistance and cross training to their peer task forces. Each of the three top performing task forces will host peer task forces, one at a time, for a week of immersion learning. One of the learning objectives that will be covered in detail in the Immersion Program will be “reporting and record keeping.” In this segment, the importance and need for both accuracy in reporting and maintaining documentation to support victims reported, will be reinforced.

    As stated in our response to Recommendation Numbers 1 and 2, the OJP is in the process of revising its human trafficking performance measures for the BJA funded task forces for collecting and reporting on such measures. By January 31, 2009, the OJP will develop and implement procedures whereby the status of all victims who have been identified by the BJA funded task forces as potential human trafficking victims in each investigation will be monitored and reported. Finally, to ensure that the BJA task forces maintain documentation, a unique incident number will be assigned to each new case as it is reported to OJP, and any victim information included for that case would be linked to the unique incident number. Therefore, documentation supporting the number of trafficking victims is readily available and easily accessible for auditing and verification.

  7. Ensure the accuracy of the number of trafficking victims reported by the task forces for inclusion in the annual reports.

  8. The Office of Justice Programs agrees with the recommendation. As stated in our response to Recommendation Number 3, the OJP plans to emphasize the importance and need to ensure accuracy of the number of victims reported at the next human trafficking conference, to be held on September 9-10, 2008, in Atlanta, Georgia. With the development of the “Immersion Program”, the OJP believes the importance and need for both accuracy in reporting and maintaining documentation to support victims reported, will be reinforced.

    To ensure the accuracy of the number of trafficking victims reported by task forces for inclusion in the annual reports, by January 31, 2009, the OJP will explore methods for implementing an ongoing system of random audits of the data provided by the task forces.

  9. Consider whether the “trafficking victims saves” performance measure should be eliminated. If not eliminated, establish procedures for taking prompt corrective action when task forces are not meeting the “trafficking victims saves” performance measure.

  10. The Office of Justice Programs agrees with the recommendation. The OJP is in the process of revising its human trafficking performance measures and exploring options for collecting and reporting on such measures. By January 31, 2009, the OJP will develop and implement procedures whereby the status of all victims who have been identified by the BJA funded task forces as potential human trafficking victims in each investigation will be monitored and reported.

  11. Ensure that OVC service providers separately identify new victims who are assisted during the semi-annual progress reporting period.

  12. The Office of Justice Programs agrees with the recommendation. By January 1, 2009, the OJP will work with the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) Training and Technical Assistance Center (TTAC), which developed OVC’s Trafficking Information Management System (TIMS), to modify the system to make data collection clearer and more streamlined. The OJP believes that modifying the TIMS is important because most of the OVC’s grantees use this system to provide data for their semi-annual progress reports, and OVC program specialists compare the data in the semi-annual progress reports with information submitted in the TIMS to ensure consistency of the data.

  13. Ensure the OVC service providers do not report as assisted those potential victims who either disappear or were found to be ineligible before services are provided.

  14. The Office of Justice Programs agrees with the recommendation. By January 1, 2009, the OJP will provide additional guidance to the service providers as to the eligibility criteria for OVC-funded assistance for victims of human trafficking. The OJP believes that service providers should only count as assisted (for the purpose of reporting under cooperative agreements with OVC) those victims who actually receive some sort of OVC-funded service and who are determined, based on the information available at the time of service or intervention, to have been eligible to receive such.

  15. Ensure that the OVC service providers verify whether victims who received T-visa have been certified by HHS as trafficking victims before they can receive services.

  16. The Office of Justice Programs agrees with the recommendation. By January 1, 2009, the OJP will develop additional and specific guidance to the OVC service providers that specifies OJP’s policy on serving certified victims and indicating that the service providers that use grant funds to serve certified victims, without prior authorization from OVC, will be required to return the funds to the OJP. Also, if allowable, OVC will require its grantees to provide the circumstances, including certification status and whether or not the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has been contacted to verify certification status, of each new trafficking victim that the service providers report serving in their semi-annual progress reports (this is a new data reporting requirement that is not currently part of the grantees’ applications). As previously stated, the OJP plans to conduct a technical assistance workshop for the OVC service providers at the next human trafficking conference, to be held on September 9-10, 2008, in Atlanta, Georgia.

  17. Ensure the OVC service providers maintain sufficient documentation to support the trafficking victims reported as assisted in the semi-annual progress reports.

  18. The Office of Justice Programs agrees with the recommendation. In addition to the guidance specified in our response in Recommendation Number 8, by January 1, 2009, the OJP will also develop guidance requiring OVC service providers to maintain written documentation to support all services provided to trafficking victims.

  19. Ensure the accuracy of the number of trafficking victims reported by the service providers for inclusion in the annual reports.

  20. The Office of Justice Programs agrees with the recommendation. The OJP is committed to ensuring that OVC service providers report data reflecting the accurate number of eligible trafficking victims assisted during a reporting period (broken down by new victims served and existing victims). At the outset, it is important to realize that some OVC service providers have served individuals who, without question, are victims of human trafficking in fact, but do not fall under the precise statutory eligibility criteria for OVC-funded services – for example, victims who are certified prior to receiving trafficking victim services. As such, to avoid confusion as to whom can be served with OVC grant funds, the OJP, the Vermont Service Center of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit within the Civil Rights Division of U.S. Department of Justice, issued written guidance to OVC service providers in March 2008, that specifically outlines eligibility for services funded by OVC trafficking grants.

    As stated in our response to Recommendation Numbers 8 and 9, by January 1, 2009, the OJP will develop additional and specific guidance to the OVC service providers that specifies OJP’s policy on serving certified victims as well as requiring the OVC service providers to maintain written documentation to support all services provided to trafficking victims to ensure the accuracy of the number of trafficking victims reported by the OVC service providers for inclusion in the annual reports.

  21. Establish procedures for use during the award process on future service provider agreements to determine whether the award amounts are reasonable in relation to the anticipated numbers of victims to be assisted.

  22. The Office of Justice Programs agrees with the recommendation. For all OVC trafficking awards that OJP makes during fiscal year (FY) 2008 and in future years as funding is appropriated, OVC trafficking program specialists will review all contracts or sub-grants that trafficking grantees fund for services or activities to ensure that costs are reasonable and strategically sound. Additionally, a programmatic hold special condition will be added in all award documents to ensure that the review is conducted before funds are available to the grantee and OVC will also include this review requirement in future solicitations.

    Human trafficking in the U.S. is a crime for which scant statistical data exists, especially in the historical context of how many victims have been identified, the dynamics of the trafficking cases, and the subsequent needs of the victims. The OJP, other Federal authorities, and local service providers cannot accurately “anticipate” the number of victims to be assisted during an 18 month or three year period in each geographic area, as there is insufficient data to ascertain where traffickers will focus their efforts. The OJP is also unaware of any tested, reliable models for estimating how and where traffickers in humans will establish or expand their efforts. Because of the episodic nature of the identification of trafficking victims (as well as the anticipated number of victims that may be identified in a single case), the OJP has elected to pursue a strategy from the inception of trafficking grant programs to focus goals and objectives on building the community capacity to assist any number of victims that are identified and to ensure that these victims are provided comprehensive services during the service period. This capacity includes the ability of the grantee and the community to provide all needed services to both male and female as well as adult and child victims of both sex and labor trafficking before certification occurs. As the OIG report indicates, the audited OVC service provider grantees have clearly met the overarching goal for the establishment and administration of this grant program.

    Grantee applications have used estimated number of victims to make budget projections, but there is no “cookie cutter” approach to how any one grantee will provide services for the victims of this emerging crime. The needs of a particular victim, and the subsequent costs, can differ tremendously from one victim to the next. Some victims have no medical needs, speak English, and may even have relatives that can help provide support. Other victims may have catastrophic medical and mental health needs, speak no English, and have no resources whatsoever. As we previously stated in Recommendation Number 6, the OJP is collecting information on costs associated with serving victims of human trafficking through the OVC Trafficking Information Management System. However, this data will not be useful until the information from several years, many different regions, and for many different types of human trafficking cases, has been collected and appropriately analyzed.

    If a grantee provides most services “in-house,” costs may differ markedly from services that are contracted out or are provided pro-bono. Costs and existing resources also differ greatly from one geographic region to another. These funding vehicles are cooperative agreements with numerous goals and objectives, but the ultimate and overarching goal is that of building community capacity.

    The OJP has concerns that the OIG appears to recommend that the OVC trafficking program specialists conduct independent cost assessments related to a “supermarket cart” of services ranging from case management to legal assistance to medical services to mental health services to shelter to dental services to job training to transportation to English-as-a-Second-Language, and so forth in every geographical area covered by these grants. Such an assessment would be a costly and ineffective approach to a grant program strategy that focuses on building overall community capacity to respond to human trafficking victims, as opposed to developing stipends to cover services. Such a recommendation also runs counter to the whole premise of this, and most other grant programs: that a local community service provider knows far better than Federal authorities what services and resources are available locally, including those that are low-cost or free.

    Nevertheless, in light of the OIG’s recommendation, OVC will implement the procedures described above, including the programmatic hold special condition, to ensure that all trafficking grantee contracts and sub-grants are reviewed to ensure that costs are reasonable and strategically sound.

  23. Provide additional training and oversight of service provider and task force grantees to ensure that they:

  24. The Office of Justice Programs agrees with the recommendation. The OJP has consistently worked to improve grantee compliance and performance through training and technical assistance, as well as enhanced oversight activities in FY 2007 and 2008. To better assist grantees in meeting performance goals, OVC recently transferred over $1 million in trafficking funding, comprised of roll-over funding from previous fiscal years, to support technical assistance and research and evaluation activities for both BJA and OVC trafficking grantees. In addition, BJA and OVC have worked with OVC’s Training and Technical Assistance Center (TTAC) to convene a working group of key personnel from other Federal agencies with anti-human trafficking responsibilities, from October 2007 through March 2008, to identify key areas of needed technical assistance for task forces and service providers, and to identify existing Federal resources that could be leveraged to address training and technical assistance needs of trafficking grantees. The findings of this working group will help shape the development of the work plan for the funding recently transferred to the OVC TTAC.

    In addition to these efforts, the OJP continues to provide grantees with training opportunities through the Office of the Chief Financial Officer’s (OCFO) regional Financial Management Training Seminars. The OVC requires that all of its grantees receiving over $150,000 in trafficking grant funds attend one of the OCFO’s training seminars. Further, the OJP’s Office of Audit, Assessment, and Management (OAAM) released several training tools to assist grantees with meeting post-award requirements, including a grant process oversight web page, which can be found at http://www.ojp.gov/funding/grant_process.htm#management, and on-line training modules for OJP’s end-to-end, web-based Grant Management System (GMS), which can be found at http://www.ojp.gov/gmscbt/. More importantly, by December 31, 2008, the OAAM will develop a more in-depth, on-line training course for OJP grantees that focuses on post-award grant management.

    In a continuing commitment to improving grant oversight, the OAAM released new, robust guidelines for monitoring OJP grants and cooperative agreements in FY 2007, making it possible for OJP grant and program managers to monitor grants and cooperative agreements consistently across OJP bureaus and offices, while preserving the flexibility to monitor diverse programs and grant types effectively. To accomplish the standards and requirements for on-site monitoring, the OAAM developed a standard Grant Monitoring Tool (GMT), which will be required for use beginning on October 1, 2008. The GMT requires grant and program managers to review all grants against a set of standard review categories to determine administrative and financial compliance with grant management policies, procedures, and regulatory requirements, as well as to evaluate the programmatic progress and success of efforts funded through the grant.

    In addition to the GMT, the OAAM released the Grant Assessment Tool (GAT) in September 2007 to provide a common, organized framework and methodology for systematically and objectively assessing risks associated with grants and/or grantees. The GAT was used to assist in the development of the OCFO FY 2008 financial monitoring plan and involves assigning a monitoring priority level to individual grants based on a standard set of criteria. In FY 2008, an improved version of the GAT will be issued in a Microsoft Access database format and has been enhanced to act as both a monitoring decision tool, as well as a format for conducting thorough desk reviews. The OAAM has worked closely with OVC in particular to include rating factors for human trafficking grants.

    Specifically to address late semi-annual progress reports, the OJP implemented the funding freeze functionality within the GMS Progress Report module in FY 2007. The module temporarily freezes payments to an award recipient due to late submission of a progress report. After the award recipient submits a progress report and the OJP approves it, the GMS module makes the funds available for drawdown. This new GMS feature, which complements the funding freeze for late Financial Status Reports, has led to increased grantee accountability and compliance with grant program reporting requirements.

    Finally, by January 31, 2009, the OAAM will schedule a follow-up review of BJA and OVC human trafficking-related grant recipients in order to ensure that issues identified in this report have been appropriately addressed, and long-term improvement measures have been implemented.

  25. Establish an effective system for monitoring the OVC service providers to ensure that (1) performance data reported by the service providers is accurate, (2) service providers are meeting the performance goals, and (3) service providers track the amount of grants funds used to assist victims of human trafficking.

  26. The Office of Justice Programs agrees with the recommendation. As previously stated in our response to Recommendation Number 12, the newly released GMT requires that grant and program managers monitor grants consistently across a set of core criteria. Specifically, the GMT requires grant and program managers to review performance measures for face validity and analyze collection processes.

    The GMT instructs grant and program managers to check that a grantee has an adequate method for collecting performance measurement data, by reviewing and analyzing whether:

    In addition, the GMT now requires that grant and program managers assess grantee performance goals when conducting on-site monitoring, as well as through the GAT when conducting a desk review. As previously stated in our response to Recommendation Number 12, by January 31, 2009, the OAAM will schedule a follow-up review of BJA and OVC human trafficking-related grant recipients in order to ensure that issues identified in this report have been appropriately addressed, and long-term improvement measures have been implemented.

  27. Establish an effective system for monitoring the BJA task forces to ensure that (1) performance data reported by the task forces is accurate, and (2) task forces are meeting the performance goals.

  28. The Office of Justice Programs agrees with the recommendation. As previously stated in our response to Recommendation Number 13, the newly released GMT requires that grant and program managers monitor grants consistently across a set of core criteria and requires grant and program managers to review performance measures for face validity and analyze collection processes. In addition, the OJP is in the process of revising its human trafficking task for performance measures and exploring options for better collecting and reporting on such measures.

  29. Issue additional guidance to all task force grantees regarding best practices to:

  30. The Office of Justice Programs agrees with the recommendation. By January 31, 2009, the OJP will develop additional, clearer guidance to all task force grantees regarding best practices in maintaining supporting documentation; tracking data to be reported; and verifying the accuracy of the data before reporting to BJA.

    As the OJP revises its performance measures as previously stated in Recommendation Number 1, the OJP will also develop a User’s Guide that provides clear guidance on reporting data to BJA. BJA also plans to provide onsite technical assistance and guidance to task force grantees in maintaining supporting documentation, tracking the data, and verifying the accuracy of the data.

Thank you for your continued cooperation. If you have any questions regarding this response, please contact LeToya Johnson, Deputy Director, Office of Audit, Assessment, and Management – Audit and Review Division, on (202) 514-0692.

cc: Beth McGarry
Deputy Assistant Attorney General
   for Operations and Management

Domingo S. Herraiz, Director
Bureau of Justice Assistance

John Gillis, Director
Office for Victims of Crime

Marcia K. Paull
Chief Financial Officer

LeToya A. Johnson
Deputy Director, Audit and Review Division
Office of Audit, Assessment, and Management

Richard A. Theis
Audit Liaison
Department of Justice



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