Follow-Up on Recommendations from Report No. 18-08, Audit of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs’ Competitive Grants and Report on the Implementation of 2013 Audit Recommendations

Hawaii State Auditor, Report No. 21-10 August 2021 (excerpts)

This report presents the results of our follow-up on the Office of Hawaiian Affairs’ implementation of the 11 audit recommendations made in Report No. 18-08, Audit of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs’ Competitive Grants and Report on the Implementation of 2013 Audit Recommendations….

We found the Office of Hawaiian Affairs has implemented 10 and partially implemented 1 of the 11 recommendations made in our report….

Recommendations and their status

Our follow-up efforts were limited to reviewing and reporting the implementation status of our audit recommendations. We did not explore new issues or revisit old ones that did not relate to the original recommendations. The following details the audit recommendations made, and the current implementation status of each recommendation based on our review of information and documents provided by OHA, and other publicly available information….

What we found in 2018

In Report No. 18-08, Audit of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs’ Competitive Grants and Report on the Implementation of 2013 Audit Recommendations, we focused on OHA’s use of grants to support Native Hawaiian programs and services. We found that while the policies and procedures for OHA’s competitively awarded grants were for the most part defined, there were shortcomings in the way awarded grants were monitored and evaluated. Section 10-17, HRS, requires OHA to monitor and evaluate every grant to ensure compliance with the purpose and intent of the grant, and to determine whether the intended results were achieved.

At the time of our audit, OHA’s Grants Program Standard Operating Procedures (Grants SOP) manual described four funding resources that involved competitive and non-competitive processes…

(OHA’s Kūlia Initiatives and CEO Sponsorships were awarded under a non-competitive administrative review process and were addressed in Report No. 18-03.)

In Report No. 18-08, we found that OHA did not consistently meet the statutory requirements to monitor and evaluate ‘Ahahui Grants and mostly met monitoring and evaluation requirements for Community Grants.

We also found the program primarily responsible for administering grants, the Transitional Assistance Program (TAP)2, followed the policies and procedures for the planning, solicitation, application, review, and recommendation phases for the ‘Ahahui and Community Grants process cycles, but that a standard operating procedures manual for ‘Ahahui Grants did not include steps for monitoring and evaluating grants that had been awarded. For example, we found that TAP did not track if grantees were in compliance with grant requirements or evaluate whether they were in good standing and eligible for future OHA grants….

In response to Report No. 18-08, OHA instituted specific policies and actions related to its use of ‘Ahahui Grants and Community Grants…

read … Full Report

June 2018: Auditor: OHA Openly Violates HRS10-17 Nepotism