Semiannual Report to Congress (SARC 30) October 1, 2003 through March 31, 2004

This semiannual report to the Congress summarizes the activities and accomplishments of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the period October 1, 2003 through March 31, 2004. During this period, we spent time discussing where we are as an office and where we want to be, resulting in Mission, Values and Vision statements that are unique to our office. When accomplishing audit and investigative work, we will ensure that it accords with our mission to be an "independent and objective voice for Congress, the Board of Directors and PBGC." We want to focus our work on the challenges facing PBGC, and to be the primary source of timely and objective information. We will accomplish our work demonstrating our values of Respect, Excellence and Integrity.

In the audit area, our work included:

• Governance issues: working with the Board of Directors, Executive management (see page 3);
• Financial Management: issuing the independent public accountant's Financial Statement Audit Opinion, and Management Letters, and accelerated financial statement reporting (see page 4);
• Program Operations: issuing a report and participating on teams to address premium accounting issues, and completing work to review field benefit administration offices (see page 8);
• Information Technology Security: submitting the OMB-mandated response on the agency's progress (see page 10); and
• Continuity of Operations: finding significant progress (see page 10).

In the investigative area, we continued implementation of our new allegation evaluation system. Our goal is to systematically and timely address each allegation, open only the highest priority cases that we agree should be worked based on our criteria, and for which we have the resources to conduct a full investigation. We received thirty-five (35) Inquiries, of which five (5) became cases. We closed twelve (12) cases and twenty (20) inquiries during the reporting period. Among the significant investigative work conducted this period, we:

• Found that a senior level employee engaged in ethical misconduct (see page 18);
• Found that a individual obtained bank routing information from PBGC's website and debited PBGC's account using on-line resources (see page 18);
• Closed 6 cases related to pension benefit fraud (see page 18).

Another highlight of this period is staff changes, including the appointments of:

• A new Assistant Inspector General for Audit Luther Atkins, formerly with the State Department OIG.
• A new Assistant Inspector General for Investigations, Tom Zigan.