U.S. RAILROAD RETIREMENT BOARD

OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL 

Improvements Needed for the 

Designated Change Process at 

the Railroad Retirement Board

Report No. 21-11 September 29, 2021

This report summary presents the abbreviated results of the subject 

audit. The full report includes information protected from disclosure 

and has been designated for limited distribution pursuant to 

5 U. S. C. § 552.
OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL

U.S.RAILROAD RETIREMENT BOARD

Improvements Needed for the Designated Change Process at the 

Railroad Retirement Board

Report Summary September 29, 2021 Report No. 21-11

What We Found

A designated change is a change made to either an individual’s 

name, home address, direct deposit, or representative payee.

The Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) did not always ensure 

changes to an individual’s name, home address, direct deposit, 

or representative payee were accurate. Based on our statistical 

sample, the RRB’s projected error rate was 27 percent, putting 

approximately $1.3 million in benefit payments at risk for 

fiscal year 2019. Inaccuracies occurred because RRB 

management and employees did not follow established 

designated change policies, procedures, or Government 

Accountability Office’s Standards for Internal Control in the 

Federal Government. 

Additionally, the RRB designed and documented internal 

controls over designated changes, including policies and 

procedures. However, these controls, policies, and procedures 

were not fully effective or complete to ensure all changes were 

processed accurately, timely, or barred from possible fraudulent 

activities.

What We Recommend

To address the exceptionsidentified in this audit, we made 

23 recommendations related to improving the RRB’s policies, 

procedures, and internal controls for processing designated 

changes. We also made recommendations directed at resolving 

the inaccurate changes. Of the 23 recommendations, RRB 

management concurred with 11, partially concurred with 2, 

deferred to concur or nonconcur with 3, and did not concur 

with 7. For the recommendations with which it did not concur, 

we continue to see the need for these recommendations. For 

the recommendations with which it concurred, RRB 

management provided target completion dates as provided in

Appendix I. 

What We Did 

We conducted this audit as part of 

our annual workplan. If the RRB 

does not process changes 

accurately or effectively, 

annuitants and beneficiaries could 

be negatively impacted almost 

immediately. They could lose 

monthly benefits, identities could 

be stolen, medical information 

could be compromised, or they 

could be wrongly classified as 

incompetent.

Our objectives of this audit were to 

determine the accuracy of 

designated changes and assess the 

effectiveness of the internal 

controls over the designated 

change process.

Our scope included designated 

change requests processed in 

fiscal year 2019 for Railroad 

Retirement Act annuitants and 

beneficiaries and management 

control reviews of the designated 

change process conducted in fiscal 

years 2018 through 2020.

We identified applicable laws and 

regulations, reviewed RRB policies 

and procedures, analyzed 

management internal control 

documentation, reviewed a 

statistically valid sample, and 

assessed control effectiveness.