OJJDP, within the U.S. Department of Justice, is the primary federal agency responsible for the prevention and control of juvenile delinquency in the United States. This includes preventing, treating and controlling youth gang activity and violence through sponsored research, evaluation, and demonstrating new approaches for communities across the country. The initiatives are carried out by seven components within OJJDP: Research and Program Development Division, Training and Technical Assistance Division, Special Emphasis Division, State Relations and Assistance Division, Information Dissemination Unit, Concentration of Federal Efforts Program, and Child Protection Division. OJJDP annual appropriations have more than tripled from $162 million in fiscal year 1996, with 71 authorized staff positions, to $568 million in fiscal year 2000, with 87 authorized staff positions. In 1996, we reviewed the operations of OJJDP. We found that official grant files for discretionary grants generally contained monitoring plans, but little evidence that monitoring occurred. We reported that none of the grant files had documentation of telephone contacts, site visits, or product reviews. Also, no quarterly program and financial reports were included in 11 of the 78 files for which projects had been ongoing for at least 2 quarters at the time of our review, and one or more reports were missing from another 61 files. In addition, only 6 of the 78 files had program and financial reports for all quarters of work completed. In commenting on our testimony, the OJJDP Deputy Administrator said that the heavy workload of OJJDP staff may have resulted in a lack of monitoring records and that, as a result of the our 1996 review, OJJDP would take the steps necessary to improve records. To address the first objective, to report on OJJDP’s grant monitoring process, we reviewed applicable federal laws and regulations as well as OJP and OJJDP policies and procedures. We also interviewed staff in OJJDP and OJP’s Office of the Comptroller. To accomplish the second objective, to report on OJJDP’s documentation of its discretionary grant monitoring activities, we reviewed probability samples of official grant files and grant managers’ files using a data collection instrument to record whether required monitoring activity occurred—that is, that the progress reports, financial reports, and other required documents were included in the files. For each grant, we also reviewed the most recent award covering 12 months to examine specific monitoring requirements and activities, such as telephone calls and site visits. Specifically, we reviewed a random sample of 89 of 545 OJJDP demonstration discretionary grants, and 45 of 83 training and technical assistance discretionary grants that were active in all of fiscal years 1999 and/or 2000. The results of these samples are representative of the populations from which they were drawn. We express our confidence in the precision of our sample results as a 95-percent confidence interval. Unless otherwise noted, all percentage estimates have confidence intervals plus or minus 10 percentage points or less. To determine the timeliness of grantee progress reports and financial status reports, we reviewed all such reports for OJJDP demonstration and training and technical assistance discretionary grants from the initiation of the grant through the date of our review. For our review, we provided a list of the selected grants to OJJDP and OJP’s Comptroller. Because we did not always receive the grant files in the order requested, we reviewed them out of order. When files were missing or lost, we substituted replacement files. After our review was complete, some of the missing files were located. We did not review the missing files but used the substitute files that were a part of our random sample. Four grant files were not found in time to be included in our review. In addition, when only one of the two files (the official grant file or the grant managers’ file) was available, we used the available file to complete the data collection instrument. We have no reason to believe that the substitution of files affected the validity of our sample because they were a part of our random sample. To determine whether OJJDP grant closeout procedures were implemented in accordance with OJP policy, we reviewed grant files in our sample whose project periods expired before August 31, 2000. For our review, we focused on required closeout documentation, such as final progress or performance reports, final financial status reports, grant checklist, and closeout notification and grant adjustment notice. Our results should not be projected to the universe of cases in our sample. To address the third audit objective, to report on the processes OJJDP uses to oversee monitoring activities, we examined OJJDP’s monitoring and oversight of its grant managers’ compliance with applicable laws, regulations, and procedures for monitoring. We obtained information from OJJDP officials at headquarters and obtained data related to these activities, such as performance work plans. To determine the requirements in the performance work plans, OJJDP officials gave us a plan that they considered to be representative. Our work was done between March 2001 and September 2001 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. After OJJDP awards discretionary grants, OJP policies require OJJDP to monitor the grants and related activities and document the monitoring results in the grant managers’ program files and OJP’s Office of the Comptroller official grant files. The monitoring is to ensure compliance with relevant statutes, regulations, policies, and guidelines; responsible oversight of awarded funds; implementation of required programs, goals, objectives, tasks, products, time lines, and schedules; identification of issues and problems that may impede grant implementation; and adjustments required by the grantee as approved by OJJDP. One of the OJJDP grant managers’ main responsibilities is project monitoring. Each grant manager prepares a monitoring plan as part of a grant manager’s memorandum recommending initial or continuation funding. The level of monitoring required is based upon the stated monitoring plan in the grant manager’s memorandum. The memorandum includes an overview of the project; a detailed description of what type of activities the grantee plans on implementing; a discussion of past monitoring activities and assessments, if the grant is a multiyear grant that is awarded yearly; an identification of monitoring activities to be performed for the current a discussion of the financial justification for the grant funds and of the cost-effectiveness evaluation of the application. Another part of the monitoring plan may list specific activities or milestones to be monitored by the grant manager. The 1991 OJJDP Monitoring Desk Book contains specific monitoring procedures that grant managers used for monitoring OJJDP’s discretionary grants. Monitoring activities documented included site visit reports and quarterly monitoring telephone calls as well as other significant telephone calls. Also, according to the OJP 1992 Handbook, all discretionary grantees are required to submit categorical assistance progress reports that summarize project activities and quarterly financial status reports for review by grant managers. The OJP Handbook also stated that when all of the grant funds are spent, all grant activities are completed, and all grantee and grant managers’ administrative requirements, including all paperwork and review of grant files, are completed, the grant managers have to close out the grant. (See app. I for a detailed discussion of the grant award processes.) The OJP Comptroller’s Control Desk is to maintain the official grant files and is responsible for tracking the receipt of all grant documents. The Control Desk receives the progress reports, files the original in the official grant file, and forwards a copy to the cognizant program office. The grant manager is responsible for the timely acceptance, review, and analysis of progress reports. The Comptroller’s Monitoring Division performs an in-house review of various program and financial documents contained in the official grant files. The Office of the Comptroller also performs risk-based on-site financial reviews of grantee organizations to monitor administrative and financial capability. The Comptroller applies risk-based criteria to a universe of grants to develop a sample for each fiscal year monitoring plan. The risk-based criteria include the dollar amount of the grant, new grantees, new grant programs, and programs with known problems. The Comptroller excludes from its sample any grantee organizations that were subject to its other on-site financial monitoring or to audit by the Office of the Inspector General during the last 2 years. According to OJP officials, the purpose of the reviews is to provide as much of a comprehensive financial review as possible without going on site. Our review of the results of the Comptroller’s in-house financial reviews of the grants in our sample disclosed that they identified a number of problems similar to our own observations. These included missing program and financial documents and program and financial monitoring not always being documented in a timely manner. In commenting on a draft of this report, the Acting Assistant Attorney General stated that there was no mention of delinquent documentation of financial monitoring during our review, nor was there any evidence cited in our draft report to support the contention that financial monitoring was not documented in a timely manner. However, contrary to the Acting Assistant Attorney General comment, our review found that there was no documentation that financial reports were generally reviewed and that many of the reports were not submitted in a timely manner. Specifically, we found one case where no progress or financial reports had been submitted during the life of a grant, and it was not discovered until almost a full year after the award date (see p. 15). In 1991, OJJDP issued a Monitoring Desk Book, which incorporated material from OJP’s 1987 Handbook, including a formula for determining the monitoring level requirements for the grant. According to OJJDP officials, this formula is applied to determine how often a grantee will be visited and officially contacted for monitoring purposes. This formula applies a weight to issues such as program priority (i.e., how important is the grant within the context of the OJJDP’s goals and objectives), size of grant, grantee’s need for assistance, and anticipated difficulties in implementing the approach. The grant manager assigns a weight or “score” to each of these criteria, which are added together for a total score.