United States Government Publishing Office publisher pbl distributor dst United States Government Accountability Office General Government Division author aut Government Organization text government publication eng GAOREPORTS Legislative Agency Publications gao legislative 2010-08-12 U.S. Government Printing Office 1999-09-20 monographic deposited born digital 32 p. GA 1.13:GGD-99-183 https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GAOREPORTS-GGD-99-183 P0b002ee18038e656 f:gg99183 DGPO 2010-08-12 2011-03-24 GAOREPORTS-GGD-99-183 machine generated eng fdlp REPORT GAOREPORTS-GGD-99-183 GGD-99-183 Legal aid Internal controls Federal grants Statistical data Grant administration Reporting requirements Eligibility criteria Resident aliens LSC Case Service Reporting System Letter Report GGD Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO determined: (1) what efforts the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) and its grantees have made to correct problems with case service reporting; and (2) whether these efforts are likely to resolve the case reporting problems that occurred in 1997.<p/>GAO noted that: (1) LSC revised its written guidance and issued a new handbook to its grantees to clarify case reporting requirements; (2) based on telephone interviews with a sample of 79 LSC grantee executive directors, GAO estimates that 90 percent of grantees viewed the new guidance as having clarified reporting requirements, overall; (3) virtually, all grantees said they responded to the new requirements by making or planning to make one or more changes to their program operations; (4) however, many grantees indicated that they were unclear about certain aspects of LSC's reporting requirements, particularly regarding: (a) the specific information required on client assets; (b) the information required for documenting citizenship/alien eligibility for services provided over the telephone; (c) the criteria for avoiding duplicate counts of cases; and (d) who can provide legal assistance to clients in order for the service to be counted as a case; (5) LSC initiated a self-inspection procedure in which grantees were required to review their 1998 case data and submit certification letters to LSC if they found that the extent of error in their data was 5 percent or less; (6) grantees who could not certify their 1998 data were required to develop corrective actions that would address the problems identified; (7) about 75 percent of the grantees submitted letters to LSC certifying that the error rate in their 1998 data was 5 percent or less, while about 25 percent of the grantees submitted letters to LSC indicating that they could not certify their 1998 data; (8) according to LSC, about 30 of the 50 grantees with the largest caseloads were unable to certify their 1998 case data; (9) GAO could not assess whether the number of certified and uncertified programs that LSC obtained for 1998 was correct, lower, or higher than it should be; (10) this is because LSC did not provide grantees with a standardized way of reporting their self-inspection results, and LSC's instructions on how to conduct the self-inspections may have led some of the smaller grantees to select too few cases to reliably assess the amount of error in their case data; (11) some grantees did not correctly interpret LSC's case reporting requirements; and (12) for these reasons, GAO do not believe that LSC's efforts to date have been sufficient to fully resolve the case reporting problems that occurred in 1997. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-GGD-99-183/html/GAOREPORTS-GGD-99-183.htm https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-GGD-99-183/pdf/GAOREPORTS-GGD-99-183.pdf GAO/GGD-99-183 https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GAOREPORTS-GGD-99-183 Letter Report GAO/GGD-99-183; Legal Services Corporation: More Needs to Be Done to; Legal aid Internal controls Federal grants Statistical data Grant administration Reporting requirements Eligibility criteria Resident aliens LSC Case Service Reporting System Title 45 Part 1635 45 CFR Part 1635 Title 45 Part 1635 45 CFR Part 1635