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Gov says progress made in reducing ‘high risk’ findings

Gov. Lolo Matalasi Moliga says American Samoa has addressed some ‘high risk’ findings and the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) has commended ASG for efforts in addressing concerns dealing with federal grants.

 

After taking office in January 2013 and learning of the serious issue faced by ASG in addressing the ‘high risk’ designation on federal grants, the governor appointed the High Risk Task Force, which has since completed and submitted all outstanding reports due to USDOE, the governor said.

 

Additionally, a USDOE team was on island last September to review the progress of the mitigation tasks assigned for completion.

 

At the end of the review, USDOE “highly commended” the local Education Department and the task force for the extensive progress towards removing American Samoa from “high risk” status, he said.

 

Lolo also says that ASG have been able to successfully reduce high risk findings from twenty to fifteen and “we are confident that work that is being done will further close these outstanding findings.”

 

Lolo went on to point out that the government continues to work aggressively in meeting all grant conditions point-by-point and by assigning the right people to the right jobs. Further, the task force has prepared the Improvement Grants Management Plan designed to prevent the replication of practices in violation of Grant Policies and Procedures.

 

According to the governor, the Plan calls for the creation of a program assessment function to collect, integrate, and analyze grantee-generated reporting, grant monitoring documentation, performance measurement data, and other primary data sources to assess program performance and grantee compliance for future policy, budget, and funding decisions.