Client: State of Idaho

Sector: Government

The state of Idaho awarded a contract to BMRA for the purpose of reviewing the Empowering Parents Grant Program (EPGP). The EPGP is funded by Federal Coronavirus Relief Funds to help K-12 students recover from the adverse educational impact caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The program provides grants of up to $1,000 per student or $3,000 per family over a two-year period to purchase eligible education services and devices through an online marketplace.

BMRA was provided a master spreadsheet of 60,000 transactions incurred-to-date under the subject grant program for the purpose of reviewing every transaction for compliance. In many instances, the transaction description included a string consisting of multiple items grouped together with only a total dollar amount for the entire transaction.

BMRA applied a two-phase approach identifying a team of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and each SME conducted the first pass of reviewing each transaction assigned and marked questionable expenses to bring back to the team to discuss in phase 2.

The task at hand was to provide an end-of-project report summarizing all deficiencies.

The report identified to include but not limited to the following:

• All incorrectly made purchases
• Justification for why they were incorrect per Idaho Statute or US Treasury guidelines
• A report summarizing how these purchases were allowed
• Recommendations to improve security and the transaction process based on how the program is currently operating

BMRA applied a two-phase approach identifying a team of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and each SME conducted the first pass of reviewing each transaction assigned and marked questionable expenses to bring back to the team to discuss in phase 2.

The task at hand was to provide an end-of-project report summarizing all deficiencies.

The report identified to include but not limited to the following:

• All incorrectly made purchases
• Justification for why they were incorrect per Idaho Statute or US Treasury guidelines
• A report summarizing how these purchases were allowed
• Recommendations to improve security and the transaction process based on how the program is currently operating