Office of Head Start ' Internal Control Review of the Competitive Process for Awarding American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Funds

The Office of Head Start's (OHS) internal controls over the competitive grant-award process used to award Recovery Act funds, as described by OHS management, are suitably designed to provide reasonable assurance that the specified internal control objectives would be achieved if the described internal controls were applied as designed.

This report provides a sufficient understanding of OHS's process for awarding Recovery Act funds to grantees as the process pertains to internal control objectives in these areas: (1) authorization and approval; (2) accuracy, validity, and completeness; (3) physical safeguards and security; (4) error handling; and (5) segregation of duties.