Sunlight Foundation

Inspector Generals

Maybe we should all spend more time reading the Inspector General reports, which are (required to be) posted on line. Look at what ProPublica’s Jake Bernstein found. He had a titillating report (really! see below) by the IG for the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) on the activities inside the department. The IG found employees downloading online porn, running a private business out of government offices among other derelictions of duty. (Think while the cat's away, the mice were playing....).

It made me want to look at little deeper into the whole IG system and whether some sunlight on their work could tell us a lot of stuff we don't know.

Congress, via the Inspector General Act of 1978 set up offices of inspector general (OIG) in federal agencies and charged them with auditing and ferreting out abuse, fraud, mismanagement and waste within their agency. Over the past 30 years, Congress has expanded the act, including increasing the number of agencies with IGs from the original 12 to 65 today. (Here’s an alphabetical listing of each agency’s OIG along with links to each OIG’s Web site.) Each OIG posts their audit reports on their Web site. Their investigative reports, which could lead to law enforcement actions, are not made public. Maybe that's where the 'best' stuff is.

This fall, Congress passed, with unanimous votes in both chambers, the Inspector General Reform Act of 2008, to enhance the IG independence. According to the Center for Public Integrity’s Matthew Lewis, lawmakers wrote the bill to provide separate legal counsel for inspectors, beef up law enforcement authority, and establish an executive Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency. In October, President Bush signed the bill into law. Matthew also adds that Bush issued a signing statement objecting to several provisions, including the authority of the separate legal counsel. Another section he objected to dealt with IG comments of presidential budget submissions. The president’s statement says, ‘The executive branch shall construe section 8 of the bill in a manner consistent with the president’s constitutional authority.’”

But more can be done to improve the requirements now in place. Sen. Claire McCaskill has introduced S.3731, the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program Act of 2008. This bill would amend the federal financial bailout, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, by beefing up the oversight powers of the bailout’s Special Inspector General. On December 10, the Senate passed the bill by unanimous consent, and sent it to the House.

Disclosure Responsibliity on Government in IG Reform

I'd like to elaborate on an important point about the IG reform measure that just passed the Senate.

The measure includes a requirement that the Inspectors General post their reports on their Web sites. This requirement places the responsibility of disclosure on the agencies themselves, rather than on citizens looking form information. The wording of the mandate takes the language of the Freedom of Information Act, which puts the onus on citizens to request information, and uses it to set a standard of full disclosure of IG reports.

That the government should take responsibility for openness, or make disclosure the rule rather than the exception, is one of Ellen's spotlight ideas; a completely open government would render FOIA unnecessary.

We're happy to see such a specific requirement pass the Senate in the spirit of full digital access.

The Inspector General of each agency shall...that is subject to release under...the Freedom of Information Act...post that report or audit (or portion of that report or audit) on the website of the Office of the Inspector General;

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IG Reform Passes Senate

Since coming across a CRS report on efforts to strengthen the Offices of Inspectors General (OIGs, and IGs), I've been interested in executive oversight structures and the laws that govern them. A section of PublicMarkup.org's Transparency in Government Act even covers IG report publication. It looks like the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) and Congress are also intently focused on the issue, as they've just passed a second version of a measure to strengthen Inspectors General.

POGO's blog explains that the Senate just passed S. 2324 (GovTrack, OpenCongress), after, according to POGO,



an amendment offered by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) finally broke through the logjam that had blocked the bill's passage since last November.

For more background on IG reform, see especially POGO's February report, Inspectors General: Many Lack Essential Tools for Independence.

Senator Lieberman is among those praising the measure, which still needs to be reconciled with the House version before going to the President.

S. 2324 would amend Title 5 of the US Code, significantly strengthening the independence and effectiveness of oversight by IGs.

Of particular interest to Sunlight is the provision that Inspectors General post copies of IG reports to their Web sites, (as long as they're subject to FOIA, and therefore not classified or otherwise unfit for publication). The text:

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