So why even have an Inspector General dept when no one follows up on their recommendations, especially CONGRESS? – PB/TK
Inspectors General: ‘Deep State’ Watchdogs With Bark, Almost No Bite – By Norman Leahy, RealClearInvestigations
It was the largest hack of federal data in history.
In June 2015, the Office of Personnel Management revealed the digital theft of sensitive, personal information on as many as 21.5 million current and former federal employees and others.
Perhaps even more scandalous was that it didn’t have to happen. The agency’s inspector general, Patrick E. McFarland, had repeatedly warned of the cyber-vulnerability of OPM – essentially the government’s human resources department. In response agency bureaucrats had misled, stonewalled and ultimately paid McFarland no heed, he said in Senate testimony. (He declined to comment further for this article.)
In this case, heads rolled, eventually: The agency administrator resigned and another official retired. But the episode illustrates how inspectors general across the federal bureaucracy, no matter how dogged some are in identifying problems, are routinely ignored as toothless watchdogs with some bark and almost no bite. At a cost of more than $2.5 billion annually, inspectors general typically provide merely the appearance of accountability within Washington’s permanent bureaucratic state.
That’s not how things were supposed to be. Under the post-Watergate 1978 Inspectors General Act, the monitors were putatively established as quasi-independent avengers of waste, fraud and mismanagement. And on paper at least, they have some serious juice behind them: They are nominated and can be fired only by the president. And they aren’t beholden just to their agency bosses, but to Congress as well.
But the law never gave the IGs power to enforce their own recommendations, even as their numbers swelled from a dozen initially to 73. (Now even the watchdog Government Accountability Office is watched by its own watchdog.)
And over the years – especially lately – the ineffectiveness of IGs has been laid bare in partisan clashes and bitter internecine struggles over disclosure and privacy.
A recent report by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee laid out one of the biggest problems facing the IGs: The agencies they oversee can just disregard them. And the consequences can be expensive.
Continue to realclearinvestigations.com article: http://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2017/02/17/inspectors_general.html
