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• Tuesday, June 24, 2008 10:46 AM

  What's all this about Inspectors General, then?

  The Project on Government Oversight released a report in February titled: Inspectors General: Many Lack Essential Tools for Independence

  This report does not inspire the confidence in Inspectors General that Pelosi, Hoyer, Obama, et al. seem to have. And lest anyone think the problems in this report are limited to the Bush administration:

  Current OMB Deputy Director Clay Johnson III has, on more than one occasion, instructed the IGs that it is their responsibility to get along with agency heads, that they are part of the agency team, and that they should contribute to agency success.

  Surprises are to be avoided. With very limited exceptions primarily related to investigations, the OIG should keep the Agency advised of its work and its findings on a timely basis, and strive to provide information helpful to the Agency at the earliest possible stage … OIG and Agency management will work cooperatively in identifying the most important areas of OIG work ...25

  That viewpoint is not unique to the current administration. During the Clinton administration, then-OMB Deputy Director Alice Rivlin sent out a memo noting with approval that the IGs had recently adopted a “vision statement” for:

  working more closely with agency management and focussing [sic] more work on program outcomes. To put it simply, the IGs have pledged to focus more on whether Federal programs are working (the “big picture”) and less on identifying individual, minor infractions of procedures (the “gotchas”).26

  There is a subtlety here that echoes the dual nature of the IG’s existence: While a relationship between agency and IG of pure antagonism surely is not desirable, there are dangers associated with IGs being too closely identified with agency success.

  http://www.pogo.org/p/government/go-080228-ig.html

  —EJ Read EJ's other letters
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