Federal Manager's Daily Report

The council of agency inspectors general has said the enactment of the Inspector General Empowerment Act of 2016 (P.L. 114-317) “will serve to protect the independence and effectiveness of Inspectors General for years to come.”

The new law clarifies that IGs are entitled to full and prompt access to agency records, “thereby eliminating any doubt about whether agencies and whistleblowers are legally authorized to disclose potentially sensitive information to IGs,” the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency said in a statement.

“In so doing, the Act ensures that IGs have the ability to conduct audits, reviews, and investigations in an independent and efficient manner. This provision was necessary because of refusals by several agencies since 2010 to provide their IGs with independent access to information that was available to the agency and relevant to ongoing oversight work by the agency inspector general, and because of a Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel opinion in July 2015 asserting that the Inspector General Act did not entitle IGs to all records available to an agency,” it said.

That legal opinion led to unusual appeals by the IG community to Congress that ultimately led to the law’s enactment.

The new law also creates new authority for IGs to match data across agencies to aid their audits and investigations.