The Justice Department in 2014 spent substantially less on conferences than it did in 2010, a report says, following an OMB directive ordering across-the-board reductions governmentwide in the wake of conference spending scandals at agencies including the GSA, IRS and VA.
The Justice IG noted that following the OMB order, the deputy attorney general’s office ordered components to postpone or scale back conferences that were not necessary to mission-critical operations.
As a result, conference spending dropped from almost $92 million to less than $20 million by 2014, while the number of events that Justice components sponsored fell from 1,740 to 445.
The report however included several recommendations to improve the tracking and reporting of conference costs.
