The IG’s office at EPA is going to audit the agency’s procedures for keeping text messages, in what could be the first of audits at a variety of agencies following revelations last year that the IRS had lost numerous electronic messages, some of them sent from personal devices, that may have been pertinent to controversies over its handling of applications for tax-exemption status.
The audit is being done at the request of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, the main panel overseeing the agency.
“Our objective is to determine whether the EPA adhered to applicable laws, regulations, and agency policies and procedures for records management, and preserved text messages when conducting official business,” the IG said in a notice to the agency.
The audit will involve headquarters, regional and program offices; the notice reminds EPA management that it is obliged to allow investigators to “have timely access to personnel and all materials necessary” and that the IG will ask senior leaders to step in if any agency or contractor employee fails to cooperate.
