TSA’s Office of Inspections has not used staff and resources efficiently in conducting inspections, audits, internal reviews, and covert testing to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of TSA’s operations including internal investigations, the DHS inspector general has said.
It said OOI did not ensure that its 124 criminal investigators – who receive 25 percent more with Law Enforcement Availability Pay – performed criminal investigations the majority of their time, as required by federal regulations and that the agency could be over spending millions on the non-investigative work they do.
Further, OOI did not properly plan its work and resource needs, track project costs, or measure performance effectively, and quality controls were not sufficient to ensure that OOI’s work complied with accepted standards; staff members were properly trained, the IG found.
It also said OOI could not ensure that other TSA components took action on its recommendations to improve operations.
TSA agreed with recommendations to ensure that criminal investigators meet the minimum requirement of spending at least 50 percent of their time on criminal investigative activity and meet all requirements, conduct an objective workforce analysis of OOI, including a needs assessment, and reclassify primary criminal investigators who do not meet the 50 percent minimum requirement as noncriminal investigators.
However, OOI maintains it uses its criminal investigators in an efficient and cost-effective manner, and disagreed with the assertion that it does not ensure some investigators are meeting the federal workload requirement qualifying them for Law Enforcement Availability Pay.
