According to the report, agencies that don’t have permanent IGs correlate to a higher volume of unimplemented recommendations.
Currently, eight of 73 IG positions are filled on only an acting basis. The report said that since 2009 the Department of State, DHS and USAID are among those with the most open and unimplemented recommendations and have been without permanent IGs — collectively — for over three years.
Common themes have emerged over the past few years as well, particularly in regard to poor IT security and inadequate oversight of payments to contractors, which IGs rank among the most pressing concerns.
In 2012 Internet security was among the most frequently cited top-three concerns for a given agency, as was inadequate oversight and controls over the outflow of federal funds, especially in contracting and bidding, the report said.
It said that overpayments are often made where additional documentation or more stringent approval requirements may have prevented them from occurring — and in other cases agencies should not have allowed contractors to bill after the fact in cases in which prices were not set in advance.
