By increasing transparency of agency compliance with recommendations of IG reports, “Congress and the public will be better equipped to hold agencies accountable and encourage them to implement recommendations, which could help the federal government save billions in taxpayer dollars,” a Senate report says.
The report was filed in support of S-2178, which recently passed the Senate Governmental Affairs and Homeland Security Committee and is now ready for floor voting.
The bill would require agency IGs to include more detailed compliance information in their semiannual reports, to include a description of each open recommendation, when it was first submitted to the agency, and projected cost savings of carrying it out. That information also would be posted on the oversight.gov site run by the IG council in a standardized, searchable format.
The committee noted that in 2016 it found more than 15,000 open and unimplemented recommendations across the government that it said represent $87 billion in potential cost savings.
