Federal Manager's Daily Report

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The nominee to become inspector general at OPM has said that if confirmed his top priorities would include getting resolution to recommendations made in the office’s reports.

“The OPM OIG has over 300 open recommendations going back many years. This is a common issue for IGs. I am concerned about what open IG recommendations does to public trust in government; a problem has been specifically identified, but not corrected,” said Craig Leen, currently director of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs at the Labor Department.

Other priorities, he told a Senate committee at his confirmation hearing, would include “evaluating OPM’s guidance related to COVID-19 and learn from what went well and what could be improved”; increasing the number of evaluations done by the office; addressing improper payments; and ensuring equal employment opportunity for all protected classes; and ensuring that “the federal civil service system advances employees based on merit, and merit alone.”

The OPM IG position has been filled on an acting basis for four years, since the retirement of Patrick McFarland, who had issued a series of reports critical of OPM’s data security practices ahead of the 2015 breaches of personnel and background investigation databases. OPM’s lack of compliance with those recommendations was one of the main themes of the later scrutiny of those breaches.

Before going to the Labor Department he held a series of positions in the private sector and local government in Florida.

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