By conducting studies on groundwater and surface water, the USGS helps identify pollutants, their sources, and their effects on human health and the environment. Image: Red Herring/Shutterstock.com
Scientific integrity controls the U.S. Geological Survey launched in 2018 are behind schedule and are not being fully implemented even where the agency considers them to be, an inspector general audit has said.
The USGS “lacks sufficient internal controls in laboratories to identify vulnerabilities and prevent losses associated with breaches of scientific integrity and misconduct”—with full implementation of a “quality management system” started in reaction to several such breaches now projected for next year, two years late.
Further, “no centralized oversight function within USGS ensures that all laboratories are appropriately implementing a QMS,” a report said. Of eight laboratories that USGS deemed to have fully implemented the QMS, “we found that none, in fact, had implemented basic internal controls such as supervisory reviews of staff work, and only one laboratory required standard operating procedures,” it said.
The audit also raised several issues with the QMS itself, including that it “does not require assessments of the risk factors that have led to past misconduct, which include factors such as workload capacity and unmet staffing needs.”
Also, while the QMS was designed to be flexible to accommodate the differing needs of USGS’s nearly 500 laboratories, “the flexibility and discretion provided to laboratories on whether and how to implement certain internal control elements . . . could compromise the very purpose of a QMS,” it said.
Many laboratories write or alter software to meet their own needs, it added, but there is insufficient review, “which increases risks of compromising USGS networks, exposing data, and creating inefficiencies due to incompatibility with current systems.”
It said management fully or partially concurred with recommendations related to conducting risk assessments, oversight of information systems and strengthening oversight of the quality management system.
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