Improving Inspector General Operations

The offices of inspector general have been most successful in realizing savings. Due to their audit and investigative efforts, about $1.4 billion was saved during fiscal year 1980. This represents a savings of approximately seven dollars for every dollar spent on audit and investigation by these offices. In spite of this effectiveness, Inspectors General (IG) continue to have staffing problems that historically have been experienced by audit organizations. Although some of these offices have several hundred auditors, others must meet their legislated and other responsibilities with very small staffs. The large responsibilities of these offices can only be achieved with the complete support of the Administration and agency heads. Legislative, congressional, presidential, and other work load requirements imposed on IG are constantly growing, but IG have not been given the resources to meet these new demands. The governmentwide hiring freeze and travel fund restrictions have seriously affected their ability to obtain needed staff and have limited the number of audits and investigations started and the scopes of both continuing and planned efforts. GAO believes that requiring separate line item treatment in the agency budget would help Congress keep better track of IG capabilities. In a review of one agency's IG office, GAO found that the budgetary process was a major impediment to increasing audit and investigative staff. In that instance, the IG budget was included as part of the Office of the Secretary's budget. Congressional cuts in the Secretary's budget and the higher priority given to major agency programs prevented reasonable growth of the audit and investigative staffs. Thus, the audit and investigation activities competed with numerous other activities carried out by the Office of the Secretary, and this office did not give audit and investigation activities the necessary emphasis. GAO believes that these findings are also applicable to other agencies.