Inspectors general detail $11.4 billion in potential savings governmentwide in fiscal 2007

Inspectors general across government identified $11.4 billion in potential savings through audits and closed 33,740 investigations in fiscal 2007, according to the IG community's annual report to the president.

More than 12,000 employees at 64 IG offices issued more than 6,500 audit reports and testified before the Congress 130 times in 2007. OIG investigations led to $5.1 billion in recoveries and receivables and 8,961 successful criminal prosecutions, according to the report, which was prepared by the IG offices of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Federal Communications Commission on behalf of the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency, and Executive Council on Integrity and Efficiency.

"Every year I'm amazed at the dollar value and number of findings and indictments and prosecutions and debarments and so forth," said Clay Johnson, chairman of the president's council and deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget. "The level of activity this year is comparable to the last five to six years, which says the effectiveness of the IG community is every bit as great as it has ever been."

Gregory Friedman, vice chairman of the council, and Christine Boesz, vice chairwoman of the executive council, wrote that in addition to individual accomplishments, IGs across agencies collaborated on a number of successful endeavors.

"In countless instances, OIGs joined forces and leveraged their expertise to tackle issues crossing agency boundaries and had a stronger impact than they might have had if working alone," they noted. The report listed a range of initiatives from exposing contracting fraud to overseeing disaster relief to auditing schools and libraries.

The report also highlighted the role of IGs in auditing agency financial statements. In fiscal 2007, more than 600 auditors participated alongside contractors in this massive task. Nineteen of the 24 departments received clean opinions for fiscal 2007, with only 39 material weaknesses governmentwide. Johnson said cooperation among the IG offices and agency financial managers played a crucial role in turning around financial statements in 45 days.

"If you want to issue an audited financial statement within 45 days you have to adopt new disciplines throughout the year. You can't wait until the end of the year and pull all your financial records together and try to make sense of them," Johnson said. "Financial management leaders work with the auditors throughout the year on this."

Johnson said inspector general offices have been bolstered by budget increases in recent years. Budgets for IGs governmentwide are up 73 percent since 2001. The average was 55 percent for offices that existed before 2001, which excludes the massive Homeland Security Department.

Inspectors general are "part of the overall governmentwide effort -- not political effort but career effort -- to identify things that need to be fixed and focus on fixing them," Johnson said.

The annual IG report identifies the top management challenges each agency faces during the fiscal year. It also notes the top challenges governmentwide, which, for 2007, were:

• Homeland security and disaster preparedness
• Information technology management and security
• Financial management and performance
• Human capital management
• Performance management and accountability
• Procurement and grant management