OIGs, Watchdogs, and Oversight
So some history first: OIG is the Office of Inspector General. There are 72 OIGs in the US federal government, of which about 25 have statutory law enforcement authority. The IGs were created in the aftermath of Watergate by the Inspector General Act of 1978. The act established 12 IGs in the executive branch, giving them statutory mandates to provide oversight of their parent agencies through audits and investigations, and the number of OIGs has grown since. (I work for one of the 25 OIGs with law enforcement authority; it is not DOD.)
The OIGs are separate from GAO, the Government Accountability Office. OIG are independent nonpartisan agencies within the executive branch and each OIG provides oversight to one specific agency, called their parent agency - for example, the Department of Justice OIG provides oversight only on the DOJ and DOJ agencies like FBI, ATF, and DEA; they will not provide oversight on Department of State. The GAO is in the legislative branch, answering to Congress. They conduct similar work to the OIGs, but unlike OIGs who give oversight to one agency/department each, GAO provides oversight of the entire executive branch; for example, they’ll look at a program in DOJ for one case, and look at a State program in the next. Also, the GAO is not in charge of all the OIGs (a common mistake).
So when you hear or read in the news something like "(agency) watchdog" (i.e. "DOJ watchdog" or "State watchdog"), they're talking about the specific OIG. If you hear/see/read "government watchdog," they're usually talking about GAO.
OIGs are headed by an Inspector General, a PAS - president appointed, Senate confirmed. Unlike all the other political appointees in the executive branch, IGs do not have to resign at the end of a president's term. Because we're independent watchdogs and nonpartisan, the IG is meant to stay across presidential terms so previous to the current president, it was rare for sitting presidents to fire the IGs like he did.
(Quick aside: Just because the IGs are gone doesn't mean the work stops. We just don't have someone who directly answers to the president the way a political appointee does because the First Assistant, who steps in to perform the duties of the agency head when there isn’t one, in accordance with the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, is a career civil servant.)
What does an OIG or watchdog do?
Our statutory mission is to a) detect, prevent, and deter fraud, waste, and abuse in agency programs, operations, activities, and personnel and b) promote effectiveness and efficiency of the agency's programs, operations, activities, and personnel.
There are three ways we do this: audits, inspections and evaluations, and investigations. Boiling it all down to the very general essence:
Audits look at finances and documentation - they are determining "where/how can we save money and minimize waste."
Inspections and evaluations look at management issues (aka compliance and quality assurance) - they are determining "did you follow the rules/laws/processes? are you managing your resources effectively?"
Investigations look at people's behavior - they are determining "did you break the law? did you abuse your position in the government for personal gain?"
Sometimes everyone works together on a case, but it depends on on the type of case. Most of the time we stay in our own lanes. (And there's also a lot of lawyers. They're their own brand of evil.)
How do the watchdogs know what to investigate?
Most watchdogs rely on tips and complaints to initiate casework. They usually come from one of these four groups:
The public and whistleblowers via the hotline
Members of Congress who write inquiry letters and requests
Our own work (for instance, an auditor reviewing a contract audit for an agency's IaaS cloud platform finds that the contracting officer is taking kickbacks from Amazon that led to them choosing Amazon for their cloud provider, so the auditor makes a referral to the investigation office, who'll open a case).
Other OIGs (think of it like when Gibbs/NCIS has to work with Fornell/FBI, Grissom/Vegas CSI, and McNulty/Baltimore PD).
I'm not certain that we initiate cases based on news coverage. Other OIGs might, but I'm not aware that mine has - usually if something massive is in the news, like the Signal chat, a congressional inquiry is almost always guaranteed and the OIG won't officially initiate a case until they receive the congressional request but unofficially they’re reassigning work, freeing up resources, moving priorities, etc. to work on that case
I do know that the flip has occurred for us before; we get a whistleblower complaint, it's assessed a Level 3 case (low priority), but then the whistleblower goes public or something happens that captures media attention, and the IG will reassess the priority to Level 1 (high) and open a case.
I suspect this is what happened with Sentebale and the Charity Commission - Dr. Chandauka lodged a whistleblower complaint, Charity Commission ranked it low, then Harry went on his media tour with his resignation, so Dr. Chandauka responded in kind, and that escalated the whistleblower complaint to a higher priority so now the Charity Commission not only is definitely investigating, they've probably cleared the deck to start their investigation ASAP.
How long does it take to audit/investigate/inspect a case?
A LOT of time. We're talking months here, if not at least a year, even for expedited high-priority cases. There are witness to interview, documents to dig up, reports to verify, statements (both witnesses and financial) to validate.
My agency recently completed a fast-tracked case with significant congressional interest (which is considered an expedited case) and that took us 14 months to complete, from the date we got the congressional request to the date our report was published. And believe me, this was really fast-tracked because Congress was really pissed off.
For Sentebale's investigation, it really could take that long and we can look at past precedent:
The Royal Foundation/SussexRoyal Charity Commission investigation - the complaint was made in July 2020 and the investigation wrapped/results announced in May 2021 (10 months).
The BP bullying investigation - the case was opened in March 2021 and the investigation completed/report issued in June 2022 (15 months).
I think we'll see the Sentebale investigation take as long, if not longer, since it sounds like they're investigating many years of activities. That's a lot of people to talk to, a lot of reports to read, a lot of finances to analyze, and I'm sure a lot of traveling too, between all the different parties and locations. I'd be surprised if we heard something before the 6-8 month mark. And if we did hear something before the 6-8 month mark, then I'd assume the commission is really fast-tracking because of pressure from Harry and/or Charles. (Personally I can't see Charles getting involved because Sentebale had always been Harry's own thing, but if there's anything we've learned during the Sussex Saga, it's that logic doesn't matter.)
What directs the casework?
Community best practices and federal regulations.
Auditors use GAGAS, Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards, aka the Yellow Book, which is maintained by GAO.
Inspectors use the Blue Book, a quality standards guide published by our oversight board and developed using industry best practices.
Investigators (also called 1811s if they have law enforcement authority) will use criminal justice laws and regulations, as well as industry best practices and quality standards guides.
Auditors also undergo a peer review annually, which is the OIG community's way of holding each other accountable, ensuring integrity, and protecting the public trust in our work. Also, a lot of auditors will have backgrounds in accounting and may even be certified accountants as well.
Every agency prioritizes their complaints or casework differently but generally:
Higher priority cases are usually things that have significant harm (like multiple agencies are affected or millions of dollars lost) that would likely affect public trust in government services or align the closest with the presidential administration's goals.
Lower priority cases are usually things with smaller impact, like thousands of dollars or personnel disputes.
(Again, that is really generalized.)
I don't know what standards or guides the Charity Commission uses for their work; it didn't come up in a basic search of their website.
What happens when the audit/inspection/investigation is done?
For audits and inspections and evaluations, the work ends with a report. The reports summarize the case, the findings, and the OIG or watchdog will make recommendations on how the agency can avoid this from happening again.
For OIGs, the parent agency has the opportunity to respond to an OIG case findings. They can either agree with the findings or recommendations, at which point they'll usually implement them into practice, or they can disagree with the finding/recommendation. I'm not actually sure what happens when they disagree, like if there's further casework, but I do know there's no consequence or penalty to not accepting the recommendations. I know my OIG will usually make a note of what they disagree with it and it can become something that we ding them on in future cases as a systemic issue.
Once the parent agency has responded to the report findings, then the report gets finalized, published, and issued. We send our reports to our agency's congressional committee, to our oversight board (which is called the Council of Inspectors General for Integrity and Efficiency, CIGIE), and to our website. Like I said in the other post, we're required to publish our casework except when details are classified, it involves PII, or it involves security. If the findings have significant adverse widespread government impact or there's significant media interest, then most likely there will be a congressional hearing about the work. Like I'm pretty certain that the Signal investigation (which was announced yesterday) will result in a congressional hearing.
For investigations, the work almost always ends up in court. Investigators and the lawyers will work closely with the Department of Justice on both criminal and civil charges. These cases also take a long time, mostly because OIGs will track the court cases through judgment before marking them as complete.
All of the reports and press releases for the OIGs' work are published and publicly available on their websites. This information is not secret. Most of it is not privileged. It's all laid out; what the tip was, what we did, what we found, what the agency should have done.
Now specific to the OIG community, we're also statutorily mandated to report to Congress twice a year on our work. These are called the Semiannual Reports to the Congress (or SARs). The SARs cover time periods of October 1 - March 31 and April 1 - September 30. The SARs also get published and are publicly available on all the websites. (The March 31st reports will start going up on OIG websites mid-Mayish so if this is something you're interested in, definitely start checking the websites then.)
Where the UK Charity Commission may be different is they don't consider themselves a watchdog in the sense like an OIG does. They are more of a regulatory agency, which to me means they make sure "are you following the laws," not necessarily "are you working efficiently and effectively." Additionally, I'm not sure if they have mandatory reporting requirements for their casework. They might just simply issue press releases to the public and keep reports internally confidential. I just don't know and I didn't see anything on their website.
What are recommendations and findings?
Findings are discoveries that were made during the course of the investigation, audit, inspection/evaluation, i.e. everything we've learned about the program, the project, the work, etc. that has an impact on the results of the case and contributes to a recommendation.
A recommendation is just that - a recommendation from the OIG on what the individual could do better next time or how to avoid getting stuck in this issue again. A recommendation can be anything from "you should remove this person" (but we can't actually terminate a federal employee, we can only advise it) to "get more training" to "don't do that again." But the thing is, a recommendation isn't punitive; it's only advisory. Meaning if the agency doesn't adopt it, there isn't much we can do. That's where the congressional oversight becomes important, because they can create laws that force changes, if the issue is severe enough.
And also if the issue is severe enough, it can be referred for civil or criminal prosecution, which means DOJ gets involved. That's usually the only way we can hold an agency or a federal worker accountable, if their actions are egregious enough that they could be fined, sued, arrested, etc. Sometimes they are. Sometimes they aren't.
The caveat to this is "it also depends" - for example, the OIGs that have oversight on contracts and contractors like GSA, Labor, and SBA can actually debar contractors, which makes them ineligible to compete for or receive government contracts. OIGs over Social Security, HHS, and the VA can terminate someone's government benefits sometimes, depending on their authority and the case/issue being investigated.
Hopefully this changes under the current administration with their focus on improving efficiency and preventing fraud, waste, and abuse - there's a tiny smidgen of hope that we might actually get more enforcement powers, but we'll see.
And this is different from the Charity Commission, which seems like they do have enforcement powers, like we saw in the case of the Captain Tom charity, where they banned his daughter/charity CEO from future positions in charity.
I think that's it...I'm probably forgetting a lot of stuff but that's the general overview of how oversight, watchdogs, and Inspectors General work. Feel free to send in questions if you've got them!
