The Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE) last week launched oversight.gov, a new website with thousands of Inspector General (IG) reports from across the federal government.
IGs serve as watchdogs inside federal government agencies. Each year, IGs identify billions of dollars in potential taxpayer savings, conduct investigations that promote government accountability, and make thousands of recommendations to improve government operations.
The website provides a “one stop shop” to follow the ongoing oversight work of all IGs that publicly post reports.
It also enables users to access more than 5,800 previously-issued IG reports, a number that will continue to grow as IGs issue new reports.
Inspectors General currently post these reports to their individual websites. But with the launch of oversight.gov, users can now sort, search, and filter the site’s database of public reports across agencies to find oversight areas of interest.
The site features a user-friendly map to find reports based on geographic location and contact information for each IG’s whistleblower hotline.
As IGs add new reports to their own websites, the new reports and data will be posted simultaneously on oversight.gov.
The website shows that for the third consecutive year, the IG community identified over $20 billion in potential savings of federal tax dollars as part of their comprehensive efforts to eliminate waste in federal programs.
Between 2011 and 2015, the IG reports have resulted in 29,000 criminal actions, 7,000 successful civil actions, 29,000 suspensions and debarments, and $71 billion in recoveries.
“I’m confident that this new website will improve the public’s access to independent and authoritative information about how their federal tax dollars are being spent, which programs are being well run and which ones need improvement,” said Justice Department IG and CIGIE chair Michael Horowitz in a video posted at oversight.gov. “It will also allow the public to learn about the IGs efforts to combat waste, fraud, abuse and misconduct in the federal government.”