The federal inspector general community is working to improve auditors’ and evaluators’ access to the tools and data needed to deliver on the Trump administration’s priority to reduce fraud. Department of Interior OIG Assistant Inspector General for Strategy, Data and Innovation Michael O’Rouke said as agencies continue to hold themselves accountable, they need to focus on transparency.
“It’s about telling people what you’re going to do, doing that, and then telling them what you’ve done. For us in our organization and stakeholders, what that looks like is our audit plan,” O’Rouke said Thursday at ATARC’s Fraud, Waste and Abuse Forum.
The Interior OIG Office of Audits, Evaluations and Inspections released its oversight plan for Fiscal Year 2027 Thursday. The plan includes more targeted oversight into fraud, waste and abuse of programs and funding. The plan builds on top of on-going efforts, like the department’s Fraud Risk Management Framework, and introduces new oversight efforts on payment integrity and agency purchases.
The OIG releases the plan semiannually to ensure there is a feedback loop between recommendations and future audit plans. O’Rouke added that accountability needs to be accompanied by timeliness.
“We have to identify all barriers. A report that takes three years is probably not going to be relevant. So how do we speed up the value of our work, which is really kind of the time we spend looking at different problems,” O’Rouke said.
Katie Rose, the chief data officer in the Department of Health and Human Services OIG, said her office is pushing for more data sharing between agencies as a part of rooting out fraud. Rose added that timely and accurate data enables all HHS inspectors general to continue delivering on the mission, especially amid increased pressure to identify fraud.
“I don’t need to be a blocker for them to be able to address new and changing needs. So that looks like moving towards open-source tools, which has been, frankly, a challenge,” said Rose. “It’s a lot of change for a lot of people. Getting access to the cloud and using the cloud to democratize data has been very significant for us.”
That data, however, needs context. Inspector General of the Architect of the Capitol Luiz Santos said without it, agencies can fall back into a pattern of focusing on the process rather than the mission’s outcome.
“Data is important, but it has to be contextualized. Otherwise, you run the risk of basing your decisions on one specific set of data without seeing the forest through the trees,” said Santos. “Strong organizations embrace that. Strong leaders embrace that, and I think it’s easier to then lead the conversation from process to outcome.”
Santos added that looking beyond the process and focusing on the outcomes allows auditors, evaluators and those outside of the OIG community to remain committed to making their agencies operate better. He said tools and resources across the community may be different, but the mission of the OIG remains to make the agency work with more integrity and efficiency.
“I tell our auditors and evaluators that the job is not to put together this wonderful audit or evaluation. It’s not about putting all the right words in the right places into this beautiful PDF that we posted on the website with great recommendations. That’s not the job,” said Santos. “I want them to really be able to zoom out and say, ‘my mission here is to make the organization better. It’s to ultimately improve the work that is being conducted’.”
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