Whistleblower Protection

In encouraging government whistleblowers to report information on waste, fraud, and abuse, Congress has sought to shield them from retaliation, such as job transfers or poor performance appraisals. The Whistleblower Protection Act specifically prohibits supervisors from retaliating against service members who make disclosures to the Defense Department (DOD) Inspector General, a military service Inspector General, or Congress. DOD is required to investigate reprisal allegations that individuals have reported within 60 days of their first having become aware of them. This report examines impediments to implementing the law, whether DOD has told service members of the law, and whether investigations of alleged cases of retaliations against whistleblowers are complete.

GAO found that: (1) the act protects persons disclosing information to IG or a member of Congress, but does not protect persons making disclosures to investigative units that are not part of the IG component; (2) whistleblowers typically direct reprisal grievances to service IG, and are unaware that they must direct a reprisal grievance to DOD IG for further consideration; (3) DOD has informally adopted a reprisal investigation approach that determines the whistleblower's protection under the act, the unfavorable nature of the personnel action, the official's awareness that the whistleblower made a protected disclosure, and the possibility of the action's occurrence if the whistleblower had not made the disclosure; (4) unlike the generally more detailed and comprehensive law protecting civilian whistleblowers, the military law does not require standards of proof that reprisal occurred, corrective actions, or convincing evidence that adverse actions are not reprisals; (5) DOD IG has emphasized the importance of familiarizing service IG with the provisions, but has not told whistleblowers that they can request reviews by a service Board for Correction of Military Records and by the Secretary of Defense; and (6) a review of DOD IG and service IG whistleblower reprisal cases found that all 15 DOD IG cases were generally complete, while 8 of 35 service IG cases failed to investigate for reprisal, the connection between the adverse action and the disclosure, and threats of adverse actions.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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