Mine Safety and Health Administration's Inspection Practices and Accident/Injury Reporting System

GAO presented preliminary results on its review of mechanisms that the Department of Labor's Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) uses to: (1) assess and ensure quality of legislatively mandated mine inspections; and (2) verify the accuracy and completeness of accident and injury reporting by mine operators. GAO found that: (1) time spent on mandated inspections has increased by about 31 percent, while it has decreased by about 18 percent on other enforcement activities; (2) inspectors are well trained and appear to have needed skills; (3) supervision of inspectors and documentation describing supervisory observations varies significantly, and is sometimes inadequate for judging inspection quality; (4) documentation describing inspection activities also varies significantly and is sometimes inadequate to determine the coverage of inspections; (5) evaluations of inspection quality are not done throughout MSHA and occur only every 3 years; (6) MSHA regularly obtains feedback from unions and mine operators; and (7) reports the agency's management information system generates are useful as part of a quality assurance system, but they do not provide information on the quality of individual inspections. GAO believes that MSHA should explore the use of state workers' compensation records as a means of strengthening its verification process.