Experts and Consultants

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO examined whether the Department of State's Office of Inspector General (OIG): (1) omitted references to itself in an annual oversight report to Congress in a deliberate attempt to conceal internal problems; and (2) inappropriately hired and paid experts and consultants.

GAO found that: (1) OIG reasons for deleting the expert appointment references stemmed from concerns about premature reporting and misunderstandings among OIG staff; (2) the evidence did not indicate that OIG omitted the reference to deliberately conceal internal problems; (3) in the future, OIG plans to not include an assessment of its own operations when auditing State; (4) State's Bureau of Personnel approved the appointments of 24 experts without a clear explanation from OIG as to the experts' duties; (5) some of the experts' duties did not appear to require an expert, and only 5 of the 24 appointees were qualified to be appointed as experts; (6) State does not perform periodic personnel management evaluation; (7) State's OIG and its Office of Acquisitions improperly awarded all 12 consulting contracts since they failed to follow federal contracting regulations and did not award the contracts on the basis of full and open competition; and (8) in recognition of possible problems, the Inspector General suspended further procurement of consulting services in March 1990, and as of February 1991, the prohibition was still in effect.

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.

Director: Team: Phone: