Opportunities and Incentives for Improving Program Quality: Auditing and Evaluating

Abstract

The evolution of the Office of Inspector General (OIG) in the federal agencies has attracted much attention during the last ten years. Recent observers have pointed to the increased use of performance audits by IG offices, and the highly visible use of inspections by the OIG at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as signals that the programmatic focus of the auditing community is merging with that of the program evaluation community (Light, 1993; Thompson and Yessian, 1991; Hendricks, Mangano, and Moran, 1990). Some observers have applauded this, while others have highlighted the crucial differences in the approaches and perspectives taken by the two, previously quite separate, communities. In his recent study of the OIGs, Paul Light commended the trend for OIGs to undertake forward-looking evaluation and analysis as a positive move. Light identified this move away from traditional auditing to identify fault in government as a possibly more effective way to monitor performance. Improving government performance through effective monitoring is the espoused objective of both auditors and evaluators. Recognizing that many ways exist to meet this objective, I undertook this study to investigate the strategies used to assess government performance currently employed by Offices of Inspector General and evaluation offices within the federal agencies. During early 1992, interviews were held with managers in 52 IG offices and 28 evaluation offices to assess how similar or different the approaches taken by these offices really are. Increasing Interest in the Offices of Inspector General Much public attention has been given to the function of inspectors general in the federal government during the last 12 years. During the Reagan and Bush administrations, the theme of public distrust in big government was played out to the accompaniment of calls to ferret out fraud, waste, and abuse. Compliance accountability was the natural approach in such a climate (Light, 1993). Conformity with the rules and regulations was encouraged and those violating them were to be sought out and punished. One of Reagan's most memorable lines was his stated desire to hire inspectors general that were mean as junkyard dogs. Congress had established statutory inspectors general with much the same enthusiasm for a negative sanction-based approach. The first statutory inspector general was established in 1976, and since then Congress has established inspectors general in over 60 federal agencies, 26 of whom are presidentially appointed. The majority of the offices were established with the Inspector General Act of 1978 and the Inspector General Act Amendments of 1988. The original statute reflected the mistrust held by Congress for executive leadership in the mid-1970s. The intent of the 1978 act was to establish a consolidated oversight office within each federal agency that would report directly to the Congress and would be vigilant against fraud and abuse in executive agency spending. The high level of interest shown by Congress in accountability continued into the 1980s, and was heightened by the concern about the huge, and growing, federal deficit. Competition for declining resources during the 1980s pressed the Congress to place an even greater emphasis upon the efforts of internal watchdogs that could identify budgetary fat for trimming. Auditing and Evaluating: A Merging Focus? During the 1980s, within the federal evaluation community, impatience with costly, time-consuming, methodologically impressive evaluations lead to changing perceptions on how evaluation could best serve policy makers. Federal evaluation offices were shrinking in terms of resources, and an emphasis upon management-oriented, short-turnaround program reviews replaced earlier concerns with assessing program impacts. While the number of staff allocated to offices of inspectors general was growing, the number of evaluation office staff was declining. …