‘It is our goal to try to minimize’ fraud, waste

By Jeremy Redmon

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Earl Devaney, a veteran inspector general and law enforcement official, watchdogs stimulus spending for the federal government.

President Barack Obama appointed Devaney to serve as chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, which seeks to prevent waste, fraud and abuse in the $787 billion program.

The panel — some observers jokingly call it the RAT Board — works out of an office in Washington with an $84 million budget and a staff of about 40. It also operates the Web site recovery.gov, on which spending and job information is being posted.

Devaney spoke with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution by phone recently about his efforts to combat waste and fraud in the stimulus program. His answers were edited for brevity.

Q: Last month, your board updated recovery.gov with the most comprehensive information yet about federal stimulus spending and jobs created or saved through that spending. What kind of feedback have you received about that information so far?

A: The information in the Web site is — as expected certainly by me and the board — it has some inaccuracies in it. I think that is the reality of transparency. Our job was not to make judgments about the data but to simply put the data up for everybody to see. One of the downsides of transparency on occasion is embarrassment. I personally think embarrassment will drive self-correcting behavior. And if recipients have failed to report accurately, hopefully they will be embarrassed enough to do it right next time.

Q: Have you found any waste, fraud or abuse in the federal stimulus spending?

A: This is a lot of money, so I think it is fair to say our expectation is there is going to be fraud and waste. It is our goal to try to minimize that. We have been crafting a number of strategies to help us do that, not the least of which is applying software packages and tools to the vast amount of data we have to identify non-obvious relationships between, for instance, a contractor and the suspensions and debarment list. Has a contractor gotten money somehow even though they are on a list that precludes them from getting money? Are there criminal records associated with that particular contractor or vendor? Those kinds of relationships we are going to pick up. Every single contract grant alone is going to be run through this system.

Q: Have you launched any investigations or issued any subpoenas yet or do you plan to?

A: We haven’t issued any subpoenas as a board. Keep in mind, we are not actually doing investigations and audits ourselves. What I have is a group of 29 [inspector generals] that do audits and investigations every day all across the country, so I am leveraging their resources. We are referring things to them and asking them to look at them and do audits and investigations as appropriate and get back to us so we understand what is going on. And we will report out when those things get concluded. We probably have about 350 audits and evaluations under way right now. There are probably a little less than 100 investigations going on — on allegations that have come in. Now that we have got the data in there and now that people are seeing it and looking at it, naturally our hotline has come alive. We have a hotline that takes calls. It takes e-mails. It takes faxes. If you want to drive by and deliver it in the front mailbox, you can do that, too.

Q: You said a little less than 100 investigations are under way. Are there any in Georgia?

A: You know, not that I know of. But I would be surprised if there was.