Openness, accountability

Federal agencies may be cumbersome, inefficient, bloated — all the stereotypical problems.

But at least they have provided themselves with mechanisms for exposing problems: inspectors general, insiders who review agency practices; the federal Government Accountability Office; and, eventually, even Congress itself.

Now, these accountability mechanisms are being endangered by a new directive at the Environmental Protection Agency:

Don’t talk. That’s the preferred option.

But if employees do decide to talk to investigators, they are supposed to check in first with an EPA official.

Says the EPA: This is just an attempt to streamline and standardize responses for more efficiency.

Say critics: It’s an effort to hide information, to cover up problems.

A recent memo from the agency’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, which is entrusted with making sure environmental laws are followed, told employees to keep quiet if they were contacted by an investigator.
The e-mail was obtained by the Associated Press. “If you are contacted directly by the IG’s office or GAO requesting information of any kind ... please do not respond to questions or make any statements,” it says. Instead, requests for information should be forwarded to a designated EPA official.

The EPA later tried to spin the memo. Of course employees can talk to investigators, it said. They just need to check in first with the designated official.
Now, that’s really going to free up discussion.
You’re an employee with insight into EPA errors? An investigator wants to talk to you? It’s certainly not going to help your career to go tell an agency official that you’re planning to talk.

However much we deplore it, we can understand the EPA telling staff to forward requests for information to a designated information handler. We’re used to that.
But discouraging discussions with the EPA’s own quality-control investigator? That’s scary.

Agencies have inspectors general for a reason. No agency is flawless — perfectly efficient, perfectly responsive, perfectly in tune with congressional laws, White House directives and constituent expectations. A review of policies and practices is a normal method of uncovering problems, analyzing problems, providing opportunities for correcting problems.

The aim is to improve service to the nation — that is, to “we the people.”
An agency with healthy self-esteem, to borrow from popular psychology, would have little reason to object to such internal reviews.
And an agency with nothing to hide would not object to internal reviews.

Eventually, if problems are not handled internally, they may come to the attention of the GAO, which is the investigative arm of Congress, or of Congress itself.
This memo has certainly come to the attention of many — and it is not positive attention.

The EPA should be open to accountability.
All government agencies should.