Measuring Transparency of State and Local Offices of Inspector General

Abstract

Inspectors general are the independent government watchdogs tasked with combating fraud, waste, abuse, and corruption, and promoting efficiency and effectiveness of the agencies, programs, and jurisdictions they oversee. Unlike federal inspectors general, state and local inspectors general are not required to adhere to the reporting requirements of the federal Inspector General Act of 1978, which raises questions on their activities. To date, there is limited research on state and local inspectors general given their substantial differences in reporting requirements, content, and publication. The author brings attributes from Stohl’s Information Visibility Scale and the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General Transparency Act to develop a 5-point scale to measure transparency of state and local offices of inspector general. This analysis finds 53% out of 116 state and local offices are very or extremely transparent while the remaining 47% are moderately to not transparent at all. The author recommends amendments to state and local inspector general statutes and their reporting methods to improve transparency within the inspection and oversight profession.

PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY

The mission of inspectors general is to combat fraud, waste, abuse, and corruption and to promote transparency in government. Contemporary research focuses on federal inspectors general because federal inspectors general are required to publish their activities to the public while state and local inspectors general are not. Due to data availability, there is limited research on state and local inspectors general and their activities despite their shared role in promoting transparency in government. This article focuses on two objectives: to advance research on state and local inspectors general and to measure their transparency levels. The author develops a 5-point scale to measure state and local inspector general transparency by combining elements from an empirical transparency model and a federal inspector general transparency bill. When applying the 5-point scale, 53% of the sampled 116 state and local inspectors general are very to extremely transparent while the remaining 47% are moderately to not transparent at all. Based on the findings in this analysis, the author recommends amendments to state and local inspectors general statutes to promote transparency in the oversight profession.

Keywords:

• Inspector general
• transparency
• accountability
• information visibility
• scale development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).