Inspector General (IG) Robert P. Storch announced today that the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General (DoD OIG) released the “Compendium of Open Office of Inspector General Recommendations to the Department of Defense.” This is the DoD Office of Inspector General’s (DoD OIG) seventh annual Compendium of Open Office of Inspector General Recommendations to the Department of Defense.
As of March 31, 2023, there were 1,354 open DoD OIG recommendations that, new for this year, can be viewed on the DoD OIG website, at https://www.dodig.mil/OpenRecommendations/.
This data, will be updated quarterly, and can be filtered in various ways, including status of recommendations, potential monetary benefits, responsible office, and age of the recommendations.
IG Storch stated, “Transparency is a core function for OIGs. Making information publicly available regarding the actions the DoD is taking, or not taking, to address open DoD OIG recommendations is fundamental to ensuring all stakeholders can track the DoD’s efforts to remedy the important issues identified in our work.”
In addition to highlighting the information on the DoD OIG’s website, the Compendium identifies trends in DoD’s actions to address DoD OIG recommendations, including a downward overall trend in the open recommendations from the prior year’s compendium. Yet, of the 1,354 open recommendations that remained open as of March 31, 2023, 40 have associated potential monetary benefits, totaling $5.9 billion. DoD management agreed to take corrective actions on 1,230 of the 1,354 open recommendations; however, the remaining 124 recommendations are unresolved because the DoD Components have not agreed to take corrective actions sufficient to meet the intent of the recommendation. This reflects an increase of more than half from the 80 unresolved recommendations reported in 2022. Similarly, the number of recommendations over five years old increased since last year’s Compendium from 195 recommendations to 240 recommendations. Finally, the number of unresolved recommendations rose this year by more than 50 percent, from 80 to 124.
IG Storch stated, “This year’s Compendium reflects that, while the DoD has made progress in addressing open OIG recommendations, much work remains to be done. We believe that this year’s Compendium, accompanied by the detailed listing of open recommendations on our website, will enhance understanding of the task ahead, and thereby further those critically important efforts.”