Training at the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Inspector
General (Correspondence, 10/20/2000, GAO/GAO-01-36R).

The Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Inspector General (IG)
provided training to its staff during fiscal years 1998 and 1999. GAO
found that the training is part of a quality control system providing
reasonable assurance that staff conform with professional standards. The
reported cost of this training was about $630,000 in fiscal year 1998
and about $970,000 in fiscal year 1999. The courses covered topics such
as leadership, quality, effectiveness, and performance. The IG plans to
include additional management-related and technical training courses for
the staff over the next two years and to conduct a skills inventory of
the staff to identify any gaps that training can address.

--------------------------- Indexing Terms -----------------------------

 REPORTNUM:  GAO-01-36R
     TITLE:  Training at the Environmental Protection Agency's Office
	     of Inspector General
      DATE:  10/20/2000
   SUBJECT:  Human resources training
	     Inspectors general
	     Education or training costs

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GAO-01-36R

EPA IG Training

United States General Accounting Office Washington, DC 20548

October 20, 2000 The Honorable Susan M. Collins Chairman Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations Committee on Governmental Affairs United
States Senate

Subject: Training at the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of
Inspector General

Dear Ms. Chairman: Your letter of February 4, 2000, asked us to provide
information about certain activities of the Environmental Protection
Agency's Office of Inspector General (EPA IG). As agreed with your staff we
focused on the training provided to the IG staff during fiscal years 1998
and 1999. Specifically, we agreed to provide information regarding (1) EPA
IG's compliance with professional standards for continuing professional
education, (2) the cost of the training, (3) EPA IG's reasons for providing
four new training courses, and (4) EPA IG's plans for future training.

Scope and Methodology

To review EPA IG's compliance with standards we obtained the results of the
recently completed peer review 1 of the IG's audit activities performed by
the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General
(HHS IG). We also obtained data regarding the cost of training for fiscal
years 1998 and 1999, as reported by EPA IG's budget office. As a benchmark,
we compared the fiscal year 1998 EPA IG costs to those in the American
Society for Training and Development's (ASTD) report entitled The 2000 ASTD
State of the Industry Report, which provided information on the training
activities of 1,200 organizations for fiscal year 1998. ASTD had not yet
developed comparable data for fiscal year 1999. The cost information
reported by EPA IG and ASTD included the costs for contractors, tuition, and
travel and did not include the salaries of employees taking the training.
Because the organizations surveyed by ASTD vary widely in purpose and in the
size of their budgets, their training costs are compared as a percentage of
their payrolls. In order

1 Peer review, as required by Government Auditing Standards, is an external
quality control review performed at least once every 3 years by an
organization not affiliated with the organization being reviewed. The peer
review should determine whether the organization's internal quality control
system is in place and operating effectively to provide reasonable assurance
that established policies and procedures and applicable auditing standards
are being followed.

GAO- 01- 36R EPA IG Training Page 2 to gain a similar perspective regarding
EPA IG's training costs, we obtained the EPA

IG's payroll cost for fiscal year 1998, calculated the percentage of
training cost to payroll, and compared this percentage to the average
calculated by ASTD. We requested the IG's rationale for the training
provided, obtained descriptions of the four new training courses, and
ascertained the IG's training plans for fiscal years 2000 and 2001, through
interviews with the IG and the training staff. We did not audit the training
information or cost data provided by EPA IG nor did we validate the results
of the ASTD report.

We conducted our work from May through August 2000 at EPA headquarters in
accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.

Results in Brief

EPA IG provided training to the staff, which, as a recent peer review
concluded, is part of a system of quality control that provides reasonable
assurance that staff conform with professional standards. The reported cost
of this training was about $630,000 in fiscal year 1998 and about $970,000
in fiscal year 1999. For fiscal year 1998, EPA IG's reported training costs
were about 2 percent of its payroll costs, which is in line with the 2
percent average reported by ASTD for public and private sector
organizations. For fiscal year 1999, EPA IG's reported training costs rose
to 3 percent of payroll costs. Included in the training costs were four new
courses provided to all IG staff. The new courses covered topics such as
leadership, quality, effectiveness, and performance. Also, the IG plans to
include additional management- related and technical training courses for
the staff over the next 2 years and to conduct a skills inventory of the
staff to identify any gaps that can be addressed by training.

Compliance With Standards

Auditors conducting audits of government organizations, programs,
activities, and functions are required to comply with the Comptroller
General's Government Auditing Standards. These standards state that audit
staff should collectively possess adequate professional proficiency for the
tasks required. To meet these standards the audit organization is required
to maintain professional proficiency through continuing education and
training. The audit organization is responsible for (1) establishing and
implementing a program to ensure that auditors meet the continuing education
and training requirements and (2) maintaining documentation confirming that
the requirements were met.

Specifically, among other requirements, each auditor is required to complete
at least 80 hours of continuing education and training every 2 years, which
contributes to the auditor's professional proficiency. At least 20 hours are
to be completed in any one year of the 2- year period, and those responsible
for planning, directing, reporting, or conducting substantial portions of
the audit are required to complete at least 24 of the 80 hours in training
directly related to government issues. EPA IG provides technical training to
keep the auditors' skills current (see enclosure I) and recently added four
new courses for all IG staff (see enclosure II).

GAO- 01- 36R EPA IG Training Page 3 A peer review performed by the HHS IG,
which included a test of compliance with

continuing education requirements, concluded that EPA IG's system of quality
control for the year ended September 30, 1999, provided reasonable assurance
that EPA IG staff conformed with professional standards. However, the peer
review also concluded that documentation of the completed training was not
consistently maintained. For example, in a test of individual training
records, HHS IG found that not all auditors were able to provide
documentation of the training they had received and that complete records of
training were not always maintained. To address this issue, EPA IG has
agreed to improve continuing professional education documentation through a
tracking system that will ensure proper documentation of all training.

EPA IG investigators follow the training guidelines in the Quality Standards
for Investigationsdeveloped by the President's Council on Integrity and
Efficiency. 2 As with the standards for auditors, investigators are required
to collectively possess professional proficiency for the tasks required.
However, no specific amount of training is specified for the investigators'
professional development. Therefore, investigator training is intended to be
a continuing process to develop professionally qualified investigators and
supervisors. While the investigators acknowledged that they have no
requirement to obtain a specified number of training hours, they have been
included in the IG's additional training classes and continue to attend
technical training courses. (See enclosure I.)

IG Reported Training Costs for Fiscal Years 1998 and 1999

As shown in table 1, EPA IG's reported training costs were $629,688 in
fiscal year 1998 and $967,804 in fiscal year 1999.

Table 1: EPA IG Fiscal Year 1998 and 1999 Reported Training Costs Training
provided Fiscal year 1998 Fiscal year 1999

Technical training costs $613,660 $567,089 Cost of four new courses $ 16,028
$400,715

Total training costs $629,688 $967,804

Note: Training costs include costs for contractors, tuition, and travel.
Source: Unaudited EPA IG budget information.

We compared the EPA IG's reported training costs with the costs reported in
The 2000 ASTD State of the Industry Report. For fiscal year 1998, the
training costs of the organizations surveyed by ASTD averaged 2 percent of
their payrolls. Likewise, EPA IG's reported training costs were 2 percent of
payroll costs. While there is no comparable data from ASTD for fiscal year
1999, EPA IG's reported training costs increased to 3 percent of payroll.

EPA IG added four new training courses during fiscal years 1998 and 1999, to
address its changing mission and role. The IG referred to the four courses
as high2

The President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency is an interagency
council principally composed of IGs, and is charged with promoting the
integrity and effectiveness of federal programs. It was established by
Executive Order No. 12301 in 1981, and revised by Executive Order No. 12805
in 1992 to reflect changes that had been made in the Inspector General Act
(Public Law 95- 452), as amended.

GAO- 01- 36R EPA IG Training Page 4 performance organization (HPO) training,
which is intended to provide the IG staff

with an understanding of why the mission of the office must change and how
the staff can contribute to the new oversight role. The IG explained that
this new role will require the staff to work more closely with EPA managers
in order to better understand program controls and activities that are not
working effectively, develop solutions that will correct long- standing
problems, and assist EPA in agencywide efforts to measure performance.

The IG hopes that with HPO training, the staff will not only identify
matters of fraud, waste, and abuse that have traditionally been the subject
of IG reports, but also provide meaningful recommendations that can
ultimately eliminate these and other systemic problems that have been
reported repeatedly by IGs over the years. To achieve this, the training is
intended to instruct the staff in how to prepare informed reviews and
assessments that are aimed at improving the performance of EPA's activities,
operations, and offices.

The IG explained that the training plan for fiscal years 2000 and 2001
includes additional courses that address EPA IG's changing mission and role.
Specifically, the IG plans training that will address the needs of new
employees, team building for all employees, project management for senior
managers, program evaluation, activitybased costing, process management,
benchmarking, and reengineering. Over the next 2 years, the IG plans to
spend as much as $2.4 million on training, which is almost a 50 percent
increase over the combined training costs for fiscal years 1998 and 1999.
The IG recently studied our internal knowledge and skills inventory process,
3 which is designed to determine the available competencies and skills, as
well as evidence of any gaps, at GAO. Using this process, the IG intends to
develop a knowledge and skills inventory that can be used to help plan
training in the future.

---- At the end of our fieldwork, EPA IG officials reviewed a draft of this
letter and concurred with our results.

3 GAO Knowledge and Skills Inventory System.

GAO- 01- 36R EPA IG Training Page 5 We are sending copies of this letter to
Senator Carl Levin, Ranking Minority Member

of your Subcommittee, and to Senator Fred Thompson, Chairman, and Senator
Joseph I. Lieberman, Ranking Minority Member, Senate Committee on
Governmental Affairs. We are also sending copies to the Honorable Nikki L.
Tinsley, Inspector General of the Environmental Protection Agency. If you
have any questions, please contact me at (202) 512- 2600; Jeanette Franzel,
Acting Director, at (202) 512- 9406; or Jackson Hufnagle, Assistant
Director, at (202) 512- 9470.

Sincerely yours, Jeffrey C. Steinhoff Managing Director Financial Management
and Assurance

Enclosures

Enclosure I GAO- 01- 36R EPA IG Training Page 6

Technical Training Provided to EPA IG Staff, Fiscal Years 1998 and 1999

Auditor training Fiscal year 1998 Fiscal year 1999

New Auditor- in- Charge Writing Value- Added Audit Reports Intergovernmental
Audit Forum Professional Development Conference Federal Financial Auditing
Contract and Procurement Fraud Contract Auditing Acquisition Training
Auditing GPRA Governmental Financial Accounting Basic Auditor Training
Effective Briefing Techniques

Fraud Symposium Introductory Auditor Training Assessing Controls –
Performance Audits Surveys: Concept and Development Audit, Consulting, and
Advisory Services Government Audit: Planning to Reporting How to Handle
People With Tact and Skill Troubleshooting and Maintaining PCs Assessing
Reliability of Computer Data Budget Formulation Advanced Auditing Tools and
Techniques Focusing First on Performance Results

Investigator training, fiscal years 1998 and 1999

Suspension and Debarment National Intelligence Academy Executive Conference
Budget Technical Workshop Blacks in Government National Training Conference
Criminal Investigator's Legal Training Street Survival Firearms Training
Fraud Awareness National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Conference
Women in Federal Law Enforcement Conference Barretta Armorers School
Training Conference on Environmental Crime National and State Asbestos
Seminar LAN Administrator Training

Other training, fiscal years 1998 and 1999

Position Description Symposium Developing Audit Reports Freedom of
Information Act Course Budget Execution PC Certification Microsoft Support
Preparation and Review of Personnel Actions Microsoft Front Page Strategic
Compensation Appropriation Law Seminar Personnel Security Review Training

Enclosure II GAO- 01- 36R EPA IG Training Page 7

Information on Four New Training Courses

The following table provides the IG's description of four training courses
that were added during fiscal years 1998 and 1999 to prepare EPA IG staff
for a changing mission and oversight role.

The Science of Leadership and the Art of Gaining Followers

This course is intended to enhance staff members' knowledge and
understanding of the leadership role and to further develop individual
leadership skills and abilities.

Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Criteria

The course presents the model of an effective business, which includes an
analysis of the seven categories in the Baldrige quality award criteria and
their application for organizational improvements.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

The course offers principles of human effectiveness, describes the seven
habits of effective people, and discusses their relationship. The course is
intended to instruct staff members on how to effectively use the seven
habits to solve problems, maximize opportunities, and continually learn and
integrate other principles for growth.

Building High- Performance Organizations for the Twenty- First Century

This course addresses the theory and practice of large- scale organizational
change. It also illustrates why some organizations are high performers and
how to move an organization toward higher performance.

(911950)
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