The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, Incident Investigation Program

We wanted to assess BSEE’s incident investigations program, but we suspended the evaluation until BSEE completes its realignment.

 

In December 2010, we issued the report “A New Horizon: Looking to the Future of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement” (“New Horizon”). The report contained 64 recommendations. In this evaluation, we found four of six recommendations (48, 49, 50, and 53) from Chapter 5 in “New Horizon” were closed but not implemented. We also noted that unimplemented organizational changes affect other recommendations from the “New Horizon” report and that the incident investigation program continues to operate under inconsistent policies. 

 

We agreed to suspend the evaluation to allow BSEE’s management more time to implement its proposed realignment known as the National Program Manager Initiative. We will conduct an evaluation after BSEE has implemented the realignment to verify that the proposed plan is in place and that BSEE has implemented the proposed changes. BSEE agreed to update us quarterly on its implementation.

 

We made four recommendations as a result of our initial review of BSEE’s incident investigation program. These recommendations focus on implementing the recommendations in “New Horizon” and improving policy. BSEE agreed with the four recommendations and agreed to provide OIG with quarterly updates on developing and implementing the incident investigation program, which includes, at a minimum, timelines and milestones for the next 2 years.