Reports

The BIA Jeopardized Land Buy-Back Program Accomplishments by Delegating Authority

The OIG investigated an allegation of a financial conflict of interest involving a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) employee and a family member. The complaint alleged that the USGS employee assigned to a USGS unit at a State university submitted and managed multiple research work orders (RWOs) from the USGS from which the family member was paid as a co-principal. (RWOs are funding agreements between USGS and a cooperating university.) We substantiated that the USGS employee’s actions on the RWOs and the requisition regarding the family member constituted a financial conflict of interest.

We investigated allegations of improper conduct and actions by a GS-15 National Park Service (NPS) employee toward another NPS employee. The NPS employee said she felt uncomfortable when the GS-15 employee placed his hand on her lower back on multiple occasions, made inappropriate comments, and reached for her cell phone when it was in her lap during a taxi ride. The NPS employee said she did not express her discomfort to the GS-15 employee until he reached for her cell phone.

We investigated allegations that U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) or National Park Service (NPS) officials may have improperly influenced two hiring actions. The first hiring action resulted in the promotion of an NPS employee from a GS-9 to a GS-11 supervisory position in 2018, and the second action resulted in the promotion of the same employee to a GS-12 supervisory position in 2020.

The OIG investigated allegations that two Bureau of Land Management (BLM) officials inappropriately released BLM records without going through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) review process. The complaint also separately alleged that certain other BLM records could not be found and appeared to have been destroyed. We did not substantiate the allegations. We found that the records the BLM released were public and did not require a FOIA review.