My Job
An Auditor's Career Notebook - Part 5
The Office of Inspector General - 1999 to 2006
In 1998, Ms. Lewis left the IG post and was eventually replaced by Eljay Bowron. However, Mr. Bowron only stayed in the IG position for a few months
before leaving for a job in law enforcement, if I remember correctly. AIGA Bob Williams served as Acting IG during the gap between Ms. Lewis' and Mr.
Bowron's tenures and again between Mr. Bowron's departure and the arrival of Earl Devaney to the position of IG in August 1999. With Mr. Devaney's arrival
came significant changes in OIG's organizational structure and its approach to audit oversight in the Virgin Islands and the Pacific insular areas. Initially, the
changes were relatively minor. In January 2000, Mr. Devaney reversed the directorate
structure implemented by former IG Lewis. OIG's headquarters audit office was
reorganized into four functional units and the audit field offices were reorganized into four
geographic regions -- Eastern, Central, Western, and Insular Areas. My title was changed
from Director of Insular Area Audits to Regional Audit Manager for Insular Areas, but I
retained management oversight responsibility for both the Virgin Islands and Guam audit
offices.
Around the same time, AIGA Bob Williams was detailed to a position in the District of
Columbia government and later retired. Roger LaRouche was appointed as the new AIGA.
Although I had developed a good working relationship with Bob, I welcomed Roger's
appointment because we had known each other a long time and worked very well together
during his tenure as the Regional Audit Manager in the Virgin Islands during the late
1980s. During his tenure as AIGA, Roger was someone I could always go to with
problems and frustrations related to the job. I will always appreciate the consideration and
support that he gave to me and to the rest of the Virgin Islands audit staff.
1999 - Inspector General Earl Devaney presents me with
OIG's
Distinguished Service Award
Out in the Pacific, by mid-2000, the Guam office was slowly beginning to implode. The
main catalyst for a rise in interpersonal problems and a resulting drop in productivity was
that the GS-14 office supervisor began having personal problems that impacted his ability
to effectively supervise the office on a day-to-day basis. When he was relieved of his
supervisory responsibilities and the office supervisor position was announced for
re-selection, a rift developed between supporters and detractors of a GS-13 auditor who was considered to be the primary candidate for the office supervisor
position. On top of this, two recent additions to the Guam audit staff began to file a series of complaints against other office staff members. A new GS-14
office supervisor was selected from a stateside office and sent to Guam. However, he was unable to bring any real sense of normalcy to the office, and the
interpersonal conflicts among staff members just continued to escalate. In July 2000 and April 2001, I made site visits to Guam specifically to address the staff
issues and I also was in daily contact with key staff members, trying to work out the problems. Sometime later, the Western Region Audit Manager and Deputy
Audit Manager were also sent to Guam to address the problems. But in the end, the personnel issues were so severe that the future of the Guam office was in
serious doubt.
In the meantime, in March 2001, I updated for Mr. Devaney a comprehensive briefing paper, which I had originally prepared for him in December 1999, on the
history, current status, and proposed future of OIG's audit efforts in the insular areas. Also in March 2001, Mr. Devaney established a working group to study
and provide recommendations on the role of OIG in the insular areas. The working group was chaired by a legal advisor to the IG and included representatives
from OIG headquarters, the Western Region Office in Sacramento, and the Guam office, plus myself representing the Virgin Islands office. An outside
consultant hired to review OIG's audit operations and organization also provided input on the subject to Mr. Devaney. The Guam representative and I provided
to the working group documentation supporting the continuation of a strong OIG audit presence in the insular areas and the advantages of maintaining the
Guam and Virgin Islands offices as one unit under my supervision. However, at a July 2001 managers' conference in Washington, I was completely blind-sided
by a presentation made by the working group's chairman which indicated the working group had concluded that the Guam office should be placed under the
supervision of the Western Region and the staffing of the Guam and Virgin Islands offices should be cut in half within a year. The report was presented as the
product of the working group although neither the Guam representative nor I had been given an opportunity to review and comment on the report's contents or
even the courtesy of being warned ahead of time about what the report would recommend. Warranted or not, I felt personally betrayed by the other members of
the working group because I had participated in the working group in an up-front and open manner concerning my views on the whole issue of OIG's audit
operations in the insular areas and had expected similar consideration from them.
Upon returning home after the manager's conference, I put together, with input from the Guam office representative, a "minority report" containing a point-by-point rebuttal to major elements in the working group report that we felt were either incorrect or misleading. Nevertheless, when Mr. Devaney announced his
official reorganization plan in October 2001, the only concession made to the suggestions contained in our "minority report" was to stretch out the Guam and
Virgin Islands staff reductions over a 5-year period. The decision to remove the Guam office from my area of responsibility and place it under the supervision
of the Western Region remained.
The other shoe dropped exactly one year later when, in October 2002, another reorganization resulted in the Virgin Islands office being stripped of its "regional"
status and being designated as a "field office" under the supervision of the Eastern Region Office in Herndon, Virginia. My position was reclassified from
Regional Audit Manger to Field Office Supervisor. This change effectively removed me from OIG's senior management team. Despite the extreme personal
disappointment that I felt over this turn of events, I developed and maintained a very positive and productive working relationship with the Eastern Region's
Audit Manager and Deputy Audit Manager. During the 2-year period (October 2002 to November 2004) that I reported to the Eastern Region, the Virgin
Islands office successfully completed 13 audits. In addition, I personally finalized two reports based on audits that had been performed by the Guam office
before it was made a field office of the Western Region. Those would be the last audits completed by the Guam office.
As part of the October 2002 reorganization, the field office on Guam was closed and replaced by a new field office in Honolulu, Hawaii. The Guam audit staff
were given the opportunity to transfer to other OIG audit offices in the United States. Given that the only other option was to give up their Federal careers, all
but one of the Guam office staff accepted the reassignments. However, by April 2006, only three of the Guam office's eight employees in 2002 were still
employed by OIG. The other five had either taken early retirement or moved on to jobs elsewhere. The Honolulu office was staffed by new hires and, as of
April 2006, had four evaluators/auditors, including the Field Office Supervisor.
In November 2004, OIG's audit operations were again reorganized. This included moving the Virgin Islands office from the supervision of the Eastern Region
Office to the Western Region Office in Sacramento, California to "put all insular areas audit activity under the management of one audit manager." As before, I
pushed my personal disappointment aside and now developed a very positive and productive working relationship with the Western Region's Audit Manager
and Deputy Audit Manager. During the year and a half (November 2004 to April 2006) that I reported to the Western Region, the Virgin Islands office
produced 10 audit reports (including two that were still in the draft report stage), thus continuing to be one of OIG's most productive audit offices in terms of
both the ratio of reports issued per employee and the overall quality of the reports we produced.
At OIG headquarters, AIGA Roger LaRouche announced his plans to retire at the end of 2005 but later postponed that decision after being appointed Acting
Inspector General of the Federal Elections Commission. Anne Richards, the Audit Manager of the Central Region Office in Denver, Colorado, was selected to
replace Roger as the new AIGA. I didn't have very much contact with Anne because I was now reporting to Western Region's Audit Manager rather than to the
AIGA. However, based on my limited contacts with Anne, I believe that she was supportive of the Virgin Islands audit office and the audit work produced by
the Virgin Islands staff.
In April 2006, as the final weeks before my retirement wound down, I worked feverishly to finish reviewing the last two audit reports for which I would have
any level of responsibility. Those audits were on the GVI's management of government-owned real property and its control over the ever-growing number of
video lottery terminals (video gaming machines) on the islands of St. Thomas and St. John. Although the resulting audit reports are still in draft form and won't
be issued until after I have already retired, they should generate much public discussion on these two important issues for the GVI and the Virgin Islands
community as a whole. Hopefully some positive changes will result from the two reports and their recommendations.
Conclusion and Acknowledgments
Officially, my last day as an employee of the U.S. Department of the Interior is Sunday, April 30, 2006. Including the 3 months that I worked with the Agency
for International Development during the summer of 1970, I have been a Federal employee and civil servant for exactly 35 years. My decision to retire at this
time has been filled with mixed emotions. On the one hand, I'm very much looking forward to having more free time to: pursue a number of personal projects
that I've been putting off, achieve a goal that Helena and I have of visiting all 50 United States, and spend some quality time with our daughter and new
granddaughter in Florida. On the other hand, I know that if I had been given the opportunity over the past 5 years to remain in the position of Regional Audit
Manager for Insular Areas, I could have continued to contribute in a very positive way towards OIG's audit operations in both the Virgin Islands and the Pacific
insular areas. Although I put aside my personal disappoints and continued, to the last day, to give my best effort in OIG's Virgin Islands audit office, the
removal of the Pacific audit operations from my area of responsibility and, even more, the reduction of my status within OIG's management hierarchy from a
Regional Audit Manager to a Field Office Supervisor effectively broke my spirit. For both reasons (plus the health-related issue I mentioned earlier), now is the
right time for me to say "goodbye."
Despite the many ups and down I experienced during these 35 years, overall the experience has been a positive and rewarding one. This was especially brought
home to me each time that I was stopped on the streets of St. Thomas by a resident (some complete strangers to me) who said how much they appreciated the
audit work we do in the Virgin Islands and encouraged us to "keep up the good work" trying to weed out fraud, waste, and mismanagement in the GVI. It was
always my feeling that, ultimately, the residents of the Virgin Islands (and for a time the Pacific islands) were our customers. Receiving this positive feedback
from them made it all worthwhile.
In closing, I want to acknowledge the more than 100 auditors and administrative support staff in the Virgin Islands and Guam offices with whom I worked
directly and came to know and respect during my 35 years of service with the U.S. Department of the Interior. It's been an honor and a pleasure to have known
and worked with you over the years. I also want to give special thanks to the many OIG employees in the United States who supported and contributed to the
important work we did and the successes we achieved in the insular areas. I won't try to list your names because I know I'll miss many of you. But you know
who you are in OIG's audit, investigative, and administrative offices in the Washington, DC area and in Honolulu, Sacramento, Denver, Albuquerque, Atlanta,
and other locations throughout the United States. Many of you I never had the opportunity to meet in person or even to speak with on the phone. However,
even when our contacts were only through emails or faxes, you were always courteous, helpful, and supportive. I hope you'll continue to give your support to
those I leave behind in OIG's off-shore audit offices in the Virgin Islands and Honolulu.
Live Long and Prosper!
Arnold E. van Beverhoudt, Jr. - CPA, CFE, CGFM
Email: arnoldvb@islands.vi
Web: www.sandcastlevi.com
Date: April 28, 2006
2006 - My former office on St. Thomas, Virgin Islands
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