A new Government Accountability Office report says that the Justice Department kept FBI employees in the dark for seven years after Congress updated whistleblower protections for bureau personnel in 2016.
The DOJ waited for that long after the passage of the FBI Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2016 to update key regulations within the statute that addressed these new whistleblower protections, the GAO said.
Those new protections, among other things, provided that FBI employees could report or make protected disclosures to supervisors in their direct chain of command.
Until that time, GAO said in its report, some complainants experienced difficulties when making protected disclosures to their supervisors.
The GAO report says that the DOJ closed a higher volume (five times more) of FBI whistleblower retaliation complaints from 2018 to 2022 compared to GAO’s last review of complaints closed from 2009 to 2013.
Additionally, according to the report, FBI employees are currently not being notified of their rights to file with or to appeal to the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, because DOJ components are interpreting the statute differently.
“Statutory changes in fiscal year 2023 provide FBI employees with rights to seek relief from the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board,” the report said.
“However, the amendments contain ambiguities — such as when determinations and corrective action orders are considered final — creating challenges for DOJ in consistently...
Hyderabad: The Drugs Control Administration (DCA), Telangana, conducted raids on Thursday, uncovering illegal drug sales, overpriced medicines and misleading advertisements across multiple locatio...