Federal employees who report waste, fraud and abuse in their agencies may receive benefits like monetary payments, favorable personnel actions or backpay through settlements for their role as whistleblowers.

But at the Veterans Affairs Department, a Government Accountability Office report published Thursday found shortfalls in the monitoring of whistleblower cases, meaning that the whistleblowers may not actually receive their negotiated benefits.

For one, VA’s Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection, which was established in 2017 to receive misconduct allegations against senior leaders and employee reports of whistleblower retaliation, doesn’t consistently track corrective actions that result from whistleblower investigations.

“These gaps in the data leave OAWP with an incomplete picture of the actions VA takes to protect whistleblowers,” GAO investigators wrote. “In turn, it is possible that corrective actions that assist whistleblowers directly are implemented inconsistently, leading to a lack of accountability for the VA officials responsible for implementing the recommended actions.”

GAO also flagged that OAWP doesn’t systematically collect information about certain benefits, backpay in particular, provided in whistleblower retaliation settlement agreements and that most of the agreements investigators reviewed (39 of 71) didn’t identify an official for the whistleblower to contact if they believed the VA breached the agreement.

Even so, OAWP said that...

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