FWS Employees Unlawfully Obtained and Used Protected Personnel Records

OIG investigated allegations that a U.S. Fish and Wildlife (FWS) human resource employee accessed the protected personnel files of a Federal employee without authorization, and that another unknown FWS employee removed a document from the office of a senior manager. We found that the human resource employee unlawfully accessed the Electronic Official Personnel Folder and USA Staffing databases and queried records related to a Federal employee who had been selected for a position. According to the human resource employee who accessed the records, she did so at the behest of another FWS employee, who was upset that she had not been selected for the position. We also determined that the human resources employee unlawfully shared information and documents from the employee’s personnel files, which were protected under the provisions of the Privacy Act of 1974, to the FWS employee requesting the information and to another FWS employee. The FWS employee requesting the protected information from the human resources employee then used information from those records to facilitate FOIA requests she made to FWS and to further EEO claims she had made. We also found that another FWS employee wrongfully obtained a copy of a draft email prepared by a senior FWS manager, and provided the email to other FWS employees, including the two employees that received the protected information from the human resources employee. We referred our findings to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia, which declined prosecution.