FAA's Office of Audit and Evaluation Adheres to Investigative Practice Standards but Lacks Comprehensive Standard Operating Procedures

What We Looked At The Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Office of Audit and Evaluation (AAE) investigates alleged lapses in aviation safety and oversight; violations of FAA regulations, orders, standards, or policies; and other whistleblower disclosures. In December 2020, a Senate committee reported that AAE did not necessarily conduct independent, objective, or impartial investigations and evaluations. In January 2021, the Federal Aviation Administrator asked our office to conduct a review of the office's practices. Our objectives were to evaluate whether AAE (1) aligned its practices for investigations of internal whistleblower safety disclosures with applicable investigative standards, benchmarks, or best practices; (2) documented sufficiency reviews of hotline investigations it referred to FAA lines of business (LOB) with best practices; and (3) complied with requirements in the Aircraft Certification, Safety, and Accountability Act of 2020. What We Found AAE's investigative practices align with applicable quality standards. However, the office lacks comprehensive written standard operating procedures to reinforce its internal controls. In addition, AAE does not have a method to track and document sufficiency reviews of hotline investigations it referred to FAA's LOBs. Specifically, AAE reviewers did not maintain documentation supporting their sufficiency review conclusions. As a result, AAE cannot demonstrate that its review of investigations it referred to LOBs was of quality and consistent. Finally, FAA has only partially met the Aircraft Certification, Safety, and Accountability Act's requirements for AAE's organizational structure. FAA reorganized AAE in February 2022--renaming one sub-office as the Office of Whistleblower Aviation Safety Investigations and adding an Office of Whistleblower Ombudsman. However, until FAA limits the duties of the AAE Director, which are currently broader, to the specific activities listed in the act, AAE will not have fully implemented the law's requirements. Our Recommendations We made four recommendations to improve AAE's compliance with applicable standards and statutory requirements for whistleblower investigations and hotline sufficiency reviews. FAA concurred with all four recommendations and provided appropriate actions and completion dates.