FAA’s Acquisition and Fiscal Law Division’s Work Environment Impacts Its Ability To Provide Legal Advice in Support of a Safe National Airspace System

What We Looked At The Office of Inspector General (OIG) maintains a hotline for receiving allegations of fraud, waste, abuse, or mismanagement affecting U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) programs or operations. OIG received a hotline complaint alleging a hostile work environment in the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Acquisition and Fiscal Law Division (AGC-500). The Division provides legal support to FAA regarding Government contract and acquisition, fiscal, and real property laws. We initiated an audit after reviewing the hotline complaint because its concerns extended beyond a matter for human resources to having potential programmatic effects that could impact the Division’s ability to conduct its mission. Accordingly, our audit objective was to determine if the work environment impacts AGC-500’s ability to fulfill its mission to provide legal support for the NAS.What We Found AGC-500’s work environment impacts its ability to meet its mission and provide legal support to FAA as the Division is experiencing high attorney turnover, employee dissatisfaction, and inefficient decision making. These issues are partly because of attorney dissatisfaction with AGC senior leadership. As a result, FAA faces unanticipated costs, potential safety burdens, and potential challenges meeting its mission. Furthermore, AGC-500 cases are not formally tracked and lack transparency. While FAA has made improvements to address issues with its documentation system, the tool will not be effective until all AGC-500 attorneys are trained on and use the system to share program information and formally document their work. In addition, AGC-500 adopted guidelines in 2022 that could conflict with employees’ whistleblowing rights and could interfere with OIG’s investigations. In November 2023, after discussion with OIG’s legal counsel, AGC-500 drafted an improved business rules document. However, until the Division officially updates its business rules, employees’ ability to fulfill their mission with the protections afforded to all Federal workers will remain at risk.Our Recommendations We made six recommendations to enhance the AGC-500’s operating environment and ability to complete its mission efficiently. The Agency concurred with all six recommendations, which we consider resolved but open pending completion of planned actions.