A Treasury Department software flaw resulted in nearly $473 million in uncollected debts owed to dozens of federal agencies, according to an audit released this week by the department's Office of Inspector General.
The defective software was uncovered as the result of an anonymous whistleblower complaint nearly three years ago by an employee at the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The whistleblower told the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) about unpaid fines owed by companies flagged for workplace safety violations.
In its initial investigation, the Treasury Department found that nearly 11,000 debts owed to OSHA had not been collected due to the software issue. Those debts totaled $91.5 million. The audit that followed found the problem to be much larger, spanning some 28 agencies and hundreds of millions of dollars more owed to the government.
“It is certainly gross mismanagement,” Special Counsel Henry J. Kerner told The Washington Post. “Although they were aware of the software problem, neither Treasury nor OSHA officials took prompt action to correct it, prompting the whistleblower to come to OSC.”
The Treasury Department says that the software error has been corrected. But as of late June, only about $10 million of the money owed to OSHA and $3 million of the $376 million owed to other agencies had been recovered. Treasury also agreed to take other corrective actions and pursue the outstanding debts, the Office of Special Counsel said.
The Post’s Joe Davidson reports that the whistleblower who helped reveal that nearly a half-billion dollars in debts to the government had gone uncollected received only a plaque.