ICF’s Evan Lee: Federal IG Group Needs Tech Toolkit for COVID-19 Response Oversight

Evan Lee, vice president for strategy and modernization at ICF’s digital practice, has said that U.S. inspectors general must deploy a toolkit of relevant technologies to help improve oversight of federal COVID-19 programs.

Lee wrote in an opinion piece published Wednesday on Nextgov that the IG offices responsible for preventing mismanagement of Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act funds should use the “oversight toolkit” to accelerate information technology deployment  while improving federal collaboration and reducing deployment times.

He noted that the toolkit should allow the recently established Pandemic Response Accountability Committee and Special Treasury IG to quicken the detection of fraud, improve the management of reporting information, promote technology reusability and foster transparency.

Lee added that while prior modernization efforts under the OIGs have supported the deployment of emerging technologies like predictive analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence, there are still limitations with regards to scaling and sustainability.

“OIG offices with available modern digital capabilities should share their systems infrastructure, platforms and application code needed to establish foundational services for oversight in other OIGs across federal government,” he said.

“They should prioritize advanced work management and fraud analytics tools that can be quickly deployed to provide immediate mission capabilities.”