Government watchdog websites go dark as OMB withholds funds from IG committee

At least 15 government oversight websites went down — and with them, access to watchdog reports and required hotline and whistleblower links — as of Wednesday morning as the White House Office of Management and Budget has moved to withhold funds from the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, or CIGIE. 

“Due to a lack of apportionment of funds, this website is currently unavailable,” the CIGIE website states. 

The Office of Inspector General websites for the Departments of Agriculture, Education, Justice, Interior and Veterans Affairs show the same line, as well as the OIG website for the Environmental Protection Agency, Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Office of Personnel Management. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration’s website is also down.

CIGIE is an independent entity charged by Congress with addressing cross-cutting oversight issues in the government. It provides training for investigators and auditors, acts as a watchdog for the watchdog community within government and conducts cross-agency work. 

It also runs Oversight.gov, which houses over 34,000 reports from most of the 70 plus OIGs, and operates 28 OIG websites that house legally required hotlines for whistleblowers to report suspected cases of government waste, fraud and abuse.  

Some of the affected OIG websites have made social media posts offering phone numbers or alternative online hotline complaint forms for individuals to use instead. 

The OIG websites for AmeriCorps, Architect of the Capitol, the Export-Import Bank of the United States, National Archives and Records Administration and International Trade Commission also all display the same message about the sites being down “due to a lack of apportionment of funds.”

The watchdog website for the Federal Trade Commission says only “bad request.” The site of the National Labor Relations Board’s OIG gives a 404 error, and that of the Smithsonian OIG website, a 403 error.

With the websites gone, so is access to the reports of those offices as well as links for whistleblowers.

“Shuttering CIGIE will eviscerate transparency in our federal government,” Mark Greenblatt, former chair of CIGIE and former Inspector General for the Interior Department, said in a Tuesday statement.

CIGIE warned lawmakers in a letter Saturday that OMB had made a “policy decision” to not apportion funding for fiscal year 2026 for CIGIE, which is primarily funded in a no-year revolving account that member OIGs contribute to, meaning that CIGIE isn’t impacted by the current government shutdown. 

It is impacted by OMB’s decision to withhold funds, despite Republican pushback.

Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, chair of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Senate Judiciary chair, wrote to OMB Monday asking the White House office “to promptly reverse course so that CIGIE and PRAC can continue their important oversight work uninterrupted.”

Asked about the decision, an OMB spokesperson told Nextgov/FCW in a statement that “inspectors general are meant to be impartial watchdogs identifying waste and corruption on behalf of the American people. Unfortunately, they have become corrupt, partisan, and in some cases, have lied to the public.”

CIGIE didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tammy Hull, the acting chair of CIGIE and current OIG for the U.S. Postal Service, warned lawmakers in the recent letter that OMB’s decision will also interrupt the work of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, which “relies on CIGIE for IT infrastructure and security, personnel, and contracting support, among other services.”

Congress recently extended the authorization of that committee through 2034 in the administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Linda Miller, president and co-founder of the Program Integrity Alliance, told Nextgov/FCW in a statement that her biggest concern is “whether defunding CIGIE is a harbinger of what’s to come with the inspector generals offices themselves.”

“If the administration plans to reduce or eliminate the role of the inspectors general, I think we all should be very concerned about integrity in the federal government. We don’t want to go back to the way things were pre-Watergate, when agency leaders didn’t have the accountability mechanisms in place that they do today,” she said. 

The move is the latest offensive against the watchdog community since Trump took office. Shortly after his inauguration, he fired nearly 20 inspectors general, a move that a federal judge recently said was an “obvious” violation of the law.

The Trump administration has said that a top priority is fighting fraud, waste and abuse. 

“None of this makes any sense,” Jenny Rone, former deputy inspector general for the Department of Agriculture until early this year, told Nextgov/FCW. “If that’s what the administration priorities are, the people that have been doing this since 1978 are the ones that should be relied on.”

“Undermining whistleblower protections is a hallmark of authoritarian systems and a direct threat to checks and balances,” said Faith Williams, director of the effective and accountable government program at the Project on Government Oversight, in a statement.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to add more IG sites that are down and correct Greenblatt’s former title.