On January 6, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) released its Performance and Accountability Report for Fiscal Year 2024 highlighting the agency’s 2024 accomplishments. The OSC works to protect and empower federal employee whistleblowers by investigating and prosecuting whistleblower retaliation cases and serving as a secure channel for whistleblower disclosures.
Among the accomplishments discussed in the report was the OSC’s work to further increase awareness of whistleblower rights by incorporating a new requirement into its Section 2302c Certification Program for federal agencies to inform their employees about National Whistleblower Appreciation Day.
Advocates including the National Whistleblower Center (NWC) have been pushing for this requirement for years.
Since his confirmation as Special Counsel in February 2024, Dellinger has been a staunch advocate for National Whistleblower Day, speaking at the NWC event on Capitol Hill and calling for the permanent recognition of the day.
“OSC has prioritized the timely review of whistleblower disclosures to ensure that waste, fraud, abuse, and illegality are identified and remedied quickly,” writes Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger in an introductory statement for the report. “For FY 2024, OSC’s whistleblower disclosure work resulted in 34 substantiated instances of wrongdoing. For example, one case found that officials at a VA healthcare clinic jeopardized patient health by incentivizing the overprescription of opioids. OSC’s referral led the healthcare clinic to take steps to ensure that opioids were not overprescribed, thereby increasing the quality of care that veterans received at the clinic.”
In addition to the VA healthcare whistleblower case referenced by Dellinger, the OSC report details a number of whistleblower disclosures it received which “contribut[ed] to improving the efficiency and accountability of government.” Allegations in whistleblowers disclosures highlighted by the OSC report include improper storage of veterans’ personally identifiable information, inadequate communication technology for forest service law enforcement officers, and improper handling of Native American funerary items.
Overall, the OSC “received 1,757 disclosures from federal whistleblowers in FY 2024, a 57 percent increase over the prior five-year average. Even with the increase in filings, OSC continued to make the statutorily required determination to refer matters for investigation within 45 days in 99 percent of cases.”
The OSC report further details the agency received 4,017 new prohibited personnel practices (PPP) cases, which include whistleblower retaliation cases, in FY 2024 and achieved 450 favorable actions in PPP cases, an agency record.
“The establishment of a permanent Whistleblower Appreciation Day reinforces the longstanding bipartisan consensus that whistleblowers serve an invaluable role in our government,” Dellinger wrote in a June letter to Congressional leaders calling for a permanent National Whistleblower Day. “By dedicating a day to these brave public servants, we not only honor the contributions of current whistleblowers, but we show potential whistleblowers that their sacrifices will not go unnoticed or unappreciated. And we make clear that retaliation against a whistleblower will not be tolerated.”
