Talk Radio News Service: News, Politics, Media

By Alexa Gitler-Talk Radio News Service

A number of government officials tasked with overseeing contractors told the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan Monday that additional transparency and resources are needed to help combat waste, fraud and abuse.

James Burch, Deputy Inspector General for Investigations with the Department of Defense, claimed that “different cases take different lengths of time” and that the money allocated to the Inspector General's office in order to efficiently prosecute every case necessary would need to be more.

Agreeing with him was Deputy Inspector General Ginger Cruz of the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), who stated that, "the amount of resources given are not going to be equal to those of larger agencies and that because of this, smaller agencies have to come up with more creative ways of dealing with their problems.”

While witness Raymond DiNunzio, Assistant Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), felt that “[SIGAR has] the adequate resources, personnel, and budget to fulfill our mission,” but that the challenge of identifying and punishing fraud was with the foreign contractors and subcontractors not being held accountable for their actions.

“Oversight is the biggest issue that we have in contract fraud and abuse, lack of oversight,” said DiNunzio.