The chairman of the House Oversight Committee wants details on the plan to finance identity theft protection services for those who had their information stolen from the Office of Personnel Management.
In a letter sent on Tuesday, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, asked for “all attachments and all documents that include the estimated cost,” in addition to any documents “referring or related to the source(s) of funding to cover the cost … during the base period and options.”
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The letter comes shortly after the OPM and Naval Sea Systems Command awarded a $133 million contract to a company called ID Experts on Sept. 1. ID Experts will provide identity theft protection to the 21.5 million people whose personal information was stolen in the OPM hack this year.
In the wake of the breach, officials have worried that OPM is not allocating its budget responsibly. The agency’s inspector general issued a report this month expressing concerns that it had not prepared a budget for the development of cybersecurity upgrades, and that it had hidden details of line-items by obscuring them under broader items in the budget.
“OPM’s refusal to develop a Major IT Business Case proposal for the overall project will result in costs being subsumed, and therefore hidden, within the individual IT investments. There will be no reporting mechanism to evaluate the overall costs of the project, which would, in effect, circumvent the transparency principles promoted by [the Office of Management and Budget],” the IG said.
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OPM responded that it needs more funding from Congress in order to be more responsive to the demands of the inspector general and its congressional overseers. Chaffetz blasted the agency’s response in a statement last week, saying, “If OPM wants to regain the trust of Congress and the American people, they must make implementing the IG’s recommendations a top priority.”
Chaffetz requested that the agency respond to his latest inquiries by Sept. 29. In addition to requesting budgetary details, the chairman also requested to know the “categories of individuals that would be entitled to coverage,” and all “documents and communications” that OPM and the Defense Department have used to notify victims of the breach.
