Academy IG to conduct unit inspection of Athletic Department

  • Published
  • By Don Branum
  • U.S . Air Force Academy Public Affairs
U.S. AIR FOCE ACADEMY, Colo. --  The Inspector General office here is scheduled to inspect a portion of the Athletic Department in mid-August using a unit inspection process established Air Force-wide over the past year.

The inspection is based on a recommendation from the Commander's Inspection Management Board's inaugural meeting July 15, said Scott Anderson, an inspector with the Academy's IG.

"The IG will inspect portions of the Athletic Department against four major graded areas: leading people, executing the mission, improving the unit and managing resources," Anderson said. "These major graded areas align with the expectations for all Air Force unit leaders as directed by AFI 1-2, Commander's Responsibilities."

Depending on the scope of the inspection, which the Academy superintendent determines by way of the board, the IG will produce a report for the superintendent's review by the end of September, Anderson said.

The Academy IG conducts inspections as well as investigations. However, investigations are based on specific complaints that an agency violated any DOD or Air Force regulations or any laws that govern the DOD. The IG's Complaints Branch handles these investigations, Anderson said.

Unit inspections involve the procedures and processes within an individual unit, Anderson said. In contrast, installation-wide programs and processes inspections involve programs and exercises that involve multiple units or the installation as a whole.

The IG recruits, trains and certifies, as inspectors, subject matter experts from areas like finance or contracting as inspections require, Anderson said.

"We could have a pretty large team, depending on what the scope of an investigation is."

The Air Force revamped its inspection system in 2013, establishing commander's inspection programs that rely on Airmen within the unit to identify weaknesses, Anderson said.

"Commanders are responsible to make sure they assess their units," he said. "Each of them has the opportunity to conduct an internal assessment. Then the installation IG does an external validation of their inspection program, and we dig deeper into other items. Then our parent major command's IG, in this case the Air Force Inspection Agency, reviews us to make sure we're exercising due diligence in our inspection program."

Retired Col. Robert Hyde, the AFIA's director of inspections, explained why the Air Force changed its inspection program in an article written for the January 2014 issue of TIG Brief, the agency's quarterly publication.

"We've grown up in a legacy inspection system that promoted short-term surges to fool the inspectors into thinking what they see that week is who the unit really is," he wrote.

In contrast, the new inspection system is designed to take a snapshot of a unit as it actually operates, Hyde wrote.

"Airmen need to see that commanders are held accountable for honest and transparent reporting," he wrote. "Airmen need to see evidence that they can focus on mission readiness, not inspection readiness, and do great. Airmen need to see the IG inspecting things that really matter."

Commander's inspection programs are designed to improve unit readiness and compliance with Defense Department and Air Force regulations and give commanders better visibility of their unit's status, according to AFI 90-201, The Air Force Inspection System.