OIG Work Plan

An OIG Work Plan is the forward-looking roster an agency Office of Inspector General keeps of the audits, evaluations, and inspections it has planned or has underway. It functions as a public risk map: institutions that receive funding from that agency read it to see which program areas, cost categories, or compliance topics OIG intends to examine next, well before any specific audit against their own institution is announced.

How a Work Plan Differs From an OIG Report

The distinction is one of timing and content, not just terminology. A OIG report documents completed work — an audit, evaluation, or investigation that has finished, with findings, questioned costs, and recommendations. A Work Plan entry documents planned or in-progress work — it names a topic and scope but has no findings to report yet, because the review has not concluded. Once fieldwork on a Work Plan item finishes and a report is issued, that item leaves the active Work Plan (moving to an archive) and the resulting report becomes the citable document going forward.

Research administrators use the two documents for different purposes: OIG reports show what auditors have already found (useful for benchmarking internal controls against real findings at peer institutions), while the Work Plan shows what auditors intend to look at next (useful for prioritizing compliance attention before an examination begins).

How HHS-OIG’s Work Plan Works

HHS-OIG — the office most closely watched by health and biomedical research institutions, given its oversight of NIH and other HHS operating divisions — maintains its Work Plan as a continuously-updated, web-based platform at oig.hhs.gov/reports/work-plan, rather than publishing it as a single static annual or semiannual document. HHS-OIG describes the Work Plan as dynamic, with items added, updated, or closed throughout the year; entries are updated on a monthly cadence, and completed items move into a searchable archive rather than simply disappearing. Each active entry typically identifies the program area or topic under review and the OIG component responsible for it (commonly the Office of Audit Services or the Office of Evaluation and Inspections), without stating a conclusion, since the underlying work is still underway.

HHS-OIG states that Work Plan items are selected based on a mix of factors: risk assessment, congressional mandates or requests, statutory and regulatory requirements, and the potential for the review to have a meaningful impact on program integrity or savings. This selection logic is why institutions treat the Work Plan as a genuine risk signal rather than a random list — items reflect where OIG has already judged its own attention is best spent.

Other research-funding agency OIGs — NSF-OIG, and others across the roughly 70+ federal Inspectors General coordinated through CIGIE — publish comparable planned-work documents, though the specific format, update cadence, and level of public detail vary by agency; HHS-OIG’s model, given the sheer size of HHS’s grant and payment programs, is the most closely tracked in the research-administration community.

Why Institutions Track the Work Plan

• Anticipating audit focus areas. If a Work Plan item names a cost category, program type, or compliance topic that overlaps with an institution’s own award portfolio (subrecipient monitoring, effort reporting, foreign-support disclosure, indirect cost rate application), that is a concrete signal to test internal controls in that specific area before, rather than after, an audit request arrives.
• Distinguishing intent from finding. Because a Work Plan entry states only that a topic is under review, institutions should not treat an active item as evidence of wrongdoing anywhere, including at their own institution — it is a scope statement, not a finding. Conflating the two overstates what the document actually says.
• Timing internal reviews. Compliance offices commonly use newly added Work Plan items as a trigger to schedule an internal self-assessment of the relevant process, so that documentation is already in order if OIG’s review does eventually reach that institution.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does every Work Plan item result in an institution-specific audit?

No. Many Work Plan items are program-wide evaluations or reviews of an agency’s own processes (for example, how an HHS operating division administers a grant program generally) rather than audits targeting specific grantee institutions. Only a subset of Work Plan items are institution-specific compliance audits of the kind covered in How an OIG Audit of a Research Grant Works.

How often should a research administration office check the Work Plan?

Because HHS-OIG updates its Work Plan on a rolling monthly basis, compliance and sponsored-programs offices that fund health or biomedical research commonly review it at least monthly, alongside their institution’s own risk calendar, rather than treating it as a document to check once a year.

Is a Work Plan item the same as a Semiannual Report finding?

No. The Semiannual Report to Congress summarizes completed work over a six-month period — audits and investigations already finished, with results. A Work Plan item is the opposite end of the same process: work that is planned or still underway, with no results yet to summarize.

Related CASRAI Content

See also: OIG Reports, How an OIG Audit of a Research Grant Works, NSF OIG: How the National Science Foundation’s Inspector General Works, The False Claims Act in Research Grant Compliance, Institutional Internal Controls for Federal Grant Compliance, and the Grants Management pillar.

References

• HHS Office of Inspector General, Work Plan: oig.hhs.gov/reports/work-plan/.
• HHS Office of Inspector General, About the Work Plan: oig.hhs.gov/reports/work-plan/about-the-work-plan/.
• NSF Office of Inspector General, Reports and Publications: oig.nsf.gov/reports-publications/reports.
• Inspector General Act of 1978, Pub. L. 95-452, as amended.