Pursuit's Take
The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) operates 8 climate science centers (CSCs) and 22 landscape conservation cooperatives (LCCs) as the cornerstone of its climate change response strategy.
OIG evaluated whether the CSCs and LCCs coordinated their programs and used available tools to prevent duplication of science effort. OIG also reviewed coordination not only within DOI but throughout the greater scientific community via Climate.Data.gov.
OIG found that CSCs and LCCs had no formal process to coordinate the prevention of duplication in research grants, which could limit accessibility of information by Federal, State, local, and private-sector decisionmakers and place DOI at increased risk of funding duplicative research. OIG also found inadequate internal controls and poor project tracking. Overall, OIG found: inadequate policies for coordination of research, inadequate data sharing within DOI, and inadequate data sharing outside DOI.