Mark Lee Greenblatt, Chair of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE) and Inspector General of the U.S. Department of the Interior, has appointed Ken Dieffenbach to serve as the Executive Director of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC). A highly regarded leader in the federal oversight community, Mr. Dieffenbach most recently served as Deputy Assistant Inspector General for Investigations at the Department of Energy Office of Inspector General (OIG).
Previously, Mr. Dieffenbach served at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Inspector General, where he helped develop the DOJ OIG’s Office of Data Analytics and served as its Deputy Director. He also served as the Special Agent in Charge of the DOJ OIG’s Fraud Detection Office. For many years, Mr. Dieffenbach also helped lead a federal interagency Grant Fraud Working Group. Mr. Dieffenbach began his federal law enforcement career with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. He has served as an adjunct instructor for more than a decade at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center's Grant Fraud Investigations Training Program and is a sought-after public speaker. He is a Certified Compliance and Ethics Professional and has been a Certified Fraud Examiner since 1999, and in 2019 he was elected as a Regent for the 85,000+ member Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. In 2020 he was elected as Regent Chair.
“It’s rare that someone is a thought leader in one area, but Ken is a visionary in two: data analysis and grant oversight,” said CIGIE Chair Greenblatt. “Ken’s experience and expertise in the federal Inspector General Community will help the PRAC continue effective oversight of pandemic relief programs and spending, which is great news for American taxpayers.”
“Ken is an exceptional leader and the right person to move the PRAC forward given his expertise in data analytics and fraud prevention. The PRAC’s data analytics platform has demonstrated its capacity to prevent fraud and has helped identify billions of dollars in improper payments and pandemic-related fraud. Ken will play an integral role in leading our effort to expand the use of that platform to oversee both emergency and regular annual federal spending,” said Michael Horowitz, Chair of the PRAC and Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Justice.
“Preventing fraud before it occurs is always the best outcome. The most successful strategy to accomplish this goal is when investigators, auditors, and data scientists, from across the federal, Tribal, state, and local oversight communities, work together to identify risk and highlight ways to strengthen internal controls. The PRAC has supercharged this collaboration, and I am eager to lead this talented team to continue to share the lessons learned from oversight of the over $5 trillion dollars in pandemic-related programs and how these lessons can be more widely applied to better protect valuable taxpayer dollars from fraud, waste, and abuse,” said Mr. Dieffenbach.
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The PRAC was established by the CARES Act to promote transparency and support independent oversight of the funds provided by the CARES Act and other related emergency spending bills. In addition to its coordination and oversight responsibilities, the PRAC is tasked with supporting efforts to “prevent and detect fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement [and] mitigate major risks that cut across program and agency boundaries.”
If you have additional questions, please contact Lisa Reijula at lisa.reijula@cigie.gov