jake wiens is the investigator for the project on government oversight, often called pogo. welcome back. pursuant to committee rules, i'd ask you to please rise and take the sworn oath and raise your right hands. do you solemnly swear or affirm the testimony you are about to give will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth. let the record indicate all witnesses answered in the affirmative. please be seated. as i previously said, we're, unfortunately, today going to be on a very tight constraint because of votes. i will try to keep our folks to their five minutes. i'd ask you to try to stay to your five minutes, and i assure you we will stay as long as we can on a vote and if possible return as soon as possible. with that, we recognize miss fong for her opening statement. >> thank you, mr. chairman, ranking member cummings and members of the committee. it's a real privilege to be here today to represent the federal ig community which consists of 73 igs in the executive and

. >> my name is jake wiens. i'm an investigator at the projects on government oversight also known as pogo. from pogo's perspective the inspector general system is an essential component of a well-functioning federal government. igs identify billions of dollars in cost savings every year. they conduct investigations that hold government officials and contractors accountable for misconduct, and they help to evaluate the effectiveness of government programs and policies. because pogo considers igs to be so incredibly important, we regularly undertake efforts to strengthen and improve the ig system as a whole. some of those efforts have focused on efforts of giving igs more tools to be more indspent. and other efforts have focused on the necessity of holding igs themselves accountable for misconduct and poor performance. our most recent effort to strengthen the ig system is a web page called, "where are all the watchdogs"? the web page continually tracks the overall number and length of ig vacancies and whose respo