EBSA “has taken a number of steps to handle its restricted sources, comparable to specializing in circumstances with excessive financial recoveries, establishing timeliness and financial benchmarks for his or her investigations, and transferring trainings on-line to save lots of prices,” the report states.
Nevertheless, GAO continues, “the company doesn’t have a scientific course of for reallocating sources,” and “EBSA’s efforts to point useful resource wants or reallocations haven’t been systematic or properly documented. Thus, it isn’t clear how EBSA would reply to elevated duties, unanticipated funding, or funding that’s decrease than requested.”
GAO states that “a transparent, systematic, and completely documented decision-making course of may put EBSA in a greater place to make knowledgeable choices concerning useful resource reallocations attributable to altering circumstances.”
As of September 2022, EBSA oversaw roughly 747,000 employer-sponsored retirement plans and about 2.5 million group well being plans, the report states. The retirement plans maintain, based on EBSA, an estimated $12 trillion in property as of fiscal 2022.
“This oversight helps guarantee laws is applied as meant and advantages are delivered as promised,” Scott acknowledged.
Nevertheless, Scott cited a latest Labor Inspector Basic report, which discovered that EBSA has the enforcement capability of lower than one investigator for each 12,600 plans at its present staffing ranges.
The Labor secretary, the GAO report recommends, “ought to direct EBSA to develop and doc a scientific decision-making course of for oversight duties and allocating employees in a altering finances atmosphere, which may very well be integrated inside present planning paperwork.”