Inspector General Reports

This required external peer review was conducted in accordance with the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE) Inspection and Evaluation Committee guidance as contained in the CIGIE Guide for Conducting External Peer Reviews of Inspection and Evaluation Organizations of Federal Offices of Inspector General (December 2020 and December 2021). The peer review was conducted from May 16, 2023 through July 28, 2023.

In March 2021, the Peace Corps shut down its Coordinated Incident Reporting System (CIRS), a repository of historical crime incidents reported by Volunteers, and replaced it with the Security Incident Management System (SIMS). SIMS autopopulates crime incident report links into VIDA (Volunteer Information Database Application) through the agency’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform. During the SIMS data migration, some posts began to identify and assess potential sites for returning Volunteers following the 2020 global evacuation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. OIG raised concerns about whether field staff had access to the historical crime data necessary to assess the safety of reused sites, consistent with site development requirements. We conducted this review to address these concerns .

On August 24, 2021, the Peace Corps notified the United States Congress that Peace Corps/Dominican Republic (hereafter referred to as “the post”) intended to resume operations in December 2021. The first intake arrived in March 2022 with 13 Volunteers, including 2 reinstated Volunteers. On September 29, 2022, the Office of Inspector General announced this review to assess the post’s compliance with specific agency policies and procedures related to Volunteer and trainee health and safety, and the re-entry process.