Project On Government Oversight (POGO)

Nonpartisan government watchdog · Nonpartisan independent watchdog organization, Washington, DC

The watchdog that made VA whistleblowing its business: in 2014 POGO and IAVA opened a secure intake for VA whistleblowers and received roughly 800 submissions in little over a month, then spent a decade testifying that VA’s own accountability office lacks independence and can become a channel for retaliation itself. Still publishing daily in 2026 across federal accountability. Its VA testimony is the documented case that the official complaint channel is part of the failure it is meant to police.

Why we carry them. Proof, in sworn testimony, that reporting a problem inside VA can become the problem — and the reform record for fixing exactly that.

Start here — their essential work

• Congressional Oversight Is Crucial for VA Accountability — Its current VA testimony: why the accountability office VA built after the waitlist scandal still lacks independence, against the scale of a department requesting $488.2 billion for fiscal 2027.
• POGO to Congress: Defend Whistleblowers, Improve VA Services — Families of VA patients feared losing services if they complained — POGO’s account to Congress of how retaliation fear silences the people closest to the care.
• Protecting Whistleblowers and Promoting Accountability — Why letting VA’s own lawyers review whistleblower discipline is a structural conflict — the judge letting the defense overturn the verdict.
• Whistleblower Retaliation at the Department of Veterans Affairs — The pattern finding: an agency culture that quashes investigations and punishes dissent, to the detriment of veterans and taxpayers.
• VA Chief May Head Watchdog Office Probing His Own Department — On the independence of the office that protects whistleblowers — and a VA whistleblower case that found roughly $110 million in potential co-pay refunds owed to nearly a million veterans.
• POGO Calls for More Oversight and Accountability at the VA — Its reform brief: track the settlement agreements whistleblowers wait years on, and train VA staff on the rights the law already gives them.

Summaries are ours. The work is theirs — we link to it, we don’t lift it. Visit Project On Government Oversight (POGO) →