WIESBADEN, Germany - With the backdrop of airborne assaults, combined live fires and armored river crossings of multi-national Exercise Anakonda 16, it may have been quite easy to overlook another major milestone achieved in enhancing the Alliance: the first ever European Inspector General Workshop conducted June 7-9.
Involving IGs from nine different counties as well as U.S. military IG representatives from European Command, Africa Command, and U.S. Army Africa, the workshop was hosted by the U.S. Army Europe Office of the Inspector General at USAREUR Headquarters in Wiesbaden. The workshop's purpose was to identify like functions among participating IGs, identify areas of combined interest such as training or inspections that might drive future combined IG operations, develop a means for rapidly sharing IG procedures and techniques across Europe and develop a long term plan for developing and training IGs in Europe on like functional areas.
"We absolutely accomplished our goals," remarked Col. David Carstens, Command IG for USAREUR. "In fact, we found more areas where we are alike than different."
"In a time of resource austerity and increased demands, it only makes sense to find ways where IGs across Europe can combine resources and operate together to achieve similar goals," said Carstens.
Working together more in the future is what this conference was all about. After the USAREUR IG met with several workshop attendee nations over the past year, it became clear that there was a need to share information among the different organizations. Adding to this urgency is the fact that while most of the 28-member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, have an IG or a similar organization, there is no NATO IG to reach out to for technical assistance, training, or lessons learned. Since the U.S. Army's Inspector General School at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, is the Department of Defense's recognized "gold standard in regard to IG training, NATO Partners and Allies are naturally turning to USAREUR IG to take a lead role in coordinating this effort.
One of the first efforts achieved during the conference was getting participating European IGs onto a common portal to share information. Now that IGs can better communicate across multiple e-mail domains, we can easily share unclassified doctrine, policies, planning guides and other critical documents that help drive day to day IG operations.
The next step was creating a venue where IGs from across Europe can annually meet for training workshops on areas of combined interest such as conducting investigations, inspection planning, and providing IG assistance. These are the three conference validated areas that most IGs have in common. These are also the areas where training resources are badly required to meet an increased demand. Over the coming months, USAREUR IG will be pursuing a venue and resources from DoDIG and DAIG to help instruct European IGs on a variety of topics of interest.
Lt. Gen. David E. Quantock, the 65th Inspector General of the Army, attended the conference and was impressed by the results. He also recognized the important of Army Service Component Command level IGs engaging with multinational counterparts in their respective areas of responsibility. Based on his observations at the conference as well as input from other ASCC IGs Army-wide, Quantock said he is considering adding "engagement" as an IG subtask under the teach-and-train section of Army Regulation 20-1 (Inspector General Activities and Procedures).
According to Carsten, perhaps the key takeaway from the workshop was that participating European IGs are strong, professionally capable, engaged, and have direct access to Ministers of Defense and Land Forces Commanders.
"Like the U.S. Army IG, these professionals serve as an extension of their respective Ministers' and Commanders' eyes and ears," he said. "They are in a perfect position to target corruption and assist with the adherence to standards and policies. It is an element of Enhancing the Alliance, one of the USAREUR's enduring priorities, which cannot be overlooked."
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