# Whistleblower Programs

**Agency:** Labor  
**Account:** Whistleblower Programs  
**Source document:** Occupational Safety and Health Administration · p. 9  
**Vintage:** President's Budget PB2027  
**Canonical URL:** https://hitchintel.com/budget/labor/whistleblower-programs  

> **Trust:** parsed from the agency Congressional Justification. Approximate, **not summable**, verify at the cited page.

## Funding ($M)

| Fiscal year | Basis | Amount |
| --- | --- | --- |
| FY2025 | enacted | 26.0 |
| FY2026 | enacted | 22.5 |
| FY2027 | request | 16.7 |

## Labor discretionary budget authority (OMB PBDB — authoritative)

FY2027 $10.30B, FY2026 $13.70B. This is the agency total, not a sum of the parsed lines.


## What this funds

In FY 2027, OSHA will continue to work to meet FY 2027 targets for relevant performance measures. With the completion of the new consolidated program structure, OSHA anticipates that the agency will continue to be able to identify program efficiencies and best practices to minimize increases to the overall inventory and will work to reduce the backlog by 2.5%. OSHA has begun to see a reduction in incoming complaints during FY 2025 and FY 2026 due to process improvements designed to limit complaints received by OSHA to only those that are within the agency's jurisdiction. These improvements are the result of a revised online complaint form, which provides an automatic redirect to other enforcement agencies when OSHA is the wrong forum for the user's complaint. Users are redirected to the proper forum for their complaint in real-time, which assists the user in finding the right agency, and allows OSHA to focus its resources on screening and investigating cases within its jurisdiction. The agency projects an approximately 3 percent decrease in new complaints from FY 2025 (14,125 complaints) to FY 2026 (13,701 complaints anticipated), due to these process improvements. While the number of complaints has declined, the number of docketed cases has remained steady, indicating that these modifications are only screening out complaints outside of OSHA's jurisdiction. In FY 2026, OSHA anticipates the completion of 2,574 cases and will work to meet FY 2026 targets for relevant performance measures. OSHA also expects to further advance Administration efforts to advance optimization and efficiency at agencies. The agency will continue to look for opportunities to streamline the investigative process without compromising quality through approved pilot programs and exploring innovative approaches to enhance whistleblower program quality, consistency, and efficiency. For example, OSHA will finalize a memo making recorded interviews a required practice for all whistleblower investigations to generate more reliable evidence, which can be easily referenced during case file review or litigation discussions. OSHA will also expand the use of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) by centralizing the team, thereby providing access to the ADR program for all eligible cases. In FY 2026, OSHA plans to publish a statute-specific desk aid for the Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA) to serve as a resource for investigating retaliation complaints under the statute. In FY 2025, OSHA completed 3,245 investigations. During this fiscal year, the agency assembled two Tiger Teams as mentioned above. Most notably, the impact of the Tiger Teams resulted in a 24% decrease in the backlog of the oldest cases, far exceeding the FY 2025 target of a 3% decrease in the backlog. This reduction also produced a positive impact on the average age of pending whistleblower investigations, bringing the time from the average days a case is pending from 187 in FY 2024 to 151 in FY 2025.


**Where it sits:** Civilian / Non-Defense › Labor › Occupational Safety and Health Administration › Whistleblower Programs


*HitchAI is an independent intelligence service, not affiliated with the U.S. government. Civilian line dollars are parsed from agency Congressional Justifications and are approximate.*