Purposes
Oversight, as an outgrowth of this principle, ideally serves a number of overlapping objectives and purposes:
- improve the efficiency, economy, and effectiveness of governmental operations;
- evaluate programs and performance;
- detect and prevent poor administration, waste, abuse, arbitrary and capricious behavior, or illegal and unconstitutional conduct;
- protect civil liberties and constitutional rights;
- inform the general public and ensure that executive policies reflect the public interest;
- gather information to develop new legislative proposals or to amend existing statutes;
- ensure administrative compliance with legislative intent; and
- prevent executive encroachment on legislative authority and prerogatives.
In sum, oversight is a way for Congress to check on, and check, the executived directors
Read more about this topic: Congressional Oversight
Famous quotes containing the word purposes:
“It is not enough that we are truthful; we must cherish and carry out high purposes to be truthful about.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding ev’ry hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flow’r.”
—William Cowper (1731–1800)
“Virtuous people are simply those who have ... not been tempted sufficiently, because they live in a vegetative state, or because their purposes are so concentrated in one direction that they have not had the leisure to glance around them.”
—Isadora Duncan (1878–1927)