Whistleblower office reports rising caseload, high closure rate and new case-management system

The San Francisco controller’s Office whistleblower program reported to the committee that reports to the office have ticked up in recent years, the office sustained a high closure rate within its 90-day target, and it implemented a new case-management system on July 1 to improve reporting and case tracking.

David Jensen, program manager for the Office of the Controller’s whistleblower program, said the program has received roughly the same volume of reports over recent years and noted a modest increase in the most recent fiscal year compared with the year before. Jensen said the office closed a large share of matters quickly — reporting a 93% rate of cases closed within 90 days in the last fiscal year against a goal of 80% — and that the office closed 668 cases last fiscal year, yielding multiple dispositions across investigations.

Jensen described the program’s statutory authority as arising from the San Francisco Charter and applicable state law and explained the office’s screening rules: matters that fall under other adjudicative bodies, criminal matters and collective-bargaining grievance processes are generally referred rather than investigated as a whistleblower matter. He said the majority of reports come through the online portal and that many reports are submitted anonymously.

The program manager also described outreach and training the office performed in the past year, including annual training delivered via the city’s HR system, liaison training for department contacts and two national webinars on hotline practices and using AI to fight fraud. Jensen said the new case-management system enables more granular dispositions reporting (multiple dispositions per submitted report) and supports public dashboards, which the office plans to expand.

Committee members praised the training efforts and asked whether the office benchmarks complaints by department; Jensen said the office produces a “heat map” showing reports received per department normalized by employee counts and that public-health and transit agencies produce the highest volumes in absolute terms given their size.

Ending: The whistleblower office said it will publish a Q4/annual report shortly and invited committee members to the office’s liaison training and webinars.