August 21, 2018
The Proposed Rules do not address the fundamental issues causing a backlog of Whistleblower claims.
The Proposed Rules claim that by allowing summary denial of claims more resources will be available to process other claims more quickly.
However, this line of reasoning is not supported by any data and is fact contradicted by a review of the current Whistleblower Claims Queue and processing procedures.
At present, the Whistleblower Office and Claims Review Staff put "frivolous" at the end of the Whistleblower Claims Queue and actively place "non-frivolous" claims in a higher priority for processing.
Therefore, summary denial of claims would not provide for more staff to process other claims because staff is currently not spending much time processing the "frivolous" claims.
Although these Proposed Rules masquerade as a method to decrease backlog of Whistleblower claims - the desired results will not be met.
Until the SEC gets serious about increasing the efficiency of Whistleblower operations, improving communication with Whistleblowers, and allocating more resources and staff to the Whistleblower Program the already low confidence in the Whistleblower Program will continue to erode.