DeCA merges its IG, internal audit offices

FORT LEE, Va, July 11, 2012 – The Defense Commissary Agency has merged its inspector general and security, and internal audit offices in a provisional move effective July 1.

“I am focused on the need to better deter, prevent and detect fraudulent activities agency wide,” said DeCA Director Joseph H. Jeu in a memorandum for employees dated June 29. “This [new] office’s primary mission is to be proactive, swift and robust in conducting future unannounced audits and investigations of DeCA’s operations.”

The consolidation paves the way for the official stand-up on Oct. 1. During its provisional status, the new office will finalize personnel assignments and operating structure. The merger creates a new investigative examiners branch within the IG function to conduct investigations based on trends and situational analysis.

As a result, Keith M. Owens, DeCA’s director of internal audit, has been selected as the agency’s inspector general. Owens assumed this position a day after the June 30 retirements of former IG John T. Maffei and Friedrich “Fred” Stein, DeCA’s chief security officer.

“John has served this agency and, more importantly, our military customers well for close to four decades, and we wish him all the best as he begins the next chapter in his life,” Jeu said. “The same goes for Fred, who has literally been the face of security since the agency began. He has had a wonderful 32-year career as a government civilian and an Air Force security specialist.

“Moving forward, I’m confident that Keith will manage this new office with the same degree of professionalism and expertise we’ve come to expect from him.”

As the IG, Owens directs and manages inspection site visits to agency activities. His job also involves evaluating allegations, complaints and disclosures of fraud, waste and abuse, and allegations of misconduct and mismanagement affecting DeCA activities. In the area of security, he is responsible for managing the agency’s antiterrorism, counterintelligence, critical infrastructure protection, force protection, information and operations security, and personnel and physical security programs.

As the agency’s chief auditor, Owens is responsible for examining and auditing various systems, operations, programs and procedures. He has served as the director of internal audit since Sept. 27, 2010. Before that, he served as audit manager in the Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General.

Owens entered the U.S. Army in 1981 as a quartermaster officer. During his active-duty career, he served in Germany, North Carolina, South Korea and Washington, D.C. (the Pentagon), and progressed in rank to major. He transitioned from active duty in 1992 to the U.S. Army Reserve, and retired as a colonel in 2011. It was in 1992 that Owens also entered civil service as an auditor with the DoD Office of the Inspector General. Over the next 18 years he served in various positions in that office, advancing from senior auditor to program director and on to program manager. For his complete bio, click here.

Maffei retires after nearly 40 years of government service. He had served as the IG since 2004 and before that as the deputy IG since 1993.

In 1974, Maffei began his government career as a commissary field operations specialist/senior field operations specialist for the Navy Resale and Services Support Office at Fort Wadsworth, N.Y. By 1990, he had become the commissary division director at NAVRESSO. When DeCA formed in 1991, he became chief of the operations division for the Northwest Pacific Region, a position he would hold until his 1993 selection as deputy IG.

In 2002, Stein was selected as DeCA’s chief of security, after serving as a physical security specialist since 1991 when the agency activated. Before DeCA, he had been a security specialist with the Air Force Commissary Service at Kelly Air Force Base, Texas, since 1989.

In the Air Force, Stein served from 1982 to 1984 as an Air Force security specialist with the 482nd Tactical Fighter Wing, Homestead Air Force Base, Fla., and later was a regional security specialist from 1985 to 1991 at Clark Air Base, Philippines. Before joining the active-duty Air Force, he served as a police officer in suburban Chicago.