The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (also represented in recent records as the House Oversight and Accountability Committee) is the House body with broad responsibility for federal oversight, from procurement and personnel systems to national security and homeland security grant administration.1 Its authority is also operationalized in committee rules that define oversight subcommittees and authorize panels or task forces with hearing and reporting duties under House procedural standards.2
Authority and jurisdiction
The committee’s mission statement places it as a federal accountability platform responsible for exposing waste, fraud, and abuse while overseeing a wide range of federal functions and national security-related policy areas.1 Its current rules reinforce that structure with seven subcommittees, member participation rights in committee hearings, and a formal Rule 14 pathway for task-force activity used by the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets.2
2025-26 UAP-relevant activity timeline
- November 13, 2024: the oversight committee convened a joint hearing titled "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth," listing both the Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation and the National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs subcommittees with witness testimony in the hearing record.345
- September 9, 2025: the committee held a UAP hearing titled "Restoring Public Trust Through UAP Transparency and Whistleblower Protection," hosted by the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets with witnesses on AARO reporting and protections for disclosure sources.678
- FY2025-26 oversight materials: Congress.gov continues that thread by publishing the Sept. 9, 2025 hearing under House Oversight and Government Reform with linked hearing materials and transcript metadata for official record continuity.8
How committee outputs connect to hearing materials
Hearing pages on the committee site provide venue, date, participating members, witnesses, and companion documents, while Congress.gov event pages attach transcripts and hearing records, tying committee output directly to citable public materials.4589 The publication chain for task-force events follows the same committee procedures as subcommittee hearings, which is why task-force testimony and task-force-related committee outputs are routed through equivalent record channels and linked publications.2 Congressional committee reporting in FY2025-26 also references prior UAP hearing activity as part of the broader committee oversight investigation stream, showing hearings and written outputs as mutually reinforcing parts of the oversight loop.10