More Efficient and Effective 

Government: Opportunities 

to Reduce Duplication, 

Overlap and Fragmentation, 

Achieve Savings, and 

Enhance Revenue 

Statement of Gene L. Dodaro

Comptroller General of the United States

Testimony 

Before the Committee on Oversight and 

Government Reform, House of 

Representatives

For Release on Delivery 

Expected at 9:30 a.m. EST

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

GAO-12-449T

United States Government Accountability Office

GAO
 

Page 1 GAO-12-449T 

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Cummings, and Members of the 

Committee:

Thank you for the opportunity to discuss our 2012 annual report, which 

presents 51 areas where programs may be able to achieve greater 

efficiencies or become more effective in providing government services 

by reducing potential duplication, overlap, or fragmentation in federal 

programs and activities.1 We have also continued to monitor 

developments in the 81 areas that we identified a year ago in the first 

report we issued in this series.2 Our 2011 follow-up report released today 

describes the extent to which progress has been made to address these 

areas.3

My testimony is based on our 2012 annual and 2011 follow-up reports. 

Specifically, it addresses: (1) federal programs or functional areas where 

unnecessary duplication, overlap, or fragmentation exists, as well as 

other opportunities for potential cost savings or enhanced revenues; (2) 

status of actions taken by Congress and the executive branch to address 

the areas we identified in our 2011 report; (3) aspects of the GPRA 

Modernization Act of 2010 that may contribute to addressing and 

preventing duplication, overlap and fragmentation among federal 

programs; and (4) our approach to identifying duplication or cost savings 

in federal programs and activities. We conducted our work in accordance 

with generally accepted government auditing standards or with our quality 

assurance framework, as appropriate. For issues where information is 

being reported on for the first time in this report, we sought comments 

from the agencies involved, and incorporated those comments as 

appropriate. In updating the actions we identified in the 2011 annual 

report, we asked the agencies involved and the Office of Management 

Appendix I presents a summary of our assessment of the overall 

progress made in each area.

 

1

GAO, 2012 Annual Report: Opportunities to Reduce Duplication, Overlap and 

Fragmentation, Achieve Savings, and Enhance Revenue, GAO-12-342SP (Washington, 

D.C.: Feb. 28, 2012).

2

GAO, Opportunities to Reduce Potential Duplication in Government Programs, Save Tax 

Dollars, and Enhance Revenue, GAO-11-318SP (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 1, 2011).

3

GAO, Follow-up on 2011 Report: Status of Actions Taken to Reduce Duplication, 

Overlap, and Fragmentation, Save Tax Dollars, and Enhance Revenue, GAO-12-453SP

(Washington, D.C.: Feb. 28, 2012).

 
 

Page 2 GAO-12-449T 

and Budget (OMB) for their review and incorporated comments as 

appropriate.

We identified 51 areas in our 2012 annual report, including 32 areas of 

potential duplication, overlap, or fragmentation as well as 19 opportunities 

for agencies or Congress to consider taking action that could either 

reduce the cost of government operations or enhance revenue collections 

for the Treasury. These areas involve a wide range of government 

missions including agriculture, defense, economic development, 

education, energy, general government, health, homeland security, 

international affairs, science and the environment, and social services. 

Within and across these missions, the 2012 annual report touches on 

virtually all major federal departments and agencies. We expanded the 

scope of our work for this year’s report to focus on areas where a mix of 

federal approaches is used, such as tax expenditures, direct spending, 

and federal grant or loan programs.

In our 2011 follow-up report, we assessed the extent to which Congress 

and the executive branch addressed the 81 areas—including a total of 

176 actions—to reduce or eliminate unnecessary duplication, overlap, or 

fragmentation or achieve other potential financial benefits. As of February 

10, 2012, Congress and the executive branch have made some progress 

in addressing the majority of the 81 areas we identified; however, 

additional steps are needed to fully implement the remaining actions. 

Specifically, our assessment found that all actions had been addressed in 

4 areas, partially addressed in 60 areas, and not addressed in 17 areas. 

In addition, OMB has instructed agencies to consider areas of duplication

or overlap identified in our 2011 report and by others in their fiscal year 

2013 budget submissions and management plans. The OMB guidance 

also advised agencies to take a number of other steps to enhance 

efficiency, such as identifying and including in their budget submissions 

cost-saving efforts that will improve operational efficiency and taxpayers’ 

rate of return, including program integration, reorganizations within and 

between agency components, and resource realignment to improve 

public services.

Under requirements established by the GPRA Modernization Act of 2010 

(the Act),4

 

4

Pub. L. No. 111-352, 124 Stat. 3866 (2011), amending Pub. L. No. 103-62, 107 Stat. 285 

(1993). 

OMB is also required to coordinate with agencies to establish 
 

Page 3 GAO-12-449T 

outcome-oriented goals covering a limited number of crosscutting policy 

areas as well as goals to improve management across the federal 

government, and develop a governmentwide performance plan for 

making progress toward achieving those goals. The President’s budget 

for 2013 includes 14 such crosscutting policy goals. Aspects of several of 

these goals—including Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math 

Education, Entrepreneurship and Small Businesses, Job Training, 

Cybersecurity, Information Technology Management, Procurement and 

Acquisition Management, and Real Property Management—are 

discussed in our March 2011 and February 2012 reports. The Act’s 

requirements provide a much needed basis for more fully integrating a 

wide array of potentially duplicative, overlapping, or fragmented federal 

activities as well as a cohesive perspective on the long-term goals of the 

federal government focused on priority policy areas.

Opportunities exist for the Congress and federal agencies to continue to 

address the needed actions identified in our March 2011 and February 

2012 reports. Collectively, these reports show that, if the actions are 

implemented, the government could potentially save tens of billions of 

dollars annually. Cost savings related to reducing or eliminating 

duplication, overlap, and fragmentation can be difficult to estimate 

because the portion of agency budgets devoted to certain programs or 

activities is often unclear, or needed information on program performance 

or costs is not readily available. In some cases, there is sufficient 

information to estimate potential savings or other benefits if actions are 

taken to address individual issues. In other cases, estimates of cost 

savings or other benefits would depend upon what congressional and 

executive branch decisions were made, including how certain of our 

recommendations are implemented. Nevertheless, considering the 

amount of program dollars involved in the issues we have identified, even 

limited adjustments could result in significant savings. Additionally, we 

have found that agencies can often realize other kinds of benefits, such 

as improved customer service and decreased administrative burdens.

Our 2012 annual report identified 51 areas where unnecessary 

duplication, overlap, or fragmentation exists as well as additional 

opportunities for potential cost savings or enhanced revenues. We 

identified about 130 specific actions that Congress or the executive 

branch could take to address these areas.

We identified 32 areas where government missions are fragmented 

across multiple agencies or programs; agencies, offices, or initiatives may 

2012 Annual Report 

Identified 51 

Opportunity Areas
 

Page 4 GAO-12-449T 

have similar or overlapping objectives or may provide similar services to 

similar populations or target similar users; and when two or more 

agencies or programs are engaged in the same activities or provide the 

same services to the same beneficiaries (see table 1). We found 

instances where multiple government programs or activities have led to 

inefficiencies, and we determined that greater efficiencies or effectiveness 

might be achievable.

Table 1: Duplication, Overlap, and Fragmentation Areas Identified

Mission Areas identified

Agriculture 1. Protection of Food and Agriculture: Centrally coordinated oversight is needed to ensure nine federal 

agencies effectively and efficiently implement the nation’s fragmented policy to defend the food and 

agriculture systems against potential terrorist attacks and major disasters. 

Defense 2. Electronic Warfare: Identifying opportunities to consolidate Department of Defense airborne electronic 

attack programs could reduce overlap in the department’s multiple efforts to develop new capabilities and 

improve the department’s return on its multibillion-dollar acquisition investments. 

3. Unmanned Aircraft Systems: Ineffective acquisition practices and collaboration efforts in the Department 

of Defense unmanned aircraft systems portfolio creates overlap and the potential for duplication among a 

number of current programs and systems. 

4. Counter-Improvised Explosive Device Efforts: The Department of Defense continues to risk duplication in 

its multibillion-dollar counter-improvised explosive device efforts because it does not have a comprehensive 

database of its projects and initiatives.

5. Defense Language and Culture Training: The Department of Defense needs a more integrated approach 

to reduce fragmentation in training approaches and overlap in the content of training products acquired by 

the military services and other organizations. 

6. Stabilization, Reconstruction, and Humanitarian Assistance Efforts: Improving the Department of 

Defense’s evaluations of stabilization, reconstruction, and humanitarian assistance efforts, and addressing 

coordination challenges with the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development, 

could reduce overlapping efforts and result in the more efficient use of taxpayer dollars. 

Economic 

development

7. Support for Entrepreneurs: Overlap and fragmentation among the economic development programs that 

support entrepreneurial efforts require the Office of Management and Budget and other agencies to better 

evaluate the programs and explore opportunities for program restructuring, which may include consolidation, 

within and across agencies. 

8. Surface Freight Transportation: Fragmented federal programs and funding structures are not maximizing 

the efficient movement of freight. 

Energy 9. Department of Energy Contractor Support Costs: The Department of Energy should assess whether 

further opportunities could be taken to streamline support functions, estimated to cost over $5 billion, at its 

contractor-managed laboratory and nuclear production and testing sites, in light of contractors’ historically 

fragmented approach to providing these functions. 

10. Nuclear Nonproliferation: Comprehensive review needed to address strategic planning limitations and 

potential fragmentation and overlap concerns among programs combating nuclear smuggling overseas. 
 

Page 5 GAO-12-449T 

Mission Areas identified

General 

government

11. Personnel Background Investigations: The Office of Management and Budget should take action to 

prevent agencies from making potentially duplicative investments in electronic case management and 

adjudication systems.

12. Cybersecurity Human Capital: Governmentwide initiatives to enhance the cybersecurity workforce in the 

federal government need better structure, planning, guidance, and coordination to reduce duplication.

13. Spectrum Management: Enhanced coordination of federal agencies’ efforts to manage radio frequency 

spectrum and an examination of incentive mechanisms to foster more efficient spectrum use may aid 

regulators’ attempts to jointly respond to competing demands for spectrum while identifying valuable 

spectrum that could be auctioned for commercial use, thereby generating revenues for the U.S. Treasury. 

Health 14. Health Research Funding: The National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, and Department of 

Veterans Affairs can improve sharing of information to help avoid the potential for unnecessary duplication. 

15. Military and Veterans Health Care: The Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs need to improve 

integration across care coordination and case management programs to reduce duplication and better assist 

servicemembers, veterans, and their families. 

Homeland 

security/Law 

enforcement

16. Department of Justice Grants: The Department of Justice could improve how it targets nearly $3.9 billion 

to reduce the risk of potential unnecessary duplication across the more than 11,000 grant awards it makes 

annually. 

17. Homeland Security Grants: The Department of Homeland Security needs better project information and 

coordination among four overlapping grant programs. 

18. Federal Facility Risk Assessments: Agencies are making duplicate payments for facility risk assessments 

by completing their own assessments, while also paying the Department of Homeland Security for 

assessments that the department is not performing. 

Information 

technology

19. Information Technology Investment Management: The Office of Management and Budget and the 

Departments of Defense and Energy need to address potentially duplicative information technology 

investments to avoid investing in unnecessary systems.

International 

affairs

20. Overseas Administrative Services: U.S. government agencies could lower the administrative cost of their 

operations overseas by increasing participation in the International Cooperative Administrative Support 

Services system and by reducing reliance on American officials overseas to provide these services. 

21. Training to Identify Fraudulent Travel Documents: Establishing a formal coordination mechanism could 

help reduce duplicative activities among seven different entities that are involved in training foreign officials 

to identify fraudulent travel documents. 

Science and the 

environment

22. Coordination of Space System Organizations: Fragmented leadership has led to program challenges and 

potential duplication in developing multibillion-dollar space systems. 

23. Space Launch Contract Costs: Increased collaboration between the Department of Defense and the 

National Aeronautics and Space Administration could reduce launch contracting duplication. 

24. Diesel Emissions: Fourteen grant and loan programs at the Department of Energy, Department of 

Transportation, and the Environmental Protection Agency, and three tax expenditures fund activities that 

have the effect of reducing mobile source diesel emissions; enhanced collaboration and performance 

measurement could improve these fragmented and overlapping programs. 

25. Environmental Laboratories: The Environmental Protection Agency needs to revise its overall approach to 

managing its 37 laboratories to address potential overlap and fragmentation and more fully leverage its 

limited resources. 
 

Page 6 GAO-12-449T 

Mission Areas identified

26. Green Building: To evaluate the potential for overlap or fragmentation among federal green building 

initiatives, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Energy, and the 

Environmental Protection Agency should lead other federal agencies in collaborating on assessing their 

investments in more than 90 initiatives to foster green building in the nonfederal sector. 

Social services 27. Social Security Benefit Coordination: Benefit offsets for related programs help reduce the potential for 

overlapping payments but pose administrative challenges. 

28. Housing Assistance: Examining the benefits and costs of housing programs and tax expenditures that 

address the same or similar populations or areas, and potentially consolidating them, could help mitigate 

overlap and fragmentation and decrease costs. 

Training, 

employment, and 

education

29. Early Learning and Child Care: The Departments of Education and Health and Human Services should

extend their coordination efforts to other federal agencies with early learning and child care programs to 

mitigate the effects of program fragmentation, simplify children’s access to these services, collect the data 

necessary to coordinate operation of these programs, and identify and minimize any unwarranted overlap 

and potential duplication. 

30. Employment for People with Disabilities: Better coordination among 50 programs in nine federal agencies 

that support employment for people with disabilities could help mitigate program fragmentation and overlap, 

and reduce the potential for duplication or other inefficiencies. 

31. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education: Strategic planning is needed to better 

manage overlapping programs across multiple agencies. 

32. Financial Literacy: Overlap among financial literacy activities makes coordination and clarification of roles 

and responsibilities essential, and suggests potential benefits of consolidation. 

Source: GAO-12-342SP. 

Overlap and fragmentation among government programs or activities can 

be harbingers of unnecessary duplication. In many cases, the existence 

of unnecessary duplication, overlap, or fragmentation can be difficult to 

determine with precision due to a lack of data on programs and activities. 

Where information has not been available that would provide conclusive 

evidence of duplication, overlap, or fragmentation, we often refer to 

“potential duplication” and, where appropriate, we suggest actions that 

agencies or Congress could take to either reduce that potential or to 

make programmatic data more reliable or transparent. In some instances 

of duplication, overlap, or fragmentation, it may be appropriate for multiple 

agencies or entities to be involved in the same programmatic or policy 

area due to the nature or magnitude of the federal effort.

Among the 32 areas highlighted in our 2012 annual report are the 

following examples of opportunities for agencies or Congress to consider 

taking action to reduce unnecessary duplication, overlap, or 

fragmentation.
 

Page 7 GAO-12-449T 

• Unmanned Aircraft Systems: The Department of Defense (DOD) 

estimates that the cost of current Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) 

acquisition programs and related systems will exceed $37.5 billion in 

fiscal years 2012 through 2016. The elements of DOD’s planned UAS 

portfolio include unmanned aircraft, payloads (subsystems and equipment 

on a UAS configured to accomplish specific missions), and ground control 

stations (equipment used to handle multiple mission aspects such as 

system command and control). We have found that ineffective acquisition 

practices and collaboration efforts in DOD’s UAS portfolio creates overlap 

and the potential for duplication among a number of current programs and 

systems. We have also highlighted the need for DOD to consider 

commonality in UAS—using the same or interchangeable subsystems 

and components in more than one subsystem to improve interoperability 

of systems—to reduce the likelihood of redundancies in UAS capabilities.

Military service-driven requirements—rather than an effective 

departmentwide strategy—have led to overlap in DOD’s UAS capabilities, 

resulting in many programs and systems being pursued that have similar 

flight characteristics and mission requirements. Illustrative of the overlap, 

the Department of the Navy (Navy) plans to spend more than $3 billion to 

develop the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance UAS, rather than the 

already fielded Air Force Global Hawk system on which it was based.

According to the Navy, its unique requirements necessitate modifications 

to the Global Hawk airframe, payload interfaces, and ground control 

station. However, the Navy program office was not able to provide 

quantitative analysis to justify the variant. According to program officials, 

no analysis was conducted to determine the cost effectiveness of 

developing the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance UAS to meet the Navy’s 

requirements versus buying more Global Hawks.

The potential for overlap also exists among UAS subsystems and 

components, such as sensor payloads and ground control stations. DOD 

expects to spend about $9 billion to buy 42 UAS sensor payloads through 

fiscal year 2016. While the fact that some multiservice payloads are being 

developed shows the potential for collaboration, the service-centric 

requirements process still creates the potential for overlap, including 29 

sensors in our review. Further, we identified overlap and potential 

duplication among 10 of 13 ground control stations that DOD plans to 

acquire at a cost of about $3 billion through fiscal year 2016. According to 

a cognizant DOD official, the associated software is about 90 percent 

duplicative because similar software is developed for each ground control 

station. DOD has created a UAS control segment working group, which is 

chartered to increase interoperability and enable software re-use and 
 

Page 8 GAO-12-449T 

open systems. This could allow for greater efficiency, less redundancy, 

and lower costs, while potentially reducing levels of contractor proprietary 

data that cannot be shared across UAS programs. However, existing 

ground control stations already have their own architecture and migration 

to a new service-oriented architecture will not happen until at least 2015, 

almost 6 years after it began.

DOD plans to significantly expand the UAS portfolio through 2040, 

including five new systems in the planning stages that are expected to 

become formal programs in the near future. While DOD has 

acknowledged that many UAS systems were acquired inefficiently and 

has begun to take steps to improve outcomes as it expands these 

capabilities over the next several years, the department faces challenges 

in its ability to improve efficiency and reduce the potential for overlap and 

duplication as it buys UAS capabilities. For example, the Army and Navy 

are planning to spend approximately $1.6 billion to acquire separate 

systems that are likely to have similar capabilities to meet upcoming 

cargo and surveillance requirements. DOD officials state that current 

requirements do not preclude a joint program to meet these needs, but 

the Army and Navy have not yet determined whether such an approach 

will be used.

To reduce the likelihood of overlap and potential duplication in its UAS 

portfolio, we have made several prior recommendations to DOD which 

have not been fully implemented. While DOD generally agreed with our 

recommendations, the overlap in current UAS programs, as well as the 

continued potential in future programs, shows that DOD must still do 

more to implement them. In particular, we have recommended that DOD 

(1) re-evaluate whether a single entity would be better positioned to 

integrate all crosscutting efforts to improve the management and 

operation of UAS; (2) consider an objective, independent examination of 

current UAS portfolio requirements and the methods for acquiring future 

unmanned aircraft; and (3) direct the military services to identify specific 

areas where commonality can be achieved. We believe the potential for 

savings is significant and with DOD’s renewed commitment to UAS for 

meeting new strategic requirements, all the more imperative.

• Housing assistance: In fiscal year 2010, the federal government incurred 

about $170 billion in obligations for housing-related programs and 

estimated revenue forgone for tax expenditures of which tax expenditures 

represent $132 billion (about 78 percent). Support for homeownership in 

the current economic climate has expanded dramatically with nearly all 

mortgage originations having direct or indirect federal assistance. The 
 

Page 9 GAO-12-449T 

Department of the Treasury (Treasury) and the Board of Governors of the 

Federal Reserve System together invested more than $1.67 trillion in 

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored enterprises, 

which issue and guarantee mortgage-backed securities. Examining the 

benefits and costs of housing programs and tax expenditures that address 

the same or similar populations or areas, and potentially consolidating 

them, could help mitigate overlap and fragmentation and decrease costs.

We identified 20 different entities that administer 160 programs, tax 

expenditures, and other tools that supported homeownership and rental 

housing in fiscal year 2010. In addition, we identified 39 programs, tax 

expenditures, and other tools that provide assistance for buying, selling, 

or financing a home and eight programs and tax expenditures that 

provide assistance to rental property owners. We found overlap in 

products offered and markets served by the Department of Agriculture’s 

(USDA) Rural Housing Service (RHS) and the Department of Housing 

and Urban Development’s (HUD) Federal Housing Administration (FHA), 

among others. In September 2000 and again as part of our ongoing work, 

we questioned the need for maintaining separate programs for rural 

areas. In September 2000, we recommended that Congress consider 

requiring USDA and HUD to examine the benefits and costs of merging 

programs, such as USDA’s and HUD’s single-family guaranteed loan and 

multifamily portfolio management programs.5

While USDA and HUD have raised concerns about merging programs, 

our recent work has shown increased evidence of overlap and that some 

RHS and FHA programs can be consolidated. For example, the two 

agencies overlap in products offered (mortgage credit and rental 

assistance), functions performed (portfolio management and 

preservation), and geographic areas served. Specifically, RHS and HUD 

guarantee single-family and multifamily loans, as well as offer rental 

subsidies using similar income eligibility criteria. And, both agencies have 

been working to maintain and preserve existing multifamily portfolios. 

Although RHS may offer its products only in rural areas, it is not always 

the insurer of choice in those areas. For example, in fiscal year 2009 FHA 

insured over eight times as many single-family loans in economically 

distressed rural counties as RHS guaranteed. And, many RHS loan 

 

5

GAO, Rural Housing: Options for Optimizing the Federal Role in Rural Housing 

Development, GAO/RCED-00-241 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 15, 2000).
 

Page 10 GAO-12-449T 

guarantees financed properties near urban areas—56 percent of singlefamily guarantees made in fiscal year 2009 were in metropolitan counties.

Regarding consolidation, we found that RHS relies on more in-house staff 

to oversee its single-family and multifamily loan portfolio of about $93 

billion than HUD relies on to manage its single-family and multifamily loan 

portfolio of more than $1 trillion, largely because of differences in how the 

programs are administered. RHS has a decentralized structure of about 

500 field offices that was set up to interact directly with borrowers. RHS 

relies on over 1,600 full-time equivalent staff to process and service its 

direct single-family loans and grants. While RHS limits its direct loans to 

low income households and its guaranteed loans to moderate income 

households, FHA has no income limits and does not offer a comparable 

direct loan program. HUD operates about 80 field offices and primarily 

interacts through lenders, nonprofits, and other intermediaries. RHS and 

FHA programs both utilize FHA-approved lenders and underwriting 

processes based on FHA’s scorecard—an automated tool that evaluates 

new mortgage loans. RHS has about 530 full-time equivalent staff to 

process its single-family guaranteed loans. FHA relies on lenders to 

process its loans. Although FHA insures far more mortgages than RHS 

guarantees, FHA has just over 1,000 full-time equivalent staff to oversee 

lenders and appraisers and contractors that manage foreclosed 

properties. While the number of RHS field offices decreased by about 40 

percent since 2000, its decentralized field structure continues to reflect 

the era in which it was established—the 1930s, when geography and 

technology greatly limited communication and transportation. These 

limitations have diminished and HUD programs can be used in all areas 

of the country.

We first recommended in September 2000 —and have followed up since 

then—that Congress consider requiring USDA and HUD to examine the 

benefits and costs of merging those programs that serve similar markets 

and provide similar products, and require these same agencies to explore 

merging their single family insured lending and multifamily portfolio 

management programs. At that time, USDA stated that some of the 

suggestions made in our report to improve the effectiveness of current 

programs may better serve rural areas. However, USDA also stated that 

the gap in housing affordability between rural and urban areas, as well as 

the importance of rural housing programs to the Department’s broader 

Rural Development mission area, would make merging RHS’s programs 

with HUD’s programs unfeasible and detrimental to rural America. HUD 

also stated that it believes any opportunity to improve the delivery of rural 

housing services should be explored, but stated that the differences 
 

Page 11 GAO-12-449T 

between RHS’s and FHA’s single-family programs are sizable and that 

without legislative changes to product terms, efforts to merge the 

programs would likely result in a more cumbersome rather than a more 

efficient delivery system. HUD added that it had been working with USDA 

in a mutual exchange of information on best practices and would explore 

possible avenues of coordination.

The agencies have been working to align certain requirements of the 

various multifamily housing programs. In addition, in February 2011, the 

Administration reported to Congress that it would establish a task force to 

evaluate the potential for coordinating or consolidating the housing loan 

programs of HUD, USDA, and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). 

According to HUD, a benchmarking effort associated with the task force 

was recently begun. Our ongoing work considers options for consolidating 

these programs and we expect to make additional related 

recommendations.

Furthermore, Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) provide 

numerous types of housing assistance through tax expenditures. 

Although often necessary to meet federal priorities, some tax 

expenditures can contribute to mission fragmentation and program 

overlap that, in turn, can create service gaps, additional costs, and the 

potential for duplication. For example, to qualify for a historic preservation 

tax credit, rehabilitation must preserve historic character, which may 

conflict with states’ efforts to produce energy-efficient, low-income 

properties with tax credits, and could increase project costs.

We recommended in September 2005 and reiterated in March 2011 that 

coordinated reviews of tax expenditures with related spending programs 

could help policymakers reduce overlap and inconsistencies and direct 

scarce resources to the most-effective or least-costly methods to deliver 

federal support.6

 

6

See GAO, Government Performance and Accountability: Tax Expenditures Represent a 

Substantial Federal Commitment and Need to Be Reexamined, 

Specifically, we recommended that the Director of OMB, 

in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury, develop and implement 

a framework for conducting performance reviews of tax expenditures. 

OMB, citing methodological and conceptual issues, disagreed with our 

2005 recommendations. To date, OMB had not used its budget and 

performance review processes to systematically review tax expenditures 

GAO-05-690

(Washington, D.C.: Sept. 23, 2005) and GAO-11-318SP. 
 

Page 12 GAO-12-449T 

and promote integrated reviews of related tax and spending programs. 

However, in its fiscal year 2012 budget guidance, OMB instructed 

agencies, where appropriate, to analyze how to better integrate tax and 

spending policies with similar objectives and goals. The GPRA 

Modernization Act of 2010 also envisions such an approach for selected 

cross-cutting areas. Such an analysis could help identify redundancies.

• Military and veterans health care: We found that DOD and VA need to 

improve integration across care coordination and case management 

programs to reduce duplication and better assist servicemembers, 

veterans, and their families. DOD and VA have care coordination7 and 

case management8

 

7

According to the National Coalition on Care Coordination, care coordination is a clientcentered, assessment-based interdisciplinary approach to integrating health care and 

social support services in which an individual’s needs and preferences are assessed, a 

comprehensive care plan is developed, and services are managed and monitored by an 

identified care coordinator. 

programs that are intended to provide continuity of 

care for wounded, ill, and injured servicemembers and veterans. DOD 

and VA established the Wounded, Ill, and Injured Senior Oversight 

Committee (Senior Oversight Committee) to address identified problems 

in providing care to wounded, ill, and injured servicemembers as well as 

veterans. Under the purview of this committee, the departments 

developed the Federal Recovery Coordination Program (FRCP), a joint 

program administered by VA that was designed to coordinate clinical and 

nonclinical services for “severely” wounded, ill, and injured 

servicemembers—who are most likely to be medically separated from the 

military—across DOD, VA, other federal agencies, states, and the private 

sector. Separately, the Recovery Coordination Program (RCP) was 

established in response to the National Defense Authorization Act for 

Fiscal Year 2008 to improve the care, management, and transition of 

recovering servicemembers. It is a DOD-specific program that was 

designed to provide nonclinical care coordination to “seriously” wounded, 

ill, and injured servicemembers, who may return to active duty unlike 

those categorized as “severely” wounded, ill, or injured. The RCP is 

implemented separately by each of the military services, most of which 

8

According to the Case Management Society of America, case management is defined as 

a collaborative process of assessment, planning, facilitation, and advocacy for options and 

services to meet an individual’s health needs through communication and available 

resources to promote quality, cost-effective outcomes.
 

Page 13 GAO-12-449T 

have implemented the RCP within their existing wounded warrior 

programs.9

As a result of these multiple efforts, many recovering servicemembers 

and veterans are enrolled in more than one care coordination or case 

management program, and they may have multiple care coordinators and 

case managers, potentially duplicating agencies’ efforts and reducing the 

effectiveness and efficiency of the assistance they provide. For example, 

recovering servicemembers and veterans who have a care coordinator 

also may be enrolled in one or more of the multiple DOD or VA programs 

that provide case management services to “seriously” and “severely” 

wounded, ill, and injured servicemembers, veterans, and their families. 

These programs include the military services’ wounded warrior programs 

and VA’s Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom Care 

Management Program, among others.

We found that inadequate information exchange and poor coordination 

between these programs have resulted in not only duplication of effort, but 

confusion and frustration for enrollees, particularly when case managers 

and care coordinators duplicate or contradict one another’s efforts. For 

example, an FRCP coordinator told us that in one instance there were five 

case managers working on the same life insurance issue for an individual. 

In another example, an FRCP coordinator and an RCP coordinator were 

not aware the other was involved in coordinating care for the same 

servicemember and had unknowingly established conflicting recovery goals 

for this individual. In this case, a servicemember with multiple amputations 

was advised by his FRCP coordinator to separate from the military in order 

to receive needed services from VA, whereas his RCP coordinator set a 

goal of remaining on active duty. These conflicting goals caused 

considerable confusion for this servicemember and his family.

DOD and VA have been unsuccessful in jointly developing options for 

improved collaboration and potential integration of the FRCP and RCP care 

coordination programs, although they have made a number of attempts to 

do so. Despite the identification of various options, no final decisions to 

revamp, merge, or eliminate programs have been agreed upon.

 

9

The Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps have all implemented the RCP within their 

existing wounded warrior programs. The Army and the U.S. Special Operations Command 

provide services that meet the requirements of the RCP, although they did not specifically 

implement this program.
 

Page 14 GAO-12-449T 

The need for better collaboration and integration extends beyond the 

FRCP and RCP to also encompass other DOD and VA case 

management programs, such as DOD’s wounded warrior programs that 

also serve seriously and severely wounded, ill, and injured 

servicemembers and veterans. In October 2011, we recommended that 

the Secretaries of Defense and Veterans Affairs direct the co-chairs of the 

Senior Oversight Committee to expeditiously develop and implement a 

plan to strengthen functional integration across all DOD and VA care 

coordination and case management programs that serve recovering 

servicemembers, veterans, and their families, including—but not limited 

to—the FRCP and RCP.10

• Information technology investment management: OMB reported that in 

fiscal year 2011, there were approximately 7,200 information technology 

(IT) investments totaling at least $79 billion. OMB provides guidance to

agencies on how to report on their IT investments and requires agencies 

to identify each investment by a single functional category and subcategory. These categorizations are intended to enable OMB and others 

to analyze investments with similar functions, as well as identify and 

analyze potentially duplicative investments across agencies. We found 

that DOD and the Department of Energy (DOE) need to address 

potentially duplicative IT investments to avoid investing in unnecessary 

systems.

DOD and VA provided technical comments on 

the report, but neither specifically commented on our recommendation. 

We plan to track the extent to which progress has been made to address 

our recommendation.

In February 2012, we completed a review that examined the 3 largest 

categories of IT investments within DOD, DOE, and the Department of 

Homeland Security (DHS) and found that although the departments use 

various investment review processes to identify duplicative investments, 

37 of our sample of 810 investments were potentially duplicative at DOD 

and DOE.11

 

10GAO, DOD and VA Health Care: Action Needed to Strengthen Integration across Care 

Coordination and Case Management Programs, 

These investments account for about $1.2 billion in IT 

spending for fiscal years 2007 through 2012 for these two agencies. We 

found that DOD and DOE had recently initiated specific plans to address 

GAO-12-129T (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 6, 

2011).

11GAO, Information Technology: Departments of Defense and Energy Need to Address 

Potentially Duplicative Investments, GAO-12-241 (Washington, D.C.: Feb. 17, 2012).
 

Page 15 GAO-12-449T 

potential duplication in many of the investments we identified—such as 

plans to consolidate or eliminate systems—but these initiatives had not 

yet led to the consolidation or elimination of duplicative investments or 

functionality.

In addition, while we did not identify any potentially duplicative 

investments at DHS within our sample, DHS officials have independently 

identified several duplicative investments and systems. DHS has plans to 

further consolidate systems within these investments by 2014, which it 

expects to produce approximately $41 million in cost savings. DHS 

officials have also identified 38 additional systems that they have 

determined to be duplicative.

Further complicating agencies’ ability to identify and eliminate duplicative 

investments is that investments are, in certain cases, misclassified by 

function. For example, one of DHS’s Federal Emergency Management 

Agency (FEMA) investments was initially categorized within the Employee 

Performance Management sub-function, but DHS agreed that this 

investment should be assigned to the Human Resources Development 

sub-function. Proper categorization is necessary in order to analyze and 

identify duplicative IT investments, both within and across agencies.

In February 2012, we recommended that the Secretaries of DOD and 

DOE direct their Chief Information Officers to utilize existing transparency 

mechanisms to report on the results of their efforts to identify and 

eliminate, where appropriate, each potentially duplicative investment that 

we identified, as well as any other duplicative investments. The agencies 

agreed with our recommendation. We also recommended that DOD, 

DOE, and DHS correct the miscategorizations of the investments we 

identified and ensure that investments are correctly categorized in agency 

submissions, which would enhance the agencies’ ability to identify 

opportunities to consolidate or eliminate duplicative investments. DOD 

and DHS agreed with our recommendation, but DOE disagreed that two 

of the four investments we identified were miscategorized, explaining that 

its categorizations reflect funding considerations. However, OMB 

guidance indicates that investments should be classified according to 

their intended purpose. Consequently, we believe the recommendation is 

warranted.

• Department of Homeland Security grants: From fiscal years 2002 through 

2011, FEMA, under DHS, allocated about $20.3 billion to grant recipients 

through four specific programs (the State Homeland Security Program, 

Urban Areas Security Initiative, Port Security Grant Program, and Transit 
 

Page 16 GAO-12-449T 

Security Grant Program) to enhance the capacity of states, localities, and 

other entities, such as ports or transit agencies, to prevent, respond to, 

and recover from a terrorism incident. We found that DHS needs better 

project information and coordination to identify and mitigate potential 

unnecessary duplication among four overlapping grant programs.

In February 2012, we identified multiple factors that contributed to the risk 

of FEMA potentially funding unnecessarily duplicative projects across 

these four grant programs. These factors include overlap among grant 

recipients, goals, and geographic locations, combined with differing levels 

of information that FEMA had available regarding grant projects and 

recipients.12 We also reported that FEMA lacked a process to coordinate 

application reviews across the four grant programs and grant applications 

were reviewed separately by program and were not compared across 

each other to determine where possible unnecessary duplication may 

occur. Specifically, FEMA’s Homeland Security Grant Program branch 

administered the Urban Areas Security Initiative and State Homeland 

Security Program while the Transportation Infrastructure Security branch 

administered the Port Security Grant Program and Transit Security Grant 

Program. We and the DHS Inspector General have concluded that 

coordinating the review of grant projects internally would give FEMA more 

complete information about applications across the four grant programs, 

which could help FEMA identify and mitigate the risk of unnecessary 

duplication across grant applications.13

We also identified actions FEMA could take to identify and mitigate any 

unnecessary duplication in these programs, such as collecting more 

complete project information as well as exploring opportunities to 

enhance FEMA’s internal coordination and administration of the 

programs. We suggested that Congress may wish to consider requiring 

DHS to report on the results of its efforts to identify and prevent 

duplication within and across the four grant programs, and consider these 

results when making future funding decisions for these programs.

 

12GAO, Homeland Security: DHS Needs Better Project Information and Coordination 

among Four Overlapping Grant Programs, GAO-12-303 (Washington, D.C.: Feb. 28, 

2012).

13Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General, Efficacy of DHS Grant 

Programs, OIG-1069 (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 22, 2010).
 

Page 17 GAO-12-449T 

• Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math education programs: 

Federal agencies obligated $3.1 billion in fiscal year 2010 on Science, 

Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education programs. 

These programs can serve an important role both by helping to prepare 

students and teachers for careers in STEM fields and by enhancing the 

nation’s global competitiveness. In addition to the federal effort, state and 

local governments, universities and colleges, and the private sector have 

also developed programs that provide opportunities for students to pursue 

STEM education and occupations. Recently, both Congress and the 

administration have called for a more strategic and effective approach to 

the federal government’s investment in STEM education. For example, 

Congress directed the Office of Science and Technology Policy, within 

the Executive Office of the President, to establish a committee under its 

component National Science and Technology Council to, among other 

things, develop a 5-year governmentwide STEM education strategic plan 

and identify areas of duplication among federal programs.14

In January 2012, we reported that 173 of the 209 (83 percent) STEM 

education programs administered by 13 federal agencies overlapped to 

some degree with at least 1 other program in that they offered similar 

services to target groups—such as K-12 students, postsecondary 

students, K-12 teachers, and college faculty and staff—to achieve similar 

objectives.

We found 

that strategic planning is needed to better manage overlapping programs 

across multiple agencies.

15

 

14Pub. L. No. 111-358, § 101, 124 Stat. 3982, 3984 (2011).

These overlapping programs largely resulted from federal 

efforts to both create and expand programs across many agencies in an 

effort to improve STEM education and increase the number of students 

going into related fields. Overlapping programs can lead to individuals 

and institutions being eligible for similar services in similar STEM fields 

offered through multiple programs. For example, 177 of the 209 programs 

(85 percent) were primarily intended to serve two or more target groups. 

Overlap can frustrate federal officials’ efforts to administer programs in a 

comprehensive manner, limit the ability of decision makers to determine 

which programs are most cost-effective, and ultimately increase program 

administrative costs.

15GAO, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education: Strategic 

Planning Needed to Better Manage Overlapping Programs across Multiple Agencies, 

GAO-12-108 (Washington, D.C.: Jan. 20, 2012). 
 

Page 18 GAO-12-449T 

Even when programs overlap, the services they provide and the 

populations they serve may differ in meaningful ways and would therefore 

not necessarily be duplicative. There may be important differences 

between the specific STEM field of focus and the program’s stated goals. 

For example, we identified 31 programs that provided scholarships or 

fellowships to doctoral students in the field of physics. However, one 

program’s goal was to increase environmental literacy related to estuaries 

and coastal watersheds while another program focused on supporting 

education in nuclear science, engineering, and related trades. In addition, 

programs may be primarily intended to serve different specific populations 

within a given target group. Of the 34 programs providing services to K-12 

students in the field of technology, 10 are primarily intended to serve 

specific underrepresented, minority, or disadvantaged groups and 2 are 

limited geographically to individual cities or universities.

However, little is known about the effectiveness of federal STEM 

education programs. Since 2005, when we first reported on this issue, we 

have found that the majority of programs have not conducted 

comprehensive evaluations of how well their programs are working. 

Agency and program officials would benefit from guidance and 

information sharing within and across agencies about what is working and 

how to best evaluate programs. This would not only help to improve 

individual program performance, but could also inform agency- and 

governmentwide decisions about which programs should continue to be 

funded. Furthermore, although the National Science and Technology 

Council is in the process of developing a governmentwide strategic plan 

for STEM education, we found that agencies have not used outcome 

measures for STEM programs in a way that is clearly reflected in their 

own performance plans and performance reports—key strategic planning 

documents. The absence of clear links between the programs and 

agencies’ planning documents may hinder decision makers’ ability to 

assess how agencies’ STEM efforts contribute to agencywide 

performance goals and the overall federal STEM effort.

We reported in January 2012 that numerous opportunities exist to 

improve the planning for STEM programs. For example, we 

recommended that the National Science and Technology Council develop 

guidance for how agencies can better incorporate governmentwide STEM 

education strategic plan goals and their STEM education efforts into their 

respective performance plans and reports, as well as determining the 

types of evaluations that may be feasible and appropriate for different 

types of STEM education programs. We also recommended that the 

National Science and Technology Council work with agencies, through 
 

Page 19 GAO-12-449T 

the strategic planning process, to identify STEM education programs that 

might be candidates for consolidation or elimination. OMB stated that our 

recommendations are critical to improving the provision of STEM 

education across the federal government. In separate comments, the 

Office of Science and Technology Policy said its own analysis of STEM 

education programs identified no duplicative programs and where it 

identified overlapping programs it found that some program 

characteristics differed. As an illustration, the Office of Science and 

Technology Policy explained that there could be two STEM education 

programs, one that worked with inner city children in New York City and 

another with rural children in North Dakota. We agree that it may be 

important to serve both of these populations, but it is not clear that two 

separate administrative structures are necessary to ensure both 

populations are served. The Office of Science and Technology Policy said 

it would address our recommendations in the 5-year Federal STEM 

Education Strategic Plan, which will be released in spring 2012. 

Furthermore, the President’s Fiscal Year 2013 budget established STEM 

education programs as one of fourteen cross-agency priority goals. These 

goals are intended to enhance progress in areas needing more crossgovernment collaboration.

• Coordination of space system organizations: U.S. government space 

systems—such as the Global Positioning System (GPS) and spacebased weather systems—provide a wide range of capabilities to a large 

number of users, including the federal government, U.S. businesses and 

citizens, and other countries. Space systems are usually very expensive, 

often costing billions of dollars to acquire. More than $25 billion a year is 

appropriated to agencies for developing space systems. These systems 

typically take a long time to develop, and often consist of multiple 

components, including satellites, ground control stations, terminals, and 

user equipment. Moreover, the nation’s satellites are put into orbit by 

rockets that can cost more than $100 million per launch. We have found 

that costs of space programs tend to increase significantly from initial cost 

estimates. A variety of agencies, such as the Federal Aviation 

Administration, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 

and DHS rely on government space systems to execute their missions, 

but responsibilities for acquiring space systems are diffused across 

various DOD organizations as well as the intelligence community and the 

National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Fragmented leadership 

has led to program challenges and potential duplication in developing 

multi-billion dollar space systems. In some cases, problems with these 

systems have been so severe that acquisitions were either canceled or 

the needed capabilities were severely delayed.
 

Page 20 GAO-12-449T 

Fragmented leadership and lack of a single authority in overseeing the 

acquisition of space programs have created challenges for optimally 

acquiring, developing, and deploying new space systems. This 

fragmentation is problematic not only because of a lack of coordination 

that has led to delays in fielding systems, but also because no one person 

or organization is held accountable for balancing governmentwide needs 

against wants, resolving conflicts and ensuring coordination among the 

many organizations involved with space acquisitions, and ensuring that 

resources are directed where they are most needed. For example, we 

reported in April 2009 that the coordination of GPS satellites and user 

equipment segments is not adequately synchronized due to funding shifts 

and diffuse leadership in the program, likely leading to numerous years of 

missed opportunities to utilize new capabilities.16

DOD has also undertaken a number of initiatives to improve leadership 

over defense space acquisitions, but these actions have not been in place 

long enough to determine whether acquisition outcomes will improve. 

Moreover, the initiatives do not extend to the space activities across the 

government. We and others, including the Commission to Assess United 

States National Security Space Management and Organization, have 

previously recommended a number of changes to the leadership of the 

space community and have consistently reported that a lack of strong, 

centralized leadership has led to inefficiencies and other problems. But 

the question as to what office or leadership structure above the 

department level would be effective and appropriate for coordinating all 

U.S. government space programs and setting priorities has not been 

addressed.

DOD has taken some 

steps to better coordinate the GPS segments by creating the Space and 

Intelligence Office within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for 

Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics and conducting enterprise level 

reviews of the GPS program. However, DOD has not yet established a 

single authority responsible for ensuring that all GPS segments, including 

user equipment, are synchronized to the maximum extent practicable.

We have suggested that OMB work with the National Security Council to 

assess whether a governmentwide oversight body for space acquisitions 

is needed. OMB agreed that coordinating space activities across the U.S. 

 

16GAO, Global Positioning System: Significant Challenges in Sustaining and Upgrading 

Widely Used Capabilities, GAO-09-325 (Washington, D.C.: Apr. 30, 2009). 
 

Page 21 GAO-12-449T 

government has been and continues to be a major challenge, but is 

concerned that our recommendation would add an extra layer of space 

bureaucracy on top of ongoing coordination efforts as well as additional 

costs and possible confusion regarding roles and authorities among the 

existing mechanisms. We believe that the recommendation is sufficiently 

flexible to allow for an implementation approach that would address these 

concerns.

• Defense Language and Culture Training: DOD has emphasized the 

importance of developing language skills and knowledge of foreign 

cultures within its forces to meet the needs of current and future military 

operations and it has invested millions of dollars to provide language and 

culture training to thousands of servicemembers, including those 

deploying to ongoing operations. For example, we estimated that DOD 

invested about $266 million for fiscal years 2005 through 2011 to provide 

general purpose forces with training support, such as classroom 

instruction, computer-based training, and training aids. We found that 

DOD has not developed an integrated approach to reduce fragmentation 

in the military services’ language and culture training approaches and 

overlap in the content of training products acquired by the military 

services and other organizations.

In May 2011, we reported that language and culture training within DOD 

is not provided through a single department- or servicewide program, but 

rather multiple DOD organizations oversee the development and 

acquisition of language and culture training and related products and 

deliver training.17

We also found that the military services have not fully coordinated efforts 

to develop and acquire language and culture training products. As a 

result, the services have acquired overlapping and potentially duplicative 

We recommended that the Office of the Under 

Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness establish internal 

mechanisms to assist the department in reaching consensus with the 

military services and other DOD entities on training priorities, synchronize 

the development of service- and departmentwide plans with the budget 

process, and guide efforts to monitor progress. DOD agreed with our 

recommendation.

 

17GAO, Military Training: Additional Actions Needed to Improve Planning and 

Coordination of Army and Marine Corps Language and Culture Training, GAO-11-456

(Washington, D.C.: May 26, 2011). 
 

Page 22 GAO-12-449T 

products, such as reference materials containing country- or regionspecific cultural information and computer software or web-based training 

programs that can be used within a distributed learning training 

environment. To illustrate, we analyzed 18 DOD language and culture 

training products and found that the content overlapped to some extent 

with at least one other training product. For Afghan languages, DOD 

invested in at least five products that were intended to build basic foreign 

language skills or specific language skills needed to perform military 

tasks.

We suggested that the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for 

Personnel and Readiness and the military services designate 

organizational responsibility and a supporting process to inventory and 

evaluate existing language and culture products and plans for additional 

investments, eliminate any unnecessary overlap and duplication, and 

adjust resources accordingly, as well as take steps to develop and 

contract for new products that can be used by more than one military 

service. DOD agreed that departmentwide coordination efforts could be 

improved and noted that our analysis would be useful in targeting specific 

areas for improvement.

• Federal facility risk assessments: Federal facilities continue to be 

vulnerable to terrorist attacks and other acts of violence, as evidenced by 

the 2010 attacks on the IRS building in Austin, Texas, and the federal 

courthouse in Las Vegas, Nevada, which resulted in loss of life. DHS’s 

Federal Protective Service (FPS) is the primary federal agency 

responsible for providing physical security and law enforcement 

services—including conducting risk assessments—for the approximately 

9,000 federal facilities under the control and custody of the General 

Services Administration. We found that agencies are making duplicate 

payments for facility risk assessments by completing their own 

assessments, while also paying DHS for assessments that the 

department is not performing.

We reported in June 2008 and also have recently found that multiple 

federal agencies are expending additional resources to assess their own 

facilities; although, according to an FPS official, the agency received $236 

million from federal agencies for risk assessments and other security 
 

Page 23 GAO-12-449T 

services in fiscal year 2011.18

FPS’s planned risk assessment tool is intended to provide FPS with the 

capability to assess risks at federal facilities based on threat, vulnerability, 

and consequence; and track countermeasures to mitigate those risks, but 

it is unclear if the tool will help minimize duplication. According to an 

official, FPS planned to use its Risk Assessment and Management 

Program to complete assessments of about 700 federal facilities in fiscal 

year 2010 and 2,500 facilities in fiscal year 2011. However, as we 

reported in July 2011, FPS experienced cost overruns, schedule delays, 

and operational issues with developing this program and as a result the 

agency could not use it to complete risk assessments.

For example, an IRS official stated that IRS 

completed risk assessments based on concerns about risks unique to its 

mission for approximately 65 facilities that it also paid FPS to assess. 

Additionally, Environmental Protection Agency officials said that the 

agency has conducted its own assessments based on concerns with the 

quality and thoroughness of FPS’s assessments. These assessments are 

conducted by teams of contractors and agency employees, cost an 

estimated $6,000, and can take a few days to a week to complete.

19

We identified several steps that DHS could take to address duplication in 

FPS’s risk assessments. For example, in July 2011 we recommended 

that DHS develop interim solutions for completing risk assessments while 

addressing challenges with the Risk Assessment and Management 

Program. In addition, in February 2012, we suggested DHS work with 

federal agencies to determine their reasons for duplicating the activities 

included in FPS’s risk assessments and identify measures to reduce this 

duplication. DHS agreed with our July 2011 recommendation and has 

begun taking action to address it, but did not comment on the action we 

identified in February 2012.

We found that 

since November 2009, the agency has only completed four risk 

assessments using its Risk Assessment and Management Program.

 

18GAO, Homeland Security: The Federal Protective Service Faces Several Challenges 

That Hamper Its Ability to Protect Federal Facilities, GAO-08-683 (Washington, D.C.: June

11, 2008).

19GAO, Federal Protective Service: Actions Needed to Resolve Delays and Inadequate 

Oversight Issues with FPS’s Risk Assessment and Management Program, GAO-11-705R

(Washington, D.C.: July 15, 2011).
 

Page 24 GAO-12-449T 

Our 2012 annual report also summarized 19 areas—beyond those 

directly related to duplication, overlap, or fragmentation—describing other 

opportunities for agencies or Congress to consider taking action that 

could either reduce the cost of government operations or enhance 

revenue collection for the Treasury. These cost saving and revenueenhancing opportunities also span a wide range of federal government 

agencies and mission areas (see table 2).

Table 2: Cost-Saving or Revenue-Enhancing Opportunities Identified

Mission Areas identified

Defense 33. Air Force Food Service: The Air Force has opportunities to achieve millions of dollars in cost savings 

annually by reviewing and renegotiating food service contracts, where appropriate, to better align with the 

needs of installations. 

34. Defense Headquarters: The Department of Defense should review and identify further opportunities for 

consolidating or reducing the size of headquarters organizations. 

35. Defense Real Property: Ensuring the receipt of fair market value for leasing underused real property and 

monitoring administrative costs could help the military services’ enhanced use lease programs realize 

intended financial benefits. 

36. Military Health Care Costs: To help achieve significant projected cost savings and other performance 

goals, DOD needs to complete, implement, and monitor detailed plans for each of its approved health care 

initiatives. 

37. Overseas Defense Posture: The Department of Defense could reduce costs of its Pacific region presence 

by developing comprehensive cost information and re-examining alternatives to planned initiatives. 

38. Navy’s Information Technology Enterprise Network: Better informed decisions are needed to ensure a 

more cost-effective acquisition approach for the Navy’s Next Generation Enterprise Network. 

Economic 

development

39. Auto Recovery Office: Unless the Secretary of Labor can demonstrate how the Auto Recovery Office has 

uniquely assisted auto communities, Congress may wish to consider prohibiting the Department of Labor 

from spending any of its appropriations on the Auto Recovery Office and instead require that the department 

direct the funds to other federal programs that provide funding directly to affected communities. 

Energy 40. Excess Uranium Inventories: Marketing the Department of Energy’s excess uranium could provide billions 

in revenue for the government. 

General 

government

41. General Services Administration Schedules Contracts Fee Rates: Re-evaluating fee rates on the 

General Services Administration’s Multiple Award Schedules contracts could result in significant cost 

savings governmentwide.

42. U.S. Currency: Legislation replacing the $1 note with a $1 coin would provide a significant financial benefit 

to the government over time.

43. Federal User Fees: Regularly reviewing federal user fees and charges can help the Congress and federal 

agencies identify opportunities to address inconsistent federal funding approaches and enhance user 

financing, thereby reducing reliance on general fund appropriations.

44. Internal Revenue Service Enforcement Efforts: Enhancing the Internal Revenue Service’s enforcement 

and service capabilities can help reduce the gap between taxes owed and paid by collecting billions in tax 

revenue and facilitating voluntary compliance.

Health 45. Medicare Advantage Payment: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services could achieve billions of 

dollars in additional savings by better adjusting for differences between Medicare Advantage plans and 

traditional Medicare providers in the reporting of beneficiary diagnoses. 
 

Page 25 GAO-12-449T 

Mission Areas identified

46. Medicare and Medicaid Fraud Detection Systems: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services 

needs to ensure widespread use of technology to help detect and recover billions of dollars of improper 

payments of claims and better position itself to determine and measure financial and other benefits of its 

systems. 

Homeland 

security/Law 

enforcement

47. Border Security: Delaying proposed investments for future acquisitions of border surveillance technology 

until the Department of Homeland Security better defines and measures benefits and estimates life-cycle 

costs could help ensure the most effective use of future program funding. 

48. Passenger Aviation Security Fees: Options for adjusting the passenger aviation security fee could further 

offset billions of dollars in civil aviation security costs.

49. Immigration Inspection Fee: The air passenger immigration inspection user fee should be reviewed and 

adjusted to fully recover the cost of the air passenger immigration inspection activities conducted by 

Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and 

Border Protection rather than using general fund appropriations.

International 

affairs

50. Iraq Security Funding: When considering new funding requests to train and equip Iraqi security forces, 

Congress should consider the government of Iraq’s financial resources, which afford it the ability to 

contribute more toward the cost of Iraq’s security. 

Social services 51. Domestic Disaster Assistance: The Federal Emergency Management Agency could reduce the costs to 

the federal government related to major disasters declared by the President by updating the principal 

indicator on which disaster funding decisions are based and better measuring a state’s capacity to respond 

without federal assistance. 

Source: GAO-12-342SP. 

Examples of opportunities for agencies or Congress to consider taking 

action that could either reduce the cost of government operations or 

enhance revenue collections include:

• Air Force food service: According to Air Force officials, most Air Force 

installations have their own individual contracts for food service, with a 

total cost of approximately $150 million per year for all Air Force 

installations. We found that the Air Force has opportunities to reduce its 

overall food service costs by millions of dollars annually by reviewing food 

service contracts and adjusting them, when appropriate, to better meet 

the needs of its installations, including aligning labor needs with the actual 

number of meals served by the dining facilities.

The Air Force recently undertook an initiative to improve food service at 

six pilot installations, with intentions to eventually expand this initiative to 

more Air Force installations. Among other intended outcomes, Air Force 

officials stated that the first group of pilot installations achieved cost 

savings when compared to their previous contracts while also increasing 

hours of operation in the dining facilities and serving an additional 

500,000 meals per year. We compared the estimated amount of food 

service labor at the six pilot installations under prior contracts to the 

projected work schedules under the initiative and found that by adjusting 
 

Page 26 GAO-12-449T 

staffing levels for contractor staff at dining facilities, the contractor 

reduced the total number of labor hours at five of the six pilot installations 

by 53 percent. For example, at one installation, the number of estimated 

labor hours decreased from approximately 2,042 hours per week to 920. 

For the sixth installation where the labor hours did not decrease, the Air 

Force Audit Agency had recently conducted a review that found that the 

number of food service personnel did not align with workload estimates. 

As a result, the Air Force renegotiated its workload estimates and pay 

rates, resulting in savings of approximately $77,000 annually.

During our review, we discussed the potential opportunity for achieving 

additional savings by reviewing staffing levels at other installations 

outside of the initiative with Air Force officials. As a result, the Air Force 

issued a memorandum directing a review of existing food service 

contracts to determine if the contracts meet current mission needs. The 

memorandum indicated that special attention must be given to whether 

the food service contract workload estimates were properly aligned with 

the actual number of meals served. In July 2011, we recommended that 

the Secretary of the Air Force monitor the actions taken in response to 

the direction to review food service contracts, and take actions, as 

appropriate, to ensure that cost-savings measures are implemented.20

• Navy information technology network: In 2007, the Navy established the 

Next Generation Enterprise Network program (NGEN) to replace and 

improve the Navy Marine Corps Intranet. According to the President’s 

fiscal year 2012 budget request, the NGEN program has spent about 

$434 million on work associated with the transition from the Navy Marine 

According to Air Force officials, eight installations have recently reviewed 

and renegotiated their food service contracts for a total savings of over 

$2.5 million per year. The potential exists for other installations that rely 

on contracts to meet their food service needs to achieve similar financial 

benefits. For example, the Air Force has requested that each of its 

installations conduct a 100 percent review of existing food service

contracts to determine if their current contract workload estimates meet 

current mission needs or if the contracts require modification. In addition, 

the Office of the Secretary of Defense planned to share the results of the 

Air Force’s review of its food service labor costs to achieve cost savings 

with the other military services.

 

20GAO, Defense Management: Actions Needed to Improve Management of Air Force’s 

Food Transformation Initiative, GAO-11-676 (Washington, D.C.: July 26, 2011).
 

Page 27 GAO-12-449T 

Corps Intranet. The Navy estimated that NGEN would cost approximately 

$50 billion to develop, operate, and maintain through fiscal year 2025. We 

found that better informed decisions were needed to ensure a more costeffective acquisition approach for the Navy’s NGEN program.

We reported in March 2011 that the Navy selected an approach that was 

not considered as part of its analysis of alternatives and that it estimated 

would cost at least $4.7 billion more than any of the four assessed 

alternatives.21

To address these weaknesses, we recommended in March 2011 that the 

Navy limit further investment in NGEN until it conducts an immediate 

interim review to reconsider the selected acquisition approach. We also 

identified an additional action that the Navy could take to facilitate 

implementation of the approach resulting from this review by ensuring 

that the NGEN schedule reflects key schedule estimating practices and 

future program reviews and decisions fully reflect the program’s 

performance and exposure to risk. DOD agreed with our recommendation 

to ensure that future NGEN acquisition reviews and decisions fully reflect 

the state of the program’s performance and its exposure to risks. The 

department did not agree with our recommendation to reconsider its 

acquisition approach; however, the Navy is currently in the process of 

reviewing and making changes to the NGEN acquisition strategy. We are 

undertaking work that will assess the extent to which the Navy has 

conducted its interim review to reconsider its acquisition approach and 

evaluate the revised strategy.

In addition, we reported that the Navy’s schedule for NGEN 

also did not provide a reliable basis for program execution because it did 

not adequately satisfy key schedule estimating best practices, such as 

establishing the critical path (the sequence of activities that, if delayed, 

impacts the planned completion date of the project) and assigning 

resources to all work activities. We also found that the Navy’s acquisition 

decisions were not always performance- or risk-based. In particular, 

senior executives approved the NGEN program’s continuing progress in 

the face of known performance shortfalls and risks.

• DOD health care costs: DOD spends billions of dollars annually on its 

worldwide healthcare system. Currently, health care costs constitute nearly 

 

21GAO, Information Technology: Better Informed Decision Making Needed on Navy’s Next 

Generation Enterprise Network Acquisition, GAO-11-150 (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 11, 

2011).
 

Page 28 GAO-12-449T 

10 percent of DOD’s baseline budget request. For its fiscal year 2012 

budget, according to DOD documentation, DOD received $52.7 billion22 to 

provide health care to approximately 9.6 million active duty 

servicemembers, reservists, retirees, and their dependents. DOD 

recognizes that it must address the rate at which health care costs are 

rising and has stated that it intends to continue to develop health care 

initiatives that will improve the quality and standard of care, while reducing 

growth in overall costs.23

DOD’s initiatives consist primarily of changes to clinical and business 

practices in areas ranging from primary care to psychological health to 

purchased care reimbursement practices. Partly in response to our 

ongoing work assessing DOD’s management of its initiatives, the 

department has taken some initial steps toward managing their 

implementation by developing a number of high-level, non-monetary 

metrics and corresponding goals for each strategic initiative, and other 

management tools, such as implementation plans that will include key 

elements such as investment costs and savings estimates. However, 

DOD currently has completed only one implementation plan, which 

contains the one available cost savings estimate among all the initiatives. 

Without completing its plans and incorporating elements such as problem 

definitions, resources needed, goals, performance measures, and cost 

estimates into them, DOD will not be fully aware if these initiatives are 

achieving projected cost savings and other performance goals.

Our ongoing work has found that DOD has 

identified 11 initiatives intended to slow the rise in its health care costs, but 

it has not fully applied results-oriented management practices to its efforts 

or an overall monitoring process, which limits its effectiveness in 

implementing these initiatives and achieving related cost savings goals.

In addition, DOD has not completed the implementation of an overall 

monitoring process across its portfolio of initiatives for overseeing the 

initiatives’ progress or identified accountable officials and their roles and 

responsibilities for all of its initiatives. DOD’s 2007 Task Force on the 

Future of Military Health Care noted that the current Military Health 

 

22DOD’s fiscal year 2012 budget of $52.7 billion for its Unified Medical Budget includes 

$32.5 billion for the Defense Health Program, $8.3 billion for military personnel, $1.1 billion 

for military construction, and $10.8 billion for the Medicare Eligible Retiree Health Care 

Fund. The total excludes overseas contingency operations funds and other transfers. 

23DOD, Quadrennial Defense Review Report, February 2010.
 

Page 29 GAO-12-449T 

System does not function as a fully integrated health care system.24

In order to enhance its efforts to manage rising health care costs and 

demonstrate sustained leadership commitment for achieving the 

performance goals of the Military Health System’s strategic initiatives, we 

plan to recommend as part of our ongoing work that DOD complete and 

fully implement detailed implementation plans for each of the approved 

health care initiatives in a manner consistent with results-oriented 

management practices, such as the inclusion of upfront investment costs 

and cost savings estimates; and complete the implementation of an 

overall monitoring process across its portfolio of initiatives for overseeing 

the initiatives’ progress and identifying accountable officials and their 

roles and responsibilities for all of its initiatives. We believe that DOD may 

realize projected cost savings and other performance goals by taking 

these actions to help ensure the successful implementation of its cost 

savings initiatives. Given that DOD identified these initiatives as steps to 

slow the rapidly growing costs of its medical program, if implemented 

these initiatives could potentially save DOD millions of dollars. DOD 

generally agreed with our planned recommendations.

For 

example, while the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs 

controls the Defense Health Program budget, the services directly 

supervise their medical personnel and manage their military treatment 

facilities. Therefore, as Military Health System leaders develop and 

implement their plans to control rising health care costs, they will need to 

work across multiple authorities and areas of responsibility. Until DOD 

fully implements a military-wide mechanism to monitor progress and 

identify accountable officials, including their roles and responsibilities 

across its portfolio of initiatives, DOD may be hindered in its ability to 

achieve a more cost-efficient military health system.

• Excess uranium inventories: DOE maintains large inventories of depleted 

and natural uranium that it no longer requires for nuclear weapons or fuel 

for naval nuclear propulsion reactors. We reported in March and April 

2008 and again in June 2011 that under certain conditions, the federal 

 

24Defense Health Board, Task Force on the Future of Military Health Care, December 

2007.
 

Page 30 GAO-12-449T 

government could generate billions of dollars by marketing inventories of 

excess uranium to commercial power plants to use in their reactors.25

Specifically, we identified options that DOE could take to market the 

excess uranium inventories for commercial use. For example, DOE could 

contract to re-enrich inventories of depleted uranium hexafluoride (a byproduct of the uranium enrichment process), consisting of hundreds of 

thousands of metric tons of material that are stored at DOE’s uranium 

enrichment plants. Although DOE would have to pay for processing, the 

resulting re-enriched uranium could be potentially sold if the sales price of 

the uranium exceeded processing costs. DOE could also pursue an 

option of selling the depleted uranium inventory “as-is”. This approach 

would require DOE to obtain the appropriate statutory authority to sell 

depleted uranium in its current unprocessed form. Firms such as nuclear 

power utilities and enrichment companies might find it cost effective to 

purchase the uranium and re-enrich it as a source of nuclear fuel.

If executed in accordance with federal law, DOE sales of natural uranium 

could generate additional revenue for the government. Natural uranium 

on its own cannot fuel nuclear reactors and weapons. Rather, it is 

shipped to a conversion facility, where it is converted for the enrichment 

process. We reported in September 2011 that in 7 transactions executed 

since 2009 DOE has, in effect, sold nearly 1,900 metric tons of natural 

uranium into the market, using a contractor as a sales agent, to fund 

environmental cleanup services.26

 

25See GAO, Nuclear Material: DOE Has Several Potential Options for Dealing with 

Depleted Uranium Tails, Each of Which Could Benefit the Government, 

DOE characterized these sales as 

barter transactions—exchanges of services (environmental cleanup work) 

for materials (uranium). While DOE received no cash directly from the 

transactions, it allowed its contractor to keep cash from the sales, which 

DOE would otherwise have owed to the United States Treasury. Because 

federal law requires an official or agent of the government receiving 

money for the government from any source to deposit the money in the 

GAO-08-606R

(Washington, D.C.: Mar. 31, 2008); Nuclear Material: Several Potential Options for 

Dealing with DOE’s Depleted Uranium Tails Could Benefit the Government, GAO-08-613T

(Washington, D.C.: Apr. 3, 2008); and Nuclear Material: DOE’s Depleted Uranium Tails 

Could Be a Source of Revenue for the Government, GAO-11-752T (Washington, D.C.: 

June 13, 2011).

26GAO, Excess Uranium Inventories: Clarifying DOE’s Disposition Options Could Help 

Avoid Further Legal Violations, GAO-11-846 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 26, 2011).
 

Page 31 GAO-12-449T 

Treasury, we found that these transactions violated the miscellaneous 

receipts statute.

We have reported that congressional action may be needed to overcome 

legal obstacles to the pursuit of certain options for the sale of depleted 

and natural uranium. Specifically, our March 2008 report suggested that 

Congress may wish to explicitly provide direction about whether and how 

DOE may sell or transfer depleted uranium in its current form. Our 

September 2011 report suggested that if Congress sees merit in using 

the proceeds from the barter, transfer, or sale of federal uranium assets 

to pay for environmental cleanup work, it could consider providing DOE 

with explicit authority to barter excess uranium and to retain the proceeds 

from these transactions. We also suggested that Congress could direct 

DOE to sell uranium for cash and make those proceeds available by 

appropriation for environmental cleanup work.

Congress has taken some actions in response to our work. For example, 

the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2012, among other things, requires 

the Secretary of Energy to provide congressional appropriations 

committees with information on the transfer, sale, barter, distribution, or 

other provision of uranium in any form and an estimate of the uranium 

value along with the expected recipient of the material. The Consolidated 

Appropriations Act, 2012 also requires the Secretary to submit a report 

evaluating the economic feasibility of re-enriching depleted uranium.

• Medicare and Medicaid fraud detection systems: We have designated 

Medicare and Medicaid as high-risk programs, in part due to their 

susceptibility to improper payments—estimated to be about $65 billion in 

fiscal year 2011. To integrate data about all types of Medicare and 

Medicaid claims and improve its ability to detect fraud, waste, and abuse 

in these programs, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services 

(CMS) initiated two information technology programs—the Integrated 

Data Repository, which is intended to provide a centralized repository of 

claims data for all Medicare and Medicaid programs, and One Program 

Integrity, a set of tools that enables CMS contractors and staff to access 

and analyze data retrieved from the repository. According to CMS 

officials, the systems are expected to provide financial benefits of more 

than $21 billion by the end of fiscal year 2015. We found that CMS needs 

to ensure widespread use of technology to help detect and recover 

billions of dollars of improper payments of claims and better position itself 

to determine and measure financial and other benefits of its systems.
 

Page 32 GAO-12-449T 

We reported in June 2011 that CMS had developed and begun using both 

systems, but was not yet positioned to identify, measure, or track benefits 

realized from these programs.27

In addition, CMS had not trained its broad community of analysts to use 

the One Program Integrity system because of delays introduced by a 

redesign of initial training plans that were found to be insufficient. 

Specifically, program officials planned for 639 analysts to be using the 

system by the end of fiscal year 2010; however only 41—less than 7 

percent—were actively using it as of October 2010. Because of these 

delays, the initial use of the system was limited to a small number of CMS 

staff and contractors. In updating the status of the training efforts in 

November 2011, although we did not validate these data, CMS officials 

reported that a total of 215 program integrity analysts had been trained 

and were using the system. However, program officials had not finalized 

plans and schedules for training all intended users.

For example, although in use since 2006, 

the Integrated Data Repository did not have Medicaid claims data or 

information from other CMS systems that store and process data related 

to the entry, correction, and adjustment of claims due to funding and other 

technical issues. These data are needed to help analysts prevent 

improper payments. Program officials told us that they had begun 

incorporating these data in September 2011 and planned to make them 

available to program integrity analysts in spring 2012. Regarding 

Medicaid data, agency officials stated that they did not account for 

difficulties associated with integrating data from the various types and 

formats of data stored in disparate state systems or develop reliable 

schedules for its efforts to incorporate these data. In particular, program 

officials did not consider certain risks and obstacles, such as technical 

challenges, as they developed schedules for implementing the Integrated 

Data Repository. Lacking reliable schedules, CMS may face additional 

delays in making available all the data that are needed to support 

enhanced program integrity efforts.

In June 2011, we recommended that CMS take a number of actions to 

help ensure the program’s success toward achieving the billions of dollars 

in financial benefits that program integrity officials projected, such as 

 

27GAO, Fraud Detection Systems: Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Needs to 

Ensure More Widespread Use, GAO-11-475 (Washington, D.C.: June 30, 2011).
 

Page 33 GAO-12-449T 

finalizing plans and reliable schedules for incorporating additional data 

into the Integrated Data Repository and conducting training for all 

analysts who are intended to use the One Program Integrity system. CMS 

agreed with our recommendations and identified steps the agency is 

taking to implement them. We plan to conduct additional work to 

determine whether CMS has addressed our recommendations and 

identified financial benefits and progress toward meeting agency goals 

resulting from the implementation of its fraud detection systems.

• Medicare Advantage: In fiscal year 2010, the federal government spent 

about $113 billion on the Medicare Advantage program, a private plan 

alternative to the original Medicare program that covers about a quarter of 

Medicare beneficiaries. CMS, the agency that administers Medicare, 

adjusts payments to Medicare Advantage plans based on the health 

status of each plan’s enrollees. The agency could achieve billions of 

dollars in additional savings by better adjusting for differences between 

Medicare Advantage plans and traditional Medicare providers in the 

reporting of beneficiary diagnoses.

CMS calculates a risk score for every beneficiary—a relative measure of 

health status—which is based on a beneficiary’s demographic 

characteristics, such as age and gender, and major medical conditions. 

To obtain information on the medical conditions of beneficiaries in 

traditional Medicare, CMS generally analyzes diagnoses—numerically 

coded by providers into Medicare defined categories—on the claims that 

providers submit for payment. For beneficiaries enrolled in Medicare 

Advantage plans, which do not submit claims, CMS requires plans to 

submit diagnostic codes for each beneficiary. Analysis has shown that 

risk scores are higher for Medicare Advantage beneficiaries than for 

beneficiaries in traditional Medicare with the same characteristics.

Medicare Advantage plans have a financial incentive to ensure that all 

relevant diagnoses are coded, as this can increase beneficiaries’ risk 

scores and, ultimately, payments to the plans. Many traditional Medicare 

providers are paid for services rendered, and providers have less 

incentive to code all relevant diagnoses. Policymakers have expressed 

concern that risk scores for Medicare Advantage beneficiaries have 

grown at a faster rate than those for traditional Medicare, in part because 

of differences in coding diagnoses. In 2005, Congress directed CMS to 

analyze and adjust risk scores for differences in coding practices, and in 

2010, CMS estimated that 3.41 percent of Medicare Advantage risk 

scores were due to differences in diagnostic coding practices. It reduced 

the scores by an equal percentage, thereby saving $2.7 billion.
 

Page 34 GAO-12-449T 

We identified shortcomings in CMS’s method for adjusting Medicare 

Advantage payments to reflect differences in diagnostic coding practices 

between Medicare Advantage and traditional Medicare. CMS did not use 

the most recent risk score data for its estimates; account for the 

increasing annual impact of coding differences over time; or account for 

beneficiary characteristics beyond differences in age and mortality 

between the Medicare Advantage and traditional Medicare populations, 

such as sex, Medicaid enrollment status, and beneficiary residential 

location. We estimated that a revised methodology that addressed these 

shortcomings could have saved Medicare between $1.2 billion and $3.1 

billion in 2010 in addition to the $2.7 billion in savings that CMS’s 3.41 

percent adjustment produced. We expect that savings in future years will 

be greater. In January 2012, we recommended that CMS take action to 

help ensure appropriate payments to Medicare Advantage plans and 

improve the accuracy of the adjustment made for differences in coding 

practices over time.28

• User fees: User fees assign part or all of the costs of federal programs 

and activities—the cost of providing a benefit that is above and beyond 

what is normally available to the general public—to readily identifiable 

users of those programs and activities. Regularly reviewing federal user 

fees and charges can help the Congress and federal agencies identify 

opportunities to address inconsistent federal funding approaches and 

enhance user financing, thereby reducing reliance on general fund 

appropriations.

The Department of Health and Human Services 

characterized our results as similar to those obtained by CMS.

The Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990 (CFO Act) requires agencies to 

biennially review their fees and to recommend fee adjustments, as 

appropriate; additionally, OMB Circulars No. A-11 and No. A-25 direct 

agencies to discuss the results of these reviews and any resulting 

proposals, such as adjustments to fee rates, in the CFO annual report 

required by the CFO Act.29

 

28GAO, Medicare Advantage: CMS Should Improve the Accuracy of Risk Score 

Adjustments for Diagnostic Coding Practices,

In 2011, we surveyed the 24 agencies 

covered by the CFO Act on their review of user fees. 21 of the 23 

agencies that responded reported charging more than 3,600 fees and 

GAO-12-51 (Washington, D.C.: 

Jan. 12, 2012).

29Pub. L. No. 101-576 (1990).
 

Page 35 GAO-12-449T 

collecting nearly $64 billion in fiscal year 2010, but agency responses 

indicated varying levels of adherence to the biennial review and reporting 

requirements. The survey responses indicated that for most fees, 

agencies (1) had not discussed fee review results in annual reports, and 

(2) had not reviewed the fees and were inconsistent in their ability to 

provide fee review documentation.

We found specific examples where a comprehensive review of user fees 

could lead to cost savings or enhanced revenues for the government. For 

example, reviewing and adjusting as needed the air passenger 

immigration inspection user fee to fully recover the cost of the air 

passenger immigration inspection activities could reduce general fund 

appropriations for those activities. International air passengers arriving in 

the United States are subject to an immigration inspection to ensure that 

they have legal entry and immigration documents. International air 

passengers pay the immigration inspection fee when they purchase their 

airline tickets, but the rate has not been adjusted since fiscal year 2002. 

In recent years, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. 

Customs and Border Protection, the agencies responsible for conducting 

inspection activities, have relied on general fund appropriations to help 

fund activities for which these agencies have statutory authority to fund 

with user fees. In fiscal year 2010, this amounted to over $120 million for 

the U.S. Customs and Border Protection alone. In September 2007, we 

recommended that the Secretary of Homeland Security report 

immigration inspection activity costs to ensure fees are divided between 

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and 

Border Protection according to their respective immigration inspection 

activity costs and to develop a legislative proposal to adjust the air 

passenger immigration inspection fee if it was found to not recover the 

costs of inspection activities. DHS agreed with our recommendations, but 

some of the recommendations remain unimplemented.30

 

30GAO, Federal User Fees: Key Aspects of International Air Passenger Inspection Fees 

Should Be Addressed Regardless of Whether Fees Are Consolidated, 

In February 

2012, we suggested that Congress may wish to require the Secretary of 

Homeland Security to fully implement these recommendations which 

would serve to help to better align air passenger immigration inspection 

fee revenue with the costs of providing these services and achieve cost 

savings by reducing the reliance on general fund appropriations.

GAO-07-1131

(Washington, D.C.: Sept. 24, 2007).
 

Page 36 GAO-12-449T 

Similarly, we identified options for adjusting the passenger aviation 

security fee, a uniform fee on passengers of U.S. and foreign air carriers 

originating at airports in the United States. Passenger aviation security 

fees collected offset amounts appropriated to the Transportation Security 

Administration for aviation security. In recent years, several options have 

been considered for increasing the passenger aviation security fee. 

However, the fee has not been increased since it was imposed in 

February 2002. We suggested that Congress may wish to consider 

increasing the passenger security fee. Such an increase could further 

offset the need for appropriated funds to support civil aviation security 

costs from about $2 billion to $10 billion over 5 years.

• Tax gap: The financing of the federal government depends largely on the 

IRS’s ability to collect federal taxes every year, which totaled $2.34 trillion 

in 2010. For the most part, taxpayers voluntarily report and pay their 

taxes on time. However the size and persistence of the tax gap—

estimated in 2012 for the 2006 tax year to be a $385 billion difference 

between the taxes owed and taxes IRS ultimately collected for that year—

highlight the need to make progress in improving compliance by those 

taxpayers who do not voluntarily pay what they owe. Given that tax 

noncompliance ranges from simple math errors to willful tax evasion, no 

single approach is likely to fully and cost-effectively address the tax gap. 

A multifaceted approach to improving compliance that includes enhancing 

IRS’s enforcement and service capabilities can help reduce the tax gap.

One approach we have identified is the expansion of third-party 

information reporting, which improves taxpayer compliance and enhances 

IRS’s enforcement capabilities. The tax gap is due predominantly to 

taxpayer underreporting and underpayment of taxes owed. At the same 

time, taxpayers are much more likely to report their income accurately 

when the income is also reported to IRS by a third party. By matching 

information received from third-party payers with what payees report on 

their tax returns, IRS can detect income underreporting, including the 

failure to file a tax return. Expanding information reporting to cover 

payments for services by all owners of rental real estate and to cover 

payments to corporations for services would improve payee compliance. 

The Joint Committee on Taxation estimated revenue increases of $5.9 

billion over a 10-year period for just these two expansions.
 

Page 37 GAO-12-449T 

In our 2011 annual report, we suggested a wide range of actions for the 

Congress and the executive branch to consider such as developing 

strategies to better coordinate fragmented efforts, implementing executive 

initiatives to improve oversight and evaluation of overlapping programs, 

considering enactment of legislation to facilitate revenue collection and 

examining opportunities to eliminate potential duplication through 

streamlining, collocating, or consolidating efforts or administrative services.

Our assessment of progress made as of February 10, 2012, found that 4 

(or 5 percent) of the 81 areas GAO identified were addressed; 60 (or 74 

percent) were partially addressed; and 17 (or 21 percent) were not 

addressed. Appendix I presents GAO’s assessment of the overall progress 

made in each area. We applied the following criteria in making these 

overall assessments for the 81 areas. We determined that an area was:

• “addressed” if all actions needed in that area were addressed;

• “partially addressed” if at least one action needed in that area showed 

some progress toward implementation, but not all actions were 

addressed; and

• “not addressed” if none of the actions in that area were addressed.

As of February 10, 2012, the majority of 176 actions needed within the 81 

areas identified by GAO have been partially addressed. Specifically, 23 

(or 13 percent) were addressed;

31

 

31In one instance, the legislative action needed required Congress to consider several 

options, including allowing a tax credit to expire. Thus, because Congress did not renew 

the provision, the action was considered addressed.

99 (or 56 percent) were partially 

addressed; 54 (or 31 percent) were not addressed. We applied the 

following criteria in making these assessments.

Status of Actions 

Taken to Address the 

Areas Identified in 

2011 Annual Report
 

Page 38 GAO-12-449T 

For legislative branch actions:

• “addressed,” means relevant legislation is enacted and addresses all 

aspects of the action needed;

32

• “partially addressed,” means a relevant bill has passed a committee, 

the House or Senate, or relevant legislation has been enacted, but 

only addressed part of the action needed; and

• “not addressed,” means a bill may have been introduced, but did not 

pass out of a committee, or no relevant legislation has been 

introduced.

For executive branch actions:

• “addressed,” means implementation of the action needed has been 

completed.

• “partially addressed,” means the action needed is in development; 

started but not yet completed; and

• “not addressed,” means the administration and/or agencies have 

made minimal or no progress toward implementing the action needed.

In addition to the actions reported above, Congress has held a number of 

hearings and OMB has provided guidance to executive branch agencies 

on areas that we identified that could benefit from increased attention and 

ongoing oversight. Since the issuance of our March 2011 report, we have 

testified numerous times on our first annual report and on specific issues 

highlighted in the report.

 

32In situations where the action we identified as needed suggested that Congress should 

let a provision expire, we classified it as “addressed” if Congress permitted such expiration 

to happen.
 

Page 39 GAO-12-449T 

Many federal efforts, including those related to protecting food and 

agriculture, providing homeland security, and ensuring a well trained and 

educated workforce, transcend more than one agency, yet agencies face 

a range of challenges and barriers when they attempt to work 

collaboratively. Both Congress and the executive branch have recognized 

this, and in January 2011, the GPRA Modernization Act of 2010 (the Act) 

was enacted, updating the almost two-decades-old Government 

Performance and Results Act. The Act establishes a new framework 

aimed at taking a more crosscutting and integrated approach to focusing 

on results and improving government performance. Effective 

implementation of the Act could play an important role in clarifying desired 

outcomes, addressing program performance spanning multiple 

organizations, and facilitating future actions to reduce unnecessary 

duplication, overlap, and fragmentation.

The Act requires OMB to coordinate with agencies to establish outcomeoriented goals covering a limited number of crosscutting policy areas as 

well as goals to improve management across the federal government, 

and to develop a governmentwide performance plan for making progress 

toward achieving those goals. The performance plan is to, among other 

things, identify the agencies and federal activities—including spending 

programs, tax expenditures, and regulations—that contribute to each 

goal, and establish performance indicators to measure overall progress 

toward these goals as well as the individual contribution of the underlying 

agencies and federal activities. The President’s budget for fiscal year 

2013 includes 14 such crosscutting goals. Aspects of several of these 

goals—including Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education, 

Entrepreneurship and Small Businesses, Job Training, Cybersecurity, 

Information Technology Management, Procurement and Acquisition 

Management, and Real Property Management—are discussed in our 

2011 or 2012 annual report. The Act also requires similar information at 

the agency level. Each agency is to identify the various federal 

organizations and activities—both within and external to the agency—that 

contribute to its goals, and describe how the agency is working with other 

agencies to achieve its goals as well as any relevant crosscutting goals. 

OMB officials stated that their approach to responding to this requirement 

will address fragmentation among federal programs.

GPRA Modernization 

Act Provides 

Opportunities to 

Address Duplication, 

Overlap, and 

Fragmentation
 

Page 40 GAO-12-449T 

The areas identified in our annual reports are not intended to represent 

the full universe of duplication, overlap, or fragmentation within the federal 

government, but we have conducted a systematic examination across the 

federal government to ensure that we have identified major instances of 

potential duplication, overlap, and fragmentation governmentwide by the 

time we issue our third annual report in 2013.

Our examination involved a multiphased approach. First, to identify 

potential areas of overlap, we examined the major budget functions and 

sub-functions of the federal government as identified by OMB.33

Identifying, preventing, and addressing unnecessary duplication, overlap, 

and fragmentation within the federal government is clearly challenging. 

These are difficult issues to address because they may require agencies 

and Congress to re-examine within and across various mission areas the 

fundamental structure, operation, funding, and performance of a number 

of long-standing federal programs or activities with entrenched 

constituencies. Implementing the Act—such as its emphasis on 

establishing priority outcome-oriented goals, including those covering 

crosscutting policy areas—could play an important role in clarifying 

desired outcomes, addressing program performance spanning multiple 

organizations, and facilitating future actions to reduce unnecessary 

This was 

particularly helpful in identifying issue areas involving multiple 

government agencies. Second, our subject matter experts examined key 

missions and functions of federal agencies—or organizations within large 

agencies—using key agency documents, such as strategic plans, agency 

organizational charts, and mission and function documents. This further 

enabled us to identify areas where multiple agencies have similar goals, 

or where multiple organizations within federal agencies are involved in 

similar activities. Next, we canvassed a wide range of published 

sources—such as congressional hearings and reports by the 

Congressional Budget Office, OMB, various government audit agencies, 

and private think tanks—that addressed potential issues of duplication, 

overlap, and fragmentation. We have work under way or planned in the 

coming year to evaluate major instances of duplication, overlap, or 

fragmentation that we have not yet covered in our first two annual reports.

 

33The federal budget is divided into 18 broad areas (functions). Each function, in turn, is 

divided into basic groupings of programs, called sub-functions. 

GAO’s Approach to 

Identifying Potential 

Areas for 

Examination
 

Page 41 GAO-12-449T 

duplication, overlap, and fragmentation. Continued oversight by Congress 

and OMB will also be critical.

In conclusion Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Cummings, and Members 

of the Committee, opportunities exist for the Congress and federal 

agencies to continue to address the identified actions needed in our 2011 

and 2012 annual reports. Collectively, these reports show that, if the 

actions are implemented, the government could potentially save tens of 

billions of dollars annually. A number of the issues are difficult to address 

and implementing many of the actions identified will take time and 

sustained leadership. This concludes my prepared statement. I would be 

pleased to answer any questions you may have. Thank you.

For further information on this testimony or our February 28, 2012, 

reports, please contact Janet St. Laurent, Managing Director, Defense 

Capabilities and Management, who may be reached at (202) 512-4300, 

or StLaurentJ@gao.gov; and Zina Merritt, Director, Defense Capabilities 

and Management, who may be reached at (202) 512-4300, or 

MerrittZ@gao.gov. Specific questions about individual issues may be 

directed to the area contact listed at the end of each area summary in the 

reports. Contact points for our Congressional Relations and Public Affairs 

offices may be found on the last page of this statement.
Appendix I: Overall Progress Made in 

Each of the 81 Areas Identified in GAO’s 2011 

Annual Report 

Page 42 GAO-12-449T 

This appendix presents a summary of GAO’s assessment of the overall 

progress made in each of the 81 areas that we identified in our March 

2011 report1

Table 3: Overall Progress Made in Each of the GAO Identified Areas of Potential Duplication, Overlap, and Fragmentation, as 

of February 10, 2012

in which the Congress and the executive branch could take 

actions to reduce or eliminate potential duplication, overlap, and 

fragmentation or achieve other potential financial benefits. For each of the 

34 areas related to duplication, overlap, or fragmentation that GAO 

identified, table 3 presents GAO’s assessment of the overall progress 

made in implementing the actions needed in that area. For each of the 47 

areas where GAO identified cost saving or revenue enhancement 

opportunities, table 4 presents GAO’s assessment of the overall progress 

made in implementing the actions GAO identified.

Mission Areas identified Assessment

Agriculture 1. Fragmented food safety system has caused inconsistent oversight, ineffective coordination, 

and inefficient use of resources ◐

Defense

2. Realigning DOD’s military medical command structures and consolidating common functions 

could increase efficiency and result in projected savings ranging from $281 million to $460 

million annually ◐

3. Opportunities exist for consolidation and increased efficiencies to maximize response to 

warfighter urgent needs ◐

4. Opportunities exist to avoid unnecessary redundancies and improve the coordination of 

counter-improvised explosive device efforts ◐

5. Opportunities exist to avoid unnecessary redundancies and maximize the efficient use of 

intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities ◐

6. A departmentwide acquisition strategy could reduce DOD’s risk of costly duplication in 

purchasing Tactical Wheeled Vehicles ◐

7. Improved joint oversight of DOD’s prepositioning programs for equipment and supplies may 

reduce unnecessary duplication ◐

8. DOD’s business systems modernization: opportunities exist for optimizing business operations 

and systems ◐

 

1

GAO, Opportunities to Reduce Potential Duplication in Government Programs, Save Tax 

Dollars, and Enhance Revenue, GAO-11-318SP (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 1, 2011). 

Appendix I: Overall Progress Made in 

Each of the 81 Areas Identified in GAO’s 2011 

Annual Report
Appendix I: Overall Progress Made in 

Each of the 81 Areas Identified in GAO’s 2011 

Annual Report 

Page 43 GAO-12-449T 

Mission Areas identified Assessment

Economic 

development 9. The efficiency and effectiveness of fragmented economic development programs are unclear ◐

10. The federal approach to surface transportation is fragmented, lacks clear goals, and is not 

accountable for results ◐

11. Fragmented federal efforts to meet water needs in the U.S.-Mexico border region have 

resulted in an administrative burden, redundant activities, and an overall inefficient use of 

resources ○

Energy 12. Resolving conflicting requirements could more effectively achieve federal fleet energy goals ○

13. Addressing duplicative federal efforts directed at increasing domestic ethanol production

could reduce revenue losses by more than $5.7 billion annually ●

General 

government 14. Enterprise architectures: key mechanisms for identifying potential overlap and duplication ◐

15. Consolidating federal data centers provides opportunity to improve government efficiency ◐

16. Collecting improved data on interagency contracting to minimize duplication could help the 

government leverage its vast buying power ◐

17. Periodic reviews could help identify ineffective tax expenditures and redundancies in related 

tax and spending programs, potentially reducing revenue losses by billions of dollars ○

Health 18. Opportunities exist for DOD and VA to jointly modernize their electronic health record 

systems ◐

19. VA and DOD need to control drug costs and increase joint contracting wherever it is costeffective ◐

20. The Department of Health and Human Services needs an overall strategy to better integrate 

nationwide public health information systems ○

Homeland 

security/ Law 

enforcement

21. Strategic oversight mechanisms could help integrate fragmented interagency efforts to defend 

against biological threats ◐

22. DHS oversight could help eliminate potential duplicating efforts of interagency forums in 

securing the northern border ○

23. The Department of Justice plans actions to reduce overlap in explosives investigations, but 

monitoring is needed to ensure successful implementation ●

24. The Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) security assessments on commercial 

trucking companies overlap with those of another agency, but efforts are under way to address 

the overlap ◐
Appendix I: Overall Progress Made in 

Each of the 81 Areas Identified in GAO’s 2011 

Annual Report 

Page 44 GAO-12-449T 

Mission Areas identified Assessment

25. DHS could streamline mechanisms for sharing security-related information with public 

transit agencies to help address overlapping information ◐

26. FEMA needs to improve its oversight of grants and establish a framework for assessing 

capabilities to identify gaps and prioritize investments ◐

International 

affairs

27. Lack of information sharing could create the potential for duplication of efforts between U.S. 

agencies involved in development efforts in Afghanistan ◐

28. Despite restructuring, overlapping roles and functions still exist at the Department of State’s 

Arms Control and Nonproliferation Bureaus ●

Social services 29. Actions needed to reduce administrative overlap among domestic food assistance programs ○

30. Better coordination of federal homelessness programs may minimize fragmentation and 

overlap ◐

31. Further steps needed to improve cost-effectiveness and enhance services for transportationdisadvantaged persons ◐

Training, 

employment, 

and education

32. Multiple employment and training programs: providing information on collocating services and 

consolidating administrative structures could promote efficiencies ◐

33. Teacher quality: proliferation of programs complicates federal efforts to invest dollars effectively ◐

34. Fragmentation of financial literacy efforts makes coordination essential ◐

Legend: 

● = Addressed, meaning all actions needed in that area were addressed.

◐= Partially addressed, meaning at least one action needed in that area showed some 

progress toward implementation, but not all actions were addressed. 

○ = Not addressed, meaning none of the actions needed in that area were addressed.

Source: GAO analysis.

As noted above, table 4 presents GAO’s assessment of the overall 

progress made in addressing the 47 cost-saving and revenue-enhancing 

areas.
Appendix I: Overall Progress Made in 

Each of the 81 Areas Identified in GAO’s 2011 

Annual Report 

Page 45 GAO-12-449T 

Table 4: Overall Progress Made to Address GAO-Identified Cost-Saving and Revenue-Enhancing Areas, as of 

February 10, 2012

Mission Areas identified Assessment

Agriculture 35. Reducing some farm program payments could result in savings from $800 million over 

10 years to up to $5 billion annually ○

Defense

36. DOD should assess costs and benefits of overseas military presence options before 

committing to costly personnel realignments and construction plans, thereby possibly saving 

billions of dollars

◐

37. Total compensation approach is needed to manage significant growth in military personnel 

costs ◐

38. Employing best management practices could help DOD save money on its weapon systems 

acquisition programs ◐

39. More efficient management could limit future costs of DOD’s spare parts inventory ◐

40. More comprehensive and complete cost data can help DOD improve the cost-effectiveness of 

sustaining weapon systems ◐

41. Improved corrosion prevention and control practices could help DOD avoid billions in 

unnecessary costs over time ◐

Economic 

development 42. Revising the essential air service program could improve efficiency ◐

43. Improved design and management of the universal service fund as it expands to support 

broadband could help avoid cost increases for consumers ◐

44. The Corps of Engineers should provide Congress with project-level information on 

unobligated balances ◐

Energy 45. Improved management of federal oil and gas resources could result in approximately $1.8 

billion over 10 yearsa

◐

General 

government 46. Efforts to address governmentwide improper payments could result in significant cost savings ◐

47. Promoting competition for the over $500 billion in federal contracts could potentially save 

billions of dollars over time ◐

48. Applying strategic sourcing best practices throughout the federal procurement system could 

saves billions of dollars annually ◐

49. Adherence to new guidance on award fee contracts could improve agencies’ use of award fees 

to produce savings ◐

50. Agencies could realize cost savings of at least $3 billion by continued disposal of unneeded 

federal real property ◐

51. Improved cost analyses used for making federal facility ownership and leasing decisions 

could save tens of millions of dollars ◐

52. OMB’s IT Dashboard reportedly has already resulted in $3 billion in savings and can further 

help identify opportunities to invest more efficiently in information technology ◐

53. Increasing electronic filing of individual income tax returns could reduce IRS’s processing 

costs and increase revenues by hundreds of millions of dollars ◐

54. Using return on investment information to better target IRS enforcement could reduce the tax 

gap; for example, a 1 percent reduction would increase tax revenues by $3.8 billionb

◐
Appendix I: Overall Progress Made in 

Each of the 81 Areas Identified in GAO’s 2011 

Annual Report 

Page 46 GAO-12-449T 

Mission Areas identified Assessment

55. Better management of tax debt collection may resolve cases faster with lower IRS costs and 

increase debt collected ◐

56. Broadening IRS’s authority to correct simple tax return errors could facilitate correct tax 

payments and help IRS avoid costly, burdensome audits ○

57. Enhancing mortgage interest information reporting could improve tax compliance ○

58. More information on the types and uses of canceled debt could help IRS limit revenue losses of 

forgiven mortgage debt ◐

59. Better information and outreach could help increase revenues by tens or hundreds of millions of 

dollars annually by addressing overstated real estate tax deductions ◐

60. Revisions to content and use of Form 1098-T could help IRS enforce higher education 

requirements and increase revenues ◐

61. Many options could improve the tax compliance of sole proprietors and begin to reduce their 

$68 billion portion of the tax gap ○

62. IRS could find additional businesses not filing tax returns by using third-party data, which 

show such businesses have billions of dollars in sales ◐

63. Congress and IRS can help S corporations and their shareholders be more tax compliant, 

potentially increasing tax revenues by hundreds of millions of dollars each year ◐

64. IRS needs an agencywide approach for addressing tax evasion among the at least 1 million 

networks of businesses and related entities ◐

65. Opportunities exist to improve the targeting of the $6 billion research tax credit and reduce 

forgone revenue ○

66. Converting the new markets tax credit to a grant program may increase program efficiency and 

significantly reduce the $3.8 billion 5-year revenue cost of the program ○

67. Limiting the tax-exempt status of certain governmental bonds could yield revenue ○

68. Adjusting civil tax penalties for inflation potentially could increase revenues by tens of millions 

of dollars per year, not counting any revenues that may result from maintaining the penalties’ 

deterrent effect

◐

69. IRS may be able to systematically identify nonresident aliens reporting unallowed tax 

deductions or credits ●

70. Tracking undisbursed balances in expired grant accounts could facilitate the reallocation of 

scarce resources or the return of funding to the Treasury ○

Health 71. Preventing billions in Medicaid improper payments requires sustained attention and action by 

CMS ◐

72. Federal oversight over Medicaid supplemental payments needs improvement, which could 

lead to substantial cost savings ○

73. Better targeting of Medicare’s claims review could reduce improper payments ◐

74. Potential savings in Medicare’s payment for health care ◐
Appendix I: Overall Progress Made in 

Each of the 81 Areas Identified in GAO’s 2011 

Annual Report 

Page 47 GAO-12-449T 

Mission Areas identified Assessment

Homeland 

security/ Law 

enforcement

75. DHS’s management of acquisitions could be strengthened to reduce cost overruns and 

schedule and performance shortfalls ◐

76. Improvements in managing research and development could help reduce inefficiencies and 

costs for homeland security ◐

77. Validation of TSA’s behavior-based screening program is needed to justify funding or 

expansion ◐

78. More efficient baggage screening systems could result in about $470 million in reduced TSA 

personnel costs over the next 5 years ◐

79. Clarifying availability of certain customs fee collections could produce a one-time savings of 

$640 million ◐

Income 

security

80. Social Security needs data on pensions from noncovered earnings to better enforce offsets 

and ensure benefit fairness, estimated to result in $2.4-$2.9 billion savings over 10 years ○

International 

affairs

81. Congress could pursue several options to improve collection of antidumping and 

countervailing duties. ○

Legend: 

● = Addressed, meaning all actions needed in that area were addressed.

◐= Partially addressed, meaning at least one action needed in that area showed some 

progress toward implementation, but not all actions were addressed. 

○ = Not addressed, meaning none of the actions needed in that area were addressed.

Source: GAO analysis.

a

The Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, updated the anticipated revenues from 

$1.75 billion to $1.8 billion in its fiscal year 2012 budget justification. 

b

The net tax gap was updated in 2012 and estimated to be $385 billion for the 2006 tax year. Thus, a 

1 percent reduction would increase tax revenues by $3.8 billion. 
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