a

GAO

United States General Accounting Office

Report to Congressional Committees

February 2004 OFFICE OF 

COMPLIANCE

Status of Management 

Control Efforts to 

Improve Effectiveness

GAO-04-400
OOC is in the early stages of a concerted and vitally needed effort to improve 

and strengthen management control across the Office and to carry out its 

mission more effectively and efficiently while safeguarding its institutional 

independence. OOC’s success in completing this important effort depends upon 

making significant progress on a number of key management control areas: 

Sharpen focus on results. OOC’s current strategic planning initiative is 

beginning to address the more fundamental question of the Office’s effectiveness 

rather than the Office’s traditional focus on activities and outputs, such as the 

number of cases processed and inspections conducted. OOC’s planning 

initiative can also provide a vehicle for engaging and consulting with key 

congressional and other stakeholders on OOC’s purposes, how those purposes 

will be achieved, how progress will be assessed, and for sustaining feedback on 

what progress is being made and what additional improvement opportunities 

exist. The planning initiative is still very much a work in progress and continued 

efforts are needed in a number of key areas including developing resultsoriented performance measures. 

Ensuring an effective program structure. As OOC shifts its focus from 

outputs and activities to results, it must put in place a more effective program 

structure that includes new ways of doing business. OOC has taken a number of 

actions to administer the CAA, such as managing a dispute resolution process 

and conducting investigations and inspections to ensure compliance with safety 

and health standards. However, OOC is not fully in compliance with the CAA’s 

requirement concerning biennial safety and health inspections of legislative 

branch agency facilities. OOC also needs to expand on recent efforts to develop 

programs that are based on collaboration with legislative branch agencies.

Building effective communication emphasizing outreach and 

coordination. OOC’s congressional and other stakeholders whom we 

interviewed said that OOC recently has used a more collaborative approach 

rather than the “gotcha” approach of the past. On the other hand, several agency 

officials said that current interactions with OOC could be improved. To 

facilitate more effective communications, OOC should establish congressional 

and agency protocols to document agreements between the Congress, legislative 

branch agencies, and OOC on what can be expected as OOC carries out its work.

Creating and sustaining an enhanced management control environment. 

Since its creation, OOC has operated without having any formal performance 

management system for its Executive Director and General Counsel. OOC 

should establish an enhanced management control environment and strengthen 

accountability by requiring performance agreements between the Board and 

both the Executive Director and General Counsel, as well as expanding and 

improving on OOC’s performance management system for all staff. Another 

important challenge concerns the lack of institutional continuity that may occur 

due to statutory term limits on OOC’s leadership positions. To prevent the loss 

of critical organizational knowledge, the Congress should consider changing the 

term limits contained in the CAA. 

The Consolidated Appropriations 

Resolution of 2003 Conference 

Report mandated that GAO review 

the Office of Compliance (OOC), an 

independent legislative branch 

agency created by the Congressional 

Accountability Act of 1995 (CAA). 

OOC, a 15-person office with about 

$2 million in expenditures during 

fiscal year 2003, administers and 

enforces various CAA provisions 

related to fair employment and 

occupational safety and health among 

certain legislative branch agencies. 

OOC’s current Executive Director has

been in place since April 2001 and its 

General Counsel joined the Office in 

June 2003. The mandate directed 

GAO to assess the OOC’s overall 

effectiveness and efficiency and to 

make recommendations, as 

appropriate. 

GAO makes several 

recommendations to strengthen 

OOC’s strategic planning process, 

facilitate communications between 

OOC and its congressional and 

legislative branch stakeholders, and 

build an enhanced control 

management environment within 

OOC. This report also contains 

matters for congressional 

consideration regarding statutory 

changes to the CAA to help maintain 

institutional continuity for OOC. 

In a joint response, OOC’s Board of 

Directors, Executive Director, and 

General Counsel all generally agreed 

with our recommendations and 

stated that OOC is making progress 

toward their adoption and 

implementation. 

www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-04-400.

To view the full product, including the scope 

and methodology, click on the link above. 

For more information, contact J. Christopher 

Mihm at (202) 512-6806 or mihmj@gao.gov. 

Highlights of GAO-04-400, a report to the

Subcommittee on Legislative Branch, 

Committee on Appropriations, U.S. Senate 

and Subcommittee on Legislative, 

Committee on Appropriations, U.S. House 

of Representatives 

February 2004

OFFICE OF COMPLIANCE 

Status of Management Control Efforts 

To Improve Effectiveness 
Page i GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

Contents

Letter 1

Results in Brief 2

Background 7

OOC Has Effort Under Way to Sharpen Focus on Results 14

Ensuring an Effective Program Structure 21

Building Effective Communication Emphasizing Outreach and 

Coordination 32

Creating and Sustaining an Enhanced Management Control 

Environment Essential for Effective Operations 39

Agency Comments 45

Appendixes

Appendix I: Objective, Scope, and Methodology 47

Appendix II: Comments from the Office of Compliance 49

Table Table 1: The 12 Civil Rights, Workplace, and Labor Laws Included 

under the CAA 7

Figures Figure 1: Organizational Structure of the Office of Compliance 10

Figure 2: Expenditures for Fiscal Years 1997-2003 Covering OOC 

Functions under the Responsibility of the Board of 

Directors, Executive Director, and General Counsel 13

Figure 3: Dispute Resolution Cases, by Stage, Reported by OOC for 

1996-2003 22

Figure 4: Health and Safety Cases Reported by OOC for 1997-2003 

24

Figure 5: Unfair Labor Practice Charges Filed Reported by OOC for 

1997-2003 26
Contents

Page ii GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

Abbreviations

ADA Americans with Disabilities Act

AOC Office of the Architect of the Capitol

CAA Congressional Accountability Act

EEOC U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

GPO Government Printing Office 

GPRA Government Performance and Results Act

LOC Library of Congress 

OOC Office of Compliance

OSHA Occupational Safety and Health Administration

IT information technology 

USCP United States Capitol Police

This is a work of the U.S. government and is not subject to copyright protection in the 

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Page 1 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

United States General Accounting Office

Washington, D.C. 20548

A

February 3, 2004 Leter

The Honorable Ben Nighthorse Campbell

Chairman

The Honorable Richard Durbin 

Ranking Minority Member

Subcommittee on Legislative Branch

Committee on Appropriations

United States Senate

The Honorable Jack Kingston

Chairman

The Honorable James P. Moran

Ranking Minority Member

Subcommittee on Legislative

Committee on Appropriations

House of Representatives

Congress established the Office of Compliance (OOC) in 1995 as an 

independent office within the legislative branch to administer and enforce 

various provisions of the Congressional Accountability Act (CAA) related 

to fair employment and occupational safety and health. As mandated by the 

Consolidated Appropriations Resolution of 2003 Conference Report,1

 we 

examined OOC’s effectiveness and efficiency in fulfilling its responsibilities 

and role as set out in the CAA. Our specific objective was to assess key 

management controls in place at OOC and identify what improvements, if 

any, could be made to strengthen OOC’s effectiveness and efficiency. 

Management controls, also known as internal controls, are a major part of 

managing an organization.2

 They comprise the plans, methods, and 

procedures used to meet missions, goals, and objectives and, in doing so, 

support performance-based management. Effective management control 

also helps in managing change to cope with shifting environments and 

evolving demands and priorities. As programs change and as agencies 

strive to improve operational processes and implement new technological 

developments, management must continually assess and evaluate its 

1

H. Rpt. 108-10, Feb. 13, 2003. 

2

U.S. General Accounting Office, Standards for Internal Control in the Federal 

Government, GAO/AIMD-00-21.3.1 (Washington, D.C.: November 1999).
Page 2 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

management control to assure that activities being used are effective and 

updated when necessary. 

To meet our objective, we analyzed applicable laws, legislative history, 

rules, and regulations; obtained and analyzed written documentation of 

guidance, policies, procedures, and performance of OOC; met with the 

OOC Board of Directors; conducted interviews with OOC executives, 

managers, and staff; met with key congressional stakeholders and officials 

in other legislative branch agencies and offices; and performed selected 

reliability and validity tests of OOC’s administrative dispute resolution 

database. We also drew on key management practices and guidance 

identified in previously issued GAO reports, where appropriate. 

In addition, to assist OOC in its management control improvement efforts, 

we provided OOC with briefings, reports, and examples of best practices in 

the areas we reviewed. For example, at OOC’s request, GAO officials 

provided briefings on our approach to strategic planning and provided 

copies of GAO strategic planning documents. We plan to continue working 

with OOC’s leadership and to meet with them regularly to discuss the 

progress of their management reform initiatives. We performed our work in 

Washington, D.C., from January 2003 through January 2004 in accordance 

with generally accepted government auditing standards. See appendix I for 

additional information on our scope and methodology.

Results in Brief OOC’s Board of Directors, senior leadership, and employees are in the early 

stages of a concerted and vitally needed effort to improve and strengthen 

management control across the Office. This effort will need to address a 

fundamental question—how effective are OOC’s efforts in contributing to 

achieving mission results such as fostering a safer and healthier workplace 

that is free from discrimination and other forms of conflict? OOC will also 

need to address concerns of congressional and other stakeholders about 

whether the Office’s scarce resources are being targeted efficiently. OOC’s 

ability to answer these critical issues will depend on, among other things, 

its ability to make significant progress in the following four key 

management control areas:

Sharpen focus on results: OOC has begun to more fully define the 

fundamental results, or outcomes, that it seeks to achieve. Traditionally, 

OOC’s operations and reporting have emphasized activities or outputs, 

focusing on measures such as the number of mediation requests received, 

the number of health and safety inspections conducted, or the time taken 
Page 3 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

for particular phases of a process. While these types of measures provide 

important information on the efficiency of its operations, OOC’s current 

strategic planning initiative will begin to address the more fundamental 

question of OOC’s effectiveness in achieving actual mission results. As part 

of this process, OOC has defined its mission as working to “advance safety, 

health, and workplace rights for employees and employers of the 

Legislative Branch as mandated by the Congressional Accountability Act.” 

Towards that end, the OOC has identified three strategic objectives or 

goals: (1) effectively enforce and administer the CAA, (2) educate, 

collaborate, and facilitate its regulated community, and (3) maintain an 

efficient and accountable workplace.

OOC’s strategic planning initiative is an important and positive 

development that is still very much a work in progress. OOC’s planning 

effort can provide a vehicle for engaging and consulting with key 

congressional and other stakeholders on the fundamental purposes of 

OOC, how those purposes will be achieved, how progress will be assessed, 

and what progress is being made and improvement opportunities exist. 

Congressional and other stakeholders also need to be engaged as OOC 

develops results-oriented performance measures. By doing so, OOC will 

help to improve its performance, assure its accountability, and provide for 

more useful and transparent annual reports. Building on the planning 

effort, OOC is in its early stages of developing work plans to ensure its daily 

operations, programs, and activities are aligned with the goals and 

priorities in its plan. The strategic use of information technology (IT) 

provides a key and continuing opportunity to improve OOC efficiency and 

effectiveness. 

We make several recommendations to OOC to help it continue and advance 

its efforts to become more results-oriented. Specifically, we recommend 

that OOC’s strategic plan includes performance measures that link directly 

with annual work plans, integrates IT planning and implementation, and is 

developed with extensive collaboration and input from key congressional 

and agency stakeholders. In addition, we recommend that OOC use its 

completed strategic plan as the basis for future budget and staff requests, 

as well as a basis for developing and implementing new program initiatives 

and assessing the contributions of those initiatives to achieving results. We 

further recommend that OOC’s strategic plan provide the foundation for 

developing an augmented and more results-oriented annual report that 

provides data on the degree to which key goals are being achieved, in 

addition to meeting existing statutory reporting requirements, as is 

currently the case. 
Page 4 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

Ensuring an effective program structure: As OOC shifts its focus from 

outputs and activities to the results of those outputs and activities, it must 

put in place a program structure that meets its statutory responsibilities, 

contributes to real improvements in the working environment and 

workplaces of legislative branch employees, and safeguards OOC’s 

independence. The CAA contains a series of specific requirements for OOC 

to meet as it carries out its responsibility to administer and enforce the 

CAA. Toward this end, OOC has taken a number of actions, including 

administering a dispute resolution process; conducting investigations and 

inspections to ensure compliance with safety, health, and disability access 

standards; investigating and managing matters concerning labormanagement relations; and educating both employees and employing 

offices about their rights and responsibilities under the CAA. 

Leading organizations have found that as they shift their orientation to 

results, new, different, and more effective ways of doing business will 

emerge. OOC is beginning to experience such changes. For example, in 

light of the increasing demands for health and safety inspections, and the 

very small number of OOC staff available to conduct those inspections, 

OOC’s General Counsel and his staff have begun to explore possible 

approaches to leverage OOC’s limited resources through constructive 

engagement with legislative branch agencies covered under the CAA. As an 

example of this constructive approach, OOC will sponsor the first-ever 

Organizational Health and Safety Program Conference for legislative 

agencies in February 2004. 

We make a number of recommendations to help OOC accelerate this 

needed shift in orientation and instill a more effective program structure. 

Specifically, we identify several ways OOC can strengthen its effectiveness 

using data including improving how the Office measures its activities and 

performance. These include the possible use of benchmarks to facilitate 

comparison and analysis; developing additional measures to provide a 

more complete picture of its workload; using information on the number 

and type of complaints it receives to better target education and 

information distribution efforts; and increasing its capacity to use 

occupational safety and health data to facilitate risk-based decision 

making. We also recommend that OOC explore additional ways to better 

disseminate information including establishing a clearinghouse for sharing 

best practice information on topics covered by the CAA; reaching out to 

relevant congressional groups, forums, and networks to ensure they are 

aware of OOC’s programs and activities; and working with the Congress to 

determine the feasibility of using feedback surveys and focus groups to 
Page 5 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

provide information on awareness among legislative branch employees and 

employers concerning their programs and activities. Finally, we 

recommend that OOC work with the Congress to develop a strategy to 

ensure that all facilities under OOC’s jurisdiction and located in the 

Washington, D.C. area—including the Senate and House page dormitories, 

and the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped 

of the Library of Congress—receive occupational safety and health 

inspections at least biennially, as required by the CAA. These facilities were 

not included in the last biennial inspection conducted in 2002. OOC 

officials told us that the decision not to inspect these facilities was largely 

due to resource constraints. 

Building effective communication emphasizing outreach and 

coordination: OOC needs to develop a communications strategy to seek 

mutual understanding among OOC’s key congressional stakeholders and 

agencies covered by the CAA concerning its mission and role as well as 

build trust among its stakeholders and clients. Developing an effective 

communications strategy could also assist OOC in becoming more 

collaborative and partnerial. Our interviews with OOC’s congressional 

stakeholders found that OOC’s efforts to consult with the Congress have 

been uneven and could benefit from having a set of congressional 

protocols, which would document agreements between the Congress and 

OOC on what congressional stakeholders can expect as the Office carries 

out its work. Likewise, OOC could make progress in achieving its mission 

by developing protocols for interacting with legislative branch agencies 

covered by the CAA. Some congressional staff members and agency 

officials said that OOC had recently shown a new attitude and approach in 

its work that is characterized by greater collaboration and cooperation 

rather than a “gotcha” approach that they said often characterized OOC’s 

past efforts. On the other hand, several agency officials said that 

interactions with OOC were not good. They said, for example, that OOC 

failed to always follow its own rules and procedures when conducting 

investigations of health and safety complaints. 

We recommend that OOC develop both congressional and agency protocols 

to facilitate open and effective communications with stakeholders, clients, 

and other recipients of the Office’s services and activities. The purpose of 

such protocols is to help create a basic understanding of OOC’s goals, 

functions, and procedures, what OOC will communicate to whom, when, 

and how, and not to compromise the independence the Congress gave OOC 

to enforce the CAA. In both cases, OOC should carefully pilot the protocols 

before they are fully implemented so that OOC, the Congress, and 
Page 6 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

legislative agencies can gain experiences in their application and that 

appropriate adjustments can be made. We also recommend that OOC 

review and revise OOC’s case-handling policies and procedures and ensure 

that they are effectively communicated with appropriate legislative agency 

officials. 

Creating and sustaining an enhanced management control 

environment: OOC also faces challenges in creating an enhanced control 

environment, which forms the foundation for an organization’s ability to 

put into place the management controls necessary for effective and 

efficient operations. A key factor that could affect OOC’s management 

control is the lack of institutional continuity due to the term limits of OOC’s 

Board and senior leadership positions and the impending required turnover 

of these individuals. Specifically, because the CAA permits incumbents in 

these positions to serve only a single, nonrenewable 5-year term, the Chair 

and two members of the five-member Board will conclude their service in 

September 2004, and the two remaining members will leave 8 months later 

in May 2005. Similarly, the terms of all of OOC’s senior executives, except 

the General Counsel, will expire within 6 months of each other in 2006. 

Taken together, eight out of nine of OOC’s top officials will have left the 

organization by September 2006. 

Adding to this challenge is the fact that OOC has operated without any 

formal performance management system for its Executive Director and 

General Counsel since its creation in 1995, although as of 2003 these 

officials prepare annual self-assessments. OOC’s Board can strengthen 

accountability for specific goals and help align daily operations with the 

organization’s programmatic goals by going the further step of requiring 

performance agreements for the Executive Director and General Counsel. 

In addition, while OOC established a performance management system for 

most of its staff in 2002, some individuals continue to work without any 

formal system to set goals, establish individual expectations, provide 

feedback, and evaluate their performance. OOC’s need to establish a 

modern, effective, and credible performance management system with 

appropriate safeguards for all its employees represents an additional 

human capital challenge for OOC. 

To address these concerns, we identify two matters for congressional 

consideration and make several recommendations to OOC. To help prevent 

the loss of critical organizational knowledge due to the impending loss of 

most of OOC’s leaders, the Congress should consider amending the CAA to 

allow Board members to be reappointed by the Congress to an additional 
Page 7 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

term. In addition, the Congress should consider allowing OOC’s Executive 

Director, General Counsel, and two Deputy Executive Directors to be 

reappointed to serve additional terms in either the same or a different 

position, if warranted and desired. This would enable, for the first time, the 

possibility of succession planning among these officials. However, any such 

reappointments should be contingent on the ability to clearly assess the 

performance of these officials and their achievement of OOC’s goals. 

Towards this end, we recommend that OOC’s Board require performance 

agreements for the Executive Director and General Counsel. The Executive 

Director and General Counsel, in turn, should actively engage their staff to 

build on and expand OOC’s recent efforts in this area in order to develop a 

more robust and effective approach to individual performance 

management for all OOC employees. 

OOC’s Board of Directors, Executive Director, and General Counsel, in a 

joint response, all generally agreed with our recommendations and stated 

that OOC is making progress toward their adoption and implementation. 

Their written response is reprinted in appendix II. 

Background Enacted on January 23, 1995, the CAA as amended, applies 12 federal civil 

rights, workplace, and labor laws to legislative branch employees who 

were previously exempted from such coverage.3

Table 1: The 12 Civil Rights, Workplace, and Labor Laws Included under the CAA

3

Pub. L. No. 104-1, 2 U.S.C. §§ 1301-1438. 

CAA-covered federal law Summary of provisions

1. Title VII of the Civil 

Rights Act of 1964,

as amended 

Prohibits discrimination in hiring, promotion, and treatment 

of employees based on race, sex, color, religion, or 

national origin.

2. The Age Discrimination 

in Employment Act of 

1967, as amended

Prohibits discrimination in hiring, promotion, and treatment 

of employees based on age.

3. The Rehabilitation Act of 

1973 

A precursor to the Americans with Disabilities Act; 

prohibits discrimination against qualified individuals with 

disabilities with regard to federal employment.

4. The Family and Medical 

Leave Act of 1993

Provides that employees may use unpaid leave for certain 

family and medical needs.
Page 8 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

Source: GAO presentation based on the CAA and laws referenced above.

By passing the CAA, the Congress extended to approximately 30,000 

employees of the legislative branch certain fair employment and 

occupational safety safeguards. The CAA applies to current employees, 

applicants for employment, and former employees of the following 

organizations:

• Senate, 

• House of Representatives,

• Capitol Guide Service,

• Capitol Police,

• Congressional Budget Office,

5. The Fair Labor 

Standards Act of 1938, 

as amended

Provides for fair compensation for employees for work 

performed.

6. The Employee 

Polygraph Protection Act 

of 1988

Prohibits most private employers from requiring employees 

and prospective employees to take a polygraph 

examination.

7. The Worker Adjustment 

and Retraining 

Notification Act

Requires employers to provide advance notice of plant 

closings and mass layoffs.

8. Chapter 43 of title 38 of 

the U.S. Code (relating 

to veterans’ employment 

and reemployment)

Provides reemployment rights for employees who serve in 

the uniformed services.

9. The Americans with 

Disabilities Act of 1990

Prohibits discrimination in hiring, promotions, and 

treatment of employees on the basis of disability; requires 

full and equal access to public accommodations for the 

disabled.

10. The Occupational Safety 

and Health Act of 1970

Requires employers to provide a workplace that complies 

with occupational safety and health standards.

11. Chapter 71 of title 5 

U.S.C. (relating to 

federal labormanagement relations)

Protects the rights and obligations of employers and 

employees in labor-management relations. 

12. Veterans’ Employment 

Opportunities Act of 

1998

Provides hiring preferences for veterans.

(Continued From Previous Page)

CAA-covered federal law Summary of provisions
Page 9 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

• Office of the Attending Physician,

• Office of the Architect of the Capitol, and

• Office of Compliance.

The CAA did not include GAO, the Library of Congress (LOC), and the 

Government Printing Office (GPO) in many of its provisions because the 

employees at these organizations already enjoyed the protections of many 

of the civil rights laws extended to legislative branch staff by the CAA prior 

to its enactment. For example, GAO, LOC, and GPO employees were 

already protected against discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, 

and national origin (42 U.S.C. § 2000e-16); discrimination based on age (29 

U.S.C. § 633a); and discrimination based on disability (42 U.S.C. § 12209). In 

addition, GAO, LOC, and GPO employees already enjoyed the protections 

provided by the Fair Labor Standards Act (29 U.S.C. § 203) and by the 

Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Act (5 U.S.C. § 7103 for GPO 

and LOC employees; 31 U.S.C. § 732(e) for GAO employees). Furthermore, 

all three organizations have individualized processes for resolving 

employee disputes. For example, GAO uses an independent entity, the 

Personnel Appeals Board, to adjudicate employment disputes involving 

GAO employees. 

The CAA does extend the protections of the Employee Polygraph 

Protection Act, the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, the 

Uniform Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, the Family 

and Medical Leave Act, the public access provisions of the Americans with 

Disabilities Act (ADA), and the Occupational Safety and Health Act to GAO 

and LOC employees.

OOC’s duties are divided among a Board of Directors, an Executive 

Director, and a General Counsel, as shown in figure 1. 
Page 10 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

Figure 1: Organizational Structure of the Office of Compliancea

a

OOC’s Executive Director, General Counsel, Deputy Executive Director for the Senate, and Deputy 

Executive Director for the House are statutory positions mandated by the CAA. The post of Deputy 

General Counsel as well as other OOC and General Counsel staff positions are not specifically 

required by the CAA.

b The CAA limits the General Counsel’s hiring authority to attorneys with the General Counsel’s Office. 

According to OOC’s General Counsel, although the Executive Director is responsible for hiring 

occupational safety and health and ADA specialists who work with the General Counsel, it has been 

the practice at OOC that the Executive Director approves the General Counsel’s hiring 

recommendations. 

Source: GAO presentation based on OOC documents and the CAA.

Board of Directors

Issues regulations and reports, and reviews 

appeals of decisions of hearing officers

Appointed by 

Congress

Appointed by Board 

of Directors

Positions filled by 

General Counselb

Positions filled 

by Executive 

Director

Although within OOC, 

the Office of the General 

Counsel functions 

independently in 

administering and 

enforcing requirements 

concerning safety and 

health, disability access, 

and labor-management 

relations. 

General Counsel

Performs duties as specified in the 

CAA, assists Board and Executive 

Director, including representing 

OOC in judicial proceedings

Executive Director

Serves as Chief Operating Officer, responsible for all OOC 

functions except those specifically delegated to General Counsel

Deputy General Counsel

Office of the General 

Counsel staff

Other OOC 

staff

Deputy Executive Director 

for the Senate

Recommends and maintains 

regulations and records relating 

to the Senate, manages dispute 

resolution process, arranges for 

mediation sessions

Deputy Executive 

Director 

for the House 

Recommends and maintains 

regulations and records relating 

to the House, manages 

education and information 

program, including publications 

and OOC Web site 
Page 11 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

The five-member Board of Directors has the duty of administering appeals 

for the CAA’s dispute resolution process. Employees or employers covered 

by the CAA who are dissatisfied with the final decision resulting from a 

dispute resolution process hearing may request that the Board review the 

decision. From 1996 through 2003, the Board has heard 20 appeal cases. 

The Board is also responsible for appeals of decisions by hearing officers 

with respect to complaints filed by the General Counsel regarding 

occupational safety and health issues, disability access concerns, and 

labor-management relations violations. 

The CAA also assigns the Board the duties of developing and issuing 

regulations to implement the rights and protections of employees for 9 of 

the 12 laws included in the CAA. The Board has issued regulations, which 

were approved by the Congress, for the Family and Medical Leave Act, 

federal labor-management relations provisions found in Chapter 71 of title 

5 U.S. Code, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and Worker Adjustment and ReTraining Act. The CAA also provides that OOC may apply existing 

regulations promulgated by executive branch agencies for regulations not 

issued by the Board, except for regulations regarding labor-management 

relations. Before the Board’s adopted regulations can become effective, 

they must first be placed in the Congressional Record for a comment 

period and must subsequently be approved by the Congress. The Board has 

delegated much of the work to complete these duties to OOC’s Executive 

Director. 

The Executive Director has overall responsibility for managing OOC’s 

education and dispute resolution processes as well as directing OOC’s 

staffing and budgeting functions. Reporting directly to the Executive 

Director are two deputies, to whom the Executive Director has delegated 

specific functional roles in addition to those identified in the CAA: the 

Deputy Executive Director for the House is responsible for managing 

OOC’s education and information distribution functions, and the Deputy 

Executive Director for the Senate is responsible for administering OOC’s 

dispute resolution process. 

The OOC General Counsel’s duties include investigation and enforcement 

of the Occupational Safety and Health Act and ADA requirements and 

managing labor-management relations unfair labor practice case 

processing and court litigation. Assisting the General Counsel is an 

attorney and an inspector detailed from the Department of Labor to 

investigate and enforce occupational safety and health standards with the 

assistance of part-time contractors on a limited basis. 
Page 12 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

In summary, OOC’s organizational structure has a leadership hierarchy with 

different top leadership functions shared among the Board of Directors, 

Executive Director, and General Counsel. This organizational structure of 

shared functions is largely due to statutory requirements that OOC carry 

out a variety of different roles—including adjudication, education, and 

enforcement—as it applies the 12 workplace laws covered by the CAA. In 

order to provide for a degree of needed independence between these 

different functions, the CAA established an organizational structure that, 

among other things, gave the Board the responsibility for hearing appeals 

of the dispute resolution process for cases that are initially within the 

province of the Executive Director or General Counsel.

While the CAA gives the Board of Directors the authority to appoint and 

remove OOC’s four senior executives—the Executive Director, General 

Counsel, and two Deputy Executive Directors—the Board does not play an 

active role in the daily operational management of OOC. Instead, OOC’s 

part-time Board focuses on its adjudicatory and policy functions including 

hearing appeals and issuing regulations. Although the CAA designates 

OOC’s Executive Director as the organization’s chief operating officer, the 

law provides the General Counsel with independent authority to investigate 

and enforce matters concerning occupational safety and health, disability 

access, and labor-management relations. In practice, this has resulted in a 

division of OOC by function, with the Executive Director responsible for 

hiring and managing staff to carry out the education and dispute resolution 

process functions and the General Counsel responsible for hiring attorneys 

and managing staff in his operational areas. 

OOC is staffed by 15 employees, including 4 in statutorily appointed 

positions. As figure 2 shows, OOC’s annual expenditures have ranged from 

a high of $2.15 million in fiscal year 1997 to a low of $1.80 million in fiscal 

year 2001. Fiscal year 2003 expenditures were $2.02 million. In general, 

these expenditures are allocated between the duties performed by the 

Executive Director, General Counsel, and Board of Directors. Over the past 

7 fiscal years, functions that are the responsibility of the Executive 

Director have accounted for most of OOC’s expenditures.
Page 13 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

Figure 2: Expenditures for Fiscal Years 1997-2003 Covering OOC Functions under 

the Responsibility of the Board of Directors, Executive Director, and General 

Counsel 

a

Executive Director: OOC’s chief operating officer is responsible for all OOC functions except those 

specifically delegated to the General Counsel. These include OOC’s education function and the 

administrative dispute resolution process as well as directing staffing and budget functions. The 

expenditures reported under this category also include officewide overhead costs such as information 

technology, utilities, and supplies. 

b

Office of General Counsel: Reports and manages compliance with occupational safety and health 

standards and disability access requirements, manages labor-management relations unfair labor 

practice case processing, court litigation, and obtains staff resources. The expenditures reported 

under the General Counsel do not reflect the salary of OOC’s occupational safety and health inspector 

on long-term detail from the Department of Labor. 

c

Board of Directors: Hears appeals of the dispute resolution process, issues regulations and reports, 

and selects four statutory appointees to OOC management positions.

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003

Thousands of dollars

Fiscal year

Executive Directora

General Counselb

Board of Directorsc

Source: GAO presentation of OOC data.

2,146

1,587

449

1,944

1,534

362 27

1,950

1,437

486

1,833

1,201

561

1,804

1,219

491

2,058

1,276

647

2,023

1,322

585

110 47 72 94

135 116
Page 14 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

OOC Has Effort Under 

Way to Sharpen Focus 

on Results

Since August 2003, the OOC Board, its senior leadership team, and OOC’s 

employees have been exerting a concerted effort—consistent with our 

suggestions—to more fully define the fundamental results, or outcomes, 

that OOC seeks to achieve. OOC’s operations and reporting have 

traditionally been activity or output focused (e.g., number of requests for 

mediation received, time within phases of the process, and number of 

occupational safety and health inspections conducted). Such information is 

important to managing OOC and to ensuring that its scarce resources are 

efficiently targeted. However, the current Board and OOC leadership have 

undertaken OOC’s first strategic planning initiative in recognition that 

despite the real value from output information, such data do not address 

the more fundamental question of the effectiveness of OOC’s efforts. That 

is, OOC’s current planning effort is intended to help OOC and its 

congressional and other stakeholders ensure that OOC’s activities and 

outputs are optimizing the Office’s contribution to results, such as a safer 

and healthier workplace and one free from discrimination and other forms 

of conflict. Our discussions with OOC stakeholders across the Congress 

and legislative branch agencies confirmed the need for and importance of 

the current planning effort. 

Effective management control requires that an organization establish its 

organizational objectives in the form of a set of defined mission, goals, and 

objectives. Furthermore, we found that leading organizations consistently 

strive to ensure that their day-to-day activities support their organizational 

missions and move them closer to accomplishing their strategic goals.4

Thus, OOC is not alone among organizations in seeking to answer critical 

questions about its overall effectiveness. Our assessments over the last 

decade of executive agencies’ implementation of the Government 

Performance and Results Act (GPRA) have consistently found that 

executive agencies have struggled with shifting the focus of their 

management and accountability from outputs to results. At OOC’s 

invitation, we have met with OOC’s leadership to share our wealth of 

information and perspective on executive agencies’ efforts under GPRA, as 

well as our own experiences in strategic planning, performance planning, 

and accountability reporting at GAO. While maintaining our respective 

4

U.S. General Accounting Office, Executive Guide: Effectively Implementing the 

Government Performance and Results Act, GAO/GGD-96-118 (Washington, D.C.: June 1996) 

and GAO/AIMD-00-21.3.1.
Page 15 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

institutional independence, we are prepared to offer OOC continuing 

support as its planning efforts proceed.

OOC’s planning initiative is important to ensuring that OOC’s programs, 

activities, and limited resources are contributing to results that are making 

improvements in the work and work environments of legislative branch 

employees. OOC’s efforts to achieve this goal are complicated by the 

inevitable tension that arises between organizations charged with the duty 

to implement and enforce regulations and the agencies subject to those 

regulations. Under the current draft of its strategic plan, OOC defines its 

mission as working to “advance safety, health, and workplace rights for 

employees and employers of the Legislative Branch as mandated by the 

Congressional Accountability Act.” OOC is developing strategic objectives 

(goals) in three areas: effectively enforce and administer the CAA; educate, 

collaborate, and facilitate the regulated community; and maintain an 

efficient and accountable workplace (within OOC). More specifically: 

• Effectively enforce and administer the CAA: Regulatory enforcement 

and administration focuses on operation of dispute resolution 

procedures and investigation and prosecution of alleged violations. 

• Educate, collaborate, and facilitate for our regulated community: The 

Office will encourage and facilitate positive change in the employment 

cultures within the regulated community to stimulate compliance with 

the entire CAA; and effectively communicate with the Congress 

regarding the status quo and potential enhancement of the CAA. 

• Maintain an efficient and accountable workplace: Efficiency involves 

not only careful and wise use of appropriated funds, but also continued 

utilization of resources in a way that allows for timely and expeditious 

completion of office activities and functions in order to better serve our 

regulated community. 

OOC’s effort to develop a results-oriented strategic plan is an important and 

positive development that is still very much a work in progress—as the 

Board and OOC’s senior leadership clearly appreciate. Perhaps most 

important is OOC’s recognition that its planning effort provides a vehicle 

for engaging and consulting with key congressional and other stakeholders 

on the fundamental purposes of OOC (strategic goals), how those purposes 

will be achieved (programs and strategies), how progress will be assessed 

(performance measures), and what progress is being made and 

improvement opportunities exist (accountability reporting). More 
Page 16 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

specifically, as OOC’s draft plan and our discussions with the Board and 

OOC’s leadership have confirmed, OOC is committed to an approach that 

meets its statutory responsibility by adopting a more cooperative and 

collegial approach with legislative branch offices and agencies, while at the 

same time maintaining its enforcement capability and safeguarding its 

institutional independence. The planning effort underway provides the 

opportunity to reach agreement with key congressional and other 

stakeholders on the direction—and potential limits—of this new 

commitment. 

OOC has held a series of discussions with selected congressional 

stakeholders and plans additional outreach with them and other 

stakeholders as the planning effort moves forward. In fact, as we have 

found by looking at leading results-oriented organizations, the production 

of the actual strategic planning document is one of the least important 

parts of the planning process. Leading results-oriented organizations 

understand that strategic planning is not a static or occasional event, but 

rather a dynamic and inclusive process. By working with and actively 

engaging key congressional and other stakeholders in its planning effort, 

OOC can better justify to stakeholders its current budget and staff 

resources allocation and program efforts then, as appropriate, OOC can 

build a business case for additional resources and new initiatives that OOC 

leadership may believe are necessary for an agreed-upon mission and set of 

strategic goals. 

In short, if done well, strategic planning is continuous and provides the 

basis for everything that the organization does each day. Moving forward, 

OOC plans to align key programs and strategies with each of these 

objectives. In that regard, OOC managers have begun drafting several work 

plans intended to link OOC’s programs and activities to the strategic 

objectives contained in the draft plan. Similar to the strategic plan, these 

work plans are still in draft and therefore do not yet provide a clear linkage 

between OOC’s strategic objectives and the day-to-day operations of these 

functions. 

OOC’s strategic planning also needs to include the development of resultsoriented performance measures. OOC is committed to this effort and has 

“place-markers” in its draft plan for these measures. OOC could benefit 

from considering the experiences of leading organization in resultsoriented performance measurement. Results-oriented organizations we 

have studied, which were successful in measuring their performance, 

developed measures that were:
Page 17 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

• tied to program goals and demonstrated the degree to which the desired 

results were achieved, 

• limited to the vital few that were considered essential to producing data 

for decision making, 

• responsive to multiple priorities, and 

• responsibility-linked to establish accountability for results.5

Similar to decisions about strategic goals, determining the appropriate set 

of performance measures should also be based on input from key 

stakeholders to determine what is important to them to determine OOC’s 

progress and assess its performance. Put most directly, agreed-upon 

performance measures are the key to providing the Congress with the data 

it needs to answer a key question that the current fiscal environment is 

demanding of all agencies across the federal government: “What are we 

getting for our investment in this agency, and is it worth it?” 

OOC Is Beginning to 

Integrate Information 

Technology Planning into its 

Strategic Plan

OOC officials said that they are committed to making better use of IT in the 

future, and to ensuring that doing so is accomplished in a prudent and 

systematic fashion. For example, OOC’s draft strategic plan cites “fully 

leveraging IT to complement and expand office activities” as one strategy 

under its “maintain an efficient and accountable workplace” goal. 

OOC has begun to take some action, but much remains to be accomplished. 

For example, it established an Information Technology Task Force in May 

2003, and consistent with our suggestions to OOC leadership, the task force 

has been charged with developing parallel IT strategies: one addressing 

near-term, stay-in-business IT needs and the other addressing long-term IT 

modernization needs. Thus far, the task force has met numerous times and 

has been guided in this initiative by a private consultant. It has also, for 

example, reviewed the current IT environment and has surveyed OOC staff 

about IT needs and preferences.

With respect to near-term needs, OOC is taking steps to address immediate 

shortfalls in its ability to produce the information it needs to manage 

5

GAO/GGD-96-118.
Page 18 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

current operations and workloads. For example, OOC is investing a few 

weeks of staff time to create a new Access database to provide a temporary 

solution to meet certain case-tracking information needs. In our view, such 

relatively small, low-risk investments that provide immediate mission value 

are appropriate near-term steps. 

However, before pursuing strategic, modernized system solutions, it is 

important that OOC first position itself for successfully doing so by 

establishing certain basic IT management capabilities. These capabilities 

include, among other things, developing a picture or description, based on 

OOC’s strategic plan, of what it wants its future IT environment to look like, 

putting in place and following defined and disciplined processes for 

allocating limited resources across competing IT investment options, 

employing explicit and rigorous IT system acquisition management 

processes, and ensuring that needed IT human capital knowledge and skill 

needs and shortfalls are identified and systematically addressed. According 

to OOC officials, each of these areas will be addressed. If they are not, the 

risk of being unable to effectively leverage technology in achieving 

strategic mission goals and outcomes will be increased.

OOC’s current use of IT is limited. For example, OOC’s automated 

administrative dispute resolution case tracking system does not have the 

capability to notify system users when a case closes or should be closed. 

OOC’s system manager said they must periodically review some cases 

manually and update the system for closed cases. OOC officials told us that 

they had experienced some data quality problems during early 

implementation stages of the dispute resolution case tracking system, but 

had tested the system in March 2003 to determine if corrective actions were 

effective. According to OOC officials, the data accuracy test demonstrated 

that the information was now reliable, although they said the test was 

performed informally and they had no documentation on the methodology 

and the test results. We performed our own independent test of data quality 

for this system as part of this review and found that the data were 

sufficiently reliable for the purposes of this report. (See app. I for 

additional information on our reliability and validity reviews of OOC’s 

database.) 

OOC also recognizes the need to make better use of IT when enforcing the 

Occupational Safety and Health Act-related provisions of the CAA. For 

example, OOC’s Office of the General Counsel is considering the purchase 

of specialized IT software that would centralize and automate a variety of 

tasks concerning the occupational safety and health-related cases it 
Page 19 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

handles, including assessing risk, monitoring case status, and tracking 

agency abatement efforts. In November 2003, after meeting with us to 

discuss best practices in IT acquisition and planning, OOC’s General 

Counsel established a group to develop specific selection criteria to assess 

potential IT case management software. As part of this process, the group 

and an outside IT consultant gathered information from both legislative 

and executive branch agencies including the Architect of the Capitol 

(AOC), LOC, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration 

(OSHA) concerning their practices and experiences with similar IT 

applications. OOC expects to complete this evaluation process by the end 

of March 2004. 

In regards to the accounting and budgeting system used by OOC, a 2003 

audit by an independent accounting firm of LOC’s financial statements 

found that the system was reliable. LOC administers the accounting and 

budgeting system and the accounting firm’s findings were addressed to 

LOC. Although the auditors reported the system was, overall, reliable, they 

also reported that there were two IT-related deficiencies that could 

adversely affect the user’s ability to meet its financial management 

objectives. The deficiencies were that (1) security practices over IT 

systems need to be improved and (2) LOC needs to establish a 

comprehensive disaster recovery program to maintain service continuity, 

minimize the risk of unplanned interruptions, and recover critical 

operations should interruptions occur. The audit recommended that the 

LOC address these deficiencies as a high priority. LOC officials 

acknowledged the need to address these deficiencies and have taken some 

preliminary actions including drafting an officewide policy on IT security 

practices and acquiring an off-site facility for their disaster recovery 

program. 

Strategic Planning Provides 

Opportunity for More Useful 

Annual Reports 

As required by section 301(h) of the CAA, OOC issues an annual report that 

contains “statistics on the use of the Office by covered employees, 

including the number and type of contacts made with the Office, on the 

reason for such contacts, on the number of covered employees who 

initiated proceedings with the Office under this Act and the result of such 

proceedings, and on the number of covered employees who filed a 

complaint, the basis for the complaint, and the action taken on the 

complaint.”

Based on our reviews of the reports issued thus far, OOC is meeting this 

annual report requirement. However, the information is almost entirely 
Page 20 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

output based, providing little sense of OOC’s broader impact. Most of 

OOC’s congressional stakeholders with whom we spoke were not familiar 

with OOC’s annual reports and those congressional stakeholders who had 

seen the report said that it was difficult to understand and could be more 

user-friendly. For example, one congressional stakeholder said that it was 

difficult to make decisions about OOC using the information contained in 

the annual report.

As an outgrowth of its strategic planning effort to identify, measure, and 

manage toward results, OOC can enhance its annual report and incorporate 

elements that would make it a more useful and relied-upon accountability 

report. New, results-oriented information, showing the extent to which 

goals were met and suggesting improvement opportunities—including 

those that may suggest the need for congressional concurrence or 

actions—could be reported along with the activity and workload statistics 

required in section 301(h) of the CAA. 

Recommended Next Steps Building on the strategic planning efforts underway, we recommend that 

the Board of Directors, Executive Director, and General Counsel of OOC 

ensure that the planning effort:

• Is developed with extensive collaboration and input from key 

congressional and agency stakeholders to ensure that there is a 

reasonable and appropriate degree of agreement concerning OOC’s 

overall direction and that its programs are effectively coordinated with 

other efforts. To be most effective, this stakeholder and agency input 

should be part of an ongoing dialogue to ensure goals, objectives, and 

strategies are adjusted as warranted. 

• Includes performance measures that are linked to the strategic plan and 

resulting annual work plans. 

• Becomes the basis for OOC’s budget and staff requests and developing 

and implementing program efforts and for assessing the contributions of 

those efforts to results.

• Makes information technology planning and implementation an integral 

component of the process.

• Is used as a basis for an augmented and more results-oriented annual 

report that provides data on the degree to which key goals are being 
Page 21 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

achieved, in addition to meeting important statutory reporting 

requirements. 

Ensuring an Effective 

Program Structure

Our work looking at leading organizations has often found that as 

organizations shift their orientation from outputs and activities to the 

results that those outputs and activities are intended to achieve, new, 

different, and more effective ways of doing business will emerge.6

 OOC is 

in the midst of just such a shift in its orientation as was discussed earlier in 

this report. This shift entails putting in place a program structure at OOC 

that meets its statutory responsibilities, contributes to improvement in the 

working environment and workplaces of legislative branch employees, and 

safeguards OOC’s independence.

OOC’s Functions and 

Workload 

The CAA contains a series of specific requirements for OOC to meet as it 

carries out its responsibility to administer and enforce the CAA. Towards 

this end, OOC has taken a number of actions including establishing and 

administering a dispute resolution process for employees who allege 

violations of civil rights, labor, and employment laws covered by the CAA; 

conducting investigations and periodic inspections of legislative branch 

facilities to ensure compliance with safety, health, and disability access 

standards; adopting substantive regulations, many of which have been 

approved by the Congress, to apply covered laws to the legislative branch; 

educating both employees and employing offices about their rights and 

responsibilities under the law; and regularly reporting to the Congress on 

its activities in a variety of required reports and studies. 

Dispute Resolution Dispute resolution is the largest of the functions performed by OOC, 

available to any legislative branch employee in an agency covered under 

the CAA’s dispute resolution provisions who alleges violations of certain 

sections of the CAA. OOC’s dispute resolution process consists of a series 

of statutorily prescribed steps beginning with counseling and mediation. If 

these actions fail to resolve the dispute, the employee may choose to either 

file a formal complaint with OOC and proceed with an administrative 

hearing before an independent hearing officer, or file suit in federal court. 

Both employees and covered legislative agencies that are dissatisfied with 

6

GAO/GGD-96-118.
Page 22 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

the decisions of their administrative hearings may appeal to OOC’s Board 

of Directors. 

Figure 3: Dispute Resolution Cases, by Stage, Reported by OOC for 1996-2003

a

Data for 1996 covers January 23–December 31. 

b

Data for 2003 covers January 1–December 9. 

Note: The number of cases closed in a given year may not equal the total number of cases identified in 

each of the other categories for that year because of other factors including cases carried over from 

previous years. 

OOC told us that the large jumps in the number of cases in the dispute 

resolution system in 1999, 2000, and 2001, were the result of two singleissue large group requests involving employees from AOC and the United 

States Capitol Police (USCP) as they worked their way through the 

process. For example, 274 (or almost 70 percent) of the 395 requests for 

95

40

13 2 0

152 157

6 4 4

60 58 57

12 0

330 318

9 2

105

294

60

5 5 0

395 381

344

10 2

82 81

13 5 5

106 93

10 5 N/A 0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

Number of cases

1996a 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003b

Counseling

Mediation

Complaints filed with OC

Appeals to Board of Directors

Civil actions filed with District Court

Source: GAO presentation of OOC data.
Page 23 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

counseling reported in 2001 pertained to a single USCP large group case. 

Similarly, 272 of the cases that were closed that same year and were 

reported as resulting in civil actions being filed with the district court were 

also associated with this same single-issue group request. In fact, OOC cites 

the absence of such group cases in its annual report to the Congress on the 

use of the Office when describing the significant decrease in total requests 

for counseling received in 2002. 

These cases illustrate that OOC’s approach to reporting case activity does 

not provide a complete picture of OOC’s workload since it reports each 

individual included as part of the large group as an individual request 

regardless of whether the individual personally requested or even 

participated in services such as counseling or mediation. OOC could not 

provide us with a specific number of the individuals included in these 

group requests who actually received counseling or mediation services in 

1999 or 2001. According to OOC, dispute resolution data is presented in this 

manner because the CAA specifically requires the Office to report on the 

total number of individuals requesting counseling or mediation. While this 

information is needed to meet existing statutory reporting requirements, 

other data, such as the actual number of counseling and mediation sessions 

held, could provide a helpful complement to the data which OOC currently 

reports, as well as a more useful indicator of its actual workload. 

In addition to rethinking how it might supplement the way it currently 

reports on single-issue large group requests, OOC should consider other 

potential improvements on how it measures its activities and workload. 

Such improvements can play an important role in helping organizations 

both obtain a fuller understanding of the process and implications of its 

activities as well as provide stakeholders with more transparent and 

complete information. OOC is exploring options in this area and we have 

offered our assistance in this regard. One possibility would be for OOC to 

benchmark its data against that reported by other federal agencies, when 

comparable measures exist, or against OOC’s own past performance when 

such measures do not. For example, following the practice of the U.S. 

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), OOC might consider 

using such benchmarks to set both long- and short-term performance 

targets. 

Occupational Safety and Health, 

Disability Access, and Labor–

Management Relations

The CAA assigns OOC’s General Counsel with a number of independent 

investigative and enforcement functions related to ensuring occupational 

health and safety, disability access, and labor-management relations. 
Page 24 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

Occupational safety and health. Enforcement of occupational safety 

and health standards accounts for the majority of the time spent by the 

General Counsel and his staff, and roughly 30 percent of OOC’s overall 

workload. The CAA requires the General Counsel to perform this work in 

two basic ways: (1) by conducting inspections and investigations of 

potential hazards in response to requests by any covered employee or 

employing office and (2) by performing periodic inspections of the facilities 

of all entities covered by the act. 

Figure 4: Health and Safety Cases Reported by OOC for 1997-2003 

a Data for 2003 covers January 1–December 9. 

Any covered legislative branch employee can file a complaint requesting 

the General Counsel inspect and investigate a possible health and safety 

hazard. As shown in figure 4, the annual workload of requested inspections 

has risen dramatically since 2000, from 14 in 2000 to 39 in 2003 (as of 

December 9, 2003). The General Counsel’s resources, however, have not 

kept pace with this growth. The General Counsel’s financial expenditures 

increased by less than 5 percent from fiscal year 2000 to fiscal year 2003. In 

50

22

12

10

21

18

3

19

11

8

18

9

6

24

20

2

53

39

19

14

13

6

60

Number of cases

Source: GAO presentation of OOC data.

Requests for inspections filed

Cases pending at end of reporting period

Cases closed

Year

40

30

20

10

0

1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003a
Page 25 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

addition, during this same period the number of full-time staff assigned to 

conduct the actual workplace health and safety investigations remained 

steady at a single individual, an OSHA workplace safety specialist assigned 

to OOC from the Department of Labor on long-term detail, with the 

assistance of part-time contractors on a limited basis. 

OOC also enforces health and safety regulations by conducting periodic 

inspections of the facilities of all covered entities at least once each 

Congress, as required by the CAA. These inspections are scheduled ahead 

of time with legislative agencies and resemble the “walk around” 

inspections conducted by OSHA. In contrast to most other CAA 

requirements, OOC is not fully in compliance with the CAA requirement 

that it “conduct periodic inspections of all facilities” of the agencies 

covered by the provision.7

 Although OOC conducted periodic inspections 

at the majority of facilities in the Washington, D.C. area including large 

structures such as all Senate and House office buildings and the U.S. 

Capitol building, OOC did not include 10 out of 46 facilities subject to its 

jurisdiction in its last biennial inspection in 2002. For example, according 

to documents provided by OOC, the Office did not perform safety and 

health inspections at the Senate or House page dormitories, or at LOC’s 

National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. OOC 

officials told us that the decision not to inspect these facilities was largely 

due to resource constraints. 

Disability access. The CAA requires the General Counsel to both conduct 

investigations of charges alleging discrimination in public services and 

accommodations on the basis of disability, and to inspect covered facilities 

in the legislative branch at least once each Congress for compliance with 

the public services and accommodations provisions in the ADA. From 1997 

through December 9, 2003, five charges of discrimination have been filed 

with the General Counsel. According to OOC documents, its biennial 

inspections have included all public areas where constituents, individuals 

on official business, and visitors have access—approximately 8 million 

square feet of space. 

7

This includes all facilities of the House of Representatives, the Senate, the Capitol Guide 

Service, the Capitol Police, the Congressional Budget Office, the Office of the Architect of 

the Capitol, the Office of the Attending Physician, the Office of Compliance, the Library of 

Congress, and the General Accounting Office. See 2 U.S.C. § 1341(e)(1).
Page 26 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

Labor-management relations. Under the CAA, OOC’s General Counsel is 

responsible for investigating charges of unfair labor practices and for filing 

and prosecuting complaints in administrative hearings and before the 

Board of Directors as appropriate. Since 2001, the number of charges filed 

with the General Counsel has remained fairly constant, varying between 18 

and 19 per year, as shown in figure 5. In 2000, OOC experienced a sharp 

spike in charges filed with the number jumping to 38 in that year. OOC was 

unable to provide a definitive reason for this increase, but told us that it 

was probably related to the large group cases going through OOC’s dispute 

resolution process as these cases raised issues that could relate to charges 

of unfair labor practices. Despite the relatively stable number of new unfair 

labor practice charges received by OOC since 2001, the backlog of cases 

still pending at the end of the year has almost doubled, increasing from 6 in 

2001 to 11 in 2003 (as of December 9, 2003). 

Figure 5: Unfair Labor Practice Charges Filed Reported by OOC for 1997-2003

a

Data for 2003 covers January1–December 9. 

25

30

35

18

10

8

14

9

5

12

6

19

6

12

18

10

8

17

18

11

38

35

3

40

Number of cases

Source: GAO presentation of OOC data.

Charges filed

Cases closed

Cases pending at end of reporting period

Year

20

15

10

5

0

1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003a
Page 27 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

OOC’s Executive Director is responsible for a variety of other functions 

relating to labor-management relations including supervising union 

elections and resolving issues involving such matters as good faith 

bargaining. OOC has supervised 14 union elections since 1997, 12 of these 

in 2000 or earlier. 

Another duty of the General Counsel under the CAA is to represent OOC in 

any judicial proceeding under the act, including cases before the U.S. Court 

of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.8

 In past years, the number of such cases 

has been low, with no cases filed in 1997, 2001, and 2002 and one case each 

filed in 1998, 1999, and 2000. However, in 2003 the number of federal circuit 

review cases involving OOC and requiring attention from the General 

Counsel and his staff unexpectedly increased to six. OOC’s General 

Counsel told us that this situation has been exacerbated by the loss of two 

attorneys during 2003, reducing his previous staffing level of four full-time 

OOC attorneys to only two, including the General Counsel, by December 

2003. According to the General Counsel, his office is currently recruiting 

for a staff attorney and he expects to have that individual hired by spring of 

2004. 

Education and Information 

Distribution

OOC has a broad mandate under the CAA to provide education and 

information to the Congress, employing offices, and legislative branch 

employees about their rights, protections, and responsibilities under the 

act. To this end, OOC uses a variety of approaches including distributing 

written material such as home mailings, fliers, bulletins, fact sheets, and 

reports; conducting briefings with new staff at agency-sponsored 

orientation sessions; holding seminars at the offices of stakeholders and 

legislative agencies; maintaining a Web site and information number; and 

responding to direct inquires. More recently, OOC’s education efforts have 

made increased use of technology including a redesign of its Web site to 

make it more user friendly and increased use of resources such as 

electronic news bulletins and online tools such as its interactive template 

for creating an emergency action plan. 

Despite such potentially promising initiatives, OOC’s current approach to 

tracking and reporting on its education efforts—its Education Program 

Year End Report—remains firmly focused on counting products and 

activities rather than focusing on results. Other approaches such as 

conducting feedback surveys and focus groups could provide OOC with 

8

See 2 U.S.C. § 1382(c)(3). 
Page 28 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

valuable mechanisms to increase its understanding of the actual level of 

awareness specific target populations have of its programs and activities. 

OOC can then use this knowledge to assess its effectiveness in actually 

communicating its message rather than simply its diligence in distributing 

documents. 

Developing appropriate performance measures has the potential to help 

OOC realize several significant benefits such as improving its ability to 

understand and track its process toward achieving goals, giving managers 

crucial information on which to base their organizational and management 

decisions, and creating powerful incentives to influence organizational and 

individual behavior. Of course, the benefits of such improvements will need 

to be balanced against real-world considerations, such as the cost and 

effort involved in gathering and analyzing performance data, and the 

burden such data collection may present for stakeholders and covered 

employees. 

Opportunities to Strengthen 

OOC’s Effectiveness by 

Ensuring Programs Are 

Aligned with Results

We have previously reported that as agencies develop information systems 

and capacities for analysis and evaluation, they discover that having a 

better understanding of the facts and the relationship between their 

activities and desired outcomes provides them with a solid foundation for 

focusing their efforts and improving their performance.9

 Facing an 

increasing workload and scarce resources, OOC’s leadership has begun the 

process of asking these questions in an effort to find more effective ways in 

which to do their work. 

OOC’s senior leadership has expressed a willingness to explore 

opportunities to develop the technical and analytical capacity needed to 

more effectively work toward results. For example, over the last several 

years OOC has used a variety of methods for tracking and recording 

summary information on its occupational safety and health related 

caseload in order to manage its work in this area. These systems were 

generally basic in design and ranged from several incompatibly designed 

databases to using simple tables in a word processor to keep track of cases. 

None of these approaches provided the General Counsel and his staff with 

an easy way to systematically examine the approximately 50 open requests 

9

GAO/GGD-96-118.
Page 29 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

for health and safety investigations, or the hundreds of inspections and 

investigations conducted by OOC in the past, to look for patterns and 

identify possible common or underlying causes of potential workplace 

hazards. Toward this end, OOC is exploring the possibility of acquiring a 

specialized regulatory case-tracking database application that would 

enable the General Counsel and his staff to take a more strategic and riskbased approach towards their work, including such decisions as assigning 

cases, determining the appropriate amount of follow-up required, and 

informing the selection of particular facilities for its biennial inspections. 

Until OOC decides on whether, and which, permanent case-tracking 

software system it may adopt, staff in the General Counsel’s office have 

been developing a new Microsoft Access database intended to offer a shortterm solution to OOC’s need to more effectively track basic information 

related to its occupational safety and health related caseload, such as case 

type, key dates, principal parties involved, and actions planned and 

accomplished. According to the General Counsel, this system should be 

operational in January 2004. 

Ensuring that an organization is focusing on the right activities to 

effectively achieve its goals is always an important part of good 

management control. However, focusing on the right activities is especially 

important in times of economic scarcity, when the benefit of having 

programs that deliver a maximum impact towards achieving results is 

particularly critical. For example, in light of increasing demands for safety 

and health inspections, and the very small number of OOC staff available to 

conduct those inspections, OOC’s General Counsel and his staff have begun 

to explore possible approaches to leverage OOC’s limited resources 

through constructive engagement with legislative agencies. This approach 

seeks to obtain agency compliance with occupational safety and health 

requirements by motivating them to do so out of a sense of common 

purpose and mutual benefit rather than forcing them with the threat of 

punitive citations. 

Toward this end, in February 2004 OOC will sponsor its first-ever 

Organizational Health and Safety Program Conference. The conference will 

bring together congressional and agency staff involved in health and safety 

issues from throughout the legislative branch in order to learn about recent 

thinking and practice in workplace health and safety and to discuss issues 

of mutual concern. The conference will include presentations by outside 

safety experts from a variety of organizations from the legislative branch 

and elsewhere. Tentatively scheduled presenters include representatives 

from AOC, organized labor, OSHA, and the National Safety Council. 
Page 30 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

The recent experiences of AOC provide another example of the potential 

benefits of sharing lessons learned concerning health and safety practices. 

AOC is undertaking a major effort to augment and make more strategic its 

approach to worker safety and health.10 This effort obviously has important 

implications for AOC and its employees. Equally important, by sharing 

AOC’s experiences and leveraging its efforts in such areas as incident 

reporting and follow-up and risk mitigation, AOC’s efforts can potentially 

have great value across legislative branch agencies. Building on this idea, 

OOC should explore the possibility of playing a more active role as a 

central repository for good practices developed by agencies throughout the 

legislative branch on topics covered under the CAA. 

OOC’s recent experience with USCP to offer fire safety training for its 

officers provides a lesson in the importance of carefully targeting such 

initiatives to the intended audience. The impact of OOC’s initiative may be 

somewhat limited until OOC develops a deeper understanding of what 

would make this type of supplemental training useful in the view of USCP’s 

management and officers. Specifically, a senior USCP official who was 

directly aware of this effort informed us that although the training 

contained some good material, it was not sufficiently tailored to USCP to 

be very useful. 

The value of thinking about outcomes and the relationship between 

activities and outcomes can also help OOC make determinations about 

whether it is providing the right mix of services and activities to achieve its 

overall goals. For example, until recently OOC’s education efforts have 

been largely focused on activities such as sending mass mailings of written 

material to the homes of legislative branch employees, distributing fliers 

and bulletins to legislative agencies for subsequent distribution, and 

conducting general information sessions for new employees. Moreover, 

OOC’s education efforts would benefit from better analysis of the types of 

complaints that have been made. As noted above, OOC tracks the number 

of cases it handles and how they proceed through established processes. It 

does not, however, currently gather data on the nature of complaints. While 

protecting the confidentiality of OOC’s case files must continue to be of 

primary concern, OOC could also seek ways to examine if common issues 

10U.S. General Accounting Office, Architect of the Capitol: Status Report on 

Implementation of Management Review Recommendations, GAO-04-299 (Washington, 

D.C.: Jan. 30, 2004). 
Page 31 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

are being raised. Such information could prove very valuable in targeting 

OOC’s education efforts. 

In addition, OOC’s current leadership team recognizes the importance of 

looking for new ways to get information about the CAA and OOC out to 

employees. They are also experimenting with new approaches such as 

posting e-bulletins and other ways to use the Internet creatively. On the 

basis of our work, ample opportunities exist for continued progress in this 

area. For example, in our conversations with congressional stakeholders, 

representatives from the Senate Administrative Office Managers Group 

told us that they would welcome additional contact with OOC. These 

Senate office managers are senior staff responsible for working with 

Members to ensure the efficient and effective operation of each member’s 

personal office. As such, office managers are key clients of OOC. Office 

managers meet periodically to discuss issues of mutual interest and 

concern—an ideal opportunity for OOC outreach. However, 

representatives from the Senate Administrative Office Managers Group 

told us that they had not had contact with OOC for several years. OOC 

should consider whether there are similar groups that it might reach out to 

as part of its effort to establish consistent and ongoing relationships with 

its clients.

Recommended Next Steps We recommend that OOC’s Executive Director and General Counsel:

• identify potential improvements to how the Office measures its 

activities and performance, including the possibility of using benchmark 

data from federal agencies with similar functions for purposes of 

comparison and analysis;

• provide a more complete picture of OOC’s workload by improving how 

it tracks and reports on single-issue large group requests for counseling 

and mediation;

• work with the Congress to develop a strategy to ensure that all facilities 

under OOC’s jurisdiction and located in the Capitol Hill complex and the 

surrounding Washington, D.C. area—including the Senate and House 

page dormitories, and LOC’s National Library Service for the Blind and 

Physically Handicapped—are covered as part of the biennial safety 

inspections required by the CAA; 
Page 32 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

• establish a clearinghouse for sharing best practice information on topics 

covered by the CAA;

• work with the Congress to determine the feasibility of using such 

mechanisms as feedback surveys and focus groups to provide valuable 

information on the actual level of awareness among target populations 

concerning OOC’s programs and activities;

• outreach to other groups and forums such as the Senate Administrative 

Managers-Chief Clerks Steering Committee; 

• use data on the number and type of complaints received by OOC to 

better target education and information distribution efforts; and

• develop capacity to use safety and health data to facilitate risk-based 

decision making. 

Building Effective 

Communication 

Emphasizing Outreach 

and Coordination

Effective communication and coordination with both stakeholders and 

clients is essential for organizations to operate effectively, manage risks, 

and achieve results. We have previously identified the ability of federal 

agencies to engage in relevant, reliable, and timely communication relating 

to internal and external events as fundamental for effective management 

control.11 At OOC, an effective communications strategy could provide a 

powerful tool to seek mutual understanding among OOC, key stakeholders, 

and legislative agencies concerning its mission and role, convey OOC’s 

recent initiatives and improvement efforts, obtain information about the 

external environment that may affect the Office’s ability to achieve its 

mission, as well as build up trust among the stakeholders and clients that is 

necessary for the Office to realize its goal of becoming more collaborative 

and partnerial. 

OOC has recently undertaken a number of important initiatives to improve 

communications and coordination. Consistent with, and building upon 

those initiatives, we identified two specific areas where OOC can continue 

to make improvements in the way in which it communicates with other 

entities and organizations including: 

11GAO/AIMD-00-21.3.1.
Page 33 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

• ensuring clear, regular, and timely consultation with congressional 

stakeholders; and

• communicating and coordinating with agencies openly and effectively.

Ensuring Clear, Regular, and 

Timely Consultation with 

Congressional Stakeholders

A key component of an effective communications strategy is 

communicating with, and obtaining information from, external 

stakeholders.12 OOC’s leaders recognize the importance of communicating 

with stakeholders and have taken steps to expand their efforts in this area. 

However, our interviews with a wide range of congressional stakeholders, 

including majority and minority staff in both the Senate and the House, 

indicate that OOC’s efforts to effectively consult with the Congress have 

been uneven and additional efforts are needed. 

On the one hand, some congressional staff—but by no means all—told us 

that they believed OOC has made efforts to develop more transparent and 

collegial working relationships with congressional stakeholders. For 

example, a congressional staff member cited the efforts of OOC's General 

Counsel to reach out to congressional staff shortly after he joined the 

Office in May 2003. Another staff member cited an example where OOC 

worked constructively with his office to resolve a potential fire safety 

problem involving the placement of furniture. This staff member 

appreciated OOC's willingness to discuss the issue with his office and work 

to find a satisfactory solution that would both comply with safety 

requirements and take into account the need of his office to continue to 

conduct business and the physical limitations of the space involved. 

On the other hand, a number of staff, including some who acknowledged 

and appreciated OOC’s recent efforts, said that they remained unclear 

about the office’s role and services, how it makes decisions, and related 

matters. Moreover, several congressional staff members told us that they 

have not seen much outreach from OOC, or that the outreach they did 

experience was inconsistent and could be more effective. For example, one 

individual told us that he only received information from OOC when it was 

interested in proposing a legislative change that would require the 

cooperation of the Congress. Another concern cited by several staff was 

the perception that OOC did not make an effort to ensure that they were 

12GAO/AIMD-00-21.3.1.
Page 34 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

informed “at the front end” concerning significant activities and initiatives. 

Thus, the concern is not so much the existence of OOC’s operating 

procedures. Rather, the concern is communication as those procedures are 

being applied and OOC undertakes its daily operations. 

Effective communications strategies take into account how to most 

effectively communicate the message given their intended audience. For 

example, in September 2003 OOC initiated a formal rulemaking process to 

amend parts of its operating procedures. As required by the CAA, OOC’s 

Board of Directors submitted an announcement for inclusion in the 

Congressional Record announcing proposed changes in OOC’s procedural 

rules and inviting comment. A key staff member said that it would have 

been more helpful—and could have avoided, or at least limited, subsequent 

concerns with the process used to issue the draft rules—if OOC had more 

fully reached out to key committees and Members before the draft proposal 

was announced publicly. Another staff member told us that, at a minimum, 

it would have been helpful if OOC followed the notice by contacting them 

directly to ensure that they were aware of the proposed rules and the 

subsequent 30-day comment period, explaining that such announcements 

are easy to miss if one is not looking for them. Although OOC’s initial 

posting met its legal obligations, the Office decided to place another notice 

and extend the comment period. 

To encourage additional feedback from stakeholders and other interested 

parties, OOC’s Board decided to hold a public hearing on the proposed 

changes even though the CAA does not require it. According to OOC, the 

decision to hold the hearing was consistent with feedback OOC had 

received several years earlier from some congressional stakeholders. 

However, instead of creating an opportunity for stakeholders to provide 

additional feedback, the Board had to cancel the session because only one 

person had agreed to speak at the hearing. Congressional staff told us that 

the Congress’ lack of participation in the hearing was not an indication of a 

lack of interest in the issues to be discussed, but was due to concerns about 

the nature and structure of the forum. OOC had not informed congressional 

staff of its intention to seek additional comment in this way. Moreover, one 

congressional stakeholder said that OOC’s approach to solicit additional 

comments through a public hearing was inappropriate. 

Communication protocols provide a potentially valuable tool that 

organizations can use to avoid such surprises and help foster clearer 

understanding with stakeholders. For example, after working closely with 

the Congress and after a trial phase, GAO implemented congressional 
Page 35 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

protocols in November 2000.13 From our experiences in developing the 

protocols, we have identified key lessons and success factors—that 

developing protocols is a time-consuming process which involves 

(1) personal commitment and direction from the agency head, (2) senior 

management participation and buy-in, and (3) continuous outreach to and 

feedback from external stakeholders. Despite the time and the effort, 

however, our experience using protocols as a transparent, documented, 

and consistent way to set priorities has been very positive for us as well as 

our congressional clients. Similarly, for OOC such protocols could help 

foster an understanding of its goals, functions, and procedures with its 

congressional stakeholders.

Communicating and 

Coordinating with Agencies 

Openly and Effectively

Open and effective coordination with legislative agencies and other 

stakeholders including employee groups is another critical component of 

an effective communications strategy at OOC. We have previously reported 

that organizations can develop and refine their operations and better 

achieve results by establishing channels that facilitate open and effective 

communication with clients and other recipients of their services and 

activities.14

Several officials at legislative branch agencies covered by the CAA told us 

that at points over the more than 8 years since OOC's has been in 

operation, communications and interactions among the Office and their 

agencies have not been good. These agency officials told us that some of 

OOC's past actions had created distrust and had fostered the belief among 

some staff that OOC was more interested in making them look bad (by 

using a “gotcha” approach) rather than working with agencies to comply 

with the CAA and create a better workplace. In contrast, the union groups 

we met with generally characterized their interactions with OOC as 

positive throughout this period. 

OOC’s Board and leadership are aware of the concerns expressed by some 

legislative agencies and have taken steps to address them. As a result, 

officials we interviewed at these agencies generally agreed that over the 

13U.S. General Accounting Office, GAO’s Congressional Protocols, GAO-01-145G

(Washington, D.C.: November 2000). 

14U.S. General Accounting Office, Internal Control Management and Evaluation Tool, 

GAO-01-1008G (Washington, D.C.: August 2001). 
Page 36 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

last year or two, OOC has taken steps to improve the working relationships 

with their respective offices. These officials cited efforts by OOC's senior 

executives to reach out to them through a series of meetings held by the 

Executive Director and General Counsel as evidence of a new, more 

constructive attitude towards legislative agencies. For example, in the area 

of occupational safety and health enforcement, an AOC official told us that 

OOC’s General Counsel had initiated several meetings with AOC to discuss 

possible initiatives to improve health and safety on Capitol Hill. Included in 

these discussions was AOC’s recent decision to adopt an internal IT 

application to assist the agency in tracking and monitoring potential safety 

and health problems before complaints are made to OOC. According to 

both the AOC official and OOC’s General Counsel, the two organizations 

have had preliminary discussions on the possibility of sharing such health 

and safety data, although they have yet to come to an agreement on 

whether or how to do so. 

Despite some advances, our interviews with agency officials identified 

several areas where OOC needs to make improvements in how it 

communicates and coordinates with agencies covered by the CAA. Among 

the continuing problems officials mentioned were (1) OOC’s failure to 

always follow its own rules and procedures when conducting 

investigations of health and safety complaints and (2) the lack of timely and 

consistent follow-up on the status and disposition of investigations 

conducted by the Office and clear communication with agency officials. 

For example, several agency officials told us that OOC was not always 

consistent in the manner in which it conducts investigations of 

occupational safety and health-related complaints, occasionally failing to 

follow its own processes and procedures. The CAA gives OOC’s General 

Counsel considerable authority to inspect and investigate places of 

employment under the jurisdiction of employing agencies covered by the 

CAA and does not require him to provide advance notice before starting an 

investigation or visiting buildings or facilities.15 However, to foster a 

constructive working relationship with the agencies they regulate, OOC’s 

General Counsel and a staff member told us that it has been a long-standing 

policy of OOC to immediately notify the agency involved when the Office 

receives a safety and health-related complaint. In addition, except in cases 

of emergency or when any delay might pose a danger, it is also OOC's 

policy to give agencies the option of attending an opening conference 

15See 2 U.S.C § 1341(c)(1).
Page 37 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

before proceeding with the investigation. However, officials at two 

agencies told us that there have been cases, including some within the past 

year, where OOC has failed to follow its policy on agency notification. They 

said these instances have contributed to misunderstandings, confusion, 

and, in at least one case, the perception among senior agency officials “that 

a ‘gotcha’ mentality still exists at OOC.” While OOC and the agency 

involved in this last case do not agree concerning the facts and significance 

of OOC’s actions that led to this comment on the part of the agency, the 

situation provides an illustration of the differences that exist in perceptions 

between OOC and some agency officials. 

In addition, agency officials told us that often OOC would not follow up 

with agency officials on the status and disposition of investigations in a 

timely or consistent manner. For example, agency officials told us of cases 

where, after meeting with OOC staff to discuss the findings of a particular 

investigation and responding with a plan to address the issues, they did not 

hear back from OOC for months, or in several instances, for a year or more. 

The agency official we spoke with explained that this absence of closure 

complicated efforts to resolve the current status of cases. 

Our review of OOC's procedure manual for handling safety and healthrelated complaints found that it did not provide a clear, complete, and upto-date source of OOC's policies and procedures on how the Office 

responds to such complaints. In addition, the manual did not provide clear 

time frames on when OOC would communicate to agencies during this 

process. For example, the manual has not been updated since 1997 and 

does not contain any specific language on the Office's policy of providing 

agencies with opening conferences as described to us by OOC's General 

Counsel and his staff. In response to follow-up requests, OOC staff did 

provide us with a separate one-page document, dated May 1999, which 

described topics discussed at an opening conference. However, this 

document also did not clearly set forth OOC's policy on agency 

notification, and it was not clear how it was used and how widely it had 

been distributed. OOC’s General Counsel has recently acknowledged the 

need to revise and update these procedures, but he told us that because of 

other needs he has not given this a high priority. 

To establish channels that facilitate open and effective communication, 

organizations need to clearly set out procedures—such as communication 

protocols—that they will consistently follow when doing their work. For 

example, building on the foundation of the congressional protocols we 

developed in 2000, GAO launched the pilot phase of our agency protocols 
Page 38 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

in 2002 that contain clearly defined and transparent policies and practices 

on how we carry out our work at federal agencies.16 These protocols 

identify what agencies can expect from GAO and what GAO expects of 

agencies. Toward this end, our protocols present information on the 

framework of GAO’s engagement and audit activities—including 

communication between GAO and agencies, interactions during the course 

of GAO’s work, and follow-up on GAO’s recommendations—and contain a 

description of the specific actions and activities we will take at each stage 

as well as specific time frames when appropriate. In this way the protocols 

are intended to help ensure the consistency, fairness, and effectiveness of 

interactions between GAO and the agencies with which it works. Rather 

than being just a paperwork exercise, the development of agency protocols 

that clearly and accurately communicate OOC’s current policies and 

procedures can be an important tool to assist OOC’s management achieve 

its commitment to communicate more openly and effectively with 

legislative agencies. In addition, protocols can have a significant impact on 

OOC's ability to work constructively and fairly with the agencies it 

regulates, and to accomplish its overall mission goals. 

Recommended Next Steps Both OOC’s Board of Directors and its senior executives recognize the 

importance of communicating with stakeholders and have begun to make 

efforts in this area. Consistent with that commitment, we recommend that 

OOC take the following steps:

• Develop congressional protocols, in close consultation with 

congressional stakeholders, that would document agreements between 

the Congress and OOC on what congressional stakeholders can expect 

as the Office carries out its work. Protocols help to ensure that OOC 

deals with its congressional stakeholders using clearly defined, 

consistently applied, and transparent policies and procedures. They can 

also help OOC reach agreement on the best mix of products and 

services to achieve its mission. It is important to note that consulting 

with stakeholders is not the same as seeking their acceptance or 

approval on matters where that would not be appropriate. The purpose 

of such protocols is to help create a basic understanding of OOC’s goals, 

functions, and procedures; and what OOC will communicate to whom, 

16U.S. General Accounting Office, GAO’s Agency Protocols, GAO-03-232SP (Washington, 

D.C.: December 2002). 
Page 39 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

when, and how, without compromising the independence the Congress 

gave OOC to enforce the CAA. 

• Develop agency protocols, in cooperation with legislative agencies, that 

would clarify and clearly communicate the procedures OOC will follow 

when interacting with agencies while carrying out its work. 

In both cases OOC should carefully pilot the protocols before they are fully 

implemented so that OOC, the Congress, and legislative agencies can gain 

valuable experiences in their application and that appropriate adjustments 

can be made.

We also recommend that the Executive Director and the General Counsel 

review and revise OOC’s case handling policies and procedures, such as 

OOC’s procedure manual for handling safety and health-related complaints, 

and ensure that they are effectively communicated to appropriate 

legislative agency officials.

Creating and 

Sustaining an 

Enhanced Management 

Control Environment 

Essential for Effective 

Operations 

The creation of an enhanced control environment forms the foundation for 

an organization’s ability to put in place the management controls necessary 

for effective and efficient operations. Well-managed organizations establish 

and maintain an environment that sets a positive and supportive attitude 

toward internal control and conscientious management. In our previous 

work, we have identified several key factors that affect an organization’s 

ability to create such an environment including its organizational and 

leadership structure and its ability to effectively manage and develop its 

human capital.17 OOC faces challenges in both of these areas, which it 

needs to successfully overcome in order to exercise effective management 

control. 

Performance Agreements 

Offer a Potential Tool to 

Increase Accountability of 

Top Leaders and Focus on 

Organizational Goals

We have previously reported that federal agencies have used performance 

agreements between senior political and career executives as a tool to 

define accountability for specific goals, monitor progress, and contribute to

17GAO/AIMD-00-21.3.1.
Page 40 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

performance evaluations.18 Congress has also recognized the role that 

performance agreements can play in holding organizations and executives 

accountable for results. For example, in 1998, the Congress chartered the 

Office of Student Financial Assistance as a performance-based 

organization and required the agency to implement performance 

agreements. In addition to providing OOC’s Board with a mechanism to 

increase accountability, performance agreements would also provide the 

platform for ongoing dialogue to help ensure that the goals and priorities 

contained in OOC’s strategic plan are carried out by its top executives and 

help ensure the proper alignment among daily operations and activities and 

the broader results OOC strives to achieve.

Since it was created in 1995, OOC has operated without having any formal 

performance management system for its Executive Director and General 

Counsel. Starting in 2003, OOC’s Board of Directors required these officials 

to prepare an annual self-assessment that they submit to the Board for 

review. The Executive Director and General Counsel prepare narratives 

assessing themselves in five performance categories: operational 

management, external relations, ethics, strategic planning, and Board 

relations. These narratives then form the basis for a subsequent informal 

review session with the Board. The development of these self-assessments 

is an important first step in improving the performance and assuring the 

accountability of OOC and its executive team. 

OOC’s current efforts to develop a strategic plan provide an ideal 

opportunity for the Office to build on this first step. Once OOC has reached 

agreement with its stakeholders and has completed its strategic plan, it can 

take the next step and develop results-oriented performance agreements 

with its senior executives that are directly linked to organizational goals 

embodied in its strategic plan—the absence of which is a major limitation 

of the current effort. We have reported on a number of benefits of 

performance agreements that may have direct importance to achieving 

improved performance at OOC. Performance agreements have:

• Strengthened alignment of results-oriented goals with daily 

operations. Performance agreements define accountability for specific 

goals and help to align daily operations with agencies' results-oriented, 

programmatic goals.

18U.S. General Accounting Office, Managing for Results: Emerging Benefits From Selected 

Agencies’ Use of Performance Agreements, GAO-01-115 (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 30, 2000).
Page 41 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

• Fostered collaboration across organizational boundaries.

Performance agreements encourage executives to work across 

traditional organizational boundaries or "silos" by focusing on the 

achievement of results-oriented goals.

• Enhanced opportunities to discuss and routinely use performance 

information to make program improvements. Performance 

agreements facilitate communication about organizational performance, 

and provide opportunities to pinpoint improved performance.

• Provided a results-oriented basis for individual accountability.

Performance agreements provide results-oriented performance 

information to serve as the basis for executive performance evaluations.

• Maintained continuity of program goals during leadership 

transitions. Performance agreements help to maintain a consistent 

focus on a set of broad programmatic priorities during changes in 

leadership.19

In addition to assuring accountability and alignment of operations to 

results, performance agreements could help OOC ensure it maintains a 

common and consistent vision and approach to the implementation of the 

CAA. In the past, a lack of such a common vision on how OOC should 

approach the enforcement of workplace health and safety requirements or 

interact with stakeholders resulted in clashes between the Executive 

Director and the previous General Counsel. Specifically, a number of 

congressional and legislative agency officials we interviewed had the 

perception that a previous General Counsel’s emphasis on a strict “gotcha” 

approach toward enforcement led to a combative and adversarial 

relationship with legislative agencies and other stakeholders that was at 

odds with the more collaborative approach supported by OOC’s Executive 

Director. 

OOC’s current Board, Executive Director, and General Counsel told us that 

they share a common commitment to pursuing a collaborative and 

constructive approach towards enforcing the CAA. OOC’s recent effort to 

develop a strategic plan is a reflection of the common vision of the 

organization’s mission, goals, and operational approach shared by OOC’s 

current leaders. In addition, they appear to enjoy good working 

19GAO-01-115. 
Page 42 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

relationships among themselves. However, the standards of effective 

management control and OOC’s own past experience demonstrate the need 

for the office to take appropriate steps to address the OOC’s organizational 

structure and presents a challenge to effective management control. 

Effective Human Capital 

Management Is Also a Key 

Factor in Management 

Control

Effective human capital management is an important factor contributing to 

management control as well as an organization’s ability to achieve results. 

We have identified two human capital challenges currently facing OOC: (1) 

the need to ensure leadership continuity and preserve critical 

organizational knowledge in the face of the impending loss of a large 

number of leaders over the next 2 years and (2) the need to establish a 

modern, effective, and credible performance management system with 

appropriate safeguards for all OOC employees.

Leadership Continuity Is Key to 

Management Control

Sustained focus and direction from top leadership is a key component of 

effective management. Management control requires that organizations 

consider the effect upon their operations if a large number of employees— 

including executives and other leaders—are expected to leave and then 

establish criteria for a retention or mitigation strategy. 

OOC currently faces a considerable loss of knowledge and leadership 

capacity due to impending turnover of its Board of Directors. This 

expected loss is the result of CAA provisions that limit current Board 

members to a single 5-year term. For example, within the next year-and-ahalf all five members of the current Board will reach the end of their terms. 

When the Congress crafted the CAA, it included a provision to provide for 

staggered terms for OOC’s Board. However, delays in the appointment of 

successors to the original group of board members resulted in the 

appointment of several new members at the same time. Specifically, the 

Chair and two members of the five-member Board were appointed in 

October 1999 and are scheduled to complete their terms in September 

2004. The terms of the two remaining Board members will end eight 

months later in May 2005.

The situation is only slightly better for OOC’s four appointed executives. 

Similar to the Board, the CAA restricts OOC’s four appointed executives to 

nonrenewable 5-year terms of service. In addition, this restriction also 

prevents the possibility of having a deputy executive director serve in the 

role of executive director, making the potential of succession planning 

among this group of executives impossible. The terms of all but the General 

Counsel will expire within 6 months of each other in 2006. If one considers 
Page 43 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

both OOC’s Board and its senior executives together, eight out of nine of 

the organization’s top officials will have left by September 2006. The loss of 

such a large proportion of OOC’s senior leadership within a relatively short 

period will likely result in a loss of leadership continuity, institutional 

knowledge, and expertise that has the potential of adversely impacting 

OOC’s performance at least in the short term. 

Other federal agencies with functions similar to OOC do not restrict their 

board members from serving subsequent terms. For example, there are no 

statutory restrictions on the five board members of the EEOC and the three 

board members of the Federal Labor Relations Authority from serving 

addition terms. In addition, the statute governing the National Labor 

Relations Board permits the five board members to be reappointed. 

Need for Modern, Effective, and 

Credible Approach to 

Performance Management 

We have previously reported that performance management systems can 

create a “line of sight” showing how team, unit, and individual performance 

can contribute to overall organizational results.20 An explicit alignment of 

daily activities with broader results is one of the defining features of 

effective performance management systems in high-performing 

organizations. Organizations naturally need to develop performance 

management systems that reflect their specific structures and priorities. 

Given OOC’s small size and specific situation, it is important that it 

considers these and other key practices in the context of its own needs, 

capabilities, and circumstances. 

In September 2002, OOC rolled out its first formal performance 

management system to staff who report to the Executive Director. OOC 

assesses employees on eight performance dimensions: (1) job knowledge 

and technical skills, (2) overall quality of work, (3) employee and 

professional relationships, (4) planning and organization, (5) work habits, 

(6) judgment, (7) initiative and creativity, and (8) development. Supervisors 

are to meet with their staff twice a year to provide ratings and feedback on 

the previous 6-month assessment period. They also are to hold an interim 

meeting halfway through each assessment period. For these eight 

performance dimensions, supervisors give each employee two separate 

20U.S. General Accounting Office, Results-Oriented Cultures: Creating a Clear Linkage 

between Individual Performance and Organizational Success, GAO-03-488 (Washington, 

D.C.: Mar. 14, 2003); Results-Oriented Cultures: Insights for U.S. Agencies from Other 

Countries’ Performance Management Initiatives, GAO-02-862 (Washington, D.C.: Aug. 2, 

2002); and GAO-01-115.
Page 44 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

ratings—the first describes the employee’s overall achievement in the 

performance dimension, and the second represents the progress of the 

employee toward achieving specific goals established at the start of the 

evaluation cycle.

On one hand, OOC’s decision to establish a formal performance 

management system covering at least some of its employees represents a 

good first step and its performance management system exhibits some 

positive characteristics. For example, OOC’s requirement that supervisors 

and employees meet at least four times a year to discuss the employees’ 

recent performance and individual goals provides regular opportunities for 

staff to discuss and act on feedback. On the other hand, there are areas 

where the system can be improved as OOC’s efforts in this area move 

forward. For example, OOC’s current performance management system 

assesses staff against the eight performance dimensions identified above 

without providing specific standards or detailed descriptions of the 

behaviors associated with varying levels of performance. For instance, for 

the performance dimension “overall quality of work,” the only descriptive 

standard provided is “consistently produces competent work.” OOC should 

explore the usefulness of including descriptions of competencies—those 

specific skills or supporting behaviors that employees are expected to 

demonstrate as they carry out their work—in its performance management 

system to provide a basis for making judgements about an individual’s 

performance and contribution to OOC’s results. 

In addition, OOC’s current performance management system does not 

apply to the General Counsel or any OOC attorneys who report to him. 

These employees continue to work without any formal performance 

management system in place. Moving forward, the involvement of 

employees will be crucial to the success of any efforts by OOC to create a 

new performance management system or reform and expand its existing 

one.21 Given OOC’s small size, the cost in time and effort to obtain such 

feedback likely could be minimal. 

Matters for Congressional 

Consideration

Congress should consider making legislative changes to the CAA to help 

ensure that OOC maintains institutional continuity into the future. 

Specifically, the Congress should consider amending the CAA to allow:

21U.S. General Accounting Office, A Model of Strategic Human Capital Management, GAO02-373SP (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 15, 2002) and GAO-02-862.
Page 45 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

• Board members to be reappointed to an additional term, and

• the Executive Director, General Counsel, and the two Deputy Executive 

Directors to be reappointed to serve subsequent terms in either the 

same or a different position, if warranted and the Congress so desires. 

Any reappointments should be contingent on an individual’s 

demonstrated performance and achievement of goals as documented in 

executive performance agreements for OOC’s Executive Director and 

General Counsel, as recommended below, or another performance 

management system in the case of OOC’s two Deputy Executive 

Directors. 

Recommended Next Steps We recommend that OOC’s Board:

• Require performance agreements between the Board of Directors and 

OOC’s Executive Director and General Counsel to help translate the 

Office’s strategic goals into day-to-day operations and to hold these 

executives accountable for achieving program results. 

We recommend that OOC’s Executive Director and General Counsel:

• Establish a modern, effective, and credible performance management 

system with appropriate safeguards for all OOC employees. OOC should 

build on the first step of establishing a basic performance management 

system for employees reporting to the Executive Director by ensuring 

that all employees, including those who report to the General Counsel, 

participate in an individual performance management system. In 

addition, OOC should look for ways to develop a more robust and 

effective approach to individual performance management by 

considering key practices employed by leading organizations. 

• Actively involve all OOC’s employees in this process, whether it entails 

the revision and expansion of its existing performance management 

system or the creation of an entirely new initiative. 

Agency Comments On January 22, 2004, we provided a draft of this report to OOC’s Board of 

Directors, Executive Director, and General Counsel for their review and 

comment. We received written comments prepared jointly by the Board of 

Directors, Executive Director, and General Counsel on January 26, 2004. In 
Page 46 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

their joint response, OOC generally agreed with the contents of this report, 

noting that the Office has begun to adopt many of our recommendations as 

part of its strategic planning process and current programmatic initiatives. 

Furthermore, the Board of Directors strongly supports our statement that 

the Congress should consider amending the CAA to allow OOC’s Board 

members to serve an additional term and to allow the Executive Director, 

General Counsel, and the two Deputy Executive Directors to be 

reappointed to serve additional terms in either the same or a different 

position, if warranted and desired. As mentioned in their response and as 

acknowledged in our report, we have provided information and assistance 

to OOC regarding their management control improvement efforts and we 

plan to continue working with OOC’s leadership and meet with them 

regularly to discuss their progress. Their written response is reprinted in 

appendix II. In addition, OOC’s Executive Director and General Counsel 

provided minor technical clarifications, and we made those changes where 

appropriate. 

We will provide copies of this report to other interested congressional 

committees, and the Office of Compliance. In addition, we will make copies 

available to others upon request. The report will be available at no charge 

on the GAO Web site at http://www.gao.gov.

If you have any questions about this report, please contact me or Steven 

Lozano on (202) 512-6806 or on mihmj@gao.gov and lozanos@gao.gov. 

Major contributors to this report were Jeff Dawson, Peter J. Del Toro, 

Jeffery Bass, Bruce Goddard, and Jeff McDermott. 

J. Christopher Mihm

Managing Director, Strategic Issues
Page 47 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

Appendix I

Objective, Scope, and Methodology ApApenednxidexiIs

To meet our objective of assessing key management controls in place at the 

Office of Compliance (OOC) and identify what improvements, if any, could 

be taken to strengthen OOC’s effectiveness and efficiency, we followed a 

multipronged approach. First, we analyzed applicable laws, legislative 

history, rules, and regulations; and obtained and analyzed written 

documentation of guidance, policies, procedures, and performance of 

OOC.

Second, to understand the complex operating environment and longstanding challenges facing the agency, we conducted a series of interviews 

with agency officials, key stakeholders, and officials from agencies covered 

by the Congressional Accountability Act (CAA). To obtain OOC’s 

perspectives on its operations and the challenges it faces, we interviewed 

OOC’s Board of Directors as well as each of its top executives—the 

Executive Director, General Counsel, Deputy Executive Director for the 

Senate, and Deputy Executive Director for the House. We also met with all 

of OOC’s managers including the Deputy General Counsel, Director of 

Counseling, and Budget and Administrative Officer. 

To understand how key stakeholders perceive the OOC, we conducted 19 

interviews with selected majority and minority congressional staff from 

both the Senate and House. Among those we interviewed were staff from 

Senate and House leadership offices, Senate and House Subcommittees on 

Legislative Branch Appropriations, Committee on Governmental Affairs, 

Committee on House Administration, Office of the Senate Employment 

Counsel, Senate Sergeant-At-Arms, Senate Administrative Managers Group, 

Office of the Clerk of the House, Office of the House Employment Counsel, 

Office of the Chief Administrative Officer of the House, House Inspector 

General, as well as personal staff of several senators and representatives. 

We also spoke with cognizant officials from agencies covered by the CAA 

to obtain their views of the performance of the Office. These included the 

Architect of the Capitol, the Congressional Budget Office, the United States 

Capitol Police, the Office of the Attending Physician, the Library of 

Congress, and GAO. To obtain the perspectives of organized labor and 

employee groups we spoke with two of the largest unions representing 

employees in legislative agencies—the Association of Federal, State, 

County, and Municipal Employees, and the Fraternal Order of Police. 

In addition, we conducted selected reliability and validity reviews of OOC’s 

dispute resolution process database. For these reviews, we questioned 

OOC staff about their internal controls for their dispute resolution 
Appendix I

Objective, Scope, and Methodology

Page 48 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

database. We then drew a random sample of 5 cases out of a total field of 44 

cases reported as closed in the database for 2002 and compared the 

electronic data to source documents. We also examined whether OOC was 

processing cases within statutorily defined thresholds for key process 

phases. The OOC’s responses to our questions and the results of this 

comparison led us to conclude that the data were sufficiently reliable for 

the purposes of our report. 

We also drew on key management practices and guidance identified in 

previously-issued GAO reports, where appropriate. As part of a process of 

constructive engagement, we provided OOC with briefings, reports, and 

examples of best practices in the areas we reviewed. For example, at the 

OOC’s request, GAO officials provided briefings on our approach to 

strategic planning and we provided copies of our strategic planning 

documents. 

On January 22, 2004, we provided a draft of this report to OOC’s Board of 

Directors, Executive Director, and General Counsel for their review and 

comment. We received written comments prepared jointly by the Board of 

Directors, Executive Director, and General Counsel on January 26, 2004. 

Their written response is reprinted in appendix II. OOC also provided 

technical comments that we have incorporated where appropriate. We 

performed our work in Washington, D.C., from January 2003 through 

January 2004 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing 

standards. 
Page 49 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance

Appendix II

Comments from the Office of Compliance ApendxiI
Appendix II

Comments from the Office of Compliance

Page 50 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance
Appendix II

Comments from the Office of Compliance

(450171) Page 51 GAO-04-400 Review of the Office of Compliance
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