Page 1 GAO-14-628R TIGER Grants

441 G St. N.W.

Washington, DC 20548

May 28, 2014

The Honorable Anthony Foxx

Secretary of Transportation

Management Report

Surface Transportation: Actions Needed to Improve Documentation of Key Decisions in 

the TIGER Discretionary Grant Program 

Dear Secretary Foxx:

In September 2013, at the request of the Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on 

Environment and Public Works, we began our review of the Department of Transportation’s 

(DOT) implementation of the TIGER Discretionary Grant program.1 Since 2009, DOT has 

awarded about $3.6 billion in TIGER grants to states, local governments, and other entities for 

highway, transit, rail, and port projects expected to have a significant impact on the nation, a 

metropolitan area, or a region. As part of our review, we have examined the extent to which 

DOT followed its grant application evaluation process and documented key decisions in the 

fiscal year 2013 funding round, referred to in this report as TIGER V. DOT is currently reviewing 

grant applications to award $600 million through a sixth TIGER funding round; applications were 

due April 28, 2014, and award decisions are expected in the coming months. 

In summary, we found that DOT did not document key decisions made during the TIGER V 

grant application evaluation and selection process and deviated from its established procedures 

and recognized internal control practices.

2 Specifically, DOT did not document key decisions to

(a) accept and review applications received after the published deadline; (b) advance projects 

with lower technical ratings instead of more highly-rated projects, and its procedures were 

inconsistent with DOT’s internal guidelines; and (c) change the technical ratings of lower-rated

projects selected for funding to the highest technical rating category. An absence of 

documentation of such decisions can give rise to challenges to the integrity of the evaluation 

process and the rationale for the decisions made. We are recommending that DOT establish 

additional accountability measures for management of the TIGER program including clear 

procedures for addressing late-arriving applications and for documenting and approving major 

decisions in the application evaluation and project selection process

 

1

Congress first authorized and appropriated funds for a national surface transportation infrastructure discretionary 

grant program in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Pub. L. No. 111-5, 123 Stat. 115, 203 (Feb. 

17, 2009)). In subsequent legislation Congress appropriated funding to the program as National Infrastructure 

Investments. This program has become known as Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery 

(TIGER). 

2

GAO, Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government, GAO/AIMD-00-21.3.1 (Washington, D.C.: 

November 1999).
Page 2 GAO-14-628R TIGER Grants

We are sending this report to provide timely information about these concerns. Meanwhile, we 

are continuing our review of DOT’s implementation of the TIGER program, including reviewing 

steps taken to assess the performance of individual TIGER projects and the overall program. 

We will include the issues raised in this report and any actions that you take to resolve them, 

along with any other findings in our final report, scheduled to be issued in September 2014.

Appendix I provides information on the objectives, scope, and methodology for the information 

presented in this report.

Background

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) authorized and 

appropriated funding for the TIGER program and directed DOT to (a) establish a competitive 

process for awarding $1.5 billion in discretionary grants and (b) publish selection criteria on 

which to base the competition.3 The same legislation required that in making award decisions, 

DOT take measures to ensure an equitable geographic distribution of funds, an appropriate

balance in addressing the needs of urban and rural communities, and meet other requirements.4

Additional statutory requirements have been enacted for subsequent funding rounds of the 

TIGER program.5

In response to this Congressional direction, DOT established selection criteria which it uses to 

evaluate project applications, while ensuring that the awards taken as a whole meet the 

statutory requirements. These criteria are published in a notice of funding availability (NOFA) in 

the Federal Register for each respective funding round. Since the initial funding round, DOT’s

primary selection criteria have included five desired long-term transportation outcomes:

economic competitiveness, state-of-good repair, livability, environmental sustainability, and 

safety.6 The TIGER V NOFA states that DOT will award funds to projects that are well-aligned 

with one or more of the selection criteria.7

 3

Pub. L. No. 111-5, 123 Stat. at 203-04. 

Discretionary grant programs represent a significant 

departure from the formula-based approach regularly used to fund the nation’s surface 

transportation program, in which funds are delivered according to prescribed formulas and not 

4

The Recovery Act also required DOT to not award more than 20 percent of the $1.5 billion in funding to projects in a 

single state; give priority to projects expected to be completed within 3 years and to projects for which federal funding 

would be required to complete an overall financing package; and make awards within a specified dollar range. Pub. L. 

No. 111-5, 123 Stat. at 204.

5

For example, in TIGER round IV (fiscal year 2012), DOT’s awards were subject to the following restrictions: (1) not 

more than 25 percent of TIGER funds were to be awarded to projects in a single state; (2) projects located in rural 

areas were eligible to receive 100 percent federal funding; (3) the federal share for projects in urbanized areas may 

be up to 80 percent of the total project costs; (4) DOT was to give priority to projects that require a contribution of 

federal funds in order to complete an overall financing package; and (5) a portion of TIGER funds were to be used to 

pay the subsidy and administrative costs of projects funded under DOT’s Transportation Infrastructure Finance and 

Innovation Act (TIFIA) program, which provides federal credit assistance to finance surface transportation projects of 

national and regional significance. Pub. L. No. 112-55, 125 Stat.552, 641(Nov. 18, 2011). 

6

See 74 Fed. Reg. 28755 (June 17, 2009). Beginning with TIGER I (2009), DOT has also included secondary 

selection criteria to encourage technical innovation and partnerships (74 Fed. Reg. at 28758)). According to the 

TIGER V NOFA, DOT gives more weight to the primary selection criteria than to the two secondary selection criteria; 

and it does not consider any of the five long-term outcomes to be to be more important than the others (78 Fed. Reg.

24792 (Apr. 26, 2013)). In TIGER V, DOT included a sixth primary selection criterion, project readiness, to encourage 

projects sufficiently advanced to complete all environmental reviews, before the September 30, 2014 obligation 

deadline for that funding round ( 78 Fed. Reg. at 24786).

7

78 Fed. Reg. 24792 (Apr. 26, 2013). 
Page 3 GAO-14-628R TIGER Grants

based on anticipated project outcomes. In prior work, we have recommended that a merit-based 

competitive approach—like TIGER—be used to direct a portion of federal funds to 

transportation projects of national and regional significance.8

In March 2011, we also reported that the TIGER program represented an important step toward 

investing in projects of regional and national significance on a merit-based, competitive basis.

9

We found that for the first TIGER funding round, DOT developed comprehensive selection 

criteria and a competitive process for evaluating applications, but DOT did not document key 

decisions, including its rationale for selecting projects with lower technical ratings for half the 

awards over more highly-rated ones. We noted that the absence of such documentation can 

give rise to challenges to the integrity of DOT’s selection decisions and subject it to criticism that 

it selected projects for reasons other than merit. We reported that it is critical that DOT gain the 

confidence of Congress and the public and show that it could fairly and expertly administer a 

multi-modal, multi-billion dollar discretionary program. We recommended that DOT document 

key decisions for all major steps in the review process and, in consultation with Congress, 

develop and implement a strategy to disclose information regarding award decisions. In 

September 2011, DOT reported that it agreed with the recommendation and planned to take 

steps to implement it in future TIGER rounds. We also recommended to Congress that should it 

continue funding the TIGER program, it consider balancing the goals of merit-based selection of 

projects with achieving an equitable geographic distribution of funds, and limit, as appropriate, 

the influence of geographic considerations.

DOT’s Established TIGER Application Evaluation Process

To fulfill Congress’ direction to award funds on a competitive basis, DOT has established a 

process in its NOFAs and internal guidance to evaluate and rate TIGER applications against the 

department’s selection criteria and the statutory requirements. The process is led by DOT’s 

Office of the Under Secretary of Transportation for Policy—referred to in this report as the Policy 

Office—and includes several steps:

• Technical evaluation teams. These teams rate projects against the NOFA selection 

criteria as highly recommended, recommended, acceptable, or not recommended.10

Teams review projects by type11

 

8

GAO, Surface Transportation: Clear Federal Role and Criteria-Based Selection Process Could Improve Three 

National and Regional Infrastructure Programs, GAO-09-219 (Washington, D.C.: Feb. 6, 2009).

and, according to DOT guidance, are to assign 

competitive ratings based on the selection criteria and not consider the statutory 

requirements. Projects that receive an overall rating of “highly recommended” are to be 

advanced for further review and funding consideration. Led by Policy Office officials, the 

9

GAO, Surface Transportation: Competitive Grant Programs Could Benefit from Increased Performance Focus and 

Better Documentation of Key Decisions, GAO-11-234 (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 30, 2011).

10According to DOT guidance, projects rated as “highly recommended” align extremely well with the selection criteria; 

“recommended” projects align well with the selection criteria; “acceptable” projects provide limited value with respect 

to the selection criterion, or the project’s alignment with the criterion was not addressed in the application; and “not 

recommended” project would adversely impact DOT’s efforts to promote the outcomes described for the criterion 

under consideration.

11For TIGER V, the technical evaluation teams were organized according to the general category of project described 

in the grant application and included two teams for “rural mobility” projects, three “urban mobility” teams; one “intercity 

mobility” team; and two teams for “goods mobility” or freight projects.
Page 4 GAO-14-628R TIGER Grants

teams are staffed with subject matter experts from DOT’s Federal Highway 

Administration (FHWA), Federal Transit Administration (FTA), Federal Railroad 

Administration (FRA), and the Maritime Administration (MARAD).

• Project-readiness and economic-analysis teams. After the technical evaluation teams 

complete their reviews, highly recommended projects are to be advanced to a project 

readiness team which assesses a project’s risk level (high, moderate, or low) in 

completing any federal environmental and other requirements before expiration of 

statutory deadlines to incur obligations.12 At the same time, an economic analysis team

reviews the required benefit-cost analysis (BCA) for each advanced application to 

assess (1) the usefulness of the BCA to estimated project benefits and costs, and (2) 

whether the total estimated benefits are reasonably likely to outweigh project costs.13 

• Senior review team. According to DOT guidance, after the economic-analysis and 

project-readiness reviews, highly recommended projects are then advanced to a senior 

review team comprised of senior officials charged with making recommendations to the 

Secretary of Transportation on which projects to fund.14 As noted in our prior work, the 

senior review team may make award recommendations from the highly recommended 

projects advanced or request to see additional projects that were not advanced.15 The 

senior review team documents its recommendations in a memorandum provided to the 

Secretary of Transportation that explains how each recommended projects aligns with 

the long-term outcome selection criteria. The Secretary makes the final selections. 

• Control and calibration team. A team of Policy Office officials is charged with ensuring 

the quality, integrity, and consistency of the evaluation process and, according to DOT 

TIGER guidelines, is to use statistical analysis and random selection to choose

applications from each evaluation team for review. According to the guidelines, the 

control and calibration team or the senior review team may, if necessary, recommend 

possible adjustments to the list of projects advanced by the technical evaluation teams

to help satisfy the statutory requirements while remaining as consistent as possible with 

the competitive ratings. According to DOT officials, the control and calibration team’s 

review occurs throughout the application evaluation process and not as a discrete step 

in the process.

DOT Did Not Document Major Decisions and Deviated from Its Application Evaluation 

Process in the TIGER V Funding Round 

DOT did not document key decisions made during the TIGER V grant application evaluation and 

selection process and deviated from its established procedures. Specifically, DOT did not 

document key decisions to (1) accept and review applications arriving after the published 

 

12For example, the fiscal year 2013 appropriation legislation for TIGER required DOT to obligate funding within 18 

months, that is, by September 30, 2014. Pub. L. No. 113-6 (Mar. 26, 2013).

13We plan to provide information on the results of these reviews in our forthcoming report. 

14The senior review team consists of the Deputy Secretary of Transportation, the Administrators of FHWA, FTA, FRA, 

and MARAD, and the Research and Innovative Technology Administration, the Under Secretary of Transportation for 

Policy, the Assistant Secretary of Transportation for Policy, the Assistant Secretary for Governmental Affairs, the 

General Counsel, the Chief Financial Officer, and the Assistant Secretary for Aviation and International Affairs. 

15GAO-11-234
Page 5 GAO-14-628R TIGER Grants

deadline in the NOFA; (2) advance projects with lower technical ratings instead of more highly 

rated projects, and its procedures were inconsistent with DOT’s internal guidelines; and (3) 

change the technical ratings of recommended and acceptable funded projects to highly 

recommended. Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government state that all 

transactions and other significant events need to be clearly documented and that the 

documentation should be readily available for examination.16 An absence of documentation can 

give rise to challenges to the integrity of the evaluation process and thus the decisions made. 

Our specific areas of concern in the TIGER V round are:

• DOT did not document or publicly communicate its decision to accept 146 TIGER V 

applications received after the published deadline. According to the TIGER V NOFA, all 

applications were to be received by June 3, 2013, to be considered eligible for funding.17

Applicants that were unable to meet the deadline due to unforeseen technical issues with 

the grants.gov website were to contact DOT and request approval for late submission.18

According to the TIGER V NOFA appendix, DOT was to reject applications as “untimely” if it 

could not validate technical issues that applicants reported. DOT officials told us that the 

grants.gov web site experienced technical issues on June 3, 2013, which caused many 

applications to be submitted late. However, DOT deviated from its procedures by not taking 

steps to validate that all late-arriving applications had experienced technical issues. DOT 

officials told us that they subsequently decided to accept applications for an additional 30 

days without notifying the public of this decision, and ultimately received and accepted a 

total of 146 late-arriving TIGER applications. Most of the late-arriving applications arrived 

within 4 days; eight applications arrived more than a week later and seven others did not 

arrive until 2 or more weeks after the deadline.19

Ultimately, 7 late-arriving applications were awarded grant funding. The absence of 

documentation demonstrating DOT’s efforts to verify technical difficulties of all late-arriving 

applications, as required by the NOFA, and its decision to leave its application period open 

for 30 days without public disclosure raises questions about whether applicants were treated 

equally and invites skepticism as to whether DOT gave preferential treatment to some 

applicants by granting them additional time to complete and submit applications. 

• DOT did not document its rationale for advancing projects with lower technical ratings 

instead of more highly-rated projects, and its procedures were inconsistent with DOT’s

internal guidelines. The TIGER V NOFA, DOT’s application evaluation guidelines, and the 

TIGER V award decision memo indicate that DOT’s process is to advance to the senior 

review team those projects that technical evaluation teams rate as highly recommended. 

However, in TIGER V, DOT did not document the rationale for not advancing 22 highly 

recommended projects, while advancing 43 recommended or acceptable projects for 

funding consideration. Specifically, DOT deviated from its TIGER guidelines by (1) 

convening several meetings of senior DOT officials in the Policy Office to determine which 

applications to present to the senior review team and, in doing so, selected 26 

 

16GAO/AIMD-00-21.3.1

1778 Fed. Reg. 24786, 24792 (Apr. 26, 2013). 

18Grants.gov web site is managed by the Department of Health and Human Services and was created to provide a 

single website for federal discretionary grant opportunities.

19The 146 late-arriving applications accounted for 25 percent of the 585 total applications received in TIGER V 

(2013).
Page 6 GAO-14-628R TIGER Grants

recommended or acceptable projects to advance; and (2) sharing preliminary lists of 

applications to be advanced with DOT modal administrations, after which 17 other projects

with lower technical ratings were advanced.

20 According to FHWA and FTA officials, these 

preliminary lists were shared with the agencies’ division and regional offices and their views 

were also considered. However, this is inconsistent with DOT’s TIGER application 

evaluation guidelines, which do not describe procedures through which the Policy Office and 

modal administrations are to be given an opportunity to identify projects to be advanced to 

the senior review team. 

When we presented these findings to DOT, officials told us that the decisions to advance 

projects with lower technical ratings were made through its control and calibration process to 

meet statutory requirements for geographic distribution and balancing funding for projects in 

urban and rural areas. However, DOT was unable to provide documentation of any 

statistical analysis or evaluation of the results by the control and calibration team and DOT 

officials previously told us that no such evaluation was conducted in TIGER V. In addition, 

DOT officials involved in the selection process that we interviewed told us that projects with 

lower technical ratings were often advanced because senior officials had specific knowledge 

of the capabilities of individual applicants to deliver projects and the strengths and weakness 

of individual applications that technical evaluation teams may not have been aware of when 

assigning their ratings. For example, the Acting Under Secretary of Transportation for Policy 

told us that when he served as FTA Administrator during round V, he advocated for 

advancing a recommended project because of the unique ability of the project to leverage 

private investment in critical regional infrastructure. This project was ultimately selected for 

funding. Lack of documentation of its deliberations or the factors considered in its decisions

is inconsistent with federal internal control standards and, as a result, DOT cannot 

definitively demonstrate the basis for advancing projects with lower technical ratings over 

highly recommended ones. 

• DOT changed the technical ratings of lower-rated projects selected for funding to highly 

recommended. DOT ultimately awarded $458 million in TIGER V grants to 52 projects, 

including $317 million to 33 highly recommended projects and $141 million to 17 

recommended and 2 acceptable projects. After DOT finalized TIGER V award selections, 

DOT changed the technical ratings of the 19 lower-rated funded projects to highly 

recommended without adequate documentation. Specifically, in its application evaluation 

documents, DOT used identical language for each of the 19 projects stating that the ratings 

were “checked by the control and calibration team” but this explanation did not (1) state that 

the ratings had been changed, (2) provide the original technical rating, (3) indicate who 

requested or approved the rating change, or (4) provide a project-specific reason for the 

changes. Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government stress that 

documentation of agency activities is a key part of accountability for decisions, and that 

control activities, such as approving or authorizing transactions or events, are an integral 

part of an entity’s accountability for stewardship of government resources.21

 

20Of the 26 lower-rated applications advanced by the Policy Office, 25 were recommended and 1 was acceptable. Of 

the 17 lower-rated applications advanced at the request of modal administrators, 16 were recommended and 1 was 

acceptable. 

In the absence 

of clear acknowledgement and documentation authorizing the decision to change technical 

ratings, DOT cannot provide adequate assurance that it has sufficient internal controls in 

place to provide accountability for its TIGER award funding decisions. 

21

GAO/AIMD-00-21.3.1
Page 7 GAO-14-628R TIGER Grants

On March 28, 2014, we provided DOT with preliminary findings from this part of our review, and 

on May 1, 2014, we met with the Acting Under Secretary of Transportation for Policy, who is 

currently responsible for the TIGER program, and other senior officials to present our concerns 

and obtain the views of DOT on these concerns. DOT officials stated that they recognize that 

during the TIGER V funding round, DOT did not sufficiently document major decisions in the 

application evaluation and project selection process. The Under Secretary outlined several 

reforms that he envisions would address our concerns, including establishing and

communicating a clearer process to deal with late applications, better defining the procedures 

by which projects can be advanced to the senior review team for review, ensuring the use of 

statistical analysis by the control and calibration team during the technical review process, as 

well as more rigorous documentation of the rationale for decisions to advance projects. 

Conclusions

Since 2009, DOT has awarded almost $3.6 billion in the first five funding rounds of the TIGER 

program, with an additional $600 million expected to be awarded in a sixth round in fiscal year

2014. In 2011, we reported that it was critical that DOT gain the confidence of Congress and the 

public and demonstrate it can fairly and expertly administer a multi-modal, multi-billion dollar 

discretionary program. However, because DOT has not yet established measures to document 

key decisions for all major steps in the application evaluation and project selection process and 

has deviated from its own guidance and recognized internal control practices, public and 

congressional confidence in the TIGER program may be at risk. By not documenting key 

decisions, DOT cannot definitively demonstrate the basis for its decisions to award more than 

$140 million in TIGER V funding to projects with lower technical ratings. The absence of 

documentation of key decisions can give rise to challenges to the integrity of the evaluation 

process, and leave DOT vulnerable to criticism concerning the rationale for the decisions made.

With the TIGER VI award selections fast approaching, the Secretary of Transportation should 

take immediate actions to address our prior recommendation and document key decisions in the 

application evaluation and project selection process and take additional immediate steps 

outlined below to bolster confidence in the program for the imminent TIGER VI awards and for 

possible future rounds.

Recommendations for Executive Action

We recommend that the Secretary of Transportation establish additional accountability 

measures for management of the TIGER program to (1) establish clear procedures for 

addressing late-arriving applications and communicate its decisions to either accept or reject 

these applications to the public, and (2) document and approve major decisions in the 

application evaluation and project selection process through a decision memorandum or similar 

mechanism that provides a clear rationale for decisions to:

• advance for senior review applications other than those rated as highly recommended;

• not advance applications rated as highly recommended; and

• change the technical evaluation rating of an application.
Page 8 GAO-14-628R TIGER Grants

Agency Comments

We provided a draft of this report to DOT for comment. In its written comments, reproduced in 

Appendix II, DOT generally agreed with our findings and recommendations. DOT stated that it 

faced challenges in round V which were exacerbated by technical challenges with grants.gov, 

compressed time frames, the loss of key personnel, and other factors. DOT also stated that, as 

a result of our review, it is making changes to clarify procedures and better document key 

decisions in the TIGER application evaluation and project selection process and is currently 

applying those changes in the TIGER VI funding round. These changes include (1) not 

accepting applications that arrived after the April 28, 2014 deadline without specific 

documentation of technical problems;22 (2) not changing an application’s technical evaluation 

rating after it has been established by a technical evaluation team; and (3) better documenting

agency decisions, including reasons why lower-rated projects are advanced and subsequently 

funded. These measures, if consistently applied in TIGER VI and any subsequent funding 

rounds, could address the intent of our recommendations and should improve the TIGER

application evaluation and project selection process. 

- - - - 

We are sending copies of this report to appropriate congressional committees. In addition, the 

report is available at no charge on the GAO website at http://www.gao.gov. If you or your staff 

have any questions about this report, please contact me at (202) 512-2834 or

flemings@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs 

may be found on the last page of this report. GAO staff who made key contributions to this 

report include Steve Cohen, Assistant Director; Matt Barranca; Colin Fallon; Dave Hooper; 

Amanda Miller; Carl Potenzieri; Crystal Wesco; and Chad Williams.

Sincerely yours,

Susan Fleming

Director, Physical Infrastructure Issues

Enclosure 

cc: Peter Henry, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee

 

22DOT stated it rejected 53 late-arriving TIGER VI applications while accepting one from an applicant that provided 

appropriate documentation of a valid technical problem.
Page 9 GAO-14-628R TIGER Grants

Appendix: Objective, Scope, and Methodology

We are providing information on the extent to which the Department of Transportation (DOT)

followed its grant application evaluation process and documented key decisions in the TIGER V 

(fiscal year 2013) funding round. To conduct this work, we reviewed statutory requirements for 

awarding TIGER V grants,

23 DOT’s written procedures for evaluating TIGER applications and 

making award selections for that round, as published in the Federal Register,

24 DOT’s Policies 

and Procedures for the Administration and Oversight of the TIGER Discretionary Grant 

Program, and DOT’s TIGER V Application Evaluation Guidelines, which provides DOT’s 

procedures for evaluating TIGER grant applications. We reviewed available DOT documentation 

of grant application evaluation results and selection decisions made by senior DOT officials and 

compared the documentation with information in Standards for Internal Control in the Federal 

Government, which provides guidance to agencies to achieve their missions and improve 

accountability.25 We also interviewed officials involved in the application evaluation and project 

selection process within DOT’s Office of the Secretary and the four surface transportation modal 

administrations that administer TIGER grants—Federal Highway Administration, Federal Transit 

Administration, Federal Railroad Administration, and the Maritime Administration. 

We conducted this performance audit from September 2013 to May 2014 in accordance with 

generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and 

perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our 

findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained 

provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.

 

23Pub. L. No. 113-6 (Mar. 26, 2013)

24See 78 Fed. Reg. 24786, 24792 (Apr. 26, 2013)

25GAO, Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government, GAO/AIMD-00-21.3.1 (Washington, D.C.: 

November 1999).
Page 10 GAO-14-628R TIGER Grants

Appendix II: Comments from the Department of Transportation

GAO Comment: We 

did not evaluate the 

transportation merits 

of the projects 

selected for TIGER 

funding. We 

examined the extent 

to which DOT 

followed its grant 

application evaluation 

process and 

documented key 

decisions in the fiscal 

year 2013 TIGER V 

funding round.
Page 11 GAO-14-628R TIGER Grants

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