From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov

Transcript for: Duplication and Overlap Across the Federal Government

Audio interview by GAO staff with Janet St. Laurent, Managing 
Director, Defense Capabilities and Management

Related GAO Work: GAO-12-342SP: 2012 Annual Report: Opportunities to 
Reduce Duplication, Overlap and 
Fragmentation, Achieve Savings, and Enhance Revenue

Released: February 2012

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[ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news 
and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. It's 
February 2012. GAO's latest report on improving government efficiency 
and effectiveness identifies 32 areas of duplication, overlap, and 
fragmentation across the federal government, as well as 19 additional 
cost savings opportunities. Janet St. Laurent, Managing Director of 
GAO's Defense Capabilities and Management team, co-led the team that 
compiled this year's report. GAO's Jeremy Cluchey sat down with Janet 
to learn more.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] This year's report identifies 32 areas of 
duplication, overlap, and fragmentation among federal programs. Can 
you talk a bit more about what this means? 

[ Janet St. Laurent: ] We identified a number of examples of both 
duplication, fragmentation, and overlap, and these are across a wide 
range of federal activities, including defense, education, housing, 
energy, health care, and we found a range of conditions. In some cases 
we identified fragmentation, meaning that there were multiple agencies 
conducting programs or activities in the same area, and in some cases 
those programs weren't well coordinated. In other situations, we found 
examples of overlap. Actually, this was fairly common, and what we 
mean by overlap are activities by multiple federal agencies that are 
similar in nature and similar in scope and also sometimes similar in 
terms of the beneficiaries or users that those programs serve. And 
then finally we did find some examples of duplication, meaning that 
agencies were involved in the same activities or programs for the same 
purposes. 

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] And can you provide a few examples of duplicative, 
overlapping, or fragmented program areas? 

[ Janet St. Laurent: ] In the defense area we found that the 
Department of Defense is developing numerous unmanned aircraft systems 
and sensors and ground stations to go along with those systems. Much 
of the software associated with the ground systems is very similar, 
and yet the services pay numerous times for the development of new 
grounds stations when they build new aircraft. Our report suggests 
that DOD should consider establishing a single entity to coordinate 
these programs in DOD, and that could potentially lead to cost 
savings. We also found that in the housing area, the federal 
government spends about $170 billion a year for a number of programs 
and tax expenditures, as well as loans and guarantees, and we found 
over 160 programs in this area administered by 20 entities. In 
particular, we found significant overlap between the Department of 
Agriculture's rural housing programs and HUD's programs as well, and 
we're suggesting that Congress should consider requiring Agriculture 
and HUD to re-examine these programs and look for opportunities to 
consolidate them. 

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Your team also identified 19 additional cost 
savings and revenue enhancement opportunities for the federal 
government. What sorts of opportunities are we talking about here? 

[ Janet St. Laurent: ] Again, we found a number of examples in the 
defense area. For example, we found that the Air Force was paying too 
much for some of its labor at a few of its dining facilities in a 
pilot project, and we suggested that the Air Force could save more 
money by re-examining and renegotiating its contracts at all of its 
dining facilities, and it has agreed with our recommendation. Also, in 
the Medicare and Medicaid area, we found that Medicaid and Medicare do 
have a number of important programs going on to try to help detect and 
prevent fraud and abuse related to improper payments. The Centers for 
Medicare & Medicaid Services hope to save more than $21 billion 
through these efforts, but we found that CMS is significantly behind 
in meeting its goals for training personnel to use the new systems, so 
we've recommended a number of steps that we can take and to improve 
the implementation and conduct the additional training that's needed 
so that CMS can achieve its goals. We also identified opportunities 
for revenue enhancements. One included depleted uranium. We found that 
the government actually has significant stocks of depleted uranium 
that are no longer needed, and could be processed and lead to revenue 
worth billions of dollars. So we've suggested that opportunities exist 
to gain that revenue if Congress clarifies Energy's authority to sell 
or transfer this uranium. 

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Last year's report on this subject identified 81 
total areas for consideration, and a companion report out now follows 
up on the extent to which progress has been made in those areas. What 
did you find in that report? 

[ Janet St. Laurent: ] We found that there's been some progress in the 
majority of the areas that we examined included in last year's report. 
There were four areas where the actions that we cited that were needed 
were fully addressed; however, in most cases actions are still under 
way. And in a number of cases, there were no actions that have been 
taken to date. The bottom line is that there are still many 
opportunities for government agencies to become more efficient, and re-
examination of the range of programs and services that they're 
offering, also greater coordination with other agencies is a key point 
of the series of reports that we're putting out in this area. Also, 
we've been finding that many programs need to be more fully evaluated 
to ensure that taxpayers are getting their full services from those 
programs. 

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