DISCUSSANT SESSION

FRANCES TIRADO, SENIOR STATISTICIAN

U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE

FCSM 2022
WHY IS EQUITY IMPORTANT?
GAO, Government Auditing Standards: 2018 Revision, GAO-21-368G (Washington, D.C.: April 2021) 
GAGAS PERFORMANCE AUDITS: CONCEPTS TO CONSIDER WHEN 

AUDITING PUBLIC FUNCTIONS AND SERVICES
GAGAS PERFORMANCE AUDITS: CONCEPTS TO CONSIDER WHEN 

AUDITING PUBLIC FUNCTIONS AND SERVICES
THE 5 E’S

 Effectiveness

 Efficiency

 Economy

 Ethical

 Equitable
EQUITY

 Equality of access to and provision of services

 Procedural fairness and equal treatment of individuals in 

government programs and policies

 Causes of disparate outcomes

 Distributional impacts of public policies, programs, 

resources, and services
EXAMPLE ISSUE AREAS

Technology:

 Bias in machine learning algorithms

 Minority technology fields

 Facial recognition accuracy

Accessibility and Outreach:

 Access to voting places by disabled persons

 Outreach to Socially Disadvantaged Groups

Gender Issues:

 Maternal mortality in childbirth

 Detention of pregnant women

 Product cost differences by gender

Funding and Grant making

 Disaster relief funding to High Poverty Areas

 Equitable grant making in transportation funding

Retirement and Aging:

 Elderly caregiver resources

 Nutritional needs of elderly

Diversity:

 Bank Board Diversity

 Financial Services Management Diversity

 NIH Biomedical research diversity

 Promotion Outcomes by Race, Gender

Discipline and Justice:

 Discipline in K-12 schools by Race, disability status

 Military Justice

 Native American Delinquency

 School Shooting Victims
EVOLUTION OF GAO EQUITY WORK

 Ensure the right people are at the table

 Competence is more than technical and subject matter proficiency, we 

need the right understanding and methods

 Scanning for missed opportunities

 Seizing opportunities to enhance conclusion and external validity

 Make sure we are asking the right questions
NOTABLE OBSERVATIONS

 Data challenges

 Political sensitivity

 Technical expertise

 Diverse teams

 Different forms of diversity

 Coordination
DATA EQUITY CONSIDERATIONS

Considerations for how data are:

 Collected

 Analyzed

 Interpreted

 Reported
DATA EQUITY CONSIDERATIONS

 Requires data at granular levels of detail to analyze experiences of 

interest

 Highlight importance of data

 Equitable data access

 Data infrastructure, internally and across government

 Leveraging administration data through matching

 Collecting missing data
CONSIDERATIONS FOR ANALYSIS

• Objectivity

• Leverage appropriate methods for sparse data

• Robust, rigorous, methodologically sound methods

• Capacity building

• Balancing rigor of method with interpretability
CONSIDERATIONS FOR REPORTING

 Clear and concise findings

 Transparency and reproducibility

 Measures of error as appropriate

 Highlight caveats to findings or conclusions

 Be upfront about interpretation and limitations of quantitative analysis
CONTACT INFO

Thank you!

Jared Smith

Chief Statistician

Center Statistics and Data 

Analysis

SmithJB@gao.gov

Sonya Vartivarian

Assistant Director 

(Statistics)

Center for Statistics and Data 

Analysis

VartivarianS@gao.gov

Jeff Tessin

Assistant Director 

(Statistics)

Center for Statistics and 

Data Analysis

TessinJ@gao.gov

Lijia Guo

Senior Actuary

Center for Actuarial 

Science

GuoL@gao.gov

Moon Parks

Assistant Director 

(Economics)

Center for Economics

ParksM@gao.gov

Frances Tirado

Senior Statistician

Center for Statistics and 

Data Analysis

TiradoF@gao.gov
Q&A

WE WILL BEGIN THE Q&A, PLEASE RAISE YOUR HAND FOR ANY QUESTIONS.