Department of Justice: Additional Actions Needed to Enhance Program Efficiency and Resource Management
Released: 2013-04-10T00:00:00

Letter

Background

DOJ Grants Administration

DOJ awards federal financial assistance to state and local governments, for-profit and nonprofit organizations, tribal jurisdictions, and educational institutions, to help prevent crime, assist victims of crime, and promote innovative law enforcement efforts. Federal financial assistance programs provide funding pursuant to statutory authorization and annual appropriations through formula grants, discretionary grants, cooperative agreements, and other payment programs, but are all generally referred to as grants. From fiscal year 2005 through fiscal year 2012, approximately $33 billion has been appropriated to support the more than 200 grants programs that DOJ manages.

DOJ administers its grant programs through three granting agencies—the Office of Justice Programs (OJP), the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW), and the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Office. OJP is the largest of DOJ’s granting agencies, and its mission to develop the nation’s capacity to prevent and control crime, administer justice, and assist crime victims is broader than that of OVW or the COPS Office. OJP’s bureaus and offices administer grant programs that address victim assistance, technology and forensics, and juvenile justice, among other things. One such grant program is the BVP program, which was created following enactment of the Bulletproof Vest Partnership Grant Act of 1998, and provides grants on a competitive basis to state and local law enforcement agencies to assist in their purchasing of ballistic-resistant and stab-resistant body armor. The COPS Office grant programs focus on advancing community policing, which generally involves cooperation between police departments and community residents in identifying and developing solutions to crime problems. OVW administers grant programs related to domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking.

Asset Forfeiture

DOJ and Treasury both operate asset forfeiture programs that are designed to prevent and reduce crime through the seizure and forfeiture of assets that represent the proceeds of, or were used to facilitate, federal crimes. Each department also maintains a separate fund that is the receipt account for the deposit of forfeitures. Over the years, a series of laws has been enacted that has expanded forfeiture from drug offenses to money laundering, financial crimes, and terrorism-related offenses. In addition to depriving criminals of property used or acquired through illegal activities, these programs are designed to enhance cooperation among foreign, federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies through the equitable sharing of assets recovered through the program, and, as a by- product, produce revenues in support of future law enforcement investigations and related forfeiture activities. A number of federal law enforcement organizations participate in DOJ’s Assets Forfeiture Fund (AFF), including the U.S. Marshals Service, which serves as the primary custodian of seized and forfeited property for the program. Once property is forfeited to the government, it is subsequently sold, put into official use, destroyed, or transferred to another agency. Cash and monetary instruments that have been forfeited and property that has been forfeited and sold are subsequently deposited in the forfeiture fund. In fiscal year 2012, the value of total assets in the AFF was approximately $5.97 billion. Money collected in the funds is used to pay for expenses related to the asset forfeiture program and for other law enforcement initiatives.

Field-Based Information- Sharing Entities

DOJ, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) operate or support, through grant funding or personnel, five types of field-based information-sharing entities that may collect, process, analyze, or disseminate information in support of law enforcement and counterterrorism-related efforts, as shown in table 1.

In general, the five types of entities in our review were established under different authorities and have distinct missions, roles, and responsibilities. As of January 2013 there were a total of 268 of these field-based entities located throughout the United States, and DOJ, DHS, and ONDCP provided an estimated $129 million in fiscal year 2011 to support three of the five types of entities.

DOJ Has Steps Under Way to Reduce the Risk of Unnecessary Duplication in Its Grant Programs

In July 2012, we reported that DOJ’s more than 200 grant programs overlapped across 10 key justice areas, and that this overlap contributed to the risk of unnecessarily duplicative grant awards for the same or similar purposes. We also recognized that overlapping grant programs across programmatic areas result in part from authorizing statutes. Further, we recognized that overlap among DOJ’s grant programs may be desirable because such overlap can enable DOJ’s granting agencies to leverage multiple funding streams to serve a single justice purpose. However, we found that the existence of overlapping grant programs is an indication that agencies should increase their ability to monitor where their funds are going and coordinate to ensure that any resulting duplication in grant award funding is purposeful rather than unnecessary, and we made recommendations to reflect these needed improvements.

In addition, we found that OJP, OVW, and the COPS Office did not routinely share lists of current and potential awardees to consider both the current and planned dispersion and purposes of all DOJ grant funding before finalizing new award decisions. Our work found instances where DOJ made multiple grant awards to applicants for the same or similar purposes without being aware of the potential for unnecessary duplication or whether funding from multiple streams was warranted. We also reported that OJP, OVW, and the COPS Office had not established policies and procedures requiring consistent coordination and information sharing among its granting agencies. Further, we found that OJP and OVW used a separate grants management system than the COPS Office, limiting their ability to share information on the funding they have awarded or are preparing to award to a recipient. officials, its mission and grant management processes are different enough to necessitate a separate system. However, OJP officials told us that its system has been and can be modified with minimal investment to accommodate different grant processes.

We included some of these related findings in GAO, 2012 Annual Report: Opportunities to Reduce Duplication, Overlap, and Fragmentation, Achieve Savings, and Enhance Revenue, GAO-12-342SP (Washington, D.C.: Feb. 28, 2012). concurred with all eight of our recommendations. Five of the recommendations specifically relate to ways in which DOJ can improve program efficiency and resource management, and these are that DOJ conduct an assessment to better understand the extent to which the department’s grant programs overlap with one another and determine if grant programs may be consolidated; coordinate within and among granting agencies on a consistent basis to review potential or recent grant awards from grant programs that DOJ identifies as overlapping, before awarding grants; require its grant applicants to report all federal grant funding, including all DOJ funding, that they are currently receiving or have recently applied for in their grant applications; provide appropriate OJP, COPS Office, and OVW staff access to both grant management systems; and ensure its comprehensive study of DOJ grant management systems assesses the feasibility, costs, and benefits of moving to a single grants management system, including the steps needed to harmonize DOJ grant processes, so that any variation in how granting agencies manage their portfolios is not an encumbrance to potential system unification.

DOJ has taken steps to partially address these recommendations. Specifically, DOJ has formed an assessment team, composed of OJP, OVW, and COPS Office representatives, to review all of the department’s fiscal year 2012 grant program solicitations, or announcements, and categorize them by several elements. These elements include program type, eligible grant funding recipients (e.g., states, localities, tribes, and law enforcement agencies), target grant award beneficiaries (e.g., victims and juveniles), allowable uses of the funds, and locations funded. The assessment team is also developing criteria to identify potentially duplicative programs and then plans to assign risk levels of potential duplication to those that have multiple solicitations addressing similar key components. According to DOJ officials, the assessment team plans to conclude its work later in 2013.

In addition, OJP has granted read-only access of its grants management system to OVW and the COPS Office to allow pertinent staff in those offices to access the most up-to-date OJP grant information. Further, OJP officials said that they are exploring ways in which more data systems may be used for coordinating grants. DOJ officials anticipate that eventually, agencies can leverage the information in these systems during the preaward process to avoid funding potentially overlapping and duplicative grant activities; however, DOJ’s plans rest upon completion of the assessment team’s work. Officials told us that upon receipt of the assessment team’s findings, they plan to work to develop and support a targeted and strategic approach to reviewing applications across all three granting agencies before making grant award decisions. DOJ officials noted that as part of this approach, DOJ plans to establish policies and procedures to govern coordination efforts. Thus, completion of this assessment could better position DOJ to take more systemic actions— such as improved coordination and potential consolidation of its programs—to limit overlap and mitigate the risk of unnecessary duplication.

DOJ has also initiated a feasibility study of moving to a single grants management system that includes the identification of the steps needed to harmonize grant processes, among other factors such as return on investment. Since this study—like DOJ’s other efforts to address all of our recommendations—is still under way, it is too soon to tell whether the department’s actions will fully address each of the recommendations.

DOJ Has Not Yet Deobligated Unused BVP Funds

We have also previously reported on and made recommendations related to DOJ’s BVP grant program. In February 2012, we reported that DOJ had designed several controls for the BVP program to ensure grantee compliance with program requirements, among other things, but could take additional action to further reduce management risk. For example, we found that from fiscal years 2002 to 2009, the BVP program had awarded about $27 million in BVP grants to grant recipients who did not ultimately seek reimbursement. Since the grant terms for each of these grantees had ended, the grantees were no longer eligible for reimbursement and DOJ could deobligate these funds. To improve DOJ’s resource management, we recommended that DOJ deobligate undisbursed funds from grants in the BVP program whose terms have ended. Further, we noted that since the BVP program received about $24 million in fiscal year 2012, deobligating this $27 million could have significant benefits. For example, deobligating this funding could enable the department to apply the amounts to new awards or reduce requests for future budgets. The department concurred with this recommendation and has since deobligated $2 million. In early April 2013, DOJ officials stated that they expect to complete the deobligation process before the end of April 2013. They also said the process is time-intensive because it has involved reconciliation among multiple data and financial management systems. DOJ officials stated that they plan to use the deobligated funds toward fiscal year 2014 BVP awards.

DOJ and Treasury Have Not Yet Studied the Feasibility of Consolidating Asset Forfeiture Activities

In September 2012, we found that DOJ and Treasury had made limited progress to consolidate their asset forfeiture property management activities. Specifically, the departments had made limited progress in sharing storage facilities or contracts, and they had not fully explored the possibility of coordinating or consolidating the management of their assets to achieve greater efficiencies, effectiveness, and cost savings. As a result, each department maintained separate asset-tracking systems, separate contracts, and separate storage facilities, which we found to be potentially duplicative. For example, DOJ and Treasury maintain four separate asset-tracking systems—DOJ maintains one system and Treasury maintains three—to support their respective asset forfeiture program activities, and these four tracking systems have similar functionalities.developing, maintaining, and overseeing their four asset-tracking systems in fiscal year 2011 totaled $16.2 million for DOJ’s asset-tracking system and $10.4 million for the three Treasury asset-tracking systems combined. Further, we found that in some cases, storage facilities are located in the same geographic area. For example, both the U.S. Marshals Service—the primary custodian of DOJ’s seized assets—and According to DOJ and Treasury data, the cost of Treasury maintain vehicle storage facilities, 40 percent of which are within 20 miles of each other.

DOJ and Treasury officials noted that when Congress passed a law establishing the Treasury Forfeiture Fund in 1992, it recognized the differences in the programs’ missions, which warranted creating separate programs, and this encouraged independent operational decisions that eventually created additional differences between the two programs. Both programs are designed to reduce and prevent crime. DOJ’s asset forfeiture program represents the interests of law enforcement components within its department as well as several components outside the department, while Treasury’s program represents the interests of We recognized the separate legal Treasury and DHS components.authorities of the two funds, but noted that those legal authorities did not preclude enhanced coordination within programs. Thus, we recommended that DOJ and Treasury conduct a study to determine the feasibility of consolidating potentially duplicative asset management activities including, but not limited to, the use of asset-tracking systems and the sharing of vendor and contract resources. The departments concurred with this recommendation. As of March 2013, DOJ officials reported that DOJ and Treasury representatives had met several times in the fall of 2012 and thereafter agreed upon an approach to conduct the study and assess potential costs. DOJ officials noted that they would continue to meet with their Treasury partners to execute their plan. Since work remains under way, it is too soon to tell whether the departments’ actions will fully address the recommendation.

DOJ Has Not Documented the Process for Carrying Over Asset Forfeiture Funds from Year to Year

In July 2012, we reported on the growth of revenues and expenses in DOJ’s AFF from fiscal years 2003 to 2011, and the need for transparency in DOJ’s process for carrying over funds from one fiscal year to the next. Each year, DOJ earns revenue from the proceeds of the forfeited assets it collects. It then pays its expenses, which include payments to victims and the costs of storing and maintaining forfeited assets. DOJ uses any balance to help cover anticipated expenses in the next fiscal year that may not be covered by that year’s revenues, and this is known as carrying over funds. For example, at the end of fiscal year 2003, DOJ carried over approximately $365 million to cover expenditures in the next fiscal year. In contrast, at the end of fiscal year 2011, DOJ carried over $844 million to cover expenses into fiscal year 2012. After DOJ reserves funds to cover needed expenses, DOJ declares any remaining funds to be an excess unobligated balance and has the authority to use these funds for any of the department’s authorized purposes. In recent years, DOJ also used these excess unobligated balances to cover rescissions. For example, in fiscal year 2011, DOJ used excess unobligated balances to help cover a $495 million AFF program rescission. Also, in fiscal year 2012, DOJ used $151 million of the remaining AFF funds identified at the end of the fiscal year to acquire the Thomson Correctional Center in Thomson, Illinois.

At the time of our review, when determining the amounts to carryover, DOJ officials reviewed historical data on past program expenditures, analyzed known future expenses such as salaries and contracts, and estimated the costs of any potential new expenditures. However, as we concluded on the basis of our findings in July 2012, without a clearly documented and transparent process, it was difficult to determine whether DOJ’s conclusions regarding the amounts that need to be carried over each year were well founded. We recommended that DOJ clearly document how it determined the amount of funds that it would need to be carried over for the next fiscal year, a recommendation with which DOJ concurred. DOJ officials stated that they plan to include information on the basis for its decisions concerning the amount of funds to be carried over in future Congressional Budget Justifications, but as of March 2013, the decision on how to present the information was still pending. Since this information has not yet been made available, it is too soon to tell whether it will fully address the recommendation.

DOJ and Other Agencies Could Improve Coordination to Help Reduce Unnecessary Overlap in Field-Based Information Sharing

In April 2013, we identified overlap in some activities of five types of field- based information-sharing entities and concluded that DOJ, DHS, and ONDCP could improve coordination among the entities to help reduce unnecessary overlap in activities. In general, the five types of entities in our review were established under different authorities and have distinct missions, roles, and responsibilities. We reviewed their activities in eight urban areas and found overlap as each carried out its respective missions, roles, and responsibilities. Specifically, we identified 91 instances of overlap in analytical activities and services, with more instances of overlap involving a fusion center and a Field Intelligence Group (54 of the 91 instances) compared with the other three types of entities. For example, we found that in five of the eight urban areas, the fusion center, Regional Information Sharing Systems center, and the Field Intelligence Group disseminated information on all crimes—which can include terrorism and other high-risk threats as well as other types of crimes—for federal, state, and local customers including state and local police departments. In addition, we found 32 instances of overlap in investigative support activities across the eight urban areas reviewed, with more instances of overlap involving a Regional Information Sharing Systems center and a fusion center (18 of the 32 instances) compared with the other three entities. For example in one urban area, the Regional Information Sharing Systems center and the fusion center both conducted tactical analysis, target deconfliction, and event deconfliction within the same mission area for federal, state, and local customers. We reported that overlap, in some cases, can be desirable. In particular, overlap across analytical activities and services can be beneficial if it validates information or allows for competing or complementary analysis. Nevertheless, overlap can also lead to inefficiencies if, for example, it burdens law enforcement customers with redundant information.

To promote coordination, we recommended two actions. First, we recommended that the Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Director of ONDCP collaborate to develop a mechanism that would allow them to hold field-based information-sharing entities accountable for coordinating and monitor and evaluate the coordination results achieved. Second, we recommended that the Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Director of ONDCP work together to assess opportunities where practices that enhance coordination can be further applied. DHS and ONDCP concurred with both recommendations. DOJ generally concurred with both recommendations, but asserted that it was already actively promoting coordination and routinely seeking to identify efficiency gains. For example, DOJ cited its participation in summits with other agencies, including DHS, and the colocation of certain field-based entities as evidence in support of this. While these efforts are positive steps for sharing information and coordinating, we noted and continue to believe that they do not fully address the recommendations. We maintain that an accountability mechanism to ensure coordination could add valuable context to any existing interagency discussions while encouraging entities to engage in coordination activities, such as leveraging resources to avoid unnecessary overlap. Further, our recommendation calls for DOJ, DHS, and ONDCP to collectively assess opportunities to enhance coordination through whatever effective means they identify.

Chairman Sensenbrenner, Ranking Member Scott, and members of the subcommittee, this completes my prepared statement. I would be pleased to respond to any questions that you may have at this time.

Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments

For further information about this statement, please contact David C. Maurer, Director, Homeland Security and Justice Issues, at (202) 512- 9627 or maurerd@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this statement. In addition to the contact named above, the following individuals also made contributions to this testimony: Joy Booth, Assistant Director; Sylvia Bascope; Michele Fejfar; Heather May; Lara Miklozek; Linda Miller; and Janet Temko.

This is a work of the U.S. government and is not subject to copyright protection in the United States. The published product may be reproduced and distributed in its entirety without further permission from GAO. However, because this work may contain copyrighted images or other material, permission from the copyright holder may be necessary if you wish to reproduce this material separately.