Department of the Interior: Status of Achieving Key Outcomes and Addressing Major Management Challenges
Released: 2001-07-16T00:00:00

Letter

Background

The Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) is intended to shift the focus of government decisionmaking, management, and accountability from activities and processes to the results and outcomes achieved by federal programs. New and valuable information on the plans, goals, and strategies of federal agencies has been provided since federal agencies began implementing GPRA. Under GPRA, annual performance plans are to clearly inform the Congress and the public of the (1) annual performance goals for agencies’ major programs and activities, (2) measures that will be used to gauge performance, (3) strategies and resources required to achieve the performance goals, and (4) procedures that will be used to verify and validate performance information. These annual plans, issued soon after transmittal of the president’s budget, provide a direct linkage between an agency’s longer-term goals and mission and its day-to-day activities. Annual performance reports are to subsequently report on the degree to which performance goals were met. The issuance of the agencies’ performance reports, due by March 31, represents a new and potentially more substantive phase in the implementation of GPRA—the opportunity to assess federal agencies’ actual performance for the prior fiscal year and to consider what steps are needed to improve performance and reduce costs in the future.

The Department of the Interior has jurisdiction over about 450 million acres of land—about one-fifth of the total U.S. landmass—and about 1.76 billion acres of the Outer Continental Shelf. Figure 1 shows the location of the majority of onshore lands under Interior’s jurisdiction.

As the guardian of these resources, Interior is entrusted with preserving the nation’s most awe-inspiring landscapes, such as the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and Denali national parks; significant historic places, such as Independence Hall and the Gettysburg battlefield; and such revered national icons as the Statue of Liberty and the Washington Monument. At the same time, Interior is to provide for the environmentally sound production of oil, gas, minerals, and other resources found on the nation’s public lands; honor the nation’s obligations to American Indians and native Alaskans; protect habitat for fish and wildlife; help manage water resources in western states; and provide scientific and technical information to allow for sound decision-making about resources. In fiscal year 2001, the Congress provided more than $10 billion to carry out these responsibilities. With these resources, Interior employs about 67,000 people in its major agencies and bureaus at over 4,000 sites around the country.

Assessment of the Department of the Interior’s Progress and Strategies in Accomplishing Selected Key Outcomes

This section discusses our analysis of Interior’s performance in achieving the selected key outcomes, as well as the strategies it has in place, particularly strategic human capital management and information technology strategies, for accomplishing these outcomes. In discussing these outcomes, we have also provided information drawn from our prior work on the extent to which Interior has provided assurance that the performance information it is reporting is credible.

Health of Federally Managed Land, Water, and Renewable Resources

Interior’s progress in maintaining the health of federally managed land, water, and renewable resources cannot be judged. Interior has four annual goals that relate to this outcome, including restoring lands and maintaining healthy natural systems. We cannot judge progress because, as we reported last year, the goals associated with this outcome do not foster a broad or departmentwide approach to measuring progress. Rather, Interior’s overview contains representative goals from various agencies and goals for a few departmental crosscutting efforts. For example, Interior uses only two examples (South Florida ecosystem and wildland fire management) of its ongoing efforts to maintain ecosystems to measure progress toward its goal of maintaining healthy ecosystems, even though it is involved in several other efforts, such as restoring the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, the California Bay Delta, and the Lower Mississippi Delta. While the two examples it chose are both important efforts that represent important aspects of Interior’s land management activities, these two efforts are not sufficient to signify the progress Interior is making overall in maintaining healthy ecosystems because many other ecosystems are managed by Interior.

Another reason that progress cannot be judged is that in some cases, Interior does not provide an overall goal for what is ultimately to be achieved. For example, Interior indicates that in fiscal year 2000 it exceeded its goal of restoring 237,800 acres that have been disturbed or damaged by previous uses, such as mining, farming, or timber harvesting, but does not provide any information on how many acres in total need to be restored. Although it does not have an overall target for its land restoration goal, to its credit, Interior has included such information in parts of its overview that are not related to the health of federal lands outcome. This example illustrates the type of information that needs to be included in the restoration goal. In reporting on its efforts to protect and recover species listed as threatened or endangered, Interior provides data on the total number of species that were listed a decade or more ago and those that are now improving or stable from that list.

Interior’s strategies for achieving its fiscal year 2002 goals, including making adjustments to address two of three performance measures that it did not meet in fiscal year 2000, appear to be clear and reasonable. For example, to address its fiscal year 2002 goal to reclaim damaged lands, Interior has a strategy to partner with nonprofit organizations to implement restoration projects. This strategy is important because, according to Interior, agency staff are often unavailable to perform work to reclaim damaged lands because they are involved in damage assessment cases. As a result, partnering with nonprofit organizations will be necessary to accomplish this goal. In addition, Interior has increased the number of acres to be treated for buildup of fuel materials, such as dead trees and underbrush, to deal with its failure to meet its goal in fiscal year 2000 and has developed a strategy to accomplish the higher goal. Interior’s strategy is to incorporate fire management activities as part of its land management and to provide additional funding to enable the responsible agencies to treat increased acres. While it has identified partnering and additional funding as options, Interior plans to conduct workforce planning for all its agencies—with a particular emphasis on the wildland fire program—in fiscal year 2002. This action could identify other strategies to achieve Interior’s goals. Interior does not have a strategy for achieving the third measure that it did not meet in fiscal year 2000, and its plan does not discuss any actions to meet its unmet measure for fiscal years 1999 and 2000 to acquire lands for the South Florida ecosystem.

Availability, Accessibility, Diversity, and Quality of National Park Facilities and Services

The Park Service reported that it achieved the outcome of safely satisfying the expectations of visitors in national parks and educating these visitors on the relevance and importance of the park units they visit. The Park Service has three goals, visitor satisfaction, safety, and education, all of which it met or exceeded in fiscal year 2000. In fact, for one goal—visitors’ satisfaction with the services, facilities, and recreation and education opportunities offered during their visits to the parks—there is little room for improvement, as the agency has met its goal of 95 percent of visitors being satisfied. However, in the past we have reported concerns about the completeness of some of the data related to the goal that deals with visitor safety. Specifically, our past work revealed that there is no systematic process in place for reporting structural fires in national parks. Without such a process, there is no assurance that structural fires are being consistently reported as part of the agency’s visitor safety statistics. This is important since the agency manages over 16,000 permanent structures, of which about a third are historic. In response to our prior recommendations, the agency acknowledged in its report that its structural fire program has significant deficiencies that need to be corrected, including those involving reporting issues.

The agency’s strategies for continuing to meet and exceed its visitor satisfaction and visitor education goals appear clear and reasonable, although the plan does not provide information on the human capital aspects of the strategies. The Park Service plans to continue to manage facilities for visitors and to provide many different services for them, including interpretive programs and concessions. However, the Park Service’s strategies do not explicitly address its workforce needs to ensure the goals are met. One potential problem that the Park Service leadership has identified is that 68 percent of its concessions staff are eligible to retire in the next 5 years. In looking for new staff, the Park Service can take the opportunity to address problems we have found with the concessions contracting staff. In contrast to the visitor satisfaction and education strategies, the agency’s strategy for achieving its visitor safety goal is vague. The Park Service says it is developing a strategic plan and a new policy for visitor safety, but this is the same strategy identified in last year’s plan. The current plan does not contain sufficient information on what the Park Service will do for us to be able to assess the merits of the strategy.

Responsibilities to Protect and Preserve Indian Trust Lands and Trust Resources

We cannot judge whether the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is making progress in protecting and preserving Indian trust lands and resources because the annual goals and performance measures it has established that relate to this outcome are output-related and therefore these measures do not assess progress toward the outcome. BIA has 18 goals, such as reforesting tribal lands and restoring wetlands on tribal lands, and the same number of performance measures for this outcome. One example of BIA’s output-related goals is to provide support for 50 tribal fish hatchery maintenance projects; the related performance measure is the number of projects supported. Such a goal does not show progress toward improving the resource. BIA recognizes the importance of developing goals that measure results and is attempting to establish them. According to the agency, the primary obstacle to the establishment of outcome goals for protecting and preserving Indian trust lands and resources is the lack of readily available data for measuring results. In other parts of its performance plan dealing with different outcomes, BIA has developed useful outcome-oriented goals. For example, its goal for law enforcement is to reduce violent crime on Indian lands and one of its long-term goals for community development is to reduce unemployment on Indian lands.

Because BIA’s goals related to the outcome we reviewed are output goals rather than outcome goals, they are more straightforward and more easily attainable. For example, the strategy for the reforestation goal focuses on planting more trees. Thus, the strategies for achieving BIA’s goals are clear and reasonable. As the agency moves toward establishing outcome-related goals, as it has indicated it plans to do, it will need to develop new strategies that reflect the outcomes.

Mineral Development on the Outer Continental Shelf

The Minerals Management Service (MMS) reported that it is making progress toward ensuring that safe and environmentally sound mineral development occurs on the Outer Continental Shelf and that the public receives fair market value for it. But MMS also reported weaknesses related to data accessibility and reliability that it is working to correct. MMS has three performance goals (environmentally sound development, fair market value, and safety) and four performance measures related to this outcome. For fiscal year 2000, MMS achieved two goals, but did not achieve a third. MMS believes that a significant reason the third goal, safety, was not achieved is that offshore oil rig operators provided more accurate data on property damage costs, which were previously underestimated. MMS measures its performance for this outcome through two indexes and two ratios, which it calculates using data from various sources, including its own data systems and models, operators, and other agencies. MMS continues to reevaluate its performance measures because it recognizes that data collection and verification problems affect them. For example, MMS changed its performance goal to no more than 10 barrels spilled per million barrels produced (previously about 6 barrels) because this is a more realistic goal based on historical data. MMS also realized it could not, at this time, obtain accurate water quality data, which are needed as a component of the environmental index. As a result, MMS eliminated that component from its calculation until reliable data can be obtained.

The MMS plan contains clear discussions of several strategies that appear to be reasonable approaches to maintaining performance and improving data quality. For example, MMS is developing a new environmental index that will focus on MMS-permitted activities, which it believes will alleviate some of its data collection problems. Other strategies include conducting more inspections of platforms to ensure operators observe safety procedures, working with the Department of Transportation to facilitate industry compliance and MMS enforcement, participating in development of industry safety standards, developing a risk-based inspection program, and improving data quality through revised regulations covering accident reporting by operators and sharing information with other nations. MMS has requested additional funding for some of these activities but does not provide information on whether these funds will be used for hiring new staff or training current staff.

Comparison of Interior’s Fiscal Year 2000 Performance Reports and Fiscal Year 2002 Performance Plans With the Prior Year’s Reports and Plans for Selected Key Outcomes

For the selected key outcomes, this section describes major improvements and remaining weaknesses in Interior’s (1) fiscal year 2000 performance reports in comparison with its fiscal year 1999 reports and (2) fiscal year 2002 performance plans in comparison with its fiscal year 2001 plans. It also discusses the degree to which Interior’s fiscal year 2000 reports and fiscal year 2002 plans address concerns and recommendations by the Congress, GAO, the Inspector General, and others.

The fiscal year 2000 reports include more thorough discussions of data validation and verification issues than the previous year’s reports.

On the other hand, Interior can improve the reporting of goals that are dropped or revised and can discuss the impact of actual performance on the likelihood of achieving planned performance in the current year.

The fiscal year 2002 plans contain more appropriate explanations of goals, measures, and crosscutting issues than the previous year’s plans.

Still, Interior can improve strategy sections to reflect strategic human capital and information technology plans and can improve discussions of program evaluations and the effects on performance goals and measures.

Comparison of Performance Reports for Fiscal Years 1999 and 2000

Interior’s fiscal year 2000 reports are largely similar to last year’s reports, although Interior and its agencies continue to make improvements in some areas. Overall, each of the 10 reports is well-organized and useful; in particular, the “Goals-at-a-Glance” section of each report and plan provides a useful way to follow the progress from year to year. The reports generally provide excellent narrative to explain those situations in which the actual performance significantly deviated from the performance goals. The discussions are brief, focused, and to the point, and they provide the reader with useful information in tracking the agency’s performance. One significant improvement this year is Interior’s and the individual agencies’ attention to data validation and verification issues, an area that we have highlighted as needing improvement in our reviews of prior year performance reports and plans. In most cases, the agencies included thorough discussions of how they determined that their goals and measures are valid and accurate. For example, BIA’s report includes a comprehensive discussion of data validation and verification issues that generally provides the reader a good understanding of the credibility of the data, the data shortcomings, and the actions planned to improve the data. In one case, for example, BIA reported it will use a checklist to document trust evaluations to help verify the number it performs.

Interior can improve its future reports in two ways. First, in its overview document, Interior can improve its reporting of goals that have been revised in previous year’s documents. For example, in the fiscal year 2000 plan, Interior had a goal to track progress in restoring lands in the Pacific Northwest; this was moved to a different section in the fiscal year 2000 report. In most instances, an explanation was provided when a new goal was added, but the absence of an explanation in this case confused efforts to track from one year to the next. Interior also revised the section of the report dealing with the restoration of the South Florida ecosystem to reflect the goals contained in the strategic plan issued by the South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Task Force in July 2000 in response to our recommendation. Interior plans to report on the results being achieved by the task force in restoring the ecosystem. In addition to reporting the results, it is important that Interior’s report reflect its contributions to the effort. Second, Interior can report on the effect of actual performance on the likelihood of achieving planned performance in the current year. For example, Interior indicated that it will not change its fiscal year 2001 measure for reclaiming damaged lands, even though it did not meet its fiscal year 2000 measure. It did not, however, state explicitly whether it could achieve the fiscal year 2001 measure.

Comparison of Performance Plans for Fiscal Years 2001 and 2002

As with its performance reports, Interior’s performance plans continue to improve. In most cases, the plans contain appropriate explanations of the goals and measures. For example, last year we observed that the MMS plan did not include an explanation of the agency’s accident index—now called the safety index. This year’s plan has a clear, sufficient explanation of the index, including examples of data used to calculate the index components: the severity factor and safety risk factor. During fiscal year 2000, MMS had planned to establish a more comprehensive safety index and a new baseline for use in 2001, but it explained in its plan that additional time will be needed to develop a valid baseline. Overall, Interior’s and the agencies’ plans also contain useful explanations of management and crosscutting issues. For example, BIA provided greater explanation of its crosscutting issues, which is significant because practically all of its functions are associated to some degree with one federal agency or another.

To further improve the plans, Interior can integrate discussions of strategic human capital management issues and technology improvements with their strategies for achieving performance goals. In some cases, these issues have already been included in discussions of strategies—for example, Interior identified a lack of personnel and the need to work with nonprofit organizations to achieve its land reclamation goals. Also, MMS identified a general need to use information technology to improve its efficiency. In other cases, such as potential succession planning difficulties in the Park Service concessions program, these issues are not yet part of the discussion of strategies. Furthermore, Interior and its agencies can continue to make program evaluations a more integral part of the plans in future years because the results of the newly developed program evaluations can lead to changes in programs and performance goals and measures. For example, MMS used program evaluations, including two fiscal year 2000 Inspector General audits and the annual Inspector General financial management reviews, to measure past performance and used other studies of information and data validity, including an environmental monitoring study of industry compliance, to establish performance measures. The Park Service, however, missed the opportunity to improve upon its last year’s plan by not fully disclosing the data limitations we had identified for its safety goal and by not identifying specific steps to address the limitations.

Interior’s Efforts to Address Its Major Management Challenges Identified by GAO

GAO has identified two governmentwide high-risk areas: strategic human capital management and information security. Interior reported some progress in resolving the strategic human capital challenge in fiscal year 2000, having completed workforce planning guidelines in June 2000. Also, Interior and its agencies identified some areas in which they have human capital concerns. For example, Interior indicated that staffing levels could limit the effectiveness of the wildfire program and set a goal to conduct workforce planning in the wildland fire program in fiscal year 2002. Interior indicated that it will undertake human capital planning for all its agencies in fiscal year 2002 and is accelerating its planning to respond to an Office of Management and Budget (OMB) bulletin instructing federal agencies to conduct a workforce analysis by June 29, 2001, but it did not substantially address how it intends to use human capital to achieve its goals. Interior did not have fiscal year 2000 goals to address progress in the information security area and, as a result, did not discuss progress in this area. Interior did include a goal and related measures for fiscal year 2002 to achieve specific improvements in this area; however, it did not indicate what steps it would take to effectively correct previously identified security weaknesses.

In addition, GAO has identified four other major management challenges facing Interior. Interior’s performance reports included goals and measures for three of these challenges—improving the management of the Park Service, Indian trust funds, and ecosystem restoration efforts—some of which the agency met or exceeded, and others it did not meet. For the remaining challenge—improving the management of expanding amounts of land for which it is responsible—Interior did not have performance goals or measures. Interior and the relevant agency, the Bureau of Land Management, did discuss the strategies the agency would use to meet this challenge, including improving program management with a national-level task force. Appendix I discusses the responses of Interior and its agencies to the management challenges identified by both GAO and Interior’s Inspector General.

Scope and Methodology

Interior has 10 reports and plans, 9 for its individual agencies and 1 departmental overview. For three of the selected key outcomes—park visitation, Indian trust assets, and Outer Continental Shelf development— we reviewed the agency-level reports and plans to assess progress toward the outcomes. The outcome on federal land management is broad, however, with multiple agencies performing the work and contributing to the goals. For this reason, we used Interior’s overview report to assess progress toward the outcome. Although the individual agencies have goals that relate to the outcome, we did not review their reports and plans because we believe the overview should provide a comprehensive look at the agencies’ progress.

As agreed with your staff, our evaluation was generally based on the requirements of GPRA, the Reports Consolidation Act of 2000, guidance to agencies from OMB for developing performance plans and reports (OMB Circular A-11, Part 2), previous reports and evaluations by us and others, our knowledge of Interior’s operations and programs, our identification of best practices concerning performance planning and reporting, and our observations on Interior’s other GPRA-related efforts. We also discussed our review with agency officials and with Interior’s Office of Inspector General. The agency outcomes that were used as the basis for our review were identified by the Ranking Minority Member of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee as important mission areas for the agency and do not reflect the outcomes for all of Interior’s programs or activities. The major management challenges confronting Interior, including the governmentwide high-risk areas of strategic human capital management and information security, were identified by GAO in our January 2001 performance and accountability series and high-risk update and by Interior’s Office of Inspector General in December 2000. We did not independently verify the information contained in the performance reports and plans, although we did draw from our other work in assessing the validity, reliability, and timeliness of Interior’s performance data. We conducted our review from April 2001 through June 2001 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.

Agency Comments

We provided a draft of this report to the Department of the Interior for its review and comment. Interior chose to meet with us to provide oral comments, and we met with the Director of the Office of Planning and Performance Management and other officials from Interior on June 1, 2001, to discuss these comments. While the officials generally agreed with the report’s findings, they raised a concern that the governmentwide high- risk area of strategic human capital management—which we reviewed in the management challenges section of this report—was first identified by us in January 2001, after Interior had completed much of its planning and reporting for fiscal year 2000. Interior noted that it has included a goal in its fiscal year 2002 plan to begin workforce planning and that it is accelerating its planning in response to an OMB directive to gather data on workforce numbers by June 29, 2001.

We agree with Interior officials that the issue of strategic human capital management was identified by us as a high-risk area in January 2001 when, according to Interior officials, it had finished most of its planning and reporting for fiscal year 2000. To address their concern, we revised the report to underscore this date when we first mention the high-risk issues in the report. We also noted, however, human capital issues have been a long-standing problem for many federal agencies and that the inclusion of human resources in performance plans has been required as part of the GPRA process since 1999, when the first performance plans were developed. In addition, OMB Circular A-11 contains guidance to federal departments to discuss strategies, including the planned use of human resources, to achieve goals in their annual performance plans.

The Interior officials also provided technical clarifications, which we made as appropriate.

As arranged with your office, unless you announce its contents earlier, we plan no further distribution of this report until 30 days after the date of this letter. At that time, we will send copies to the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, the Chairman and Ranking Minority Member of the House Committee on Government Reform, the Secretary of the Interior, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and other interested congressional committees. This report will also be available on GAO’s home page at http:\\www.gao.gov.

If you or your staff have any questions, please call me at (202) 512-3841. Key contributors to this report are listed in appendix II.

Appendix I: Observations on the Department of the Interior’s Efforts to Address Its Major Management Challenges

Table 1 identifies the major management challenges confronting the Department of the Interior, which include the governmentwide high-risk areas of strategic human capital management and information security. Interior has 10 performance reports/plans, including 1 that serves as a departmental overview, 1 each for the 8 major bureaus within the Department, and 1 for the Office of Insular Affairs. The first column of the table lists the management challenges that we and the Department of the Interior’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) have identified. The second column discusses the progress Interior has made in addressing these major management challenges, as discussed in its fiscal year 2000 performance report. The third column discusses the extent to which Interior’s fiscal year 2002 performance plan includes performance goals and measures to address the management challenges that we and Interior’s OIG have identified.

While Interior’s performance reports discussed the Department’s progress in resolving many of its management challenges, the Department did not have goals for the management challenge dealing with information security and therefore did not discuss progress in resolving the challenge in fiscal year 2000. Interior has been engaged in workforce planning and information security activities during fiscal year 2001. Interior’s fiscal year 2002 performance plans provided goals and performance measures for most of its management challenges. For Interior’s 14 major management challenges, its performance plans had (1) goals and measures that were directly related to 9 of the challenges; (2) goals and measures that were indirectly applicable to 1 challenge; and (3) no goals and measures related to 3 of the challenges, although strategies to address them were discussed. The last challenge relates to Government Performance and Results Act, which is the subject of this report and therefore was not addressed in the matrix.

Appendix II: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments

GAO Contact

Staff Acknowledgments

Arleen Alleman, Julie Gerkens, Susan Iott, Dave Irvin, Lisa Knight, Mike Koury, Jeff Malcolm, Sherry McDonald, Charles Vrabel, and Ned Woodward made key contributions to this report.