Federal advisory committees are designed to collect a variety of viewpoints and to provide advice or recommendations to the executive and legislative branches of the federal government from nonfederal sources. Congress, the President, or agency heads may establish advisory committees, which render independent advice or make recommendations to their affiliated departments or agencies, and in some cases make recommendations to the President or Congress. Congress can also statutorily authorize an agency to create an advisory committee (leaving the final determination of whether to establish the advisory committee at the agency's discretion). In 1972, Congress passed the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) in response to the perception that existing advisory committees were duplicative, inefficient, and lacked adequate control or oversight. FACA sets structural and operational requirements for advisory committees, including formal reporting and oversight procedures. FACA requires that committee membership be "fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented," and that the advice provided by committees be objective, independent, and accessible to the public. Additionally, FACA requires that committee meetings be open to the public, unless the material discussed meets certain requirements. Pursuant to FACA, the General Services Administration (GSA) promulgates regulations and produces management guidelines for federal advisory committees. GSA also maintains the FACA Database, a database of information concerning FACA committee membership, operations, and costs. Pursuant to FACA Section 7, the GSA Administrator must complete an annual review of FACA committees to determine whether they are carrying out their purposes, can be merged together, or should be abolished. To complete this review, the Administrator has the authority to request necessary information from agencies. GSA collected the information in paper form between 1972-1997. Since 1997, GSA has required agencies to report these data directly into the FACA Database, an online data collection tool GSA created and manages. This report uses data from the FACA Database, the only publicly available source that includes aggregated and historical information on FACA committee membership, operations, and costs. According to GSA, the database is a "shared management system" wherein each participating agency and individual committee manager has responsibility for providing accurate and timely information that can be accessed by the system's wide array of users. Within the database, GSA provides descriptions of the data sought from agencies. Agency employees then interpret these requests and report data. Agencies' employees, however, may interpret the requested data in a variety of ways. The accuracy and completeness of the information contained in the FACA Database have not been independently validated by the Congressional Research Service (CRS). In some cases, data reporting appears inconsistent. Certain data elements in the database are required, while others are optional. Consequently, some data elements are reported by some agencies and not reported by others. One example of this data limitation is the reporting of federal advisory committees' subcommittee meetings, membership, and costs. GSA allows agencies to report this information, but they are not required to do so by statute or regulation. Some agencies, therefore, report subcommittees' titles, member names, member affiliations, costs, and meeting dates—often in accordance with requirements set by the committee charter. The FACA Database requires that all committee and subcommittee costs be aggregated and reported as total costs. In cases where a FACA committee does not report subcommittee information, therefore, users of the data would not necessarily be able to determine whether subcommittees exist. Additional data concerns and limitations are discussed later in this report. In addition to the aggregated, longitudinal data described above, this report provides detailed analysis of data from FY2015, the data most recently verified by the agencies and departments sponsoring the advisory committees and reviewed by GSA. Pursuant to GSA's interpretation of Executive Order 12838 and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-135, the total number of advisory committees established by the executive branch, as opposed to those required by statute, may not exceed 534. According to GSA, every executive branch agency has a "ceiling" on the number of discretionary advisory committees it may create, "and the Committee Management Secretariat [within GSA] can adjust individual agency ceilings in consultation with the agency, as long as the overall [g]overnmentwide cap [of 534 total committees] is not exceeded." GSA requires agencies to provide a "determination of need" if they request new discretionary FACA committees—even if they are within their available ceiling. While there is a cap on the number of discretionary advisory committees that can be created by federal agencies, there are no limitations on the number of advisory committees that Congress and the President may establish. The potential number of total advisory committees, therefore, cannot be determined. Figure 1 shows the total number of active FACA committees from FY2004 through FY2015. Included in this figure is a breakdown of the authorities used to create the FACA committees. As Figure 1 shows, FY2009 had the fewest number of FACA committees report as active with 907, and FY2011 had the greatest number of FACA committees reported as active with 1,029. In FY2015, 1,009 FACA committees reported as active. From FY2004 to FY2015, the number of FACA committees: required by statute increased inconsistently from 459 to 539 (+14.8%); established by agency authority declined inconsistently from 279 to 245 (-13.9%); authorized by statute declined inconsistently from 206 to 183 (-12.6%); and established by presidential directive increased inconsistently from 37 to 42 (+11.9%). Figure 2 shows the number of new committees created by any authority during each fiscal year. From FY2004 to FY2015, the number of new active FACA committees declined inconsistently from 66 annually to 42 (-36.4%), ranging from a low of 23 new FACA committees in FY2014 to a high of 147 new FACA committees in FY2010. Figure 3 shows the 14 executive branch departments or agencies that reported administering the largest number of FACA committees in FY2015. The data show that the Department of Health and Human Services reported the largest number of FACA committees with 248 (25.6% of total active FACA committees). HHS consistently operates the largest number of FACA committees in the executive branch. GSA requires FACA committees to report their primary function, using one of seven categorical options. These options are non-scientific program advisory board; scientific technical program advisory board; national policy issue advisory board; grant review committee; special emphasis panel; regulatory negotiations committee; or other committee. As shown in Table 1 , of the 1,009 advisory committees active in FY2015, 265 (26.3%) reported acting as non-scientific program advisory boards, 197 (19.5%) reported acting as scientific technical program advisory boards, 133 (13.2%) reported acting as national policy issue advisory boards, 90 (8.9%) reported acting as grant review committees, 26 (2.6%) reported acting as special emphasis panels, 4 (0.4%) reported acting as regulatory negotiations advisory committees, and 294 (29.1%) reported acting as "other" committees. Roughly 70,000 FACA committee and subcommittee members serve in any fiscal year. Figure 4 shows the number of FACA committee members from FY2004 through FY2015. This number represents members who were reported as serving on committees and not the potential number of members who could serve if all committees had all available membership positions filled. GSA requires all FACA committees to enter the maximum number of members specified by their "charter or authorizing legislation." If neither document includes a maximum number of committee members, GSA instructs FACA committees to report their membership count as "unlimited." In FY2015, 72,200 members served on advisory committees. As shown in Figure 4 , the number of FACA committee members remained around 70,000 per year from FY2004 through FY2015—the only exception being FY2009, when membership rose by 28.4% to 81,947 (an increase of 18,113 members). According to GSA, the growth in FACA committee membership in FY2009 was prompted largely by an increase in membership on committees that made recommendations about where and how to distribute appropriations provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 ( P.L. 111-5 ). The data demonstrate that the FY2009 increase in FACA committee membership was prompted by a sharp increase in the number of peer review consultants, who serve only the National Institutes of Health. The number of members of other designations appears to have stayed relatively stable over time. From FY2009 to FY2014, FACA member levels declined 16.8% (13,768 members), led by the decline in peer review consultants. From FY2014 to FY2015, however, the number of members serving on FACA committees increased 4,021 (5.9%) from 68,179 to 72,200. Figure 5 shows the total number of members separated into the five distinct member designations from FY2005 to FY2015. Each designation has its own requirements, expectations, and standards—which are analyzed in greater detail in the sections below. The data show that much of the growth in the number of federal advisory committee members comes from increases in peer review consultants (33,326 in FY2005 and 36,315 in FY2015, a 9.0% increase) and special government employees (19,784 in FY2005 and 23,306 in FY2015, a 17.8% increase). The data show that the 5.9% increase in members from FY2014 to FY2015 includes increases in peer review consultants (a 6.2% increase), representatives (a 6.1% increase), and special government employees (a 6.1% increase). The number of ex officio and regular government employee members declined slightly from FY2014 to FY2015. In FY2015, 191 (19.5%) FACA committees reported an unlimited number of members.