According to the Financial Literacy and Education Improvement Act, the purpose of the Financial Literacy and Education Commission is to “improve the financial literacy and education of persons in the United States through development of a national strategy to promote financial literacy and education.” The act states the Commission shall be composed of the Secretary of the Treasury and the heads of 19 other federal departments and agencies and allows the President to appoint up to 5 additional members. The Commission must hold one public meeting at least every 4 months; the Commission’s first meeting was held in January 2004. The act specifies certain areas the Commission shall emphasize—such as consumer awareness of budgeting, credit, investment, and banking—and requires the Commission to undertake certain activities, including providing not later than 18 months after the date of the first meeting of the Commission a report to Congress on the Commission’s progress, which must include, among other things, a national strategy to promote financial literacy and education for all Americans; establishing and maintaining a financial education Web site to provide a coordinated point of entry for information about federal financial literacy education programs and grants; establishing a toll-free hotline available to the public seeking information about issues pertaining to financial literacy and education; identifying areas of overlap and duplication among federal financial literacy and education activities and coordinating federal efforts to implement the national strategy; assessing the availability, utilization, and impact of federal financial literacy and education materials; and promoting partnerships among federal, state, and local governments, nonprofit organizations, and private enterprises. The act requires that the strategy be reviewed and modified as deemed necessary at least once a year. The act also requires the Secretary of the Treasury, after review of the Commission’s recommendations, as part of the national strategy, to develop, implement, and conduct a pilot national public service multimedia campaign to enhance the state of financial literacy and education in the United States. The Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Education lends primary support to the Commission and coordinates its efforts. The office has assigned professional staff, equivalent to 2.5 staff years, to handle work related to the Commission. Three other agencies have detailed seven government employees for between 2 months and 2 years each at the Treasury Department to support the Commission between April 2003 and August 2006. The Commission has no independent budget. Most representatives of the Commission could not provide us with an estimate of the resources allocated to the Commission, most of which consisted of in-kind staff assistance. The act authorized appropriations to the Commission of “such sums as may be necessary” to carry out its work, and for fiscal year 2005 Congress specified that $1 million should be used for the development and implementation of the national strategy. Additional information on the Commission’s budget and expenditures appears in appendix II. The National Strategy for Financial Literacy serves as a useful first step in focusing attention on financial literacy but is largely descriptive rather than strategic. The strategy is comprehensive, discussing many of the major issues and challenges in improving financial literacy and describing a variety of financial literacy initiatives in the government, nonprofit, and private sectors. However, its recommendations are presented as “calls to action” that generally do not include a plan for implementation and the strategy only partially addresses most of the characteristics—such as full discussion of performance measures, resource needs, and roles and responsibilities—that we have previously identified as desirable for any effective national strategy. As a result, most federal and nonfederal agencies we interviewed said that the national strategy was unlikely to affect their financial literacy and education efforts. To develop the National Strategy for Financial Literacy, in May 2004, the Commission formed a national strategy working group of 13 member agencies. According to a Treasury Department representative, the working group met 11 times and working group members provided background research and developed material for each of the strategy’s chapters. The Financial Literacy Act called for the participation of state and local governments and private, nonprofit, and public institutions in the creation and implementation of the national strategy. To help meet this requirement, the working group, through the Treasury Department, issued a request for public comment on the development of the strategy in a Federal Register notice that was released in August 2004. The request generated approximately 158 public responses from a wide array of federal, state, and local government entities; private companies; nonprofit agencies; and individuals, including academics and private citizens. The working group also held six public meetings in February and March 2005 with individuals and organizations that had responded to the request for public comment. Each meeting was organized around a specific sector— commercial, government, nonprofit, education, and banking—with one for individuals. Commission documents stated that the working group had considered information and ideas from the participants of these meetings during the development of the national strategy. Although the Financial Literacy Act required the Commission to adopt the strategy within 18 months after the date of the act’s enactment, or June 2005, the strategy was not publicly released until April 4, 2006. The Commission sought unanimous consent on the national strategy, and Commission members told us that the difficulty of reaching consensus among all 20 member agencies had delayed the strategy. For instance, according to a Treasury Department official, some agencies disagreed about what the strategy should include, and some agency representatives had difficulties securing the approval of higher-level agency officials, who in some cases had objections. Some participants in the development of the national strategy told us that the process was generally collaborative and that they were given sufficient opportunity to provide input and review drafts of the strategy. Other participants told us that they believed that the working group was not always given ample opportunity to provide input into important issues, such as the strategy’s overall direction, recommendations, or implementation. Many Commission representatives acknowledged that the Treasury Department faced a significant challenge in trying to get 20 federal agencies—each with its own mission and point of view—to unanimously agree to a strategy. A particular source of disagreement among agencies was the issue of whether nonfederal entities should be cited by name in the strategy document. The national strategy includes numerous “illustrative programs” that provide examples of financial literacy initiatives in the private and nonprofit sector. According to a Treasury official, most Commission member agencies believed that these private and nonprofit entities should be cited by name, but some agencies did not. Specifically, two regulatory agencies that were part of the Commission said that a potential conflict of interest existed if they were perceived to be endorsing a program run by an entity that was potentially the subject of an enforcement action. To address these issues, the Commission decided to remove names of private and nonprofit sector organizations from the national strategy. After consultation with all Commission members, the organizations’ names were included instead in a separate document issued by the Treasury Department, the “National Strategy for Financial Literacy: Quick Reference Guide.” The content of the National Strategy for Financial Literacy largely consists of a comprehensive overview of issues related to financial literacy, along with examples of ongoing initiatives. The strategy is organized into 13 chapters. Seven of these chapters cover subject areas for financial education, such as retirement saving, credit, and taxpayer rights, while three others focus on specific groups—students, the unbanked, and multilingual and multicultural populations. There are also chapters on academic research and program evaluation, coordination efforts, and international initiatives. Most chapters provide a brief overview of the subject and the challenges the nation faces in addressing it, but most of the discussion involves “illustrative programs” that are already in place. These programs, of which the report discusses more than 80, are run by nonprofit organizations, academia, the private sector, and federal, state, and local governments. For example, the chapter on investor protection includes several pages describing specific resources and programs available through federal agencies and private entities. The strategy is comprehensive in its scope. It describes many major problems and challenges related to financial literacy in America, identifies key subject matter areas and target populations, and describes what it believes to be illustrations of potentially effective practices in financial education across a broad spectrum of subjects and sectors. As such, the strategy represents a useful first step in laying out key issues and highlighting the need for improved financial literacy. At the same time, as some representatives of the Commission told us, the strategy is fundamentally descriptive rather than strategic—that is, it provides information on disparate issues and initiatives related to financial literacy but is limited in presenting a long-term plan of action for achieving its goal. Most notably, the strategy’s recommendations are presented as “calls to action,” which it defines as concrete steps that should be taken for improving financial literacy and education in particular areas. Sixteen of these 26 calls to action are addressed to federal entities, 5 to private or nonprofit organizations, and 5 to the public at large. However, many of these calls to action are very general and do not discuss an implementation strategy, and others describe initiatives that already exist. For example, one call to action states “Investors should take advantage of the wealth of high quality, neutral, and unbiased information offered free of charge,” but it does not lay out a plan for helping ensure that investors will do so. Among the ongoing initiatives cited are a multimedia campaign that the Treasury Department is to launch that is mandated in the Financial Literacy Act. Another call to action states that the Department of Health and Human Services “will continue its public awareness campaign on the new Medicare drug benefit that encourages seniors to enroll in the program.” We have previously identified a set of desirable characteristics for any effective national strategy. While national strategies are not required to contain a single, consistent set of attributes, we found six characteristics that can offer policymakers and implementing agencies a management tool to help ensure accountability and more effective results. These six characteristics are (1) a clear purpose, scope and methodology; (2) a detailed discussion of problems and risks; (3) desired goals, objectives, activities, and performance measures; (4) a description of future costs and resources needed to implement the strategy; (5) a clear delineation of the government’s roles, responsibilities, and mechanisms for coordination; and (6) a description of how the strategy is integrated with other entities.