In our September 2015 report, we found that the agencies assess the effectiveness of their wildland fire management programs in several ways, including through performance measures, efforts to assess specific activities, and reviews of specific wildland fire incidents. We found that both the Forest Service and Interior were developing new performance measures, in part to help better assess the results of their current emphasis on risk-based management, according to agency officials. In addition, the agencies have undertaken multiple efforts to assess the effectiveness of activities such as fuel reduction treatments and aerial firefighting. We also found that the agencies had conducted reviews of their responses to wildland fires, but that they did not consistently follow agency policy in doing so or use specific criteria for selecting the fires they reviewed, limiting their ability to help ensure that their fire reviews provided useful information and meaningful results. As we found in our September 2015 report, both the Forest Service and Interior use various performance measures, such as the number of acres treated to reduce fuels and the percentage of wildland fires contained during initial attack, to assess their wildland fire management effectiveness. These measures are reported in, among other things, the agencies’ annual congressional budget justifications. Officials from both the Forest Service and Interior, however, told us their performance measures need improvement to more appropriately reflect their emphasis on a risk-based approach to wildland fire management and, in June 2015, officials from both agencies told us that they were working to improve them. For example, in fiscal year 2014, the Forest Service began developing a performance measure intended to reflect that, in some cases, allowing naturally-ignited fires to burn can provide natural resource benefits at a lower cost and lower risk to personnel than fully suppressing the fire as quickly as possible. Forest Service officials told us they are working with field units to evaluate whether this measure will effectively assess their efforts to implement a risk-based approach to fire management, and said they will adjust it as needed. The officials told us they plan to finalize the measure and use it in 2017. Similarly, in fiscal year 2014 Interior began using a new performance measure intended to better reflect the variety of strategies, in addition to all-out suppression efforts, available to respond to wildland fires. The agencies have also undertaken multiple efforts to assess the effectiveness of particular wildland fire management activities, such as fuel reduction and aerial firefighting. Regarding fuel reduction activities, in prior work we found that demonstrating the effectiveness of fuel reduction treatments is inherently complex and that the agencies did not have sufficient information to evaluate fuel treatment effectiveness, such as the extent to which treatments changed fire behavior. Without such information, we concluded that the agencies could not ensure that fuel reduction funds were directed to the areas where they can best minimize risk to communities and natural and cultural resources. Accordingly, we recommended in 2007 that the agencies take actions to develop additional information on fuel treatment effectiveness. The agencies agreed with this recommendation and have taken steps to address it. In our September 2015 report, we found that the agencies are continuing efforts to improve their understanding of fuel treatment effectiveness. For example, the Forest Service and Interior agencies use a system called Fuel Treatment Effectiveness Monitoring to assess fuel reduction treatment effectiveness. The Forest Service began requiring such assessments in 2011, and Interior requested such assessments be completed starting in 2012. Under this approach, the agencies are to complete a monitoring report whenever a wildfire interacts with an area where a fuel reduction treatment was previously conducted. Regarding aerial firefighting, in our August 2013 report, we found that Forest Service and Interior had not collected information on the performance and effectiveness of firefighting aircraft as part of their efforts to identify their firefighting aircraft needs. Specifically, we found that the agencies had not established data collection mechanisms to track the specific tactical uses of firefighting aircraft—for example, where retardant or water is dropped in relation to a fire as well as the objective of a drop, such as protecting a structure—or measure their performance and effectiveness in those uses. Since the 1960s, multiple reviews of federal fire aviation programs have called for the Forest Service and Interior to collect information on the performance of firefighting aircraft. At the time of our 2013 report, the Forest Service had recently begun an effort known as the Aerial Firefighting Use and Effectiveness Study to address this concern. We noted, however, that this study focused on large airtankers (which, as noted, are managed by the Forest Service) and that Interior did not have plans to collect performance information on the types of firefighting aircraft it manages. Accordingly, in that report we recommended that the agencies expand efforts to collect information on aircraft performance and effectiveness to include all types of firefighting aircraft in the federal fleet. The agencies generally agreed with our recommendation. In our September 2015 report, we found that the Forest Service and Interior were jointly implementing the Aerial Firefighting Use and Effectiveness Study begun in 2012. According to the study website and agency officials, the agencies are collecting information on how aerial retardant and suppressant delivery affects fire behavior, and they plan to use this and other collected information to track the performance of specific aircraft types. As of November 2015, according to agency officials, the agencies had collected data on aircraft use in more than 100 fires as part of the study. In addition, according to these officials, as part of the study the agencies are developing specific ways to assess firefighting aircraft performance effectiveness to be used during the 2016 fire season. Agency officials told us the study is not a one-time activity but is an ongoing effort to continually provide information to help improve their use of firefighting resources. As detailed in our September 2015 report, the Forest Service and the Interior agencies have conducted reviews to assess their effectiveness in responding to wildland fires, but have not consistently followed agency policy in doing so and did not always use specific criteria for selecting the fires they reviewed. Congressional committee reports and agency policy have generally called for the agencies to review their responses to wildland fires involving federal expenditures of $10 million or more, in part to help understand how to better contain suppression costs. The agencies, in turn, have each developed their own policies that generally direct them to review each fire that exceeds the $10 million threshold and, in some cases, those policies note that fire reviews may be conducted for other purposes, such as where the fire raised significant political, social, natural resource, or policy concerns. The agencies have not consistently conducted reviews of fire incidents meeting the $10 million threshold, in part because, according to officials, doing so does not reflect the agencies’ focus on assessing the effectiveness of their response to fire. However, the agencies have not developed specific criteria for selecting fire incidents for review. Forest Service officials told us that rather than selecting all fires with federal expenditures of $10 million or more to review, they changed their selection approach. These officials told us that focusing exclusively on suppression costs when selecting fires may keep the agency from choosing those fires where it can obtain important information and best assess management actions and ensure they are appropriate, risk-based, and effective. Instead, Forest Service officials told us the agency judgmentally selects incidents to review based on a range of broad criteria, such as complexity and national significance, taking into account political, social, natural resource, or policy concerns. Using these broad selection criteria, the Forest Service reviewed 5 wildland fires that occurred in 2012 and 10 that occurred in 2013. However, with these broad criteria it is not clear why the Forest Service selected those particular fires and not others. For example, the 2013 Rim Fire, which burned more than 250,000 acres and cost more than $100 million to suppress—by far the costliest fire to suppress that year—was not among the 2013 fires selected for review. Moreover, the reviews completed for each of those years did not use consistent or specific criteria for conducting the reviews. As of July 2015, the agency had not selected fires to review from the 2014 wildland fire season and, when asked, agency officials did not indicate a time frame for doing so. Forest Service officials told us they believe it is appropriate to judgmentally select fires to provide them flexibility in identifying which fires to review and which elements of the fire response to analyze. Nevertheless, Forest Service officials also acknowledged the need to develop more specific criteria for selecting fires to review and conducting the reviews. In July 2015, officials told us they were working to update their criteria for doing so. They provided us a draft update of the Forest Service policy manual, but this draft did not contain specific criteria for selecting fires for review or conducting the reviews. Moreover, officials did not provide a time frame for completing their update. Within Interior, Bureau of Land Management officials told us that the agency completed its last fire review based on significant cost (i.e., federal expenditures of $10 million or more) in 2013. These officials told us that the Bureau of Land Management, similar to the Forest Service, plans to shift the emphasis of its fire reviews to evaluate management actions rather than focusing on cost, and that officials are working to determine criteria for selecting fires for review. Interior headquarters officials told us that the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service have continued to follow the direction provided through their policies regarding reviews of fires that met the $10 million threshold. Interior headquarters officials, however, acknowledged the need to improve Interior’s approach to selecting fires for review to focus more on information about decision making rather than fire costs. In July 2015, the officials told us they planned to develop criteria other than cost for use by all Interior agencies in selecting fires to review, and that they planned to develop standard criteria for implementing the reviews, but they did not provide information about how they planned to develop such criteria or the factors they would consider. Agency reports have likewise cited the need to improve both the processes for selecting fires for review and the implementation of the reviews. A 2010 report, for example, noted the importance of improving the selection of fires to review and stated that the agencies would benefit from a more productive review strategy.