EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs asked the National Academy of Public Administration to convene an expert panel to examine the roles, mission and operation of the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) in May 1993. This report presents the findings and recommendations of the panel, focusing on GAO's mission and roles, its relationships with Congress and with federal executive agencies, the quality of its work, and its work processes. GAO has been a valuable part of the federal government for more than 70 years, providing auditing, research and evaluation to government generally and to Congress in particular, which could not be easily and readily replaced. GAO's most important assets are its objectivity and impartial fact-finding and analysis that have given its reports and testimony a special standing in discussions and debates on government performance. In recent years, there has been considerable criticism about GAO's work, including concerns about its objectivity and impartiality. Interviews conducted for this study revealed these concerns even among congressional staffs who most strongly support GAO. While the panel found no evidence of deliberate partisan bias in GAO's work, the panel did find that GAO's credibility and authoritativeness will be eroded by its involvement in policy areas without a solid base in research and evaluation. The panel's major conclusion is that GAO and Congress should give greater attention to the scope of work GAO does, how it uses its resources, the quality of its work products, the objectivity of its findings and conclusions, and the fairness of their presentation and release. GAO's status as the government's central agency for audit and evaluation requires bipartisan trust, particularly in a time of partisan conflict. The panel concludes that two major approaches are necessary to serve that objective: 1) restraint on the part of GAO and congressional requesters of its work, to avoid reports that do not have a firm factual base within GAO's competence; and 2) continuing congressional oversight of GAO, with increased sharing of information, including GAO's strategic plans, lists of jobs started, terms of reference for individual studies, periodic peer review reports, and improved GAO performance indicators, as well as agency comments routinely and consistently obtained on individual GAO reports. GAO MISSION AND ROLES GAO's Vision, Mission, and Guiding Principles GAO's mission and roles are becoming broader and more diverse than appropriate for the government's central audit and evaluation agency, going beyond its core purpose, skills, and resources. GAO's statutory authorization, dating from the 1921 legislation that established it as an agency independent of the executive branch, gives the comptroller general a broad mandate to make recommendations on the economy and efficiency of public expenditures, to prescribe systems and procedures for appropriation and accounting, and to undertake investigations and reports ordered by any congressional committee. This mission has been broadened over the years by additions to the original statute and specific provisions in laws requiring numerous periodic or one-time reports on specific programs and expanding GAO's general management-oriented responsibilities. Internal GAO processes for defining mission and roles -- most notably the processes of strategic planning and total quality management (TQM) -- have defined objectives for GAO that are very ambitious and reach beyond GAO's core mission. As part of the TQM process, GAO has defined its organizational vision as follows: "We aspire to be the world's leading organization engaged in audit, evaluation, and public policy analysis." This formulation encourages GAO to become more involved in policy questions, in a way that may extend beyond the appropriate role of the government's central audit agency and beyond its resources. To be the world leader in audit, evaluation, and policy analysis is an unrealistic aim, in light of the diversity of management, program and policy issues and the degree of specialization required to perform sound policy analyses and policy development across that full range. GAO has become increasingly involved in policy analysis and policy development. Elected officials have the responsibility to set public policies and priorities. GAO's appropriate role is not to formulate policy but to contribute information and analysis that decisionmakers can use in evaluating options and making policy choices. Congressional staffs, majority and minority, overwhelmingly suggest that GAO's most effective contribution to decision making is to provide accurate, reliable information and fact-based audit and evaluation. The panel recommends that GAO revise its vision and mission statements to reflect more focused and realistic objectives, building on its own standards and guiding principles, along the following lines: GAO's principal mission is to produce high quality research that is objective and The panel recommends a shift in GAO perspectives and methods, from promoting processoriented controls to examining the root causes of problems in order to help improve the effectiveness of program outcomes. GAO should also ensure that it has the staff skills and resources to match its work priorities, particularly in the areas of program evaluation, cost analysis, and financial and other management systems. GAO should take a cautious approach to policy analysis and policy development, building from a foundation in research, audit, and evaluation. Congressional requesters of GAO work should not put GAO's role and reputation as impartial, objective auditor and evaluator in jeopardy by posing research questions that inevitably place GAO in areas of conflict over policy priorities and values, without a solid factual base or objective standards for review. GAO Strategic Planning GAO's internal strategic planning and its relationship to congressionally-requested work is not known to most congressional members and staff. A more open strategic planning process at GAO would help create greater understanding of GAO's work priorities and address concerns about GAO's perceived reliance on congressional requesters to define its work. GAO maps its work priorities through an internal strategic planning process that identifies research questions and projects likely to make a useful contribution to meeting vital congressional interests and needs. The GAO strategic planning process is largely confidential, as is the nature of the jobs GAO is starting. Few outside GAO are aware of the strategic planning process, the resulting work plans in each GAO issue area, and the important role they play not only in GAO's choice of selfinitiated work but also in the requests that Congress makes for work. GAO and congressional staffs hold frequent discussions of issues and interests and negotiate requests for specific jobs, often based on issues that GAO has identified as the potential focus for useful future work or related to continuing streams of GAO work. In the panel's view, the comptroller general's discretion to define important issues and to advise Congress on areas for audit and evaluation is important and valuable for GAO. But a higher level of openness, accountability, and exchange of information is needed; more sharing of information on GAO's strategic planning and choice of work can help to resolve misunderstandings and congressional uneasiness with the work GAO does and its use of resources. The panel recommends that GAO systematically consult with congressional committees, executive agencies, and experts in each issue area, as part of its planning process. GAO should provide its summary strategic plan to GAO's oversight committees and distribute the plan in its final form to other members of Congress, as well as executive branch agencies and officials. Quality Management and Customer Focus GAO has taken an example from the private sector and TQM to "focus on the customer," which GAO generally defines as Congress. Interviews for this study and GAO's own 1992 survey of congressional staffs indicate some discomfort in Congress with GAO's "customer focus" language, and some suspicions that GAO is becoming too willing to tailor its work to the interests of requesters and satisfy the committee and subcommittee staffs who are the major requesters and users of GAO work. 1. 2. 3. Approaching Congress as "customer" has several built-in problems: Congress consists of hundreds of individuals with diverse and often conflicting interests. Therefore, work that might please one committee or member is unlikely to please all the others. Unlike the typical private sector "customer," congressional requesters do not pay or even perceive a cost for GAO work, and most are not aware of the costs of the work GAO does for them. GAO's credibility depends on its reputation for impartiality, which could be damaged by an overemphasis on pleasing any individual requester. The panel recommends that GAO clarify what it means to be "responsive" to Congress while preserving objectivity and professional standards for audit and evaluation. GAO WORK PROCESSES Internal Design and Review of GAO Work GAO work processes tend to proceed in uniform, hierarchical patterns with inadequate definition at the outset of the objectives, methods, and type of work, and cumbersome review processes at the end. GAO work products include blue cover reports -- ranging from substantial "chapter reports" to shorter "letter reports," written briefings, fact sheets, and correspondence issued in blue covers -as well as oral briefings, shorter and less formal correspondence, and historical or other factual series of studies or guidance. Despite the diversity of its tasks, GAO tends to work in uniform patterns that produce reports in similar formats. In the panel's view, controversies over GAO studies generally reflect misunderstandings of the basic research objectives and different views on sources and methods. Some congressional staffs do not feel that GAO did the work they requested. In some cases, GAO's methods do not seem suitable to its conclusions. |