VI. CONGRESS AND GAO

Congressional perspectives on GAO are diverse. Over the years, committees and staff members have had varied experiences with GAO's work -- positive and negative. Based on interviews for this study and GAO's own survey of Congress, however, the concerns that congressional members and staff express are serious and not limited to a small number of critics.

Congressional Views of GAO

As part of its quality management initiative, GAO surveyed its congressional "customers" in 1992, conducting interviews with 93 congressional staffers. The results were quite mixed.

On the positive side, at least two-thirds of those interviewed said it is easy to obtain GAO's help for committee work, that GAO is easy to work with and generally responsive to their needs, that they are satisfied with GAO's reporting of its results, and that GAO's reports and testimony for their committees are accurate and useful. Smaller numbers, but still a majority, expressed satisfaction with how GAO carried out the projects, how easy the reports are to understand, and the level of knowledge and technical expertise GAO brought to the work.

On the negative side, only 47 percent rated GAO reports as highly objective, 33 percent rated them moderately objective, and 14 percent said the reports had low or no objectivity. Only 38 percent rated the reports as very thorough. In terms of what parts of the reports congressional staff read, 92 percent of respondents reported that they read the executive summary; 80 percent read the conclusions and recommendations; and just over half read the introduction and individual chapters.

Partly based on the results of the congressional survey, GAO is working to improve its relations with Congress, and particularly communications and responsiveness to committee and member requests. As a pilot effort launched by GAO's Quality Council beginning in February 1994, five issue areas are participating in a six-month test of a process for sending an evaluation questionnaire to each congressional requester immediately after delivering a report or other written product. 85 The questionnaire asks for feedback on the requester's perceptions of the work's accuracy, clarity, objectivity, usefulness, responsiveness to the request, timeliness, and overall quality. The questionnaire also asks about GAO's communications with the requesting office at various stages in the work. In addition, GAO has prepared training materials for employees on effective communications with Congress, encouraging more frequent contacts, discussions, and information sharing with committee staffs.

Congressional concerns, however, stretch well beyond communications and into the nature of GAO's work, its quality, and its objectivity. The concerns expressed in GAO's congressional survey came from some who frequently request GAO work (generally staff of majority members or committee

85 GAO Survey: Improving Congressional Relations: Guidance for Congressional Communications Indicators, February 1994, transmitted to all GAO staff by memorandum from J. Dexter Peach, February 2, 1994.

chairmen), some who use GAO occasionally, and some who seldom or never request work (generally staff of the minority). Heavy users expressed concern primarily that GAO's work was not timely, was not hard-hitting enough, and was moving into policy in a way that made them uncomfortable. (These staff members seemed to want short turnaround and critical reports and testimony from GAO.) Some said that when GAO advocated policy, it undermined the organization's credibility. Infrequent users of GAO were more likely to raise concerns about GAO's objectivity and responsiveness to the majority, including use of GAO staff on "detail" to congressional committees. Many interviewees complimented the work of GAO's detailees; several noted how quickly the detailees completed assignments, particularly in comparison to the long wait for written work from GAO.

The research for this study affirms that congressional staffs are the primary users of GAO work. According to both GAO's congressional survey and interviews for this study, members of Congress often do not know what staffs ask for and rarely read GAO documents; what the members see of GAO work is primarily their staff's summaries and perhaps GAO's executive summaries. A relatively small group of committees and subcommittees accounts for a large proportion of GAO work (see Tables 5 and 6).

Many congressional staff members are generally pleased with the work they get from GAO, but others report either that they do not request GAO work or that they seldom use GAO reports. A few, in fact, said they avoid using GAO because they don't trust it or because, in the past, they disagreed with its findings and recommendations or did not find the work useful. Some congressional staff interviewed for this study also noted that GAO seems to be trying to be a "player" in policy debates and they expressed discomfort with this direction. On the other hand, a substantial number of congressional staff members interviewed for this research consider GAO their most trustworthy, professional source of research, evaluation, and recommendations on a wide variety of government management, finance, program, and policy matters.

Congressional Requests

Concerns about GAO's objectivity raise a basic question about the organization: Does GAO depend too much on congressional members and staff to guide the work it produces? Recent congressional hearings highlighted a shift in GAO's work from self-initiated to primarily congressionally-requested. Twenty-five years ago, work directly in response to congressional requests accounted for less than 10 percent of GAO staff-years; ten years ago, the figure was slightly under 50 percent, reflecting a concerted effort by Comptroller General Elmer Staats to make GAO work more useful and relevant to Congress. Congressionally-requested or statutorily mandated work took 80 percent of GAO staff-years in fiscal year 1993.

By themselves, these figures don't prove that there has been an equally dramatic increase in GAO's dependence on Congress to determine what it does. First, Congress does not take a comprehensive approach toward GAO's allocation of resources or definition of priorities. Congressional input to GAO's work tends to be episodic and fragmented. Second, the statistics do not mean that congressional committees or members necessarily generated, designed, or imposed the work that GAO performed. As discussed in Chapter III, GAO plays a major role in establishing its

priorities, through internal planning and negotiation with committees and members of Congress.

GAO's process of planning and negotiating specific projects with Congress occurs in three stages. In the early stages of developing their strategic plan updates, GAO issue area directors consult about emerging issues and interests with staffs of congressional committees, to some extent with staffs of ranking minority members, and with individual members who have supported certain streams of GAO work. Recently, GAO has encouraged its issue area directors to consult with minority as well as majority staffs.

During the second stage of negotiations, GAO managers and congressional staffs discuss particular jobs that GAO's internal strategic planning process has identified as priorities. In some cases, this stage of negotiations involves discussions with staffs of individual members rather than committees.

The third stage occurs when GAO receives a formal request for work from a committee or member of Congress. (GAO processes for organizing and conducting work are discussed in Chapter IV.)

Congressional requests fit into several categories (all of which GAO includes in the 80 percent of work that it labels as congressionally-requested). They include:

• "Unanticipated congressional requests," originating with congressional members and staffs. Often, these requests relate to special circumstances (e.g., disaster relief), newly highlighted issues (e.g., "Homosexuals in the Military"), or congressional constituents' problems.

A continuation of work planned or ongoing at GAO. Requests of this kind reflect congressional interest in or support for multi-year, multi-study streams of GAO work such as its studies on agricultural commodity supports, transportation safety, Defense Department contract administration, and Medicare and Medicaid management.

• Support for work that GAO has previously designed and for which it has sought a requester. Frequently, members who send request letters in this case pay very little attention to GAO's specific work plans or results.

Work that GAO categorizes as congressionally-requested also includes studies that GAO performs to comply with statutory mandates. Over the last ten years, GAO reports a modest increase in the volume of work it has been required to do by statutory mandates. That trend may be increasing, as several recent laws have added substantially to GAO mandates (e.g., the Chief Financial Officers Act, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, the Government Performance and Results Act, the Independent Counsels Act, various housing acts amendments). Some mandates call for one-time studies, others for periodic reports. Table 7 shows the distribution of congressionally

"Statistics from issue area staffs reviewed for this study indicate that work for minority staffs ranges from 4 to 20 percent of their congressionally-requested work.