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II. PROFILE OF GAO TODAY

GAO is an organization of about 4,500 employees with a fiscal year 1994 appropriation of $430.8 million. Just under two-thirds of GAO employees work in or near Washington, D.C. -- in GAO headquarters or in 29 other "audit sites" near or within the offices of executive branch agencies that GAO studies or audits. The remaining third (1,698 in fiscal 1993) work in field offices.

The comptroller general, whom the President appoints with the advice and consent of the Senate, is GAO's chief executive officer. The comptroller general serves a 15-year term and may not be reappointed. He or she can be removed by impeachment or joint resolution of Congress, which requires the President's signature."

While the President nominates the comptroller general, Congress in 1980 provided for the establishment of a congressional commission to develop a list of individuals for the President to consider for the job.29 The commission recommends at least three individuals for a vacancy, and the President may ask the commission to recommend additional names. Such a commission has been formed once, in 1981, when President Reagan appointed the current comptroller general, Charles A. Bowsher, to the position. The President must next appoint a comptroller general in 1996 for a 15-year term, running through 2011.

By statute and tradition, the comptroller general has a highly visible position in government, with substantial responsibilities.30 In fact, most authorizing legislation related to GAO's responsibilities directs the comptroller general -- not GAO -- to respond to congressional requests and undertake the various studies and activities.

Like GAO's function and structure, its workforce has evolved to meet changing needs and demands. In the 1970s, GAO's predominant focus shifted from accountants and auditors to evaluators with education in social sciences, public administration, business administration, statistics, computer technology, economics, and other non-accounting disciplines. In 1993, GAO categorized 57 percent of its employees as evaluators and another 15 percent as evaluator-related.

"Grounds for removing the comptroller general are limited to permanent disability, inefficiency, neglect of duty, malfeasance, or a felony or conduct involving moral turpitude.

2931 U.S.C. 703(a)(2)-(3). The commission is composed of the President pro tempore of the Senate, Speaker of the House of Representatives, majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate, and the chairs and ranking minority members of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs and the House Committee on Government Operations.

3oFrom a constitutional perspective, the Supreme Court in Bowsher v. Synar found that "the removal powers over the Comptroller General's office dictate that he will be subservient to Congress." 478 U.S. 714, 730.

Under the General Accounting Office Personnel Act of 1980," GAO has its own pay and personnel system, parallel, but not identical, to the executive branch system. GAO's pay and personnel system classifies evaluator and evaluator-related positions in three broad pay bands and the Senior Executive Service (SES). Nearly all its entry-level hires into those positions have college degrees, and over 70 percent have doctoral or master's degrees. The share of GAO employees in higher pay bands has risen slightly in recent years, partly reflecting GAO's increased emphasis on hiring experienced mid-level analysts and technical experts to conduct the increasingly specialized research studies that GAO is called upon to do.

GAO organizes its audit and evaluation staff in six divisions, within which are 35 "issue areas" that cover the major federal program and policy areas (see Table 1). SES-level directors head up each issue area; each director, in turn, manages a staff of evaluators and is responsible for planning and directing work in his or her particular area. GAO also has staff offices that advise the issue area staffs --e.g., the Office of General Counsel (which conducts bid protests and drafts opinions on the legality of executive agencies' receipt and expenditure of public funds), the Office of the Chief Economist (which oversees and advises on overall approaches and methods of conducting economic analysis), the Office of Program Planning (which leads GAO's strategic and operational planning processes), and the Office of Special Investigations. One division, Program Evaluation and Methodology, advises other divisions and issue areas on the design and methodology for conducting program evaluations, and conducts program evaluations of its own.

GAO produces several types of work products, including written reports, testimony, briefings, correspondence, and legal opinions. For fiscal year 1993, GAO reported that it issued 1,305 audit and evaluation products, including: 979 reports to Congress and agency officials (including 183 "chapter reports," 497 shorter "letter reports," 129 pieces of numbered and published correspondence, 40 fact sheets, 35 briefing reports, and 95 products for agencies, collectively known as "blue books," for their blue covers); 136 formal oral briefings for congressional members and staff, and 190 pieces of congressional testimony. In addition, GAO issued nearly 4,000 legal opinions. GAO also prepares shorter correspondence in response to less complicated and quicker turnaround requests from Congress.

In addition, GAO provides numerous briefings to executive branch agencies about its ongoing work -- a way to share information and findings and build understanding of substantive issues and recommendations, particularly in the financial and management areas where agencies have the responsibility for implementing the recommendations. GAO employees frequently are invited to speak to conferences and meetings of their professional peers about the results of projects that GAO has completed, the general substantive lessons they learned in the course of their work, and the methodologies and approaches they have found useful.

3194 Stat. 27 (See 5 U.S.C. §§ 2108, 5102, 5342, 7328; 31 U.S.C. §§ 711, 731-733, 735, 736, 751-755; 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-16).

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NATIONAL SECURITY AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS (NSIAD)
National Security Analysis

Military Operations and Capabilities

Acquisition Policy, Technology and Competitiveness

Systems Development and Production

Defense and NASA Management

International Affairs

RESOURCES, COMMUNITY, AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (RCED)

Energy and Science

Food and Agriculture

Transportation and Telecommunications

Housing and Community Development

Environmental Protection

Natural Resources Management

ACCOUNTING AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT (AIMD)

Budget Issues

Corporate Audits

Defense Audits

Civil Audits

Legislative Review and Audit Oversight

Central Core Group

Defense and Security Information Systems

General Government Information Systems

Human Resources Information Systems

Resources, Community, and Economic Development Information Systems

PROGRAM EVALUATION AND METHODOLOGY (PEMD)

Program Evaluation and Methodology

NOTE: GAO also has a small Office of Special Investigations that is classified as an issue area.

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GAO's issue area staffs produce most of the reports and testimony that GAO issues. Through its first four decades, GAO's investigators served on a general investigative staff. Later, GAO assigned the individuals auditing and evaluating government to civil or defense-related units, and within those units they specialized in studying particular government organizations. GAO initiated the current structure of divisions and issue areas in the 1970s, hoping to bring together people working on government programs and issues related to a particular public purpose -- e.g., housing or economic development -- that cuts across organizational lines. For many years, GAO relied heavily on auditors and evaluators who rotated among program or issue areas and could be assigned to a variety of areas and types of studies. But in the last five years, it has built technical and program expertise in specific issue areas partly by having staff members remain in an issue area for a longer time, rather than rotating to another division or issue area.

GAO's field offices have witnessed a parallel development. Created to address demands for wide-ranging research and investigations during the New Deal and World War II, GAO's field offices now number 14, with 11 "sub-offices" (GAO plans to close 3 field offices and 5 sub-offices in the next three years) (see Table 2).

Until the last few years, evaluators in the field were generalists who applied their auditing and research skills across a wide spectrum of programs and issues. Under GAO's new concept of "core" teams, field staff are assigned to particular issue areas that generally relate to their previous concentrations of work and areas of expertise and, where applicable, the predominant government activities in their geographic locations. Generally, staff teams in several field offices are assigned to work with each issue area. This arrangement is intended to allow issue area directors to manage more directly the work in the field; to nourish greater familiarity with, and expertise on, specific issue areas in the field staffs; and to foster closer, longer-term relationships between field and headquarters staffs.

GAO is currently investing in communications and information technology to give its employees greater capacity, increase their effectiveness and efficiency, and improve links among headquarters and field offices. The planned agency-wide computer network is not expected to be fully operating until the end of fiscal year 1995. GAO has recently installed video tele-conferencing facilities in headquarters and field offices, allowing staff members and others to share information and interact more effectively. As GAO develops improved, state-of-the art communications systems and information technology, it should be able to achieve broader, faster transmission of data and written work among GAO employees on a project, thus reducing the time involved in preparing and reviewing work (see Chapter IV on GAO work processes). The advent of improved computer systems at GAO will allow auditors and evaluators to gain access to a larger amount of data and analyze it more quickly and easily, and could speed the distribution of reports, testimony, and other products that Congress requests of GAO. Improved communications and information technology also are likely to contribute to changes in the design of internal work processes, the mix and type of skills that GAO needs, and the type of products that will be most helpful to Congress."2

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"Opportunities for the Use of Information Resources and Advanced Technologies in Congress: A Study for the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, by Robert Lee Chartrand and Robert C. Ketchum of the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government, October 1993, provides valuable background and findings in this area.

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