Standards for Categories of GAO Work It is clear from the project team's review of GAO work products that GAO is conducting a wide variety of research and analytical work across a broad range of programs, issues and policy areas. The work is so diverse that it is difficult to evaluate, judge, or even categorize. The panel has observed that much of GAO work, in fact, does not fit neatly within a single one or even two of the above categories of work, and occasionally the nature of the work shifts in the course of a job, as data gathering proceeds and requesters develop new questions related to the information GAO finds. The fact that many jobs do not fit discretely into neat categories of work can create ambiguity about the objectives, confusion in the audience about the nature of the results, and uncertainty within GAO staff about the standards and methodologies that should be applied. If the nature of the work changes as a job is progressing, the staff may also not have the clear understanding they need of the research questions, appropriate methods and criteria for developing findings and recommendations. In the areas of financial audits and economy and efficiency audits, in which GAO has been conducting work for decades, standards and methodologies are relatively well developed in the "yellow book." The "yellow book," however, has not provided effective standards for conducting the increasing range of work that GAO is conducting in program evaluation, general management reviews, and policy analysis. In the last year, GAO has undertaken a process to revise the "yellow book," with particular attention to updating standards for economy and efficiency audits as well as program audits (together referred to as "performance audits"). GAO included staff and professional peers across the country in this effort. The resulting revision was issued in June 1994. The standards will be applied by federal inspectors general as well as many other government organizations and others conducting financial and performance audits; the standards also are an important guide and expression of GAO's standards for its work. The revised "yellow book" still does not include standards for program evaluation or policy analysis work, beyond the traditional range of financial and performance audits. RECOMMENDATION: GAO should clearly articulate and define the general categories of work it conducts, identify the category (or categories) into which each job start fits, and maintain clear standards and methods for conducting each category of work. RECOMMENDATION: GAO should review its internal standards -- including the newly issued June 1994 "yellow book" -- to assess how well they serve the needs of its auditors and evaluators for guidance and clear criteria in the various categories of work they perform. GAO should form a task force to identify needs for clarification and further development of internal standards and criteria for performing work, particularly for program evaluation and policy analysis, in order to guide GAO staff in preparing the full range of products to carry out GAO's mission. "Government Auditing Standards (GAO/OCG-94-4), June 1994. 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 15 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 |