RECOMMENDATION: Congressional requesters should not tailor requests for GAO work, or shape the course of the research or the nature of the reports to serve particular policy or partisan interests. RECOMMENDATION: Before GAO undertakes any congressionally-requested work, GAO and the congressional requesters should negotiate clear mutually agreed written "terms of reference" that specify the objectives and general questions to be addressed, the general sources, methods, and scope of the work, skills required, and estimates of GAO staff-years, budget, and time span for the job. If circumstances change or facts are uncovered during the course of the work that raise questions about the original terms of reference, GAO and the requesters should negotiate update terms of reference as needed. If the requester is a committee or subcommittee, the chairman and his or her staff should share the terms of reference for the GAO work with the ranking minority member, as well as with all majority members. RECOMMENDATION: The Congress' monthly Research Notification System listing all GAO job starts and recently completed work should be available to all members and committees. The panel sees no need for restricted distribution of this document. If listing any GAO work would pose a threat to sensitive security matters or criminal investigations, that work could be omitted from the published listing. Detailees - Another factor in congressional concerns about GAO's objectivity to which Congress contributes -- is its use of "detailees" from GAO. Detailees are GAO employees who, on request from a committee, are assigned to work directly with the committee or subcommittee staff on "detail." By statute, detail assignments of GAO employees to a congressional committee can last for no more than a year." No limits exist, however, on the number of detailees that GAO can assign to Congress or to any one committee at a time, and the committees face no requirements to reimburse GAO for their services. In the past, because GAO could officially.assign an employee first to a full committee, then to a subcommittee, and then back to the full committee or to a different subcommittee, some GAO detailees remained with the same committee for two or three years -- sometimes even longer. Traditionally, detailees went to a committee to help with a particular project, to lend their expertise on a particular issue, or to contribute to analyses that led to the development of options and recommendations for specific legislation. When a committee must address a complicated, high-priority issue in a relatively short time frame, its staff may lack the background knowledge or time to do the required work. In those cases, detailees have served especially valuable roles. But, particularly with $896 Stat. 899 (See 31 U.S.C. § 734). assignments that lasted for more than a year, committees and subcommittees often called on detailees for day-to-day work, rather than a specialized, individual assignment. Typically, a chairman requests detailees and assigns them to the committee or subcommittee staff as a whole; they work most closely with the majority and often on the chairman's priorities. On committees where staffs work on a bipartisan basis, the use of detailees tends not to raise questions about the potential partiality of the work of GAO employees. But, where majority and minority members' interests differ, minority members sometimes have found that detailees built the majority staff's capacity to support majority members' interests. In these cases, detailees contributed to the imbalance between majority and minority staff resources. 89 Detailees have been the subject of considerable debate in congressional hearings on GAO in recent years. Several pending pieces of legislation would change the law governing detailees. Some would require committees to reimburse GAO for detailees; one would limit detailees to serving no more than twice in any committee in any Congress and would not allow the assignments to last more than three months. Moreover, if a GAO employee had been on a detail to a committee, one proposal would bar GAO from responding to a request from that committee for three months thereafter. GAO continues to believe that detailees are an important way that GAO contributes to informing and assisting Congress in addressing high priority public issues, and also that details are a valuable way for GAO employees to learn more about both specific issues and the operations and perspectives of Congress. GAO has recognized, however, that problems arise when committees request numerous detailees or when assignments are extended so GAO staff continue to work for committee staffs for more than a year. Therefore, GAO has committed to following strictly the oneyear limit on the length of a detailee's assignment. The comptroller general has also testified that GAO has been working with congressional committees and subcommittees to reduce the number of detailees.90 "According to rules in the House of Representatives governing permanent staff members, the ratio of majority to minority must not exceed two to one. If detailees work for the majority but they are not counted in calculating the ratio, they skew the imbalance more heavily to the majority than would be allowed under the ratio. The comptroller general has testified that ranking minority members can request detailees and that GAO has filled all requests from ranking minority members for detailees (GAO/T-OPP-93-1, p. 15). Ranking minority members, however, tend to make few requests. 9GAO/T-OPP-93-1, pp. 15-16. GAO reported that at the end of the third quarter of fiscal year 1993, the number of detailees was only 34, down from 60 a year before. The total number of detailees who were assigned to a committee or subcommittee at any time during fiscal year 1993 was 74 -- the lowest in ten years. The number of detailees had grown during the 1980s from 78 in fiscal year 1984 to a peak of 148 during fiscal year 1990, involving 173 different detail assignments. (Some GAO staff members were sent on more than one detail assignment in a single year.) The average number of detailees from 1983 through 1992 was 123. Based on the steps taken by GAO to limit and discipline the use of detailees and the reduced number of detailees now on assignment, it does not appear that legislation is necessary to address the use of detailees from GAO at this time, but the panel urges that both Congress and GAO continue to monitor the use of detailees to ensure that the authority to assign detailees to assist Congress is not misused or overused."1 RECOMMENDATION: GAO should abide by the one-year limit on the length of time a GAO staff member is assigned to work for a congressional committee on a "detail." GAO also should publish annually for public distribution a report of the numbers, length and nature of detail assignments, by committee and subcommittee, and make that information available to members and committees at any time on request. RECOMMENDATION: GAO should review carefully each request for detailees to ensure that the assignment is a wise use of staff resources; that the assignment will involve analytical work and application of staff expertise, and not political or partisan work; and that the request for assistance cannot be better served by an internal assignment at GAO rather than a detail. Reauthorization and Oversight The Senate and House members of the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress included in their final reports" a recommendation to repeal the permanent authorization of GAO and require a new authorization every eight years. (The change would apply to other legislative support agencies as well.) By this change, they seek to solve the problem of Congress' "irregular and unsystematic oversight" of GAO.93 The panel is united in its recommendation that the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs and the House Committee on Government Operations should provide continuing and systematic oversight of GAO. They should hold regular, at least biennial oversight hearings based on more extensive and useful information about GAO's work, including a number of new elements the panel is recommending that GAO should prepare and share with the committees: GAO multi-year plans, a compendium of the reports on regular external peer review of GAO work, job costs allocated by topic and requester, and statistics compiled from improved GAO performance indicators, such as net "Existing provisions of Senate Rule XXVII, cl. 4, provides that no staff employee of any department or agency of the Government should be detailed or assigned to a committee of the Senate without the written permission of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee. "Senate Report 103-215, Vol. 2, Dec. 9, 1993; House Report 103-413, Vol. 2, Dec. 17, 1993. "House report, p. 21. savings and impacts on executive performance that can be linked to GAO work. Moreover, the publication of job starts and the sharing of terms of reference between majority and minority committee leaders for requested GAO jobs would increase not only the non-partisanship of GAO's work environment but also the information flow, contributing to improved allocation of GAO resources and oversight. Congress, of course, can change GAO's authorizing statute at any time, and also can affect GAO activities through annual appropriations. The panel does not have a unified position on the efficacy of an eight-year reauthorization requirement. In effect, that requirement would replace the general opportunity for Congress to change authorization language legislatively, at any time, with a positive requirement to reauthorize the agency or allow it to expire. (Most major government departments are not subject to reauthorization at fixed periods, although many of their programs are.) Effective, systematic oversight of GAO by Congress requires more frequent hearings and review than an eight-year reauthorization cycle, which is slightly over half the length of the comptroller general's term under current law. Most panel members are concerned that the dynamics leading up to the reauthorization year would put political pressures on GAO that run counter to the Congress' interest in ensuring the objectivity and credibility of this primary audit and evaluation agency and preserving access to reliable, objective research and analysis." The reauthorization process could hinder development of constructive, ongoing, bipartisan congressional oversight of GAO; weaken the capacity of GAO leadership to manage and guide the organization; and threaten GAO's ability to complete high quality, timely work and recruit and retain first-rate staff. Changes and improvements are needed at GAO in the way it approaches its work and carries out its mission. Any changes, however, should be carefully designed to maintain the value and the assets that GAO has brought to government for over 70 years assets of credibility and objectivity, flexible staff resources, and a leadership role in auditing and evaluating activities supported by public funds and in improving the financial integrity, management, and accountability of government. "One of the most common comments in the course of the interviews conducted for this study was, "If GAO did not exist, Congress would have to create it." The Academy - The National Academy of Public Administration is a non-profit, nonpartisan, collegial organization chartered by Congress to improve governance at all levels federal, state, and local. NAPA works toward that end chiefly by using the individual and collective experiences of its Fellows to provide expert advice and counsel to governance leaders. Its congressional charter, signed by President Reagan in 1984, was the first granted to a research organization since President Lincoln signed the charter for the National Academy of Sciences in 1863. The unique source of the Academy's expertise is its membership. It consists of more than 400 current and former Cabinet officers, members of Congress, governors, mayors, legislators, jurists, business executives, public managers, and scholars who have been elected as Fellows because of their distinguished practical or scholarly contributions to the nation's public life. Since its establishment in 1967, NAPA has responded to a large number of requests for assistance from various agencies and has undertaken a growing number of studies on issues of particular importance to Congress. In addition, NAPA has increasingly conducted projects for private foundations and has begun to work closely with corporations. Its work has covered a wide range of topics, including: agriculture, education, health, human services, housing, urban development, prisons, courts, space, defense, environment, emergency management, human resources, organization and management analysis, and international public management. |