Government Accountability Office
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A new GAO report is recommending OMB be more specific in its guidance on grant management. The report said 5,100 employees are significantly involved in managing grants.
July 31, 2013 -
Senate committee members introduced the Federal Real Property Asset Management Reform Act of 2013 to address the management of federal real property. The government is the largest owner of property in the country, owning more than 1 million properties.
July 31, 2013 -
Federal CIO Steve VanRoekel is testifying this morning before the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on the progress of several IT reform initiatives. He says agencies are on track to close or consolidate more than 850 data centers in 2013.
July 25, 2013 -
A group of Democrats and Republicans, called the No Labels Caucus, plans to introduce nine bills this week focused on government effectiveness and efficiency. The strategic sourcing legislation would require agencies to save at least $10 billion a year. Senators say agencies need the right incentives to buy smarter.
July 16, 2013 -
The General Services Administration plans to award the $60 billion multiple award contract for complex professional services by October. Concerns again arise over whether there are too many multiple award contracts.
July 12, 2013 -
Members of the House have doubts about the Labor Department's proposal to set a uniform benefit rate for FECA beneficiaries. A GAO study found that such propositions will decrease benefits to injured workers with dependents. FECA benefits would also align more closely with Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) benefits once injured workers reach retirement age.
July 11, 2013 -
The Office of Personnel Management needs to beef up its role in helping agencies set goals for increasing telework, the Government Accountability Office concluded in a new report. Under the 2010 Telework Enhancement Act, agencies are required to take new steps to increase the number of employees who telework -- and OPM is required to report to Congress on agencies' goals for doing so. But GAO found many new mandated reporting requirements went unmet in OPM's 2012 report to Congress, the first since the telework law went into effect.
July 02, 2013 -
A new report from the Government Accountability Office shows the Defense Department still lacks end goals and metrics in its service acquisition system. DoD currently is the largest buyer of services in the government.
July 02, 2013 -
Agencies need to do more to fully implement the Government Performance and Results Modernization Act, according to the Government Accountability Office. Forty percent of agency managers remain unfamiliar with cross-agency priority goals developed by the administration. The report also recommends agencies do more to ensure the performance information they release is both useful and used by federal managers to measure agency results.
June 28, 2013 -
The metrics used by the Defense Department to help determine whether it needs an official round of Base Realignments and Closures (BRAC) is in need of an update, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office. Current procedures lack the precision needed to give the Pentagon accurate data on the number of excess properties it actually owns.
June 27, 2013 -
Reducing the contractor compensation cap to the level of the salary drawn by the President ($400,000) or the Vice President ($230,700), as suggested by some lawmakers and the White House in the past, would dramatically increase the number of employees who earn compensation above the allowable limits GAO said. But the changes would mostly affect large companies, auditors said, because few of the small companies it surveyed pay their employees more than the amount earned by the President and Vice President.
June 19, 2013 -
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) plans to offer the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) as an amendment later this week to the 2013 Defense Authorization bill. The Senate held a hearing looking at the best approach to empower federal CIOs. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee heard that transparency, visibility and senior leadership are common traits among successful CIOs.
June 12, 2013 -
The Defense Department reported making just $1.1 billion in improper payments in fiscal 2011, a small fraction of the Pentagon's total outlays of more than $1 trillion. But, in a new report, the Government Accountability Office said those estimates are neither reliable nor statistically valid because of "longstanding and pervasive" weaknesses in DoD financial-management practices as well as specific deficiencies in the department's procedures for estimating improper payments.
June 10, 2013 -
The Partnership for Public Service named Orice Williams Brown, the managing director of GAO's Financial Markets and Community Investment, a finalist for a 2013 Service to America Medal.
June 10, 2013 -
Nearly two years after the site launched, the Office of Management and Budget still hasn't clearly defined its purpose or its intended audience, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.
June 07, 2013