From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov

Title: Comptroller General Testifies on the Transparency of Federal
Spending

Description: In his July 18, 2012 testimony to the Senate Committee on
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Comptroller General Gene
Dodaro testifies on the transparency of federal spending.

Related GAO Work: GAO-12-913T: Government Transparency: Efforts to
Improve Information on Federal Spending

Released: July 2012


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Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs


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Government Transparency: Efforts to Improve Information on Federal
Spending


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U.S. Comptroller General Gene L. Dodaro
Opening Statement
July 18, 2012

>> Senator Lieberman: Gene Dodaro welcome. You're, as Senator Coburn
said, held very high by this Committee, and I'd say by most members of
Congress. Good morning.

>> Gene Dodaro: Good morning Mr. Chairman, ranking member Senator
Coburn, Senator Johnson. It's a pleasure to be here this morning. Before
I start about the subject of today though, given your impending from the
Senate, Senator Lieberman, I wanted to just take a minute on behalf of
myself and all my colleagues at GAO to thank you for your years of
dedicated service to our country. It's been a privilege to work with you
on many initiatives to improve government, and know when you leave, you
leave with the best wishes for myself and our organization. So, thank
you very much.

>> Senator Lieberman: Thanks very much. It was very kind of you, and
it's been a pleasure to work with you. Based on that opening statement,
I'm probably going to try to arrange for you to appear before the
Committee at least three or four times more [laughter] before the end of
the year.

>> Gene Dodaro: Since I thought this might be my last appearance, I
can't guarantee it at every session. But with regard to today's subject,
it's a very important topic. We've been reviewing both USAspending.gov
and Recovery.gov. We had statutory responsibilities to do that, and I
think the USAspending.gov has been mentioned. Senator Coburn's
sponsorship was pioneering legislation; and we took a good look at it
back--and issued a report--in 2010, and we found OMB had stood up the
website and was searchable, but there were a lot of quality, accuracy,
and completeness issues. We took a sample of 100 awards back then, and
found a data problem with each of the 100. And in 70 percent of the
cases multiple data quality issues. Also some agencies at that point in
time were not reporting, and OMB had missed the deadline for including
sub-award data, which was set for January 2009. Now since then, and we
made a number of recommendations, OMB's acted on some of the
recommendations. Sub-award data is now available on the site. They've
designated accountable officials at each of the departments and
agencies, and they're to have quality assurance framework in place. But
we still think there ought to be more reporting by OMB on the usage of
the site. The Act required an annual report, and only once has OMB
issued that report to the Congress. So we think there's more to do. The
committee has recently asked us to look again at the quality of the
information on USAspending.gov, so we'll be launching another review to
do that more carefully, and we'll report back to the committee. Now on
the Recovery Act, it introduced novel concepts in addition to those
introduced by USAspending.gov, in that it had recipients of the
information reporting the data, whereas USAspending.gov was the federal
agencies reporting the award data. And I must say the efforts were very
impressive to stand that up within a 30-day period of time on a national
scale with thousands of recipients receiving the money. Not
surprisingly, we did find though, in the early stages of it, data
quality problems, made a number of recommendations. OMB and the Recovery
Board were quick to implement our recommendations. We had a very good
working relationship with them, and the information began to improve.
But there's some critical lessons learned out of that process I think
are really important. Number one: there was two-way communication with
the federal government and the state and local government community.
Shortly after the act was passed, actually, a number of state officials
sent a letter to myself and the director of OMB at the time, Peter
Orszag, about trying to have a working arrangement on the reporting
requirements. So we worked. I talked to Peter, we'd set up weekly
meetings with OMB and Treasury and other stakeholders so that these
issues could be discussed. There was training provided to the
recipients, so they knew how to report, particularly those that had not
reported previously to the federal government; and there was also, after
a period of time, a need for the federal agencies to review the quality
of the information. For a period of time there, there was a period where
the recipients were reporting, and in some cases their information
conflicted with the federal agencies' information. And the federal
agencies, once they started reviewing the quality of the data and there
was ability to make changes to the data, the quality improved during
that--after that period of time. And also there were other lessons
learned where the federal agencies could actually pre-populate some of
the information to reduce the burden on the recipients going forward. So
I think there's a lot of opportunities here to build upon the lessons
learned from the Recovery Act and USAspending.gov to broaden the amount
of information that's made, and the transparency of that information, to
the American public, to build upon both of those efforts, to learn from
them and to expand that though. So there's more information made
available in better formats that could be accessible to the American
people, and that a premium be placed on the quality and the reliability
of the information. That's pivotal here; we could make a lot of
information available, but if it's not reliable and accurate, it doesn't
really serve the American people well, and it doesn't serve policymakers
and other decisionmakers well. So we're going to be continuing to focus
on the efforts to ensure the quality of the information. I would say
that legislation is absolutely essential here going forward. And I
commend the House as well for starting the legislative ball rolling on
this process. I say that for several reasons. One, I think it's really
important to get consensus on what information's required to be
reported; I think legislation is needed to ensure continuity over time;
that there's data standards that are set in place in order to make sure
that the information is comparable and can be consistent over time; that
there's proper stakeholder involvement. I think there are legitimate
issues on reporting burden that could be worked through appropriately so
that this could be done in an efficient manner, and that we could take
advantage of the latest technologies in order to, not only be more
efficient, but also to allow for more searchability. I think some of the
features of the Recovery.gov, particularly the geographic distribution
of the information was very helpful, and there's a lot of lessons that
can be learned there. So I think with the legislation that's moved
through the House and new legislative initiatives in the Senate,
hopefully something can be done here to provide a proper foundation for
this going forward, so it can be successful, done well, and be enduring
over a period of time. So I thank you very much for your time and
attention this morning. I'll be happy to answer questions at the
appropriate time.

>> Senator Lieberman: Thank you Gene that's a good beginning.