Building Quality

• Focus on hiring, enabling, empowering, rewarding and retaining top talent (people)

• Recognize the importance of people, process, technology, and environmental dimensions to achieve total quality management

• Quality cannot simply be added as a step or steps in a process

• GAO’s approach is holistic and comprehensive

  • Begins with strategic planning
  • Establishes core values as a foundation for everything the agency does (i.e. beliefs and boundaries)
  • Requires proper organizational alignment and allocation of resources
  • Uses a value and risk based management approach
  • Includes an appropriate degree of transparency about key policies, procedures, and criteria (e.g. protocols, high risk criteria)
  • Establishes a consistent, repeatable engagement acceptance, status, and report review process with appropriate documentation and records retention
  • Includes public dissemination of virtually all GAO reports and testimonies
  • Focuses on serving clients and achieving positive and identifiable results (e.g. ROI).
  • Opens the process to independent external review

Notes: