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Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation: Human Capital and Risk Assessment Programs Appear Sound, but Evaluations of Their Effectiveness Should Be Improved

GAO-07-255 Published: Feb 15, 2007. Publicly Released: Feb 15, 2007.
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Highlights

The Federal Deposit Insurance Reform Conforming Amendments Act of 2005 requires GAO to report on the effectiveness of Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's (FDIC) organizational structure and internal controls. GAO reviewed (1) mechanisms the board of directors uses to oversee the agency, (2) FDIC's human capital strategies and how its training initiatives are evaluated, and (3) FDIC's process for monitoring and assessing risks to the banking industry and the deposit insurance fund, including its oversight and evaluation. To answer these objectives, GAO analyzed FDIC documents, reviewed recommended practices and GAO guidance, conducted interviews with FDIC officials and board members, and conducted site visits to FDIC regional and field offices in three states.

Recommendations

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation To ensure that it can measure the contribution that key human capital initiatives make toward achieving agency goals, FDIC should take steps to identify meaningful, outcome-based performance measures to include in its training and development scorecard and communicate available performance results to all FDIC employees.
Closed – Implemented
In 2007, Corporate University began tracking two new results-oriented performance measures and reporting the results of these measures on its intranet Web site: (1) percent of internal certificate holders who are able to successfully perform when called on to apply skills on the job, and (2) percent of participants who, on follow-up evaluations, are successfully applying skills gained from training. These actions should assist FDIC in measuring the contribution that key human capital initiatives make toward achieving its mission and human capital goals, and determining whether to modify or eliminate ineffective training programs.
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation To strengthen the oversight of its risk assessment activities, FDIC should develop policies and procedures clearly defining how it will systematically evaluate and monitor its risk assessment activities and ensure that required evaluations are conducted in a comprehensive and routine fashion.
Closed – Implemented
In July 2007, FDIC's Risk Analysis Center Operating Committee provided results of its review of FDIC's risk assessment activities and evaluation procedures, and began to implement a number of improvements to its risk assessment and evaluation activities. FDIC has developed semi-annual risk assessment scorecards for its Regional Risk Committee and National Risk Committee members, and for its Risk Analysis Center to formally evaluate its risk assessment efforts, as well as an annual survey for the committee members to assess how effective the committees have been in achieving their stated missions. FDIC has also developed a system for regularly monitoring its offsite monitoring activities, which consists of two types of reviews that they have recommended an annual review of the accuracy of its statistical models and systems, and annual rotating reviews of the logical and conceptual soundness of its major offsite monitoring tools. Further, FDIC has created a visual depiction of its risk assessment framework to describe the various risk activities the agency undertakes and their associated outputs.

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Topics

Corporate auditsDeposit fundsEmployee trainingFederal corporationsHuman capital managementHuman capital planningInternal controlsLending institutionsPerformance measuresProgram evaluationRisk assessmentStrategic planningProgram goals or objectives