The Government Performance and Results Act directs agencies to articulate not just goals, but also strategies for achieving their goals. The strategies emphasize the need to work with other organizations on crosscutting issues and to mitigate internal and external factors that could impair performance.

For GAO, achieving our strategic goals and objectives rests, for the most part, on providing professional, objective, fact-based, nonpartisan, nonideological, fair, and balanced information. We support the Congress in a variety of ways:

evaluations of federal policies and the performance of agencies;

oversight of government operations through financial and other management audits to determine whether public funds are spent efficiently, effectively, and in accordance with applicable laws;

investigations to assess whether illegal or improper activities are occurring;

analyses of the financing for government activities;

various engagements in which we consult proactively with agencies, when appropriate, to help guide their efforts toward positive results;

legal opinions to determine whether agencies are in compliance with applicable laws and regulations;

policy analyses to assess needed actions and the implications of proposed actions; and

additional assistance to the Congress in support of its oversight and decision-making responsibilities.

As part of these strategies, we are coordinating with the wider accountability community, both domestically and internationally, and are confronting challenges inside GAO and in the environment in which we and the Congress operate, as discussed in the following sections:

Coordination to Address Crosscutting Issues

Major Management Challenges--Internal Factors That Could Affect Our Performance

External Factors That Could Affect Our Performance

For a more detailed discussion of GAO's strategies and challenges, please download the PDF of the full-length version of this report.

[ Contents  |  Introduction  |  C.G.'s Letter  |  FY 2000 ] [ FYs 2001 and 2002  |  Strategies and Challenges  |  Financial Information ]