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

Transcript for: Reducing Government Duplication and Saving Tax Dollars

Description: Audio interview by GAO staff with Orice Williams Brown,
Managing Director, Financial Markets and Community Investment

Related GAO Work: GAO-13-279SP: 2013 Annual Report: Actions Needed to
Reduce Fragmentation, Overlap, and Duplication and Achieve Other
Financial Benefits

Released: April 2013

[ Background Music ]

[ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and
information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. It's April
2013. GAO is releasing its third annual look at duplication, overlap,
and fragmentation across the federal government as well as opportunities
for cost savings and revenue enhancements. A team led by Orice Williams
Brown, Managing Director in GAO's Financial Markets and Community
Investment team, conducted this latest review. GAO's Jeremy Cluchey sat
down with Orice to talk about what they found.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Your team identified some new areas of duplication
as well as opportunities for savings in this year's report. Can you talk
about a few of those?

[ Orice Williams: ] We identified 31 new areas in our 2013 report--17
involve duplication, overlap, or fragmentation and 14 involve cost
savings or revenue enhancements. New areas for 2013 include overlapping
research and development programs at the Department of Homeland
Security. We identified fragmentation among several Department of
Defense foreign language services and products. We also identified
duplication in the Medicaid Integrity Program. We also identified
revenue enhancements in IRS' tax enforcement and cost savings in the
Medicare Advantage Quality Bonus Program.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Your team also followed up on the reports GAO
released in 2011 and 2012 looking at these same issues. Can you talk a
little bit about what kind of progress you found has been made there
across the government?

[ Orice Williams: ] We found that Congress and the agencies have
continued to make progress in the 131 areas GAO identified in 2011 and
2012. For the--over 300 specific actions that we included in those
reports, we found that about two-thirds had been partially or fully
addressed. Going forward, GAO is rolling out new this year, GAO's action
tracker which is a web-based tool that Congress, agencies, and the
public can use to track the status of previous actions that GAO has
implemented. The GAO action tracker going forward will include new
actions from future duplication, overlap, and fragmentation reports and
also update the status of existing reports and actions.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Finally, big picture for taxpayers interested in
reducing government inefficiency and duplication wherever possible and
prudent in saving money wherever the government can, what's the bottom
line here?

[ Orice Williams: ] Bottom line is that there are many instances where
there are several agencies and programs that are serving similar needs
or designed to address similar issues. While we found many instances of
fragmentation across agencies and program, we found fewer instances of
overlap and even fewer instances of duplication. Decision makers often
lack the information that they need to make decisions about whether or
not the fragmentation, overlap, or duplication that may exist across
programs is problematic. For example, if there are dozens of programs
that address a particular need but they are well coordinated, this may
not be a problem. On the other hand, if there are dozens of programs and
only half are effective, this may indicate that consolidation should be
considered. Until Congress gets this information, it will be difficult
for them to make decisions about which programs to consolidate and which
ones may be working effectively. The bottom line is agencies should be
able to demonstrate the effectiveness of their programs and activities.

[Background Music]

[ Narrator: ] To learn more, visit GAO.gov and be sure to tune in to the
next episode of GAO's Watchdog Report for more from the congressional
Watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office.