From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: U.S. Comptroller General Testifies to U.S. Senate on GAO's 2019 Duplication Report Description: In his May 21, 2019, testimony to the U.S. Senate, U.S. Comptroller General Gene Dodaro introduces GAO's 2019 Duplication and Cost Savings Report. Related GAO Works: GAO-19-536T: Government Efficiency and Effectiveness: Opportunities to Reduce Fragmentation, Overlap, and Duplication and Achieve Billions in Financial Benefits and GAO-19-285SP: 2019 Annual Report: Additional Opportunities to Reduce Fragmentation, Overlap, and Duplication and Achieve Billions in Financial Benefits Released: March 2019 [First Screen] 2019 Opportunities to Reduce Fragmentation, Overlap & Duplication [Second Screen] Opening Statement by U.S. Comptroller General Gene L. Dodaro May 21, 2019 [Third Screen] Senate Committeee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs [Fourth Screen] Subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight & Emergency Management >> Thank you very much Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Senator Hassan, Senators Enzi, Holly, and Senator Lankford. Nice to see everyone this morning. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about GAO's latest report on overlap, duplication, fragmentation and other ways to save and realize cost savings and enhance revenues to the federal government. In our first eight reports, we made over 800 recommendations for congressional and executive branch action. Fifty-four percent have been implemented fully already, another 23 percent partially implemented. And as Senator Hassan mentioned, there had been financial benefits realized of $262 billion already that either have accrued or will accrue as a result of implementation of the recommendations. Now very importantly, most of those real dollar savings came from congressional action in addition to some action on part of the executive branch but there are additional 98 actions we're adding this year, recommendations in 28 different areas. There are still tens of billions of dollars in potential savings that could accrue from congressional and executive branch action. For example, in this past year in the Defense Department alone, there's savings to be realized by looking at the functions and providing human--resources over there as the chairman mentioned in his opening statements. Document services could save millions of dollars there and also in consolidating the administration of military health treatment facilities, additional savings there in the offing. Also, defense could use better intergovernmental agreements where they're working with state and local governments to provide services, the installations rather than use of contractors. That's already saved money; greater use of it could save more. Also right now in foreign military sales, the foreign purchasers of our military equipment are not paying for the full cost, administrative cost of arranging the sale and as a result the U.S. government's paying the cost when we think that the cost should be borne by the purchaser, foreign government, for arranging those sales. Now in the healthcare area, there's billions of dollars that could be saved here by having greater oversight over Medicaid spending and also in the Medicare area of looking at various payment policies including preauthorization and place of service reimbursement that's different now based upon where you receive the same potential service. There are savings also that could be accrued at the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA. There could be greater use and better use of advanced contracting to save money as well as post-contracting activities that could take place. Also, the benchmark or litmus test of the federal government getting involved in a disaster hasn't been revisited since 1986. So for 33 years now we've been using the same indicator. It hasn't even been indexed for inflation. And as a result, we think the federal government may be paying more or getting involved more when the state and local governments have the capacity to deal with -- you know obviously these are not catastrophic disasters but ones that occur on a more regular basis as well. There are also many opportunities to have more efficient and effective government. The chairman mentioned the alignment of strategies to provide foreign assistance. This could be done better. At DOD, there's not enough coordination in reporting and dealing with adverse medical events, particularly sentinel events that could lead to -- that have led to unexpected deaths or very serious physical or mental problems over there as well. And there are many other activities including the one the chairman mentioned on better coordination of research activities in the federal government. Clearly these research activities are important, but there needs to be better coordination to be more effective. Now I was also asked to comment on what could be done to make it easier to identify these duplicative services and overlapping areas. And we point out on our report the failure of OMB to produce a comprehensive inventory of federal programs. This was required by the Congress in 2010 in the Government Performance Management Modernization Act. It still has not been done. So right now we don't have a comprehensive federal inventory which makes it very difficult. We have to spend a lot of time and energy to identify these areas. And then I have other areas we could talk about more in the Q&A session. So thank you very much for the opportunity to talk about our work. And we look forward to working with this committee and the Congress and the executive branch moving forward to have more efficient and effective government. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.