Highway Funding: The Federal Highway Administration's Funding Apportionment Model
RCED-97-159
Published: Jun 05, 1997. Publicly Released: Jun 18, 1997.
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Highlights
Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Federal Highway Administration's (FHwA) funding apportionment model.
Recommendations
Recommendations for Executive Action
| Agency Affected | Recommendation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Department of Transportation | To ensure the accuracy of the model's estimates and to provide the Congress with confidence in the model's results, the Secretary of Transportation should direct the administrator, FHwA, to establish a quality assurance process to ensure the integrity of any changes to the model's input data and validation of any changes to the model, including new subroutines developed for the model. |
The Office of Budget and Finance brought an additional staff member in from the Office of Policy Development to assist and check the work of the consultant staff that were adapting and running the model. This individual was responsible for verifying that any changes were accurate from a program and policy standpoint based on the technical assistance requests from the Congress that were being estimated. The Information Systems Division did a single verification of the technical aspects of the model, but did not verify the technical changes to the model made to respond to each adaptation, that is, the changes in the programming language of the subroutines that perform the estimates.
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Topics
Appropriation actsComputer modelingData integrityFederal aid for highwaysFuture budget projectionsQuality assuranceTransportation policiesPublic roads or highwaysAuthorizing legislationHighway funding