Top Ten List

What GAO Found Since 2017, when the Army announced its initiative to update its forces and equipment with improved capabilities—known as modernization—it has prioritized six broad areas of capability needs as shown in the table below; established and assigned eight cross-functional teams to pilot...

What GAO Found From fiscal years 2014 through 2018, a variety of executive branch actions related to climate change—such as executive orders and strategies—affected the Department of State (State), the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Department of Defense (DOD), including...

What GAO Found The Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Environmental Management (EM) faces an environmental liability of $377 billion, according to DOE's fiscal year 2018 financial statement. This amount largely reflects estimates of future costs to clean up legacy radioactive tank waste and contaminated...

What GAO Found There is limited information about the national prevalence of food insecurity among college students. GAO reviewed 31 studies that identified a wide range of food insecurity rates among the students studied, but the studies did not provide national estimates. College students at risk of...

What GAO Found Stakeholders GAO interviewed, including representatives from physician practices and hospitals, described their approaches for matching patients' records—that is, comparing patient information in different health records to determine if the records refer to the same patient. Stakeholders...

What GAO Found Since 2014, when health insurance exchanges established by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) began operating, issuers' medical costs for enrollees (claims costs) in the individual market have varied widely. Claims costs were higher than expected in early years (from...

What GAO Found Federal support of the housing finance market remains significant even though the market has largely recovered since the 2007–2009 financial crisis. While down from the peak in 2009, in 2017, the federal government directly or indirectly guaranteed about 70 percent of single-family mortgage...

What GAO Found GAO identified four key challenges the Department of Education (Education) faces in assessing K-12 program performance. Education has taken steps to mitigate these performance assessment challenges, which could improve transparency and understanding about the extent to which Educations...

What GAO Found Use of an alternate consumer price index (CPI) for calculating cost-of-living adjustments (COLA) would create tradeoffs regarding individual benefits and the costs for federal retirement programs, such as Social Security. Using historical and assumed future inflation, GAO analyzed the...

What GAO Found Conducting required environmental and historic reviews in a timely manner is among the challenges the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) faces in its real property disposal process. These reviews include assessing the potential effects of property disposals on the environment and historic...