Top Ten List

What GAO Found The Census Bureau (Bureau) completed in-field address canvassing as scheduled on October 11, 2019, despite nationwide hiring shortfalls. The Bureau credits this success to better-than-expected productivity—the actual hourly productivity rate for the operation was 19.8 addresses versus...

What GAO Found While generally providing required information to Congress, poor recordkeeping by the Department of Defense (DOD) and late notifications by the Department of State (State) have limited the accuracy and timeliness of information provided to Congress on acquisition and cross-servicing agreements...

What GAO Found Nationally, since 2002, rates of drug misuse have increased, according to GAO's analysis of federal data. In 2018, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration reported that an estimated 19 percent of the U.S. population (over 53 million people) misused or abused drugs,...

What GAO Found The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has efforts in place to detect business identity theft refund fraud (business IDT), which occurs when thieves create, use, or try to use a business's identifying information to claim a refund. IRS uses computerized checks, or fraud filters, to screen...

What GAO Found The Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and the military departments conduct a range of oversight activities, but some of these activities have been more extensive than others. Specifically, GAO found that: The military departments conduct some oversight of the physical condition...

What GAO Found The Navy has delivered warships—such as aircraft carriers, destroyers, and submarines—to its fleet over the past 10 years that require more effort to sustain than initially planned. In assessing how these classes of ships are sustained, GAO found 150 examples of class-wide problems,...

What GAO Found Agency-reported improper payment estimates for fiscal year 2019 totaled about $175 billion, based on improper payment estimates reported by federal programs, an increase from the fiscal year 2018 total of $151 billion. Of the $175 billion, about $121 billion (approximately 69 percent)...

Why This Matters Coronaviruses can spread rapidly and cause outbreaks with high mortality rates. They were not considered a major risk for humans until the SARS outbreak in 2002. Since then, there have been multiple highly contagious outbreaks originating in animals and spreading to humans—most recently...

What GAO Found Data from the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) indicate that apprehensions of family unit members (noncitizen children under 18 and their parents or legal guardians) grew from about 22 percent of total southwest border apprehensions in fiscal...

The nation faces serious economic, security, and social challenges that require difficult policy choices in the near term in setting national priorities and charting a path forward for economic growth. This will influence the level of federal spending and how the government obtains needed resources....