What GAO Found As the nation continues to respond to, and recover from, the COVID-19 pandemic, increases in COVID-19 cases in July, August, and September 2021, primarily due to the Delta variant of the virus, have hampered these efforts. From the end of July 2021 to September 23, 2021, the number of...
What GAO Found Federal agencies adopted a maximum telework posture following the March 2020 national emergency declaration related to COVID-19. In April 2020, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance established a framework for agencies to plan for the reentry of employees to the workplace and...
What GAO Found The CARES Act provided temporary hiring authorities to six agencies with responsibilities for responding to the public health and economic crisis caused by COVID-19. A hiring authority is the law, executive order, or regulation that allows an agency to hire a person into the federal civil...
What GAO Found U.S. research may be subject to undue foreign influence in cases where a researcher has a foreign conflict of interest (COI). Federal grant-making agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) can address this threat through COI policies and requiring the disclosure of information...
What GAO Found The Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) Risk Mapping, Assessment, and Planning (Risk MAP) program has increased its development of flood maps and other flood risk products, but faces challenges ensuring they comprehensively reflect current and future flood hazards. For example,...
GAO’s Evolution of Expertise and Services Over the last century, GAO has strategically adapted its services and products—all with an eye towards informing congressional decision-making and improving government operations through nonpartisan and fact-based work. GAO continues to evolve to meet the...
What GAO Found The Department of Commerce's National Weather Service (NWS) initiated the Evolve Program in 2017 to carry out a series of agency reforms to help it achieve its strategic vision of strengthening the nation's readiness and responsiveness to extreme weather events. The program has 20 reform...
Para la versión de esta página en español, ver a GAO-22-105386. What GAO Found Starting in March 2019, the Trump administration suspended most new foreign assistance funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Department of State to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras—the...
What GAO Found The Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Environmental Management (EM) identifies cleanup-related research and development (R&D) needs across the EM complex—EM headquarters and sites and DOE's national laboratories—in various ways. For example, DOE officials and contractors at...
What GAO Found According to the literature GAO reviewed, diagnosis of any disease can be complicated, and diagnosis of rare diseases can be particularly difficult because of a variety of factors. (See figure.) Although some rare diseases may be detected quickly, in other cases years may pass between...