Recommendation: The Secretary of the Interior should direct BLM to collect centralized data on the acquisition method and interest acquired for the lands it obtains using LWCF funds as part of its planned update to Legacy Rehost 2000. (Recommendation 1)

Agency: Department of the Interior
Status: Open

Comments: As of November 2019, BLM reported it had awarded a contract to develop a new data system that will allow for centralized data collection on acquisition method and ownership interest. In addition, the agency issued updated guidance and procedures related to data entry to help ensure complete and accurate recording, which will improve BLM's ability to track acquisition method and interest acquired in the interim.

Recommendation: The Secretary of the Interior should direct BLM to develop more specific guidance to ensure that land acquisition data are entered correctly into the agency's data system. (Recommendation 2)

Agency: Department of the Interior
Status: Open

Comments: As of November 2019, BLM reported it was planning to develop specific guidance to ensure land acquisition data is entered correctly into its new data system.

Recommendation: The Director of the National Gallery of Art should direct the Office of Protection Services to ensure that program goals and performance measures linked to those goals are included as part of the master security plan and develop a timeline for completion of this plan.

Agency: National Gallery of Art
Status: Open

Comments: The National Gallery concurred with this recommendation and said it would take steps to implement it. In February 2019, the National Gallery approved the Office of Protection Services' 5-year strategic plan, which included goals for security. However, as of June 2020, work to establish performance measures was not yet complete. We will continue to monitor the National Gallery's progress in implementing this recommendation

Recommendation: To help improve oversight of the concessions program, the Secretary of the Interior should direct the Director of the National Park Service to develop performance goals with targets and timeframes in its commercial services strategic plan.

Agency: Department of the Interior: National Park Service
Status: Open

Comments: In May 2019, the agency provided an update of their recent efforts, including their revised Commercial Services Improvement Plan. This plan include performance goals and general time frames , however did not include performance measures or specific targets for each of the initiatives. The agency has subsequently reviewed this plan and determined that many of the goals and time frames identified were not realistic to achieve, making it difficult to establish performance measures or targets. As of July 2020, the agency is currently updating its 2015 Strategic Plan and reviewing the improvement plan to identify those items that will be feasible to implement. According to agency officials, they plan to develop goals and performance targets where feasible and develop time estimates for achieving them. Since this effort is currently underway, we will update the status of their efforts in the summer of 2021.

Recommendation: To ensure that the elements of the agency's process for making asset maintenance decisions are achieving desired outcomes, the Secretary of the Interior should direct the Director of the Park Service to evaluate the Capital Investment Strategy and its results to determine if it is achieving its intended outcomes or if changes need to be made.

Agency: Department of the Interior
Status: Open

Comments: According to NPS officials, the agency is currently working to address this recommendation and expects to complete it in August 2020. GAO will update the status of the recommendation as soon as possible thereafter.

Recommendation: To better enable NCA to meet its mission of providing reasonable access to burial options at veterans cemeteries, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs should direct the Under Secretary for Memorial Affairs to use the capability of NCA's existing software to estimate the served and unserved veteran populations using census tract data.

Agency: Department of Veterans Affairs
Status: Open

Comments: VA disagreed with our recommendation. Although VA agreed that census tract data was more precise than the county-level data NCA was using, the department disagreed that using this more precise data to make decisions would lead to different outcomes. Instead, VA believed that NCA's methodology of using county-level data was sufficient for estimating the number of served and unserved veterans. We disagree with VA's assertion that using more precise data to identify served and unserved veterans would have no effect on the outcome of VA's decisions about cemetery locations or prioritization. In 2019, VA officials provided new information that they make decisions on cemetery locations based in part on the projected, county-level veteran population 30 years in the future. VA officials expressed concern that there would be too much uncertainty trying to perform such long-term population projections at the census tract level. We believe VA's position has some basis, and therefore have removed the priority designation from our 2014 recommendation. However, as we reported in 2019 (GAO-19-121), we continue to maintain the validity of our recommendation and believe that comparing estimates of unserved veterans based on current census tract data with estimates based on current county-level data would provide a useful supplement to the VA's use of long-term projected county-level population data.