GAO recommended treating reports as a stand-alone documents to raise its visibility. Image: Bacho/Shutterstock.com
Federal agencies have been uneven in carrying out a law that generally requires them to report on the status of unimplemented recommendations, the GAO said.
GAO said that there are some 4,800 recommendations currently outstanding that only GAO itself has made, which if implemented “could result in significant benefits, including increased savings and revenues, enhanced services to the public, and improved federal programs.” Concerns about lack of follow-up to recommendations from the GAO and agency IGs led to enactment in 2019 of the requirements for agencies to report on their responses as part of their budget submissions.
In reviewing compliance with the reporting requirement by 24 departments and agencies in the fiscal 2024 submissions, the GAO found that 16 both included the required reporting elements—including on the status of recommendations—and followed the submissions process. Agriculture, Energy, VA and SBA did neither, however.
Further, the level of detail varied among agencies that did report on the status of recommendations, with some describing the actions they have taken and/or plan to take while other said only that recommendations were “open” or “in progress.” Agencies also varied in the number of years of open recommendations they included and the cut-off dates they used.
GAO recommended that agencies take steps such as coordinating with their GAO and IG liaisons; maintaining up-to-date status information on open recommendations on their IT systems; and treating the report as a stand-alone document to raise its visibility.
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