Legislation has been introduced to eliminate or modify 321 legislatively mandated reports from 29 federal agencies such as a dog and cat fur protection report DHS has to produce every year.
Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., introduced the Government Reports Elimination Act of 2014. A similar bill passed the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee recently.
Agencies were directed under the Government Performance and Results Modernization Act to identify reporting requirements that are outdated, duplicative, or too frequent.
For example, the Social Security Administration has been reporting to Congress for 25years on its printing activities, even though it has never received feedback and does not know howCongress uses the information. The agency estimates that 95 of its employees spend about 85workdays to produce the plan.
Another example is a Department of Veterans Affairs annual report on medical and surgical bed closures that has reportedly received little if any interest from Congress in the past 30 years of its production.
