The rate at which agencies comply with GAO recommendations has slipped a bit from its peak year of 2001, according to an analysis by the Deloitte consulting firm.
The report noted that it can take years for an agency to implement a GAO recommendation, and thus it focused on a 25-year period ending in 2008—during which more than 40,000 recommendations were made. GAO tracks agency responses and considers a recommendation implemented after documentation from the agency or by conducting interviews with agency officials.
During that period, the rate of implementing recommendations ranged from 76 percent in 1992 to 86 percent in 2001, but trended downward since then, in 2008 reaching about 78 percent.
Areas in which agencies most often comply include recommendations pertaining to information security and technology, education and equal opportunity. The lowest rates involved those implicating use of data and cross-agency issues.
It concluded: “Given GAO’s finite resources, it cannot uncover and solve every problem—but it is successful at driving its recommendations to fruition within agencies. Having said that, the low variability in the implementation rate could indicate that GAO may, for better or for worse, sometimes be issuing recommendations that it believes agencies are likely to implement.”
