Sixty-five solar-related initiatives supported by six federal agencies are fragmented across the agencies and overlap to some degree in their key characteristics, but most agency officials reported coordination efforts to avoid duplication, GAO has said.
It said the initiatives are fragmented in that they are implemented by various offices across the six agencies and address the same broad areas of national need. However, the agencies tailor their initiatives to meet their specific missions, such as DoD’s energy security mission and NASA’s space exploration mission, according to GAO-12-843.
It said many of the initiatives overlapped with at least one other initiative in the technology advancement activity, technology type, funding recipient, or goal, but that GAO found no clear instances of duplicative initiatives.
Further, officials at 57 of the 65 initiatives indicated that they coordinated in some way with other solar-related initiatives, including both within their own agencies and with other agencies, and 59 of them require applicants to disclose other federal sources of funding on their applications to help ensure that they do not receive duplicative funding.
