Federal Manager's Daily Report

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A new GAO report on the long-running issue of overlap, duplication and fragmentation of federal programs identifies more than two dozen additional opportunities for improvement, including several relating to federal personnel management:

* “The Department of Defense should address fragmentation and overlap among providers of human resources services to increase effectiveness and efficiency and potentially save millions of dollars.”

* “The Office of Management and Budget and the General Services Administration could better position themselves to achieve their cost savings goal of $2 billion over 10 years and reduce inefficient overlap and duplication by strengthening their implementation of selected federal shared services reform efforts.”

* “The Internal Revenue Service should address its fragmented human capital activities to improve its strategic workforce planning so it can better meet challenges to achieving its mission.”

GAO said that as of March, agencies have addressed 54 percent of the more than 800 such recommendations it made over 2011-2018 on overlap, duplication and fragmentation and that they have partially addressed 23 percent more. Those actions have saved about $216 billion with another $46 billion in savings projected.