Government Accountability Office (GAO)

GAO Report Finds Problems with EPA Groundwater Protection Program

Aug 11, 2014 by Amanda Starbuck

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is not adequately monitoring more than 172,000 wells used to enhance oil and gas drilling and dispose of drilling wastewater, according to a July 28 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The report, based on two years of research, identified several significant problems with EPA's program to protect groundwater from drilling chemicals and wastes.

read in full

Billions of Dollars Missing From Government Spending Website

Aug 6, 2014 by Guest Blogger

Last December, National Priorities Project and the Center for Effective Government noted that "hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending are missing from USASpending, the website designed to show the public how their tax dollars are spent."

read in full

Report Finds Flaws in Small Business Advocacy Office

Jul 28, 2014 by Katie Weatherford

According to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy has failed to develop and implement procedures necessary to ensure the office is effectively carrying out its mission of representing small businesses before federal agencies.  

read in full

Sequestration Report Highlights Detriments of Budgeting by Crisis

Mar 7, 2014 by Jessica Schieder

Across-the-board budget cuts in fiscal year 2013 affected the ability of agencies to serve the public. In response to these automatic cuts – triggered by the Budget Control Act of 2011 and a lack of consensus regarding changes in spending and revenue policies – agencies were forced to retrofit their budgets to fit these constraints mid-year.

read in full

Is the Federal Civilian Workforce Really Growing? Some Important Context

Congress's investigative arm, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), recently released its latest analysis of the executive branch's civilian government workforce, and it shows a modest increase between 2004 to 2012. However, the GAO's analysis does not take into account workforce reductions of around 70,000 in 2013, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). When the 28,000 full-time equivalent reductions from 2011 to 2012 are included, there has been a contraction of the federal civilian workforce of around 100,000 in the last three years.1 The report also leaves out significant context, which might lead readers to draw somewhat different conclusions about how the federal workforce has changed over time.

read in full

DOJ Letter Shows Need for Stepped-Up Enforcement of Freedom of Information Act

A new letter by Department of Justice (DOJ) officials reveals the department is engaged in limited enforcement activities under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The letter responds to an inquiry from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to DOJ's Office of Information Policy (OIP), which oversees agency compliance with FOIA.

read in full

New GAO Report Shows the Benefits of Spending Transparency

May 26, 2011 by Sam Rosen-Amy

According to the report, $24 billion in Recovery Act contract and grant spending went to about 3,700 recipients who owed some $750 million in taxes to the US government. Clearly, this isn’t good. Government contracts shouldn’t be benefiting organizations that don’t play by the rules. But the important point is that we only know this because of the recipient reporting feature built into the Recovery Act.

read in full

Commentary: GAO Duplicative Programs Report Shows Need for More than Spending Cuts

The Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) recent report on duplicative federal programs has caused quite a stir in Washington. Conservative lawmakers have latched on to the report as "proof" of the need to cut billions of dollars of federal spending. Whether Congress should make such cuts is debatable, but the tome-like report includes much more than an extensive list of duplicative federal programs. It also provides a list of potential cost savings that involve continued prodding and oversight from Congress and some that may even require additional spending to help reduce waste, fraud, and abuse.

read in full

Opening Access to Federal Reports

Aug 13, 2010 by Gavin Baker

Each year, Congress requires thousands of reports from federal agencies, containing information on nearly every conceivable aspect of government. In fact, merely the list of those reports is over 200 pages long. But there is no organized method for the public to access those reports. A new bill would change that.

read in full

GAO Calls for More Descriptive Recovery Recipient Reports

Jul 15, 2010 by Sam Rosen-Amy

On this blog, we talk a lot about how great the Recovery Act recipient reports are (these are the reports recipients turn in every quarter explaining what they've done with their Recovery Act funds). Over the past year, we've thrown around words like "groundbreaking" and "historic" to describe how we feel about them. But they aren't perfect. Among other problems, reading the reports can oftentimes leave readers confused about what the project in question actual does, as the main descriptive fields can be anywhere from a few words to lines and lines of text filled with industry jargon.

read in full

Pages

  • ©2025 Project On Government Oversight
  • All Rights Reserved.
  • This an archive site of the materials produced by the Center for Effective Government (formerly OMB Watch) and is maintained by the Project On Government Oversight.