Agencies with overlapping duties need to coordinate their strategic plans to make sure they don't duplicate each other, a General Accounting Office examiner told Congress last week.
One of the goals of the Government Performance and Results Act, under which agencies are now developing strategic plans, is to root out redundant programs.
In testimony before the House Resources Subcommittee on Water and Power, Susan Kladiva, GAO's acting associate director for energy, resources and sciences issues, said the Energy and Interior departments need to coordinate with each other and other agencies as they develop their Results Act plans because they manage overlapping programs.
"Crosscutting program efforts present the logical need to coordinate efforts to ensure that goals are mutually reinforcing," Kladiva said. "When this is not done, overlap and duplication can undermine efforts to establish clear missions and goals."
The Energy Department developed four business lines as the foundation of its draft strategic plan: energy resources, national security, environmental quality and science and technology. But the department did not identify other agencies' programs that overlap with its own programs.
"Although Energy is sharing its draft plan with other federal agencies for coordination, it believes its functions are unique," Kladiva said. "However, we believe that Energy's four broad business lines do involve or overlap those of other agencies."
Energy's Power Marketing Administrations (PMAs), for example, market electricity that is generated by the Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corp of Engineers. The PMAs will not be able to meet their performance standards without coordinating closely with those two agencies, Kladiva said.
The Interior Department has done little to coordinate its subagencies' draft plans with one another or with other agencies' plans, GAO found. For example, two Interior agencies, the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Geological Survey, work on water quality, as do the Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Department. But Interior's draft plans do not attempt to explain how its agencies will work with those of other departments.
Kladiva stressed that the final draft strategic plans required under the Results Act are not due to Congress until September, and applauded the agencies for making progress on their plans. But she said that meeting strategic goals will depend on how well agencies coordinate their efforts.
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