Results Act can eliminate duplication, GAO says

Congress can use the changes in the budget process envisioned under the Government Performance and Results Act to eliminate duplicative programs across the government, a new General Accounting Office report says.

Overlap and duplication among federal agencies is one of the key concerns of the Results Act on which Republican House leaders are focusing. As agencies struggled through the summer to complete their first strategic plans, with a Results Act deadline of Sept. 30, House Majority Leader Dick Armey issued an interim report card giving agencies particularly low marks on whether they identified the need for collaboration with other agencies on certain programs.

The Results Act requires agencies to tie their budgets to performance goals and measurements. They also need to explain how programs that overlap with other agencies' programs complement each other rather than duplicate each other.

"As continued budget pressures prompt decisionmakers to weigh trade-offs inherent in resource allocation . . . the Results Act can provide the framework to integrate and compare performance of related programs to better inform choices among competing budgetary claims," GAO said.

Over the years GAO has issued dozens of reports describing government programs that duplicate each other, leading to waste and leaving the people those programs serve confused about where to go for services.

For example, in 1995 GAO identified over 160 employment training programs peppered across 15 agencies. Also in 1995, GAO found that at least 12 federal agencies oversee hundreds of community development programs designed to assist impoverished urban communities. Another often-cited example is federal drug control programs. More than 50 agencies are responsible for aspects of the federal government's drug policies. The Office of National Drug Control Policy, created in 1988 to create an integrated plan to fight drug use, has had limited success in getting agencies to work together.

"In program area after program area--from early childhood programs to land management and from food safety to international trade--the picture remains the same: widespread fragmentation and overlap," GAO said. "Such unfocused efforts can waste scarce funds, confuse and frustrate program customers and limit overall program effectiveness."

GAO said that agencies tend not to work together, in part because they are concerned about losing funding.

Duplication among agencies was not born in the executive branch alone, GAO notes. The overlap among congressional committees is a major cause of program redundancies. GAO warned that the traditional committee structures will undermine attempts to use the Results Act to address the problem.

Not all duplication is bad, however. The Energy Department, for example, spread out research and development among national laboratories as a way to ensure quality. Similarly, disaster assistance is administered by 27 federal agencies to provide rapid response to victims.

A recent House Government Reform and Oversight Committee report noted that "a certain amount of redundancy is understandable and can be beneficial if it occurs by design as part of a management strategy to foster competition, provide better service delivery to customer groups, or provide emergency backup."

But much duplication in the federal government is not part of an overall plan, and agencies can expect to coordinate with each other more as the Results Act takes full effect, GAO said.