Armey Hunts Mismanagement

House Majority Leader Richard Armey, R-Texas, dispatched troops from the General Accounting Office and agency inspector general offices on a mismanagement scavenger hunt this winter, asking them to identify the top governmentwide management problems and the most troublesome programs in every major agency. Did your program end up on Armey's list?

GAO identified scores of management mishaps and challenges--enough to fill a 200-page notebook. Armey asked the IGs of 24 agencies to name their organizations' five biggest management problems. Their findings paint a picture of a federal government with systemic financial management, information technology and organizational troubles. Armey hopes his colleagues on Capitol Hill will use the information GAO and the IGs have collected to confront the difficulties of managing the federal bureaucracy.

"GAO's overview tears away the rose-colored glasses of the 'reinventing government' crowd," Armey said in a statement. "The GAO notebook is a realistic overview of a defective federal government. The management delinquencies catalogued by GAO hold serious consequences for the taxpayers if they aren't addressed."

Armey spokeswoman Michelle Davis said the majority leader's office is reviewing the lists GAO and the IGs created to pick the programs Congress will focus on. She declined to say which areas are the most likely targets for congressional scrutiny.

"Management problems are pervasive," Davis said. "The basic concern that comes out all through the report is how can we measure agencies' performance when they don't even have the capacity to gather the data needed to make budget and management decisions."

GAO said data collection was a major challenge for many agencies, including the Transportation, Education and Labor Departments. Financial management woes were also a recurring theme in many agencies, as were IT foul-ups.

L. Nye Stevens, GAO's director of federal management and workforce issues, said agencies often don't make smart IT investments.

"There's been a faith that if we just buy technology, that will do it," Stevens said. Agencies "tend to automate processes that are already inefficient."

Another oft-cited problem was the sheer scope of agencies' activities. Six of the 25 programs GAO has identified as the most at risk for waste, fraud and abuse are concentrated in the sprawling Defense Department, for example. GAO says the Agriculture Department now runs more than 200 programs covering not just agricultural productivity but land management and forestry, farmer income support, rural development, international and domestic food assistance, food safety and foreign market development.

"To address multiple responsibilities, USDA has become a conglomerate of about 30 independent agencies and offices, resulting in an unwieldy span of control for the Secretary of Agriculture," GAO said.

Armey also asked GAO to identify areas in which federal programs overlap each other. GAO cited several examples. For instance, 15 agencies administered 127 at-risk and delinquent youth programs in 1996. Twelve agencies oversee food safety, which is governed by 35 different laws.

GAO also suggested ways Congress can approach regulatory reform issues and privatization.

Stevens said Armey's effort is a good sign that Congress is beginning to take federal management issues seriously. Armey pledged to use the findings to push agencies to become better information gatherers as the federal government ramps up its performance measurement efforts under the Government Performance and Results Act. Stevens cautioned that Congress is the key to improving federal management.

"None of these challenges are going to be self-executing," Stevens said. "If Congress fails to press agencies in its oversight capacity ... this will pretty soon turn into a very expensive paper-pushing exercise.

"There's the real possibility that Congress will not actually use it--the strategic plans, the performance plans, the performance reports--for any kind of decision-making activity."

The GAO report will soon be available on the Internet. Armey's office is compiling the IGs' lists and has not yet released them.

Selected Agencies Identified by GAO as Facing Major Management Problems