GAO says agencies’ paperwork reduction plans are incomplete

The plans submitted by federal agencies for meeting the requirements of the 1998 Government Paperwork Elimination Act (GPEA) are incomplete and inconsistent, a new report from the General Accounting Office says.

Under GPEA, agencies must put their most important forms and processes online by Oct. 21, 2003. The law also requires agencies to accept electronic signatures on official documents by that date. Agencies outlined their GPEA strategies in reports submitted to the Office of Management and Budget in October 2000.

GAO said many agencies provided potentially useful information. But because agencies were inconsistent in what they reported, GAO found it impossible to truly assess the federal government's progress in complying with the law. The Office of Management and Budget, which is responsible for monitoring agencies' GPEA progress, will be hard-pressed to successfully oversee progress in achieving the 2003 deadline because of this shortcoming, according to the report, "Electronic Government: Better Information Needed on Agencies' Implementation of the Government Paperwork Elimination Act (GAO-01-1100).

Beyond the quality of the agencies' plans, GAO is concerned that many agencies will miss GPEA's deadline because of ill-timed or unscheduled projects. "Because electronic options for large numbers of activities were not planned until 2003 at the earliest or were not scheduled at all, many agencies may be at risk of not meeting GPEA objectives," the report stated.

In a briefing to the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, GAO reported that 3,048 federal activities are scheduled for completion before the deadline. However, most of these activities--66 percent, have deadlines in 2003 and if they run behind schedule, would fail to meet the law's deadline. Furthermore, GAO found that 3,860 activities have not been scheduled for paperwork elimination at all.

In the same briefing, GAO singled out the Housing and Urban Development Department as the only federal agency to fully report its GPEA activities.

GAO called for OMB to collect more detailed information from the agencies and asked that the new information include agency strategies for complying with GPEA and their priorities for doing so. GAO also asked OMB to "hold agencies accountable for achieving results by linking GPEA activities to agencywide and program-specific performance measures and outcomes."

In response, OMB said it had received more GPEA relevant information via the 2002 budget process. But additional data "would further integrate GPEA information with budget and program reviews and agency electronic government plans," according to GAO.

OMB issued a memo to federal chief information officers on Sept. 28, which outlined the procedures for updating October 2000 GPEA plans in a consistent manner.