High-risk problems just won't go away

Federal programs on the General Accounting Office's "high-risk" list need continuous monitoring and top-level attention if the government's worst financial mismanagement, waste and fraud problems will ever be solved, GAO officials reported recently.

In response to questions posed by Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, GAO emphasized the need for congressional oversight of problem agencies. GAO developed its high-risk list, a compilation of the worst mismanagement problems in the federal government, in 1990. Ten of the originally cited problems are still on the list. Only one problem program has been removed since 1995.

Comptroller General David M. Walker, head of GAO, expressed concern that, in many cases, agencies have not made even short-term improvements in problem areas. Walker said, for example, that NASA has dragged its feet on putting a needed financial management system in place. "Repeated slippages in the implementation schedule for this system continue to cause lingering uncertainties as to when this implementation will start," Walker said.

The Justice and Treasury departments, too, have not solved problems with mismanagement of forfeited assets, despite continuous prodding to do so by Congress in 1988, GAO in 1991 and a House Appropriations Committee in 1995. Walker suggested that the Office of Management and Budget or the President should intervene to ensure that the departments' seized assets are consolidated.

GAO has reported that high-risk-list problems cost the government billions of dollars per year. Improper Medicare payments alone reached an estimated $12.6 billion in 1998 while a total of $3.3 billion in overpayments was owed the Social Security Administration in 1998.

Problem agencies can learn from the success of others, Walker said. The Transportation Department's Coast Guard and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Health and Human Services' Office of Child Support Enforcement and the Federal Emergency Management Agency were listed among the most-improved agencies. Walker also said IRS Commissioner Charles O. Rossotti's efforts to make his agency more results-oriented make him a role model for other federal leaders.

GAO plans to update its high-risk series report in 2001. In the meantime, Congress and the executive branch need to make a sustained commitment to management improvement, Walker said. "In other words, hold agencies and key leaders accountable," he told Burton.