GAO: Watchdog or Reformer?

One of the most seasoned of these oversight bodies is the General Accounting Office, established along with the Bureau of the Budget by the 1921 Budget and Accounting Act. The Budget Bureau, then a part of Treasury, enabled the President for the first time to consolidate all department budgets and send them to Congress as the President's budget. Similarly, GAO gave Congress an ability to oversee all executive branch financial transactions. A staff of auditors, thousands strong, fulfilled this role for Congress for many years.

Bernard Ungar, head of GAO's government business operations issues group, points out that these types of skills are scarce in the agency today. "It's not what we do," he says. When Congress directed GAO to perform a detailed financial transaction review for purchasing currency paper for an August 1998 report, for example, a retiree was brought in to assist in the work. Recent hires are pretty much the same as the public administration and economics graduates who fill analyst positions at the Office of Management and Budget-nary a green eyeshade in the mix.

If GAO is not auditing agency transactions, what is it doing? Paul Light in his book The Tides of Reform (Yale University Press, 1997) argues that the agency is improving government management, usurping a role earlier played by the Bureau of the Budget. I already can see eyebrows being raised among the many executive branch officials who've debated the merits of those blue-jacketed GAO reports.

Is there a new GAO-one not engaged in the old "gotcha" studies that have compelled many a harried political appointee to explain to a frowning Congress member how the GAO had gotten it all wrong, that the problems cited in its study were taken way out of context? (I find my palms getting sweaty as I recall the occasions I have had to perform that little ritual.) The answer is a qualified "yes."

Some of the most recent GAO reports and testimony reflect a reform agenda:

• "Defense Acquisition: Best Commercial Practices Can Improve Program Outcomes" (March 1999)
• "Best Practices: DoD Can Help Suppliers Contribute More to Weapon System Programs" (March 1998)
• "Department of Energy: Contract Reform is Progressing, But Full Implementation Will Take Years" (December 1996)
• "Federal Prison Industries: Limited Data Available on Customer Satisfaction" (March 1998)

  The point of these reports isn't to examine agency failures. Rather, it's to consider how agencies are proceeding with reforms and whether there are best practices elsewhere from which they can benefit. For example, Ungar and David Sausville of GAO's General Government Division have been examining how other countries have managed outsourcing to see if some lessons learned might apply here.

  In a similar vein, meetings over the past several years between GAO and DoD leaders on GAO's best commercial practices projects have been collaborative, not adversarial, says David Cooper of the National Security and International Affairs Division. Defense managers were keenly interested in GAO's findings, which run to the heart of reforming the acquisition process. On moving systems from development to production, for example, GAO found a key difference between government and commercial development. Unlike the government, commercial contractors refuse to launch production until technology development and potential risks are resolved. The intent behind these reviews is to expand agencies' knowledge and help them do a better job.

  One reason for GAO's more positive approach is the emergence of inspectors general since 1976. "With the IGs focused on fraud, waste and abuse, there is less of a need for us to plow that same ground," says John Brosnan of GAO's Office of General Counsel.

  GAO's new focus on technical assistance hasn't stopped Congress from ordering specific reviews. Often the parameters of investigations are carefully defined in law or report language. And no matter the tenor of GAO's report, Congress, will have the last word.

  With a new comptroller general, a key question will be whether this more collaborative, advisory mode will continue or some new path will be set for GAO. All things considered, if you were called to testify with GAO on a matter of interest to Congress, I'd offer this suggestion: Ask to go first.

  Allan V. Burman, a former Office of Federal Procurement Policy administrator, is president of Jefferson Solutions in Washington.