Transportation, security technology, food safety join high-risk list

Postal reform and single-family mortgage insurance and rental housing assistance programs have moved off a list of "high-risk" areas needing management improvements, the Government Accountability Office announced Wednesday.

To get programs off the list, agencies must have a strategy to address problems and demonstrate progress on implementing it, said Comptroller General David M. Walker, at a Capitol Hill event to unveil the update (GAO-07-310). GAO releases a new list every two years, though it makes some modifications at shorter intervals, such as the March 2006 addition of the National Flood Insurance Program.

Landmark postal overhaul legislation enacted in late December, and the Postal Service's progress in paying off debt and reducing pension obligations, helped it get off the list, Walker said. The mortgage insurance and rental housing programs at the Housing and Urban Development Department do not need to be listed any longer because of reductions in improper rental payments and other procedural improvements, he said.

But despite this progress, a number of programs have remained in GAO's sights for much of the nearly two decades the agency has been publishing the list. "GAO has changed its name in these 17 years, but some of those issues have stayed," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The Defense Department still figures prominently, and was directly named on eight of 27 items. These included contract management, weapons system acquisition, financial management and the security clearance program.

Walker emphasized the need for a chief management official at the Pentagon. "We can't just keep going the way we are or we'll never -- we'll never -- get the department in the shape we need," he said.

GAO also added three areas to the latest list: transportation financing and capacity, protection of technology key to national security and oversight of food safety. Transportation was added, GAO said, because revenues to support federal trust funds are eroding "at a time when investment is needed to expand capacity to address congestion caused by increasing passenger and freight travel."

Security technologies are targets for espionage, reverse engineering and illegal transport, GAO said. And the federal food safety system is fragmented, resulting in "inconsistent oversight, ineffective coordination and inefficient use of resources," the report containing the list stated.

High-risk programs could require legislative fixes, as well as executive branch action.

Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said at the Wednesday event that fraud, waste and abuse in the government need to be addressed in part through the budget process.

"Waste doesn't come in neatly bundled packages.… In reality, the fat is marbled through the budget process," he said.

Jenny Mandel contributed to this report.