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Open Recommendations (97 total)

Data Center Optimization: Agencies Need to Address Challenges and Improve Progress to Achieve Cost Savings Goal

GAO-17-448
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of the Treasury The Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Homeland Security, Energy, HHS, Interior, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury, and VA; the Attorney General of the United States; the Administrators of EPA, GSA, and SBA; the Director of OPM; and the Chairman of NRC should take action to, within existing OMB reporting mechanisms, complete plans describing how the agency will achieve OMB's requirement to implement automated monitoring tools at all agency-owned data centers by the end of fiscal year 2018.
Open
In November 2019, the Department of the Treasury reported that it had 16 agency-owned data centers that the department planned to keep open. However, of those 16 data centers, only four had implemented the advanced monitoring tools. As of January 2020, we have not received a more recent update from the department about how it will meet the Data Center Optimization Initiative requirement to implement monitoring tools at the remaining 12 agency-owned data centers. We will continue to monitor the status of this recommendation.

U.S. Consolidated Financial Statements: Improvements Needed in Internal Controls over Treasury and OMB Preparation Processes

GAO-23-106707
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of the Treasury The Fiscal Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, in coordination with the working group, should develop and implement policies and procedures for determining, in coordination with applicable federal entities, in which reporting entity's financial statements to report any identified contingencies. (Recommendation 2)
Open
As of the completion of our fiscal year 2023 audit of the consolidated financial statements of the U.S. government, this recommendation remained open. Treasury and State reported that they plan to address this recommendation in fiscal year 2024.

Tax Policy: The Research Tax Credit's Design and Administration Can Be Improved

GAO-10-136
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of the Treasury In order to significantly reduce the uncertainty that some taxpayers have about their ability to earn credits for their research activities, the Secretary of the Treasury should provide additional guidance to more clearly identify when commercial production of a qualified product is deemed to begin.
Open
As of February 2023, Treasury has not issued regulations to more clearly identify when commercial production of a qualified product is deemed to begin.

Foreign Investment in the U.S.: Efforts to Mitigate National Security Risks Can Be Strengthened

GAO-24-107358
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of the Treasury The Secretary of the Treasury, as CFIUS's chair, should work with member agencies to document a committee-wide process for considering and making timely decisions on enforcement actions related to mitigation agreements. (Recommendation 1)
Open
When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.

Federal Spending Transparency: Opportunities Exist for Treasury to Further Improve USAspending.gov's Use and Usefulness

GAO-22-104127
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of the Treasury The Secretary of the Treasury should add a broad website search function to USAspending.gov to help users find content on the website. (Recommendation 3)
Open
Treasury officials told us that they are in the process of laying the foundation for a broad ("global") search function across all USAspending.gov content. However, they expect the design work for a global search function will not begin until FY2024 at the earliest. As of April 2024, this status is unchanged.

Working Dogs: Federal Agencies Need to Better Address Health and Welfare

GAO-23-104489
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of the Treasury The Secretary of the Treasury should direct all of the Department of the Treasury's agencies with contractor-managed working dog programs to ensure that all 18 issues GAO identified as important to the health and welfare of working dogs are addressed, as appropriate, in future contracts. (Recommendation 18)
Open
As of July 2023, we are working with the agency to update the status of the recommendation.

IRS 2017 Budget: IRS Could Improve Presentation of Budget Data in Its Congressional Justification

GAO-16-695
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of the Treasury As Treasury works with IRS to improve the quality and accuracy of budget data, the Secretary of the Treasury should ensure sufficient controls are in place to make certain that the information technology investment reports generated from the SharePoint Investment Knowledge Exchange are accurate. This includes, for example, taking steps to reduce the need for manual corrections to the data.
Open
As of November 2017, Treasury Department officials took steps to address the need to manually correct budget data for the fiscal year 2017 budget request. However, we did not receive documentation that they have done so for future budget years. In November 2022, we received additional documentation in response to this recommendation. We are reviewing it to determine if it satisfies our recommendation. Improved information would help Treasury and IRS better account for information technology resources.

U.S. Consolidated Financial Statements: Improvements Needed in Internal Controls over Treasury and OMB Preparation Processes

GAO-23-106707
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of the Treasury The Fiscal Assistant Secretary of the Treasury should develop and implement procedures to annually determine the reliability of information used from sources other than significant component entities' audited financial statements to prepare the social insurance sections of the CFS. (Recommendation 5)
Open
As of the completion of our fiscal year 2023 audit of the consolidated financial statements of the U.S. government (CFS), this recommendation remained open. In fiscal year 2023, Treasury designed and implemented some corrective actions, including a position paper documenting its analysis of the reliability of certain sources of information. However, additional work is needed to annually determine the reliability of information used from sources other than significant component entities' audited financial statements.

Government Performance and Accountability: Tax Expenditures Represent a Substantial Federal Commitment and Need to Be Reexamined

GAO-05-690
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1 Open Recommendations
1 Priority
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of the Treasury
Priority Rec.
To ensure that policymakers and the public have the necessary information to make informed decisions and to improve the progress toward exercising greater scrutiny of tax expenditures, the Director of OMB, in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury, should develop and implement a framework for conducting performance reviews of tax expenditures. In developing the framework, the Director should (1) determine which agencies will have leadership responsibilities to review tax expenditures, how reviews will be coordinated among agencies with related responsibilities, and how to address the lack of credible performance information on tax expenditures; (2) set a schedule for conducting tax expenditure evaluations; (3) re-establish appropriate methods to test the overall evaluation framework and make improvements as experience is gained; and (4) to identify any additional resources that may be needed for tax expenditure reviews.
Open
Treasury did not submit comments on this report and deferred to OMB. OMB agreed that this recommendation had promise and also said that tax expenditure evaluations were the responsibility of Treasury, which had access to the necessary data. As of March 2024, the Director of OMB had not taken action to develop a framework for reviewing tax expenditure performance, as GAO recommended in June 1994 and again in September 2005. Since their initial efforts in 1997 and 1999 to outline a framework for evaluating tax expenditures and preliminary performance measures, OMB and the Department of the Treasury have ceased to make progress and retreated from setting a schedule for evaluating tax expenditures. The President's fiscal year 2012 budget stated that developing an evaluation framework is a significant challenge due to limited data availability and analytical constraints of isolating the effect of any single program. The administration planned to focus on addressing some of these challenges so it could work toward crosscutting analyses that examine tax expenditures alongside related spending programs. However, OMB and Treasury had not reported on progress on this recommendation since the President's fiscal year 2012 budget. As of March 2024, OMB said it does not plan to address this recommendation. Assessing the performance of tax expenditures is critically important given that many tax expenditures that function as entitlement programs do not compete openly in the annual budget process. Although revenue losses from tax expenditures exceed $1 trillion each year, many tax expenditures are not subject to congressional reauthorization, and therefore Congress does not have the opportunity to regularly review their effectiveness. Periodic reviews could help identify redundancies in related tax and spending programs and could help determine how well specific tax expenditures work to achieve their goals, as well as how their benefits and costs compare to those of programs with similar goals.

Foreign Investment in the U.S.: Efforts to Mitigate National Security Risks Can Be Strengthened

GAO-24-107358
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of the Treasury The Secretary of the Treasury, as CFIUS's chair, should work with member agencies to document a committee-wide process for periodically assessing the relevance of mitigation agreements and amending, phasing out, or terminating them when appropriate. (Recommendation 2)
Open
When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
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