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Open Recommendations (156 total)

Cloud Computing: Agencies Have Increased Usage and Realized Benefits, but Cost and Savings Data Need to Be Better Tracked

GAO-19-58
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Office of Management and Budget The Director of the Office of Management and Budget should require agencies to explicitly report, at least on a quarterly basis, the savings and cost avoidance associated with cloud computing investments. (Recommendation 1)
Open
No action taken. As of March 2024, an official from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) reported that OMB did not intend to take action to address the recommendation. However, GAO continues to believe that requiring agencies to explicitly report, at least on a quarterly basis, the savings and cost avoidance associated with cloud computing investments, is necessary to ensure that agencies better report cloud savings data and so that OMB and Congress have sufficient data to see the results of key initiatives, like Cloud Smart, and understand whether agencies are achieving savings using cloud services.

Government Efficiency and Effectiveness: Inconsistent Definitions and Information Limit the Usefulness of Federal Program Inventories

GAO-15-83
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1 Open Recommendations
1 Priority
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Office of Management and Budget
Priority Rec.
To ensure the effective implementation of federal program inventory requirements and to make the inventories more useful, the Director of OMB should, to better present a more coherent picture of all federal programs, revise relevant guidance to provide a time frame for what constitutes "persistent over time" that agencies can use as a decision rule for whether to include short-term efforts as programs.
Open
As of July 2022, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) had taken limited action in response to this recommendation. Although OMB published an initial inventory covering the programs of 24 federal agencies in May 2013, OMB decided to postpone further development of the inventory in order to coordinate with the implementation of the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 (DATA Act). In January 2021, Congress amended and expanded requirements for the federal program inventory as part of the William M. (Mac) Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021. In November 2021, OMB published a plan for implementing the federal program inventory, including a series of pilots to test approaches. The plan describes how OMB, in collaboration with agencies, will conduct pilots to define and identify programs. According to information provided by OMB staff in May 2022, OMB plans to refine its existing guidance to incorporate lessons learned from the pilots, as appropriate, which presents an opportunity to fully address this recommendation. According to updates provided by OMB officials in March and April 2023, they expect to begin implementing the first pilot in Summer 2023. We will continue to monitor progress.

Federal Spending Transparency: Opportunities Exist to Further Improve the Information Available on USAspending.gov

GAO-22-104702
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Office of Management and Budget The Director of OMB, in collaboration with the Secretary of the Treasury, should develop and implement a process to help ensure that disallowed program activities are not included in its list of program activity and accounts combinations used for validating DATA Act submissions to USAspending.gov. (Recommendation 7)
Open
OMB concurred with this recommendation. In July 2022, OMB told us that they will continue to review the quality of program activity submissions as part of their larger effort to develop a federal program inventory. In December 2022, they told us that action is in progress on addressing this recommendation. We will continue to monitor OMB's progress towards implementing this recommendation.

Federal Contracting: Opportunities Exist to Improve the Reporting of Waivers to Domestic Preference Laws

GAO-24-106166
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Office of Management and Budget The Director of OMB should establish an updated date for federal agencies to cross-post all their federal financial assistance waivers to the madeinamerica.gov website. (Recommendation 2)
Open
When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.

Managing for Results: Government-wide Actions Needed to Improve Agencies' Use of Performance Information in Decision Making

GAO-18-609SP
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Office of Management and Budget The Director of OMB, in coordination with the PIC, should prioritize efforts to identify and share among agencies proven practices for increasing, and challenges that hamper, the use of performance information in decision making more extensively within agencies. At a minimum, this effort should involve the agencies that our survey suggests may offer such insights. (Recommendation 2)
Open
As of July 2023, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Performance Improvement Council (PIC) have taken some actions towards addressing this recommendation. For example, in 2018 and 2019, the PIC hosted a series of workshops focused on relevant topics, such as how agency staff can develop performance measures and analyze data, and how data-driven reviews are used across the federal government. However, as of July 2022, they had not yet undertaken efforts to directly address the recommendation. They have not engaged the agencies highlighted by our survey results to identify proven practices that would increase, or challenges that are hampering, data-driven decision making within agencies. In July 2023, we reached out to OMB about any additional actions. We will update the status of this recommendation once we hear from OMB.

Federal Statistical System: Agencies Can Make Greater Use of Existing Data, but Continued Progress Is Needed on Access and Quality Issues

GAO-12-54
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Office of Management and Budget In order to maintain progress in maximizing the efficiency of existing data sources, and to increase the reliability of the information presented on the Reginfo.gov website and in OMB's internal system, the Director of OMB, in consultation with the Chief Statistician, should work with the ICSP to implement quality-control procedures designed to identify and remedy any differences between cost and burden information provided on the website and in the related supporting statement documentation that underlies this information.
Open
OMB staff reported in July 2022 that because it publishes cost and burden information in Federal Register notices, PRA statements, and on RegInfo.gov, the public is able to identify discrepancies and bring them to OMB's attention. We continue to believe that the responsibility for identifying these discrepancies should belong to OMB and not the public.

Technology Business Management: OMB and GSA Need to Strengthen Efforts to Lead Federal Adoption

GAO-22-104393
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Office of Management and Budget The Director of OMB should direct the Federal CIO to work with GSA to establish an approach for assessing the maturity of agencies' TBM implementation. (Recommendation 3)
Open
When we confirm what actions OMB has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.

Cloud Security: Federal Authorization Program Usage Increasing, but Challenges Need to Be Fully Addressed

GAO-24-106591
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Office of Management and Budget The Director of OMB, in collaboration with the FedRAMP PMO, should issue guidance to agencies to ensure that they consistently track and report the costs of sponsoring a FedRAMP authorization of cloud services. (Recommendation 1)
Open
In October 2023, OMB published proposed guidance for public comment to modernize the FedRAMP program, as required by the FedRAMP Authorization Act (44 U.S.C. ? 3608-3616). The proposed guidance calls for the FedRAMP program management office and the FedRAMP board to seek feedback from industry on how to reduce the burden and cost of the FedRAMP authorization process for both federal agencies and cloud service providers. OMB requested that agencies report aggregated cloud security costs but did not ask agencies to separately track and report the specific costs for sponsoring the authorizations or provide them with guidance on how to track these costs. As a result, we recommended that OMB issue guidance to ensure agencies consistently track and report the costs of sponsoring a FedRAMP authorization. OMB did not comment on the recommendation. When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.

Social Security Numbers: OMB Actions Needed to Strengthen Federal Efforts to Limit Identity Theft Risks by Reducing Collection, Use, and Display

GAO-17-553
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Office of Management and Budget To improve the consistency and effectiveness of governmentwide efforts to reduce the unnecessary use of SSNs and thereby mitigate the risk of identity theft, the Director of OMB should establish performance measures to monitor agency progress in consistently and effectively implementing planned reduction efforts.
Open
As of March 2024, we have not received sufficient information to validate the agency's actions on this recommendation. Subsequent to the agency stating that is has taken action, we plan to verify whether implementation has occurred.

Federal Chief Information Security Officers: Opportunities Exist to Improve Roles and Address Challenges to Authority

GAO-16-686
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Office of Management and Budget To assist CISOs in carrying out their responsibilities, the Director of OMB should issue guidance for agencies' implementation of the FISMA 2014 requirements to ensure that (1) senior agency officials carry out information security responsibilities and (2) agency personnel are held accountable for complying with the agency-wide information security program. This guidance should clarify the role of the agency CISO with respect to these requirements, as well as implementing the other elements of an agency-wide information security program, taking into account the challenges identified in this report.
Open
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) partially concurred with this recommendation, but does not intend to directly issue guidance as recommended. As of October 2023, OMB has not provided sufficient evidence that it has implemented this recommendation. We will continue to monitor OMB's implementation of this recommendation.
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