From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: 2013 Update to GAO's High Risk List Description: Audio interview by GAO staff with Chris Mihm, Managing Director, Strategic Issues Related GAO Work: GAO-13-283: HIGH-RISK SERIES: An Update Released: February 2013 [ Background Music ] [ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. It's February 2013. GAO's High Risk List focuses attention on the federal program areas that are most vulnerable to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement, or are in need of fundamental transformation. The list is updated every 2 years, and GAO released the latest update this week. Chris Mihm is GAO's Managing Director for Strategic Issues. He sat down with GAO's Jeremy Cluchey to talk about the 2013 update to the High Risk List. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] What is the goal of GAO's High Risk List? [ Chris Mihm: ] We began the High Risk List in 1990 when we saw a persistent set of management and program challenges across agencies that were really putting the government at great risk to the effectiveness of programs and to financial risk to the government and to the health and safety of the American people. We saw that these programs in operations really needed much greater attention on the behalf of Congress and the Executive Branch. What the high-risk program is designed to do is identify some of these major risk programs and then give them the visibility that they need both within the administration and with Congress, in order to address some of these very, very difficult challenges. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] And this year GAO is adding two new areas to the list. Can you talk about those new areas and why they're being added? [ Chris Mihm: ] Sure. The first of which is limiting the federal government's fiscal exposure to better manage climate change risks. We all are living through obviously climate change in which we have severe weather events. We've seen just most recently, of course, with Hurricane Sandy. This poses an enormous financial and other risk to the U.S. government on how we better manage these things, whether it be in terms of the financial costs associated with disaster assistance and relief, whether it be how we protect federal infrastructure, that is, the federal buildings and the federal footprint. Climate change is basically putting the U.S. government at great financial risk. This is how we manage those risks. The second area deals with mitigating the gaps in weather satellite data. And in essence, what's happening here is that problems and delays on environmental satellite acquisition both on the polar-orbiting and the geo-stationary satellites, problems with those acquisition programs is resulting in gaps in the continuity of official satellite data. For weather forecast and with warnings, we need to make sure in the high-risk issue is centered on making sure that there's proper mitigation strategies in place to address those gaps. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] I understand that two other high-risk issues that have previously been identified are being removed from the list this year--one being IRS's Business Systems Modernization as well as Interagency Contracting. Can you explain these issues and what led to the decision to take them off? [ Chris Mihm: ] Of course. And both of these are good stories. And there's been, you know, over the life of the high-risk program about a third or more of the issues that have been on the high risk eventually come off due to sustained attention on behalf of the Congress and the administration to putting in place and executing the corrective action programs that are needed. These are two real good examples of what happens when you have that top-level attention. First, in terms of a business systems modernization, this is a multibillion dollar, highly complex effort over Internal Revenue Service. It involves the development and delivery of a number of modernized tax administration and internal management systems. We put it on the High Risk List in 1995 because we identified a set of serious management weaknesses there. We're very pleased that we're able to remove it now from the high-risk program, because IRS has made just real significant progress in addressing these significant weaknesses in information technology and financial management. And that's led to--that actually led to the high-risk designation. The other one that's coming off the list went on in 2005, and that's the Management of Interagency Contracting. Since then, we've been able to see continued progress in addressing the previous deficiencies and putting in place a good set of management controls, which had been absent in the past, and most important, the creation of a policy framework for setting up a new way to interagency contracts. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] So a couple of new high-risk issues and then a number in which the scope has been narrowed, but there's still a larger number of high-risk issues that have been on the list for several cycles. What should people think about those areas that GAO's identified persistently as being in need of this attention? [ Chris Mihm: ] One of the things that we've done is we've published the criteria that it takes to get on the High Risk List and what it takes to get off the High Risk List. And we take that very seriously and going through and making judgments about what comes on as well as then making judgments about progress that's being made so that we can get these things off as soon as we can. There's been enormous progress that's been made over time on this. I mean, just over the last 2 years, for example, there's something like $57 billion in financial accomplishments that we've been able to identify to the collective actions of executive agencies in the Congress in addressing certain high-risk areas. And likewise, there's been over a thousand nonfinancial accomplishments and progress that's been made on this. So it really does show that when you get those action plans in place, when you get that concerted action, when you track and monitor follow-up, you can get progress in addressing some of these seemingly intractable issues. [Background Music] [ Narrator: ] To learn more, visit GAO.gov and be sure to tune in to the next episode of GAO's Watchdog Report for more from the congressional Watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office.