From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: Assessing Duplication in Federal Programs Description: Audio interview by GAO staff with Nikki Clowers, Director, Financial Markets and Community Investment Related GAO Work: GAO-15-49SP: Evaluating and Managing Fragmentation, Overlap, and Duplication and GAO-15-404SP: 2015 Annual Report: Additional Opportunities to Reduce Fragmentation, Overlap, and Duplication and Achieve Other Financial Benefits Released: April 2015 [ Background Music ] [ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. It’s April 2015. GAO is releasing its fifth annual look at duplication, overlap, and fragmentation across the federal government, as well as opportunities for cost savings and revenue enhancements. A team co-led by Nikki Clowers, a director in GAO's Financial Markets and Community Investments team, recently conducted this latest review. GAO's Jacques Arsenault sat down with Nikki to talk about what they found. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] This year's report, like the ones before it, identify several areas of duplication, overlap, or fragmentation among federal programs. Can you talk a little bit about the findings in this year's report and why they're important? [ Nikki Clowers: ] Like our previous reports, we found instances of fragmentation, overlap, and duplication across a range of government services. We have issues in this year's report that deal with defense, healthcare, transportation, and other sectors. I can give you an example of one area that we found this year. Specifically, we found duplication among DOD's health care system. In particular, DOD contracts with private sector companies to provide benefits to military beneficiaries across the country. However, in certain locations, another program, the U.S. Family Plan, provides the same benefits to these beneficiaries. And we found that this increases the administrative cost of the programs. So we make a recommendation to Congress to terminate the U.S. Family Health Plan, which would save the government millions of dollars each year. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] And your team also looks at several cost saving opportunities, opportunities to get some financial benefits for the government. What are the sorts of things that you found in this year's report? [ Nikki Clowers: ] Like our past reports, and like the issues of duplication, overlap, or fragmentation, we find opportunities for greater efficiency across the government spectrum of programs. And we identified 12 issues this year where we believe there could either be a savings through greater efficiencies or increased revenue collections. An example is the area of strategic petroleum reserve in that we found that the Department of Energy could examine the size of the reserve and determine if it's appropriately sized. If they make a decision based on that analysis, that they could reduce the size of the strategic petroleum reserve, they could sell off that oil and the proceeds could be used for other national priorities. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] GAO has been doing this work for 5 years now. Can you talk about some of the kinds of progress that you’ve found across the government? [ Nikki Clowers: ] We take a look at the progress each year, and this year we're reporting continued strides both on the Executive branch side as well as congressional action specifically looking at all of our actions that we've made to date or recommendations that we've made to date. We find that about 37 percent are fully addressed, and another 39 percent are partially addressed. Within those statistics there's good examples of achievements. For example, last year Congress took action on farm payments. We had found that direct payments to farmers were not based on income or production level, the history of production. And we made recommendations to Congress to look at this issue, and provided options for Congress to consider. They did that in the most recent farm bill, which resulted in a $5 billion savings. More recently, this past year, Congress took action in the area of employment and training. Previously we had reported over 40 programs provide employment and training services. Through legislation this past year, Congress took steps to consolidate some of those programs. Through the implementation of our suggested actions, we found that the government has saved $20 billion to date with another $80 billion coming in the near future in savings. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] One new thing that's in this year's report is a new framework guide to help policymakers and analysts look at the opportunities that are identified and address them. Can you talk about the guide and how it works? [ Nikki Clowers: ] There's two parts to the guide. The first part are for analysts, either congressional analysts or analysts in various agencies. And it takes them through a series of steps from looking -- first defining what is duplication, overlap, and fragmentation, to how you would evaluate or validate findings and how would you form recommendations based on those findings. And so really it's a tool for analysts to help if they were going to identify duplication, overlap, or fragmentations themselves within their own area of expertise or jurisdiction. The second part of the framework focuses on policymakers. And it's intended to help inform policymakers' decisions so that when analysts come to them with information about duplication or overlap or fragmentation, laying out a series of questions for them to consider in terms of addressing or better managing the issues that are raised. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] And, finally, for taxpayers and for policymakers, what would you say is the bottom line of this work? [ Nikki Clowers: ] There is significant savings that we have achieved working with the Executive branch agencies as well as Congress in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of government. We will continue to monitor these issues. We believe additional savings could be achieved in the range of tens of billions of dollars annually. [ 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.