From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov

Transcript for: U.S. Comptroller General Testifies to U.S. Senate on
GAO's 2019 Duplication Report 

Description: In his May 21, 2019, testimony to the U.S. Senate, U.S.
Comptroller General Gene Dodaro introduces GAO's 2019 Duplication and
Cost Savings Report.

Related GAO Works: GAO-19-536T: Government Efficiency and Effectiveness:
Opportunities to Reduce Fragmentation, Overlap, and Duplication and
Achieve Billions in Financial Benefits
and
GAO-19-285SP: 2019 Annual Report: Additional Opportunities to Reduce
Fragmentation, Overlap, and Duplication and Achieve Billions in
Financial Benefits

Released: March 2019


[First Screen]
2019 Opportunities to Reduce Fragmentation, Overlap & Duplication

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Opening Statement by U.S. Comptroller General
Gene L. Dodaro
May 21, 2019

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Senate Committeee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

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Subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight & Emergency Management

>> Thank you very much Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Senator Hassan,
Senators Enzi, Holly, and Senator Lankford. Nice to see everyone this
morning. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about GAO's latest report
on overlap, duplication, fragmentation and other ways to save and
realize cost savings and enhance revenues to the federal government. 

In our first eight reports, we made over 800 recommendations for
congressional and executive branch action. Fifty-four percent have been
implemented fully already, another 23 percent partially implemented. And
as Senator Hassan mentioned, there had been financial benefits realized
of $262 billion already that either have accrued or will accrue as a
result of implementation of the recommendations. Now very importantly,
most of those real dollar savings came from congressional action in
addition to some action on part of the executive branch but there are
additional 98 actions we're adding this year, recommendations in 28
different areas. There are still tens of billions of dollars in
potential savings that could accrue from congressional and executive
branch action. 

For example, in this past year in the Defense Department alone, there's
savings to be realized by looking at the functions and providing
human--resources over there as the chairman mentioned in his opening
statements. Document services could save millions of dollars there and
also in consolidating the administration of military health treatment
facilities, additional savings there in the offing. 

Also, defense could use better intergovernmental agreements where
they're working with state and local governments to provide services,
the installations rather than use of contractors. That's already saved
money; greater use of it could save more. 

Also right now in foreign military sales, the foreign purchasers of our
military equipment are not paying for the full cost, administrative cost
of arranging the sale and as a result the U.S. government's paying the
cost when we think that the cost should be borne by the purchaser,
foreign government, for arranging those sales. 

Now in the healthcare area, there's billions of dollars that could be
saved here by having greater oversight over Medicaid spending and also
in the Medicare area of looking at various payment policies including
preauthorization and place of service reimbursement that's different now
based upon where you receive the same potential service. 

There are savings also that could be accrued at the Department of
Homeland Security and FEMA. There could be greater use and better use of
advanced contracting to save money as well as post-contracting
activities that could take place. Also, the benchmark or litmus test of
the federal government getting involved in a disaster hasn't been
revisited since 1986. So for 33 years now we've been using the same
indicator. It hasn't even been indexed for inflation. And as a result,
we think the federal government may be paying more or getting involved
more when the state and local governments have the capacity to deal with
-- you know obviously these are not catastrophic disasters but ones that
occur on a more regular basis as well. 

There are also many opportunities to have more efficient and effective
government. The chairman mentioned the alignment of strategies to
provide foreign assistance. This could be done better. At DOD, there's
not enough coordination in reporting and dealing with adverse medical
events, particularly sentinel events that could lead to -- that have led
to unexpected deaths or very serious physical or mental problems over
there as well. And there are many other activities including the one the
chairman mentioned on better coordination of research activities in the
federal government. Clearly these research activities are important, but
there needs to be better coordination to be more effective. 

Now I was also asked to comment on what could be done to make it easier
to identify these duplicative services and overlapping areas. And we
point out on our report the failure of OMB to produce a comprehensive
inventory of federal programs. This was required by the Congress in 2010
in the Government Performance Management Modernization Act. It still has
not been done. So right now we don't have a comprehensive federal
inventory which makes it very difficult. We have to spend a lot of time
and energy to identify these areas. And then I have other areas we could
talk about more in the Q&A session. 

So thank you very much for the opportunity to talk about our work. And
we look forward to working with this committee and the Congress and the
executive branch moving forward to have more efficient and effective
government. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.