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Open Recommendations

DOD Service Contracts: Actions Needed to Identify Efficiencies and Forecast Budget Needs
GAO-23-106123
Sep 07, 2023
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5 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of the Air Force The Secretary of the Air Force should revise its service acquisition policy to ensure major commands collectively prioritize service requirements valued between $10 million and under $100 million. (Recommendation 1)
Open
When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
Department of the Air Force The Secretary of the Air Force should revise its service acquisition policy to require an official who is responsible for the oversight of services, such as the Air Force's Senior Services Manager, to aggregate and review data on service requirements valued between $10 million and under $100 million to identify efficiencies. (Recommendation 2)
Open
When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
Department of the Army The Secretary of the Army should revise its service acquisition policy to require an official who is responsible for the oversight of services, such as the Army's Senior Services Manager, to aggregate and review data on service requirements valued at $10 million or more to identify efficiencies. (Recommendation 3)
Open
When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
Department of Defense The Secretary of Defense should require that the Under Secretary of Defense, Comptroller, in coordination with other relevant offices involved in the recently established services working group, to develop a charter that includes steps that ensure information requirements for the fiscal year 2026 and future budget submissions are communicated to the military departments in a timely manner. (Recommendation 4)
Open
When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
Department of Defense The Secretary of Defense should ensure that the Under Secretary of Defense, Comptroller, in coordination with other relevant offices involved in the recently established services working group, specifies the data sources and methodology for forecasting budget needs for service contracts across the Future-Years Defense Program to inform its fiscal year 2026 and future budget submission. (Recommendation 5)
Open
When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.

Tactical Aircraft Investments: DOD Needs Additional Portfolio Analysis to Inform Future Budget Decisions
GAO-23-106375
Dec 20, 2022
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2 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Defense The Secretary of Defense should conduct an integrated acquisition portfolio review of all piloted fixed-wing tactical aircraft platforms. This review should analyze key elements including, but not limited to, portfolio goals; potential overlap; potential tradeoffs; capability gaps; risk; and cost, schedule, and performance information on each platform within the portfolio. (Recommendation 1)
Open
DOD concurred with our recommendation. In response to this report, DOD stated that it intends to conduct an integrated acquisition portfolio review of piloted fixed-wing tactical aircraft programs, to be completed by the end of fiscal year 2024. In July 2023, a Senate Report Accompanying the Fiscal Year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act directed the Secretary of Defense to provide quarterly briefings to the congressional defense committees on the status of this review, beginning no later than January 31, 2024, until the review is completed and briefed to the committees. We will continue to monitor DOD's actions related to its integrated acquisition portfolio review for piloted fixed-wing tactical aircraft.
Department of Defense The Secretary of Defense should establish a requirement that ensures the congressional defense committees receive information underpinning DOD's integrated acquisition portfolio review of all piloted fixed-wing tactical aircraft platforms. (Recommendation 2)
Open
DOD partially concurred with our recommendation. In response to this report, DOD stated that the Department intends to conduct an integrated acquisition portfolio review of piloted fixed-wing tactical aircraft programs, but does not intend to establish a requirement to provide information from integrated acquisition portfolio reviews to Congress. DOD noted that the information derived from integrated acquisition portfolio reviews is used for internal, deliberative purposes, and that there are other existing methods by which the Department can provide congressional defense committees with information related to budget decisions for its piloted fixed-wing tactical aircraft platforms. In July 2023, a Senate Report Accompanying the Fiscal Year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act directed the Secretary of Defense to provide quarterly briefings to the congressional defense committees on the status of this review, beginning no later than January 31, 2024, until the review is completed and briefed to the committees. We will continue to monitor DOD's actions related to its integrated acquisition portfolio review for piloted fixed-wing tactical aircraft.

Federal Spending Transparency: Opportunities Exist for Treasury to Further Improve USAspending.gov's Use and Usefulness
GAO-22-104127
Dec 16, 2021
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of the Treasury The Secretary of the Treasury should develop and implement website promotion efforts that are clearly targeted toward the USAspending.gov user personas that it has previously identified. (Recommendation 1)
Open – Partially Addressed
Treasury officials stated that they have tied their USAspending.gov promotion efforts to specific features and initiatives that they have launched for the website. Treasury has taken some steps such as conducting outreach with collaborative partners to help inform its "Data Dives" feature and producing YouTube tutorials on topics of specific interest. However, as of April 2023, we have not received documentation supporting specific promotion and outreach efforts that clearly target the various USAspending.gov user personas previously identified by Treasury.
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 2023, this status is unchanged.

Federal Spending Transparency: Opportunities Exist to Further Improve the Information Available on USAspending.gov
GAO-22-104702
Nov 08, 2021
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5 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of the Treasury The Secretary of the Treasury should design and implement a process to periodically inform agencies about unlinked data to help agencies reconcile and resolve data linkage differences between transaction and submission data on USAspending.gov. (Recommendation 2)
Open
As of July 2022, Treasury is working on a process to address this recommendation, including sending a quarterly report to agencies on the status of their unlinked awards and updating the functionality of the USASpending.gov Agency Submission Statistics Page (ASSP) so that it will allow agencies to quickly download a list of all unlinked awards. Fully implementing these new procedures will be responsive to our recommendation. We will continue to monitor Treasury's progress toward implementing this recommendation.
Department of the Treasury The Secretary of the Treasury should ensure that identifiers and database keys (e.g., unique award key) used for financial assistance awards result in display outputs on USAspending.gov that are accurate and complete. (Recommendation 3)
Open
Treasury agreed with this recommendation. In June 2022, Treasury notified agencies that, given the design of the unique award key, changing the Awarding Sub Tier Agency Code during the life of a financial assistance award would result in transactions for the same award displayed as separate awards on USAspending.gov. Treasury specified that, in order for these financial assistance award transactions to be displayed together, agencies would need to ensure that all transactions under the award have the same Awarding Sub Tier Agency Code. However, to implement this recommendation, Treasury needs to ensure that when agencies accurately report information -- such as transactions for one award with different Awarding Sub Tier Agencies -- the unique award key design properly displays information on USAspending.gov. We will continue to monitor Treasury's efforts to implement this recommendation
Office of Management and Budget The Director of OMB, in collaboration with the Secretary of the Treasury, should ensure that their policies, guidance, and procedures related to DATA Act and USAspending.gov (e.g., maximum number of characters for award descriptions) are consistent with each other. (Recommendation 5)
Open
OMB concurs with this recommendation. In July 2022 OMB told us that work with Treasury is ongoing to ensure the display and technical standards for reporting information on USAspending.gov is consistent with FFATA and DATA Act statutory, regulatory, and policy guidance. We will continue to monitor OMB's progress toward implementing this recommendation.
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. We will continue to monitor OMB's progress towards implementing this recommendation.
Department of the Treasury The Secretary of the Treasury should disclose on USAspending.gov that changes in the data submission and reporting guidance and requirements over time may affect the completeness, consistency, and quality of specific data elements. (Recommendation 8)
Open
As of July 2022, Treasury officials told us that they plan to implement this recommendation in the coming months, as part of a new data limitation disclosure module. We will continue to monitor Treasury's efforts to implement this recommendation.
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