OMB’s deficient federal program inventory limits value for users, transparency: GAO

Terry Gerton GAO has a new report out, talking about the government’s inventory of federal programs. It has been impossible to evaluate government program performance because the government can’t actually inventory all of its programs. What makes it so hard to make a comprehensive list here?

Dawn Locke We don’t know what’s making this so difficult or what’s slowing down OMB. They have not responded to our questions, nor did they provide comments on our draft report. We really acknowledge that this is incredibly complex, especially given the size and scope of the government. We also know there are various challenges that make this effort more difficult that could potentially be slowing things down, including things like inconsistencies or limitations of resources. When it comes to the inconsistencies, I can share with you that this means things like having common definitions for programs. It’s difficult for OMB to collect information when they don’t have these common definitions. As a specific example of that, if someone working on the inventory wanted to find all STEM education-related programs, they have to know, for example, that some agencies define these programs by calling them mathematics and science partnerships. So it’s very difficult; inconsistencies are all over the board. When it comes to the limited resources that I discussed, they’re both people resources and financial resources. For many years, what we can tell, one woman at OMB was trying to tackle the inventory. I believe that she had a FEMA detail helping her for a few months, a while ago. We’ve also suggested that Treasury officials could be brought in to assist, given their expertise in this area, but we’re not sure where OMB is with this. And the one woman that was running it has since left OMB last year. And then just to add, when it comes to the financial resources, back in 2021, OMB said that they needed about $20.5 billion to set up the inventory. But you know what’s interesting about this, Terry, is that they never identified this resource in subsequent budget justifications, nor have they ever requested this money And so one of our recs from a prior report did include identifying the resources needed to fully implement the inventory so all decision-makers are on the same page and understand what it will take for OMB to get this done.

Terry Gerton Dawn, that is a really helpful background and I want to follow it up, because in addition to the resources and people that maybe aren’t available to make this happen, your report says that there are complete categories of programs that are missing. There’s nothing in here about foreign assistance; there’s nothing in here about defense, which is a huge portion of the federal budget. What does that gap mean for policymakers who rely on the inventory?

Dawn Locke It essentially means that they’re not getting the complete picture. The programs that are missing, and some of which that you mentioned — it’s about $4 trillion of federal spending still not included in this inventory. And as you and your listeners know, defense alone makes up almost half of discretionary spending, and there’s not a single defense program in this inventory. I will add, if all programs were included, policymakers, decision-makers would have better transparency into those programs and could really better identify any potential wasteful or even duplicative spending.

Terry Gerton Defense seems like it would be an easy one to add since they have their own programs defined in the POM. What explains why that one’s not included?

Dawn Locke You know, that is something that we don’t know. OMB has not shared that. And to credit OMB, defense is massive, but it’s now time for OMB to tackle these massive issues.

Terry Gerton One of the other issues that you identify are data quality problems, from inactive programs being listed to missing spending information for the programs that they do have. How does that missing information affect the utility of the website?

Dawn Locke Quite simply, Terry, if the data are not reliable, they’re not useful. I’ll give you a very interesting example: There’s a national railroad grant program. It shows obligated amounts that differ by more than $4 billion, depending on where you look on the inventory. In one chart, the program shows that its obligations are at about $6.8 billion, and on another chart, it shows the obligations to be at about $2.4 billion. How is this helpful to users? So without that reliable inventory, there’s really no transparency when it comes to how the government is spending our money.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Dawn Locke. She’s a director in GAO’s strategic issues team. Dawn, let’s follow that up because you spoke to 10 organizations who actually try to use the inventory. What sort of feedback did you hear from them?

Dawn Locke They are currently trying to use the inventory right now and their suggestions to us were the same that we were finding. The inventory needs to be complete. It needs to include the remaining programs, such as the ones you mentioned earlier — defense, foreign assistance, acquisition programs, regulatory programs. They also said they need to know how the programs are performing to identify opportunities for improvement. In addition, these user groups suggested it would be helpful to have, for example, geographic information to see where money is being spent, whether it’s by state or by congressional district. And they would also value more advanced navigation features, such as things like enhanced search capabilities and filtering functions to more easily search for the information. So Terry, they have these great ideas for the inventory, but OMB is not aware, or at least we’re not sure if they’re aware. And it really shouldn’t take a GAO report to audit them to make them aware. So OMB has to engage with their users.

Terry Gerton Dawn, this report does have a standard GAO line: “Much progress has been made.” OMB has updated the inventory. They have added programs to it. But much remains to be done, and you’ve made 17 recommendations to OMB. Walk us through the categories of those recommendations.

Dawn Locke Our recommendations really fall into two categories. One, helping OMB complete the inventory; 13 of our recommendations just deal with that. When it comes to the inventory not being complete, like I said, it is missing about $4 trillion dollars in spending. So they have to complete the programs, get them all in there, provide performance information, make sure that all the programs that are listed have spending data. And we also recommended that they archive prior years of the inventory, because they have not yet done that. The second category of our recommendations deal with ensuring the usefulness of the inventory. And by this, we looked at five key practices for helping ensure transparency and usefulness of government websites. And what we found is that OMB really needs to engage with its users, as I mentioned earlier. They fully have to do things like describe the data and define the data. And then they have to lay out the data quality issues for users. For instance, we found inactive programs listed and more than, I think more than 150 programs listed that didn’t have any spending data. So they need to really shore this up.

Terry Gerton You said that OMB has not responded to this report, and this administration OMB seems to have a bit of an adversarial relationship with GAO. In this case, do you think Congress might take up your recommendations? Are they showing interest in getting a complete inventory of federal programs?

Dawn Locke You know, we were really helpful. Although OMB is not collaborating currently as much as they did, we used to have monthly meetings with OMB and had a really great discourse about how to improve and implement this inventory. And even though they’re not collaborating as much right now, we are hopeful because of the bipartisan support of this inventory and the importance of this inventory. We’re hopeful that things will improve as we go forward.

Terry Gerton If OMB gets this right, what would a complete and reliable program inventory actually enable Congress to do?

Dawn Locke It would give Congress and agency leaders and the public — it would give us all a transparent view of where the federal dollar is being spent and whether those programs are achieving intended outcomes because it would include performance information. And then ultimately it would give all of us the ability to better identify any potential wasteful or duplicative spending.