Washington, D.C. – Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today lauded the release of a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on areas of the federal government it deems at “high-risk” of waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement. 

High-Risk Series: An Update (GAO-07-310) identified 27 high-risk areas in 2007, compared to 25 areas in 2005 and 14 areas in 1990, the first year such reports were issued.  The GAO added three areas to the high-risk list:  financing of transportation, protection of national security technologies, and oversight of food safety.  Since 1990, 18 areas have been removed from the high-risk list.  The report identifies varying levels of progress across many areas, such as Medicaid and real property management, “although not yet enough progress to remove these areas from the list.”

“Democrats have promised better oversight of federal agencies than the previous Congress,” CAGW President Tom Schatz said.  “An early test of their sincerity is whether they pay attention to a comprehensive resource like the GAO report.”

Relating to traffic congestion, the report describes “the absence of a link between federal grant funding levels and specific performance-related goals and outcomes, resulting in little assurance that federal funding is being channeled to the nation’s most critical mobility needs.”  One reason for this poor outcome, not mentioned by GAO, could be congressional pork-barrel projects like the $223 million Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska.  NASA’s contract management has been high-risk since 1990 and the agency reports that more than 10 percent of its facilities are excess or underutilized. 

“Unfortunately, the programs taken off of GAO’s high-risk list are too often replaced by others.  The fact that Department of Defense programs dominate the list is especially alarming.  These management inadequacies require sustained attention from agency heads and Congress,” concluded Schatz.

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, mismanagement and abuse in government.