[Senate Hearing 118-131]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                                                        S. Hrg. 118-131

                       EXAMINING THE FINDINGS AND
                RECOMMENDATIONS OF GAO'S 2023 REPORT ON
                 OPPORTUNITIES TO REDUCE FRAGMENTATION,
        OVERLAP, AND DUPLICATION AND ACHIEVE FINANCIAL BENEFITS

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                            SUBCOMMITTEE ON
                EMERGING THREATS AND SPENDING OVERSIGHT

                                 OF THE

                              COMMITTEE ON
               HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS


                             FIRST SESSION
                               __________

                             JUNE 14, 2023
                               __________

        Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov

                       Printed for the use of the
        Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
        
                  [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]        
        
                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
                    
52-787 PDF                 WASHINGTON : 2023          



        COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

                   GARY C. PETERS, Michigan, Chairman
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware           RAND PAUL, Kentucky
MAGGIE HASSAN, New Hampshire         RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
KYRSTEN SINEMA, Arizona              JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma
JACKY ROSEN, Nevada                  MITT ROMNEY, Utah
ALEX PADILLA, California             RICK SCOTT, Florida
JON OSSOFF, Georgia                  JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut      ROGER MARSHALL, Kansas

                   David M. Weinberg, Staff Director
                    Zachary I. Schram, Chief Counsel
           William E. Henderson III, Minority Staff Director
                     Laura W. Kilbride, Chief Clerk
                   Ashley A. Gonzalez, Hearing Clerk


        SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGING THREATS AND SPENDING OVERSIGHT

                 MAGGIE HASSAN, New Hampshire, Chairman
KYRSTEN SINEMA, Arizona              MITT ROMNEY, Utah
JACKY ROSEN, Nevada                  JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma
JON OSSOFF, Georgia                  RICK SCOTT, Florida

                    Jason M. Yanussi, Staff Director
                     Allison Tinsey, Senior Counsel
           Scott Maclean Richardson, Minority Staff Director
        Margaret E. Frankel, Minority Professional Staff Member
                      Kate Kielceski, Chief Clerk

                            C O N T E N T S

                                 ------                                
Opening statements:
                                                                   Page
    Senator Hassan...............................................     1
    Senator Romney...............................................     2
Prepared statements:
    Senator Hassan...............................................    19
    Senator Romney...............................................    20

                                WITNESS
                        Wednesday, June 14, 2023

Hon. Eugene L. Dodaro, Comptroller General of the United States, 
  U.S. Government Accountability Office
    Testimony....................................................     3
    Prepared statement...........................................    21

                                APPENDIX

GAO Staff Report.................................................    32
Response to Senator Romney's questions regarding penalties for 
  defrauding the government......................................   157
Report of open matters for congressional consideration, GAO-23-
  106837.........................................................   160

 
                       EXAMINING THE FINDINGS AND
                  RECOMMENDATIONS OF GAO'S 2023 REPORT
                       ON OPPORTUNITIES TO REDUCE
 FRAGMENTATION, OVERLAP, AND DUPLICATION AND ACHIEVE FINANCIAL BENEFITS

                              ----------                              


                        WEDNESDAY, JUNE 14, 2023

                                     U.S. Senate,  
                       Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and
                                        Spending Oversight,
                    of the Committee on Homeland Security  
                                  and Governmental Affairs,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:30 p.m., in 
room SD-562, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Maggie 
Hassan, Chairwoman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
    Present: Senators Hassan [presiding], Sinema, Romney, and 
Scott.

             OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HASSAN\1\

    Senator Hassan. Good afternoon.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Senator Hassan appears in the 
Appendix on page 19.
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    Today the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Spending 
Oversight (ETSO) continues its longstanding work to save 
taxpayer dollars and improve government services for the 
American people.
    Our hearing this afternoon focuses on the Government 
Accountability Office's (GAO) annual report on duplication, 
fragmentation, and overlap in Federal programs. We are joined 
by Comptroller General Gene Dodaro and several GAO subject 
matter experts who contributed to this year's report. Their 
testimony will provide the Subcommittee with a better 
understanding of the challenges described in the report\2\ and 
GAO's recommendations to address these challenges.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\ The GAO Staff Report appears in the Appendix on page 32.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Since 2011, legislative and executive action to address 
recommendations made in GAO's annual report have led to roughly 
$600 billion in cost savings and other financial benefits, 
including nearly $70 billion in the past year alone. This 
includes $2.5 billion taxpayer dollars saved as a result of 
this Subcommittee's work to address issues identified in 
previous duplication reports.
    I remain firmly committed to ensuring that Congress does 
its part to eliminate duplication, overlap, and fragmentation 
to achieve cost savings and improve program outcomes. That is 
why I have led bipartisan efforts to respond to GAO's 
recommendations for congressional action for the past 4 years, 
and I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues to 
pass these common-sense proposals.
    Thank you, Mr. Dodaro and your team, for testifying today. 
I look forward to today's discussion on how Congress and 
Federal agencies can work to be better stewards of taxpayer 
dollars.
    With that I will recognize Ranking Member Romney for his 
opening remarks.

             OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR ROMNEY\1\

    Senator Romney. Thank you very much, Chair. I appreciate 
your leadership of this Subcommittee and I appreciate the 
chance to speak with you, Mr. Dodaro.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Senator Romney appears in the 
Appendix on page 20.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    I want to thank you and GAO for the extensive work that you 
do in, if you will, accounting for what is happening in our 
government, those things that are measured, or those things you 
can control. If they are not measured, you cannot control them, 
and I appreciate the work that you are doing, particularly that 
which identifies waste and duplication in government, of which 
there is plenty.
    This annual duplication report, I understand, was first 
created as part of a debt ceiling deal. It has become essential 
reading, and I appreciate what you have uncovered and the 
improvements you have brought to government already.
    I think like many that serve with me, we are discouraged by 
the high levels of waste, fraud, and abuse that were associated 
with our Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) relief efforts. I 
understand, by some reports in the media, as much as $400 
billion may have been wasted. I hope that is not accurate, but 
it is obviously of great concern.
    Back in March, I led a letter with some 30 of my colleagues 
to President Biden, requesting more information on this 
extraordinary waste of taxpayer funds.
    I am also interested in discussing how the government could 
be fumbling taxpayer money in other ways, like through Federal 
work-at-home policies, and wonder to what extent we are less 
effective, less efficient by virtue of allowing those to 
continue. I am also curious about the duplicative lines of 
effort that go on in government, particularly as they relate to 
one area in particular, disaster prevention and mitigation. I 
have worked with a number of folks to help put in place a 
Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission. We have 
seen great success from that group so far, and hopefully we 
will be able to do a better job in fighting wildfires in the 
American West, and apparently in eastern Canada as well.
    We obviously rely on you to help us spend our money more 
wisely. I look forward to hearing your report today, and thank 
you and your entire team for the dedicated service you provide 
for our country.
    Senator Hassan. Thank you, Ranking Member Romney.
    It is the practice of the Homeland Security and 
Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) to swear in witnesses, 
so if you will please stand and raise your right hands.
    Do you swear that the testimony you give before this 
Subcommittee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing 
but the truth, so help you, God?
    [Chorus of I dos.]
    Thank you all. Please be seated.
    The Subcommittee is pleased to welcome back Comptroller 
General Gene Dodaro. Mr. Dodaro's career at GAO began more than 
45 years ago, and he has spent the last 12 years leading this 
agency. In this position, he oversees GAO's important work that 
leads to hundreds of reports, testimonies, and recommendations 
issued each year. Mr. Dodaro is widely considered one of the 
foremost experts on government administration, efficiency, and 
effectiveness, and he is assisted today by Cathleen Berrick, 
Tim DiNapoli, Charles Johnson, Jessica Lucas-Judy, and Marisol 
Cruz Cain.
    Welcome to you all and thank you all for your work.
    I am going to start with a series of questions and then 
turn it over to the Ranking Member, and if and when others join 
us we will recognize them for their questions too.
    Oh, you are right. You need to give your opening statement 
before I ask questions.
    Senator Romney. What a way to move the hearing.
    Senator Hassan. Thank God for the people on my right here.
    Mr. Dodaro, you are recognized for your opening statement.

TESTIMONY OF HON. EUGENE DODARO,\1\ COMPTROLLER GENERAL OF THE 
      UNITED STATES, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE

    Mr. Dodaro. Thank you very much, Chair Hassan, Senator 
Romney. Good to see both of you today.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Dodaro appears in the Appendix on 
page 21.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    I first want to say how appreciative we are at the GAO for 
this Subcommittee's continued interest in our work. It is very 
important. What we have seen is that persistence over time will 
pay off and that a number of these recommendations have been 
implemented.
    I have been very pleased, with the impact of this work. We 
have made over 1,800 recommendations, and 73 percent have been 
fully or partially implemented. It has resulted in financial 
benefits of, as you noted in your opening statement, about $600 
billion so far.
    When we started this work with Senator Coburn years ago, he 
predicted $300 billion. He would not be surprised, though, at 
where we are right now. There is much more to do, though, and 
tens of billions of additional dollars that could be saved.
    In this year's report we recommend 100 new actions. For 
example, there are over 130 programs administered by 15 
different agencies for expanding broadband throughout the 
country. These are worthwhile efforts, but they could be better 
coordinated. We have recommended a national strategy, where you 
could actually better measure, whether there is good 
coordination.
    Senator Romney, you mentioned disaster assistance. This 
year we outlined 30 different Federal departments and agencies 
that are involved in disaster recovery and response, and this 
has been developed incrementally over a 40-year period of time. 
With the advent of more frequent and severe events, the Federal 
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is stretched very thin. 
There needs to be a comprehensive look again at better ways to 
be able to deal with people who are affected by disasters. We 
have recommended that FEMA take a fresh look at this issue.
    We have also made recommendations, in an area about 
providing support to Tribes and their members. There are 22 
programs that try to provide economic development and 
assistance, at 7 different agencies. There is supposed to be an 
Office of Native American Business Development in Commerce, but 
it has not had a director and it has not been staffed since 
2011. As a result, you do not really have good leadership and 
coordination in that area.
    There is also the First Responder Network Authority that 
was set up to put in place an interoperable system for police 
and firefighters and all our first responders. They have made 
some good progress in that area, but the authority needs to be 
reauthorized in order to make sure that this network continues 
and that they can collect billions of dollars in revenue to 
support the operation, maintenance, and improvement of this 
network going forward. Otherwise the investment that has been 
made so far will be for naught. We recommend that Congress 
reauthorize this authority.
    We also recommended that The Office of Personnel Management 
(OPM) do a better job identifying and removing ineligible 
family members in the Federal Employee Health Benefit (FEHB) 
Program, which is the largest employer-sponsored health care 
program in the country. They estimate that there is anywhere 
from $360 million to almost $1 billion in improper payments 
because they have not done this effort.
    Senator Romney, you are right. The government has a payment 
problem. It has a fraud problem. I would be happy to talk more 
about that in the questions and answers (Q&A).
    We also made recommendations in a number of areas in the 
Department of Defense (DOD), including artificial intelligence 
(AI) strategies; how to dispose of unneeded military equipment; 
how to purchase commercial satellite imagery and analysis; and 
how to do predictive maintenance to lower the maintenance costs 
at DOD. DOD could do a much better job in managing 
fragmentation, overlap, and duplication throughout the 
department.
    Also there are a number of open recommendations we still 
have from prior work. One I would mention in particular that 
the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has already scored as 
saving over $140 billion over a 10-year period of time is 
Medicare's payments by place of service. We have recommended 
that Congress equalize the Medicare payment rates for 
evaluation and management and other services between doctor's 
offices and hospital outpatient departments. Right now, we pay 
more for the affiliation with the hospital. If we equalize 
these payments, it would save beneficiaries money, too, on co-
pays. This is a win for the government and beneficiaries. I am 
very concerned, and I know both of you are, with the fact that 
the Medicare Hospital Trust Fund is close to being depleted. We 
have to look for ways to save money, and we have other 
suggestions as well.
    Again, thank you for the opportunity to be here today, and 
I am happy to respond to questions.
    Senator Hassan. Thank you very much, and I will note that I 
think it is Senator Braun and I have a bill in onsite 
neutrality on this very issue of the location of where you get 
a certain service determining how much you pay for it as 
opposed to what the service is, so I would look forward to 
continuing to get more feedback from all of you.
    Let me start with this question. Many of the programs 
identified in this year's report have problems with 
fragmentation rather than overlap or duplication. Fragmentation 
occurs when more than one agency is involved in the same broad 
area, and these fail to adequately coordinate with each other, 
leading to inefficiencies and ineffectiveness.
    One example highlighted in this year's report is the 
Federal Government's fragmented approach to providing 
cybersecurity resources to K-12 schools. Could you describe the 
consequences of fragmentation or a lack of coordination for K-
12 schools that need access to cybersecurity resources?
    Mr. Dodaro. They basically have told us they need training 
and incident response support when something happens--such as--
ransomware attack. There are different agencies involved, but 
it is basically Education and the Department of Homeland 
Security (DHS), which has their Cybersecurity and 
Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Bottom line, there is 
not enough coordination going on.
    According to the National Incident Response Plan, agencies 
that are dealing with different sectors--there are 16 different 
sectors in our economy--Education is responsible for the 
education sector, and they are supposed to have a coordinating 
council and they do not. We recommended they have a 
coordinating council so they can understand more what the needs 
are in the K-12 area, and they can then provide better support 
to the schools.
    Senator Hassan. Thank you, because fragmentation is such a 
major problem across programs highlighted in this year's 
report. What is your general advice? What can agencies do to 
proactively coordinate and collaborate to avoid fragmentation?
    Mr. Dodaro. They have to formalize their procedures. In a 
lot of cases, this is basically an anecdotal kind of 
experience, where the individual departments and agencies have 
individuals within the department who coordinate with one 
another. If they change positions or retire, the coordination 
is lost because it is not institutionalized. We have many 
recommendations to the Congress to require agencies to put in 
place an interagency coordination council. It is very rare 
these days that there is a problem that does not need 
coordination across the Federal Government, and it has become 
increasingly so. Many of the areas we have added to our High 
Risk List are where there is lack of coordination across the 
government.
    I would like to get the lack of coordination among agencies 
solved. In the meantime, it is like the GAO Full Employment 
Act, but it is a problem, and there is not a good institutional 
commitment. Without that, you have episodic success, but mostly 
unsuccessful efforts.
    Senator Hassan. Senator Romney's point, maybe measuring the 
effort and measuring the degree to which these efforts are 
institutionalized and prioritized would be a step forward 
there, because I agree with you. People say you should 
coordinate, but unless people really make an effort and 
formalize it, it may not get done.
    Mr. Dodaro. Yes. We have developed a set of criteria of 
eight factors that ensure successful collaboration including: 
clear roles and responsibilities, what kind of resources are 
needed, how do you measure outcomes, and how do you deal with 
conflict in the issues.
    We evaluate against those criteria. But if Congress could 
also legislate that these coordinating bodies meet these 
collaboration criteria, which we have seen produce success. You 
will see a lot of examples in this year's report where they 
meet one of the eight criteria. Even if there is a coordinating 
body, it may not be effective.
    We know how to produce success. It is a matter of people 
following the right practices and principles.
    Senator Hassan. Good. Thank you.
    I want to turn to the issue that Senator Romney raised, 
which is Federal disaster relief. Federal disaster relief 
programs span across more than 30 agencies, as you noted. GAO 
found that this fragmented and overlapping approach to disaster 
recovery diminishes service delivery to disaster survivors and 
communities, exposes agencies to waste, fraud, and abuse of 
taxpayer dollars, and reduces the effectiveness of the recovery 
efforts.
    GAO recommends that Congress set up an independent 
commission to address these disaster recovery challenges. What 
benefit could an independent commission provide compared to 
effort to simply require agencies to better coordinate?
    Mr. Dodaro. In this case I think there needs to be a 
thorough reevaluation of the situation. As I mentioned in my 
opening comments, you are having more frequent, more intense 
events. They are becoming broader than just floods--there are--
wildfires, earthquakes, tsunamis, et cetera. The circumstances 
for disasters, the panoply of potential disasters has 
broadened.
    Second, we consistently raise issues with FEMA staffing. 
FEMA, right now, is still monitoring close to 500 different 
disasters that have occurred since 2004. While we have become 
much better, as a government, in the initial response, we are 
not very good on the recovery process. It drags on for years 
and years.
    The agencies all have unique statutory authorities and 
regulations, and some of that cannot be changed without 
statutory changes in the Congress. There are 32 different 
congressional committees that have responsibility for oversight 
of these agencies. So you need someone who is independent in 
the commission.
    Now what we did is we got a group of experts together, and 
they came up with 11 different policy options that Congress 
could consider. The White House is looking at those policy 
options now and trying to figure out what to do. The Office of 
Management and Budget (OMB) is trying to look at it from a 
consumer standpoint, or somebody who is a disaster victim, and 
how difficult it is to deal with all these different agencies 
and understand even what is available. The process is difficult 
for applicants. You have to apply to different agencies. They 
are trying to simplify it into one application form. I know 
there is some legislation introduced in the Senate to require a 
uniform disaster application form. I think that would move this 
issue in the right direction, but I think this is a broader 
issue. The agencies themselves have vested interests in the 
status quo. We have lots of experts in the country that could 
give this a good, thorough reexamination, which I believe is 
needed.
    Senator Hassan. Great. Thank you.
    I will recognize Senator Romney for his questions.
    Senator Romney. Thank you. I thought that I had an eye-
popping statistic when some years ago I noted that there were 
some 49 different Federal job training programs and thought the 
duplication was outrageous. But you have blown that away with, 
what did you say, about 140 different broadband expansion 
programs. I am trying to understand why that happens.
    I presume part of it is that all of us who want to get 
elected, and that is the people up here, want to show that we 
are doing something about something our voters care about, so 
we fashion a bill, we get it passed, we do not really spend a 
lot of time asking whether there is already something that 
deals with that. We get that passed, and the Executive Branch 
dutifully sets up an agency or department or whatever to take 
it on, and there is never a cleaning up. I do not know what 
potential there is for actually cleaning it up. These 140 out 
there, whatever the number was--was it 140?
    Mr. Dodaro. It was over 130 programs.
    Senator Romney. Over 130.
    Mr. Dodaro. It is close to 140.
    Senator Romney. What is the process? Because to say that 
Congress should deal with it, the challenge we have, of course, 
is that we do not have a person in charge of Congress. But the 
White House has a President, and then a chief of staff, and so 
forth, so they are more like a corporation that can carry out 
action. Congress is, just in the Senate side, 100 people all 
pulling in different directions, or in the same direction but 
all pulling.
    How do we actually consolidate and eliminate and put 
together efforts so that it is easier for us to be able to 
address the issue that we are talking about without having tons 
of people and departments and wheels spinning and money being 
wasted? How do you get from here to there? When has that 
worked? When have we been able to consolidate?
    Mr. Dodaro. This happened in the science, technology, 
engineering, and math (STEM) area. They had over 160 programs 
in that area. We were able to work with Congress to reduce it 
by having the White House and others develop a strategy to look 
at the programs and make proposals to the Congress. We are 
suggesting, in the broadband area, that the Administration come 
up with a national strategy. I mean, what is the plan here? 
There are a number of these programs to build infrastructure; a 
number of them to provide devices to people; and another one to 
help people afford broadband services. None of them are really 
coordinated over a period of time. Some of them have different 
minimum eligible broadband speeds.
    This is an issue that is not going to be static, that if we 
do it one time you are going to have it all fixed. About 13 
percent of the population right now, about 42 million people, 
do not have any broadband access, and everybody is always 
trying to chase that. Then there is the question of once you 
have 4G, now you need 5G, and that is going to continue in that 
path.
    We need a strategy to say, What are our goals? How are we 
going to measure them? You do not really have that now at the 
national level. We are committing $65 billion in the 
Infrastructure Investment Act, on top of about $44 billion that 
has already been spent. If you date back to the Recovery Act 
days in 2009, we were spending money then on broadband 
authority as well.
    It is going to be an endless Federal investment, and who 
would make an investment long term, over time, without a 
strategy and a way to check the strategy? That is what we are 
calling for in this case, and I think Congress can require the 
Administration to do it. The Administration balked at our 
recommendation. They are still mulling it over. They did not 
agree or disagree to do it. But I think Congress can require 
them to do it, and then you can have a debate on the plan right 
now, rather than all these individual programs going forward.
    Senator Romney. It sounds like it is something that has to 
be executed by the Executive Branch. If they are not moving on 
that front you are looking to Congress to insist that they do 
move on that front.
    Mr. Dodaro. Absolutely.
    Senator Romney. I must admit, I am a little frustrated 
sometimes. We will call for the Administration to do something, 
on the Executive Branch to do something, and we ask them to do 
so much stuff that it does not happen. This might be a big 
enough topic, particularly with $60 billion in the 
Infrastructure Bill that might motivate an effort to really 
make sure that develop a strategy.
    Mr. Dodaro. Absolutely. I think they are on the precipice 
of potentially agreeing, but it is not an easy thing to do. 
There are also potentially some statutory limitations to 
coordinating the programs. You need somebody to be able to 
advise and say, here is our strategy, here is what we need to 
implement it, but we need some legislative changes in order to 
make it more efficient and effective to be able to coordinate 
over time.
    I think it is a big enough investment, and it is not going 
to go away. If this was a one-time thing I would say, the money 
is gone, and you are going to get what you are going to get. 
But in this case I do not think this is the last investment we 
are going to make in this area.
    Senator Romney. The vulnerability of our various 
governmental systems for fraud is substantial, obviously, but 
my impression is that relative to the private sector, the fraud 
that is perpetrated against the government is much greater. I 
do not know why that is, precisely, but my expectation is it is 
going to get a lot worse with AI, that the capacity of bad 
actors to hack into our systems will be greater.
    I certainly do not want to reveal private information, but 
I was approached by a colleague, not a government colleague, 
whose Social Security number (SSN) was stolen, address and name 
was taken, and this person who stole that information filled 
out a two-page tax form, sent it in, and received almost $1 
million in a tax refund, totally fraudulent. That is almost 
never going to happen in the private sector. American Express 
is not going to send you a million dollars.
    I do not understand how this can go on and how bad our 
systems are, and given the advent of AI is it going to get a 
lot worse, and do we need to dramatically up our game to 
prevent fraud?
    Mr. Dodaro. Absolutely. The fraud that occurred during the 
pandemic programs was epic in my experience. In 2 weeks, I will 
have been at GAO 50 years. I have never seen it as bad. Now, we 
have thrown a lot of money at the issue, but we harmed 
ourselves by allowing self-certification in the beginning, in 
the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), COVID-19 Economic Injury 
Disaster Loan (EIDL) program, and unemployment insurance 
program. I think it was well-intended, we were trying to get 
the money out, but in these types of emergencies, the best in 
human nature comes out and the worst in human nature comes out.
    In this case you had organized fraud. It was not just 
national. It was international. We have estimated that at a 
minimum the unemployment insurance fraud is $60 billion. We are 
developing the higher end estimate now. Then we are going to 
make a governmentwide estimate by the end of the year on fraud 
across the Federal Government.
    We worked with the Congress back in 2015 and 2016 to pass 
the Fraud Reduction and Data Analytics Act, which has best 
practices for preventing fraud. Too many people in the Federal 
Government, program managers, think it is the responsibilities 
of the inspectors general (IGs) or GAO to combat fraud. It is 
their responsibility to prevent it in the first place, and they 
need more guidance and assistance to do this. If that act had 
been implemented properly, the Small Business Administration 
(SBA) and the Department of Labor (DOL) would have been much 
better prepared to deal with the fraud issues during the 
pandemic.
    That is still on the to-do list--that is, to get the 
agencies to be better prepared on fraud. We need better 
identity verification approaches, more careful approaches. We 
need better data sharing. Now part of the problem in the 
government is that there is a tension between sharing of 
information to catch the fraudsters and the protection of 
privacy on a number of people, on a number of programs, and not 
wanting to share the information under the guise of privacy. 
There are legitimate privacy issues, but they could be dealt 
with.
    On the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) identity theft fraud 
we suggested to the Congress years ago that they expedite the 
W-2 data coming from employers. Previously employers had to 
give it to the employees by January, and then they did not have 
to give it to the government until February or March. The 
government did not have the form to compare against the 
submission of the information in the tax return. We got 
Congress to change that. That has helped a lot, but there are 
still some gaps in that area, and we have some open 
recommendations.
    Senator Romney. Thank you.
    Senator Hassan. Thank you, Senator Romney, and I want to 
follow up on the line of questioning that Senator Romney and 
you were talking about which is how we prevent fraud in Federal 
programs. But I want to drill down a little bit when we are 
talking about fraud in relief programs in particular. As we 
were just talking about the COVID-19 relief packages and the 
fraud there, what are your recommendations? We know it is 
important to prevent fraud. There are lessons learned here. But 
we also, at a time like COVID, need to balance preventing fraud 
and being vigilant, but we also need to be able to deliver aid 
quickly during emergencies.
    How do we strike that balance? Your recommendations call 
for improving transparency in data sharing and oversight, but I 
would like you to give us a little bit more of a feel of how we 
can accomplish these two things together.
    Mr. Dodaro. Absolutely, and they are not mutually 
exclusive.
    Senator Hassan. Right.
    Mr. Dodaro. I think you can have a much better balance than 
what we had before, in these COVID-19 areas.
    No. 1 is you need to get the regular payment process right. 
Right now, the latest governmentwide improper payment estimate, 
adding up all the agency estimates, was about over $247 billion 
in 2021. Now this has been a problem well before the pandemic. 
Between 2003 and up to the most recent time, there has been 
over $2.4 trillion in estimated improper payments made by the 
Federal Government in regular program activities. You have to 
fix the underlying payment problem that the Federal Government 
has in the first place, before we add additional money, as we 
did during the pandemic.
    Second, you have to have the agencies implement these best 
practices for fraud prevention. They were supposed to designate 
an entity full-time to focus on this. The SBA did not do it 
until after all the money was distributed. It was supposed to 
be done in 2016-2017, and it was not done until 2022. Labor 
still has not done it to our satisfaction. There needs to be 
more attention to hold the agencies accountable for 
implementing these best practices, doing risk assessments, and 
making sure they can come up with the different suggestions.
    Now we have a special report coming out to deal exactly 
with the issue that you talked about, which is how to build 
internal controls in before the emergency programs come up and 
how you can balance that so you do not sacrifice speed in 
getting the information out. That will be out next month.
    I have also recommended that the Congress require OMB to 
require the agencies to have an internal control plan in place 
for emergency spending before emergencies happen. We know what 
the problems are, and I have been trying to do this for years, 
and the agencies have balked, and OMB said, our normal controls 
are satisfactory. Well, no, they are not, and that has been 
proven time and again and was proven very vividly during the 
COVID pandemic. It happens in almost every disaster that we 
have, so you need to have that in place.
    Third, every new program over $100 million, in my opinion--
and I have recommended this to the Congress--ought to be 
designated susceptible to significant improper payments. Right 
now, under the guidance, you do not have to make an estimate, 
if you are an agency with a new program, of what improper 
payments might be until 2 or 3 years after the program has 
started. That is way too late. With some of the emergency 
spending, the program is over before you make your estimate. By 
designating programs over $100 million susceptible to 
significant improper payments you will get this estimate much 
sooner.
    The last suggestion I had is during the Recovery Act days, 
in the American Recovery and Rescue Act (ARRA), Congress 
created a Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board (RATB) 
of the Inspectors General. Congress gave it about $80 million, 
and they were able to help prevent fraud in the agencies. They 
would identify where contracts were considered to be let or had 
just been let to somebody who should not have been on the list 
or had some other kind of problem or looked like a fake 
address, and that was very successful. It was extended when we 
had Superstorm Sandy, but it expired in 2015.
    Now Treasury had the ability to pick up that 
responsibility. They demurred. I encouraged them to do it. They 
said, ``No, we do not get into that business.'' Then I went to 
Congress, and I said you ought to make this analytics center of 
excellence a permanent feature of the inspector general 
community to deal with this improper payment problem, and then 
it is already there when emergencies develop. But no action was 
taken.
    Then the CARES Act comes out in 2020, authorizing trillions 
of dollars. That IG function was not resurrected even then. It 
was not until the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARP), but 
after that the government already spent trillions of dollars 
that Congress authorized the Pandemic Response Accountability 
Committee. It then took some time to get the Pandemic Response 
Accountability Committee up and running again before it was 
effective.
    Because a lot of the fraudsters go across government, the 
IGs need to coordinate. They can share information and pool 
their resources. Some of the smaller IGs do not have the 
capacity for this type of work. The IG community is supportive 
of establishing a permanent analytics center and I have 
recommended it to Congress. It would be a minor investment of a 
few million dollars a year, but it would pay huge dividends.
    Senator Hassan. Got it. OK. Thank you. I look forward to 
working on a lot of those suggestions with you.
    I want to ask one more question and then I will turn it 
back to Senator Romney. The American people expect agencies to 
use taxpayer dollars responsibly, but GAO identified an area 
where agencies are failing to use goods they already have, 
called excess property, and they are purchasing new goods 
instead. These include goods that agencies use every day, from 
printer ink and desk chairs to large research equipment and 
heavy machinery.
    What can agencies do to make sure that they are considering 
available property before buying new items?
    Mr. Dodaro. The General Services Administration (GSA) needs 
to ensure there is better guidance. We looked at five different 
agencies, and for a lot of them it was not clear in their 
policies they were required to look to excess property first 
before making a purchase, how to evaluate the pros and cons of 
doing that, and then having some transparency over that 
process.
    We made recommendations to each of the five agencies to 
strengthen their guidance to make sure that they check on this 
beforehand. There are tens of billions of dollars available in 
excess property. Some of it is not in the greatest shape, or 
might not match their needs, but I think about 12 percent of 
what we looked at was actually used by the agencies to then not 
have to make those purchases. GSA needs to clarify their 
guidance across the Federal Government and work with the 
agencies to make them aware of the excess property and how to 
be able to access it.
    Senator Hassan. Thank you. Senator Romney.
    Senator Romney. Thank you. Are penalties too small for 
defrauding the government? I must admit, when I heard some of 
the stories on the PPP program and the entities, law firms, and 
others that were taking this money--and I understand if you 
might have thought that your business was going to be affected, 
but if it is not affected, and it was not affected, you ought 
to return the money. If you do not, it did not seem like the 
penalties were substantial. I wonder, should we substantially 
increase the penalties for defrauding the government of the 
United States such that people really think twice about doing 
what so many did?
    Now I recognize a lot of it is organized crime. They do not 
care what the penalties are because they are hard to find and 
hard to convict, and particularly if they are outside the 
country. But are we not showing tough enough penalty?
    Mr. Dodaro. The people who are being convicted are getting 
substantial jail time. I will provide the details for the 
record.\1\ But I would like to think about the penalty issue 
and come back to you with a more thoughtful answer than I can 
give you off the top of my head.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The response to Senator Romney's questions regarding penalties 
for defrauding the government appears in the Appendix on page 157.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The one thing I would suggest is, in the PPP program, 
Congress extended the statute of limitations to 10 years from 5 
years. The Administration and the inspectors general have 
recommended that the same thing be done for Labor Department 
and the Unemployment Insurance Program. I would encourage 
Congress to extend the statute of limitations for those 
programs.
    I will look at the penalties issue and see if we have any 
recommendations in that area. The one thing is, you are not 
going to get a lot of this money back, but you can enforce the 
law and make people pay the penalties for defrauding the 
government. Unless you do that, you are exactly right. If the 
consequences are not there and it is easy, we have a recipe for 
problems.
    Senator Romney. Yes, too easy. Going back to AI for a 
moment, and is this something that you would do, do we need to 
upgrade our capacity to defend against fraud in a much more 
substantial way as a result of the advent of AI, and are you 
recommending that? Are you talking to various agencies, saying, 
``OK, look? You guys have to dramatically increase the kind of 
protective measures that are employed or the consequences could 
be quite substantial?''
    Mr. Dodaro. We definitely need to upgrade as a government 
in order to prepare for artificial intelligence, and ultimately 
quantum computing as well. We have not done as much on this as 
your question implies. We have come up with a framework for how 
to audit artificial intelligence algorithms to make sure that 
they are done properly.
    We will take more of a look at that issue, Senator, going 
forward. We are looking at a lot of artificial intelligence, 
for example, in the Defense Department. We have not looked at 
it specifically is as it relates to the fraud area, but we 
should.
    Senator Romney. Yes. One concern of substance is the fact 
that you come out with recommendations every year that you lay 
out things that you think we ought to do to become more 
effective. Many of those things are implemented, but many are 
not. How do we prioritize your recommendations, and do you do 
that, and do you publicize that, meaning do you have a Top Ten 
List--all right, Congress, these are the top ten things, or 
President Biden, these are the top ten things you really ought 
to focus on?
    I appreciate the report, but I think it has to be far more 
in the public mind than it is. We tend to respond to what the 
public is talking about and concerned about, and what is on the 
news, whether it is cable or broadcast, or social media. Do you 
need to increase your publicity capacity to get the message out 
there and to create the fire that is needed to actually improve 
some of the challenges we have and fulfill the recommendations 
that you make?
    Mr. Dodaro. Every year I send a letter to the head of each 
major department and agency in the Federal Government, saying 
how many open recommendations still exist for your department 
and here is our priority list at GAO of the top priorities. In 
some agencies it is 5 priority recommendations, for another may 
be 12. DOD has almost 90, but they are a big agency. That 
information is made public and it is on our website. We send it 
to all the congressional committees.
    We are also working on one report that details all our open 
recommendations for the Congress.
    Each year we track how many recommendations have been 
implemented by the Executive Branch and how many by the 
Congress. Executive Branch is ahead----
    Senator Romney. I am not surprised.
    Mr. Dodaro [continuing]. In the game. But the big money 
comes from Congress' actions.
    Senator Romney. Wow.
    Mr. Dodaro. We will submit that report to your office.\1\ 
Also, we have an appendix in this report that we are talking 
about today that lists all the open matters for Congress 
including those that have over $1 billion in potential savings. 
We prioritize by that avenue as well. Senator Lankford asked me 
this question years ago. So I call it the Lankford Appendix. 
But it is in there every year.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The report on open matters for congressional consideration, 
GAO-23-106837 appears in the Appendix on page 160.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Senator Romney. Let the record show that the Democratic 
Party is in the majority in Congress now, so they take full 
responsibility. [Laughter.]
    Let me also ask a question that is maybe smaller bore, but 
that is with regard to at-home employment by our Federal 
employees. Did that result in a reduction in services and 
inefficiencies of a substantial amount, and if so, were you 
able to audit that or evaluate that? Does that continue to 
plague our government agencies?
    Mr. Dodaro. It definitely caught a number of agencies off-
guard because a number of them were moving in the other 
direction, where they were not allowing telework. When the 
pandemic hit they were not well prepared with technology as 
much as they should, or policies, or whatever.
    It definitely had an effect for agencies that deal directly 
with the public--Social Security, IRS, et cetera. While 
technologies enabled them to do some things electronically, a 
number of people do not have access--broadband or do not have 
devices--so they need to walk into an office.
    We are looking now at agencies, post-pandemic, asking them 
questions like: What are your plans? How is it going to affect 
service delivery? We are also looking more broadly at the 
private sector--what the experience has been in the private 
sector of telework and remote work. That report will be out 
soon.
    We are studying the issue. It definitely had an effect, but 
the extent is unknown and there are questions about what the 
posture should be going forward. Because on one side there is 
the customer service to the public that has to be dealt with 
effectively. On the other side it is recruiting and retaining 
the workforce necessary to be able to deliver that service in a 
quality manner. You have to find the right kind of balance 
there, I think. The balance is different, depending upon the 
different missions that the agencies have. We are looking at it 
and giving it a great deal of thought.
    Then there is the question, also, related to Chair Hassan's 
question about--you asked about personal property but there is 
the real property aspect of the government too--if they need 
all these facilities. We have said for years, before the 
pandemic, you have more facilities than you need and you ought 
to get rid of them, and agencies have not been doing such a 
good job at the government level to do it.
    Congress passed a law in 2016, trying to create a board, 
and the board would recommend properties that should be sold. 
There are three rounds. So far we have been through two. The 
first round, we sold 10 properties so far, for $194 million. 
The proceeds were supposed to fund additional rounds. Then some 
of the board members quit and some of the sales strategies 
changed. One of our recommendations is that the GSA do a 
lessons learned and try to figure out what went wrong and what 
could be done to improve it.
    Now there is one more round left in 2024, so we will be 
back with an update on that area. Federal real property is on 
our High Risk List. GSA made some progress in getting out of 
costly leases, which is good, but this whole question about 
where the employees are going to work and how much office space 
they need, I think has those implications too.
    The main thing has to be effectively accomplishing your 
mission. That has to be the primary goal. The question is how 
best to do that and what kind of policies you need to have your 
employees where and doing what you need, and measuring 
outcomes. Too much time in the government we spend looking at 
process issues. Are they in the office? They could be in the 
office full-time and have been doing a lousy job, as opposed to 
being somewhere else and doing a better job.
    You have to focus on what are the outcomes. Are citizens 
being served? Are they being served well? How do they feel they 
are being served, et cetera, and focus on the outcomes.
    Senator Hassan. Thank you, Senator Romney, and I appreciate 
that nuanced and balanced look at this, because I do think we 
need more information about the issue of remote work. I also 
think sometimes you have healthier, more energetic employees if 
they have not had to deal with a 2-hour commute each way, and 
they get more exercise. It is hard to know without looking at 
those outcomes and looking at the mission, so I am very 
appreciative of that work.
    I only really had kind of one wrap-up question that really 
follows on the discussion that we were all having about how do 
you make sure that as you all do this important work and come 
up with these recommendations that we really make progress on 
them.
    We were talking about the fact that you do an annual 
duplication report and that we are seeing some agencies take 
action on some of the recommendations. But my question really 
is, are you satisfied with agency progress on the 
recommendations made in these duplication reports since GAO 
began issuing them 12 years ago? Just tell us how you think the 
agencies are doing overall. Obviously, we know it is not 
perfect.
    Mr. Dodaro. Not really. We could be doing so much more. 
There is still too much resistance to change that I think it is 
disappointing. I think there needs to be more leadership.
    The Executive Branch is not set up to deal with these 
multi-agency issues that we have. OMB is a very small agency. 
OMB has not had a confirmed Controller in 7 years, which is one 
of the primary people we would deal with. OMB has ``small P'' 
political issues they deal with, trying to mediate between the 
agencies. Furthermore, there is a lot of turnover in government 
and a lot of vacancies and open positions. Then you have the 
policy debate and issues about things as well.
    GAO, has more continuity than anybody else in the 
government. The Comptroller General has a 15-year term, and we 
look across the government. We have a lot of institutional 
knowledge and memory, and a lot of agencies do not have that.
    But so much more could be done. If I was satisfied, I am in 
the wrong job.
    Senator Hassan. Right, and I understand that, and it is 
always hard to achieve change, especially in large 
organizations, especially sometimes mission-driven ones where 
their focus is on the customer service aspect. But to the point 
we both are making, the effective and frugal use of taxpayer 
dollars is part of customer service.
    One of the things I heard you really talk about that I 
think is something we might want to pursue is how do we make 
sure that our agencies have somebody who is accountable for 
pursuing these recommendations and really taking on their 
agency's fiscal responsibility in a way that might bring it to 
the forefront and let them drive some of this change from 
within. That really struck me as you were testifying.
    Mr. Dodaro. I think that is a good issue. We have another 
report coming out at the end of this month. There are actually 
19 programs in the Federal Government that have reduced their 
estimated improper payment rates when comparing fiscal year 
2022 to 2017, and we are trying to glean, what are common 
factors that cause that. Key factors include that they made 
somebody responsible for that action and they shared data, and 
upgraded their technology. We are trying to then take that and 
extrapolate it.
    But in the context of what we need, though, in terms of 
dealing with our long-term deficit and debt problems, I have 
seen more action on our recommendations on overlap, 
duplication, and fragmentation the more Congress focuses on, 
like when there were caps in place for the Budget Enforcement 
Act of 2011. The first few reports we published received a lot 
of attention, and several of the big-dollar savings came during 
that period of time.
    I think with the current discussion about trying to 
restrain Federal spending in some of these areas that Congress 
should look more at our recommendations. Because our 
recommendations will not hurt beneficiaries or diminish 
services; we focus on where you are wasting money. There are 
smart ways to save money, and I think they deserve a lot of 
attention. That is why we keep repeating these ones from the 
past.
    Senator Hassan. Senator Romney, you had another question?
    Senator Romney. I did. This is perhaps personal curiosity, 
but is there better technology for identifying whether someone 
is who they say they are? My impression is that my credit card 
company is pretty good at that, but the government is not 
terribly good. We are still using Social Security numbers. Is 
there better technology? I think, again, with AI and technology 
that misidentification of people approaching government is 
going to be an even greater problem.
    Do we need to find a better way to authenticate if it is a 
real human and who it is and where they live? Is there a 
technology and an opportunity there?
    Mr. Dodaro. The answer is yes. We need to have better 
technology. Exactly what it is, I am not prepared to say at 
this point, but we need to be better, not only for individuals 
but also for companies. We have the same kind of issue there. 
Yes, there are better ways, but we have to be willing to deal 
with some of the potential privacy issues associated with it, 
and so far that has been a little bit of a problem.
    But it is the key. If we can get better technology to 
better verify people, it is the key to making payments quickly, 
without sacrificing the integrity of the programs. If you can 
verify their identity early on in the process, it can help 
prevent problems. That is why I was saying before, programs 
should not have self-certification. You cannot have that. There 
was no checking, none. And identities, could have been checked 
easily in a lot of cases.
    But there are better ways to do it. I have had discussions 
with the Executive Branch about that. They are supposed to be 
working on an Executive Order (EO) about how to improve 
identity verification, but it is not yet out.
    Senator Romney. At the airport, when I go to Clear, they 
take a picture of my eye or my thumbprint, and yet when I apply 
for a refund from the IRS I just give a Social Security number. 
It just does not make sense to me.
    Mr. Dodaro. Yes.
    Senator Hassan. Or if we could have a system that could 
read the----
    Mr. Dodaro. Yes. There are agencies using facial 
recognition technology, but they are facing a lot of blowback 
to it. It is mostly in law enforcement areas right now, but IRS 
tried to do it and they got a lot of pushback on that issue. It 
is always a tension there that we face as a country on those 
issues.
    Senator Hassan. Thank you. Thank you, Senator Romney. I am 
going to close again with thanking you, Mr. Dodaro, and all of 
the GAO subject matter experts who are here today. Thank you 
for your time, for your testimony, for the work that you do 
every day to improve government services for the American 
people. I look forward to continuing to work to address your 
recommendations to save taxpayer dollars and deliver government 
services more efficiently and effectively.
    The hearing record will stay open for 15 days, until 5 p.m. 
on June 29th, for submissions of statements and questions for 
the record. This hearing is now adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 3:36 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

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