Information Technology: Agriculture Needs to Strengthen 	 
Management Practices for Stabilizing and Modernizing Its Farm	 
Program Delivery Systems (16-MAY-08, GAO-08-657).		 
                                                                 
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has experienced	 
significant problems with its information technology systems that
support the delivery of benefits programs to farmers. In October 
2006, these systems began experiencing considerable delays while 
attempting to process a large number of transactions, and by	 
January 2007, the systems became inoperable for 1 month. In	 
response to these issues, USDA developed a near-term		 
stabilization plan and long-term plans to modernize its delivery 
of these programs. GAO was asked to determine (1) the extent to  
which USDA's stabilization plan addresses key management issues, 
including consistently tracking reported problems, establishing  
performance metrics and goals, and defining roles and		 
responsibilities and (2) the adequacy of USDA's assessment of	 
existing product capabilities, as well as cost and schedule	 
estimates for its new, long-term modernization investment. To	 
address these objectives, GAO, among other things, compared	 
USDA's plans with industry best practices. On March 25, 2008, GAO
briefed the requesters' staff on the results of this review.	 
-------------------------Indexing Terms------------------------- 
REPORTNUM:   GAO-08-657 					        
    ACCNO:   A82132						        
  TITLE:     Information Technology: Agriculture Needs to Strengthen  
Management Practices for Stabilizing and Modernizing Its Farm	 
Program Delivery Systems					 
     DATE:   05/16/2008 
  SUBJECT:   Agricultural industry				 
	     Agricultural programs				 
	     Chief information officers 			 
	     Cost analysis					 
	     Data collection					 
	     Data integrity					 
	     Information management				 
	     Information technology				 
	     Internal controls					 
	     Performance measures				 
	     Program evaluation 				 
	     Program management 				 
	     Reporting requirements				 
	     Strategic information systems planning		 
	     Strategic planning 				 
	     Systems analysis					 
	     Systems integration				 
	     Telecommunications 				 
	     Telecommunications systems 			 
	     Cost estimates					 
	     Program implementation				 

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GAO-08-657

   

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Report to Congressional Requesters: 

United States Government Accountability Office:
GAO: 

May 2008: 

Information Technology: 

Agriculture Needs to Strengthen Management Practices for Stabilizing 
and Modernizing Its Farm Program Delivery Systems: 

GAO-08-657: 

GAO Highlights: 

Highlights of GAO-08-657, a report to congressional requesters. 

Why GAO Did This Study: 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has experienced significant 
problems with its information technology systems that support the 
delivery of benefits programs to farmers. In October 2006, these 
systems began experiencing considerable delays while attempting to 
process a large number of transactions, and by January 2007, the 
systems became inoperable for 1 month. In response to these issues, 
USDA developed a near-term stabilization plan and long-term plans to 
modernize its delivery of these programs. GAO was asked to determine 
(1) the extent to which USDAï¿½s stabilization plan addresses key 
management issues, including consistently tracking reported problems, 
establishing performance metrics and goals, and defining roles and 
responsibilities and (2) the adequacy of USDAï¿½s assessment of existing 
product capabilities, as well as cost and schedule estimates for its 
new, long-term modernization investment. To address these objectives, 
GAO, among other things, compared USDAï¿½s plans with industry best 
practices. On March 25, 2008, GAO briefed the requestersï¿½ staff on the 
results of this review. 

What GAO Found: 

USDAï¿½s near-term plan to stabilize the agencyï¿½s farm program delivery 
systems focused on technical issues such as expanding telecommunication 
capacity and acquiring a means for disaster backup and recovery; 
however, it did not address key managerial issues such as the 
departmentï¿½s inconsistent tracking of usersï¿½ reported problems with the 
system. Additionally, USDA did not have system performance goals or 
dedicated staff to analyze and use system performance data, and the 
stabilization plan did not address these issues. Moreover, the plan did 
not clearly define the roles and responsibilities for the organizations 
involved in the stabilization effort in order to ensure proper 
accountability. While department officials indicated that they planned 
to address system performance management issues in a future version of 
the stabilization plan, they did not yet have plans to enable USDA to 
consistently track usersï¿½ reported problems and to clarify roles and 
responsibilities. As a result, USDA could not be assured that its 
stabilization efforts would enable the department to reliably deliver 
farm benefit programs to its customers. 

Regarding USDAï¿½s proposed long-term investment known as MIDASï¿½Modernize 
and Innovate the Delivery of Agricultural Systemsï¿½officials had plans 
under way to obtain the necessary information for assessing the 
capability of products to integrate existing systems. However, business 
requirements were not used as a basis for the departmentï¿½s life-cycle 
cost estimate of $455 million for the modernization initiative. 
Instead, the estimate was based primarily on the cost estimate for 
another unrelated USDA IT investment. Similarly, the department had not 
adequately assessed its schedule estimate. According to department 
officials, they committed to accelerating the implementation of MIDAS 
from 10 years to 2 years in order to more quickly deliver a long-term 
solution to problems the department is experiencing with its existing 
programï¿½s delivery systems. However, business requirements were not 
considered when developing this schedule estimate. As a result, it was 
uncertain whether the department would be able to deliver the 
modernization initiative within the cost and schedule time frames it 
had proposed. 

What GAO Recommends: 

GAO recommends that USDA develop specific plans to address management 
weaknesses and develop reliable cost and schedule estimates. USDA 
officials did not provide comments on a draft of this report; however, 
in commenting on the draft briefing, they generally agreed with the 
recommendations. 

To view the full product, including the scope and methodology, click on 
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-08-657]. For more 
information, contact Linda D. Koontz at (202) 512-6240 or 
[email protected]. 

[End of section] 

Contents: 

Letter: 

Recommendations for Executive Action: 

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation: 

Appendix I: Briefing to Staff of Congressional Requesters on USDA's 
Stabilization and Modernization Efforts: 

Appendix II: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments: 

Abbreviations: 

AS/400: Application System/400: 

CRP: Conservation Reserve Program: 

DCP: Direct and Counter-Cyclical Program: 

e-LDP: Electronic Loan Deficiency Program: 

FSA: Farm Service Agency: 

IT: information technology: 

ITIL: Information Technology Infrastructure Library: 

ITS: Information Technology Services: 

MIDAS: Modernize and Innovate the Delivery of Agricultural Systems: 

NRCS: Natural Resources Conservation Service: 

OMB: Office of Management and Budget: 

RD: Rural Development: 

SEI: Software Engineering Institute: 

USDA: U.S. Department of Agriculture: 

[End of section] 

United States Government Accountability Office:
Washington, DC 20548: 

May 16, 2008: 

Congressional Requesters: 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently experienced 
significant problems with its information technology (IT) systems that 
support the delivery of benefits programs to farmers (farm program 
delivery systems). In October 2006, these systems began experiencing 
considerable delays while attempting to process a large number of 
transactions, and by January 2007, the systems became inoperable for a 
period of 1 month. Among other things, this outage led to significant 
delays in USDA's delivery of benefits to farmers. 

In response to these issues, USDA developed a near-term plan to 
stabilize its farm program delivery systems. USDA also has a long-term 
project to modernize its delivery of these programs. The project, which 
has been in the planning stage since 2004, is known as MIDAS--Modernize 
and Innovate the Delivery of Agricultural Systems--and is envisioned to 
be an entirely new farm program delivery system. 

At your request, we reviewed USDA's efforts to stabilize and modernize 
its farm program delivery systems. Specifically, we (1) assessed the 
extent to which USDA's stabilization plan addresses key management 
issues, including consistently tracking reported problems, 
establishing performance metrics and goals, and defining roles and 
responsibilities; and (2) determined the adequacy of USDA's assessment 
of existing product capabilities, as well as cost and schedule 
estimates for its new, long-term modernization investment. 

To address our first objective, we assessed USDA's near-term plans for 
stabilizing farm program delivery systems to identify the activities 
that the plan covers; analyzed system performance documentation, 
including an independent validation and verification report and other 
internal system performance assessments; compared the stabilization 
plan with key practices for managing information systems; and 
interviewed officials from USDA, the Farm Service Agency (FSA), the 
Natural Resources Conservation Service, Rural Development, and end 
users of the systems. 

To address our second objective, we identified key practices and 
lessons learned from previous GAO reports and other guidance, such as 
the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model 
Integration--which encompasses defining requirements, assessing 
existing product capabilities, and preparing cost and schedule 
estimates. We also reviewed and analyzed FSA's business case, cost-
benefit analysis, and an analysis of alternative implementation options 
for its modernization initiative. In addition to interviewing officials 
from USDA and FSA to discuss their approach to planning the development 
of MIDAS, we also interviewed officials from OMB to obtain their 
perspective on USDA's plans to modernize its program delivery systems. 

We conducted this performance audit at USDA in Washington, D.C., and 
Kansas City, Missouri, and at the Office of Management and Budget in 
Washington, D.C., from May 2007 to May 2008 in accordance with 
generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards 
require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, 
appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and 
conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence 
obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions 
based on our audit objectives. 

This report summarizes the information we provided to your staff during 
our March 25, 2008, briefing. The full briefing, including our scope 
and methodology, can be found in appendix I. 

In summary, our briefing made the following points: 

* USDA's near-term plan to stabilize the agency's farm program delivery 
systems focused on technical issues, such as expanding 
telecommunications capacity and acquiring a means for disaster backup 
and recovery; however, it did not address key managerial issues, such 
as the department's inconsistent tracking of users' reported problems 
with the system. Additionally, USDA did not have system performance 
goals or dedicated staff to analyze and use system performance data, 
and the stabilization plan did not address these issues. Moreover, the 
plan did not clearly define the roles and responsibilities for the 
organizations involved in the stabilization effort in order to ensure 
proper accountability. While department officials indicated that they 
plan to address system performance management issues in a future 
version of the stabilization plan, they did not yet have plans to 
enable USDA to consistently track users' reported problems and to 
clarify roles and responsibilities. As a result, USDA could not be 
assured that its stabilization efforts would enable the department to 
reliably deliver farm benefit programs to its customers. 

* Regarding USDA's proposed long-term investment in MIDAS, officials 
had plans under way to obtain the necessary information for assessing 
the capability of products to integrate existing systems. However, 
business requirements were not used as a basis for the department's 
life-cycle cost estimate of $455 million for the modernization 
initiative. Instead, the estimate was based primarily on the cost 
estimate for another unrelated USDA information technology investment. 
Similarly, the department had not adequately assessed its schedule 
estimate. According to department officials, they committed to 
accelerating the implementation of MIDAS from 10 years to 2 years in 
order to more quickly deliver a long-term solution to problems the 
department is experiencing with its existing program delivery systems. 
However, business requirements were not considered when developing this 
schedule estimate. As a result, it was uncertain whether the department 
would be able to deliver the modernization initiative within the cost 
and schedule time frames it had proposed. 

Recommendations for Executive Action: 

We recommend that the Secretary of USDA direct the department's Chief 
Information Officer to work with FSA's Chief Information Officer to 
develop specific plans for consistently tracking users' reported 
problems and clearly defining roles and responsibilities for 
Information Technology Services and the Farm Service Agency. 

We also recommend that the Secretary of USDA direct the department's 
chief information officer to work with FSA's chief information officer 
to fully assess USDA's investment in MIDAS, including: 

* establishing effective and reliable cost estimates using industry 
best practices, including using key information such as business 
requirements to develop the estimates; and: 

* establishing a realistic and reliable implementation schedule for 
MIDAS that is based on complete business requirements. 

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation: 

We solicited comments from USDA officials on a draft of this report; 
however, the officials did not provide a response. We previously 
received comments on a draft of the briefing slides (see app. I) via e-
mail, which represented the views of officials from FSA, USDA's Office 
of the Chief Information Officer, and USDA's Office of the Chief 
Financial Officer. These officials generally agreed with our findings, 
conclusions, and recommendations. The department also provided 
technical comments that we incorporated into the briefing slides, as 
appropriate. 

We are sending copies of this report to interested congressional 
committees and the Secretary of Agriculture. We will also make copies 
available to others on request. In addition, the report will be 
available at no charge on the GAO Web site at [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov]. 

If you or your staffs have any questions about this report, please 
contact me at (202) 512-6240 or at [email protected]. Contact points for 
our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found 
on the last page of this report. Key contributors to this report are 
listed in appendix II. 

Signed by: 

Linda D. Koontz: 
Director, Information Management Issues: 

List of Requesters: 

The Honorable Herb Kohl: 
Chairman: 
The Honorable Bob Bennett: 
Ranking Member: 
Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug 
Administration, and Related Agencies: 
Committee on Appropriations: 
United States Senate: 

The Honorable Rosa DeLauro: 
Chairwoman: 
Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug 
Administration, and Related Agencies: 
Committee on Appropriations: 
House of Representatives: 

The Honorable Jo Ann Emerson: 
House of Representatives: 

The Honorable Ray LaHood: 
House of Representatives: 

The Honorable Tom Latham: 
House of Representatives: 

[End of section] 

Appendix I: Briefing to Staff of Congressional Requesters on USDA's 
Stabilization and Modernization Efforts: 

Information Technology: Agriculture Needs Stronger Management Practices 
for Stabilizing and Modernizing Its Farm Program Delivery Systems: 

Briefing for: 

The Staff of the Senate Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, 
Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies, Committee on 
Appropriations, and: 

The House Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug 
Administration, and Related Agencies, Committee on Appropriations. 

March 25, 2008: 

Outline of Briefing: 

* Introduction; 
* Objectives, Scope, and Methodology: 
* Results in Brief; 
* Background; 
* Extent to which USDAï¿½s Stabilization Plan Addresses Key Management 
Issues; 
* Adequacy of USDAï¿½s Assessment of Existing Product Capabilities and 
Cost and Schedule Estimates for a New, Modernized Farm Program Delivery 
System; 
* Conclusions; 
* Recommendations; 
* Agency Comments and Our Evaluation. 

Introduction: 

The Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently experienced significant 
problems with its information technology (IT) systems that support the 
delivery of benefits programs to farmersï¿½called farm program delivery 
systems in this briefing. In October 2006, these systems began 
experiencing considerable delays while attempting to process a large 
number of transactions and, by January 2007, the systems became 
inoperable for a period of one month. Among other things, this outage 
led to significant delays in USDAï¿½s delivery of benefits to farmers. 

In response to these issues, USDA developed a near-term plan to 
stabilize its farm program delivery systems. USDA also has long-term 
plans to modernize its delivery of these programs. The long-term 
project, which has been in the planning stage since 2004, is known as 
MIDASï¿½Modernize and Innovate the Delivery of Agricultural Systemsï¿½and 
is envisioned to be an entirely new farm program delivery system. 

Objectives, Scope, and Methodology: 

As agreed, our objectives for this review were to: 

* assess the extent to which USDAï¿½s stabilization plan addresses key 
management issues including consistently tracking reported problems, 
establishing performance metrics and goals, and defining roles and 
responsibilities; and; 

* determine the adequacy of USDAï¿½s assessment of existing product 
capabilities and cost and schedule estimates for its new, long-term 
modernization investment. 

To address our first objective, we: 

* reviewed relevant GAO and industry reports and guidance to identify 
key management practices; 

* reviewed and analyzed USDAï¿½s near-term plans for stabilizing farm 
program delivery systems to identify the activities that the plan 
covers; 

* analyzed system performance documentation, including an independent 
validation and verification report and other internal system 
performance assessments; 

* compared the stabilization plan with key practices for managing 
information systems; and; 

* interviewed officials from USDA, the Farm Service Agency (FSA), the 
Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Rural Development (RD), 
and end users of the systems. 

To address our second objective, we: 

* identified key practices and lessons learned from previous GAO 
reports and other guidance such as the Software Engineering Instituteï¿½s 
(SEI) Capability Maturity Model Integration [Footnote 1] regarding 
defining requirements, assessing existing product capabilities, and 
preparing cost and schedule estimates; 

* reviewed and analyzed FSA's business case, cost-benefit analysis, and 
an analysis of alternative implementation options for its modernization 
initiative; 

* interviewed officials from USDA and FSA to discuss their approach to 
planning the development of MIDAS, and; 

* interviewed officials from OMB to obtain their perspective on USDAï¿½s 
plans to modernize its program delivery systems. 

We performed our work at USDA in Washington, D.C., and Kansas City, 
Missouri, and at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in 
Washington, D.C., from May 2007 to January 2008. We conducted this 
audit in accordance with generally accepted government auditing 
standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit 
to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable 
basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. 
We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for 
our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. 

Results In Brief: 

Although USDAï¿½s plan to stabilize the agencyï¿½s farm program delivery 
systems focuses on technical issues such as expanding telecommunication 
channels and acquiring a means for disaster backup and recovery, it 
does not address key managerial issues. For example, the plan does not 
address USDAï¿½s inconsistent tracking of usersï¿½ reported problems with 
the system, provide for the development of performance metrics and 
goals to assess system performance, or clearly define organizational 
roles and responsibilities. While USDA officials indicated that they 
plan to address system performance management issues in a future 
version of the stabilization plan, they do not yet have plans to enable 
USDA to consistently track usersï¿½ reported problems and to clarify 
roles and responsibilities. As a result, USDA cannot be assured that 
its stabilization efforts will enable the department to reliably 
deliver farm benefit programs to its customers. 

Regarding USDAï¿½s proposed long-term investment in MIDAS, officials have 
plans under way to obtain the necessary information for assessing the 
capability of products to integrate existing USDA systems; however, 
they have not yet adequately assessed cost and schedule estimates by 
using key information such as MIDAS business requirements to develop 
the estimates. As a result, it is uncertain whether the department will 
be able to deliver MIDAS within the cost and schedule time frames it 
has proposed. 

We are recommending that the Secretary of USDA direct the departmentï¿½s 
Chief Information Officer to work with FSAï¿½s Chief Information Officer 
to develop specific plans for consistently tracking usersï¿½ reported 
problems and clearly define the roles and responsibilities of 
organizations involved in stabilizing USDAï¿½s farm program delivery 
systems. We are also recommending that the Secretary direct the Chief 
Information Officer to work with FSAï¿½s Chief Information Officer to 
develop reliable cost and schedule estimates based on business 
requirements. 

We received comments on a draft of this briefing via e-mail from a 
management analyst at USDA. According to the analyst, coordination has 
occurred with officials from FSA, USDAï¿½s Office of the Chief 
Information Officer, and USDAï¿½s Office of the Chief Financial Officer. 
The analyst stated that these officials generally agreed with our 
findings, conclusions, and recommendations. The department also 
provided technical comments that we have incorporated, as appropriate. 

Background: 

One of USDAï¿½s major tasks is to manage and administer benefits to 
farmers through programs that support farm and ranch production, 
natural resources and environmental conservation, and rural 
development. USDAï¿½s FSA is one of three service center agencies that 
are responsible for administering these programs. In fiscal year 2008, 
USDA estimates that it will spend approximately $29 billion in farm 
loan, commodity, and conservation programs and $15 billion in rural 
housing, utilities, and business development programs. 

FSA supports the delivery of approximately 100 farm programs through 
its 2,280 county-based service centers. Major programs include: 

* The Direct and Counter Cyclical Program, which may be used by farmers 
to offset the difference when the market price for a specific crop 
falls below a defined target price. 

* The Loan Deficiency Payment Program, which provides farmers short-
term funds to pay expenses when market prices fall below the ï¿½loanï¿½ 
price (also known as the loan rate, which is different from the 
interest rate charged on marketing loans). 

* The Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program, which is designed to 
provide aid for uninsured crops that are destroyed through natural 
disasters. 

* The Conservation Reserve Program, which is intended to reduce 
erosion, protect streams and rivers, enhance wildlife habitats, and 
improve air quality through incentive payments and cost sharing. 

FSA currently uses two primary systems to process applications and user 
data in support of the delivery of farm benefit programs. However, both 
systems have shortcomings. One system consists of a distributed network 
of IBM Application System/400 (AS/400) computers running software to 
emulate [Footnote 2] IBMï¿½s System 36 computers, which were used in the 
service centers in the 1980s. The use of emulation software allows USDA 
to use the same program applications and data structures for these 
computers as were previously developed for the System 36 computers, but 
this configuration also limits the capabilities of the AS/400s. These 
computers no longer fully meet business needs or internal control and 
security requirements. Beginning in 2002, USDA also has used a 
centralized ï¿½Web farmï¿½ï¿½an array of interconnected computer servers that 
exchange dataï¿½to supplement the AS/400s with a Web-based interface for 
specific programs. While FSA has been in the process of transitioning 
specific farm program applications from the AS/400s to the Web farm, it 
has encountered substantial performance problems with the Web farm. 

FSA maintains 2,555 AS/400 computers (one or more for each service 
center) with software applications to process most of its approximately 
100 farm programs. The AS/400s store customer information and use it 
locally for specific program delivery applications. 

The Web farm stores customer data and hosts Web-based applications. 
FSAï¿½s Web farm is located in Kansas City and is hosted on a network 
known as the Common Computing Environment. [Footnote 3] 

To date, FSA has transferred approximately 10 to 30 percent of its 
programs to the Web farm, including several of the previously mentioned 
farm programs: 

* the Loan Deficiency Payment Program, also called the Electronic Loan 
Deficiency Program (e-LDP) in September 2004; 

* the soils database and processes for documenting participation offers 
for the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) in April 2004, [Footnote 4] 
and; 

* the enrollment processes for the Direct and Counter-Cyclical Program 
(DCP) in October 2005. [Footnote 5] 

There are two methods for applying for and obtaining benefits from USDA 
farm programs. The method that is used depends on which system is 
hosting the desired program: 

* If the desired program is hosted on the Web farm, the customer has 
the option of accessing it from a home or business computer or visiting 
a local county service center, [Footnote 6] where staff use the Web 
farm to complete the customerï¿½s transaction. 

* If the desired program is hosted on the AS/400s, the customer must 
visit, mail, or fax documents to a local service center, where the 
staff use the AS/400s to complete the customerï¿½s transaction. 

The following graphic illustrates the two methods for applying for and 
receiving benefits. 

Figure 1: Methods for Applying for and Obtaining Benefits: 

[See PDF for image] 

This figure is an illustration of methods for applying for and 
obtaining benefits. The following information is depicted: 

There are two methods shown: 

First method: 

1. Mandatory initial visit to service center to obtain approval for 
participation in programs. 

2. If desired program is hosted on the AS/400s: Staff assisted service 
at the local USDA service center: 

3. Access to AS/400. 

4. Replicate data, utilizing the internet to: 

5. Input to USDA Common Computing Environment; Kansas City Web farm 
servers. 

Second method: 

1. Mandatory initial visit to service center to obtain approval for 
participation in programs. 

2. If desired program is one of the limited number of Web-enabled 
applications hosted on the Web farm: 
- Self-service access from home or business, or; 
- Staff assisted service at the local USDA service center. 

3. Access to Web-enabled applications utilizing the internet to: 

4. 5. Input to USDA Common Computing Environment; Kansas City Web farm 
servers. 

Source: GAO analysis of USDA data. 

[End of figure] 

According to USDA officials, the AS/400s emulating the System 36 
operating system are antiquated and no longer meet business needs. 

* IBM first introduced the System 36 computers in 1983 and the AS/400s 
in 1988. According to USDA, these computers are now obsolete and, 
therefore, the company is no longer supplying replacement parts or 
providing maintenance services to USDA for these machines. 

* The AS/400 computers have limited storage. The storage for an AS/400 
computer is 17 gigabytes. In comparison, todayï¿½s personal computers 
usually have approximately 20 to 30 times more storage. As a result, an 
AS/400 can store only a limited number of files. Since many service 
centers reach their full capacity for file storage on a daily basis, 
USDA must take extra steps to monitor the status and, if necessary, 
work with the service centers to remove files from the system when the 
storage is overloaded. 

* Applications running on the AS/400s are written in a legacy 
programming language (COBOL). As a result, according to USDA officials, 

they have had difficulty finding programmers who are knowledgeable in 
this programming language to build and maintain additional applications 
for the computer. 

* AS/400s can store customer information only locally at the county 
offices. Customers are unable to use different service centers to 
complete their transactions. 

USDA officials have also indicated that the AS/400s are not in 
compliance with internal control and security requirements. 

* According to officials, because of technological limitations, the 
AS/400s emulating System 36 computers are not in compliance with 
internal control requirements as specified in OMB Circular A-123, 
ï¿½Managementï¿½s Responsibility for Internal Controlï¿½ and security 
requirements established under the Federal Information Security 
Management Act. For example, officials stated that they currently have 
limited mechanisms in place to prevent fraud and abuse when using the 
AS/400s because the AS/400s do not allow USDA to run software that 
would limit the access of service center employees to information 
necessary to performing their duties. 

As previously stated, the Web farm also has shortcomings. Specifically, 
as USDA began to transfer more programs from the AS/400s to the Web 
farm, performance issues developed and gradually became more severe, 
ultimately leading to USDAï¿½s inability to deliver farm programs to many 
customers in early 2007. 

* Significant performance problems began in October 2006 and became 
progressively worse when the use of the Web farm dramatically increased 
in order to complete prior-year accounting transactions and to process 
direct and counter-cyclical payment applications for the new accounting 
year. 

* On January 13, 2007, the majority of business applications running on 
USDAï¿½s Web farm shut down for approximately a month. On February 14, 
2007, USDA restored service based on the Web farm. According to USDA 
officials, the Web farm continued to experience 4-6 hours of 
unscheduled outages each week after this time. During outages, service 
center staff were unable to provide reliable customer service due to 
slow transaction speeds, Web page display errors, delays in updates to 
Web-based applications, and had to continually re-enter Web-based 
application data. 

The following figure provides a timeline of events leading up to the 
destabilization of the Web farm. 

Figure 2: Timeline of Events Leading to the Destabilization of the Web 
farm: 

[See PDF for image] 

This figure is a timeline of events leading to the destabilization of 
the Web farm. Indicated dates are either approximate timeframe or 
specific date. The following information is illustrated: 

First quarter, 2002: USDA begins to develop Web farms (approximate 
timeframe); 
Fourth quarter, 2003: Web farms become operational (approximate 
timeframe); 
Second quarter, 2004: CRP added to the Kansas City Web farm 
(approximate timeframe); 
Third quarter, 2004: e-LDP added to Kansas City Web farm (approximate 
timeframe); 
Fourth quarter, 2004: ITS established (approximate timeframe); 
Fourth quarter, 2005: DCP added to Kansas City Web farm (approximate 
timeframe); 
Fourth quarter, 2006: Completion of FY06 accounting transactions 
increases usage (approximate timeframe); 
Fourth quarter, 2006: Submission of DCP applications for FY07 increases 
system usage (approximate timeframe); 
Fourth quarter, 2006: Issues with Kansas City Web farm began 
(approximate timeframe); 
Early first quarter, 2007: Business activity running on Web farm shut 
down (specific date); 
Early first quarter, 2007: Expert performance tests conducted (specific 
date); 
Early first quarter, 2007: Marginal performance restored (specific 
date). 

Over the past two years, USDA has had various organizations and 
individuals identify specific technical issues pertaining to the Web 
farm. In addition, in January 2007, USDA officials assembled a group of 
experts to conduct performance tests on the system to identify 
additional technical issues that contributed to the performance 
problems. The identified issues include: 

* Inefficiently designed and structured databases caused benefits 
transactions to be processed slowly during FSAï¿½s peak usage periods. 

* USDA lacked 2 of the 5 commonly recommended testing environments, 
which, if implemented, could have been used to identify the potential 
adverse effects of adding new applications to the Web farm. 

* Insufficient bandwidth of firewalls serving the county-based agencies 
resulted in USDAï¿½s inability to accommodate increases in Web farm 
traffic. 

In May 2007, Congress appropriated $37.5 million to be used by USDA for 
the stabilization of farm programsï¿½ existing delivery systems. 

USDAï¿½s current IT support structure was established by merging IT staff 
from FSA and the two other service center agencies into one 
organizationï¿½Information Technology Services (ITS)ï¿½within the Office of 
the Chief Information Officer. The new organization was designated to 
support and maintain the Common Computing Environment. ITS provides 
operations, maintenance, and help desk support for equipment, 
telecommunications, and administrative applications. 

While ITS supports the platforms and infrastructure across the service 
center agencies, the responsibility for developing and operating 
applications that support program delivery remains with the individual 
service center agencies. For example, FSA has developed 143 different 
applications to support more than 100 farmer benefit programs and is 
responsible for maintaining these applications. For this reason, FSA 
continues to maintain its own IT services division, headed by its own 
chief information officer. 

With regard to its long-term modernization program, USDA began planning 
the MIDAS initiative in January 2004. It is aimed at reengineering 
agency business processes and correcting weaknesses in aging IT systems 
and, according to the MIDAS fiscal year 2007 business case, the 
initiative was planned to be completed by fiscal year 2020. According 
to USDA, MIDAS is intended to: 

* improve the overall delivery of benefits to FSA customers through the 
use of the Internet; 
* modernize system operations to remediate IT weaknesses; 
* correct financial material weaknesses and integrate with USDAï¿½s 
financial modernization plan; 
* provide flexibility in responding to changes in program requirements 
as defined by new legislation, and; 
* provide computing environments that comply with legislative 
requirements such as the Federal Information Security Management Act. 

From January 2004 through January 2006, officials reported that they 
had spent $14 million defining requirements and conducting the initial 
planning for MIDAS. However, USDA never completed the MIDAS 
requirements development process because key program officials lost 
confidence that the process would be an effective solution to meet 
USDA's future business needs and consequently withdrew their support. 

Subsequently, in the summer of 2006, USDA changed direction from 
building a customized system to acquiring commercial off-the-shelf 
enterprise resource planning software. [Footnote 7] USDA officials 
stated that this approach would be more flexible in adapting to new 
legislative requirements and would reduce overall IT operating costs 
for the department. 

The department is currently still in the planning phase for MIDAS. In 
September 2007, USDA hired an executive program manager for the MIDAS 
initiative. Officials have indicated that they have additional 
requirements definition work under way to complete the foundational 
requirements and expect to finish this work by the third quarter of 
fiscal year 2008. [Footnote 8] Subject to the availability of funds, 
they also plan to issue a request for proposals to acquire and 
implement the system later in 2008. 

USDA currently estimates that the life cycle cost of MIDAS will be $455 
million and is planning for a two-year implementation schedule from the 
time it awards a contract. Since an award date has not been 
established, a specific implementation schedule has not been developed. 

MIDAS has been on OMBï¿½s high risk IT project list [Footnote 9] since 
fiscal year 2006. 

Objective 1: Addressing Key Management Issues: 

USDA has developed a stabilization plan, but has not addressed key 
managerial issues with its farm program delivery systems. 

To successfully implement any IT project, both technical as well as 
managerial issues should be addressed. Regarding managerial issues, the 
Project Management Institute [Footnote 10] and the Information 
Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)[Footnote 11] both indicate 
that good program management includes consistently tracking usersï¿½ 
reported problems, developing reportable metrics for measuring 
performance, and defining clear roles and responsibilities among 
project teams. Instituting these good management practices can help 
ensure that a solid foundation for achieving an IT projectï¿½s objective 
is established. 

In April 2007, USDA established a plan for stabilizing its farm program 
delivery systems. The plan, which focuses on technical issues 
identified by USDA officials and outside experts, has the following 
objectives: 

* Expand telecommunication channels, acquire firewalls with greater 
bandwidth, and optimize Web farm software and databases to address the 
inefficient design and structure of the databases and thus improve the 
efficiency of performing transactions. 

* Conduct a review of the technical architecture of the Common 
Computing Environment to improve FSAï¿½s understanding of all existing 
components of its farm delivery systems. 

* Build a data warehouse to centralize customer data to enable FSA to 
more efficiently conduct program management oversight and generate 
reports pertaining to farm programs. 

* Implement monitoring tools, configuration management practices, and 
the two missing testing environments to help enable USDA to be more 
proactive in identifying performance problems. 

* Acquire a means for disaster backup and recovery, which does not 
currently exist. 

* Invest in specialized staff training and development to help ensure 
that users optimize the capabilities of these new tools and 
applications. 

USDA began to address these objectives in 2007 and plans to continue 
the stabilization effort through 2010. 

The plan also includes high-level descriptions of each of the sub-
projects intended to address the objectives. In addition, it includes 
implementation schedules for the sub-projects and the management 
structure for overseeing the project. 

According to USDA officials, as of October 2007, they had spent 
approximately $18 million to take steps towards achieving these 
objectives. For example, they had expanded telecommunication channels, 
acquired more sophisticated firewalls, and had a contractor prepare the 
first draft of process flow diagrams of selected program delivery 
processes. 

USDA estimates it will spend an additional $131 million from fiscal 
year 2008 through 2010 to complete its technical plan for stabilizing 
the Web farm. Major tasks that remain include building a data warehouse 
to centralize customer data and acquiring a means for disaster backup 
and recovery. 

While USDA has developed a stabilization plan that focuses on various 
technical weaknesses relating to its farm programsï¿½ delivery system, 
the plan does not address key managerial areas. Specifically: 

* USDA has had difficulty ensuring that it consistently tracks problems 
that users encounter with the Web farm. Rather than using a consistent 
approach for reporting and resolving problems, which could enable USDA 
to more accurately identify issues with the system, users have been 
informally obtaining assistance from their colleagues to solve 
problems. According to a report issued by an independent verification 
and validation contractor in October 2007, there has been widespread 
use of such informal networks for problem resolution. Moreover, certain 
employees did not have access to USDA's customer service ticketing 
system; therefore, problems that were reported by those without access 
to the ticketing system were not being centrally tracked. As a result, 
these problems are not being tracked and monitored consistently, thus 
contributing to unreliable information about system performance. 
Further, the current stabilization plan does not address the need to 
improve problem tracking. USDA officials indicated that they 
established a separate initiative in April 2007 to address this issue, 
although they have not yet provided us with any details regarding it. 

* ITS lacks measures for the performance of the Web farms. During an 
assessment of the Kansas City Web farm in the fall of 2006, agency 
officials reported that they did not have real-time statistics 
available on the Web farmï¿½s performance, and that they needed 
statistics such as data processing time, firewall activity, and 
utilization of the telecommunications network. While officials have 
indicated that in November 2007 they implemented automated tools to 
monitor the system and to collect performance data, such as processing 
and utilization time, ITS does not have dedicated staff to analyze and 
use the collected performance data. Additionally, ITS has not 
established performance goals for the Web farm. 

While FSAï¿½s Chief Information Officer indicated that USDA officials are 
aware of the performance management issues, they indicated that they 
did not want to address them in their stabilization plan until they had 
investigated them more thoroughly. The report by the independent 
verification and validation contractor provided additional analysis and 
offered recommendations to USDA for resolving the performance 
management problems and other issues. For example, the contractor 
recommended that USDA establish performance metrics for all ITS 
business service areas and create a dedicated ITS team to conduct 
performance management activities. In response to this study and our 
inquiries about how the studyï¿½s recommendations would be addressed, 
USDA officials indicated that they plan to update the stabilization 
plan by February 2008 to address the identified performance management 
issues. 

* USDA lacks clearly defined organizational roles and responsibilities 
for stabilizing the Web farm. As previously mentioned, USDAï¿½s ITS 
organization has overall responsibility for operating and maintaining 
the Web farm hardware and the Common Computing Environment network; 
FSAï¿½s ITS division is responsible for operating and maintaining FSA 
applications for farm programs. However, USDAï¿½s stabilization plan 
indicates that ITS and FSA are both ï¿½ownersï¿½ of all planned improvement 
activities and does not clearly establish the specific roles and 
responsibilities of these respective organizations. As we have 
previously reported, effective management of programs requires clear 
definitions of roles and responsibilities. The extent to which these 
are explicit and unambiguous goes a long way towards ensuring proper 
accountability and performance. USDA officials indicated that they had 
overlooked that aspect of their plan, and they do not yet have plans to 
address the lack of clearly defined roles and responsibilities for 
stabilizing the Web farm in the updated version of the stabilization 
plan. 

Until USDA addresses the inconsistent tracking of usersï¿½ reported 
problems and the lack of clearly defined roles and responsibilities, it 
may not be able to establish a solid foundation for achieving and 
sustaining stability in the farm program delivery systems. As a result, 
the department faces the risk that its stabilization plan will not 
ensure that it is able to successfully deliver benefits to farmers in 
the future. 

Objective 2: Assessment of Capabilities, Cost, and Schedule for 
Modernization: 

While the department has plans under way to obtain the information 
necessary to assess the capabilities of commercial off-the-shelf 
enterprise resource planning products for MIDAS, it has not: 

* adequately assessed the cost of its proposed approach or; 
* adequately assessed the schedule for its proposed approach. 

Without developing reliable cost and schedule estimates using business 
requirements to derive the estimates, it is questionable whether USDA 
will be able to deliver MIDAS within the cost and schedule it has 
proposed. 

Objective 2: Assessment of Capabilities, Cost, and Schedule for 
Modernization: Plans Under Way to Assess Product Capabilities: 

USDA has not yet fully assessed the capabilities of commercial products 
to integrate with key USDA systems, but has plans under way to do so. 

SEI [Footnote 12] recommends that organizations planning to acquire a 
new enterprise resource planning system understand the capabilities of 
existing products. More specifically, it recommends that the 
organization understand the ways in which the new system will interface 
with legacy systems. 

In June 2006, the department issued a request for information to learn 
about vendorsï¿½ enterprise resource planning product capabilities, and 
the responses were used to develop USDAï¿½s investment justification 
documentation. However, USDA did not request that vendors provide 
detailed information regarding the capability of commercial off-the-
shelf products to integrate with key USDA systems, such as the 
departmentï¿½s existing documents and records management system and 
service center customer database. Officials indicated that they have 
met with a few other federal agencies that have implemented enterprise 
resource planning products to obtain lessons learned. Officials stated 
that in order to save time, rather than issuing another request for 
information, they plan to solicit this information in their request for 
proposals. 

USDA's inclusion of sufficient detail regarding the existing systems, 
with which the commercial off-the-shelf enterprise resource planning 
product needs to be integrated, may facilitate the agency's assessment 
of proposals. 

Objective 2: Assessment of Capabilities, Cost, and Schedule for 
Modernization: Inadequate Assessment of Costs: 

USDA has not adequately assessed the costs of MIDAS. 

GAOï¿½s Cost Assessment Guide [Footnote 13] provides best practices for 
establishing reliable cost estimates to be used in the software 
acquisition process. Specifically, GAO's Cost Assessment Guide states 
that key information such as requirements should be used to develop 
cost estimates. 

As previously mentioned, USDA had worked to define requirements for 
MIDAS, but this effort was never completed. As a result, business 
requirements were not used as a basis for their life cycle cost 
estimate of $455 million. Instead, their estimate was based primarily 
on the cost estimate for another unrelated USDA IT investment, the 
Financial Management Modernization Initiative. [Footnote 14] Officials 
also indicated that they had used information provided by vendors in 
response to USDAï¿½s request for information. However, while the 
department requested that vendors provide cost estimates as part of the 
request for information for MIDAS, three vendors indicated that they 
could not develop such estimates because USDA had not provided enough 
specific information regarding its needs for hardware, software, and 
labor in order for the vendors to provide an estimate. Other vendors 
supplied a generic price list. As a result, the department had only a 
limited basis for deriving the cost figures for MIDAS. 

USDA officials acknowledge that they had limited information to use as 
a basis for developing their cost estimate. However, the department 
included the $455 million figure in its business case for justifying 
the investment in MIDAS. According to USDA officials, they included 
this figure because it was the best estimate they could derive given 
the information they had. 

Not until after the cost estimate was developed did USDA officials 
begin analyzing the partially-defined requirements to determine what 
requirements could be applied to the new approach of acquiring a 
commercial off-the-shelf product for MIDAS. As previously mentioned, 
officials have additional requirements definition work under way to 
complete the foundational business requirements and expect to finish 
this work by the third quarter of fiscal year 2008. 

Without defined complete business requirements, significant questions 
will remain regarding the accuracy and reliability of the MIDAS cost 
estimate. 

Objective 2: Assessment of Capabilities, Cost, and Schedule for 
Modernization: Inadequate Assessment of Schedule: 

USDA has not adequately assessed the implementation schedule for MIDAS.
According to SEI, [Footnote 15] a systematic assessment of business 
requirements can also provide an organization with the opportunity to 
conduct a realistic estimate for the project schedule. 

In its fiscal year 2008 business case for MIDAS, the department 
committed to accelerating its implementation of MIDAS from ten years to 
two years. According to USDA officials, they decided to accelerate the 
implementation in order to deliver a long-term solution to problems the 
department is experiencing with its existing program delivery systems 
more quickly. 

As part of USDAï¿½s plan to reduce the time frame for implementing MIDAS 
by 80 percent, officials plan to condense the requirements analysis 
phase from four years to five months. Moreover, they plan to reduce the 
analysis and design portion of the acquisition from three and a half 
years to nine months. 

However, according to USDA officials, similar to the cost estimation 
process, the schedule estimates had been based on previous experience 
and not on an understanding of the business requirements. Additionally, 
officials said that they are unaware of any programs that have been 
able to employ a similar product implementation within a two-year time 
frame. While USDA has produced a high-level description of the 
accelerated implementation, the department does not plan to establish a 
detailed project schedule for MIDAS until it has selected a vendor for 
the implementation. 

The lack of a reliable basis for the two-year implementation schedule 
for MIDAS significantly increases the risk that the department will not 
be able to implement MIDAS within this time frame. Furthermore, 
schedule overruns could lead to further problems such as cost overruns. 

Conclusions: 

While USDAï¿½s stabilization plan focuses on addressing technical issues, 
the plan is inadequate because it does not address key managerial 
weaknesses. USDA officials recently indicated that they plan to address 
one of these three issues in a future version of their stabilization 
plan; however, they do not have plans to address the inconsistent 
tracking of usersï¿½ reported problems and the lack of clearly defined 
roles and responsibilities. As a result, the department cannot be 
assured that its stabilization efforts will enable it to reliably 
deliver farm benefit programs to its customers. 

Additionally, officials have plans under way to obtain the information 
necessary for assessing vendorsï¿½ ability to integrate existing USDA 
systems with commercial off-the-shelf enterprise resource planning 
products; however, they have not yet adequately assessed cost and 
schedule estimates by using key information such as business 
requirements to develop the estimates. As a result, it is uncertain 
whether the department will be able to deliver MIDAS within the cost 
and schedule time frames it has proposed. 

Recommendations: 

We recommend that the Secretary of USDA direct the departmentï¿½s Chief 
Information Officer to work with FSAï¿½s Chief Information Officer to 
develop specific plans for consistently tracking usersï¿½ reported 
problems and clearly defining roles and responsibilities for ITS and 
FSA. 

We also recommend that the Secretary of USDA direct the departmentï¿½s 
Chief Information Officer to work with FSAï¿½s Chief Information Officer 
to fully assess USDAï¿½s investment in MIDAS, including: 

* establishing effective and reliable cost estimates using industry 
best practices, including using key information such as business 
requirements to develop the estimates and; 

* establishing a realistic and reliable implementation schedule for 
MIDAS that is based on complete business requirements. 

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation: 

We received comments on a draft of this briefing via e-mail from a 
management analyst at USDA. According to the analyst, coordination has 
occurred with officials from FSA, USDAï¿½s Office of the Chief 
Information Officer, and USDAï¿½s Office of the Chief Financial Officer. 
The analyst stated that these officials generally agreed with our 
findings, conclusions, and recommendations. The department also 
provided technical comments that we have incorporated, as appropriate. 

[End of section] 

Appendix II: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments: 

GAO Contact: 

Linda D. Koontz, (202) 512-6240 or [email protected]: 

Staff Acknowledgments: 

In addition to the contact named above, John de Ferrari (Assistant 
Director), Marisol Cruz, Neil Doherty, Nancy Glover, Josh Leiling, 
James MacAulay, and Shannin O'Neill made key contributions to this 
report. 

[End of section] 

Footnotes: 

[1] Software Engineering Institute, CMMI Acquisition Model (CMMI-AM), 
Version 1.1, (Pittsburgh, Penn.: May, 2005). 

[2] Emulation software enables the use of programs not originally 
intended for a particular computer system. 

[3] The Common Computing Environment provides a network connecting the 
three service center agencies and provides administrative applicationsï¿½ 
such as common e-mail, telecommunications, and Microsoft Office 
toolsï¿½to the three agencies. 

[4] The AS/400s still host the application software for maintaining 
contracts and annual CRP rental payments. 

[5] The AS/400s still host the application software for payment 
processes. 

[6] Customers may also mail or fax documents to the service centers for 
the staff to process. 

[7] Enterprise resource planning refers to the use of commercial off-
the-shelf software that incorporates shared data from various lines of 
business and that is consistent across an entire organization. 

[8] According to USDA officials, detailed requirements development work 
will be completed by the contractor following an award. 

[9] High risk projects are projects requiring special attention from 
oversight authorities and the highest level of agency management 
because of one or more of the following four reasons: (1) the agency 
has not consistently demonstrated the ability to manage complex 
projects; (2) the projects have exceptionally high development, 
operating, or maintenance costs; (3) the projects are addressing 
deficiencies in the agenciesï¿½ ability to perform an essential mission 
program or function of the agency; or (4) the projectsï¿½ delay or 
failure would impact the agenciesï¿½ essential mission functions. 

[10] Project Management Institute, A Guide to the Project Management 
Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), 3rd ed. (Newton Square, Penn.; 2004). 

[11] The ITIL is a set of best practices guidance for IT service 
management owned by the Office of Government Commerce within the 
government of the United Kingdom. 

[12] Smith, et. al., ï¿½Enterprise Integration,ï¿½ The Architect, vol. 5, 
no. 4 (Pittsburgh, Penn.; SEI, Fourth Quarter 2002), [hyperlink, 
http://www.sei.cmu.edu/news-at-sei/columns/the_architect/2002/4q02/
architect-4q02.pdf] (accessed Jan. 4, 2008). 

[13] GAO, Cost Assessment Guide: Best Practices for Estimating and 
Managing Program Costs, Exposure Draft, GAO-07-1134SP Washington, D.C.: 
July 2007). 

[14] USDA's Financial Management Modernization Initiative is a 
significant IT modernization effort that intends to address material 
financial weaknesses through improving its general ledger and 
administrative payment system. 

[15] SEI, Software Acquisition Capability Maturity Model (SA-CMM) 
Version 1.03, (Pittsburgh, Penn.: March 2002). 

[End of section] 

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