Management Reform: Elements of Successful Improvement Initiatives
(Testimony, 10/15/1999, GAO/T-GGD-00-26).

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed efforts to improve
the management and performance of the federal government.

GAO noted that: (1) serious and disciplined efforts are needed to attack
the management problems confronting some of the federal government's
largest agencies; (2) successful management improvement efforts often
contain a number of common critical elements, including top leadership
commitment and accountability, the integration of management improvement
initiatives into programmatic decisions, planning to chart the direction
the improvements will take, employee involvement in the change efforts,
organizational realignment to streamline operations and clarify
accountability, and congressional involvement and oversight; and (3)
experience has shown that when these elements are in place, lasting
management reforms are more likely to be implemented that ultimately
lead to improvements in the performance and cost-efficiency of
government.

--------------------------- Indexing Terms -----------------------------

 REPORTNUM:  T-GGD-00-26
     TITLE:  Management Reform: Elements of Successful Improvement
	     Initiatives
      DATE:  10/15/1999
   SUBJECT:  Agency missions
	     Total quality management
	     Performance measures
	     Private sector practices
	     Productivity in government
	     Federal agency reorganization
	     Internal controls
	     Accountability
	     Strategic planning
IDENTIFIER:  Performance and Accountability Series 1999

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United States General Accounting Office
GAO

Testimony

Before the Subcommittee on Oversight of
Government Management, Restructuring, and the
District of Columbia Committee on Governmental
Affairs, U.S. Senate

For Release on Delivery
Expected at
9:00 a.m. EDT
on Friday
October 15, 1999
GAO/T-GGD-00-26

MANAGEMENT REFORM
Elements of Successful Improvement Initiatives

Statement of
J. Christopher Mihm, Associate Director
Federal Management and Workforce Issues and
James R. White, Director
Tax Policy and Administration Issues
General Government Division

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Statement
Management Reform:  Elements of Successful
Improvement Initiatives
Page 10                           GAO/T-GGD-00-26
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:

We are pleased to be here today to contribute to
the Subcommittee's ongoing efforts to identify
ways to improve the management and performance of
the federal government. As you know, last January
we issued a new volume of reports, the Performance
and Accountability Series, outlining the major
management challenges confronting our largest
federal agencies and the substantial opportunities
for improving their performance.1 Many of the
challenges discussed in that series represent long-
standing, difficult, and complex problems that our
work has shown will not be easily or quickly
resolved. In fact, implementing and sustaining
major change initiatives requires a cultural
transformation for many agencies. Therefore, given
the magnitude of the problems an agency may face,
and the extensive effort and long period of time
it can take before problems are fully resolved,
progress must often be measured initially in terms
of whether the agency has a well thought out
management improvement initiative in place to
guide its reform efforts.

As agreed with the Subcommittee, this morning we
will discuss the elements that our wide-ranging
work on federal management issues suggests are
particularly important in implementing and
sustaining management improvement initiatives that
genuinely take root and eventually resolve the
problems they are intended to fix. These elements
are (1) a demonstrated leadership commitment and
accountability for change; (2) the integration of
management improvement initiatives into
programmatic decisionmaking; (3) thoughtful and
rigorous planning to guide decisions, particularly
to address human capital and information
technology issues; (4) employee involvement to
elicit ideas and build commitment and
accountability; (5) organizational alignment to
streamline operations and clarify accountability;
and (6) strong and continuing congressional
involvement. Not surprisingly, the elements of
successful management improvement initiatives that
we will discuss today are consistent with the
approaches shared by performance-based management
efforts under the Government Performance and
Results Act (Results Act) and quality management
that we discussed in our July 29, 1999, statement
for this Subcommittee.2 Our statement today is
based on our broad body of work and resulting
knowledge of management issues, including our
examination of the implementation of the Results
Act and related initiatives, our reviews of
selected National Partnership for Reinventing
Government (NPR) recommendations, and our ongoing
analyses of agency-specific improvement efforts,
such as the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
modernization.

Demonstrated Leadership Commitment and
Accountability for Change
Perhaps the single most important element of
successful management improvement initiatives is
the demonstrated commitment of top leaders to
change. This commitment is most prominently shown
through the personal involvement of top leaders in
developing and directing reform efforts.
Organizations that successfully address their long-
standing management weaknesses do not "staff out"
responsibility for leading change. Top leadership
involvement and clear lines of accountability for
making management improvements are critical to
overcoming organizations' natural resistance to
change, marshalling the resources needed in many
cases to improve management, and building and
maintaining the organizationwide commitment to new
ways to doing business.

Commissioner Rossotti's efforts at IRS provide a
clear example of leadership's commitment to
change. The Commissioner has articulated a new
mission for the agency, together with support for
strategic goals that balance customer service and
compliance with tax laws.3 Moreover, the
Commissioner has initiated a modernization effort
that touches virtually every aspect of the agency,
including business practices, organizational
structure, management roles and responsibilities,
performance measures, and technology. Commissioner
Rossotti has assigned clear executive ownership of
each of IRS' major initiatives and is using
executive steering committees to provide oversight
and accountability for driving the change efforts.

Sustaining top leadership commitment to
improvement is particularly challenging in the
federal government because of the frequent
turnover of senior agency political officials. As
a result, sustaining improvement initiatives
requires commitment and leadership by senior
career executives, as well as political leaders.
Career executives can help provide the long-term
focus needed to institutionalize reforms that
political executives' often more limited tenure
does not permit.  In addition, the other elements
of successful management improvement initiatives
that we shall turn to shortly are important for
institutionalizing reform initiatives.

Integration of Management Improvement Initiatives
into Programmatic Decisionmaking
Traditionally, the danger to any management reform
is that it can become a hollow, paper-driven
exercise where management improvement initiatives
are not integrated into the day-to-day activities
of the organization. Thus, successful
organizations recognize-and implement reform
efforts on the basis of-the essential connection
between sound management and the programmatic
results those organizations hope to achieve.

The Results Act provides a ready-made statutory
mechanism for making this essential connection,
engaging Congress in a discussion of how and when
management problems will be addressed, and helping
to pinpoint additional efforts that may be needed.
We have found that annual performance plans that
include precise and measurable goals for resolving
mission-critical management problems are important
to ensuring that agencies have the institutional
capacity to achieve their more results-oriented
programmatic goals. Moreover, by using annual
performance plans to set goals to address
management weaknesses, agencies provide themselves
and Congress with a vehicle-the subsequent agency
performance reports-for tracking progress in
addressing management problems and considering
what, if any, additional efforts are needed.

Unfortunately, we found that agencies do not
consistently address major management challenges
and program risks in their fiscal year 2000
performance plans.4 In those cases where
challenges and risks are addressed, agencies use a
variety of approaches, including setting goals and
measures directly linked to the management
challenges and program risks, establishing goals
and measures that are indirectly related to the
challenges and risks, or laying out strategies to
address them. Figure 1 shows the distribution of
the 24 agencies covered by the Chief Financial
Officers Act and their different approaches to
addressing management challenges and program risks
in their annual performance plans.

Figure 1:  Approaches Used to Address Management
Challenges and Program Risks

Note: Numbers do not add up to 100 percent due to
rounding.
Source: GAO analysis based on agencies' fiscal
year 2000 performance plans.

     IRS has important management reform
initiatives underway to address long-standing
management weaknesses, but it missed the
opportunity to demonstrate these actions in its
portion of the Department of the Treasury's fiscal
year 2000 performance plan. For example, the
Department of the Treasury's plan has no goals,
measures, or strategies to address several of the
high-risk areas5 we have identified at IRS,
including

ï¿½    internal control weaknesses over unpaid tax
assessments (We found that the lack of a
subsidiary ledger impairs IRS' ability to
effectively manage its unpaid assessments. This
weakness has resulted in IRS inappropriately
directing collection efforts against taxpayers
after amounts owed have been paid.);
ï¿½    the need to assess the impact of various
efforts IRS has under way to reduce filing fraud;
ï¿½    the need to improve security controls over
information systems and address weaknesses that
place sensitive taxpayer data at risk to both
internal and external threats (Our high-risk
update reported that IRS' controls do not
adequately reduce vulnerability to inappropriate
disclosure.); and
ï¿½    weaknesses in internal controls over taxpayer
receipts.

Similarly, the General Services Administration's
(GSA) fiscal year 2000 annual performance plan
does not address several long-standing problems
identified by the GSA Inspector General. These
problems include top management's lack of emphasis
on ensuring that the internal controls are in
place to deter fraud, waste, and abuse. GSA's plan
also does not fully address issues raised by the
Inspector General related to developing new
management information systems and ensuring that
automated information systems have the proper
controls and safeguards. These omissions are
significant because GSA's governmentwide oversight
and service-provider role, its extensive
interaction with the private sector, and the
billions of taxpayer dollars involved in carrying
out its activities, make it especially important
that GSA's operations be adequately protected.

Thoughtful and Rigorous Planning to Guide
Decisions
The magnitude of the challenges that many agencies
face in addressing their management weaknesses
necessitates substantive planning be done to
establish (1) clear goals and objectives for the
improvement initiative, (2) the concrete
management improvement steps that will be taken,
(3) key milestones that will be used to track the
implementation status, and (4) the cost and
performance data that will be used to gauge
overall progress in addressing identified
weaknesses. Our work across the federal government
has found the effective use of human capital and
information technology-both separately and,
importantly, as they relate to one another-are
areas where thoughtful and rigorous planning is
needed if fundamental management improvements are
to be made.

For example, we looked at the efforts of four
agencies (the Departments of Agriculture, Health
and Human Services, Interior, and Veterans
Affairs) to both improve services and reduce
staffing levels in their personnel offices through
the better application of information technology.6
The agencies planned to increase operating
efficiencies and improve services by automating
paper-based personnel processes. The agencies
expected that new hardware and/or software
technology would reduce paperwork and workload,
thereby permitting sizable staff reductions.
However, the agencies made the staffing reductions
before much of the new automation was in place,
and automation efforts had not been fully
implemented as of late 1997. As a result, the
agencies were struggling to achieve their
efficiency and service improvement objectives.

On a more positive note, we recently reviewed the
efforts of three agencies (the Postal Service, the
Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and the Park
Service) to more strategically manage their
facilities and assets by forming business
partnerships with the private sector.7 In each of
the six partnerships that we reviewed, the agency
built the expertise to engage in the partnership
and make it successful. For example, the
Department of Veterans Affairs established a
separate organizational unit staffed with
professionals experienced in management,
architecture, civil engineering, and contracting
to manage its partnerships.

With regard to planning for major technology
projects, IRS has historically lacked disciplined
and structured processes for developing and
managing information technology. We reported in
February 1998 that IRS had not clearly defined
system modernization phases, nor had it adequately
specified organizational roles, making it unclear
who was to do what.8 IRS' systems modernization
challenges include completing a modernization
blueprint to define, direct, and control future
modernization efforts and establishing the
management and engineering capability to build and
acquire modernized systems. The key to effectively
addressing these challenges is to ensure that long-
standing modernization management and technical
weaknesses are corrected before IRS invests large
sums of modernization funds. As we have reported,
IRS recently initiated appropriate first steps to
address these weaknesses via its initial
modernization expenditure plan that represents the
first step in a long-term, incremental
modernization program.9

The Census Bureau, through its effective use of
technology in expanding the electronic
availability of census data, demonstrates how
federal agencies can leverage performance and
customer satisfaction through the better use of
technology. Before applying technology to its data
dissemination efforts, the Bureau released massive
amounts of data in printed reports. Now, by using
the Internet as its principal medium for
disseminating data, the Bureau is able to reduce
its reliance on printed materials, reach a wider
audience, and provide its clients with information
in a format that better meets their needs. The
Bureau reports that its customers are responding
positively to the shift, with significant growth
in the number of customer hits on the Census
Internet site, from about 10,000 per day in 1994
to more than 850,000 per day in 1999. The Bureau
plans to use the Internet as its principal medium
for releasing data from the 2000 Census.

Employee Involvement to Elicit Ideas and Build
Commitment and Accountability
Successful management improvement efforts require
the active involvement of managers and staff
throughout the organization to provide ideas for
improvements and supply the energy and expertise
needed to implement changes. Employees at all
levels of high-performing organizations
participate in--and have a stake in--improving
operational and program performance to achieve
results. Our work has shown that high-performing
organizations use a number of strategies and
techniques to effectively involve employees,
including (1) fostering a performance-oriented
culture, (2) working to develop a consensus with
unions on goals and strategies, (3) providing the
training that staff need to work effectively, and
(4) devolving authority while focusing
accountability on results.

Fostering a performance-oriented culture requires
agency management to communicate with staff
throughout the organization to involve them in the
process of designing and implementing change.
Setting improvement goals is an important step in
getting organizations across the government to
engage seriously in the difficult task of change.
The central features of the Results Act-strategic
planning, performance measurement, and public
reporting and accountability-can serve as powerful
tools to help change the basic culture of
government. Involving employees in developing and
implementing these goals and measures can help
direct a diverse array of actions to improve
performance and achieve results. However, our
survey of federal managers, conducted in late 1996
and 1997, indicates there is substantial room for
improvement in this area. This survey found that
only one-third of non-SES managers (as opposed to
nearly three-fourths of the SES managers) reported
they had been involved in establishing long-term
strategic goals for their agencies.10

Employees in high-performing organizations
understand the importance of and the connection
between their performance and the organization's
success.11  The failure to constructively involve
staff in an organization's improvement efforts
means running the risk that the changes will be
more difficult and protracted than necessary. For
example, in the fall of 1997, the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission's (NRC) Office of Inspector
General surveyed NRC staff to obtain their views
on the agency's safety culture. In its June 1998
report, the Inspector General noted that the staff
had a strong commitment to protecting public
health and safety but expressed high levels of
uncertainty and confusion about the new directions
in regulatory practices and challenges facing the
agency. Employees who are confused about the
direction their agency is taking will not be able
to effectively focus on results or make as full a
contribution as they might otherwise.

One way high-performing organizations can enhance
employee involvement and gain agreement on an
organization's goals and strategies is by
developing partnerships with employee unions. The
U.S. Postal Service's long-standing challenges in
labor-management relations illustrate the
importance of having a shared set of long-term
goals and strategies agreed upon by managers,
employees, and unions. As we have reported, labor-
management relations at the Postal Service have
been characterized by disagreements that have,
among other things, hampered efforts to automate
some postal systems that could have resulted in
savings and helped the Service reach its
performance goals.12 Although there has been some
progress, problems persist and continue to
contribute to higher mail processing and delivery
costs. To help the Postal Service resolve its
problems, we have long recommended that the
Service and its unions and management associations
establish a framework agreement to outline common
goals. We have also noted that the Results Act can
provide an effective framework for union and
management representatives to discuss and agree
upon goals and strategies.

Employees' capabilities also play an important
role in achieving performance improvements, and
training is a key factor enabling employee
involvement. Agencies that expect their employees
to take greater responsibility and be held
accountable for results must ensure that the
employees have the training and tools they need to
fulfill these expectations. In that regard, IRS is
beginning to implement significant changes that
will require training for frontline employees and
their supervisors. For example, in lieu of hiring
a large number of seasonal employees to handle
return processing workload during the annual
filing season, IRS plans to increase the number of
permanent employees and expand their job
responsibilities to include compliance work that
they can do after the filing season. Those
employees will have to be cross-trained so that
they can handle both their return processing and
compliance responsibilities. Training is expected
to be a key factor in IRS' efforts to provide top-
quality customer service. Further, given the
dynamic environment agencies face, employees need
incentives, training, and support to help them
continually learn and adapt. Our 1996/97 survey
found that about 60 percent or more of the
supervisors and managers reported that their
agencies had not provided them with the training
necessary to accomplish critical, results-oriented
management tasks.

High-performing organizations also seek to involve
and engage employees by devolving authority to
lower levels of the organization. Employees are
more likely to support changes when they have the
necessary amount of authority and flexibility--
along with commensurate accountability and
incentives--to advance the agency's goals and
improve performance.  Allowing employees to bring
their expertise and judgement to bear in meeting
their responsibilities can help agencies
capitalize on their employees' talents, leading to
more effective and efficient operations and
improved customer service.13 Some federal agencies,
such as the Social Security Administration (SSA),
are exploring new ways to involve employees by
devolving decisionmaking authority. Although the
efficacy of this initiative has not been fully
assessed, SSA has been implementing a pilot
program to establish a "single decision maker"
position.  This program expands the authority of
disability examiners, who currently make initial
disability determinations jointly with physicians,
and allows the single decision maker to make the
initial disability determination and consult with
physicians only as needed.14

Our work has shown that agencies can improve the
extent to which they devolve authority for
employees to make decisions and the extent to
which they hold employees accountable for results.
Our 1996/97 survey of federal managers found that
less than one-third of non-SES managers felt that
to a great or very great extent they had the
decisionmaking authority needed to accomplish
strategic goals. Likewise, only about half of the
managers we surveyed reported that they were being
held accountable for program results.

Our work has also shown that agencies can do a
better job of providing incentives to encourage
employees to improve performance and achieve
results. Only one-fourth of non-SES managers
reported that to a great or very great extent
employees received positive recognition from their
agencies for efforts to help accomplish strategic
goals. At the request of this Subcommittee, we are
surveying federal managers again to follow up on
whether there have been improvements in these
critical areas.

Some agencies have explored new ways of devolving
decisionmaking authority in exchange for
operational flexibility and accountability for
results. For example, in fiscal year 1996, the
Veterans Health Administration (VHA) management
structure was decentralized to form 22 Veterans
Integrated Service Networks.15 VA gave these
networks substantial operational autonomy and the
ability to perform basic decisionmaking and
budgetary duties. VA made the networks accountable
for results such as improving patient access,
efficiency, and reducing costs. VA also
established performance measures, such as
increasing the number of outpatient surgeries,
reducing the use of inpatient care, and increasing
the number of high-priority veterans served to
hold network and medical center directors
accountable for results.

Organizational Alignment to Streamline Operations
and Clarify Accountability
Successful management improvement efforts often
entail organizational realignment to better
achieve results and clarify accountability. For
example, GSA has sought to improve its efficiency
and effectiveness by changing its organizational
structure to separate its policymaking functions
from its operations that provide services. GSA
recognized that it suffered from conflicting
policymaking and service-providing roles and
needed to replace its outmoded methods of
delivering service. To address this issue, GSA
established the Office of Policy, Planning, and
Evaluation in 1995, which it later renamed the
Office of Governmentwide Policy, to handle policy
decisions separately from functions that deliver
supplies or services. GSA believes that this
realignment has improved efficiency and reduced
the perception of conflict of interest that
existed prior to the separation of its
policymaking and service-delivery roles.

While GSA's efforts thus far are an important
reform, additional opportunities for
organizational realignment appear to exist. For
example, the GSA Inspector General has expressed
concerns that GSA's organization and management
structure has not kept pace with GSA's downsizing,
streamlining, and reform efforts. In addition, the
Inspector General has said that GSA's
organizational structure does not seem to match
the responsibility for managing programs with the
authority to do so. As a result, for example, GSA
has faced situations where regions (which operate
independently) have taken divergent positions on
similar issues, according to the Inspector
General.

IRS' ongoing efforts provide another example of
the importance of aligning organizational
structures. As Commissioner Rossotti has stated,
IRS' current cumbersome organizational structure
and inadequate technology are the principal
obstacles to delivering dramatic improvements in
customer service and productivity. The
Commissioner is reorganizing IRS with the aim of
building an organization designed around taxpayer
groups and creating management roles with clear
responsibilities. One of the first organizational
realignments taking place is in the Office of the
Taxpayer Advocate. This office is intended to,
among other things, help taxpayers who cannot get
their problems resolved through normal IRS
channels. Formerly, the Advocate's Office had to
rely on functional groups within IRS, like
examination and collection, to provide most of its
program resources-including staff, space, and
equipment.16 When functional needs conflicted with
Advocate Office needs, there was no assurance that
advocate needs would be met. In the new
organization, all advocate program resources will
be controlled and managed by the Taxpayer
Advocate. By organizing this way, IRS hopes to
improve both program efficiency and service to
taxpayers.

The organizational realignments at GSA and IRS are
consistent with a more general exploration under
way to use streamlined and clarified
organizational arrangements to help enhance
accountability and improve performance. For
example, building on reform efforts in the United
Kingdom and other countries, the Administration
has proposed creating Performance-Based
Organizations (PBOs) in which selected agencies
that deliver measurable services receive greater
organizational autonomy in exchange for heightened
accountability for results on the part of top and
senior leadership. Last year, in an attempt to
address significant management and accountability
problems with federal student financial aid
programs, Congress enacted the first PBO, the
Office of Student Financial Assistance, within the
Department of Education. We have identified the
management of student financial aid programs, with
more than $150 billion in outstanding student
loans, as being at high-risk to waste, fraud,
abuse, and mismanagement.

The PBO structure exemplifies new directions in
accountability for the federal government because
the PBO's Chief Operating Officer, who reports to
the Secretary of Education, is held directly and
personally accountable, through an employment
contract, for achieving measurable organizational
and individual goals. The Chief Operating Officer
is appointed by the Secretary of Education to a
minimum 3-year and a maximum 5-year term, and may
receive a bonus for meeting the performance goals
or be removed for failing to meet them.

The Office of Student Financial Assistance was
provided with increased flexibility for
procurement and personnel management, and key
managers are to be held directly accountable for
performance objectives that include (1) improving
customer satisfaction; (2) providing high quality
cost-effective services; and (3) providing
complete, accurate, and timely data to ensure
program integrity. The Chief Operating Officer is
to enter into annual performance agreements
containing measurable organization and individual
goals with key managers, who can receive a bonus
or can also be removed.

An additional accountability mechanism is that the
Chief Operating Officer and the Secretary of
Education are required to agree on, and make
public, a 5-year performance plan that establishes
the Office's goals and objectives. To further
underscore accountability issues, the PBO's Chief
Operating Officer is to annually prepare and
submit to Congress, through the Secretary, a
report on the performance of the PBO. The report
is to include an evaluation of the extent to which
the Office met the goals and objectives contained
in the 5-year performance plan. In addition, the
annual report is to include (1) an independent
financial audit, (2) applicable financial and
performance requirements under the Chief Financial
Officers Act and the Results Act, (3) the results
achieved by the Office relative to its goals, (4)
an evaluation of the Chief Operating Officer's
performance, (5) recommendations for legislative
and regulatory changes to improve service and
program integrity, and (6) other information as
detailed by the Director of the Office of
Management and Budget.

Strong and Continuing Congressional Involvement
Finally, Congress plays a crucial role in
management improvement efforts throughout the
executive branch through its legislative and
oversight capacities. On a governmentwide basis,
Congress, under the bi-partisan leadership of this
Committee and the House Government Reform
Committee, has established a statutory framework
consisting of requirements for goal-setting and
performance measurement, financial management, and
information technology management, all aimed at
improving the performance, management, and
accountability of the federal government. Through
the enactment of the framework and its efforts to
foster the framework's implementation, Congress
has, in effect, served as an institutional
champion for improving the management of the
federal government, providing a consistent focus
for oversight and reinforcement of important
policies. On an agency-specific basis as well,
support from the Congress has proven to be
critical in instituting and sustaining management
reforms, such as those taking place at IRS, GSA,
and elsewhere across the federal government.

Congress, in its oversight role, can monitor
management improvement initiatives and provide the
continuing attention necessary for reform
initiatives to be carried through to their
successful completion. Information in agencies'
plans and reports produced under the Results Act,
high quality financial and program cost data, and
other related information, can help Congress in
targeting its oversight efforts and identifying
opportunities for additional improvements in
agencies' management. In this regard, we have long
advocated that congressional committees of
jurisdiction hold augmented oversight hearings on
each of the major agencies at least once each
Congress. Congress could examine, for example, the
degree to which agencies are building the elements
of successful management improvement initiatives
that we have discussed today into their respective
management reform efforts. Such hearings will
further underscore for agencies the importance
that Congress places on creating high-performing
government organizations. Also, through the
appointment and confirmation process, the Senate
has an added opportunity to make clear its
commitment to sound federal management and explore
what prospective nominees plan to do to ensure
that their agencies are well-managed and striving
to be high-performing organizations.

In summary Mr. Chairman, serious and disciplined
efforts are needed to attack the management
problems confronting some of our largest agencies.
Successful management improvement efforts often
contain a number of common critical elements,
including top leadership commitment and
accountability, the integration of management
improvement initiatives into programmatic
decisions, planning to chart the direction the
improvements will take, employee involvement in
the change efforts, organizational realignment to
streamline operations and clarify accountability,
and congressional involvement and oversight.
Experience has shown that when these elements are
in place, lasting management reforms are more
likely to be implemented that ultimately lead to
improvements in the performance and cost-
efficiency of government.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes our prepared
statement. We would be pleased to respond to any
questions that you or other Members of the
Subcommittee may have.

     Contacts and Acknowledgement

     For further contacts regarding this
testimony, please contact J. Christopher Mihm at
(202) 512-8676.  For information regarding GAO's
work on IRS modernization, please contact James R.
White at

(202) 512-9110, and for information regarding
GAO's work on GSA, please contact Bernard L. Ungar
at (202) 512-4232.  Individuals making key
contributions to this testimony included Kelsey
Bright, Deborah Junod, Susan Ragland, and William
Reinsberg.

_______________________________
1Major Management Challenges and Program Risks
(GAO/OCG-99-SET, January 1999).
2Management Reform: Using the Results Act and
Quality Management to Improve Federal Performance
(GAO/T-GGD-99-151, July 29, 1999).
3IRS' new mission statement reads, "Provide
America's taxpayers top quality service by helping
them understand and meet their tax
responsibilities and by applying the tax law with
integrity and fairness to all." IRS' supporting
strategic goals are to (1) provide top quality
service to each taxpayer, (2) provide service to
all taxpayers by applying the law with integrity
and fairness, and (3) increase productivity by
providing a quality work environment for its
employees.
4Managing for Results: Opportunities for Continued
Improvements in Agencies' Performance Plans
(GAO/GGD/AIMD-99-215, July 20, 1999).
5 These areas are characterized as "high-risk"
because of their greater vulnerability to waste,
fraud, abuse, and mismanagement.
6Management Reform: Agencies' Initial Efforts to
Restructure Personnel Operations (GAO/GGD-98-93,
July 13, 1998).
7Public-Private Partnerships: Key Elements of
Federal Buildings and Facility Partnerships
(GAO/GGD-99-23, Feb. 3, 1999).
8Tax Systems Modernization: Blueprint Is a Good
Start But Not Yet Sufficiently Complete to Build
or Acquire Systems (GAO/AIMD/GGD-98-54, Feb. 24,
1998).
9Tax Systems Modernization: Results of IRS'
Initial Expenditure Plan (GAO/AIMD/GGD-99-206,
June 15, 1999).
10 The Government Performance and Results Act:
1997 Governmentwide Implementation Will Be Uneven
(GAO/GGD-97-109, June 2, 1997).
11 Major Management Challenges and Program Risks:
A Governmentwide Perspective  (GAO/OCG-99-1,
January 1999).
12 Major Management Challenges and Program Risks:
U.S. Postal Service (GAO/OCG-99-21, January 1999).
13 Executive Guide:  Effectively Implementing the
Government Performance and Results Act  (GAO/GGD-
96-118, June 1996).
14 SSA Disability Redesign:  Actions Needed To
Enhance Future Progress  (GAO/HEHS-99-25, Mar. 12,
1999).
15 VA Health Care:  More Veterans Are Being Served,
But Better Oversight Is Needed  (GAO/HEHS-98-226,
Aug. 28, 1998).
16IRS Management: IRS Faces Challenges as it
Restructures the Office of the Taxpayer Advocate
(GAO/GGD-99-124, July 15, 1999).

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