30 Steps to Better Government

By GENE L. DODARO
NYT

Gene L. Dodaro is the comptroller general of the United States and the head of the Government Accountability Office.

Washington

CALLS for greater government efficiency are nothing new in Washington. But with President Obama and Congress now debating budgets for both the rest of this year and the next, with the economy yet to fully recover from the recent recession and with our government’s finances still on an unsustainable long-term path, the need to wring every dollar out of the federal budget and ensure that taxpayers are getting their money’s worth has never been greater. How, though, do you find these savings?

Today, the Government Accountability Office is issuing its updated roadmap to confronting waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement. Since we started this list of programs at high risk of such problems two decades ago, our office has come to update it with each new Congress, and history shows that sustained, focused oversight from lawmakers and administration officials can save billions of dollars and improve services. But while over one-third of the programs we listed previously have come off the list over the years, dozens of others have moved onto it. The latest high-risk list presents 30 areas ripe for Congress and President Obama to take action.

One new area on the list is the Interior Department’s management of oil and gas leases and royalties, which are among the largest sources of non-tax revenue to the federal government. One reason this area is at risk is that the department does not have reasonable assurance that all revenues are being collected. Indeed, in 2008, the G.A.O. reported that the Interior Department had not conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the federal oil and gas revenue system in more than 25 years, despite significant changes in the oil and gas industry.

We have also pointed out that royalty collection relied too heavily on company-reported oil and gas production figures. In fiscal years 2006 and 2007 we found that much of the data reported by oil and gas companies appeared erroneous, resulting in millions in uncollected fees. And the proportion of revenues that the government collected for oil and gas produced in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a major study, was lower than for 93 of 104 other owners of such resources.

(More here.)

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