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Piloting coordinated performance audits to address crosscutting

issues

J. Christopher Mihm

Managing Director, Strategic Issues

United States Government Accountability Office

7h Meeting of the INTOSAI Working Group on Key National Indicators Kuta, Indonesia

24-26 February, 2014

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Update from our last meeting in Krakow

My presentation last year discussed provided

1. An update on the status of U.S. efforts,

2. Discussed how GAO is evolving its approach to performance auditing to include a more direct focus on crosscutting issues, and

3. What this evolution means for us internally.

This year, I will discuss two initiatives broadly related to KNI issues

4. Our pilot project with state and local auditors on coordinated audits on affordable housing.

5. The use of Strategic Reviews under the Government Performance and Results Act Modernization Act (GPRAMA).

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As was discussed in prior KNI WG meetings, the US is part of the “global public management revolution” with certain overarching characteristics

• The types of issues that government confronts are growing more complex and boundary-less (wicked issues).

• The approaches (policy tools) that government uses to address these issues are wide ranging and increasingly indirect (hollow or third-party government).

• Citizen confidence in the federal government is at historic lows and citizens are rightly demanding increased transparency and opportunities for active engagement.

• All of this must take place in an environment where agencies are stressed to develop and maintain the basic capacities they need (austerity budgets, the “thinning of the hollow state”).

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This Governance Environment is Consistent with Europe’s Plan for 2025

• The European Parliament 2025: Preparing for Complexity

• Four major trends• A multi-polar world• Multi-level governance• Multi-actor• Multi-tech

• The implications for performance auditing: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-868T

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GAO’s Intergovernmental Initiative

• GAO is partnering with members of the state and local accountability community who have volunteered to participate in a pilot to develop an approach for reviewing how federal, state, and local resources might be better coordinated to enhance performance outcomes and/or increase efficiency in a selected policy area.

• The partners group is a mix of state auditors and comptrollers, county auditors, city auditors, and internal auditors. We also have senior-level representation from the National Association of State Auditors, Comptrollers, and Treasurers (NASACT) and the Association of Local Government Auditors (ALGA).

• A subset of the partners group will conduct coordinated audits focused on the use of rental assistance to provide affordable housing to low-income families to show how federal, state, and local programs—often delivered through various mechanisms such as grants, tax preferences, loans, guarantees, and vouchers—are combined at the service-delivery level.

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Strategic Reviews under GPRAMA

• Annual assessments of progress to improve outcomes and seek opportunities for productivity improvements.

• To be undertaken at the strategic objective level, i.e., below strategic goals but above annual performance goals. Strategic objectives are to “reflect the outcomes or management impact the agency is trying to achieve and generally include the agency’s role”.

• Bring together multiple sources of analytic, research, performance, and evaluation data.

• To be effective, they will need to involve multiple actors as well.

• Agencies are to do the first round of Strategic Reviews in 2014.

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Thank you!

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GAO on the WebWeb site: http://www.gao.gov/ 

Congressional RelationsKatherine Siggerud, Managing Director, siggerudk@gao.gov(202) 512-4400, U.S. Government Accountability Office 441 G Street, NW, Room 7125, Washington, DC 20548

Public AffairsChuck Young, Managing Director, youngc1@gao.gov(202) 512-4800, U.S. Government Accountability Office441 G Street, NW, Room 7149, Washington, DC 20548

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