Employment
Employment

Author: U S Government Accountability Office (G

Publisher: BiblioGov

Published: 2013-06

Total Pages: 68

ISBN-13: 9781289003432

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The Department of State's Office of Foreign Buildings is responsible for acquiring, constructing, selling, maintaining, and operating about $3 billion worth of government-owned and leased properties in 215 cities and 135 countries. The overseas construction program is not effective because of a lack of reliable, long-range planning; poor cost estimating; external pressures; and insufficient technical personnel. Management of employee housing is fragmented and lacks adequate criteria, centralized review, and a uniform policy. This results in higher costs because employees are provided with housing that exceeds space standards and living quarters allowances. Properties are not properly maintained and managed because of a lack of qualified personnel to make inspections, weak maintenance criteria, and deficient information used by managers. In spite of plans to establish a real property management information system, the Office had not established a reliable system 8 years after GAO expressed concerns on this subject. It is estimated that it will be least 5 more years before such a system is operational. A recent appointment of a new Office of Foreign Buildings' Director offers the opportunity for improved management.

Compendium of GAO's Views on the Cost Saving Proposals of the Grace Commission: Individual issue analyses
Compendium of GAO's Views on the Cost Saving Proposals of the Grace Commission: Individual issue analyses

Author: United States. General Accounting Office

Publisher:

Published: 1985

Total Pages: 1320

ISBN-13:

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In response to a congressional request, GAO examined issues studied and recommendations made by the President's Private Sector Survey on Cost Control, better known as the Grace Commission, to determine whether: (1) the issues and recommendations made on program management and cost control had merit; (2) legislation would be necessary to implement the recommendations; (3) implementation efforts were completely underway; and (4) the savings estimates were realistic. GAO found that many of the issues studied and recommendations made by the Commission had overall merit and that, while many have already been implemented by legislative or administrative action, many more require additional legislative action to be fully implemented. However, GAO questioned the accuracy of many of the associated savings estimates, found flaws in the methodology used to develop some of the estimates, and found that the description of the methodology used in some estimates was insufficient to allow an assessment of its validity. In most of the instances where GAO questioned the methodology used, it believed that the savings were overstated. GAO supported management improvement issues more frequently than policy-oriented issues; however, policy-oriented issues constitute a large portion of the total estimated savings. GAO does not support restructuring federal subsidy programs and fixing federal health care costs to a percentage of the gross national product, and it disagreed with selected aspects of recommendations to reduce civilian and military retirement benefits. GAO support was most extensive in the areas aimed at strengthening federal management systems, federal automatic data processing operations, federal credit and cash management efforts, and civilian procurement and property management activities. GAO has made similar or related recommendations in nearly half of the areas in which it agreed with the Commission. Additional legislative action would be necessary to fully implement approximately half of the recommendations analyzed.