Possible Budget Cuts

GAO has issued its 2012 Annual Report. Here is their summary of areas that should be cleaned up.

Duplication, Overlap, or Fragmentation Areas

Missions	Areas Identified
Agriculture	1. Protection of Food and Agriculture Centrally coordinated oversight is needed to ensure nine federal agencies effectively and efficiently implement the nation’s fragmented policy to defend the food and agriculture systems against potential terrorist attacks and major disasters.
Defense	2. Electronic Warfare Identifying opportunities to consolidate Department of Defense airborne electronic attack programs could reduce overlap in the department’s multiple efforts to develop new capabilities and improve the department’s return on its multibillion-dollar acquisition investments.
Defense	3. Unmanned Aircraft Systems Ineffective acquisition practices and collaboration efforts in the Department of Defense unmanned aircraft systems portfolio creates overlap and the potential for duplication among a number of current programs and systems.
Defense	4. Counter-Improvised Explosive Device Efforts The Department of Defense continues to risk duplication in its multibillion-dollar counter Improvised Explosive Device efforts because it does not have a comprehensive database of its projects and initiatives.
Defense	5. Defense Language and Culture Training The Department of Defense needs a more integrated approach to reduce fragmentation in training approaches and overlap in the content of training products acquired by the military services and other organizations.
Defense	6. Stabilization, Reconstruction, and Humanitarian Assistance Efforts Improving the Department of Defense’s evaluations of stabilization, reconstruction, and humanitarian assistance efforts, and addressing coordination challenges with the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development, could reduce overlapping efforts and result in the more efficient use of taxpayer dollars.
Economic development	7. Support for Entrepreneurs Overlap and fragmentation among the economic development programs that support entrepreneurial efforts require the Office of Management and Budget and other agencies to better evaluate the programs and explore opportunities for program restructuring, which may include consolidation, within and across agencies.
Economic development	8. Surface Freight Transportation Fragmented federal programs and funding structures are not maximizing the efficient movement of freight.
Energy	9. Department of Energy Contractor Support Costs The Department of Energy should assess whether further opportunities could be taken to streamline support functions, estimated to cost over $5 billion, at its contractor-managed laboratory and nuclear production and testing sites, in light of contractors’ historically fragmented approach to providing these functions.
Energy	10. Nuclear Nonproliferation Comprehensive review needed to address strategic planning limitations and potential fragmentation and overlap concerns among programs combating nuclear smuggling overseas.
General government	11. Personnel Background Investigations The Office of Management and Budget should take action to prevent agencies from making potentially duplicative investments in electronic case management and adjudication systems.
General government	12. Cybersecurity Human Capital Governmentwide initiatives to enhance cybersecurity workforce in the federal government need better structure, planning, guidance, and coordination to reduce duplication.
General government	13. Spectrum Management Enhanced coordination of federal agencies' efforts to manage radio frequency spectrum and an examination of incentive mechanisms to foster more efficient spectrum use may aid regulators' attempts to jointly respond to competing demands for spectrum while identifying valuable spectrum that could be auctioned for commercial use, thereby generating revenues for the U.S. Treasury.
Health	14. Health Research Funding The National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, and Department of Veterans Affairs can improve sharing of information to help avoid the potential for unnecessary duplication.
Health	15. Military and Veterans Health Care The Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs need to improve integration across care coordination and case management programs to reduce duplication and better assist servicemembers, veterans, and their families.
Homeland security/Law enforcement	16. Department of Justice Grants The Department of Justice could improve how it targets nearly $3.9 billion to reduce the risk of potential, unnecessary duplication across the more than 11,000 grant awards it makes annually.
Homeland security/Law enforcement	17. Homeland Security Grants The Department of Homeland Security needs better project information and coordination among four overlapping grant programs.
Homeland security/Law enforcement	18. Federal Facility Risk Assessments Agencies are making duplicate payments for facility risk assessments by completing their own assessments, while also paying the Department of Homeland Security for assessments that the department is not performing.
Information technology	19. Information Technology Investment Management The Office of Management and Budget, and the Departments of Defense and Energy need to address potentially duplicative information technology investments to avoid investing in unnecessary systems.
International affairs	20. Overseas Administrative Services U.S. government agencies could lower the administrative cost of their operations overseas by increasing participation in the International Cooperative Administrative Support Services system and by reducing reliance on American officials overseas to provide these services.
International affairs	21. Training to Identify Fraudulent Travel Documents Establishing a formal coordination mechanism could help reduce duplicative activities among seven different entities that are involved in training foreign officials to identify fraudulent travel documents.
Science and the environment	22. Coordination of Space System Organizations Fragmented leadership has led to program challenges and potential duplication in developing multibillion-dollar space systems.
Science and the environment	23. Space Launch Contract Costs Increased collaboration between the Department of Defense and National Aeronautics and Space Administration could reduce launch contracting duplication.
Science and the environment	24. Diesel Emissions Fourteen grant and loan programs at the Department of Energy, Department of Transportation, and the Environmental Protection Agency and three tax expenditures fund activities that have the effect of reducing mobile source diesel emissions; enhanced collaboration and performance measurement could improve these fragmented and overlapping programs.
Science and the environment	25. Environmental Laboratories The Environmental Protection Agency needs to revise its overall approach to managing its 37 laboratories to address potential overlap and fragmentation and more fully leverage its limited resources.
Science and the environment	26. Green Building To evaluate the potential for overlap or fragmentation among federal green building initiatives, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Energy, and the Environmental Protection Agency should lead other federal agencies in collaborating on assessing their investments in more than 90 initiatives to foster green building in the nonfederal sector.
Social services	27. Social Security Benefit Coordination Benefit offsets for related programs help reduce the potential for overlapping payments but pose administrative challenges.
Social services	28. Housing Assistance Examining the benefits and costs of housing programs and tax expenditures that address the same or similar populations or areas, and potentially consolidating them, could help mitigate overlap and fragmentation and decrease costs.
Training, employment, and education	29. Early Learning and Child Care The Departments of Education and Health and Human Services should extend their coordination efforts to other federal agencies with early learning and child care programs to mitigate the effects of program fragmentation, simplify children’s access to these services, collect the data necessary to coordinate operation of these programs, and identify and minimize any unwarranted overlap and potential duplication.
Training, employment, and education	30. Employment for People with Disabilities Better coordination among 50 programs in nine federal agencies that support employment for people with disabilities could help mitigate program fragmentation and overlap, and reduce the potential for duplication or other inefficiencies.
Training, employment, and education	31. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education Strategic planning is needed to better manage overlapping programs across multiple agencies.
Training, employment, and education	32. Financial Literacy Overlap among financial literacy activities makes coordination and clarification of roles and responsibilities essential, and suggests potential benefits of consolidation.