LIAISON AND COORDINATING ARRANGEMENTS Mr. BENJAMIN. I am aware of that. Discuss the work of the "interagency research notification system" during the past year as it pertains to the prevention of duplication of effort by GAO, CBO, CRS and OTA. Mr. HELLER. May I respond to that one? The Research Notification System is one of the tools that we use to coordinate with our, excuse my sexist term, "sister agencies" in support of the Congress. Each one of our top operating officials in GAO receives the monthly printout, and they also receive the weekly printout. Staff is under instructions in our policy guidelines that when any new assignment starts, that is at the time of submitting a project approval document, they are to check and to contact the person named in there to make sure that we are not stepping on each other's toes. It is important for you to understand that pieces of paper don't get things done. I am sure you are aware of that. What we have tried to do is encourage the professional staff of the organizations to get to know each other as individuals and feel free to look ahead as to the kinds of things that people are planning to get into. We don't just invent jobs from day to day. We do have a planning process, and so do the others, so they have pretty much of an idea of the kinds of things that we are going to get into. We have encouraged and have been very successful in getting the groups to sit down in particular areas, like food or water, energy, minerals, and to discuss what is going on so they know each other on a peer level. That is where the payoff is in terms of those people dealing with one another. We have had a number of people look at us, as to duplication, and basically they have found none that they can point to and say duplication. Certainly we overlap. We study energy, OTA studies energy, CRS studies energy. As far as outright duplication, we have yet to find that happening. Certainly there is overlap in areas. Mr. BENJAMIN. Are you talking about consulting and in-house work? Mr. HELLER. Pardon me? Mr. BENJAMIN. There is no duplication in either consulting or inhouse work? Mr. HELLER. Yes, sir. INTERAGENCY RESEARCH NOTIFICATION SYSTEM Mr. BENJAMIN. When is the notification system initiated, after you start on the project, before the fact or what? Mr. HELLER. When we generate a request to start an assignment, the staff at that level is supposed to coordinate and on the form authorizing the assignment they indicate whether coordination has taken place. Some of our jobs we don't have to coordinate. For example when we are looking for approval of an accounting system, we don't think others are involved at all. It is just kind of a blanket exception where we don't bother anybody. We feel we are wasting our time when we start such an assignment, to pick up the phone and call the person who is your contact. Mr. BENJAMIN. I am inclined to believe that is a faulty assumption, but go ahead. Mr. SCANTLEBURY. We have checked on approval of accounting systems, and there is no one interested in those agencies. Mr. HELLER. When we first started the system we did check and basically CRS said please stop bothering us with this stuff, we are not concerned with that. There you take a risk. Sure you might have a risk. Anyway, in the process of approval, our staff is charged with coordination, and we have been very successful with that we think. Also periodically myself, representing GAO, Mr. Dan Desimone of OTA, Bob Levine, Deputy Director of CBO, and Gil Gude, Director of CRS, get together, I guess every 6 weeks, and just talk over how things are going and any problems we have. If there are any issues, we get them resolved, and there have been some problems that we have run into that we have had to resolve at that level. We just reach an impasse sometimes with the staff. There is disagreement. We may have a problem with a staffer on the Hill who wants one agency to do the job, and that agency would like someone else to do it because it is more in their bailiwick. We are aware of them. Mr. STAATS. We have had a number of cases where we have persuaded the committee to go to OTA, and OTA has done the same thing where they felt it more appropriate for GAO to do the work. After all, you have to recognize a lot of the requests that are generated come from the committee staffs and the chairman may or may not be thinking about duplication when he sends it forward. So that is another thing that has happened. The thing I would like to emphasize, which Mr. Heller has already referred to, is that we have given our people strict instructions that before they start any work, they are to check with CBO, OTA and CRS to see what work they have done or are planning to do in that area. I think there has been remarkably good cooperation among the four agencies. If you do work in international trade, which is a very broad area, they might be working in the same area, but they will be looking at different problems than we will. Mr. BENJAMIN. If I understand the testimony, there is no duplication but possibly some overlap; is that correct? Mr. HELLER. Yes, sir. No honest to God duplication that we are not aware of and that is only where the chairman is seeking different views. POSSIBLE OVERLAP IN THE USE OF CONSULTING SERVICES Mr. BENJAMIN. Can we avoid overlap, particularly when it involves consulting services? Mr. HELLER. Again I think OTA does an awful lot of their work by consultant, and so when I talk about OTA, basically their mode of operation is to impanel groups to do their work. I think we are talking also of the consultant work, yes. Mr. STAATS. I am not clear how there would be duplication on consultants. Mr. BENJAMIN. You are getting into perhaps different subject fields, but the substance generally might be the same. You do a study that is not going to be a duplication of the OTA study, but you both have to have some research done, say, in energy-related fields. They go about doing it. Since you are not duplicating, you are handling two different questions, then you go about doing it. It would be so easy to combine that effort initially on a task force concept so that you could save some money. It might be small, but any savings would be appreciated at this time. INFORMATION EXCHANGE BY SUPPORT AGENCIES Mr. HELLER. We have in several cases provided information to the other agency, and we have used information that they have developed. I am trying to think of the one in energy and minerals where there was this situation where we were going to be going to the same places, Dexter, at about the same time and they agreed to take our work papers? This was about a year and a half to 2 years ago, as I recall. Dexter, if I am not mistaken, it dealt with data supplied on reserves? Mr. PEACH. Coal reserves and resources particularly, and basically it was an issue where we have the authority to go into the books and records of energy companies reporting information to the Federal Government. Mr. HELLER. That is it. Mr. PEACH. And they needed information as a part of their work in the coal reserves area, so we were able to work together in terms of the work we were doing and the initial work they were planning in the area. The particular thrust of our work was trying to get a handle on just how good was the information the government had at this point in time on coal reserves and resources. GAO POLICY ON CONFIDENTIALITY OF WORK REQUESTS Mr. BENJAMIN. What about the confidentiality of the request and when do you make any of our information public? Let me put it in the framework of, one, a committee request, secondly, a member's request, or thirdly, it is demanded by statute. Mr. HELLER. Our policy on that is that we would not disclose the requester until we have that requester's permission, whether it be a member or a chairman. If it is in law it is public knowledge why we are doing this. Mr. KELLER. We do have a 30-day limit though. Mr. HELLER. That is when we issue a report. When we go into a job, if the chairman says "I don't want you to disclose that I have requested this work," we honor that. Mr. BENJAMIN. Does that have to be an affirmative request by the chairman or the member? Mr. HELLER. We go back on every request to the chairman, because we want to make sure we don't start down a path that he didn't mean us to start down. We clarify the scope of the audit, when that is necessary, what form of product he wants, whether it is an oral briefing, a staff study or a formal report, and then one of the check list type questions we have is, do we have your permission to disclose that we are doing this request for you? Mr. BENJAMIN. Generally speaking, what is the percentage of those who say "Hold it confidential," to those who say "I don't care"? Mr. HELLER. Extremely small, rare. Mr. BENJAMIN. Then there is no problem at that point in discussing it with the other agencies involved in this interagency research notification. Mr. STAATS. No. Mr. HELLER. That is true. Now CRS has a rule that they will not under any circumstances, in this research notification book, which is their policy, disclose who requested work. In setting this up, in dealing with the Appropriations Committee of how we would set this up, they agreed that the way we would set it up would be "committee" or "member." It is not by name in the research notification, but that is what the Appropriation Committee wanted, because you couldn't have one of them putting them in, the other one not putting them in. It wouldn't make much sense to the user for that. Mr. STAATS. We would prefer a situation where it is possible to identify the requester. It makes it easier to work with the other agencies and other committees on the Hill, and it is frequently easier to go out and get the information so that there is no mystery about it. There is no secrecy involved. The chairman says to the Foreign Relations Committee he wants GAO to make a review of some particular problem. We would much prefer to have it possible to say that that is the case, that Senator Church has asked for it as chairman of the committee. Mr. BENJAMIN. If you can't disclose the requester, can you disclose the subject matter? Mr. STAATS. What we do is if the requester says "Keep my name confidential," then we simply identify it as a request, a congressional request. Mr. BENJAMIN. But you can discuss the substance of the request without identifying the source. Mr. STAATS. That is right. Mr. HELLER. That would almost be necessary, sir, to be able to proceed with the examination. Mr. BENJAMIN. Now with the interagency research notification system, are any of the other agencies barred from discussing it because their source or the initiator said he didn't want his name or the committee's name revealed? Mr. HELLER. The only one I am aware of, sir, is the Congressional Research Service. It is their policy that they will not disclose or name the requester. Mr. BENJAMIN. Or the request? Mr. HELLER. The request they will disclose in the research notification. They will print what it is. Mr. BENJAMIN. You can discuss that? Mr. HELLER. Oh, sure, and they will usually tell us, sir, but for the public record that they put out, they don't just want that confidentiality violated, so when we talk to them, we can say, well, this is a committee request, who is it, and they will name the chairman with no hesitation, so we know that. |