Mr. STAATS. That is across the board. That is not just for the OEO. That is the point I wanted to make clear.

Mr. ANDREWS. Whenever Congress specifically directs you to do a certain type of work, as was done in the Prouty amendment on the OEO bill, that is a mandate to you?

Mr. STAATS. That is the way we have construed it. Since they gave us no extra money we have to defer other work.

Mr. ANDREWS. You give it the highest priority?

Mr. STAATS. That is right.

Mr. WEITZEL. Mr. Chairman, the Budget and Accounting Act, 1921, and the Budget and Accounting Procedures Act of 1950 and other laws require us to audit generally all of the activities and programs of the Government. When Congress puts a substantial additional job on us we have to grind this into our system. Mr. Staats has established a semiannual planning exercise in which we try to allocate our resources in Washington and in the field and elsewhere in the world to do the jobs first that Congress wants done and then use the rest of our resources on what we think needs to be done throughout the Government. It would be hard to say what particular job was deferred as a result of putting 125 extra people on OEO.

In our last planning exercise for the 6 months we are now in, from January to June 1968, we had to take account of the need for 125 more people for OEO so we had to step down the assignments to other jobs. This means those jobs, instead of being done in this period, will be done in the next period. This is one of the things that we need the 100 extra staff for next fiscal year.

For several fiscal years we have had an average of 100 extra professional staff that we have used to do the work that comes under the General Accounting Office both because of new programs and because of more money being spent on established programs, and partly to enable us to get into areas that we ought to be in but have not been into, like research and development in the Defense Department where we have done little work in the past. Now we are working there. It is all these things put together that make up our general work program. Mr. YATES. Mr. Chairman?

Mr. ANDREWS. Yes.

Mr. YATES. I am still not satisfied with the answer that Mr. Staats gave me.

I know it is a very difficult thing, but I want to know what other work was deferred. Can you give us a specific instance? The Prouty amendment is a mandate. You accept it as such?

Mr. STAATS. Right.

Mr. YATES. You had to go through your Department pulling men off other projects and putting them on this survey. Is the work that relates to your examination of conditions in Vietnam hurt by this approach? Are you taking any men off that? Are you taking any men off of any of the defense work? Where are you taking your men? Mr. STAATS. I think I could give you this for the record. The answer about Vietnam, we have not taken people out of the Vietnam work. Mr. YATES. You did not have many people on it?

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Mr. STAATS. We didn't have as many

Mr. YATES. As a matter of fact, there should be more people on it, should there not?

Mr. STAATS. There probably should.

Mr. YATES. What is the number you have in Vietnam, 23?

Mr. STAATS. No, 12.

Mr. YATES. Whole Vietnam program?

Mr. STAATS. We supplement that with people from Manila and Honolulu.

Mr. YATES. How many people do you supplement it with?

Mr. STAATS. This depends on the assignments. We have several assignments going there, as I indicated in my statement.

Mr. YATES. What is the most number of people you ever had?
Mr. STAATS. Thirty-one.

Mr. YATES. Thank you.

Mr. ANDREWS. Turning to page B-1, the tabulation which summarizes your budget request by organizational unit, I wonder if you would take up each item of increase as between 1969 and 1968 as shown on that sheet and explain what the need and situation is. We can ask questions as you discuss each one of them.

COMPUTATON OF PERSONNEL LAPSES

Before we go into each of these items, I wish you would turn to the chart on page B-2. In several of the boxes on that chart, lapse figures against the number of positions in the current year, 1968, differ somewhat from the corresponding lapse figure used in arriving at the 1969 requests. For example, in the immediate Office of the Comptroller General there is a lapse of four positions in the 1968, but none in 1969, In the Civil Division there is a lapse in 1968 of 59 positions, but only 40 in 1969. There are other variations.

Could you say something about this situation?

Mr. STAATS. Would you like that now or would you like that for the record?

Mr. ANDREWS. I think that you can supply it for the record.
Mr. STAATS. Yes, sir.

(The information follows:)

The lapse in positions, which varies from year to year, represents a measure of the amount of time that authorized positions will be vacant or not paid for during the year and is directly related to the salary savings shown in our budget which results from unfilled and unpaid positions. One lapsed position is the equiv alent of 1 man-year or 2,080 scheduled work-hours.

Lapsed positions result from delays in filling authorized positions and from absences without pay. To the salary savings resulting from these lapsed positions is added the savings resulting from grade promotions and periodic step increases for only a part of the year, net of the cost of terminal leave payments. These savings are used to reduce the budget estimate for salary to an amount expected to be actually paid.

With respect to the Office of the Comptroller General, a small program planning staff was organized in July 1967, but the staffing of the unit was not completed until about December 1967. Thus, the positions authorized will not be filled for the full year and will be vacant and not paid for the equivalent of about 4 man-years or 8,300 hours during 1967. This results in a lapse of four positions. In general, because our major recruiting effort is directed to college and university seniors and graduate students, most of our vacancies in the professional staff are filled soon after graduation-June and July, February and March, and some in September following summer school. The lapses shown on page B-2 are

directly related to our turnover and recruiting activity and reflect the impact of this activity on the staffing of authorized positions and the actual amount of salary to be paid.

Mr. ANDREWS. Now we will take up B-1, each of the increases. Turn to page B-1 and explain that to us.

Mr. STAATS. Mr. Chairman, I thought that our general statement, where we covered each of these areas, pretty well spelled this out. I would be glad to go back over that if you wish.

INCREASED PERSONNEL REQUESTED-OFFICE OF COMPTROLLER

Mr. ANDREWS. Just speak to the increase in the Office of the Comptroller General where you show an increase of four.

Mr. STAATS. We have been attempting, in the Office of Comptroller General, to develop a system to improve our procedures; to speed up our reports. One of our great problems now is that there is such a lag between the time we collect our information in the field and the time that it is available to the Congress.

We had a good deal of criticism. I have been very unhappy about the time that it takes us to develop these reports. What we have been doing here is developing a small staff in a central office to try to improve this.

Secondly, we are trying to improve the central information that is available on all of our activities, budget, personnel, and our work reporting.

Thirdly, we have been trying to improve the very process on the very point that you are talking about, setting priorities within the GAO as a whole; how we can better allocate our manpower. One of the great problems we have is in our 16 regional offices, if we are normally performing studies where we have interruptions in our work for assignments from the Congress, to keep our staff fully occupied in all of these regional offices and not overburdened in other regional offices. It is a matter of distribution of the work. Being located in 16 regional offices and in offices overseas, we have a tremendous problem here. This is what we have been trying to do. That is why we have increased that staff.

INCREASED PERSONNEL REQUESTED—ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES

Mr. ANDREWS. The next increase.

Mr. STAATS. The next increase is in the Office of the Administrative Services. Mr. Simmons will speak to that.

Mr. ANDREWS. You are asking for six additional employees in that Office.

Mr. SIMMONS. Yes, sir. Four of those positions, Mr. Chairman, are for computer technicians. The Comptroller General is having a study made of our information processing system. This study identified a need for these skills and we provided for them in 1969. The other two are merely to fill in a couple of gaps. Our travel and other expenses are increasing. There are more vouchers to audit and more records management work with the agencies.

INCREASED PERSONNEL REQUESTED- -OFFICE OF POLICY AND

SPECIAL STUDIES

Mr. ANDREWS. The next is Office of Policy and Special Studies. You ask for an increase of five.

Mr. STAATS. Mr. Morse will speak to that.

Mr. MORSE. Out of the five positions requested, two are for our new systems analysis group that we established during the last year. One position is for our automatic data processing group of specialists, and one is for our group serving the area of financial management and accounting systems development. The last one is for our audit policy group.

Mr. ANDREWS. Tell us briefly what this Office of Civil Division does. Mr. STAATS. Civil Division, Mr. Chairman, covers all of the agencies, domestic agencies. The only agencies excluded from the Civil Division are the Defense Department and the international agencies, such as State, AID, USIA, and Export-Import Bank. In other words, this includes all agencies such as Agriculture and Interior.

Mr. ANDREWS. Specifically, how much of the $612,000 increase is associated with the 31 additional positions under this Civil Division section?

Mr. CORNETT. It is about $154,500 for the 31 positions and the balance is for added cost of the last pay increase, promotions, and withingrade increases.

Mr. ANDREWS. Are there any particular agencies on the civil side of the Government that you would concentrate on? Is it a general strengthening of new positions?

Mr. STAATS. It is the latter, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Samuelson may want to comment on this point further. I believe it is the latter.

Mr. SAMUELSON. Mr. Chairman, we are organized into 10 operating groups, somewhat along functional or activity lines, such as Agriculture, HEW, and Labor, housing, space, and so on. We shift staff between operating groups as our needs arise. It is pretty hard to identify any one specific group as being the recipient of our increase staff requirements here. Basically, for the long term, however, the increases would go into Health, Education, and Welfare, Housing and Urban Development, Labor poverty programs, and to some degree transportation, natural resources, and to Agriculture. Those are the currently expanding programs.

Mr. STAATS. Those are the areas expanding most rapidly. We do not feel that we are adequately covering them.

Mr. ANDREWS. You are asking for a salary increase of $612,900 and an increase in the average number of positions of 31. I gather from your statement earlier that this is one of the principal front-line divisions in your office. From what you indicated in your general statement, I gather that much of this increase is occasioned by the general growth of the Federal Establishment in terms of numbers of programs and increased expenditures?

Mr. STAATS. That is a very correct and good statement of it.

Mr. ANDREWS. Are there any particular agencies on the civil side of

the Government that you would concentrate on, or is it a general strengthening of a new proposition?

Mr. STAATS. Again, our workload has to respond, first, to the needs of the Congress and then, secondly, we try beyond that to give priority to the areas which are the most costly and where we feel there may be problems of one kind or another. In general, we would concentrate the additional resources in the civil division mostly in the new and expanding areas where we have large increases, for example, in HEW, Labor, Housing, and Urban Development, and the poverty program.

We cannot be sure as of right now what additional requests we are going to get from Congress during the course of the year. I mentioned here that we had had something like 27 requests from the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. We did not anticipate that a year ago. We cannot be sure that another committee might not come through and make a similar request next year. Our workload in the last year in the space program has jumped up tremendously. We cannot always anticipate what committee interests are going to be.

Mr. ANDREWs. No one else can.

Mr. STAATS. No one else can. We know it is growing.

GENERAL COUNSEL'S OFFICE

Mr. ANDREWS. About the General Counsel's Office, you are asking for an increase of $89,300. No additional positions. You do not show any increase from the average size of that staff, but you are asking for $89,300. What about that?

Mr. KELLER. Yes, sir, Mr. Chairman. The increase results from a few grade changes, but for the most part, it results from within-grade increases which are required under the law.

Mr. ANDREWS. Is any of that money to be used for salary increases under the pay act?

Mr. KELLER. Not the increases that will be effective in July 1968. Mr. ANDREWS. You have told us that. There is no money requested of this committee for salary increases under the pay act?

Mr. WEITZEL. Some of the money, Mr. Chairman, like all the way through here would be for the additional costs over the full year of the pay increase that took effect last October.

Mr. ANDREWS. For the pay increase that will come in on the first of July, there is no money requested in this budget?

Mr. KELLER. That is correct.

Mr. ANDREWS. If I remember correctly, you said the pay increase that will become effective the first of July will amount to about $2.5 million for fiscal year 1969?

Mr. SIMMONS. That is our best estimate at this time. It could be a little bit more. We are not sure what the final increases will be for each grade.

Mr. KELLER. I want to make clear that the figures shown for General Counsel's Office include within-grade promotions that we must give to an employee who is performing satisfactorily.

Mr. ANDREWS. And the annualization of the pay increase that took effect the first of last October 1967?

Mr. KELLER. Yes, sir.