This is the accessible text file for GAO report number GAO-09-194 
entitled 'Confirmation Of Political Appointees: Eliciting Nominees' 
Views on Management Challenges within Agencies and across Government' 
which was released on November 24, 2008.

This text file was formatted by the U.S. Government Accountability 
Office (GAO) to be accessible to users with visual impairments, as part 
of a longer term project to improve GAO products' accessibility. Every 
attempt has been made to maintain the structural and data integrity of 
the original printed product. Accessibility features, such as text 
descriptions of tables, consecutively numbered footnotes placed at the 
end of the file, and the text of agency comment letters, are provided 
but may not exactly duplicate the presentation or format of the printed 
version. The portable document format (PDF) file is an exact electronic 
replica of the printed version. We welcome your feedback. Please E-mail 
your comments regarding the contents or accessibility features of this 
document to Webmaster@gao.gov. 

This is a work of the U.S. government and is not subject to copyright 
protection in the United States. It may be reproduced and distributed 
in its entirety without further permission from GAO. Because this work 
may contain copyrighted images or other material, permission from the 
copyright holder may be necessary if you wish to reproduce this 
material separately. 

United States Government Accountability Office: 
GAO: 

Report to the Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Oversight of Government 
Management, the Federal Workforce, and the District of Columbia, 
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, U.S. Senate: 

November 2008: 

Confirmation Of Political Appointees: 

Eliciting Nominees' Views on Management Challenges within Agencies and 
across Government: 

GAO-09-194: 

Contents: 

Letter: 

Appendix I: Department of Agriculture: 

Appendix II: Department of Commerce: 

Appendix III: Department of Defense: 

Appendix IV: Department of Education: 

Appendix V: Department of Energy: 

Appendix VI: Department of Health and Human Services: 

Appendix VII: Department of Homeland Security: 

Appendix VIII: Department of Housing and Urban Development: 

Appendix IX: Department of the Interior: 

Appendix X: Department of Justice: 

Appendix XI: Department of Labor: 

Appendix XII: Department of State: 

Appendix XIII: Department of Transportation: 

Appendix XIV: Department of the Treasury: 

Appendix XV: Department of Veterans Affairs: 

Appendix XVI: Environmental Protection Agency: 

Appendix XVII: Export-Import Bank of the United States: 

Appendix XVIII: Federal Communications Commission: 

Appendix XIX: General Services Administration: 

Appendix XX: National Aeronautics and Space Administration: 

Appendix XXI: National Archives and Records Administration: 

Appendix XXII: Office of Management and Budget: 

Appendix XXIII: Office of Personnel Management: 

Appendix XXIV: Office of the U.S. Trade Representative: 

Appendix XXV: Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation: 

Appendix XXVI: Small Business Administration: 

Appendix XXVII: Social Security Administration: 

Appendix XXVIII: U.S. Agency for International Development: 

Appendix XXIX: Acquisition Management: 

Appendix XXX: Collaboration: 

Appendix XXXI: Financial Management: 

Appendix XXXII: Human Capital Management: 

Appendix XXXIII: Information and Technology Management: 

Appendix XXXIV: Real Property Management and Security: 

Appendix XXXV: Results-Oriented Decision Making: 

[End of section] 

United States Government Accountability Office: 
Washington, DC 20548: 

November 17, 2008: 

The Honorable George V. Voinovich: 
Ranking Member: 
Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal 
Workforce and the District of Columbia: 
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs: 
United States Senate: 

Dear Senator Voinovich: 

While some progress has been made in recent years, agencies urgently 
need to strengthen basic management capabilities to successfully 
address current and emerging demands. The incoming administration will 
face challenges in implementing its policy and program agendas because 
of shortcomings in agencies' management capabilities. Building and 
developing the institutional capacity to meet these challenges will 
require appointing the right people to the right positions. It is 
vitally important that leadership and management skills, abilities, and 
experience be among the key criteria the new President uses to select 
his leadership teams in the agencies. The Senate's interest in 
leveraging its role in confirmation hearings--as evidenced by your 
request and by the interest expressed in hearings about the upcoming 
transition--will send a strong message that nominees should have the 
requisite skills to deal effectively with the broad array of complex 
management challenges they will face. 

In keeping with previous work that we performed in 2000 and 2001 to 
facilitate the confirmation process of individuals nominated to 
selected leadership positions in major executive branch agencies, you 
asked us to update the report entitled Confirmation of Political 
Appointees: Eliciting Nominees' Views on Leadership and Management 
Issues (GAO/GGD-00-174) along with its companion report, Potential 
Questions to Elicit Nominees' Views on Agencies' Management Challenges 
(GAO-01-332R). You expressed concern then and now that some nominees 
may lack the depth and breadth of experience required to manage a 
federal agency effectively. This letter provides you with a series of 
questions that Senate committees of jurisdiction could use to help 
determine the management experience and capabilities of upcoming 
nominees. 

As requested, this report includes questions in 35 appendixes; one for 
each of 28 major executive branch departments and agencies, and one for 
each of the following seven major governmentwide management areas: 

* acquisition management, 

* collaboration, 

* financial management, 

* human capital management, 

* information and technology management, 

* results-oriented decision making, and: 

* real property management and security. 

Questions are organized within each appendix by the major issues that 
need to be addressed as identified by our work, and a GAO contact is 
listed for each agency and for each management area. The major issues 
that need to be addressed are discussed in detail on our Transition Web 
site at [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/transition]. That Web site also 
contains information on urgent issues facing the nation, opportunities 
for cost savings across the federal government, discussions of the 
country's long-term fiscal challenges, and summaries of major upcoming 
GAO reports on federal policies and programs. 

These questions are intended to contribute to the diverse array of 
resources available to Senators as they fulfill their constitutional 
responsibilities to advise and consent on presidential nominations. The 
questions cover a wide range of management-related issues, and, as a 
result, not all questions will be relevant to all nominees. 

We look forward to working with you and other members of Congress and 
executive branch officials on this collective effort in leading 
agencies as they work toward addressing key challenges and achieving 
missions. 

As arranged with your office, unless you publicly announce the contents 
of this report earlier, we plan no further distribution of it until 30 
days after its date. At that time, we will provide copies of this 
report to others on request. In addition, the report will be available 
at no charge on the GAO Web site at [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov]. 

Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public 
Affairs may be found on the last page of this report. If you have any 
questions, please contact me at (202) 512-5600. 

Sincerely yours, 

Signed by: 

Gene L. Dodaro: 
Acting Comptroller General of the United States: 

[End of section] 

Appendix I: Department of Agriculture: 

The Department of Agriculture has a broad and far-reaching mission--to 
enhance agricultural trade, improve farm economies and quality of life 
in rural America, help protect the nation's food supply, improve the 
nation's nutrition, and protect and enhance the nation's natural 
resource base and environment--by providing leadership that is based on 
sound public policy, the best available science, and efficient 
management. For fiscal year 2009, total outlays for the department's 17 
agencies--such as Rural Development, the Economic Research Service, and 
the Food Safety and Inspection Service--are estimated at $95 billion, 
including about $72 billion associated with mandatory programs such as 
the majority of food assistance programs; farm commodity programs; 
export promotion programs; and a number of conservation programs, and 
including an estimated $23 billion as discretionary funds to support, 
among other things, rural development loans and grants; management of 
national forests; research and education; and the Special Supplemental 
Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children. The Congressional 
Budget Office has estimated that, for the period 2008-2012, spending on 
the programs covered in the 2008 Farm Bill will total about $307 
billion. 

The department faces challenges that could affect its ability to carry 
out certain of its responsibilities effectively and efficiently. As a 
steward of the nation's natural resources, the department faces the 
increasing severity and frequency of wildland fires that cross into 
populated rural and urban areas. Declining economic conditions, extreme 
weather events, a stronger U.S. dollar abroad, and rising food prices-
-all factors outside the department's control--bring increased demand 
for food and farm assistance programs and challenge the department to 
further improve its controls for ensuring proper payments. The 
department's Inspector General has identified information-technology 
management and security as a material weakness that could seriously 
jeopardize the department's operations and compromise the 
confidentiality, integrity, or availability of sensitive information. 
Today's global marketplace makes safeguarding food from contamination 
and protecting livestock and other natural resources from foreign 
diseases and invasive species more complicated, and more important than 
ever. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Ensuring Proper Farm Program Payments; 
* Ensuring Farm and Conservation Programs Do Not Work at Cross 
Purposes; 
* Ensuring Meat and Poultry Safety and Humane Slaughter of Livestock; 
* Protecting American Agriculture; 
* Addressing Civil Rights Issues; 
* Improving Food Assistance Program Integrity; 
* Protecting Natural Resources; 
* Improving Management of the Competitive Sourcing Program; 
* Defining "Rural" for Housing Programs; 
* Assessing the Multifamily Housing Portfolio; 
* Implementing the Agricultural Systems Initiative; 
* Addressing Concerns about Renewable Fuels. 

Questions: 

Ensuring Proper Farm Program Payments: 

1. GAO has documented abuse in federal farm programs related to the 
requirement that people who receive payments be actively engaged in 
farming. The abuse results from the department's lack of a measurable 
standard to ensure these payments are made only to actual working 
farmers. The department needs to develop and enforce measurable 
standards for what constitutes a "significant contribution to active 
personal management" of a farm so that individuals who may have had 
limited involvement in farming operations do not qualify for payments. 
Have you previously been involved in development of performance or 
other measures? What lessons have you learned that might be useful for 
developing a standard measurable definition of a working farmer to be 
eligible for federal farm programs? 

2. The 2008 Farm Bill lowered the income eligibility limits for farm 
program payments, likely decreasing the number of people eligible for 
payments. What expertise would you bring to the department to improve 
management controls in its farm programs and help ensure that future 
payments go only to intended individuals? 

Ensuring Farm and Conservation Programs Do Not Work at Cross Purposes: 

3. Along with rising crop prices, department programs such as crop 
insurance increase the profitability of crop production and encourage 
the conversion of grassland to cropland. What skills and abilities do 
you possess that would prepare you to address the incompatibility 
between these programs and conservation programs, which pay producers 
to convert environmentally sensitive cropland to grassland? 

4. The growing biofuels industry is spurred on by subsidies such as 
grants and loans for small-scale ethanol and biodiesel refineries in 
rural communities. The growth of this industry is putting further 
pressure to convert environmentally sensitive drought-prone grasslands 
and range historically used for livestock into cropland. Highly 
erodible and environmentally sensitive land, which is currently 
enrolled in the department's land retirement programs (e.g., the 
Conservation Reserve Program), is also under pressure to be put back 
into agriculture production without penalty to the landowner. What 
specific leadership skills and experiences do you have in managing 
competing priorities? How would those skills and experiences help the 
department address competing demands, such as cropland for biofuels 
versus grassland for livestock grazing? 

Ensuring Meat and Poultry Safety and Humane Slaughter of Livestock: 

5. The department faces challenges that could impact its ability to 
carry out certain of its responsibilities effectively. In particular, 
today's global marketplace makes safeguarding food from contamination 
and protecting livestock and other natural resources from foreign 
diseases and invasive species more complicated. How might your prior 
work help in leading the department to manage a changing product 
environment? 

6. The 2008 Farm Bill gives the department responsibility for grading 
examination and inspection of catfish processed for human consumption. 
The new inspection responsibility also includes the conditions under 
which the catfish were raised and transported. The catfish industries 
may be quite different from the traditional meat and poultry industries 
that the department inspects and there may be other differences from 
developing catfish inspection procedures to the trade agreements that 
the new procedures may impact. Can you describe any prior work of yours 
relevant to leading and directing new and expanding roles and 
responsibilities, and how you managed expectations within the 
organization? How could your experience help in effectively managing 
the department's expanding food safety role? 

Protecting American Agriculture: 

7. The Department of Agriculture and the Department of Homeland 
Security have not resolved how they will work together in the event of 
a disease outbreak when a presidential emergency or major disaster is 
declared. How have you previously worked across organizational 
boundaries to develop joint plans? What key steps do you believe are 
needed to ensure a clear understanding between agencies of their 
leadership and roles in responding to crises, such as catastrophic 
agriculture-and food-related events? 

8. In light of the 2001 anthrax attack, the proliferation of 
institutions maintaining high-consequence biological pathogens, and the 
many weaknesses we found in securing such pathogens at the Plum Island 
Animal Disease facility, significant management challenges continue 
regarding the safety and security of pathogens maintained at numerous 
laboratories across the United States. What types of experiences have 
you had that might demonstrate your abilities to manage and lead in 
such critical, high-risk, rapidly changing situations? 

9. We will, in all likelihood, continue to hear about animal diseases 
in the news media, such as avian influenza and mad cow disease, which 
can cause illness and death in humans. The potential for this type of 
illness has a negative effect on the public, who fear illness and avoid 
products that they believe present a risk, thereby having a negative 
effect on industry, in terms of lost revenues and jobs. Do you have 
experience that will help ensure that consumers are well informed on a 
timely basis when episodic events arise? What are key steps that need 
to be taken during a crisis to address and contain the potential animal 
disease threat, public fear, and the effect on industry? 

Addressing Civil Rights Issues: 

10. What has been your background in dealing with civil rights 
performance problems and ensuring a work environment that is free from 
discrimination and provides equal opportunity for all? How could your 
leadership help turn around the long-standing poor civil rights 
performance of the department? 

Improving Food Assistance Program Integrity: 

11. In recent years, the department has made great strides in reducing 
fraud in its nutrition assistance programs, yet challenges remain. Have 
you been successful in identifying, preventing, or addressing fraud? If 
so, how could those experiences help the department effectively build 
on past efforts to improve program integrity and continue to make 
improvements especially in the food stamp and school lunch programs? 

12. Given the current economic climate and rising food prices, 
increasing numbers of households may find they are eligible for and in 
need of nutrition assistance. The department's Food and Nutrition 
Service endeavors to ensure that those with the greatest need enroll in 
nutrition assistance programs while ensuring that recent progress in 
improving the integrity of food stamps and other federal nutrition 
programs continues. Have you been involved in efforts to target 
assistance programs to those--and only those--in need of and eligible 
for benefits? What related insights and guidance would you offer to the 
Food and Nutrition Service? 

13. Obesity has become recognized as a major health threat that 
jeopardizes the well-being of millions of Americans. In your work, have 
you ever attempted to address negative trends that have multiple causes 
and come about over time, such as obesity? Based on your knowledge or 
lessons learned, to what extent can or should the department be 
involved in addressing the obesity issue? 

Protecting Natural Resources: 

14. Wildland fires continue to threaten our nation's public lands and 
communities and consume significant appropriations. GAO reports dating 
back to 1999 have recommended that the Forest Service, along with 
agencies in the Department of the Interior, develop a cohesive strategy 
that identifies options and associated funding to reduce wildfire fuels 
and address wildland fire problems, and develop a tactical plan that 
lays out the steps and time frames needed to develop such a strategy. 
How would you go about developing a cohesive fire strategy that 
identifies long-term options and associated funding needs for 
responding to wildland fire issues? What steps could you take to 
contain and manage the costs of the strategy? 

15. Forest pests have caused substantial damage in the past and 
continue to pose a serious threat to the nation's environment and 
economy. How have you networked with local, regional, and other 
organizations such as may be needed to implement cost-effective early 
warning systems for invasive forest pests, particularly in urban and 
suburban forests that are at high risk of receiving invasive insects 
and disease? 

Improving Management of the Competitive Sourcing Program: 

16. The President's Management Agenda included a governmentwide 
initiative to improve government efficiency and reduce costs of 
government programs by promoting competition between federal employees 
and private sector organizations. What is your management experience in 
competing for work? How would you improve the department's efforts in 
this area? 

Defining "Rural" for Housing Programs: 

17. The department's Economic Research Service has developed a number 
of density-based approaches that can be used to measure the "rurality" 
of an area, based on, for example, whether residents are within 
commuting distance to, or constitute the labor market for, an urban 
area. What, if any, programs have you managed that provided economic 
services to people living in rural communities? Based on the knowledge 
you acquired managing those programs, what factors would you use to 
update the definition of "rural" for the department's rural housing 
programs? 

Assessing the Multifamily Housing Portfolio: 

18. Rural Development has been administering the department's Multi-
family Preservation and Revitalization demonstration program. Do you 
have experience with pilot or temporary demonstration programs? What 
criteria should be used to determine whether such programs are meeting 
their goals? What should be considered in determining whether the 
current structure is adequate to preserve all the properties identified 
by the Rural Housing Service as structurally sound but in need of 
updates and repair, or whether permanent legislation would be required? 

Implementing the Agricultural Systems Initiative: 

19. The department is undertaking an information systems modernization 
effort known as MIDAS. Have you ever taken an organization through 
information systems modernization? How close were the cost and 
completion estimates to the actual numbers when all systems were 
operational? What insights can you share that might help the department 
ensure that MIDAS is successful and delivered within cost and schedule 
estimates? 

Addressing Concerns about Renewable Fuels: 

20. Meeting our renewable fuel standard's goal of 36 billion gallons of 
biofuels annually by 2022 will stretch our use of water, arable land, 
and other resources. Can you describe your skills in managing the 
achievement of long-term goals? With those skills and your 
understanding, are you comfortable planning to reach the renewable fuel 
standard's goal without overburdening these resources? 

Point of Contact: Patricia Dalton, Managing Director, Natural Resources 
& Environment, (202) 512-3841 or daltonp@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix II: Department of Commerce: 

The historic mission of the Department of Commerce is "to foster, 
promote, and develop the foreign and domestic commerce" of the United 
States. This has evolved, as a result of legislative and administrative 
additions, to encompass broadly the responsibility to foster, serve, 
and promote the nation's economic development and technological 
advancement. The department comprises 12 bureaus that further this 
mission through their goals. These bureaus include the National Oceanic 
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Bureau of the Census, the 
International Trade Administration, and the National Institute of 
Standards and Technology (NIST). For fiscal year 2009, the department 
requested about $8.73 billion to implement its various missions and 
programs, including about $4.1 billion for NOAA and about $3.1 billion 
for the Census Bureau. 

Two department bureaus in particular face upcoming challenges that we 
believe merit the attention of America's senior leadership. First, 
NOAA's capacity to provide critical weather-forecasting services has 
been hampered by ineffective oversight of satellite contracts worth 
billions of dollars. Second, as the Census Bureau approaches the 
constitutionally mandated 2010 Census, there have been performance 
deficiencies and uncertain, escalating costs. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Improving Acquisition of Weather-Forecasting Satellites; 
* Ensuring an Effective Census. 

Questions: 

Improving Acquisition of Weather-Forecasting Satellites: 

1. The National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite 
System (NPOESS) program was restructured in 2006 to decrease program 
complexity and address growing costs. As a result, the program was 
directed to remove some critical climate and space environment 
measuring sensors from the program. More than 2 years after this 
occurred, agencies still have not agreed upon appropriate paths forward 
for these sensors or measurements. What experience do you have 
collaborating across organizational boundaries that will help you 
ensure that this interagency process works smoothly and quickly? What 
practices are key to ensuring that this long-term planning will take 
place? 

2. What prior experience, if any, do you have with interagency 
agreements (such as those affecting the NPOESS program)? What are 
specific key practices to assure that interagency agreements are made 
in a timely manner and maintained appropriately? 

3. In the past, GAO has reported lessons learned from satellite 
acquisitions such as underestimating program costs and the 
unanticipated expansion of the program's scope. What specific large- 
scale acquisitions have you been involved in? Have acquisitions you 
have been involved in experienced cost overruns or expansions in scope? 
What lessons have you learned from your prior experiences that will 
ensure that future acquisitions, such as the GOES-R program, do not 
also experience similar problems? 

Ensuring an Effective Census: 

4. The 2010 Census is less than 2 years away. What do you think are the 
key challenges facing its managers, and what advice would you give them 
to help overcome those challenges? 

5. In March 2008, GAO placed the 2010 Census on its list of high-risk 
federal programs because of long-standing weaknesses in the Census 
Bureau's information technology (IT) acquisition and contract 
management function, risks associated with the performance of its 
handheld computers, uncertainty over the ultimate cost of the 2010 
Census, and the elimination of several operations from the 2008 Dress 
Rehearsal. What experience, if any, do you have that prepares you to 
deal with such technical management concerns? Based on that, what steps 
do you think might mitigate these risks and ensure that the 2010 Census 
is a success? 

6. The bureau plans to spend an estimated $3 billion on IT investments 
for the 2010 Census. Management of these large investments will be 
important to the success of the Decennial Census. Do you have 
experience overseeing or managing such large contracts? What do you 
think is most important to ensuring that IT contracts meet expected 
cost, schedule, and performance? 

7. Many agencies are involved in the data collection and dissemination 
of federal statistics, including the Bureau of Economic Analysis and 
Bureau of Labor Statistics. Do you have experiences with significant 
data sharing among statistical agencies? How would you balance data 
sharing with concerns about privacy and confidentiality? 

8. In June 2005, GAO reported that 45 percent of the workforce at the 
Census Bureau will be eligible to retire by 2010. Have you ever been 
faced with the prospect of projected high staff turnover? What did you 
do about it? Are there key steps that you believe are useful in 
carrying out effective succession planning? 

9. The Department of Commerce could be described as a federal holding 
company of sorts, including a diverse group of agencies and programs 
with wide-ranging missions. Have you ever been involved in managing an 
organization with such a diverse set of missions, objectives, cultures, 
and constituencies? What key management principles do you believe are 
most important to the effective and integrated management of the 
Department of Commerce? 

Point of Contact: Mathew Scirč, Director, Financial Markets and 
Community Investment, (202) 512-6794 or sciremj@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix III: Department of Defense: 

The Department of Defense's mission is to defend the United States from 
attack upon its territory and to secure its interests abroad. Through 
the coordinated efforts of the military services, defense agencies, 
combatant commands, and other components, it provides and supports the 
forces needed to deter war and protect the security of the United 
States. With an annual appropriation of about $512 billion for fiscal 
year 2009 and supplemental funding of about $807 billion in the past 
several years to support the global war on terror, the department has 
been entrusted with more of the taxpayers' dollars than any other 
federal agency. Given its size and mission, the department is one of 
the largest and most complex organizations to manage in the world. 

The department faces a number of management challenges and underlying 
fiscal pressures. It continues to experience a mismatch between its 
programs and budget due to overly optimistic planning assumptions, and 
the lack of a strategic approach to investment decision making. 
Extended operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken a toll on 
readiness, especially in the Army and Marine Corps. Rebuilding 
readiness is a costly and complex effort but will be even more 
challenging because, at the same time, the department is pursuing broad-
based initiatives to reshape and grow the size of the force, and 
modernize and transform capabilities. It is also experiencing rising 
personnel costs for pay and compensation, and health care, as well as 
significant growth in the costs of its weapon system programs. Striking 
an affordable balance between current and future defense needs will be 
an ongoing challenge, particularly with the nation's fiscal imbalance. 
The department spends billions on its business operations, but long- 
standing weaknesses have resulted in substantial waste and 
inefficiency. For example, eight individual items on GAO's list of high-
risk government operations and several of the governmentwide high-risk 
areas apply to the department's business operations. The department has 
initiated actions to transform these operations and produced some 
positive results, but significant challenges remain. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Developing Affordable Plans and Budgets to Accomplish Missions; 
* Rebuilding Near-Term Readiness and Transforming Capabilities to Meet 
Threats; 
* Sizing and Organizing the Force to Meet National Security Demands; 
* Managing Weapon System Programs; 
* Developing Cost-Effective Pay and Compensation Strategies; 
* Improving Health Care for Servicemembers and Veterans; 
* Stabilizing Regions in Conflict; 
* Transforming Business Operations; 
* Establishing an Overall Management Approach; 
* Establishing Financial Management Operations; 
* Managing Business System Investments; 
* Reducing Contract Risk; 
* Providing Logistics Support; 
* Creating and Maintaining Support Infrastructure; 
* Developing an Effective Process for Granting Security Clearances. 

Questions: 

Developing Affordable Plans and Budgets to Accomplish Missions: 

1. To what extent do you have experience in managing complex 
organizations with large budgets, including developing near-term and 
long-term investment strategies, prioritizing resource needs, and 
balancing needs with resource constraints to prepare affordable program 
plans and funding requests? Given the significant challenges facing the 
department to address current, emerging, and future threats and the 
considerable increases in the department's funding to address these 
threats, if confirmed, what management actions and timelines would you 
establish to identify defense plans and budgets that are linked to a 
strategic, risk-based framework? 

2. Describe your ability to develop ways to change the historical 
allocation of resources across services and programs so the new 
allocations reflect the results of a forward-looking comprehensive 
threat risk assessment and capabilities-based approach to determine 
defense needs. 

3. The department currently continues to identify funding needs for its 
longer war against terror separately from its base defense needs. 
Funding needs for the war on terror include expenses that it considers 
to be related to ongoing military operations, particularly in Iraq and 
Afghanistan. However, because of the growing similarities between items 
included in the department's funding requests for the war on terror and 
base defense needs, it is becoming increasingly difficult for decision 
makers to achieve transparency of the department's total funding 
picture. What has been your experience in managing and developing 
complex and multifaceted budgets, and developing and implementing 
fiscal guidance to ensure consistent approaches to estimating funding 
needs within organizational entities? How do you plan to apply your 
knowledge and skills to provide Congress and the taxpayers more 
transparency over the total defense budget? 

Rebuilding Near-Term Readiness and Transforming Capabilities to Meet 
Threats: 

4. The military services face significant challenges in equipping, 
training, and preparing forces for the ongoing large-scale operations 
as well as maintaining readiness to meet other operational 
requirements. How does your background and experience enable you to 
address these pervasive problems? 

5. Given the enormous challenges facing the department to rebuild the 
military forces, what experience will you apply to ensure that the 
department takes steps to manage these near-and long-term efforts? 
Specifically, describe how your qualifications and experience have 
prepared you to develop and implement a comprehensive investment 
strategy, including plans, timelines, and funding priorities, to tackle 
this critical need to rebuild the readiness of U.S. forces. How would 
you hold managers accountable for implementing actions, meeting 
timelines, and developing risk-based rationales to fund investments? 

Sizing and Organizing the Force to Meet National Security Demands: 

6. The department has moved from sizing and organizing its forces based 
on specific threats, as it did in the Cold War era, to identifying 
capabilities the combatant commanders need to face a broad range of 
threats and managing capabilities by portfolios across the services 
rather than individual service programs. What factors do you see as 
most important in making choices about how to size and organize the 
military services, including the role of the reserve component? 

7. The department has become increasingly reliant on contractors to 
support deployed forces. What experience do you have in managing large- 
scale contracting and what actions do you believe the department should 
take to improve its management and oversight of contractors? 

8. Six years after its establishment, the U.S. Northern Command 
(NORTHCOM) is still "finding its way" as a federal joint military 
command with operational responsibilities in the continental United 
States to defend the homeland and assist civil authorities. NORTHCOM's 
missions are likely to include other federal departments as well as 
state and local agencies. How would you ensure that NORTHCOM is an 
effective organization in the future in terms of defending the homeland 
as well as assisting civil authorities? 

Managing Weapon System Programs: 

9. The department's weapon system acquisition has been on GAO's high-
risk list since the list began in 1990. Since that time, the department 
has made what GAO has called well-conceived changes to its acquisition 
policies, but outcomes are still not improving. In your view, why is 
this issue so immune to improvement? What in your experience prepares 
you to further improve management of the department's acquisition 
system to reduce its susceptibility to cost growth, delivery delays, 
and poor performance? 

10. The department's budget process allocates resources on a roughly 
proportional basis across the military services. Do you have experience 
that would help you to encourage the department to reexamine the status 
quo and reallocate budget authority across the military services when 
priorities call for it? For example, the department has committed to 
spending about $10 billion each year on missile defense for the 
foreseeable future, while the Navy is canceling ship programs because 
it does not have the money, and the Army cannot afford to recapitalize 
the assets it is bringing back from war theaters. How would you help us 
reexamine the levels of investment we are committing to each portfolio 
of capability? 

11. It seems quite clear that there will not be enough money in future 
budgets to cover the costs (currently underreported) of the weapon 
system programs currently underway. How would you propose that we 
tackle this problem? How would you go about making choices, if 
available funds will not cover current acquisition commitments? 

12. When an agency starts an acquisition program, commercial best 
practices indicate there needs to be a match between the requirements 
of the program and the resources (time, money, and people) needed to 
execute it. What do you believe are the key steps to ensure that your 
agency has sufficient workforce capacity before starting a major 
acquisition program? What has been your experience with tracking the 
people-cost of running an acquisition program, and do you think it 
should be a specific part of that program's budget? 

Developing Cost-Effective Pay and Compensation Strategies: 

13. Given the constrained fiscal environment and the lack of 
transparency over military compensation costs, what steps would you 
take to manage growing compensation costs while ensuring that the 
compensation strategy effectively meets the department's recruiting and 
retention goals? How does your background and experience prepare you to 
determine to what extent the current military compensation system is 
affordable and sustainable? 

4. Internal safeguards, such as transparency over rating results and 
meaningful distinctions in employee performance, are an integral part 
of successful performance management systems in the federal government. 
Based on your prior experience and knowledge, what steps would you take 
to ensure that meaningful distinctions are made in employee performance 
and that civilian employees do not perceive quotas or "forced 
distributions" as part of the performance management system? 

Improving Health Care for Servicemembers and Veterans: 

15. The Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs (VA) are in the 
process of pilot testing an integrated approach to determining 
disability benefits for servicemembers leaving active duty service. 
Have you been involved in taking two different processes and combining 
them into one integrated process? What would be key steps to follow in 
doing so? 

16. In recent years, problems have been identified with the Department 
of Defense and VA efforts to coordinate the care of servicemembers 
returning from military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as 
veterans from those military operations. Can you tell us about a 
specific example where you had responsibility for enhancing 
collaboration across significant organizational boundaries, such as is 
needed to coordinate care for this population and manage the transition 
from Department of Defense to VA care? 

17. What steps would you take to ensure that servicemembers returning 
from military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are appropriately 
screened, diagnosed, and treated for mental health and other 
conditions? 

Stabilizing Regions in Conflict: 

18. What skills and abilities do you have that would prepare you for 
managing government programs that are implemented in war zones or 
regions in conflict? 

19. What experience do you have successfully working with a wide 
variety of civilian and military stakeholders and balancing competing 
priorities, approaches, and objectives? 

20. Does your background provide you with any lessons learned for 
developing comprehensive strategic plans and using these plans to 
measure progress toward achieving goals in regions in conflict? 

Transforming Business Operations: 

Establishing an Overall Management Approach: 

21. The department spends billions of dollars to sustain key business 
operations intended to support the warfighters. While the department 
has taken positive steps toward achieving reforms on its business side, 
significant inefficiencies continue to exist, including the lack of 
sound requirements and processes, sustained leadership, and a 
comprehensive and integrated enterprisewide business plan. Describe 
your ability to manage large reform efforts, including establishing 
management accountability, governance structures, and integrated 
strategic plans to guide reform efforts and investment decisions. 

22. As required by statute, the department has established a Chief 
Management Officer (CMO) and Deputy CMO at the departmentwide level, 
and CMO positions within the military departments. What experience have 
you had in organizing large institutions that will allow you to further 
guide the refinement of the roles, responsibilities, and relationships 
among these positions over the next few years? Given that the Deputy 
Secretary of Defense serves as the CMO and performs many other duties, 
what actions would be necessary to ensure that the business side of the 
department gets the proper attention? 

23. How has your background prepared you to establish management 
actions and timelines to identify performance goals and measures, 
conduct regular performance reporting and progress reports, and show 
clear linkages to budgets for improving and evaluating the overall 
efficiency and effectiveness of the business operations of the 
department? How would you hold managers accountable to meet these 
milestones efficiently and effectively? 

Establishing Financial Management Operations: 

24. The department faces tremendous challenges in transforming its 
financial management operations. How do your background and experience 
prepare you to understand and address challenges that not only hinder 
the department's ability to produce auditable financial statements, but 
more importantly to produce timely, reliable, and relevant financial 
data for decision making? 

25. Financial management is dependent upon other business processes and 
systems to provide the data and other information needed to support 
financial accountability. What do you think should be done to ensure 
that the department's efforts to improve financial management are 
reflective of an integrated approach with shared goals, objectives, and 
measures? 

26. A clean financial-statement audit opinion is an important 
transformation goal; however, neither the department nor its military 
components have yet to achieve this goal because they have failed to 
address the underlying material weaknesses in their business systems, 
operations, processes, and controls that have adversely affected 
reported financial-statement information. What steps would you take to 
ensure that material weaknesses that impede financial reporting are 
identified and addressed in an effective and sustainable manner? 

27. What steps would you take to understand and address how the 
department's financial management community can support internal and 
external department oversight, accountability, and decision making? 

Managing Business System Investments: 

28. What skills do you bring that will enable you to ensure that at the 
institutional level, the department extends (federates) its corporate 
Business Enterprise Architecture (BEA) and related transition plan to 
its component organizations? How will you ensure that the plan reflects 
the department's complete investment portfolio, and its corporate and 
component investment management processes are effectively defined and 
institutionalized at all levels of the organization? 

29. In the absence of a well-defined federated architecture, how would 
you ensure that department programs are being defined and implemented 
in a way that sufficiently ensures interoperability and avoids 
duplication and overlap, which are goals of BEA and the department's 
related business system investment management approach? 

30. Describe experience that will help you to ensure that the thousands 
of department business-system programs and projects employ acquisition 
management rigor and discipline, including economically justifying 
investments on the basis of reliable estimates of future costs and 
benefits; pursuing investments within the context of an enterprise 
architecture; and adequately executing key acquisition functions, such 
as requirements management, risk management, test management, 
performance management, and contract management. 

Reducing Contract Risk: 

31. Setting the tone at the top is essential for assuring that the 
department's acquisition personnel adhere to sound contracting 
practices. What steps would you take to establish and communicate your 
vision, goals, and values to an organization as diverse and complex as 
the department? 

32. The department generally has established sound policies to govern 
its acquisitions, but such policies are not always reflected in the 
department's practices on individual programs or acquisition decisions. 
What approach would you take to assure that the department's policies 
are consistently implemented throughout the department? 

33. What would be your highest priorities with regard to assuring that 
the acquisition workforce is capable of meeting the demands posed by 
the increasing volume and complexity of contracting activity? 

34. Do you believe the department has become overly dependent on 
contractors to support key functions or missions? If so, what steps 
would you take to identify and mitigate the risks that such dependence 
might pose? 

Providing Logistics Support: 

35. From a management perspective, please address what you see as the 
main challenges in integrating and optimizing the department's end-to-
end supply system given the diffused organization and funding of the 
department's logistics operations? 

36. Could you describe your ability to develop and use performance and 
cost metrics of the type that could and should be used as a basis to 
monitor the effectiveness and the efficiency of the department's supply 
system? 

37. What experiences have you had in managing the implementation of new 
logistics technologies and processes across a large enterprise, and 
what do you see as the keys to successfully managing such changes? 

Creating and Maintaining Support Infrastructure: 

38. What management principles or criteria do you think should be 
relied upon when considering whether to redirect authorized funds to 
other unrelated purposes, as the department persistently does with 
funds for the sustainment, modernization, and restoration of base 
facilities? 

39. What experience do you have with the development or refinement of 
models or processes for estimating cost savings, such as the ones that 
may need to be done for developing the initial costs and savings 
estimates that would be required in the event of another base 
realignment and closure (BRAC) round? 

40. What experience do you possess that you will be able to call upon 
to help implement such challenging initiatives as transforming the 
military in such areas as supply-chain management and the delivery of 
medical health care for military personnel and their families through 
the department's BRAC process? 

41. What experience do you have that will help the department to 
efficiently implement and pay for the significant base realignments 
underway through the BRAC, Grow the Force, Army Modularity, overseas 
rebasing, and Guam military buildup initiatives in the limited period 
of time available and in an era of constrained budgets? What, in your 
opinion, are good ways to communicate with local communities 
surrounding affected bases? 

Developing an Effective Process for Granting Security Clearances: 

42. Long-standing delays in granting personnel security clearances and 
a variety of other problems continue to persist that heighten the risk 
that classified information will be disclosed to unauthorized 
personnel. It is recognized throughout the federal government that the 
clearance process needs to be overhauled. Based on your involvement 
with transformation efforts, what best practices would you use to 
follow through with such a transformation of the clearance process? 

43. Could you elaborate on your experience managing the trade-offs 
between complying with legal deadlines for timeliness and not 
compromising quality, such as is required with security clearance 
investigations and adjudications? 

Point of Contact: Janet St. Laurent, Managing Director, Defense 
Capabilities and Management, (202) 512-4300 or stlaurentj@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix IV: Department of Education: 

The Department of Education's mission is to promote student achievement 
and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational 
excellence and ensuring equal access. The department focuses on 
establishing policies on federal financial aid for education and 
distributing and monitoring those funds; collecting data on America's 
schools and disseminating research; focusing national attention on key 
educational issues; and prohibiting discrimination and ensuring equal 
access to education. For fiscal year 2009, the department requested 
almost $65 billion in discretionary and mandatory funding, including 
over $22 billion for the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education 
and over $22 billion for federal student aid. 

In the coming years, the United States will continue to face increased 
economic competition from countries around the world. While the shift 
to a global economy, technological advances, and changing population 
demographics challenge existing federal approaches to educating the 
nation's people, these changes make ensuring that all citizens have 
access to a high quality education all the more important. Yet, not all 
students in this country are receiving the education they need to be 
successful. For example, a 2006 study of 30 advanced countries found 
that American 15-year-olds ranked 25th in math and 21st in science and 
that large achievement gaps persist for students of different 
backgrounds. In addition, many of the federal government's higher- 
education policy tools, designed decades ago, may not be as well suited 
for an increasingly diverse population. Moreover, the cost of attending 
college has increased, heightening concerns that underserved 
populations specifically targeted by federal aid may be precluded from 
attending college or opt to attend schools that may not align well with 
their needs. As a backdrop to this concern, the recent instability in 
the credit markets has resulted in a number of lenders who have reduced 
or ceased their participation in the loan program and some are 
concerned about the ability of the federal government's student loan 
programs to fill this void. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Improving Student Achievement in Elementary and Secondary Schools; 
* Improving Oversight of Federal Student Aid Programs; 
* Ensuring Continued Access to Federal Student Loans. 

Questions: 

Improving Student Achievement in Elementary and Secondary Schools: 

1. How would your management experience, skills, and abilities help the 
department assist states in raising student achievement? 

2. Can you talk about any prior efforts you have undertaken to improve 
the quality of program management data? What challenges did you face, 
and how did you address them? What tools do you think you would be 
prepared to use to improve the quality of education achievement data 
reported by states? 

3. Does your background involve helping to assure that funding or 
program benefits are well targeted to those most in need of them? What 
are some key steps toward implementing a risk-based, need-based, or 
other system of prioritizing the direction of program funds or 
technical assistance resources? 

4. Given the limited federal role in K-12 education, would you describe 
two or three specific experiences you have had in intergovernmental 
relationships that demonstrate your readiness to help guide federal 
approaches to providing states technical assistance and oversight in 
the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act? 

Improving Oversight of Federal Student Aid Programs: 

5. What experience, if any, do you have with monitoring and other 
internal controls over financial transactions that might prepare you to 
ensure that the Department of Education is effectively monitoring 
schools and lenders to identify and address improper lending 
activities? 

6. Can you describe a role you may have had in developing or 
implementing performance measures or fraud indicators that are designed 
to identify emerging areas of risk and potential instances of 
noncompliance? How qualified are you to help the department monitor 
schools and lenders' participation and compliance with the rules in 
federal student aid programs? 

Ensuring Continued Access to Federal Student Loans: 

7. Improper lending activities among lenders participating in the 
Federal Family Education Loan Program can hamper student access to 
federal support for higher education. Do you have any familiarity with 
how a monitoring or reporting system designed to document and follow up 
on "bad apples" might have to work? What type of criteria might an 
organization have to rely on to take action in response to lenders with 
improper practices that are not necessarily illegal? 

8. GAO has reported that the Office of Federal Student Aid has had weak 
management controls and difficulty accounting for the cost of one of 
its capital improvement programs. What is your familiarity with 
management and cost controls? Can you describe how you have used 
management controls to improve transparency or accountability? 

Point of Contact: Cynthia M. Fagnoni, Managing Director, Education, 
Workforce, and Income Security, (202) 512-7202 or fagnonic@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix V: Department of Energy: 

The Department of Energy's overarching mission is to advance the 
national, economic, and energy security of the United States; to 
promote scientific and technological innovation in support of that 
mission; and to ensure the environmental cleanup of the national 
nuclear weapons complex. The department's eight program offices such as 
the Offices of Science and Environmental Management, six separately 
organized agencies such as the National Nuclear Security Administration 
(NNSA), and 21 National Laboratories and Technology Centers such as Los 
Alamos and Oak Ridge National Laboratories, work together to accomplish 
this mission. For fiscal year 2009, the department requested more than 
$25 billion to implement its programs, including $5.3 billion for 
environmental cleanup, $6.6 for nuclear weapon activities, and more 
than $5 billion for science and technology. 

The department faces numerous challenges, including conducting energy- 
related research and development and the management and protection of 
key assets--such as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve--that are vital to 
the nation's energy and national security. In addition, the department 
faces challenges in maintaining the safety, reliability, and physical 
and information security of the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile in 
the absence of clear Department of Defense requirements and with an 
inefficient and outmoded nuclear weapons complex. The department's 
nonproliferation efforts, while having some positive effects, need to 
be reviewed for relevance and effectiveness. Underlying these issues 
are the continued and related problems of the department's contract 
administration and project management of large and complex projects and 
the department's human capital challenge of developing and retaining a 
skilled workforce capable of overseeing those projects. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve; 
* Developing Advanced Energy Technologies; 
* Addressing Concerns about Renewable Fuels; 
* Improving Energy Efficiency; 
* Transforming the Nuclear Weapons Complex; 
* Improving Contract Administration and Project Management; 
* Strengthening Cyber Security; 
* Consolidating Surplus Nuclear Material; 
* Assessing Nonproliferation Efforts. 

Questions: 

Filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve: 

1. GAO has recommended that the cost of filling the Strategic Petroleum 
Reserve be reduced and the reserve made more effective by exchanging 
some of the lighter oil currently stored in the reserve for less- 
expensive heavier oil. What experiences have you had that would bear on 
your decision of whether to adopt GAO's recommendations? 

2. GAO has recommended options to improve the cost-effectiveness of 
filling the reserve, including the adoption of a dollar-cost averaging 
strategy when purchasing fill oil and allowing oil companies more 
flexibility to defer delivery of oil to the reserve in return for 
additional deliveries in the future. Both of these strategies involve 
reducing the rate of filling the reserve when oil prices are higher and 
increasing the rate of fill when prices are lower. What prior 
experience do you have in managing large assets in a cost-effective way 
and, given that experience, how would you go about assessing these 
options to improve the cost-effectiveness of filling the Reserve? 

3. Both GAO and the department's own Inspector General have questioned 
the efficiency and transparency of filling the reserve by trading 
royalty oil received from the Department of the Interior. What prior 
experience, if any, do you have with the use of management and 
accounting controls to ensure transparency with highly visible or 
potentially controversial transactions? What types of reporting or 
communication strategies have you used in the past to ensure the 
appropriate transparency of sensitive decisions? 

4. With over 700 million barrels of oil currently in the Strategic 
Petroleum Reserve, there are sufficient reserves to meet all but the 
most extreme oil supply disruptions. However, as demand for oil rises 
in the future, the level of protection provided by the reserve may fall 
unless it increases along with demand. What do you see as the trade- 
offs in deciding how large the reserve should be? What criteria or 
decision process would you suggest for deciding when to fill the 
reserve with an eye to managing cost? 

Developing Advanced Energy Technologies: 

5. State and local governments, other nations, and the worldwide 
private sector have shown interest in advanced energy technology 
development. Have you ever leveraged such a broad range of entities in 
trying to direct the efforts of your own organization? What prepares 
you to determine the appropriate federal government role and lead the 
department in the development of advanced renewable, fossil, and 
nuclear energy technologies? 

6. The federal government faces severe fiscal challenges and limited 
budgets, and that will put pressure on all discretionary spending, 
including federally funded research and development in advanced energy 
technologies. What successes can you cite in building a business case 
for long-term investments involving high uncertainty? What do you think 
are key strategies for ensuring taxpayers get the most "bang for the 
buck" from department-funded and other federally funded research and 
development efforts for advanced energy technologies? 

7. Besides direct funding, what other federal policies, incentives, 
standards, and mandates will be important in the development of 
advanced energy technologies? How familiar are you with these various 
"governance" tools, and how are you prepared to coordinate them with 
direct funding? 

Addressing Concerns about Renewable Fuels: 

8. During 2008, food prices skyrocketed and some have attributed these 
price increases, at least in part, to increased demand for corn and 
other biofuel feedstock. Would any of your prior experiences help you 
coordinate the implementation of energy and agriculture policies in a 
way that would identify and mitigate any unintended consequences of one 
policy on another? How so? 

9. Meeting our renewable fuel standard's goal of 36 billion gallons of 
renewable fuels annually by 2022 will stretch our use of water, arable 
land, and other resources. Can you describe the kinds of long-term 
strategic planning that you have done that might help us attain such a 
goal without overburdening these resources? 

Improving Energy Efficiency: 

10. Sustained high prices for all types of energy and concerns about 
the United States' dependence on imported fuels have raised concerns 
about our energy security. While improving the security of supply is 
important, reducing demand for energy could also be part of a strategy 
to improve our energy security. The department sets appliance 
efficiency standards and funds some research and development in energy 
efficiency. How would you look for crosscutting solutions to address 
energy security concerns? And what specific principles or criteria 
would you turn to to balance supply versus demand policies? 

11. The Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the 
Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and 
the Department of Transportation share responsibility for encouraging 
and enabling energy conservation. What experiences do you have that 
would enable you to help successfully lead this joint effort? Can you 
describe specific examples where you have successfully collaborated 
across organizational boundaries to achieve a common goal? 

Transforming the Nuclear Weapons Complex: 

12. The department is planning a 25-year, $80 billion transformation of 
the nation's nuclear weapons complex from Cold War legacy facilities 
into a modern organization. This transformation--including the 
construction of major new facilities--is being planned without clear 
requirements from the Department of Defense about its weapons and 
stockpiling needs. Can you describe any major planning efforts you have 
been involved in that had to proceed with great uncertainty about key 
parameters or operating assumptions? How does an organization proceed 
with its planning in a way that accommodates such uncertainty? 

13. Drawing on your experiences, how does an organization sustain its 
focus on a multiyear, long-term program that is likely to transcend at 
least several administrations? 

14. Transforming the nuclear weapons complex will require that the 
Department of Energy and the Department of Defense collaborate and work 
closely together to develop a future vision for the nuclear weapons 
stockpile. What role, if any, have you played in carrying out 
organizational transformation? What do you think are some of the key 
implementation steps to a successful organizational transformation? Can 
you describe specific examples where you have successfully facilitated 
cooperation and collaboration across organizational boundaries to 
achieve a common goal? 

Improving Contract Administration and Project Management: 

15. Although the department spends billions of dollars on contracts, 
the department's contract and project management has been on GAO's high-
risk list for fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement since the list's 
inception in 1990. Please provide us examples of how you have addressed 
issues of waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in your current or 
past roles. How would you apply those experiences at the department? 

16. Have you overseen or managed complex projects? Were they completed 
within cost and on schedule? What challenges or pitfalls do you believe 
are common in contract and project management, and how do you overcome 
them? 

17. The department has had problems managing human capital shortfalls, 
including insufficient staff with project management experience. What 
successes have you had in attracting and retaining highly qualified and 
technically proficient staff? 

18. Based on your experiences, what are the most significant barriers 
in the U.S. government to building and retaining the human capital 
needed to manage complex projects? How do you propose to overcome these 
barriers? 

Strengthening Cyber Security: 

19. The department must balance the physical security of key assets, 
including nuclear weapons and special nuclear material, with the 
security of its sensitive computer and information systems. The 
department must actively engage in risk management that seeks to 
address vulnerabilities, consequences, and costs of real and potential 
threats. Can you describe how in your prior work you have developed and 
implemented risk management strategies? What were the risks you were 
trying to balance? How successful were these strategies? 

20. What are your qualifications and experience to manage the 
information sharing and security needs of large, complex organizations 
like the department and its contractors? 

21. Have you successfully managed a large blended workforce, ensuring 
uniform compliance with cyber security policies? What steps are key to 
ensure that the department's numerous contractor employees, in multiple 
locations throughout the United States, are complying with the 
department's cyber security policies? 

Consolidating Surplus Nuclear Material: 

22. Consolidation of the department's special nuclear material is a 
complex task involving multiple department organizations. How does your 
background qualify you to ensure that department organizations and 
other actors, such as state governments, are coordinating sufficiently 
to allow the department's consolidation plans to come to fruition? 
Please provide examples of how you have facilitated successful 
interorganizational cooperation and collaboration. 

23. Consolidation of the department's special nuclear material involves 
difficult trade-offs between the competing priorities of safety, 
security, cost, and programmatic need. How have you managed sensitive 
trade-offs between competing priorities--such as these--in your career? 

Assessing Nonproliferation Efforts: 

24. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. government, led by the 
department's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), has spent 
more than $11 billion to reduce the proliferation risks posed by 
nuclear and radiological materials and warheads at facilities in Russia 
and other countries. Given that the department's nonproliferation 
efforts involve a number of foreign countries, what kinds of 
international or diplomatic qualifications do you have that might 
assist you furthering NNSA's nonproliferation efforts? 

25. Given that NNSA's nonproliferation efforts involve other U.S. 
government agencies such as the Departments of Defense and State, can 
you describe some examples of your facilitating successful 
interorganizational cooperation and collaboration? 

26. Some of the department's nonproliferation programs are coming to an 
end after 15 years. What experience do you have in successfully 
terminating programs? What experience do you have in maintaining morale 
and retaining key staff during downsizing efforts? 

Point of Contact: Patricia Dalton, Managing Director, Natural Resources 
& Environment, (202) 512-3841 or daltonp@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix VI: Department of Health and Human Services: 

The Department of Health and Human Services' mission is to protect the 
health of Americans and provide essential human services, especially 
for vulnerable populations. To support this mission, the department's 
11 agencies--such as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS); the 
Food and Drug Administration (FDA); the Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention (CDC); and the Administration for Children and Families 
(ACF)--manage more than 300 federal health and social programs, which 
accounted for almost a quarter of all federal spending in 2008. For 
fiscal year 2009, the department requested $805.5 billion to support 
its mandatory and discretionary spending, including $711.2 billion for 
CMS and $2.4 billion for FDA. 

The department and its agencies face numerous management challenges. 
CMS faces challenges to improve management of Medicare and Medicaid and 
oversee patient care and safety in settings such as nursing homes and 
hospitals, while difficulties in ensuring the integrity of their 
payments undermine CMS's efforts to curb outlays in these high-risk 
programs. Due to weaknesses in agency capacity and data, FDA has had 
problems overseeing the safety and efficacy of medical products and 
limitations in strategic planning have hindered its food safety 
efforts. The department's efforts to strengthen preparedness for public 
health emergencies have been hampered by shortages in the public health 
workforce and difficulties in intergovernmental coordination. Finally, 
the department faces challenges in overseeing programs that target the 
well-being and economic independence of children and families. In 
particular, given that these programs are generally administered by 
states and grantees, the department is challenged to balance the 
quality of services, program participation and the integrity of these 
programs--which is especially critical given the potential for rising 
numbers of applicants and the needs of vulnerable individuals in an 
increasingly difficult labor market. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Reforming and Refining Medicare Payments; 
* Improving Medicare Program Management; 
* Enhancing Medicare Program Integrity; 
* Enhancing Medicaid Oversight; 
* Overseeing Patient Care and Safety; 
* Ensuring Medical Product Safety; 
* Ensuring Food Supply Safety; 
* Strengthening Emergency Preparedness; 
* Improving the Well-being of Children and Families. 

Questions: 

Reforming and Refining Medicare Payments: 

1. What unique knowledge, skills, and abilities would you bring to the 
department that would help you identify, negotiate, and implement 
measures to assure Medicare's fiscal sustainability? 

2. Can you explain what experience and skills you would bring to an 
effort to shift Medicare from paying for a volume of care to being a 
prudent purchaser that pays for the value of care? 

3. Private payers take many steps to restrain medical costs and 
maintain quality, such as guiding physicians toward more efficient care 
by using information on their practice patterns to compare them with 
their peers. Could you describe what experience you have had that could 
be helpful in managing the implementation of such practices by the 
federal government? 

Improving Medicare Program Management: 

4. Can you describe the skills that you would bring to an effort to 
improve CMS oversight of beneficiary protections and fiscal management 
of Medicare Parts C and D? 

5. What management experiences would you bring to the department to 
help CMS improve its oversight of Medicare and Medicaid providers? 

Enhancing Medicare Program Integrity: 

6. Preventing enrollment of providers that lack integrity or have 
intentions to defraud Medicare is a key step to stem fraud and abuse. 
Have you ever successfully prevented fraud and abuse? What have you 
learned that would help strengthen critical preventive measures in this 
area? 

Enhancing Medicaid Oversight: 

7. Given the size and growth of Medicaid as well as the diversity in 
funding and coverage levels across states, reforming how the Medicaid 
program is financed is going to be quite complex. Can you describe what 
has prepared you to help lead a reexamination of how Medicaid is 
financed? 

8. Given the size and growth of Medicaid, there is significant 
financial risk associated with insufficient oversight of state Medicaid 
financial management--for example, addressing high levels of improper 
payments. How has your involvement in financial management at a 
previous organization helped reduce its financial risk? What would be 
key steps to help the department create an effective strategic plan for 
CMS financial management and oversight of Medicaid? 

9. CMS continues to approve waivers to allow states to operate Medicaid 
demonstration programs even when those programs affect beneficiaries 
and increase the federal government's potential financial liability 
substantially. If you were involved in efforts to improve the criteria 
and transparency of the process for reviewing and approving Medicaid 
demonstrations, what skills would you bring to the process? What 
principles would you use to improve the way that groups representing 
beneficiaries can provide federal-level input regarding waiver 
proposals? 

Overseeing Patient Care and Safety: 

10. What skills, knowledge, and abilities would you bring to the 
department to improve patient safety and care quality? 

11. When CMS revamped its Special Focus Facility program for poorly 
performing nursing homes in 2004, it promised to initiate progressive 
enforcement actions and to remove homes that failed to show improvement 
within 18 months, but several years later, some poorly performing 
nursing homes have been in the program for more than 36 months. Could 
you describe how your experience could help you better manage oversight 
of poorly performing nursing homes? 

12. In the late 1990s, CMS initiated the development of a revised 
nursing home survey methodology to address shortcomings in surveyors' 
abilities to identify all serious quality problems. As of September 
2008, almost 10 years and more than $10 million later, CMS has still 
not released the results of its evaluation of the new methodology nor 
its nationwide deployment plans. What experience can you bring to bear 
on moving along initiatives that seem to have stalled? 

13. Since 2004, CMS's Survey and Certification Group--the entity 
responsible for oversight of Medicare and Medicaid providers--has 
undergone significant staffing reductions, while increasing concern has 
been focused on provider quality of care issues. How has your prior 
work ever involved you in managing after significant staffing 
reductions? Describe how you would ensure that CMS's workload to 
oversee care is managed, given its reduced staffing levels. 

Ensuring Medical Product Safety: 

14. What knowledge, skills, and abilities could you bring to bear to 
help FDA take short-term and long-term actions to improve the accuracy 
of the data it uses to manage its foreign inspections programs? 

15. FDA has expressed interest in conducting a greater number of 
inspections of foreign establishments that manufacture drugs and 
medical devices for the U.S. market. Have you managed efforts operating 
in multiple countries and dealing with varying legal frameworks? Based 
on that experience, if any, what would be the most important steps for 
FDA to take when increasing its foreign inspections? And, since 
resources have been an issue for the agency, what steps could you take 
to ensure that FDA has all the resources it needs to take these 
important steps? 

16. FDA has taken initial steps to collaborate more with drug 
regulators in foreign countries. What experience do you have that can 
help FDA further leverage the resources of foreign regulatory bodies to 
improve the information it has on foreign establishments that 
manufacture drugs and devices? 

17. FDA's initiative to allow inspections of medical device 
manufacturers by third parties has faced obstacles to manufacturers' 
participation. What skills could you use to encourage greater 
manufacturer participation in such an inspection program? 

18. FDA faces a great challenge in overseeing an enormous volume of 
promotional materials submitted by drug companies. Do you have any 
experiences that might illustrate your readiness to help FDA ensure 
that this growing volume of promotional material is not false or 
misleading? 

Ensuring Food Supply Safety: 

19. GAO has testified that FDA's Food Protection Plan presented 
positive first steps and urged additional information on strategies and 
resources as well as public reporting of the plan's progress. Can you 
describe the skills that you could bring to an effort to ensure that 
FDA can protect the nation's food supply? 

Strengthening Emergency Preparedness: 

20. If you were to assume a position in the department, what would you 
do to encourage greater interest in joining the public health 
workforce? 

21. What in your experience prepares you to help strengthen the 
department's intergovernmental relationships, particularly with the 
Department of Homeland Security, to improve preparedness and response 
for public health and medical emergencies? 

Improving the Well-being of Children and Families: 

22. Despite substantial federal and state investment in social services 
intended to support families and protect vulnerable youth, no state's 
child welfare system has been able to meet all of the expected outcomes 
as defined and measured by the department. Where, if at all, have you 
had successes in working with different levels of government to improve 
their programs? Would you please discuss how your experience might help 
the department address the challenges it faces in helping states 
improve their child welfare systems? 

23. While many American children and families thrive, others live in 
poverty, increasing their risks for adverse outcomes, such as low 
educational attainment, poor health, and criminal activity. Would you 
discuss how your experience could be brought to bear in the department 
to ensure the effective and efficient operation of its programs to 
promote child well-being and economic independence for families? 

Point of Contact: Marjorie Kanof, Managing Director, Health Care, (202) 
512-7114 or kanofm@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix VII: Department of Homeland Security: 

The Department of Homeland Security is responsible for securing the 
homeland from terrorist attacks. Formed in 2002 in response to the 
attacks of September 11, 2001, the department's current mission is to 
prevent and deter terrorist attacks and protect against and respond to 
threats and hazards to the nation, ensure safe and secure borders, 
welcome lawful immigrants and visitors, and promote the free flow of 
commerce. The department is the integration of 22 component agencies, 
including the Transportation Security Administration (TSA); the Federal 
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and the U.S. Coast Guard. For 
fiscal year 2009, the department will receive about $41.2 billion to 
implement its various missions and programs, including about $4.4 
billion for TSA and $9.4 billion for the Coast Guard. 

The department must remain prepared and vigilant with respect to 
securing the homeland, particularly during the presidential transition 
period, when the nation could be seen as vulnerable. Although the 
department has made progress in addressing major management and mission 
challenges, which prior GAO work has identified as key to successfully 
integrating its agencies into one department and effectively carrying 
out its homeland security mission, the department lacks not only a 
comprehensive strategy with overall goals and a timeline but also a 
dedicated management integration team to support its management 
integration efforts. In 2003, GAO designated the implementation and 
transformation of the newly created department as a high-risk area, 
where it remains today, due to the enormous undertaking required to 
manage the department's transformation, as well as the serious 
consequences that could face the nation if the department failed to 
effectively address its management and programmatic challenges. The 
department and its components are developing corrective action plans to 
address weaknesses in the management of financial, information 
technology, and acquisition systems. They are also making improvements 
in all mission areas, such as transportation security and emergency 
management. Finally, the department is developing partnerships with 
other levels of government and nongovernmental organizations and is 
starting to base many of its major investment decisions on risk. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

Emergency Preparedness and Response: 
* Effectively Coordinating the Mitigation of and Response to All 
Hazards; 
* Improving Interoperable Communications for Federal, State, and Local 
Public Safety Officials; 
* Enhancing the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP); 

Border Security and Immigration: 
* Enhancing Border Security; 
* Improving Immigration Enforcement and Services; 
* Balancing the Department's Homeland Security Mission with Its Legacy 
Customs Functions; 

Transportation Security: 
* Strengthening Security of Surface Modes of Transportation; 
* Assessing Aviation Security Measures; 
* Balancing Resources across Missions and Enhancing Technologies to 
Improve Maritime Security; 
* Strengthening Container Security; 

Critical Infrastructure Protection: 
* Developing Strategies for Securing Critical Infrastructure; 
* Forming Partnerships in Securing Critical Infrastructure; 
* Making Trade-Offs Related to Protection and Resiliency; 

Transforming the Department of Homeland Security: 
* Integrating Management Functions; 
* Improving Acquisition Management; 
* Improving Financial Management and Controls; 
* Improving Real Property Management; 
* Applying Risk Management to Homeland Security Investments; 
* Improving Terrorist Information Sharing; 
* Protecting Privacy and Civil Liberties in a Post-9/11 Environment; 
* Strengthening Strategic Planning and Performance Measurement. 

Questions: 

Emergency Preparedness and Response: 

Effectively Coordinating the Mitigation of and Response to All Hazards: 

1. In 2008 the department issued the new National Response Framework, a 
summary of principles, participants, and structures rather than an 
operational plan for responding to national disasters. Can you cite a 
couple of examples of your involvement in the development of 
operational plans? 

2. There is concern that the department and FEMA have not yet clarified 
how prepared they expect first responders to be. Congress passed the 
Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act (PKEMRA), providing 
direction and setting many expectations for the department and FEMA. Do 
you have significant experience ensuring that key executives and other 
partners have clear roles, responsibilities, and expectations? 

3. GAO identified the potential for significant fraud and abuse as a 
result of FEMA's management of the Individuals and Households Program 
for disaster relief assistance in response to Hurricanes Katrina and 
Rita. Describe your views on the importance of financial management, in 
general, and what your role would be in addressing these challenges in 
order to provide accurate, relevant, and timely financial management 
information to decision makers. 

4. Flaws in a disaster assistance program registration process resulted 
in what GAO estimated to be between $600 million and $1.4 billion in 
improper and potentially fraudulent payments due to invalid 
registration data. In your view, what can be done to improve the 
accuracy and integrity of federal payments? Does your experience 
suggest anything specific that the department and FEMA might do to 
prevent future problems in distributing disaster assistance through the 
Individual and Households Program? 

5. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Homeland 
Security have not resolved how they will work together in the event of 
a disease outbreak where a presidential emergency or major disaster is 
declared. Do you have experience with continuity of operations and 
succession planning under emergencies? What key steps do you believe 
are necessary to ensure there is a clear understanding of leadership 
and agency roles in responding to catastrophic agriculture-and food- 
related events? 

Improving Interoperable Communications for Federal, State, and Local 
Public Safety Officials: 

6. What experience do you have with assessing, developing, and 
implementing plans for integrating competing legacy systems? How are 
you prepared to help the department develop and implement a plan for 
improving emergency response interoperability among all levels of 
government? 

Enhancing the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP): 

7. GAO placed NFIP on its high-risk list in March 2006, following 
unprecedented losses from the 2005 hurricane season. At that time, GAO 
also cited a number of management challenges that need to be addressed 
including managing the inventory of subsidized properties and map 
modernization efforts, and mitigating losses from repetitive-loss 
properties. What experience do you have relevant to addressing any of 
these specific management challenges confronting NFIP? How would you 
use that experience to help NFIP address these management challenges? 

8. Although FEMA administers NFIP, an insurance program, FEMA's primary 
mission is emergency management, requiring a balance of demands. What 
examples can you cite where you have had to balance different, often 
competing goals? What key principles would you suggest for keeping in 
mind for situations where a choice across such competing goals needs to 
be made? 

9. As you know, private-sector insurance companies that administer the 
NFIP, called Write-Your-Own insurers, are reimbursed and overseen by 
FEMA. What experience do you have in working with the insurance 
industry? Based on your past experience, what are your views about the 
inherent conflict of interest that exists between these private 
insurers that must adjust claims for both NFIP flood policies and their 
own homeowners' policies on the same property? What experience do you 
have in managing conflicts of interest and developing policies and 
procedures to effectively mitigate the challenges these conflicts can 
pose? 

Border Security and Immigration: 

Enhancing Border Security: 

10. The department is pursuing the Secure Border Initiative, a 
multiyear, multibillion-dollar program aimed at securing U.S. borders 
and reducing illegal immigration. Concerns have been raised about 
whether early results are meeting user needs, and whether the 
department will be able to deliver the program on schedule and at cost. 
Do you have significant experience you can cite with major programs or 
initiatives depending on the integration of technology? What were key 
success factors? Based on your experiences, what would be key 
considerations for deciding whether to continue when faced with 
significant delays or cost overruns? 

11. The department continues to invest hundreds of millions of dollars 
each year in its US-VISIT program intended to collect, maintain, and 
share information on selected foreign nationals who enter and exit the 
United States. However, the department still does not have an 
operational exit tracking capability. Given the extreme uncertainty of 
being able to develop an exit capability at land ports of entry, what 
criteria do you think would be appropriate for determining whether to 
still pursue such a capability? 

Improving Immigration Enforcement and Services: 

12. Most experts believe that the majority of those who migrate 
illegally to the United States do so to obtain employment. The 
department has a program called E-verify that provides participating 
employers with a means for electronically verifying employees' work 
eligibility, but mandating participation for the estimated 7.4 million 
employers in the United States would be challenging. What prior 
experience do you have that would help the federal government market 
the benefits of or provide incentives to participate in the program by 
the nation's employers? 

13. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has had long-
standing backlogs of immigration benefit applications and has a major 
program underway to transform its business processes. However, USCIS 
has previously attempted efforts to revise its business processes to no 
avail. Have you ever been involved in successful business 
transformation efforts? If so, what practices would you suggest to 
USCIS for its transformation program? 

Balancing the Department's Homeland Security Mission with Its Legacy 
Customs Functions: 

14. In 2002, the U.S. Customs Service's historical responsibilities for 
enforcing trade laws and collecting customs duties, taxes, and fees 
were transferred to the Department of Homeland Security. The 
department's first priority is to enforce border measures to prevent 
terrorist attacks within the United States. GAO has identified several 
operational weaknesses within Customs and Border Protection's trade and 
customs revenue functions that could benefit from improved management 
attention. How does an executive approach balancing the department's 
homeland security mission with its customs revenue and trade functions? 
What are key steps a manager can take to help meet such a challenge? 

Transportation Security: 

Strengthening Security of Surface Modes of Transportation: 

15. Regarding efforts to secure the transportation network, the 
department and TSA have made limited progress in defining TSA's role 
with respect to securing surface modes of transportation, including 
passenger rail, mass transit, freight rail, commercial vehicles, 
highway infrastructure, and pipelines. What has been your experience in 
helping an organization determine its role in a dynamic environment 
involving many partnerships? What key steps would your experience 
suggest that the department and TSA might take to define and implement 
a strategy to strengthen security in these nonaviation modes? 

Assessing Aviation Security Measures: 

16. Regarding efforts to secure commercial aviation, the security 
measures in place today in commercial airports have largely been shaped 
by legislation passed immediately following the terrorist attacks of 
September 11, 2001. What experiences do you have in implementing 
systemic, environmental, or procedural scans intended to identify 
opportunity for fundamental changes in organizational strategy or 
tactic? Explain how this experience might help the department and TSA 
identify any necessary fundamental changes to the existing security 
structure in place in airports today. 

Balancing Resources across Missions and Enhancing Technologies to 
Improve Maritime Security: 

17. The Coast Guard and outside observers have noted problems with 
shortages of personnel and other resources devoted to maritime 
missions. The Commandant has hinted that the Coast Guard will be asking 
for more personnel and other resources in the fiscal year 2010 budget. 
In some cases, we have heard that Coast Guard has reduced its 
operations to better align with resource realities, raising concerns 
that the agency is just reducing operations arbitrarily to meet budget 
constraints. What relevant experiences can you cite where you have been 
involved in the trade-off between quality and budget? What are your 
views on how the department and its components should set and measure 
security standards and balance them against existing resources? 

18. In most recent years, the vast majority of the Coast Guard's 
capital funding requests has been dedicated to the Deepwater program, 
leaving very little funding left for other acquisitions, construction, 
and improvements projects--such as replacing the ever-aging icebreakers 
and aids-to-navigation boats, and improving shore facilities. This has 
left the Coast Guard without modern equipment to perform some of its 
more routine missions. What experience do you have balancing the 
mission needs of high-visibility projects with other less-visible 
projects? What role do you think senior management should play in 
monitoring this trade-off? 

Strengthening Container Security: 

19. For U.S. Customs and Border Protection container security programs 
and other component programs, the department has stationed its staff 
overseas to work with foreign governments, raising issues of high 
costs, security of personnel, language capabilities, and international 
sovereignty. In addition, there are concerns that components have not 
made clear determinations of how many staff need to be overseas and how 
they coordinate with other departments and components. What experience, 
if any, do you have managing a multinational footprint and determining 
the right staffing needs for the right locations? 

20. The Secure Freight Initiative is a pilot program to test the 
feasibility of 100 percent scanning of United States-bound container 
cargo. Such containers would be scanned regardless of their assessed 
risk level. A risk management approach generally calls for identifying 
higher risk threats (such as high-risk containers) and then applying 
resources against those threats--but not against all potential threats. 
Do you have experience with using either of these approaches in a 
security environment, or a blend of them? What would you advise for 
striking the balance between them? 

Critical Infrastructure Protection: 

Developing Strategies for Securing Critical Infrastructure: 

21. As you know, the department has issued the National Infrastructure 
Protection Plan, and the individual sectors such as energy, banking, 
and agriculture have issued their plans. These plans do not always 
recognize their interdependencies. Can you describe a couple of 
examples of your involvement with strategic planning that involved 
multiple organizations or multiple sectors with interdependencies? What 
next steps would you suggest for identifying gaps and aligning 
disparate plans into an overall, long-term strategy to protect critical 
infrastructure? 

Forming Partnerships in Securing Critical Infrastructure: 

22. Could you provide a couple of examples where you worked with state 
and local governments? What advice would you offer the department for 
involving state and local governments in the department's critical 
infrastructure protection efforts? 

23. In light of the 2001 anthrax attack, the proliferation of 
institutions maintaining high-consequence biological pathogens, and the 
many weaknesses we found in securing such pathogens at the Plum Island 
Animal Disease Center, what experience do you have with assuring 
security at geographically dispersed facilities with numerous 
stakeholders? What lessons do you offer to help the incoming 
administration assure the safety and security of pathogens maintained 
at numerous laboratories throughout the United States? 

Making Trade-Offs Related to Protection and Resiliency: 

24. Industry has criticized the department for focusing on protection, 
rather than resiliency, that is, the ability to quickly recover from an 
incident. Do you have experience wrestling with such a trade-off? If 
so, how would you balance protection with recovery in addressing 
critical infrastructure security? 

Transforming the Department of Homeland Security: 

Integrating Management Functions: 

25. GAO has reported that departmental transformation takes at least 5-
7 years. Can you describe how that compares to any fundamental 
transformations you have been involved with? Given the department's 
upcoming 6-year anniversary, what actions should the department 
undertake to promote an efficient transformation? 

26. Have you ever been involved with the merger of disparate entities 
and the integration of their management functions, including 
acquisition management, financial management, human capital management 
and information-technology management? What lessons have you learned 
that will be useful to the department as it continues its own 
integration? 

27. In order to build the management infrastructure needed to help 
support the department's integration and transformation, GAO 
recommended in 2005 that the department should develop an overarching 
management integration strategy for the department. Are you familiar 
with such a concept, and, if so, how? What elements do you believe are 
necessary for such a strategy to be useful and effective? 

28. What are your thoughts/concerns regarding the establishment of a 
Chief Operating Officer or Chief Management Officer (CMO) as it relates 
to attaining sustained departmental leadership? 

Improving Acquisition Management: 

29. What major acquisitions have you been involved in, and what is the 
appropriate role for department-level oversight of its major 
investments? Given long-standing concerns about the department's 
Investment Review Process and issues with major acquisitions such as 
Deepwater and SBInet, what advice would you offer to help ensure that 
the department's acquisitions stay within cost and on schedule, and 
perform as intended? 

30. What experiences do you have relying on contractors to support 
major acquisitions? Given the department's extensive reliance on 
contractors, what would you suggest are the key considerations in 
determining the appropriate role for contractors in supporting major 
acquisitions? 

31. Improving the acquisition workforce has been noted as one of the 
acquisition management priorities at the department. What experience 
have you had recruiting and retaining individuals with skills that are 
in high demand? How will this experience help the department make 
progress in recruiting, hiring, and retaining contract specialists, as 
well as address the challenge of filling the remaining acquisition 
workforce gaps? 

Improving Financial Management and Controls: 

32. What actions would you take to move the focus of the department's 
system-improvement efforts from getting a clean audit opinion to 
providing reliable, timely, and useful information to support day-to- 
day decision making and oversight and for the systematic measurement of 
performance? 

Improving Real Property Management: 

33. All executive agencies are required to develop a physical security 
plan under Homeland Security Presidential Directive 7, and the 
department has not developed one yet. Have you ever developed or 
managed the development of a physical security plan for an 
organization? What advice do you have for others doing so? 

34. The Federal Protective Service faces funding and operational 
challenges as it provides physical security and law enforcement 
services to 9,000 General Services Administration (GSA) facilities. GAO 
has made several recommendations about how to address these challenges 
including developing and implementing a strategic approach to better 
manage staffing resources and evaluating current and alternative 
funding mechanisms. What experience do you have addressing staffing and 
funding constraints within an organization? 

35. The department, currently dispersed in more than 80 buildings in 
more than 50 locations, would like to consolidate its headquarters on 
the western campus of the former St. Elizabeth's Hospital. What 
involvement have you had, if any, with consolidating the operations of 
an organization that are dispersed geographically? Did the 
consolidation go on schedule? What do you believe are key steps in 
assessing whether to make such a move? 

Applying Risk Management to Homeland Security Investments: 

36. GAO has reported that the department has made varying levels of 
progress in making risk-based investment decisions, but that more work 
remains, including more centralized assessment and prioritization of 
risk across sectors. What has been your experience with using 
integrated risk management processes? How will you leverage that 
experience to help collectively assess departmentwide priorities so 
that resources can be appropriately targeted across the department's 
broad areas of responsibility? 

37. Do you have experiences in either the private or public sector that 
suggest ways Congress can assist the department in strengthening the 
use of risk management to establish priorities for systems and assets 
that should be protected, and ensuring that resources are aligned with 
these priorities? 

Improving Terrorist Information Sharing: 

38. What has been your experience in aligning widespread internal 
information and knowledge systems to better leverage the sum of their 
knowledge? For example, what advice would you offer the department to 
ensure that each component in the department is collecting and sharing 
important information within the agency that could lead to tactical and 
strategic intelligence to help thwart possible terrorist threats? 

39. Describe a specific experience of yours working across 
organizational boundaries to achieve a common goal with others and how 
it would help you ensure that the department is collecting and sharing 
important information with other federal agencies, as well as state, 
local, and tribal partners, which could lead to tactical and strategic 
intelligence to help thwart possible terrorist threats. 

40. Citing your experiences working across organizational boundaries, 
what performance measures would you suggest for monitoring progress on 
implementation of interagency plans, such as the department's 
obligations to help implement the Information Sharing Environment that 
Congress mandated as a means to avoid the problems the tragedies of 
9/11 exposed? 

Protecting Privacy and Civil Liberties in a Post-9/11 Environment: 

41. How knowledgeable are you about the need for developing system-of- 
records notices and privacy impact assessments for systems relying on 
personal data? What do you think are the competing priorities in 
ensuring that an organization, like the department, stays current with 
its privacy notices? 

Strengthening Strategic Planning and Performance Measurement: 

42. The department has gone through continued delays in issuing its 
strategic plan, a key component of which should be the identification 
and timeline for achieving departmental goals. Describe your successes 
with strategic planning and how they would prepare you to help develop 
short-and long-term goals for the department/component/office. 

43. How important has performance measurement been to the organizations 
you have worked with? How are you prepared to ensure that the 
department's components and offices establish appropriate measures, 
coordinate their performance measurement activities, and use the 
results of measurement efforts to make appropriate program or 
operational adjustments? 

44. Based on your experience, what are key practices you would 
recommend in using performance-measurement data to monitor the 
department's progress, and to assess its performance in meeting 
established targets and achieving specific outcomes? 

Point of Contact: Cathleen Berrick, Director, Homeland Security and 
Justice, (202) 512-3404 or berrickc@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix VIII: Department of Housing and Urban Development: 

The Department of Housing and Urban Development's overall mission is to 
provide rental housing assistance to low-and moderate-income families, 
increase homeownership opportunities, support community development, 
and enforce the nation's fair housing laws. To accomplish this mission, 
the department administers multiple programs through component agencies 
and offices such as the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), Office of 
Public and Indian Housing, and Office of Community Planning and 
Development. For fiscal year 2009, the department requested about $38 
billion to implement its various programs, including approximately $28 
billion for rental assistance. 

In recent years, the nation's housing sector has faced major challenges 
that threaten the financial security and well-being of millions of 
American families. Foreclosure rates for home mortgages have soared to 
record levels, and the resulting turmoil in the credit markets has 
severely limited financing options for homeowners and developers of 
multifamily rental housing. In addition, the number of very-low-income 
renters with severe housing cost burdens has significantly increased, 
while the supply of low-cost housing has declined. These developments 
have compounded already serious housing and community development 
challenges in areas recovering from major natural disasters such as 
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Modernizing the Federal Housing Administration (FHA); 
* Reforming Rental Housing Assistance Programs; 
* Strengthening Accountability in Disaster Assistance. 

Questions: 

Modernizing the Federal Housing Administration (FHA): 

1. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that under a program 
created by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, FHA will help 
refinance about 400,000 distressed borrowers into FHA-insured loans, 
but that roughly one-third of these loans will fail. Could you please 
describe your experience related to the task of helping borrowers avoid 
foreclosure, while mitigating financial losses on troubled loans? 
Similarly, given that FHA is likely to see an increase in its inventory 
of foreclosed properties, how has your prior work prepared you to help 
the department manage and dispose of these properties in a manner that 
expands homeownership opportunities, strengthens neighborhoods, and 
maximizes return to FHA's insurance fund? 

2. FHA has taken some steps to modernize its insurance processes, but 
still has administrative inefficiencies, risk management challenges, 
and has seen its financial condition deteriorate. What would be your 
management priorities in terms of resource investments and process 
reengineering to improve FHA's administrative and financial 
performance? Drawing from your experience, what techniques in 
understanding and managing risk could FHA improve upon as it takes on 
an expanded role in today's unsettled mortgage market? 

Reforming Rental Housing Assistance Programs: 

3. As you may know, thousands of third-party administrators--such as 
housing agencies and individual property owners--are responsible for 
ensuring that only eligible households receive rental housing 
assistance, that properties meet health and safety standards, and that 
federal resources are spent wisely. Based on your experience, what are 
the critical management skills needed to ensure that these third-party 
entities are performing effectively? 

4. The department faces a number of challenges in ensuring that 
property owners continue to participate in the department's rental 
assistance programs and in preserving the stock of assisted units that 
are affordable to low-income households. How, if at all, has your prior 
work exposed you to the incentives and challenges property owners face? 
How can the department's management better leverage incentives and 
challenges to build stronger ties with property owners and work with 
them to encourage program participation? 

Strengthening Accountability in Disaster Assistance: 

5. What do you believe should be the department's role in assisting 
victims of hurricanes and other natural disasters, and what obstacles, 
if any, prevent the department from performing such a role? 

6. Have you ever managed an organization's preparation and response to 
a natural disaster? Based on that experience, what steps would you 
propose that the department take to better prepare itself for future 
disasters? 

Points of Contact: Mathew Scirč, Director, Financial Markets and 
Community Investment, (202) 512-6794 or sciremj@gao.gov; and William B. 
Shear, Director, Financial Markets and Community Investment, (202) 512- 
4325 or shearw@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix IX: Department of the Interior: 

The Department of the Interior is one of the nation's principal 
conservation and land management agencies. Its mission is to protect 
and provide access to our nation's natural and cultural heritage and 
honor our trust responsibilities to American Indians and Alaska Natives 
and our commitments to island communities. Operating at approximately 
2,400 locations, the department is responsible for 500 million acres of 
America's public land (about one-fifth of the land in the United 
States), a variety of water and underwater resources, including 479 
dams and 348 reservoirs, and more than 56,000 active onshore and 
offshore oil and gas leases. Approximately 30 percent of the nation's 
energy production comes from projects on department-managed lands and 
offshore areas. The department is comprised of eight bureaus: the U.S. 
Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, the Bureau of 
Indian Affairs, the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of 
Reclamation, the Minerals Management Service, the Office of Surface 
Mining, and the U.S. Geological Survey. The President's budget for the 
department for fiscal year 2009 is $10.7 billion, including $2.1 
billion for park operations under the Centennial Initiative to prepare 
for the 100th anniversary of the National Park System. 

As the guardian of much of the nation's vast natural resources, the 
department is entrusted to preserve the nation's most awe-inspiring 
landscapes, such as the wild beauty of the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and 
Denali National Parks; our most historic places, like Independence Hall 
and the Gettysburg battlefield; and such revered national icons as the 
Statue of Liberty and the Washington Monument. At the same time, the 
department is to provide for the environmentally sound production of 
oil, gas, minerals, and other resources found on the nation's public 
lands; protect habitat to sustain fish and wildlife; help manage water 
resources in western states; and provide scientific and technical 
information to allow for sound decision making about resources. The 
department's management of this vast federal estate is largely 
characterized by the struggle to balance the demand for greater use and 
consumption of its resources with the need to conserve and protect them 
for the benefit of future generations. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Strengthening Resource Protection; 
* Strengthening the Accountability of Indian and Island Community 
Programs; 
* Improving Federal Land Acquisition and Management; 
* Reducing Interior's Deferred Maintenance Backlog; 
* Ensuring the Accurate Collection of Royalties; 
* Enhancing Other Revenue Collection. 

Questions: 

Strengthening Resource Protection: 

1. Wildland fires continue to threaten our nation's public lands and 
communities and consume significant appropriations as the Department of 
the Interior and the Forest Service prepare for and respond to wildland 
fires. How would you go about developing a cohesive fire strategy that 
identifies long-term options and associated funding needs for 
responding to wildland fire issues? What steps could you take to 
contain and manage the costs of the strategy? 

2. Over the past several years, federal land management agencies have 
been participating in collaborative resource management efforts that 
involve public and private stakeholders working together to resolve 
natural resource conflicts and problems. Can you describe specific 
examples where you have worked across organizational boundaries with 
stakeholders in other sectors to develop coordinated solutions? What 
steps do you think would be necessary to enhance further collaboration 
among federal, state, and local stakeholders to reduce resource 
management conflict and improve natural resource conditions? 

Strengthening the Accountability of Indian and Island Community 
Programs: 

3. Having land held in trust for the benefit of tribes or individual 
Indians is important for tribal sovereignty and economic development. 
GAO and the department's Inspector General have reported that it 
usually takes over a year for the Bureau of Indian Affairs to process 
land in trust applications for both gaming and nongaming purposes. One 
application that GAO reviewed took almost 19 years. What experience do 
you have with developing an action plan to address these challenges? 
How would you instill a priority and a sense of urgency in the 
department to strengthen its performance in this area? 

4. Tribal membership disputes and tribal leadership disputes seem to be 
occurring more and more frequently. What experience do you have in 
working with tribal leadership and trying to resolve these types of 
disputes or in trying to prevent them? 

5. GAO has reported that the department could be doing more to assist 
island communities with long-standing financial and program management 
difficulties. What qualifications would you cite for being able to 
ensure that proper guidance, technical assistance, and accountability 
are put in place to help island communities make progress in areas such 
as accounting for expenditures, collecting taxes and other revenues, 
controlling expenditures, and delivering program services? 

Improving Federal Land Acquisition and Management: 

6. GAO and the department's Inspector General have reported on the 
difficulties the Bureau of Land Management and other federal land 
management agencies have had in managing land appraisals and the 
resulting loss of millions of federal dollars. Challenges include a 
wide variation in the quality of appraisals, the lack of a system for 
ensuring realistic time frames for appraisal delivery, and inadequate 
inspections to ensure landowners' compliance with easement 
restrictions. What aspects of your background in internal controls 
would enable you to assure that these challenges are addressed? What 
actions would you recommend to help improve performance? 

7. Since the inception of the Small Wetlands Acquisition Program in the 
late 1950s, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has acquired and 
permanently protected about 3 million acres of wetlands and grasslands 
in the Prairie Pothole Region, primarily using Migratory Bird 
Conservation Funds. However, at the current pace of acquisitions, it 
could take the service around 150 years and billions of dollars to 
acquire its 12 million goal acres, and some emerging market forces 
suggest that the service may have only several decades before most of 
its goal acreage is converted to agricultural uses. What experience do 
you have with developing action plans for a dynamic business 
environment? How would you tackle the need for developing targeted 
priorities flexible to varying market conditions? How could you help 
the federal government acquire more lands, and what strategies would 
you institute? 

Reducing Interior's Deferred Maintenance Backlog: 

8. Many tribes, individual Indians, and non-Indians rely on irrigation 
projects managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to provide water for 
their agriculture. In 2006, GAO reported that the estimated maintenance 
backlog for 16 Indian irrigation projects was about $850 million, and 
there are maintenance backlogs for Indian schools. How do you balance 
priorities to ensure that regular maintenance happens, and what steps 
do you believe should be taken address these maintenance backlogs? 

Ensuring the Accurate Collection of Royalties: 

9. What steps would you take to ensure that management of public oil 
and gas resources is efficient, effective, and generates an appropriate 
return to the public? How does one go about deciding the balance 
between the need to protect our nation's natural resources and the 
pressure to rapidly expand energy production on federal lands? 

10. GAO, the department's Inspector General, and the Royalty Policy 
Committee have made more than 100 recommendations to the Secretary of 
the Interior over the past year on ways to improve the accuracy, 
efficiency, and effectiveness of royalty collections for oil and gas 
produced on federal lands and waters. What specific steps should the 
department take to ensure that a system is in place to evaluate and 
implement these recommendations? 

Enhancing Other Revenue Collection: 

11. The collection and control of authorized fees and revenues has been 
a major management challenge for the department for years. Have you 
managed or led an organization with fee collection responsibilities? 
What management controls would you find important to have in place to 
assure that fees were being set, charged, collected, and used properly? 
Are there practices or innovations from elsewhere that you think you 
might bring to enhance and better control the collection of authorized 
revenues at the department? 

Other Broad Management Questions for the Department of the Interior: 

12. The department operates in a decentralized environment, allowing 
the many planning and project decisions to be made by managers assigned 
to parks and other units. Have you managed or led in a decentralized 
organization? How would you balance the need to provide discretion to 
local managers while ensuring that they are accountable for achieving 
departmentwide goals and objectives while operating efficiently? 

13. The department, like many other federal departments and agencies, 
has an aging workforce, and some of its positions (such as 
firefighters) require special skills and abilities that take years to 
train and develop. Have you had to wrestle with attracting and 
retaining talent? What specific workforce challenges have you faced and 
how did you overcome them? 

14. Over the years, GAO has identified a number of areas where program 
management problems exist at the department. Resolving systemic 
management problems will require strong leadership to ensure needed 
steps are taken and funding priorities are identified. Can you describe 
your style and philosophy for holding executives accountable for making 
progress in program management areas? What specific methods do you use 
to ensure that progress is being made? 

Point of Contact: Patricia Dalton, Managing Director, Natural Resources 
& Environment, (202) 512-3841 or daltonp@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix X: Department of Justice: 

The Department of Justice's mission is to enforce the law and defend 
the interests of the United States according to the law; ensure public 
safety against threats; provide federal leadership in preventing and 
controlling crime; seek just punishment for those guilty of unlawful 
behavior; and ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for 
all Americans. The department comprises 40 component agencies with wide-
ranging missions, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); 
the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA); and the Bureau of Alcohol, 
Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF); the U.S. Attorney's Offices; 
the Office of Justice Programs (OJP); and the Bureau of Prisons. For 
fiscal year 2009, the department requested about $25.4 billion to 
implement its various missions and programs, including about $5 billion 
for preventing terrorism and promoting national security and about $12 
billion for crime reduction and civil and constitutional rights 
enforcement. 

Following the September 11, 2001, attacks, the department expanded its 
activities and added new missions to help combat terrorism and provide 
for homeland security. For example, in fiscal year 2006 the department 
created the National Security Division to improve information sharing, 
coordination, and counterterrorism capacity. Adjusting to these new 
missions has posed challenges to the department and its component 
agencies in balancing competing resource needs and providing 
appropriate management and oversight of major programs. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Balancing Traditional Crime-Fighting Efforts with Counterterrorism; 
* Transforming the FBI to Address Terrorism; 
* Protecting Civil Liberties and Privacy in the 21st Century; 
* Managing a Growing Prison Population; 
* Ensuring Effective Grant Programs. 

Questions: 

Balancing Traditional Crime-Fighting Efforts with Counterterrorism: 

1. What experiences and skills do you have that would help you to 
distinguish, implement, monitor, and troubleshoot the roles of each of 
the criminal investigation components of the department in carrying out 
both its counterterrorism and traditional crime-fighting missions? 

2. Please describe how you have worked to coordinate different levels 
of government and how that experience would help you define, fund, and 
manage the roles of state and local law enforcement agencies to fill 
any gaps left by federal agencies' shifting away from traditional crime-
fighting to counterterrorism? 

Transforming the FBI to Address Terrorism: 

3. What experiences would help you balance the trade-offs of the FBI's 
integration of its domestic intelligence mission with its traditional 
law enforcement mission and how would you ensure that the integration 
is succeeding? 

4. Have you ever been involved in an organizational transformation, 
such as the one the FBI is undergoing? How do you track and measure 
transformation progress and success? 

5. What skills do you have that will help ensure that all components of 
the FBI effectively share, analyze, and use intelligence information 
not only to support investigations but also to promote more strategic 
analyses of threats to the nation? 

Protecting Civil Liberties and Privacy in the 21st Century: 

6. The department is often faced with balancing the requirements of 
providing security while protecting civil liberties and privacy. To 
what extent has your prior work prepared you for guiding the agency in 
maintaining balance between multiple goals and objectives? 

7. Based on your experiences to date, are there tools--external to the 
department (such as advisory groups) or internal--that you have 
determined could help you ensure that rights and liberties are 
protected? 

Managing a Growing Prison Population: 

8. Considering the increasing prison population and the extraordinary 
number of offenders who are released back into the community each year, 
the American public depends on the Department of Justice to ensure to 
the maximum extent possible that these ex-convicts are productive 
citizens and do not end up back in prison. What types of problems have 
you resolved in the past that will prepare you to address this daunting 
challenge? 

Ensuring Effective Grant Programs: 

9. The department's Office of Justice Programs (OJP) provides grant 
funding for various prisoner reentry programs and activities at the 
state and local levels. What are important steps to consider in 
ensuring that proper monitoring and evaluation data are collected, such 
as data that would be needed to effectively assess whether these 
reentry grant programs are having their desired effect? 

10. Concerns have been raised about the department's overall management 
of its grant programs, particularly related to the ways in which it 
awards funds and monitors and assesses the success of its funded 
programs. What in your background prepares you to help ensure the 
transparency, accountability, sustainability, and overall effectiveness 
of the department's grant programs? 

11. Given that federal grant funding for state and local law 
enforcement assistance has decreased in recent years, targeting grant 
funding and support to state and local entities will be key to the 
successful performance of these programs. What experience do you have 
that will help the department set priorities and establish criteria to 
ensure that funding is targeted to its best use for the country? 

Point of Contact: Eileen Larence, Director, Homeland Security and 
Justice, (202) 512-6510 or larencee@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix XI: Department of Labor: 

The Department of Labor's mission is to foster and promote the welfare 
of job seekers, wage earners, and retirees of the United States by 
improving their working conditions; advancing their opportunities for 
profitable employment; protecting their retirement and health care 
benefits; helping employers find workers; strengthening free collective 
bargaining; and tracking changes in employment, prices, and other 
national economic measurements. The department and its 26 offices and 
agencies, such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Veterans' 
Employment Training Service, and the Employee Benefits Security 
Administration, help administer a variety of federal laws including 
those that guarantee workers' rights to safe and healthful working 
conditions; a minimum hourly wage and overtime pay; freedom from 
employment discrimination; civilian reemployment after leaving to 
perform military service; unemployment insurance; and other income 
support. For fiscal year 2009, the department requested about $53 
billion to implement its various missions and programs, including about 
$3.1 billion for training and employment services and about $238 
million for veterans' employment and training. 

With rising concerns about workplace safety, employment security, and 
retirement income prospects, the department needs to focus on policies 
to enhance workers' physical and economic security, while at the same 
time enforcing laws requiring employers to safeguard workers' safety, 
rights, and resources. As the growth in the labor force slows and 
America faces a shortage of skilled workers, it is critical for the 
department to have reliable information on how well its employment and 
training programs are achieving their objectives and allocating 
resources, and how management and oversight of these programs can be 
improved. In addition, the department must take steps to ensure that 
employers follow the law and that workers have the tools they need to 
make wise saving choices. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Enhancing Employment and Training Programs; 
* Ensuring Safe and Productive Workplaces; 
* Improving Private Pension Plan Monitoring and Enforcement. 

Questions: 

Enhancing Employment and Training Programs: 

1. What experience do you have evaluating employment and training 
programs, and how can such experience help inform policy decisions 
about what level of federal investment is warranted in these programs? 

2. Please describe any experience you have developing or implementing 
performance measures and implementing systems to capture performance 
data on federal employment and training programs. 

3. What promising practices have you identified that would help ensure 
that all stakeholders (e.g., employers, community colleges, unions) are 
involved in and are effective partners in the national employment 
training system? 

4. Based on your experiences, what policies have you found to be 
effective in encouraging employers to engage and retain older workers 
or encouraging workers to work longer, and what role can job training 
programs play in this effort? 

Ensuring Safe and Productive Workplaces: 

5. The department is responsible for enforcement of labor laws designed 
to protect workers, including the Fair Labor Standards Act, the 
Occupational Safety and Health Act, the Mine Act, Mine Improvement and 
New Emergency Response Act, and Uniformed Services Employment and 
Reemployment Rights Act. What is your familiarity with these laws, and 
what do you think are key steps for improving their enforcement? 

6. The department's strategic planning process focuses, in part, on 
setting goals and performance measures for protecting workers' rights 
under various federal labor laws. These efforts include establishing 
performance goals and measures and involving key stakeholders in the 
establishment of these goals and measures. What strategic planning 
experience do you have that might assist the department in improving 
its planning processes? 

7. The department annually evaluates and reports on the effectiveness 
of its programs designed to protect workers. For example, the 
department measures the effectiveness of many of its enforcement and 
compliance assistance programs by relying on self-reported injury and 
illness data from employers. What management experience do you have in 
evaluating programs and what actions would you take to improve the 
department's evaluations of its enforcement and compliance assistance 
programs? 

8. Please discuss any policies or partnerships that you have helped 
develop that would inform federal efforts to foster the inclusion of 
new or underutilized groups of workers in the labor force. 

Improving Private Pension Plan Monitoring and Enforcement: 

9. How familiar are you with the legal and regulatory framework the 
department uses to protect the pension assets of American workers? How 
are you prepared to help identify any additional authorities or 
remedies that would assist the department in refining this framework? 

10. GAO has recommended that the Employee Benefits Security 
Administration (EBSA) take a more proactive approach to its 
investigations, including conducting routine compliance examinations 
and ongoing risk assessments. Do you have prior work with 
investigations? What would be key considerations in implementing a risk-
based compliance examination program? 

11. In a report on pension plan conflicts of interest, GAO suggested 
that Congress consider amending the Employee Retirement Income Security 
Act to allow EBSA greater enforcement authority regarding pension 
service providers. From your experience with pension plans, what would 
you say are the conflicts of interest that might still need to be 
addressed? 

Points of Contact: Barbara Bovbjerg, Director, Education, Workforce, 
and Income Security, (202) 512-5491 or bovbjergb@gao.gov; and George 
Scott, Director, Education, Workforce, and Income Security, (202) 512- 
5932 or scottg@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix XII: Department of State: 

The Department of State's overarching mission is to advance freedom for 
the benefit of the American people and the international community by 
helping to build and sustain a more democratic, secure, and prosperous 
world composed of well-governed states that respond to the needs of 
their people, reduce widespread poverty, and act responsibly within the 
international system. The many bureaus, embassies, and consulates that 
constitute the department contribute to achieving its mission at home 
and around the world. The Secretary of State also chairs the board of 
the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a U.S. government 
corporation that provides assistance to some of the poorest countries 
in the world. For fiscal year 2009, the President requested about $39.5 
billion for the International Affairs budget for the Department of 
State, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and 
other foreign affairs agencies. 

The 2007-2012 Department of State and USAID Strategic Plan outlines 
seven goals: achieving peace and security; governing justly and 
democratically; investing in people; promoting economic growth and 
prosperity; providing humanitarian assistance; promoting international 
understanding; and strengthening our consular and management 
capabilities. In addition to those goals, the strategic plan notes that 
the department must address a variety of challenges to U.S. security 
interests, development efforts, and democratic ideals, including the 
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, and the spread 
of disease and environmental degradation. The department is challenged 
to address the growing threat posed by violent extremism while also 
combating poverty and laying foundations for economic prosperity, human 
rights, and democracy. The department also faces daunting personnel 
challenges, including language proficiency gaps; critical 
reconstruction and democracy-building challenges throughout the world; 
and an ongoing challenge to promote the image of the United States 
abroad. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Stabilizing Regions in Conflict; 
* Strengthening Visa and Passport Operations; 
* Fostering Public Diplomacy and International Broadcasting; 
* Addressing Staffing Challenges; 
* Reforming United Nations Management; 
* Sustaining Counternarcotics Activities; 
* Addressing HIV/AIDS Challenges; 
* Implementing the Millennium Challenge Corporation Compacts; 
* Enhancing Democracy and Human Right Activities; 
* Maximizing Humanitarian Assistance. 

Questions: 

Stabilizing Regions in Conflict: 

1. What skills and abilities do you have that would prepare you for 
managing government programs in war zones or regions in conflict? 

2. What experience do you have successfully working with a wide variety 
of civilian and military stakeholders and balancing competing 
priorities, approaches, and objectives? 

3. What aspects of your background provide you with any lessons learned 
for developing comprehensive strategic plans and using these plans to 
measure progress toward achieving goals in regions in conflict? 

Strengthening Visa and Passport Operations: 

4. What skills do you have for developing a comprehensive long-term 
strategy to enhance and rationalize passport operations in ways that go 
beyond simply increasing capacity? 

Fostering Public Diplomacy and International Broadcasting: 

5. What experience do you have in implementing an international 
communications strategy? 

6. What skills and abilities do you have to address human capital 
challenges--such as staffing shortfalls, foreign language proficiency 
deficiencies, limited time to conduct public outreach, short tours of 
duty, and inadequate training--and security challenges, which limit 
public outreach efforts? 

7. What approaches to communications have you used in past jobs, and 
have any of them included the use of in-depth audience research and 
detailed country-level communications plans? 

8. What experience do you have that prepares you for managing a 
disparate collection of broadcasters with varying missions, overlapping 
language services, and duplicative management structures? 

Addressing Staffing Challenges: 

9. What in your background prepares you for addressing the staffing 
challenges at the department, which include the need to enhance and 
maintain a skilled multilingual global workforce that shifts around the 
world every few years? 

10. What experience have you had managing overseas operations of a 
large organization and allocating resources, including human capital, 
across various competing lines of effort? 

11. What skills do you have that would be applicable to the 
department's rightsizing efforts that must balance mission priorities 
with security and cost concerns? 

Reforming United Nations Management: 

12. What experience do you have as a change-agent that would help push 
forward the management reform agenda within the UN and with member 
states? 

13. What skills and abilities do you have that would help you measure 
and assess the progress in advancing and implementing management 
reforms, such as those needed at the UN? 

14. Do you have any background in international member organizations 
that illustrates how you might address long-standing barriers to the 
advancement of UN management reforms, including disagreements and 
competing priorities among member states? 

Sustaining Counternarcotics Activities: 

15. International counternarcotics programs bring together activities 
that are both development assistance and law enforcement in nature. How 
does your management experience fit with these two aspects of these 
programs? 

16. What skills and abilities do you bring to run programs in 
adversarial foreign environments like those in Afghanistan and parts of 
Colombia and Mexico? 

Addressing HIV/AIDS Challenges: 

17. What skills do you have that would allow you to overcome challenges 
of and successfully manage programs to achieve the United States' 
international objectives for health? 

18. Do you have experience developing accurate and appropriate systems 
for monitoring and evaluating results of these types of programs? 

Implementing the Millennium Challenge Corporation Compacts: 

19. We understand that the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) has 
had to reduce the scope of some of its compacts in order to address 
rising implementation costs. What experiences can you cite that prepare 
you to help MCC navigate the choice of proper scope given this rising 
cost constraint, without compromising on goals for contributing to 
economic growth and poverty reduction? 

Enhancing Democracy and Human Right Activities: 

20. What experience do you have in working with governments in 
transition and how has this experience prepared you to lead and oversee 
U.S. programs designed to support democracies abroad? 

21. Other countries' human rights records are an important 
consideration for making a range of foreign policy decisions. What 
aspects of your background have prepared you to address human rights 
violations and make these important decisions? 

Maximizing Humanitarian Assistance: 

22. What skills and abilities do you have to manage humanitarian 
assistance programs in crisis situations, be they short-term or open-
ended in nature? 

23. What in your professional background prepares you to help guide the 
department to facilitate coordination with other U.S. departments and 
agencies, as well as other non-U.S. stakeholders that may be involved 
in disaster recovery and reconstruction programs? 

24. What experience can you cite for measuring organizational 
performance and effect of humanitarian programs, such as establishing 
and using frameworks that link project activities with goals and 
targets and implementing efforts to obtain reliable program data? 

Point of Contact: Jacquelyn Williams-Bridgers, Managing Director, 
International Affairs and Trade, (202) 512-3101 or 
williamsbridgersj@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix XIII: Department of Transportation: 

The overall mission of the Department of Transportation is to ensure a 
fast, safe, efficient, accessible, and convenient transportation system 
that meets vital national interests and enhances the quality of life of 
the American people, today and into the future. Such a transportation 
system is integral to the health of our economy and quality of life. 
The department comprises 12 operating administrations and bureaus, 
including the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Federal 
Highway Administration (FHWA), and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety 
Administration (FMCSA). For fiscal year 2009, the department requested 
about $68 billion to implement its various missions and programs, 
including about $37 billion to reduce congestion and about $20 billion 
on safety activities. 

Our nation's vast system of airways, railways, roads, pipelines, 
transit, and waterways has served this need, yet is under considerable 
strain from increasing congestion; large maintenance and improvement 
costs; and the human cost of the more than 44,000 people killed and 
more than 2.5 million injured each year in transportation-related 
accidents. The department will face a range of key challenges as it 
seeks to fulfill its mission. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Maintaining and Improving Our Nation's Mobility; 
* Financing the Nation's Transportation System; 
* Improving Transportation Safety; 
* Transitioning to NextGen; 
* Improving Performance and Accountability; 
* Improving Energy Efficiency; 
* Building Human Capital Strategies; 
* Fostering Improved Financial Management. 

Questions: 

Maintaining and Improving Our Nation's Mobility: 

1. Despite large increases in expenditures in real terms for 
transportation, the investment has not commensurately improved the 
performance of the nation's surface transportation system as congestion 
continues to grow. Many believe that major changes in the federal 
approach are needed but agreement on what those changes should be is 
lacking. What past experiences have prepared you to take a lead role in 
determining what types of changes are needed? 

2. Freight tonnage carried by freight railroads is forecasted to 
increase by about 73 percent between 2006 and 2035. This situation has 
led to calls for increased federal investment in the U.S. railroad 
network. In your opinion, what information and factors should be 
considered in determining the appropriate role the federal government 
should play in investing in freight railroads? 

3. Higher fuel prices have attracted more attention to the role of 
public transit, as well as Amtrak, in the nation's passenger 
transportation system. What experiences do you have that prepare you to 
help determine their appropriate roles and the changes, if any, that 
are needed in federal policy in these areas? 

4. Aviation congestion and delays have plagued air travelers for some 
time and 2007 was one of the worst years for delays in the last decade. 
What experiences do you have that would help you ensure that the FAA 
work with the aviation industry is adequate to reduce congestion and 
delays? 

5. The Essential Air Service (EAS) program was established to ensure 
that small communities served by air carriers before deregulation would 
continue to receive scheduled service. This program's design has 
changed little in 30 years and recently several EAS carriers have gone 
out of business or announced their intent to leave the program due to 
rising operating costs. Have you ever contributed to a fundamental 
reexamination of a long-standing program or line of business that may 
have become out of touch with its market or operating environment? What 
prepares you to help determine whether the EAS program is designed 
adequately to address the needs of America's small and rural 
communities? 

Financing the Nation's Transportation System: 

6. In January 2007, GAO designated the financing of our nation's 
transportation system as a high-risk area because of an increasing 
demand for transportation services, and the inability of revenue from 
traditional funding mechanisms to keep pace. In particular, 
expenditures now exceed revenues for the Highway Trust Fund and, to 
prevent a funding shortfall, Congress recently transferred $8 billion 
from the general fund of the Treasury to the Highway Trust Fund. 
Without major changes in funding levels or planned spending, deficits 
will continue to occur. Can you cite some prior experiences that would 
help you contribute to both immediate and longer-term steps to improve 
the fiscal condition of the Highway Trust Fund? 

7. In December 2007, the National Surface Transportation Policy and 
Revenue Study Commission recommended significant increases in 
investments across surface transportation modes--increases between $130 
billion and $250 billion annually--in order to maintain the condition 
of the nation's infrastructure, relieve congestion, and improve 
essential services. In your experience, what are important factors to 
consider in determining what level of funding is truly needed, and in 
determining which funding sources should be tapped to meet it? 

8. The highway public-private partnerships created to date have 
resulted in benefits to state and local governments, such as the 
construction of new infrastructure, without using public funding. 
However, these partnerships are largely a new form of privately issued 
debt that must be repaid to private investors by road users. What 
knowledge and experiences do you have that might suggest your readiness 
to help discern the appropriate federal approach and role regarding 
such partnerships? 

9. The revenues that are generated from FAA's current funding 
mechanisms depend heavily on factors, such as ticket prices, that are 
not connected to FAA's workload and costs to maintain, operate, and 
modernize the nation's air traffic control system. The previous 
administration proposed better aligning FAA's costs and revenues 
through a system based largely on user fees. What prepares you to 
objectively help determine how FAA should be funded? What criteria 
should be used to help determine if funding will be acquired through 
the traditional mechanisms of taxes and a general fund contribution, or 
a new user-fee regimen? 

Improving Transportation Safety: 

10. Over the last 10 years, the number of traffic fatalities has 
unfortunately remained at about 42,000 to 43,000 annually. The two 
leading factors contributing to fatalities are the failure to use 
safety belts and alcohol-impaired driving; however, speeding and 
motorcycle crashes are also key factors. What knowledge and experience 
do you possess that prepare you to lead the department's efforts to 
address these problems nationwide in order to reduce the number of 
traffic related fatalities? 

11. Serious concerns have been raised regarding FAA's oversight and 
enforcement of air carrier safety. What qualifications do you have for 
implementing, managing, and enforcing safety standards? Have you ever 
had to deal with oversight and enforcement lapses? How would you use 
your management skills to ensure these kinds of problems do not occur 
in the future? 

12. GAO recently reported that FMCSA, which is responsible for reducing 
crashes involving large trucks and buses, does not assess maximum fines 
as often as required by law and that the Federal Railroad 
Administration only takes enforcement action on a very small percentage 
of railroad safety problems it identifies. What in your management 
history suggests that you are prepared and qualified to take specific 
actions to ensure enforcement measures are taken when necessary? 

Transitioning to NextGen: 

13. As you know, FAA is beginning to implement the Next Generation Air 
Transportation System (NextGen), a large-scale, highly complex, and 
costly effort aimed at increasing the safety and efficiency of the 
national air transportation system. Have you ever been responsible for 
a large-scale or highly complex technology acquisition or 
implementation? If so, was it completed within cost and schedule 
estimates? What challenges did you face and how did you address them? 

Improving Performance and Accountability: 

14. GAO has found that many surface transportation programs are not 
linked to performance of the transportation system or grantees, as most 
highway, transit, and safety funds are distributed through formulas 
that indirectly relate to needs and may have no relationship to 
performance. Therefore, it is difficult to assess the effect of recent 
record levels of federal highway expenditures. In addition, programs 
often do not use the best tools or approaches, such as using rigorous 
economic analysis to select projects. What experiences do you bring 
that demonstrate your ability to manage federal investments so that 
taxpayers can be assured that the large amounts of funding for surface 
transportation programs are used efficiently and effectively? 

15. As a provider of billions of dollars worth of highway and transit 
funding to states and cities, the department has the responsibility to 
oversee the projects to ensure that they meet standards and that money 
is spent efficiently. What major investment project experience, if any, 
do you have? What in your opinion are key steps to ensure that projects 
are executed on time and without cost overruns? 

Improving Energy Efficiency: 

16. The transportation sector is a major source of greenhouse gases 
that cause climate change. GAO has reported that improving the 
efficiency of the air traffic system is key to reducing emissions from 
aviation. Have you worked before on initiatives involving multiple 
levels of government, their agencies, independent authorities, and 
businesses? What qualifications do you have to help department efforts 
to develop and effectively execute strategies across the aviation 
sector to reduce the overall transportation sector's contribution to 
local air pollution and global warming? 

17. Record high prices on gasoline have stimulated consumer interest in 
highly fuel-efficient vehicles. Auto manufacturers are responding to 
this new consumer interest, although rolling out new efficient vehicles 
takes time, investment, and involves financial risk. What knowledge and 
experience do you have that would enable you to help determine the 
appropriate role of standards (such as Corporate Average Fuel Economy, 
or "CAFE") and market-based incentives to lower the nation's fuel 
consumption and assist auto manufacturers in continuing to roll out 
fuel-efficient vehicles? 

Building Human Capital Strategies: 

18. Over the next decade, FAA will need to hire and train nearly 17,000 
air traffic controllers to replace current controllers who are expected 
to retire from or leave the agency, and it can take up to 3 to 5 years 
for a controller to complete training and become certified. In 
addition, air traffic controller fatigue, brought about by long work 
weeks and overtime, will become more critical as the number of 
retirements increase, leaving some facilities short-staffed. Can you 
describe your prior responsibilities, if any, with a large technical 
workforce? What training, hiring, and retention challenges have you 
faced, and how did you address them? 

19. As a result of increased capabilities at state transportation 
agencies to conduct detailed reviews of highway project design plans 
and inspections of their projects, Federal Highway Administration 
(FHWA) staff responsibilities have shifted from detailed oversight 
functions to broader reviews. Have you been involved in a major 
evolution or reorientation of an organization's human capital needs? 
What type of strategic human capital planning have you undertaken? 

Fostering Improved Financial Management: 

20. While FAA has made progress in recent years in improving its 
financial management systems and practices, work remains to ensure that 
the agency soundly manages its finances. For fiscal years 2006 and 
2007, the department's Inspector General reported FAA's challenges in 
managing a construction account of more than $2 billion, and described 
this as a material weakness. What successes, if any, can you cite from 
your involvement in overseeing or implementing reforms to financial 
management systems? What characteristics do you believe are essential 
to a sound financial management system? 

Point of Contact: Kate Siggerud, Managing Director, Physical 
Infrastructure, (202) 512-2834 or siggerudk@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix XIV: Department of the Treasury: 

The Department of the Treasury's mission is to serve the American 
people and strengthen national security by managing the federal 
government's finances effectively, promoting economic growth and 
stability, and ensuring the safety, soundness, and security of U.S. and 
international financial systems. The department is made up of 12 
bureaus, including the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the Internal 
Revenue Service (IRS), and the U.S. Mint. In its role as the nation's 
tax collector, IRS has a demanding responsibility to collect taxes, 
process tax returns, and enforce the nation's tax laws. In fiscal year 
2007, IRS collected about $2.7 trillion in tax payments. 

Our past and ongoing work has identified key challenges facing the 
department as it works toward ensuring economic growth, that financial 
markets are efficient and stable, and that the nation's tax system is 
fair and efficient. These challenges are significant because they 
affect the department's ability to stabilize financial markets and 
collect sufficient tax revenue to fund domestic and international 
priorities while minimizing economic harm. Like other federal agencies, 
the department will be confronting these issues at a time when it also 
faces a looming retirement wave. Indeed, 35 percent of the department's 
workforce that was on-board at the end of fiscal year 2007 will be 
eligible to retire by 2012. As a result, it will be important for the 
department to ensure it has the requisite skills and expertise to carry 
out its diverse responsibilities. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Implementing the Troubled Asset Relief Program; 
* Obtaining an Opinion on Consolidated Financial Statements; 
* Improving Reporting on the Federal Government's Long-Term Fiscal 
Challenge; 
* Reexamining Tax Policies and Priorities; 
* Reducing the Tax Gap; 
* Modernizing Business Systems; 
* Implementing Debt Relief; 
* Ensuring Retirement Income Security. 

Questions: 

Implementing the Troubled Asset Relief Program: 

1. There are inherent challenges in implementing and managing any new 
federal program. However, the Troubled Asset Relief Program faces a 
number of unique challenges in achieving its statutory purposes, which 
include mitigating foreclosures, stabilizing financial markets and 
protecting taxpayers. How will your prior experience help you in 
meeting your responsibilities over the Troubled Asset Relief Program? 

2. The Office of Financial Stability is responsible for the Troubled 
Asset Relief Program, and one challenge facing the new management of 
this office will be hiring a highly-qualified management team. Could 
you please discuss your experience in hiring, leading, and retaining 
high performing work teams? 

Improving Reporting on the Federal Government's Long-Term Fiscal 
Challenge: 

3. As you well know, our nation faces a serious structural fiscal 
imbalance. A number of other countries issue fiscal sustainability 
reports to explain and to improve the understanding of the long-term 
outlook and the magnitude of necessary change. The Federal Accounting 
Standards Advisory Board has recently issued an exposure draft on 
fiscal sustainability reporting for the federal government. How has 
your experience prepared you to help with such reporting? 

4. While the basic reporting would be on the long-term fiscal 
sustainability of current spending and tax policies, how would you 
incorporate alternative scenarios and assumptions--on both the spending 
and the revenue side--into the report? 

Reexamining Tax Policies and Priorities: 

5. There are differing opinions on whether the goals for the nation's 
tax system can best be achieved by reforming the current income tax so 
that it has a broader base and a flatter rate schedule, or switching in 
whole or in part to some form of a consumption tax. What experience, 
background, and skills do you have that will assist you in contributing 
to a policy change of this magnitude? 

6. Tax expenditures represent a substantial federal commitment that 
needs to be examined. Some tax incentives fail to achieve congressional 
objectives, have costs that outweigh their benefits, duplicate other 
programs, or are not the most cost-effective means for achieving their 
objectives. What principles or criteria would you use to determine 
which tax incentives need to be reconsidered? 

Reducing the Tax Gap: 

7. Can you provide two or three specific examples where you were 
involved in balancing the need for quality customer service against 
other corporate or organizational goals? Tax administration must 
emphasize customer service and enforcement. Citing lessons from your 
experience, what is important to a successful strategy to improve tax 
administration given this requirement? 

8. Streamlining and simplifying the current tax system could 
potentially make it more transparent and less burdensome to taxpayers 
while reducing opportunities for tax evasion. Have you ever been 
involved significantly in a major rewrite of procedures, regulations, 
or rules? What do you think would be important steps in implementing 
such a major effort? 

9. The tax gap is a perennial problem. Despite numerous IRS compliance 
initiatives, rates of tax noncompliance have persisted at roughly their 
current levels for decades, based on available evidence. Could you 
please describe your enforcement and related experience that may 
provide insights into helping reduce the tax gap? 

Modernizing Business Systems: 

10. Do you have a couple of specific experiences of modernizing 
technology that may be relevant to improving IRS's modernization 
management controls and capabilities or bolstering IRS's efforts to 
mitigate the future risks associated with securing modern systems? 

11. What financial management experiences will help you to ensure that 
IRS's financial management system will be fully integrated and able to 
give IRS the information it needs to more effectively manage daily 
operations? 

Implementing Debt Relief: 

12. Could you please describe the skills and abilities you have that 
prepare you for building consensus for U.S. positions in institutions 
like the World Bank and African Development Bank? 

13. How has your previous work related to issues of debt relief for 
poor countries and potential financing plans? Have you successfully 
brokered significant economic development or financing plans before? 
What do you think are key inputs to successful processes that do so? 

Ensuring Retirement Income Security: 

14. Tax deductions and deferrals are meant to encourage pension 
benefits. Yet, despite billions of dollars' worth of these tax 
expenditures, many Americans will reach retirement age without adequate 
retirement income prospects. More needs to be done not only to 
encourage employers to offer benefit plans, but to assure that the 
plans will be sufficient for a secure retirement at the end of a 
worker's career. What experiences with these sorts of policy trade-offs 
would you bring to the department, and how specifically would you help 
the nation move forward to deal with this? 

Point of Contact: James White, Director, Strategic Issues, (202) 512- 
9110 or whitej@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix XV: Department of Veterans Affairs: 

The Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) mission reflects the nation's 
commitment to care for veterans, their families, and their survivors. 
The department is composed of the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), 
the Veterans Benefits Administration, and the National Cemetery 
Administration. VA operates nationwide programs for the health care, 
financial assistance, and burial benefits of approximately 74.5 million 
potentially eligible people, which is about a quarter of the nation's 
population. The health care delivery system operated by VA is the 
largest in the nation and provides a broad range of services, including 
those uniquely related to veterans' health or special needs. VA also 
provides disability compensation to veterans who are disabled by injury 
or disease incurred or aggravated during military service, as well as 
pensions for certain wartime veterans with disabilities. For fiscal 
year 2009, VA requested $93.7 billion to deliver its services and 
address various management challenges. 

VA faces a range of key management challenges in the areas of 
disability benefits, health care delivery, property management, and 
information technology. VA continues to face long-standing problems 
with large pending disability claims inventories, lengthy processing 
times, and concerns about decision accuracy and consistency. Further, 
both VA and the Department of Defense (DOD) face challenges in meeting 
the health care and disability evaluation needs of servicemembers 
returning from the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well 
as veterans of those military operations. VHA also faces difficulties 
in managing its resources to be consistent with a substantial increase 
in its patient workload and encounters obstacles when recruiting and 
retaining health care professionals to provide care to its veteran 
population. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Improving Criteria for Disability Compensation; 
* Improving Claims Process; 
* Ensuring Processing of Benefits; 
* Improving Health Care for Servicemembers and Veterans; 
* Enhancing Health Care Delivery; 
* Improving Controls over Third-Party Insurers; 
* Recruiting and Retaining Professionals; 
* Improving Property Management; 
* Improving Information Technology Accountability; 
* Improving Controls over IT Equipment; 
* Improving Controls over Obligations. 

Questions: 

Improving Criteria for Disability Compensation: 

1. The economic portion of VA's rating schedule--VA's eligibility 
criteria--hasn't been updated since 1945, although several changes have 
taken place in medicine, technology, and the labor market since then 
that could affect veterans' earning capacity. GAO and others have 
questioned whether VA's rating schedule reflects modern concepts about 
disability and its effect on veterans' ability to work. Do you have an 
experience you can describe where you were involved in fundamentally 
reexamining and overhauling something as organizationally ingrained in 
the culture and processes as VA's eligibility criteria are? 

2. What experience or knowledge do you have about the effect that 
medical advances, technology, and the labor market have on disabled 
veterans' earning capacity? 

Improving Claims Process: 

3. VA hired about 1,800 claims processing staff between January 2007 
and February 2008 and estimated that by the end of fiscal year 2008, 
3,100 new claims processing staff would be on board. Have you ever 
overseen a large increase in workforce? 

4. Making timely, accurate, and consistent decisions about veterans' 
eligibility has been a challenge for VA for years. Describe your 
involvement with process quality-assurance programs that might help you 
address this challenge and ensure our veterans get the service they 
deserve from their government. 

Ensuring Processing of Benefits: 

5. Would you discuss how your experience could be brought to bear in VA 
to ensure that the processing of benefits to veterans and their 
families is carried out effectively and efficiently? 

6. The department has multiple efforts underway to improve the 
processing of benefits payments to its beneficiaries. Some of these 
efforts, such as "VETSNET"--a computer-based system for processing 
disability compensation, pension, and survivor benefits--have taken 
much longer to complete than anticipated. Have you had any significant 
role in technology project management? Was the project completed on 
time and within cost estimates? What do you think are keys to ensuring 
that technology-based process improvements come to completion in a 
timely manner? 

Improving Health Care for Servicemembers and Veterans: 

7. In recent years, problems have been identified with DOD and VA 
efforts to coordinate the care of servicemembers returning from 
military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as veterans from 
those military operations. Can you tell us about a specific example 
where you had responsibility for enhancing collaboration across 
significant organizational boundaries, such as is needed to coordinate 
care for this population and manage the transition from DOD to VA care? 

8. What in your prior work prepares you to help strengthen VA's 
intragovernmental relationships, particularly with DOD, to improve the 
transition of servicemembers from DOD health care to VA health care? 

9. DOD and VA are in the process of pilot testing an integrated 
approach to determining disability benefits for servicemembers leaving 
active duty service. Have you been involved in taking two different 
processes and combining them into one integrated process? What would be 
key steps to follow in doing so? 

Enhancing Health Care Delivery: 

10. What unique knowledge, skills, and abilities would you bring to VA 
that would help you identify, negotiate, and implement measures to 
improve the health care VA provides to our nation's veterans? 

11. What steps would you take to ensure that veterans returning from 
military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are appropriately screened, 
diagnosed, and treated for mental health and other conditions when they 
seek care from VA facilities? 

12. Over the last few years, VA's appropriations have grown 
substantially. What in your background best illustrates that you would 
be able to ensure that VA's appropriations are used in the most 
effective manner possible? 

Improving Controls over Third-Party Insurers: 

13. Have you ever been involved in the accountability of systems 
responsible for accounts receivable or in debt collections operations? 
Could you describe how you could help manage oversight of VA's system 
to collect payments from third-party insurers? 

14. GAO found that significant internal control weaknesses and 
inadequate management oversight limit VA's ability to maximize revenue 
from private insurance companies (third-party insurers). What 
experience do you have in implementing internal controls? How could 
these help an organization increase its collection of payments from 
third-parties? 

Recruiting and Retaining Professionals: 

15. If you were to assume a position at VA, what would you do to 
encourage greater interest by health care providers in working in VA 
medical facilities? 

16. Like other federal departments, VA has been challenged by a 
shortage of qualified human resources personnel. Can you describe your 
involvement in any successful, sustained recruiting efforts? 

Improving Property Management: 

17. VA has a large portfolio of vacant and underutilized property, many 
with historic significance, which hinders VA's options for modernizing 
or disposing of the property. What experience do you have in managing 
large portfolios of property? 

18. One of the challenges to disposing of federal property, GAO 
identified, is administrative complexity and cost. Please describe two 
or three experiences where you played a role in implementing or 
simplifying administrative processes. 

Improving Information Technology Accountability: 

19. Have you ever played a major role in the management of large-scale 
information technology (IT) for organizations or programs? How would 
you help ensure the successful realignment of VA's IT management 
processes? 

20. As part of the centralization of departmental IT management, the 
Office of Information and Technology has developed 36 management 
processes to guide IT activities. Describe how you have held IT 
managers responsible for implementing management processes. 

21. Would you discuss your experience in institutionalizing best 
technology management practices across a large decentralized 
organization? 

Improving Controls over IT Equipment: 

22. GAO and the VA Office of Inspector General have both identified 
weaknesses in VA's internal control systems over IT assets. Describe 
your philosophy about the importance of internal controls and whether 
or how that has shaped your involvement in any organization. 

23. Could you describe what in your experience could help you better 
manage oversight of VA's accountability for IT equipment? 

Improving Controls over Obligations: 

24. GAO and the VA Office of Inspector General have both identified 
weaknesses in VA's internal control systems over appropriated funds. 
What experience have you had in leading organizations that have 
implemented and maintained internal controls to help ensure that 
organizational resources are used appropriately? 

25. GAO and other auditors have identified internal control weaknesses 
related to VA financial management. Could you share with us your 
thoughts on the importance of internal controls in financial 
management, and whether you have any experience identifying control 
weaknesses? What types of control problems existed, and what steps did 
you take to address them? 

Points of Contact: Randall Williamson, Director, Health Care, (202) 512-
7114 or williamsonr@gao.gov, and Daniel Bertoni, Director, Education, 
Workforce, and Income Security, (202) 512-7215 or bertonid@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix XVI: Environmental Protection Agency: 

The overarching mission of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is 
to protect human health and the environment by implementing and 
enforcing environmental laws intended to improve the quality of our air 
and water and to protect our land. Key environmental laws include the 
Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the 
Toxic Substances Control Act, and the Comprehensive Environmental 
Response, Compensation and Liability Act (or Superfund). This 17,200 
person agency is headed by an Administrator and Deputy Administrator 
who are politically appointed. The agency comprises nine major offices 
generally aligned with major environmental laws--the Office of Air and 
Radiation, the Office of Water, the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency 
Response, and so on--each headed by a politically appointed Assistant 
Administrator, and 10 regional offices each headed by a politically 
appointed regional administrator. For fiscal year 2009, the agency 
requested $7.14 billion, including $940 million for clean air and 
climate change, $2.58 billion for clean water, and $1.69 billion for 
land restoration. 

EPA, like many agencies, has been faced with declining budgets over the 
past several years, exacerbating its already challenging portfolio of 
implementing and enforcing the nation's environmental laws. Enforcement 
of environmental laws occurs through EPA's 10 regions as well as 
authorized states. This has, at times, led to uneven enforcement of 
environmental laws. In some cases, EPA must also balance the cost of 
implementing regulations with the benefits to public health and the 
environment--always a controversial proposition depending upon one's 
point of view. In addition, EPA is often relegated to being reactive in 
its approach to implementing environmental law, resulting from the need 
to comply with numerous court orders emanating from the myriad lawsuits 
brought against the agency by states, concerned citizens, special 
interest groups, and others. Finally, the lack of complete and 
comprehensive environmental information on, for example air quality or 
water quality, makes it difficult for EPA to evaluate the success of 
its policies and programs. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Ensuring Sound Science; 
* Providing More Effective Controls over Toxic Substances; 
* Ensuring Consistent Environmental Enforcement and Compliance; 
* Reducing Pollution in the Nation's Water Bodies; 
* Speeding the Pace of Cleanup of Hazardous Waste Sites; 
* Ensuring the Safety of the Nation's Drinking Water; 
* Addressing Challenges in Implementing the Clean Air Act; 
* Improving the Development and Use of Environmental Information; 
* Addressing Human Capital Management Challenges at EPA; 
* Addressing Concerns about Renewable Fuels; 
* Improving Energy Efficiency. 

Questions: 

Ensuring Sound Science: 

1. During the past several years, concerns have been raised about the 
length of EPA's scientific chemical risk-assessment process, and the 
influence of industry groups, the Department of Defense, and others on 
what should be a scientific process. What role have you played in 
either making decisions based on scientific data, or in assuring the 
quality of such science? What are your views on the importance of 
transparency in decision-making processes, such as the chemical risk- 
assessment process? What steps would you take to help restore the 
credibility of EPA's scientific assessments and ensure that decisions 
are based on sound science? 

2. Many agencies, including EPA, often inappropriately appoint members 
to their Federal Advisory Committee Act committees as representatives 
rather than as special government employees. Since these members did 
not go through a screening process, EPA cannot ensure that committee 
members are free from significant conflicts of interest and that the 
committee as a whole is appropriately balanced. What steps will you 
take to ensure that EPA's federal advisory committee members are free 
from conflicts of interest and that the committees are appropriately 
balanced as a whole? 

3. Over the years, EPA has convened several advisory groups, such as 
the Children's Health Protection Advisory Committee and the Clean Air 
Advisory Committee, to help the agency develop policy, guidance, and 
laws. Some have questions about how effectively the agency is using 
these groups. Could you describe your experience in proactively using 
expert groups? What organizational construct and specific steps would 
you take to ensure that the views of groups are appropriately 
considered? 

Providing More Effective Controls over Toxic Substances: 

4. A number of states have introduced legislation to regulate toxic 
chemicals in commerce due to concerns that EPA's Toxics Substances 
Control Act (TSCA) program is inadequate. Some states that have taken 
or considered taking steps to ramp up their chemical oversight and 
assessment programs. The Centers for Disease Control is finding through 
studies that a large percent of Americans have been exposed to 
potentially toxic chemicals. What experience do you have in assessing 
risks posed by chemicals and in protecting the public against these 
risks? Based on your experience, how much of the responsibility of 
finding out if chemicals are safe for use should be with EPA and how 
much should be with companies that produce the chemicals? 

5. The National Academy of Sciences has found that children may be more 
susceptible to adverse health effects from exposure to chemicals than 
adults. What in your background prepares you to understand and address 
the risks of chemicals to vulnerable populations? Do you support 
requiring industry to demonstrate the safety of chemicals they produce 
when children may be exposed to them? 

6. When assessing chemical risk, EPA sometimes relies on information 
about a chemical's properties that industry may claim is confidential, 
and whose disclosure would hurt their business. Yet the public has 
great interest in knowing the dangers posed by chemicals in products it 
uses. How has your experience prepared you to address the complicated 
relationship between information that business claims as confidential, 
but that the public may need to know? 

7. The bulk of chemicals produced in the United States today are 
chemicals that were grandfathered in to the inventory of chemicals 
required by Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). EPA has rarely used 
its authorities under TSCA to require that chemical companies provide 
data on the safety of the chemicals they produce, and even more rarely 
used its authorities to ban the use of chemicals. Instead, EPA is 
implementing a program calling on companies to voluntarily supply 
information on the chemicals they produce. What experience do you bring 
to the federal rule-making process? What is the appropriate balance 
between relying on industry's voluntary cooperation to protect human 
health from the risks of chemicals and using the power of government to 
regulate these risks? 

Ensuring Consistent Environmental Enforcement and Compliance: 

8. Enforcement of environmental laws occurs though EPA's 10 regions as 
well as authorized states. What experiences in your career have 
provided you with the expertise necessary to ensure that the nation's 
environmental laws are consistently enforced? Do you believe that this 
should be a goal of EPA, or do you believe it is appropriate for there 
to be variations in enforcement of the nation's environmental laws by 
states and regions? 

9. Pursuing administrative, civil, or criminal actions against 
suspected polluters is a complex undertaking that often lasts years. 
EPA and the Department of Justice (DOJ) work closely in these efforts, 
with DOJ primarily responsible for prosecuting and settling civil 
judicial and criminal enforcement cases. Despite the efforts of EPA and 
DOJ, there are significant aspects of the legal and policy environment 
that can affect enforcement outcomes. What experiences can you draw 
upon that would provide you with the tools necessary to address legal 
and policy changes that may influence progress in EPA's environmental 
enforcement program? 

Reducing Pollution in the Nation's Water Bodies: 

10. Under the Clean Water Act, EPA is responsible for publishing water 
quality criteria that establish thresholds, including for pathogens, at 
which contamination may threaten human health. In 2000, the Beach Act 
required EPA to create new or revised water quality criteria for 
pathogens by October 2005. However, in 2007, EPA had not yet 
established a firm timeline for completing the necessary studies or 
developing new water quality criteria. How would you approach the 
complex problem of establishing water quality criteria? What expertise 
do you have that would help you ensure that such criteria are 
consistent, regularly updated, and protective of human health? 

11. Developing the analytical methods needed to measure pollutants at 
or below established water quality criteria has been a challenge for 
EPA. For example, although EPA established water quality criteria for 
nine bioaccumulative chemicals of concern found in the Great Lakes 
Basin in 1995, the agency has approved analytical methods for only two 
of the nine chemicals. Do you have experience that would allow you to 
examine and improve EPA's process for developing and approving 
measurement methods to ensure the states can detect and quantify 
harmful pollutants at the established water quality criteria levels? 

Speeding the Pace of Cleanup of Hazardous Waste Sites: 

12. EPA and the Department of Defense have been in a dispute related to 
several National Priority List hazardous waste sites for which there is 
currently no interagency agreement, as required by law. Without an 
agreement, EPA has not been able to fully oversee some sites to ensure 
that cleanup is progressing appropriately. To what extent has your 
experience equipped you with the tools necessary to address interagency 
conflicts such as this, and how would you position EPA to work to avoid 
such challenges in the future? 

13. EPA authorizes states to implement many environmental programs, not 
only in the area of cleaning up contaminated sites, but across a wide 
range of environmental programs. Have you worked across various levels 
of government before? What experiences have you had that will allow you 
to ensure greater cooperation and coordination between EPA and states 
in their hazardous waste cleanup efforts so as to maximize 
environmental benefits? 

Ensuring the Safety of the Nation's Drinking Water: 

14. Following the terrorist attacks in 2001, Congress appropriated more 
than $140 million through fiscal year 2004 to help drinking-water 
systems assess vulnerabilities to terrorist threats and develop 
response plans. Numerous public and private organizations worked 
together with EPA to facilitate a coordinated effort to address 
preparedness. What in your background has prepared you to address 
similar macro-level concerns that involve government and industry 
working together with others to facilitate important changes by 
numerous stakeholders and hundreds of affected entities? 

Addressing Challenges in Implementing the Clean Air Act: 

15. Since the passage of the Clean Air Act, EPA and its state, local, 
and tribal partners have made significant progress in decreasing 
harmful air emissions from a variety of sources. However, in recent 
years, EPA has undertaken efforts to revise its existing clean air 
regulations and issue new regulations to help meet air quality 
standards, and in many cases, EPA's efforts have been challenged by 
others and overturned by the courts. Can you give examples from your 
work where you have applied tools to build consensus among a variety of 
federal, state, local, tribal, and private partners? 

16. Can you describe how you have used data to help target your efforts 
or the efforts of your organization? How might available information on 
public health threats, ambient levels of air pollution, and major 
sources of emissions be used to establish priorities for the agency? 

Improving the Development and Use of Environmental Information: 

17. EPA has long recognized the need for more robust and comprehensive 
environmental indicators and information for strategic planning, 
prioritizing the allocation of limited resources, and measuring the 
success of environmental policies and programs. However, significant 
gaps exist in environmental information due to the lack of resources 
and comprehensive monitoring in several environmental areas. What work 
have you been involved in that relied heavily on performance measures 
or progress measures? Can you describe the role you see environmental 
information playing in agency strategic and operational planning? How 
would you go about determining the right amount of expensive 
environmental monitoring given limited resources? 

18. One of EPA's primary goals under the Emergency Planning and 
Community Right to Know Act is to keep the public informed regarding 
the risks of dangerous chemicals and the existence of facilities in 
their localities that manufacture and use dangerous chemicals. Limiting 
the regulatory burden on industry as well as keeping the public 
informed are both laudable, but sometimes conflicting, goals. Can you 
describe where you have had to make decisions involving conflicting 
goals before? What in your background or experience suggest that you 
are ready to manage the sometimes conflicting goals of industry and the 
public in this regard? What would be the key principles that would 
guide your decision making in striking this balance? 

Addressing Human Capital Management Challenges at EPA: 

19. EPA has made some progress in addressing human capital management 
challenges since GAO first issued a report on this subject in 2001, but 
has not yet established a workforce planning and analysis system to 
ensure that EPA deploys an appropriate number of staff and technical 
competencies to its 10 regions throughout the country. As a result, 
EPA's resource requests to Congress are largely based on historical 
precedents, rather than on a bottom-up review of the nature and 
distribution of the agency's current workload. Could you describe your 
experience in workload analysis and human capital management that would 
equip you to effectively deal with this long-standing problem at EPA. 
What are your general thoughts on how a new workforce planning and 
analysis system could best be implemented? 

20. GAO work has shown that EPA lacks essential information needed for 
resource planning and allocation, such as complete and reliable 
information on the amount of time that regional staff devote to various 
types of environmental program activities, and on the universe of 
regulated entities in a given region. What in your experience and 
background would equip you to effectively deal with workload planning 
for a 17,000-person organization such as EPA? How would you ensure that 
staffing levels are based on needs and priorities rather than 
historical levels? 

Addressing Concerns about Renewable Fuels: 

21. During 2008, food prices skyrocketed due in part to the ethanol 
industry's demand for corn. This may be good for farmers who grow corn 
and those concerned about replacing fossil fuels with renewable fuels 
and lessening our dependency on foreign oil, but bad for everyday 
consumers concerned about food prices. In addition, there are energy 
costs associated with producing ethanol. What in your background makes 
you equipped to deal with balancing the needs of different sectors of 
the economy, and addressing complicated, multiagency, interrelated 
problems such as this? 

22. Meeting our renewable fuel standard's goal of producing 36 billion 
gallons of biofuels annually by 2022 will stretch our use of water, 
arable land, and other resources. How would you approach the biofuels 
area, and what experiences and expertise have you acquired in your 
career that would give you the tools for dealing with such a complex 
problem? 

Improving Energy Efficiency: 

23. Sustained high prices for all types of energy and concerns about 
the United States' dependence on imported fuels worry citizens and 
policymakers alike, and much has been made of becoming more energy 
efficient in all aspects of today's life, from household appliances, to 
buildings, to vehicles. Have you been involved in initiatives requiring 
participation by broad elements of the population to achieve the 
initiative's objectives? What steps would you recommend in developing a 
national plan to improve the nation's energy efficiency? How could this 
experience help you play a role in addressing major challenges facing 
the federal government in doing all it can to enable citizens to 
conserve as much energy as possible? 

24. EPA, the Department of Energy, the Department of Transportation, 
the Federal Trade Commission, and the Federal Energy Regulatory 
Commission share responsibility for encouraging and enabling energy 
conservation. Can you describe any significant results you have been 
able to achieve by reaching across organizational boundaries to 
accomplish a shared goal? What experiences can you cite that 
demonstrate your ability to work effectively across such distinct 
agency boundaries to leverage resources and knowledge to get results? 

Point of Contact: John Stephenson, Director, Natural Resources & 
Environment, (202) 512-3841 or stephensonj@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix XVII: Export-Import Bank of the United States: 

The Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank) is the 
official export credit agency of the United States. Ex-Im Bank's 
mission is to assist in financing the export of U.S. goods and services 
to international markets. It was created during the Great Depression to 
promote U.S. trade by supplementing, but not competing with, private 
sources of finance. The bank provides working capital guarantees (pre-
export financing), export credit insurance, loan guarantees, and direct 
loans (buyer financing) to U.S. companies, both large and small. For 
fiscal year 2009, Ex-Im Bank requested budget authority of about $82 
million for administrative expenses and $41 million for the cost of 
loans, loan guarantees, and tied-aid, all of which it projected would 
be covered by offsetting receipts, such as fees. 

While the bank's traditional role was to finance U.S. exports to buyers 
in countries that the private sector considered too risky, the global 
economy has evolved and the reach of private finance has expanded. Some 
critics have come to question the necessity of Ex-Im Bank; however, 
supporters argue that Ex-Im Bank continues to be an important resource 
for helping U.S. exporters compete in a global marketplace against 
companies that are financed, and sometimes subsidized, by foreign 
export credit agencies. To meet the challenge presented by its foreign 
counterparts, Ex-Im Bank has worked within the Organisation for 
Economic Co-operation and Development to develop a common set of rules 
to govern export finance; its efforts have met with some success but 
uneven practices remain. Against this backdrop, Ex-Im Bank faces 
questions about the types and sizes of U.S. companies it most often 
supports and whether its business mix needs to change. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Reevaluating Small Business Outreach and Financing; 
* Improving Economic Impact Assessments; 
* Reviewing Energy-Related and Environmental Exports; 
* Reassessing Efforts to Combat Subsidized Export Credit Financing; 
* Budgeting for Future Losses and Limiting Fraud. 

Questions: 

Reevaluating Small Business Outreach and Financing: 

1. Congress recently increased the minimum percentage of financing that 
Ex-Im Bank is required to make available to small businesses. What 
experience do you have in working with small businesses? Are you 
familiar with the challenges that such businesses face in developing 
successful, viable, export markets? 

2. Congress recently required Ex-Im Bank to develop performance 
standards to measure its progress in providing financing to small 
business. What has been your involvement in the development of 
performance standards in the financing arena? How has this prepared you 
to implement standards to measure performance in a federal agency? 

Improving Economic Impact Assessments: 

3. Congress has directed that Ex-Im Bank take into account any negative 
effect of its projects on U.S. producers before approving transactions, 
but GAO found flaws with that process. What kind of economic impact 
assessments have you performed in your prior positions? 

4. Like many financial institutions, projects financed by Ex-Im Bank 
cover a wide range of industries. How would Ex-Im Bank benefit from 
your prior experiences when dealing with such a diverse portfolio? What 
steps should a financial institution take to ensure that its economic 
impact assessments carried out for a variety of industries are 
consistent and transparent? 

Reviewing Energy-Related and Environmental Exports: 

5. Fossil fuel-related projects have been a significant area of 
financing for Ex-Im Bank, but there is growing interest in having the 
bank finance renewable energy projects. What experience do you have in 
the financing of energy projects? Does this experience include both 
traditional and renewable forms of energy? 

6. Ex-Im Bank has worked in recent years through the Organisation for 
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to develop common 
environmental policies for export credit agencies, in part to help 
level the playing field among export credit agencies. However, concerns 
about the environmental effect of global financing continue. In what 
ways has your experience prepared you to address environmental effect 
issues related to project finance? 

Reassessing Efforts to Combat Subsidized Export Credit Financing: 

7. Congress has shown long-standing interest in how financing provided 
by Ex-Im Bank compares with the support from other countries' export 
credit agencies. In what ways has your work prepared you to address 
uneven government subsidies or other policies regarding export finance? 

Budgeting for Future Losses and Limiting Fraud: 

8. Given its role, Ex-Im Bank has substantial exposure to risky 
borrowers in developing countries. Have you managed a loan portfolio 
similar to Ex-Im Bank's, and how have you managed such risks in the 
past? 

9. Ex-Im Bank is required to budget up front for any losses the U.S. 
government could incur as a result of defaults. What responsibilities 
have you had in the past for estimating the expected losses from 
developing country financing, and how accurate have your estimates 
been? 

10. International financial markets have experienced substantial 
turmoil and loss, and investors' confidence has been shaken. What 
lessons have you learned from your prior experiences that prepare you 
to lead Ex-Im Bank through these difficult times and minimize the 
potential for future losses? 

11. Ex-Im Bank's Inspector General recently began a review of its 
medium-term loan guarantee program that includes examining the 
potential for fraud. Can you describe when you have been successful in 
identifying and addressing instances of fraud in a financial 
institution? 

Point of Contact: Jacquelyn Williams-Bridgers, Managing Director, 
International Affairs and Trade, (202) 512-3101 or 
williamsbridgersj@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix XVIII: Federal Communications Commission: 

The overall mission of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is 
to ensure that the American people have available--at reasonable costs 
and without discrimination--rapid, efficient, nationwide, and worldwide 
communication services. FCC is responsible for ensuring that an orderly 
framework exists where communications products and services can be 
quickly and reasonably provided to consumers and businesses. There are 
seven operating bureaus within the FCC such as the Media bureau and the 
Wireline Competition bureau, all of which are organized by function, 
and 10 staff offices such as the Office of Managing Director. FCC 
addresses the communications aspects of public safety, health, and 
emergency operations; universal availability of basic 
telecommunications service; accessibility of communications services to 
all people; and consumer protection. To carry out its mission, FCC 
requested $339 million for its fiscal year 2009 budget, with $1 million 
as a direct appropriation and the remainder from regulatory fees 
collected by the commission. 

FCC regulates industries that touch the lives of every American, 
including radio, television, telephone, the Internet, and satellite. In 
addition, FCC manages use of the radio-frequency spectrum by all 
nonfederal entities, such as commercial enterprises, state and local 
governments, and public safety organizations. FCC oversees the 
Universal Service Fund, which helps ensure the diffusion of 
communications services to a variety of communities and entities. In 
each of these areas, FCC faces critical challenges. FCC's regulatory 
function has become more complex as separate communications networks 
that provide distinct services, sometimes in a monopoly environment, 
have increasingly converged to provide similar bundled services. FCC 
faces difficulties of ensuring robust competition in this environment. 
FCC also faces the challenges of balancing competing demands for a 
limited radio-frequency spectrum, protecting existing users of this 
spectrum while facilitating new services such as wireless broadband, 
and ensuring an adequate spectrum for critical public safety services. 
Finally, the cost of the Universal Service Fund has increased 
dramatically to about $7 billion in 2007, imposing greater burdens on 
consumers. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Facilitating a Robust Communications Industry; 
* Managing and Overseeing Universal Service; 
* Managing Information and Human Capital. 

Questions: 

While no current Commissioner's term expires before June 2009, and 
terms are independent of changes in the executive branch 
administration, these questions may be used when subsequent 
appointments are made. 

Facilitating a Robust Communications Industry: 

1. In recent years, the United States has fallen in the world rankings 
of broadband service, when measured as the percentage of the country's 
population with broadband. But broadband deployment and rates of 
adoption involve many factors and competing interests. Can you tell us 
when you have succeeded in bringing different organizations--such as 
businesses and government--together to achieve a common goal? 

2. In recent years, there has been a proliferation of media content 
contributing to a changing media landscape with the growth of Web-based 
content and the decline of newspaper subscribership and broadcast 
ratings. Yet, many well-known media outlets remain owned by major 
corporations. Would you describe any experience you have had in 
confronting and balancing the competing interests of large private- 
sector entities and the public? 

Managing and Overseeing Universal Service: 

3. Since 1998, the Universal Service Fund has disbursed over $51 
billion to companies serving rural areas, low-income consumers, and 
schools and libraries. What is your vision of the respective roles of 
FCC, the Universal Service Administrative Company, and state 
governments in the management and oversight of the fund? How has your 
prior work prepared you for helping oversee a multibillion-dollar 
program? 

4. Press accounts have reported instances of individuals and companies 
defrauding the Federal Schools and Libraries program--commonly referred 
to as the Federal E-Rate program. What experiences do you have in 
managing internal controls that would be helpful for the E-Rate 
program? 

5. In 2007, FCC's Office of Inspector General found that the erroneous 
payment rates for each of the four Universal Service Fund programs 
ranged from 9.5 percent to 20.6 percent, far exceeding the 2.5 percent 
threshold that marks programs as susceptible to risk of improper 
payment. What actions have you taken in the past that might be useful 
to improve the internal controls of the Universal Service Fund? 

Managing Information and Human Capital: 

6. GAO defined management of human capital as a governmentwide high-
risk area because of a pattern of human capital shortcoming across the 
federal government that has eroded mission capabilities. FCC requires 
highly trained, expert staff capable of assessing and understanding 
technological and industry trends. What has been your experience in 
dealing with such a technical workforce, and how might it help FCC 
address its human capital challenges? 

7. In the past decade, the communications industry has experienced 
significant convergence, with traditional telephone companies providing 
video service and cable companies providing telephone service, among 
the many changes. Based on your experience, what do you think are key 
steps when changing organizational structures to better align them with 
the external environment? 

8. FCC has traditionally collected different data in a piecemeal manner 
from the various industries it regulates. What familiarity do you have 
with the data-collection challenges that you believe FCC might face? 
How might you help enhance FCC's data collection efforts? 

Point of Contact: Mark L. Goldstein, Director, Physical Infrastructure, 
(202) 512-6670 or goldsteinm@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix XIX: General Services Administration: 

The General Services Administration (GSA) was established in 1949 to 
serve as a central procurement and property management agency for the 
federal government. GSA's mission is to leverage the buying power of 
the federal government to acquire the best value for taxpayers and its 
federal customers. GSA consists of the Public Buildings Service (PBS), 
the Federal Acquisition Service (FAS), the Office of Governmentwide 
Policy (OGP), and various other offices. GSA's major areas of 
responsibility include real property management, government 
telecommunications, and the acquisition of supplies and services. GSA 
obligated over $20 billion in fiscal year 2008 to meet agencies' needs 
through various revolving funds. A large bulk of this spending--over $8 
billion--is through the Federal Buildings Fund, which is used to 
acquire, lease, and renovate federal facilities under GSA's 
stewardship. 

GAO's work has highlighted several key areas at GSA in need of 
oversight, mostly in the real property area. Like many real property- 
holding agencies, GSA has a multibillion-dollar repair backlog and has 
property that is not needed or is underutilized. Furthermore, GSA's 
overreliance on leasing for long-term needs, where ownership would be 
less costly, is an ongoing challenge; and, the benefits of contracts 
under its National Broker Services (NBS) program, where four brokers 
receive commissions for lease acquisition services, have yet to be 
demonstrated. Related to GSA's construction responsibilities, oversight 
of its multibillion-dollar courthouse construction program will 
continue to be critical. Finally, in fiscal year 2007, agencies spent 
$960 million through GSA's telecommunications services program, known 
as FTS2001. GSA has awarded contracts for a successor program called 
Networx and faces challenges with the transition. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Reducing Repair Backlogs and Excess Property; 
* Addressing Reliance on Costly Leasing; 
* Managing Courthouse Construction Effectively; 
* Overseeing National Broker Services Contracts; 
* Transitioning to a New Telecommunications Program. 

Questions: 

Reducing Repair Backlogs and Excess Property: 

1. What experience and skills would you bring to GSA that would be 
beneficial in developing strategies that GSA could use to reduce its 
repair and maintenance backlog and reduce its excess and underutilized 
property? 

2. Have you been involved in fundamental reviews of legal or regulatory 
frameworks before? How might your experiences prepare you to advise GSA 
and Congress on any possible changes to existing laws or regulations, 
should they be needed, to address GSA's repair backlog and facilitate 
the sale or reuse of its excess or underutilized properties? 

3. The Federal Buildings Fund is the interagency revolving fund GSA 
uses for meeting agencies' construction, repair and restoration, and 
leasing needs. What skills and experiences do you have with revolving 
funds for capital investment? 

4. What experience do you have in any past positions with managing a 
large real estate portfolio? If you lack any specific real property 
background, what other experiences would be applicable to GSA's real 
property mission? 

Addressing Reliance on Costly Leasing: 

5. GAO has reported since the late 1980s that overreliance on costly, 
long-term operating leases has cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of 
dollars and needs to be addressed. To what extent have you wrestled 
with the own-lease trade-off in organizations before? Based on your 
experience, under what conditions should the federal government lease 
real property and what should guide budgeting for leasing versus 
ownership? 

Managing Courthouse Construction Effectively: 

6. Since the early 1990s, GSA and the federal judiciary have undertaken 
a multibillion-dollar courthouse construction initiative to address the 
judiciary's growing needs, yet routine and comprehensive analyses of 
the judiciary's needs for space had not been undertaken. Have you ever 
directed major assessments of a client's needs or developed long-term 
plans for a client based on their projected needs? What experiences do 
you have in client relations that would be beneficial to the GSA- 
judiciary relationship? 

7. The federal judiciary is one of GSA's biggest customers and the 
success of its relationship with the judiciary hinges on striking a 
balance between customer service and safeguarding taxpayer dollars. 
What experiences would you bring to GSA that would be beneficial to 
achieving this balance? 

Overseeing National Broker Services Contracts: 

8. Given diminishing in-house resources, the National Broker Service 
(NBS) contracts and GSA's control over them are critical to the success 
of GSA's overall leasing program. To what extent have you ever been 
involved in significant evaluations of management controls? Evaluations 
of contractor performance? Can you suggest three things that GSA should 
keep in mind when assessing the effectiveness of NBS contracts, which 
GSA expects to eventually cover 90 percent of its lease acquisition 
workload? 

9. What experience have you had with ensuring that services contracts, 
such as the NBS contracts, have the necessary safeguards in place to 
ensure that the government's interests are well protected? 

Transitioning to a New Telecommunications Program: 

10. What experience have you had in conducting or overseeing large, 
multifaceted technology contracts, such as those GSA manages in the 
telecommunications area? What factors are most critical to the 
successful performance of such contracts? 

11. On the basis of your experience, what are the pitfalls GSA should 
avoid in ensuring that it is getting the best deal from private-sector 
service providers, such as those that provide hundreds of millions of 
dollars in telecommunications services? 

Point of Contact: Mark L. Goldstein, Director, Physical Infrastructure, 
(202) 512-2834 or goldsteinm@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix XX: National Aeronautics and Space Administration: 

The mission of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) 
is to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery, 
and aeronautics research. Its activities span a broad range of complex 
and technical endeavors such as investigating and evaluating the 
composition and resources of Mars and working with its international 
partners to complete and operate the International Space Station, 
developing a new series of space flight vehicles capable of carrying 
humans to space, providing satellite and aircraft observations of Earth 
for scientific and weather forecasting, and developing new technologies 
designed to improve air flight safety. In order to continue with these 
activities and meet future goals, NASA requested $17.6 billion for its 
fiscal year 2009 budget. NASA is organized under four mission 
directorates--Aeronautics Research, Exploration Systems, Science, and 
Space Operations--which provide direction and oversight of the agency's 
research and development programs. Its programs and projects are 
executed by nine centers located around the country, and the contractor-
operated Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In addition, NASA partners with 
academia, the private sector, state and local governments, other 
federal agencies, and a number of international organizations. 

NASA is currently at a crossroad. In response to President Bush's 
Vision for Space Exploration, the agency is in the midst of phasing out 
the Space Shuttle Program and beginning another major undertaking, the 
Constellation Program, which will create the next generation of 
spacecraft for human spaceflight. This is NASA's biggest transition 
effort since landing humans on the moon more than three decades ago and 
then initiating the Space Shuttle Program a few years later. Moreover, 
it is expected ultimately to cost nearly $230 billion over the next two 
decades. Numerous people, hardware, and infrastructures will be 
affected by coming changes. There are also pressures for funds to be 
spent on other projects, which poses a financing challenge for the 
agency. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Retiring the Space Shuttle; 
* Balancing NASA's Investments in Programs; 
* Completing and Sustaining the International Space Station; 
* Developing the Next Generation of Human Spaceflight Systems; 
* Improving NASA's Financial Management Systems. 

Questions: 

Retiring the Space Shuttle: 

1. A decision must be made soon on whether to retire the space shuttle 
in 2010, as currently planned, or to extend its life in view of limited 
options for supporting the International Space Station. What are the 
consequences to the future of U.S. human spaceflight if the Space 
Shuttle program is extended? What are the important steps that need to 
be taken if a decision is made to continue operating the Space Shuttle? 

2. NASA will have to spend considerable funds on the transition from 
the Space Shuttle Program to the Constellation Program, so it may have 
to delay or take dollars away from other programs or ask Congress for 
more funds to cover these activities. Do you have any experience in 
shutting down a major project or program? What actions or steps are key 
to implementing a successful exit strategy? 

3. Currently, the nation is facing a gap in human space flight until at 
least 2015. Moreover, NASA could face a loss of critical skills, 
suppliers, and technological edge due to the retirement of the space 
shuttle. What in your background prepares you to cope with these types 
of challenges? 

Balancing NASA's Investments in Programs: 

4. NASA's workforce comprises about 18,700 civil servants at various 
centers across the country. Can you describe what role you have 
previously played in managing a highly skilled technical workforce? 

5. Overall, NASA's programs and projects continue to have significant 
cost growth and schedule delays. Have you ever been responsible for 
long-term project development? Was it completed within estimated cost 
and timelines? What major project-implementation challenges have you 
encountered and how have you addressed them? 

6. In addition to managing work at multiple NASA centers, NASA works 
with academia, the private sector, state and local governments, other 
federal agencies, and a number of international organizations. Are you 
practiced at managing the coordination of multiple independent entities 
to achieve a common goal? What practices are key to facilitating 
effective collaboration across organizational boundaries? 

Completing and Sustaining the International Space Station: 

7. NASA plans to finish assembling the International Space Station in 
fiscal year 2010 and operate the station until 2016. How has your prior 
work prepared you to manage a multibillion-dollar project with multiple 
international partners? 

8. NASA is working with the commercial space sector to develop and 
produce transport vehicles that can take equipment and, ultimately, 
crew to and from the space station during the gap between the Space 
Shuttle and the Orion Crew Launch Vehicle. What skills could you bring 
to encourage greater participation by the aerospace industry in 
developing private orbital transportation services to send cargo and 
transport crews to the International Space Station? 

Developing the Next Generation of Human Spaceflight Systems: 

9. The Constellation program faces challenges in developing the next 
generation of human-rated space craft capable of carrying humans to 
space. Continued uncertainty about the Orion and Ares I vehicles' 
requirements have led to considerable unknowns as to whether NASA's 
plans for these vehicles can be executed within scheduled time goals, 
as well as what these efforts will ultimately cost. What qualifications 
do you have that would suggest you may be able to help rein in some of 
this uncertainty and reduce the risk of cost growth and schedule 
slippage? What are the important steps to consider for reducing the 
development problems experienced by these and other Constellation 
projects, such as Ares V and Altair? 

10. In order to minimize the Orion's weight, NASA used a process that 
zero-based the design of the vehicle. The zero-based design only met 
minimal mission requirements but was not safe for human flight. 
Beginning with the zero-based design of the Orion vehicle, NASA first 
added back the systems necessary to ensure crew safety and then 
conducted a series of engineering trade-offs to determine what other 
systems should be included to maximize the probability of mission 
success while minimizing the system's weight. Have you been involved in 
product development that involved trade-offs between cost and risks to 
program success? What specific principles or criteria should managers 
turn to when weighing such trade-offs, and how can costs be contained 
on improving spacecraft development without increasing risks to the 
program or crew safety? 

Improving NASA's Financial Management Systems: 

11. NASA has struggled to implement a modern financial management 
system that produces the kind of accurate and reliable information 
needed to manage its projects and programs and produce timely, reliable 
financial information for external reporting purposes. Could you 
describe what financial management experience you have had at other 
organizations that could help you ensure that NASA will produce 
auditable financial statements and implement a financial management 
system that can generate timely, accurate, and useful financial 
information? 

12. For years, GAO and others have reported that NASA does not maintain 
effective control over its largest asset categories--property, plant, 
equipment, and materials. How prepared are you to strengthen the 
agency's control and accountability over government-owned equipment? 
What in your management background has prepared you? 

13. NASA continues to rely largely on its contractors to identify and 
report property values for assets created at the contractors' 
facilities. Based on your experience, what would be the most important 
steps for NASA to take to ensure that contractors begin providing 
complete and accurate information related to contractor-created assets? 

Point of Contact: Cristina Chaplain, Director, Acquisition and Sourcing 
Management, (202) 512-484 or chaplainc@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix XXI: National Archives and Records Administration: 

As the nation's record keeper, the mission of National Archives and 
Records Administration (NARA) is to safeguard and preserve the records 
of the federal government, including presidential records, and ensure 
ready access to this information for the public, the President, 
Congress, and the courts. In order to serve its mission, NARA is home 
to the Information Security Oversight Office and the National 
Historical Publications and Records Commission, and requested $404 
million from Congress for its fiscal year 2009 budget. 

Agency business throughout the federal government is increasingly being 
conducted using electronic documents, including e-mail, which continue 
to grow in volume and complexity. This transformation has led to 
improvements in the way that federal agencies do business but has also 
created new challenges for NARA in managing and preserving electronic 
records. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Ensuring Management and Preservation of Electronic Records. 

[End of table] 

Questions: 

Ensuring Management and Preservation of Electronic Records: 

1. Have you guided or advised transitions from paper to electronic 
records before? What experiences could you bring to this position that 
would enable you to effectively lead the government's transition to 
electronic records? 

2. What challenges in managing and preserving electronic records have 
you helped address? 

3. Please describe your experience or knowledge related to managing, 
implementing, or using records management tools or principles to ensure 
that critical business information, such as information in e-mail 
messages, is available to those who need it when they need it. 

4. One of NARA's most critical projects is the development of the 
Electronic Records Archive, which is to preserve and provide access to 
federal and presidential records. Have you led the development and 
implementation of large systems before? What, in your view, are the 
critical factors for successfully managing such an effort? 

Point of Contact: Linda Koontz, Director, Information Technology, (202) 
512-6240 or koontzl@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix XXII: Office of Management and Budget: 

The mission of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is to serve 
the President by developing the annual budget proposal; overseeing the 
execution of the budget; developing and monitoring the administration 
of policies and programs, including management policies to improve the 
efficiency and effectiveness of the government; and advising and 
assisting the President, including coordination and clearance of all 
executive branch communications to Congress and all executive orders. 

Within OMB, there are also three statutory offices that are responsible 
for federal government policies on information and regulations, 
financial management, and procurement. GAO's work has identified key 
challenges facing OMB as it assesses competing and growing funding 
demands, sets policy, and oversees important management initiatives. 

The federal government faces an unsustainable fiscal outlook that 
warrants increased transparency over the longer-term costs implicit in 
existing and proposed policies. With the various views on how OMB 
should carry out its rulemaking role, OMB must develop an agreed-upon 
oversight approach and develop ways to improve transparency and 
communication of its decisions to all stakeholders. Also, as Internet- 
based exchanges of information become the standard, agencies are 
increasingly under pressure to collect, process, and protect 
information and systems, and OMB will have to set the overall direction 
and oversee these important initiatives. Finally, there is a continued 
and widespread lack of effective financial management systems. 
Additional efforts are needed to ensure that agencies have systems that 
can provide reliable, useful, and timely information. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Improving Reporting and Recognition of the Federal Government's Long-
Term Fiscal Challenge; 
* Budgeting for Contingencies; 
* Improving Budgeting for Federally Owned Capital; 
* Addressing the Role of OMB and OIRA on Regulatory Matters; 
* Examining the Implementation of E-Government and Line of Business 
Initiatives; 
* Protecting Government Facilities and Systems; 
* Ensuring That Agencies Protect Privacy; 
* Improving Federal Information Collections; 
* Managing IT to Achieve Benefits and Control Costs; 
* Developing and Implementing Well-Defined Modernization Blueprints; 
* Strengthening Information Security Controls; 
* Improving Federal Financial Management Systems; 
* Strengthening Risk Assessments to Determine Susceptibility to 
Improper Payments; 
* Ensuring the Transparency of Federal Awards; 
* Completing and Executing Corrective Action Plans for High-Risk Areas. 

Questions: 

Improving Reporting and Recognition of the Federal Government's Long- 
Term Fiscal Challenge: 

1. As you well know, our nation faces a serious structural fiscal 
imbalance, and it is clear that more needs to be done to raise 
awareness and stimulate debate in the country about how to address it. 
How are you prepared to help the federal government do this? What would 
you do to raise awareness and stimulate debate about how to address our 
nation's long-term fiscal challenges? 

2. A number of other countries issue fiscal sustainability reports to 
explain and to improve the understanding of the long-term outlook and 
the magnitude of necessary change. The Federal Accounting Standards 
Advisory Board has recently issued an exposure draft on fiscal 
sustainability reporting for the federal government. How has your 
experience prepared you to help with such reporting? 

3. OMB is in a unique position to innovate and improve the performance 
and budgeting reporting to Congress. What types of information have you 
either relied on or provided to others before that is most useful for 
decision making? What measures or reporting mechanisms do you think 
would be most useful for congressional decision makers? 

4. What steps would you take to increase recognition of existing 
exposures and encourage explicit consideration of the long-term 
implications of new proposals before the government makes any 
additional commitments? 

5. The government already uses accrual concepts for credit programs, 
and agencies have been working for nearly 20 years to refine credit 
subsidy estimates. Estimating the long-term claims on budgetary 
resources from government insurance programs and federal retiree health 
programs also can be difficult. How would you support agencies' efforts 
to improve the estimates of these long-term costs? 

Budgeting for Contingencies: 

6. In the last several years the bulk of funding for the war on 
terrorism has been provided through supplemental appropriations. How 
would you ensure that the base budget reflects the best and most 
complete estimate for defense policies and activities? 

7. Although we recognize that flexibility to respond to unexpected 
events is necessary, how would you ensure the budget includes the best 
estimate of likely claims? 

8. Estimating the risk assumed under various insurance programs can be 
difficult. What would you do to support agencies' efforts in this area? 

Improving Budgeting for Federally Owned Capital: 

9. What are your views on recognizing the full costs of commitments at 
the time they are incurred? 

10. What ideas do you have to ensure that budget decisions be driven by 
best value? 

Addressing the Role of OMB and OIRA on Regulatory Matters: 

11. How would you characterize the role of OMB and OIRA in regulatory 
oversight and what approach do you believe would be most effective in 
working with regulatory agencies? 

12. Where and when do you believe OIRA can add the greatest value in 
the rulemaking process? How would your skills and abilities contribute 
to OMB and OIRA's performance in overseeing and managing that process? 

13. Does your prior experience provide insights into whether the many 
procedural and analytical requirements placed on executive branch 
regulatory agencies' rulemaking are all still necessary and useful? Are 
there requirements that you perceive as duplicative or that should be 
revised to better address current regulatory challenges? 

14. Are there areas where you believe more transparency, better 
documentation, and improved communication would help Congress and the 
public to better understand OIRA's role? Conversely, does your prior 
experience suggest activities and situations where you believe 
transparency is not necessary or desirable? 

Examining the Implementation of E-Government and Line of Business 
Initiatives: 

15. E-Government was one of five priorities under the prior 
administration's President's Management Agenda. In addition, nine lines 
of business to develop common solutions to service delivery are in 
various stages of development. What management experiences have you had 
with e-commerce or "e-service" delivery? What criteria would you use to 
decide to continue, redirect, or eliminate such lines of business? 

16. Based on your experience with e-commerce, what steps are important 
to ensure that all phases of development and implementation of e-
services are carried out on schedule and at reasonable cost? What 
advice would you give to OMB and other agency officials on how to 
adequately address project risks? 

17. Agencies are required to report annually to Congress on the 
benefits of these initiatives. How would you monitor for quality and 
accuracy of this reporting? As a manager, what indicators or data on 
benefits would you find most useful? 

Protecting Government Facilities and Systems: 

18. Maintaining security over facilities and systems is a daunting 
challenge for all large organizations. Can you provide an example of 
how you successfully led efforts to address this or similar challenges 
in the past? 

19. What are the key lessons that you took away from this experience 
and how might they apply to improving security in the federal 
government? 

Ensuring That Agencies Protect Privacy: 

29. What experiences do you have that would prepare you to provide 
leadership on this critical issue? 

21. Based on your experience, what are the most important issues that 
need to be considered in determining how to strike an appropriate 
balance between ensuring homeland security and protecting personal 
privacy? 

Improving Federal Information Collections: 

22. What has prepared you to help OMB exercise leadership in ensuring 
that government information collections maximize utility and minimize 
burden? 

23. Based on your experience, what kinds of steps do you think OMB 
might take to help agencies use the information-collection 
certification process to optimize their information management? 

Managing IT to Achieve Benefits and Control Costs: 

24. Every year, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and agencies 
identify IT projects totaling billions of dollars as being poorly 
planned and poorly performing through OMB's Management Watch List and 
high-risk projects processes. Despite agencies' efforts to address 
management weaknesses, the numbers remain high every year. What key 
practices have you found effective for improving project planning and 
performance? 

25. Ensuring that system programs and projects are effectively planned 
and managed can be challenging. Describe the experience you have had 
that will help you to ensure that key capabilities and controls are 
implemented across agencies to increase project success. 

26. The idea of establishing a Federal CIO to better focus on the 
challenges agencies are facing in managing their investments has been 
debated. What previous experience do you have that would inform your 
views on creating this position? 

Developing and Implementing Well-Defined Modernization Blueprints: 

27. GAO has identified organizational leadership as the key element to 
departments and agencies overcoming the challenges associated with 
defining and using enterprise architectures--challenges such as 
cultural resistance, resource constraints, lack of top management 
understanding, and the lack of skilled staff. What is your position on 
the value of having and using enterprise architecture, and how do you 
envision overcoming the challenges that federal departments and 
agencies face in effectively leveraging architectures for 
organizational transformation? 

28. What qualifications and experiences do you bring relative to 
encouraging federal departments and agencies to leverage enterprise 
architectures to facilitate organizational transformation? 

Strengthening Information Security Controls: 

29. What do you see as the greatest information security challenges 
facing government? What experience or knowledge of information security 
do you have that you could use to help address these challenges? 

30. Considering OMB's oversight role under the Federal Information 
Security Management Act of 2002, what metrics should be used to measure 
information security effectiveness at agencies and governmentwide? 

Improving Federal Financial Management Systems: 

31. Improving federal financial management and systems has been in the 
forefront of concern for Congress, the administration, and oversight 
bodies such as GAO. While agencies have taken a number of steps over 
the years to modernize federal financial management systems, more work 
remains. What steps do you think can be taken to further improve 
federal financial management? 

32. Over the last eleven years, three continuing major impediments have 
prevented the United States Government from receiving an opinion on its 
consolidated financial statements: (1) serious financial management 
problems at the Department of Defense, (2) the federal government's 
inability to adequately account for and reconcile intragovernmental 
activity and balances between federal agencies, and (3) the federal 
government's ineffective process for preparing the consolidated 
financial statements. What strategies would you implement to ensure 
that agencies take appropriate actions to address these long-standing 
challenges? What steps would you take to sustain OMB's working 
relationship with GAO, the auditor of the consolidated financial 
statements? 

Strengthening Risk Assessments to Determine Susceptibility to Improper 
Payments: 

33. Ensuring the integrity of program payments has been in the 
forefront of concern for Congress and the administration. While 
agencies have taken a number of steps to reduce improper payments more 
work remains. What steps do you think can be taken to further reduce 
improper payments? 

Ensuring the Transparency of Federal Awards: 

34. OMB is responsible for publishing information on all federal awards 
via a Web site at USASpending.gov. Have you ever been responsible for 
the upkeep of large amounts of data coming from a variety of sources? 
Could you describe the challenges you faced? What do they suggest as 
steps OMB might need to take to ensure the reliability of the data 
reported on the Web site? 

35. With increasing interest in making information on federal grants 
and contracts available to the public, collecting accurate and complete 
information on subawardees is essential, yet very difficult. Have you 
ever successfully partnered with others across levels of government and 
with a variety of businesses or nongovernmental organizations? How 
would you approach getting the cooperation of the many nonfederal 
partners needed to address this problem? 

Completing and Executing Corrective Action Plans for High-Risk Areas: 

36. OMB has led an initiative to prompt agencies to develop detailed 
action plans for each area on GAO's high-risk list. Based on your past 
experience, what strategies could OMB use to ensure that agencies take 
appropriate actions to address these high-risk areas? 

37. While agencies have made significant progress to address high-risk 
issues, sustained attention from OMB is needed to ensure progress 
continues. Based on your knowledge or lessons learned, what do you 
believe OMB needs to do demonstrate continued leadership and hold 
agencies accountable for results? To what extent could the Government 
Performance and Results Act including the provision for a 
Governmentwide Performance Plan be used as a mechanism for holding 
agencies and OMB accountable for progress on high-risk issues? 

Points of Contact: Susan J. Irving, Director, Strategic Issues, (202) 
512-8288 or irvings@gao.gov; and Denise M. Fantone, Director, Strategic 
Issues, (202) 512-4997 or fantoned@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix XXIII: Office of Personnel Management: 

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) oversees the management of the 
federal governments' most important asset--its employees--and plays a 
central role in helping agencies transform their human capital 
management functions. OPM's specific responsibilities include leading 
agencies and holding them accountable for acquiring, developing, 
retaining, and managing employees with the knowledge, skills, and 
abilities needed to carry out their diverse missions. OPM also helps 
federal agencies uphold governmentwide values such as merit system 
principles, veterans' preference, and workforce diversity, and 
administers retirement, health benefits, and other insurance services 
for employees, annuitants, and beneficiaries. For fiscal year 2009, OPM 
requested about $229 million to help complete the transition to new 
technology supporting the retirement program, procure and begin 
implementing a new financial system, undertake new human resources 
policy initiatives, and maintain the Merit System Accountability 
(Compliance) Program. 

In 2001, GAO identified strategic human capital management as a 
governmentwide high-risk area, because human capital shortfalls were 
eroding the ability of many agencies--and threatening the ability of 
others--to effectively, efficiently, and economically perform their 
missions. Although OPM and agencies have made commendable progress in 
transforming their human capital functions, the area remains high risk 
because additional efforts are needed. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Strengthening Internal Capacity to Assist Agencies; 
* Modernizing Federal Employee Retirement Systems; 
* Helping Agencies Attract and Retain Older Workers. 

Questions: 

Strengthening Internal Capacity to Assist Agencies: 

1. OPM plays a central role in helping agencies transform their human 
capital management functions. This responsibility is critical as 
agencies continue to struggle with aligning their human capital 
activities with their mission and program goals. Can you describe a 
couple of specific experiences where you have led and implemented human 
capital reforms? 

2. Congress recognizes the critical leadership role that agency Chief 
Human Capital Officers (CHCO) and the CHCO Council must play in 
implementing the fundamental changes that need to take place across the 
executive branch. What experience do you have collaborating with others 
that would prepare you to work with CHCOs in agencies to ensure 
continued reforms? 

3. Regarding OPM's role in supporting other federal agencies, what 
prior experience do you have in client relations and the provision of 
technical assistance? What do you believe would be a useful role for 
OPM in working with agencies to help them address challenges in 
recruiting, hiring, and performance management? 

4. In recent years, in terms of how it assists agencies, OPM has moved 
from a focus on rules, to a focus on tools. What steps would you take 
to continue this trend of building more collaborative, constructive 
relationships with agencies? To what extent would you proactively reach 
out to top cabinet officials to understand their needs? 

5. Performance metrics are essential for effective oversight and 
holding agencies accountable for results. What metrics do you feel are 
appropriate for gauging OPM's and agencies' human capital efforts? 

Modernizing Federal Employee Retirement Systems: 

6. OPM's retirement modernization initiative has faced many project 
management challenges related to deploying new technology to improve 
the timeliness and accuracy of retirement application processing. In 
your prior work have you been involved in deploying new technology 
organizationwide? If so, what do you think are key variables a manager 
can and should track to ensure timely deployment? 

7. What prior experience do you have in overcoming hurdles that can be 
inherent in large-scale modernization projects similar to OPM's 
retirement initiative? 

8. In modernizing the federal employee retirement system, OPM has had 
difficulty developing a reliable program cost estimate. Could you 
please describe the steps you would take to develop more reliable cost 
estimates and stay within those costs when implementing the program? 

Helping Agencies Attract and Retain Older Workers: 

9. Helping federal agencies prepare for the looming baby boomer 
retirement wave will require a multifaceted approach that could include 
hiring, engaging, and retaining older workers beyond their normal 
retirement age. Have you wrestled with these challenges in a way that 
would prepare you to assume a leadership role in this area? How would 
you encourage federal departments and agencies to recruit and retain 
older workers? 

10. The demographics of the nation's workforce, and the workforce as a 
whole, are in flux. For the first time, four distinct generations will 
be in the workforce together, and each group possesses unique values, 
attitudes, and expectations. How should the employer-employee 
relationship adapt to these changes in order to build an inclusive work 
environment that supports success? 

11. In addition to becoming more multi-generational in nature, the 
federal workforce is also becoming increasing "blended." Federal 
agencies are making greater use of contractors, career employees, full-
timers, part-timers, tele-workers, etc., all working together to carry 
out an organization's mission. What should federal agencies do to 
manage, supervise, and develop staff in this new environment? 

Point of Contact: Robert N. Goldenkoff, Director, Strategic Issues, 
(202) 512-2757, goldenkoffr@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix XXIV: Office of the U.S. Trade Representative: 

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) is responsible for 
developing and coordinating U.S. international trade, commodity, and 
direct investment policy, and overseeing negotiations with other 
countries. It seeks to contribute to U.S. economic growth, 
competitiveness, and prosperity by opening markets and reducing trade 
and investment barriers around the world. The head of USTR is the U.S. 
Trade Representative, a Cabinet member who serves as the President's 
principal trade advisor, negotiator, and spokesperson on trade issues. 
For fiscal year 2009, USTR requested slightly over $46 million to carry 
out its mission. 

The U.S. economy is unquestionably tied to international trade. 
According to the U.S. International Trade Commission, the United States 
exported about $1.6 trillion in goods and services in 2007 and imported 
about $2.3 trillion. The number of multilateral, regional, and 
bilateral trade agreements that USTR has negotiated, and to which the 
United States is a party, have increased substantially in the last two 
decades. According to USTR, these agreements have greatly expanded 
markets and provided benefits for American workers, farmers, ranchers, 
manufacturers, and service providers. However, U.S. public opinion on 
the benefits of free trade are mixed, and continued liberalization of 
trade rules throughout the world is a difficult undertaking. Moreover, 
ensuring that U.S. companies obtain the trade agreements requires 
vigilant monitoring and enforcement by USTR and other trade agencies. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Integrating Development-through-Trade Programs; 
* Expanding Consultations with Stakeholders; 
* Ensuring Compliance with Trade Agreements; 
* Improving USTR Human Capital Management. 

Questions: 

Integrating Development-through-Trade Programs: 

1. Assessing the effect of trade preference programs entails 
comprehensive review and analysis across multiple issues and countries. 
What leadership experience do you have in compiling and reviewing a 
range of information from multiple sources? 

2. GAO has said that a more integrated and systematic approach is 
needed to review other countries' compliance with U.S. 
trade/development programs. Can you cite any examples in which you led 
an organization through a major overhaul of its progress, review, or 
assessment practices? 

Expanding Consultations with Stakeholders: 

3. Formulating trade policy and negotiating agreements requires USTR to 
obtain input from a variety of stakeholders, including Congress, other 
federal agencies, and the private sector. What experience do you have 
in leading an organization that required broad stakeholder input? What 
lessons did you learn in your previous positions about balancing 
divergent or competing interests among stakeholders? 

4. Congress has had concerns in the past with USTR's efforts to obtain 
timely and substantive congressional input for trade negotiations. What 
experience do you have in creating incentives for managers to seek 
timely stakeholder input? How did you hold managers accountable for 
obtaining input in the manner expected? 

Ensuring Compliance with Trade Agreements: 

5. A significant part of federal efforts to monitor other countries' 
compliance with trade agreements are undertaken by officials from the 
Departments of Commerce, State, and Agriculture, requiring a high level 
of collaboration and communication among USTR and these agencies. 
Please describe how you have collaborated with multiple organizations 
to achieve a common goal. 

6. What mechanisms should be in place to ensure that collaboration and 
communication among these agencies regarding potential compliance 
issues occurs in a timely and efficient manner? 

Improving USTR Human Capital Management: 

7. What experience do you have in developing and implementing strategic 
human capital plans to improve the ability of an organization under 
your leadership to achieve its mission? 

8. Given USTR's small size, it must frequently leverage resources at 
other agencies to help it carry out its mission. Have you led an 
organization that faced a similar circumstance, and what steps did you 
take to access outside resources to help the organization carry out its 
mission? 

9. How would you determine whether an organization under your 
leadership had the right mix of skills in place to carry out current 
and emerging mission needs? 

10. USTR has limited resources with which to manage a growing 
monitoring and enforcement workload, created by new WTO members and new 
trade agreements. As a manager and leader, how do you handle the 
challenge of "doing more with less"? 

Point of Contact: Jacquelyn Williams-Bridgers, Managing Director, 
International Affairs and Trade, (202) 512-3101 or 
williamsbridgersj@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix XXV: Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation: 

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) protects the retirement 
incomes of nearly 44 million American workers in 30,000 private-sector 
defined-benefit pension plans. It was established to insure the pension 
benefits of participants in qualified plans and to pay participants' 
benefits when plans could not. PBGC aims to encourage the continuation 
and maintenance of private-sector defined-benefit pension plans, 
provide timely and uninterrupted payment of pension benefits, and keep 
pension insurance premiums at a minimum. PBGC receives no funds from 
general tax revenues; instead operations are financed by insurance 
premiums set by Congress. PBGC's board of directors consists of the 
Secretaries of Labor, Treasury, and Commerce. 

In July 2003, GAO designated PBGC's single-employer pension insurance 
program--its largest insurance program--as "high risk," including it on 
GAO's list of major programs that need urgent attention and 
transformation due to the financial risk that they face. The program 
remains on the list today. PBGC projected its financial deficit at 
nearly $14 billion as of September 2007. Further, recent GAO reports 
have highlighted several management challenges facing PBGC. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Improving the Stability of PBGC. 

Questions: 

Improving the Stability of PBGC: 

1. Currently, PBGC's investment policy's goal is to invest 55 percent 
of assets in equity and real estate, reflecting investment policies 
aligned with pension plans. What experience do you have that would help 
you develop and maintain an appropriate investment policy at this 
unique agency? What criteria do you think are appropriate in developing 
recommendations for such a policy? 

2. The PBGC board of directors consists of the Secretaries of Labor, 
Treasury, and Commerce, who have limited time to oversee corporation 
policy and management. GAO has recommended that Congress expand PBGC's 
board of directors to include more members with diverse backgrounds 
related to PBGC's mission. What experiences do you have working with 
boards of directors that might help Congress and PBGC better align the 
board with PBGC's needs? Are there other measures, in your experience, 
that could help strengthen the governance of PBGC under current law? 

3. The decline in the provision of defined-benefit pension plans calls 
PBGC's very role into question for the long-term future. What skills or 
experience do you have with other entities facing threats to their 
financial viability that may be helpful to PBGC at this time? 

Point of Contact: Barbara Bovbjerg, Director, Education, Workforce, and 
Income Security, (202) 512-5491 or bovbjergb@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix XXVI: Small Business Administration: 

The Small Business Administration's (SBA) primary mission is to promote 
small business development and entrepreneurship. SBA carries out its 
mission with programs that provide access to credit and by providing 
entrepreneurial assistance through partnerships with private entities 
that offer small business counseling and technical assistance. SBA also 
administers various small business procurement programs, which are 
designed to assist small and small disadvantaged businesses obtain 
federal contracts and subcontracts. Additionally, SBA provides 
financial assistance through its Disaster Loan Program to help 
homeowners, renters, and businesses of all sizes recover from disasters 
such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and terrorist attacks. SBA requested 
$657 million in its fiscal year 2009 budget proposal in order to 
implement these programs and achieve its mission. 

In the past several years, SBA has faced the same budget pressures as 
other agencies while demand for its loans, services, and programs has 
grown. For example, SBA's 7(a) loan program has grown from 
approximately 44,000 loans approved in fiscal year 2000 to 92,500 in 
fiscal year 2007. The growth in its programs has also created a demand 
for increased oversight. SBA must oversee lenders who make loans 
through the 7(a) program, contracting assistance programs, and 
technical assistance grantees. However, SBA's workforce (not including 
disaster assistance employees whose levels fluctuate) decreased by 
about 26 percent between 2000 and 2007. SBA's disaster loan program 
also faces challenges. Due to the damage associated with the Gulf Coast 
hurricanes in 2005, SBA faced unprecedented demand for its disaster 
loan services. Nine months following the hurricanes, SBA had approved 
nearly 150,000 such loans totaling nearly $10 billion, which will 
continue to be serviced by the agency until the loans are paid off or 
liquidated as a result of default. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Providing Timely and Effective Disaster Assistance; 
* Addressing the Effects of Transformation Efforts; 
* Overseeing the 7(a) Loan Guaranty Program; 
* Strengthening the HUBZone Program. 

Questions: 

Providing Timely and Effective Disaster Assistance: 

1. The farm bill that was enacted in 2008 contained several provisions 
designed to strengthen SBA's disaster planning processes (such as 
requiring the appointment of a qualified disaster planner, conducting 
planning simulations, and ensuring the availability of adequate 
personnel and office space in an emergency). Could you describe a 
couple of examples of your experience with similar steps taken 
elsewhere and how they prepare you to help SBA to implement these 
requirements? 

2. The federal response to the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes was widely 
criticized. Have you ever helped an organization respond to a major 
crisis? Could you provide examples of how you would manage and oversee 
SBA's response to a major disaster? 

Addressing the Effects of Transformation Efforts: 

3. A recent GAO report identified several practices implemented by a 
previous SBA Administrator that helped to improve employee morale and 
the operational capacity of the agency. In that report, GAO noted that 
SBA's leadership would need to remain committed to sustain the progress 
it had made. What has been your experience with transformation efforts, 
and what do you think are key steps to ensuring the sustainability of 
successful practices? 

4. SBA has faced a number of human capital challenges, including 
overcoming low employee morale from earlier restructuring efforts and 
developing employees to succeed an increasing number of employees 
eligible to retire. Have you managed a large workforce? Have you had to 
address similar human capital challenges and if so, what are some of 
the actions you found successful in addressing these challenges? 

5. SBA has a significant field presence with 68 district offices, 10 
regional offices, and numerous centers that process and service loans. 
These offices have employees that work directly with potential 
entrepreneurs, small businesses, and lenders. Have you had experience 
working in or managing an organization with a large field presence and 
if so how have you communicated with employees across offices? What are 
some of the methods you believe would be effective in ensuring that 
employees who work outside of SBA's Washington, D.C., headquarters are 
also able to provide their input, knowledge, and expertise? 

Overseeing the 7(a) Loan Guaranty Program: 

6. Through SBA's largest small business loan program, private-sector 
lenders make the loans with a government guaranty if the loan defaults. 
Recent Office of Inspector General reports have found that SBA's lender 
oversight program has been deficient in taking enforcement actions when 
its examinations of certain lenders have found numerous problems. Given 
that SBA's loan programs require a partnership with the private sector, 
what is your experience in managing public-private relationships and 
what skills and knowledge do you think you could offer that would 
improve SBA's oversight of lenders? 

7. Can you describe examples of where you have taken action to 
implement, oversee, or enforce internal controls? How could you be 
helpful to oversee improved enforcement of controls for the 7(a) loan 
guaranty program? 

Strengthening the HUBZone Program: 

8. The HUBZone program is just one of several contracting programs that 
support small business development by encouraging federal agencies to 
award contracts to small businesses. How have you successfully worked 
with multiple organizations to achieve common goals? What do you think 
would be key to successfully working across multiple agencies to 
increase the percentage of federal contracting dollars awarded to small 
businesses? 

9. GAO's recent work on the HUBZone program identified several 
deficiencies in SBA's management of the program and concluded that the 
program was vulnerable to fraud. What is your experience with 
implementing internal controls to ensure that an organization's 
policies and procedures prevent fraud, waste, and abuse? 

Point of Contact: William B. Shear, Director, Financial Markets and 
Community Investment, (202) 512-8678, or shearw@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix XXVII: Social Security Administration: 

The Social Security Administration's (SSA) overarching mission is to 
advance the economic security of the nation's people through its 
leadership in shaping and managing America's Social Security programs. 
SSA administers three major benefit programs with estimated outlays 
totaling over $680 billion in fiscal year 2009: the Old Age and 
Survivors Insurance program provides benefits to retired workers and 
their families and to survivors of deceased workers; the Disability 
Insurance (DI) program provides benefits to eligible workers who have 
qualifying disabilities, and their eligible family members; and the 
Supplemental Security Income program provides income for aged, blind, 
or disabled individuals with limited income and resources. 

SSA is facing challenges on a number of fronts--disability claims 
processing, service delivery, and trust fund solvency. SSA has 
experienced significant growth in its disability programs and is 
struggling to keep pace with a large number of applications for 
benefits, resulting in large backlogs and long waits for claimants. 
Moreover, the criteria the agency uses to make decisions about 
eligibility for benefits may not sufficiently assess the work capacity 
of individuals in the 21st century. Additionally, SSA is having 
difficulty fulfilling its many other responsibilities, including 
processing retirement claims, helping to administer the Medicare 
prescription drug program, verifying employees' authorization to work, 
and performing program integrity activities. Further, the aging of the 
baby boom generation, increased life expectancy, and declining birth 
rates have adversely affected the long-term financial sustainability of 
the Social Security trust fund. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Improving Criteria for Disability Compensation; 
* Improving Claims Process; 
* Addressing Service Delivery Challenges; 
* Restoring Financial Sustainability to Social Security Programs. 

Questions: 

While the Commissioner's term expires in 2013 and is independent of 
changes in the executive branch administration, these questions may be 
used during confirmation hearings for others. 

Improving Criteria for Disability Compensation: 

1. Medical and technological advances as well as changes in the labor 
market over the years have afforded more employment opportunities for 
some people with disabilities in the 21st century, raising questions 
about whether SSA's eligibility criteria for disability benefits 
appropriately take such factors into account. What experience have you 
had in managing complex issues in a constantly changing environment? 

Improving Claims Process: 

2. SSA, which is responsible for administering a number of programs 
that affect the lives of Americans daily, is facing significant 
challenges in delivering timely, accurate, and consistent service to 
the public. What prior work has exposed you to the demands a business 
or other organizations face in providing high-quality customer service? 
How has that prepared you to effectively address such challenges as 
lengthy waiting times and large disability claims backlogs? 

Addressing Service Delivery Challenges: 

3. As the baby boom generation begins to retire, some SSA managers 
believe that the current field office structure is financially 
unsustainable at the current level of appropriations. Have you managed 
a large field presence of an organization or been involved in fine-
tuning it to best meet the mission? If so, what criteria are important 
for obtaining an efficient structure that ensures quality service 
delivery into the future under tight resource constraints? 

4. In numerous field offices, the average customer waiting time is over 
1 hour. What practices, in your experience, can help assure high 
quality and timely service to customers? What experience do you have in 
addressing the trade-off between face-to-face service and a more 
electronic approach? 

5. In some field offices, the resources devoted to processing 
applications for new and replacement Social Security cards have 
increased, which may have contributed to longer wait and processing 
times for other types of SSA services. Do you have experience in making 
trade-offs between competing lines of business that might help SSA 
address this situation? 

6. SSA faces a looming retirement wave of its own--at precisely the 
time its workload is significantly increasing. What experience do you 
have with this type of challenge, and what steps would you take to 
ensure that you have the people you need to do the job? 

Restoring Financial Sustainability to Social Security Programs: 

7. The Social Security program is not currently financially sustainable 
in the decades to come. What experience do you bring that would help 
policymakers reach agreement on how to finance Social Security benefits 
in the future? 

Points of Contact: Daniel Bertoni, Director, Education, Workforce, and 
Income Security, (202) 512-5988 or bertonid@gao.gov; and Barbara 
Bovbjerg, Director, Education, Workforce, and Income Security, (202) 
512-5491 or bovbjergb@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix XXVIII: U.S. Agency for International Development: 

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is the principal 
U.S. agency providing assistance to countries recovering from disaster, 
trying to escape poverty, and engaging in democratic reforms. The 
agency's work supports long-term and equitable economic growth and 
advances U.S. foreign policy objectives by supporting economic growth, 
agriculture, trade, global health, democracy, conflict prevention, and 
humanitarian assistance. The agency provides assistance in Sub-Saharan 
Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe and Eurasia, and 
the Middle East. For fiscal year 2009, the President requested about 
$39.5 billion for the International Affairs budget for the Department 
of State, USAID, and other foreign affairs agencies. 

The agency plays a vital role in supporting U.S. national security, 
foreign policy, and the war on terrorism by addressing one of the root 
causes of violence: poverty fueled by lack of economic opportunity. The 
agency must operate amidst long-standing and emergent challenges, such 
as the world's growing poor and malnourished population, and the 
critical need to rebuild regions and nations in conflict, such as 
Afghanistan. In addition, the agency must work to maximize the effect 
of humanitarian assistance programs, while also strengthening democracy 
and human rights programs in places such as Cuba and elsewhere. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Stabilizing Regions in Conflict; 
* Addressing International Food Aid and Security; 
* Maximizing Humanitarian Assistance; 
* Improving Foreign Assistance Management; 
* Enhancing Democracy and Human Rights Activities. 

Questions: 

Stabilizing Regions in Conflict: 

1. What skills and abilities do you have that would prepare you for 
managing government programs in war zones or regions in conflict? 

2. What experience do you have successfully working with a wide variety 
of civilian and military stakeholders and balancing competing 
priorities, approaches, and objectives? 

3. Does your background provide you with any lessons learned for 
developing comprehensive strategic plans and using these plans to 
measure progress toward achieving goals in regions in conflict? 

Addressing International Food Aid and Security: 

4. As a 2008 GAO report pointed out, lack of agricultural and rural 
development are major factors contributing to food insecurity in Sub- 
Saharan Africa. What expertise do you have in the areas of agricultural 
and rural development? 

5. Currently, U.S. food aid is funded under four program authorities 
and delivered through six programs administered by USAID and the U.S. 
Department of Agriculture. A 2008 GAO report said the United States 
lacks an integrated governmentwide strategy that defines actions and 
resources to deal with food insecurity. What prepares you to be a 
leader in working with other federal agencies and others to develop 
such a strategy? 

6. With increasing prices for commodities and agricultural products 
worldwide, what experience do you have managing operations that are 
affected by global commodity markets? 

Maximizing Humanitarian Assistance: 

7. What skills and abilities do you have to manage humanitarian 
assistance programs in crisis situations, be they short-term or open-
ended in nature? 

8. What in your professional background prepares you to help guide 
USAID to facilitate coordination with other U.S. departments and 
agencies, as well as other non-U.S. stakeholders that may be involved 
in disaster recovery and reconstruction programs? 

9. What experience can you cite for measuring organizational 
performance and effect of humanitarian programs, such as establishing 
and using frameworks that link project activities with goals and 
targets and implementing efforts to obtain reliable program data? 

Improving Foreign Assistance Management: 

10. What experiences do you have in overseeing the integration of and 
accounting for operating-expense budgets across a variety of offices 
and programs, such as Office of the Director of Foreign Assistance must 
do? 

11. What skills and expertise do you have that prepares you for 
addressing the many human capital challenges that face USAID and other 
agencies providing humanitarian assistance? 

Enhancing Democracy and Human Rights Activities: 

12. What experience do you have in working with governments in 
transition and how has this experience prepared you to lead and oversee 
U.S. programs designed to support democracies abroad? 

13. Other countries' human rights records are an important 
consideration for making a range of foreign policy decisions. What 
aspects of your background have prepared you to address human rights 
violations and make these important decisions? 

Point of Contact: Jacquelyn Williams-Bridgers, International Affairs 
and Trade, Managing Director, (202) 512-3101 or 
williamsbridgersj@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix XXIX: Acquisition Management: 

Bolstering the size and skill of the acquisition workforce continues to 
be a primary goal for procurement executives at virtually all federal 
agencies. Agencies across the government are increasingly reliant on 
contractors to execute their missions. In fact, federal agencies spent 
more than $450 billion on goods and services in fiscal year 2007, a 
significant increase since 2000. 

With this increase in reliance comes a commensurate responsibility to 
assure that funds are spent wisely and result in good acquisition 
outcomes, that is, that agencies are buying the right things the right 
way. GAO's work has shown, however, that agencies confront several 
interrelated challenges, including separating wants from needs; 
executing acquisition programs within available funding and established 
time frames; using sound contracting arrangements with appropriate 
incentives and effective oversight; assuring that contractors are used 
only in appropriate circumstances and play proper roles; and sustaining 
a capable and accountable acquisition workforce. GAO has designated 
five high-risk areas within acquisition management, including 
management and use of interagency contracting; weapon system 
acquisition; and contract management at three agencies--the Department 
of Defense, the Department of Energy, and the National Aeronautics and 
Space Administration. Collectively, these high-risk areas expose 
hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to potential waste and misuse. 
Addressing these challenges will require sustained management attention 
and leadership at both the agency level and from organizations such as 
the Office of Management and Budget and its Office of Federal 
Procurement Policy. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Improving Acquisition Outcomes on Major Systems; 
* Promoting the Use of Sound Business Arrangements; 
* Ensuring Agencies Have the Capacity to Effectively Manage and 
Appropriately Use Contractors; 
* Making Progress to Address GAO High-Risk Areas. 

Questions: 

Improve Acquisition Outcomes on Major Systems: 

1. Major acquisition projects at Department of Defense, the Department 
of Homeland Security, and the National Aeronautics and Space 
Administration are all are projected to cost significantly more than 
initially estimated and to take longer to complete than initially 
planned. What experience do you have overseeing the management of major 
acquisitions and improving outcomes on these projects? What lessons 
learned from those experiences can you bring to the management of major 
programs at these federal agencies and others? 

2. We routinely hear about large government contracts that are over 
cost and behind schedule, yet the contractors for these efforts 
continue to win new work. How would you hold contractors accountable 
for acquisition outcomes, particularly those large government 
contractors that continue to get new work no matter how bad past 
outcomes were? 

3. The amount spent on federal contracting continues to grow and may be 
unsustainable given other mandated budgeted priorities. How would you 
go about making spending priorities and choices if the amount of money 
for acquisitions declines? 

Promoting the Use of Sound Business Arrangements: 

4. GAO's work at the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland 
Security, and other agencies, has found that the lack of well-defined 
requirements, the use of ill-suited business arrangements or poorly 
structured incentives, and inadequate oversight of contractor 
performance have contributed to poor acquisition outcomes. In your 
experience, what are the keys to structuring effective business 
arrangements with contractors? What are the most effective mechanisms 
for motivating them to perform? 

5. When a contract goes poorly it can be due to actions taken by both 
the government and the contractor. How would you assign responsibility 
for bad outcomes and ensure that neither side gets a free pass? What 
are the responsibilities of contractors to push back on the government 
when it takes an action that is likely to negatively affect the 
contractor's ability to deliver the desired outcomes? Do you have 
experience discontinuing or terminating poor-performing contracts or 
programs? 

6. What are the most important aspects of contractor performance to 
measure? What steps would you take to ensure that your agency is 
consistently capturing performance information in these areas and using 
that information when awarding new contracts? 

Ensuring Agencies Have the Capacity to Effectively Manage and 
Appropriately Use Contractors: 

7. Large numbers of the federal workforce are eligible to retire in the 
next few years, and D.C.-based agencies are reportedly competing among 
themselves for acquisition talent. How have you recruited and retained 
individuals with skills that are in high demand? How has your 
experience prepared you to help bring discipline to this area to ensure 
that federal agencies do not become their own worst enemies in the 
battle for employees in acquisition-related fields? 

8. In the 1990s, conventional wisdom said that it was cheaper to 
contract out for services rather than provide them in-house with 
federal employees. Today, data suggests that a contractor employee 
could cost the government 25 percent more than a federal employee. 
Where, if at all, have you compared "in-house" and contracted services 
and their cost? What lessons have you learned from these experiences? 

9. What do you propose to do to create more transparency about the 
number and use of contractors to support federal agencies? What are 
your views on the need for, and how would you go about, requiring large 
organizations like federal agencies to develop a strategy for 
determining when contracting makes sense? 

10. When the decision is made to use contractors in roles closely 
supporting inherently governmental functions, additional risks are 
present. Contractors are not subject to the same ethics rules as the 
government even when doing the same job, and the government risks 
entering into an improper personal services contract if an employer/ 
employee relationship exists between the government and the contractor 
employee. What are your professional views on how best to address these 
challenges to ensure proper oversight of such arrangements, 
particularly given the evolving and enlarging role of contractors in 
federal acquisitions? 

Making Progress to Address GAO High-Risk Areas: 

11. GAO has designated contract management as a high-risk issue in 
three agencies and has identified problems in individual acquisitions 
at numerous other agencies. What steps will you take to help address 
this governmentwide challenge? What steps will you take to ensure that 
this agency is effectively performing its contract management 
responsibilities? 

12. Over the past few years, a number of concerns have arisen 
pertaining to the adequacy of competition for government contracts, 
whether it is to rebuild Iraq, the ability of small businesses to 
compete for contracts, or agencies finding that they have only one or 
two sources for key services. In your experience, what are some key 
steps that can help ensure robust competition in federal contracting? 

13. What experience can you describe that demonstrates your ability to 
marshal sustained attention necessary to address systemic weaknesses or 
deficiencies, such as may be required to show progress toward 
addressing long-standing issues on GAO's high-risk list? 

Point of Contact: Katherine Schinasi, Managing Director, Acquisition 
and Sourcing Management, (202) 512-4841 or schinasik@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix XXX: Collaboration: 

Achieving meaningful national results in many policy and program areas 
requires some combination of coordinated efforts among various actors 
across federal agencies, often with other governments (for example, 
internationally and at state and local levels), nongovernmental 
organizations (NGO), for-profit and not-for-profit contractors, and the 
private sector. Examples of such results include taking additional 
action to protect the homeland, strengthening preparedness for large- 
scale public health emergencies, revamping oversight of food safety, 
and improving the United States' image abroad. 

These and many other public issues vividly underscore the critical 
importance of employing a broad governance perspective to meet global 
and national needs and will highlight challenges Congress and the new 
administration face in devising integrated solutions to such 
multidimensional problems. 

There are several tools for forging successful partnerships across 
these networks. GAO has identified key practices that can help enhance 
and sustain federal agency collaboration, some of which can also be 
applied more broadly to collaboration in networks. These practices 
include, for example, having collaborating parties (1) establish 
mutually reinforcing or joint strategies; (2) identify and address 
needs by leveraging resources; (3) agree on roles and responsibilities; 
and (4) establish compatible policies, procedures, collaboration, and 
other means to operate across boundaries. 

An annual governmentwide performance plan could provide a broader view 
of the federal government's goals and strategies to address issues that 
affect different federal agencies and could help highlight redundancy 
and other inefficiencies in how the government does its business. 

A longer-term strategic plan for the federal government, along with key 
national indicators to assess performance, could also enable 
governmentwide reexamination of both existing programs and proposed new 
programs. 

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has a central role in 
overseeing the management of federal agencies and promoting the 
President's Management Agenda (PMA). While OMB has used the PMA to 
foster greater interagency collaboration, its efforts have been 
limited, and the agency could be doing much more to improve 
coordination among federal agencies. 

The increasing complexity of how the government does its business--and 
who does it--presents new challenges to congressional decision making, 
as well. Throughout the nation's history, Congress has consistently 
shown the ability to respond to the nation's most technically complex 
and politically difficult challenges. Congress will increasingly need 
to rely on integrated approaches to help its decision making on the 
many issues requiring effective collaboration across federal agencies, 
levels of government, and sectors. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Strengthening Partnerships to Protect the Homeland; 
* Ensuring a Strategic, Integrated Approach to Recovering and 
Rebuilding from the 2005 Gulf Coast Hurricanes, and Implications for 
Future Catastrophic Events; 
* National Preparedness for, and Response to, an Influenza Pandemic; 
* Developing a Comprehensive, Governmentwide Approach to Climate 
Change; 
* Improving the Cost-Effectiveness of Federal Programs Supporting 
Children and Families; 
* Developing an Integrated Approach to Guide Interagency Efforts to 
Coordinate, Plan, and Implement Crosscutting National Security 
Programs; 
* Ensuring a Competitive and Informed Energy Market; 
* Protecting Technologies Critical to U.S. National Security While 
Allowing Legitimate Trade. 

Questions: 

1. Can you describe specific successes you have had establishing 
partnerships with other organizations that created benefits for both? 
What was accomplished through these partnerships? 

2. What challenges have you faced in working collaboratively with other 
organizations? What approaches did you take to overcome those 
challenges? 

3. What experiences have you had creating incentives for your managers 
in other organizations to work collaboratively with external parties? 
How can managers be held accountable for working collaboratively? 

4. When in your prior work have you identified and leveraged the 
resources of other organizations to accomplish shared goals? 

5. Are you aware of the networks and partnerships (including federal 
agencies, state and local governments, domestic and international 
nongovernmental or quasi-governmental organizations, and for-profit and 
not-for-profit contractors and grantees) that you and your agency rely 
on to achieve results and form public policy? Do you know whether these 
networks and partnerships have been identified? What would be your plan 
for reaching out to these other agencies or organizations? 

6. What are some specific ways in which your agency could work 
collaboratively with other federal or nonfederal organizations to 
improve performance outcomes for the American public? 

Point of Contact: Bernice Steinhardt, Director, Strategic Issues, (202) 
512-6543 or steinhardtb@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix XXXI: Financial Management: 

While significant improvements have occurred, the federal government 
has a long way to go in assuring that Congress and federal policymakers 
and management have reliable, useful, and timely financial and 
financial-related performance information needed to support well- 
informed decision making. While many individual federal agencies can 
now produce reliable financial statements, for the 11th consecutive 
year, GAO was unable to render an opinion on the federal government's 
fiscal year 2007 accrual basis consolidated financial statements. In 
addition, financial management system deficiencies and continuing 
material weaknesses continue to hinder federal agency accountability 
and program performance measurements. Most recently, there has been 
increasing concern over the financial implications of turmoil in the 
nation's housing and financial markets. Given the fiscal challenges 
facing the federal government, the need for reliable, useful, and 
timely cost and other financial performance information is greater than 
ever. 

A multipronged approach will be required to make greater progress and 
meet the financial management challenges of the 21st century. This 
approach should include (1) sustaining top-level commitment and 
leadership to build on progress made to date, (2) focusing on 
establishing and maintaining accountability for programs and resources, 
and minimizing improper payments, and (3) considering whether federal 
financial reporting enhancements are needed, and (4) recognizing that 
the longer actions to address these important issues are delayed, the 
greater the risk that the eventual changes will be disruptive and 
destabilizing. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Improving Internal Controls to Enhance Accountability and Reduce 
Improper Payments; 
* Improving the Extent and Reliability of Cost Information Available to 
Assist in Evaluating Federal Program Operations; 
* Obtaining an Unqualified Opinion on the U.S. Government's 
Consolidated Financial Statements; 
* Developing and Implementing Effective Federal Financial Management 
Systems; 
* Improving Federal Grant Accountability; 
* Evaluating Federal Accountability Requirements and Practices for 
Opportunities to Streamline and Enhance Effectiveness. 

Questions: 

Improving Internal Controls to Enhance Accountability and Reduce 
Improper Payments: 

1. The federal government's reported improper payment estimate has 
increased from about $20 billion in fiscal year 2002 to $55 billion in 
fiscal year 2007. In your view, what can be done to improve the 
accuracy and integrity of federal payments? 

Improving the Extent and Reliability of Cost Information Available to 
Assist in Evaluating Federal Program Operations: 

2. What is your experience in using cost information to manage and 
modify large and complex programs for an organization? 

3. Several agencies' accounting systems have significant weaknesses and 
lack the necessary information to help guide daily decision making. 
Please elaborate on your views on agencies' cost accounting information 
and whether it could be helpful to Congress during its oversight. 

Obtaining an Unqualified Opinion on the U.S. Government's Consolidated 
Financial Statements: 

4. Over the last eleven years, three continuing major impediments have 
prevented the United States Government from receiving an opinion on its 
consolidated financial statements: (1) serious financial management 
problems at the Department of Defense, (2) the federal government's 
inability to adequately account for and reconcile intragovernmental 
activity and balances between federal agencies, and (3) the federal 
government's ineffective process for preparing the consolidated 
financial statements. What strategies do you think would help ensure 
that agencies take appropriate actions to address these long-standing 
challenges? 

5. What are your views regarding needed financial information and how 
it should be used to effectively manage operations and hold managers 
accountable? 

Developing and Implementing Effective Federal Financial Management 
Systems: 

6. What is your experience with developing and implementing systems 
providing integrated planning, programming, budgeting, and execution 
data to better demonstrate the relationship between dollars allotted 
and results achieved? 

7. What are your views on the challenges of modernizing systems and how 
your skills and experience will assist you in overcoming such 
challenges? 

8. What are your views regarding the importance of financial management 
technology in becoming a world-class finance organization and what are 
the consequences of not having a modernized, integrated financial 
management system? 

9. What actions do you intend to take to ensure that financial 
management system initiatives are implemented on time and within 
budget, and provide the promised capabilities? 

Improving Federal Grant Accountability: 

10. What skills and experiences do you possess that could help navigate 
the trade-offs between financial control, audit burden, and maintaining 
accountability in government programs that rely heavily, if not 
exclusively, on grants? 

Evaluating Federal Accountability Requirements and Practices for 
Opportunities to Streamline and Enhance Effectiveness: 

11. How would your financial management experience be useful in 
effectively administering government programs? 

Point of Contact: McCoy Williams, Managing Director, Financial 
Management and Assurance, (202) 512-2600 or williamsm@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix XXXII: Human Capital Management: 

The importance of a high-performing federal workforce cannot be 
overstated. The nation faces new and more complex challenges in the 
21st century including a large and growing long-term fiscal imbalance, 
evolving national and homeland security threats, increasing global 
interdependence, and a changing economy. To help address these 
challenges, federal agencies will need to recruit and retain employees 
able to create, sustain, and thrive in organizations that are flatter, 
results-oriented, and externally focused, and that can collaborate with 
other government entities as well as with the private and nonprofit 
sectors to achieve desired outcomes. 

In 2001, we identified federal human capital management as a 
governmentwide high-risk area because federal agencies lacked a 
strategic approach to human capital management that integrated human 
capital efforts with their missions and program goals. Exacerbating 
this problem is the fact that federal agencies are facing a looming 
retirement wave. Governmentwide, about one-third of federal employees 
on board at the end of fiscal year 2007 will become eligible to retire 
by 2012. Further, proportions of workers eligible to retire are 
projected to be especially high in certain occupations. As experienced 
employees retire, they leave behind critical gaps in leadership and 
institutional knowledge, which could adversely affect the government's 
ability to carry out its diverse responsibilities and missions. 

Over the past few years, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), 
individual federal agencies, and Congress have made a number of 
noteworthy human capital reforms. For example, OPM has developed online 
decision support tools to provide agencies with guidance on how to use 
hiring flexibilities and retention strategies, while individual 
agencies have developed targeted recruitment strategies to identify and 
attract a talented workforce. For its part, Congress has provided 
agencies with hiring flexibilities that could help streamline the 
hiring process. Still, strategic human capital management remains on 
our high-risk list because federal agencies do not consistently have 
the modern human capital programs and policies needed to ensure that 
they have the right people in the right jobs at the right time to meet 
the challenges they face. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Addressing Human Capital and Related Organizational Transformation 
Issues; 
* Ensuring Agencies Have the Right Mix of Skills to Address Current and 
Emerging Missions; 
* Ensuring Effective Diversity Management Strategies Are in Place; 
* Ensuring Full Use Is Being Made of Available Flexibilities; 
* Developing a Results-Oriented Organizational Culture. 

Questions: 

Addressing Human Capital and Related Organizational Transformation 
Issues: 

1. How important to you is human capital management and what experience 
do you have in leading human capital reforms? 

2. Can you describe your philosophical view of the role that a human 
capital office plays in fulfilling an organization's mission? 

3. What human capital innovations that you have used elsewhere might 
you bring with you to the federal workforce in your agency? 

4. In your view, what are the key ingredients of successful workforce 
transformation, and how would you apply them to your agency? 

Ensuring Agencies Have the Right Mix of Skills to Address Current and 
Emerging Missions: 

5. What steps would you take to ensure your agency has the right mix of 
skills in place at the right time to meet current and emerging mission 
needs? 

6. What were some of the workforce challenges you have faced, and how 
did you address them? 

7. What do you expect to be some of the biggest workforce challenges 
facing you in the position to which you have been nominated? 

Ensuring Effective Diversity Management Strategies Are in Place: 

8. Can you describe your reliance, if any, on a diversity strategy and 
plan for organizations you have worked in? How have these related to 
the strategic plans of the organizations? 

9. What types of qualitative and quantitative measures have you found 
to be useful in assessing the impact of various aspects of an 
organization's overall diversity program? 

10. Do you have experience in holding managers accountable for 
diversity initiatives? What successes have you had by linking their 
performance assessment and compensation to the progress of diversity 
initiatives? 

Ensuring Full Use Is Being Made of Available Flexibilities: 

11. Please describe the hiring and retention flexibilities you have 
used successfully in the past, and explain how important they were to 
your organization. 

12. What experience do you have using work/life flexibilities that 
enable employees to balance their personal lives with their work lives? 
Can you describe any success your organization has achieved using these 
flexibilities? 

Developing a Results-Oriented Organizational Culture: 

13. Agencies have encountered difficulties when they have attempted to 
make their performance management systems more results-oriented. How 
would you address this issue at your agency? 

14. Can you describe some specific results that you or your 
organization have achieved as a result of strategic human capital 
planning you have been involved in? 

15. What experience do you have using performance metrics to measure 
the success of your organization's human capital efforts? 

Point of Contact: Robert N. Goldenkoff, Director, Strategic Issues, 
(202) 512-2757 or goldenkoffr@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix XXXIII: Information and Technology Management: 

The government is dependent on information management systems and 
networks to help carry out vital missions and public services, 
including tax collection, national defense, and social benefits. 
However, GAO and agency Inspectors General have reported that federal 
agencies have spent billions of dollars in developing systems and 
processes that are not cost-effective, fail to deliver expected 
results, and provide suboptimal solutions to agencies' core mission and 
business needs. Perhaps more importantly, not all agencies are taking 
full advantage of the opportunities provided by technological change 
and innovation--opportunities to reengineer key business processes and 
take advantage of (for example) techniques developed for e-business/e- 
commerce to make dramatic improvements in customer service and drive 
down administrative costs. Exploiting such opportunities requires the 
government to build its capacity not only to manage information 
technology (IT) but also to manage the collection, use, and 
dissemination of information in an era of rapidly changing technology. 
Among other things, this entails providing adequate security and 
privacy protections for the government's automated systems and the 
information they contain. Thus, to ensure that taxpayer money is well 
spent and vital government missions are not compromised, it is 
essential that information and technology are well managed. 

Challenges in this crosscutting management area have led to the 
inclusion of several topics on GAO's high-risk list, such as the most 
recent addition--preparing for and carrying out the rapidly approaching 
2010 Decennial Census. Other high-risk areas include carrying out 
crucial large-scale modernization efforts at the Department of Defense 
(DOD), the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Internal Revenue 
Service; implementing and transforming the Department of Homeland 
Security; establishing information-sharing mechanisms to improve 
homeland security; and protecting the federal government's information 
systems and the nation's critical infrastructures. 

As a result of GAO's work on these challenges, Congress and the 
agencies have taken important actions addressing information and 
technology management. For example, GAO's work on the 2010 Census 
helped to prompt congressional hearings and focused attention on 
solving the Census Bureau's information systems problems, helping the 
bureau better manage key systems acquisition risks and thus improve the 
accuracy and management of the 2010 Decennial Census. Another example 
is recommendations that GAO developed regarding DOD's business systems 
modernization program, which Congress embraced in legislative mandates 
to DOD and which have formed the basis for annual oversight hearings. 
As a result, DOD has made progress in establishing institutional 
management controls associated with successful modernizations. A final 
example is GAO's work to address the increasing concern that 
individuals' personal information could be inadequately protected by 
federal agencies, potentially compromising privacy rights or exposing 
personal information to misuse (such as identity theft). In response to 
these concerns and GAO findings on privacy issues, including the 
Privacy Act's controls over federal collection and use of personal 
information, Congress is considering amending the Privacy Act to better 
align its requirements with modern technology and uses of information. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Managing IT to Achieve Benefits and Control Costs; 
* Working with the Private Sector and Other Levels of Government to 
Protect Cyber Critical Infrastructure; 
* Developing and Implementing Well-defined Modernization Blueprints; 
* Ensuring Privacy Protections in a Post-9/11 Environment; 
* Ensuring Citizen Access to Government Information; 
* Strengthening Controls to Ensure Identity Protection; 
* Strengthening Information Security Controls; 
* Furthering the Exchange of Electronic Patient Health Information. 

Questions: 

1. Based on your experience, please explain the role technology should 
play in your agency to support mission needs. What measures would you 
implement to show the effect technology has in meeting these needs? 

2. How would you determine whether your agency has in place the key 
information management processes and tools required by law, including 
well-defined enterprise architecture, an investment control process, 
and computer security plans? What role do you envision you would play 
in managing or providing oversight over these processes and tools? How 
would you go about implementing or improving these processes and tools? 

3. Based on your experience, how would you go about assessing your core 
mission and business processes to identify opportunities for 
reengineering and for the enhanced use of technology? What challenges 
do you believe your agency may face in reengineering your processes and 
using technology? In using e-government? In hiring and retaining 
qualified IT professionals? 

Managing IT to Achieve Benefits and Control Costs: 

4. Every year, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and agencies 
identify IT projects totaling billions of dollars as being poorly 
planned and poorly performing through OMB's Management Watch List and 
high-risk projects processes. Despite agencies' efforts to address 
management weaknesses, the numbers remain high every year. What do you 
believe are key practices for effective IT project planning, 
management, and oversight? 

5. Although executive-level involvement is critical to projects' 
success, it is lacking at many agencies. What would you do to ensure 
that executives are involved in overseeing projects at your agency? 

6. Ensuring that system programs and projects are effectively planned 
and managed can be challenging. Describe the experience you have had 
that will help you to ensure that key capabilities and controls are 
implemented to increase project success. 

Working with the Private Sector and Other Levels of Government to 
Protect Cyber Critical Infrastructure: 

7. GAO has studied cyber critical infrastructure protection--commonly 
referred to as cyber CIP--since the mid 1990's, when the leadership 
responsibility and focal point for this area was placed in an office of 
the White House. Since then, this role has been shifted to the 
Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The work of GAO and others has 
raised questions concerning whether this placement is at the 
appropriate level for a national cyber focal point. What are your views 
on this issue? Please describe your leadership experiences that inform 
these views. 

8. While DHS currently has lead responsibility for cyber CIP, federal 
policy and strategy also identify lead federal agencies to coordinate 
CIP efforts with public and private stakeholders within 18 
infrastructure sectors--such as banking and finance, and nuclear 
reactors. GAO and others have reported that effective voluntary 
partnerships have not always been built, and where action is being 
taken, it is not necessarily being implemented evenly across the 18 
sectors. What partnership-building experience do you have in the 
technology sector that prepares you to help ensure a collaborative and 
effective national response across many types of stakeholders? 

9. GAO recently had the responsible federal agencies help it identify 
the federal cyber security laws, regulations, and mandatory standards 
that specifically pertain to each of the 18 CIP sectors. The resulting 
inventory showed a patchwork of requirements. Specifically, while 
certain sectors, such as banking and finance, cited multiple 
requirements, others (such as telecommunications) did not cite any. 
What principles and criteria would you draw on to help harmonize or 
rationalize this patchwork of requirements into an effective framework 
for making sure that cyber security is addressed by our critical 
infrastructure sectors? 

Developing and Implementing Well-Defined Modernization Blueprints: 

10. GAO has identified organizational leadership as the key element to 
departments and agencies' overcoming the challenges associated with 
defining and using enterprise architectures--challenges such as 
cultural resistance, resource constraints, lack of top management 
understanding, and the lack of skilled staff. What is your position on 
the value of having and using enterprise architecture, and how do you 
envision overcoming the challenges associated with effectively 
leveraging architectures for organizational transformation? 

11. What qualifications and experiences do you bring relative to 
leveraging enterprise architecture to facilitate organizational 
transformation? 

Ensuring Privacy Protections in a Post-9/11 Environment: 

12. Various laws address the protection of personally identifiable 
information that is accessed, processed, stored, or disseminated by the 
federal government. What has been your experience in ensuring that 
private information is protected? What laws applied in those 
situations? What challenges have you faced in implementing applicable 
privacy protections? 

13. How does your experience prepare you for overseeing privacy 
practices and ensuring that they are adequate? 

14. What prior work qualifies you to help people understand their 
responsibilities for protecting personal privacy? What would qualify 
you to review and update agency guidance on protecting personal 
privacy? 

15. The Fair Information Practices are generally accepted privacy 
principles that form the foundation for the Privacy Act. How familiar 
are you with these principles and do you have experience applying them? 
What challenges do you see in ensuring that current practices 
adequately reflect these principles in an era of rapid of technological 
change? 

Ensuring Citizen Access to Government Information: 

16. Based on the principles of openness and accountability in 
government, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) gives the public the 
right to access government records and information. What challenges 
would you foresee in supporting these principles while still ensuring 
that certain kinds of government information are protected from 
disclosure, such as privacy-related information? 

17. What kind of information would you envision presenting the greatest 
challenges? 

18. Responding to FOIA requests requires agencies to be able to find 
and review information. What experience do you have that would help 
your agency take measures to maximize the efficiency of such processes? 

Strengthening Controls to Ensure Identity Protection: 

19. News reports and research by privacy and consumer advocates have 
documented a wide variety of purposes for which Social Security numbers 
(SSN) are collected and used. These range from using SSNs as 
identifiers for posting grades of college students without revealing 
names, to using the number as a unique identifier for individuals with 
similar names or other identifying characteristics in conducting 
background or credit checks. Have you been involved in decisions 
regarding the use of SSNs as personal identifiers? What do you believe 
are the trade-offs and key considerations in using SSNs as personal 
identifiers besides establishing or maintaining Social Security 
accounts? 

20. Do you have prior experience that would help inform whether or not 
to display the full SSN on identification cards, such as federal 
benefit or insurance program cards, or what alternatives, such as 
encrypting it in a magnetic strip or not using it at all, may be 
appropriate? 

21. Social Security Administration (SSA) officials believe that SSA 
does not have any statutory authority to regulate the use of SSNs in 
areas other than its use in administering Social Security benefits or 
within SSA's internal operations. What would you consider in deciding 
whether the use of SSNs in the agency you are nominated to serve in 
needs to be changed? 

Strengthening Information Security Controls: 

22. What do you see as the greatest information security challenges 
facing your agency? What experience or knowledge of information 
security do you have that you could use to help address your agency's 
challenges? 

23. Have you had experience dealing with data breaches involving 
personally identifiable information? What kinds of steps do you think 
are most important in responding to such a data breach? 

Furthering the Exchange of Electronic Patient Health Information: 

24. Increasing the extent to which electronic patient health 
information is exchanged depends on the sustained cooperation of very 
large organizations and interests (e.g., DOD and insurance companies). 
How do you intend to build and maintain the relationships that are 
necessary to sustain cooperation among all the key players? 

25. What do you see as the top three challenges our country faces in 
moving toward the widespread exchange of electronic patient health 
information? What should be the role of the federal government in 
meeting these challenges? What are your particular qualifications and 
what specific actions would you take to address the challenges? 

26. What experience do you have in protecting the privacy of medical or 
other sensitive information transmitted between organizations? Based on 
your experience, what do you see as the most important (or urgent) 
steps that should be taken by the federal government and the health 
care industry to ensure that the privacy of electronic personal health 
information is adequately protected? Based on your experience, what, if 
any, are the critical gaps in current privacy protections in this area? 
In what ways have you worked to resolve these gaps or to determine how 
they could be resolved? 

Point of Contact: Joel C. Willemssen, Managing Director, Information 
Technology, (202) 512-6222 or willemssenj@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix XXXIV: Real Property Management and Security: 

The federal real property portfolio is vast and diverse, totaling over 
3 billion square feet of space with an estimated gross value in the 
hundreds of billions of dollars. The Department of Defense, the U.S. 
Postal Service, the General Services Administration, and the Department 
of Veterans' Affairs hold the majority of federally owned and leased 
space. Real property decisions draw considerable attention during 
congressional deliberation over federal appropriations. Members of 
Congress take a keen interest in federal facilities in their districts 
and in the economic effect of any decisions. Several stakeholders other 
than Congress, the Office of Management and Budget, and the real 
property-holding agencies, have an interest in how the federal 
government carries out its real property acquisition, management, and 
disposal practices. These stakeholders include state and local 
governments, business interests in the communities where the properties 
are located, private-sector construction and leasing firms, historic 
preservation organizations, various advocacy groups, and the public in 
general, which often views the facilities as the physical face of the 
federal government in its communities. 

GAO first designated federal real property management as a high-risk 
area in January 2003 due to long-standing problems with excess and 
underutilized property, deteriorating facilities, unreliable real 
property data, and overreliance on costly leasing. Federal agencies 
also face many challenges securing real property due to the threat of 
terrorism. Our work also showed that these problems have persisted and 
been exacerbated by competing stakeholder interests in real property 
decisions, various legal and budget limitations to businesslike 
outcomes, and the need for better capital planning among agencies. 
Since our high-risk designation, the President added real property 
management to the President's Management Agenda, and a related 
executive order (13327) established a Federal Real Property Council to 
address the problems. Agencies have also established asset management 
plans; standardized data; and adopted performance measures to gauge 
progress. Overall, there has been progress, but our recent and ongoing 
work indicates that the underlying problems still exist. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Demonstrating Significant Progress toward Eliminating Problems; 
* Addressing Underlying Obstacles to Real Property Reform; 
* Developing Performance Measurement Standards for Facility Protection. 

Questions: 

1. In your view, how should an agency use its real property portfolio 
to accomplish its mission? 

2. What experience do you have with developing and implementing action 
plans to address identified operational weaknesses, such as may be 
required to address outstanding recommendations specific to real 
property management at the agency level as identified by GAO and 
others? 

Demonstrating Significant Progress toward Eliminating Problems: 

3. Long-standing problems such as excess property, repair backlogs, 
security concerns, and reliance on leasing have made real property 
management a problem area at many agencies. Could you describe a 
specific example where you have had to deal with these types of 
problems? 

4. Executive order 13327 was issued to improve real property management 
in the federal government and, among other things, established the 
position of senior real property officer at agencies. Based on your 
past, what advice would you give the senior real property officer in 
the agency you are being appointed to lead? 

5. Based on your experiences and knowledge, how would you measure the 
progress of an agency that was trying to improve the efficiency of its 
management of its real property portfolio? 

Addressing Underlying Obstacles to Real Property Reform: 

6. Are you aware of the obstacles that the agency faces in managing and 
securing its real property? Do you have experience addressing such 
obstacles? 

7. Do you have experience juggling the competing interests involved in 
deciding when to lease or when to own? What principles do you think 
should guide the long-term capital planning involved in planning for 
long-term space needs? 

8. Can you describe any specific challenges you have faced managing 
underutilized assets and how you dealt with the challenges? 

9. What experience do you have facing the trade-offs between demands 
for deferred maintenance and other activity that more directly affects 
the short-term bottom line or your organization's expected results? 

Developing Performance Measurement Standards for Facility Protection: 

10. What do you know about the challenges of facility protection in 
today's post 9/11 environment? Do you have any experience identifying 
and balancing the many competing trade-offs in ensuring the protection 
of facilities from the threat of terrorism? 

11. GAO has found that other entities outside the federal government 
use security-related performance measures to help improve security, 
make decisions about risk management and resource allocation, and hold 
employees accountable for whether a program meets its security goals 
and objectives. Could you describe any experience you have overseeing 
the physical security program of a large organization, particularly 
with respect to using performance data and standards to measure 
success? 

Point of Contact: Mark L. Goldstein, Director, Physical Infrastructure, 
(202) 512-2834 or goldsteinm@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Appendix XXXV: Results-Oriented Decision Making: 

The federal government must address and adapt to a range of major 
trends and challenges in the nation and the world--a long-term, 
structural fiscal imbalance; a transformation from an industry-based to 
a knowledge-based economy; revolutionary changes in technology that 
have altered how we communicate and do business globally; greater 
reliance on market forces and competition; and changing national 
security threats. Furthermore, recent events, such as the financial 
markets crisis, lead paint in imported children's products, tainted 
meat, predatory mortgage lending, contract fraud, and national 
disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the attacks of September 11, 2001, 
raise questions among the American people about the capacity of the 
federal government to meet their most pressing needs. 

To respond to these trends and challenges, government must have the 
institutional capacity to plan more strategically, identify and react 
more expediently, and focus on achieving results. Over the past 15 
years, federal agencies have developed an infrastructure of outcome- 
oriented strategic plans, performance measures, and accountability 
reporting that provides a solid foundation for improving the 
performance of federal programs. However, the danger to any management 
reform is that it can become a hollow, paper-driven exercise where 
management improvement initiatives are not integrated into the day-to- 
day activities of the organization and fail to be relevant to Congress 
for its decision making. In addition, agencies across the federal 
government, such as the Department of Homeland Security, the Department 
of Defense, the Postal Service, and others are embarking on large-scale 
organizational transformations to address 21st century challenges. The 
management weaknesses in some agencies are deeply entrenched and long- 
standing, and it can take at least 5 to 7 years of sustained attention 
and continuity to fully implement transformations and change management 
initiatives. However, high turnover among politically appointed leaders 
in federal agencies can make it difficult to follow through with 
organizational transformation because of the length of time often 
needed to provide meaningful and sustainable results. For these 
reasons, GAO has recommended the creation of a senior-level position-- 
a chief operating officer/chief management officer (COO/CMO)--in 
federal agencies to help elevate attention on management issues and 
transformational change, integrate various key management and 
transformation efforts, and institutionalize responsibility for 
addressing management issues and leading transformational change. 

Key Issues Needing Attention: 

* Improving the Use of Performance Information; 
* Improving Leadership Capacity and Continuity. 

Questions: 

Improving the Use of Performance Information: 

1. During your tenure in this appointed position, what key performance 
goals do you want to accomplish, and how would this committee know 
whether you have accomplished them? 

2. Under the Government Performance and Results Act, federal agencies 
are required to establish long-term, strategic goals and related annual 
performance goals and report on actual performance achieved. How would 
you demonstrate your commitment to achieving agency performance goals? 
How would you motivate your managers to improve the agency's 
performance? How would you use performance information to improve 
performance results? 

3. Without developing an effective strategy for obtaining and acting on 
congressional views on what to measure, how to measure it, and how to 
best present this information to a congressional audience, it is more 
likely that performance information would largely be ignored in the 
authorization, appropriations, and oversight processes. How would you 
obtain Congress's views on these matters? What steps would you take to 
ensure that your agency's performance measures and reporting meet 
congressional as well as executive branch needs? 

Improving Leadership Capacity and Continuity: 

4. To successfully lead an organization into the future, a leader must 
be able to create and share a vision that inspires people to follow. In 
your past experience, what specific steps have you taken to 
successfully create a vision for an organization, and how did you make 
sure that the entire organization had a common understanding of the 
mission and was aligned so that it could be accomplished? 

5. Describe two or three tangible examples of instances where your 
personal leadership skills were essential in getting your employees to 
accomplish a challenging goal. How could those leadership abilities 
help you in the position for which you have been nominated? 

6. With regard to the creation of Chief Operating Officer/Chief 
Management Officer (COO/CMO) positions, what are your views on using 
these positions to help oversee organizational transformation efforts? 
Are there other mechanisms that you would use to elevate, integrate and 
institutionalize management and transformational change efforts in 
federal agencies? 

Point of Contact: Bernice Steinhardt, Director, Strategic Issues, (202) 
512-6543 or steinhardtb@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

GAO's Mission: 

The Government Accountability Office, the audit, evaluation and 
investigative arm of Congress, exists to support Congress in meeting 
its constitutional responsibilities and to help improve the performance 
and accountability of the federal government for the American people. 
GAO examines the use of public funds; evaluates federal programs and 
policies; and provides analyses, recommendations, and other assistance 
to help Congress make informed oversight, policy, and funding 
decisions. GAO's commitment to good government is reflected in its core 
values of accountability, integrity, and reliability. 

Obtaining Copies of GAO Reports and Testimony: 

The fastest and easiest way to obtain copies of GAO documents at no 
cost is through GAO's Web site [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov]. Each 
weekday, GAO posts newly released reports, testimony, and 
correspondence on its Web site. To have GAO e-mail you a list of newly 
posted products every afternoon, go to [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov] 
and select "E-mail Updates." 

Order by Phone: 

The price of each GAO publication reflects GAO’s actual cost of
production and distribution and depends on the number of pages in the
publication and whether the publication is printed in color or black and
white. Pricing and ordering information is posted on GAO’s Web site, 
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/ordering.htm]. 

Place orders by calling (202) 512-6000, toll free (866) 801-7077, or
TDD (202) 512-2537. 

Orders may be paid for using American Express, Discover Card,
MasterCard, Visa, check, or money order. Call for additional 
information. 

To Report Fraud, Waste, and Abuse in Federal Programs: 

Contact: 

Web site: [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/fraudnet/fraudnet.htm]: 
E-mail: fraudnet@gao.gov: 
Automated answering system: (800) 424-5454 or (202) 512-7470: 

Congressional Relations: 

Ralph Dawn, Managing Director, dawnr@gao.gov: 
(202) 512-4400: 
U.S. Government Accountability Office: 
441 G Street NW, Room 7125: 
Washington, D.C. 20548: 

Public Affairs: 

Chuck Young, Managing Director, youngc1@gao.gov: 
(202) 512-4800: 
U.S. Government Accountability Office: 
441 G Street NW, Room 7149: 
Washington, D.C. 20548: