2025 Annual Report: Opportunities to Reduce Fragmentation, Overlap, and Duplication and Achieve an Additional One Hundred Billion Dollars or More in Future Financial Benefits [Reissued with revisions on May 13, 2025]

What GAO Found

GAO identified 148 new matters and recommendations in 43 new topic areas for Congress or federal agencies to improve efficiency and effectiveness of government. For example:

• The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and 24 federal agencies should implement statutory requirements for annual IT portfolio reviews and high-risk IT investment reviews, which could result in one hundred million dollars or more in cost savings by reducing duplicative IT investments and halting or terminating investments, when appropriate.
• The Space Development Agency should fully demonstrate its space-based laser communications technology in each iterative development phase before progressing, potentially saving hundreds of millions of dollars over 10 years.
• The Department of Defense should take steps to incorporate data analytics into its fraud risk management strategy and improve the usability of fraud investigative information to support fraud risk management and potentially save one hundred million dollars or more.
• OMB and General Services Administration should join Congress in taking steps to help ensure the Federal Audit Clearinghouse contains quality single audit information, which could reduce risk and resolve deficiencies in federal award spending by hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
• The Director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts should better manage fragmentation by collaborating with relevant stakeholders when updating design standards for constructing federal courthouses, and reassess changes made to those standards to potentially avoid cost increases of tens of millions of dollars.
• Congress should clarify the Department of Energy's waste management authority at the Hanford site. Energy should also pause work at a waste treatment facility at the site—as it previously did with other types of waste—until it takes several actions, potentially saving billions of dollars.
• The Department of Interior could prevent continued productivity losses and cost overruns from a failed data system development and improve its compliance activities to verify federal oil and gas royalties, potentially increasing collections by tens of millions of dollars per year.

As of March 2025, Congress and agencies had fully addressed 1,460 (71 percent) of the 2,049 matters and recommendations GAO identified from 2011-2025 and partially addressed 130 (about 6 percent). This has resulted in financial and other benefits such as improved interagency coordination and reduced mismanagement, fraud, waste, and abuse.

As shown in the figure below, these efforts have cumulatively resulted in about $725 billion in financial benefits, an increase of about $57 billion from GAO's last report on this topic. These are rough estimates based on a variety of sources that considered different time periods and used different data sources, assumptions, and methodologies.

Total Financial Benefits of $725 Billion Identified in GAO's 2011-2025 Duplication and Cost Savings Annual Reports

Further steps are needed to fully address the matters and recommendations GAO identified from 2011 to 2025. Of the 589 open matters and recommendations, 170 (about 29 percent) have the potential for financial benefits. Legislation was introduced in the 118th or 119th Congress to address 27 (about 33 percent) of the 83 open matters. As of February 2025, the legislation had not been enacted.

GAO estimates that fully addressing the remaining open matters and recommendations could yield financial benefits of one hundred billion dollars or more and improved governmental services, among other benefits.

Examples of Open Topic Areas with Potential Financial Benefits

Topic area and description (GAO report number linked)	Mission	Potential financial benefits (source of estimate)
*Medicare Payments by Place of Service: Congress could realize additional financial benefits if it took steps to direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services to equalize payment rates between settings for evaluation and management office visits and other services that the Secretary deems appropriate. (GAO-16-189)	Health	$156.9 billion over 10 years (Congressional Budget Office)
*Public-Safety Broadband Network: Congress should consider reauthorizing FirstNet, including different options for its placement, and ensure key statutory and contract responsibilities are addressed before current authorities sunset in 2027. (GAO-22-104915)	Information Technology	$15 billion over 15 yearsa (GAO analysis of the FirstNet Contract)
*Individual Retirement Accounts: Congress should consider revisiting the use of Individual Retirement Accounts (IRA) to accumulate large balances and consider ways to improve the equity of the existing tax expenditure on IRAs. (GAO-15-16)	General Government	Ten billion dollars or more (Joint Committee on Taxation and the Department of the Treasury)
*Disability and Unemployment Benefits: Congress should consider passing legislation to require the Social Security Administration to offset Disability Insurance benefits for any Unemployment Insurance benefits received in the same period. (GAO-14-343SP)	Income Security	$2.2 billion over 10 years (Office of Management and Budget)

Legend:

* = Legislation is likely to be necessary to fully address all matters or recommendations in this topic area.

Source: GAO. | GAO-25-107604

Note: The potential financial benefits shown in this table represent estimates of amounts GAO or others believe could accrue if steps are taken to implement the actions described. The estimates are dependent on various factors, such as whether action is taken and how it is taken. Realized financial benefits may be less, depending on costs associated with implementing the action, unintended consequences, and the effect of controlling for other factors. The individual estimates in this table should be compared with caution, as they come from a variety of sources, which consider different time periods and use different data sources, assumptions, and methodologies.

^aIf FirstNet sunsets, it is unclear what will happen to the remaining $15 billion in scheduled annual payments, which FirstNet currently has authority to collect and reinvest.

Why GAO Did This Study

GAO annually reports on federal programs, agencies, offices, and initiatives—either within departments or government-wide—that have potentially duplicative goals or activities. As part of this work, GAO also identifies additional opportunities for greater efficiency and effectiveness that result in cost savings or enhanced revenue collection.

This report discusses new opportunities for achieving billions of dollars in potential financial benefits and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of a wide range of federal programs. It also evaluates the status of prior matters for congressional consideration and recommendations for federal agencies related to the Duplication and Cost Savings body of work.

In addition, this report provides examples of other, still open matters and recommendations where further implementation steps could yield significant financial and other benefits.

For more information, contact Jessica Lucas-Judy at lucasjudyj@gao.gov or Michelle Sager at sagerm@gao.gov.

Reissued with revisions on May 13, 2025

Reissued with update on May 13, 2025 Revised May 13, 2025 to correct the header section on page 38 in Appendix II. The corrected section should read: “The Department of Defense should better manage fragmentation of nutrition programs and initiatives by establishing department-wide strategic goals, performance goals, and performance metrics for nutrition efforts.”