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As of May 19, 2024, there are 5119 open recommendations that still need to be addressed. 413 of these are priority recommendations, those that we believe warrant priority attention. Learn more about our priority designation on our Recommendations page.

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4861 - 4880 of 5119 Recommendations, including 413 Priority Recommendations

Geospatial Data: Progress Needed on Identifying Expenditures, Building and Utilizing a Data Infrastructure, and Reducing Duplicative Efforts [Reissued March 18, 2015]

GAO-15-193
David A. Powner
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Recommendation Status
Congress To increase coordination between various levels of government and reduce duplication of effort, resources, and costs associated with collecting and maintaining accurate address data, Congress should consider assessing the impact of the disclosure restrictions of Section 9 of Title 13 and Section 412 of Title 39 of the U.S. Code in moving toward a national geospatial address database. If warranted, Congress should consider revising those statutes to authorize the limited release of addresses, without any personally identifiable information, specifically for geospatial purposes. Such a change, if deemed appropriate, could potentially result in significant savings across federal, state, and local governments.
Open

No legislative action had been identified as of March 5, 2024. Addressing this action, which GAO suggested in February 2015, could increase coordination between various levels of government and reduce duplication of effort, resources, and costs associated with collecting and maintaining accurate address data.

Crop Insurance: In Areas with Higher Crop Production Risks, Costs Are Greater, and Premiums May Not Cover Expected Losses

GAO-15-215
Steve Morris
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2 Open Recommendations
Agency Recommendation Status
Risk Management Agency To better inform Congress in the future about crop insurance program costs, reduce present costs, and ensure greater actuarial soundness, the Administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Risk Management Agency should monitor and report on crop insurance costs in areas that have higher crop production risks.
Open

When we confirm what actions USDA has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
Risk Management Agency To better inform Congress in the future about crop insurance program costs, reduce present costs, and ensure greater actuarial soundness, the Administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Risk Management Agency should, as appropriate, increase its adjustments of premium rates in areas with higher crop production risks by as much as the full 20 percent annually that is allowed by law.
Open

USDA agreed with this recommendation. When we confirm what actions USDA has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.

Food Safety: Additional Actions Needed to Help FDA's Foreign Offices Ensure Safety of Imported Food

GAO-15-183
J. Alfredo Gómez
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1 Open Recommendations
1 Priority
Agency Recommendation Status
Food and Drug Administration
Priority Rec.
To help ensure the safety of food imported into the United States, the Commissioner of Food and Drugs should complete an analysis to determine the annual number of foreign food inspections that is sufficient to ensure comparable safety of imported and domestic food. If the inspection numbers from that evaluation are different from the inspection targets mandated in FSMA, FDA should report the results to Congress and recommend appropriate legislative changes.
Open

On March 25, 2020, GAO staff met with FDA officials to discuss the status of the recommendation. FDA officials said that they cannot meet the number of foreign inspections required under the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) due to capacity constraints, and FDA's current strategy for the safety of imported food relies on a "cumulative oversight" approach involving multiple programs, in addition to foreign inspections. FDA officials said that it could be a number of years before these programs are fully implemented and that FDA will provide GAO with more specific status updates on the

Private Pensions: Participants Need Better Information When Offered Lump Sums That Replace Their Lifetime Benefits

GAO-15-74
Charles Jeszeck
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5 Open Recommendations
Agency Recommendation Status
Department of the Treasury To provide participants with useful information and to provide for lump sums that are based on up-to-date assumptions, Treasury should review its regulations governing the information contained in relative value statements to ensure these statements provide a meaningful comparison of all benefit options, especially in instances where the loss of certain additional plan benefits may not be disclosed.
Open

Treasury generally agreed with this recommendation but did not provide specific comments on plans to address it. As of July 2023, Treasury has not implemented this recommendation.
Department of the Treasury To provide participants with useful information and to provide for lump sums that are based on up-to-date assumptions, Treasury should review the applicability and appropriateness of allowing sponsors to select a "lookback" interest rate for use in calculating lump sums associated with a lump sum window that can serve to advantage the interests of the sponsor.
Open

Treasury generally agreed with this recommendation but did not provide specific comments on plans to address it. As of July 2023, Treasury has not implemented this recommendation.
Department of the Treasury To provide participants with useful information and to provide for lump sums that are based on up-to-date assumptions, Treasury should establish a process and a timeline for periodically updating the mortality tables used to determine minimum required lump sums-- including a means for monitoring when experts' views may indicate that mortality tables may have become outdated, and for taking expedited action if warranted.
Open

Treasury generally agreed with this recommendation but did not provide specific comments on plans to address it. As of July 2023, Treasury has not implemented this recommendation.
Department of Labor To ensure that federal regulators have better information about lump sum windows and to better ensure that participants have ready access to key information they need to make a decision when presented with a lump sum offer, the Department of Labor should require plan sponsors to notify DOL at the time they implement a lump sum window offer, including the number and category of participants being extended the offer (e.g., separated vested; retiree) as well as examples of the materials provided to them.
Open

The Department of Labor (DOL) agreed that this type of information may be helpful in determining the extent to which lump sum window offers are made, as well as the types of disclosures the participants receive. However, as of July 2017, DOL reported that it has not identified authority under ERISA for it to impose such a requirement on plan sponsors either before or shortly after the plan offers the lump sum window. The agency states that ERISA expressly provides specific reporting and disclosure requirements. These include various filings, such as annual financial reports, reports upon plan
Department of Labor To ensure that federal regulators have better information about lump sum windows and to better ensure that participants have ready access to key information they need to make a decision when presented with a lump sum offer, the Department of Labor should coordinate with the Internal Revenue Service and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) to clarify the guidance regarding the information sponsors should provide to participants when extending lump sum window offers and place the guidance on the agency's website. Guidance should include clear and understandable presentations of information, such as the relative value of the lump sum, the role and level of protections provided by PBGC, and the positive and negative ramifications of accepting the lump sum. Such guidance could also include promising practices for information materials from plan sponsors which are particularly effective in facilitating informed participant decision-making.
Open

The Department of Labor agreed with this recommendation, noting it is important to coordinate with the Treasury Department/IRS and PBGC to clarify the guidance regarding the information sponsors and other plan fiduciaries should provide to participants and beneficiaries when extending lump sum window offers. In 2016, the agency noted that the manner of publishing that guidance would be part of that coordination process. They may consider some formal public request for input (such as publishing a Request for Information in the Federal Register) and focus group or other field testing work. In

Federal Food Safety Oversight: Additional Actions Needed to Improve Planning and Collaboration

GAO-15-180
Steve Morris
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2 Open Recommendations
Agency Recommendation Status
Congress Because challenges associated with the fragmented federal food safety system are long-standing, decision makers do not have an integrated perspective on federal food safety performance, and centralized mechanisms for broad-based collaboration have not been sustained, Congress should consider directing OMB to develop a government-wide performance plan for food safety that includes results oriented goals and performance measures and a discussion of strategies and resources.
Open

As of March 2024, Congress had not acted on this matter. OMB informed GAO in December 2022 that it had no plans to develop a government-wide performance plan for food safety. We continue to believe that such a plan is necessary for effective federal oversight of food safety. We will continue to follow up on this issue.
Congress Because challenges associated with the fragmented federal food safety system are long-standing, decision makers do not have an integrated perspective on federal food safety performance, and centralized mechanisms for broad-based collaboration have not been sustained, Congress should consider formalizing the FSWG through statute to help ensure sustained leadership across food safety agencies over time.
Open

As of March 2024, Congress had not acted on this matter.

Fair Labor Standards Act: Extending Protections to Home Care Workers

GAO-15-12
Andrew Sherrill
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Recommendation Status
Department of Labor Depending on the outcome of the litigation, the Secretary of Labor should take steps to ensure the agency will be positioned to conduct a meaningful retrospective review consistent with the Executive Order at an appropriate time. These steps should be taken in consultation with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and could include, for example, identifying metrics that could be used to evaluate the rule, and implementing a plan to gather and analyze the necessary data.
Open

The Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division (WHD) agreed with this recommendation. WHD continues to collect and analyze enforcement data from investigations within the home care industry consistent with practices for its overall enforcement portfolio. In addition, WHD and the Office of the Solicitor served as technical advisors to an evaluation project funded by the Department of Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Policy and Evaluation analyzing state implementation of the home care rule and specifically, the rule's impact on self-directed home care programs. The evaluators

Nuclear Regulatory Commission: NRC Needs to Improve Its Cost Estimates by Incorporating More Best Practices

GAO-15-98
Frank Rusco
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1 Open Recommendations
1 Priority
Agency Recommendation Status
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Priority Rec.
To improve the reliability of its cost estimates, as NRC revises its cost estimating procedures, the NRC Chairman should ensure that the agency aligns the procedures with relevant cost estimating best practices identified in the GAO Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide and ensure that future cost estimates are prepared in accordance with relevant cost estimating best practices.
Open

NRC generally agreed with the recommendation. NRC updated a draft of its cost estimating procedures in January 2020 to conform with agency-wide directives and provided it to the NRC Commissioners for their review. However, as of March 2024, NRC has not issued the final procedures. To fully implement this recommendation, NRC needs to issue its update to its cost estimating procedures to align with best practices identified in our cost estimating guide. By doing so, NRC will have better assurance that its cost estimates are reliable and that the NRC Commissioners have adequate information on

Information Technology: HUD Can Take Additional Actions to Improve Its Governance

GAO-15-56
Valerie C. Melvin
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1 Open Recommendations
1 Priority
Agency Recommendation Status
Department of Housing and Urban Development
Priority Rec.
To establish an enterprise-wide view of cost savings and operational efficiencies generated by investments and governance processes, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development should direct the Deputy Secretary and Chief Information Officer to place a higher priority on identifying governance-related cost savings and efficiencies and establish and institutionalize a process for identifying and tracking comprehensive, high-quality data on savings and efficiencies resulting from IT investments and the IT governance process.
Open

The department has taken steps to address this recommendation. Specifically, in April 2016, HUD provided examples of cost savings that the department had identified by "scrubbing" existing contracts during the budget formulation process, along with copies of a template that it designed and used to help identify such savings. In May 2018, department officials provided a demonstration of the HUD PLUS tool, including screens staff could use to report cost savings and avoidances related to specific projects--although they reported that HUD was not yet using that functionality. In April 2019, OCIO

401(K) Plans: Greater Protections Needed for Forced Transfers and Inactive Accounts

GAO-15-73
Charles Jeszeck
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3 Open Recommendations
Agency Recommendation Status
Social Security Administration To ensure that 401(k) plan participants have timely and adequate information to keep track of all their workplace retirement accounts, the Social Security Administration's Acting Commissioner should make information on potential vested plan benefits more accessible to individuals before retirement. For example, the agency could consolidate information on potential vested benefits, currently sent in the Potential Private Retirement Benefit Information notice, with the information provided in the Social Security earnings and benefits statement.
Open

As of October 2023, SSA continued to disagree with this recommendation. In responding to one suggested way of making information on potential vested plan benefits more accessible to individuals before retirement--namely, including it on the SSA benefits statement, SSA has stated that adding such information would place the agency in a position to respond to issues or questions about ERISA and private pension plans, about which the agency has no firsthand legal or operational knowledge. However, as we acknowledged in our report, the current potential vested plan benefits notice refers those
Department of Labor To prevent forced-transfer IRA balances from decreasing due to the low returns of the investment options currently permitted under the Department of Labor's safe harbor regulation, the Secretary of Labor should expand the investment alternatives available. For example, the forced-transfer IRA safe harbor regulations could be revised to include investment options currently under the qualified default investment alternatives regulation applicable to automatic enrollment, and permit forced-transfer IRA providers to change the investments for IRAs already established.
Open

As of September 2023, DOL had not implemented this recommendation but reported two significant legislative developments relating to the outcome for missing participants' accounts. One development is a requirement to establish a Retirement Savings Lost and Found, which will make it possible for participants to more easily locate their retirement savings when it has been forced out of their former plan. The other development is a new statutory prohibited transaction exemption that will facilitate "automatic portability transactions", which involve automatic transfer of assets held in an IRA
Congress To better protect the retirement savings of individuals who change jobs, while retaining policies that provide 401(k) plans relief from maintaining small, inactive accounts, Congress should consider amending current law to repeal the provision that allows plans to disregard amounts attributable to rollovers when determining if a participant's plan balance is small enough to forcibly transfer it.
Open

As of March 2024, there has been no Congressional action on this recommendation. Although the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 raised the amount of vested savings that could be forced out of a 401(k) plan, it did not address whether or not the definition of vested savings for this purpose would continue to exclude rollovers. We reported that rollover savings are always vested when they are transferred into a plan account, but the law permits plans to ignore rollover savings when calculating the vested balance eligible for forced distribution and transfer. Having embraced new policies around auto

Financial Stability Oversight Council: Further Actions Could Improve the Nonbank Designation Process

GAO-15-51
Lawrance L. Evans, Jr.
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2 Open Recommendations
Agency Recommendation Status
Financial Stability Oversight Council To help ensure that FSOC is comprehensively identifying and considering companies, the Secretary of the Treasury in consultation with FSOC members, should establish procedures to evaluate companies in Stage 2 and Stage 3 under both statutory determination standards when an evaluation in either stage concludes that a company does not meet one of the standards, or document--on a company-specific or more general basis--why the second determination standard is not relevant for determination evaluations.
Open

In December 2019, FSOC adopted final interpretive guidance that revises its approach to evaluating and determining whether to designate nonbank financial companies. The final revised guidance prioritizes an activities-based approach to identifying and addressing potential risks to financial stability and states that FSOC will pursue company-specific determinations only if the activities-based approach is not sufficient. The guidance further states that if FSOC does consider a company-specific determination, its evaluation will focus primarily on the first determination standard. The guidance
Financial Stability Oversight Council To help ensure that FSOC is comprehensively identifying and considering companies, the Secretary of the Treasury in consultation with FSOC members, should develop a process to collect information necessary for Stage 1 analysis, as appropriate, from certain nonbank financial companies for which public or regulatory information is otherwise unavailable. For example, FSOC could have companies for which such information is unavailable and that meet certain characteristics (such as quantitative thresholds similar to those used in Stage 1) report necessary information to the Office of Financial Research.
Open

In December 2019, FSOC adopted final interpretive guidance that revises its approach to evaluating and determining whether to designate nonbank financial companies. The final revised guidance introduces a new stage 1 of the designation process in which FSOC would notify a nonbank financial company under review and consider available public and regulatory information. While the guidance states that a company under review in stage 1 may submit information it deems relevant to the evaluation, FSOC would not require the company to submit information during stage 1. We will continue to monitor FSOC

Consumer Product Safety Oversight: Opportunities Exist to Strengthen Coordination and Increase Efficiencies and Effectiveness

GAO-15-52
Alicia Puente Cackley
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Recommendation Status
Congress To improve existing coordination of oversight for consumer product safety, Congress should consider establishing a formal comprehensive oversight mechanism for consumer product safety agencies to address crosscutting issues as well as inefficiencies related to fragmentation and overlap such as communication and coordination challenges and jurisdictional questions between agencies. Different types of formal mechanisms could include, for example, creating a memorandum of understanding to formalize relationships and agreements or establishing a task force or interagency work group. As a starting point, Congress may wish to obtain agency input on options for establishing more formal coordination.
Open

This matter is an action identified in GAO's annual Duplication and Cost Savings reports. As of March 2024, no legislation was identified that would establish a collaborative mechanism to facilitate communication across the relevant agencies and to help enable them to collectively address crosscutting issues, as GAO suggested in November 2014. Some of the agencies with direct regulatory oversight responsibilities for consumer product safety reported that they continue to collaborate to address specific consumer product safety topics. However, without a formal comprehensive oversight mechanism
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