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Open Recommendations (70 total)

Economic and Commercial Diplomacy: State and Commerce Could Build on Efforts to Improve Coordination and Effectiveness

GAO-22-105860
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3 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Commerce The Secretary of Commerce and the Secretary of State should ensure Commerce and State articulate and agree to a process for making and enforcing program decisions in their Memorandum of Understanding for the Partner Post Program. (Recommendation 3)
Open
The Department of Commerce provided an action plan in January 2023. The plan indicates that in collaboration with the Department of State, the MOU was revised to include a new performance review process; specifies the role of the Program Managers and leadership in this process; and designates the Regional Senior Commercial Officer (RSCO) as the decision-maker for their region. As of April 2023, we continue to monitor Commerce's actions in response to this recommendation.
Department of Commerce The Secretary of Commerce and the Secretary of State should ensure that Commerce and State indicate how they will use client feedback on client experiences in their Memorandum of Understanding for the Partner Post Program. (Recommendation 4)
Open
The plan indicates that both the Department of Commerce and the Department of State have agreed to update the Partner Post Program's standard operating procedures to incorporate client feedback/experiences as a review element in the Partner Post Annual Tier Review to continuously improve partner post service delivery. This action is expected to be completed no later than Q4 FY 2023. In addition, the plan indicates that no later than Q2 FY 2024, the Departments will revise the MOU to include indicating how to use client feedback. As of April 2023, we continue to monitor Commerce's actions in response to this recommendation.
Department of Commerce The Secretary of State and the Secretary of Commerce should ensure their agencies indicate a method to evaluate outcomes or a way to track or monitor progress toward goals for the program in their guidance cables for the Deal Team Initiative. (Recommendation 5)
Open
The Department of Commerce provided an action plan in January 2023 indicating its readiness to assist the Department of State in applying best practices in identifying performance measures and will continue to engage State at the working level on determining performance measures that will help State assess and report on its collaborative measures under the Deal Team Initiative (DTI) program, consistent with but not necessarily duplicative of Department of Commerce metrics. Action supporting the Department of State issuance of guidance cables addressing performance measures is expected to be completed no later than Q4 FY 2023. As of April 2023, we continue to monitor Commerce's actions in response to this recommendation.

Export Promotion: Commerce Should Improve Workforce Planning and Management of Its Global Markets Unit

GAO-23-105369
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2 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Commerce The Secretary of Commerce should ensure that the Director General Global Markets regularly reviews the allocation of Foreign Commercial Service Officers and U.S. Field staff, including the justifications of positions that continue to exceed modeled projections for domestic and overseas posts. (Recommendation 2)
Open
The Department of Commerce, the International Trade Administration (ITA), and Global Markets (GM) concurred with our recommendations. Officials said the process for updating GM's staff allocation models began in earnest in May of 2021, but that they still had work to do. They said they conducted an internal study on how to bridge human capital gaps across GM and transformed GM's staffing plan into a table of organization that would help them link budget to staffing and sharpen their understanding of how to measure productivity enhancements. They reported that a cross-organizational approach would be an intense and ongoing multi-year effort. In response to our recommendation, they plan to build on their review of staff allocations, update these procedures, and include them in the Director General's regular review cycle. We will continue to monitor their progress.
Department of Commerce The Secretary of Commerce should ensure that there is a workforce plan that comprehensively and strategically considers GM's entire overseas and domestic workforce and describes leadership action to improve diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. (Recommendation 3)
Open
The Department of Commerce, the International Trade Administration (ITA), and Global Markets (GM) concurred with our recommendations. They said that GM must manage the relationships between its three workforce segments to ensure the systemic linkages between them remain in balance and have upward productivity gains, aligned with their ongoing desire to invest in technology enhancements. They believed this work will allow GM to deliver a comprehensive, iterative workforce plan, which they will map out this fiscal year. In the process, they planned to document linkages with ITA-level efforts related to employees hired using Title 5 authorities. They reported recent success in standardizing and linking its position descriptions for almost all client-facing Civil Service and Locally Employed Staff overseas as a notable starting point. In addition, ITA and GM are working on an ITA wide table of organization which will maintain position information and employee data that will provide a complete picture of filled and vacant positions across ITA. They plan to use the Office of Personnel Management's workforce planning model to serve as a best practice guide and template for GM's efforts to prepare, draft and finalize a comprehensive workforce plan. We will continue to monitor their progress.

2020 Census: Actions Needed to Improve Census Bureau's Process for Working with Governments to Build Address List

GAO-20-17
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Commerce The Secretary of Commerce should ensure that the Director of the Census Bureau improves the use of LUCA results to inform procedures of other decennial operations, such as sharing information on address update quality to inform NRFU planning or administrative records modeling. (Recommendation 5)
Open
Commerce agreed with this recommendation. In its April 2020 action plan, the Bureau indicated that it would investigate how best to improve the flow of address data from governments into other census activities, such as research on administrative records or address canvassing. In December 2022, Bureau officials said that they are documenting various ways this may be implemented. Officials expect that later in the decade the process diagrams that will control the flows of geographic information to and from the Census Data Lake will likely demonstrate the use of address-update data by other decennial activity, such as by administrative-record modeling staff. As of March 2024, officials reported that they had determined the steps required to add LUCA data to the Enterprise Data Lake, but were waiting until other research or operational uses identified their needs for the data before adding LUCA data to the data lake. In order to fully implement this recommendation, the Bureau will need to establish and demonstrate the use of pathways for data on addresses collected from governments and their quality to inform the planning of other census activities that rely on address data.

Telecommunications: Agencies Should Fully Implement Established Transition Planning Practices to Help Reduce Risk of Costly Delays

GAO-20-155
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Commerce The Secretary of Commerce should ensure that the agency's Chief Information Officer updates the telecommunications inventory to include all telecommunications assets and services in use at the agency, and updates Commerce's process for ongoing maintenance of the inventory to include the complete inventory. (Recommendation 1)
Open
Commerce concurred with this recommendation. Commerce officials stated that most bureaus have completed the telecommunications inventory, but some are continuing to gather the inventory across the organization. For example, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is continuing to gather the inventory and estimated completion date is after fiscal year 2024. We will continue to follow-up on the department's efforts to implement this recommendation.

Environmental Justice: Federal Efforts Need Better Planning, Coordination, and Methods to Assess Progress

GAO-19-543
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Commerce The Secretary of Commerce should update the department's environmental justice strategic plan. (Recommendation 1)
Open
In April 2023, the White House issued Executive Order 14096, "Revitalizing Our Nation's Commitment to Environmental Justice for All." Executive Order 14096 builds on the foundational 1998 environmental justice Executive Order 12898 and reiterates a requirement for each federal agency to submit an environmental justice (EJ) strategic plan, to the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) within 18 months of the April 2023 order and every 4 years thereafter. According to the order, each EJ strategic plan shall outline the agency's vision, goals, priority actions, and metrics to address and advance environmental justice, among other directives, based on guidance to be provided by CEQ. As of August 2023, the department agrees with our recommendation and has stated that it plans to complete updates to its EJ strategic plan by the end of December 2023. We will continue to review the department's actions and provide updated information.

Telecommunications: Agencies Should Fully Implement Established Transition Planning Practices to Help Reduce Risk of Costly Delays

GAO-20-155
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Commerce The Secretary of Commerce should ensure that the agency's Chief Information Officer completes efforts to identify future telecommunications needs using a complete inventory of existing telecommunications services; conducts and documents a comprehensive strategic analysis at all bureaus to identify areas for optimization and sharing of telecommunications resources; evaluates the costs and benefits of implementing new telecommunications technology and alternative options at all bureaus; and fully aligns Commerce's telecommunications needs with its long-term IT plans and enterprise architecture. (Recommendation 2)
Open
Commerce concurred with this recommendation. Commerce officials stated that many of the department's bureaus plan to or have already transitioned services to a comparable service. However, as of January 2024, it did not provide evidence to demonstrate its efforts to identify future telecommunications needs using a complete inventory of existing telecommunications services; conducting and documenting a comprehensive strategic analysis at all bureaus to identify areas for optimization and sharing of telecommunications resources; evaluating the costs and benefits of implementing new telecommunications technology and alternative options at all bureaus; and fully aligning Commerce's telecommunications needs with its long-term IT plans and enterprise architecture We will continue to follow-up on the department's efforts to implement this recommendation.

Steel and Aluminum Tariffs: Agencies Should Ensure Section 232 Exclusion Requests Are Needed and Duties Are Paid

GAO-23-105148
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Commerce The Secretary of Commerce should ensure that the Under Secretary for Industry and Security fully assesses the effectiveness of the quantity certification requirement BIS put in place and takes further actions, as needed, to improve the Section 232 exclusion request process. (Recommendation 1)
Open
In commenting on the report, Commerce concurred with this recommendation. The comments noted the known challenges in administering the Section 232 Exclusions Portal and stated that Commerce had proactively begun to take steps to limit the amount of unutilized and underutilized exclusions prior to the release of the report. In January 2024, Commerce stated that it would conduct an internal analysis of unutilized or underutilized quantities since mid-2019 in order to understand the impact of the quantity certification and volume certification reviews. This analysis will review the number of exclusions and quantities requested to determine whether the reviews have had an impact on requestor behavior. Finally, Commerce will also incorporate regular tracking of exclusion quantities and volume certification reviews into its existing weekly Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) so trends can be better monitored in real-time. Commerce expects to complete this by June 30, 2024. GAO continues to monitor Commerce's actions in response to this recommendation.
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