GAO is Nonpartisan. Here’s How We Do It.

GAO is known for its fact-based, nonpartisan work for Congress. But how does GAO keep partisanship out of its work when Congress, which directs this work, is political?

Today's WatchBlog post looks at the importance of GAO’s independence and the checks in place to ensure our work remains fact-based and nonpartisan.

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How does GAO’s independence prevent external politics from influencing our work?

Congress understood the importance of having an independent arbiter of the facts when it established GAO in 1921. It would be fair to say we are independent by design.

What does it mean to be an independent agency? It means that while Congress provides us with direction on what to work on, we are not told how to do this work. Nor are we told what we should find during audits.

There are some key features of this independence:

• First, the head of GAO (the Comptroller General of the United States) serves a 15-year term that spans multiple congresses and presidential administrations. Sometimes Republicans are in charge. Sometimes Democrats. Our current Comptroller General, Gene L. Dodaro, has served during five administrations (two Democrat and three Republican), starting with George W. Bush.  
   
• Second, the head of GAO can only be removed by Congress. This is important because it allows GAO—which audits the executive branch agencies and programs—to work free from reprisal should a president or an administration not like our findings. This frees the Comptroller General to “call balls and strikes” as the facts dictate and not based on politics.

How does GAO prevent bias and partisanship from getting into our work?

There are multiple layers of checks and rigorous requirements in place that ensure our work is free from bias and partisanship. These include checks on individual auditors, audit team, and the agency itself.

Listen to our podcast with GAO’s Chief Quality Assurance Officer Tim Bowling, who discusses these checks and requirements, and more.

Rules for auditors. There are rules for auditors on how to conduct audit work with objectivity, integrity, and independence. Those rules are in the Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards—also known as the “Yellow Book.” These are professional standards for individual auditors. 

For example, the Yellow Book requires that auditors be independent (both in fact and appearance), maintain an attitude of impartiality, and are free of conflicts of interest. To meet these requirements, staff at GAO must:

• Complete an annual financial disclosure to demonstrate they do not have a financial stake in the outcome of an audit
• Attest to their independence on a biweekly basis
• Disclose and get approval to participate in some activities outside of work, like serving on a non-profit board

Rules for auditing. The Yellow Book also sets rules for audit institutions—not just GAO, but Offices of Inspector General and state auditing institutions too. These standards speak to the quality and sufficiency of evidence we use to draw conclusions in our reports.

And the Yellow Book requires that we provide executive branch agencies with an opportunity to review and comment on our reports before they are issued. This allows agencies to provide their perspectives.

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Who audits the auditors?

While we’ve outlined the rules for individual staff and the audit work itself, there are even more checks to prevent bias and partisanship from seeping into our work.

Internal quality checks against bias. GAO’s auditing framework includes an extensive review process for our reports.

• There are successive levels of supervisory reviews outside of the audit team.
• GAO’s subject matter experts also provide input throughout the audit and review the final draft. These experts include economists, actuaries, clinical nurses, biologists, attorneys, and data scientists, among others. They review for accuracy, contextual sophistication, and to ensure the methodology used supports conclusions made.
• And after all those reviews, each report then undergoes an extensive fact-checking process. This requires auditors to go line-by-line through a draft and document the underlying evidence for every fact and analysis contained in the report. Once that is complete, another auditor, who is not on the audit team, must then check that the evidence supports the facts and analyses. 

This extensive review and fact-checking process helps ensure that our work is accurate, objective, nonpartisan, and professional. It’s also why GAO’s work is known as the “gold standard” among government auditing entities.  

External reviews of our work. Even with all the checks above, you might think, “That’s still GAO staff reviewing GAO work.” But we also undergo external, independent peer reviews. During these reviews, an international peer review team with representatives from other supreme audit institutions (entities similar to GAO, but in other countries) looks at our compliance with Yellow Book standards. Reviewers randomly select reports to audit with the goal of determining whether that work was suitably designed and executed, and that GAO has maintained its gold standard.

GAO’s most recent review was completed in 2023. As with previous reviews, GAO passed this review with the highest possible rating.

As you can see, our process is rigorous. Our standards are high. And we do all this because we are proud of that reputation and work hard every day to maintain it.

• GAO’s fact-based, nonpartisan information helps Congress and federal agencies improve government. The WatchBlog lets us contextualize GAO’s work a little more for the public. Check out more of our posts at GAO.gov/blog. 
   
• Got a comment, question? Email us at blog@gao.gov.