Federal Reports: Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Agencies Should More Fully Implement the Process to Streamline Reporting Requirements

Abstract

The Government Performance and Results Modernization Act of 2010 (GPRAMA) requires the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to coordinate an annual review of agencies' plans and reports for Congress and publish proposals to eliminate or modify reports that may be outdated or duplicative. Since the passage of GPRAMA, OMB posted three lists of proposals (in 2012, 2014, and 2016) on Performance.gov. These lists contained a total of 523 new proposals. In 2014, Congress acted on agencies' report modification proposals by eliminating 51 reporting requirements, including 34 that were identified through this process. As shown in the figure, GAO found that OMB did not implement the report modification process on an annual basis, as required by GPRAMA. OMB staff said that they implemented the report modification process every other year because reporting requirements are relatively static. OMB staff said, in future years, they plan to implement the process annually as required.