USDA Telecommunications

This report discusses the Agriculture Department's (USDA) efforts to improve its management of telecommunications resources and act on opportunities to realize savings. GAO determines what steps USDA has taken to address the telecommunications management problems that GAO cited in earlier reports and the extent to which these problems have been resolved. (See GAO/AIMD-95-97, Apr. 1995, GAO/AIMD-95-219R, Sept. 1995, GAO/AIMD-95-203, Sept. 1995, and GAO/AIMD-96-59, Apr. 1996.) In these reports, GAO recommended that USDA act immediately to (1) establish the sound management practices needed to cost effectively manage telecommunications and eliminate unnecessary services, (2) consolidate and optimize Federal Telecommunications System 2000 resources when opportunities exist to do so, (3) plan networks in support of information and resource-sharing needs, and (4) correct telephone abuse and fraud problems and mitigate future risks in this area.

GAO noted that: (1) USDA has taken positive steps to begin correcting its telecommunications management weaknesses--improvements that the department says could reduce its $200 million-plus reported annual investment in telecommunications by as much as $70 million each year; (2) for example, USDA conducted a departmentwide reengineering study and is beginning to test a redesigned approach for managing telecommunications resources; (3) USDA has also taken action to eliminate some redundant services and reduce costs; (4) however, USDA has not achieved significant cost savings or management improvements because many of the department's corrective actions are incomplete or inadequate; (5) specifically, USDA has not: (a) established the sound management practices necessary for ensuring that telecommunications resources are cost-effectively managed and payments for unused, unnecessary, or uneconomical services are stopped; (b) consolidated and optimized telecommunications to achieve savings where opportunities exist to do so; (c) adequately planned integrated networks in support of information sharing needs; and (d) determined the extent to which the department is at risk for telephone abuse and fraud and acted to mitigate those risks nationwide; (6) further, it is unclear how and when these needed corrective actions will be implemented because the department has not established an effective action plan or strategy for addressing GAO's recommendations with timeframes, milestones, and resources for making improvements; and (7) a major factor contributing to this situation is that no one at USDA has been given overall responsibility, authority, and accountability for fixing USDA's long-standing telecommunications management problems.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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