Management of HHS

Using the Office of the Secretary to Enhance Departmental Effectiveness Gao ID: HRD-90-54 February 9, 1990

GAO examined the role and operations of the Health and Human Services' (HHS) Office of the Secretary (OS) in managing HHS programs and activities.

GAO found that: (1) the lack of an effective strategic planning management system within OS hampered many secretaries' capacity to effectively manage administrative matters and programs; (2) although HHS decisionmaking processes tended to be slow but generally effective, their quality suffered if OS inappropriately used a clearance process designed to ensure that the secretary obtained the knowledge and perspective of department officials before making a decision; (3) although secretaries have appointed chiefs of staff to assist in HHS management, their involvement in various departmental matters has often overlapped with and caused confusion over the duties and responsibilities of other senior OS officials; (4) although secretaries retained authority for policy activities and delegated administrative and program activities to others, they did not monitor those activities to ensure effectiveness and efficiency; (5) HHS did not have an agency-wide, coordinated approach to systematically address its work-force problems; (6) although some operating divisions attempted to solve their own work-force problems, they lacked the comprehensive perspective needed to match human resources to changing operational and program objectives; (7) information management problems in many HHS programs contributed to difficulties in providing good service and assessing program performance; (8) before 1986, OS attempts to improve HHS information management failed because it exerted too much direct control over information management activities; and (9) although past attempts to correct long-standing problems in establishing an effective financial management system proved unsuccessful, HHS developed a plan called the Phoenix Plan, aimed at long-term financial management enhancement efforts.

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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