Peer Review

Compliance With the Privacy Act and Federal Advisory Committee Act Gao ID: GGD-91-48 April 17, 1991

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed six federal agencies' compliance with the Privacy Act of 1974 and the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) in their peer reviews of grant applications, focusing on: (1) how agencies kept their peer review records and whether applicants had access to them; (2) whether agencies misclassified peer review records as being subject to, or exempt from, the Privacy Act; and (3) whether the agencies chartered peer review panels and operated as advisory committees in compliance with FACA.

GAO found that: (1) four agencies properly classified their peer review records as Privacy Act records, since the records included personal information and were retrieved through a personal identifier; (2) the other two agencies did not classify their records as Privacy Act records, since they did not access their records by a personal identifier; (3) one of those two agencies improperly retrieved records on three occasions using the applicant's name, failing to comply with the Privacy Act; (4) one agency installed a new computer system in October 1990 that was capable of retrieving records through applicant name; (5) all six agencies maintained similar files documenting the peer review process, and did not include irrelevant personal applicant information in their files; (6) only a few applicants asked to review their records under the Privacy Act; (7) all six agencies routinely provided feedback to applicants on the results of peer review; (8) 215 files indicated no instances where agencies denied evaluation information feedback on the peer review process or had incomplete information; (9) four agencies chartered or were chartering their peer review panels as FACA advisory committees, while the other two believed that their panels did not meet FACA advisory committee criteria; and (10) 1 agency chartered 140 panels under FACA, but had about 30 unchartered panels during fiscal year 1990.

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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