ERISA Targeting

Gao ID: HRD-93-34R September 30, 1993

GAO reviewed the Department of Labor's enforcement of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), focusing on the Pension and Welfare Benefit Administration's (PWBA) investigation of pension and welfare benefit plans' violations of ERISA fiduciary requirements. GAO found that PWBA: (1) could make computer targeting more effective and efficient by designing program thresholds to better identify plans that are likely to violate ERISA and analyzing computer targeting programs in combination with one another rather than individually; (2) could improve program testing and validation by randomly selecting plans for investigation and using a more appropriate formula to determine the minimum sample size; (3) has no evidence that the highest-ranking plans under investigation are more likely to violate ERISA; and (4) may be able to target plans and test programs more effectively by using multivariate analyses that consider all applicable characteristics of the plans.

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.

Director: Joseph F. Delfico Team: General Accounting Office: Health, Education, and Human Services Division Phone: (202) 512-7215


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