Indian Trust Funds

GAO reviewed the Department of the Interior's efforts to develop an implementation plan for the Secretary of the Interior's Indian trust management improvement project, focusing on the: (1) status of the plan's development; (2) level of participation by key department officials in the development of the plan; (3) main components of the plan; and (4) actions that have been undertaken to implement those components.

GAO noted that: (1) development of the draft implementation plan is substantially complete; (2) Interior's project manager told GAO that as of April 17, 1998, he had received implementation plan sections from the responsible Interior units for each of the 13 subprojects that represent the main components of the plan; (3) the Secretary of the Interior and other key department officials have provided input on various aspects of the plan at steering committee meetings and are now scheduled to review the entire draft plan, which the project manager told GAO he had already given them on May 1, 1998; (4) some actions are already under way to implement several of the subprojects; and (5) the project manager told GAO that it would receive a copy of the implementation plan after the departmental review, which he projected would occur by the middle of June 1998.