High-Risk Series

In 1990, GAO began a special effort to identify federal programs at high risk for waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement. GAO issued a series of reports in December 1992 on the fundamental causes of the problems in the high-risk areas; it followed up on the status of these areas in February 1995. This, GAO's third series of high-risk reports, revisits these troubled government programs and designates five additional areas as high-risk (defense infrastructure, information security, the year 2000 problem, supplemental security income, and the 2000 decennial census), bringing to 25 the number of high-risk programs on GAO's list. The high-risk series includes an overview, a quick reference guide, and 12 individual reports. The high-risk series may be ordered as a full set, a two-volume package including the overview and the quick reference guide, or as 12 separate reports describing in detail these vulnerable government programs. GAO summarized the high-risk series in testimony before Congress (GAO/T-HR-97-22).

GAO found that: (1) IRS has made some progress in addressing the problems GAO has identified in the four high-risk areas; (2) IRS is finalizing a comprehensive strategy to maximize electronic filing and has begun initiatives to develop a complete integrated systems architecture; (3) in response to GAO recommendations, IRS has also begun to plan both short-term and long-term solutions to its financial management problems, has implemented a new administrative accounting system, and has transferred its payroll processing to the Department of Agriculture's National Finance Center; (4) in dealing with its accounts receivable problems, IRS has streamlined selected notification and collection processes and is developing ways to adjust its collection techniques to address the various characteristics of delinquent taxpayers; (5) IRS' effort to further prevent and deter the filing of fraudulent tax returns has involved increasing the electronic filters and manual checks to screen electronic and paper returns for problems, determine the suitability of those who want to serve as preparers or transmitters of electronic returns, and better identify questionable refund claims; (6) IRS' and Treasury's actions are encouraging, but GAO remains concerned because continued progress is needed to fully implement essential improvements; and (7) until IRS sustains an agency-wide commitment and devotes the necessary management attention to addressing the challenges it faces in modernizing its processes and systems, it cannot hope to solve its high-risk problems.