Better Evaluations Needed to Weed Out Useless Federal Advisory Committees

Gao ID: GGD-76-104 April 7, 1977

Legislation to control the growing number of advisory committees, 1267 as of December 31, 1975, assigned oversight responsibilities to Congress, the President, and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The OMB is required to make an annual comprehensive review of each committee to determine whether it has carried out its purpose, needs revised responsibilities, or should be merged or abolished.

The OMB and agencies have had a difficult time identifying useless committees because they have not developed objective criteria. Because of lack of leadership by OMB, the agencies have developed their own approaches. Uncertainties existed within agencies about the status of subgroups and ad hoc groups, cost analyses, reporting procedures, and committee missions.

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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