Computer Matching

Quality of Decisions and Supporting Analyses Little Affected by 1988 Act Gao ID: PEMD-94-2 October 18, 1993

Government agencies have turned to computer matching in recent years in an attempt to stem waste, fraud, and abuse in federal benefit programs. Computer matching has two main goals: to establish and verify applicant and recipient eligibility for federal benefits and to recoup payments and delinquent debts under these programs. Although these agencies have justified their efforts by citing billions of dollars in projected savings, they have often lacked data and analyses to back up these claims. To provide improved analyses of these programs and to protect individuals' privacy, Congress passed the Computer Matching and Privacy Protection Act of 1988. This report examines how agencies have implemented the law. GAO identified 71 computer-matching programs at 14 federal agencies, involving 447 separate matching agreements. GAO reviewed 277 of these agreements in depth to determine whether they included elements required under the act.

GAO found that: (1) the quality of computer matching cost-benefit analyses needs improvement; (2) agencies either have not developed cost-benefit estimates or have estimated costs but not benefits; (3) there is little support for the agencies' cost and benefit estimates, since agencies include only some of their direct, quantifiable costs and benefits in their analyses; (4) the costs and benefits to other agencies and the public are often missing from the analyses, and qualitative costs and benefits are not well documented; (5) agencies are using substantially different methodologies to identify and calculate costs and benefits since the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has not issued specific guidance to agencies on conducting cost-benefit analyses; (6) agencies are not providing full and earnest reviews of proposed matches; (7) newly established data integrity boards have not cancelled ongoing matching programs or have refused to approve proposed matching programs as a result of the new process; (8) there is no evidence that data integrity boards use privacy requirements to determine if a match should be approved; and (9) the implementation of new computer matching procedures has not affected the most important review process.

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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