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).