GAO urges changes in budgeting for national security

The Government Accountability Office has recommended that the U.S. government establish a central national security budget and then set aside money by responsibilities, breaking with the current arrangement of letting departments and agencies decide how best to arrange their budgets.

That setup has created "a patchwork of activities that waste scarce funds and limit the overall effectiveness of federal efforts," said Gene L. Dodaro, the GAO's director and acting U.S. comptroller general.

"Different organizational structures, planning processes and funding sources to plan for and conduct their national security activities . . . can hinder interagency collaboration," Dodaro said, with the result being "budget requests and congressional appropriations that tend to reflect individual agency concerns." His comments came in a speech about national-security budgeting at National Defense University this month.

Dodaro cited a couple of examples for his position. Since 2005, he said, separate efforts to improve governance within Iraq's ministries -- by the State and Defense departments and the U.S. Agency for International Development -- have "contributed to U.S. efforts not meeting the goal for key Iraqi ministries" to take more responsibility for reconstruction projects.

He also said the Pentagon's regional commands -- such as Central Command, which includes the Middle East and Central Asia -- "are aligned differently" and cover different areas than do the State Department's regional bureaus. That makes coordination "more challenging and [creates] the potential for gaps and overlaps in policy implementation," Dodaro said.

His call for developing and implementing "overarching strategies to achieve national security objectives" reflects the findings of a December 2008 report by the Project on National Security Reform. The report recommended "issuing an integrated national security strategy and creating a unified national security budget"; several leading members of the Obama administration were involved in that project, including Adm. Dennis C. Blair, now director of national intelligence, and James B. Steinberg, now deputy secretary of state.

More recently, the Center for American Progress -- a think tank led by John Podesta, President Obama's transition chief -- came out with a similar recommendation. Last November, in a report titled "Integrating Security," it called for "a unified national security budget that enables policymakers to more readily make the trade-offs necessary between defense, economic development and diplomacy."

That report went further than did Dodaro, saying a unified national security budget could be put together by the National Security Council and the Office of Management and Budget, and would "identify . . . security priorities within budgetary constraints." It would also include "a prioritized list of critical missions; and identify the major federal programs, infrastructure and budget plan designed to implement the strategy," the center suggested.

Dodaro also focused last week on other weaknesses in the Pentagon's dealing with taxpayer dollars. He started with the oft-repeated fact in such reports that, the Defense Department "is one of the few federal entities that cannot accurately account for its spending or assets," even though it represents a major part of the federal budget.

For 20 years, he said, the GAO had urged changes in the department's financial management, with little success. But he said: "Problems with asset accountability further complicate critical functions such as supporting current plans to withdraw troops and equipment from Iraq."

The Marine Corps this year, he added, will audit its 2010 statement of budgetary resources as a test case for the rest of the Defense Department.

- Walter Pincus, WashingtonPost.com

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Panel witnesses press for GAO audits of intelligence agencies

Government and public policy experts Friday said legislation is badly needed that would affirm the right of GAO to audit programs and financial activities of the U.S. intelligence agencies, especially because their scope and complexity have grown enormously since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Such legislation has been introduced by Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, who chairs a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee on government oversight.

"It is my strong belief that the intelligence community could benefit from the Government Accountability Office's expertise in reviewing organizational transformations and management reforms," Akaka said during a hearing of his subcommittee Friday. "GAO has substantial expertise evaluating virtually all of the bread-and-butter management challenges that the intelligence community is confronting." Experts who testified at the hearing included GAO Director David Walker, National War College professor Marvin Ott and Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. They all said they support Akaka's legislation.

Akaka and Walker said they believe GAO has authority to audit the intelligence agencies. Akaka's bill would essentially allow Congress to clarify that such authority exists. The hearing did not include a witness from the intelligence agencies. Walker said the opposition by intelligence officials to allowing GAO to conduct audits goes back decades. He said he believes GAO could conduct audits of such things as management practices, personnel reforms and financial transactions without needing to review classified sources and methods or covert operations.


-Chris Strohm, GovExec.com
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