Summary

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) need to: (1) work with federal agencies to develop and coordinate guidance on data collection and reporting for evaluating the cost-effectiveness of the Income and Eligibility Verification System (IEVS) in accordance to the Computer Matching and Privacy Protection Act of 1988, focusing on whether states had appropriate data collection and reporting systems.

GAO found that: (1) as of February 1990, federal agencies had not developed final guidelines for data collection and reporting for the IEVS computer matching program; (2) most states did not collect sufficient cost and benefit data; (3) states believed that the lack of coordination among federal agencies had a major impact on IEVS implementation; (4) officials responsible for IEVS implementation lacked federal guidance; (5) if federal agencies do not take into account IEVS reporting requirements, states may be required to develop separate and duplicate reporting systems; (6) OMB made little progress in consolidating the collection and reporting of data to meet IEVS and act requirements; (7) due to collection, reporting, and coordination problems, federal agencies established an interagency income verification work group to provide a forum for discussing problems and developing uniform data collection and reporting guidelines for IEVS; and (8) OMB would be responsible for coordinating data collection and reporting requirements for IEVS if duplication continued to be a problem.