Department of Commerce

The historic mission of the Department of Commerce is "to foster, promote, and develop the foreign and domestic commerce" of the United States. GAO has identified two key challenges facing the department that we believe merit the attention of America’s senior leadership.

• First, the department’s ability to support future critical weather-forecasting services has been jeopardized by problems with a major satellite acquisition. In particular, the department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has not ensured the efficient and effective acquisition of a crucial $12.5 billion weather satellite system, which has experienced cost overruns, schedule delays, and technical challenges. Meanwhile, the department is initiating efforts to acquire another $7.7 billion environmental satellite system.
• Second, GAO has identified the 2010 Census, which is managed by the department’s Census Bureau, as a high-risk area. The decennial census is a constitutionally mandated enterprise used to apportion and redistrict the U.S. House of Representatives and allocate about $300 billion yearly in federal financial assistance. GAO has placed the 2010 Census on its high-risk list due to, among other reasons, uncertainty over the ultimate cost of the 2010 Census, as well as performance deficiencies with the handheld computers to be used by bureau field staff in conducting the Census.