Government Accountability Office

GAO’s Role in the Presidential Transition

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is an independent, nonpartisan agency in the Legislative branch responsible for examining how the government spends federal funds. The Presidential Transition Act identifies GAO as a source of briefings and materials to help inform new administrations of the major management issues, risks, and challenges they will face. GAO’s transition web pages provide brief summaries of GAO’s published work highlighting the most important risks and management challenges confronting government. These pages are available at www.gao.gov/resoμrces/presidential-transition and include:

Priority Recommendations:

These immediate opportunities to improve government operations and reduce costs warrant priority attention by the Secretaries or agency heads and the Office of Management and Budget. GAO also introduced a new smart phone app “Priorities for Policy Makers” enabling users to search open recommendations by topic or agency; it is available free in the App Store or on Google Play.

Key Issues and High Risks:

This section highlights a range of issues facing the nation and each department and major agency across  government. The High Risk List identifies agencies and program areas that are vulnerabilities to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement, or are in need of transformation.

Management Agenda:

A streamlined tool for new leaders to quickly learn about actions needed to address critical government wide management challenges.