WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — EPA officials provided several reasons for meeting relatively few of the performance goals and not measuring the others, the GAO reported.
The report, issued on Thursday, said that "of the 17 performance goals in its 2009–2013 grants management plan, the… EPA fully met two, partially met six, and did not meet one. EPA did not measure its progress for the other eight goals."
"According to officials, EPA did not measure progress for some goals because it redirected resources from achieving grants management goals to managing American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 grants, under which EPA more than doubled its grants in 2009," the report read.
For ten goals, GAO found a negative effect of EPA not measuring or partially meeting them, including an absence of data on compliance with policies, inefficient processes that increased workload, delayed processes for awarding grants, and delayed training and policy implementation.
Although EPA deployed two web-based reporting tools to pull data from its IT system, it uses them to track only eight percent, or 17, of the 212 grants directive requirements GAO reviewed, making it difficult for managers to compare actual performance to expected results agency-wide, the GAO observed.
"EPA plans to fully implement an updated IT system by 2017, but it has had similar plans since 2009 and has not yet done so," it said.
In 2014, EPA disbursed about $4.6 billion in grants through its headquarters and ten regional offices to states and others, in part to implement laws, the GAO noted.
The US Government Accountability Office is an independent, nonpartisan agency that works for Congress and investigate show the federal government spends taxpayer money.
