I want to thank you and kathy for sponsoring this program and for organizing it. I am very pleased to be here, so good morning to all of you. I would like to talk a little bit about the genesis of the high risk list, and efforts associated with helping the agencies navigate their way off the list. When i was at my confirmation hearing, and Congress Asked me what some of my Top Priorities were, in addition to trying to get the federal government on a path, itainable fiscal mention the high risk list. It was not only to identify areas of high risk, but the help agencies appropriately giving our agencies get off the list. That is the way we view success at gao, is helping the government operate more effectively by solving these highrisk problems. The High Risk Program had its 1980s in the late some scandals that have occurred in the federal government. Congress became concerned that these major breakdowns occurred in their view with little warning. Ao to come up g ofh a list of programs having major breakdowns of the actions could be taken to avoid serious problems, and avoid crises. With developing a list based on the work that we had , family started to get into a routine where we updated the list with the beginning of each new congress to allow congress to have this list to help set its oversight agenda. In doing that, a coincided with the beginnings of new administrations as they came in and took over their responsibilities and government as well. On list initially focused fraud, waste abuse and mismanagement in the federal government. Time, we have added the areas in need of broadbased transformation. It was very important to have the federal government be responsive to changes in the environment, both internationally, and domestically to prepare its self to meet contemporary challenges, and those that are likely to be confronted in the future. It is not only solving management problems, but it is preparing government with the future to make sure that it meets its responsibility. The transformation area is protecting the public and medical product safety. Fda was set up to oversee domestic reduction of pharmaceuticals in the united states, and medical devices, the most ingredients for medicinetical medical it right now about 80 of ingredients, and half of finished drugs come from foreign manufacturers. Practices change its to work more any global marketplace, to make sure they are protecting Public Safety rather than this rather than just in the united states. Evolves,as the program we work with the executive branch, who to clearly specify the material gao uses, and identify which high risk areas to include on the list. We spell those out and we included rings Like Public Health and safety. Security, Homeland Security, those things that could have an economic effect on our country. Large dollart were risks. Anything to be on the list has to be about 1 billion or more to be at risk. ,mportantly, in that document there is also the criteria that we used to take agencies off the list. Or to reduce the area of risk. Those five criteria are leadership commitment, as barbara mentions, sustained leadership commitment is comparative and a prerequisite to attacking on these problems at the agencies. The agencies have to have the capability. This is the resources, the people, the skills necessary to. Ddress the problems at hand thirdly, they have to have an action plan. Very specific plan with goals, measures and milestones to track progress. These are among the most significant problems the federal government is facing. They do not get solved overnight. You need to have a good plan to get there and measure your progress along the way. You have to have a monitoring effort to make sure that your staying on top of this, making refinements, necessary proceed. Ts as beings finally have to demonstrate progress. You dont have the you dont have to have the risk completely resolved to zero, we are to have it under management as much as possible, and you have to demonstrate you are actually fixing some of the problems, the root problems of the high risk area. And demonstrating that your making necessary improvements. Then you decide to do this, to focus the agencys intentions on what actions are needed. We have developed a couple of other techniques over the years. We have had, for the last several administrations, regular meetings between omb, the Deputy Director for management is usually the convener of the meeting. And with the agencies on a high risk list. Addition to bilateral discussions between gao and the agencies, omb has become involved in the process. It is helpful from a resource allocation standpoint, and also since many of the high risk areas involve multiple agencies. Not just single agencies on the list that have omb involved. Congress recognize the importance of this last year. In 2016 a past the Program Management improvement accountability act. That basically requires the to do a portfolio review of any area of the gao identifies as a high risk area. Wideeate a Government Council to focus on improving program and project management, and to review the areas that gao has identified as high risk, and make recommendations for omb as part of this process. That is a very important process as well. The other part of the evolution was to started in 2015 give a greater level of specificity to the agencies as was as aheir progress proceeding in the high risk areas. We have developed a rating criteria for each of the five areas that i mentioned, that are important to get off the list. ,e decided that they either met partially met, or did not meet each of the five criterias to give them a more specific scorecard, and a roadmap to follow. Them, discussion with individually, and with omb, we talked about what specifically remains to be done in each of those five criteria areas that i mentioned earlier, in order to get off the list. We haveagencies identified very specific things that they need to do. For example, the department of Homeland Security, in terms of transforming and managing the Department Since it was created in 2003 and was on the high risk list. We identified 31 different actions that needed to be taken. The department of Homeland Security reports on those actions every six months, in terms of their selfassessment, on how well they are doing in the criteria. We then evaluate their selfassessment and provide our views. That area has been narrowed over time. Right now it is focus mostly on the management functions within the department. Particularly Acquisition Management and financial management, as well as Human Resource management. It has been a very significant way to achieve progress over time by getting greater specificity, and greater clarity on how well the agencies are implementing those programs and making progress addressing the high risk areas. Was inest update february of this year, 2017 as the new congress was convening. We had a new administration. There had been 32 areas on the high risk list coming off of 2015. We reported that 23 of the 32 either met or partially met all five criteria is for coming off the list. That was a very significant amount of progress over a period we were very pleased about that. During that, congress was 12. Highriskre just areas. One area on the list is assessing and managing toxic chemicals. Gave them Greater Authority to get information from Chemical Companies that would put them in a better position in order to make those determinations to better protect Public Health and safety from toxic chemicals. That was a very significant move. Congress also created a couple of councils on the Property Management areas, which would be on the list for a while. We believe the government had too much unneeded excess property. They needed to manage that area better. To help deal with Property Management issues across the government. That2 laws were passed addressed it. We designate also, for each high risk area, where Congress Needs to act, as well as the executive branch agencies. It is very clear. This effort involves discussions, not only with the administration, but with congress to make sure that they every time we update the high risk list, we have testimonies for the senate, Homeland Security and Government Affairs committee. They have sponsored the highrisk program over the year. At has become one of the it has become one of the best programs in our history. The results of a program for improving the federal governments operations. Heart areas of progress that we cited in our 2017 report, we took one area off of the list completely which was information sharing. This was a big concern after 9 11. In National Security issue that needed to be dealt with and we added it to our highrisk list. We were working with the director of the National Intelligence operations with all of the agencies on the list. It was an area that involved multiple state agencies local communities as well, the private sector and various sectors of our economy. Congress passed legislation requiring more information better information sharing environment to be created. The agency made a lot of progress in that effort in the area. To our satisfaction to take them off the list. Does that mean there with zero risk associated with this, of course not. It was a process to manage the list, to share information to protect those against terrorism related incidents. I am very pleased that they are part of the panel today and you can get there was active on how to Work Together with them to have them make progress to achieve that end result to be off the list. When we take something off of the list, i always mention to the agency in congress that just because it is off the list, does not mean it is out of sight. We keep an eye on some of these and some have indeed been added back to the highrisk list. Of theirlip in terms progress over time. Sustained attention is really an underpinning of this issue, not only within the administration but across the administration. I view the highrisk list is a good way to ensure that we maintain this across congress is over time. Hice have a narrow high risk area. Commentsntioned in the about the gao highrisk list, the urban legend is that if you get on, you do not get off. That is not true. 20 areas off over of the list in the past few years. One of the areas you will hear from on the panel today is on supply Chain Management at the dod which was one of the turner members back in 1990 that was on the list along with medicare, dod Weapons Systems acquisition, contract management and nasa. There are still on the list but they are making great progress. But supply Chain Management area, they were actually able to, we took the inventory component off the list. In addition they have a very good corrective action plan and ingress not involved supporting the need for corrective action plans. They have implemented and have actually been reducing excess inventories there, they have made great, tangible progress in addition to having a better Management Structure in place. So, we thought that we needed to needed to area narrow that area and recognize the progress that they had made in that area. We also as usual identified new highrisk areas. We identified three this past there are a believe number of risks that have not been managed appropriately in 2010 census in 2012 for example cost more money than it had cost in history. The 2020 census is not yet apparently have an effective cost estimate in place area there are a number of new areas in which they are thinking about using. For example using administrative records to reduce the need to send people doortodoor if there are no responses to read but these risks are not very well managed yet. We made a number of recommendations to them, about 30, only six have been implemented so far. There are also environmental liabilities, especially in Nuclear Weapon cleanup activities and also cleaning up military activities. They are now approaching half 1 trillion. We believe that number is probably understated, ed the federal government is ending tens of billions of dollars to clean up these activities that reliability keeps on growing. We really do not have a costeffective way to manage this enormous and growing challenge. Third, as you saw, a pattern of federal programs that are supposed to help Indian Tribes and their members who have fallen way short, both in the educational area, schools, staffing problem staffing problems, hospitals not having great quality standards in place and also, it was taking a long time to get approval from federal Government Agencies to allow Indian Tribes to an to exploit resources on their lands. Best depriving them with capabilities to be able to solve their own problems. These were the areas we identified on our list. Effortmmitted to this and as i mentioned in the last administration, if they got the agency head or deputy or senior officials in the meeting with the omb Deputy Director, i personally would attend the meeting to focus on this. I personally participated in these highrisk areas and i plan to continue to do that as well. Have the responsibility also, under the program of management and improvement accountability act, to evaluate all of these efforts to address these highrisk areas as well. So i am determined to do this, i have a. 5 years left in my 16 15 year term at the gao. G ia plan to stay focused on this as one of our topo priorities. Happy to take any questions at this point before we get into the Panel Discussion if time permits. Yes. We just need to get you a microphone. Thank you. Meredith summers with federal news radio. Thank you. How do you think your physician will affect the highrisk list in the coming years . One of the areas we pointed out mary, is the number of highrisk areas we have identified, and the later years, they have involved multiple agencies working on an issue. So i would be interested to see to what extent those areas will be addressed in the government reorganization effort. The government reorganization, i have sent letters to all major and agencies in the federal government outlining open gao recommendations, not only from our high list but we also have overlap in duplication and fragmentation, and prioritized what i thought were key issues that the agencies needed to personally identify on. Because at any one time, even though 70 77 of our recommendations are implemented, there are probably 4000 or 5000 open recommendations but i prioritized ones that i thought were important. I wanted them to consider them in their reorganization effort, so it is a perfect opportunity for them to look at gao recommendations and see if they want to embrace that as part of their reorganization efforts. So we will wait and see. Part, weve done our have given them the information in order to make better i am headingread for a meeting with all of the new Department Agencies and their leaders. Appropriatee outreach. Thank you very much, james. One of the things that has always amazed me is how some of the programs stay for year after year after year. Wondering, many times we use the shame game in the federal government with the green light, yellow light, under each president s agenda. I am wondering, how do you get whention . It seems like you see things like contracts in the dod, it looks like forever. I was just wondering, are you coordinating at all with the offices of the is actor general and may be holding them accountable and saying guys, what are you doing here . Are you helping fix these problems . One of the areas caffe, that we look at to help us inform us about the high risk areas is the igs are required by law to produce management challenges list to their agencies. That area, that list that they develop is a very poor and sorts, and many of their management challenges, overlap with our highrisk areas. So they are working on that area and very importantly. Is in cybert area security. I became concerned back in the 1990s about Cyber Security. Asdesignated Cyber Security a highrisk area across the federal government in 1997. This year is that 20 Year Anniversary of designating it, so nobody can say that we did not want people. We did not warn people of the problem. We have made it dozens of recommendations over the years and worked with ig and congress on this. A lot of the Cyber Security work right now is done by the igs as part of the legislation. We are involved in helping the agencies called the highrisk areas. Criticalated 2003 in Infrastructure Protection as well,. These are important areas. So the ig is working as partners with us to address these highrisk areas, both through challenges and working with us on government wide issues across both that areas. You have to be persistent in addressing these issues. I will not take anything off the highrisk list on till it is appropriate to take it off the list. Some of the biggest management problems and the federal government, and among the problems, the issues change over time. One of the examples in the medicaid program. We added it right after we added through, and it is now the expansion and through the Affordable Care act and other areas changing over time. Medicare and medicaid are among the Fastest Growing federal programs and they are finding difficulties managing proper payments in those areas. Wide, in 2016 it was 124 billion. 60 billion was medicare and