I am a fellow, prod to have you all here, and also i am one of your two cohosts from representing the school of Public Policy and Public Administration, where we prepare lots and lots of wonderful students for federal service as well as service in a variety of part of the public and nonprofit sector. Im delighted to be here for several reasons. Good to see a lot of my old friends. With 12 of our faculty are not the fellows. At least a couple of us are here at this sort of midsummer, a lot of people at the beach and its great you all are you. Its an important topic, and we are delighted to be here to invite you to host, and also its wonderful always to see gene dodaro. Just a couple months ago i was up on this stage giving, being part of the arthur awards commission to give gene a Lifetime Achievement award. I dont know if you know that but he was an Arthur Flemming award winner very early in his career. Its an award that goes to federal leaders early in their career, and as i said it was great to give that to gene because he did as well. So i was just here and now im here again think its great to have gene today are here on the stage again. So thank you. Im going to pass the baton to terry gerton who i am just so excited is our leader at napa. I have just been delighted to see all the wonderful things shes doing at napa, and im sure those of you in the audience from napa would agree with me. So thank you for having this idea and thank you for letting us participate. Terry gerton. [applause] well, thanks kathy a thanks to all of you for joining us here on an august wednesday for not being on recess, and instead coming to join us for what we think is a very, very timely event. I would also like to thank kathy and gw school and also barbara and the American University school of Public Administration for sponsoring the event today. For those of you who may not be fully with the academy, we are a nonpartisan, nonprofit congressionally chartered organization, charged with identifying emergency issues against a federal, state and local governments improve their performance. The academies mission is to provide trusted advice, advice that is timely, actionable, and objective on Public Management issues. And the source of our expertise is our membership, r 850 fellows who are current and former cabinet officials, members of congress, governors, mayors, legislators, jurists, business executives, public managers and scholars. They are elected fellows because of their distinguished contribution to the field of Public Administration through scholarship, civic activism and government service. Issue were celebrating our 50th anniversary pic since our establishment in 1967, the academy has responded to multitude of request for assistance from agencies across the government, and is undertaken numerous studies on issues of particular interest to congress, the administration, and stakeholders in general. We are in the business of making government work and we have a great partner in that effort in the government accounting office. I have to confess when i was in the government i didnt always see gao that way, and you might not either, but their biannual publication of the high risk list generates a powerful tool for improving government at the federal level. The dreaded high risk list as some people call it has often been portrayed as a room at the hotel california. You can check in but you can never leave. Or sometimes its a personally address invitation for leaders of selected agencies to spend some time with her closest friends in congress. And so i reaction to being on the high risk list is often defensively we want to help her down, defend our agency and her efforts and hope the headlines go away quickly. But there is a different approach thats possible and especially useful. And theres no time like the present when agencies are polishing up the reform plans that are due to omb at the end of september to examine the Lessons Learned by those agencies who responded positively to their appearance on the high risk list and issues raised by gao. It has embraced the challenge, embraced the challenge we can learn lessons from them about how to address that, how to get off and more poorly how to stay off the list. So thats why im so pleased today that weve got a great event that can bring both insight and action to that objective. In that way i think our conversation can be of great use to each of you as you work to improve your agencies operations to omb as they can set the strategy and the practice of governmentwide reform, and the members of congress and citizens who all just what government work better. I think youll find todays discussions and presentations informative and challenging. With also provided you with a copy of the 2016 report from the ibm center for the business of government called managing risk, improving results come lessons for improving government management from gaos high risk list. The report was written by doctor don kelly was a napa fella, a professor and former dean and the school of Public Policy at university of maryland. We will close today session with facilitated table conversation that will give you the opportunity to submit your insights of the day with the city nearest you. I hope you will continue to work through these issues within and across your circles of collaboration so that together we can make government work and work for all of which is the vision of the academy. So again thank you for being here and spending your morning with the spirit i will be followed by barbara who is currently on sabbatical and joining us but having just recently stepped down after serving for five use as a dean of the school of Public Administration at American University. Barbara. [applause] thank you, terry. I am pleased to be here. I am very pleased that American University school of Public Affairs can partner with the National Academy of Public Administration and cosponsor with George Washington university school. This important event. I have a personal interest in this as well as a professional interest. I study as the scholar accountability so this is for me a great morning breakfast and i look forward to the conversation and want to look a lot. But also i am dedicated to the notion that Public Management is the way to address some of the important problems weve got in the world. And so these kind of discussions about how to improve government in these days is particularly important. Now, we know the state and federal Government Agencies and the challenges of operating at high levels of effectiveness have been much in the news of late. But these are perennial issues and the worker gao shows that. These perennial issues of effectiveness requires sustained and serious attention, and our keynote speaker today is someone who is able to lead in that direction. He is able to lead the discussion about what agencies can do to become more effective in their operations, not telling them what their missions are but if they embrace their mission how they might be able to address it in a more effective way. Now, its my pleasure to introduce mr. Gene dodaro, but in the stream i think he needs probably very little introduction. Many of you know his work and most of you will know the work of the Government Accountability office. Gene is our eighth comptroller general and as head of the u. S. Officer Government Accountability he was confirmed to the position in 2010, though he started earlier than that in an interim position. They liked his work so much they kept them. In the Government Accountability office, gene works with the congress and the administration on Major Management reform initiatives. With the agency he helps oversee the development and issuance of hundreds of reports and testimonies each year the coded various congressional committees and individual members of congress. Thithis is a pretty exacting grp of individuals. They have clear expectations what they want, and they dont always get what you want in their reports. So its a delicate act to speak truth to power, and thats one of the things Government Accountability office can do. These reports and the testimonies that are given to congress are part of the products that gao produces to help save money, saving billions of dollars in taxpayer expenditures and contributing to improvements in Government Operations and wide range of government services. Now, gene has testified before Congress Dozens of times on a Foreign National issues. These include nations longterm fiscal outlook as well as efforts to reduce and eliminate overlap and duplication across the federal government. For example, gene has led efforts to fulfill gaos new audit responsibilities under the doddfrank wall street reform and Consumer Protection act. A longterm project of gao has been the development of the high risk list. It focuses on agencies that they specific challenges such as reducing improper payments under medicare or medicaid or improving the pentagons business practices. And those are just bookends of the range of competent issues. Nobody knows the high risk list better than gene. What causes agencies to be listed on it, how agencies get off it, and what it takes to stay off it. More importantly, no one has more insight into the positive change that can happen when Agency Leaders commit to implementing the kind of Management Practices and process controls that can mitigate risk, knowing the problem give you a chance to address the problem. So the worker gao helps our agencies. The work of gao helps our congress. The worker gao helps our country. Please join me in welcoming the leader of that agency, mr. Gene dodaro. [applause] thank you very much, barber, for that kind introduction. I want to thank you and kathy for helping sponsor this program and napa and terry for organizing it. Im 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 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 more sustainable longterm fiscal path, i mentioned high risk list. And at gaos role is not going to identify areas of high risk but to help agencies appropriately, given our independence, help them get off the list. And thats the way we view success at gao is helping the government operate better, more efficiently and effectively by solving these highrisk problems. The High Risk Program had its genesis in the late 1980s in some scandals that had occurred in the federal government. And congress became concerned that these major breakdowns occurred in their view with little warning. And so they asked gao to come up with a list of programs that have major problems and that were at risk of having major breakdowns, so that actions can be taken to avoid Serious Problems and avoid crises. So we began with developing a list based on the work that we are done at the gao. We identified 14 areas, and then we started to get into a routine when we updated the list with the beginning of each new congress to allow congress to have this list to upset its oversight agenda, and in doing that it also coincided with the beginnings of new administrations as they came in and took over their responsibilities in government as well. Now the list initially focused on fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement in the federal government. But over time weve added the areas in need of broadbased transformation. Because we felt it was very important to have the federal government be responsive to changes in the environment, both internationally and domestically to prepare it self to meet contemporary challenges. And those that are likely to be confided in the future. So its not only solving management problems but its preparing government for the future to make sure that it meets its responsibilities. So good example of transformation and that we identified is protecting the public and medical products safety. It was set up to oversee Domestic Production of pharmaceuticals in the United States, medical devices, but most ingredients for pharmaceutical medical, medicine right now, about 80 of the ingredients and about half of finished drugs come from foreign manufacturers. So fda had to change its practices to look for in a global marketplace to make sure they were protecting Public Safety rather than just Domestic Production in the United States. So in 2000 as the program evolved, we worked with the executive branch to clearly specify the criteria that gao uses in identifying which high risk areas to include on the list. And so we spelled those out and we included things such as Public Health and safety. National security, Homeland Security, those issues they could have an economic effect on our country. And areas that were large dollar risk, anything to be in the list has to be about a billion dollars or more to be at risk. Importantly, in that document is also the criteria that we use to today agencies off the list or to reduce the area of risk. And those five criteria are leadership commitment, as barbara mentioned, sustained leadership commitment is imperative and sort of a prerequisite to attacking these problems at the agencies. The agencies have to have the capability, this is the resources and the people and the skills necessary to address the problems at hand. Thirdly, they have to have an action plan. They need a very specific plan with goals and measures and milestones to track progress. Since these are among the most significant problems the federal government is facing, they dont get stalled overnight. And so you need to have a good plan to get there and measure your progress along the way. Then you have to have, fourthly, a monitoring effort to make sure that you are staying on top of this, making refinements and necessary adjustments as things proceed. And then finally you have to demonstrate progress. You dont have to have the risk completely solved down to zero, but you have to have it under management as much as possible. And yet to demonstrate you are actually fixing some of the problems, the root causes of the high risk areas, and demonstrating that you are making necessary improvements. Then we decide to do this, to focus the agencies attention on what actions are needed. We developed a couple of other techniques over the years. One is that weve had for the last several administrations regular meetings between omb, the Deputy Director for management is usually the convener of the meetings, with gao and with the agencies on the high risk list. So in addition to bilateral discussions between gao and agencies, omb has become involved in the process, and is helpful from a resource allocation standpoint and also since many of the high risk areas involve multiple agencies, not just the Single Agency on the list, to a omb involved. And congress recognized the importance of this last year in 2016. The past the Program Management improvement accountability act. And that basically requires the deputy at omb to do a portfolio review of the area that gao identifies as a highrisk area, and create a government wide council to focus on improving program and project management, and to review the areas that gao has identified as high risk and make recommendations to omb as part of this process. So thats very important process as well. The other part of the evolution that we started in 2015 was to give a greater level of specificity to the agencies as to what their progress was as they proceeded in a highrisk area. So we developed a rating criteria for each of the five areas that i mention that are important to get off the list. And so we decided that they either met, partially met, or did not meet each of the five criteria is to give them a more specific scorecard. And a roadmap to follow. And then in our discussions with them, individually and with omb, we talk 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. And in some agencies weve 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 it had been on the high risk list. We identified 31 different actions that needed to be taken, and the department of Homeland Security reports on those actions every six months in terms of their selfassessment on how well they are doing against gaos criteria. We can evaluate their selfassessment and provide our views. And so that area has been narrowed over time but right now it is focused mainly on the Management Integration functions within the department, particularly Acquisition Management and financial management. As well as Human Resource management at the department. But its been a very significant way to achi