GAO Reports: Reducing Fragmentation, Overlap and Duplication, and Achieving Other Financial Benefits (with Lofchie Comment)

The U.S. Government Accountability Office ("GAO") released two reports regarding opportunities and actions to reduce "fragmentation," "overlap" and "duplication" in the government (see page 2 of the GAO report for a very nice visual explanation of what these terms mean) and to achieve other financial benefits.

In a number of areas, including catfish inspection and geospatial investments, the GAO report identified financial benefits that could result if executive branch agencies or Congress took action. For example, as to catfish, the GAO report found that millions of dollars could be saved by coordinating the efforts of the Food and Drug Administration with the National Marine Fisheries Services. See, in particular, pages 34-36 of the GAO report for more information as to potential savings to be reaped by more efficient regulation of catfish inspections.

Lofchie Comment: When I first saw the title of this report, I assumed it would be about our system of financial regulation. In fact, the report covers quite a lot of topics, from catfish to geospace, but duplicative, fragmented and overlapping financial regulation is not among them. The interesting thing is that the same problems which are evident in financial regulation are also present in catfish inspection.

See: 2013 Annual Report; Government Efficiency and Effectiveness (Statement of Gene L. Dodaro).Related Item: Link here for images of catfish.