Overlapping Programs

The federal government hosts 47 job-training programs, 44 of which overlap. It runs 80 programs for the "transportation disadvantaged". Another 82 programs spread across 10 separate agencies endeavor to improve teacher quality - something hundreds of local school districts are already focused on.

These are just a few of the findings in a blockbuster report  on government waste and inefficiencies released by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office. The report identifies billions of dollars in potential savings if Congress just had the will to streamline initiatives that target politically popular causes.

The study found 33 areas with "overlap and fragmentation" in the federal government. Among them, it found:

• Fifty-six programs across 20 agencies dealing with financial literacy. 
• More than 2,100 data centers - up from 432 a little more than a decade ago across 24 federal agencies. GAO estimated the government could save up to $200 billion over the next decade by consolidating them. 
• Twenty programs across seven agencies dealing with homelessness. The report found $2.9 billion spent on the programs in 2009. "Congress is often to blame" for fragmentation, GAO wrote in this section, explaining that the duplicative programs in multiple agencies cause access problems for potential participants. 
• Eighty-two "distinct" teacher-quality programs across 10 agencies. Many of them have "duplicate sub-goals," GAO said. Nine of them address teacher quality in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math. 
• Fifteen agencies administering 30 food-related laws. "Some of the oversight doesn't make any sense" the report stated bluntly. 
• Eighty economic development programs. 

In some cases, the programs in question struggled to account for what they did. Take, for instance, domestic food assistance initiatives. According to GAO, 18 such programs are administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services -- with GAO estimating $62.5 billion spent on them. But "little is known about the effectiveness" of 11 of those programs, the report states. 

Similarly, of the 47 job-training programs run out of the federal government, only five could provide an "impact study" since 2004 looking at "outcomes." About half of them provided no performance review at all since 2004.