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GAO-23-106456 1 (2023-05-12)

handle is hein.gao/gaoorf0001 and id is 1 raw text is: U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 441 G St. N.W. Comptroller General Washington, DC 20548 of the United States May 12, 2023 The Honorable Thomas J. Vilsack Secretary of Agriculture U.S. Department of Agriculture 1400 Independence Avenue, SW Washington, D.C. 20250 Priority Open Recommendations: Department of Agriculture Dear Secretary Vilsack: The purpose of this letter is to provide an update on the overall status of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) implementation of GAO's recommendations and to call your continued attention to areas where open recommendations should be given high priority.1 In November 2022, we reported that, on a government-wide basis, 77 percent of the recommendations we made 4 years ago were implemented.2 USDA's recommendation implementation rate was 86 percent. As of April 2023, USDA had 134 open recommendations. Fully implementing these open recommendations could significantly improve agency operations. I appreciate your leadership and commitment to strengthening USDA's efforts to implement our recommendations, including the continued use of a working group to address priority and other open recommendations. Consequently, the department has increased its rate for implementing our recommendations by 11 percent from last year's letter and 40 percent from the year prior. Since our June 2022 letter, USDA has implemented six of our 13 open priority recommendations. * USDA incorporated leading practices for collaboration-such as identifying specific outcomes and a way to monitor and evaluate progress toward outcomes, as we recommended in April 2020-into working groups that USDA and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) created to implement the terms of their interagency agreement on oversight of cell-cultured meat.3 1Priority recommendations are those that GAO believes warrant priority attention from heads of key departments or agencies. They are highlighted because, upon implementation, they may significantly improve government operations, for example, by realizing large dollar savings; eliminating mismanagement, fraud, and abuse; or making progress toward addressing a high-risk or duplication issue. 2GAO, Performance and Accountability Report: Fiscal Year 2022, GAO-23-900398 (Washington, D.C.: Nov. 15, 2022). 3GAO, Food Safety: FDA and USDA Could Strengthen Existing Efforts to Prepare for Oversight of Cell-Cultured Meat, GAO-20-325 (Washington, D.C.: Apr. 7, 2020). GAO-23-106456 Page 1

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