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GAO-12-508R 1 (2012-03-21)

handle is hein.gao/gaobacfwf0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Accountability * Integrity * Reliability United States Government Accountability Office Washington, DC 20548 March 21, 2012 Congressional Committees Subject: Federal Employees' Compensation Act: Status of Previously Identified Management Challenges In 2010, the Department of Labor's (Labor) Federal Employees' Compensation Act (FECA)1 program paid approximately $2.8 billion in total cash and medical benefits to federal employees who sustained injuries or illnesses while performing federal duties. Because the FECA program's benefit structure has not been significantly amended in 38 years, policymakers and others have raised concerns related to its efficiency and efficacy. As a result, there have been a number of legislative proposals to manage program costs by changing the benefit type or amount that employees receive at retirement age and to enact procedures that may enhance program administration. Federal agencies' Inspectors General (IGs) have identified long- standing programmatic deficiencies at the department and agency level that may make the program vulnerable to fraud and abuse.2 For this reason, we were asked to review the FECA program's management challenges and determine the extent to which actions have been taken to address them. To determine the program's identified management challenges, we reviewed Labor's performance and accountability reports from 2004 to 2010.3 Using the reports' themes for the FECA program as a framework, we performed a content analysis of 65 reports, issued from 1994 to 2011-the majority of these reports were issued from 2004 to 2011-by federal IGs and others4 who reviewed the FECA program. We obtained the status for all recommendations in these reports from the IGs and conducted more in-depth interviews with officials from Labor and 1Codified at 5 U.S.C. § 8101 et seq. 2We recently reported that although departments and agencies have instituted a variety of promising practices to limit fraud, several vulnerabilities still exist. See GAO, Federal Employees' Compensation Act: Preliminary Observations on Fraud Control, GAO-12-402, (Washington, D.C.: Jan. 25, 2012). 3We reviewed the Department of Labor's 2010 equivalents for its performance and accountability report, the Agency Financial Report and its Annual Accountability Report. 4These reports were issued by federal agency IGs, GAO, and consultants writing on behalf of departments and federal agencies. GAO-12-508R Federal Employees' Compensation Act Page 1

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