Search error: Feds pay for data they could have just Googled, audit finds
Congress’s top auditor said Tuesday that the Commerce
Department has been charging other government agencies millions of dollars for
reports that the other agencies could just as easily have gotten online, for
free.
The Government Accountability Office, releasing its third
annual report on duplication in the federal government, said 74 percent of all
the reports held by the National Technical Information Service were available
elsewhere, usually for free — and often just by a simple Google search.
“The source that most often had the reports GAO was
searching for was another website located at http://www.Google.com,” the
auditors said.
The reports don’t amount to much — the agency reported
revenues of $1.5 million in fiscal year 2011 — but overall, duplication and
waste are likely costing the federal government billions of dollars a year, the
auditors said.
In one example GAO said the federal government paid for
679 separate renewable energy programs in 2010. The 2009 stimulus alone created
or boosted 157 of the initiatives. Altogether, 23 federal agencies have
renewable energy programs.
But the Government Accountability Office said it can’t
even begin to measure how much overlap there is because the agencies don’t keep
sufficient records to evaluate that.
GAO said the Defense Department has so many different
branches that each pay separately for foreign language services, but if the
department were to coordinate it could save hundreds of millions of dollars a
year.
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