DOD and Education officials have a history of collaborating on education  issues for children of military families. The act also requires that  OMB—with agencies—develop annual federal government performance  plans to, among other things, define the level of performance to be  achieved toward the cross-agency priority goals. Approaches for Ensuring Accountability from Select Interagency Groups

Key Considerations for Implementing  Interagency Collaborative Mechanisms  Accountability   Is there a way to track and monitor  progress? Agency Comments

We provided a draft of this report for review and comment to the heads of  the nine key agencies that participated in the four interagency groups that  we reviewed for this study. The  objectives of this report are to examine how select interagency groups  (such as task forces, working groups, councils, and committees): 1)  defined their missions and desired outcomes; 2) measured performance  and ensured accountability 3) established leadership approaches; and 4)  used resources, such as funding, staff and technology. We organized the challenges that these reports identified into the  key issues from our 2012 report and found that the most common  challenges that interagency groups experienced fell under the key  features of:
Outcomes
Accountability
Leadership
Resources  To identify implementation approaches that agencies have used to  address or avoid these challenges, we identified a limited number of  interagency groups from our prior work that have addressed or avoided  one or more of these challenges. Based on a review of our prior work, we  identified potential interagency groups that exhibited some of the  practices to enhance and sustain collaboration. We selected panelists that were  recipients of the Presidential Distinguished Rank Award in 2011 or 2012  and that had experience leading or participating in interagency groups. If more  than one group had used the approach and found it to be effective, we  included it in our list.
Why GAO Did This Study

Many of the meaningful results that the federal government seeks to achieve require the coordinated efforts of more than one federal agency, level of government, or sector. The GPRA Modernization Act of 2010 (GPRAMA) takes a more crosscutting and integrated approach to improving government performance. GPRAMA requires that GAO periodically review implementation of the law. As a part of a series of reports responding to this requirement, GAO assessed how interagency groups addressed the central collaboration challenges identified in its prior work of 1) defining outcomes; 2) measuring performance and ensuring accountability; 3) establishing leadership approaches; and 4) using resources, such as funding, staff, and technology.
GAO selected four interagency groups that met its key practices for enhancing and sustaining collaboration to learn about the approaches they used and found to be successful. These groups addressed issues of homelessness, reentry of former inmates into society, rental housing policy, and the education of military dependent students. To identify successful approaches, GAO reviewed agency documents, and interviewed agency officials that participated in these groups. Additionally, GAO convened recipients of the Presidential Distinguished Rank Award, who had experience with interagency collaboration. GAO is not making any recommendations in this report. GAO shared a draft of this report with key agencies that participated in the interagency groups GAO reviewed. The agencies either had no comments or provided technical comments, which GAO incorporated as appropriate.

What GAO Found

The interagency groups GAO selected and expert practitioners—including those who received the Presidential Distinguished Rank Award—have used a range of approaches to address some of the key considerations for implementing interagency collaborative mechanisms, related to defining outcomes; measuring performance and ensuring accountability; establishing leadership approaches; and using resources, such as funding, staff, and technology.