	BSEE Leadership Has Started Several Initiatives to Improve the Bureau’s Safety and Environmental Oversight Capabilities, but Its Actions Have Hindered Progress

We found that BSEE leadership has started several initiatives to improve  its safety and environmental oversight capabilities, but its limited efforts to  obtain and incorporate input from within the bureau have hindered its  progress. Since 2012, BSEE has sought to augment its annual inspection  program with a risk-based inspection program, but limited efforts to obtain  and incorporate input from experienced regional personnel have hindered  BSEE’s ability to develop and implement the risk-based program. However, to date, BSEE has not successfully implemented this  supplemental risk-based inspection capability. BSEE leadership led the development of the risk-based program;  however, according to officials, leadership developed the program with  little input from regional personnel. As a result, BSEE first identified deficiencies with its risk-based program  during pilot testing in 2015, rather than working closely with experienced  regional personnel earlier in the process to obtain their input to identify  potential deficiencies and remediate them during program development. Moreover, because the efforts were uncoordinated, they resulted in the  inefficient use of resources. Without higher-level oversight within Interior  establishing a mechanism for BSEE management to obtain and  incorporate input from personnel within the bureau and any external  parties that can affect the bureau’s ability to achieve its objectives,  BSEE’s risk-based inspection program and Environmental Stewardship  efforts are likely to experience continued implementation and efficacy  problems. BSEE Leadership Has Made Limited Progress in Implementing Strategic Initiatives to Improve Its Internal Management

We found that since 2013, BSEE has begun four strategic initiatives to  improve its internal management—two to improve its decision-making  capabilities and two to enhance communication and transparency—but  their successful implementation has been hindered by limited leadership  commitment and not addressing factors contributing to trust concerns. The officials  said BSEE planned to finalize a plan for its prioritized risk treatments by  August 2016 but did not do so because of the temporary halt to ERM  implementation. BSEE’s initiative to develop performance measures has  been comprised of three sequential efforts, in 2014, 2015, and 2016. For  the first two efforts, the bureau contracted with a consultant. BSEE  terminated the first effort, and although the consultant delivered a report  identifying 12 performance measures during the second effort, BSEE  officials said they were not implementing them due to a variety of factors,  including data availability limitations. For its third effort to develop  performance measures in 2016, BSEE headquarters officials told us that  this initiative, which is being conducted internally by BSEE personnel,  represents the beginning of a multi-year effort to implement a  performance management system. BSEE initially planned to finalize its  internally developed list of performance measures in February 2016 but  did not meet this deadline. In December 2016, BSEE completed a report  that discusses 17 performance measures and the bureau’s plans for  future iterations of their development. An example of  leadership commitment is continuing oversight and accountability, which  BSEE leadership has not demonstrated for implementing internal  management initiatives, as evidenced by its limited progress in  implementing key strategic initiatives as well as its inability to address  long-standing oversight deficiencies. Without higher-level oversight within  Interior addressing BSEE’s leadership commitment deficiencies— including by implementing internal management initiatives and ongoing  strategic initiatives—in a timely manner, the bureau is unlikely to succeed  in implementing such initiatives.
Why GAO Did This Study

This testimony summarizes the information contained in GAO's March 2017 report, entitled Oil and Gas Management: Stronger Leadership Commitment Needed at Interior to Improve Offshore Oversight and Internal Management ( GAO-17-293 ).

What GAO Found

The Department of the Interior's (Interior) Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) leadership has started several key strategic initiatives to improve its offshore safety and environmental oversight, but its limited efforts to obtain and incorporate input from within the bureau have hindered its progress. For example, to supplement its mandatory annual regulatory compliance inspections, in 2012, BSEE leadership began developing a risk-based inspection initiative to identify high-risk production facilities and assess their safety systems and management controls. During pilot testing in 2016, several deficiencies--including the usefulness of its facility risk-assessment model and unclear inspection protocols--caused BSEE to halt the pilot. According to bureau officials, during the development of the initiative, BSEE headquarters did not effectively obtain and incorporate input from regional personnel with long-standing experience in previous risk-based inspection efforts, who could have identified deficiencies earlier in the process. GAO previously found that when implementing large-scale management initiatives a key practice is involving employees to obtain their ideas by incorporating their feedback into new policies and procedures. Instead, BSEE leadership appears to have excluded the input of regional personnel by, for example, not incorporating input beyond the risk-assessment tool when selecting the first pilot facility, even though it was prescribed to do so in the bureau's inspection planning methodology. This undercut the pilot effort, raising questions about whether the bureau's leadership has the commitment necessary to successfully implement its risk-based program. Without higher level leadership within Interior establishing a mechanism for BSEE to obtain and incorporate input from personnel within the bureau, BSEE's risk-based inspection initiative could face continued delays.
Similarly, since 2013, BSEE leadership has started several key strategic initiatives to improve its internal management, but none have been successfully implemented, in part, because of limited leadership commitment. For example, BSEE's leadership identified the importance of developing performance measures in its 2012-2015 strategic plan. BSEE began one of three attempts to develop performance measures in July 2014 by hiring a contractor to develop measures, but the bureau terminated this contract in January 2015 after determining a need to complete its internal reorganization before developing such measures. A second effort to develop performance measures started in December 2015, using the same consultant, and yielded 12 performance measures in March 2016, but BSEE did not implement them, in part, because data did not exist to use the measures. By the time BSEE received this consultant's report, it had already begun a third effort to internally develop performance measures; as of November 2016 had identified 17 draft performance measures, but BSEE leadership missed repeated deadlines to review them. BSEE officials told GAO that after leadership approval, the bureau plans to pilot these measures and develop others. BSEE leadership has not demonstrated continuing oversight and accountability for implementing internal management initiatives, as evidenced by its limited progress implementing key strategic initiatives. Without higher-level oversight within Interior addressing leadership commitment deficiencies within BSEE, the bureau is unlikely to succeed in implementing internal management initiatives.