List of Selected Federal Programs That Have Similar or Overlapping Objectives, Provide Similar Services, or Are Fragmented Across Government Missions

This report supplements our March 1, 2011, report Opportunities to Reduce Potential Duplication in Government Programs, Save Tax Dollars, and Enhance Revenue--GAO's first annual report to Congress in response to a statutory requirement to identify federal programs, agencies, offices, and initiatives, either within departments or governmentwide, which have duplicative goals or activities. Section I of that report touched on hundreds of federal programs governmentwide that we found have similar or overlapping objectives, provide similar services to the same populations, or are involved in government missions that are fragmented across multiple agencies. As noted in our March 1 report, the presence of fragmentation and overlap can suggest the need to look more closely at the potential for unnecessary duplication. However, determining whether and to what extent programs are actually duplicative requires programmatic information that is often not readily available. In addition, while we have reported on examples where duplication, overlap, and fragmentation can hinder program performance and cause inefficiencies, we recognize that there could be instances where some degree of program duplication, overlap, or fragmentation may be warranted due to the nature or magnitude of the federal effort. For details on the extent to which we found the programs listed in this report to be fragmented, overlapping, or possibly duplicative. This report provides a more detailed listing of programs we identified in several areas discussed in our March 1 report.