A new Government Accountability Office report on government missions shows 162 program redundancies across several federal agencies.
GAO said government agencies failed to save costs in 14 mission areas during 2013 and found 17 other government programs that overlap one another, Federal News Radio reported Tuesday.
Gene Dodaro, U.S comptroller general, said the redundancies and overlaps in government areas involve almost all major federal departments and agencies.
In one instance, the Department of Homeland Security‘s 29 out of 50 research development contracts overlap with other R&D activities and the department spent $66 million on the duplicative programs.
Auditors also found overlapping projects in the Defense Department‘s acquisition of combat uniforms, separating the development of camouflage patterns from either of the woodland variant and the desert variant, resulting in seven total patterns currently, according to Federal News Radio.
The department could save $82 million by coordinating the program between the military departments, GAO said.
GAO also raised concern on the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs joint plan to create an interoperable health record system and recommended those departments instead coordinate the systems over time.
