The U.S. Government Accountability Office has released a report on 34 high-risk areas for Congress and the executive branch to watch, which it updates every two years.
Although the office acknowledged many of the items from the 2015 list have shown "solid progress," it emphasized that some still need significant attention — such as improving healthcare in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
The VA was added to the GAO high-risk list in February 2015 due to five areas of concern, including IT challenges alongside ambiguous policies and inconsistent processes, inadequate oversight and accountability, inadequate training for VA staff and unclear resource needs and allocation priorities.
"VA developed an action plan for addressing its high-risk designation, but the plan describes many planned outcomes with overly ambitious deadlines for completion," according to the report. "We are concerned about the lack of root cause analyses for most areas of concern, and the lack of clear metrics and needed resources for achieving stated outcomes."
GAO has made 66 healthcare-related recommendations to the VA since its high-risk designation in 2015, bringing its total recommendations since Jan. 1, 2010, through Dec. 31, 2016, to 244. The VA has implemented about 50 percent of the recommendations, but more than 100 still remain open.
Click here to view more of the report's findings.