Chairwoman Rosenworcel's Response to Members of Congress Regarding GAO Report on Performance Goals and Measures

In January 2023, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) publicly released a report which makes nine recommendations to assist the Federal Communications Commission  enhance the Affordable Connectivity Program’s (ACP) performance goals and measures, language translation process, consumer outreach plan, and various processes for managing fraud risk. The FCC  has undertaken an aggressive and robust corrective plan to address and resolve each of GAO’s nine recommendations. In less than six months since the Report’s release, corrective action tasks addressing five recommendations have been implemented, and FCC  staff continue efforts to obtain close-out approval from GAO on each. Actions completed include development of new policies and procedures on fraud risk management, development of an anti-fraud strategy aligned with GAO’s best practices, establishment of a governance body for fraud risk management, and strengthened internal controls to prevent ACP duplicate identification and prevention, subscriber identity verification, and subscriber address validation. Ongoing efforts continue to resolve GAO’s recommendation  to ensure that ACP performance goals and measures align with key attributes of effective performance goals and measures, which include surveys, metrics, and outreach efforts to track ACP progress in reducing the digital divide, increasing program participation, and measure application difficulty. In addition, a multi-faceted translation plan designed to promote the ACP in 12 languages is underway. Innovative outreach efforts continue to make progress in educating consumers about ACP that aligns with leading practices for consumer outreach planning. Finally, analytic efforts continue to progress with the objective of improving the ACP’s fraud risk management design.