GAO-America's Best

Great American Organisation

It’s an American treasure.

My first visit to Washington left me with two abiding favourable impressions. First was the astonishing grandeur of Grand Union Rail Station. The second was the efficiency of the General Accounting Office (GAO) – now renamed as the General Accountability Office.

I visited both this morning and I am blogging from the Amtrak Express from Grand Union Station Washington to New York Penn Station.

Every country should have a GAO to combat the trend for Government policies to be increasingly prejudice rich and evidence free. A check on the endemic inefficiency of Government management of projects yields enormous savings, The GAO last year claim financial benefits on contracts of a staggering $46 billion. For every dollar they spend they save $94 dollars.

Their approach is science-base, objective and ideology-free. Their exposure of waste and incompetence is on an oceanic scale.  Virtually all defence contacts are works of fiction that have inbuilt vast cost over-runs and delays.

US Defence spending is ascending to the stratosphere from $313 billion to $669 billion. Most of it is because of the Global War on Terrorism. One man living in a cave somewhere has transformed the economy of the world’s only super state.

If private commercial firms ran their affairs as (probably all) government do, they would be broke. I asked the GAO whether they had ever investigated the difference. They told me they had but they have not come up without a solution.

The unending horror of financial mayhem of the US Joint Strike Fighter makes our nightmare of the Eurofighter sound like financial prudence.

The GAO work in carried out piecemeal in the UK by he Audit Commission, the Public Accounts Committee and the Public Adminisatrtion Committee. They all worked but only scratch the surface of the problem.

We need our own GAO.

Times out of joint

The five-hour time difference between Eastern USA and the UK is interesting. Valiantly, I try to keep immediately accessible to constituents.

Tomorrow the GAO is making their authoritative announcement on the Boeing Eads Saga. It will affect tens of thousands of jobs.
I explained at the GAO today as Europeans we are in a different time zone. At home it is already tomorrow, so perhaps they could let us know the good news now. No chance, of course.

My office tries to respond as swiftly as possible to inquiries. I had an e-mail last night at 10.00 o’clock. The request was relatively straight forward and I answered immediately.  A further inquiry followed immediately. My constituent expressed no surprise or gratitude for the instant service she had from an e-mail sent at 3.01 a.m. I hope she does not expect the same service next time.

My favourite Argus journalist was a little apologetic when she rang. ‘Have I woken you up?’ she asked, noting my blurred, semi-coherent response. ‘No’ I lied, trying to avoid her feeling guilty. It was reasonable time, 10.00 am, for her to ring an MP, it was less reasonable time of 5.00 am to me. Still, it's good to be constantly in touch.

You knows it

Yet another good news story for Newport – the jobs' magnet. It is only a couple of weeks since we had the good news of the relocation her of 400 Swalec jobs. Today it’s an additional 250 jobs to bring to a total of 450 for HSBC telephone banking customers who will have a splendid service delivered in a prime quality Newport accent.

I believe that the Newport accent is the secret of our appeal.