GAO: Agencies must do more to cut $1 billion federal phone bill

Most federal agencies have not done enough to help cut down on the $1.2 billion a year the government pays for mobile phones and other wireless devices, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Thursday. 

The federal government spends money on about 1.5 million devices, according to the most recent data in 2012 from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). 

{mosads}Of the 15 agencies the GAO reviewed, only five had fully completed an agency-wide or other broad inventory of government-issued mobile devices and contract costs. Only one agency was found to have fully developed broad procedures that allow it to look at how often phones are used, which the GAO says can reveal waste and lead to cost savings. 

“GAO recommends that the 15 agencies take actions to improve their inventories and control processes and that OMB measure and report progress in achieving mobile cost savings,” the GAO wrote in a summary of the report. 

Most agencies had met some but not all of the procedural and inventory goals. Three agencies did not satisfy any of the requirements at the agency level. 

The GAO found that the tracking of mobile phones at agencies tends to be decentralized, limiting their “ability to monitor device usage and determine if a device should be canceled or moved to a more cost-effective service plan.”

The lowest monthly cost for any wireless plan came from the Department of Agriculture, which paid $21 for unlimited data, 200 voice minutes and a 200 text message limit for a device.

The highest reported monthly cost came from the Department of Health and Human Services, which paid $121.57 for unlimited voice, data and text. That compares to the $69 the Justice Department paid for a similar unlimited plan. 

The GAO found the Departments of Commerce, Defense and Homeland Security did not have the available data. 

In 2012, the OMB set a goal of $388 million in savings through 2015 by eliminating or consolidating agency phone contracts. A key objective was to have agencies manage mobile phone contracts at the agency level and “eventually at the governmentwide level.” The goal is to cut down on costs by tracking price and usage on a wide scale. But the GAO said the OMB “has not measured progress toward that goal, as called for by leading practices in performance management.”