GAO Compliments Progress on Export Controls, Identifies Continuing Challenges
The Government Accountability Office’s (GAO’s) latest report on the U.S. export control system congratulates agencies for changes already made in reducing the time needed to process licenses and coordinating across multiple agencies, but cautions that challenges remain.
The report makes no new recommendations, but assesses how agencies responded to previous GAO advice. Among the remaining challenges it identifies are developing metrics for determining the effectiveness of the arms export control system, reaching interagency agreement on which items need to be controlled, and obtaining congressional approval for implementing reforms.
One particularly interesting statistic GAO cites is that in September 2010, the State Department had an average processing time of 15 calendar days for export control licenses, down from 43 days in 2006. Also, the number of pending cases is down to 10,000 from 3,500 even though the number of applications has grown by 20 percent annually.
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