U.S. Government Accountability Office

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is an independent, nonpartisan agency that works for Congress. It evaluates federal programs and operations and provides fact-based information intended to improve government performance and accountability.

GAO’s examination of recurring, data-driven performance reviews gives The Meeting Is the Operating System a concrete example of meetings as part of a management process. In a survey of officials at 23 federal agencies, GAO found that most agencies reported preparing relevant data before reviews, assessing progress during them, and identifying follow-up actions. Identifying follow-up actions was positively correlated with agencies’ reported performance-improvement impact. The report supports examining what goes into a review and what happens afterward, while its survey and reported outcomes do not establish that these practices caused improvement or will transfer unchanged to other workplaces.