Summary: Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Navy's implementation of the Managing To Payroll (MTP) program for managing its civilian personnel budget.
GAO found that: (1) overall, the MTP program provided better information for use in managing its civilian payroll and personnel budget; (2) Navy managers generally believed that MTP improved their awareness of payroll costs by increasing accountability; (3) only 8 of 14 naval locations had completed MTP program objectives of reducing paperwork and improving classification timeliness by delegating civilian classification and approval authority to lower-level managers; (4) since implementing MTP, the Navy has reduced overexpenditures to about 1 percent of its civilian payroll, but the extent to which the program caused those reductions was unknown; and (5) although Navy managers identified some difficulties in implementing MTP, including hiring freezes and budget constraints that limited the availability and use of payroll funds, those problems were not directly attributable to the program.
