As required by 5 USC section 1006(b) of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), as amended, GSA must conduct an Annual Comprehensive Review (ACR) of the activities and responsibilities of each Federal advisory committee. The ACR is initiated by the GSA Committee Management Secretariat (“Secretariat”), with guidance on how to conduct the review, and relies on the cooperation of agency staff for reporting their data. The ACR is used to determine:
- Whether the committee is carrying out its purpose;
- Whether, consistent with the provisions of applicable statutes, the responsibilities assigned to the committee should be revised;
- Whether the committee should be merged with other advisory committees; or
- Whether the committee should be abolished.
What is the ACR Process?
A primary reason for creating the FACA database was to provide an electronic reporting tool to complete the annual statutory and regulatory assessment and reporting requirements. However, the ACR process itself is more than the FACA database. After the Secretariat closes out the data for each agency and department in the database each spring, GSA then conducts the following actions to complete the ACR:
- Extracts the verified raw data from the database
- Creates a series of downloadable datasets (in csv format) that are zipped and posted on the database. These files include data on the agency, committees, committee meetings, members, and advisory reports, committee interest areas, subcommittees, and subcommittee meetings, members, and advisory reports.
- Uploads the raw data into the FACA Dashboard for data analysis with graphical displays.
- Generates ACR files that mimic how the data was displayed for the Annual Reports to Congress (1972-1998) that were repealed by the Federal Reports Elimination and Sunset Act of 1995. This allows data to be compared from 1972 - present.
U.S. General Services Administration