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Report to Congressional Committees:

December 2005:

Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration:

Education and Outreach Programs Target Safety and Consumer Issues, but 
Gaps in Planning and Evaluation Remain:

[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-103]:

GAO Highlights:

Highlights of GAO-06-103, a report to congressional committees.

Why GAO Did This Study:

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is responsible 
for improving commercial vehicle safety and uses education and outreach 
as part of its efforts. The House report accompanying the fiscal year 
2005 Department of Transportation (DOT) appropriations bill asked GAO 
to report on FMCSA’s education and outreach programs to the House and 
Senate Committees on Appropriations. GAO (1) describes FMCSA’s 
education and outreach programs and how they relate to FMCSA’s goals 
(2) identifies the extent to which FMCSA has evaluated its education 
and outreach programs and (3) describes the extent to which FMCSA’s 
education and outreach programs are effective.

What GAO Found:

FMCSA’s education and outreach programs—New Entrant, Non-Entrant, Motor 
Coach, Safety Belt, and Household Goods— target different audiences, 
including the motor carrier industry, commercial vehicle drivers, and 
the public. Total funding for these programs in fiscal year 2005 was 
$36.3 million; the largest share (about $33 million) went to the New 
Entrant program, which is designed to inform newly registered motor 
carriers (new entrants) about motor carrier safety standards and 
regulations to help them gain compliance with FMCSA requirements. FMCSA 
uses many approaches, such as direct contact with carriers, media 
campaigns, distributing printed materials, and establishing Web sites 
to provide information to target audiences. FMCSA has not described how 
its education and outreach program activities link expected changes in 
attitudes and behavior to broader goals, such as DOT’s strategic 
objective of reducing transportation-related fatalities. FMCSA 
officials state that the education and outreach activities and programs 
link to agency goals at a high level, but this was not evident from our 
review, with the exception of the Safety Belt program. FMCSA has used a 
logic model as a tool in other programs to show the relationship 
between program activities and broader goals.

FMCSA has begun some evaluations of its education and outreach 
programs, and plans other evaluations of these programs. However, 
although FMCSA’s New Entrant program has existed for over 2 years, 
FMCSA has no plans to evaluate its New Entrant program until 2008. Thus 
FMCSA has no information on whether information on its safety 
requirements, provided through the Education and Technical Assistance 
package or during New Entrant safety audits—targeted toward truckers 
newly entering the industry—effectively communicate information to new 
entrants. This lack of evaluation makes it difficult to determine the 
impact the education portion of the New Entrant program has on 
commercial motor vehicle safety. 

Since FMCSA currently has little information on how its programs have 
affected attitudes and behavior, it is difficult to determine the 
effectiveness of FMCSA’s effort. However, the designs of two programs 
appear to follow theories and research regarding media campaigns, which 
are intended to influence decision making about safety. Research and 
behavior theory suggest that for some types of programs—such as DOT’s 
Click It or Ticket program, which is designed to increase safety-belt 
use by passenger car drivers—enforcement linked to education can 
improve results, and FMCSA has indicated it is linking some education 
and outreach programs to enforcement efforts, where appropriate. 
Finally, motor carrier association officials whom we spoke with stated 
that, in their view, FMCSA is doing some positive things in its 
education and outreach activities. A public safety group stated that 
FMCSA followed reasonable approaches in starting its education and 
outreach efforts; however, they would like to see more information on 
program effectiveness to help FMCSA refine the programs.

What GAO Recommends:

GAO recommends that the Secretary of Transportation direct the FMCSA 
Administrator to describe the link between education and outreach 
programs and agency strategic objectives and evaluate the extent to 
which educational information and safety audits are helping new 
carriers learn FMCSA requirements. GAO provided a draft of this report 
to DOT for its review and comment. FMCSA officials commented on the 
link between its education and outreach programs and its overall goals. 
Based on FMCSA’s comments, GAO acknowledged FMCSA’s comments and 
clarified the recommendations.

To view the full product, including the scope and methodology, click on 
the link above. For more information, contact Katherine Siggerud at 
(202) 512-2834 or at siggerudk@gao.gov.

[End of Section]

Contents:

Letter:

Results in Brief:

Background:

FMCSA Has Established Several Education and Outreach Efforts but Needs 
Specific Links to Goals:

Evaluations of Specific Education and Outreach Programs Impacts Are 
Still in Preliminary Stages, but the Lack of a Plan to Evaluate How New 
Entrant Safety Audits Improve Knowledge and Attitudes Raises Concern:

The Effectiveness of Education and Outreach Programs Is Unclear, but 
Programs Seem to be Reasonably Designed According to Theories of 
Behavior Change and Industry Groups:

Conclusions:

Recommendations for Executive Action:

Agency Comments:

Appendixes:

Appendix I: Scope and Methodology:

Appendix II: FMCSA Education and Outreach Programs:

Appendix III: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments:

Tables:

Table 1: Overview of FMCSA Education and Outreach Programs:

Table 2: How Fiscal Year 2005 Outreach and Education Funding Is Being 
Used:

Table 3: Hierarchy of Objective, Goal, and Indicators for FMCSA's 
Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Objective:

Figures:

Figure 1: Cover of Safety Belt Partnership Brochure:

Figure 2: FMCSA Fiscal Year 2005 Education and Outreach Funding:

Figure 3: Program Logic Model:

Figure 4: FMCSA's Evaluations and Planned Evaluations by Program:

Figure 5: Number of New Entrant Safety Audits Completed by FMCSA and 
State Agencies (first 7 months of fiscal year 2005):

Abbreviations:

CVSA: Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance:

DOT: Department of Transportation:

FMCSA: Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration:

GPRA: Government Performance and Results Act:

GSA: General Services Administration:

MCMIS: Motor Carrier Management Information System:

NHTSA: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration:

OMB: Office of Management and Budget:

SAFETEA-LU: Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation 
Equity Act: A Legacy for Users:

TAG: Technical Assistance Group A Legacy for Users:

TAG: Technical Assistance Group:

Letter: 

December 19, 2005:

The Honorable Joe Knollenberg: 
Chairman: 
The Honorable John W. Olver: 
Ranking Minority Member: 
Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury, Housing, and Urban 
Development, the Judiciary, the District of Columbia, and Independent 
Agencies: 
Committee on Appropriations: 
House of Representatives:

The Honorable Christopher S. Bond: 
Chairman: 
The Honorable Patty Murray: 
Ranking Minority Member: 
Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury, the Judiciary, Housing and 
Urban Development, and Related Agencies: 
Committee on Appropriations: 
United States Senate:

In 2003, large trucks represented 3 percent of registered vehicles in 
the country, but nearly 12 percent of the people killed in motor 
vehicle accidents died in crashes involving large trucks. The Federal 
Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), within the Department of 
Transportation (DOT), is responsible for improving the safety of 
commercial vehicle operations--which includes interstate truck and 
motor coach (bus) companies--and has set a safety goal to reduce 
fatalities from an estimated 2.81 per 100 million truck vehicle miles 
traveled in 1996 to no more than 1.65 per 100 million truck vehicle 
miles traveled by the end of 2008. Among the ways that FMCSA attempts 
to achieve this and other goals is through education and outreach 
activities.[Footnote 1] For example, the agency provides information to 
consumers about motor coach safety records and what to consider when 
hiring a moving company. It also provides new motor carriers with 
information on safety requirements and conducts safety audits to review 
motor carrier compliance with these requirements. In some cases, 
education and outreach efforts regarding safety audits may be 
reinforced when followed-up with enforcement.

In recent years, we have raised concerns about FMCSA education and 
outreach efforts. In 2003, for example, we reported that FMCSA's "Share 
the Road Safely" program lacked a clear program strategy and included 
activities that were only tenuously linked to program goals, and we 
reported that FMCSA had not recently evaluated the program's 
effectiveness.[Footnote 2] In addition, our 2001 report on oversight of 
the household goods moving industry noted that DOT and FMCSA had made 
limited efforts to provide consumer education that would enable the 
public to be more informed about hiring a mover.[Footnote 3] 
Furthermore, the Congress has expressed concern about how FMCSA's 
education and outreach programs are meeting broader goals. In the 
conference report accompanying the DOT appropriations bill for fiscal 
year 2005, FMCSA was asked to report by April 2005 to the House and 
Senate Committees on Appropriations on strategies linking outreach and 
education program initiatives to each goal.

The House report accompanying the DOT appropriations bill for fiscal 
year 2005 asked us to monitor and evaluate FMCSA's education and 
outreach programs and to report on the status of these programs to the 
House and Senate Committees on Appropriations.[Footnote 4] We (1) 
describe the scope and nature of FMCSA's education and outreach 
programs and how they relate to FMCSA's goals, (2) identify the extent 
to which FMCSA has evaluated its education and outreach programs, and 
(3) describe the extent to which FMCSA's education and outreach 
programs are effective. As discussed with your staff, we focused on 
five specific education and outreach programs: (1) the New Entrant; (2) 
the Non-Entrant; (3) Commercial Safety-Belt Use; (4) Motor Coach 
Selection Outreach; and (5) Household Goods Outreach programs and did 
not review the "Share the Road Safely" program, which Congress 
transferred from FMCSA to the National Highway Traffic Safety 
Administration (NHTSA) in fiscal year 2004, with FMCSA retaining a 
supporting role. The recent highway reauthorization 
legislation[Footnote 5] authorizes funding for this program to both 
FMCSA and NHTSA and asks us to review the "Share the Road Safely" 
program by June 2006.

To describe the scope and nature of FMCSA's education and outreach 
programs and FMCSA's intended results for these programs, we discussed 
these programs with FMCSA officials at agency headquarters and two 
field locations, and we reviewed program materials and documentation as 
well as observed a safety audit for the new entrant program. We also 
analyzed both the extent to which FMCSA describes how its programs lead 
to agency goals and incorporates its education and outreach programs 
into its strategic and program planning and performance budgeting. To 
identify approaches to describing how agency programs contribute to 
agency goals, we reviewed our previous work on government education 
programs that showed how a program logic model--a model that links 
activities to goals by analyzing program inputs, outputs, and outcomes-
-illustrates how education and outreach activities can influence 
attitudes and behavior, and ultimately contribute to agency goals. To 
identify what the agency was doing to evaluate these programs, we 
discussed evaluations and evaluation plans with FMCSA officials at 
agency headquarters and two field locations. We also reviewed 
evaluation materials, including proposals and statements of work for 
planned contracts to carry out programs and program evaluations. 
Finally, to identify what is known about the effectiveness of the 
programs, we conducted a literature review of media based campaigns and 
reviewed the structure and evaluation of these campaigns related to 
improving safety as well as behavioral theories used in designing the 
campaigns. We selected two behavioral theories that were directly 
applicable to the programs under this review, which are called the 
theory of reasoned action[Footnote 6] and the general deterrence 
theory.[Footnote 7] We also discussed what is currently known about the 
effectiveness of these programs with FMCSA officials and with 
representatives of associations that serve the trucking, motor coach, 
and household goods moving industries, as well as a law enforcement 
association and public interest groups that are involved in motor 
carrier safety. Our work was conducted in accordance with generally 
accepted government auditing standards. Appendix I provides the details 
of our scope and methodology.

Results in Brief:

FMCSA has recently established several education and outreach programs 
intended to promote motor carrier safety and consumer awareness. 
Although FMCSA documents state that education activities are vital to 
FMCSA's goal of reducing fatalities, injuries, and crashes, FMCSA has 
not described how most of its education and outreach programs are 
linked to agency goals. Four of the programs we reviewed accounted for 
a relatively small portion of FMCSA's funding--1 percent of the 
agency's fiscal year 2005 funding. However, the new entrant program 
accounted for almost 7.5 percent of FMCSA's fiscal year 2005 funding. 
These education and outreach programs are part of FMCSA's overall 
approach to encourage safer practices and better decision making by 
communicating information to motor carriers, commercial drivers, and 
the public. FMCSA's education and outreach programs are as follows:

* The New Entrant program is designed to inform newly registered motor 
carriers (new entrants) about motor carrier safety standards and 
regulations to help them comply with FMCSA requirements. FMCSA 
disseminates information on safety requirements in its Education and 
Technical Assistance Package. In addition, FMCSA, state, or contractor 
personnel visit new carriers within their first 18 months of operations 
for "safety audits" to explain safety requirements and review 
documentation. Although primarily informational, a carrier can fail its 
safety audit if it cannot document sufficient compliance to pass at 
least four of the six sections of the audit and, as a result, could 
lose its operating license.

* A planned Non-Entrant program will focus on identifying carriers 
engaging in interstate operations that have not registered with FMCSA 
as required, making them aware of the requirements and getting them to 
register. This program is still being developed but is expected to 
include outreach efforts through truck sales and leasing firms.

* The Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Belt program is aimed at 
increasing safety-belt use among commercial drivers, which is lower 
than safety-belt use by passenger vehicle drivers. FMCSA, in 
partnership with industry, distributes brochures, posters, and bumper 
stickers describing the importance of wearing safety belts. The 
partnership also distributes its materials at trucking industry trade 
shows, through law enforcement programs, and at truck stops.

* The Motor Coach Outreach program, officially known as Passenger 
Carrier Safety, provides information to help organizations and 
individuals who hire motor coach (bus) services make safe choices. The 
primary program effort is a FMCSA Web site that makes information on 
motor coach companies' safety history accessible to the public.

* The Household Goods Outreach program provides advice to help 
individuals planning a move make informed decisions on selecting and 
hiring moving companies through brochures, publications, and FMCSA's 
Web site.

Research indicates that the development of education and outreach 
programs should include identifying how these programs are expected to 
change the target audience's attitudes and behaviors.[Footnote 8] 
However, FMCSA has not clearly described how most of its education and 
outreach programs link expected changes in attitudes and behavior to 
broader goals, such as DOT's strategic objective of reducing 
transportation-related fatalities.[Footnote 9] In the conference report 
accompanying the DOT appropriations bill for fiscal year 2005, Congress 
requested FMCSA to clarify the link between the agency's education and 
outreach programs and program goals. FMCSA's October 2005 response to 
Congress states that FMCSA considers education and outreach programs 
vital in achieving overall DOT and FMCSA safety goals. However, the 
agency did not describe how the programs are intended to influence 
knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors that will support FMCSA's goals. 
FMCSA officials told us that the agency uses logic models in its 
performance budget to establish, at a high level, the link between its 
education and outreach program and its goals. However, the link FMCSA 
asserts was not evident to us for most of the education and outreach 
programs we reviewed. For example, FMCSA's fiscal year 2006 performance 
budget does describe how the Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Belt 
program[Footnote 10] will highlight the risks of not wearing a safety 
belt, which FMCSA officials believe should improve drivers' attitudes 
toward wearing safety belts, and subsequently meet the program goal of 
increasing safety-belt usage 10 percent by 2009. However, the 
performance budget does not describe similar links between other FMCSA 
education and outreach programs and how those programs help achieve DOT 
and FMCSA safety and productivity objectives. This lack of clarity in 
FMCSA's planning, budgeting, and program documents relating to 
education and outreach programs can make it difficult for stakeholders, 
including congressional oversight authorities, to see how program 
activities that seek to change attitudes and behavior can relate to 
agency goals and whether the programs are appropriately targeted. In 
contrast, FMCSA's Research and Technology group has used a logic model 
to clearly describe how program activities support agency goals in its 
strategic plan. As FMCSA further articulates the links between its 
education and outreach programs and its goals, it might consider using 
a tool such as the one used by FMCSA's Research and Technology group to 
make those relationships clear.

FMCSA has begun some evaluations of its education and outreach 
programs. Since most of these programs are relatively new and most 
evaluations are still being planned, little information on results is 
currently available. Therefore, FMCSA has limited information on 
program effectiveness, particularly for the New Entrant program. 
FMCSA's evaluation related activities and gaps in these activities are 
described below:

* For the New Entrant program, FMCSA conducted a preliminary comparison 
of crash rates for new entrants who had received safety audits during 
the first part of 2003 with new entrants who had not received safety 
audits and found little difference in the crash rates of the two 
groups. In addition, FMCSA is planning to conduct an evaluation study 
beginning in 2008 to examine new entrants' safety performance. Although 
the program has been in place for over 2 years, FMCSA has not evaluated 
and has not developed plans to evaluate the New Entrant program, 
specifically whether the information package or safety audits 
effectively communicate information to new entrants, making it 
difficult to determine the effectiveness of that program in improving 
new motor carriers' knowledge of safety requirements and ultimately 
improving safety.

* For the planned Non-Entrant program, FMCSA is planning to hire a 
contractor to identify the target population of non-entrants, measure 
if the outreach approaches it implements are reaching the target 
audience through focus group studies, and measure changes in knowledge 
and attitudes and changes in behavior through surveys.

* For the Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Belt program, FMCSA is 
installing software to monitor Web site hits, planning focus groups 
with motor carrier operators on how safety belt marketing material 
affected their awareness of the importance of using safety belts, and 
planning to annually measure safety-belt usage by commercial vehicle 
drivers.

* For the Motor Coach Outreach program, FMCSA uses a web survey to 
track exposure to information provided. FMCSA also expects to evaluate 
the program under a contract it plans to award, which will support 
surveys and other evaluations of its education and outreach programs.

* For the Household Goods Outreach program, FMCSA has contracted with 
the General Services Administration to measure the effectiveness of its 
booklet on moving tips in changing consumer knowledge by surveying the 
target audience. It also expects to evaluate the program under the 
planned survey contract.[Footnote 11]

It is difficult to determine the overall effectiveness of FMCSA's 
education and outreach efforts at this time; however, on the basis of 
behavior theory and our discussions with industry and public safety 
groups, the design of FMCSA's programs appears to be reasonable for 
contributing to commercial motor vehicle safety. Little information on 
effectiveness is available, since FMCSA has not completed many 
evaluations of its programs, and so it cannot be sure of the extent to 
which target audiences have received the information and intend on 
changing their behavior. However, two of FMCSA's education and outreach 
programs and marketing materials we reviewed appear to follow theories 
and research regarding media campaigns that are intended to influence 
decision making about safety. The Household Goods Outreach and Motor 
Coach Outreach programs--targeted toward consumers--focus on changing 
consumer attitudes by providing information about potential 
consequences of their actions. For example, the Motor Coach Outreach 
program conveys information on the safety history of motor coach 
companies. As a result, after considering this information consumers 
may change their behavior and select a motor coach company with a good 
safety record. In contrast, research and behavior theory described in 
several studies we reviewed suggest that industry--the target audiences 
of the Safety Belt, New Entrant, and Non-Entrant programs--may be more 
likely to change behaviors when exposed to both education and 
enforcement. FMCSA's program documentation indicates enforcement is 
part of the agency's efforts to increase safety-belt usage and will be 
part of the agency's efforts to decrease the number of non-entrants. In 
part because there are few sanctions for carriers who fail certain 
portions of the safety audit, FMCSA is now increasing the enforcement 
associated with its safety audits by making it more difficult to pass 
the audit and requiring carriers to correct deficiencies. Currently, a 
carrier can pass its safety audit even if it fails two of the six 
sections of the audit. We found, for example, that over the past 2 
years, about 40 percent of the carriers failed the "driver" section of 
their safety audits, despite passing the audit overall.[Footnote 12] 
Finally, motor carrier association officials whom we spoke with stated 
that, in their view, FMCSA is doing several positive things in its 
education and outreach activities. In addition, officials of one public 
safety group suggested that FMCSA followed reasonable approaches in 
starting its education and outreach efforts, so implementation in 
theory should be effective; however, the officials would like to see 
more evaluations on program effectiveness in the future to help FMCSA 
refine its programs. Another safety group we spoke with emphasized 
FMCSA's need for stronger enforcement in conjunction with education and 
outreach programs.

Our study found that for most of the FMCSA's education and outreach 
programs we reviewed, it is unclear how the activities link to program 
and agency goals. In addition, although FMCSA plans to conduct a study 
beginning in 2008 of its New Entrant program, the agency has not 
evaluated the effectiveness of the education and outreach of this 
program. To more clearly describe and better evaluate FMCSA education 
and outreach programs, we are recommending that the Secretary of 
Transportation direct the Administrator of FMCSA to take two actions: 
(1) ensure that the agency describes and documents how education and 
outreach program activities link to and support broader program and 
agency goals in a planning, program, or budget document that is 
available to the public and (2) evaluate the effectiveness of the 
education and outreach component of the New Entrant program, assessing 
the extent to which the Education and Technical Assistance Package and 
safety audits are helping new carriers learn and understand FMCSA 
requirements. We provided a draft of this report to DOT for its review 
and comment. In responding to a draft of this report, DOT and FMCSA 
officials, through the DOT liaison, provided oral comments. Agency 
officials disagreed with GAO's characterization that FMCSA has not 
linked its education and outreach programs with its overall goals. We 
acknowledge the FMCSA comments in our report. Because we did not find 
this link evident for most of the education and outreach programs, we 
retained our recommendation with some clarification. The officials also 
provided technical comments, which we incorporated as appropriate.

Background:

FMCSA, established as a separate administration under DOT by the Motor 
Carrier Safety Improvement Act of 1999 is responsible for improving the 
safety of commercial vehicle operations on the nation's highways. FMCSA 
is engaged in several programs and activities to carry out its mission, 
including developing and enforcing Federal Motor Carrier Safety 
Regulations, administering Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program 
grants to states, regulating interstate household goods movers, and 
performing education and outreach. FMCSA operates through its 
headquarters in Washington, D.C; four regional service centers; and 
division offices located in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, 
and Puerto Rico.

FMCSA undertakes education or outreach while carrying out many of its 
functions--for example, in posting regulations pertaining to commercial 
drivers' licensing or transporting hazardous materials on its Web site, 
or in providing on-line access to motor carrier crash statistics. FMCSA 
is also allocated funding for specific education and outreach programs. 
In fiscal year 2005, FMCSA used education and outreach funding for 
activities supporting its Safety Belt program targeted to commercial 
vehicle drivers, outreach to the public on hiring motor coach services, 
and outreach to consumers using household goods movers. Congress also 
allocated fiscal year 2005 funding for FMCSA's program directed at 
recently registered new entrant motor carriers and funding to establish 
an initiative directed to non-entrants--which are carriers in 
interstate operations that have not registered with DOT.

Under the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA), 
federal programs should be designed with measurable goals that support 
the agency's overall strategic goals. Congress enacted GPRA to shift 
agencies' focus from simply monitoring activities undertaken to 
measuring the results of these activities. Under GPRA, agencies develop 
multiyear strategic plans, which are the starting point for their 
performance measurement. Each strategic plan is to include a mission 
statement, a set of outcome-related strategic goals, and a description 
of how the agency intends to achieve these goals. To measure progress 
toward the strategic goals, we have previously reported that the agency 
should also have a plan for collecting data to measure and evaluate 
program performance.[Footnote 13] Without measurable goals and 
evaluation, it is difficult to determine whether the program is 
accomplishing its intended purpose and whether the resources dedicated 
to the program efforts should be increased, used in other ways, or 
applied elsewhere.

Research conducted on the effectiveness of media campaigns[Footnote 14] 
indicates that the development of an education and outreach program 
should include identifying how the program is expected to change the 
target audience's attitudes and behaviors. There are several theories 
and models on affecting behavior, and two in particular are the most 
relevant to the education and outreach programs under this review. This 
is because the theories are consistent with the structure and goals of 
the FMCSA programs we reviewed. One behavioral model that researchers 
have developed--the reasoned action theory--assumes that people will 
take a desired action if they believe the action is beneficial, and 
they have the means to undertake it. Another model that experts have 
developed--the general deterrence theory--indicates that in some 
circumstances people will take a desired action when they recognize 
that they may be punished for failing to act. The relative roles of 
education and enforcement depend upon the program's target audience, 
the desired change to be achieved, and other factors.

Since media campaigns should identify how the program is expected to 
change target audiences' attitudes and behaviors, program managers can 
use a tool or framework to show how outreach activities are intended to 
influence attitudes and behaviors, and thus achieve broad program 
goals. Academic literature on program development and evaluation 
provides a number of models. One tool we have previously used to review 
education and outreach programs[Footnote 15] is called a logic model. A 
logic model links program inputs and outputs to program outcomes (see 
fig. 3). Agencies have used such a model to plan, evaluate, and adjust 
program activities. A logic model can facilitate planning and 
evaluation by (1) demonstrating accountability through focusing on 
measurable outcomes; (2) linking activities to results to prevent 
mismatches between program activities and outcomes; and (3) integrating 
planning, implementation, evaluation, and reporting. In addition, a 
program logic model can help describe a program's components and 
desired results and explain the strategy--or logic--by which the 
program is expected to achieve its goals. The logic model can help 
clarify the links between program components, focusing on outcomes that 
are measured and under some degree of control. In some cases, it may be 
difficult to show a direct link--a specific cause and effect--between 
program activities and outcomes due to the influence of external 
factors. For example, the Safety Belt program, although targeted toward 
commercial motor vehicles operators, may have outcomes influenced by 
the NHTSA's "Click It or Ticket" program targeted to passenger car 
drivers. Commercial motor vehicle operators could be affected by this 
program, or other safety-belt messages, and decide to wear safety belts 
when driving commercially. Thus, the Safety Belt program's initiatives 
may not have been the primary factor in determining a particular 
driver's safety-belt use.

Finally, once program activities are established and linked to program 
goals, organizations can use program evaluation to determine whether or 
not a program is meeting its goals. Program evaluations are conducted 
periodically to provide an overall assessment of how well a program is 
achieving its expected results. We have reported on the value of 
program evaluations to assess the impact of a particular 
program.[Footnote 16] This work showed that results of evaluations can 
support decisions on resource allocation and ways to improve program 
effectiveness.

FMCSA Has Established Several Education and Outreach Efforts but Needs 
Specific Links to Goals:

FMCSA has established several education and outreach programs, with 
different purposes targeted to different audiences. Total funding for 
these programs in fiscal year 2005 was $36.3 million, with the largest 
share--$33.1 million--allotted to the New Entrant program. FMCSA's 
education and outreach efforts are intended to address recognized 
problems by communicating information to motor carriers, commercial 
drivers, and the public to encourage safer practices and better 
decision making. FMCSA activities under these programs range from 
distributing brochures and posting information on Web sites, to site 
visits to newly registered motor carriers under its New Entrant 
program. Although FMCSA officials consider these programs to be linked 
to agency goals at a high level, this linkage to broader agency goals 
is not explicit in the agency's planning and budgeting documents. FMCSA 
officials state that they have used a logic model in their performance 
budgets to illustrate the link between education and outreach and 
agency goals at a high level. Although the performance budget implies a 
link between the education and outreach program and agency goals, it 
does not describe how the activities are intended to support these 
goals. As a result, it is difficult for stakeholders to see how 
education and outreach activities that seek changes in attitudes and 
behavior will ultimately contribute to agency goals. Also, without a 
clear link, program managers can not easily determine if program 
activities are appropriately targeted or if they need to refine their 
programs to meet agency goals. In contrast, we found, however, that 
FMCSA uses a logic model in the strategic plan for its Research and 
Technology group to demonstrate how its programs and activities support 
agency goals. As FMCSA continues its efforts to develop the links 
between its education and outreach activities and broader goals, it 
might consider using such a logic model to make those relationships 
clear.

Education and Outreach Programs Address a Range of Safety and Consumer 
Protection Concerns and Are Targeted to Industry and the Public:

We reviewed five education and outreach programs that FMCSA has 
initiated in response to either congressional direction or concerns 
about motor carrier operations. FMCSA's education and outreach programs 
target a variety of audiences, including the motor carrier industry, 
commercial vehicle drivers, and the public; and they involve a variety 
of approaches, such as direct contact with carriers, media campaigns, 
distributing printed materials, and establishing Web sites. FMCSA also 
works with industry and law enforcement associations, other agencies, 
and safety-oriented organizations in carrying out some of these 
education and outreach efforts. Four of these programs are about motor 
carrier, driver, or passenger safety, while one has a consumer 
information focus. Table 1 provides a brief overview of the target 
audience, general purpose of the program, and program activities.

Table 1: Overview of FMCSA Education and Outreach Programs:

Program: New Entrant;
Target audience: New motor carriers that have registered with FMCSA;
Program purpose: Promoting compliance with FMCSA safety requirements, 
during new carriers' first 18 months of operation;
Activities: * Web site on motor carrier regulations;
* Education and Technical Assistance Package;
* Personal contact with new carriers through safety audits by state or 
federal officials, or contractors.

Program: Non-Entrant (Planned);
Target audience: Motor carriers that are operating interstate but have 
not registered with FMCSA;
Program purpose: Increasing registrations by carriers that should 
register with FMCSA;
Activities: * Planned outreach through truck sales and leasing firms.

Program: Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Belt Use;
Target audience: Commercial vehicle drivers;
Program purpose: Increasing safety-belt use by commercial vehicle 
drivers;
Activities: * Brochures, posters, bumper stickers distributed through 
trade shows and law enforcement campaigns;
* Safety belt information on Web site.

Program: Motor Coach Outreach;
Target audience: Organizations such as schools and individuals that 
hire motor coach services;
Program purpose: Enabling the public to make more informed choices when 
selecting a motor coach company;
Activities: * Web site information on selecting a motor coach company 
and company safety information.

Program: Household Goods Outreach;
Target audience: Individuals that are planning to move across state 
lines;
Program purpose: Enabling the public to be better informed about 
selecting an interstate moving company;
Activities: * Brochures distributed through moving companies and other 
means;
* Web site information on selecting and contracting with a moving 
company.

Source: GAO analysis of FMCSA information.

[End of table]

The five programs in this review are summarized below, and discussed in 
greater detail in appendix II.

New Entrant Program:

FMCSA intends the New Entrant program to inform newly registered motor 
carriers (new entrants) about motor carrier safety standards and 
regulations to help them gain compliance with FMCSA requirements and 
improve truck safety and thus reduce crash rates.[Footnote 17] Studies 
have shown that new carriers have higher safety violation and crash 
rates than more experienced carriers. FMCSA uses its Education and 
Technical Assistance Package to communicate safety requirements and 
other information to new entrants when they register with DOT. This 
information package is also available at FMCSA's Web site, along with 
carrier registration forms.[Footnote 18] The primary activity of the 
New Entrant program is safety audits conducted through site visits to 
the new carriers. Safety audits are conducted by FMCSA, state law 
enforcement, or contractor personnel, who review the carrier's 
compliance with FMCSA requirements, including driver qualifications, 
driver records of duty status, vehicle maintenance records, and 
participation in a controlled substance and alcohol use testing 
program. As of April 2005, FMCSA had conducted 52,000 safety audits 
since the New Entrant program began in 2003.

Non-Entrant Program:

FMCSA is developing a Non-Entrant program intended to inform start-up 
motor carriers who have not registered with the agency--called non- 
entrants--of the requirement to register with FMCSA. FMCSA officials 
are concerned that carriers that have not registered with FMCSA may 
represent an increased safety risk. FMCSA expects to target motor 
carriers who have not registered as interstate carriers with FMCSA, by 
working through truck sales and leasing firms to inform start-up motor 
carriers about registration requirements and, ultimately, to ensure 
that the carriers register as new entrants. FMCSA officials expect to 
award a contract to develop the Non-Entrant program before the end of 
2005.

Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Belt Program:

The Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Belt program is intended to 
increase safety-belt use by commercial truck drivers. FMCSA began this 
effort after a study showed that only 48 percent of commercial truck 
drivers used safety belts, compared with nearly 80 percent safety-belt 
use by passenger car drivers. Working through the Commercial Motor 
Vehicle Safety Belt Partnership--an organization of government, 
industry, law enforcement, and safety associations--FMCSA facilitates 
and coordinates the development and distribution of outreach materials, 
including posters, bumper stickers, and brochures promoting safety-belt 
use. (See fig. 1 for an example of a brochure describing the safety- 
belt partnership.) Working through the Partnership allows FMCSA to 
leverage its resources and tap into organizations that have their own 
communication links to the trucking industry. FMCSA staff distribute 
materials through trucking industry shows and events, and state law 
enforcement personnel distribute materials during safety enforcement 
campaigns. FMCSA has prepared over 200,000 brochures and 50,000 bumper 
stickers for the 2005 "Be Ready, Be Buckled" campaign. FMCSA also 
provides safety belt information through its Web site.

Figure 1: Cover of Safety Belt Partnership Brochure:

[See PDF for image]

[End of figure]

Motor Coach Outreach Program:

The Motor Coach Outreach program provides consumers with information to 
help them select and hire motor coach services. The program began 
following an increase in motor coach accident fatalities. Currently, 
FMCSA's primary effort is maintaining a Web site that allows 
individuals to access advice on selecting a motor coach company and 
safety information on specific motor coach companies. For the "Moving 
Kids Safely" campaign in 2002 that was part of the Motor Coach Outreach 
program, FMCSA created 49,000 brochures; 1,200 posters; and 1,200 
"toolkits" to provide advice to school districts on hiring school bus 
services. FMCSA also reaches out to the industry to inform motor coach 
companies of regulations and provide safety advice through printed 
materials and the agency's motor coach specialists.

Household Goods Outreach Program:

The Household Goods Outreach program is intended to help consumers make 
more informed choices in selecting an interstate moving company to 
avoid unscrupulous movers. This program was begun in response to 
congressional concern over increasing consumer complaints about 
fraudulent moving companies. FMCSA distributes printed material through 
moving companies and other means, such as its Web site and the General 
Services Administration (GSA) consumer information catalog, to inform 
consumers of their rights when dealing with moving companies. The 
material that FMCSA has developed includes a new outreach theme: 
"Protect Your Memories, Your Money, Your Move" and it includes 
brochures and presentations that can be delivered by FMCSA staff. For 
example, as of October 2005, FMCSA officials reported that they had 
printed a total of 50,000 copies of the two brochures the agency 
distributes. FMCSA also maintains a hotline to receive complaints from 
individuals about problems with movers and enters them into a database. 
Although FMCSA does not get involved in resolving complaints, the 
agency uses the database to target firms for investigation. Also, we 
previously reported that FMCSA should make the complaint information 
available to consumers.[Footnote 19] According to FMCSA officials the 
agency has not yet done this because of privacy and other legal issues.

Except for the New Entrant Program, Education and Outreach Funding 
Represents a Small Portion of FMCSA's Budget:

The five education and outreach programs represent a small portion of 
FMCSA's total funding. Fiscal year 2005 funding for the five programs 
totaled $36.3 million, out of approximately $443.3 million to fund 
FMCSA operations and grant programs. The New Entrant program accounted 
for $33.1 million of the funding for the five programs, while funding 
for the other four programs combined was $3.2 million--less than 1 
percent of the agency's total fiscal year 2005 funding.

The first chart in figure 2 below depicts the New Entrant program, and 
the combined funding for the other four programs, as their relative 
share of total FMCSA funding in fiscal year 2005. The second chart 
depicts the relative size of the four smaller education and outreach 
programs.

Figure 2: FMCSA Fiscal Year 2005 Education and Outreach Funding:

[See PDF for image]

Note: Data resulted from U.S. House of Representatives Report 108-792, 
Making Appropriations for Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and 
Related Programs for the Fiscal Year Ending September 30, 2005, and for 
Other Purposes (Nov. 20, 2004): and discussions with FMCSA officials.

[A] Congressional language accompanying the fiscal year 2005 DOT 
appropriations requested FMCSA to apply $50,000 to the "Safety is Good 
Business" program. FMCSA officials informed us that this amount would 
be added to the $1.0 million appropriated for the Non-Entrant program.

[End of figure]

The funding available for education and outreach supports a diverse 
range of activities, from the costs of state personnel conducting 
safety audits, to the costs of printing and distributing brochures and 
other materials, and the costs of contracts being awarded to develop 
and evaluate education and outreach activities. The principal 
activities that FMCSA is undertaking through the five programs are 
shown in table 2.

Table 2: How Fiscal Year 2005 Outreach and Education Funding Is Being 
Used:

Program: New Entrant;
FY 2005 Funding: $33,100,000;
Principal use of funding[A]: $30,100,000 in grants to states to conduct 
safety audits; $3,000,000 for FMCSA to contract for safety audits.

Program: Commercial Motor Carrier Safety-Belt Use;
FY 2005 Funding: $500,000;
Principal use of funding[A]: $440,000 interagency transfer to NHTSA for 
two studies addressing safety belt use by commercial drivers;
$24,400 for brochures, posters, bumper stickers and other materials 
prepared for "Be Ready, Be Buckled" campaign.[B].

Program: Motor Coach Outreach;
FY 2005 Funding: $150,000;
Principal use of funding[A]: Printing and distributing brochures, Web 
site maintenance, and surveys of Web-site users.

Program: Household Goods;
Outreach;
FY 2005 Funding: $1,488,000;
Principal use of funding[A]: $900,000 for education, outreach and 
evaluation support contracts;
$570,000 for complaint database development and maintenance.

Program: Non-Entrant;
FY 2005 Funding: $1,050,000;
Principal use of funding[A]: $1,000,000 appropriated for a Non-Entrant 
program plus $50,000 targeted for "Safety is Good Business," will be 
used to contract for development of a Non-Entrant program.

Source: FMCSA information.

[A] Because these examples illustrate the principal use of components 
of these programs, in some cases they do not add to the total amounts 
spent in the programs.

[B] The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) provides additional 
financial support for printing and distributing brochures under this 
initiative.

[End of table]

FMCSA Has Not Clearly Articulated How Its Education and Outreach 
Initiatives Will Support Broader Goals:

Congress has expressed concern about how FMCSA's education and outreach 
activities are meeting broader goals, such as individual program goals, 
or DOT's strategic goals. The conference report accompanying the DOT 
appropriations bill for fiscal year 2005, for example, asked that FMCSA 
report by April 2005 to the House and Senate Committees on 
Appropriations on strategies linking outreach and education program 
initiatives to each goal.[Footnote 20] FMCSA sent its report on October 
11, 2005. The report indicates that FMCSA believes education and 
outreach programs support the overall DOT safety strategic objective of 
"enhancing public health and safety by elimination of transportation 
deaths and injuries." FMCSA also indicates that every education 
activity undertaken "is vital to FMCSA's goal of reducing fatalities, 
injuries, and crashes, and attaining a large truck crash rate of no 
more than 1.65 fatalities per 100 million miles of truck travel by the 
end of 2008."

Although the report was intended to address congressional concerns 
about linking education and outreach to program goals, it is unclear 
specifically how this will be accomplished, since the report does not 
describe how these programs are intended to influence knowledge, 
attitudes, and behaviors and thus support FMCSA's broader goals. 
Although the report describes in detail the activities FMCSA is 
undertaking for each of these programs, it does not describe how these 
activities are intended to change attitudes and behaviors that will 
ultimately meet FMCSA's goals.

In addition, although FMCSA's fiscal year 2006 performance budget has 
some discussion of how activities support FMCSA and DOT safety and 
productivity goals, except for the Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Belt 
program, none of the budget or program documentation we reviewed for 
FMCSA's education and outreach programs provides detailed descriptions 
about how activities link to goals. A greater level of detail in the 
description of how education and outreach program activities link to 
goals would help the public and other interested parties to see how 
program activities that seek changes in attitudes and behavior will 
ultimately contribute to agency goals. Furthermore, without this link, 
program managers cannot easily determine if program activities are 
appropriately targeted or if they need to refine their programs to meet 
agency goals.

FMCSA officials stated that information about education and outreach 
programs is reported in DOT's strategic plan and in FMCSA's performance 
budget documents.[Footnote 21] However, DOT's strategic plan does not 
specifically address FMCSA's education and outreach programs and refers 
readers to the performance budgets for more detailed, program-specific 
information. FMCSA's performance budget documents identify strategic 
objectives, such as saving lives and reducing injuries by preventing 
bus and truck crashes, that link and contribute to objectives in DOT's 
strategic plan, such as reducing transportation-related fatalities. It 
also identifies underlying performance goals and indicators for each 
objective. For example, FMCSA's strategic objective for safety is 
illustrated in table 3.

Table 3: Hierarchy of Objective, Goal, and Indicators for FMCSA's 
Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Objective:

Strategic objective;
Save lives and reduce injuries by preventing truck and bus crashes.

Performance goal;
Reduce the rate of large truck-related fatalities to no more than 1.65 
fatalities per 100 million truck vehicle miles traveled by the end of 
2008.

Leading indicators;
Fatalities in large truck crashes; Intercity bus fatalities; Injuries 
in large truck crashes; Rate of large truck- related injuries.

Source: Performance Budget Estimates section of FMCSA's Fiscal Year 
2006 Budget Submission to Congress.

[End of table]

The performance budget documents address education and outreach 
primarily under this strategic objective for safety, by stating that 
"educating carriers about the benefits of operating safely, and in 
compliance with safety regulations, is advantageous to both the carrier 
and enforcement community." The budget also states that the education 
programs are designed to change "the knowledge, attitudes, and 
behaviors of commercial motor carriers, commercial motor vehicle 
drivers, and passenger vehicle drivers, driving in the vicinity of 
large trucks."

However, the performance budget does not provide specific information 
for each program on how these expected attitude and behavior changes 
are linked to broader goals. Of the five programs included in our 
review, the description of the safety belt initiative provides the 
clearest information articulating how the program is intended to affect 
the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of its targeted audience, and 
consequently to improve safety. FMCSA describes how education will 
highlight the risks of not wearing a safety belt, which in turn is 
intended to improve drivers' attitudes toward wearing safety belts, and 
subsequently meet the program goal of increasing safety-belt usage 10 
percent by 2009 and further, meet the strategic objective of reducing 
fatalities.[Footnote 22] The performance budget also indicates that 
education will be combined with traffic enforcement of safety-belt 
requirements to achieve this outcome. In contrast, the performance 
budget discusses the New Entrant program in terms of staffing, funding, 
and the number of safety audits to be done in fiscal year 2006, without 
defining a goal for what the New Entrant program will accomplish and 
how that accomplishment would contribute to the strategic objective of 
reducing fatalities.

In addition, the links between the Motor Coach and Household Goods 
program activities and broader strategic goals are difficult to 
discern. Specifically, the performance budget document explains that 
the Motor Coach program seeks to increase consumers' knowledge about 
the safety records of carriers, with a potential side benefit of 
encouraging motor carriers to maintain good safety records. FMCSA does 
not, however, describe how affecting consumers' choice of a particular 
motor coach company would support the overall strategic objective of 
reducing transportation-related fatalities. FMCSA's performance budget 
relates its Household Goods program to DOT's mobility and FMCSA's 
productivity objectives. The mobility objective is "to advance 
accessible, efficient, and intermodal transportation for the movement 
of people and goods."[Footnote 23] The productivity strategic objective 
is "to promote efficient and economical motor carrier operations to 
sustain mobility and economic growth." The performance budget document 
asserts links between these objectives and the education and outreach 
program, but it does not explain how specific activities--such as 
establishing its Web site on selecting moving companies and creating 
brochures on consumer rights and responsibilities--support either of 
these objectives.[Footnote 24]

On the basis of our discussions with FMCSA officials, it appears the 
agency is attempting to more clearly describe how education and 
outreach activities link to the agency's goals. FMCSA acknowledged that 
there may have been some disconnection between the strategic planning 
and budgeting processes in the past, but managers have recently 
received training on defining a program's desired outcome and then 
linking inputs--such as funding--and outputs. Officials told us that as 
a result the agency's proposed fiscal year 2007 performance budget will 
better link programs and goals to budget requests. FMCSA's eventual 
goal is to link program outputs to outcomes, as well as identifying 
measurable and verifiable goals to the extent possible.

A Logic Model Provides a Framework for Linking Program Activities to 
Desired Results and Goals:

Although the relationships among program activities, changes in 
knowledge and behaviors, and broader goals can sometimes seem 
intuitive, laying a program out through a logic model can be useful for 
program managers and stakeholders to demonstrate and understand these 
relationships. FMCSA officials state that they use a logic model in its 
performance budget to link education and outreach to agency objectives. 
However, the performance budget implies a link between the education 
and outreach program budget and agency goals without describing how 
FMCSA intends the program to change behaviors, such as following 
federal safety regulations, to support agency goals, as would be shown 
in a logic model. FMCSA has used a logic model in another program area 
that provides a description of how a program is intended to support 
agency goals. Specifically, FMCSA's Research and Technology group used 
a logic model along with other planning tools to demonstrate how its 
activities support FMCSA's goals in its 5-Year Strategic Plan. The 
Research and Technology logic model includes inputs such as staff, 
outputs such as research studies, outcomes such as improved 
understanding of root causes of crashes, and impacts such as fewer 
commercial motor vehicle crashes.[Footnote 25] FMCSA described the 
Research and Technology Logic Model as a "mechanism to help define 
metrics for performance, quality, and relevance of the 
program."[Footnote 26]

As FMCSA endeavors to describe how its education and outreach program 
activities affect the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of its target 
audiences, and link these results to broader goals, it may wish to 
consider a tool such as a logic model--as the agency used in its 
Research and Technology strategic plan--to clearly outline those links. 
In previous work on educational and outreach,[Footnote 27] we used a 
logic model to describe the program components--inputs and outputs--and 
how these support the desired results, thus explaining the strategy--or 
logic--by which programs are expected to achieve their goals. Figure 3 
graphically depicts this model and its components.

Figure 3: Program Logic Model:

[See PDF for image]

[End of figure]

The logic model illustrates how program activities such as distributing 
informational pamphlets contribute to the results of a program, such as 
increasing safety-belt usage, and to an ultimate goal, such as reducing 
fatalities. In addition, program managers should consider the effect of 
external factors when defining outcomes and recognize that the 
correlation between activities and desired outcomes may not be as 
direct as one would like. Without a logic model or similar tool to 
clearly describe the links between education and outreach programs and 
broader goals, FMCSA may have difficulty designing and evaluating 
effective programs.

Evaluations of Specific Education and Outreach Programs Impacts Are 
Still in Preliminary Stages, but the Lack of a Plan to Evaluate How New 
Entrant Safety Audits Improve Knowledge and Attitudes Raises Concern:

FMCSA has begun some evaluations of its education and outreach 
activities, including the New Entrant program, and plans to use 
contractors to evaluate some programs. Surveys and studies are the 
primary means by which FMCSA or its contractor will evaluate the 
programs. However, some gaps in evaluation plans remain, especially for 
the largest of the programs we reviewed. Specifically, FMCSA has not 
evaluated whether the Education and Technical Assistance Package 
provided to new entrants and the safety audits conducted under the New 
Entrant program effectively communicated information to new entrants, 
making it difficult to determine the impact of that program. A list of 
FMCSA's evaluations and planned evaluations are provided in figure 4.

Figure 4: FMCSA's Evaluations and Planned Evaluations by Program:

[See PDF for image]

[End of figure]

For each program, FMCSA's evaluation efforts are described as follows.

New Entrant Program:

FMCSA evaluates the performance of the New Entrant program primarily by 
tracking the number of safety audits conducted of new motor carriers. 
The agency has a goal of conducting a certain number of safety audits 
per year, safety audits of 80 percent of new entrants within the first 
6 months they are in business, and 100 percent of all new entrants 
within their first 18 months of operation. FMCSA sets employee 
performance goals for division office managers for conducting a 
particular number of safety audits of new entrants. According to FMCSA 
officials, agency personnel conducted over 9,400 safety audits in 
fiscal year 2005, exceeding their goal of 8,000 FMCSA completed safety 
audits. In addition, by April 2005, 52,000 safety audits had been 
conducted since the program began, and the number conducted each 
quarter has been generally increasing. However, FMCSA officials 
acknowledge that there is a safety audit backlog in some states, and 
the goals for auditing new entrants in the first 6 months, and the 
first 18 months, are not being met. The number of safety audits 
reflects the number of new registrants that were personally informed 
about the carrier requirements. Using registration data on the number 
of new entrants, the agency can estimate the number of new entrants 
needing a safety audit and agency progress toward the program goal. 
There are about 40,000 new entrants registered per year, but officials 
told us that about 40 percent drop out or discontinue business within 
the first year of operations.

By tracking the number of safety audits conducted, FMCSA seeks to 
determine the extent to which it has provided information to its 
targeted audience of new drivers. FMCSA has no process to measure 
whether new entrants' awareness of safe trucking practices was raised, 
which ideally would be a consequence of an effective education and 
outreach effort. Specifically, although FMCSA plans to evaluate the New 
Entrant program in 2008, it has no current plan to determine how 
FMCSA's safety requirement information, such as its Education and 
Technical Assistance Package and its safety audits, affect new 
entrants' (1) awareness of FMCSA requirements, such as drug and alcohol 
testing requirements or (2) their motivation to change behaviors that 
might lead to safer operations. The New Entrant program manager 
indicated that since the program is new and still evolving, the 
outreach campaign does not have much historical data to evaluate.

Although the program has not been in existence very long, FMCSA 
officials stated that the agency has conducted one study of the New 
Entrant program and has plans to conduct another. One preliminary 
analysis by FMCSA compared the crash rates of new motor carriers 
registering with FMCSA during 2002 to the crash rates of over 1,000 new 
motor carriers that registered with FMCSA and had a safety audit during 
the first 6 months of 2003. This analysis showed that there was little 
difference between the crash rates of these two groups. FMCSA officials 
said that they are planning a study to be conducted after planned 
changes to the safety audit, discussed later in this report, have been 
in place for a period of time. Officials told us that the study planned 
to begin in 2008 will examine carriers' safety records over time, 
although they have not yet developed an evaluation plan.

We have previously reported on the difficulties of assessing education 
and outreach programs such as the New Entrant program. We have also 
reported, however, that federal agencies are expected to demonstrate 
how their activities contribute to achieving agency or governmentwide 
goals. Additionally, the guidance that FMCSA uses when developing 
evaluation efforts for education and outreach programs--a booklet 
entitled The Art of Appropriate Evaluation[Footnote 28] --published by 
NHTSA--emphasizes that evaluations should include measurements of 
changes in awareness, knowledge, and behavior. If FMCSA's planned 
evaluation of the New Entrant program does not consider whether the 
program is actually succeeding in effectively conveying the educational 
material on safe trucking practices, FMCSA will be unable to clearly 
determine the program's impact. Or, if safety audits are having little 
impact, as suggested by FMCSA's preliminary analysis, the agency will 
not be able to determine whether it is due to (1) the educational 
material provided, (2) how the information is conveyed during the 
safety audits, (3) the lack of follow-up on the safety audit results, 
or (4) other factors. Additionally, it will be difficult to demonstrate 
to Congress that this program is having its desired effect.

Non-Entrant Program:

This program has not yet begun. FMCSA officials plan to award a 
contract by the end of 2005 to develop, implement, and evaluate the Non-
Entrant program. The contractor is to test the effectiveness of the 
outreach materials while they are being developed to determine if they 
will reach the intended audience and effectively changed knowledge and 
attitudes. Development of the materials will include surveying the 
targeted audience and conducting outreach through truck leasing and 
sales firms. FMCSA's program plan indicated that the contractor will be 
expected to assess changes in knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of 
its target audience.

Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Belt Program:

FMCSA officials stated that they plan to evaluate this initiative in 
several ways once they have finalized its evaluation arrangements. 
According to FMCSA officials, during program design, FMCSA tested its 
marketing materials with target audiences, including truck drivers, and 
found that the marketing material was appropriately targeted. Also, 
FMCSA is installing software to track the number of Web-site hits on 
certain of its Web pages that contain important educational elements of 
the Safety Belt campaign. This system will enable FMCSA to determine 
how many times its information has been viewed, but it will not enable 
FMCSA officials to know whether that information was effectively 
conveyed to its target audience or changed their attitudes about 
wearing safety belts. Nonetheless, FMCSA officials believe that this 
software will enable program managers to monitor and determine which 
Web-site pages are viewed, and therefore are more effective, based on 
the number of hits and the length of time at each site. Furthermore, 
FMCSA is considering focus groups and surveys with carriers on how 
safety belt marketing material affected their awareness of the 
importance of using safety belts.

In addition, FMCSA has an agreement with NHTSA for two efforts that 
could measure progress toward the expected outcome of this initiative-
-a 10-percent increase in use of safety belts from 2006 through 2009. 
The first effort is a study, expected to be completed in December 2005, 
which updates a 2003 commercial motor vehicle study that reported that 
48 percent of commercial drivers wear safety belts. The new study will 
update information on the percentage of commercial drivers that wear 
safety belts by replicating the methodology used in the 2003 study, 
according to FMCSA officials. The second effort will investigate the 
feasibility of annually collecting data on safety-belt use by 
commercial drivers through the National Occupant Protection Usage Study 
(NOPUS) sponsored by NHTSA. Although these efforts will measure safety- 
belt use, they will not evaluate whether the education and outreach 
program in particular contributed to changes in the number of 
individuals wearing safety belts.

Motor Coach Outreach Program:

FMCSA has a Web-based, pop-up survey for its Web site which, although 
focusing on consumer satisfaction in general, gives FMCSA some ideas 
about Web-site usage and exposure to the information contained on the 
site. The survey randomly selects visitors to the Motor Coach Web site 
and asks them to answer a series of questions concerning the accuracy, 
quality, convenience, and ability of finding needed information. The 
survey also asks visitors about their overall satisfaction with the Web 
site. Although these questions may be generally helpful to rate the Web 
site experience, more specific questions on the Motor Coach program 
information have not been incorporated. The pop-up survey has 
flexibility for use in other FMCSA program Web pages, and FMCSA has 
plans to use Web-based usage tracking as an additional tool in the 
future. However, with only a small budget--$150,000 in fiscal year 
2005--for the Motor Coach program, it is reasonable to expect that 
FMCSA would balance the need for this type of evaluation information 
with its other education and outreach program priorities.

As of October 2005, FMCSA officials also had plans to award a contract 
for contractor support to conduct surveys, focus groups, and interviews 
to evaluate its education and outreach programs, including obtaining 
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) clearance for these 
activities.[Footnote 29] FMCSA officials told us that the motor coach 
program would be evaluated under this contract.

Household Goods Outreach Program:

FMCSA has identified at least two approaches to evaluate the 
effectiveness of the outreach efforts for the household goods outreach 
program. One effort is to survey recipients who have received the Ready 
to Move - Tips for a Successful Interstate Move booklet from GSA. As of 
May 2005, 703 surveys had been distributed to determine whether the 
recipients believed that the booklet would change their intentions 
about which household goods carrier they might select. The survey asks 
questions regarding the effectiveness of the booklet and its 
information content. Also, FMCSA officials stated that the Household 
Goods program would be evaluated under the survey support contract 
discussed in the preceding section on the Motor Coach program.

An FMCSA official whom we spoke with indicated that the elderly may be 
particularly targeted by unscrupulous movers. Recent data released by 
the Census Bureau indicate that only about 40 percent of people age 55 
years or older have computers with Internet access in their 
homes.[Footnote 30] Although FMCSA has an available hard-copy brochure, 
the Web-based outreach efforts may not be fully reaching this 
population. FMCSA's planned evaluations of the Household Goods program 
do not address the effectiveness of FMCSA's Web-based outreach in 
reaching this population.

The Effectiveness of Education and Outreach Programs Is Unclear, but 
Programs Seem to be Reasonably Designed According to Theories of 
Behavior Change and Industry Groups:

Most of FMCSA's evaluations of its education and outreach programs have 
yet to be completed, and therefore little is currently known about the 
effectiveness of the programs. FMCSA expects the contracts for the 
evaluation programs to be finalized within months and will receive 
information from the evaluations once the data are collected and 
analyzed. Until that time, what is known about program effectiveness is 
largely based on anecdotal information from stakeholders such as 
industry associations, as well as a comparison of the education and 
outreach programs to the design of other successful programs that have 
been implemented. However, FMCSA's education and outreach programs and 
marketing materials appear to follow theories and research on behavior 
change. Finally, a public-safety group suggests FMCSA followed 
reasonable approaches in starting its education and outreach efforts, 
however, it would like to see more quantitative evaluation in the 
future to help FMCSA refine its programs.

Behavior Theory Indicates Education and Outreach Can Be Effective in 
Increasing Awareness and Changing Behavior for Programs that Do Not 
Have Regulations Governing the Behavior of Their Target Audiences:

Studies by us, other agencies, and academics show that education and 
outreach programs, such as those undertaken by FMCSA, can be effective 
in creating awareness of a problem or issue and influencing some change 
in behavior. One theory--the theory of reasoned action--explains the 
relationship between attitudes, beliefs, intentions, and behavior. In 
short, people are more likely to change their behavior if they believe 
the change is valued--or that not changing their behavior has negative 
consequences--and if they have the necessary opportunity to change the 
behavior. For example, one antismoking advertising campaign emphasized 
the negative effects of smoking on a smoker's health. Smokers became 
aware of the negative consequences, and 26 percent of respondents 
indicated that they were more likely to quit smoking based on the 
awareness of the negative consequences of smoking. Another study on the 
effects of sun exposure showed that countering the mistaken belief that 
sun tanning had a positive effect reduced the percentage of individuals 
who habitually lie in the sun. These studies demonstrate that 
emphasizing the consequences of a negative behavior to individuals can 
result in changes to attitudes and behavior, without applying any 
specific sanctions.

Based on the theory of reasoned action, education and outreach can have 
a positive impact through FMCSA's two programs that have a goal of 
influencing consumers to make appropriate choices of motor carriers. 
FMCSA's Motor Coach and Household Goods Outreach programs are targeted 
toward consumers and do not have regulations governing the consumers' 
behavior, thus, according to the theory of reasoned action, gaining 
knowledge about the positive consequences of choosing a safe carrier 
will affect the individuals' attitude toward this behavior. The change 
in attitude will directly affect intention and the subsequent behavior. 
Thus, education and outreach campaigns can provide an individual under 
these circumstances with the information that is needed to make a more 
educated choice. For example, the Motor Coach program follows this 
approach by targeting consumers and conveying the negative consequences 
of choosing an unsafe carrier. In the case of the Household Goods 
program, the campaign conveys the positive consequences of choosing a 
reputable carrier in the Households Goods program, although the 
elderly, a group potentially susceptible to unscrupulous carriers, may 
require a different delivery method other than FMCSA's Web site to 
receive this message.

A Link to Enforcement Can Strengthen Education and Outreach Programs' 
Ability to Change Behavior:

Independent studies as well as our prior work[Footnote 31] indicate 
that the level of enforcement in safety related programs is positively 
correlated with safety-belt use, especially when coupled with public- 
awareness efforts. According to the general deterrence theory, 
individuals must be exposed to law enforcement or receive information 
about legal ramifications of their actions before they can be deterred. 
The perception or expectation of certain sanctions results in attempts 
to avoid committing the offense. Studies show this theory is an 
effective model for strengthening the change in behavior resulting from 
safety programs. Thus, this link to enforcement would apply to FMCSA's 
three education and outreach programs--Safety Belt, Non-Entrant and New 
Entrant--that have existing regulations that address their target 
audience's behavior.

One study, conducted by the National Safety Council, on the state of 
South Carolina's safety-belt program, showed that while media campaigns 
immediately increased awareness of the importance of safety belts, the 
largest increase in safety belt-use occurred after officers enforced 
the requirement to wear safety belts. Additionally, a 2002 study by 
NHTSA included data from the state of Washington, which showed that the 
baseline percentage of individuals wearing safety belts (81 percent) 
increased slightly with advertising over a 4-week period to 82 percent. 
Ultimately with the addition of enforcement efforts, the percentage of 
those who wear safety belts increased to 90 percent within 2 months. 
The same study showed similar results in Texas, where the effects of 
advertising alone raised the safety belt percentage slightly, but the 
combination of advertising with enforcement caused the number to 
increase another 6 percent, from the 80-percent baseline. These studies 
suggest that although publicity may increase the awareness of the need 
to wear safety belts, some people are unlikely to act on that awareness 
unless the enforcement component of the campaign was closely integrated 
with the publicity campaign. The results of these studies suggest that 
education and outreach alone can increase awareness and encourage the 
intended behaviors for FMCSA's education and outreach programs, but 
that enforcement can strengthen the result of these efforts.

FMCSA Is Increasing Enforcement in the New Entrant Program and 
Acknowledges the Importance of Enforcement to the Non-Entrant and 
Safety Belt Programs:

Three of FMCSA's programs we examined, the New Entrant, Non-Entrant and 
Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Belt programs have regulations, such as 
a requirement for motor carrier drivers to wear safety belts, affecting 
the target audiences' (motor carrier industry) behavior. This provides 
the opportunity to use both enforcement and education in programs with 
the goal of improving the safety behavior of the motor carrier 
industry. The following sections describe how FMCSA has indicated it is 
using or will be using enforcement along with education and outreach in 
these programs.

New Entrant Program:

Enforcement has been only a minor component of the New Entrant program, 
but FMCSA is currently strengthening the criteria for passing New 
Entrant safety audits because of concerns of its effectiveness, based 
on analysis and anecdotal information indicating that new entrants that 
have been notified of the safety audit requirements may not be 
operating more safely. In addition, even if a new entrant passes the 
safety audit, some carriers are not yet following important safety 
requirements, such as having a drug and alcohol testing program, at the 
time the safety audit was conducted. This change should establish a 
better link to enforcement, in keeping with behavioral research, in 
that it will be more difficult for new entrants to retain their 
operating status unless they are following the safety requirements at 
the time of the audit.

The safety audit has been considered an educational unit, with a strong 
emphasis on training new entrants about the requirements to operate in 
interstate commerce. For example, the federal register notice that 
established the new entrant safety assurance process indicated that the 
new entrant process is intended to "improve the safety performance of 
new entrants by providing educational and technical assistance" and 
required "minimum requirements to new entrant motor carriers to ensure 
that they are knowledgeable about applicable federal motor carrier 
safety standards." There are few sanctions for carriers who fail 
critical areas of the safety audit, although a new entrant might be 
subject to a more stringent and detailed review--a compliance review-- 
under certain circumstances.[Footnote 32] However, the compliance 
review process occurs less often with new motor carriers than 
experienced carriers.

Although FMCSA's requirements indicate that the objectives of the 
safety audit are to educate the carrier and determine areas where the 
carrier's compliance might be deficient, in practical application 
almost all new entrants have passed the safety audit, and little is 
done to follow-up to ensure that new motor carriers correct 
deficiencies identified in the safety audits. A new entrant can fail 
two of six sections and still pass the audit. Safety audit sections 
include areas such as driver qualifications, business operations, and 
maintenance records. Over a 2-year period ending in April 2005, there 
were 51,681 carriers that passed the safety audit, and only 372 failed, 
producing a 99.3 percent passing rate for new entrant motor carriers. 
Those who fail the audit must take corrective action within 45 days if 
they are a passenger or hazardous material carrier, or 60 days for all 
other carriers, or they will lose operating status. Furthermore, for 
those carriers who passed the audit despite failing multiple sections 
of it, FMCSA currently has no mechanism to ensure the failed sections 
of the audit have been corrected before the carrier achieves permanent 
status. Although FMCSA sends letters to new entrants about the sections 
in which they are not in compliance with motor carrier regulations; 
beyond the letter and agency follow-up to obtain proof of insurance, 
the agency or its representatives do not determine if the new entrants 
have in fact corrected deficiencies identified during the safety audits.

Our analysis of critical factors within the safety audit questions 
revealed that over the same 2-year period, about 40 percent of the 
carriers failed the "driver" section of the audit, despite passing the 
audit overall. This section includes critical questions, such as 
whether a carrier's driver qualifications have been reviewed and 
whether the carrier's drivers are covered by a drug and alcohol testing 
program. Specifically, we found that about 60 percent of the new 
entrant carriers that passed the safety audit had failed the 
requirement to check qualifications of drivers prior to hiring them. 
Checking qualifications means that before hiring a driver a motor 
carrier company obtains and reviews information on an applicant's 
driving history, including accident and ticket information. In 
addition, we found that for the most part, between 27 and 29 percent of 
carriers who passed the safety audit had not maintained maintenance 
files for requested vehicles. The lack of improvement over the 2-year 
period illustrates the importance of determining if the Education and 
Technical Assistance Package, which the carriers received prior to the 
audit, should be changed to improve these results.

FMCSA officials agreed that the safety audit may not be improving 
safety behavior of new entrants, and the agency is already tightening 
these requirements. Currently, there is no one question or section of 
the audit that can cause a new entrant to fail. FMCSA officials 
informed us that the new federal register notice laying out stricter 
pass requirements--expected to be issued shortly--identify eight 
critical questions that individually could lead to failing the safety 
audit, thus providing more incentive for carriers to comply with new 
entrant requirements. For example, carriers would automatically fail if 
they do not employ a drug and alcohol program, have insurance, or have 
the proper maintenance requirements. Carriers who fail the safety audit 
and do not correct the deficiencies could lose their operating status 
and would be required to correct deficiencies before their operating 
status is reinstated.

Safety Belt Program:

Similarly to the New Entrant program, there has been limited 
enforcement associated with the Safety Belt program to date. The 
finding that 48 percent of commercial drivers wear safety belts, 
compared with 80 percent of passenger vehicle drivers, suggests that 
commercial motor vehicle operators have thus far been less receptive to 
messages in the market place regarding the importance of wearing safety 
belts while on duty.[Footnote 33] In light of the studies we reviewed, 
an enforcement element might help strengthen education and outreach 
programs' attempts to increase awareness of the risk to drivers of not 
wearing safety belts and encourage commercial drivers to wear them. It 
is reasonable to assume that commercial motor vehicle operators, 
similar to private operators, would be educated and informed from the 
materials presented in the campaign but that some would not act on the 
information unless there was some risk of sanction. The approved plan 
for FMCSA's safety belt initiatives includes a third phase of 
implementation that calls for increased enforcement. Although the plan 
does not specify how FMCSA will enforce federal regulations regarding 
wearing safety belts and how FMCSA will work with state agencies to 
carry out enforcement--as this program develops, strengthening the 
enforcement link may increase the effectiveness of the safety belt 
education and outreach efforts. FMCSA officials indicated that this 
enforcement effort had begun and included fiscal year 2005 grants to 
state agencies that can be used for safety belt education and 
enforcement.

Non-Entrant Program:

FMCSA's program plan for the Non-Entrant program indicates it will have 
some enforcement component as it is developed; however, specific 
information on enforcement has not yet been developed. Literature on 
safety programs and experience with similar programs indicates the Non- 
Entrant program might benefit from enforcement after non-entrants are 
exposed to the message about the importance of registering for a DOT 
license when they buy or rent a vehicle for operation.

Industry Associations Offer A Mostly Positive View of FMCSA's Education 
and Outreach Efforts, but Public Advocacy Groups Expressed Some 
Concerns:

Overall, the industry associations' view is that FMCSA is doing several 
positive things in its education and outreach activities. Officials of 
the seven industry associations whom we spoke with had regular contact 
with FMCSA officials and were familiar with the education and outreach 
programs under this review. Many association officials cited direct 
contact with FMCSA on industry issues on a regular basis and said that 
their partnerships with FMCSA on education and outreach activities were 
productive. Specifically, an official of one moving industry 
association told us that it shared data with FMCSA regarding complaints 
against carriers and often refers complainants to FMCSA for further 
information. Officials representing a consortium of primarily state 
agencies involved in motor carrier safety, to which FMCSA belongs, told 
us that the support FMCSA was able to provide was important to the 
implementation of the Safety Belt program. Lastly, some association 
officials said that FMCSA was doing a good job with the resources it 
has, but others said FMCSA could do more with its education and 
outreach efforts if the agency had more resources.

However, one of the two public safety groups we contacted believed that 
although the education and outreach programs were based on good ideas, 
FMCSA needs to do more quantitative evaluations of these programs. Both 
public safety groups also felt that FMCSA should have stronger 
enforcement. For example, one group indicated that research has shown 
enforcement to increase the effectiveness of education programs and 
thus, FMCSA should focus more on compliance and enforcement. Finally, 
although industry associations emphasized the positive professional 
relationships they have with FMCSA officials, a public safety group 
indicated that it is wary about FMCSA's tendency to manage programs in 
alliance with industry partners, since the group believes it might 
affect the agency's objectivity.

Conclusions:

Uncertainty about how FMCSA's education and outreach activities link to 
broader program and agency goals and about FMCSA's New Entrant program 
have emerged from our study. FMCSA officials have stated that the 
agency's education and outreach programs support department objectives 
and that they have used a logic model to show this in the agency's 
performance budgets. However, in our review of agency documents, we 
found that except for the Safety Belt program, FMCSA has not 
established clear links between the education and outreach programs and 
agency and departmental goals. For example, the conference report 
accompanying the DOT appropriations bill for fiscal year 2005 requested 
FMCSA report to the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations "a 
goal, message, and coherent and explicit program strategy that clearly 
and directly link FMCSA's outreach and education program initiatives to 
each program's goals" because of its concerns over how FMCSA's 
education and outreach activities support agency goals. In the October 
2005 response, FMCSA stated that its education and outreach programs 
support DOT strategic objectives. The report, however, did not clearly 
set out the links between changing attitudes and behaviors that would 
describe how these programs contribute to objectives. Such a step would 
be welcome, for without an explanation of that link, FMCSA cannot 
transparently demonstrate to stakeholders, including congressional 
oversight authorities that the programs do, in fact, contribute to 
these broader goals. Furthermore, without a clear statement of how 
these programs are intended to support these goals, it is difficult to 
design evaluations to determine if these programs are performing as 
intended or if changes are needed in program design. FMCSA has used a 
type of a logic model for its Research and Technology program, making 
it clear to all interested parties how its research activities help the 
agency achieve its goals. While FMCSA officials say they have used a 
logic model for its education and outreach program, this is not evident 
in agency budget and program documents. The use of a logic model, 
similar to the one used by the agency's Research and Technology group, 
in planning, budgeting or program for education and outreach programs 
may be beneficial.

Second, the absence of a plan to evaluate how well the information 
provided to motor carriers as part of the New Entrant program was 
understood and if the information raised awareness and helped promote 
safer behavior also emerges as a concern. An FMCSA official stated that 
the New Entrant program is still new and has limited data to evaluate. 
Further, changes to the program are planned to raise the threshold for 
passing a safety audit. Thus, FMCSA is planning on starting an 
evaluation of the New Entrant program in 2008. However, without an 
evaluation of the effect of education on new entrants' knowledge about 
safety requirement, FMCSA is losing an opportunity to obtain 
information about the effectiveness of the educational information 
conveyed through the program. In addition, FMCSA cannot know whether 
its safety audits, which composed almost 7.5 percent of FMCSA's 2005 
funding, are having the desired effect; whether the Education and 
Technical Assistance Package and the information conveyed during the 
safety audits might require some changes to improve their 
effectiveness; and whether the safety audits themselves might be 
achieving their purpose of improving motor carrier safety. FMCSA has 
two opportunities upcoming to obtain information on the effectiveness 
of the educational materials and safety audits. First, it could use its 
planned contract for evaluation of education and outreach activities to 
develop and conduct such an evaluation. Second, FMCSA could include 
this evaluation in its plans to evaluate the New Entrant program 
beginning in 2008.

Recommendations for Executive Action:

To better demonstrate how FMCSA education and outreach programs 
contribute to achieving agency goals, we recommend that the Secretary 
of Transportation direct the Administrator of FMCSA to take the 
following two actions:

* Ensure that the agency describes and documents how education and 
outreach program activities link to and support broader program and 
agency goals in a planning, program, or budget document that is 
available to the public, and:

* Evaluate the effectiveness of the education and outreach of the New 
Entrant program, assessing the extent to which the Education and 
Technical Assistance Package and safety audits are helping new carriers 
learn and understand FMCSA requirements.

Agency Comments:

We provided a draft of this report to the Department of Transportation 
for its review and comment. FMCSA officials, through the DOT liaison, 
provided oral comments on a draft of this report. The officials did not 
agree with GAO's finding that FMCSA has not linked its education 
efforts with its overall goals. FMCSA officials state they have linked 
their education and outreach programs to agency goals at a high level 
in the agency's performance budgets. In addition, the officials state 
that they used a logic model to make this link. We included FMCSA's 
view that it has linked its education and outreach programs to agency 
goals in our report. However, we did not find this link evident for 
most of the education and outreach programs. For example, Congress 
requested FMCSA to report on the link between its education and 
outreach program initiatives to each program's goal. FMCSA's report to 
Congress described the program activities; however, it did not describe 
the link between the activities and FMCSA's goals. In addition, 
although FMCSA officials stated that they have used a logic model in 
their performance budget to link education and outreach programs to 
agency goals, the discussion implied a link, but does not describe how 
FMCSA's education and outreach activities are intended to change target 
audience's attitudes and behaviors that would contribute to meeting 
agency goals. However, in FMCSA's fiscal year 2006 performance budget, 
we did find and report on a relatively clear discussion of how the 
Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Belt program supported safety 
objectives such as reduced fatalities.

In addition, DOT and FMCSA officials were concerned that our 
recommendation on documenting the link between education programs and 
agency goals was too prescriptive. We recommended that FMCSA expedite 
the process of describing and documenting how its education and 
outreach programs link to and support overall agency goals in strategic 
planning and budget documents. DOT officials said that including this 
specific information on relatively small dollar projects--such as the 
Motor Coach program--was not appropriate in the DOT strategic plan. In 
addition, DOT officials told us that it is not appropriate to include 
this level of performance information in budget requests. Since the 
strategic plan and the performance budget are not the only 
opportunities to detail program linkage to broad agency goals, we 
clarified our recommendation to provide FMCSA with more flexibility in 
identifying an appropriate planning, program, or budgeting document in 
which to describe and document the link between program activities and 
goals, so that external stakeholders, including congressional oversight 
authorities, can understand how these programs are supporting agency 
goals.

Second, agency officials suggested that it is too early to evaluate the 
New Entrant program, as we recommended; and they have not developed 
evaluation plans because they do not plan on beginning an evaluation 
until 2008. However, after over 2 years of implementation and 52,000 
safety audits, FMCSA is losing an opportunity to conduct an evaluation 
of the educational component of the New Entrant program, including the 
Educational and Technical Assistance Package for new entrants and the 
information conveyed during safety audits to determine if new motor 
carriers increase their knowledge of motor carrier requirements and 
change their behavior to better comply with these requirements. The 
lack of such an evaluation is a missed opportunity for FMCSA to 
demonstrate the effectiveness of its educational information and safety 
audits, which represented almost 7.5 percent of its funding in fiscal 
year 2005. In addition, we continue to believe this is an important 
component of any evaluation FMCSA develops to determine the 
effectiveness of the New Entrant program. Therefore, we retained our 
recommendation to evaluate the New Entrant program and conclude that 
there are two opportunities for doing so--either through contracts for 
evaluations of education and outreach programs or through the 
evaluation FMCSA is planning to start in 2008.

Finally, agency officials provided technical comments, which we 
incorporated as appropriate.

We are sending copies of this report to the Honorable Norman Mineta, 
Secretary of Transportation. We will also make copies available to 
others upon request. In addition, the report will be available at no 
charge on the GAO Web site at [Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov].

If you or your staff have any questions about this report, please 
contact me at [Hyperlink, siggerudk@gao.gov] or (202) 512-2834. Contact 
points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs 
may be found on the last page of this report. Major contributors to 
this report are listed in appendix III.

Signed by:

Katherine Siggerud: 
Director, Physical Infrastructure:

[End of section]

Appendixes:

[End of section]

Appendix I: Scope and Methodology:

To address our first objective and describe the scope and nature of the 
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's (FMCSA) education and 
outreach programs, we reviewed program documentation and interviewed 
FMCSA officials at agency headquarters, its Eastern Service Center in 
Maryland, and its New Jersey division office. We selected this division 
office and service center because they were significantly involved in 
all four of the currently active education and outreach programs we 
reviewed, which are the New Entrant, Commercial Safety Belt, Motor 
Coach Outreach, and Household Goods Outreach programs. We obtained and 
reviewed information on FMCSA's plans to initiate an additional program 
targeted at non-entrant carriers.

Further, to determine how these programs relate to FMCSA's goals, we 
reviewed its strategic planning and performance budgeting documents and 
how these education and outreach programs were portrayed in the current 
fiscal year 2006 documents. We also discussed the performance budgeting 
process with an FMCSA senior budget analyst to identify the agency's 
plans for the fiscal year 2007 and 2008 performance budgets. We also 
obtained and reviewed the Department of Transportation's (DOT) 
strategic plan, which FMCSA refers to in its performance budget. In 
addition, we obtained the strategic plan for FMCSA's Research and 
Technology group. We reviewed this plan to identify what one group 
within FMCSA uses for its strategic and program planning. To identify 
other tools used for describing how program activities relate to agency 
goals, we reviewed our previous work and identified a program logic 
model, originally developed by the University of Wisconsin Cooperative 
Extension, as a model that FMCSA could use to clearly describe its 
education and outreach programs.

To address our second objective--identifying the extent to which FMCSA 
has evaluated its education and outreach programs, we discussed the 
status of these evaluation efforts with FMCSA officials and reviewed 
proposals and statements of work for current and planned contracts to 
carry out program evaluations. We also assessed the usefulness of 
FMCSA's ongoing or planned program evaluations to determine if the 
evaluations would address how program activities affected target 
audiences' attitudes, knowledge, and behavior. We did not thoroughly 
assess the evaluation design.

We took several approaches to assess what is currently known about the 
effectiveness of programs like FMCSA's education and outreach programs. 
Finally, to identify what is known about the effectiveness of the 
programs, we conducted a literature review of media based campaigns and 
reviewed the structure and evaluation of these campaigns as well as 
behavioral theories used in designing the campaigns. We selected two 
behavioral theories that were directly applicable to the programs under 
this review--the theory of reasoned action and the general deterrence 
theory. We then directly compared the characteristics of the two 
theories with the characteristics of FMCSA's programs. Additionally, 
through our literature search, we also identified additional research 
that discusses the importance of the relationship between education and 
enforcement in changing behavior. We used this research to help assess 
the potential for using enforcement to augment FMCSA's education and 
outreach efforts. We obtained aggregated data from safety audit results 
from FMCSA's Motor Carrier Management Information System (MCMIS) to 
examine results for individual elements within a safety audit. We used 
these data to identify the failure rates for key elements of the safety 
audit. We conducted a reliability assessment of MCMIS data by (1) 
reviewing documentation related to system development, (2) interviewing 
knowledgeable agency officials, and (3) reviewing FMCSA's internal 
controls, and we determined the data was sufficiently reliable for our 
use. Finally, we interviewed officials from several motor carrier, law 
enforcement, and safety organizations, including the American Trucking 
Associations; the National Private Truck Council; the American Bus 
Association; the United Motorcoach Association; the American Moving and 
Storage Association; the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance; Advocates 
for Highway and Auto Safety; and Public Citizen for their perspective 
of the effectiveness of FMCSA's education and outreach efforts.

In accordance with congressional direction, we did not extend our 
review to include "Share the Road Safely" which is targeted to 
passenger car drivers. In fiscal year 2004, Congress transferred 
funding for the program from FMCSA the National Highway Traffic Safety 
Administration (NHTSA). Funding for this program is being returned to 
FMCSA in fiscal year 2006. In fiscal years 2004 and 2005, Congress 
provided FMCSA with funding for another outreach effort entitled 
"Safety Is Good Business." The SAFETEA-LU requires GAO to review this 
program by June of 2006.

Our work was conducted in accordance with generally accepted government 
auditing standards, from December 2004 through October 2005.

[End of section]

Appendix II: FMCSA Education and Outreach Programs:

The following provides a more detailed discussion of the five education 
and outreach programs we reviewed.

New Entrant Program:

The New Entrant program is intended to ensure that new motor carriers 
are knowledgeable about federal motor carrier safety standards and 
applicable hazardous material regulations. The program is focused on 
the safety audits conducted through site visits to the new carriers' 
offices by personnel from the state law enforcement agency, the FMCSA 
division office, or a FMCSA contractor.

In 1998, a FMCSA commissioned study[Footnote 34] found that new 
entrants to the motor carrier industry have a substantially higher 
level of safety regulation violations than more experienced carriers. 
Other, earlier research had also indicated that new entrant carriers 
had crash rates higher than more experienced carriers.[Footnote 35] The 
Motor Carrier Safety Improvement Act, which established FMCSA, also 
directed the Secretary of Transportation to establish regulations 
specifying minimum requirements for applicant motor carriers seeking 
federal interstate operating authority and to require that new entrants 
undergo a safety audit within the first 18 months of operations. 
Effective January 1, 2003, FMCSA established its New Entrant program to 
improve the safety of new entrant motor carriers by providing them with 
educational and technical assistance as they begin their businesses. 
Under FMCSA's New Entrant program, any new motor carrier that registers 
with DOT is designated a "new entrant" and will be subject to a new 
entrant safety audit and increased roadside performance monitoring for 
an 18-month period.

The safety audit's purpose is to provide educational and technical 
assistance to the new entrant by reviewing the carrier's compliance 
with FMCSA requirements, including driver qualifications, driver 
records of duty status, vehicle maintenance records, accident 
registers, and controlled substances and alcohol use and testing 
requirements. Education and technical assistance information is also 
available to new entrants through FMCSA's Web site. A carrier that 
passes the safety audit is informed of any deficiencies and what it 
must do to be in compliance. A carrier that fails the safety audit has 
60 days[Footnote 36] to take necessary corrective action, and 
ultimately if the deficiencies are not corrected, its registration can 
be revoked. At the end of the 18-month period, if the carrier has 
passed its safety audit, does not have an unsatisfactory safety rating, 
and is not subject to an "out of service" order or any notice to remedy 
safety management controls, the "new entrant" designation will be 
removed from its registration, and it will be monitored like any other 
carrier.

In most states, new entrant safety audits have been done by both state 
law enforcement agency and FMCSA division office personnel. Contractors 
conduct safety audits in four states (Florida, Maine, Oregon, and 
Wyoming) that are presently doing few or none of their own. When the 
New Entrant program began, FMCSA staff performed most of the safety 
audits, but states now carry out the majority of these audits, as 
indicated by figure 5.

Figure 5: Number of New Entrant Safety Audits Completed by FMCSA and 
State Agencies (first 7 months of fiscal year 2005):

[See PDF for image]

[End of figure]

Non-Entrant Program:

FMCSA's Non-Entrant program will target motor carriers that operate 
interstate but have not registered with DOT. The purpose of the program 
will be to raise awareness of registration requirements, and to 
increase the number of registrations among these non-entrant motor 
carriers. This program has not yet begun, but FMCSA officials told us 
it will include information disseminated through truck sales and 
leasing firms to non-entrants.

The number of non-entrants is unknown, but a FMCSA official estimates 
it may be in the tens of thousands. FMCSA officials whom we spoke with 
believe that non-entrants may represent an even higher level of risk 
than new entrants, because they do not get exposure to FMCSA safety 
information through registration. The officials believe that, in 
general, motor carriers that do not register with DOT are unaware of 
the requirement to do so, rather than intentionally avoiding 
registering. FMCSA will be awarding a contract for the development of 
the Non-Entrant program; the contract is expected to include a 
requirement to identify the target population of non-entrants, develop 
informational material, with follow-up monitoring of non-entrants that 
are identified.

Commercial Safety Belt Program:

FMCSA's Commercial Safety Belt Program is intended to improve upon the 
low rate of safety-belt use by commercial truck drivers. In 2003, a 
study commissioned by FMCSA reported that only 48 percent of commercial 
truck drivers wear safety belts, compared with 80 percent of passenger 
car drivers wearing safety belts. In December 2003, FMCSA established 
the Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Belt Partnership with 16 other 
organizations, including trucking industry and law enforcement 
associations, commercial drivers associations, and safety 
organizations, with the goal of increasing commercial safety-belt use 
by commercial motor vehicle drivers. With its safety belt partners, 
FMCSA produces materials including posters, bumper stickers, and 
brochures for distribution at trucking industry shows and events, and 
through law enforcement campaigns. In 2004, as part of the Partnership, 
FMCSA helped distribute informational brochures developed by the 
Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA).[Footnote 37] In 2005, FMCSA 
introduced and distributed new materials with the theme "Be Ready. Be 
Buckled." for distribution at national and regional trucking industry 
shows and events, and through the CVSA-sponsored Road Check 2005. This 
was a 3-day truck and motor coach inspection effort in June 2005 that 
involved over 9,900 inspectors, conducting more than 60,000 vehicle 
inspections in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Through the 
Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Belt Partnership, FMCSA also 
communicates its message through information displayed at truck stops 
and satellite radio programming oriented to truck drivers.

Motor Coach Outreach Program:

FMCSA's objective for the motor coach industry is to reduce injuries 
and save lives through increased compliance with safety regulations and 
promotion of safe operations by motor coach owners and operators. 
FMCSA's approach is two-fold--(1) reaching out to the industry to 
inform motor coach companies of regulations and provide safety advice 
and (2) providing consumers with information to help them in selecting 
and hiring motor coach services. FMCSA's motor coach outreach 
activities include communication with the carriers through printed 
material and participation in trade shows, and Web-based information 
for the public. For the purposes of our review, we focused on FMCSA's 
outreach to members of the public that hire motor coach services.

Motor coaches have been one of the safest forms of commercial 
transportation, but an increase in motor coach occupant fatalities 
since 2001 led FMCSA to increase its focus on motor coach companies. In 
2002, FMCSA developed "Moving Kids Safely" a toolkit of reference 
materials targeted to school districts and others who contract for bus 
services. In 2004, FMCSA introduced a motor coach safety Web site 
within the FMCSA Web site, which provides guidance to consumers on 
selecting a motor coach company and allows consumers to access safety 
data on specific interstate motor coach companies.

FMCSA's most direct outreach to motor coach companies is through the 
agency's Technical Assistance Group (TAG), consisting of about 12 FMCSA 
staff with motor coach expertise, primarily in FMCSA's field offices. 
TAG personnel staff information booths and give presentations at 
industry conventions and events, and serve as agency contact points for 
carriers. Also, a FMCSA contractor developed a series of brochures 
aimed at motor coach companies that describe guidelines and regulations 
for motor coach companies (for instance licensing and insurance, hours 
of service, inspection and maintenance, and specific requirements for 
operators of school buses). In 2004 and 2005, FMCSA also conducted mass 
mailings to motor coach companies, advising them of their reporting 
requirements under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Household Goods Outreach Program:

Most households need to hire moving services infrequently, and 
therefore consumers may be unaware of what their rights and protections 
are in hiring a commercial mover. The overriding objective of FMCSA's 
Household Goods program is to help consumers make better informed 
choices in selecting and negotiating with a moving company, primarily 
through printed material distributed through moving companies and other 
sources, as well as providing information through its Web site. FMCSA 
also maintains a complaint hotline to receive complaints about movers 
from individuals.

The ICC Termination Act of 1995 transferred federal responsibilities 
for protecting consumers who use commercial moving companies for 
interstate moves to DOT; and the Motor Carrier Safety Improvement Act 
granted FMCSA continuing oversight responsibility over household goods 
movers. However, the act did not provide FMCSA with the authority to 
intercede on behalf of individuals seeking reimbursement of moving 
company charges or recovery of their goods. FMCSA officials whom we 
spoke with acknowledge that when the agency was established in January 
2000, its mandate was commercial vehicle accidents and fatalities and, 
as a result, the household goods industry received little attention. 
Also, in 2001, we reported that complaints about movers were on the 
rise and that DOT's lack of action had created a vacuum that allowed 
unscrupulous carriers to take advantage of consumers.[Footnote 38] At 
that time, our report noted that FMCSA had just begun planning to 
increase both consumer education and enforcement effort of household 
goods carriers.

FMCSA distributes three consumer-oriented publications. Interstate 
movers are required by law to provide a copy of one FMCSA publication-
-"Your Rights and Responsibilities When You Move" to prospective 
customers. A second brochure, "Ready to Move? Tips for a Successful 
Interstate Move" is available through the General Services 
Administration's Pueblo, Colorado Information Center. A third brochure 
"Protect your Memories…Protect Yourself from Moving Fraud" and the 
"Your Rights and Responsibilities" publications are available on 
FMCSA's Web site.

In March 2005, FMCSA awarded a contract for the development of a 
household goods education and outreach program. FMCSA and the 
contractor have developed a new outreach theme: "Protect Your Memories, 
Your Money, Your Move"; and the contractor will be developing 
brochures, presentations that can be delivered by FMCSA staff, and 
other materials. In June 2005, FMCSA launched its redesigned household 
goods Web page, designed around the "Protect Your Memories…" theme, 
which incorporates new content, including a checklist for moving and 
information on protecting against moving fraud. In November 2005, FMCSA 
officials informed us that they were in discussions with the U.S. 
Postal Service to have the Postal Service Web site provide a link to 
FMCSA's Web site when registering a change of address with the Postal 
Service.

FMCSA officials told us they do not arbitrate complaints that the 
agency receives, but they maintain a national consumer complaint 
database that is used to identify problem movers for investigation by 
FMCSA field staff. Our 2001 report on DOT and FMCSA oversight of the 
household goods industry recommended that FMCSA make information on the 
number and general nature of complaints against carriers be made 
available to the public.[Footnote 39] FMCSA officials whom we spoke 
with said the agency intends to do this, but Privacy Act and other 
issues need to be resolved beforehand.

[End of section]

Appendix III: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments:

GAO Contact:

Katherine Siggerud, (202) 512-2834:

Staff Acknowledgments:

In addition to the person named above, Cathy Colwell, Assistant 
Director; Colin Fallon; Eric Fielding; Donald Kittler; Sara Ann 
Moessbauer; and Elaine Vaurio also made major contributions to this 
report.

(542051):

FOOTNOTES

[1] Other activities include working with states and contractors to 
enforce federal motor carrier safety regulations.

[2] GAO, Truck Safety: Share the Road Safely Program Needs Better 
Evaluation of Its Initiatives, GAO-03-680 (Washington, D.C.: May 30, 
2003).

[3] GAO, Consumer Protection: Federal Actions Are Needed to Improve 
Oversight of the Household Goods Moving Industry, GAO-01-318 
(Washington, D.C.: Mar. 5, 2001).

[4] H.Rept. 108-71, 53.

[5] Safe, Accountable, Flexible, and Efficient Transportation Equity 
Act: A Legacy for Users, (SAFETEA-LU), Pub. L. 109-59§4127.

[6] The theory of reasoned action helps explain the relationship 
between attitudes, beliefs, intentions, and behavior in that people are 
more likely to undertake an action if they believe that the outcomes 
are valued and that they have the necessary opportunities to perform 
the action.

[7] According to the general deterrence theory, individuals must be 
exposed to law enforcement or receive information about law enforcement 
before they can be deterred from behavior that may be unsafe or illegal.

[8] Monash University Accident Research Centre, "A Review of Mass Media 
Campaigns in Road Safety," May 2004.

[9] We consider DOT's strategic objective of reducing transportation- 
related fatalities as one of the agency's broader goals.

[10] We refer to the Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Belt program as 
the Commercial Safety Belt program throughout this report.

[11] SAFETEA-LU requires GAO to review the impact state consumer 
protection laws have on household goods carriers.

[12] This driver section includes critical questions, such as whether 
the carriers reviewed drivers' qualifications before hiring them and 
whether the carriers' drivers have been included in a drug and alcohol 
testing program. 

[13] GAO, Executive Guide: Effectively Implementing the Government 
Performance and Results Act, GAO/GGD-96-118 (Washington, D.C.: June 
1996).

[14] See, for example: Monash University Accident Research Centre, "A 
Review of Mass Media Campaigns in Road Safety," May 2004. This report 
incorporated a number of behavioral theories and applied the theories 
to 11 studies on media-based safety programs.

[15] GAO, Program Evaluation: Strategies for Assessing How Information 
Dissemination Contributes to Agency Goals, GAO-02-923 (Washington, 
D.C.: Sept. 30, 2002).

[16] GAO, Program Evaluation: Studies Helped Agencies Measure or 
Explain Program Performance, GAO/GGD-00-204 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 
29, 2000). Also see the preceding footnote.

[17] According to FMCSA, as of 2004, there were over 677,000 active 
interstate truck and bus companies and about 6 percent of these were 
new carriers.

[18] According to an FMCSA official, FCMCSA is updating the Education 
and Technical Assistance package.

[19] GAO-01-318.

[20] H. Rept. 108-792, 1414, which refers also to H. Rept. 108-671.

[21] Performance budgets are integrated budgets that tie budget items 
such as grants and operational funding to outcomes that will be 
achieved by the funding used. The budget requests justify and describe 
the intended program outputs and outcomes rather than inputs and 
processes. 

[22] In October 2005, FMCSA officials informed us that the goal was a 
10-percent increase in safety-belt use by 2009. This represents a 
change from the goal of a 15-percent increase stated in the fiscal year 
2006 performance budget.

[23] The ICC Termination Act of 1995 transferred federal 
responsibilities for protecting consumers who use commercial moving 
companies for interstate moves to the DOT; and the Motor Carrier Safety 
Improvement Act established FMCSA. Also, FMCSA was granted continuing 
oversight responsibility over household goods movers. However, the act 
did not provide FMCSA with the authority to intercede on behalf of 
individuals seeking reimbursement of moving company charges or recovery 
of their goods.

[24] The Non-Entrant program has not yet been developed and is 
therefore not included in the 2006 performance budget.

[25] U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Motor Carrier Safety 
Administration, Research and Technology: 5-Year Strategic Plan, Fiscal 
Years 2005-2009, (undated).

[26] The Research and Technology report does refer to one education and 
outreach activity done by that group--improving driver training. 
However, this activity is not part of the programs we are reviewing. 

[27] GAO, Program Evaluation: Strategies for Assessing How Information 
Dissemination Contributes to Agency Goals, GAO-02-923 (Washington, 
D.C.: Sept. 30, 2002).

[28] National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, The Art of 
Appropriate Evaluation: A Guide for Highway Safety Program Managers, 
May 1999.

[29] Under regulations that implement the Paperwork Reduction Act of 
1995, federal agencies seeking to collect information from ten or more 
persons are required to first obtain approval from OMB.

[30] Data as of 2003, from the U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract 
of the United States: 2004-2005, p. 732.

[31] GAO, Truck Safety: Share the Road Safely Program Needs Better 
Evaluation of Its Initiatives, GAO-03-680 (Washington, D.C.: May 30, 
2003). 

[32] A compliance review is a more stringent and detailed review than a 
safety audit, and it is triggered if a new entrant is (1) involved in a 
fatal or serious accident, (2) subject to a nonfrivolous complaint, (3) 
involved in a hazardous materials accident, or (4) on a FMCSA database 
that flags carriers with poor safety records for compliance reviews. 

[33] As mentioned earlier, FMCSA currently has a planned study to 
update the data.

[34] John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center, New Entrant 
Safety Research Final Report, April 1998.

[35] Thomas M. Corsi and Philip Fanara, Jr., "Deregulation, New 
Entrants, and the Safety Learning Curve," Journal of the Transportation 
Research Forum, Vol. XXIX, No. 1, 1988.

[36] Forty-five days, in the case of passenger or hazardous material 
carriers.

[37] The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance is an association of North 
American law enforcement agencies that enforce commercial vehicle 
safety. Membership includes representatives of all 50 states, all 
Canadian provinces, and Mexico. 

[38] GAO, Consumer Protection: Federal Actions Are Needed to Improve 
Oversight of the Household Goods Moving Industry, GAO-01-318 
(Washington, D.C.: Mar. 5, 2001).

[39] GAO-01-318.

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