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ExpectMore.govExpectMore.gov home pageEXPECT FEDERAL PROGRAMS TO PERFORM WELL, AND BETTER EVERY YEAR.
Program Assessment

Program

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Coast Guard: Polar Icebreaking Program

The purpose of the polar icebreaking program is to break ice in the world's polar regions and to provide a system of heavy polar icebreaking for the United States.

Rating

What This Rating Means

NOT PERFORMING
Results Not Demonstrated

A rating of Results Not Demonstrated (RND) indicates that a program has not been able to develop acceptable performance goals or collect data to determine whether it is performing.
  • Scientific research programs are the primary beneficiaries of the Coast Guard's annual polar icebreaking operations.
  • The scientific community is the primary user of polar icebreaking services, but the funding had been requested in the Coast Guard budget until 2006. As a result, the Coast Guard ice breaking operations were providing a de facto subsidy to the scientific community.
  • The program has neither long-term nor annual performance measures to gauge its effectiveness or efficiency, but is working to address this shortcoming.

Improvement Plan

About Improvement Plans

We are taking the following actions to improve the performance of the program:

  • Implement a financial management remediation plan, as recommended by the Department of Homeland Security's financial auditor.
  • Develop robust annual and long-term performance measures that focus on outcomes of the program.
  • Plan for and schedule regular independent evaluations of the Polar Icebreaking program.

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