Coast Guard: Workforce Actions Under Way to Address Backlog in Recreational Vessel Documentation
Abstract
Vessel documentation - a national form of vessel registration - provides evidence of nationality for international travel and trade, among other things. Certificates of documentation are required for certain commercial vessels and optional for recreational vessels of 5 or more net tons. NVDC commercial officers are funded using commercial user fee collections and may also be funded by appropriations; recreational officers are funded wholly by recreational user fee collections. Since at least 2007, some applications for recreational certificates of documentation have waited in a queue before they could be reviewed (i.e., a backlog). As a result, vessel owners have sometimes waited as long as 4 months to obtain certificates of documentation. GAO was asked to review NVDC operations related to the backlog. GAO reviewed (1) the factors that contributed to the backlog in processing applications for recreational certificates of documentation, and (2) the extent to which Coast Guard has taken steps to address these factors. To address these questions, GAO reviewed data on the NVDC recreational application backlog dating back to fiscal year 2007, and financial and staffing data dating back to fiscal year 2004; reviewed NVDC documents; conducted a site visit to observe NVDCs work processes; and interviewed Coast Guard headquarters and NVDC officials.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2017
- Accession Number
- AD1163963
Entities
People
- Jennifer Grover
Organizations
- United States Government Accountability Office