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GGD-95-147R 1 (1995-04-21)

handle is hein.gao/gaobackut0001 and id is 1 raw text is: GAO United States General Accounting Office Washington, D.C. 20548 General Government Division B-260243.2 April 21, 1995 The Honorable Henry B. Gonzalez Ranking Minority Member Committee on Banking and Financial Services House of Representatives Dear Mr. Gonzalez: This letter responds to your request that we determine whether selected federal agencies have bilingual staff available to meet the needs of their non-English-speaking customers. The growth in the number of non-English-speaking customers requesting federal services and the National Performance Review's emphasis on improving federal agencies' service to the public have focused attention on this issue. Interviews at headquarters and selected regional offices of four agencies with service missions revealed no indication that the agencies had been generally unable to meet their growing responsibilities to communicate with non-English-speaking customers. Although several offices reported having a shortage of bilingual staff, these offices said they were able to obtain bilingual services as needed from their local communities. We selected the Social Security Administration (SSA), the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for review because of the specific interests expressed by your office and because they represent examples of the different ways in which federal agencies provide services to the public. To assess the availability of bilingual services at these agencies, we interviewed officials at their headquarters and selected regional and district offices, including VA medical facilities. We also reviewed the congressional inquiry files at the regional offices of SSA, VA, and HUD to determine whether these offices had received any complaints concerning service to non-English-speaking customers. Because HCFA deals with the public largely through private insurance carriers, we GAO/GGD-95-147R, Agencies' Service to Non-English Speaking Customers /f71 d/©