The reporting requirements of the various Federal agencies ranked among the top barriers to efficient and effective coordination in regards to two specific issues:

1) entities coordinating various transportation agencies are required to report similar (though not standardized) data leading to higher administrative costs than optimal and

2) several Federal programs do not currently collect transportation data, which precludes the ability to evaluate program effectiveness.

Many service providers indicate that the required reporting process, data collection efforts, and varied formats are difficult, time consuming, inefficient, and ineffective at truly capturing valuable performance data. The burden of reporting to multiple agencies, all requiring different data, different forms, and different schedules is resource intensive, but does not result in program improvement. This report documents the different forms and data required by the Federal agencies providing transportation funding, examines the issues of reporting from several different perspectives, and discusses reasonable solutions to improve the reporting conundrum.This report illustrates how important it is that players come to the table

1) to examine how recent advances in technology can facilitate data collection and

2) to regularly review how data is used to streamline, standardize, and simplify the reporting burden.

The suggestions offered here should be considered a springboard to ongoing evaluation and simplification. Several courses of action are recommended in terms of organizational aspects, technical aspects, data collection issues, and evaluation issues.