The intention of this dissertation is to understand how federal advisory boards are operationalizing Congressional intent of transparency, financial efficiency and balanced board membership. When Congress passed the Federal Advisory Commission Act (FACA) in 1972, these three values were intended to help add legitimacy to the operation advisory boards. Advisory boards have been in use on the federal level since the first term of President George Washington, and they provide valuable expertise on a wide variety of subjects for the government. Currently, over 1,000 advisory boards are operating across the federal government with nearly 25,000 people participating. Collectively, annual operations of these boards approaches a half billion dollars. In the years leading up to the passage of FACA, Congressional hearings revealed deficiencies across federal departments with transparency of advisory board operations, spending practices, and appointment processes which threatened the legitimacy of their use. The FACA law was intended to bring legitimacy back to boards' operation by requiring more transparency, financial efficiency and balance in viewpoints on board appointments. With the law more than 40 years old, this dissertation explores how advisory boards today are operating is relation to the values Congress laid out in legislation. A quantitative exploration was conducted to assess the fidelity to the Congressional values by using publicly available data points. A sample of the 1,000 operating advisory boards was used to conduct the research. Using the results of the quantitative exploration, six case studies were selected for additional examination. Three cases were selected by a systematic method based on the quantitative data, and three additional cases were selected by the unique results from the data. A dozen policy changes were suggested as a result of the quantitative and qualitative examinations to better align present day operation of advisory boards with the Congressional intent. This study may be useful to policymakers who have oversight on advisory board operations. / Doctor of Philosophy / American citizens provide input to the federal government in several ways. Voting for President and Members of Congress is the most visible way. However, serving on one of the approximately one thousand existing federal advisory boards is another way. These are boards and commissions made up of citizens who have expertise in various subjects for which the government needs ideas to help fix problems affecting our country. The focus of these boards ranges greatly. For example, some boards focus on highly specialized medical issues, and others focus on how citizens use the land around national forests. In 1972, Congress passed a law that set some basic guidelines on how these boards should operate. Congress said that boards need to be transparent in how they work so the public can monitor them easily. Congress also noted that the boards need to use the tax money given to them to operate efficiently and try to save money whenever they can. Finally, Congress wanted boards to have people with different points of views represented, so recommendations are not one-sided. Now that the law is over 40 years old, this dissertation examines how closely advisory boards today are following those guidelines Congress wrote in 1972. This dissertation suggests some ways to measure how close they are following the directions, and it looks in-depth to several of them to see how they operate. Finally, the dissertation gives some new suggestions on how all boards can operate to better reflect the ideas Congress wanted.