A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Over the past decade, a series of devastating and deadly wildland fires has burned millions of acres of federal forests, grasslands, and deserts each year, requiring federal land management agencies to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to fight them. GAO was asked to assess opportunities to improve the way agencies manage fires through the use of geospatial information technologies, specifically, to (1) identify key geospatial information technologies for addressing different aspects of managing wildland fires, (2) summarize key challenges to the effective use of geospatial technologies in managing wildland fires, and (3) identify national opportunities to improve the effective use of geospatial technologies."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Congress has appropriated billions of dollars for equipment repair, replacement, and recapitalization, collectively known as equipment reset. Because of the potential for equipment reset costs to affect the Department of Defense's (DOD) future budget requirements and related readiness concerns, GAO initiated this review under the Comptroller General's authority. GAO's objectives were to determine the extent to which the Army and Marine Corps (1) track and report equipment reset expenditures in a way that confirms that funds appropriated for reset are expended for that purpose and (2) can be assured that their reset strategies will sustain equipment availability while meeting ongoing operational requirements. GAO reviewed equipment reset policies and analyzed related budget data."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "U.S. dairy farmers produced 167.7 billion pounds of unprocessed, raw milk in 2000. Federal and state dairy programs influence the minimum prices paid to farmers for raw milk. These prices are based on how the raw milk is to be used. Minimum prices set for raw milk to be used for making drinking milk (fluid milk) are higher than those for milk used for manufacturing cheese, butter, and other dairy products. About 70 percent of the raw milk produced in the United States is regulated under the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) federal milk marketing order program. The 1996 farm bill established another pricing program -- the Northeast Interstate Dairy Compact (NEDC) -- which is run by a commission that sets a minimum price for raw milk sold as fluid milk in six New England states. The NEDC works in conjunction with federal and state dairy programs to establish an alternative minimum price for raw milk in the Compact states. When the monthly NEDC minimum price exceeds the federal marketing order or state minimum price, the NEDC price becomes the minimum price. Congress is now considering …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "As the number of biological labs increases, so too do the safety risks for lab workers. Data on these risks--collected through a safety reporting system (SRS) from reports of hazards, incidents, and accidents--can support safety efforts. However, no such system exists for all biological labs, and a limited system--managed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS)--applies to only a subset of these labs. While a national SRS has been proposed, design and implementation are complex. In this context, GAO was asked to identify lessons from (1) the literature and (2) case studies; and to apply those lessons to (3) assess CDC and APHIS's theft, loss, or release (TLR) system for select agents, such as anthrax, and (4) suggest design and implementation considerations for a labwide SRS. To do its work, GAO analyzed SRS literature; conducted case studies of SRSs in aviation, commercial nuclear, and health care industries; and interviewed agency officials and biosafety specialists."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) has provided about $6 billion in grants for three Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) programs that fund housing or community development. As of March 31, 2010, HUD's Capital Fund awarded nearly $3 billion in grants to 3,134 public housing agencies, the Community Development Block Grant-Recovery (CDBG-R) awarded about $1 billion to 1,167 recipients, and the Tax Credit Assistance Program (TCAP) awarded $2.25 billion to 52 state housing finance agencies. The act requires recipients to report specific information on fund use. Recipients began reporting in October 2009. This information is publicly available on Recovery.gov, the official Recovery Act Web site. As requested, for these three HUD programs, the report (1) examines what information recipients are required to report as a part of their descriptions of funded projects, and (2) assesses the extent to which descriptions of a representative sample of 219 grants in Recovery.gov are transparent in providing a basic understanding of grant activities and expected outcomes. GAO reviewed requirements for reporting in the act and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and HUD guidance."

Other written product issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This supplementary report to GAO-10-999 provides individual state appendixes for 16 states and the District of Columbia for GAO's work on the seventh of its bimonthly reviews of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act)."