A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed four areas related to the Health Care Financing Administration's (HCFA) use of personally identifiable health information, focusing on: (1) HCFA's need for personally identifiable health information to manage the Medicare program and accomplish other purposes; (2) HCFA's policies and practices regarding disclosure of information on Medicare beneficiaries; (3) the adequacy of HCFA's safeguards for protecting the confidentiality of electronic information and HCFA's monitoring of others' protection of beneficiary information; and (4) the effect on HCFA of state restrictions on the disclosure of confidential health information."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the experiences of foreign countries that are consolidating their food safety responsibilities, focusing on the: (1) reasons for and approaches taken to consolidation, the costs and savings, if any, associated with consolidation, and efforts to assess the effectiveness of the revised food safety systems; and (2) lessons that the United States might learn from these countries' experiences in consolidating their food safety functions."

A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the reasons for the reported military pilot shortages, focusing on: (1) the services' reported and projected estimates of their pilot shortages; (2) the basis for the services' pilot requirements; (3) key factors that account for the reported pilot shortages; and (4) concerns that are causing pilots to consider leaving the military."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the federal paperwork burden, focusing on the: (1) paperwork burden associated with federal agencies' general purpose statistics and research (GPS/R) surveys that are directed towards businesses; (2) nature, use, and burden of selected GPS/R surveys; and (3) agencies' efforts to reduce the burden associated with the selected surveys."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the readiness of the insurance industry to meet the year 2000 date change, focusing on: (1) an updated assessment, as of September 30, 1999, of state regulatory oversight of the insurance industry's year 2000 preparations; and (2) the status of the industry's year 2000 readiness."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed federally created or facilitated programs for helping schools and libraries with their telecommunications and information technology efforts."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO determined whether the Customs Service's Office of Investigations (OI) follows its case management policies and procedures. GAO visited two Special Agent in Charge (SAC) offices to determine whether: (1) agents were entering statistics in the case management database; (2) first-line supervisors were reviewing investigative case files quarterly; (3) agents completed reports documenting their opening reports of investigation on time; and (4) the two SAC offices were maintaining and storing their case files appropriately."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Department of Energy's (DOE) efforts to improve the storage of spent nuclear fuel from its nuclear reactors at DOE's Hanford Site in Washington State, focusing on: (1) its status; (2) what problems might affect achieving cost and schedule estimates; and (3) whether changes have been sufficient to address management weaknesses."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the Financial Management Service's (FMS) internal controls over cash receipts collected on behalf of the federal government, focusing on testing the effectiveness of FMS' internal controls over lockbox collections."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on defense transportation, focusing on the: (1) progress in reengineering defense transportation financial management processes; (2) challenges associated with implementing these reengineered processes agencywide; and (3) the extent to which the Department of Defense (DOD) is assessing the infrastructure required to support the reengineered processes."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the: (1) standards and processes under which mergers between local telephone companies are evaluated and approved by governmental bodies; and (2) implementation of this process in the Bell Atlantic-NYNEX merger, and the effects of the merger that can be observed."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request concerning the privatization in place of select Department of Defense industrial facilities, GAO focused on: (1) determining how contractors are responding to decreasing workloads at these privatized facilities; (2) comparing the cost-effectiveness of the privatization-in-place operations to the former government-run operations; and (3) identifying the impact of privatization on excess capacity in the Department's industrial infrastructure."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the fiscal year (FY) 2000 performance plans of the 24 agencies covered by the Chief Financial Officers Act, focusing on the: (1) extent to which the agencies' plans include the three key elements of informative performance plans: (a) clear pictures of intended performance; (b) specific discussions of strategies and resources; and (c) confidence that performance information will be credible; and (2) degree of improvement the FY 2000 performance plans represent over the FY 1999 plans."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO determined: (1) what efforts the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) and its grantees have made to correct problems with case service reporting; and (2) whether these efforts are likely to resolve the case reporting problems that occurred in 1997."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Defense's (DOD) management of identical repairable parts used by more than one DOD component, focusing on: (1) DOD's progress in correcting problems in the management of identical parts; and (2) opportunities to improve management of these parts."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) information security program, focusing on: (1) whether NASA's mission-critical information systems are vulnerable to unauthorized access; (2) whether NASA is effectively managing information systems security; and (3) what NASA is doing to address the risk of unauthorized access to mission-critical systems."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Food Stamp Program, focusing on: (1) the measures used by the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to assess states' requests for waivers to the work requirement for able-bodied adults without dependents; (2) how states have used the waiver provision; and (3) whether USDA and states considered the availability of employment in adjacent areas when deciding which areas to include in a waiver."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO studied how Medicare health maintenance organizations (HMO) manage drug formularies to control drug expenditures and what the implications are for beneficiaries of these formulary management activities."

Quarterly publication of the Texas Comptroller's Office regarding sales and use tax in the state of Texas, including an analysis by county, analysis by industry, and related notes.

A phase 11 study has been initiated to investigate surfactant-assisted coal liquefaction, with the objective of, quantifying the enhancement in liquid yields and product quality. This report covers the third quarter of work. The major accomplishments were (1) completion of coal liquefaction autoclave reactor runs and related analysis with Illinois {number_sign}6 coal at a processing temperature of 375{degree}C, and pressures of 1800 and 1500 psig, (2) completion and analysis of two autoclave reactor runs to observe the synergistic effect of the surfactant and an iron catalyst, and (3) setting up a subcontract with HRI Inc. to test the surfactant enhanced liquefaction process in a continuous flow reactor.

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A letter with a handwritten note to Dennis addressing recent statistics about AIDS in Dallas County. The letter is followed by a surveillance report listing the demographic information of Dallas residents with AIDS .

A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) 1997 and 1998 reports to Congress regarding the costs and benefits of federal regulations, focusing on, for each of four statutory requirements: (1) how OMB addressed the requirements in its reports; and (2) the views of noted economists in the field of cost-benefit analysis regarding OMB's responses in these reports."

This study has been made to assess the needs, potential benefits and the applicability of early (circa year 2000) Nuclear Electric Propulsion (NEP) technology in conducting NASA science missions. The study goals are: to obtain the performance characteristics of near term NEP technologies; to measure the performance potential of NEP for important OSSA missions; to compare NEP performance with that of conventional chemical propulsion; to identify key NEP system requirements; to clarify and depict the degree of importance NEP might have in advancing NASA space science goals; and to disseminate the results in a format useful to both NEP users and technology developers. This is a mission performance study and precludes investigations of multitudes of new mission operation and systems design issues attendant in a NEP flight.