Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In January, we issued our Performance and Accountability Series on management challenges and program risks at major agencies, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The report for USDA focused on a number of major management challenges, including enhancing financial management, and continued the high risk designation for Forest Service financial management. For many years, USDA struggled to improve its financial management activities, but inadequate accounting systems and related procedures and controls hampered its ability to get a clean opinion on its financial statements. After eight consecutive disclaimers of opinion, USDA's Office of Inspector General issued an unqualified opinion on USDA's fiscal year 2002 financial statements and reported that significant progress had been made in improving overall financial management. For each of USDA's agencies that prepared separate financial statements for fiscal year 2002, the audit opinions were also positive. Specifically, unqualified audit opinions were issued on the financial statements of the Forest Service, Federal Crop Insurance Corporation/Risk Management Agency, Commodity Credit Corporation, the Rural Development mission area, and the Rural Telephone Bank. While we consider these clean opinions a positive step, some of these could not have been …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In its 2003 performance and accountability report on the Department of Education, GAO identified challenges in, among other areas, student financial aid programs and financial management. The information GAO presents in this testimony is intended to assist Congress in assessing Education's progress in addressing and overcoming these challenges. GAO is not making new recommendations in this testimony, but past reports have made specific recommendations aimed at addressing some of these major management challenges."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Geographic information systems (GIS) manipulate, analyze, and graphically present an array of information associated with geographic locations, have been invaluable to all levels of government. Their usefulness in disaster response was recently demonstrated during the Space Shuttle Columbia recovery effort. GIS provided precise maps and search grids to guide crews to the debris that was strewn across 41 counties in Texas and Louisiana. The federal government has long been attempting to develop an integrated nationwide GIS network. The information available through such a network could significantly enhance decision--making in myriad public--service areas, including emergency response, national security, law enforcement, health care, and the environment. Among GAO's objectives were to describe the federal government's efforts to coordinate GIS activities, the long-standing challenges of adopting and implementing federal GIS standards, and the role of Geospatial One-Stop."

We describe Merlot, a system for delivery of digital imagery over high speed networks. We describe various use cases, the client/server interaction, and the image and network codecs. We also describe some possible applications using Merlot and future work.

Interview with B. L. Henderson, a United States Marine veteran of the Korean War. Henderson answers questions concerning his service time as well as recounts certain operations and movements of he and his fellow Marines during his time in Korea. He tells about their rations, retreating procedures, and weaponry used.

News release about DART transportation options to Trinity Fest 2003, celebrating Independence Day.

News release about advanced DART tickets to Trinity Fest 2003, celebrating Independence Day in downtown Dallas.

News release regarding public meetings to be held by DART seeking input on proposed changes to 43 bus routes.

News release about advanced DART tickets to Trinity Fest 2003, celebrating Independence Day in downtown Dallas.

News release about DART transportation options to Trinity Fest 2003, celebrating Independence Day.