Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO’s audit of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) fiscal years 2012 and 2011 financial statements identified two areas of deficiency in SEC’s internal control that GAO determined represented significant deficiencies. Specifically, as briefly discussed in GAO’s November 2012 audit report, the aggregation of both continuing and new deficiencies in SEC’s financial reporting controls over (1) budgetary resources and (2) property and equipment transactions each constituted significant deficiencies. These significant control deficiencies may adversely affect the accuracy and completeness of information used and reported by SEC’s management. GAO is making a total of nine new recommendations to address these significant internal control deficiencies."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act of 2012 specifically defines political intelligence as information that is "derived by a person from direct communications with an executive branch employee, a Member of Congress, or an employee of Congress; and provided in exchange for financial compensation to a client who intends, and who is known to intend, to use the information to inform investment decisions." While no other laws or ethics rules specifically govern political intelligence activities, securities laws and executive and legislative branch ethics rules and guidance do provide guidelines for government officials to protect material nonpublic information (e.g., information that has not been disseminated to the general public or is not authorized to be made public). For example, insider trading laws apply to both the executive and legislative branches and prohibit the disclosure of material nonpublic information derived from employees' official positions for personal benefit."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Costs substantially increased and schedules were delayed for Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) largest medical-center construction projects in Denver, Colorado; Las Vegas, Nevada; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Orlando, Florida. As of November 2012, the cost increases for these projects ranged from 59 percent to 144 percent, with a total cost increase of nearly $1.5 billion and an average increase of approximately $366 million. The delays for these projects range from 14 to 74 months, resulting in an average delay of 35 months per project. In commenting on a draft of this report, VA contends that using the initial completion date from the construction contract would be more accurate than using the initial completion date provided to Congress; however, using this date would not account for how VA managed these projects prior to the award of the construction contract. Several factors, including changes to veterans' health care needs and site-acquisition issues contributed to increased costs and schedule delays at these sites."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Five types of field-based information-sharing entities are supported, in part, by the federal government--Joint Terrorism Task Forces, Field Intelligence Groups, Regional Information Sharing Systems (RISS) centers, state and major urban area fusion centers, and High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Investigative Support Centers--and have distinct missions, roles, and responsibilities. However, GAO identified 91 instances of overlap in some analytical activities--such as producing intelligence reports--and 32 instances of overlap in investigative support activities, such as identifying links between criminal organizations. These entities conducted similar activities within the same mission area, such as counterterrorism, for similar customers, such as federal or state agencies. This can lead to benefits, such as the corroboration of information, but may also burden customers with redundant information. GAO also found that RISS centers and HIDTAs operate three different systems that duplicate the same function--identifying when different law enforcement entities may be conducting a similar enforcement action, such as a raid at the same location, to ensure officer safety--resulting in some inefficiencies. RISS and HIDTA have taken steps to connect two of the systems, but HIDTA does not have target time frames to connect …