A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Since 2002, the federal government has offered long-term care insurance to its employees, retirees, and certain others through the Federal Long Term Care Insurance Program (FLTCIP). Enrollees pay the full cost of their premiums. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) oversees the program. OPM has held two competitive processes to select contractors to insure enrollees and administer FLTCIP, although interest in and competition for these contracts has been limited. In 2009, soon after OPM's award of FLTCIP's second 7-year contract to John Hancock Life Insurance Company (John Hancock), 66 percent of enrollees were notified that their premiums would increase up to 25 percent in order to compensate for how the actuarial assumptions used to set premiums differed from the program's experience. GAO was asked to review FLTCIP. In this report, GAO describes (1) factors affecting carriers' interest in FLTCIP, (2) how the actuarial assumptions used to set FLTCIP premiums have changed since the program's inception, and (3) OPM's oversight of actuarial assumptions and experience and program communications. To do so, GAO interviewed officials from six carriers that in 2009 insured over 60 percent of all long-term …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "To carry out complex national security initiatives--such as combating illicit financing of terrorist activities, undertaking development projects in conflict zones, and countering piracy off the Horn of Africa--U.S. government agencies must coordinate with a large number of organizations in their planning efforts. Our prior work on the federal government's national security initiatives has determined that U.S. agencies face a number of challenges to effectively collaborating with one another, potentially resulting in gaps and overlaps in policy implementation. In particular, we have found that agencies face challenges to developing overarching strategies to achieve common goals, creating effective mechanisms for operating across agencies, and sharing sensitive information. For example, our work has shown that the Department of State (State) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have different planning time frames than the Department of Defense (DOD), which poses a challenge for the three organizations. This report summarizes and formally transmits the enclosed briefing in response to Section 1055 of the Ike Skelton National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011, which required us to examine the need for and implications of a common alignment of world regions in …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Over the past decade, hedge funds, private equity funds, and other private funds proliferated but were largely unregulated, causing members of Congress and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) staff to raise questions about investor protection and systemic risk. To address this potential regulatory gap, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act) brought certain advisers to private funds under the federal securities laws, requiring them to register with SEC. The Dodd-Frank Act also requires GAO to examine the feasibility of forming a self-regulatory organization (SRO) to provide primary oversight of private fund advisers. This report discusses (1) the feasibility of forming such an SRO, and (2) the potential advantages and disadvantages of a private fund adviser SRO. To address the mandate, GAO reviewed federal securities laws, SEC staff's recently completed study on its investment adviser examination program that was mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act, past regulatory and legislative proposals to create an SRO for investment advisers, and associated comment letters. GAO also interviewed SEC and SRO staffs, other regulators, and various market participants and observers. We provided a draft of this report to …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Explosives represent a continuing threat to aviation security. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA), within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), seeks to ensure through the Electronic Baggage Screening Program (EBSP) that checked-baggage-screening technology is capable of detecting explosives. Generally, the explosives detection system (EDS) is used in conjunction with explosives trace detection (ETD) machines to identify and resolve threats in checked baggage. As requested, GAO assessed the extent to which: (1) TSA revised explosives detection requirements and deployed technology to meet those requirements, and (2) TSA's approach to the current EDS acquisition meets best practices for schedules and cost estimates and includes plans for potential upgrades of deployed EDSs. GAO analyzed EDS requirements, compared the EDS acquisition schedule against GAO best practices, and interviewed DHS officials. This is a public version of a sensitive report that GAO issued in May 2011."