A chapter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) introduced its Patient Safety Program in 1999 in order to discover and fix system flaws that could harm patients. The Program process relies on staff reports of close calls and adverse events. GAO found that achieving success requires a cultural shift from fear of punishment for reporting close calls and adverse events to mutual trust and comfort in reporting them. GAO used ethnographic techniques to study the Patient Safety Program from the perspective of direct care clinicians at four VA medical facilities. This approach recognizes that what people say, do, and believe reflects a shared culture. The focus included (1) the status of VA's efforts to implement the Program, (2) the extent to which a culture exists that supports the Program, and (3) practices that promote patient safety. GAO combined more traditional survey methods with those from ethnography, including in-depth interviews and observation."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Homeland Security Act of 2002 authorized the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to establish a pilot program for the use of acquisition agreements known as "other transactions." Because they are exempt from many of the requirements that apply to government contracts, other transactions can be useful in acquiring cutting-edge technologies from entities that traditionally have declined to do business with the government. The act requires GAO to report to Congress on the use of other transactions by DHS. To fulfill this obligation, GAO (1) determined if DHS has developed policies and established a workforce to manage other transactions effectively and (2) evaluated how effectively DHS has used its other transactions authority to attract nontraditional government contractors."