Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The General Services Administration (GSA) is the federal government's principal real estate agent, with responsibilities including constructing, leasing, and maintaining a variety of facilities--such as office buildings, courthouses, border stations, and laboratories--that it rents to federal agencies. GSA's construction projects, which can span several years, are authorized to carry forward fund balances from year to year in its construction and facility accounts for these projects. GSA is responsible for keeping track of and managing these balances to ensure that any unexpended funds that remain after projects are completed are redirected to other construction project needs within the agency. GSA is required to identify construction projects that are estimated to cost in excess of established thresholds and obtain congressional approval for them. Funding for these projects exists in two accounts: (1) Construction and Acquisition and (2) Repairs and Alterations. For the purposes of this report, we refer to them as GSA's construction accounts. Additionally, the studies required for construction projects are among the items funded in the Building Operations account and we decided to include this account in our review. For purposes of this report, we refer to this …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In March 2003, a U.S.-led multinational force began operations in Iraq. At that time, 48 nations, identified as a "coalition of the willing," offered political, military, and financial support for U.S. efforts in Iraq, with 38 nations other than the United States providing troops. In addition, international donors met in Madrid in October 2003 to pledge funding for the reconstruction of Iraq's infrastructure, which had deteriorated after multiple wars and decades of neglect under the previous regime. This testimony discusses (1) the troop commitments other countries have made to operations in Iraq, (2) the funding the United States has provided to support other countries' participation in the multinational force, and (3) the financial support international donors have provided to Iraq reconstruction efforts. This testimony is based on GAO's prior work and data collected for this hearing. Although we reviewed both classified and unclassified documents, the information in this statement is based only on unclassified documents. We completed this work in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "A January report by the National Science Foundation (NSF) identified a $5 billion gap between the amount of money that federal agencies reported as research and development (R&D) support and the amount of money that those who did the R&D work reported as spent in 1998. According to NSF, federal agencies earmarked about $72 billion for R&D support in 1998, while those who carried out the R&D reported spending about $67 billion. GAO found that this gap results primarily from annually comparing two separate and distinct types of financial data--federal obligations and performer expenditures--that are not comparable. In addition, R&D funding are collected on a yearly basis, but,in reporting, the period that defines a year can vary. Furthermore, agencies and performers do not always agree on what type of activities fall under the category of R&D. Because the gap results from comparing two dissimilar types of financial data, it does not necessarily reflect poor-quality data, nor does it reflect whether performers are receiving or spending all the federal R&D funds obligated to them. Thus, even if the data collection and reporting issues were addressed, a gap would still …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Since 2001, SSA has reported spending more than $5 billion on the development, modernization, and enhancement of its IT systems and capabilities. SSA officials identified 120 initiatives undertaken from 2001 to 2011 that the agency considered to be key investments in modernization. These comprise a subset of the hundreds of projects and modernization activities SSA undertakes yearly, which vary greatly in level of effort, scope, and cost. These initiatives affected all of the agency’s main program areas:"

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins ""

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense's (DOD) Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has made some recent progress gaining important knowledge for its Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) by successfully conducting several important tests. In addition, the agency made substantial improvements to the clarity of its cost and schedule baselines since first reporting them in 2010, and declared the first major deployment of U.S. missile defense in Europe operational in December 2011. MDA also took steps to reduce acquisition risk by decreasing the overlap between technology and product development for two of its programs."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In brief:"

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Our work on the outcomes of the CBP round 1 rebid found that the number of bidding suppliers and the number of contracts awarded in the CBP round 1 rebid were very similar to the CBP round 1 and about a third of the 1,011 suppliers that bid in the rebid were awarded at least one CBP contract. CMS made improvements to the bidding process for the CBP round 1 rebid—such as providing additional information about disqualification reasons—and significantly fewer bids were disqualified than in round 1. However, many suppliers still had difficulty meeting bid requirements. Of the bids that were disqualified during the initial bid review, 73 percent were disqualified because suppliers failed to provide the required financial documentation or did not meet CMS’s minimum financial standard threshold for suppliers. The number of bids disqualified for missing financial documentation in the CBP round 1 rebid would have been higher if many suppliers had not benefited from a MIPPA provision that required that CMS provide suppliers the opportunity to be notified of and to submit missing required financial documentation—a process not available during CBP round 1. As a …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In a series of reviews, GAO found that the Office of Personnel Management's (OPM) retirement modernization efforts were hindered by weaknesses in key management practices that are essential to successful information technology (IT) modernization projects. For example, in 2005, GAO made recommendations to address weaknesses in the following areas:"

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) plans to spend $2.9 billion to modernize its information systems. This report reviews the latest draft of IRS' Investment Decision Management Business Case Procedure, which guides the agency's information technology (IT) investments. GAO discusses changes to the guidance that would ensure that the economic analyses in IRS business cases are consistent with commonly accepted principles. IRS' draft guidance on business case documentation represents an important step toward ensuring that IRS management has relevant information on which to base its critical IT investment decisions. However, some aspects of IRS' guidance are inconsistent with commonly held principles of public sector cost-benefit analysis. Most important, the guidance does not require the computation of a comprehensive social net present value (NPV)--the standard for deciding whether a government investment can be justified on economic grounds. The two partial NPV computations that IRS' guidance requires are inappropriate because they do not incorporate the proper values for all relevant benefits and costs for investment projects with significant effects outside of IRS. In addition, IRS' two NPV's are not additive, so even if all benefits and costs were properly valued, decision …

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Following the terrorist attacks of September 2001, prosecuting the global war on terrorism became the United States' primary foreign policy priority. The United States focused its initial efforts on Afghanistan in Operation Enduring Freedom because the country harbored elements of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. As a result, countries in the region--Pakistan and the five Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan--became frontline states in the war on terrorism, raising the profile of U.S. relations with these countries."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO’s past work has found that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) have faced challenges in developing and meeting program requirements when acquiring screening technologies. GAO’s past work has demonstrated that program performance cannot be accurately assessed without valid baseline requirements established at the program start. In June 2010, GAO reported that more than half of the 15 DHS programs GAO reviewed awarded contracts to initiate acquisition activities without component or department approval of documents essential to planning acquisitions, setting operational requirements, or establishing acquisition program baselines. At the program level, in January 2012, GAO reported that TSA did not fully follow DHS acquisition policies when acquiring advanced imaging technology (AIT)—commonly referred to as a full body scanner that identifies objects or anomalies on the outside of the body—which resulted in DHS approving full AIT deployment without full knowledge of TSA’s revised specifications. In July 2011, GAO reported that in 2010 TSA revised its explosive detection systems (EDS) requirements to better address current threats and planned to implement these requirements in a phased approach; however, GAO reported that some number of the …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Over the past several years, GAO has made a number of recommendations to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)—an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—to increase savings in Medicare fee-for-service and Medicare Advantage (MA), which is a private plan alternative to the traditional Medicare fee-for-service program. Open recommendations that could yield billions of dollars in savings remain in many areas, such as the following:"

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The former Immigration and Naturalization Service estimated that as of January 2000 the total unauthorized immigrant population residing in the United States was 7 million. This total includes those who entered the United States illegally and those who entered legally but overstayed their authorized period of stay. A more recent study estimated that there were about 10 million illegal aliens living in the United States as of March 2005. The study estimated that nearly 700,000 aliens entered the United States illegally or overstayed their authorized period of stay each year between 2000 and 2004. Some illegal aliens in the United States have been arrested and incarcerated in federal and state prisons and local jails, adding to already overcrowded prisons and jails. On April 7, 2005, we issued a report on criminal aliens that were incarcerated in federal and state prisons and local jails. Our report contained information on the number of criminal aliens incarcerated, their country of citizenship or country of birth, and the cost to incarcerate them. Congress also requested that we provide information on the criminal history of aliens incarcerated in federal and state prisons or …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This statement today highlights the key findings of a report GAO released yesterday on the TWIC program that addressed the extent to which the results from the TWIC reader pilot were sufficiently complete, accurate, and reliable for informing Congress and the TWIC card reader rule. For the report, among other things, GAO assessed the methods used to collect and analyze pilot data since the inception of the pilot in August 2008. GAO analyzed and compared the pilot data with the TWIC reader pilot report submitted to Congress to determine whether the findings in the report are based on sufficiently complete, accurate, and reliable data. Additionally, we interviewed officials at DHS, TSA, and USCG with responsibilities for overseeing the TWIC program, as well as pilot officials responsible for coordinating pilot efforts with TSA and the independent test agent (responsible for planning, evaluating, and reporting on all test events), about TWIC reader pilot testing approaches, results, and challenges."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO has done many studies over the past 7 years on anthrax vaccine safety and anthrax detection methods. GAO has reported the lack of validated methods for detecting anthrax contamination and has recommended a coordinated approach to improving the overall process for detecting anthrax that included a probability-based sampling strategy. GAO also reported that the vaccine has not been adequately tested on humans; no studies have been done to determine the optimum number of doses; the long-term safety has not been studied and data on short-term reactions are limited; however, women report higher rates of reactions than do men. Given these problems, GAO recommended the development, of a better, alternative vaccine."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The size and strength of hurricane Katrina resulted in one of the largest natural disasters in our nation's history and raised major questions about our nation's readiness and ability to respond to catastrophic disasters. GAO has a large body of completed and ongoing work on a range of issues relating to all phases of the preparation, response, recovery, and rebuilding efforts related to hurricane Katrina as well as a wealth of historical experience in reviewing the federal government's response to disasters and catastrophic events. A great deal of attention has been focused on lessons learned from the 2005 hurricane season and many recommendations have been advanced on how to improve the nation's preparedness and ability to effectively respond to catastrophic disasters. GAO's testimony today describes some factors for success and other issues that Congress may wish to consider as it determines what changes to make, including those of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) organizational placement, to improve the nation's readiness and ability to respond effectively to major disasters, including catastrophic disasters, regardless of cause."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Gasoline prices have increased dramatically in recent weeks and currently, California has the highest gasoline prices in the nation. Consequently, consumers are expected to spend significantly more on gasoline this year than last. Specifically, EIA recently projected that, because of higher expected gasoline prices, the average American household will spend about $350 more on gasoline in 2005 than they did in 2004. Understandably, the public and the press have focused on these higher gasoline prices and some have questioned why this is happening. Moreover, people are concerned about the future, with some analysts projecting prices of crude oil--the primary raw material from which gasoline is produced--to remain at current high levels or even increase. Other analysts expect prices to fall as new oil supplies are developed and as consumers adjust to the current high prices and adopt more energy-efficient practices. This testimony, as requested, address factors that help explain today's high gasoline prices in the nation as a whole and specifically in California. In addition, potential trends that may impact future prices of crude oil and gasoline are addressed."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the usage of the social security number (SSN), focusing on: (1) federal laws and regulations directing the number's use; (2) the non-federal purposes for which the number is used; and (3) what businesses and state governments believe the impact would be if federal laws limiting the use of SSNs were passed."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Department of Defense's (DOD) financial management reform, focusing on the challenges and initiatives that are in place or planned."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The nation's current air traffic control system is reaching its capacity limits as demand for air transportation grows. The Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) represents a new system that will use state-of-the-art technologies and procedures. Transitioning to NextGen will require the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to continue to sustain the current air traffic control system while acquiring new systems on schedule and on budget. In 2003, Congress authorized the creation of the Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO), housed within FAA, to plan NextGen and coordinate the transition. GAO's testimony focuses on the progress FAA is making in implementing businesslike operations that could provide a foundation for managing the transition to NextGen, the status of JPDO's planning and facilitation of NextGen, and some key challenges that FAA and JPDO need to address in moving toward NextGen. This statement is based on GAO's November 2006 report and recent testimonies as well as ongoing work. GAO's November report recommended that FAA study its technical and contract management expertise and that JPDO take actions to institutionalize its collaborative practices. FAA and JPDO said they would consider our recommendations."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In 2004, several high-profile drug safety cases raised concerns about the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) ability to manage postmarket drug safety issues. In some cases there were disagreements within FDA about how to address these issues. GAO was asked to testify on FDA's oversight of drug safety. This testimony is based on Drug Safety: Improvement Needed in FDA's Postmarket Decision-making and Oversight Process, GAO-06-402 (Mar. 31, 2006). The report focused on the complex interaction between two offices within FDA that are involved in postmarket drug safety activities: the Office of New Drugs (OND), and the Office of Drug Safety (ODS). OND's primary responsibility is to review new drug applications, but it is also involved in monitoring the safety of marketed drugs. ODS is focused primarily on postmarket drug safety issues. ODS is now called the Office of Surveillance and Epidemiology. For its report, GAO reviewed FDA policies, interviewed FDA staff, and conducted case studies of four drugs with safety issues: Arava, Baycol, Bextra, and Propulsid. To gather information on FDA's initiatives since March 2006 to improve its decision-making process for this testimony, GAO interviewed FDA officials in …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The extent and quality of federal voter assistance for military personnel and overseas citizens varied considerably during the November 2000 election. The Department of Defense (DOD) has developed some useful information tools, but many overseas military personnel were unaware of them. Moreover, the military services did not always comply with DOD requirements to appoint and train Voting Assistance Officers, brief military personnel on how to go about voting, or maintain enough supplies of voting materials. Lack of emphasis by commanders and limited oversight by service Inspectors General and installation commanders appear to be the chief reasons why some military installations did not fully comply with DOD guidance on how voting assistance programs should be carried out. Many states have worked with DOD's Federal Voting Assistance Program to make it easier for military personnel and overseas citizens to register, obtain ballots, and vote; however, voters continue to face challenges. Information on the precise number of military and overseas absentee votes that local jurisdictions disqualified nationwide in the November 2000 election and the reasons for the disqualification is not available. Many local officials said that they did not track data …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Labor's Office of Workers' Compensation Programs (OWCP) paid $2.1 billion in medical and death benefits and received 174,000 new injury claims during fiscal year 2000. GAO found that (1) one in four appealed claims' decisions are reversed or remanded to OWCP district offices for additional consideration and a new decision because of questions about or problems with the initial claims decision; (2) OWCP set a goal of informing 96 percent of claimants within 110 days of the date of the hearing; (3) nearly all doctors used by OWCP to provide opinions on injuries claimed were board certified and state licensed and were specialists in areas consistent with the injuries they evaluated; and (4) OWCP has used mailed surveys, telephone surveys, and focus groups to measure customer satisfaction. The Labor inspector general is monitoring fraud within OWCP's workers compensation program and using the claims examiners as one source to identify potentially fraudulent claims. This testimony is based on a May report (GAO-02-637)."