A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This report discusses the management of the air transportation network used to move checks from one Federal Reserve office to another. GAO studied the propriety of practices for bidding, awarding, and monitoring contracts and the adequacy of controls to monitor fuel and other payments to vendors. The network was moved to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta (FRB Atlanta) in September 1998 and renamed Check Relay. Check Relay's internal controls are designed to ensure that each step of the contract evaluation and approval process conforms to FRB Atlanta and Federal Reserve System policies and that appropriate senior officials review and approve contract terms. Check Relay also ensures that all payments to vendors conform to contract terms. Another set of controls verifies that the amount of fuel used by Check Relay's vendors is consistent with expected levels and that fuel is provided only to the appropriate recipients. Check Relay is managed as a unit of the Retail Payments Office, which is managed out of FRB Atlanta. The Board's Division of Reserve Bank Operations and Payment Systems also has oversight responsibility over Check Relay. GAO found no evidence …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Management of the U.S. Postal Service's (USPS) e-commerce program has been fragmented, and implementation of e-commerce initiatives has varied at different business units. Overall, USPS' performance in this area has fallen short of expectations. Last year, the Postmaster General announced a sweeping management restructuring that changed both the reporting structure and program managers. USPS also revised its procedures for approving and implementing new Internet initiatives, including e-commerce. However, concerns persist about whether USPS' e-commerce initiatives are being cross-subsidized by other postal products and services. USPS managers contend that e-commerce products and services must cover their incremental costs. GAO found that this goal has not been met and it is unclear when it might be achieved. Without accurate, complete, and consistent financial information, USPS cannot assess its progress toward its financial performance goals for e-commerce. USPS also lacks clear and comprehensive policies and procedures for reporting direct and indirect revenues and costs for e-commerce and other new products and services. As a result, reporting inconsistencies are likely to continue. In contrast, USPS has reportedly developed privacy policies and practices for its e-commerce customers that exceed those required …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This report analyzes the Department of Defense's (DOD) 1999 survey of active duty personnel. GAO found that among first-term and mid-career personnel, satisfaction with military life and retention intent, which tend to increase with an individual's seniority, were important reasons for joining the armed forces. Among first-term enlisted personnel, education benefits and training for civilian employment were among the top reasons for joining. Mid-career personnel cited a desire to serve their country as one of the main reasons for joining, and these individuals said that they were likely to serve 20 years. Mid-career enlisted personnel and officers who joined for education benefits or for training for a specific occupation--skills that can be transferred to civilian jobs--said that they were more likely to leave the military. Base pay, the amount of personal/family leave time, and leadership quality were the main reasons cited by servicemembers for leaving the military. Servicemembers did, however, view some aspects of military life more favorable compared with civilian life, including vacation time, sense of accomplishment and pride, and education and training opportunities."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 directed the Treasury to issue advance 2001 tax refunds to individual taxpayers who filed a tax year 2000 return. As a result, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had to identify eligible taxpayers so that checks could be sent to these taxpayers by December 31, 2001. The Department of the Treasury's Financial Management Service was to issue the checks on behalf of IRS, with the first checks to be received during the week of July 23, 2001. As of September 30, 2001, 84 million taxpayers were to have received $36 billion in advance tax funds. IRS offset about $2.1 billion from these advance tax refunds to recover delinquent federal taxes. IRS spent $104 million to run the program through September 2001, which included IRS staffing costs as well as the costs associated with contracts, postage, and printing. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration identified two initial problems that affected either the accuracy or timeliness of the advance refund notices. One involved computer programming errors that resulted in 523,000 taxpayers receiving notices indicating that they would receive …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Energy (DOE) manages the nation's nuclear weapons production complex, cleans up the environmental legacy from the production of nuclear weapons, and conducts research and development into both energy and basic science. DOE launched several reforms in the 1990s to realign its organizational structure, reduce its workforce, strengthen contracting procedures by competitive awards practices, streamline oversight of activities, and delegate some responsibilities to the private sector. Despite these reforms, GAO found that management weaknesses persist because DOE's reforms were piecemeal solutions whose effect has been muted by three impediments to fundamental improvement: the department's diverse missions, dysfunctional organizational structure, and weak control of accountability. Management weaknesses and performance problems will likely continue unless DOE addresses these impediments in a comprehensive fashion."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In recent years, GAO has testified that personnel shortages, assignment priorities, and frequent peacekeeping deployments were undermining the combat readiness of the Army's five later-deploying divisions. In 2001, GAO reported on the Army Chief of Staff's manning initiative of October 1999, which seeks to ensure that all active Army units are assigned the numbers, grades, and skills needed to carry out wartime missions. Since then, terrorists have attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the Bush administration has formulated a new military strategy. These developments may change how, when, and where these divisions will be used--as seen in the deployment of soldiers from the 40th Infantry Division in Operation Enduring Freedom. As of June 2001 the five divisions reported they were ready and able to perform all or most of their combat missions. Enlisted personnel levels were at or near 100 percent of their authorization compared with 93 percent in March 1998. However, staffing imbalances persist for some combat support skills. Each division met its training requirements for combat missions. The amount of equipment on hand and the serviceability of that equipment indicated that …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Initiatives to address flight delays include adding new runways to accommodate more aircraft and better coordinating efforts to adjust to spring and summer storms. Although most of these efforts were developed separately, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has incorporated many of them into an Operational Evolution Plan (OEP), which is designed to give more focus to these initiatives. FAA acknowledges that the plan is not intended as a final solution to congestion and delay problems. The plan focuses on initiatives that can be implemented within 10 years and generally excludes approaches lacking widespread support across stakeholder groups. The current initiatives, if successful, will add substantial capacity to the nation's air transport system. Even so, these efforts are unlikely to prevent delays from becoming worse unless the reduced traffic levels resulting from the events of September 11 persist. One key reason is that most delay-prone airports have limited ability to increase their capacity, especially by adding new runways--the main capacity-building element of OEP. The air transport system has long-term needs beyond the initiatives now under way. One initiative would add new capacity--not by adding runways to existing …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The estimated $6.5 billion full-cycle cost of the 2000 decennial census is nearly double that of the 1990 census. When the full-cycle cost is divided by the number of American households, the cost per housing unit of the 2000 census was $56 compared to $32 per housing unit for the 1990 census. The primary reasons for the cost increases include the following: (1) in the 1990 census, field data collection cost was $16 per housing unit, while in the 2000 census it was $32 per housing unit; (2) in the 1990 census, technology costs were $5 per housing unit compared to $8 per housing unit for the 2000 census; and (3) the data content and products activity cost $3 per housing unit in 1990 and $5 per housing unit in 2000."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This report focuses on the debt collection processes and procedures used by the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The primary reason for the growth of CMS' civil monetary penalties (CMP) receivables was the expansion of fraud and abuse detection activities from fiscal year 1995 through fiscal year 1997 that significantly increased reported fraud and abuse debts in fiscal year 1997. GAO's analysis of CMS' CMP receivable data revealed similar financial accountability and reporting issues as those identified for non-CMP receivables by CMS' external financial statement auditors. GAO identified (1) unreconciled differences of tens of millions of dollars in the CMP receivables balances reported by HHS and CMS for fiscal years 1997 through 1999 and (2) an unreconciled net difference of about $22 million between the CMP receivables balance in CMS' general ledger and the detailed subsidiary systems as of September 30, 2000. The data reliability issue prevented GAO from determining the overall adequacy of the CMP debt collection policies and procedures. However, GAO's limited tests showed that debt collection policies and procedures were followed for 11 of …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In September 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau told Congress that it had at least $305 million in budget savings out of its $4.5 billion fiscal year 2000 no-year appropriations for the 2000 decennial census. Of the $4.5 billion appropriated to the U.S. Census Bureau in fiscal year 2000, lower-than-expected expenditures and obligations resulted in available balances of at least $415 million. A lower-than-expected support staff workload reduced salary and benefit costs by about $348 million. Enumerator workload is largely determined by the initial mail response rate for returned census questionnaires. The initial mail response of 64 percent meant that Census enumerators did not have to visit more than three million American households. However, the available balances from the higher mail response rate and the lower support staff workload were partially offset by about $100 million of higher salary and benefit costs for enumerators, including a higher workload for unanticipated recounts. According to Bureau data, enumerator productivity did not significantly affect budget variances for the 2000 decennial census. The Bureau reported the national average time to visit a household and complete a census questionnaire was about the …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "As part of its Accuracy and Coverage Evaluation (ACE), the U.S. Census Bureau interviewed people across the country to develop an estimate of the number of persons missed, counted more than once, or otherwise improperly counted in the 2000 census. In conducting the interviews, which took place in person or over the phone, Census faced several challenges, including (1) completing the operation on schedule, (2) ensuring data quality, (3) overcoming unexpected computer problems, (4) obtaining a quality address list, and (5) keeping the interviews independent of census follow-up operations to ensure unbiased estimates of census errors. The Bureau completed the interviews largely ahead of schedule. On the basis of the results of its quality assurance program, the Bureau assumes that about one-tenth of one percent of all cases nationally would have failed the program because they were believed to have been falsified. Early on, the Bureau dealt with an unexpected problem with its automated work management system, which allows supervisors to selectively reassign work among interviewers. According to the Bureau officials, the Bureau addressed the underlying programming error within two weeks, and the operations proceeded on …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO audited the financial statement for the Senate Stationary Room Revolving Fund for fiscal year 2000. GAO found that (1) the statement is presented fairly in all material respects; (2) although internal control should be improved, the Stationary Room had effective internal controls over financial reporting and compliance with laws and regulations; and (3) there was no reportable noncompliance with selected provisions of laws and regulations GAO tested."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Despite the recent success of casino gaming and other business ventures undertaken by some Native Americans and Alaska Natives, unemployment and poverty remain widespread in these communities. Many federal programs are available to help Native Americans with economic development, and some tribes are using these programs. Although agencies reported that their programs helped to create and retain jobs, little is known about the effectiveness of these programs. The preparation of performance plans and reports, the designation of agency points of contact, and the establishment of a single office to coordinate federal programs relating to Indian economic development could improve Native Americans' access to federal programs and provide federal decisionmakers with valuable performance information."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO assessed the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) performance in the following five key tax filing season activities: (1) processing individual tax returns and refunds, (2) increasing the extent to which individual income tax returns are filed electronically, (3) answering telephone calls and providing quality telephone service, (4) providing accurate and timely face-to-face assistance at its Taxpayer Assistance Centers (TAC), and (5) providing services via the Internet. GAO found that IRS' performance during the 2001 filing season varied. Although there was less information available on which to base a judgement than in past filing seasons, IRS' processing of 130 million individual income tax returns and 94 million refunds in 2001 went smoothly. IRS addressed problems quickly, with relatively minor impact on taxpayers. About 31 percent of all individual income tax returns were filed electronically in 2001--an increase of 13.7 percent compared to 2000. That rate of increase was below IRS' goal of 20 percent and the lowest percentage since 1996. IRS has identified several impediments, but it lacks enough information to determine why about 40 million individual income tax returns were prepared on computers but filed on …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Army announced in October 2000 that personnel would begin wearing berets eight months later. To meet the tight deadline for the production of 5 million berets at a cost of about $30 million, the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) shortcut normal contracting procedures and waived restrictions that limit military purchases of some items, including clothing, to those produced in the United States or its possessions. Despite these efforts, DLA was unable to meet the Army's deadline, and it terminated three contracts because the contractors did not meet delivery requirements. So far, the Defense Department (DOD) has received about 2.1 million berets--less than 1 million of which were distributed to Army personnel. DOD still expects another 1.6 million berets to be delivered by September 2002. DOD has taken steps to ensure that proposed waivers are considered at an appropriate management level. DOD no longer allows the Under Secretary of Defense or the service secretaries to delegate their authority to approve waivers. Requests for waivers must also be supported by analyses of why alternatives that would not require a waiver were unacceptable."

A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In most of the requests approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to transfer licenses to own or operate nuclear power plants, the financial arrangements have sought to ensure that adequate funds will be available to decommission those plants. However, when new owners proposed to continue relying on periodic deposits to external sinking funds, NRC's reviews were not always rigorous enough to ensure that decommissioning funds would be adequate. Varying cleanup standards and proposed new decommissioning methods introduce additional uncertainty about the future costs of decommissioning nuclear power plants. Changes to the Financial Accounting Standards Board's financial reporting standard will require, for the first time, owners of facilities that require significant end-of-life cleanup expenditures--such as nuclear power plants--to consistently report estimated decommissioning costs as liabilities in their financial statements. However, the new accounting standard is not intended to, and will not, establish a legal requirement that these licensees set aside adequate funding for decommissioning costs."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) serves almost half of all infants and about one-quarter of all children between one and four years of age in the United States. The WIC program faces the following challenges: (1) coordinating its nutrition services with health and welfare programs undergoing considerable change, (2) responding to health and demographic changes in the low-income population, (3) recruiting and keeping a skilled staff, (4) improving the use of information technology to enhance service delivery and program management, (5) assessing the effect of nutrition services, and (6) meeting increased program requirements without a corresponding increase in funding. This report identifies 16 approaches to address these challenges. Each of the approaches has advantages and disadvantages that policymakers should consider."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced in 1997 that it would modify its meat and poultry slaughter inspection program to make industry more responsible for identifying carcass defects. Before making the change permanent, USDA developed a model to test whether a prevention-oriented inspection system that uses plant personnel to examine each carcass and USDA inspectors to verify that quality standards are met would continue to ensure the safety of meat and poultry products. USDA's pilot project for chickens had several design and methodology problems that compromised the overall validity and reliability of its results. First, the chicken pilot that USDA designed lacked a control group--a critical design flaw that precluded a comparison between the performance of the inspection systems at those plants that volunteered to participate in the pilot and that of plants that did not participate. Second, the chicken plants that volunteered to participate in the baseline measurement phase of the pilot were not randomly selected, and they did not include plants from all chicken-producing areas or plants of all sizes. Third, the pilot project's methodology did not take into account such variables as seasonal …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In 1998, three-fourths of welfare recipients lived in central cities or rural areas, but two-thirds of new, entry-level jobs were in the suburbs. Public transportation, such as buses or subways, often offer little or no access to these jobs, and many welfare recipients do not have cars. To address this mismatch, the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century authorized up to $750 million through fiscal year 2003 for the Job Access and Reverse Commute (Job Access) program. Under the program, the Department of Transportation (DOT) can provide grants to improve transportation to employment sites. DOT must conduct a nationwide solicitation for grant applications and select grantees on a competitive basis. DOT adopted a two-track process for the selection of grantees. A noncompetitive process set aside funds for entities identified in conference reports, or applicants selected by those entities, and they were chosen without scoring or ranking their applications. The previously established competitive process for other applicants was continued. This two-track process for selecting Job Access grantees decreased opportunities to fund projects identified as "meritorious" through the competitive selection process. Although grantees must be chosen on …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. defense industry and some foreign government purchasers have expressed concern that the U.S. export control process is unnecessarily burdensome. Defense industry officials contend that extended reviews of export license applications by the State Department have resulted in lost sales and are harming the nation's defense industry. The State Department's Office of Defense Trade Controls is responsible for licensing the export and temporary import of defense articles and services. Many license applications take a long time to review because of their complexity and the need to consider different points of view. However, several conditions make the application review process less efficient and cause delays. The State Department has not established formal guidelines for determining the agencies and offices that need to review license applications. As a result, the licensing office refers more license applications to other agencies and offices than may be necessary. Furthermore, many license application reviewers in State Department reviewing offices consider license reviews a low priority. The State Department lacks procedures to monitor the flow of license applications through the review process. The State Department has hired new licensing officers which license …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO examined the environmental cleanup costs of ongoing operations of the Department of Defense (DOD). These include general property, plant, and equipment facilities or other assets that are being operated or are in use at DOD installations. GAO found that DOD has not developed policies, procedures, and methodologies to ensure that cleanup costs required for all of its ongoing and inactive or closed operations are identified, consistently estimated, and appropriately reported. As a result, DOD's financial statements and environmental reports continue to underreport environmental liabilities and related long-term budgetary needs. The military installations GAO visited had a total of 221 sites with estimated cleanup costs of $259 million. Of these, only 45 sites with estimated cleanup costs of $61 million were being reported for the Defense Environmental Restoration Program Annual Report to Congress, and only that amount was likely included in DOD's financial statements. GAO found DOD was not reporting 149 sites related to ongoing operations with estimated cleanup costs of $91 million and 27 inactive and closed operations with estimated cleanup costs of $107 million. The environmental offices at the six installations GAO visited had …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Section 212 of the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act requires agencies to publish compliance guides for each rule or group of related rules for which the agency is required to prepare a final regulatory flexibility analysis. GAO found that Section 212 has had little impact, and its implementation has varied across and sometimes within the agencies. None of the agencies in GAO's review provided GAO with guidance documents that met all of the statutory requirements for all of their 1999 and 2000 final rules. The agencies indicated that they tried to put their compliance guides in plain language--just as they have for all their regulatory materials. The guidance documents that the agencies gave GAO were often published on the agencies' web sites. Direct mail, electronic list servers, agency/regional offices, and workshops were also used for distribution."

This laboratory study was conducted to assess RDX (hexahydro-1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5 triazine) abiotic degradation by chemically reduced sediments and other geochemical aspects of the application of this technology to remediation of RDX contamination in groundwater at the U.S. DOE Pantex facility...

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) plans to use the Common Criteria, as the tool for developing graded and measurable evaluation criteria for information technology (IT) in safeguards systems in facilities subject to IAEA inspection. In their draft paper [ITSECSES] the IAEA defines a three-tiered Vulnerability Assessment Level (VAL) scheme. Each increased VAL level (1-3) defines additional and more stringent security and security-related requirements for the system developer, the system evaluator (assessor or authenticator), and for the IAEA. When all parties meet all requirements for a particular VAL level, IAEA has a measurable degree of confidence in the secure and proper operation of an IT system.