Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "We reported the number of 2008 tax returns by state for IRS's 2009 Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program (OVDP) participants. OVPD offered incentives for taxpayers to disclose their offshore accounts and pay delinquent taxes, interest and penalties. Generally, the program offered somewhat reduced penalties and no risk of criminal prosecution, if eligible taxpayers fully disclosed their previously unreported offshore accounts, and paid taxes due plus interest. To safeguard taxpayer identifies, we suppressed the totals for any state with fewer than 10 OVDP participants."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Among the 9 states and 35 services examined, GAO found that all states varied Medicaid payments for at least some services. However, the states differed in the number of services for which they varied payments, in the factors that accounted for variation, and in the magnitude of the variation. Many of the states varied payment rates by at least one of the factors GAO was able to explore in detail: provider type, service setting, and/or patient age. Some states also varied their payment rates for other reasons, such as by geographic region or by physician specialty. GAO also found that most of the median Medicaid payment rates calculated from claims data generally confirmed payment rates published in studies of fee schedules conducted by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Urban Institute; however, some of the published fee schedule rates were rarely used in practice. Collectively, GAO's findings demonstrate that Medicaid fee-for-service claims data can be a useful source of information for analyzing provider payments. These data have the potential to provide a more complete representation of provider payment than do fee schedules, as claims data can capture …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The schedule and cost for the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) border enforcement system modernization program known as TECS Mod that is managed by Customs and Border Protection's (CBP) continue to change; while the part managed in parallel by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is undergoing major revisions to its scope, schedule, and cost after discovering that its initial solution is not technically viable. CBP's $724 million program intends to modernize the functionality, data, and aging infrastructure of legacy TECS and move it to DHS's data centers by 2016. To date, CBP has deployed functionality to improve its secondary inspection processes to air and sea ports of entry and, more recently, to land ports of entry in 2013. However, CBP is in the process of revising its schedule baseline for the second time in under a year. Further, CBP has not developed its master schedule sufficiently to reliably manage work activities or monitor program progress. These factors raise questions about the certainty of CBP's remaining schedule commitments. Regarding ICE's $818 million TECS Mod program, it is redesigning and replanning its program, having determined in June 2013 that its …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Federal programs GAO reviewed that offer financial support to entrepreneurs, such as grants and loans, are fragmented and overlap based on the type of support they are authorized to offer and the type of entrepreneur they are authorized to serve. The Departments of Commerce (Commerce), Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and Agriculture (USDA); the Small Business Administration (SBA); and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) have taken steps to collaborate more in administering these programs in response to a recommendation in GAO's August 2012 report. For example, OMB has established a Cross-Agency Priority goal for entrepreneurship and small business and an associated interagency working group. However, the four agencies have not implemented a number of good collaborative practices GAO has identified, such as establishing compatible policies and procedures to better support rural businesses. The Government Performance and Results Act Modernization Act of 2010 (GPRAMA) crosscutting framework requires that agencies collaborate in order to address issues such as economic development that transcend more than one agency, and GPRAMA directs agencies to describe how they are working with each other to achieve their program goals. Some entrepreneurs struggle to …