Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "For the past 5 years, the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Defense have been working to exchange health care data and create electronic records for veterans and active duty personnel. Such exchange is seen as a means of reducing the billions of dollars that the departments spend annually on health care services and making such data more readily accessible to those treating our country's approximately 13 million veterans, military personnel, and dependents. This is especially critical when military personnel are engaged in conflicts all over the world, and their health records can reside at multiple locations. GAO has reported on these efforts several times, most recently in September 2002. At the request of the Subcommittee, GAO is updating its observations on the departments' efforts, focusing on (1) the reported status of the ongoing, one-way exchange of data, the Federal Health Information Exchange, and (2) progress toward achieving the longer term two-way exchange under the HealthePeople (Federal) initiative."

A statement of record issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "When the President created the Department of Homeland Security, he included U.S. agriculture and food industries in the list of critical infrastructures needing protection. The Secretaries of Agriculture and of Health and Human Services have publicly declared that the U.S. food supply is susceptible to deliberate contamination. GAO was asked to provide an overview of the potential vulnerabilities of the food supply and agriculture sector to deliberate contamination and to summarize four recent GAO reports that identified problems with federal oversight that could leave the nation's agriculture and food supply vulnerable to deliberate contamination."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Abusive tax avoidance schemes could threaten our tax system's integrity and fairness if honest taxpayers believe that significant numbers of individuals are not paying their fair share of taxes. Abusive schemes encompass such distortions of the tax system as falsely describing the law (saying, for example, that the income tax is unconstitutional), misrepresenting facts (for instance, promoting the deduction of personal expenses as business expenses), or using trusts or offshore bank accounts to hide income. As agreed, this report focuses on three objectives. They are to (1) describe the nature and scope of abusive tax avoidance schemes as determined by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), (2) describe IRS's strategy to combat these schemes and the performance goals and measures IRS uses to track its major effort related to them, and (3) describe how IRS determined the amount and source of staff resources to be devoted to these schemes in the IRS operating division most directly affected."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "During the 1990s, the State Department lost more people than it hired. The resultant shortfalls in the number and skills of Foreign Service officers have endangered U.S. diplomatic readiness. Furthermore, recent studies, including several by GAO, have questioned whether State's recruitment system identifies people with the appropriate skills and whether State is assigning officers with specialized skills, such as the ability to speak a difficult language, to positions where they can be utilized. GAO was asked to review State's processes for determining the number and skills of junior officers the department needs and to determine whether it is hiring and assigning officers with the general skills to carry out foreign policy overseas. GAO was also asked to examine the challenges State still needs to address, especially regarding officers' foreign language skills."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "To help strengthen aviation security after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Congress expanded the size and mission of the Federal Air Marshal Service (the Service) and located the Service within the newly created Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Between November 2001 and July 1, 2002, the Service grew from fewer than 50 air marshals to thousands, and its mission expanded to include the protection of domestic as well as international flights. In March 2003, the Service, with TSA, merged into the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS); and in November 2003, it was transferred from TSA and merged into DHS's Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). GAO looked at operational and management control issues that emerged during the rapid expansion of the Service, specifically addressing its (1) background check procedures and training; (2) management information, policies, and procedures; and (3) challenges likely to result from its mergers into DHS and ICE."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "To better monitor children and families served by state child welfare agencies, Congress authorized matching funds for the development of statewide automated child welfare information systems (SACWIS) and required that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) compile information on the children served by state agencies. This testimony is based on our July 2003 report and addresses the following: (1) states' experiences in developing child welfare information systems and HHS's role in assisting in their development, (2) factors that affect the reliability of data that states collect and report on children served by their child welfare agencies and HHS's role in ensuring the reliability of those data, and (3) practices that child welfare agencies use to overcome challenges associated with SACWIS development and data reliability. For the July 2003 report, we surveyed all 50 states and the District of Columbia regarding their experiences developing and using information systems and their ability to report data to HHS. We also reviewed a variety of HHS documents and visited five states to obtain firsthand information. Finally, we interviewed HHS officials and child welfare and data experts and reviewed relevant literature."