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A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Aerospace medical experts GAO interviewed generally agreed that the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) medical standards are appropriate and supported FAA's recent data-driven efforts to improve its pilot medical-certification process. Each year, about 400,000 candidates apply for a pilot's medical certificate and complete a medical exam to determine whether they meet FAA's medical standards. From 2008 through 2012, on average, about 90 percent of applicants have been medically certified by an FAA-designated aviation medical examiner (AME) at the time of their medical exam or by a Regional Flight Surgeon. Of the remaining applicants, about 8.5 percent have received a special issuance medical certificate (special issuance) after providing additional medical information to FAA. Approximately 1.2 percent were not medically certified to fly. According to an industry association, the special issuance process adds time and costs to the application process, in part, because applicants might not understand what additional medical information they need to provide to FAA. Officials from FAA's medical certification division have said that technological problems with the aging computer systems that support the medical certification process have contributed to delays in the special issuance process. FAA's …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO's 2014 annual report identifies 64 new actions that executive branch agencies and Congress could take to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of 26 areas of government. GAO identifies 11 new areas in which there is evidence of fragmentation, overlap, or duplication. For example, under current law, individuals are allowed to receive concurrent payments from the Disability Insurance and Unemployment programs. Eliminating the overlap in these payments could save the government about $1.2 billion over the next 10 years. GAO also identifies 15 new areas where opportunities exist either to reduce the cost of government operations or enhance revenue collections. For example, Congress could rescind all or part of the remaining $4.2 billion in credit subsidies for the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan program unless the Department of Energy demonstrates sufficient demand for this funding."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) continued to make progress in addressing information security control weaknesses and improving its internal control over financial reporting; however, weaknesses remain that could affect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of financial and sensitive taxpayer data. During fiscal year 2013, IRS management devoted attention and resources to addressing information security controls, and resolved a number of the information security control deficiencies that were previously reported by GAO. However, significant risks remained. Specifically, the agency had not always (1) installed appropriate patches on all databases and servers to protect against known vulnerabilities, (2) sufficiently monitored database and mainframe controls, or (3) appropriately restricted access to its mainframe environment. In addition, IRS had allowed individuals to make changes to mainframe data processing without requiring them to follow established change control procedures to ensure changes were authorized, and did not configure all applications to use strong encryption for authentication, increasing the potential for unauthorized access."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Navy's 2013 report to Congress on the Port Royal 's material condition partially addressed congressional reporting requirements but has likely overstated modernization costs should the ship be retained in service. While the Navy acknowledges that it did not obtain an independent structural assessment as required by one of the mandates, the Navy found the condition of the ship to be comparable to other cruisers when its own technical experts assessed the ship. For example, in addressing the congressional requirements, the Navy assessed the Port Royal 's structure and found the condition of the superstructure and interior hull to be typical of other cruisers in the class, indicating its suitability for continued use. The mandate also required that the Navy's assessments be reviewed by experts. GAO found that the Navy's assessment was reviewed by the Naval Sea Systems Command Engineering Directorate, the Navy's technical authority, and by independent boards of subject-matter experts from the Department of Defense and industry—the Board of Inspection and Survey and the American Bureau of Shipping, respectively. All three reviewers generally concurred with the assessment. Finally, the Navy's report to Congress included …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) authority to regulate the practice of representatives before IRS is limited to certain preparers, such as attorneys and certified public accountants. Unenrolled preparers—those generally not subject to IRS regulation—accounted for 55 percent of all preparers as of March 2014. In 2010, IRS initiated steps to regulate unenrolled preparers through testing and education requirements; however, the courts ruled that IRS lacked the authority."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) spent (obligated) less than half of the $1.1 billion in tobacco user fees it collected from manufacturers and others from fiscal year 2009 through the end of fiscal year 2012; however, FDA's spending increased substantially in fiscal year 2013. Through December 31, 2013, FDA spent nearly 81 percent of the approximately $1.75 billion in fees collected by that time. According to officials in FDA's Center for Tobacco Products (CTP), the center established by the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (Tobacco Control Act) to implement the act's provisions, the time it took to award contracts contributed to the center spending less than it had planned to spend. In fiscal year 2013, FDA was able to carry out a number of activities that were originally planned for fiscal years 2011 and 2012, such as efforts to educate youth on the dangers of tobacco use. About 79 percent ($1.12 billion) of user fees spent as of December 31, 2013, was spent by three CTP offices: Office of Health Communication and Education, Office of Science, and Office of Compliance and Enforcement."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO found that from 2007 through 2009, the federal government's actions to stabilize the financial system provided significant funding support and other benefits to bank holding companies and their subsidiaries. The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Federal Reserve Board), the Department of the Treasury (Treasury), and FDIC introduced new programs with broad-based eligibility that provided funding support to eligible institutions, which included entities that were part of a bank holding company and others. Programs that provided the most significant support directly to bank holding companies or their subsidiaries included Treasury's capital investment programs, the Federal Reserve System's lending programs, and FDIC's guarantee programs. Some large institutions benefited from special assistance specific to their institution."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) project is generally executing to its September 2011 revised cost and schedule baseline; however, several challenges remain that could affect continued progress. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has requested funding that is in line with the rebaseline and the project is maintaining 14 months of schedule reserve prior to its launch date. Performance data from the prime contractor indicate that generally work is being accomplished on schedule and at the cost expected; however, monthly performance declined in fiscal year 2013. Project officials have maintained and enhanced project oversight by, for example, continuing quarterly NASA and contractor management meetings and instituting a tool to update cost estimates for internal efforts. Program officials, however, are not planning to perform an updated integrated cost/schedule risk analysis, as GAO recommended in 2012, stating that the project performs monthly integrated risk analyses they believe are adequate. Updating the more comprehensive analysis with a more refined schedule and current risks, however, would provide management and stakeholders with better information to gauge progress."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Available evidence does not support whether behavioral indicators, which are used in the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT) program, can be used to identify persons who may pose a risk to aviation security. GAO reviewed four meta-analyses (reviews that analyze other studies and synthesize their findings) that included over 400 studies from the past 60 years and found that the human ability to accurately identify deceptive behavior based on behavioral indicators is the same as or slightly better than chance. Further, the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) April 2011 study conducted to validate SPOT's behavioral indicators did not demonstrate their effectiveness because of study limitations, including the use of unreliable data. Twenty-one of the 25 behavior detection officers (BDO) GAO interviewed at four airports said that some behavioral indicators are subjective. TSA officials agree, and said they are working to better define them. GAO analyzed data from fiscal years 2011 and 2012 on the rates at which BDOs referred passengers for additional screening based on behavioral indicators and found that BDOs' referral rates varied significantly across airports, raising questions about …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The total number of conditional registrations granted is unclear, as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports that its data are inaccurate for several reasons. First, the database used to track conditional registrations does not allow officials to change a pesticide's registration status from conditional to unconditional once the registrant has satisfied all requirements, thereby overstating the number of conditional registrations. Second, EPA staff have misused the term "conditional registration," incorrectly classifying pesticide registrations as conditional when, for example, they require a label change, which is not a basis in statute for a conditional registration. According to EPA documents and officials, weaknesses in guidance and training, management oversight, and data management contributed to these misclassification problems. For example, according to EPA documents, there was limited, organized management oversight to ensure that regulatory actions were not misclassified as conditional registrations. As of July 2013, EPA officials told GAO that the agency has taken or is planning to take several actions to more accurately account for conditional registrations, including beginning to design a new automated data system to more accurately track conditional registrations."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) expanded the use of the Enrollee Health Care Projection Model (EHCPM) in developing the agency’s health care budget estimate that supported the President’s fiscal year 2014 budget request. VA expanded the use of the EHCPM by using, for the first time, the model’s estimate for the amount of care provided—workload—to develop estimates of the resources needed for 14 long-term care services. However, VA continued to use the most current expenditure data rather than EHCPM estimates for projecting needed resources for these services due to concerns about the reliability of the EHCPM expenditure data. Using this new blended approach, VA used the EHCPM in whole or in part, to develop estimates for 74 health care services that accounted for more than 85 percent of VA’s health care budget estimate. Additionally, VA used a new budget category label for its estimate of certain administrative personnel costs, “Administrative Personnel,” and identified the types of positions this estimate included. However, VA did not consistently use the new label across its three health care appropriations accounts. Instead, VA used “Administration” and provided no information clarifying …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Air Force did not evaluate its pilot program that moved funding for Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) acquisition civilian personnel from its 1-year Operation and Maintenance (O&M) appropriation to its 2-year Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E) appropriation. In addition, the Air Force is considering using this pilot program to inform funding changes for other sections of its civilian workforce. GAO's prior work has identified the following practices for implementing and evaluating pilot programs: (1) develop objectives that link to the goals of the pilot; (2) develop processes for monitoring the pilot; (3) develop and implement a data collection and analysis plan for evaluating the pilot; and (4) communicate evaluation results to stakeholders. When implementing the pilot program, the Air Force did not follow these practices, and primarily focused on ensuring that administrative changes were made accurately such as ensuring employees received pay on time. For example, while a variety of potential goals were identified for the pilot program by the Air Force in various documents; they were not clear or consistent. As a result, anecdotal opinions on the advantages or disadvantages of the …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO found no consensus among stakeholders on the advantages and disadvantages of eliminating paper labeling and relying instead on electronic labeling as a complete substitute for the three types of drug labeling discussed in this report and approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)--an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). This report focuses on three types of prescription drug labeling: the prescribing information intended for health care practitioners, Medication Guides intended to inform patients about drugs FDA has determined pose a serious and significant public health concern, and patient package inserts (PPI) required for oral contraceptives and estrogens. Stakeholders said an advantage of such a change would be that it could provide physicians, pharmacists, and patients with the most current drug information in a more user-friendly format, which would positively impact public health. For example, drug labeling could be made interactive to include hyperlinks to definitions of key terms or to additional information, enhancing patients' knowledge about the drugs they are using. However, stakeholders noted disadvantages that could offset any advantages gained from such a change. Relying on electronic labeling as …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Rogue Internet pharmacies violate a variety of federal and state laws. Most operate from abroad, and many illegally ship prescription drugs into the United States that have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), that is responsible for ensuring the safety and effectiveness of prescription drugs. Many also illegally sell prescription drugs without a prescription that meets federal and state requirements. Rogue sites also often violate other laws, including those related to fraud, money laundering, and intellectual property rights."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Designed to safeguard client assets, the Securities and Exchange Commission's(SEC) rule governing advisers' custody of client assets (custody rule) imposes various requirements and, in turn, costs on investment advisers. To protect investors, the rule requires advisers that have custody to (1) use qualified custodians (e.g., banks or broker-dealers) to hold client assets and (2) have a reasonable basis for believing that the custodian sends account statements directly to clients."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins ""

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury) has increasingly used auctions to sell its Capital Purchase Program (CPP) investments. Initially, Treasury relied primarily on financial institutions redeeming their shares to wind down the program. However, in March 2012 Treasury began using auctions to exit CPP, and more institutions have exited the program through auctions than through any other method since then. As of May 2013, Treasury has held 16 auctions, selling 128 investments for total proceeds of about $2.4 billion. Each auction has involved the sale of an institution's outstanding investment, also known as the par amount. In most cases, the final sales price was below the par amount, and in total Treasury received 84 percent of par in the first 16 auctions. Through these auctions, repurchases, and other mechanisms, 556 institutions had exited CPP as of May 31, 2013, accounting for almost $223 billion in repayments and income and exceeding the original investment amount by about $18 billion."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "For more than a decade, GAO has reported on the challenges the Department of Energy's (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the Office of Environmental Management (EM) have faced in meeting their projects' cost performance targets as developed in estimates and for ensuring that these cost estimates are based on sound assumptions. NNSA and EM are included on GAO's High-Risk List in recognition of the potential for vulnerabilities to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement in contract administration and management of major projects. In January 2010, GAO reported on DOE's project cost-estimating practices and found that DOE did not have a cost-estimating policy and that cost-estimating guidance it had developed in the 1990s remained in effect but was out-of-date. GAO also found that DOE was taking steps to improve its cost-estimating practices, such as establishing the Office of Cost Analysis (OCA) in 2008 to improve cost-estimating capabilities and better ensure that project cost estimates are reliable by providing a new independent cost-estimating function. Both DOE's NNSA, a separately organized agency within the department, and EM adopted policies and practices to support cost estimating. GAO is conducting an ongoing …

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

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Social Security Administration's (SSA) procedures for handling and verifying death reports may allow for erroneous death information in the Death Master File (DMF) because SSA does not verify certain death reports or record others. SSA officials said, in keeping with its mission, the agency is primarily focused on ensuring that it does not make benefit payments to deceased Social Security program beneficiaries. As a result, it only verifies death reports received for individuals who are current program beneficiaries, and even then, only for those reports received from sources it considers to be less accurate. For example, SSA officials consider death reports from states that have pre-verified decedents' name and SSN to be highly accurate, so SSA does not verify that the subjects of these reports are actually deceased. It would, however, verify a report received from a source such as a post office. SSA verifies no death reports for individuals who are not beneficiaries, regardless of source. Because there are a number of death reports that SSA does not verify, the agency risks including incorrect death information in the DMF, such as including living individuals in the …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins ""

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is pursuing key operational improvements to implement the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) in the "midterm," which is 2013 through 2018. These improvements focus on establishing Performance Based Navigation (PBN) procedures at key airports, but benefits could be limited in the midterm. PBN uses satellite-based guidance to improve air-traffic control routes (known as "procedures"). These procedures can deliver benefits to airlines, such as fuel savings and increased efficiency, particularly in congested airspace. To deliver benefits more quickly, FAA made trade-offs in selecting sites and in the scope of proposed improvements. For example, FAA is not implementing procedures that will trigger lengthy environmental reviews. These trade-offs, with which airlines and other stakeholders generally agree, will likely limit benefits from these PBN initiatives early in the midterm. FAA has also made some progress in other key operational improvement areas, such as upgrading traffic management systems and revising standards to improve aircraft flow in congested airspace. However, FAA has not fully integrated implementation of all of its operational improvement efforts at airports. Because of the interdependency of improvements, their limited integration could also …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Wilkie D. Ferguson, Jr. U.S. Courthouse in Miami, Florida, along with the other 32 federal courthouses completed from 2000 to March 2010 include 3.56 million square feet of extra space consisting of space that was constructed (1) above the congressionally authorized size, (2) because of overestimating the number of judges the courthouses would have, and (3) without planning for courtroom sharing among judges. Overall, this extra space represents about 9 average-sized courthouses. The estimated cost to construct this extra space was $835 million in 2010 dollars, and the annual cost to rent, operate, and maintain it is $51 million. The Ferguson Courthouse specifically included approximately 238,000 extra square feet of space, which GAO estimated increased the construction cost by $48.5 million (in constant 2010 dollars) and an additional $3.5 million annually."