A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Year 2000 census, focusing on: (1) the need to boost the declining level of public participation in the census; and (2) the Census Bureau's need to collect timely and accurate data from nonrespondents."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on improvements needed to track and archive trade agreements, focusing on: (1) the number of trade agreements the United States is party to; (2) the way in which the executive branch notifies Congress when trade agreements are entered into; and (3) the extent to which the public has ready access to information from government sources about trade agreements."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reported on the: (1) status of the development and use of alternative fuel technologies in transit buses, particularly the use of compressed natural gas (CNG) as a fuel; (2) air quality benefits of such technologies; (3) costs incurred by transit operators to use CNG buses, as well as other alternative fuels, compared with the costs to use diesel buses; and (4) primary incentives and disincentives for using these technologies."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) reports on how the pork industry's sharp decline in prices does not reflect pork prices at the retail level, focusing on the: (1) structural changes in the pork industry that have occurred since the 1980s and their effect on production and marketing; (2) reasons for the sudden and rapid decline in prices paid to farmers in late 1998; and (3) extent to which USDA's methods for obtaining and reporting on prices at the farm and retail level for hogs and pork products result in accurate estimates of these prices."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on skilled nursing facilities, focusing on: (1) the initial effect of the skilled nursing facility (SNF) prospective payment system (PPS) on Medicare beneficiaries' access to care; (2) the initial effect of the SNF PPS on providers; and (3) the role the SNF PPS has played in the poor financial performance of large nursing home chains."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed how the Department of Veterans' Affairs' (VA) manages its national formulary and how drugs other than those on the formulary are made available to veterans."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO compared the cost of the Department of Defense's (DOD) high-quality child development program with the cost of comparable care in the civilian market, focusing on: (1) identifying the objectives of the military child development program and describing how it operates; (2) determining the full cost of operating DOD's U.S. child development centers and the cost per child-hour for center-based care; and (3) comparing the cost per child in DOD's child development centers with the full cost of comparable quality child care in the civilian market."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the federal response to international parental child abductions, focusing on: (1) problems with the federal government's response to parental child abduction; and (2) how the federal government is attempting to improve its response."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the extent to which the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employee evaluation system can support the new mission statement during the period IRS will need to revamp its performance management system, focusing on: (1) determining the relative emphasis on revenue production, efficiency, and customer service in enforcement employees' annual written evaluations; (2) identifying features of the evaluation process that might be used to greater advantage to reinforce the importance of customer service; and (3) describing IRS initiatives to promote customer service, including those to encourage enforcement employees to be taxpayer oriented."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) plans and controls for year 2000 business continuity planning, focusing on: (1) the status of and plans for completing DEA's contingency planning for continuity of operations; and (2) whether DEA's contingency planning efforts satisfy the key processes described in GAO's business continuity and contingency planning guide."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO provided an analysis of the Navy's assessment of the short-term and long-term costs associated with alternative methods for executing the naval surface fire support mission, including the alternative of reactivating two battleships."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO evaluated the Army's schedule for implementing best commercial inventory practices for the acquisition and distribution of secondary inventory items, focusing on: (1) the extent to which that schedule responds to the provisions of the Strom Thurmond National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999; and (2) specific elements of a management framework needed for effective implementation and oversight of the Army's best practice initiatives."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO compared the actual fiscal year (FY) 1998 obligations for the Department of Energy's (DOE) Fossil Energy Research and Development (R&D) Program and the Clean Coal Technology Demonstration Program with the estimated obligations that were previously reported."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on efforts to assess the economic impact of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) regulations to enhance environmental quality, focusing on: (1) to what extent EPA's regulations have been the subject of retrospective studies; (2) whether retrospective studies are viewed as useful or difficult to do; and (3) ways to foster such studies in the future."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed various aspects of the Forest Service's and the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) firefighting programs."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the enterprise funds, established to support private sector development in selected countries of Eastern and Central Europe, focusing on: (1) whether enterprise funds are assisting private sector development; (2) what factors have affected the funds' ability to carry out their activities; (3) whether funds still have a role in private sector development, given other private investment and international donor efforts; (4) whether the funds are likely to recoup their authorized capital; and (5) whether the funds are complying with recent changes in the Agency for International Development (AID) reporting requirements."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the structural changes undergone by the Polish-American Enterprise Fund and its management company to enable them to operate more like private venture capital companies, focusing on: (1) whether these structural changes were permitted by law; (2) whether the purchase of the Polish Fund's management company by its employees at book value was permitted by law and whether it favored the employees; (3) whether monies earned by Polish Fund management company employees contravened a $150,000 salary cap; and (4) how proceeds from the sale of the Polish Fund's assets will be distributed."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the trends in the occupational distribution of military women, focusing on: (1) all occupations women were in during fiscal years 1990 and 1998, particularly those with the highest percentage of women; and (2) systemic barriers, if any, that limit women entering certain occupations."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO reviewed two Internal Revenue Service (IRS) year 2000 business continuity and contingency plans for their consistency and completeness on the basis of IRS' guidance for such plans."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO provided information on the internal control requirements in Title 6, "Pay, Leave, and Allowances," of GAO's Policy and Procedures Manual for Guidance of Federal Agencies, as they relate to the Department of Agriculture's Marketing and Regulatory Programs' staff time and attendance (T&A) records, focusing on: (1) if employees are required to sign for their arrival/departure time when recording deviations from their preapproved declared schedule; and (2) in lieu of signing in/out times for deviations to the preapproved work schedule, whether employees could use electronic mail (e-mail) or phone in their actual pay period schedule."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Veterans Health Administration's (VHA) plans to spend an additional $900 million requested for veterans' medical care and the likelihood of VHA's achieving its proposed management efficiency savings."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the progress being made in addressing the year 2000 computing challenge, focusing on: (1) the federal government's progress and the challenges that remain in correcting its systems; (2) state and local government year 2000 issues; and (3) the readiness of key public infrastructure and economic sectors."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Climate Change Report, which was submitted to the Senate Committee on Appropriations in April 1999, focusing on the extent to which it: (1) provides a comprehensive explanation of the agency's climate change programs for fiscal year (FY) 2000; (2) justifies requested increases in funding for that fiscal year; (3) explains how the climate change activities are justified independently of the Kyoto Protocol; and (4) includes performance measures and goals and similar elements, as would be required by the Government Performance and Results Act."

A statement of record issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Department of Energy's (DOE) use, acquisition, and management of its supercomputing resources."