Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011 mandated that GAO examine the costs and benefits of an increased Department of Defense (DOD) role to help secure the southwest land border. This mandate directed that GAO report on, among other things, the potential deployment of additional units, increased use of ground-based mobile surveillance systems, use of mobile patrols by military personnel, and an increased deployment of unmanned aerial systems and manned aircraft in national airspace. In September 2011, GAO reported that DOD estimated a total cost of about $1.35 billion for two separate border operations—Operation Jump Start and Operation Phalanx—conducted by National Guard forces in Title 32 status from June 2006 to July 2008 and from June 2010 through September 30, 2011, respectively. Further, DOD estimated that it has cost about $10 million each year since 1989 to use active duty Title 10 forces nationwide, through its Joint Task Force-North, in support of drug law enforcement agencies with some additional operational costs borne by the military services. Agency officials stated multiple benefits from DOD’s increased border role, such as assistance to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The new F-35 acquisition baseline reflects positive restructuring actions taken by the Department of Defense (DOD) since 2010, including more time and funding for development and deferred procurement of more than 400 aircraft to future years. Overall, the program progressed on several fronts during 2012 to further improve the current outlook. The program achieved 7 of 10 key management objectives and made substantial progress on one other. Two objectives on aircraft deliveries and a corrective management plan were not met. The F-35 development test program substantially met expectations with some revisions to flight test plans and made considerable progress addressing key technical risks. Software management practices and some output measures improved, although deliveries to test continued to lag behind plans. Manufacturing and supply processes also improved--indicators such as factory throughput, labor efficiency, and quality measures were positive. While initial F-35 production overran target costs and delivered aircraft late, the latest data shows labor hours decreasing and deliveries accelerating."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The AMP process, which the judiciary has applied to about 67 percent of its courthouses, represents progress by the judiciary in aligning its capital-planning process with leading capital-planning practices, but the document the judiciary uses to request courthouse construction projects from Congress lacks transparency and key information. For example, the AMP process better aligns with leading practices for identifying real property needs by establishing a comprehensive, nationwide 328-factor analysis of every courthouse, whereas the previous process only assessed courthouses when requested by a local judicial district. However, the AMP process does not fully align with several leading practices due to, for example, its lack of linkage to the judiciary's strategic plan. Two courthouse projects illustrate how the AMP process has changed the way the judiciary evaluates its need for new courthouses. Specifically, two projects listed on a previous 5-year plan (covering fiscal years 2012 through 2016) were re-evaluated under AMP--San Jose, California, and Greenbelt, Maryland. Both had ranked among the top 15 most urgent projects nationwide under the previous capital-planning process, and as such, the judiciary prioritized them for new construction in 2010. However, after the judiciary evaluated …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO found the following:"

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Although the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had implemented and made progress in strengthening information security controls, weaknesses limited their effectiveness in protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of a key financial system. For this system's network, servers, applications, and databases, weaknesses in several controls were found, as the following examples illustrate:"

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "According to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), 12 of its 20 major information technology (IT) investments were within 10 percent of cost and schedule estimates or significantly below cost between October 2011 and October 2012. For the remaining 8 investments, 3 were reported as being significantly over cost and 5 were reported as being significantly behind schedule. Reported reasons for these significant variances include unplanned work activities, procurement delays, and additional costs associated with terminating an investment that was being replaced."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Over time, Congress has modified how Medicare reimburses certain hospitals under the inpatient prospective payment system (IPPS), which pays hospitals a flat fee per stay, set in advance, with different amounts for each type of condition. GAO identified numerous statutory provisions that individually increased Medicare payments to a subset of hospitals."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The performance of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) portfolio of major projects has improved in the areas of cost and schedule growth since GAO’s first assessment in 2009. Average development cost growth and schedule delay for the current portfolio have decreased to about a third of their 2009 levels."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Over the past 5 years, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has taken several actions to restructure its retail network through reducing its workforce and its footprint while expanding retail alternatives. USPS officials estimated that it had saved about $800 million from reducing the number of work hours dedicated to retail operations. USPS also closed 631 of its post offices, but it did not have cost-savings estimates for these closures. Most of the facilities closed (500) were in response to a postmaster vacancy or the suspension of operations due to an expired lease or irreparable damage following a natural disaster. Fewer closures (131) have resulted from nationwide reviews that USPS initiated in 2009 and 2011. USPS has also restructured its retail network by expanding alternatives through self-service options as well as partnerships with other retailers."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) continues to incur unsustainable operating deficits, has not made required payments of $11.1 billion to prefund retiree health benefits, and has reached its $15 billion borrowing limit. Thus far, USPS has been able to operate within these constraints, but now faces a critical shortage of liquidity that threatens its financial solvency and ability to finance needed capital investment. USPS had an almost 25 percent decline in total mail volume and net losses totaling $40 billion since fiscal year 2006. While USPS achieved about $15 billion in savings and reduced its workforce by about 168,000 over this period, its debt and unfunded benefit liabilities grew to $96 billion by the end of fiscal year 2012. USPS expects mail volume and revenue to continue decreasing as online bill communication and e-commerce expand."

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