Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Health care providers' difficulties in recruiting and retaining nurses may worsen as the demand for nurses rises with the aging of the population. Demographic changes are widening the gap between the numbers of people needing care and available caregivers. Moreover, the current high levels of job dissatisfaction among nurses because of management decisions to restructure health care delivery and staffing may play a crucial role in the extent of future nurse shortages. Efforts to improve the workplace environment may reduce the likelihood that nurses will leave or consider leaving the profession. More data on the exact scope and nature of the problem are needed to help plan and target corrective measures. Providers, states, and the federal government have the opportunity to collect and analyze critical information on changes in the supply of and demand for nurses."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Visitor centers at the national parks are among the most important facilities run by the National Park Service. As existing visitor centers age and new parks are created, renovated or new facilities are needed. This report discusses (1) the number, the status, and the reasons for Park Service visitor center projects; (2) whether the projects involve new construction or the renovation of existing buildings; (3) whether these projects were designated priorities by the Park Service or by Congress; (4) the costs and functions of the projects; and (5) the funding sources for the projects. GAO found that from 1996 through 2005, the Park Service has completed or planned 80 projects to renovate or build new visitor centers. The renovations and new construction are intended to replace aging facilities and exhibits, to provide more space, and to handle rising numbers of visitors. Of the 80 projects, 53 were a priority of the Park Service and 27 were a priority of Congress. The Park Service estimates that the total cost of the 80 projects will be $542 million. The visitor center projects are funded primarily by the Park Service's appropriated …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The number of federal and state inmates released to communities increased more than threefold from 1980 to 1998. Since 1980, recidivism rates have been about 40 percent. Within the group of recidivists, the number of offenders reincarcerated for violating parole or other release conditions rose more than sevenfold from 1980 to 1998. Furthermore, such reincarcerations represent an increasing proportion of all prison admissions. The Bureau of Justice Statistics' (BJS) 1997 survey found that most federal offenders (62 percent) were imprisoned for drug offense convictions, and almost half (47 percent) of all state offenders were incarcerated for violent offense convictions. Also, the majority of inmates in both correctional systems--federal inmates (73 percent) and state inmates (83 percent)--had some history of illegal drug use. BJS' survey also showed that 27 percent of both federal and state exit cohort inmates participated in vocational training programs, and 11 percent of federal and 2 percent of state exit cohort inmates worked in prison industry jobs. In addition, 33 percent of the federal inmates and 36 percent of the state inmates participated in residential in-patient treatment programs for alcohol and drug abuse. …

Guidance issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This publication has been superseded by GAO-02-171G, Property Management Systems Requirements: Checklist for Reviewing Systems Under the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act, December 2001. This checklist reflects the Joint Financial Management Improvement Program's Property Management Systems Requirements to assist (1) agencies in implementing and monitoring their property management systems and (2) managers and auditors in reviewing agency property management systems to determine if they substantially comply with the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act. This checklist is provided as a tool for use by experienced staff and is one in a series of documents issued by GAO to assist agencies in improving or maintaining effective operations."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This report reviews changes in fastener industry practice "resulting from or apparently resulting from" the small-lot exemption of the Fastener Quality Act. GAO found no evidence that the fastener industry changed any practices resulting from, or apparently resulting from, the small-lot exemption. The Customs Service's limited tests of imported fasteners in 2001 found no evidence of substandard fasteners and no evidence of any decline in the quality of fasteners from the results of tests Customs conducted in 1998."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Medicare is highly vulnerable to fraud, waste, and abuse. The enforcement of program payment rules, however, has raised concerns that these safeguards may have imposed too great a burden on health care providers. The proposed Medicare Education and Regulatory Fairness Act would seek to address some of these concerns by providing expedited procedures for provider appeals, new options for providers to use in repaying Medicare overpayments, protections for providers who voluntarily return overpayments or ask for a review of their claims, and new requirements for provider education. This report reviews how this proposed legislation would affect Medicare policies and procedures in (1) provider education and participation, (2) medical reviews, audits, and appeals, (3) recovery of overpayments, and (4) related legal issues."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Many of today's workers may not be financially prepared for retirement when they stop working. Many people are counting on Social Security alone, without an additional retirement plan. The Savings Are Vital to Everyone's Retirement (SAVER) Act of 1997 requires the Department of Labor (DOL) to hold periodic national summits and run an outreach program to promote retirement saving. This report (1) identifies major accomplishments of the 1998 summit and issues that might affect future summits, (2) describes DOL's outreach program, and (3) determines what DOL knows about the effectiveness of the summit and outreach program. GAO found that the 1998 National Summit made progress in identifying problems that workers face in saving for retirement. DOL's Outreach Program--the Retirement Savings Education Campaign--targets of small business owners, women, minorities, and youth to change the way they think about, and act on, their retirement saving needs. DOL has not tried to assess the extent to which outreach efforts from the 1998 National Summit and Pension and Welfare Benefits Administration have increased the public's knowledge and understanding of retirement savings."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This report reviews the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) resolution of accounting issues submitted by companies that have or are contemplating publicly traded securities. Companies are required by law to register their securities with SEC by filing a registration statement. This statement must contain financial and other information on the securities and the issuer. SEC's Office of the Chief Accountant (OCA) is responsible for providing guidance to companies to ensure that they comply with the reporting requirements of the law. Generally, registrants submit issues to OCA for which there is no authoritative guidance. These issues tend to involve unusual, complex, or innovative transactions. Some of the accounting issues frequently reviewed include business mergers and issues surrounding revenue recognition and financial instruments. Representatives of registrants and the accounting profession have had both positive and negative experiences with SEC's handling of accounting issues. Several representatives expressed concerns over the transparency of SEC's decision making process and SEC's use of accounting sources outside of generally accepted accounting procedures."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This report evaluates how the Small Business Administration (SBA) has managed its Women's Business Center Program. GAO found that the two offices that run the program--the Office of WOmen's Business Ownership (program office) and the Office of Procurement and Grants (grants office)--have addressed the weaknesses cited in GAO's 1999 report. For example, files from the program office that GAO reviewed were generally complete, and the few documents that GAO could not locate were provided promptly. The program office was also able to provide various historical documents for 1999 and 2000, and the program office and grants office had tried to improve coordination with each other, such as through better recordkeeping."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This report reviews the Small Business Administration's (SBA) fiscal year 2000 performance report and fiscal year 2002 performance plan required by the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 to assess SBA's progress in achieving selected key outcomes that are important to its mission. SBA's reported progress in achieving its outcomes is mixed. However, GAO had difficulty assessing SBA's progress due to weaknesses in its performance measures and data. GAO was unable to assess SBA's lack of an explanation about how the strategies relate to the outcomes or a discussion regarding strategies for the outcome. GAO identified some improvements from SBA's prior year report and plan, but several weaknesses persist in SBA's fiscal year 2000 performance report and performance plan. The performance report includes a section that summarizes SBA's programs, a matrix that identifies ongoing and closed audit reviews, and several recommendations associated with each. However, SBA omitted time frames or schedules for achieving unmet goals, lacked strategies for meeting unmet goals, and failed to adequately link strategies to indicators and measures."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "To ensure that people claiming disability insurance benefits can obtain legal representation at a fair price, the Social Security Act requires that the Social Security Administration (SSA) regulate the fees that attorneys charge people to represent their disability claims before the agency. Inefficiencies in the current process increase both the time it takes to pay the attorney fees and the costs of administration. One segment of attorney fee processing--the fee approval process--was substantially simplified in 1991. Systems support could streamline the second segment of the processing--the fee payment--thus lowering the annual administrative costs and cutting processing time. By automating this final segment of the fee processing, SSA could help improve customer service for both claimants and their attorneys. GAO found that despite internal recommendations for a new system, SSA has repeatedly postponed its plans to improve the attorney fee payment process. Indeed, even though these improvements have been part of SSA's system's plans since 1998, SSA has yet to establish a firm schedule for carrying out its plans. Additionally, although SSA has a draft plan for improving the process, agency officials told GAO that the details …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO reviewed the Social Security Administration's (SSA) fiscal year 2000 performance report and fiscal year 2002 performance plan to assess SSA's progress in achieving five key outcomes important to the agency's mission. The five key outcomes are (1) providing timely, accurate, and useful information and services to the public; (2) making disability determinations more timely and accurate; (3) reducing long-term disability benefits as people return to the workplace; (4) providing timely information to decisionmakers on program policy issues, such as long-term solvency of trust fund; and (5) reducing waste, fraud, abuse, and error in the Supplemental Security Income program. Although it lowered and met its goal for the volume of 800-number calls processed, SSA did not report on its progress toward improving the accuracy of 800-number service because data were not yet available. SSA's strategy for meeting its fiscal year 2002 goals included training customer staff to be more accurate. However, in its fiscal year 2002 plan, SSA merged two accuracy indicators without sufficient justification, which may affect SSA's ability to monitor and manage performance. Even though SSA lowered the targets for about half of its …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This report discusses the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) contract with Boeing Reusable Space Systems to build the now-canceled follow-on propulsion module for the International Space Station. GAO found that the initial propulsion module project did not meet performance, cost, and schedule goals largely because NASA proceeded with Boeing's proposal without following fundamental processes involving project planning and execution. Once it was determined that Boeing's proposal was inadequate, NASA began to assess alternatives to the Boeing-proposed propulsion module. The assessment team defined mission success criteria, identified key design assumptions, and performed comparative analysis on competing designs. On the basis of its analyses, the team recommended a follow-on design. NASA acknowledged that its initial approach to developing a propulsion module was inadequate and contributed to the project's unsuccessful conclusion. NASA officials sought to learn lessons from the project in order to avoid similar problems in managing future programs."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) X-33 and X-34 reusable launch vehicle programs. The two programs experienced difficulties achieving their goals primarily because NASA did not develop realistic cost estimates, timely acquisition and risk management plans, and adequate and realistic performance goals. In particular, neither program fully (1) assessed the costs associated with developing new, unproven technologies, (2) provided for the financial reserves needed to deal with technical risks and accommodate normal development delays, (3) developed plans to quantify and mitigate the risks to NASA, or (4) established performance targets showing a clear path leading to an operational reusable launch vehicle. As a result, both programs were terminated. Currently, NASA is in the process of taking steps in the Second Generation Reusable Launch Vehicle Program to help avoid problems like those encountered in the X-33 and X-34 programs."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. tax system is based on voluntary reporting. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) reviews all tax returns after they are filed to ensure compliance with tax laws governing this voluntary system. Despite these efforts, each year billions of dollars in taxes owed are not voluntarily reported and paid, which could result in reduced revenue to fund federal programs, higher tax rates, or both. There are three types of voluntary compliance measures: filing compliance, which measures the percent of taxpayers who file returns in a timely manner; payment compliance, which measures the percent of tax payments that are paid in a timely manner; and reporting compliance, which measures the percent of actual tax liability that is reported accurately on returns. This report reviews the status of IRS' plans to measure voluntary reporting compliance as well as six other federal programs that currently measure voluntary compliance. GAO found that IRS has tried to develop an approach for measuring voluntary compliance. It has established objectives and guiding principles for developing this measure as well as developed database software to collect and analyze data. As of March 2001, IRS' …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses the implementation and management of the General Services Administration's (GSA) Metropolitan Area Acquisition (MAA) program, which encourages competition for telecommunication services in large cities. GAO found that as of June 2001, GSA had awarded 37 MAA contracts for 20 metropolitan areas. Existing GSA contracts were to become MAA contracts within nine months after contractors were authorized to begin work. This goal was met in only two of the 14 metropolitan areas in which authorization was given. GSA charges customer agencies two types of fees to recover the costs of their contract management and administration activities. Although GSA does not yet allow MAA contractors to offer FTS2001 services, it is taking steps to allow crossover between the two programs."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The attorneys general of 46 states signed a settlement agreement in 1998 with the nation's largest tobacco companies. The agreement requires the tobacco companies to make annual payments to the states in perpetuity as reimbursement for past tobacco-related costs. Florida, Minnesota, Mississippi, and Texas reached earlier individual settlements with the tobacco companies. States are free to use the money for any purpose. This report examines (1) the amount of payments received by the states and the states' decision-making processes on the allocation of payments in fiscal years 2000 and 2001 and (2) the types of programs that states funded with their payments in those two fiscal years. As of April 2001, GAO found that 45 of the 46 states received nearly $13.5 billion of the $206 billion estimated to be paid by the tobacco companies during the first 25 years of the agreement. Many states established dedicated funds to receive at least part of the payments. Other states passed legislation to ensure that payments are used to supplement existing state funds, enacted laws governing the future use of the payments, established voter approved initiatives to decide …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The United Nations' (U.N.) headquarters in New York clearly needs to be renovated, and the Secretary-General will ask member states to make key decisions in 2002 about the future of the renovation. As host country to U.N. headquarters, the United States needs to play a major role in making these decisions if the renovation is to proceed. However, the administration and the Department of State have not yet developed a comprehensive U.S. position on the renovation. Assuming the United States decides to support the renovation, it needs considerable lead time to examine the issues, including what scope of renovation meets U.N. and U.S. needs in the 21st century, what share of the renovation costs would the United States be willing to provide, and what process is needed to ensure that the construction is cost-effective and timely. One option for examining these issues would be to establish a team comprised of experts on construction management and U.N. issues, using appropriate administration resources from State, the National Academy of Sciences, and the General Services Administration."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has issued a rule requiring vehicle manufacturers to install advanced air bag systems in an increasing number of cars beginning in 2003. This report reviews the development of technologies that vehicle manufacturers plan to use to comply with the advanced air bag rule. GAO found that some advanced air bag technologies are now being installed in vehicles and others are still being developed. The principal advanced technology being installed in some vehicles is an air bag that can inflate with lower or higher levels of power--rather than a single level--depending on the severity of the crash. Although frontal air bag systems with these advanced technologies are an improvement over previous systems, they do not contain all of the features that manufacturers believe are needed to meet the requirements of the advanced air bag rule, such as sensors that can distinguish among different types of occupants. To meet the requirements, manufacturers plan to introduce new technologies as well as continue to make further improvements in current technologies. The key new technologies that manufacturers plan to introduce are occupant classification sensors …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This report reviews the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) fiscal year 2000 performance report and fiscal year 2002 performance plan required by the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 to assess VA's process in achieving selected key outcomes that are important to its mission. VA reported making mixed progress towards achieving its key outcomes. For example, VA reported that it made good progress in providing high-quality care to patients, but it did not achieve its goal of processing veterans' benefits claims in a timely manner. GAO found out that VA made several improvements to its fiscal year 2000 performance report and 2002 performance plan. These improvements resulted in clearer discussions of VA's management challenges and additional performance measures for assessing program achievement. Furthermore, VA addressed all six of the major management challenges previously identified by GAO, and generally described goals or actions that VA is taking or plans to take in response to them. VA has established strategies for achieving strategic goals and objectives for two of these challenges: human capital management and information security. VA has established a performance goal and identified milestones for …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Veterans' Employment and Training Service (VETS) runs programs and activities designed to help veterans obtain employment and training assistance. Recently, policymakers have advocated changes to the structure and administration of the VETS program and the way it assesses program performance. This testimony discusses VETS' efforts to improve its performance measurement system. VETS has proposed changes to its performance measurement system that will move it closer to implementing an effective accountability system. However, more changes are needed so that VETS can effectively determine whether its programs and services are fulfilling its mission. VETS continues to send a mixed message to states about what services to provide and to whom. In addition, two of the proposed measures may provide nearly identical results, and neither helps VETS to monitor whether more intensive services are being provided to veterans or whether these services are successful. Furthermore, through its planning documents and proposed performance measures, VETS continues to inconsistently identify the groups of veterans that it wants states to help. This testimony summarizes a May report (GAO-01-580)."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Three years ago, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) characterized hepatitis C as a serious national health problem that needs early detection to reduce transmission risks, ensure timely treatment, and prevent progression of liver disease. In a 1988 letter, VA outlined the process clinicians should use when (1) screening veterans for known risk factors for exposure to hepatitis C and (2) ordering tests to detect antibodies and diagnose hepatitis C infection as part of a plan to evaluate and assess risk factors for VA patients. This testimony discusses VA's progress in screening and testing veterans for hepatitis C during fiscal years 1999 and 2000. GAO found that VA missed opportunities to screen as many as three million veterans when they visited medical facilities during fiscal years 1999 and 2000, potentially leaving as many as 200,000 veterans unaware that they have hepatitis C infections. Of those screened, an unknown number likely remain undiagnosed because of flawed procedures. Although the pace of screening and testing appears to be improving, many currently undiagnosed veterans may not be identified expeditiously unless VA (1) establishes early detection of hepatitis C as a standard …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers the contaminants in storm water runoff as a significant threat to water quality across the nation. Prompted by Congress, EPA has responded with various initiatives, including the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Storm Water Program, which requires more than 1,000 local governments to undertake storm water management programs. Those municipalities in Phase I of the program have been trying to reduce pollutants in storm water runoff for several years, and it is time to begin evaluating their efforts. EPA however, has not established measurable goals for this program, nor has it attempted to evaluate the program's effectiveness in reducing storm water pollution or to determine its cost. EPA attributes its inaction to inconsistent data reporting from municipalities, insufficient staff resources, and other competing priorities within the Office of Wastewater Management. Although municipalities report monitoring and cost data to EPA or state regulatory agencies annually, these agencies have not reviewed this information to determine whether it can be useful in determining the program's overall effectiveness or cost. GAO found that the reported cost information will be difficult to analyze unless EPA …