Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The National Interagency Canada Lynx Survey (Protocol) was designed to determine the presence of Canada lynx through deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) analysis of hair samples recovered from scratch pads in forests in the northern United States. Beginning in January 2002, GAO investigated the submission of unauthorized samples to the University of Montana's laboratory as part of the National Survey and investigated whether the biologists involved had communications about their submissions. GAO found were four instances in which unauthorized hair samples, not obtained from the Wenatchee and Gifford Pinchot National Forests, were submitted for DNA testing as part of the National Survey for those forests. These included one submission on bobcat hair in 1999, and three submissions of lynx hair in September and October 2000. The biologists maintain that they submitted these samples to test the accuracy of the work done by the laboratory, although they knew that the Protocol for the National Survey did not provide for such action. They also said that they did not have the authority to make these submissions and that they were aware that they had alternatives for testing the laboratory other than submitting …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Financial management problems at the Department of Defense (DOD) are complex, long-standing, and deeply rooted throughout its business operations. DOD's financial management deficiencies represent the single largest obstacle to achieving an unqualified opinion on the U.S. government's consolidated financial statements. So far, none of the military services or major DOD components have passed the test of an independent financial audit because of pervasive weaknesses in financial management systems, operations, and controls. These problems go back decades, and earlier attempts at reform have been unsuccessful. DOD continues to rely on a far-flung, complex network of finance, logistics, personnel, acquisition, and other management information systems for financial data to support day-to-day management and decision-making. This network has evolved into an overly complex and error-prone operation with (1) little standardization across DOD components, (2) multiple systems performing the same tasks, (3) the same data stored in multiple systems, (4) manual data entry into multiple systems, and (5) a large number of data translations and interfaces, which combine to exacerbate problems with data integrity. Many of the elements that are crucial to financial management reform and business process transformation--particularly those that rely …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) has been at the forefront of federal agencies in using the OMB Circular A-76 process. In 1995, DOD made it a priority to reduce operating costs and free funds for other needs. DOD has also augmented the A-76 program with what it terms strategic sourcing--a broader array of reinvention and reengineering options that may not necessarily involve A-76 competitions. The number of positions--at one point 229,000--that DOD planned to study and the time frames for the studies have varied. Current plans are to study about 183,000 positions between fiscal years 1997 and 2007. Changes in the inventory of commercial activities and the current administration's sourcing initiatives could change the number of positions studied in the future. However, GAO has not evaluated the extent to which these changes might occur. DOD's A-76 program has faced several challenges that may provide valuable lessons learned for other federal agencies. These lessons include the following: (1) studies took longer than initially projected, (2) costs and resources required for the studies were underestimated, (3) selecting and grouping functions to compete can be difficult, and (4) determining and maintaining …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Many people are homeless for only a short time and get back on their feet with minimal assistance, but others are chronically homeless and need intensive and ongoing assistance. Fifty federal programs exist to help the homeless with housing. Sixteen of these are targeted exclusively to the homeless, and the others are mainstream programs. Targeted programs were funded at $1.7 billion in fiscal year 2001. GAO found that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has been unable to ensure that adequate coordination occurs among the programs without creating undue administrative burdens for the states and communities. Steps have been taken to improve the coordination of homeless assistance programs within communities and to reduce some of the administrative burdens caused by separate programs. Although low-income populations face barriers to obtaining services provided by mainstream programs, these barriers are compounded by homelessness. In addition, the underlying structure and operations of federal mainstream programs do not ensure that the special needs of homeless people are met. Consolidating HUD's McKinney-Vento programs could help reduce the administrative burden. However, to end chronic homelessness in 10 years, federal agencies must strive to …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001 seek to minimize pervasive information security weaknesses that place federal operations at significant risk of disruption, tampering, fraud, and inappropriate disclosure of sensitive information. Increases in computer interconnectivity, especially in the use of the Internet, pose significant risks to computer systems and to the critical operations and infrastructures they support, such as telecommunications, power distribution, public health, national defense, law enforcement, and emergency services. Although federal agencies have taken steps to redesign and strengthen their information security programs, federal systems are not being adequately protected from computer-based threats, even though these systems process, store, and transmit enormous amounts of sensitive data and are indispensable to many federal agency operations."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The National Interagency Canada Lynx Survey (Protocol) was designed to determine the presence of Canada lynx through deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) analysis of hair samples recovered from scratch pads in forests in the northern United States. Beginning in January 2002, GAO investigated the submission of unauthorized samples to the University of Montana's laboratory as part of the National Survey and investigated whether the biologists involved had communications about their submissions. GAO found four instances in which unauthorized hair samples, not obtained from the Wenatchee and Gifford Pinchot National Forests, were submitted for DNA testing as part of the National Survey for those forests. These included one submission on bobcat hair in 1999, and three submissions of lynx hair in September and October 2000. The biologists maintain that they submitted these samples to test the accuracy of the work done by the laboratory, although they knew that the Protocol for the National Survey did not provide for such action. They also said that they did not have the authority to make these submissions and that they were aware that they had alternatives for testing the laboratory other than submitting samples …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Regulatory Flexibility Act of 1980 (RFA) requires agencies to prepare an initial and a final regulatory flexibility analysis. The Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996 (SBREFA) seeks to strengthen RFA protections for small entities, and some of the act's requirements are built on "significant impact." GAO has reviewed the implementation of RFA and SBREFA several times in recent years, with topics ranging from specific provisions in each statute to the overall implementation of RFA. Although both of these reforms have clearly affected how federal agencies regulate, GAO believes that their full promise has not been realized, and key questions about RFA remain unanswered. These questions lie at the heart of RFA and SBREFA, and their answers can have a substantive effect on the amount of regulatory relief provided through those statutes. Because Congress did not answer these questions when the statutes were enacted, agencies have had to develop their own answers, and those answers differ."

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