A statement of record issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Floods have been, and continue to be, the most destructive natural hazard in terms of economic loss to the nation. The National Flood Insurance Program is a key component of the federal government's efforts to minimize the damage and financial impact of floods. The program identifies flood-prone areas of the country, makes flood insurance available in the nearly 20,000 communities that participate in the program, and encourages flood-plain management efforts. Since its inception in 1969, the National Flood Insurance has provided $12 billion in insurance claims to owners of flood-damaged properties, and its building standards are estimated to save $1 billion annually. The program has been managed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but along with other activities of the agency, it was recently placed into the Department of Homeland Security. GAO has issued a number of reports on the flood insurance program and was asked to discuss the current challenges to the widespread success of the program."

Guidance issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This publication is superseded by GAO-10-846G, Organizational Transformation: A Framework for Assessing and Improving Enterprise Architecture Management (Version 2.0), August 2010. Effective use of enterprise architectures is a recognized hallmark of successful public and private organizations. For over a decade, GAO has promoted the use of architectures, recognizing them as a crucial means to a challenging goal: agency operational structures that are optimally defined, in both business and technological environments. The alternative, as GAO's work has shown, is perpetuation of the kinds of operational environments that saddle most agencies today, in which lack of integration among business operations and supporting information technology (IT) resources leads to inefficiencies and duplication. Why are enterprise architectures so important? Metaphorically, an enterprise architecture is to an organization's operations and systems as a set of blue prints is to a building. That is, building blueprints provide those who own, construct, and maintain the building with a clear and understandable picture of the building's uses, features, functions, and supporting systems, including relevant building standards. Further, the building blueprints capture the relationships among building components and govern the construction process. Enterprise architectures provide to people …

Guidance issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In July 2001, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) and the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency (PCIE) issued the GAO/PCIE Financial Audit Manual (FAM). The FAM provides guidance for financial audits conducted by the Inspector General community, GAO, and their contractors. The FAM is a key part in enhancing accountability over taxpayer-provided resources. GAO and the PCIE are committed to keeping the FAM current and intend to prepare updates as needed. With this goal in mind, a GAO/PCIE task force prepared this update to volume II of the FAM, which provides tools to assist the auditor in complying with audit standards ."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "There is widespread agreement that the basic approach to federal pay is broken and that it needs to be more market- and performance-based. Doing so will be essential if the federal government is to maximize its performance and assure accountability for the benefit of the American people. While there will be debate and disagreement about the merits of individual reform proposals, all should be able to agree that a performance management system with adequate safeguards, including reasonable transparency and appropriate accountability mechanisms in place, must serve as the fundamental underpinning of any fair, effective, and appropriate pay reform. At the request of the Subcommittee on Civil Service and Agency Organization, House Committee on Government Reform, GAO discussed the key practices for effective performance management that federal agencies should consider as they develop and implement performance management systems as part of any pay reform."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Since the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) was enacted in 1993, federal agencies increasingly have been expected to link strategic plans and budget structures with program results. The current administration has taken several steps to strengthen and further the performance-resource linkage by making budget and performance integration one of its five management initiatives included in the President's Management Agenda. GAO has reported and testified numerous times on agencies' progress in making clearer connections between resources and results and how this information can inform budget deliberations. The administration's use of the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) for the fiscal year 2004 President's budget and further efforts in fiscal year 2005 to make these connections more explicit, have prompted our examination of what can and cannot be expected from performance budgeting."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In tax year 2000, over half of individual filers paid someone to prepare their tax return. These taxpayers paid an estimated $14.7 billion for individual return preparation. Despite the importance of paid preparers' role in the tax system, little data exist on the quality of the services they provide. In light of this, GAO surveyed and interviewed taxpayers and gathered examples of the range of outcomes experienced by taxpayers who used paid tax preparers."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony responds to the request of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States for information on GAO's work in transportation security. It addresses (1) transportation security before September 2001; (2) what the federal government has done since September 11th to strengthen transportation security, particularly aviation, mass transit, and port security; and (3) what long-term institutional challenges face the federal agencies responsible for transportation security. The testimony is based on a body of work that GAO has performed over the years."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "According to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), charities are increasingly turning to vehicle donation programs as a fund- raising activity, resulting in increased solicitations for donated vehicles. Therefore, to make informed decisions about donating their vehicles, taxpayers should be aware of how vehicle donation programs operate, the role of fund- raisers and charities in the vehicle donation process, and IRS rules and regulations regarding allowable tax deductions. Due to the increased use of vehicle donation programs, GAO was asked to describe (1) the vehicle donation process, (2) the amount of proceeds received by charities and fund-raisers, (3) donor tax deductions, and (4) taxpayer cautions and guidance."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Coast Guard is one of 22 agencies being placed in the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS). With its key roles in the nation's ports, waterways, and coastlines, the Coast Guard is an important part of enhanced homeland security efforts. But it also has important nonsecurity missions, such as search and rescue, fisheries and environmental protection, and drug and migrant interdiction. GAO has conducted a number of reviews of the Coast Guard's missions and was asked to testify about the Coast Guard's most recent level of effort for its various missions and the major operational and organizational challenges facing the agency during its transition into the newly created DHS."

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Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas House of Representatives and Senate relating to recognizing March 25, 2003, as JPCA Day at the State Capitol.

Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas House of Representatives and Senate relating to honoring Clayton W. "Claytie" Williams, Jr., as the recipient of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society Hope Award for Midland and the Permian Basin.

Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas House of Representatives and Senate relating to designating March 26, 2003, as ACT Now! Day at the Capitol.

Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas House of Representatives and Senate relating to honoring Martelia Garnet Reaves of El Paso on the occasion of her 100th birthday.

Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas House of Representatives and Senate relating to congratulating James Allan Smith on his retirement as superintendent of the Robinson Independent School District.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to the use of appropriations in the Smart Jobs Fund as business location incentives; making an appropriation.

Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas Senate and House of Representatives relating to recognizing the artists and arts patrons who are being honored at the Texas Medal of Arts Awards on March 25, 2003.

This report contains information on the general structure of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate committee structure, types of committees, and subcommittees.

This newsletter provides a brief overview of the Field Verification Project for Small Wind Turbines conducted at the NWTC and a description of current activities. The newsletter also contains case studies of current projects.

Subcontract report summarizing results of a trial of a corn fiber pretreatment process. The results of the trial showed that the carbohydrates in the pretreated liquid and solid streams are readily hydrolyzed by enzymes and easily fermentable to ethanol by yeast.

We have studied the influence of substrate temperature and hydrogen dilution ratio on the properties of silicon thin films deposited on single-crystal silicon and glass substrates. We varied the initial substrate temperature from 200 to 400C and the dilution ratio from 10 to 100. We also studied the effectiveness of the use of a seed layer to increase the crystallinity of the films. The films were analyzed by atomic force microscopy, X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, and transmission and scanning electron microscopy. We found that as the dilution ratio is increased, the films go from amorphous, to a mixture of amorphous and crystalline, to nanocrystalline. The effect of substrate temperature is to increase the amount of crystallinity in the film for a given dilution ratio. We found that the use of a seed layer has limited effects and is important only for low values of dilution ratio and substrate temperature, when the films have large amounts of the amorphous phase.

We present data showing the potential adverse effects on photovoltaic device performance of all traps in InGaAsN. Deep-level transient spectroscopy measurements were performed on InGaAsN samples grown by both metal-organic chemical vapor deposition and RF plasma-assisted molecular-beam epitaxy. For each growth technique, we studied samples with varying nitrogen composition ranging from 0% to 2.2%. A deep hole trap with activation energy ranging between 0.5 and 0.8 eV is observed in all samples. These data clearly obey the Meyer-Neldel rule, which states that all traps have the same emission rate at the isokinetic temperature. A fit of our trap data gives an isokinetic temperature of 350 K, which means that both deep and shallow traps emit slowly at the operating temperature of solar cells-thus, the traps can be recombination centers.

This is one of a series of sourcebooks on motor-driven equipment produced by the Industrial Technologies Program. It provides a reference for industrial fan systems users, outlining opportunities to improve fan system performance.