Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Balancing our nation's security and commercial needs is a longstanding issue that is especially important in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that changed the nation's security environment. Addressing this challenge now falls principally to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its Border and Transportation Security directorate. Within this directorate, responsibility has been assigned primarily to the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (BCBP). BCBP consists of the inspections component of the former U.S. Customs Service; the Border Patrol and Inspections component of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, and a former component of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. Achieving the balance between security and commercial needs is greatly affected by BCBP's commercial and border and immigration control workload. Regarding commercial workload, in fiscal year 2002, the former U.S. Customs Services processed 24.9 million trade import entries valued at over $1.1 trillion and collected $23.8 billion in duties and fees; it also processed about 6 million cargo containers arriving at U.S. sea ports. While the cargo workload has stabilized somewhat as a result of the recent global …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Congress passed Public Law 106-429 because it was concerned about the sufficiency of external audits of the financial operations of the World Bank Group, a set of multilateral development banks. This law provides that GAO report on the sufficiency of such audits of each Bank Group entity. GAO addressed (1) the extent that the external auditor was providing assurance on internal control over financial reporting, operations, and compliance with key provisions of bank charters and policies in conjunction with financial statement audits and (2) the role the Bank Group's audit committee plays in providing oversight of external financial statement audits and internal control."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) needs up-to-date information on voluntary compliance in order to assess and improve its programs. IRS's last detailed study of voluntary compliance was done in the late 1980s, so the compliance information IRS is using today is not current. IRS is now carrying out the National Research Program (NRP), through which IRS auditors are reviewing about 47,000 randomly selected tax year 2001 individual tax returns. In June 2002, GAO reported that NRP was necessary, that its design was sound, and that it appeared to meet IRS's goals of acquiring useful compliance data while minimizing burden on taxpayers with returns in the sample. GAO was asked to review IRS's implementation of NRP. GAO reviewed IRS's method of gathering internal and third-party data (casebuilding) and IRS's process of reviewing casebuilding materials to determine if audits are necessary (classification) and assessed IRS's plans to ensure consistent data collection while minimizing burden on taxpayers."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "While the Treasury generally pays lower interest rates on U.S. Savings Bonds than it does on other forms of borrowing from the public, it also incurs substantially higher administrative costs to issue and redeem the paper savings bond certificates. To determine whether these higher administrative costs exceed its interest rate savings, Treasury's Bureau of the Public Debt uses a spreadsheet model to compare the costs of issuing Series EE and Series I savings bonds with those of issuing marketable Treasury securities. GAO was asked to review this model to judge its reliability in measuring the relative costs of Treasury's borrowing alternatives."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Building on reform initiatives instituted after the Mexican financial crisis, the IMF implemented new initiatives in the mid-1990s to better anticipate, prevent, and resolve sovereign financial crises. GAO was asked to assess (1) the IMF's framework for anticipating financial crises, (2) the status of key IMF reform initiatives to prevent financial crises, and (3) new IMF proposals to resolve future financial crises."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The United States has been providing assistance to Colombia since the early 1970s to help reduce illegal drug activities. In fiscal years 2000-03 alone, the United States provided over $2.5 billion. Despite this assistance, Colombia remains the world's leading producer and distributor of cocaine and a major source of the heroin used in the United States. The report discusses the status of U.S. counternarcotics assistance to the Colombian Army and for a U.S.-supported Colombian police aerial eradication program. It also addresses challenges Colombia and the United States face in sustaining these programs."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "On April 8, 2003, GAO testified before the House Committee on Government Reform, Subcommittee on Government Efficiency and Financial Management at a hearing on our report on the U.S. government's consolidated financial statements for fiscal year 2002. This letter responds to questions related to our testimony from the Subcommittee's Chairman and the Ranking Minority Member and to subsequent questions from the Vice Chairman that the Chairman asked us to answer for the record."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000 required that GAO review the Department of Defense's (DOD) use of the authority to install telephone lines and any necessary telecommunications equipment in the homes of persons who provide voluntary services for the military. These volunteers, in addition to their other social service activities, provide a link between military units and the families of servicemembers deployed away from home. The legislation required us to submit the results of our review within 2 years after the department issued implementing regulations. The department issued its regulation in March 2002. This report discusses (1) the extent of the military services' use of the authority and (2) the internal controls that have been established to ensure equipment is used only for authorized purposes."