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Nuclear Regulation: NRC's Oversight of Nuclear Power Reactors' Decommissioning Funds Could Be Further Strengthened (open access)

Nuclear Regulation: NRC's Oversight of Nuclear Power Reactors' Decommissioning Funds Could Be Further Strengthened

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) periodically reviews licensees’ decommissioning funds and related licensee data to determine if licensees have provided reasonable assurance that they will accumulate adequate funds for decommissioning. For example, licensees must submit estimates to NRC of decommissioning costs throughout the life of the reactor and submit fund status reports at least every 2 years while the reactor is operating. Licensees typically accumulate such funds over time through trust fund investments. The minimum amount of funds considered adequate is established by NRC’s decommissioning funding formula, which is based on information collected more than 30 years ago."
Date: April 5, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Modernizing the Nuclear Security Enterprise: Strategies and Challenges in Sustaining Critical Skills in Federal and Contractor Workforces (open access)

Modernizing the Nuclear Security Enterprise: Strategies and Challenges in Sustaining Critical Skills in Federal and Contractor Workforces

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and its M&O contractors have developed and implemented multifaceted strategies to recruit, develop, and retain both the federal and contractor workforces needed to preserve critical skills in the enterprise. NNSA’s recruiting and retention efforts for its federal staff focus on attracting early career hires with competitive pay and development opportunities. Its development efforts generally rely on two key programs to develop its critically skilled workforce––one that identifies needs and another that identifies the qualifications necessary to meet them. For strategic planning purposes, NNSA is also undertaking a comprehensive reassessment and analysis of staffing requirements to ascertain future federal workforce requirements. M&O contractors’ recruitment and retention strategies vary from site to site, but each site focuses on maintaining competitive compensation packages. Their development efforts vary in approach and scope and face some challenges––particularly in preserving underground nuclear testing skills."
Date: April 26, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Medicaid: Federal Oversight of Payments and Program Integrity Needs Improvement (open access)

Medicaid: Federal Oversight of Payments and Program Integrity Needs Improvement

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Oversight of managed care rate-setting has been inconsistent. In August 2010, GAO reported that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) had not ensured that all states were complying with the managed care actuarial soundness requirements that rates be developed in accordance with actuarial principles, appropriate for the population and services, and certified by actuaries. For example, GAO found significant gaps in CMS’s oversight of 2 of the 26 states reviewed—CMS had not reviewed one state’s rates in multiple years and had not completed a full review of another state’s rates since the actuarial soundness requirements became effective. Variation in practices across CMS regional offices contributed to these gaps and other inconsistencies in the agency’s oversight of states’ rate setting. GAO’s previous work also found that CMS’s efforts to ensure the quality of the data used to set rates were generally limited to requiring assurances from states and health plans—efforts that did not provide the agency with enough information to ensure the quality of the data used. With limited information on data quality, CMS cannot ensure that states’ managed care rates are appropriate, which places billions of …
Date: April 25, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Limited Data Available on USDA and Interior Attorney Fee Claims and Payments (open access)

Limited Data Available on USDA and Interior Attorney Fee Claims and Payments

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Most USDA and Interior agencies did not have readily available information on attorney fee claims and payments made under EAJA and other fee-shifting statutes for fiscal years 2000 through 2010. As a result, there was no way to readily determine who made claims, the total amount each department paid or awarded in attorney fees, who received the payments, or the statutes under which the cases were brought for the claims over the 11-year period. Both USDA and Interior officials stated that given the decentralized nature of their departments and the absence of an external requirement to track or report on attorney fee information, decisions such as whether to track attorney fee data and the manner in which to do so are best handled at the agency level. Specifically, officials from 65 of the 75 USDA and Interior agencies we contacted told us that they did not track or could not readily provide us with this information. The remaining 10 USDA and Interior agencies either had mechanisms to track information on attorney fees or were able to compile this information manually using hard copy files or directed us to …
Date: April 12, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Workplace Safety and Health: Multiple Challenges Lengthen OSHA's Standard Setting (open access)

Workplace Safety and Health: Multiple Challenges Lengthen OSHA's Standard Setting

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In summary, we found that, between 1981 and 2010, the time it took OSHA to develop and issue safety and health standards ranged from 15 months to 19 years and averaged more than 7 years. Experts and agency officials cited several factors that contribute to the lengthy time frames for developing and issuing standards, including increased procedural requirements, shifting priorities, and a rigorous standard of judicial review. We also found that, in addition to using the typical standard-setting process, OSHA can address urgent hazards by issuing emergency temporary standards, although the agency has not used this authority since 1983 because of the difficulty it has faced in compiling the evidence necessary to meet the statutory requirements. Instead, OSHA focuses on enforcement activities—such as enforcing the general requirement of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSH Act) that employers provide a workplace free from recognized hazards—and educating employers and workers about urgent hazards. Experiences of other federal agencies that regulate public or worker health hazards offered limited insight into the challenges OSHA faces in setting standards. For example, EPA officials pointed to certain requirements of the Clean …
Date: April 19, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Agency Operations: Agencies Must Continue to Comply with Fiscal Laws Despite the Possibility of Sequestration (open access)

Agency Operations: Agencies Must Continue to Comply with Fiscal Laws Despite the Possibility of Sequestration

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Budget Control Act of 2011, amending the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, establishes limits on discretionary spending for fiscal years 2012 through 2021. In addition, the Act specifies additional limits on discretionary spending and automatic reductions in direct spending because legislation was not enacted that would reduce projected deficits by at least $1.2 trillion by the end of fiscal year 2021. Among other things, the Budget Control Act requires the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to calculate, and the President to order, a sequestration of discretionary and direct spending on January 2, 2013, to achieve reductions for that fiscal year."
Date: April 25, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
State and Local Governments' Fiscal Outlook: April 2012 Update (open access)

State and Local Governments' Fiscal Outlook: April 2012 Update

Other written product issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The state and local government sector continues to face near-term and long-term fiscal challenges that grow over time. The fiscal challenges confronting the state and local sector add to the nation’s overall fiscal challenges. The fiscal situation of the state and local government sector has improved in the past year as the sector’s tax receipts have slowly increased in conjunction with the economic recovery. Nonetheless, total tax receipts have only recently returned to the prerecession levels of 2007 and the sector still faces a gap between revenue and spending. The sector faces long-term fiscal challenges that grow over time. The fiscal position of the sector will steadily decline through 2060 absent any policy changes."
Date: April 5, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Checked Baggage Screening: TSA Has Deployed Optimal Systems at the Majority of TSA-Regulated Airports, but Could Strengthen Cost Estimates (open access)

Checked Baggage Screening: TSA Has Deployed Optimal Systems at the Majority of TSA-Regulated Airports, but Could Strengthen Cost Estimates

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) Electronic Baggage Screening Program (EBSP) reports that 76 percent of the airports (337 of 446) the agency regulates for security have a mix of in-line and stand-alone baggage screening configurations that best meet airport needs (i.e., optimal systems). However, only 36 percent (10 of 28) of the nation’s larger airports—based on factors such as the total number of takeoffs and landings annually—have complete optimal systems. This is because the larger airports generally need more complex in-line systems and often require a significant amount of airport infrastructure modification and construction. In August 2011, TSA shifted its focus from installing optimal baggage screening systems to replacing aging machines (recapitalization). However, TSA plans to continue to optimize systems during many of its recapitalization projects."
Date: April 27, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Department of Energy: Budget Trends and Oversight (open access)

Department of Energy: Budget Trends and Oversight

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Recent GAO work found that funding increases have expanded or created Department of Energy (DOE) programs with varying results. For example:"
Date: April 18, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Management Report: Improvements Needed in SEC's Internal Controls and Accounting Procedures (open access)

Management Report: Improvements Needed in SEC's Internal Controls and Accounting Procedures

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In our audit of SEC’s fiscal years 2011 and 2010 financial statements, we identified four significant deficiencies in internal control as of September 30, 2011. These significant internal control deficiencies represent continuing deficiencies concerning controls over (1) information systems, (2) financial reporting and accounting processes, (3) budgetary resources, and (4) registrant deposits and filing fees. These significant control deficiencies may adversely affect the accuracy and completeness of information used and reported by SEC’s management. We are making a total of 10 new recommendations to address these continuing significant internal control deficiencies."
Date: April 13, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Internal Revenue Service: Opportunities to Improve the Taxpayer Experience and Voluntary Compliance (open access)

Internal Revenue Service: Opportunities to Improve the Taxpayer Experience and Voluntary Compliance

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has made improvements in processing tax returns, and electronic filing (e-filing), which provides benefits to taxpayers including faster refunds, continues to increase. However, IRS’s performance in providing service over the phone and responding to paper correspondence has declined in recent years. For 2012, as with previous years, IRS officials attribute the lower performance to other funding priorities."
Date: April 26, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Renewable Energy Project Financing: Improved Guidance and Information Sharing Needed for DOD Project-Level Officials (open access)

Renewable Energy Project Financing: Improved Guidance and Information Sharing Needed for DOD Project-Level Officials

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "To finance renewable energy projects, the military services use up-front appropriations, such as operation and maintenance funds, and alternative-financing approaches that generally rely on private capital, such as arranging financing and implementing a project with a private developer or utility. The military services have funded about 85 percent of nearly 600 projects that were in design, under construction, or operating in fiscal year 2011 with up-front appropriations, but financed 8 of the 9 large-scale projects and 19 of the 57 medium-scale projects with alternative financing. Several factors affect the military services’ use of financing approaches, including perceived benefits and drawbacks such as how long it takes to obtain funding."
Date: April 4, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
FBI Counterterrorism: Vacancies Have Declined, but FBI Has Not Assessed the Long-Term Sustainability of Its Strategy for Addressing Vacancies (open access)

FBI Counterterrorism: Vacancies Have Declined, but FBI Has Not Assessed the Long-Term Sustainability of Its Strategy for Addressing Vacancies

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "From fiscal years 2005 through 2011, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) human capital strategies contributed to reductions in the vacancy rate for all positions in the Counterterrorism Division (CTD) from 26 percent to 6 percent. Most vacancies were caused by transfers to other parts of the FBI. While overall vacancies declined, trends in vacancies varied by position. For example, vacancies for special agents and professional staff generally decreased each year while vacancies for intelligence analysts varied during the same time period."
Date: April 16, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Energy Conservation and Climate Change: Factors to Consider in the Design of the Nonbusiness Energy Property Credit (open access)

Energy Conservation and Climate Change: Factors to Consider in the Design of the Nonbusiness Energy Property Credit

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Under criteria for evaluating a tax credit design, both the performance-based and cost-based credits have advantages and disadvantages with neither design being unambiguously the better option based on current information. Both a cost-based and a performance-based credit are designed to reduce energy use and CO2 emissions by providing incentives for energy conservation investment. However, they differ in their relative effectiveness and costs. In general, a performance-based credit is more likely to effectively reduce energy use and CO2 emissions because it rewards energy savings from the investment rather than the cost-based credit’s rewarding of spending regardless of whether this spending results in energy savings. However, the performance-based credit may have significant up-front costs for energy audits, not required by the cost-based credit, which could reduce its effectiveness by discouraging investment. In addition, for taxpayers who do invest, these up-front costs may mean that a performance-based credit may have significantly higher taxpayer compliance and IRS administrative costs than a cost-based credit. A credit’s fairness depends on subjective judgments of how a credit varies with a taxpayer’s income level."
Date: April 2, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Nuclear Safety: DOE Needs to Determine the Costs and Benefits of Its Safety Reform Effort (open access)

Nuclear Safety: DOE Needs to Determine the Costs and Benefits of Its Safety Reform Effort

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins ""
Date: April 20, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Aviation Safety: FAA Is Taking Steps to Improve Data, but Challenges for Managing Safety Risks Remain (open access)

Aviation Safety: FAA Is Taking Steps to Improve Data, but Challenges for Managing Safety Risks Remain

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) uses data reactively and proactively to prevent accidents and manage safety risks. For instance, since 1998, FAA has partnered with the airline industry to identify precursors and contributing factors, and ensure that efforts to improve safety focus on the most prevalent categories of accidents and formulate an intervention strategy designed to reduce recurrences. Although FAA plans to continue using data reactively to understand the causes of accidents and incidents, as part of its adoption of Safety Management Systems (SMS), it is shifting to a proactive approach in which it analyzes data to identify and mitigate risks before they result in accidents."
Date: April 25, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
School Improvement Grants: Education Should Take Additional Steps to Enhance Accountability for Schools and Contractors (open access)

School Improvement Grants: Education Should Take Additional Steps to Enhance Accountability for Schools and Contractors

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Successful SIG implementation posed a number of challenges. Specifically, state and district officials were challenged to build staff capacity and commitment for reform, facing difficulties such as recruiting and retaining strong staff members. In addition, the SIG requirements to develop teacher evaluations and increase student learning time were difficult to implement quickly and effectively because they required extensive planning and coordination. Furthermore, states sometimes had limited evidence about the performance of SIG schools when making grant renewal decisions. For example, although Education’s guidance identifies meeting annual student achievement goals as a key criterion for making renewal decisions, some states did not receive student achievement data by the time decisions had to be made. States also made decisions through qualitative assessments of schools’ implementation efforts, but such determinations were not always based on extensive interaction with schools or systematic monitoring. Education did not provide written guidance to states about making evidence-based grant renewal decisions after they encountered these challenges."
Date: April 11, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Social Security Administration: Improved Planning and Performance Measures Are Needed to Help Ensure Successful Technology Modernization (open access)

Social Security Administration: Improved Planning and Performance Measures Are Needed to Help Ensure Successful Technology Modernization

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Social Security Administration (SSA) has undertaken numerous modernization efforts, but it lacks effective measurement tools to determine progress. Since 2001, SSA has reported spending about $5 billion on the modernization of its systems. Specifically, the agency has undertaken hundreds of modernization projects each year from 2001 to 2011, and officials identified 120 such initiatives that they considered to be key investments in modernization. About two-thirds of these projects were for modernizing and enhancing existing systems, while other efforts were aimed at moving from manual to electronic processes and online access, and the development of new or redesigned system software. These efforts also enhanced work processes, automated notices to beneficiaries, and modified systems to accommodate legislation, among other things. Nonetheless, SSA still has major efforts under way to transition from its aging systems to a more modernized IT environment. Specifically, in order to help meet the agency’s key strategic goal of strengthening its infrastructure and further enhancing its online services, SSA intends to streamline its operations and reduce duplication in databases to allow for more efficient maintenance. The agency also intends to complete its conversion to …
Date: April 26, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Maritime Security: Coast Guard Efforts to Address Port Recovery and Salvage Response (open access)

Maritime Security: Coast Guard Efforts to Address Port Recovery and Salvage Response

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Each of the seven Coast Guard AMS Plans that we reviewed has incorporated key recovery and salvage response planning elements as called for by legislation and Coast Guard guidance. Using a template provided by Coast Guard headquarters to help guide AMS Plan development, each AMS Plan included an applicable section addressing procedures to facilitate recovery of the MTS following a TSI. While some variation exists regarding the level of detail provided and the inclusion of additional recovery-related appendices, each of the seven plans identified key recovery components and applicable operational processes as called for by Coast Guard guidance documents. These components include procedures for establishing a Marine Transportation System Recovery Unit (MTSRU) to work with stakeholders and provide guidance to the Incident Command; procedures for gathering and updating Essential Elements of Information (EEIs) to provide status updates on key port assets and operations; and identification of general recovery priorities to help guide decision making. In addition, each AMS Plan also included a Salvage Response Plan to provide a coordination framework for salvage activities and identify available equipment and other resources that may be necessary to support the clearing …
Date: April 6, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Southwest Retort, Volume 64, Number 7, April 2012 (open access)

Southwest Retort, Volume 64, Number 7, April 2012

This publication of the Dallas-Fort Worth Section of the American Chemical Society includes information about research, prominent scientist, organizational business, and various other stories of interest to the community.
Date: April 2012
Creator: American Chemical Society. Dallas/Fort Worth Section.
Object Type: Journal/Magazine/Newsletter
System: The UNT Digital Library
Toward fully self-consistent simulation of the interaction of E-Clouds and beams with WARP-POSINST (open access)

Toward fully self-consistent simulation of the interaction of E-Clouds and beams with WARP-POSINST

To predict the evolution of electron clouds and their effect on the beam, the high energy physics community has relied so far on the complementary use of 'buildup' and 'single/multi-bunch instability' reduced descriptions. The former describes the evolution of electron clouds at a given location in the ring, or 'station', under the influence of prescribed beams and external fields [1], while the latter (sometimes also referred as the 'quasi-static' approximation [2]) follows the interaction between the beams and the electron clouds around the accelerator with prescribed initial distributions of electrons, assumed to be concentrated at a number of discrete 'stations' around the ring. Examples of single bunch instability codes include HEADTAIL [3], QuickPIC [4, 5], and PEHTS [6]. By contrast, a fully self-consistent approach, in which both the electron cloud and beam distributions evolve simultaneously under their mutual influence without any restriction on their relative motion, is required for modeling the interaction of high-intensity beams with electron clouds for heavy-ion beam-driven fusion and warm-dense matter science. This community has relied on the use of Particle-In-Cell (PIC) methods through the development and use of the WARP-POSINST code suite [1, 7, 8]. The development of novel numerical techniques (including adaptive mesh refinement, …
Date: April 9, 2012
Creator: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Greensheet (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 43, No. 145, Ed. 1 Tuesday, April 24, 2012 (open access)

The Greensheet (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 43, No. 145, Ed. 1 Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.
Date: April 24, 2012
Creator: unknown
Object Type: Newspaper
System: The Portal to Texas History
The Greensheet (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 43, No. 153, Ed. 1 Thursday, April 26, 2012 (open access)

The Greensheet (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 43, No. 153, Ed. 1 Thursday, April 26, 2012

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.
Date: April 26, 2012
Creator: unknown
Object Type: Newspaper
System: The Portal to Texas History
A Summary Report on Full-time Equivalent State Employees for the Quarter Ending February 29, 2012 (open access)

A Summary Report on Full-time Equivalent State Employees for the Quarter Ending February 29, 2012

Report of the Texas State Auditor's Office related to providing the Legislature and the public with information related to full-time equivalent employees (FTEs) who perform services for state government.
Date: April 2012
Creator: Texas. Office of the State Auditor.
Object Type: Report
System: The Portal to Texas History