Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The five agencies varied in the extent to which they collected the over 100 land and resources, revenue, and federal land use designation data elements that GAO asked them about. Specifically, all five agencies collected data on four basic data elements, which related to total surface acres managed, total acres managed within each state, the number of special use permits generated for filming activities on federal land, and the number of cultural and historic sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In contrast, none of them collected information for 33 other data elements, such as the percent of total acres under oil, gas, or coal leases that have surface disturbance or where the surface disturbance has been reclaimed, or information on the potential quantities of oil, gas, and coal resources on federal land. Agency officials cited various reasons why the agencies did not collect certain information, such as believing another federal agency collected it, it was inconsistent with the agency’s mission, or they lacked the authority or resources to do so."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Case processing times under the Integrated Disability Evaluation System (IDES) process have increased over time, and measures of servicemember satisfaction have shortcomings. Each year, average processing time for IDES cases has climbed, reaching 394 and 420 days for active and reserve component members in fiscal year 2011—well over established goals of 295 and 305 days, respectively. Also in fiscal year 2011, just 19 percent of active duty servicemembers and 18 percent of guard or reserve members completed the IDES process and received benefits within established goals, down from 32 and 37 percent one year prior. Of the four phases comprising IDES, the medical evaluation board phase increasingly fell short of timeliness goals and, within that phase, the time required for the military’s determination of fitness was especially troubling. During site visits to IDES locations, we consistently heard concerns about timeframes and resources for this phase of the process. With respect to servicemember satisfaction with the IDES process, GAO found shortcomings in how these data are collected and reported, such as unduly limiting who is eligible to receive a survey and computing average satisfaction scores in a manner that …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Multiple Title IV programs and tax expenditures provided substantial aid to populations across income levels. In 2009, 12.8 million students received Title IV aid, and approximately 18-million tax filers claimed a higher education tax benefit for current expenses. Recent increases in both programs from 2008 to 2009 may be because of enrollment increases and legislative actions, among other factors. Title IV grants tend to benefit students and families with incomes below the national median (about $52,000 from 2006–2010), while loans and work-study serve these students and those with family incomes above the median. Most tax benefits from the tuition and fees deduction and the parental exemption for dependent students went to households with incomes above $60,000, whereas the majority of benefits from the other higher education tax expenditures in GAO’s review—such as the American opportunity credit—went to households with lower incomes."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins ""

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "DOD is estimating and publishing approximate costs for selected types of internally and externally required reports, but in some cases its approach is not fully consistent with relevant cost estimating best practices and cost accounting standards. Specifically, DOD entities have been directed to use the cost estimating tool to capture marginal costs of activities associated with completing a report or study that would not have been performed otherwise. These costs consist of certain manpower costs (such as the prorated salaries of military and civilian personnel based on the time they spent) and nonlabor costs (such as contract services, travel, or printing). In comparing DOD’s approach to (1) GAO’s Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide—which states that high-quality, reliable cost estimates should be comprehensive, well documented, and accurate—and (2) relevant accounting standards, we found the following."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins ""

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO found a number of weaknesses in the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) execution of the planning and early implementation phases of the Dialysis Pilot. These weaknesses involved pilot location selection, cost estimation practices, and cost savings calculations that could collectively limit the achievement of the pilot’s goals. Specifically, VA did not do the following:"

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In determining that Salmonella is the primary food safety hazard in catfish, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) officials stated that the agency focused on Salmonella at the direction of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which considered Salmonella the most practical hazard to evaluate. However, GAO found that FSIS used outdated and limited information in its risk assessment as its scientific basis for a catfish inspection program that seeks to mitigate that hazard. For example, FSIS identified a single outbreak of Salmonella-caused illnesses, but this outbreak was not clearly linked to catfish. FSIS noted that this outbreak was before the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) 1997 Seafood Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point regulations, which required firms to identify hazards in their processing systems and implement controls to prevent or mitigate these hazards; no similar outbreaks have occurred since. Other federal agencies questioned if FSIS had adequately demonstrated a Salmonella problem in catfish. For example, FDA does not generally have such concerns. Officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) also stated that FSIS …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Since GAO’s 2007 review, the Army has taken steps to improve its use of reset in targeting equipment shortages. In 2007, GAO noted that the Army’s reset implementation strategy did not specifically target shortages of equipment on hand among units preparing for deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan in order to mitigate operational risk. GAO recommended that the Army act to ensure that its reset priorities address equipment shortages in the near term to ensure that the needs of deploying units could be met. The Department of Defense (DOD) did not concur, and stated that there was no need to reassess its approaches to equipment reset. However, in 2008, the Army issued its Depot Maintenance Enterprise Strategic Plan, noted that filling materiel shortages within warfighting units is a key challenge facing the depot maintenance enterprise, and called for changes in programs and policies to address materiel shortages within warfighting units. Further, recognizing that retrograde operations—the return of equipment from theater to the United States—are essential to facilitating depot level reset and redistribution of equipment, the Army in 2010 developed the retrograde, reset, and redistribution (R3) initiative to …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of State’s (State) Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator (OGAC), the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have evaluated a wide variety of President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program activities, demonstrating a clear commitment to evaluation. However, GAO found that the findings, conclusions, and recommendations were not fully supported in many PEPFAR evaluations. Agency officials provided nearly 500 evaluations addressing activities ongoing in fiscal years 2008 through 2010 in all program areas relating to HIV/AIDS treatment, prevention, and care. GAO’s assessment of a selected sample of seven OGAC-managed evaluations found that they generally adhered to common evaluation standards, as did most of a selected sample of 15 evaluations managed by CDC and USAID headquarters. Based on this assessment, GAO determined that these evaluations generally contained fully supported findings, conclusions, and recommendations. However, based on a similar assessment of a randomly selected sample taken from 436 evaluations provided by PEPFAR country and regional teams, GAO estimated that 41 percent contained fully supported findings, conclusions, and recommendations, …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In summary, this report provides information on the incidence of treatment exclusions for MH/SU for the 2011 or 2010 plan year and the 2008 plan year for employers that responded to our survey. In total, for the 2011 or 2010 plan year, of the 96 employers that responded to our question about whether their most popular plan excluded coverage for any specific treatments related to MH/SU, 39 employers reported excluding a treatment. In comparison, for the 2008 plan year, of the 81 employers that responded to our question about whether their most popular excluded coverage for any specific treatments related to MH/SU, 27 employers reported excluding a treatment."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Fewer small employers claimed the Small Employer Health Insurance Tax Credit in tax year 2010 than were estimated to be eligible. While 170,300 small employers claimed it, estimates of the eligible pool by government agencies and small business advocacy groups ranged from 1.4 million to 4 million. The cost of credits claimed was $468 million. Most claims were limited to partial rather than full percentage credits (35 percent for small businesses) because of the average wage or full-time equivalent (FTE) requirements. 28,100 employers claimed the full credit percentage. In addition, 30 percent of claims had the base premium limited by the state premium average."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Multiple U.S. agencies and international partners are engaged in efforts to assist Pakistan in countering improvised explosive devices (IEDs) but face a variety of ongoing challenges. The agencies providing counter-IED assistance to Pakistan are primarily the Departments of State (State), Defense (DOD), Homeland Security (DHS), and Justice (DOJ). The following table identifies the types of assistance these U.S. agencies have provided and the corresponding objectives of Pakistan’s National Counter-IED Strategy. According to U.S. officials, U.S. agencies have encountered ongoing challenges to their efforts to assist Pakistan, such as delays in obtaining visas and in the delivery of equipment. U.S. officials have also identified broader challenges to Pakistan’s ability to counter IEDs, including the extreme difficulty of interdicting smugglers along its porous border with Afghanistan. In addition, though Pakistan developed a National Counter-IED Strategy in June 2011, it has yet to finalize an implementation plan for carrying out the strategy."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) has taken steps to establish its concept for conducting security force assistance, including broadly defining the term and identifying actions needed to plan for and prepare forces to execute these activities. For example, in October 2010, the department issued an instruction that broadly defines security force assistance and outlines responsibilities for key stakeholders, including the geographic combatant commands and military services. DOD also identified gaps in key areas of doctrine, organization, and training related to the implementation of security force assistance and tasks needed to address those gaps. The tasks include reviewing joint and service-level doctrine to incorporate security force assistance as needed and developing measures to assess progress in partner nations. Citing a need to clarify the definition of security force assistance beyond the DOD Instruction, DOD published a document referred to as a Lexicon Framework in November 2011 that included information to describe how security force assistance relates to other existing terms, such as security cooperation."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "School bullying is a serious problem, and research shows that it can have detrimental outcomes for victims, including adverse psychological and behavioral outcomes. According to four nationally representative surveys conducted from 2005 to 2009, an estimated 20 to 28 percent of youth, primarily middle and high school-aged youths, reported they had been bullied during the survey periods. However, differences in definitions and questions posed to youth respondents make it difficult to discern trends and affected groups. For example, the surveys did not collect demographic information by sexual orientation or gender identity. The Departments of Education (Education) and Health and Human Services (HHS) are partially addressing the issue of inconsistent definitions by collaborating with other federal departments and subject matter experts to develop a uniform definition of bullying that can be used for research purposes. However, gaps in knowledge about the extent of bullying of youths in key demographic groups remain."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "From fiscal years 2006 to 2010, the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) reported more than a doubling of National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) member agencies’ funding for nanotechnology environmental, health, and safety (EHS) research––from approximately $38 million to $90 million. Reported EHS research funding also rose as a percentage of total nanotechnology funding over the same period, ending at about 5 percent in 2010. However, GAO identified several reporting problems that raise concerns about the quality of EHS funding data reported. For example, for 18 percent of the 2010 projects GAO reviewed that were reported as EHS research, it was not clear that the projects were primarily directed at EHS risks. In addition, NNI member agencies did not always report funding using comparable data. The absence of detailed guidance on how agencies should report funding for their nanotechnology research has contributed to these problems, as GAO also reported in 2008 and made a related recommendation."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Since GAO’s last report in July 2011, more of the assistance provided by the Department of the Treasury (Treasury) and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Federal Reserve) to benefit American International Group, Inc. (AIG) has been repaid. As of March 22, 2012, the remaining assistance to AIG was $46.3 billion, including unpaid dividends and accrued interest. This amount includes Treasury’s $35.9 billion investment in AIG common stock and a balance of $8.3 billion owed by Maiden Lane III to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY). This remaining assistance was down from $92.5 billion in March 2011 and $154.7 billion in December 2010. Several indicators show that as of March 2012, the government’s remaining outstanding assistance to AIG has continued to be reduced, mostly because of repayments on the FRBNY loan to Maiden Lane II; repayment of AIA Aurora, LLC, a special purpose vehicle; and sales of Treasury’s common stock in AIG. The government’s outstanding assistance to AIG is largely composed of Treasury’s common stock in AIG. Treasury’s sales of AIG stock in May 2011 and March 2012 have yielded total …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Total projected cost of the F-22A modernization program and related reliability and maintainability improvements more than doubled since the program started–from $5.4 billion to $11.7 billion–and the schedule for delivering full capabilities slipped 7 years, from 2010 to 2017. The content, scope, and phasing of planned capabilities also shifted over time with changes in requirements, priorities, and annual funding decisions. Visibility and oversight of the program’s cost and schedule is hampered by a management structure that does not track and account for the full cost of specific capability increments. Substantial infrastructure costs for labs, testing, management, and other activities directly support modernization but are not charged to its projects. The Air Force plans to manage its fourth modernization increment as a separate major acquisition program, as defined in DOD policy and statutory requirements."

Guidance issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. Government Accountability Office is responsible for, among other things, assisting the Congress in its oversight of the federal government, including agencies’ stewardship of public funds. To use public funds effectively, the government must meet the demands of today’s changing world by employing effective management practices and processes, including the measurement of government program performance. In addition, legislators, government officials, and the public want to know whether government programs are achieving their goals and what their costs are."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "During our audit of CFPB’s fiscal year 2011 financial statements, we identified seven internal control issues that could adversely affect CFPB’s ability to meet its internal control objectives. We do not consider these issues to represent material weaknesses or significant deficiencies in relation to CFPB’s financial statements. Nonetheless, we believe they warrant management’s attention and action. These issues concern necessary controls to ensure"

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "HUD’s fiscal year 2011 expenditure plan, which seeks to obligate about $114 million for seven modernization projects, along with enterprisewide services and program management, satisfies both sets of statutory conditions contained in the 2011 appropriations act. Specifically, for the first set of statutory conditions, the plan identified the functional and performance capabilities, mission benefits, lifecycle costs, and key milestones for each of the projects. For example, the plan described specific and measurable mission benefits associated with HUD’s Place-Based Performance Management System project, such as reducing the time to compile performance information from 50 hours to 20 hours. In addition, the plan described costs associated with the lifecycle of each project, providing details on funds needed for major work activities."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) pension program design and management do not adequately ensure that only veterans with financial need receive pension benefits. While the pension program is means tested, there is no prohibition on transferring assets prior to applying for benefits. Other means-tested programs, such as Medicaid, conduct a look-back review to determine if an individual has transferred assets at less than fair market value, and if so, may deny benefits for a period of time, known as the penalty period. This control helps ensure that only those in financial need receive benefits. In contrast, VA pension claimants can transfer assets for less than fair market value immediately prior to applying and be approved for benefits. For example, GAO identified a case where a claimant transferred over a million dollars less than 3 months prior to applying and was granted benefits. Also, VA’s process for assessing initial eligibility is inadequate in several key respects. The application form does not ask for some sources of income and assets such as private retirement income, annuities, and trusts. As a result, VA lacks complete information on a …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has conducted about 2,800 security surveys and vulnerability assessments on critical infrastructure and key resources (CIKR). DHS directs its protective security advisors to contact owners and operators of high-priority CIKR to offer to conduct surveys and assessments. However, DHS is not positioned to track the extent to which these are performed at high-priority CIKR because of inconsistencies between the databases used to identify these assets and those used to identify surveys and assessments conducted. GAO compared the two databases and found that of the 2,195 security surveys and 655 vulnerability assessments conducted for fiscal years 2009 through 2011, 135 surveys and 44 assessments matched and another 106 surveys and 23 assessments were potential matches for high-priority facilities. GAO could not match additional high-priority facilities because of inconsistencies in the way data were recorded in the two databases, for example, assets with the same company name had different addresses or an asset at one address had different names. DHS officials acknowledged that the data did not match and have begun to take actions to improve the collection and organization of the …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In the last 8 years, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate has used its special acquisition authority to enter into 58 “other transaction” agreements. Use of the authority has declined since 2005. DHS officials said the decline is due to uncertainty about the agency’s continuing authority to enter into these agreements, among other things."