Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "A total of 22 of the 39 former high-ranking officials (admiral-level and SES officials) who separated from the Coast Guard from 2006 through 2010 were compensated at some point from 2006 through 2011 by contractors that received obligations from the Coast Guard in calendar year 2011. We found that 12 of these former officials were compensated in calendar year 2011 by major Coast Guard contractors--those contractors receiving more than $10 million in obligations during that calendar year. The responsibilities of these officials vary, but 9 of these 12 officials were assigned by major contractors to positions involving the development of new business."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In summary, TSA has completed its initial testing of the CAT/BPSS technology and has begun operational testing at three airports. We found the project’s associated life cycle cost estimate to be reasonably comprehensive and well documented, although we are less confident in its accuracy due to questions about the assumed inflation rate. In addition, we could not evaluate its credibility because the current version does not include an independent cost estimate or an assessment of how changing key assumptions and other factors would affect the estimate. Our past work has identified three key challenges related to TSA’s efforts to acquire and deploy technologies to address homeland security needs: (1) developing and meeting technology program requirements, (2) overseeing and conducting testing of new screening technologies, and (3) developing acquisition program baselines to establish initial cost, schedule, and performance parameters."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Our reviews of open sources published between January 1, 2009 and September 30, 2012 identified a total of 17 foreign firms that were reported to have sold refined petroleum products to Iran during that same time period. Our review of open sources published from January 2012 through September 2012 indicated that only 1 of these 17 firms--Sytrol--was reported to have sold refined petroleum products to Iran during that same time period. In addition, our open source review and communication with firms indicated that 12 of the 17 firms were reported to have stopped selling these products to Iran before September 30, 2012; however, our review did not identify sufficient information to indicate either that the remaining 4 firms had continued to sell or ceased selling refined petroleum products to Iran at some point between January 1, 2012 and September 30, 2012."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) insured over $1.44 billion in mortgages for 6,327 borrowers with $77.6 million in federal tax debt who benefited from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Of these borrowers, 3,815 individuals claimed and received $27.4 million in Recovery Act First-Time Homebuyer Credits (FTHBC). This analysis includes tax debtors who (1) benefited from FHA’s increased loan limits, or (2) claimed the FTHBCs and received FHA mortgage insurance of any value. Federal policy makes delinquent tax debtors ineligible for FHA mortgage insurance unless they repay their debt or are in a valid repayment agreement with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), but the FTHBC, like all tax credits, was available to those who qualified, regardless of their tax debt. GAO could not determine the proportion of borrowers who were ineligible for FHA insurance because GAO could not systematically identify which of the 6,327 borrowers were in valid repayment agreements using the data GAO received from IRS. However, GAO did find that 5 of the 8 borrowers completely evaluated were ineligible because they were not in valid repayment agreements at the time they obtained FHA …

Other written product issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) seek to enhance the efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability of the federal government. As Congress debates ways to address the federal government’s long-term fiscal imbalance, it becomes even more critical that we help with this challenge by identifying opportunities for cost-savings and for improving programs to ensure that every dollar counts."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Federal grant and loan funding for activities that reduce mobile source diesel emissions is fragmented across 14 programs at the Department of Energy (DOE), the Department of Transportation (DOT), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). From fiscal years 2007 through 2011, the programs obligated at least $1.4 billion for activities that have the effect of reducing mobile source diesel emissions. The programs have varying goals and purposes; nevertheless, each program allows or requires a portion of its funding to support activities that reduce mobile source diesel emissions, such as replacing fleets of older diesel trucks or school buses with natural gas vehicles. In addition, each of the 14 programs overlaps with at least one other program in the specific activities they fund, the program goals, or the eligible recipients of funding. GAO also identified several instances of duplication where more than one program provided grant funding to the same recipient for the same type of activities. However, GAO was unable to determine whether unnecessary duplication exists because of limited information on program administrative costs, among other things. GAO did not find any gaps among the programs, …

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 "Chief Information Officers (CIO) at six federal agencies rated the majority of their information technology (IT) investments as low risk, and many ratings remained constant over time. Specifically, CIOs at the selected agencies rated a majority of investments listed on the federal IT Dashboard as low risk or moderately low risk from June 2009 through March 2012; at five of these agencies, these risk levels accounted for at least 66 percent of investments. These agencies also rated no more than 12 percent of their investments as high or moderately high risk, and two agencies (Department of Defense (DOD) and the National Science Foundation (NSF)) rated no investments at these risk levels. Over time, about 47 percent of the agencies' Dashboard investments received the same rating in every rating period. For ratings that changed, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Office of Personnel Management (OPM) reported more investments with reduced risk when initial ratings were compared with those in March 2012; the other four agencies reported more investments with increased risk. In the past, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) reported trends for risky IT …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In summary, the Army and the Marine Corps have taken steps to determine the future usefulness of nonstandard equipment but have not finalized all of the decisions on whether to add such equipment to unit authorization documents. As of November 2011, the Army had reviewed 409 equipment systems through its Capabilities Development for Rapid Transition process, determining that about 11 percent of that equipment is useful for the future and about 37 percent is not needed and should be terminated. The Army has not made a final decision on the future need for the remaining 52 percent of the equipment, which it continues to sustain for current operations primarily through the use of overseas contingency operations funds. The Army has also taken some additional actions to review nonstandard equipment through other forums and reviews which have led to recommendations for some items to be retained for the future. Since 2008, the Marine Corps has reviewed 144 different requests for capabilities to fill gaps identified by commanders. Of these, the Marine Corps has determined that about 63 percent will continue to be needed in the future to meet enduring …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Under PPACA, states are responsible for making a number of changes to their Medicaid programs by January 1, 2014, including expanding eligibility levels and streamlining their enrollment processes. Specifically, states must expand Medicaid eligibility to non-elderly individuals with incomes at or below 133 percent of FPL. Under the newly eligible category, states will provide Medicaid coverage to eligible low-income parents and childless adults. States must also begin determining income eligibility for Medicaid beneficiaries, including newly eligible adults, using a uniform methodology—MAGI, which is a tax-based definition of income. To implement these requirements, eligibility categories have been consolidated into four groups—adults, children, parents, and pregnant women. States may choose to expand Medicaid coverage to the newly eligible prior to January 1, 2014 (referred to as the early expansion option), but must cover lower income individuals before higher income individuals. These more uniform eligibility requirements will replace the current system where Medicaid eligibility and income rules may vary from state to state. Further, states must adopt a methodology for identifying the newly eligible in order to obtain the increased federal match. States will receive the enhanced federal match …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The four Department of Defense (DOD) components GAO examined have active processes for referring identified cases of contractor misconduct for appropriate action, including suspension or debarment. The components identify numerous cases of actual or alleged contractor misconduct each year from various internal and external sources. The figure below shows the process for identifying and referring cases to the suspension and debarment official for consideration."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In summary, based on our work to date, we have found that"

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "DOL and OSC began the USERRA demonstration project on August 9, 2011, meeting the time frame (within 60 days of our report on the project's design) required by the VBA. From August 9, 2011, to May 9, 2012, DOL has received 87 USERRA demonstration project cases and OSC has received 123 cases. The data reported in this study cover only 9 months of the demonstration project and do not represent the overall results of the 36-month project nor are we drawing any conclusions of the relative performance at either agency. As both agencies continue to collect and track data, we will be able to provide an in-depth evaluation of relative performance. We did not report customer satisfaction survey data in this assessment due to the short amount of time the survey has been available to claimants and the low survey response rate. Also, while both agencies track time spent on cases on an ongoing basis, OSC only compiles cost data on those cases that have been closed while DOL compiles cost data on open and closed cases. Therefore, we plan to evaluate and compare the relative …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "While FDA has taken several important steps toward modernizing its IT environment, much remains to be done. FDA reported spending about $400 million for IT investments in fiscal year 2011; however, the agency currently lacks a comprehensive IT inventory that identifies and provides key information about the systems it uses and is developing. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and GAO guidance call for federal agencies to maintain such an inventory in order to monitor and manage their IT investments. This inventory should include information on each system, such as costs, functionality or purpose, and status. However, FDA does not have such a comprehensive list of its systems. Instead, the agency points to budget documents required by OMB, which included information on 44 IT investments for fiscal year 2011. The agency also provided a partial list of 21 mission-critical systems and modernization initiatives. Nonetheless, agency officials acknowledged that these documents do not identify all FDA’s systems or the complete costs, purpose, or status of each system. Until the agency has a complete and comprehensive inventory, it will lack critical information needed to effectively assess its IT …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Nearly all of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) program managers GAO surveyed reported their programs had experienced significant challenges. Sixty-eight of the 71 respondents reported they experienced funding instability, faced workforce shortfalls, or their planned capabilities changed after initiation, and most survey respondents reported a combination of these challenges. DHS lacks the data needed to accurately measure program performance, but GAO was able to use survey results, information DHS provided to Congress, and an internal DHS review from March 2012 to identify 42 programs that experienced cost growth, schedule slips, or both. GAO gained insight into the magnitude of the cost growth for 16 of the 42 programs, which increased from $19.7 billion in 2008 to $52.2 billion in 2011, an aggregate increase of 166 percent."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Most agencies have appointed Chief Acquisition Officers (CAO) in accordancewith two of the three key requirements in the Services Acquisition Reform Act of2003 (SARA): that the CAOs be political appointees and have agency SeniorProcurement Executives report directly to them. However, few CAOs haveacquisition management as their primary duty; other areas of responsibilityincluded financial, information, and human capital management."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GPOs are subject to certain federal laws that HHS, DOJ, and FTC are responsible for enforcing. According to HHS Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG) officials, since 2004, the office has not routinely exercised its authority to request and review disclosures related to GPOs’ contract administrative fees, but it has collected information on GPOs’ contract administrative fees while conducting audits of hospitals’ cost reports. While HHS-OIG is responsible for enforcing the Anti-Kickback statute, the law and regulation do not require routine monitoring of GPO written agreements and disclosures. HHS-OIG officials told us that even if they requested this information from GPOs, it would not necessarily be sufficient to determine whether a GPO violated the Anti-Kickback statute. Officials from HHS-OIG also told us that, since 2004, it participated in two case investigations with DOJ that involved allegations that certain GPOs did not comply with safe harbor requirements and violated the Anti-Kickback statute. Officials told us that HHS-OIG has not imposed administrative penalties on any GPOs since 2004. DOJ and FTC have investigated complaints related to federal antitrust laws, and we identified one lawsuit filed by DOJ against a GPO in …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In recent years, the government’s reliance on DUNS numbers has increased significantly. There has been a dramatic increase in the number and types of entities that are required to have DUNS numbers to do business with the government. GSA also has expanded the level of business information services that it acquires from Dun & Bradstreet. These services include data verification and monitoring as well as corporate linkage information to support enhanced reporting capabilities. As GSA has increased its use of the DUNS number and business information services, its costs have increased from about $1 million in 2002 to approximately $19 million per year under the current contract. The current contract for DUNS numbers is a sole-source contract awarded to Dun & Bradstreet in 2010 for a 3-year base period with options for 5 additional years—the contract now totals up to $154 million."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "According to 2010 data from the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of the Inspector General (HHS-OIG) and the Department of Justice (DOJ), 10,187 subjects--individuals and entities involved in fraud cases--were investigated for health care fraud, including fraud in Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP). These subjects included different types of providers and suppliers--such as physicians, hospitals, durable medical equipment suppliers, home health agencies, and pharmacies--that serve Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP beneficiaries. For criminal cases in 2010, medical facilities--including medical centers, clinics, or practices--and durable medical equipment suppliers were the most-frequent subjects investigated. Hospitals and medical facilities were the most-frequent subjects investigated in civil fraud cases, including cases that resulted in judgments or settlements."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Some spectrum users may lack incentive to share spectrum or otherwise use it efficiently, and federal agencies and private users currently cannot easily identify spectrum available for sharing. Typically, paying the market price for a good or service helps to inform users of the value of the good and provides an incentive for efficient use. Federal agencies, however, pay only a small fee to the NTIA for spectrum assignments and therefore have little incentive to share spectrum. Federal agencies also face concerns that sharing could risk the success of security or safety missions, or could be costly in terms of upgrades to more spectrally efficient equipment. Nonfederal users, such as private companies, are also reluctant to share spectrum. For instance, license holders may be reluctant to encourage additional competition, and companies may be hesitant to enter into sharing agreements that require potentially lengthy and unpredictable regulatory processes. Sharing can be costly for them, too. For example, nonfederal users may be required to cover all interference mitigation costs to use a federal spectrum band, which might include multiple federal users. Sharing can also be hindered because information …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Through its policy and guidance, VHA has outlined processes that enable VAMCs to respond to reported adverse events that occur. VHA generally grants individual VAMCs discretion on choosing which process to use. Specifically, VAMCs conduct an initial review to determine how best to respond to an adverse event. According to VHA officials, if the circumstances that led to an adverse event are clear, based on a VAMC's initial review, VAMCs can take immediate corrective action. If the circumstances that led to an adverse event need to be examined further, VAMCs are given discretion to use one or more of the following four processes: (1) root cause analysis, (2) peer review, (3) clinical care review, and (4) administrative investigation board. Because VAMCs generally have discretion in which of these processes they use, different VAMCs that experience similar adverse events may not use the same processes to respond to them. Nonetheless, each process has certain purposes and limitations. For example, some of these processes may be used to examine a clinician's actions as they relate to an adverse event, while others may be used to examine whether a systems or …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and other federal agencies have taken steps to improve federal spending data available on USAspending.gov. This effort to publicly display comprehensive data arose from the federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, which required OMB to establish a free, publicly accessible website containing data on federal awards and subawards. OMB launched USAspending.gov in December 2007 to meet these requirements. As GAO reported in 2010, while OMB had satisfied most of the requirements associated with the act, such as establishing the site with required data elements and search capability, it had only partially satisfied the requirement to establish a pilot program to test the collection and display of subaward data and had not met the requirements to include subaward data by January 2009, or to report to Congress on the site’s usage. Also, GAO found that from a sample of 100 awards on USAspending.gov, each award had at least one data error and that USAspending.gov did not include information on grants from programs at 9 agencies for fiscal year 2008. Subsequently, OMB and agencies have taken steps to improve the site …

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 "Certain protections under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA) only apply to those servicemembers who obtained mortgages prior to becoming active duty, but at least 15,000 instances of financial institutions failing to properly reduce servicemembers’ mortgage interest rates and over 300 improper foreclosures have been identified by federal investigations and financial institutions in recent years. Additional independent reviews of financial institutions’ compliance are under way, and staff from some of these institutions told GAO that they have implemented improved practices—such as creating single points of contact familiar with military issues for borrowers—to better comply with SCRA."