A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Federal agencies spend billions of dollars every year on information technology and are increasingly using performance-based contracting methods where agencies specify desired outcomes and allow contractors to design the best solutions to achieve those outcomes. Share-in-savings contracting is one such method under which a contractor provides funding for a project, and the agency compensates the contractor from any savings derived as a result of contract performance. The E-Government Act of 2002 authorized the use of share-in-savings contracting for information technology and required implementing regulations by mid-September 2003. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) reported in December 2004 that no share-in-savings contracts had been awarded. The act's authority expires in September 2005. The act required GAO to assess the effectiveness of share-in-savings contracts. Because no such contracts have been awarded, GAO cannot provide an assessment. Instead, GAO reviewed the status of regulations and tools available to agencies in developing these contracts and identified the reasons agencies have not used the authority provided by the act. OMB and the General Services Administration (GSA) generally agreed with GAO's report."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "With the number of airplane passengers using U.S. airports expected to grow to almost 1 billion by the year 2015, ground access to U.S. airports has become an important factor in the development of our nation's transportation networks. Increases in the number of passengers traveling to and from airports will place greater strains on our nation's airport access roads and airport capacity, which can have a number of negative economic and social effects. U.S. transportation policy has generally addressed these negative economic and social effects from the standpoint of individual transportation modes and local government involvement. However, European transportation policy is increasingly focusing on intermodal transportation as a possible means to address congestion without sacrificing economic growth. This report addresses the development of intermodal capabilities at U.S. airports, including (1) the roles of different levels of government and the private sector; (2) the extent such facilities have been developed; (3) benefits, costs, and barriers to such development; and (4) strategies to improve these capabilities. GAO provided a draft of this report to the Department of Transportation (DOT) and Amtrak. DOT generally concurred with the report, and …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Debt Collection Improvement Act of 1996 (DCIA) allows the federal government to collect state debts from federal payments to contractors. However, before a state can participate in this program, DCIA requires that the state enter into a reciprocal agreement with the Department of the Treasury that would require the state to collect unpaid federal debt from state payments if Treasury collects unpaid state debt from federal payments. In February 2004, we reported that Department of Defense (DOD) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) records showed that over 27,000 DOD contractors had nearly $3 billion in unpaid federal taxes as of September 30, 2002. In a hearing before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on February 12, 2004, we noted that many of those contractors also had unpaid state taxes. Based on the issues raised in that hearing, Congress requested that we determine (1) the extent to which Financial Management Service (FMS) and the states have entered into reciprocal agreements to collect unpaid state and federal debt from their payments to contractors and (2) whether additional opportunities may exist for the Department of the Treasury's FMS to collect unpaid …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "A successful terrorist attack on a Department of Energy (DOE) site containing nuclear weapons material could have devastating effects for the site and nearby communities. DOE's Office of the Under Secretary for Energy, Science and Environment (ESE), which is responsible for DOE operations in areas such as energy research, manages five sites that contain weapons-grade nuclear material. A heavily armed security force equipped with such items as automatic weapons protects ESE sites. GAO was asked to examine (1) the extent to which ESE protective forces are meeting DOE's existing readiness requirements and (2) the actions DOE and ESE will need to take to successfully defend against the larger, revised terrorist threat identified in the October 2004 design basis threat (DBT) by DOE's implementation deadline of October 2008."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Each year, federal agencies spend billions of dollars to buy commercial products and services through the General Service Administration's (GSA) Multiple Award Schedules program. The program has grown significantly over the past several years. Currently, federal agencies can directly purchase, through more than 16,000 schedule contracts, over 8 million products from more than 10,000 commercial vendors. In fiscal year 2004, purchases from these contracts totaled more than $32 billion. The multiple award schedules program is designed to take advantage of the government's significant buying power. To maximize savings, GSA negotiates discounts that are equal to or greater than those given to the vendor's most favored customers. This testimony focuses on GSA's historic use of two proven negotiation tools to improve the pricing of schedules contracts--pre-award audits and postaward audits of pre-award information. Pre-award audits allow GSA to avoid potential overpricing by verifying vendor pricing information before contracts are awarded. Postaward audits allow GSA to identify overpricing of awarded contracts and recover overcharges."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Advances in technology have led to rapidly increasing sales of new electronic devices, particularly televisions, computers, and computer monitors. With this increase comes the dilemma of how to manage these products when they come to the end of their useful lives. Concerns have been increasingly expressed that while millions of existing computers become obsolete each year, only a fraction of them are being recycled. Some have alleged that the disposal of used electronics causes a number of environmental problems. They note, for example, that toxic substances such as lead can leach from used electronics. They have also noted that computers and other electronic equipment contain precious metals that require substantial amounts of energy and land to extract. These metals, they say, can often be extracted with less environmental impact from used electronics than from the environment. In this testimony, GAO summarizes existing information on the amounts of, and problems associated with, used electronics. GAO also examines the factors affecting the nation's ability to recycle and reuse electronics when such products have reached the end of their useful lives. This testimony discusses preliminary results of GAO's work. GAO will …