A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on international parental child abductions, focusing on the adequacy of federal response to: (1) problems identified with the federal government's response to international parental child abductions; (2) the Department of Justice's (DOJ) use of the 1993 International Parental Kidnapping Crime Act to prosecute abducting parents; and (3) the actions federal agencies plan to take to address the problems."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the possible connection between depleted uranium exposure and Gulf War illnesses, focusing on: (1) the scientific understanding about health effects from exposure to depleted uranium; (2) whether the Gulf War veterans are experiencing administrative problems with the medical screening program for depleted uranium health effects; and (3) the extent to which the services have implemented programs to train servicemembers to safely operate in a depleted uranium-contaminated battlefield."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO reviewed the federal government's management of crosscutting program activities, focusing on: (1) an overview of programs with mission fragmentation and overlap in 1998 and 1999; (2) barriers to interagency coordination within the last decade; and (3) potential approaches for improving the effectiveness and efficiency of crosscutting programs."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This report reviews the department of Defense's (DOD) implementation of computer incident response capabilities and identifies challenges to improving these. GAO found that during the last several years, DOD has taken several steps to build incident response capabilities and enhance computer defensive capabilities across the Department, including the creation of computer emergency response teams and incident response capabilities within each of the military services as well as the Defense Information Systems Agency and the Defense Logistics Agency. DOD also created the Joint Task Force-Computer Network Defense (JTF-CND) to coordinate and direct the full range of activities within the Department associated with incident response. GAO identified the following six areas in which DOD faces challenges in improving its incident response capabilities: (1) coordinating resource planning and prioritization activities; (2) integrating critical data from intrusion detection systems, sensors, and other devices to better monitor cyber events and attacks; (3) establishing departmentwide process to periodically review systems and networks for security weaknesses; (4) increasing individual unit compliance with departmentwide vulnerability alerts; (5) improving DOD's system for coordinating component-level incident response actions; and (6) developing departmentwide performance measures to assess …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The computer systems that support the Department of Energy's (DOE) civilian research and development programs house enormous amounts of data. Although unclassified, some of the information in these systems is nevertheless sensitive and must be protected from inappropriate access or disclosure. For this reason, DOE property management regulations require the agency to clear the hard drives of all computers before they are transferred into the excess category for reuse or disposal. GAO found that DOE lacks standardized instructions, verification procedures, and training for agency and contract employees on how to properly clear excessed computers. DOE also does not ensure that procedures used to remove all software, information, and data from systems are effective. As a result, some of the excessed computers GAO inspected at DOE headquarters had information still stored on the hard drives."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Congress created the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) in 1997 to reduce the number of uninsured children in families with incomes that are too high to qualify for Medicaid. Financed jointly by the states and the federal government, SCHIP encourages state participation by offering a higher federal matching rate than the Medicaid program. Concerns have been raised that states might inappropriately enroll Medicaid-eligible children in SCHIP and thus obtain higher federal matching funds than allowed under Medicaid. The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (OIG) concluded that Medicaid-eligible children were not being enrolled in SCHIP by the 13 states that administer separate child health care programs. Furthermore, the issue of appropriate enrollment is not limited to states with completely separate child health programs but also applies to those states with combination programs and Medicaid expansions, which also receive the higher SCHIP matching rate. The OIG could not conclude whether states were reducing the number of uninsured children and meeting the objectives and goals they established in their SCHIP programs. The OIG found that some states had set program goals without considering …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Most major U.S. airlines began realizing net operating losses early in the 2001, and all of the major U.S. passenger carriers except Southwest Airlines reported losses for the year. Travelers throughout the nation shared in the difficulties. In October 2000, the typical or median small community that GAO analyzed had service from two airlines, with a total of nine daily departing flights. Forty-one percent of the communities were served by only one airline with size being the most obvious factor for service limitations. However, the level of service also varied by the level of local economic activity. The total number of daily departures from these small communities declined by 19 percent between October 2000 and October 2001. Although carriers had reduced total departure levels at small communities before September 11th, airlines made even more reductions after that date. Because profitability is so critical to airline decisions about what markets to serve and how to serve them, the changes in service levels in small communities can be traced to economic factors. Two such factors--the economic decline that began in early 2001 and the collapse of airline passenger …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Debt Collection Improvement Act of 1996 seeks to maximize the collection of billions of dollars of nontax delinquent debt owed to the federal government. The act requires agencies to refer eligible debts delinquent more than 180 days to the Department of the Treasury for payment offset and to Treasury or a Treasury-designated debt collection center for cross-servicing. The Treasury Offset Program includes the offset of benefit payments, vendor payments, and tax refunds. Cross-servicing involves locating debtors, issuing demand letters, and referring debts to private collection agencies. The Farm Service Agency (FSA) has initiatives to ensure the timely referral of all delinquent debt. However, the agency's failure to make the act a priority has left key provisions of the legislation unimplemented and has severely reduced opportunities for collection. FSA lacks effective procedures and controls to identify and promptly refer eligible delinquent debts to Treasury for collection action. GAO identified several obstacles to FSA's establishment and implementation of an effective and complete debt-referral process. In the four states with the highest dollar amounts of federal debt excluded from the Treasury Offset Program, GAO reviewed FSA's use of …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Debt Collection Improvement Act of 1996 seeks to maximize collections of delinquent nontax debt owed to the federal government. However, the act also seeks to reduce losses by requiring proper screening of potential borrowers and information sharing within and among federal agencies. The major information sources of data on delinquent federal debtors are credit bureau reports, the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Credit Alert Interactive Voice Response System (CAIVRS), and the Financial Management Service's (FMS) Treasury Offset Program's (TOP) database. There is no effective mechanism for federal implementation of the act's debtor bar provision. Although credit bureau reports, CAIVRS, and FMS's TOP database each contain some information on delinquent federal nontax debtors, none provides all-inclusive, timely data or maintains them long enough to serve as an adequate data source for successfully barring future financial assistance to currently delinquent debtors or those who did not meet their past obligations. The TOP database, with modifications, now provides an adequate reference point for identifying delinquent debtors to deny them additional financial assistance. Maximizing the TOP database as a delinquency reporting tool would require several changes, such as …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "To control the export of defense items, the U.S. government requires exporters to obtain a license from the State Department. A license is not required to export many defense items to Canada, currently the only country-specific exemption to the licensing requirement. In May 2000, the U.S. government announced the Defense Trade Security Initiative, which included a proposal to grant Canadian-like export licensing exemptions to other qualified countries. Since the initiative was announced, the State Department has been negotiating such exemptions with the United Kingdom and Australia. Exporters have been implementing the Canadian exemption inconsistently. Moreover, some exporters are interpreting reporting requirements about the use of the exemption differently. The U.S. government has mechanisms in place to reduce the risk of defense items being inappropriately exported, but there are associated limitations. U.S. Customs officials attributed these enforcement weaknesses to a lack of information and resources, including inspectors to staff ports. In addition, there are competing demands on the agency, which include the prevention of terrorism, and the interdiction of illicit drugs, illegal currency, and stolen vehicles. Experience with the Canadian exemption shows that three areas need to …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO reviewed federal agencies' use of "seat management"--an information technology (IT) outsourcing alternative for distributed computing services. Under "seat management," contractor-owned desktop and other computing hardware, software, and related services are bundled and provided on the basis of a fixed price per unit. No single overarching reason emerged for agencies adoption of seat management. The most common rationales were to improve IT management, improve user support and productivity, and upgrade agency IT. All six agencies GAO reviewed reported that their seat management approaches had yielded positive results, such as better IT management and desk-help support. However, GAO could not determine whether any of the agencies were achieving expected costs benefits because they did not perform sufficient up-front analyses of their baseline and projected costs and benefits or routinely monitor all actual seat management costs and benefits. Four of the six agencies identified risks associated with seat management, such as possible cost overruns, schedule delays, or contractor performance problems. However, none of the agencies prioritized their risks, and only one identified actions to mitigate risks before implementing seat management. Agencies and seat management contractors have identified the …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Since 1999, the Department of Education (Education) has offered a 0.25 percent interest rate reduction to borrowers who agree to an electronic debit (EDA) program. Borrowers pay a lower interest rate, while the federal government receives fewer late payments. Any revenue loss to the federal government from a reduced interest rate would be more than offset by a gain in revenue because some EDA borrowers who had previously paid by check would stop making periodic payments in excess of their scheduled amount due. By ceasing to make these prepayments, these borrowers would not pay off their loans as soon as they would have without signing up for EDA and, therefore, incur additional interest costs over the life of their loans. Although actual EDA enrollments have exceeded original estimates, Education lacks data on prepayment patterns after borrowers enroll in the program. Education has not informed borrowers of the cost implications of EDA participation, nor has it systematically informed borrowers of their prepayment options. GAO estimates that Education saved $1.5 million in administrative costs in fiscal year 2001 because it did not have to mail bills to EDA …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) runs two programs--the Heroin Signature Program and the Domestic Monitor Program--that provide information on trends in heroin trafficking. The only programs of their kind in this country, these two program conduct chemical analyses to pinpoint the geographic origin of heroin being sold on the streets. The Domestic Monitor Program determines (1) the source of heroin that has been bought undercover in 23 U.S. cities and (2) the purity and price of heroin at the retail level. The Heroin Signature Program provides law enforcement with information on the origins of heroin at the wholesale and retail level in some U.S. cities. Data from the two programs are included in intelligence and investigative reports provided to DEA and other federal law enforcement agencies, which use this information to adjust their drug enforcement efforts. The quantity of heroin seized by the Customs Service at ports-of-entry but not sent to DEA for testing may make a difference in the results reported by DEA. All seizures at ports-of-entry forwarded to DEA are tested for geographic source, according to DEA officials. However, Customs is not required to …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This report describes GAO's audits of expenditures reported by six offices of independent counsel and one office of special counsel for the six months ended September 2001. GAO found that the statements of expenditures for the offices of independent counsels and office of special counsel were presented fairly in all material respects. There were no material weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting (including safeguarding of assets) and no reportable noncompliance with the laws and regulations GAO tested."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Head Start and Even Start Family Literacy programs have sought to improve the educational and economic outcomes for millions of disadvantaged children and their families. Because the two programs seek similar outcomes for similar populations, GAO has pointed out that they need to work together to avoid inefficiencies in program administrative and service delivery. Questions have also arisen about the wisdom of having similar early childhood programs administered by different departments. Head Start's goal is to ensure that young children are ready for school, and program eligibility is tied to specific income guidelines. In contrast, Even Start's goal is to improve family literacy and the educational opportunities of both the parents and their young children. Even Start eligibility is tied to parents' educational attainment. Despite these differences, both programs are required to provide similar services. Both programs have some similar and some identical performance measures and outcome expectations for children, but not for parents. Head Start and Even Start grantees provided some similar services to young children and families, but how these programs served adults reflect the variations in the need of the parents. No …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In response to persistent security weaknesses at nuclear weapons facilities during the late 1990s, the Department of Energy (DOE) undertook several initiatives and Congress created the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) as a separate entity with DOE. DOE and NNSA have made progress in implementing many of the 75 initiatives undertaken since 1998. Lessons from these initiatives could help improve implementation of future efforts. DOE and NNSA have completed 64 percent of the initiatives, and most of the rest should be completed by December 2002. NNSA has begun a security organization and program to safeguard nuclear information and materials, but several key issues still need to be addressed to ensure the new program's effectiveness. NNSA has almost completed staffing the two new offices created to lead its security and counterintelligence activities and, with DOE, is completing a detailed review of security policies and procedures. NNSA has also begun specific activities, including training, to create a security-oriented culture in its organization."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "When computing their federal taxes, taxpayers either claim a standard or itemized deduction. In recent years, about 70 percent of taxpayers have claimed the standard deduction. GAO found that on 948,000 tax returns for tax year 1998, taxpayers did not itemize their deductions yet had payments for mortgage interest and points and for state and local income tax that exceeded the standard deductions for their filing status. GAO estimated that these taxpayers are likely to have overpaid their taxes by about $473 million. When charitable contributions, real estate and personal property tax payments are included, the total overpayment could reach $945 million."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Each year, fires on federal lands burn millions of acres and federal land management agencies spend hundreds of millions of dollars to fight them. Wildland fires also threaten communities adjacent to federal lands. The Departments of Agriculture (USDA) and the Interior, the lead federal agencies in fighting wildfires, jointly developed a long-term fire-fighting strategy in September 2000. Five federal land management agencies--the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the National Park Service, and the Fish and Wildlife Service--are working together to accomplish the plan's objectives. GAO found that the Forest Service and Interior have not effectively determined the amount of personnel and equipment needed to respond to and suppress wildland fires. Although the agencies have acquired considerably more personnel and equipment than were available in 2000, they have not acquired all of the resources needed to implement the new strategy. Despite having received substantial additional funding, the two agencies have not yet developed performance measures. The Forest Service simply measures the amount of fire-fighting resources it will be able to devote to fire fighting at each location, regardless of risk. …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Department of Homeland Security (DHS) organizations are expected to work together to protect the United States from terrorism. To support this primary mission, DHS has been acquiring billions of dollars worth of goods and services. DHS also has been working to integrate the disparate acquisition processes and systems that organizations brought with them when DHS was created 2 years ago. GAO was asked to identify (1) areas where DHS has been successful in promoting collaboration among its various organizations and (2) areas where DHS still faces challenges in integrating the acquisition function across the department. GAO was also asked to assess DHS's progress in implementing an effective review process for major, complex investments."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Social Security Administration (SSA) has issued more than 430 million Social Security numbers (SSN) and cards since the Social Security program began in 1935, of which an estimated 300 million belong to living number holders. SSNs have a key role in verifying individuals' authorization to work in the United States, but SSN cards are also vulnerable to theft and counterfeiting. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 requires that SSA consult with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), form a task force, establish standards for safeguarding the SSN and card, and provide for implementation by June 2006. Concerns about unauthorized workers and the use of counterfeit documents led the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee to ask that GAO (1) review SSA's progress to safeguard the SSN and enhance the card as required under the Intelligence Act, (2) identify key issues to be considered before enhancing the card, and (3) outline the range of options available to SSA for enhancing the card."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "More than 3 billion tons of regulated hazardous materials (hazmat)--including explosive, poisonous, corrosive, flammable, and radioactive materials--are transported in the United States each year. When these materials are properly packaged, labeled, and stowed, they can be transported safely, but when they are not, they can pose significant threats to transportation workers, emergency responders, and the general public because of the potential for accidents and incidents. Moreover, since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the security of such shipments, especially those that can be used as weapons of mass destruction, has attracted the attention of the transportation community, government officials, and emergency responders. In the wrong hands, hazardous materials could pose a significant security threat, and it is likely that terrorists who seek to use hazardous materials to harm Americans would move those materials as undeclared shipments. Federal officials are aware that undeclared shipments of hazmat occur and can have serious consequences. Federal hazmat experts believe that the most frequent explanations for undeclared shipments are (1) shipper's lack of knowledge--an unawareness or misunderstanding of the requirements for properly declaring and transporting hazmat--and (2) economic--an attempt to …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This is GAO's third report since the September 11 terrorist attacks that assesses progress that market participants and regulators have made to ensure the security and resiliency of our securities markets. This report examined (1) actions taken to improve the markets' capabilities to prevent and recover from attacks; (2) actions taken to improve disaster response and increase telecommunications resiliency; and (3) financial regulators' efforts to ensure market resiliency. GAO inspected physical and electronic security measures and business continuity capabilities using regulatory, government, and industry-established criteria and discussed improvement efforts with broker dealers, banks, regulators, telecommunications carriers, and trade associations."