A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Service members found unfit for duty due to a service-related illness or injury may be eligible for military disability retirement. When their disability is not stable, however, they may be placed on the military's Temporary Disability Retired List (TDRL) and granted temporary benefits for as long as 5 years. GAO was asked to respond to concerns about TDRL caseloads, management, and impact on servicemembers. To address these concerns, we analyzed TDRL data; interviewed military officials; reviewed laws, regulations, and other relevant documents; and conducted 12 focus groups with temporary retirees. This report examines (1) recent trends in the TDRL caseload size, (2) recent trends in the characteristics of those placed on the TDRL, (3) disability retirement outcomes for TDRL placements, (4) the adequacy of TDRL management, and (5) the adequacy of information provided to TDRL retirees."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Coast Guard manages a broad $27 billion major acquisition portfolio intended to modernize its ships, aircraft, command and control systems, and other capabilities. GAO has reported extensively on the Coast Guard's significant acquisition challenges, including project challenges in its Deepwater program. GAO's prior work on the Coast Guard acquisition programs identified problems in costs, management, and oversight, but it also recognized several steps the Coast Guard has taken to improve acquisition management. In response to the Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2010, GAO (1) assessed Coast Guard capabilities to manage its major acquisition programs, and (2) determined the extent to which the Coast Guard leverages Department of Defense (DOD) and other agency contracts or expertise to support its major acquisition programs. GAO reviewed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Coast Guard acquisition documents, GAO and DHS Inspector General reports, and selected DOD contracts; and interviewed Coast Guard, DHS, and DOD officials"

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "To accomplish its mission of protecting about 9,000 federal facilities, the Federal Protective Service (FPS) currently has a budget of about $1 billion, about 1,225 full-time employees, and about 15,000 contract security guards. FPS obligated $659 million for guard services in fiscal year 2009. This report assesses the challenges FPS faces in managing its guard contractors, overseeing guards deployed at federal facilities, and the actions, if any, FPS has taken to address these challenges. To address these objectives, GAO conducted site visits at 6 of FPS's 11 regions; interviewed FPS officials, guards, and contractors; and analyzed FPS's contract files. GAO also conducted covert testing at 10 judgmentally selected level IV facilities in four cities. A level IV facility has over 450 employees and a high volume of public contact."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. Coast Guard manages a broad major acquisition portfolio. GAO has reported extensively on the Coast Guard's significant challenges with its major acquisition programs, including its Deepwater Program. GAO has also recognized steps the Coast Guard has taken to improve acquisition management. Additionally, GAO has recommended that the Coast Guard complete a review of the Deepwater Program to clarify the mix of assets that are needed to meet mission needs and trade-offs while considering fiscal constraints, because the program had exceeded its $24.2 billion baseline. This testimony updates (1) Coast Guard efforts to manage major acquisitions, (2) challenges programs are facing in the areas of cost and schedule, and (3) the status of the Deepwater fleet mix analysis. This statement is largely based on GAO-11-480, which is being issued today. In that report, GAO recommended that the Coast Guard formalize its database of agreements with the Department of Defense (DOD). The Department of Homeland Security agreed with the recommendation. This statement also draws from prior GAO reports and ongoing work related to Deepwater. GAO reviewed the first phase of the Coast Guard's fleet mix analysis, contract documents, …

Other written product issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This report presents the Government Accountability Office's (GAO) Performance Plan for Fiscal Year 2010. In the spirit of the Government Performance and Results Act, this annual plan informs the Congress and the American people about what we expect to accomplish on their behalf in the coming fiscal year. It sets forth our plan to make progress toward achieving our strategic goals for serving the Congress and the American people. This framework not only shows the relationship between our strategic goals and strategic objectives, but also show major themes that could potentially affect our work."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Along with private mortgage providers, the Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has been impacted by technological advances that began in the mid-1990s and that have significantly affected the way the mortgage industry works. As a result, in 2004, FHA implemented Technology Open to Approved Lenders (TOTAL) Scorecard--an automated tool that evaluates the majority of new loans insured by FHA. However, questions have emerged about the effectiveness of TOTAL. Given these concerns, you asked GAO to evaluate the way the agency developed and uses this new tool. This report looks at (1) the reasonableness of FHA's approach to developing TOTAL and (2) the potential benefits to HUD of expanding its use of TOTAL."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "A genuine U.S. passport is a vital document, permitting its owner to travel freely into and out of the United States, prove U.S. citizenship, obtain further identification documents, and set up bank accounts, among other things. Since May 2005, we have issued several reports identifying significant fraud vulnerabilities in the passport issuance process. This report (1) describes our recent work on passport fraud and (2) summarizes actions the Department of State (State) has indicated it is taking to address the fraud vulnerabilities we identified."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The United States is the largest global food aid donor, accounting for over half of all food aid supplies to alleviate hunger and support development. Since 2002, Congress has appropriated an average of $2 billion per year for U.S. food aid programs, which delivered an average of 4 million metric tons of food commodities per year. Despite growing demand for food aid, rising business and transportation costs have contributed to a 52 percent decline in average tonnage delivered over the last 5 years. These costs represent 65 percent of total emergency food aid, highlighting the need to maximize its efficiency and effectiveness. Based on analysis of agency documents, interviews with experts and practitioners, and fieldwork, this report examines some key challenges to the (1) efficiency of U.S. food aid programs and (2) effective use of U.S. food aid."

A statement of record issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) information management initiatives, focusing on the: (1) status of EPA's efforts to create a central office responsible for information management, policy, and technology issues; and (2) major challenges that the new office needs to address to achieve success in collecting, using, and disseminating environmental information."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Securing transportation systems and facilities requires balancing security to address potential threats while facilitating the flow of people and goods that are critical to the U.S. economy and necessary for supporting international commerce. As we have previously reported, these systems and facilities are vulnerable and difficult to secure given their size, easy accessibility, large number of potential targets, and proximity to urban areas. To help enhance the security of these systems and facilities, the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002 (MTSA) required the Secretary of Homeland Security to prescribe regulations preventing individuals from having unescorted access to secure areas of MTSA-regulated facilities and vessels unless they both possess a biometric transportation security card and are authorized to be in such an area. MTSA further tasked the Secretary with the responsibility to issue biometric transportation security cards to eligible individuals unless the Secretary determines that an applicant poses a security risk warranting denial of the card. The Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) program is designed to implement these biometric maritime security card requirements. The program requires maritime workers to undergo a background check to obtain a biometric identification card. …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In 2010, the Department of Defense (DOD) estimated that corrosion costs the DOD over $22.9 billion annually. Corrosion negatively affects all military assets, including both equipment and infrastructure, and is defined as the unintended destruction or deterioration of a material due to its interaction with the environment. Corrosion also affects military readiness, taking critical systems out of action and creating safety hazards. Congress has enacted several legislative requirements to address the high cost of corrosion on military equipment and infrastructure, including legislation that created the Office of Corrosion Policy and Oversight (Corrosion Office) within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics. The Corrosion Office is responsible for the prevention and mitigation of corrosion of military equipment and infrastructure and, according to officials, manages funding for DOD-wide corrosion prevention and control (CPC) activities and CPC projects proposed by the Military Departments. Section 2228(e) of Title 10 of the United States Code requires DOD to annually report on CPC funding to Congress. Additionally, the Duncan Hunter National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009 required each Military Department's corrosion control and prevention executive to …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO prepared this report under the Comptroller General's authority to conduct evaluations on his own initiative to assist Congress. Federal real property is a high-risk area due to excess and deteriorating property, reliance on costly leasing, unreliable data, and security challenges. GAO's objectives were to determine (1) what progress the administration and major real property-holding agencies have made in strategically managing real property and addressing long-standing problems and (2) what problems and obstacles, if any, remain to be addressed. GAO reviewed documents and interviewed officials from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and nine agencies that hold 93 percent of federal property."

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."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to help protect investors and restore investor confidence. While the act has generally been recognized as important and necessary, some concerns have been expressed about the cost for small businesses. In this report, GAO (1) analyzes the impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on smaller public companies, particularly in terms of compliance costs; (2) describes responses of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) to concerns raised by smaller public companies; and (3) analyzes smaller public companies' access to auditing services and the extent to which the share of public companies audited by mid-sized and small accounting firms has changed since the act was passed."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In January 2005, GAO released its 2005 high-risk series update report for the 109th Congress. GAO's high-risk series has increasingly focused on major government programs and operations that need urgent attention and transformation to ensure that the U.S. government functions in the most economical, efficient, and effective manner possible. GAO also emphasizes those federal programs and operations that are at high risk because of their greater vulnerabilities to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. Of the 25 areas on GAO's 2005 high-risk list, 8 are Department of Defense (DOD) programs or operations and 6 are governmentwide high-risk areas for which DOD shares some responsibility. These high-risk areas touch on all of DOD's major business operations. DOD's failure to effectively address these many high-risk areas results in billions of dollars of waste each year and inadequate accountability to Congress and the American people. Congress asked GAO to provide its views on (1) DOD's high-risk areas, including those it shares responsibility for with other federal agencies; (2) an emerging challenge for DOD that merits close attention, involving DOD's approach to risk management; and (3) key elements, such as a chief management …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses the findings from our recent work on fragmentation, overlap, and potential duplication in federally funded programs that support teacher quality. We recently issued a report addressing fragmentation, overlap, and potential duplication in federal programs that outlined opportunities to reduce potential duplication across a wide range of federal programs, including teacher quality programs. Our recent work on teacher quality programs builds on a long history of work where we identified a number of education programs with similar goals, beneficiaries, and allowable activities that are administered by multiple federal agencies. This work may help inform congressional deliberations over how to prioritize spending given the rapidly building fiscal pressures facing our nation's government. In recent years, the Department of Education (Education) has faced expanded responsibilities that have challenged the department to strategically allocate resources to balance new duties with ongoing ones. For example, we reported the number of grants Education awarded increased from about 14,000 in 2000 to about 21,000 just 2 years later and has since remained around 18,000, even as the number of full-time equivalent staff decreased by 13 percent from fiscal years 2000 to 2009. …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the: (1) accuracy, completeness, and usefulness of the information Medicare managed care organizations (MCO) distribute about their plans' benefit packages; (2) extent to which MCOs inform beneficiaries of their plan appeal rights and the appeals process; and (3) Health Care Financing Administration's (HCFA) review, approval, and oversight of the plan information that MCOs distribute."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the cost and realization of national security objectives at Russia's Mayak nuclear complex and Shchuch'ye chemical weapons storage depot, focusing on whether the: (1) Mayak project will be completed on schedule and within past Department of Defense (DOD) estimates of its total cost to the United States; (2) United States has made progress in ensuring that the completed Mayak facility would achieve U.S. national security objectives by safely and securely storing retired materials taken only from dismantled nuclear weapons; (3) Shchuch'ye project will be completed on schedule and the status of DOD efforts to estimate its total cost to the United States; and (4) completed Shchuch'ye facility will achieve U.S. national security objectives by helping Russia destroy the Shchuch'ye depot's stocks and accelerate elimination of all Russian chemical weapons under the Chemical Weapons Convention."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for overseeing medical devices sold in the United States. In general, new devices are subject to FDA review via either the 510(k) premarket notification process, which determines if a device is substantially equivalent to another legally marketed device, or the more stringent premarket approval (PMA) process, which requires the manufacturer to supply evidence providing reasonable assurance that the device is safe and effective. FDA also has broad responsibilities for postmarket surveillance of devices, including oversight of recalls. A recall involves the correction or removal of a product from the market and is an important remedial action that can mitigate the risks associated with a defective or unsafe medical device. In recent years, GAO has identified a wide variety of concerns related to FDA's ability to fulfill its mission of protecting the public health and added FDA's oversight of medical products, including devices, to its list of high-risk areas. This statement provides an update on FDA's actions in response to a recommendation made in GAO's report, Medical Devices: FDA Should Take Steps to Ensure That High-Risk Device Types Are Approved through …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Federal agencies have created ombudsmen offices to expedite the resolution of employees' complaints about workplace issues. An ombudsman provides an informal alternative to more formal administrative processes in the workplace, using various techniques and often working "outside the box" to deal with conflicts and other organizational disputes. GAO found that the number of ombudsman offices handling workplace issues in federal agencies is small but is expected to grow. These offices deal with a wide range of workplace issues, from helping employees get answers to questions about agency policies and cutting through "red tape" to more serious situations, such as allegations about employment discrimination. In studying the ombudsmen offices at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), and the U.S. Secret Service, GAO found some common approaches as well as some differences in their operations. Common to all three offices was their broad responsibility and authority to deal with almost any workplace issue, their ability to bring systemic issues to management's attention, and the way in which they worked with other agency offices in providing assistance to employees. But how they were structured …

Other written product issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In 1981, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) began a program to modernize the national airspace system and a primary component, the air traffic control (ATC) system. The ATC component of this program, which is designed to replace aging equipment and accommodate predicted growth in air traffic, has had difficulty for more than two decades in meeting cost, schedule, and performance targets. The performance-based Air Traffic Organization (ATO) was created in February 2004 to improve the management of the modernization effort. On October 7, 2004, GAO hosted a panel to discuss attempts to address the ATC modernization program's persistent problems. Participants discussed the factors that they believed have affected FAA's ability to acquire new ATC systems. Participants also identified steps that FAA's ATO could take in the short term to address these factors, as well as longer term steps that could be taken to improve the modernization program's chances of success and help the ATO achieve its mission. The participants included domestic and foreign aviation experts from industry, government, private think tanks, and academia. They are recognized for their expertise in aviation safety, economics, and engineering; transportation …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The anthrax attacks of 2001 and a radiation leak after the recent natural disaster in Japan highlighted concerns that the United States is vulnerable to threats from chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) agents, which can cause widespread illness and death. Medical countermeasures--such as drugs, vaccines, and diagnostic devices--can prevent or treat the health effects of exposure, but few are currently available for many of these CBRN agents. GAO was asked to testify on the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) CBRN medical countermeasure development and acquisition activities. This statement focuses on (1) how HHS determines needed CBRN medical countermeasures and priorities for development and acquisition and (2) selected challenges to medical countermeasure development and acquisition. This statement of preliminary findings is based on ongoing work. To do this work, GAO examined relevant laws and presidential directives, analyzed federal agency documents and reports from advisory boards and expert groups, and interviewed officials from HHS and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) about the processes for developing and acquiring CBRN medical countermeasures and the challenges related to those efforts. GAO shared the information in this statement with HHS. …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) fiscal year (FY) 2000 budget request and the status of the 1999 filing season."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Customs Service's management of its Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) system."