Government Transparency: Efforts to Improve Information on Federal Spending (open access)

Government Transparency: Efforts to Improve Information on Federal Spending

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 …
Date: July 18, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
System: The UNT Digital Library
General Aviation Security: TSA's Process for Ensuring Foreign Flight Students Do Not Pose a Security Risk Has Weaknesses (open access)

General Aviation Security: TSA's Process for Ensuring Foreign Flight Students Do Not Pose a Security Risk Has Weaknesses

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "TSA and aircraft operators have taken several important actions to enhance general aviation security, and TSA is working with aviation industry stakeholders to develop new security guidelines and regulations. Among other measures, TSA worked with members of the General Aviation Working Group of its Aviation Security Advisory Committee in 2003 and 2004 to develop recommended guidelines for general aviation airport security, and TSA expects the group to issue updated guidelines later this year. In addition, pursuant to the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, TSA established and oversees implementation of a security program in which aircraft weighing more than 12,500 pounds in scheduled or charter service that carry passengers or cargo or both, and that do not fall under another security program, must implement a “Twelve-Five” standard security program. Aircraft operators implementing a Twelve-Five security program must include, among other elements, procedures regarding bomb or air piracy threats. TSA obtains information directly from aircraft operators that fall under Twelve-Five through its review and approval of the security programs developed by these operators and through periodic inspections to determine the extent to which operators comply with their security programs. TSA …
Date: July 18, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
System: The UNT Digital Library
2020 Census: Sustaining Current Reform Efforts Will Be Key to a More Cost-Effective Enumeration (open access)

2020 Census: Sustaining Current Reform Efforts Will Be Key to a More Cost-Effective Enumeration

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Overall, the U.S. Census Bureau’s (Bureau) planning efforts for 2020 are off to a good start, as the Bureau made noteworthy progress within each of the four lessons learned from the 2010 Census. Still, additional steps will be needed within each of the lessons learned in order to sustain those reforms."
Date: July 18, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
System: The UNT Digital Library
ARM Operations Quarterly Report - April - June 2012 (open access)

ARM Operations Quarterly Report - April - June 2012

Individual raw datastreams from instrumentation at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility fixed and mobile sites are collected and sent to the Data Management Facility (DMF) at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) for processing in near real-time. Raw and processed data are then sent approximately daily to the ARM Data Archive, where they are made available to the research community. For each instrument, we calculate the ratio of the actual number of processed data records received daily at the Archive to the expected number of data records. The results are tabulated by (1) individual datastream, site, and month for the current year and (2) site and fiscal year (FY) dating back to 1998.
Date: July 18, 2012
Creator: Voyles, JW
System: The UNT Digital Library