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."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) report progress developing capable Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), but tools used to assess the performance of ANSF units have changed several times. In April 2012, DOD reported progress increasing the number and capability of ANSF, with 7 percent of army units and 9 percent of police units rated at the highest level of capability. GAO has previously found the tools used by DOD and NATO to assess ANSF reliable enough to support broad statements regarding capability. However, issues related to these tools exist. When GAO reported on ANA capability in January 2011, the highest capability rating level was “independent”—meaning that a unit was capable of executing the full spectrum of its missions without assistance from coalition forces. As of August 2011, the highest level had changed to “independent with advisors”—meaning that a unit was capable of executing its mission and can call for coalition forces when necessary. DOD reports, these changes, as well as the elimination of certain requirements for validating units, were partly responsible for the increase in ANSF units rated at the highest …

This report is an appendix to the Hawaii WindHUI efforts to dev elop and operationalize short-term wind forecasting and wind ramp event forecasting capabilities. The report summarizes the WindNET field campaign deployment experiences and challenges. As part of the WindNET project on the Big Island of Hawaii, AWS Truepower (AWST) conducted a field campaign to assess the viability of deploying a network of monitoring systems to aid in local wind energy forecasting. The data provided at these monitoring locations, which were strategically placed around the Big Island of Hawaii based upon results from the Oahu Wind Integration and Transmission Study (OWITS) observational targeting study (Figure 1), provided predictive indicators for improving wind forecasts and developing responsive strategies for managing real-time, wind-related system events. The goal of the field campaign was to make measurements from a network of remote monitoring devices to improve 1- to 3-hour look ahead forecasts for wind facilities.

This report is an appendix to the Hawaii WindHUI efforts to develop and operationalize short-term wind forecasting and wind ramp event forecasting capabilities. The report summarizes the WindNET Phase 1 efforts on the Big Island of Hawaii and includes descriptions of modeling methodologies, use of field validation data, results and recommendations. The objective of the WindNET project was to investigate the improvement that could be obtained in short-term wind power forecasting for wind generation facilities operating on the island grids operated by Hawaiian Electric Companies through the use of atmospheric sensors deployed at targeted locations. WindNET is envisioned as a multiphase project that will address the short-term wind forecasting issues of all of the wind generation facilities on the all of the Hawaiian Electric Companies' island grid systems. The first phase of the WindNET effort (referred to as WindNET-1) was focused on the wind generation facilities on the Big Island of Hawaii. With complex terrain and marine environment, emphasis was on improving the 0 to 6 hour forecasts of wind power ramps and periods of wind variability, with a particular interest in the intra-hour (0-1 hour) look-ahead period. The WindNET project was built upon a foundation that was constructed with …

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.

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Over the past 10 years, DHS has made significant progress in deploying radiation detection equipment to scan for nuclear or radiological materials in nearly all trucks and containerized cargo coming into the United Stated through seaports and border crossings. However, challenges remain for the agency in developing a similar scanning capability for railcars entering this country from Canada and Mexico, as well as for international air cargo and international commercial aviation. As portal monitors approach the end of their expected service lives, observations from our past work may help DHS as it considers options to refurbish or replace such monitors. Among other things, we have previously reported that DHS should (1) test new equipment rigorously prior to acquisition and deployment, (2) obtain the full concurrence of the end user to ensure that new equipment meets operational needs, and (3) conduct a cost-benefit analysis to inform any acquisition decisions. In our past work on the GNDA, we recommended that DHS develop an overarching strategic plan to guide the development of the GDNA, as well as a strategic plan for the domestic part of the global nuclear detection strategy. DHS …

Version 1.0 glossary of terms for converting National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data to hate crime data.

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "We identified four categories of assistance U.S. agencies have provided: (1) counter-IED training and equipment, (2) a counter-IED public awareness campaign, (3) training of border officials, and (4) legal assistance for laws and regulations to counter IEDs and IED precursors. We found that each agency providing counter-IED assistance to Pakistan performs a unique role based on its specialized knowledge and expertise. DHS, for example, takes primary responsibility for border management and customs investigation training. DHS conducts joint regional training and operational exercises for both Pakistani and Afghan border officials, including international border interdiction training and cross-border financial investigation training. DHS also plays a lead role in Program Global Shield to foster cross-border cooperation and initiate complementary border management and customs operations. According to DHS, the main goals of Program Global Shield are (1) to identify and interdict falsely declared explosive precursor chemicals, (2) to initiate investigations of smuggled or illegally diverted IED materials, and (3) to uncover smuggling and procurement networks that foster illicit trade."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The November 2011 memorandum that discussed the management of the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program was prepared based primarily on the observations of the Director of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Infrastructure Compliance Security Division (ISCD), a component of the Office of Infrastructure Protection (IP) within the National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD). The memorandum was intended to highlight various challenges that have hindered ISCD efforts to implement the CFATS program. According to the Director, the challenges facing ISCD included not having a fully developed direction and plan for implementing the program, hiring staff without establishing need, and inconsistent ISCD leadership—factors that the Director believed place the CFATS program at risk. These challenges centered on human capital issues, including problems hiring, training, and managing ISCD staff; mission issues, including overcoming problems reviewing facility plans to mitigate security vulnerabilities and performing compliance inspections; and administrative issues, including concerns about NPPD and IP not supporting ISCD’s management and administrative functions."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The threats to systems supporting critical infrastructures are evolving and growing. In testimony, the Director of National Intelligence noted a dramatic increase in cyber activity targeting U.S. computers and systems, including a more than tripling of the volume of malicious software. Varying types of threats from numerous sources can adversely affect computers, software, networks, organizations, entire industries, and the Internet itself. These include both unintentional and intentional threats, and may come in the form of targeted or untargeted attacks from criminal groups, hackers, disgruntled employees, nations, or terrorists. The interconnectivity between information systems, the Internet, and other infrastructures can amplify the impact of these threats, potentially affecting the operations of critical infrastructures, the security of sensitive information, and the flow of commerce. Moreover, the electricity grid’s reliance on IT systems and networks exposes it to potential and known cybersecurity vulnerabilities, which could be exploited by attackers. The potential impact of such attacks has been illustrated by a number of recently reported incidents and can include fraudulent activities, damage to electricity control systems, power outages, and failures in safety equipment."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Navy follows the five basic guiding principles for managing risk at the strategic, environmental, and operational levels before making decisions about the placement and operation of its force structure—including the placement of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers on the East Coast of the United States. The Navy does not conduct any unique risk assessment for its nuclear-powered aircraft carriers at naval installations; rather, nuclear-powered aircraft carriers are high-value assets that are included in the Navy’s overall risk management process. At the strategic level, Office of the Secretary of the Navy and Office of the Chief of Naval Operations headquarters staff have identified and analyzed risks, such as emerging threats from hostile nation-states, which could make demands on homeland defense capabilities. Since 2004, according to Navy officials, the Navy has been using its strategic laydown and dispersal methodology in dividing its force structure and assets between the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets. In addition, officials stated that there may be adjustments to the Navy’s current split of assets between the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets based on direction from the President that is reflected in DOD’s January 2012 defense strategic guidance, which …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The termination of the six defined benefit plans the Delphi Corporation (Delphi) sponsored, and the provision of benefit protections to some Delphi employees but not others, culminated from a complex series of events involving Delphi, the General Motors Corporation (GM), various unions, the U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury), and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC). When Delphi spun off from GM in 1999, three unions secured an agreement that GM would provide a retirement benefit supplement (referred to as "top-ups") for their members should their pension plans be frozen or terminated and they were to suffer a resulting loss in pension benefits. These three unions were: (1) the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW); (2) the International Union of Electronic, Electrical, Salaried, Machine and Furniture Workers, AFL-CIO (IUE); and (3) the United Steelworkers of America (USWA). No other Delphi employees had a similar agreement to receive a top-up, including salaried workers and hourly workers belonging to other unions. Over the course of events that unfolded over the next decade, the agreements with these three unions ultimately were preserved through the resolution …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Prior Department of Defense (DOD) civilian workforce downsizing efforts in the 1990s were not oriented toward shaping the makeup of the workforce, resulting in significant imbalances in terms of shape, skills, and retirement eligibility. Specifically, in a series of reviews GAO found that DOD’s efforts in the 1990s to reduce its federal civilian workforce to levels below that of 1987 were hampered by incomplete data and lack of a clear strategy for avoiding skill imbalances and other adverse effects of downsizing. For instance, in 1992, GAO found that DOD used incomplete and inconsistent data related to workers, workload, and projected force reductions. Further, the approaches DOD has relied on to accomplish downsizing have sometimes had unintended consequences. The use of voluntary attrition, hiring freezes, and financial separation incentives allowed DOD to mitigate some adverse effects of civilian workforce reductions, but were less oriented toward shaping the makeup of the workforce than was the approach the department used to manage its military downsizing. For DOD, this was especially true of the civilian acquisition workforce. The department, which in 2011 obligated about $375 billion to acquire goods and services, was …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "To implement the 2010 National Drug Control Strategy, ONDCP obtained input from drug control stakeholders to help ensure that they shared responsibility for implementation, established a new process to determine progress made, and reported that most action items in the Strategy were on track or complete as of November 2011. ONDCP officials stated that they developed the 2010 Strategy’s seven objectives—for example, Strengthen Efforts to Prevent Drug Use in Our Communities—and 106 action items under these objectives through a consultative process with federal, state, and local drug control agencies and other stakeholders. Officials from the four agencies we spoke with as of April 2012 stated that ONDCP sought input from them to develop the Strategy and that as a result, existing agency priorities and activities are reflected in the Strategy. ONDCP officials stated that this alignment helps facilitate Strategy implementation. In August 2010, ONDCP initiated a process to track progress made on Strategy action items. As part of this process, ONDCP requested that each agency develop and submit (1) a plan for implementing each action item for which it has lead responsibility and (2) status updates on implementation …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In summary, 761 hospitals and 56,585 professionals were awarded a total of approximately $2.3 billion in Medicare EHR incentive payments for 2011. These 761 hospitals represented 16 percent of the estimated 4,855 eligible hospitals, and were awarded $1.3 billion in Medicare EHR incentive payments for 2011. While the amount of EHR incentive payments awarded to each hospital ranged from $22,300 to $4.4 million, the median payment amount was $1.7 million. About 61 percent of hospitals accounted for about 80 percent of the total amount of incentive payments awarded to hospitals. Among hospitals awarded an incentive payment for 2011, we found that"

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In summary, BOP uses different factors in estimating the daily costs of its facilities and community corrections and incorporating certain additional factors would increase the daily cost per inmate for its facilities. Specifically, BOP estimates daily costs per inmate for its prison facilities using operational costs such as staff salaries and training, inmate food, and medical supplies, among other things, but does not include factors such as construction of new prisons, certain modernization and repair (M&R) projects, or depreciation of its existing facilities. According to BOP, these M&R projects and depreciation are incorporated into budget requests, financial statements, and a user fee BOP computes to bill states for the full costs of housing state prisoners. Adding these costs into BOP’s estimates would raise the costs from between $4.39 and $4.82 per day per inmate for the last 3 fiscal years. For community corrections, BOP estimates daily costs using the contract per diem rates paid to the private companies that operate RRCs and monitor inmates on home detention and the costs of management and oversight by BOP Community Corrections officials and subtracts out subsistence fees paid by inmates in …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO’s preliminary results indicate that the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Federal Protective Service (FPS) is not assessing risks at federal facilities in a manner consistent with standards such as the National Infrastructure Protection Plan’s (NIPP) risk management framework, as FPS originally planned. Instead of conducting risk assessments, since September 2011, FPS’s inspectors have collected information, such as the location, purpose, agency contacts, and current countermeasures (e.g., perimeter security, access controls, and closed-circuit television systems). This information notwithstanding, FPS has a backlog of federal facilities that have not been ssessed for several years. According to FPS’s data, more than 5,000 facilities were to be assessed in fiscal years 2010 through 2012. However, GAO was not able to determine the extent of FPS’s facility security assessment (FSA) backlog because the data were unreliable. Multiple agencies have expended resources to conduct risk assessments, even though they also already pay FPS for this service."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "USAID obligated and expended most of the ESF assistance to the West Bank and Gaza appropriated for fiscal years 2010 and 2011. Of the total $789 million provided for West Bank and Gaza assistance over the 2 years, USAID had obligated 96 percent and expended 70 percent by the end of April 2012. USAID obligated about $410 million for 26 development projects and $350 million in budget support to the PA over the 2 fiscal years. USAID provided the most assistance to the water resources and infrastructure sector, about 56 percent of total project obligations."

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 …

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 …

An agency summary issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Closeout is an important final point of grants accountability. It helps to ensure that grantees have met all financial and reporting requirements. It also allows federal agencies to identify and redirect unused funds to other projects and priorities as authorized or to return unspent balances to the Department of the Treasury (Treasury). At the end of fiscal year 2011, GAO identified more than $794 million in funding remaining in expired grant accounts (accounts that were more than 3 months past the grant end date and had no activity for 9 months or more) in the Payment Management System (PMS). GAO found that undisbursed balances remained in some grant accounts several years past their expiration date: $110.9 million in undisbursed funding remained unspent more than 5 years past the grant end date, including $9.5 million that remained unspent for 10 years or more. Nevertheless, the more than $794 million in undisbursed balances remaining in PMS represents an improvement in closing out expired grant accounts with undisbursed balances in PMS compared to the approximately $1 billion GAO found in 2008. This improvement is notable given that the overall …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "We found that multiple Title IV programs and tax expenditures provided substantial aid to populations across income levels. In 2009, 12.8 million students received Title IV aid, and approximately 18 million tax filers claimed a higher education tax benefit for current expenses. The number of students receiving Title IV aid increased from 10.4 million to 12.8 million, or 23 percent, from 2006 to 2009. The number of tax filers benefiting from an education tax expenditure was larger, and increased from 14.4 million to 18 million, or 25 percent, from 2006 to 2009. Recent increases in both Title IV aid and tax expenditures from 2008 to 2009 may be because of enrollment increases and legislative actions, among other factors. Title IV grants tend to benefit students and families with incomes below the national median (about $52,000 from 2006 to 2010), while loans and work-study serve these students as well as students at family incomes above the median. Most tax benefits from the tuition and fees deduction and the parental exemption for dependent students went to families with incomes above $60,000, whereas the majority of benefits from the other higher …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The IMF is proceeding with its plan for creating an endowment for operations and increasing its resources for low-income country lending using the approximately $8 billion in gold sales profits it had projected earning from the 2009–2010 sales. First, the IMF is working to establish the approximately $7 billion endowment to partially fund IMF operations. The Board is expected to finalize the endowment’s investment strategy and governance structure in calendar year 2012 with implementation in financial year 2013,6 according to IMF documents and staff. IMF and U.S. Treasury officials said the Board understood that it would require some time to take the needed actions, including adopting new rules and regulations, to create the endowment for operations. The Board is discussing various aspects of the endowment’s investment strategy, such as acceptable risk levels, and governance structure, such as using external managers to help avoid potential conflicts of interests. Second, the Board approved a strategy for the use of about $1 billion in gold sales profits to subsidize concessional lending to low-income countries through the PRG Trust. Implementation of the Board decision depends on the IMF receiving sufficient assurances from …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "During our audit of the Commission’s fiscal years 2011 and 2010 financial statements, we identified the following internal control deficiencies that, collectively, constituted a significant deficiency in the Commission’s internal control over financial reporting as of September 30, 2011."