A Guide to Women's Equal Pay Rights (open access)

A Guide to Women's Equal Pay Rights

This guide looks at women's equal pay rights.
Date: April 2012
Creator: United States. Women's Bureau.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Equal Pay: An Employer's Guide to Equal Pay (open access)

Equal Pay: An Employer's Guide to Equal Pay

This guide seeks to inform employers on major laws affecting equal pay and practices.
Date: April 2012
Creator: United States. Women's Bureau.
System: The UNT Digital Library
2012 Edition of the Drinking Water Standards and Health Advisories (open access)

2012 Edition of the Drinking Water Standards and Health Advisories

This document by the EPA's Office of Water presents data on the concentrations of drinking water contaminants.
Date: April 2012
Creator: United States. Environmental Protection Agency. Office of Water.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Climate Research Facility Operations Quarterly Report January 1–March 31, 2012 (open access)

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Climate Research Facility Operations Quarterly Report January 1–March 31, 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: April 13, 2012
Creator: Voyles, J. W.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Supplement to Substantive Rules Applicable to Electric Service Providers (open access)

Supplement to Substantive Rules Applicable to Electric Service Providers

Updated rules supplement to the Substantive Rules for Electric Service Providers.
Date: April 6, 2012
Creator: Texas. Public Utility Commission.
System: The Portal to Texas History
Diversity Partnership Success: Together We Will Achieve More (open access)

Diversity Partnership Success: Together We Will Achieve More

Advertisement and registration form for the HUB Procurement Connection Seminar and Expo in Austin, Texas on June 18, 2012.
Date: April 2012
Creator: Texas. Statewide Historically Underutilized Business Program.
System: The Portal to Texas History
Disciplinary Rules and Procedures for Offenders (open access)

Disciplinary Rules and Procedures for Offenders

Document detailing the disciplinary rules and procedures for offenders in the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Correctional Institutions Division.
Date: April 2012
Creator: Texas. Department of Criminal Justice.
System: The Portal to Texas History
Good-Time Loss Limits: Proposed Changes (open access)

Good-Time Loss Limits: Proposed Changes

Chart showing the statistical breakdown of changes to inmate penalties for infractions against good behavior.
Date: April 2012
Creator: Texas. Department of Criminal Justice.
System: The Portal to Texas History
Reglas Y Procedimientos Disciplinarios para los Presos (open access)

Reglas Y Procedimientos Disciplinarios para los Presos

Spanish-language copy of a document detailing disciplinary rules and procedures for prisoners, from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Correctional Institutions Division.
Date: April 2012
Creator: Texas. Department of Criminal Justice.
System: The Portal to Texas History
Tabla Límites de Pérdida de Tiempo Bueno (open access)

Tabla Límites de Pérdida de Tiempo Bueno

Chart showing the statistical breakdown of changes to inmate penalties for infractions against good behavior.
Date: April 2012
Creator: Texas. Department of Criminal Justice.
System: The Portal to Texas History
Farm Bill: Issues to Consider for Reauthorization (open access)

Farm Bill: Issues to Consider for Reauthorization

Other written product issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) seek to enhance the efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability of the federal government. As Congress debates ways to address the federal government’s long-term fiscal imbalance, it becomes even more critical that we help with this challenge by identifying opportunities for cost-savings and for improving programs to ensure that every dollar counts."
Date: April 24, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Financial Literacy: Enhancing the Effectiveness of the Federal Government's Role (open access)

Financial Literacy: Enhancing the Effectiveness of the Federal Government's Role

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The federal government plays a wide-ranging role in promoting financial literacy. Efforts to improve financial literacy in the United States involve an array of public, nonprofit, and private participants, but among those participants, the federal government is distinctive for its size and reach and for the diversity of its components, which address a wide range of issues and populations. At forums of financial literacy experts that GAO held in 2004 and 2011, participants noted that the federal government can use its “bully pulpit,” convening power, and other tools to draw attention to the issue, and serve as an objective and unbiased source of information about the selection of financial products and services. In prior work, GAO cited a 2009 report by the RAND Corporation in which 20 federal agencies self-identified as having 56 federal financial literacy programs, but GAO’s subsequent analysis found substantial inconsistency in how different agencies defined and counted financial literacy programs. Based on a more consistent set of criteria, GAO identified 16 significant financial literacy programs or activities among 14 federal agencies, as well as 4 housing counseling programs among 3 federally supported entities, in …
Date: April 26, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Patent and Trademark Office: New User Fee Design Presents Opportunities to Build on Transparency and Communication Success (open access)

Patent and Trademark Office: New User Fee Design Presents Opportunities to Build on Transparency and Communication Success

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "To successfully manage AIA implementation, USPTO must consider a number of trade-offs as it sets and uses its over 340 fees, as well as maintain an effective fee review process. USPTO officials have stated that the agency’s limited fee-setting authority prior to the AIA and uncertainty about the extent to which its collections would be available contributed to a number of the agency’s operational challenges, such as the current backlog of over 640,000 patent applications and patent application processing time of over 30 months. They said fees that generated over 80 percent of USPTO’s revenues were set in statute, limiting the agency’s ability to ensure that total collections kept pace with total costs as its workload has grown. USPTO can only use its fee collections to the extent that Congress makes them available. In the past, Congress has in some years made available less than the total amount collected; there has been significant debate about the status and use of these fees collected in excess of amounts appropriated."
Date: April 25, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Community Development Financial Institutions and New Markets Tax Credit Programs in Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan Areas (open access)

Community Development Financial Institutions and New Markets Tax Credit Programs in Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan Areas

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The policies and procedures of the CDFI and NMTC Programs help ensure that awards and allocations generally are proportionate to the numbers of qualified applicants that serve metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas. The CDFI Program’s authorizing legislation and regulations require that award recipients constitute a geographically diverse group, serving metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas and Native communities from different U.S. regions. To meet this requirement, CDFI Program officials have used the application review process and established a goal of matching the proportion of awards to the proportion of qualified applicants that primarily serve nonmetropolitan areas. This proportion changed from year to year depending on the number of qualified applicants that served nonmetropolitan areas. According to officials, revisions to the award procedures in the fiscal year 2012 funding round will enhance the CDFI Program’s ability to achieve proportionality. In 2006, Congress, in the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006, added a requirement for the NMTC Program that nonmetropolitan counties receive a proportional allocation of qualified equity investments. To meet this requirement, in 2008, the NMTC Program implemented two goals in its application review process. The first goal requires that …
Date: April 26, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Cybersecurity: Threats Impacting the Nation (open access)

Cybersecurity: Threats Impacting the Nation

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The nation faces an evolving array of cyber-based threats arising from a variety of sources. These threats can be intentional or unintentional. Unintentional threats can be caused by software upgrades or defective equipment that inadvertently disrupt systems, and intentional threats can be both targeted and untargeted attacks from a variety of threat sources. Sources of threats include criminal groups, hackers, terrorists, organization insiders, and foreign nations engaged in crime, political activism, or espionage and information warfare. These threat sources vary in terms of the capabilities of the actors, their willingness to act, and their motives, which can include monetary gain or political advantage, among others. Moreover, potential threat actors have a variety of attack techniques at their disposal, which can adversely affect computers, software, a network, an organization’s operation, an industry, or the Internet itself. The nature of cyber attacks can vastly enhance their reach and impact due to the fact that attackers do not need to be physically close to their victims and can more easily remain anonymous, among other things. The magnitude of the threat is compounded by the ever-increasing sophistication of cyber attack techniques, such …
Date: April 24, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Medicare: Important Steps Have Been Taken, but More Could Be Done to Deter Fraud (open access)

Medicare: Important Steps Have Been Taken, but More Could Be Done to Deter Fraud

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)—the agency that administers Medicare—has made progress in implementing several key strategies GAO identified in prior work as helpful in protecting Medicare from fraud; however, some actions that could help combat fraud remain incomplete."
Date: April 24, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Tax Gap: Sources of Noncompliance and Strategies to Reduce It (open access)

Tax Gap: Sources of Noncompliance and Strategies to Reduce It

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Noncompliance does not have a single source but occurs across different types of taxes and taxpayers. For example, individual income tax accounts for the largest portion of the tax gap, but corporate income tax and employment tax are also significant. Further, misreporting by individuals involves business income, non-business income, deductions, and credits. The extent of misreporting depends on the extent to which income tax is withheld or reported to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) by third parties. For example, nearly 40 percent, or $179 billion, of the 2006 gross tax gap is due to misreporting of non-corporate business income and related self-employment taxes. Much of this misreporting can be attributed to sole proprietors underreporting receipts or over-reporting expenses. Unlike wage and some investment income, sole proprietors’ income is not subject to withholding and only a portion is reported to IRS by third parties."
Date: April 19, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Missile Defense: Opportunities Exist to Strengthen Acquisitions by Reducing Concurrency and Improving Parts Quality (open access)

Missile Defense: Opportunities Exist to Strengthen Acquisitions by Reducing Concurrency and Improving Parts Quality

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins ""
Date: April 25, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Federal Government's Long-Term Fiscal Outlook: Spring 2012 Update (open access)

The Federal Government's Long-Term Fiscal Outlook: Spring 2012 Update

Other written product issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Federal deficits and debt have reached historic highs in recent years. Congress has taken action to address the fiscal imbalance, but longer-term challenges remain. The Budget Control Act (BCA) of 2011 limits spending over the next decade and leads to an improved fiscal outlook. The act targets discretionary spending, and under both of GAO’s simulations, discretionary spending as a share of the economy would be lower in 2022 than at any point in the last 50 years. Further, as the economy recovers, revenue increases and spending decreases. While the BCA improved the outlook, it did not eliminate the longer-term challenge, in part because it did not focus on the fundamental drivers of the government’s future fiscal imbalances—a structural gap between revenues and spending driven by rising health care costs and demographics. As our 2011 simulations showed, if the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is implemented as intended it would have a major effect on the gap but would not eliminate it. The aging of the population and rising health care costs will continue putting upward pressure on spending. Assuming revenue in the long term …
Date: April 2, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Export Promotion: The Export-Import Bank's Financing of Dual-Use Exports (open access)

Export Promotion: The Export-Import Bank's Financing of Dual-Use Exports

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This report identifies (1) the dual-use exports, if any, that Ex-Im financed in fiscal years 2010 through 2011 and (2) the end uses of any such exports. Ex-Im did not finance any dual-use exports in fiscal years 2010 and 2011, according to our review of relevant data on Ex-Im authorizations."
Date: April 12, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Border Security: Observations on Costs, Benefits, and Challenges of a Department of Defense Role in Helping to Secure the Southwest Land Border (open access)

Border Security: Observations on Costs, Benefits, and Challenges of a Department of Defense Role in Helping to Secure the Southwest Land Border

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011 mandated that GAO examine the costs and benefits of an increased Department of Defense (DOD) role to help secure the southwest land border. This mandate directed that GAO report on, among other things, the potential deployment of additional units, increased use of ground-based mobile surveillance systems, use of mobile patrols by military personnel, and an increased deployment of unmanned aerial systems and manned aircraft in national airspace. In September 2011, GAO reported that DOD estimated a total cost of about $1.35 billion for two separate border operations—Operation Jump Start and Operation Phalanx—conducted by National Guard forces in Title 32 status from June 2006 to July 2008 and from June 2010 through September 30, 2011, respectively. Further, DOD estimated that it has cost about $10 million each year since 1989 to use active duty Title 10 forces nationwide, through its Joint Task Force-North, in support of drug law enforcement agencies with some additional operational costs borne by the military services. Agency officials stated multiple benefits from DOD’s increased border role, such as assistance to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) …
Date: April 17, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
System: The UNT Digital Library
DOD Financial Management: Challenges in Attaining Audit Readiness and Improving Business Processes and Systems (open access)

DOD Financial Management: Challenges in Attaining Audit Readiness and Improving Business Processes and Systems

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO’s recent work highlights the types of challenges facing the Department of Defense (DOD) as it strives to attain audit readiness and reengineer its business processes and systems. The urgency in addressing these challenges has been increased by the goals of an auditable DOD Statement of Budgetary Resources (SBR) by the end of fiscal year 2014 and a complete set of auditable financial statements by the end of fiscal year 2017. For example, GAO’s 2011 reporting highlights difficulties the DOD components experienced in attempting to achieve an auditable SBR. These include:"
Date: April 18, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Food and Drug Administration: Employee Performance Standards for the Timely Review of Medical Product Applications (open access)

Food and Drug Administration: Employee Performance Standards for the Timely Review of Medical Product Applications

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Employee Performance Standards for the Timely Review of Medical Product Applications:"
Date: April 18, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Federal Reserve Banks: Areas for Improvement in Information Systems Controls (open access)

Federal Reserve Banks: Areas for Improvement in Information Systems Controls

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins ""
Date: April 11, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
System: The UNT Digital Library