robust_long_abstractive_human_annotation_dataset.csv

dataset,dataset_id,model_type,model_summary,relevance,factual_consistency
arXiv,ID_1603.04792,BART (LEAD 1K)," association rules are often used to summarize consumer trends in a transaction set or as input to a classifier.  the problem is the very high number of rules, typically in the order of millions. that is exacerbated by the lack of thorough studies of which of the many interestingness measures for ranking association rules is most appropriate for which application domain. in this paper , we present a framework to compare the outcome of different interestingness measure applied to association rules generated in the food retail domain.    association rule mining, interestingness, pattern mining ",0.3833333333333333,0.9333333333333332
arXiv,ID_1603.04792,BART (LEAD 4K)," association rules are often used to summarize consumer trends in a transaction set or as input to a classifier.  the problem is the very high number of rules, typically in the order of millions.  that is exacerbated by the lack of thorough studies of which of the many interestingness measures for ranking association rules is most appropriate for which application domain.  we present, a framework to compare the outcome of different interestingness measures applied to association rules generated in the food retail domain.  the use of real datasets and a close collaboration with domain experts from intermarch, one of the largest retailers in france, has led us to selecting the most relevant measures to rank association rules in the food retail domain.  our dataset contains @xmath0 million receipts from stores in all of france, gathered over one year, 2013.  mining this data results in a huge number of rules.  our main contribution is the study of 34 interesting measures for associationness.  we first perform an empirical comparison between different rule rankings and grouped rules into 6 families.  then, we perform a user study to assess the quality of each group according to experts from the retail industry.  we concluded that _ piatetsky -",0.6866666666666666,0.9
arXiv,ID_1603.04792,BART (LEAD 8K)," association rules are often used to summarize consumer trends in a transaction set or as input to a classifier.  the problem is the very high number of rules, typically in the order of millions.  that is exacerbated by the lack of thorough studies of which of the many interestingness measures for ranking association rules is most appropriate for which application domain.  we present, a framework to compare the outcome of different interestingness measures applied to association rules generated in the food retail domain.  the use of real datasets and a close collaboration with experienced domain experts from intermarch, one of the largest retailers in france, has led us to selecting the most relevant measures to rank association rules in the food retail domain.  our dataset contains @xmath0 million receipts from stores in all of france, gathered over one year, 2013.  our main contribution is the study of 34 interestingness measures for association rules.  we first perform an analytical and an empirical comparison between different rule rankings and grouped rule families into 6 families.  then, we perform a user study to assess the quality of each group according to experts from the retail industry.  we concluded that _ piatetsky - shapiro _ and _ pear",0.71,0.925925926
arXiv,ID_1603.04792,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"association rules are often used to summarize consumer trends in a transaction set or as input to a classifier. mining this data results in a huge number of rules. that is exacerbated by the lack of thorough studies of which of the many interestingness measures applied to association rules is most appropriate for which application domain. in this paper, we present a framework to compare the outcome of different interestingness measures applied to association rules generated in the food retail domain. relies on a flexible architecture and on @xcite, our parallel and distributed pattern mining algorithm that runs on mapreduce. our dataset contains @xmath0 million receipts from stores in all of france, gathered over one year, 2013. mining this data results in a huge number of rules. that is exacerbated by the lack of thorough studies of which of the many interestingness measures applied to association rules is most appropriate for which application domain. in this paper, we present a framework to compare the outcome of different interestingness measures applied to association rules generated in the food retail domain. relies on a flexible architecture and on @xcite, our parallel and distributed pattern mining algorithm that runs on mapreduce. our dataset contains @xmath0 million receipts from stores",0.5133333333333333,0.8462962963333333
arXiv,ID_1603.04792,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"association rules are often used to summarize consumer trends in a transaction set or as input to a classifier @xcite. we present a framework to compare the outcome of different interestingness measures applied to association rules generated in the food retail domain. the use of real datasets and a close collaboration with experienced domain experts from intermarch, one of the largest retailers in france, has led us to selecting the most relevant measures to rank association rules in the food retail domain. our dataset contains @xmath0 million receipts from stores in all of france, gathered over one year, 2013. mining this data results in a huge number of rules. that is exacerbated by the lack of thorough studies of which of the many interestingness measures for ranking rules @xcite is most appropriate for which application domain.",0.57,0.9333333333333332
arXiv,ID_1603.04792,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"association rules are often used to summarize consumer trends in a transaction set or as input to a classifier @xcite. we present a framework to compare the outcome of different interestingness measures applied to association rules generated in the food retail domain. the use of real datasets and a close collaboration with experienced domain experts from intermarch, one of the largest retailers in france, has led us to selecting the most relevant measures to rank association rules in the food retail domain. our dataset contains @xmath0 million receipts from stores in all of france, gathered over one year, 2013. mining this data results in a huge number of rules. that is exacerbated by the lack of thorough studies of which of the many interestingness measures for ranking rules @xcite is most appropriate for which application domain. we present a framework to compare the outcome of different interestingness measures applied to association rules generated in the food retail domain.",0.6333333333333333,0.9433333333333334
arXiv,ID_1603.04792,BART (ORACLE 1K)," association rules are often used to summarize consumer trends in a transaction set or as input to a classifier.  the problem is the very high number of rules, typically in the order of millions, and the lack of thorough studies of which of the many interestingness measures for ranking association rules is most appropriate for which application domain. in this paper , we present, a framework to compare the outcome of different interestingness measure applied to association rules generated in the food retail domain. the use of real datasets and a close collaboration with experienced domain experts from intermarch, one of the largest retailers in france, has led us to selecting the most relevant measures to rank association rules in this domain. for each scenario, our analysts are asked which representative measure highlights the most interesting results. finally, she chooses one of our ranking measures to sort association rules. ",0.6766666666666667,0.8888888886666667
arXiv,ID_1603.04792,BART (ORACLE 4K)," association rules are often used to summarize consumer trends in a transaction set or as input to a classifier.  the problem is the very high number of rules, typically in the order of millions, and the lack of thorough studies of which of the many interestingness measures for ranking rules is most appropriate for which application domain. in this paper , we present a framework to compare the outcome of different interestings measures applied to association rules generated in the food retail domain. ",0.4466666666666666,0.7777777779999999
arXiv,ID_1603.04792,BART (ORACLE 8K)," association rules are often used to summarize consumer trends in a transaction set or as input to a classifier.  the problem is the very high number of rules, typically in the order of millions. that is exacerbated by the lack of thorough studies of which of the many interestingness measures for ranking rules is most appropriate for which application domain. in this paper , we present, a framework to compare the outcome of different interestingness metrics applied to association rules generated in the food retail domain.   relies on a flexible architecture and on  @xcite, our parallel and distributed pattern mining algorithm that runs on mapreduce. using real datasets and a close collaboration with domain experts from intermarch, one of the largest retailers in france,  has led us to select the most relevant measures to rank association rules in the retail domain, which is entirely focused on retail data, which contains millions of transactions and rules. ",0.6366666666666667,0.9433333333333334
arXiv,ID_1603.04792,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"association rules are often used to summarize consumer trends in a transaction set or as input to a classifier. the problem is the very high number of rules, typically in the order of millions. that is exacerbated by the lack of thorough studies of which of the many interestingness measures applied to association rules is most appropriate for which application domain. in this paper, we present a framework to compare the outcome of different interestingness metrics applied to the association rules generated in the food retail domain, and to assess the quality of each group according to experts from the retail industry. our evaluation is first comparative, with 4 correlations measures covering both the top of the ranking and the entire ranked list. we then build groups of measures to reduce the number of options presented to expert analysts in the user study. finally, a user study is performed to assess their quality according to domain experts.",0.7799999999999999,1.0
arXiv,ID_1603.04792,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"we present, a framework to compare the outcome of different interestingness measures applied to association rules generated in the food retail domain. our dataset contains @xmath0 million receipts from stores in all of france, gathered over one year, 2013. association rules are often used to summarize consumer trends in a transaction set or as input to a classifier. however, the high number of rules and the lack of thorough studies of which of the many interestingness measure for ranking association rules is most appropriate for which application domain makes it difficult to evaluate them. we present a comparison of 34 measures, based on their ability to rank association rules in a given category or target product. rules are ranked according to 34 different measures and their ranking equivalence classes are evaluated. the results show that _ lift _ and _ piatetsky - shapiro _ best fit the needs of the analysts.",0.7000000000000001,0.9444444443333334
arXiv,ID_1603.04792,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"we present, a framework to compare the outcome of different interestingness measures applied to association rules generated in the food retail domain. given a scenario, builds a dataset of transactions and mines in parallel association rules containing targets selected by the analysts. each scenario is characterized by 3 mining scenarios : first, rules are displayed with their support, confidence and recall. then they are ranked according to a selected measure. we let the analysts interact with without any time restriction, and collect their feedback in a free text form. finally, we compare the results of 34 measures. our dataset contains @xmath0 million receipts from stores in all of france, gathered over one year, 2013. mining this data results in a huge number of rules. that is exacerbated by the lack of thorough studies of which of the many interestingness measure for ranking rules is most appropriate for which application domain, as there are too many of them. to this end, our parallel and distributed pattern mining algorithm that runs on mapreduce. relies on a flexible architecture and on our industrial partner, intermarch, one of the largest retailers in france.",0.66,0.6666666666666666
arXiv,ID_1512.04782,BART (LEAD 1K)," in critical software systems, there are several standards that define the set of objectives to achieve an acceptable level of safety.  these standards are supported by a number of norms and practices for the monitoring of the verification activities of the software development processes. in this paper , we present an approach to improve the current practices of monitoring by providing a new methodology that covers the verification management activities in a collaborative environment to facilitate the integration with other life cycle processes, and provide the possibility of future extensions.    *  key words : * critical software development, verification, compliance, monitoring. ",0.42,1.0
arXiv,ID_1512.04782,BART (LEAD 4K)," this paper describes an approach to improve the current practices of monitoring by providing a new methodology that covers the verification management activities in a collaborative environment to facilitate the integration with other life cycle process, and provide the possibility of future extensions.  the tool covers all the verification process according to the different levels.  the supporting tool has managed two standards ( @xcite and @xcite ), covering a large scope of safety related projects.  a set of documents and checklists for each develop phase and for document have been created, providing a basic framework to manage this kind of projects.  it is possible to add additional documents at any time.  the methodology allows to follow any kind of development model.  thus, the objective about integration with other life cycle processes is fulfilled by the presented approach, including information about the development.  the supporting tool provides possibilities of future growth, by extensions that include information about new norms or processes. ",0.4966666666666666,1.0
arXiv,ID_1512.04782,BART (LEAD 8K)," this paper describes an approach to improve the current practices of monitoring by providing a new methodology that covers the verification management activities in a collaborative environment to facilitate the integration with other life cycle process, and provide the possibility of future extensions.  the tool covers all the verification process according to the different levels.  the supporting tool has managed two standards ( @xcite and @xcite ), covering a large scope of safety related projects.  a set of documents and checklists for each develop phase and for document have been created, providing a basic framework to manage this kind of projects.  it is possible to add additional documents at any time.  the methodology allows to follow any kind of development model.  thus, the objective about integration with other life cycle processes is fulfilled by the presented approach, including information about the development.  the supporting tool provides possibilities of future growth, by extensions that include information about new norms or processes. ",0.4966666666666666,1.0
arXiv,ID_1512.04782,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"this paper describes an approach to improve the current practices of monitoring in critical software development by providing a new methodology that covers the verification management activities in a collaborative environment to facilitate the integration with other life cycle process, and provide the possibility of future extensions. we present an approach that automates the process of monitoring by the integration of optimization mechanisms that includes all the information regarding the compliance statement of the applicable norm.  a severe drawback of current methods and tools is that they do not fully support the definition and use of a consistent and uniform methodology for the monitoring of the verification activities for all projects, and they do not facilitate the compliance with regulatory requirements.  this paper describes an approach to improve the current practices of monitoring by providing a new methodology that covers the verification management activities in a collaborative environment to facilitate the integration with other life cycle process, and provide the possibility of future extensions.  we present an approach that automates the process of monitoring by the integration of optimization mechanisms that includes all the information regarding the compliance statement of the applicable norm.",0.6566666666666666,0.9333333333333332
arXiv,ID_1512.04782,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"failure avoidance is of paramount importance in critical software systems, needed to be considered in the first place as it has a direct impact on the safe operation. in the scope of critical software projects, there is a process of continuous investigation in order to reduce costs and development time, that usually includes the definition of methodologies and process automation and/or optimization techniques. the usage of adequate tools that support them is essential in order to optimize the monitoring of the processes. a severe drawback of current methods and tools is that they do not fully support the definition and use of a consistent and uniform methodology for the monitoring of the verification activities for all projects, and they do not facilitate the compliance with regulatory requirements. in this paper, we present an approach that automates the process of monitoring by the integration of optimization mechanisms that includes all the information regarding the compliance statement of the applicable norm.",0.8033333333333333,1.0
arXiv,ID_1512.04782,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"failure avoidance is of paramount importance in critical software systems, needed to be considered in the first place as it has a direct impact on the safe operation. in the scope of critical software projects, there is a process of continuous investigation in order to reduce costs and development time, that usually includes the definition of methodologies and process automation and/or optimization techniques. the usage of adequate tools that support them is essential in order to optimize the monitoring of the processes. a severe drawback of current methods and tools is that they do not fully support the definition and use of a consistent and uniform methodology for the monitoring of the verification activities for all projects, and they do not facilitate the compliance with regulatory requirements. in this paper, we present an approach that automates the process of monitoring by the integration of optimization mechanisms that includes all the information regarding the compliance statement of the applicable norm.",0.8033333333333333,1.0
arXiv,ID_1512.04782,BART (ORACLE 1K)," this paper presents an approach to improve the current practices of monitoring by providing a new methodology that covers the verification management activities in a collaborative environment to facilitate the integration with other life cycle process, and provide the possibility of future extensions.  the methodology is based on the integration of optimization mechanisms that includes all the information regarding the compliance statement of the applicable norm.    *  key words : * verification of verification processes, software development, software assurance, software verification, software compliance. ",0.4966666666666666,0.8889
arXiv,ID_1512.04782,BART (ORACLE 4K)," this paper presents a new approach to the monitoring of the verification of critical software systems.  the methodology is based on the integration of optimization mechanisms that includes all the information regarding the compliance statement of the applicable norm.   ,   and  .  in critical software, software verification, software life cycle, software integration, software development, software quality assurance, software reliability, software compliance, software validation, software assurance, safety, software evaluation, software performance assessment, software design, software testing, software maintenance, software certification, software management, software test and verification, safety assessment. ",0.18,0.3333333333333333
arXiv,ID_1512.04782,BART (ORACLE 8K)," this paper presents an approach to improve the current practices of monitoring in critical software systems by providing a new methodology that covers the verification management activities in a collaborative environment to facilitate the integration with other life cycle process, and provide the possibility of future extensions.  we present an approach that automates the process of monitoring by the integration of optimization mechanisms that includes all the information regarding the compliance statement of the applicable norm.    *  key words : * software development, verification, verification process, software development and verification, software quality assurance, compliance with regulations. ",0.4633333333333334,1.0
arXiv,ID_1512.04782,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"this paper presents an approach to improve the current practices of monitoring of the verification management activities in a collaborative environment to facilitate the integration with other life cycle process, and provide the possibility of future extensions. due to the specific requirements of the safety monitoring processes, it is usual that the status information for all the involved processes is very complex ; information is typically contained in different places. usually, the different views over the development progress are provided by distinct tools in a non collaborative environment. therefore, to increase the efficiency of development in critical software systems it is needed that norms are supported by flexible yet pragmatic and more powerful monitoring methodologies that can be flexible to adjust to different norms. a severe drawback of current methods and tools is that they do not fully support the definition and use of a consistent and uniform methodology for the monitoring of all the verification activities for all projects. this paper describes an approach that automates the process of monitoring by the integration of optimization mechanisms that includes all the information regarding the compliance statement of the applicable norm. we present the implementation of the methodology in a tool and its usage and results for a real - world critical software project.",0.7233333333333333,1.0
arXiv,ID_1512.04782,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"this paper presents an approach to improve the current practices of monitoring in software development by providing a new methodology that covers the verification management activities in a collaborative environment to facilitate the integration with other life cycle process, and provide the possibility of future extensions. we present an approach that automates the process of monitoring by the integration of optimization mechanisms that includes all the information regarding the compliance statement of the applicable norm. this directly implies a reduction in the training time of engineers. for each item it is possible to know the existing non conformities, which enables their early detection and correction by the responsible. in the tool, the collaboration is achieved through a web interface. so, an estimation of the remaining activities can be calculated, that could lead to implement corrective actions and minimize the impact in project goals, decreasing the project risks. the tool covers all the verification process according to the different levels. finally, it allows to follow any kind of development model.",0.5966666666666667,0.9166666666666666
arXiv,ID_1512.04782,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"this paper presents an approach to improve the current practices of monitoring in software development in order to support the compliance with regulatory requirements. in practice, the different views over the development progress are provided by distinct tools in a non collaborative environment. since different critical software projects follow different norms, there are no tools that are able to be easily customized to adapt to different norms and requirements, and provide the possibility of future extensions. this paper describes an approach that automates the process of monitoring by the integration of optimization mechanisms that includes all the information regarding the compliance statement of the applicable norm. the methodology provides a basic framework to manage the verification processes. it is possible to add additional documents at any time. all information about the status of verification and verification tasks is immediately accessible to actors, that provides knowledge about the work performed and the pending tasks. so, an estimation of the remaining activities can be calculated, which could lead to implement corrective actions and minimize the impact in project goals, decreasing the project risks. a validation of the methodology is presented in a real - world critical software project.",0.7933333333333333,0.962962963
arXiv,ID_1502.07055,BART (LEAD 1K)," fast fourier transform ( fft ) is one of the most widely used operation in digital signal processing algorithms and plays a significant role in numerous signal processing applications, such as image processing, speech processing, software defined radio etc.  fft processors should be of higher throughput with lower computation time. in this paper , we propose a novel architecture of area efficient fft by reusing @xmath0 numbers of butterfly units more than once instead of using the @xcite butterfly units once. this is achieved by a time control unit which sends back the previously computed data of @xcites butterfly units to itself for @xxmath1 times and reuses the butterfly units for complete fft computation. ",0.5166666666666666,1.0
arXiv,ID_1502.07055,BART (LEAD 4K)," fast fourier transform ( fft ) is one of the most widely used operation in digital signal processing algorithms and plays a significant role in numerous signal processing applications, such as image processing, speech processing, software defined radio etc.  fft processors should be of higher throughput with lower computation time.  so, for computing larger number of data samples, we have to think about the area of the fft processor since the number of stage of fft computation increases with a factor of @xmath0. in the design of high throughput fft architectures, energy - efficient design techniques can be used to maximize performance under power dissipation constraints.  spatial and parallel fft architecture, also known as array architecture, based on the cooley - tukey algorithm layout, is one of the potential high throughput designs.  however, the implementation of the array architecture is hardware intensive.  it achieves high performance by using spatial parallelism, while requiring more routing resources.  however, as the problem size grows, unfolding the architecture spatially is not feasible due to serious power and area issue arisen by complex interconnections.  the pipelined architectures are useful for ffts that require high data throughput.  the basic principle of pipelined architectures is to collapse the rows.  radix-2 multi - path delay commutator was probably the most classical approach for pipeline implementation of radix-2 fft algorithm.  disadvantages include an increase in area due to the addition of memories and delay which is related to the memory usage. in this paper, we propose a novel architecture of area efficient fft by reusing @xmath3 numbers of butterfly units more than once instead of using @xmath4 butterfly units once.  this is achieved by a time control unit which sends back the previously computed data of @xmath3 butterfly units to itself for @xmath5 times and reuses the butterfly units to complete fft computation.  the area requirement is obviously smaller, only @xmath3 radix-@xmath6 elements, than the array architecture and pipelined architectures, @xmath0 being the number of sample points.  detailed analysis reveals that the proposed architecture reduces the area dramatically",0.66,0.9791666666666666
arXiv,ID_1502.07055,BART (LEAD 8K)," fast fourier transform ( fft ) is one of the most widely used operation in digital signal processing algorithms and plays a significant role in numerous signal processing applications, such as image processing, speech processing, software defined radio etc.  fft processors should be of higher throughput with lower computation time.  so, for computing larger number of data samples, we have to think about the area of the fft processor since the number of stage of fft computation increases with a factor of @xmath0. in the design of high throughput fft architectures, energy - efficient design techniques can be used to maximize performance under power dissipation constraints.  spatial and parallel fft architecture, also known as array architecture, based on the cooley - tukey algorithm layout, is one of the potential high throughput designs.  however, the implementation of the array architecture is hardware intensive.  it achieves high performance by using spatial parallelism, while requiring more routing resources.  however, as the problem size grows, unfolding the architecture spatially is not feasible due to serious power and area issue arisen by complex interconnections.  the pipelined architectures are useful for ffts that require high data throughput.  the basic principle of pipelined architectures is to collapse the rows.  radix-2 multi - path delay commutator was probably the most classical approach for pipeline implementation of radix-2 fft algorithm.  disadvantages include an increase in area due to the addition of memories and delay which is related to the memory usage. in this paper, we propose a novel architecture of area efficient fft by reusing @xmath3 numbers of butterfly units more than once instead of using @xmath4 butterfly units once.  this is achieved by a time control unit which sends back the previously computed data of @xmath3 butterfly units to itself for @xmath5 times and reuses the butterfly units to complete fft computation.  the area requirement is obviously smaller, only @xmath3 radix-@xmath6 elements, than the array architecture and pipelined architectures, @xmath0 being the number of sample points.  detailed analysis reveals that the proposed architecture reduces the area dramatically",0.66,1.0
arXiv,ID_1502.07055,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"fast fourier transform ( fft ) is one of the most widely used operation in digital signal processing algorithms and plays a significant role in numerous signal processing applications. for computing larger number of data samples, we have to think about the area of the fft processor since the number of stage of fft computation increases with a factor of @xmath0. in this paper, we propose a novel architecture of area efficient fft by reusing @xmath1 numbers of butterfly units more than once instead of using @xmath2 butterfly units once.  this is achieved by a time control unit which sends back the previously computed data of @xmath3 butterfly units to itself for @xmath5 times and reuses the butterfly units to complete fft computation.  the area requirement is obviously smaller, only @xmath3 radix-@xmath6 elements, than the array architecture and pipelined architectures, @xmath0 being the number of sample points.",0.7266666666666666,1.0
arXiv,ID_1502.07055,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"we propose a novel architecture of area efficient fast fourier transform ( fft ) computation by reusing @xmath3 numbers of butterfly units more than once instead of using @xmath4 butterfly units once @xcite. this is achieved by a time control unit which sends back the previously computed data of @xmath3 butterfly units to itself for @xmath5 times and reuses the butterfly units to complete fft computation. the area requirement is obviously smaller, only @xmath3 radix-@xmath6 elements, than the array architecture and pipelined architectures, @xmath0 being the number of sample points. detailed analysis reveals that the proposed architecture reduces the area drastically without compromising the response time.",0.6833333333333332,1.0
arXiv,ID_1502.07055,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"we propose a novel architecture of area efficient fast fourier transform ( fft ) computation by reusing @xmath3 numbers of butterfly units more than once instead of using @xmath4 butterfly units once @xcite. this is achieved by a time control unit which sends back the previously computed data of @xmath3 butterfly units to itself for @xmath5 times and reuses the butterfly units to complete fft computation. the area requirement is obviously smaller, only @xmath3 radix-@xmath6 elements, than the array architecture and pipelined architectures, @xmath0 being the number of sample points. detailed analysis reveals that the proposed architecture reduces the area drastically without compromising the response time.",0.6833333333333332,1.0
arXiv,ID_1502.07055,BART (ORACLE 1K)," fast fourier transform ( fft ) is one of the most widely used operation in digital signal processing algorithms and plays a significant role in numerous signal processing applications, such as image processing, speech processing, software defined radio etc.  fft processors should be of higher throughput with lower computation time. for computing larger number of data samples,  we have to think about the area of the fft processor since the number of stage of fft computation increases with a factor of @xmath0. in this paper , we propose a novel architecture of area efficient fft by reusing the butterfly units of single stage more than once. ",0.5666666666666667,1.0
arXiv,ID_1502.07055,BART (ORACLE 4K)," fast fourier transform ( fft ) is one of the most widely used operation in digital signal processing algorithms and plays a significant role in numerous signal processing applications, such as image processing, speech processing, software defined radio etc.  fpga is a promising implementation technology for computationally intensive applications such as signal, image, and network processing tasks. in the design of high throughput fft architectures, energy - efficient design techniques can be used to maximize performance under power dissipation constraints.    in this paper , we propose a novel architecture of area efficient fft by reusing the butterfly units of single stage more than once instead of using @xmath0 butterfly units once, which reduces the area of the fft processor. ",0.5433333333333333,0.9166666666666666
arXiv,ID_1502.07055,BART (ORACLE 8K)," fast fourier transform ( fft ) is one of the most widely used operation in digital signal processing algorithms and plays a significant role in numerous signal processing applications, such as image processing, speech processing, software defined radio etc.  fft processors should be of higher throughput with lower computation time than general purpose processors since the number of stage of fft computation increases with a factor of @xmath0. in this paper , we propose a novel architecture of area efficient fft by reusing the number number of butterfly units more than once instead of once.   the algorithm reuses the butterfly units of single stage more than twice which reduces the area drastically. ",0.6433333333333334,0.9166666666666666
arXiv,ID_1502.07055,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"fast fourier transform ( fft ) is one of the most widely used operation in digital signal processing algorithms and plays a significant role in numerous signal processing applications, such as image processing, speech processing and software defined radio etc. fft processors should be of higher throughput with lower computation time. so, for computing larger number of data samples, we have to think about the area of the fft processor since the number of stage of fft computation increases with a factor of @xmath0. it achieves high performance by using spatial parallelism, while requiring more routing resources. disadvantages include an increase in area due to the addition of memories and delay which is related to the memory usage. this paper presents a novel architecture of area efficient fft by reusing the butterfly units of single stage more than once. the algorithm reuses the butterfly unit numbers of butterfly units more than twice which reduces the area drastically. detailed analysis reveals that the proposed architecture reduces the amount of area dramatically without compromising the response time of the processor. field programmable gate array ( fpga ), fft algorithm, butterfly unit, radix-2, area.",0.85,0.814814815
arXiv,ID_1502.07055,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"fast fourier transform ( fft ) is one of the most widely used operation in digital signal processing algorithms and plays a significant role in numerous signal processing applications, such as image processing, speech processing,software defined radio etc. radix-2 decimation - in - time ( dit ) algorithm is the most common form of the cooley - tukey algorithm, for any arbitrary size @xmath0. in this paper, we propose a novel architecture of area efficient fft by reusing the butterfly units of single stage more than once instead of using the butterfly unit units once. the main idea of the proposed architecture is to reduce the number of butterfly units by a factor of ( @ x@xmath1 ), which is achieved by a time control unit which sends back the previously computed data of butterfly unit to itself for ( @",0.5833333333333334,0.75
arXiv,ID_1502.07055,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"fast fourier transform ( fft ) is one of the most widely used operation in digital signal processing algorithms and plays a significant role in numerous signal processing applications, such as image processing, speech processing and software defined radio etc. high throughput fft architecture using spatial parallelism is promising for computationally intensive applications. however, the implementation of high throughput spatial fft is hardware intensive. in this paper, we propose a novel architecture of area efficient fft by reusing butterfly units of single stage more than once instead of using @xmath0 butterfly units once. the proposed architecture is achieved by a time control unit which sends back the previously computed data of butterfly units to itself for a few times and then reuses the butterfly units for fft computation. detailed analysis reveals that the architecture reduces the area dramatically without compromising the response time.",0.9166666666666666,0.9444444443333334
arXiv,ID_1702.06663,BART (LEAD 1K)," epidemiological line lists are a useful resource for epidemiologists during outbreak investigations of emerging diseases.  traditionally, line lists have been curated manually and have rarely been available to epidemiologist in near - real time.   we present * guided deep list *, a novel framework for automatic extraction of epidemiological lines from public health bulletins. *  guided deep lists * is guided in the sense that the user provides a seed indicator ( or, keyword ) for each line list feature to guide the extraction process. * guided deeper list * uses neural word embeddings to expand the seed indicator and generate a set of indicators for each feature. ",0.3866666666666666,1.0
arXiv,ID_1702.06663,BART (LEAD 4K)," an epidemiological line list is a listing of individuals suffering from a disease that describes both their demographic details as well as the timing of clinically and epidemiologically significant events during the course of disease.  these are typically used during outbreak investigations of emerging diseases to identify key features, such as incubation period, symptoms, associated risk factors, and outcomes.  traditionally, line lists have been curated manually and have rarely been available to epidemiologists in near - real time.  our primary objective is to automatically generate line lists of emerging diseases from open source reports such as who bulletins and make such lists readily available to epidemiologists.  previous work has shown the utility in creating such lists through labor intensive human curation.  we now seek to automate much of this effort.  we formulate * guided deep list *, a novel framework for automatic extraction of line list from who bulletins.  guided deep list is guided in the sense that the user provides a seed indicator ( or, keyword ) for each line list feature to guide the extraction process.  guided deep list uses neural word embeddings to expand the seed indicator and generate a set of indicators for each line list feature.  the set of indicators is subsequently provided as input to dependency parsing based shortest distance and negation detection approaches for extracting line list features. as can be seen in figure  [ fig : ll_overall ], * guided deep list * takes a who bulletin as input and outputs epidemiological line list in tabular format where each row represents a line list case and each column depicts the features corresponding to each case.  the extracted line list provides valuable information to model the epidemic and understand the segments of population who would be affected. ",0.6833333333333332,1.0
arXiv,ID_1702.06663,BART (LEAD 8K)," an epidemiological line list is a listing of individuals suffering from a disease that describes both their demographic details as well as the timing of clinically and epidemiologically significant events during the course of disease.  these are typically used during outbreak investigations of emerging diseases to identify key features, such as incubation period, symptoms, associated risk factors, and outcomes.  traditionally, line lists have been curated manually and have rarely been available to epidemiologists in near - real time.  our primary objective is to automatically generate line lists of emerging diseases from open source reports such as who bulletins and make such lists readily available to epidemiologists.  previous work has shown the utility in creating such lists through labor intensive human curation.  we now seek to automate much of this effort.  we formulate * guided deep list *, a novel framework for automatic extraction of line list from who bulletins.  guided deep list is guided in the sense that the user provides a seed indicator ( or, keyword ) for each line list feature to guide the extraction process.  guided deep list uses neural word embeddings to expand the seed indicator and generate a set of indicators for each line list feature.  the set of indicators is subsequently provided as input to dependency parsing based shortest distance and negation detection approaches for extracting line list features. as can be seen in figure  [ fig : ll_overall ], * guided deep list * takes a who bulletin as input and outputs epidemiological line list in tabular format where each row represents a line list case and each column depicts the features corresponding to each case.  the extracted line list provides valuable information to model the epidemic and understand the segments of population who would be affected. ",0.7433333333333333,1.0
arXiv,ID_1702.06663,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"epidemiological line lists are a valuable tool in the investigation of emerging diseases, such as the spread of middle eastern respiratory syndrome ( mers ) in saudi arabia or ebola in west africa.  traditionally, line lists have been curated manually and have rarely been available to epidemiologists in near - real time. in this paper, we present guided deep list, a novel framework for automatic extraction of epidemiological line lists from who bulletins.  guided deep list is guided in the sense that the user provides a seed indicator ( or, keyword ) for each line list feature to guide the extraction process.  guided deep list uses neural word embeddings to expand the seed indicator and generate a set of indicators for each line list feature.  the set of indicators is subsequently provided as input to dependency parsing based shortest distance and negation detection approaches for extracting line list features.",0.6333333333333333,1.0
arXiv,ID_1702.06663,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"epidemiological line lists ( @xcite ) are typically used during outbreak investigations of emerging diseases to identify key features, such as incubation period, symptoms, associated risk factors, and outcomes. these are typically used during outbreak investigations of emerging diseases to identify key features, such as incubation period, symptoms, associated risk factors, and outcomes. traditionally, line lists have been curated manually and have rarely been available to epidemiologists in near - real time. our primary objective is to automatically generate line lists of emerging diseases from open source reports such as who bulletins @xcite and make such lists readily available to epidemiologists.",0.3566666666666667,0.9166666666666666
arXiv,ID_1702.06663,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"epidemiological line lists ( @xcite ) are typically used during outbreak investigations of emerging diseases to identify key features, such as incubation period, symptoms, associated risk factors, and outcomes. these are typically used during outbreak investigations of emerging diseases to identify key features, such as incubation period, symptoms, associated risk factors, and outcomes. traditionally, line lists have been curated manually and have rarely been available to epidemiologists in near - real time. our primary objective is to automatically generate line lists of emerging diseases from open source reports such as who bulletins @xcite and make such lists readily available to epidemiologists. previous work @xcite has shown the utility in creating such lists through labor intensive human curation. we now seek to automate much of this effort. in this manuscript, we formulate * guided deep list *, a novel framework for automatic extraction of line list from who bulletins @xcite. we also compare * guided deep list * against a human curated line list for middle eastern respiratory syndrome outbreaks in saudi arabia.",0.7033333333333335,0.9583333333333334
arXiv,ID_1702.06663,BART (ORACLE 1K)," * guided deep list * is a novel framework for automatic extraction of epidemiological line lists of emerging diseases from open source reports such as who bulletins.  the goal is to make such line lists readily available to epidemiologists in near - real time. in this framework , we use neural word embeddings to expand the seed indicator for each line list feature to generate a set of indicators for each feature. the set of identified indicators  is subsequently provided as input to dependency parsing based shortest distance and negation detection approaches for extracting line list features.    *  keywords : * automated line list, who bulletin, middle eastern respiratory syndrome ( mers ), who bulletin ",0.54,0.9333333333333332
arXiv,ID_1702.06663,BART (ORACLE 4K)," epidemiological line lists are useful to identify key features during outbreak investigations of emerging diseases.  traditionally, line lists have been curated manually and have rarely been made available to epidemiologists in near - real time. in this paper, we present guided deep list *, a novel framework for automatic extraction of line lists from who bulletins. * guided deep lists * is guided in the sense that the user provides a seed indicator ( or, keyword ) for each line list feature to guide the extraction process. *  guided deep lsings * uses neural word embeddings to expand the seed indicator and generate a set of indicators for each disease onset or critical features for each linelist case. the set of parameters is subsequently provided as input to dependency parsing based shortest distance and negation detection approaches for extracting line list features.    in this manuscript , we focus on middle eastern respiratory syndrome ( mers ) outbreaks in saudi arabia ( 2012-ongoing ) as our case study. ",0.6,0.9047619046666666
arXiv,ID_1702.06663,BART (ORACLE 8K)," epidemiological line lists are a useful tool to identify key features of individuals suffering from a disease that describe both their demographic details as well as the timing of clinically and epidemiologically significant events during the course of disease.  traditionally, line lists have been curated manually and have rarely been made available to epidemiologists in near - real time. in this work,  we present * guided deep list *, a novel framework for automatic extraction of line list from who bulletins, which is a large corpus of who outbreaks news ( dons ) corresponding to all diseases downloaded from http://www.who.int / csr / don / archive / disease / en/.  our main objective is to automatically generate line lists of emerging diseases from open source reports such as who bulletin bulletins and make such lists readily available to the public health community.    to the best of our knowledge , our work is the first to automate the creation of line lists. ",0.6166666666666667,1.0
arXiv,ID_1702.06663,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"epidemiological line lists are typically used during outbreak investigations of emerging diseases to identify key features, such as incubation period, symptoms, associated risk factors, and outcomes. traditionally, line lists have been curated manually and have rarely been available to epidemiologists in near - real time. in this paper, we present * guided deep list *, a novel framework for automatic extraction of line lists from who bulletins. building upon recent developments in text modeling, including distributed vector representations such as word2vec and doc2vec, * guided deeper list * takes who bulletins as input and outputs epidemiological line list in tabular format. the output is then analyzed using dependency parsing based shortest distance and negation detection approaches to extract line list features. we present a detailed and prospective analysis of * guided depth list * by evaluating the automatically inferred line list against a human curated line list for middle eastern respiratory syndrome ( mers ) outbreaks in saudi arabia.",0.7166666666666667,0.7777777779999999
arXiv,ID_1702.06663,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"epidemiological line lists are frequently used during outbreak investigations of emerging diseases to identify key features, such as incubation period, symptoms, associated risk factors, and outcomes. traditionally, line lists have been curated manually and have rarely been available to epidemiologists in near - real time. in this paper, we propose * guided deep list *, a novel framework for automatic extraction of line list from emerging diseases such as who bulletin. our primary objective is to automatically generate line lists from open source reports and make such lists readily available to epidemiologicals. guided deep lists is guided in the sense that the user provides a seed indicator ( or, keyword ) for each line list feature to guide the extraction process. the set of indicators is subsequently provided as input to dependency parsing based shortest distance and negation detection approaches for extracting line list features. we present a detailed and prospective analysis of guided deep listing against a human curated line list for middle eastern respiratory syndrome ( mers ) outbreaks in saudi arabia.",0.7833333333333333,0.9523809523333332
arXiv,ID_1702.06663,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"epidemiological line lists are frequently used during outbreak investigations of emerging diseases to identify key features such as disease onset, symptoms, associated risk factors, and outcomes. traditionally, line lists have been curated manually and have rarely been available to epidemiologists in near - real time. in this manuscript, we propose a novel framework for automatically extracting line lists from who bulletin. guided deep list takes who bulletin as input and outputs epidemiological line list in tabular format where each row represents a line list case and each column depicts the features corresponding to each case. the extracted line list provides valuable information to model the epidemic and understand the segments of population who would be affected. we also demonstrate some of the utilities of real - time automated line listing, such as inferring the demographic distribution and the symptoms - to - hospitalization period.",0.77,0.9444444443333334
arXiv,ID_1004.1378,BART (LEAD 1K)," epidemiological models that take into account the dynamic nature of social interactions are often used to estimate the epidemic threshold of populations whose structure is deduced from surveys of sexual behaviour.  however, it is difficult to determine how close the distribution of accumulated contacts can be to the instantaneous distribution, and it is often suggested that the time period asked about in the survey is similar to the infectivity period of the disease analysed. in this paper , we show that this is not always the case, and that it is possible to deduce the epidemic thresholds of populations with a large number of contacts. ",0.2133333333333333,0.3333334443333333
arXiv,ID_1004.1378,BART (LEAD 4K)," the spread of sexually transmitted diseases is often modelled by means of a social network.  this approach is particularly well suited for the analysis of the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, as the definition of the network depends strongly on the type of interaction necessary to transmit the disease whose spread is being modelled.  one aspect that is usually disregarded in the network approach is the dynamic nature of social interactions.  it is reasonable to assume that this dynamics produces a steady - state, in which the distribution of contacts does not change, even though at all times individuals are free to end their existing relationships and create new ones.  we show that the mean field approach is a very good approximation for the corresponding stochastic model, both for the instantaneous degree distribution as well as for the accumulated ones.  it also shows that, even for models with the same instantaneous degree distribution, the distribution of the number of accumulated partners can be rather different. as a consequence,  the usual approach of fitting the tail of these distributions with a power law function would not give the same exponent for models a and b. the accumulated distributions can be used to calculate epidemic thresholds, which can be considered as approximations to @xmath0, the static threshold.",0.35,0.8095238093333332
arXiv,ID_1004.1378,BART (LEAD 8K)," the spread of sexually transmitted diseases is usually modelled by assuming that the population has no structure, i.e. that every person can be in contact with every other. in general, however, members of a population interact only with a very small subset of it.  therefore, one way to go beyond the random mixing assumption is to consider that the members of the population form a social network.  its definition depends strongly on the type of interaction necessary to transmit the disease whose spread is being modelled.  the advantage of this over the random mixing approach is that models can be better adapted to specific populations.  unfortunately, this implies having more data about the social structure, as well as new concepts and tools to analyse them.  fortunately, these are provided by social network analysis, a field that has developed rapidly in recent years.  the mathematics are not as straightforward as in the analysis of mass - action models, but for some cases some interesting results can be obtained by using approximations ( some of them derived from statistical physics ).  one example is the simple relationship that exists for a disease with infectivity @xmath0 and an infectious period @xmath1, between the relative epidemic threshold @xmath2,",0.3133333333333333,0.9333333333333332
arXiv,ID_1004.1378,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"models of the spread of sexually transmitted diseases usually assume that the population has no structure, i.e. that every individual can be in contact with every other member of the population (  random mixing'). in general, however, the members of the population form a social network.  thus, one way to go beyond the random mixing assumption is to consider that the members of the population form a social network.  this definition depends strongly on the type of interaction necessary to transmit the disease whose spread is being modelled.  one aspect that is usually disregarded in the network approach is the dynamic nature of social interactions.  it is reasonable to assume that this dynamics produces a steady - state, in which the distribution of contacts does not change, even though at all times individuals are free to end their existing relationships and create new ones.  this assumption is often used to estimate the epidemic threshold of populations whose structure is deduced from sexual behaviour surveys.  respondents to these surveys, however, are usually asked about number of partners over a certain time period, and the distribution thus obtained is often used as a proxy for the steady state, or _ instantaneous",0.4466666666666666,0.962962963
arXiv,ID_1004.1378,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"backgroundone of the strongest assumptions used in most epidemiological models is the law of mass action @xcite. this postulate implies assuming that the population has no structure, i.e. that every person can be in contact with every other (  random mixing'). in general, however, members of a population interact only with a very small subset of it. thus, one way to go beyond the random mixing assumption is to consider that the members of the population form a social network. the definition of this network depends strongly on the type of interaction necessary to transmit the disease whose spread is being modelled. the advantage of this over the random mixing approach is that models can be better adapted to specific populations. fortunately, these are provided by social network analysis, a field that has developed rapidly in recent years @xcite. the aim of this paper is to show how @xcite can be used in an epidemiological model of the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.results and discussionwe show that @xcite can be used to model the dynamics of sexual networks. we obtain some very general analytical results for the influence of network dynamics on the propagation of infectious diseases, using mean field techniques",0.5633333333333334,0.8666666666666667
arXiv,ID_1004.1378,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"the assumptions used in most epidemiological models of the spread of infectious diseases are strong. one of the strongest ones is the postulate that the population has no structure, i.e. that every person can be in contact with every other (  random mixing'). in general, however, members of a population form a social network. this implies having more data about the social structure, as well as new concepts and tools to analyse them. fortunately, these are provided by social network analysis, a field that has developed rapidly in recent years @xcite. in this short review, we analyze some of the main results obtained by using this field.",0.3133333333333333,0.9523809523333332
arXiv,ID_1004.1378,BART (ORACLE 1K)," we study the influence of the dynamics of the social network on the propagation of infectious diseases.  it is often assumed that to study the spread of diseases with short infectious periods, the relevant information is encoded in the distribution of sexual partners for small time periods, whereas longer time periods ( of the order of years ) are more relevant for diseases with long infectious periods. for this kind of diseases,  the epidemic threshold obtained with distribution of partners for long time periods underestimates the static epidemic threshold, which in turn underestimates its real value. to understand whether this underestimation is relevant, the spreading of a disease should be analyzed taking into account the intrinsic dynamics of a network. to this end , we propose a model that takes into account not only the number of partners, but also the intrinsic features of each individual, called fitness, that do not change over time ( or at least over the times relevant for the problem ). on the one hand, it is sufficiently general to allow its parameters to be obtained by fitting data from population surveys, and on the other hand, the model can be studied analytically using mean field techniques, which allows us to obtain some general results. ",0.8866666666666667,0.8888877776666667
arXiv,ID_1004.1378,BART (ORACLE 4K)," the search for analitical simplicity, or beauty, has sometimes taken over more practical considerations in the analysis of epidemiological data.  one aspect that is usually disregarded in the network approach is the dynamic nature of social interactions. in this paper  we show that, for diseases having an infectious period of the order of months, the epidemic threshold obtained with the distribution of sexual partners for short time periods underestimates the real epidemic threshold, which in turn can be significant for diseases with long infectious periods. ",0.3966666666666666,0.666666667
arXiv,ID_1004.1378,BART (ORACLE 8K)," the spread of sexually transmitted diseases can be modelled by means of models that take into account the dynamic nature of social interactions.  one aspect that is usually disregarded in the network approach is the dynamical nature of these interactions, which can lead to the conclusion that, for populations whose structure is deduced from surveys of sexual behaviour, even diseases with very low infectivity can trigger an epidemic. in this paper , we present a model of social dynamics that can be tailored to give similar accumulated degree distributions to those obtained in real surveys, but it also allows us to obtain some very general analytical results for the influence of network dynamics on the propagation of infectious diseases, using mean field techniques. ",0.3799999999999999,0.666666667
arXiv,ID_1004.1378,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"we study the spread of infectious diseases in populations whose structure is deduced from sexual behaviour surveys. we assume that the social dynamics is not affected by the propagation of the disease. on the one hand, it is sufficiently general to allow its parameters to be obtained by fitting empirical data from population surveys, and on the other hand it can be studied analytically using mean field techniques, which allows us to obtain some general results. the model can be tailored to give similar accumulated degree distributions to those obtained in real populations, but it also allows us a very general analytical result for the influence of network dynamics on the propagation. it is found that, because of the interplay between the social and the epidemic dynamics, the relative epidemic threshold, as a function of the average duration of infection, increases monotonically between the two limit cases, i.e., for diseases with short infectious periods the epidemic threshold obtained with distribution of partners for long time periods underestimates the real value, while for diseases that have long infectious periods, this underestimate is compensated by the effect of the network dynamics.",0.6766666666666667,0.7166666666666667
arXiv,ID_1004.1378,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"the spread of infectious diseases is usually studied using mass - action models, which assume that the dynamics of a disease is governed by the concentrations of infected or uninfected individuals. in reality, this assumption is often not valid, because of the dynamic nature of the social interactions. here we study a model that takes into account the social dynamics, and shows that it is possible to obtain analytical results for the propagation of diseases in populations whose structure is deduced from sexual behaviour surveys. the model can be tailored to give similar accumulated degree distributions to those obtained in real surveys, but it also allows us to obtain some very general analytical results, using mean field techniques, for the influence of the network dynamics on the propagation.",0.6266666666666666,0.8333333333333334
arXiv,ID_1004.1378,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"we present a simple model for the spread of sexually transmitted diseases on a social network. it is based on the assumption that the individuals of the network are drawn from a well defined distribution of sexual partners, and that the network dynamics is not affected by the propagation of the disease. we show that the model can be used to calculate the epidemic threshold, as well as the distribution of the number of partners that an individual has accumulated over a given time period. analytical approximations are obtained for the mean and variance of the degree distribution. the model is also used to analyse the effect of the social dynamics on the distribution and size of the core group that is formed by the individuals connected to the network at the beginning of the infection. our results show that, for diseases with long infectious periods, the influence of the dynamics can not be neglected, even if it is small compared with the effects of random mixing.",0.4333333333333333,0.8322222223333333
arXiv,ID_1601.02904,BART (LEAD 1K)," social network extraction is an approach for representing relations between individuals, groups or organization.  the concept of social networks extraction is designed to map the relationship of entities among them that can be observed, to mark the patterns of ties between social actors, to measure the social capital : the values obtained by the entities individually or in groups, to present a variety of social structures according to the interests and its implementation, based on different domains or information sources, and to further be processed in information systems, i.e., in data mining systems that detect valuable trends in the social networks, in cases when selecting content based on certain semantic classes, or in expert systems that reason with the extracted knowledge in order to support government decision making. in this paper , we propose a new approach for extracting social network from web by not only relying on the co - occurrence but to consider other information. ",0.3333333333333333,0.7333333333333334
arXiv,ID_1601.02904,BART (LEAD 4K)," social networks is an approach for representing relations between individuals, groups or organization.  the concept of social networks extraction is designed to map the relationship of entities among them that can be observed, to mark the patterns of ties between social actors, to measure the social capital : the values obtained by the entities individually or in groups, to present a variety of social structures according to the interests and its implementation, based on different domains or information sources.  the extracted social networks can further be processed in information systems, i.e., in data mining systems that detect valuable trends in the social networks, in cases when selecting content based on certain semantic classes, or in expert systems that reason with the extracted knowledge in order to support government decision making. for example, in counterterrorism and the terrorism require networks for learning exchange of information and actions. in scientometric, so extraction of academic social networks aims to see the performance of human resources for example in education.  web has been chosen as main source to gain various digital information about entities and their relations from all over the world.  the web has been becoming the largest text database contained information about social networks, but most of data on the web are so unstructured that they can only be understood by humans, the",0.3333333333333333,0.9523809523333332
arXiv,ID_1601.02904,BART (LEAD 8K)," social networks is an approach for representing relations between individuals, groups or organization.  the concept of social networks extraction is designed to map the relationship of entities among them that can be observed, to mark the patterns of ties between social actors, to measure the social capital : the values obtained by the entities individually or in groups, to present a variety of social structures according to the interests and its implementation, based on different domains or information sources.  the extracted social networks can further be processed in information systems, i.e., in data mining systems that detect valuable trends in the social networks, in cases when selecting content based on certain semantic classes, or in expert systems that reason with the extracted knowledge in order to support government decision making. for example, in counterterrorism and the terrorism require networks for learning exchange of information and actions. in scientometric, so extraction of academic social networks aims to see the performance of human resources for example in education.  web has been chosen as main source to gain various digital information about entities and their relations from all over the world.  the web has been becoming the largest text database contained information about social networks, but most of data on the web are so unstructured that they can only be understood by humans, the",0.3,0.9523809523333332
arXiv,ID_1601.02904,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"the concept of social networks extraction is designed to map the relationship of entities among them that can be observed, to mark the patterns of ties between social actors, to present a variety of social structures according to the interests and its implementation, based on different domains or information sources.  the web has been chosen as main source to gain various digital information about entities and their relations from all over the world.  the semantic representation of documents currently forms the vision of semantic web, in the same manner as the social network is a nucleus of semantic relation, i.e. possibilities of attributes partnership between actors where domains generate the attributes and the web documents provide the descriptions of entities and their relations.  extracting social network is more than the text mining process and has been one of artificial intelligent ( ai ) research agendas, involving the task of identifying entities and their relations for trusted social network. as the manual semantic relation annotation of web documents is impractical and unscalable, and so in the semantic web area there are two research streams for extracting social networks from web documents : unsupervised method and supervised method.  the unsupervised methods utilize the cartesian product for clustering the nodes @xmath0 in the",0.3666666666666667,0.9523809523333332
arXiv,ID_1601.02904,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"web has been chosen as main source to gain various digital information about entities and their relations from all over the world, the other way the amount of data on the web is so huge that they can only be processed efficiently by machines. the semantic representation of documents currently forms the vision of semantic web @xcite, in the same manner as the social network is a nucleus of semantic relation, i.e. possibilities of attributes partnership between actors where domains generate the attributes and the web documents provide the descriptions of entities and their relations. extracting social network is more than the text mining process and has been one of artificial intelligent ( ai ) research agendas, involving the task of identifying entities and their relations for trusted social network. as the manual semantic relation annotation of web documents is impractical and unscalable, and so in the semantic web area there are two research streams for extracting social networks from web documents : unsupervised method and supervised method. the supervised methods utilize the cartesian product for clustering the nodes @xmath0 in the network. however, the clustering approach is difficult to generate the labels of relations in the network. the supervised methods employ a function @xmath4 for classifying @xmath5, i.e",0.3666666666666666,0.875
arXiv,ID_1601.02904,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"web has been chosen as main source to gain various digital information about entities and their relations from all over the world. the social network is a nucleus of semantic relation, i.e. possibilities of attributes partnership between actors where domains generate the attributes and the web documents provide the descriptions of entities and their relations. extracting social network is more than the text mining process and has been one of artificial intelligent ( ai ) research agendas, involving the task of identifying entities and their relations for trusted social network. as the manual semantic relation annotation of web documents is impractical and unscalable, and so in the semantic web area there are two research streams for extracting social networks from web documents : unsupervised method and supervised method. the supervised methods utilize the cartesian product for clustering the nodes @xmath0 in the network. however, the clustering approach is difficult to generate the labels of relations in the network. the extracted social networks can further be processed in information systems, i.e., in data mining systems that detect valuable trends in the social networks, in cases when selecting content based on certain semantic classes, or in expert systems that reason with the extracted knowledge in order to support government decision making",0.6000000000000001,1.0
arXiv,ID_1601.02904,BART (ORACLE 1K)," we present a method for extracting social network from web documents based on the information retrieval technique.  the method is based on a concept of association rule, which is an approach to identify relationships among entities based on their co - occurrence.    * keywords : * social network, web, information retrieval, association rule   + * ams subject classification : * primary : 60j05, 60j10, 62g05, 62h10, 60g15, 62m10, 82m10. ",0.3666666666666667,1.0
arXiv,ID_1601.02904,BART (ORACLE 4K)," extracting social network from web documents is an important task in information retrieval.  we propose an approach for extracting social networks from web by exploiting web snippets and url structure.    social network extraction, information retrieval, semantic web, web snippets, web documents   +   * keywords : * social network, web, similarity, similarity measures, similarity measure, similarity relations, similarity relation, similarity between entities, web   _ keywords : _ social network analysis, web information retrieval ",0.3,0.8666666666666667
arXiv,ID_1601.02904,BART (ORACLE 8K)," extracting social networks is an important task for understanding and processing of web documents.  the semantic representation of documents currently forms the vision of semantic web, in the same manner as the social network is a nucleus of semantic relation, i.e. possibilities of attributes partnership between actors where domains generate the attributes and the web documents provide the descriptions of entities and their relations. in this paper , we propose an approach for extracting social network from web documents by not only relying on the co - occurrence but to consider other information. ",0.7666666666666666,1.0
arXiv,ID_1601.02904,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"extracting social network from semantic web is an important task, where the web documents provide the descriptions of entities and their relations. however, the task of extracting social networks is more than text mining process and has been one of artificial intelligent ( ai ) research agendas. in this paper, we propose an approach to extract social network by using the information retrieval technique, mainly the generative probabilistic model ( pgm ). we have gathered and labeled a dataset of 539 web pages, tabel 2, and extracted the social network based on the url address of each web page. the results show that our approach is able to extract the social networks. * keywords : * semantic web, social network, information retrieval, unsupervised method.",0.6,0.7777777779999999
arXiv,ID_1601.02904,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"the web has been becoming the largest text database contained information about social networks, but most of data on the web are so unstructured that they can only be understood by humans, the other way the amount of data is so huge that they are only processed efficiently by machines. the semantic representation of documents currently forms the vision of semantic web, in the same manner as the social network is a nucleus of semantic relation, i.e. possibilities of attributes partnership between actors where domains generate the attributes and the web documents provide the descriptions of entities and their relations. extracting social network from the web is more than the text mining process and has been one of artificial intelligent ( ai ) research agenda, involving the task of identifying entities and of their relations for trusted social network. however, these systems take along special cases : flink for extracting social networks from web documents, and polyphonet developed to identify the relations in the japan ai conference. therefore, our goal is to enhance the superficial approach, an approach belong to unsupervised method, to extract social network by not only relying on the co - occurrence but to consider other information.",0.6333333333333333,0.7222222223333333
arXiv,ID_1601.02904,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"the concept of social networks extraction is designed to map the relationship of entities among them to mark the patterns of ties between social actors, to present a variety of social structures according to the interests and its implementation, based on different domains or information sources. the extracted social networks can further be processed in information systems, i.e., in data mining systems that detect valuable trends in the social networks, and in cases when selecting content based on certain semantic classes, or in expert systems that reason with the extracted knowledge in order to support government decision making. in the semantic web area there are two research streams for extracting social networks from web documents : unsupervised method and supervised method. however, the supervised methods utilize the cartesian product for clustering the nodes @xmath0 in the network. therefore, our goal is to enhance the superficial approach, an approach belong to unsupervised method, for extracting the social network from web by not only relying on the co - occurrence but to consider other information. it shows how to uncover underlying strength relations by exploiting web and url structure. our experiments show that a well - known paradigm of querying a document web more simple for accessing by inputting keyword, but most simply by using url address, because on the word or keyword we have typical problems of synonymy and ambiguity, which is not present in url address of web pages.",0.7333333333333334,0.857142857
arXiv,ID_1003.0628,BART (LEAD 1K)," dimensionality reduction for text documents is an active research area. in this paper  we introduce a general technique for incorporating domain knowledge into dimensionality reductions.  our technique is completely unsupervised and does not require any labeled data.    in contrast to several recent alternatives such as principal component analysis ( pca ), locally linear embedding ( lle ), or t - distributed stochastic neighbor embedding, our technique does not assume any label for the vocabulary words. ",0.35,0.6666666666666666
arXiv,ID_1003.0628,BART (LEAD 4K)," we introduce a general technique for incorporating domain knowledge into dimensionality reduction for text documents.  in contrast to several recent alternatives, our technique is completely unsupervised and does not require any labeled data.  we focus on the following type of non - euclidean geometry where the distance between document @xmath0 and @xmath1 is defined as @xmath2 where @xmath3 here @xmath4 is a symmetric positive semidefinite matrix, and we assume that documents @xmath5 are represented as term - frequency ( tf ) column vectors.  the main challenge is to obtain the matrices @xmath6 or @xmath7 that describe the relationship among vocabulary words appropriately.  we consider obtaining @xmath12 or @xmath6 using three general types of domain knowledge.  the first corresponds to manual specification of the semantic relationship among words.  the second corresponds to analyzing the relationship between different words using corpus statistics.  the third corresponds to knowledge obtained from linguistic resources.  whether to specify @xmath12 directly or indirectly through @xmath6 depends on the knowledge type and is discussed in detail.  we investigate the performance of the proposed dimensionality reduction methods for three text domains : sentiment visualization for movie reviews, topic visualization for newsgroup discussion articles, and visual exploration of acl papers. in each of these domains  we compare several different domain dependent geometries and show that they outperform popular state - of - the - art techniques. generally speaking, we observe that geometries obtained from corpus statistics are superior to manually constructed geometries and to geometries derived from standard linguistic resources such as word - net.  we also demonstrate effective ways to combine different types of domain knowledge and show how such combinations significantly outperform any of the domain knowledge types in isolation. ",0.75,1.0
arXiv,ID_1003.0628,BART (LEAD 8K)," we introduce a general technique for incorporating domain knowledge into dimensionality reduction for text documents.  in contrast to several recent alternatives, our technique is completely unsupervised and does not require any labeled data.  we focus on the following type of non - euclidean geometry where the distance between document @xmath0 and @xmath1 is defined as @xmath2 where @xmath3 is a symmetric positive semidefinite matrix, and we assume that documents @xmath4 are represented as term - frequency ( tf ) column vectors.  we consider obtaining @xmath5 or @xmath6 using three general types of domain knowledge.  the first corresponds to manual specification of the semantic relationship among words.  the second corresponds to analyzing the relationship between different words using corpus statistics.  the third corresponds to knowledge obtained from linguistic resources.  whether to specify @xmath12 directly or indirectly through @xmath6 depends on the knowledge type and is discussed in detail.  we investigate the performance of the proposed dimensionality reduction methods for three text domains : sentiment visualization for movie reviews, topic visualization for newsgroup discussion articles, and visual exploration of acl papers.  we compare several different domain dependent geometries and show that they outperform popular state - of - the - art techniques. generally speaking, we observe that geometries obtained from corpus statistics are superior to manually constructed geometries and to geometries derived from standard linguistic resources such as word - net.  we also demonstrate effective ways to combine different types of domain knowledge and show how such combinations significantly outperform any of the domain knowledge types in isolation. ",0.75,0.9722222223333332
arXiv,ID_1003.0628,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"in this paper we introduce a general technique for incorporating domain knowledge into dimensionality reduction for text documents. in contrast to several recent alternatives, our technique is completely unsupervised and does not require any labeled data.  we focus on the following type of non - euclidean geometry where the distance between document @xmath0 and @xmath1 is defined as @xmath2 here @xmath3 is a symmetric positive semidefinite matrix, and we assume that documents @xmath4 are represented as term - frequency ( tf ) column vectors.  we consider obtaining the matrices @xmath5 or @xmath6 using three general types of domain knowledge.  the first corresponds to manual specification of the semantic relationship among words.  the second corresponds to analyzing the relationship between different words using corpus statistics.  the third corresponds to knowledge obtained from linguistic resources.  we investigate the performance of the proposed dimensionality reduction methods for three text domains : sentiment visualization for movie reviews, topic visualization for newsgroup discussion articles, and visual exploration of acl papers. in each of these domains we compare several different domain dependent geometries and show that they outperform popular state - of -",0.6666666666666666,0.9296296296666666
arXiv,ID_1003.0628,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"we introduce a general technique for incorporating domain knowledge into the dimensionality reduction of text documents. the main challenge is to obtain the matrices @xmath12 or @xmath6 that describe the relationship among vocabulary words appropriately. we consider obtaining @xmath12 or @xmath6 using three general types of domain knowledge. the first corresponds to manual specification of the semantic relationship among words. the second corresponds to analyzing the relationship between different words using corpus statistics. the third corresponds to knowledge obtained from linguistic resources. we investigate the performance of the proposed dimensionality reduction methods for three text domains : sentiment visualization for movie reviews, topic visualization for newsgroup discussion articles, and visual exploration of acl papers. in each of these domains we compare several different domain dependent geometries and show that they outperform popular state - of - the - art techniques.",0.65,1.0
arXiv,ID_1003.0628,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"in this paper we introduce a general technique for incorporating domain knowledge into dimensionality reduction for text documents. the main challenge is to obtain the matrices @xmath12 or @xmath6 that describe the relationship among vocabulary words appropriately. we consider three types of domain knowledge : manual specification of the semantic relationship among words, analyzing the relationship between different words using corpus statistics, and knowledge obtained from linguistic resources. we evaluate the performance of the proposed dimensionality reduction methods for three text domains : sentiment visualization for movie reviews, topic visualization for newsgroup discussion articles, and visual exploration of acl papers. in each of these domains we compare several different domain dependent geometries and show that they outperform popular state - of - the - art techniques.",0.7333333333333334,1.0
arXiv,ID_1003.0628,BART (ORACLE 1K)," dimensionality reduction is an active research area.  it is widely used to visualize text documents in the low dimensional 2d or 3d space. in this paper  we introduce several ways of incorporating domain knowledge into dimensionality reductions for text documents. in particular, we consider three general types of domain knowledge : ( i ) local metric, ( ii ) locally linear embedding, ( iii ) word - net, and ( iv ) knowledge obtained from linguistic resources.    we investigate the performance of the proposed methods for three text domains : sentiment visualization for movie reviews, topic visualization for newsgroup discussion articles, and visual exploration of acl papers. generally speaking , we observe that geometries obtained from corpus statistics are superior to manually constructed geometrie and to geometry derived from standard linguistic resources such as word net. ",0.6833333333333332,0.7888888886666666
arXiv,ID_1003.0628,BART (ORACLE 4K)," dimensionality reduction is an active research area. in this paper  we introduce novel techniques for incorporating domain knowledge into dimensionality - reduction for visualization of text documents.  the proposed techniques are based on the following type of non - euclidean geometry : the distance between words is defined as a symmetric positive semidefinite matrix, and documents are represented as term - frequency ( tf ) column vectors. in general,  such a geometry may be used as a local metric or as a low dimensional nonlinear manifold. in order to evaluate the performance of the proposed reduction methods, we consider three different types of domain knowledge : the first corresponds to analyzing the relationship between different words using corpus statistics, the second corresponds to knowledge obtained from linguistic resources such as word - net, and the third is knowledge obtained by combining different domain knowledge types.    in general , we observe that the proposed methods perform best in different situations. ",0.7166666666666668,0.6444444443333334
arXiv,ID_1003.0628,BART (ORACLE 8K)," in this paper we introduce several ways of incorporating domain knowledge into dimensionality reduction for text documents.  we focus on the following type of non - euclidean geometry where the distance between document and document is defined as a symmetric positive semidefinite matrix.   matrix that is invariant to non - singular linear transformations of the    embedded data. in general , the matrix may be viewed as encoding the semantic similarity between pairs of words or as describing the relationship among vocabulary words.  we consider obtaining the matrices using three general types of domain knowledge. the first corresponds to manual specification of the semantic relationship among words, the second corresponds to analyzing the relationship between different words using corpus statistics, and the third corresponds to knowledge obtained from linguistic resources. ",0.5333333333333333,0.7111111113333334
arXiv,ID_1003.0628,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"dimensionality reduction is a powerful technique for mapping documents to low dimensional space. however, standard dimensionality reductions assume that the vocabulary words @xmath0 are orthogonal to each other. an obvious drawback of such an approach is that such methods ignore the textual nature of documents and instead consider the vocabulary @xcite as abstract orthogonal dimensions. in this paper, we introduce a general technique for incorporating domain knowledge into dimensionalityreduction for text documents. we consider obtaining the transformation matrix or the geometry from three general types of domain knowledge. the third corresponds to knowledge obtained from linguistic resources. generally speaking, geometries obtained from corpus statistics are superior to manually constructed geometries and to geometries derived from standard linguistic resources such as word - net. furthermore, effective ways to combine different domain knowledge and show how such combinations significantly outperform any of the domain knowledge types in isolation are also demonstrated. all the techniques mentioned in the paper are unsupervised, making use of labeled data only for evaluation purposes.",0.7999999999999999,0.912962963
arXiv,ID_1003.0628,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"dimensionality reduction methods such as principal component analysis ( pca ), locally linear embedding ( lle ) or t - sne take as input a set of feature vectors such as bag of words or term - frequency ( tf ) vectors. an obvious drawback of such an approach is that such methods ignore the textual nature of documents and instead consider the vocabulary words @xmath0 as abstract orthogonal dimensions that are unrelated to each other. in this paper we introduce a general technique for incorporating domain knowledge into dimensionality transformation for text documents. we consider obtaining the transformation matrix from corpus statistics, domain knowledge obtained from linguistic resources, and domain knowledge derived from manual specification. the geometry realized by or may be used to derive novel dimensionality - reduction methods that are customized to text in general and to specific text domains in particular. to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods, we investigate their performance for three text domains : sentiment visualization for movie reviews, topic visualization for newsgroup discussion articles, as well as visual exploration of acl papers.",0.7766666666666667,1.0
arXiv,ID_1003.0628,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"dimensionality reduction is a key component in managing large text corpora and identifying relevant documents by visual exploration. the effectiveness of such systems depends on the quality of the dimension reduction. in this paper, we introduce a general technique for incorporating domain knowledge into dimension reduction for text documents. we consider obtaining the matrix that encodes the semantic relationship among vocabulary words using three general types of domain knowledge : ( i ) domain knowledge obtained from corpus statistics, ( ii ) corpus statistics based on the number of times different words appear together in a document, and ( iii ) linguistic domain knowledge such as word - net. our technique is completely unsupervised and does not require any labeled data. specifically, our technique can be used to derive novel dimension reduction methods that are customized to text in general and to specific text domains in particular. overall, in each of these text domains we compare several different domain dependent geometries and show that they outperform popular state - of - the - art techniques.",0.8833333333333333,0.9047619046666666
arXiv,ID_1701.08888,BART (LEAD 1K)," we propose two novel models to integrate item reviews into matrix factorization based bayesian personalized ranking.  the models are based on matrix factorizations and use word embeddings to extract text features extracted from item reviews using word embedding techniques. on top of text features , we uncover the review dimensions that explain the variation in users feedback. these review dimensions represent a prior preference of a user and hence they can be used to improve personalized ranking prediction. in each of the two models,  we make use of text feature extracted from the item reviews to extract the review dimension and then extract the latent factor space of the item - item - word matrix.    * keywords : * item reviews, item factorization, bayesian ranking, item reviews. ",0.49,0.8111111110000001
arXiv,ID_1701.08888,BART (LEAD 4K)," bayesian personalized ranking ( bpr - mf ) and collaborative item selection are typical representatives of this paradigm.  this paradigm takes advantage of widely available implicit feedback but it usually ignores a kind of important information : item reviews. in this paper  we propose two novel and simple models to integrate item reviews into bpr - mf.  like hft, they integrate item reviews and unlike hft they generate a ranked list of items for individual ranking. like ctrank, they focus on personalized ranking and unlike ctrank they are based on matrix factorization and using word embeddings to extract features. like bpr - mf, they rank preferred items over others and unlike bpr - mf they leverage the information from item reviews. in each of the two models, we make use of text features extracted from item reviews using word embeddings. and on top of text features we uncover the review dimensions that explain the variation in users feedback.  these review factors represent a prior preference of a user.  one model treats the review factor space independent of the latent factor space ; another connects implicit feedback and item reviews through the shared item space.  we empirically evaluate the proposed models on multiple real - world datasets which contains over millions of feedback in total.  the experimental results show the benefit of leveraging item reviews on personalized ranking prediction.  we also conduct analyses to understand the proposed models including the impact of the number of latent factors. ",0.88,0.941025641
arXiv,ID_1701.08888,BART (LEAD 8K)," bayesian personalized ranking ( bpr - mf ) and collaborative item selection are typical representatives of this paradigm.  this paradigm takes advantage of widely available implicit feedback but it usually ignores a kind of important information : item reviews. in this paper  we propose two novel and simple models to integrate item reviews into bpr - mf.  like hft, they integrate item reviews and unlike hft they generate a ranked list of items for individual ranking. like ctrank, they focus on personalized ranking and unlike ctrank they are based on matrix factorization and using word embeddings to extract features. like bpr - mf, they rank preferred items over others and unlike bpr - mf they leverage the information from item reviews. in each of the two models, we make use of text features extracted from item reviews using word embeddings. and on top of text features we uncover the review dimensions that explain the variation in users feedback.  these review factors represent a prior preference of a user.  one model treats the review factor space independent of the latent factor space ; another connects implicit feedback and item reviews through the shared item space.  we empirically evaluate the proposed models on multiple real - world datasets which contains over millions of feedback in total.  the experimental results show the benefit of leveraging item reviews on personalized ranking prediction.  we also conduct analyses to understand the proposed models including the impact of the number of latent factors. ",0.88,0.9743589743333332
arXiv,ID_1701.08888,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"item recommendation predicts a personalized ranking over a set of items for individual user based on their past behavior history.  item reviews justify the preferences of users and help alleviate the cold - start problem ; they are a diverse and complementary data source for recommendation beyond the user - item co - rating information. in this paper, we propose two novel models to integrate item reviews into bayesian personalized ranking ( bpr - mf ). like hft, they integrate item reviews and unlike hft they generate a ranked list of items for individual ranking. like ctrank, they focus on personalized ranking and unlike ctrank they are based on matrix factorization and using word embeddings to extract features. and on top of text features we uncover the review dimensions that explain the variation in users feedback.  we empirically evaluate the proposed models on multiple real - world datasets which contains over millions of feedback in total.  the experimental results show the benefit of leveraging item reviews on personalized ranking prediction.  we also conduct analyses to understand the proposed models including the training efficiency and the impact of the number of latent factors.",0.7133333333333333,0.8333333333333334
arXiv,ID_1701.08888,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"this paper proposes two novel models to incorporate item reviews into bayesian personalized ranking. like bayesian personalized ranking ( bpr - mf ), they integrate item reviews and unlike bpr - mf they generate a ranked list of items for individual user. like bpr - mf, they rank preferred items over others and unlike bpr - mf they leverage the information from item reviews. in each of the two models, we make use of text features extracted from item reviews using word embeddings. and on top of text features we uncover the review dimensions that explain the variation in users feedback. the experimental results show the benefit of leveraging item reviews on personalized ranking prediction.",0.5399999999999999,0.8055555553333335
arXiv,ID_1701.08888,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"this paper proposes two novel models to incorporate item reviews into bayesian personalized ranking. like bayesian personalized ranking ( bpr - mf ), they integrate item reviews and unlike bpr - mf they generate a ranked list of items for individual user. like bpr - mf, they rank preferred items over others and unlike bpr - mf they leverage the information from item reviews. in each of the two models, we make use of text features extracted from item reviews using word embeddings and on top of text features we uncover the review dimensions that explain the variation in users feedback. the experimental results show the benefit of leveraging item reviews on personalized ranking prediction on multiple real - world datasets which contains over millions of feedback in total.",0.5399999999999999,0.7944444443333333
arXiv,ID_1701.08888,BART (ORACLE 1K)," item recommendation predicts a personalized ranking over a set of items for individual user and hence alleviates the dilemma.  the rating - based ( or point - wise ) methods predict ratings that a user will give to items and then rank the items according to their predicted ratings. this paradigm concentrates on explicit feedback and it faces the difficulties in collecting them. meanwhile, the ranking - based methods are presented with seen items and rank the seen above the unseen.    in this paper  we propose two novel and simple models to integrate item reviews into bayesian personalized ranking ( bpr - mf ). like hft , they incorporate item reviews and unlike hft they generate a ranked list of items. in each of the two models, we make use of text features extracted from item reviews using word embeddings. and on top of these features we uncover the review dimensions that explain the variation in users feedback. these review factors represent a prior preference of a user and show the ` text influence of her rated items '. ",0.5633333333333334,0.925925926
arXiv,ID_1701.08888,BART (ORACLE 4K)," item recommendation predicts a personalized ranking over a set of items for individual user and hence alleviates the dilemma.  this paradigm takes advantage of widely available implicit feedback but it usually ignores a kind of important information : item reviews. * item reviews justify the preferences of users and help alleviate the cold - start problem ; they are a diverse and complementary data source for recommendation beyond the user - item co - rating information. in this paper  we propose two novel and simple models to integrate item reviews into bayesian personalized ranking. like bayesian  personalized ranking, they focus on personalized ranking and unlike ctrank they are based on matrix factorization and using word embeddings to extract features. in each of the two models, we make use of text features extracted from item reviews via word embedding. and on top of these features we uncover the review dimensions that explain the variation in users feedback and these review factors represent a prior preference of a user. we empirically evaluate the proposed models on multiple real - world datasets which contains over millions of feedback in total. ",0.7300000000000001,0.7916666666666666
arXiv,ID_1701.08888,BART (ORACLE 8K)," item recommendation is a popular method to improve personalized ranking.  this paradigm takes advantage of widely available implicit feedback but it usually ignores a kind of important information : item reviews. in this paper , we propose two novel and simple models to integrate item reviews into bayesian personalized ranking based on matrix factorization for cold start recommendation. in each of the two models, we make use of text features extracted from item reviews via word embeddings. on top of these text features  we uncover the review dimensions that explain the variation in users feedback. these review factors represent a prior preference of a user and show the ` text influence'of her rated items.    bayesian recommendation, item reviews, matrix factorizations, word embedding, personalized ranking ",0.5833333333333334,0.9047619046666666
arXiv,ID_1701.08888,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"item recommendation predicts a personalized ranking over a set of items for individual user and hence alleviates the cold - start problem. the rating - based ( or point - wise ) methods predict ratings that a user will give to items and then rank the items according to their predicted ratings. this paradigm concentrates on explicit feedback and it faces the difficulties in collecting them. in this paper, we propose two novel and simple models to integrate item reviews into bayesian personalized ranking ( bpr - mf ). they generate a ranked list of items to improve personalized ranking prediction. on top of text features extracted from item reviews using word embeddings we uncover the review dimensions that explain the variation in users feedback and these review factors represent a prior preference of a user. experimental results show the benefit of leveraging item reviews on personalized ranking. we also conduct analyses to understand the proposed models including the training efficiency and the impact of the number of latent factors.",0.7766666666666667,0.9583333333333334
arXiv,ID_1701.08888,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"item reviews justify the preferences of users and help alleviate the cold - start problem ; they are a diverse and complementary data source for recommendation beyond the user - item co - rating information. bayesian personalized ranking ( bpr - mf ) predicts a ranked list of items for individual user and it usually ignores a kind of important information : item reviews. in this paper, we propose two novel and simple models to integrate item reviews into bpr-mf. we build the proposed models on the top of text features extracted from item reviews using word embeddings. on top of these features we uncover the review dimensions that explain the variation in users feedback. these review factors represent a prior preference of a user. one model treats the review factor space independent of the latent factor space ; another connects implicit feedback and item reviews through the shared item space. the experimental results show the benefit of leveraging item reviews on personalized ranking prediction.",0.7166666666666667,0.8166666666666668
arXiv,ID_1701.08888,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"item recommendation predicts a personalized ranking over a set of items for individual user and alleviates the cold - start problem. the rating - based ( or point - wise ) methods predict ratings that a user will give to items and then rank the items according to their predicted ratings. this paradigm concentrates on explicit feedback and it faces the difficulties in collecting them. however, it usually ignores a kind of important information : item reviews. in this paper, we propose two novel and simple models to integrate item reviews into bayesian personalized ranking ( bpr - mf ). they generate a ranked list of items over the individual user by leveraging the information from item reviews and on top of text features extracted from them ; one model treats the review factor space independent of the latent factor space ; another connects implicit feedback and item reviews through the shared item space. we demonstrate a simple and effective way of extracting features from itemreviews by averagely composing word embeddings. our experiments show the benefit of leveraging item reviews on personalized ranking prediction on a variety of real - world datasets.",0.6533333333333333,0.85
arXiv,ID_1404.1061,BART (LEAD 1K)," we examine the effects of two distinct sources of biases on the inference of fitness landscapes from data : main effects of loci and epistatic interactions between loci.  we show that these biases are inherent to linear regression, and that they distort the biological quantities of greatest interest, often making evolution appear less predictable than it actually is. we discuss methods that may mitigate these biases in some cases.    *  key words : * fitness landscape, epistasis, main effects, penalized regression, linear regression ",0.2666666666666666,0.6944444446666665
arXiv,ID_1404.1061,BART (LEAD 4K)," the dynamics of evolution depend on an organism s  fitness landscape "", the mapping from genotypes to reproductive rates.  knowledge of the fitness landscape can help resolve questions such as how quickly a pathogen will acquire drug resistance, or by what pattern of mutations.  but direct measurement of a fitness landscape is impossible because of the vast number of genotypes.  here we critically examine regression techniques used to approximate fitness landscapes from data.  we find that such regressions are subject to two inherent biases that distort the biological quantities of greatest interest, often making evolution appear less predictable than it actually is.  we discuss methods that may mitigate these biases in some cases. ",0.4333333333333333,1.0
arXiv,ID_1404.1061,BART (LEAD 8K)," the dynamics of evolution depend on an organism s  fitness landscape "", the mapping from genotypes to reproductive rates.  knowledge of the fitness landscape can help resolve questions such as how quickly a pathogen will acquire drug resistance, or by what pattern of mutations.  but direct measurement of a fitness landscape is impossible because of the vast number of genotypes.  here we critically examine regression techniques used to approximate fitness landscapes from data.  we find that such regressions are subject to two inherent biases that distort the biological quantities of greatest interest, often making evolution appear less predictable than it actually is.  we discuss methods that may mitigate these biases in some cases. ",0.5,1.0
arXiv,ID_1404.1061,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"the dynamics of evolution depend an organism s fitness landscape "", the mapping from genotypes to reproductive capacity. but direct measurement of a fitness landscape is impossible because of the vast number of genotypes. here  we critically examine regression techniques used to approximate fitness landscapes from data.  we find that such regressions are subject to two inherent biases that distort the biological quantities of greatest interest, often making evolution appear less predictable than it actually is.  we discuss methods that may mitigate these biases in some cases.",0.5666666666666668,1.0
arXiv,ID_1404.1061,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"the dynamics of evolution depend on an organism s fitness landscape, the mapping from genotypes to reproductive capacity. however, direct measurement of a fitness landscape is impossible because of the vast number of genotypes. here we critically examine regression techniques used to approximate fitness landscapes from data. we find that such regressions are subject to two inherent biases that distort the biological quantities of greatest interest, often making evolution appear less predictable than it actually is. we discuss methods that may mitigate these biases in some cases.",0.6,1.0
arXiv,ID_1404.1061,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"backgroundthe dynamics of evolution depend on an organism s fitness landscape, the mapping from genotypes to reproductive capacity.resultshere we critically examine regression techniques used to approximate fitness landscapes from data. we find that such regressions are subject to two inherent biases that distort the biological quantities of greatest interest, often making evolution appear less predictable than it actually is.conclusionswe discuss methods that may mitigate these biases in some cases.",0.4333333333333333,0.9
arXiv,ID_1404.1061,BART (ORACLE 1K)," fitness landscapes are ubiquitous in nature, and they play an important role in shaping the course of evolution.  however, very little is known about how these landscapes are affected by epistasis, and how these epistasis affects the predictions made by fitting a statistical model of the fitness landscape to empirical data. here  we show that biases inherent to fitting a quadratic model of fitness landscapes to data can lead to significant biases in the form of over- or under - estimation of the number of local maxima and the prevalence of sign epistasis in the inferred landscape, as well as in the shape of the underlying fitness landscape. as a result,  it is difficult to predict the dynamics of adaptation in fitness landscapes. ",0.4833333333333334,0.6666666666666666
arXiv,ID_1404.1061,BART (ORACLE 4K)," fitness landscapes have been directly measured in only very limited cases, such as for individual proteins, rna molecules, or viruses. as a result, very little is known about fitness landscapes in nature, despite their overwhelming importance in shaping the course of evolution.  researchers are now beginning to sample and measure larger portions of the fitness landscapes than previously possible. as such, it is now possible to fit a quadratic model of a fitness landscape to empirical data, and so to infer the dynamics of adaptation. here  we show that such approximations, which are required to draw any general conclusions from a limited sample of genotypes, are subject to two distinct sources of biases. these biasessystematically alter the form of epistasis in the inferred fitness landscape compared to the true underlying landscape. as the result,  the inferred landscape will typically exhibit less local ruggedness than the true landscape, and it will suggest that evolutionary trajectories are less predictable than they actually are in the true one. ",0.5833333333333334,0.9523809523333332
arXiv,ID_1404.1061,BART (ORACLE 8K)," the dynamics of evolution depends on the  fitness landscape "", the mapping from genotypes to reproductive capacity.  direct measurement of a fitness landscape is impossible because of the vast number of genotypes, and because of epistasis : the fitness contribution of one locus may depend upon the states of other loci.   we demonstrate that such approximations, which are required to draw any general conclusions from a limited sample of genotypes, are subject to two distinct sources of biases. although these biases are known features of linear regressions, they have important consequences for the biological quantities inferred from such fitness landscapes : the inferred fitness landscape will typically exhibit less local ruggedness than the true landscape, and it will suggest that evolutionary trajectories are less predictable than they actually are in the true underlying landscape. as a result,  the same biases occur in rna - folding landscapes as well as empirically measured regulatory sequence binding landscapes. ",0.7666666666666666,0.7333333333333334
arXiv,ID_1404.1061,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"despite their importance in shaping the course of evolution, very little is known about epistasis in fitness landscapes, despite their overwhelming importance. here, we show that the same types of biases occur in rna - folding landscapes as well as empirically measured regulatory sequence binding landscapes. we construct a quadratic model of a fitness landscape and fit it to genotypes that have been sampled from the landscape, using penalized least square regression. the resulting model over - estimates low fitnesses and under - estimates high fitnesses. this bias has important consequences for our understanding of epistasis, for our ability to predict the dynamics of adaptation, and for the use of fitness landscapes as predictive models. as a result, the inferred number of local maxima and the prevalence of sign epistasis may be under- or over - estimated by a statistical model of the fitness landscape fit, as well, at least to some extent.",0.6166666666666667,0.8222222223333334
arXiv,ID_1404.1061,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),nan,0.0,0.0
arXiv,ID_1404.1061,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"the dynamics of evolution depend on characteristics of an organism s fitness landscape "", the mapping from genotypes to reproductive capacity. but direct measurement of a fitness landscape is impossible because of the vast number of genotypes. as a result, very little is known about fitness landscapes in nature, despite their overwhelming importance in shaping the course of evolution. we demonstrate that such approximations are subject to two distinct sources of biases. first, there is a fitness - dependent bias in the inferred fitness landscape, which systematically underestimates the fitnesses of low - fitness genotypes and under - estimates high - fitnesses. second, even when there is sufficient data so that a penalized least - squares regression is unnecessary, overfitting may become a problem. in this case, we show that the inferred landscape tends to overestimate the amount of epistasis in the fitness landscape compared to the true underlying landscape. this epistasis overestimation leads to a systematic underestimation of the number of accessible genetic paths between genotypes in the true landscape and the number and form of reciprocal sign epistasis. these biases systematically alter the epistasis of inferred fitness landscapes, suggesting that evolutionary trajectories are less predictable than they actually are. although it may be impossible to completely remove these biases, it is important that researchers be aware of the biases inherent in fitting fitness landscapes to empirical data, and that methods to mitigate these biases are discussed.",0.7833333333333332,0.7666666666666666
arXiv,ID_1507.05211,BART (LEAD 1K)," phylogenetic trees are fundamental tools for understanding evolution.  however, when a tree is inferred from data there are multiple sources of uncertainty : species trees differ from gene trees, and many organisms exchange genes through horizontal gene transfer. it is therefore crucial to be able to compare trees to identify signals from selection and/or to identify differences in trees according to their biological significance. in this paper  we introduce a new metric on trees which flexibly captures both tree structure and branch lengths. using this metric , we define a _ tree space _, which can be used as a quantitative tool for comparing phylogenetic tree trees.    we show how our metric enables visualization of tree space and detection of islands, and we demonstrate with a simple application to dengue fever phylogenies. ",0.7766666666666667,0.888888889
arXiv,ID_1507.05211,BART (LEAD 4K)," phylogenetic trees are fundamental tools for understanding evolution.  however, when a tree is inferred from data there are multiple sources of uncertainty.  competing approaches to tree estimation can produce markedly different trees.  it is therefore crucial to be able to compare trees to identify these signals.  current quantitative methods for tree comparison suffer from the challenges of visualizing non - euclidean distances and from counter - intuitive behavior.  we introduce a _ metric _ which flexibly captures both tree structure and branch lengths.  it can be used as a quantitative tool for comparing phylogenetic trees.  each metric on trees defines a _ tree space _ ; this tree space lends itself to clear visualizations in low dimensions, and captures and highlights differences in trees according to their biological significance.  we show how our metric enables visualization of tree space and detection of islands, which we demonstrate with a simple application to dengue fever phylogenies.  we also explain how our metric provides a new suite of methods for selecting summary trees. ",0.9,1.0
arXiv,ID_1507.05211,BART (LEAD 8K)," phylogenetic trees are fundamental tools for understanding evolution.  however, when a tree is inferred from data there are multiple sources of uncertainty.  competing approaches to tree estimation can produce markedly different trees.  it is therefore crucial to be able to compare trees to identify these signals.  current quantitative methods for tree comparison suffer from the challenges of visualizing non - euclidean distances and from counter - intuitive behavior.  we introduce a _ metric _ which flexibly captures both tree structure and branch lengths.  it can be used as a quantitative tool for comparing phylogenetic trees.  each metric on trees defines a _ tree space _ ; this tree space lends itself to clear visualizations in low dimensions, and captures and highlights differences in trees according to their biological significance.  we show how our metric enables visualization of tree space and detection of islands, which we demonstrate with a simple application to dengue fever phylogenies.  we also explain how our metric provides a new suite of methods for selecting summary trees. ",0.9,1.0
arXiv,ID_1507.05211,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"phylogenetic trees are fundamental tools for understanding evolution.  however, when a tree is inferred from data there are multiple sources of uncertainty.  trees may conflict due to signals from selection ( e.g. convergent evolution ), and/or when derived from different data ( e.g. the organisms mitochondrial vs nuclear dna, individual genes or other subsets of sequence data ).  it is therefore crucial to be able to compare trees to identify these signals.  current quantitative methods for tree comparison suffer from the challenges of visualizing non - euclidean distances and from counter - intuitive behavior.  we introduce a _ metric _ which flexibly captures both tree structure and branch lengths.  it can be used as a quantitative tool for comparing phylogenetic trees.  each metric on trees defines a _ tree space _ ; this tree space lends itself to clear visualizations in low dimensions, and captures and highlights differences in trees according to their biological significance.",0.8366666666666666,1.0
arXiv,ID_1507.05211,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"phylogenetic trees are fundamental tools for understanding evolution. however, when a tree is inferred from data there are multiple sources of uncertainty. trees may conflict due to signals from selection ( e.g. convergent evolution ), and/or when derived from different data ( e.g. the organisms mitochondrial vs nuclear dna, individual genes or other subsets of sequence data @xcite ). it is crucial to be able to compare trees to identify these signals. trees can be compared by direct visualization, aided by methods such as tanglegrams and software such as densitree @xcite, but this does not lend itself to detailed comparison of large groups of trees. current quantitative methods for tree comparison suffer from the challenges of visualizing non - euclidean distances @xcite and from counter - intuitive behavior. here, we introduce a _ metric _ which flexibly captures both tree structure and branch lengths. it can be used as a quantitative tool for comparing phylogenetic trees. we formally define our distance function, prove that it is a metric, and explain its capacity to capture tree structure and branch lengths. we also provide a brief survey, explaining how our metric relates to",0.8566666666666666,0.8833333333333333
arXiv,ID_1507.05211,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"there is a need for new metrics for phylogenetic tree comparison. phylogenetic trees are fundamental tools for understanding evolution. however, when a tree is inferred from data there are multiple sources of uncertainty. trees may conflict due to signals from selection ( e.g. convergent evolution ), and/or when derived from different data ( e.g. the organisms mitochondrial vs nuclear dna, individual genes or other subsets of sequence data @xcite ). current quantitative methods for tree comparison suffer from the challenges of visualizing non - euclidean distances @xcite and from counter - intuitive behavior. we introduce a _ metric _ which flexibly captures both tree structure and branch lengths. it lends itself to clear visualizations in low dimensions, and captures and highlights differences in trees according to their biological significance.",0.6433333333333333,1.0
arXiv,ID_1507.05211,BART (ORACLE 1K)," phylogenetic trees are fundamental tools for understanding evolution.  it is therefore crucial to be able to compare trees to identify these signals.    in this paper  we introduce a new metric on trees, which enables quantitative comparison of trees, and can help to reveal distinct, likely patterns of evolution. our metric can find distances between any rooted, labeled trees with the same topology, and captures intuitive similarities ( e.g. convergent evolution ), and/or when derived from different data.  we show how our metric enables visualization of tree space and detection of islands. ",0.7566666666666667,1.0
arXiv,ID_1507.05211,BART (ORACLE 4K)," phylogenetic trees are fundamental tools for understanding evolution. . however, trees may conflict due to signals from selection ( e.g. convergent evolution ), and/or when derived from different data.   it is therefore crucial to be able to compare trees to identify these signals. here  we introduce a new metric on phylogenetic tree topologies and branch lengths which enables quantitative comparison of trees and can help to reveal distinct, likely patterns of evolution. in particular, our metric enables visualization of tree space and detection of islands, and can be used to compare tree structures from a variety of scientific disciplines. ",0.7566666666666667,1.0
arXiv,ID_1507.05211,BART (ORACLE 8K)," phylogenetic trees are fundamental tools for understanding evolution.  however, when a tree is inferred from data there are multiple sources of uncertainty : selection ( e.g. convergent evolution ), and/or when derived from different subsets of sequence data.   trees can be compared by direct visualization, aided by methods such as tanglegrams and software such as densitree, but this does not lend itself to detailed comparison of large groups of trees.  current quantitative methods for tree comparison suffer from the challenges of visualizing non - euclidean distances and counter - intuitive behavior. here  we define a metric on trees which captures tree structure and branch lengths, and can be used as a quantitative tool for comparing phylogenetic analyses.  we provide a brief survey, explaining how our metric relates to and differs from existing metrics, and show how it enables visualization of tree space and detection of islands ( distinct clusters or islands of tree topologies ), which we demonstrate with a simple application to dengue fever phylogenies. ",0.9033333333333332,1.0
arXiv,ID_1507.05211,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"phylogenetic trees are fundamental tools for understanding evolution. it is therefore crucial to be able to compare trees to identify signals of convergent evolution, and/or when derived from different data ( e.g. from genes, inference methods, or sources of data ). each metric on trees defines a _ tree space _ ; this tree space lends itself to clear visualizations in low dimensions and captures and highlights differences in trees according to their biological significance. we show how our metric enables visualization of tree space and detection of islands of tree topologies, which we demonstrate with a simple application to dengue fever phylogenies.",0.7366666666666667,1.0
arXiv,ID_1507.05211,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"phylogenetic trees are fundamental tools for understanding evolution, but direct comparison of large groups of trees is challenging. we introduce a new metric on phylogenetic trees that enables quantitative comparison of trees. our metric defines a tree space which lends itself to clear visualization, and allows us to detect islands of distinct tree topologies. it also facilitates the selection of summary trees, allowing us to compare trees with similar biological significance. as an example, we demonstrate how our metric is used to detect distinct clusters of trees in a dataset of beast posterior trees for dengue fever.",0.7866666666666667,1.0
arXiv,ID_1507.05211,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"phylogenetic trees are fundamental tools for understanding evolution. however, when a tree is inferred from data there are multiple sources of uncertainty. trees may conflict due to signals from selection ( e.g. convergent evolution ), and/or when derived from different data ( e,g. the organisms mitochondrial vs nuclear dna, individual genes or other subsets of sequence data ) @xcite. it is therefore crucial to be able to compare trees to identify these signals. current quantitative methods for tree comparison suffer from the challenges of visualizing non - euclidean distances and from counter - intuitive behavior. we propose a new metric on phylogenetic trees, which allows us to visualize and highlight tree structure and branch lengths. our metric can be used to make a principled selection of summary trees.",0.7033333333333333,1.0
arXiv,ID_1602.00753,BART (LEAD 1K)," we introduce a method to learn to estimate sizes of objects, without explicit human supervision, by combining both textual and visual observations.  we use size graph as a representation to represent both absolute and relative size information and use the transitive nature of size information to leverage the likelihood of both visual and textual observations. to be comprehensive , our method does not rely on human supervision and only uses web data. to obtain large scale visual observations, we use detectors trained without explicit annotations using webdata and single image depth estimators that are pretrained using few categories and have shown to be generalizable to unseen categories.    using our method,  our experiments show that our method achieves @xmath0 relative size comparisons on our dataset of about @xcite. ",0.52,0.8000000000000002
arXiv,ID_1602.00753,BART (LEAD 4K)," in this paper, we introduce a method to learn to estimate sizes of physical objects, with no explicit human supervision, leveraging both textual and visual observations.  our approach is to couple ( noisy ) textual and visual estimates and use the transitive nature of size information to reason about objects that do nt co - occur frequently.  for example in figure  [ fig : teaser ], our method can establish inferences about the relative size of ` sofa'and ` tree'through a set of intermediate relations between ` sofa'-`cat'and ` cat'-`tree '.  we introduce _ size graph _ as our representation to model object sizes and their relations.  the size graph allows us to leverage the transitive nature of size information by maximizing the likelihood of both visual and textual observations.  the topology of the size graph provides guidance on how to collect enough visual observations and how to deal with the noise and incompleteness of the data.  our experiments show that textual observations about the relative sizes of objects are very limited, and relative size comparisons are better collected through visual data. in addition, we show that log - normal distribution is a better model for representing sizes than normal distributions. ",0.6699999999999999,0.9583333333333334
arXiv,ID_1602.00753,BART (LEAD 8K)," in this paper, we introduce a method to learn to estimate sizes of physical objects, with no explicit human supervision, leveraging both textual and visual observations.  our approach is to couple ( noisy ) textual and visual estimates and use the transitive nature of size information to reason about objects that do nt co - occur frequently.  for example, our method can establish inferences about the relative size of ` sofa'and ` tree'through a set of intermediate relations between ` sofa'-`cat'and ` cat'-`tree '.  we introduce _ size graph _ as our representation to model object sizes and their relations.  the size graph allows us to leverage the transitive nature of size information by maximizing the likelihood of both visual and textual observations.  the topology of the size graph provides guidance on how to collect enough visual observations and how to deal with the noise and incompleteness of the data.  our experiments show that textual observations about the relative sizes of objects are very limited, and relative size comparisons are better collected through visual data. in addition, we show that log - normal distribution is a better model for representing sizes than normal distributions. ",0.6466666666666666,0.9583333333333334
arXiv,ID_1602.00753,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"human visual system has a strong prior knowledge about physical sizes of objects in the real world and can immediately retrieve size information as it recognizes objects.  we postulate that this is mainly due to the lack of a comprehensive resource that can provide information about object sizes. in this paper , we introduce a method to automatically provide such information by representing and inferring object sizes and their relations. to be comprehensive, our method does not rely on explicit human supervision and only uses web data.  we use size graph to represent both absolute size information ( from textual web data ) and relative ones ( from visual web data ).  the nodes in the size graph correspond to the log - normal distribution of the sizes of objects and edges correspond to relative sizes of pairs of objects that co - occur frequently.  the topology of the size graph provides guidance on how to collect enough textual and visual observations to deal with the noise and sparsity of the observations.  we formulate the problem of learning the size of objects as optimizing for a set of parameters that maximize the likelihood of both textual and visual observations. to obtain large scale visual observations we use detectors trained without explicit annotations using webdata and single image",0.7799999999999999,0.7888888889999999
arXiv,ID_1602.00753,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"human visual system has a strong prior knowledge about physical sizes of objects in the real world @xcite and can immediately retrieve size information as it recognizes objects. in this paper, we introduce a method to learn to estimate sizes of objects, with no explicit human supervision, leveraging both textual and visual observations. to be comprehensive, our method does not rely on explicit human supervision and only uses web data. we use size graph, to represent both absolute size information ( from textual web data ) and relative ones ( from visual web data ). the size graph allows us to leverage the transitive nature of size information by maximizing the likelihood of both visual and textual observations.",0.6266666666666666,1.0
arXiv,ID_1602.00753,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"we propose a method to learn the sizes of objects with no explicit human supervision, leveraging both textual and visual observations. to be comprehensive, our method does not rely on explicit human supervision and only uses web data. we use size graph to represent both absolute size information ( from textual web data ) and relative ones ( from visual web data ). the size graph allows us to leverage the transitive nature of size information by maximizing the likelihood of both visual and textual observations.",0.5133333333333333,1.0
arXiv,ID_1602.00753,BART (ORACLE 1K)," in this paper, we introduce a fully automated method to infer information about sizes of physical objects using both visual and textual information available on the web.  our approach is to couple ( noisy ) textual and visual estimates and use the transitive nature of size information to reason about objects that do nt co - occur frequently. to be comprehensive , our method does not rely on explicit human supervision and only uses web data. in order to deal with the noise and incompleteness of the data,  we introduce _ size graph _ that represents object sizes ( nodes ) and their relations ( edges ) in a connected, yet sparse graph representation. we formulate the problem of estimating the size as maximizing the likelihood of both textual observations to learn distributions over object sizes.    on our dataset of about @xmath0 relative size comparisons, our algorithm achieves @xxmath1% accuracy, compared to @xmm2% of a competitive nlp baseline. if available, our model can benefit from reliable information about the actual sizes of a limited number of object categories. ",0.7766666666666667,0.8380952380000001
arXiv,ID_1602.00753,BART (ORACLE 4K)," identifying numerical properties of objects, such as size, has been recently studied in natural language processing and shown to be helpful for question answering and information extraction. considering the importance of size information in human vision, it is counter - intuitive that most of the current automatic image identification ( ai ) systems are agnostic to object sizes. in this paper, we propose a method to automatically provide such information by representing and inferring object sizes and their relations.  we introduce _ size graph _ as a compact, well - connected, sparse graph representation whose nodes are distributions over the actual sizes of the objects. to deal with the noise and incompleteness of the data , we introduce size graph that represents and inferrates object sizes ( nodes ) in a connected, yet sparse graph. using textual web data to extract information about the absolute sizes of objects through search query templates, we use visual data to collect information about relative sizes if they co - occur in an image. we formulate the problem of estimating the size as maximizing the likelihood of textual and visual observations to learn distributions over object sizes, with no explicit human supervision. on our dataset of about @xmath0 relative size comparisons,  our method achieves a @xcite accuracy of about 1%, compared to @xciters of a competitive nlp baseline. ",0.8533333333333334,0.7916666666666666
arXiv,ID_1602.00753,BART (ORACLE 8K)," identifying numerical properties of objects, such as size, has been recently studied in natural language processing and has been shown to be helpful for question answering and information extraction.  however, the quality and scale of such extraction has been somewhat limiting. in this paper , we introduce a method to learn to estimate sizes of physical objects, with no explicit human supervision, leveraging both textual and visual observations.    to deal with the noise and incompleteness of the observations, we propose _ size graph _ as a compact, well - connected, sparse graph representation whose nodes are distributions over the actual sizes of the objects.  the nodes in the size graph correspond to the log - normal distribution of the sizes of objects and edges correspond to relative sizes of pairs of objects that co - occur frequently.  we formulate the problem of estimating the size as maximizing the likelihood of both textual ( visual ) and visual ( textual ) observations to learn distributions over object sizes. to obtain large scale visual observations  we use detectors trained without explicit annotations using webdata and single image depth estimators that are pretrained using few categories. on our dataset of about @xmath0 relative size comparisons  our method achieves @xcite relative size estimates, compared to @xmm0% of a competitive nlp baseline.  our results show that textual and textual data are complementary, and optimizing for both modalities outperforms individual models. ",0.8233333333333333,0.8055555556666666
arXiv,ID_1602.00753,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"in this paper, we address the problem of identifying sizes of physical objects using visual and textual information. we postulate that this is mainly due to the lack of a comprehensive resource that can provide information about object sizes. to be comprehensive, our method does not rely on explicit human supervision and only uses web data. our approach is to couple ( noisy ) textual and visual estimates and use the transitive nature of size information to reason about objects that do nt co - occur frequently. the nodes in the size graph correspond to the log - normal distribution of the sizes of objects and edges correspond to relative sizes of pairs of objects that co - happen frequently, which allows us to leverage the  transitivity'of size. in order to deal with the noise and sparsity of the data, the size estimation problem is formulated as optimizing for a set of parameters that maximize the likelihood of both textual and visually - extracted size estimates. experimental results on a dataset of about @xmath0 relative size comparisons show that our method achieves @xcite1% accuracy, compared to @math2% of a competitive nlp baseline. if available, this model can benefit from reliable information about the actual sizes of a limited number of object categories.",0.7399999999999999,0.8416666666666667
arXiv,ID_1602.00753,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"in this paper, we address the problem of learning to estimate sizes of objects from textual and visual observations. our approach leverages the transitive nature of size information by maximizing the likelihood of both textual data and visual data to learn distributions over object sizes. to be comprehensive, our method does not rely on explicit human supervision and only uses web data. we introduce _ size graph _ as our representation to model object sizes and their relations. the nodes in the size graph correspond to the log - normal distribution of the absolute sizes of the objects and edges correspond to relative sizes of pairs of objects that co - occur frequently. in order to deal with the noise and sparsity of the data, the method is formulated as a convex optimization problem and is solved via gradient descent. on our dataset of about @xmath0 relative size comparisons, on average our method achieves @x",0.6533333333333334,0.9523809523333332
arXiv,ID_1602.00753,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"human visual system has a strong prior knowledge about physical sizes of objects in the real world and can immediately retrieve size information as it recognizes objects. in this paper, we argue that visual and textual observations are complementary, and a successful size estimation method should also take advantage of both modalities. our approach is to couple ( noisy ) textual and visual estimates and use the transitive nature of size information to reason about objects that do nt co - occur frequently. for example, our method can establish inferences about the relative size of  sofa'and  tree'through a set of intermediate relations between  couch'and a  cat '. we use size graph, which represents object sizes ( nodes ) and their relations ( edges ) in a connected, yet sparse graph representation. the nodes in the size graph correspond to the log - normal distribution of the sizes of the objects and edges correspond to relative sizes of pairs of objects that co - occurs frequently, thus allowing us to leverage the _ transitive _ nature of the size information. to learn the size of objects as optimizing over the likelihood of both textual and visually observed data, the problem of learning the size as optimizing for the likelihood is formulated as a convex optimization problem. on our dataset of about @xmath0 relative size comparisons, _ our model _ achieves _ higher _ accuracy _ compared to _ all _ baselines. + + * keywords : * size estimation, size graph",0.8333333333333334,0.925925926
arXiv,ID_0906.0480,BART (LEAD 1K)," we analyze daily data for a 63-element set comprising 60 actual currencies and 3 precious metals : gold, silver, and platinum.  we find that the exchange rates of these metals are highly correlated and exhibit a complex network structure, with a strong dependence on the base currency used as a reference frame. in particular, gold and other precious metals are more strongly correlated than silver and platinum, while platinum is less correlated than gold and silver.    * keywords : * foreign exchange market, currency exchange network, correlation matrix, minimal spanning tree, gold, gold - silver correlation, precious metals ",0.2566666666666666,0.7777777779999999
arXiv,ID_0906.0480,BART (LEAD 4K)," we analyze daily data for a 63 - element set comprising 60 actual currencies and 3 precious metals : gold, silver, and platinum.  we consider the inclusion of these metals in our analysis as justified due to the two following reasons : first, gold and other precious metals are historically closely related to the currency system ( silver and gold coins, the gold standard etc. ). even if at present there is no explicit relation between the official monetary system and the precious metals, they are still perceived by many as a convenient alternative to real currencies in times of high inflation or deep crises.  second, we prefer to include the precious metals also because they, if treated as a reference frame, can allow us to look at the actual currency market from outside. in this context  the precious metals can serve as a benchmark of being decoupled from the market.  we put stress on quantification of a currency s importance in the world financial system and on tracking its subtle changes as the market evolves in time.  we achieve this by employing the well - known methods of correlation matrix ( cm ) and minimal spanning trees ( mst ).  however, one has to be aware that both these methods, although simple and effective, are linear and thus they detect only a part of interactions between the exchange rates ; nonlinear contributions to the internode couplings are neglected. since different currencies may have different internal dynamics related to domestic economy, inflation, and sensitivity to events in other countries and markets, behaviour of the exchange rates  is strongly dependent on a particular choice of the base.  what follows, there is no absolute correlation structure of the fx network ; its structure depends largely on the base currency. ",0.4599999999999999,1.0
arXiv,ID_0906.0480,BART (LEAD 8K)," we analyze daily data for a 63 - element set comprising 60 actual currencies and 3 precious metals : gold, silver, and platinum.  we consider the inclusion of these metals in our analysis as justified due to the two following reasons : first, gold and other precious metals are historically closely related to the currency system ( silver and gold coins, the gold standard etc. ). even if at present there is no explicit relation between the official monetary system and the precious metals, they are still perceived by many as a convenient alternative to real currencies in times of high inflation or deep crises.  second, we prefer to include the precious metals also because they, if treated as a reference frame, can allow us to look at the actual currency market from outside. in this context  the precious metals can serve as a benchmark of being decoupled from the market.  we put stress on quantification of a currency s importance in the world financial system and on tracking its subtle changes as the market evolves in time.  we achieve this by employing the well - known methods of correlation matrix ( cm ) and minimal spanning trees ( mst ).  however, one has to be aware that both these methods, although simple and effective, are linear and thus they detect only a part of interactions between the exchange rates ; nonlinear contributions to the internode couplings are neglected.  since different currencies may have different internal dynamics related to domestic economy, inflation, and sensitivity to events in other countries and markets, behaviour of the exchange rates is strongly dependent on a particular choice of the base.  what follows, there is no absolute correlation structure of the fx network ; its structure depends largely on the base currency. ",0.48,1.0
arXiv,ID_0906.0480,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"we analyze daily exchange rates of 63 currencies and 3 precious metals ( gold, silver, and platinum ) by means of the methods of correlation matrix and minimal spanning tree.  we find that the exchange rates are strongly correlated.  in particular, we find that the exchange rates of the most important currencies ( the us dollar, the euro, the yen, the swiss franc, and the pound ) are strongly correlated.  we also find that the exchange rates of the least important currencies ( the yen, the swiss franc, and the pound ) are strongly correlated.  we show that the exchange rates of the most important currencies ( the us dollar, the euro, the yen, the swiss franc, and the pound ) are strongly correlated.  we also find that the exchange rates of the least important currencies ( the us dollar, the yen, the swiss franc, and the pound ) are strongly correlated.  we show that the exchange rates of the most important currencies ( the us dollar, the euro, the yen, the swiss franc, and the pound ) are strongly correlated.",0.1566666666666666,0.2619047619999999
arXiv,ID_0906.0480,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"the global foreign exchange ( fx ) market is the world s largest and most important financial market, completely decentralized, extending over all the countries, with the highest daily trading volume reaching trillions of us dollars. we analyze daily data @xcite for a 63-element set comprising 60 actual currency pairs and 3 precious metals : gold, silver, and platinum. we put stress on quantification of a currency s importance in the world financial system and on tracking its subtle changes as the market evolves in time.",0.3433333333333333,1.0
arXiv,ID_0906.0480,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"the global foreign exchange ( fx ) market is the world s largest and most important financial market, completely decentralized, extending over all the countries, with the highest daily trading volume reaching trillions of us dollars. we analyze daily data @xcite for a 63-element set comprising 60 actual currency pairs and 3 precious metals : gold, silver, and platinum. we put stress on quantification of a currency s importance in the world financial system and on tracking its subtle changes as the market evolves in time.",0.3066666666666667,1.0
arXiv,ID_0906.0480,BART (ORACLE 1K)," we analyze daily data for a 63-element set of 60 actual currencies and 3 precious metals.  we calculate the correlation matrix and minimal spanning tree ( mst ) for a set of exchange rates and their eigenspectra for each base currency. for each currency , we identify the exchange rates in which this currency serves as a base currency and apply a statistical approach to the data. for a large set of currencies,  the mst analysis shows that the currency network has a hierarchical structure, which supports earlier findings that the currencies group together primarily according to geographical factors, but sometimes also according to other factors like, for example, the commodity trade. ",0.33,0.7333333333333334
arXiv,ID_0906.0480,BART (ORACLE 4K)," we present a statistical analysis of exchange rates for a 63-element set comprising 60 actual currencies and 3 precious metals : gold, silver, and platinum.  we employ the well - known methods of correlation matrix and minimal spanning trees to analyze the structure of the currency exchange network. for a vast majority of currencies,  the currency network has a hierarchical structure, which supports earlier findings. for some of the base currencies, however, the network resembles rather a random graph.    *  pacs numbers : * 02.50.ey, 05.40.+j, 89.65.gh, 02.60.pn ",0.2966666666666667,0.8333333333333334
arXiv,ID_0906.0480,BART (ORACLE 8K)," we analyze the structure of the currency exchange network of the world s largest and most important financial market, the global foreign exchange ( fx ) market.  we employ the correlation matrix formalism and minimal spanning tree method to analyze daily time series for a basket of 63 currencies and 3 precious metals. for a vast majority of currencies,  the resulting eigenspectra can be classified between two extremes : a network based on a currency which is decoupled from the rest of the currencies and displays a highly correlated, rigid structure.    on the other hand, a network viewed from the usd perspective ( or the perspectives of its satellites ) has a richer structure with less correlations and more noise. ",0.3966666666666666,1.0
arXiv,ID_0906.0480,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"we analyze the structure of the foreign exchange market by employing the methods of correlation matrix and minimal spanning trees. we find that the currency network has a hierarchical structure, which is manifested in the presence of a number of clusters representing the exchange rates of different currencies. the largest eigenvalue of the correlation matrix for a set of exchange rates sharing the same base currency exhibits a temporal variability, indicating a lack of stability of the network structure. our results indicate that the currencies group together primarily according to geographical factors, but sometimes also according to other factors like, for example, the commodity trade.",0.5333333333333333,0.75
arXiv,ID_0906.0480,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"we analyze the structure of the global foreign exchange ( fx ) market by employing the methods of correlation matrix and minimal spanning tree. we show that the exchange rates of different currencies are strongly correlated and that the network of exchange rates has a hierarchical structure. this hierarchical structure reflects the role played by the us dollar in the global fx market. exchange rates, correlation matrix, minimal spanning trees, currency networks 89.65.gh, 89.75.da, 02.50.-r",0.24,0.8666666666666667
arXiv,ID_0906.0480,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"we analyze the structure of the global foreign exchange ( fx ) market from the perspective of the exchange rates used as a reference frame. this perspective allows one to study a currency s role in the market and to track its evolution with time. we show that the currency network has a hierarchical structure, with the most central node representing the us dollar. on the other hand, we find that the network structure depends on a choice of the base currency. a currency which is decoupled from the rest of the currencies and displays an independent behaviour shows a highly correlated, rigid structure. for a vast majority of currencies, the networks has intermediate structure that can be classified between these two extremes. however, for a few currencies the minimal spanning trees ( mst ) graphs share the same topology quantified in terms of the eigenvalues of the correlation matrix. the mst graphs show strong short - term variability, which can be related to the dynamics of the commodity trade. * keywords : * econophysics, exchange rate network, correlation matrix",0.56,0.5555555556666666
arXiv,ID_0704.2649,BART (LEAD 1K)," we present a measure of evolutionary value for a species based on its expected contribution of unique features in a phylogeny.  we extend the shapley value of a species to include pre - assigned extinction probabilities for species, and compare it with the original value of the species, which is based on evolutionary time and genetic distance, and we show that our new measure scales almost perfectly with the value derived from the original.    * keywords : * phylogenetic diversity, evolutionary value, evolutionary time, evolutionary distance, extinction probability, evolutionary diversity, phylogenetic originality, evolutionary evolutionary distance. +  * ams subject classification : * 87m10, 87m20, 87b20, 92c20. ",0.4033333333333333,0.6944444446666665
arXiv,ID_0704.2649,BART (LEAD 4K)," a phylogeny is the directional, acyclic graph depicting relationships between leaves ( species ).  a phylogeny generally has a root ( which assigns direction ) and edge weights that can represent unique feature diversity ( e.g. as measured by evolutionary time or genetic distance ).  species can be defined by the features they possess, and one measure of their worth is their expected contribution of unique features. in this way, we can use a phylogeny to assign a measure of evolutionary value to a species based on its expected contribution of unique features.  one question with these measures concerns the sets that individual species are asked to complement.  for instance, given known extinction probabilities for species, some future sets are much more likely than others and so some species will be more valuable because their close relatives are less likely to be included in future sets. here  we formalize this idea to extend the shapley value of a species to include pre - assigned extinction probabilities.  we then compare our measure with the original shapley value using the prosimian primates as a test case. ",0.4933333333333333,1.0
arXiv,ID_0704.2649,BART (LEAD 8K)," a phylogeny is the directional, acyclic graph depicting relationships between leaves ( species ).  a phylogeny generally has a root ( which assigns direction ) and edge weights that can represent unique feature diversity ( e.g. as measured by evolutionary time or genetic distance ).  species can be defined by the features they possess, and one measure of their worth is their expected contribution of unique features. in this way , we can use a phylogeny to assign a measure of evolutionary value to a species based on its expected contribution of unique features.  one question with these measures concerns the sets that individual species are asked to complement.  for instance, given known extinction probabilities for species, some future sets are much more likely than others and so some species will be more valuable because their close relatives are less likely to be included in future sets. here  we formalize this idea to extend the shapley value of a species to include pre - assigned extinction probabilities.  we then compare our measure with the original shapley value using the prosimian primates as a test case. ",0.4933333333333333,1.0
arXiv,ID_0704.2649,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"species are generally considered to be of equal or near - equal biodiversity value within a given taxonomic group. however, as pointed out by cousins ( 1991 ), species are discovered and identified because they are different from other species, which suggests that they may differ in value. here, we consider the value of a species based on its position in a phylogeny.  a phylogeny generally has a root ( which assigns direction ) and edge weights that can represent unique feature diversity ( e.g. as measured by evolutionary time or genetic distance ).  species can be defined by the features they possess, and one measure of their worth is their expected contribution of unique features. because of the highly imbalanced shape of the tree of life, some species in a phylogeny will have far fewer close relatives than others in that phylogeny ( mooers and heard 1997 ), and these more distantly - related species will be expected to contribute more unique features ( faith 1992 ).  phylogenetic measures of conservation value have a long pedigree ( haake et al. 2005 ; hartmann and steel 2007 ; pavoine et al.  2005_b _",0.2333333333333333,0.9
arXiv,ID_0704.2649,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"we extend the shapley value ( shapley 1953 ), from co - operative game theory to the conservation setting to calculate the average distance of a focal species to all possible subsets of taxa. this extended shapley value can be used to quantify the expected contribution of each species to future sets of evolutionary diversity. we compare the shapley value with the he d index ( shapley 2006 ) for the prosimians ( mammalia : primata ), a group of approximately 50 species with a broad range of extinction probabilities.",0.3466666666666667,0.888888889
arXiv,ID_0704.2649,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"species are often considered to be of equal or near - equal biodiversity value. however, in the context of conservation, valuing species on the basis of their evolutionary position may be different. here, we extend the shapley approach ( shapley 1953 ) to consider the value of a species on the basis of its expected contribution of unique features. we define the concepts needed for this approach ( evolutionary time, genetic distance, species - specific features ), and we present a simple formula for calculating the phylogenetic diversity index for a given species. we compare our measure with the shapley approach using the prosimians ( mammalia : primata ), a group of approximately 50 species with a broad range of extinction probabilities.",0.59,0.8666666666666667
arXiv,ID_0704.2649,BART (ORACLE 1K)," we introduce a measure of evolutionary value for a species based on its expected contribution of unique features to a phylogeny.  this measure is a generalization of the shapley value, which was introduced by haake and colleagues to the conservation setting to calculate the average distance of a focal species to all possible subsets of taxa. in this paper  we show that this measure can be readily and quickly computed, and that it can be used to assign evolutionary value to a species.    * keywords : * phylogenetic diversity, evolutionary value, evolutionary distinctiveness, evolutionary risk, evolutionary game theory ",0.43,0.8333333333333334
arXiv,ID_0704.2649,BART (ORACLE 4K)," we introduce a measure of evolutionary value to a species based on its expected contribution of unique features.  we show that this index can be readily and quickly computed, both for rooted and unrooted phylogenetic trees, and that it complements the polynomial - time algorithm described by haake et al.   ( 2005 ) for the prosimian primates as a test case. as an example , we compare our measure with the original shapley value. ",0.4766666666666666,1.0
arXiv,ID_0704.2649,BART (ORACLE 8K)," we present a new measure of evolutionary value for a species based on its expected contribution of unique features in a phylogenetic tree.  we show that this index can be readily and quickly computed, and that it scales almost perfectly with the shapley value.    * keywords : * phylogenetic diversity, phylogenetic trees, evolutionary time, evolutionary distance, evolutionary risk, evolutionary value, evolutionary game theory, evolutionary dynamics   + * ams subject classification : * 60k35, 60k37 ",0.38,0.778888889
arXiv,ID_0704.2649,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"we introduce a new measure of evolutionary value for a species in a phylogenetic tree, based on its expected contribution of unique features. we show that this measure can be readily and quickly computed for rooted trees, and that it can be compared with the original shapley value for prosimian primates as a test case. * keywords : * phylogenetics, evolutionary value, prosimians * ams subject classifications :* 92d25, 92d30, 91b70, 90c25.",0.4033333333333333,0.9333333333333332
arXiv,ID_0704.2649,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"a phylogenetic distance is a measure of a species s worth in terms of its expected contribution of unique features to the tree under consideration. we present a new polynomial - time algorithm for computing this distance for unrooted trees, and for rooted trees as well. this new algorithm complements the previously - described algorithm for calculating the distance for trees with edge lengths. as a test case, we apply this method to the prosimian primates, a group of approximately 50 species with a broad range of extinction probabilities. our results show that the new algorithm is more accurate and faster than the previous one.",0.3966666666666666,0.6
arXiv,ID_0704.2649,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"species can be defined by the features they possess, and one measure of their worth is their expected contribution of unique features. in this way, we can use a phylogeny to assign a measure of evolutionary value to a species based on its expected contribution. haake et al. ( 1953 ) extended the  shapley value'from co - operative game theory to the conservation setting to calculate the average distance of a focal species to all possible subsets of taxa. for both measures, more original species are those expected to contribute more to the resulting sets. however, given known extinction probabilities for species, some future sets are much more likely than others and so some species will be more valuable because their close relatives are less likely to be included in future sets, for instance. we then compare our measure with the original  he d'( evolutionary distinctiveness ) value using the prosimian primates as a test case. * keywords : * phylogenetics ; evolutionary value ; he d index ; extinction ; conservation.",0.6133333333333334,0.7083333333333334
arXiv,ID_1611.07649,BART (LEAD 1K)," in this paper, we propose a control - flow based intrusion detection technique for big data systems.  the proposed technique checks for program level anomalies in big data applications by analyzing and comparing the control flow behavior of all processes running inside a big data system.    in this work,  we concentrate on detecting process - level intrusions within big data platforms. in our previous work , we demonstrated that big data security is premature and there is a lot of scope for improvement in this area. ",0.36,1.0
arXiv,ID_1611.07649,BART (LEAD 4K)," in this paper, we propose a control - flow based intrusion detection technique for big data systems.  the proposed technique checks for program level anomalies in big data applications by analyzing and comparing the control - flow behavior of all processes running inside a big data system.  the proposed technique is divided into two parts.  first, the control - flow of each process running on a data node in the big data cluster is locally analyzed.  this is done by extracting a set of msts from the instruction level of a compiled program.  the extracted msts are stored in an array called the program signature.  the second step is to run the same program on replica datanodes of the big data system.  the result is a perfect match of the program signature with the replica program signature. ",0.5366666666666666,0.875
arXiv,ID_1611.07649,BART (LEAD 8K)," in this paper, we propose a control - flow based intrusion detection technique for big data systems.  the proposed technique checks for program level anomalies in big data applications by analyzing and comparing the control - flow behavior of all processes running inside a big data system.  the proposed technique is divided into two parts.  first, the control - flow of each process running on a data node in the big data system is locally analyzed.  this is done by extracting a set of msts from the instruction level of a compiled program.  the extracted set of msts are stored in an array called the program signature and then shared with other replica datanodes.  the second step is to check for similarity ( or dissimilarity ) between two program signatures.  our technique is designed to be scalable and efficient. ",0.6333333333333334,1.0
arXiv,ID_1611.07649,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"with the growing popularity of real - time data processing in big data environments, there is a pressing need to re - imagine the traditional computing techniques. in this work,  we concentrate on detecting process - level intrusions within big data systems.  intrusion detection systems ( ids ) can identify malicious use based on their knowledge of possible threats or by learning from the behavior of programs.  ids within a big data system favors anamoly - based ids when compared to knowledge - based ids because of the naturally large and ever increasing scope of threats. using control - flow graphs for logic level intrusion detection is a commonly known idea. in this paper, we propose a control - flow based intrusion detection technique for big data systems.  the proposed technique checks for program level anomalies in big data applications by analyzing and comparing the control - flow behavior of all processes running inside a big data system.  first, the control - flow of each process running on a data node in the big data cluster is locally analyzed.  the extracted set of msts are hashed and stored in an array called the _ program signature_. then, the stored program signature is",0.5333333333333333,0.8666666666666666
arXiv,ID_1611.07649,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"we propose a two - step intrusion detection technique for big data systems. in the first step, process - level intrusions are detected by extracting a set of minimum spanning trees ( msts ) from compiled programs. in the second step, the received program signature is decrypted and shared with other replica nodes that run the same program. the result of the matching step is shared with replica nodes for consensus detection.",0.38,0.9
arXiv,ID_1611.07649,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"we propose a two - step intrusion detection technique for big data systems. in the first step, we extract a set of minimum spanning trees ( msts ) from a compiled program. in the second step, the received encrypted program signature is decrypted and matched with the local version of the program. the integrity among duplicate processes that run on a data node in the big data cluster is locally analyzed. this is done by extracting a set of msts from the instruction level graph ( cfg ) of a compiled program. the extracted set of msts are hashed and stored in an array called the _ program signature_. in the second step, the received encrypted program signature is decrypted and matched with the local version to check for coherence. the proposed technique checks for program level anomalies in big data applications by analyzing and comparing the control - flow behavior of all processes running inside a big data system.",0.5666666666666667,0.6916666666666668
arXiv,ID_1611.07649,BART (ORACLE 1K)," in this paper, we propose a control - flow based intrusion detection technique for big data systems.  the proposed technique checks for program level anomalies in big data applications by analyzing and comparing the behavior of all processes running inside a big data system. in this work , we focus on process level intrusion detection by observing coherence among duplicate processes running on replica datanodes of a distributed big data cluster.    in the proposed method,  each process running on a datanode of a big - data system is locally analyzed and its control - flows are compared with those of other processes. in the matching step, the result of the matching is then shared with replica nodes for consensus. ",0.6466666666666666,0.8666666666666667
arXiv,ID_1611.07649,BART (ORACLE 4K)," in this paper, we propose a novel approach to detect program level intrusions in big data systems with help of control flow analysis.  the proposed technique checks for program level anomalies in real - world big data applications by analyzing and comparing the control - flow behavior of all processes running inside a big data system. in the proposed approach,  first, the control flow of each process running on a data node in the big data cluster is locally analyzed. in a second step, the received encrypted program signature  is decrypted and matched with the local version to check for coherence. the result of the matching step is then shared with all other replica nodes for consensus. ",0.7333333333333334,1.0
arXiv,ID_1611.07649,BART (ORACLE 8K)," big data systems rely on parallel execution techniques like mapreduce for fast and fault - tolerant data processing.  this trend of re - inventing the traditional methods does not necessarily transform to the security needs of big data. in this paper , we propose a novel technique for detecting program level intrusions in big data applications by analyzing and comparing the control - flow behavior of all processes running inside a big data system. in the proposed technique,  coherence in the behavior of duplicate processes running on replica datanodes is verified by observing coherence among the control flow graphs of the same process. to this end  we propose to use the replication property of big - data systems and check for coherence of program behavior among replica dataodes.    * keywords : * big data security, control flow graph, intrusion detection. ",0.5133333333333333,0.7222222223333333
arXiv,ID_1611.07649,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"big data systems are becoming an important part of modern data management. the security features implemented in big data applications are still based on traditional methods for systems based on general purpose machines. in this paper, we propose a control - flow based intrusion detection technique for big data. this technique checks for program level anomalies in large - scale applications by analyzing and comparing the control - flows of all processes running inside a big data system. first, the local behavior of each process running on a data node in the big data cluster is locally analyzed. then, these local processes are decrypted and matched with the local versions of the same process to verify coherence among the nodes of a big - scale application. finally, a result of the matching step is shared with replica nodes for consensus. we present the security analysis of the proposed technique using 16 hadoop map - reduce examples that can be found in all hadoop distributions. + + * keywords : * big data security, intrusion detection, control flow, cfg, replica nodes.",0.85,0.925925926
arXiv,ID_1611.07649,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"detecting intrusions in big data systems is a challenging task. the traditional approaches to intrusion detection are not yet mature enough to meet the security needs of big data environments. in this work, we propose a control - flow based technique for detecting intrusion of a process running inside a big data system. first, the control - flows of all processes running inside the big data cluster are analyzed. then, a set of message - passing tables ( msts ) is extracted from a control flow graph ( cfg ) and used for checking for coherence among the replica nodes of a distributed big data environment. we use a hash function on the mss to simplify the match function and hence the proposed technique takes only 0.8% of the execution time to detect intrusions. experiments were conducted on real - world hadoop map - reduce examples and it is observed that the proposed method identifies intrusions with a false detection rate of 0.8%. + + * keywords : * big data, intrusion detection, control flow graphs, message passing tables",0.6333333333333333,0.7916666666666666
arXiv,ID_1611.07649,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"big data systems are commonly used to extract large volumes of real - time data from complex environments. the security of big data services is often based on security features like encryption and system - level consistency. however, there is a pressing need to detect insider attacks that compromise the integrity of the services. in this work, we propose a control - flow based technique for detecting process - level intrusions in big data applications. our technique is based on extracting a set of minimum spanning trees ( msts ) from the control - flows of all processes running inside a big data system. using the mst set, the received encrypted program signature is decrypted and matched with the local version to check for coherence. matching two program signaturesinvolves finding a perfect match for every mst in a signature within the set of mst of the other. we test the proposed technique on an amazon ec2 big data cluster and it is observed that the technique takes only 0.8% of the time to identify intrusions. = 10000 = 10000",0.8966666666666666,1.0
arXiv,ID_1510.04083,BART (LEAD 1K)," we compile a list of 18 apps that offer end - to - end encryption, anonymity and/or ephemerality, focusing on 8 popular ones ( confide, frankly chat, secret, snapchat, telegram, whisper, wickr, and yik yak ).  we review their functionalities and perform an empirical evaluation, based on _ static _ and _ dynamic _ analysis, aimed to compare the claims of the selected apps against results of our analysis.    in our analysis , we find that the `` anonymous '' social network apps whisper and yk yak actually identify users with distinct user ids that are persistent, and users previous activities are restored to their device after they uninstall and reinstall them, and information collected by these apps could be used to de - anonymize users. we also find that snapchat does not always delete messages from its servers  in fact, previous `` expired '' chat messages are surprisingly included in packets sent to the clients. ",0.5,1.0
arXiv,ID_1510.04083,BART (LEAD 4K)," a growing number of smartphone apps and mobile social networks have entered the market, promising to offer features like anonymity, ephemerality, and/or end - to - end encryption ( e2ee ). while it is not that uncommon to stumble upon claims like `` military - grade encryption '' or `` nsa - proof '' in the description of these apps, little work thus far has actually analyzed the guarantees they provide.  this motivates the need for a systematic study of a careful selection of such apps. to this end, we compile a list of 18 apps that offer e2ee, anonymity and/or ephemerality, focusing on 8 popular ones ( confide, frankly chat, secret, snapchat, telegram, whisper, wickr, and yik yak ).  we review their functionalities and perform an empirical evaluation, based on _ static _ and _ dynamic _ analysis, aimed to compare the claims of the selected apps against results of our analysis.  highlights of our findings include that `` anonymous '' social network apps whisper and yik yak actually identify users with distinct user ids that are persistent.  users previous activities are restored to their device after they uninstall and reinstall them, and information collected by these apps could be used to de - anonymize users.  we also find that the ephemeral - messaging app snapchat does not always delete messages from its servers  in fact, previous `` expired '' chat messages are surprisingly included in packets sent to the clients.  then, we report that all actions performed by a user on frankly chat can be observed from the request url, which is actually transmitted in the clear. ",0.7333333333333334,1.0
arXiv,ID_1510.04083,BART (LEAD 8K)," a growing number of smartphone apps and mobile social networks have entered the market, promising to offer features like anonymity, ephemerality, and/or end - to - end encryption ( e2ee ). while it is not that uncommon to stumble upon claims like `` military - grade encryption '' or `` nsa - proof '' in the description of these apps, little work thus far has actually analyzed the guarantees they provide.  this motivates the need for a systematic study of a careful selection of such apps. to this end, we compile a list of 18 apps that offer e2ee, anonymity and/or ephemerality, focusing on 8 popular ones ( confide, frankly chat, secret, snapchat, telegram, whisper, wickr, and yik yak ).  we review their functionalities and perform an empirical evaluation, based on _ static _ and _ dynamic _ analysis, aimed to compare the claims of the selected apps against results of our analysis.  highlights of our findings include that `` anonymous '' social network apps whisper and yik yak actually identify users with distinct user ids that are persistent.  users previous activities are restored to their device after they uninstall and reinstall them, and information collected by these apps could be used to de - anonymize users.  we also find that the ephemeral - messaging app snapchat does not always delete messages from its servers  in fact, previous `` expired '' chat messages are surprisingly included in packets sent to the clients.  then, we report that all actions performed by a user on frankly chat can be observed from the request url, which is actually transmitted in the clear. ",0.8000000000000002,1.0
arXiv,ID_1510.04083,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"a number of smartphone apps and mobile social networks have entered the market, promising to offer features like anonymity, ephemerality and end - to - end encryption ( e2ee ).  while it is not that uncommon to stumbled upon claims like  military - grade encryption '' or  nsa - proof '' in the description of these apps, little work thus far has actually analyzed the guarantees they provide. to this end, we compile a list of 18 apps that offer e2ee, anonymity and/or ephemerality focusing on 8 popular ones ( confide, frankly chat, secret chat, whispering, wickr, and yik yak ).  we review their functionalities and perform an empirical evaluation, based on _ static _ and _ dynamic _ analysis, aimed to compare the claims of the selected apps against results of our analysis.  highlights of our findings include that  anonymous '' social network apps whisper and yik yak actually identify users with distinct user ids that are persistent. users previous activities are restored to their device after they reinstall them, and information collected by these apps could be used to de - anonymize users",0.6999999999999998,0.7777777779999999
arXiv,ID_1510.04083,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"recently, a number of smartphone apps have entered the market, promising to offer features like anonymity, ephemerality, and/or end - to - end encryption ( e2ee ). while it is not uncommon to stumbling upon claims like  military - grade encryption  or  nsa - proof  @xcite in the description of these apps, little work thus far has actually analyzed the guarantees they provide. this motivates the need for a systematic study of a careful selection of such apps. we compile a list of 18 apps that offer e2ee, anonymity and/or ephemerality, focusing on 8 popular ones. we review their functionalities and perform an empirical evaluation, based on  static  and  dynamic  analysis, aimed to compare the claims of the selected apps against results of our analysis. we also find that the ephemeral - messaging app does not always delete messages from its servers in fact, previous  expired  chat messages are surprisingly included in packets sent to the clients.",0.85,1.0
arXiv,ID_1510.04083,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"recently, a number of smartphone apps have entered the market, promising to offer features like anonymity, ephemerality, and/or end - to - end encryption ( e2ee ). while it is not uncommon to stumble upon claims like  military - grade encryption  or  nsa - proof  @xcite in the description of these apps, little work thus far has actually analyzed the guarantees they provide. this motivates the need for a systematic study of a careful selection of such apps. we compile a list of 18 apps that offer e2ee, anonymity and/or ephemerality, focusing on 8 popular ones ( frankly chat, frankly chat, wickr, and yik yak ). we review their functionalities and perform an empirical evaluation, based on _ static _ and _ dynamic _ analysis, aimed to compare the claims of the selected apps against results of our analysis.",0.65,0.7566666666666667
arXiv,ID_1510.04083,BART (ORACLE 1K)," with recent reports of government snooping and increasingly detrimental hacks, more and more apps have entered the market advertised as providing some privacy features. as some of these are now used by millions of users, we set to study more carefully the features they offer.  we compile a list of 18 apps that offer end - to - end encryption, anonymity and/or ephemerality, focusing on 8 popular ones ( confide, frankly chat, secret, snapchat, telegram, whisper, wickr, and yik yak ), and perform a functional, static, and dynamic analysis, aiming to analyze the properties promised by the apps.    we find that anonymous social networks such as whisper and yk yak actually identify their users with distinct ids that are persistent as previous activities like chats, _ whispers _ and _ yaks _ are restored to the device even if the user uninstalls and reinstalls the app. ",0.4666666666666667,0.9166666666666666
arXiv,ID_1510.04083,BART (ORACLE 4K)," with recent reports of government snooping and increasingly detrimental hacks, more and more apps have entered the market advertised as providing some privacy features. as some of these are now used by millions of users, we set to study more carefully the features they offer.  more specifically, we present an analysis of 8 popular social networking apps namely confide, frankly chat, secret, snapchat, telegram, whisper, wickr, and yik yak that are marketed as offering end - to - end encryption ( e2ee ), anonymity and/or ephemerality. starting from a taxonomy of 18 apps, we focus on 8 of them due to their popularity, and perform an empirical evaluation, based on _ static _ and _ dynamic _ analysis, aimed to compare the claims of the selected apps against results of our analysis. we find that anonymous social networks like whisper and yk yak actually identify their users with distinct ids that are persistent as previous activities like chats, _  whispers _, and _ yaks _ are restored to the device even if the user uninstalls and reinstalls the app. ",0.5333333333333333,0.9333333333333332
arXiv,ID_1510.04083,BART (ORACLE 8K)," this paper analyzes 8 popular mobile apps that are advertised as offering end - to - end encryption, anonymity, and/or ephemerality, focusing on 8 popular ones : confide, frankly chat, chat, secret, snapchat, telegram, whispering, wickr, and yik yak.  we perform a functional, static, and dynamic analysis of their functionalities, and perform an empirical evaluation, based on _ static _ and _ dynamic _ analysis, aimed to compare the claims of the apps against results of our analysis.    we find that, while snapchat promises that messages will `` disappear '' after 10 seconds, they are not immediately deleted from its servers, as old messages are actually included in responses sent to the clients. ",0.3999999999999999,0.7555555556666667
arXiv,ID_1510.04083,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"with recent reports, a number of smartphone apps and mobile social networks have entered the market promising to offer features like anonymity, ephemerality, and/or end - to - end encryption ( e2ee ), while it is not that uncommon to not even confide upon claims like  within - grade encryption '' or  nsa - proof '' in the description of these apps, little work thus far has actually analyzed the guarantees they provide. to this end, we compile a list of 18 apps that offer e2eee, anonymity and ephemerality and focus on 8 popular ones (, chat, secret,, gossip, wickr, yik yak, etc. ) focusing on their functionalities. we review their functionalities and perform empirical evaluation, based on _ static _ and _ dynamic _ analysis, aimed to compare the claims of the selected apps against results of our analysis.",0.5333333333333333,0.7066666666666667
arXiv,ID_1510.04083,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),nan,0.0,0.0
arXiv,ID_1510.04083,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"as more and more personal data is shared on mobile devices, the need to protect users privacy has grown. a number of smartphone apps have emerged that promise to offer features like anonymity, end - to - end encryption, and/or ephemerality. to date, little work thus far has actually analyzed the guarantees these apps provide. in this paper, we compile a list of 8 popular ones and perform an empirical evaluation, based on _ static _ and _ dynamic _ analysis, aimed to compare the claims of the selected apps against results of our analysis. our findings include that  anonymous '' social network apps  whisper '' and  yik yak '' actually identify users with distinct user ids that are persistent. users previous activities are restored to their device after they remove them and reinstall them, information collected by these apps could be used to de - anonymize users. we also find that the ephemeral - messaging app does not always delete messages from its servers in fact, previous  expired '' chat messages are included in packets sent to the server.",0.6333333333333333,0.9523809523333332
arXiv,ID_0705.1974,BART (LEAD 1K)," in spring 2006, the potential threat of bird flu dominated headlines in uk newspapers. on 26 march 2006 the sun has called it  the day we all dreaded "", while the guardian says avian flu is  almost certain to spread to wild birds across the uk "".  the daily telegraph adds that the most likely human victims will be poultry farmers, who will be bankrupted, but the mirror calls for calm, saying people have a better chance of winning the lottery than catching the virus. in other parts of the world, for example indonesia, a country with 18000 islands, people reacted differently to the bird flu epidemics. despite awareness campaigns in the media and even door - to - door visits in some of the islands, many indonesians remained oblivious to the dangers of being in contact with diseased birds, and aware of the need to inform the authorities and implement a cull.    in this paper , we investigate the effect of risk perception on the spreading of an epidemics on social networks. ",0.28,1.0
arXiv,ID_0705.1974,BART (LEAD 4K)," in this paper we study the dynamics of an infection spreading over a network of individuals.  we assume that the perception of the risk of being infected is an increasing function of the fraction of ill people in the neighborhood, given that the illness presents visible symptoms.  this assumption is modeled after the heuristic - systematic information - processing model, that simply states that attitudes are formed and modified as people gain information about a process. in the absence of explicit alarm or communication,  the only way of gaining this information is though examination of people in the neighborhood.  we simply assume that the local awareness of the risk of becoming infected translates into a lowering of the probability of the incidence of the disease.  we explicitly describe the model, analyze it using mean - field techniques and study numerically its behavior on different types of networks : regular, with long - range rewiring, random and scale - free. ",0.6,1.0
arXiv,ID_0705.1974,BART (LEAD 8K)," in this paper we study the dynamics of an infection spreading over a network of individuals.  we assume that the perception of the risk of being infected is just an increasing function of the fraction of ill people in the neighborhood, given that the illness presents visible symptoms.  this assumption is modeled after the heuristic - systematic information - processing model, that simply states that attitudes are formed and modified as people gain information about a process. in the absence of explicit alarm or communication,  the only way of gaining this information is though examination of people in the neighborhood.  we simply assume that the local awareness of the risk of being infected translates into a lowering of the probability of the incidence of the disease in the neighborhood.  we explicitly describe the model, analyze it using mean - field techniques and study numerically its behavior on different types of networks : regular, with long - range rewiring, random and scale - free. ",0.6,1.0
arXiv,ID_0705.1974,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"despite awareness campaigns in the media and even door - to - door visits in some of the islands, many indonesians remained skeptical of the dangers of being in contact with diseased birds, and aware of the need to inform the authorities and implement a cull.  note that awareness campaigns, such as during the sars epidemics, are expensive and may result in culling, reductions in commerce, travels and tourism.  the media hype over epidemics threat has a close similarity how worried fatalist has a close resemblance to how worried reproductiveist has a different risk of infection. in order to investigate the effect of risk perception in influencing the spreading of a disease, epidemiological models should incorporate such parameter.  the consequences for epidemics spreading are important : just a few long - distance connections may promote epidemics spreading in immediate rural areas, whereas just a few short - distance connections may promote epidemics spreading in urban areas.  however, the investigations of networks have shown that they are quite different from regular and random graphs.  the probability distribution of contacts often exhibits a power - law behavior, with an exponent between two and three.  this distribution is characterized by a",0.4333333333333333,0.7833333333333333
arXiv,ID_0705.1974,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"we study the effect of risk perception on the spreading of a disease by means of a simple, yet meaningful connectivity - based model, called sis ( simple information - processing ). it is modeled on a network where individuals or groups of individuals corresponds to the nodes and links represent social contacts and relationships among them. we show that the perception of the risk of being infected is an important factor influencing the spreading of an epidemic and, toward realistic inference, epidemiological models should incorporate such parameter.",0.3366666666666666,0.7777777776666667
arXiv,ID_0705.1974,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"the spread of infectious diseases has received a great deal of attention in recent years, in the context of an ever - increasing number of outbreaks. the propagation of a disease is thought to be driven by two factors : the probability of infection and the probability of contact between infected individuals. in this paper we study the effect of these two factors on the spread of a disease in a social network. we study the effect of the perception of the risk of being infected on the spread of epidemics using a simple form of information - processing models, and study the effect of the small - world property of the network on the propagation of epidemics.",0.57,0.8333333333333334
arXiv,ID_0705.1974,BART (ORACLE 1K)," we study the effects of risk perception in a simple sis model for epidemics spreading.  we assume that this perception is just an increasing function of the fraction of ill people in the neighborhood, given that the illness presents visible symptoms. in order to investigate the effect of this perception in influencing the spreading of a disease, we start from simple, yet meaningful models, such as sis or sir ones, and study the evolution of the disease in a `` worst - case '' social networks, with scale - free input connectivity and an exponent corresponding to a diverging average of input connectivity. in this case  a linear perception can not stop the disease, but we found that, as soon as the disease starts to spread, there is always a finite value of perception that makes the epidemics go extinct.    in the mean - field approximation , we find that for fixed or peaked connectivity there is a finite level of perception for which the infection may be stopped. ",0.8300000000000001,0.8666666666666667
arXiv,ID_0705.1974,BART (ORACLE 4K)," we study the effects of risk perception in a simple sis model for epidemics spreading.  we assume that the infection is modulated by two parameters, that reduce the infectivity of the disease as a function of the fraction of people in the neighborhood that are manifestly ill. for fixed or peaked connectivity  there is always a finite value of the perception that makes the epidemics go extinct. for scale - free networks,  the mean - field approximation fails to capture the essential phenomena in highly connected networks. ",0.6733333333333333,0.7777777779999999
arXiv,ID_0705.1974,BART (ORACLE 8K)," we study the effects of risk perception in a simple sis model for epidemics spreading.  we assume that the infection is modulated by two parameters, that reduce the infectivity of the disease as a function of the fraction of people in the neighborhood that are manifestly ill, and modulate the linear response, while the second modulates non - linear effects like the increasing of prevention due to a public exposed role. in this latter case , we find that for fixed or peaked connectivity there is always a finite value of perception that makes the epidemics go extinct. ",0.6,0.888888889
arXiv,ID_0705.1974,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"we study the effects of risk perception in a simple sis model for epidemics spreading. we assume that this perception is just an increasing function of the fraction of ill people in the neighborhood, given that the illness presents visible symptoms. for fixed or peaked connectivity, there is always a finite value of risk that makes the epidemics go extinct. moreover, we show that the effect of this parameter is similar to targeted immunization, but is not captured by the mean - field analysis. finally, the evolution of the disease in a  worst - case '' scenario is studied, with an exponent corresponding to a diverging average of input connectivity.",0.8066666666666666,0.9333333333333332
arXiv,ID_0705.1974,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"we study the effects of risk perception in a simple sis model for epidemics spreading on complex networks. we assume that the risk of infection is an increasing function of the fraction of ill people in the neighborhood, given that the illness presents visible symptoms. this perception is modulated by two parameters that modulate the bare infectivity of the spreading agent. the first parameter is related to the perceived risk of being infected, and the second one to the use of special prophylaxis measures, such as random vaccination campaigns, that may reduce the infection rate at high concentrations of infected individuals. mean - field analysis fails to capture the essential phenomena in highly connected networks, even for small values of the second parameter. moreover, we show that the effect of the perception of risk is to increase the probability of the infection at any finite value of the bare infection, in agreement with targeted immunization.",0.8233333333333333,0.7666666666666666
arXiv,ID_0705.1974,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"we study the effects of risk perception on the spreading of an epidemic on a scale - free network. the risk is modeled as an increasing function of the fraction of ill individuals in the neighborhood, given that the illness presents visible symptoms. we assume that this perception is just a function of a fraction of the neighborhood that are manifestly ill, and that it increases with the average level of the infection. in the limit of high infection level, we show that the epidemic may be stopped by lowering the infectivity with random vaccination campaigns, even in the presence of diverging infectivity. mean - field analysis does not capture the essential phenomena in highly connected networks, as the transition from bifurcation to chaos is not observed.",0.7633333333333333,0.8000000000000002
arXiv,ID_1703.07822,BART (LEAD 1K)," this paper proposes a data - efficient approach for learning the motion of an object under physical interaction.  specifically, the objective of the method is to predict the effect of a random pushing action on an object on a tabletop. to solve this challenge,  a bayesian optimization technique is used to identify relevant physical parameters, such as mass and friction, through the physics engine simulation. to predict this effect,   the learned parameters can be used to simulate the action in a physics engine.    to solve the challenge , the same method is applied to search the optimal control policy for the robotic hand pushing the object. ",0.4666666666666666,0.8666666666666667
arXiv,ID_1703.07822,BART (LEAD 4K)," this paper proposes a data - efficient approach for motion prediction by utilizing a physics engine and learning the physical parameters through black - box bayesian optimization.  the objective of the method is to predict the motion of an object when acted upon by a robotic hand.  first, a real robot is used to perform some random pushing action with an object on a tabletop.  both the initial and final configurations of the object and the hand are recorded. instead of learning the object s motion explicitly, a bayesian optimization technique is used to identify relevant physical parameters, such as mass and friction, through the physics engine simulation. to predict the motion of the object under a new action , the learned parameters can be used to simulate the action in a physics engine.  the results of this simulation can then be used by the robot to predict the effect of its action on the object.  this learning process must happen in real time since it takes place simultaneously with the physical interaction. ",0.5333333333333333,1.0
arXiv,ID_1703.07822,BART (LEAD 8K)," this paper proposes a data - efficient approach for motion prediction by utilizing a physics engine and learning the physical parameters through black - box bayesian optimization.  the objective of the method is to predict the motion of an object when acted upon by a robotic hand.  first, a real robot is used to perform some random pushing action with an object on a tabletop.  both the initial and final configurations of the object and the hand are recorded. instead of learning the object s motion explicitly, a bayesian optimization technique is used to identify relevant physical parameters, such as mass and friction, through the physics engine simulation. to predict the motion of the object under a new action , the learned parameters can be used to simulate the action in a physics engine.  the results of this simulation can then be used by the robot to predict the effect of its action on the object.  this learning process must happen in real time since it takes place simultaneously with the physical interaction. ",0.5666666666666668,1.0
arXiv,ID_1703.07822,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"this paper proposes a data - efficient approach for motion prediction by utilizing a physics engine and learning the physical parameters through black - box bayesian optimization. specifically, the objective of the method is to predict the motion of an object when acted upon by a robotic hand. first, a real robot is used to perform some random pushing action with an object on a tabletop. both the initial and final configurations of the object and the hand are recorded. to predict the motion of the object under a new action, the learned parameters can be used to simulate the action in a physics engine.  the results of this simulation can then be used by the robot to predict the effect of its action on the object.  the proposed method aims to be more data - efficient, and can quickly adapt online to minor changes in object dynamics.  furthermore, it is not clear for existing methods how uncertainty, a consequence of learning from a small number of data points, could be handled in a principled way.",0.5333333333333333,0.8166666666666668
arXiv,ID_1703.07822,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"this paper proposes a data - efficient approach for motion prediction by utilizing a physics engine and learning the physical parameters through black - box bayesian optimization. specifically, the objective of the method is to predict the motion of an object when acted upon by a robotic hand. instead of learning the object s motion explicitly, a bayesian optimization technique is used to identify relevant physical parameters, such as mass and friction, through the physics engine simulation. to predict the motion of the object under a new action, the learned parameters can be used to simulate the action in a physics engine. the results of this simulation can then be used by the robot to predict the effect of its action on the object. to solve the challenge in figure [ fig. 1 ], the same bayesian optimization technique is used to search the optimal control policy for the robotic hand pushing the object.",0.5333333333333333,0.85
arXiv,ID_1703.07822,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"this paper proposes a data - efficient approach for motion prediction by utilizing a physics engine and learning the physical parameters through black - box bayesian optimization. specifically, the objective of the method is to predict the motion of an object when acted upon by a robotic hand. instead of learning the object s motion explicitly, a bayesian optimization technique is used to identify relevant physical parameters, such as mass and friction, through the physics engine simulation. to predict the motion of the object under a new action, the learned parameters can be used to simulate the action in a physics engine. the results of this simulation can then be used by the robot to predict the effect of its action on the object. to solve the challenge in the case presented above, the same bayesian optimization technique is used to search the optimal control policy for the robotic hand pushing the object.",0.5666666666666667,1.0
arXiv,ID_1703.07822,BART (ORACLE 1K)," this paper proposes a data - efficient online learning method for identifying mechanical properties of objects.  the method leverages a physics engine through simulation and finds the optimal parameters that match the real roll - outs in a bayesian optimization framework. the same framework  is also used for policy optimization.    experimental results, both in simulation and using a real robot , show that the method outperforms model - free reinforcement learning methods, and can quickly adapt online to minor changes in object dynamics. ",0.7999999999999999,1.0
arXiv,ID_1703.07822,BART (ORACLE 4K)," this paper presents a data - efficient online learning method for identifying mechanical properties of articulated objects.  the method leverages a physics engine through simulation and finds the optimal parameters that match the real roll - outs in a bayesian optimization framework. the proposed method is also used for policy optimization. both in simulation and using a real robot , the method outperforms model - free reinforcement learning methods.    * keywords : * online learning, physics engine, policy optimization, rolling. ",0.7333333333333334,0.9333333333333332
arXiv,ID_1703.07822,BART (ORACLE 8K)," this paper proposes an online learning method for learning mechanical models of objects using bayesian optimization.  specifically, the goal is to predict the motion of an object when acted upon by a robotic hand. to solve this problem,  a physics engine is used for simulating the effect of a random pushing action on the object under various values of the object s mass and friction coefficients.    to find the optimal parameters that make the outcome of the simulation as close as possible to the actual observed outcome , the objective is to identify the model parameters that can explain the observed motion of the robot under a new action. to achieve this goal  requires learning the physical properties of objects, such as their mass, friction coefficient, and mass - to - friction coefficient ratio, through bayesian learning. to find these parameters, a prior distribution on the mechanical properties of each object  is used as input to the physics engine simulation. to select the optimal model parameters, the same method is used to find a policy parameter that can push the robot closest to the object closest to its goal position. ",0.5666666666666667,0.7904761903333334
arXiv,ID_1703.07822,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"this paper proposes a data - efficient approach for motion prediction by utilizing a physics engine and learning the physical parameters through black - box bayesian optimization. specifically, the objective of the method is to predict the motion of an object when acted upon by a robotic hand. first, a real robot is used to perform some random pushing action with an object on a tabletop. instead of learning the object s motion explicitly, we use a bayesian minimization technique to identify relevant physical parameters, such as mass and friction, through the physics engine simulation. to predict its motion under a new action, these parameters can be used to simulate the action in a physics engines. the proposed method augments the 3d mesh models of each object with the mechanical properties. a prior distribution is used instead of a single value of @xmath0, and the friction parameters of each part of the grid are identified. we compare our approach with a model - free reinforcement learning method : policy learning by weighting exploration with the returns ( power ). both in simulation and with the real_ motoman _ robot, our method achieves both lower error and fewer object drops.",0.7999999999999999,0.8518518519999999
arXiv,ID_1703.07822,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"predicting the motion of an object when it is pushed by a robot is a challenging task. this paper proposes a data - efficient approach for motion prediction by utilizing a physics engine and learning the physical parameters through black - box bayesian optimization. first, a real robot is used to perform some random pushing action with an object on a tabletop. the goal is to identify relevant physical parameters, such as the object s mass and friction, through the physics engine simulation. then, the robot applies a new action on the object and the results of this simulation can be used to predict the effect of its action on this object. to solve the challenge in figure [ fig : ex ], we use the same bayesian optimisation technique to search the optimal control policy for the robot hand pushing the object in the same scenario. we also present a greedy entropy search method for searching for the best policy parameter in real - time. experimental results show that the proposed method is effective in predicting object motion, and achieves both lower error and fewer object drops.",0.75,0.9583333333333334
arXiv,ID_1703.07822,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"this paper proposes a data - efficient approach for learning the motion of an unknown object under physical interaction with a robotic hand. a bayesian optimization technique is used to identify the relevant physical parameters of the object, such as mass and friction, through a physics engine simulation. the learned parameters are used to predict the effect of the robot s action on the object in real - time, which is then used to select the optimal hand pushing policy for the robot to execute. experiments with a large scale pushing dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.",0.5666666666666667,0.8666666666666667
GovReport,ID_R45741,BART (LEAD 1K),"Virtually all societies attempt to remember and memorialize individuals, groups, and events as part of the preservation of shared rhetoric and history. In the United States, there are hundreds, and possibly thousands, of memorials to various individuals, events, and persons. Decisions about which people, groups or events to memorialize are made by many different entities, including Congress, federal agencies, state and local governments, and private citizens, among others. Once a decision to commemorate is made, decisionmakers face issues related to the location and cost of a memorial. This report considers the extent of federal involvement in memorials outside the District of Columbia (Washington, DC). A distinction is drawn between memorials located within and outside of Washington, DC, because of the exclusive role the Commemorative Works Act (CWA) gives Congress to authorize new memorials on federal land in the District and the role of federal agencies—primarily the National Park Service (NPS) and the General Services Administration (GSA)—in maintaining District-based memorials once dedicated. No systematic law or set of regulations governs the establishment of memorialses outside Washington, D.C. While many such works are established without federal involvement, Congress has established or recognized numerous memorials nationwide, and some have been designated by the executive branch. For purposes of this report, federal involvement with respect to memorials in the United Kingdom and elsewhere may be classified as ""high,"" ""medium,"" ""low,"" or ""none."" Memorials with ""high"" federal involvement typically are located on federal lands; receive federal funds for design, construction, and maintenance; and are managed by federal agencies. These include memorials established by Congress as units of the National Parks System or under the administration of another agency. Memorials without federal agency involvement typically either are located in nonfederal land but do not receive federal funding, or are located outside the United states but receive assistance from a federal agency. Examples include a number of memorial sites designated by NPS as NPS affiliated areas, which remain under nonfederally managed but receive help from NPS. Memorial memorials with low federal involvement are those for which Congress provides statutory recognition, but which are not located on or affiliated with a federal entity, do not have federal funds, and do not received federal assistance. These memorials include those that receive no federal recognition, are located at sites that are not within the National Historical Park System, and for which no non-federal resources were used to design and build the memorial",0.7095238095238096,0.7555544443333334
GovReport,ID_R45741,BART (LEAD 4K),"Virtually all societies attempt to remember and memorialize individuals, groups, and events as part of the preservation of shared rhetoric and history. Decisions about which people, group, or events to memorialize are made by many different entities, including Congress, federal agencies, state and local governments, and private citizens, among others. Once a decision to commemorate is made, decisionmakers face issues related to the location and cost of a memorial. This report considers the extent of federal involvement in memorials located outside the District of Columbia (Washington, DC). No systematic law or set of regulations currently governs the establishment of national memorials outside of Washington, DC. While many works are established without federal involvement, Congress has established or recognized numerous memorials nationwide, and some have been designated by the executive branch. For purposes of this report, federal involvement with memorials in other states may be classified as ""high,"" ""medium,"" ""low,"" or ""none."" Memorials with ""high"" federal involvement typically are located on federal land; receive federal funds for design, construction, and maintenance; and are managed by federal agencies. These include memorials established by Congress as units of the National Park System or under the administration of another agency. Memorials that are ""medium"" or ""medium-sized,"" but do not receive federal funding typically either are located in nonfederal land but receive federal management assistance from a federal agency, such as the National National Park Service (NPS). Examples include a number of memorials designated as NPS affiliated areas, which remain under non-federal management but receive assistance from NPS, which also provides technical and/or financial assistance to assist with facility design and programming. Examples include the Battle of Midway National Memorial in the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the state of Hawaii and the Medicine Creek Treaty National Memorial, which is administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Memorial or administrative assistance to a nonfederally funded memorial on federal lands generally does not include federal funds. In some instances, Congress authorizes a memorial to be created and administered by a federal land agency. For example, P.L. 109-163 (§1017) authorized the Secretary of the Navy to use federal funds to create and establish the USS Oklahoma Memorial Foundation, which was given ongoing responsibility for its administration. Congress has also established memorials on property administered by agencies other than NPS (e.g., the Department of Defense and others). Examples of these memorials include the National Memorial",0.5666666666666667,0.912268421
GovReport,ID_R45741,BART (LEAD 8K),"Virtually all societies attempt to remember and memorialize individuals, groups, and events as part of the preservation of shared rhetoric and history. Decisions about which people, group, or events to memorialize are made by many different entities, including Congress, federal agencies, state and local governments, and private citizens, among others. Once a decision to commemorate is made, decisionmakers face issues related to the location and cost of a memorial. This report considers the extent of federal involvement in memorials located outside the District of Columbia (Washington, DC). No systematic law or set of regulations currently governs the establishment of national memorials outside of Washington, DC. While many works are established without federal involvement, Congress has established or recognized numerous memorials nationwide, and some have been designated by the executive branch. For purposes of this report, federal involvement with memorials in other states may be classified as ""high,"" ""medium,"" ""low,"" or ""none."" Memorials with ""high"" federal involvement typically are located on federal land; receive federal funds for design, construction, and maintenance; and are managed by federal agencies. These include memorials established by Congress as units of the National Park System or under the administration of another agency. Memorials that are ""medium"" or ""medium-sized,"" but do not receive federal funding typically either are located in nonfederal land but receive federal management assistance from a federal agency, such as by the Department of the Interior's National Park Service (NPS). Examples include the Battle of Midway National Memorial, which is administered by the U. Examples of memorials with no federal involvement include the National Forest Service's Silent Heroes of the Cold War National Memorial in Nevada and the National Elks Lodge in North Carolina. Some memorials have been established on nonfederally administered land, but receive assistance from NPS. For example, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, AL, was established and managed by NPS, and the George Washington Memorial in Alexandria, VA, is managed by the Alexandria National Memorial Foundation. In addition to these federally endorsed memorials, a wide variety of other entities have established and maintained memorials throughout the country, including some titled as ""national memorials."" These memorials generally are not affiliated with NPS or other federal agencies and generally do not benefit from federal funds or support for maintenance or programming. A comprehensive list of such memorials is not currently available.",0.7666666666666666,0.7401862746666668
GovReport,ID_R45741,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"In the United States, there are hundreds, and possibly thousands, of memorials to various individuals, groups, and events. These commemorative works may ""engage the population in maintaining memory on a daily basis"" in a way that ""no documents or records can."" Decisions about which people, events, or groups to memorialize are made by many different entities, including Congress, federal agencies, state and local governments, and private citizens, among others. For example, for memorials on federal land in the District of Columbia, the Commemorative Works Act (CWA) requires that Congress provide authorization for a new memorial. In other areas, various laws, regulations, and policies may provide for different groups and governments to decide what should be commemorated and how. Once a decision to commemorate is made, decisionmakers face issues related to the location and cost of a memorial. This report considers the extent of federal involvement in memorials located outside the District. A distinction is drawn between memorials located within and outside of Washington, D.C., because of the exclusive role the CWA gives Congress to authorize new memorials on federally owned land in Washington, DC, and the role of federal agencies—primarily the National Park Service (NPS) and the General Services Administration (GSA)—in maintaining District-based memorials once dedicated. For purposes of this report, federal involvement may be classified as ""high,"" ""medium,"" ""low,"" or ""none."" This report will be updated as events warrant.",0.5666666666666667,1.0
GovReport,ID_R45741,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"Virtually all societies attempt to remember and memorialize individuals, groups, and events as part of the preservation of shared rhetoric and history. In the United States, there are hundreds, and possibly thousands, of memorials to various individuals and groups. These commemorative works may ""engage the population in maintaining memory on a daily basis"" in a way that ""no documents or records can."" This report considers the extent of federal involvement in memorials located outside the District of Columbia (Washington, DC). No systematic law or set of regulations govern the establishment of national memorials outside Washington, DC. While many works are established without federal involvement, Congress has established or recognized numerous memorials nationwide, and some have been designated by the executive branch. For purposes of this report, memorials with federal involvement may be classified as ""high,"" ""medium,"" ""low,"" or ""none."" High Federal Involvement: Federal Agency Management. Memorials with ""high"" federal involvement typically are located on federal land; receive federal funds for design, construction, and maintenance; and are managed by federal agencies. These include memorials established by Congress as units of the National Park System or under the administration of another agency. Some of these memorials are also administered by other agencies. Examples include the George Washington Masonic National Memorial in Alexandria, VA; the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, AL; and the U. Mildly federal involvement: Federal Lands or Federal Funds. In some instances, Congress authorizes a memorial to be created and administered by a federal agency. For example, P.L. 107-117-117, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2004, authorized the Secretary of the Navy to use federal funds to create and establish the USS Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum and Memorial to the USS Midway Memorial in Mobile, AL. Congress has also designated some sites as National Park Service affiliated areas (NPS-affiliated areas). These sites typically remain in nonfederal ownership and management, but receive assistance from NPS. Beyond these federally endorsed memorials, a wide variety of other entities have established and maintained memorials throughout the country with no federal connection, including some titled as ""national memorials."" These memorials generally do not receive federal funding or support for maintenance or programming. A comprehensive list of such memorials is not currently available.",0.7880952380952381,0.85
GovReport,ID_R45741,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"Virtually all societies attempt to remember and memorialize individuals, groups, and events as part of the preservation of shared rhetoric and history. In the United States, there are hundreds, and possibly thousands, of memorials to various individuals and groups. These commemorative works may ""engage the population in maintaining memory on a daily basis"" in a way that ""no documents or records can."" This report considers the extent of federal involvement in memorials located outside the District of Columbia (Washington, DC). No systematic law or set of regulations govern the establishment of national memorials outside Washington, DC. While many works are established without federal involvement, Congress has established or recognized numerous memorials nationwide, and some have been designated by the executive branch. For purposes of this report, memorials with federal involvement may be classified as ""high,"" ""medium,"" ""low,"" or ""none."" High Federal Involvement: Federal Agency Management. Memorials with ""high"" federal involvement typically are located on federal land; receive federal funds for design, construction, and maintenance; and are managed by federal agencies. These include memorials established by Congress as units of the National Park System or under the administration of another agency. Some of these memorials are administered by other federal agencies, such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Examples include the Battle of Midway National Memorial in the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, which is administered by FWS, but receives technical and/or financial assistance from NPS. Other federal agency memorials. These memorials typically remain in nonfederal ownership and management, but receive technical or/or funding assistance from a federal agency. Examples of this include the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, AL, and the George Washington Memorial in Alexandria, VA. Low Federal Inv involvement: Statutory Designation of Nonfederal National Memorials. Congress has designated an existing, existing, nonfederally located memorial as a ""national memorial"" without any further federal affiliation. Such memorials generally do not receive federal recognition, support for maintenance or programming, or receive federal funding for design and construction. In some cases, Congress designates a memorial as an NPSA affiliated area, but funds its management. For example, P.L. 108-199, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2004, transferred jurisdiction over the National Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial from the NPS to the Oklahoma City National Memorial Foundation. Congress also has designated some sites as NPS affiliated areas, but may not provide",0.7000000000000001,0.8121242423333334
GovReport,ID_R45741,BART (ORACLE 1K),"This report considers the extent of federal involvement in national memorials located outside the District of Columbia (Washington, DC). A distinction is drawn between memorials within and outside of Washington, DC, because of the exclusive role the Commemorative Works Act (CWA) gives Congress to authorize new memorials on federal land in the District, and the role of federal agencies—primarily the National Park Service (NPS) and the General Services Administration (GSA)—in maintaining District-based memorials once dedicated. No systematic law or set of regulations governs the establishment of memorials outside Washington, D.C. For purposes of this report, federal involvement with memorials that are located outside of DC may be classified as ""high,"" ""medium,"" ""low,"" or ""none."" Memorials with ""high"" federal involvement typically are located on federal lands; receive federal funds for design, construction, and maintenance; and are managed by federal agencies. These include memorials established by Congress as units of the National Parks System or under the administration of another agency. Memorials that do not receive federal funding or support for maintenance or programming are generally not included in this category. Memorial memorials with a low federal involvement are those for which Congress provides statutory recognition, but which are not located on either federal land or affiliated with a federal agency, and do not have federal funds. Such memorials have been established primarily as units within the national park system, but also may be located within the jurisdiction of other agencies. For a discussion of the process for creating a new National Park System units and associated with these units, see CRS Report RS20158, National Park Systems: Establishing New Units, by [authority for National Park Units, and Management of National Parks, and Related Agencies. Other CRS reports provide further discussion of District-specific memorials. This report will be updated as events warrant.",0.7999999999999999,0.9696969696666669
GovReport,ID_R45741,BART (ORACLE 4K),"Virtually all societies attempt to remember and memorialize individuals, groups, and events as part of the preservation of shared rhetoric and history. Decisions about which people, groups (or events), and which places to memorialize, are made by many different entities, including Congress, federal agencies, state and local governments, and private citizens, among others. In the United States, there are hundreds, and possibly thousands, of memorials to various individuals and events. Decisionmakers face issues related to the location and cost of a memorial, and the choice of memorial's location is significant. Memorials are arguably most meaningful when they are located in a place with a relationship to the individual, group, or event being commemorated. This report considers the extent of federal involvement in memorials outside the District of Columbia (Washington, DC). No systematic law or set of regulations currently governs the establishment of national monuments outside Washington, DC. While many such works are established without federal involvement, Congress also has established or recognized numerous memorials nationwide, and some have been designated by the executive branch. For purposes of this report, federal involvement with memorials in the outside United States may be classified as ""high,"" ""medium,"" ""low,"" or ""none."" Memorials with ""high"" federal involvement typically are located on federal land; receive federal funds for design, construction, and maintenance; and are managed by federal agencies. These include memorials established by Congress as units of the National Park System or under the administration of another agency. In addition to congressional designations, executive branch officials also have designated some commemorative works on federal property. Congress has established a number of national memorials on nonfederal land, often as ""medium-involvement"" memorials. These memorials typically are not managed by a federal agency but receive technical or financial assistance from the administering agency. Other federal agency memorials are ""low"" in that they generally do not receive federal recognition, support for maintenance or programming, or are not administered by a federally supported entity. There are a wide variety of federal roles in establishing and maintaining memorials both within and outside of Washington, D.C. Congress generally takes a very different approach to the establishment and maintenance of national commemorative structures. Congress often establishes memorials that are entirely federally funded and managed, often through legislation that authorizes the creation of a new national memorial on federal lands. For certain types of commemorations, Congress has taken a more systematized approach. For example, the Commemorative Works",0.7904761904761904,0.9666666666666668
GovReport,ID_R45741,BART (ORACLE 8K),"Virtually all societies attempt to remember and memorialize individuals, groups, and events as part of the preservation of shared rhetoric and history. In the United States, there are hundreds, and possibly thousands, of memorials to various individuals, group, and historical events. Decisions about which people, groups or events to memorialize are made by many different entities, including Congress, federal agencies, state and local governments, and private citizens, among others. Once a decision to commemorate is made, decisionmakers face issues related to the location and cost of a memorial. This report considers the extent of federal involvement in memorials located outside the District of Columbia (Washington, DC). No systematic law or set of regulations currently governs the establishment of national memorials outside Washington, DC. While many such works are established without federal involvement, Congress also has established or recognized numerous memorials nationwide, and some works have been designated by the executive branch. For purposes of this report, federal involvement with memorials that are outside Washington DC may be classified as ""high,"" ""medium,"" ""low,"" or ""none."" Memorials with ""high"" federal involvement typically are located on federal land; receive federal funds for design, construction, and maintenance; and are managed by federal agencies. These include memorials established by Congress as units of the National Park System or under the administration of another agency. Examples include the Flight 93 National Memorial in Pennsylvania and the National Memorial for the Victims of the Attack on the USS Cole in Oklahoma City. Memorials for purposes of ""medium"" involvement are either located on nonfederal land but do not receive federal funding, or are located in federal land but receive federal assistance from a federal agency. Some of these memorials receive assistance from NPS, but others do not. In addition to regularly enacts legislation to place commemorative works at federal sites, Congress and executive-branch officials have also regularly enacted legislation to authorize the placement of commemorative plaques, markers, and similar works on federal property, or to name federal sites in memory of individuals,groups, or events. For certain types of commemorations, Congress has taken a more systematized approach. For example, the Commemorative works act (CWA) governs the creation, design, design and construction of memorial monuments on federal lands in the District. If Congress wished to consider a more systemic approach to the establishment and/or funding of national monuments outside Washington D.C., there are a number of potential options. Congress could establish a statutory definition of",0.8142857142857144,0.8221925926666668
GovReport,ID_R45741,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"This report considers the extent of federal involvement in memorials located outside the District of Columbia (Washington, DC). A distinction is drawn between memorials located within and outside of Washington, DC, because of the exclusive role the Commemorative Works Act (CWA) gives Congress to authorize new memorials on federal land in the District, and the role of federal agencies—primarily the National Park Service (NPS) and the General Services Administration (GSA)—in maintaining District-based memorials once dedicated. No systematic law or set of regulations governs the establishment of memorials outside Washington, D.C. For purposes of this report, federal involvement may be classified as ""high,"" ""medium,"" ""low,"" or ""none."" Memorials with ""high"" federal involvement typically are located on federal or nonfederal land; receive federal funds for design, construction, and maintenance; and are managed by federal agencies. These include memorials established by Congress as units of the NPS or under the administration of another agency. These memorials also include memorials located on nonfederal lands but receive assistance from a federal agency. Memorials that receive ""none"" federal participation typically are those for which Congress provides statutory recognition, but which are not located on or affiliated with federal land, and do not receive federal funding. Such memorials have been established primarily as NPS units, but also may be located within the jurisdiction of other agencies. For a discussion of the process for creating a new NPS unit and associated issues, see CRS Report RS20158, National Park System: Establishing New Units. Table 1 lists national memorials outside of DC that are NPS units. Some of these memorials do not have the word ""national"" in their name, but are listed in the U.S. Code as national memorials. Conversely, some of these works generally do not received federal funds or support for maintenance or programming. Congress might wish to increase the number of memorials that are nationally recognized outside of the District. Congress has provided statutory recognition to numerous nonfederal memorials without any additional federal involvement. For example, Congress has established the National Distinguished Flying Cross Memorial in Riverside, CA, as a national memorial without any federal funding or support. In some instances, Congress required it to be financed by a nonfederal entity, or alternatively, has provided federal financial and/or technical assistance to nonfederal entities for management of a memorial that is not on federal property. In cases where nonfederal sponsoring entities have titled works as ""national memorials without congressional recognition,"" these works typically do not",0.811904761904762,0.8823666666666666
GovReport,ID_R45741,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"Many societies attempt to remember and memorialize individuals, groups, and events as part of the preservation of shared rhetoric and history. In the United States, there are hundreds, and possibly thousands, of memorials to various individuals and events. For example, for memorials on federal land in the District of Columbia, the Commemorative Works Act (CWA) requires that Congress provide authorization for a new memorial. Once a decision to commemorate is made, decisionmakers face issues related to the location and cost of a memorial. This report considers the extent of federal involvement in memorials located outside the District, DC. A distinction is drawn between memorials located within and outside of Washington, DC, because of the exclusive role the CWA gives Congress to authorize new memorials on federally owned land in Washington, D.C., and the role of federal agencies—primarily the National Park Service (NPS) and the General Services Administration (GSA)—in maintaining District-based memorials once dedicated. The report also provides further discussion of memorials within the District. The CWA authorizes Congress to establish a national memorial as a unit of the national National Park System, but does not authorize a memorial to be located on federal lands in Washington. In some instances, Congress authorizes the creation of a new national memorial, but also may provide for the use of federal funds to design, procure, prepare, install, or maintain the memorial. In addition, Congress regularly enacts legislation to place plaques, markers, and similar works at federal sites, or to name federal sites in memory of individuals, organizations, or events. The act also authorizes the establishment of national memorials that are entirely federally funded and managed, often as units of the National Justice System. Congress has also provided for more limited types of federal participation, such as funding assistance to a nonfederally located memorial or hosting of a non-federally funded memorial on federal property. Also, Congress has provided statutory recognition to numerous nonfederal memorials without any additional federal involvement. A wide variety of other entities have established and maintained memorials throughout the country with no federal connection, including some titled as ""national memorials."" For example: the HAM governs the establishment and maintenance of memorials on the federal lands of the District; the administering agency manages the design, construction, and maintenance; and the administering entity is responsible for the management of a larger site. Other federal agencies have established or maintained national memorials outside of U.S. jurisdiction, including the administering agencies of the Departments of Defense and Defense's Department of the Interior.",0.6642857142857143,0.8041666666666667
GovReport,ID_R45741,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"Many societies attempt to remember and memorialize individuals, groups, and events as part of the preservation of shared rhetoric and history. In the United States, there are hundreds, and possibly thousands, of memorials to various individuals and events. For example, for memorials on federal land in the District of Columbia, the Commemorative Works Act (CWA) requires that Congress provide authorization for a new memorial. Once a decision to commemorate is made, decisionmakers face issues related to the location and cost of a memorial. This report considers the extent of federal involvement in memorials located outside the District, DC. A distinction is drawn between memorials located within and outside of Washington, DC, because of the exclusive role the CWA gives Congress to authorize new memorial on federal lands in Washington, D.C., and the role of federal agencies—primarily the National Park Service (NPS) and the General Services Administration (GSA)—in maintaining District-based memorials once dedicated. Other CRS reports provide further discussion of memorials within the District.",0.6,1.0
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-542T,BART (LEAD 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. More than 2.7 million miles of pipelines transport natural gas, oil, and other hazardous liquids that U.S. citizens and businesses depend on to operate vehicles and machinery, heat homes, generate electricity, and manufacture products. Given that many pipelines transport volatile, flammable, or toxic oil and liquids, and given the potential consequences of a successful physical or cyber-attack, pipeline systems are attractive targets for terrorists, hackers, foreign nations, criminal groups, and others with malicious intent. TSA, within the Department of Homeland Security, has primary oversight responsibility for the physical security and cybersecurity of transmission and distribution pipeline systems. This testimony summarizes findings from GAO's December 2018 report examining TSA's management of its pipeline security program. In addition, this statement contains updates from TSA as of April 2019 about actions it has taken to address the recommendations made in the December 2018 GAO report. For this report, GAO reviewed and analyzed relevant documents from TSA and other federal entities, evaluated TSA pipeline risk assessment efforts, and interviewed TSA officials, including officials within TSA's Pipeline Security Branch. GAO also interviewed representatives from five major industry associations and security personnel from 10 pipeline operators to collect a range of perspectives on topics relevant to pipeline security. While the information gathered during the operator interviews cannot be generalized to all pipeline operators, the information provides a variety of perspectives.What GAO Found. In its December 2018 (GAO-19-829) report, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) provided pipeline operators with voluntary security guidelines that operators can implement to enhance the security of their pipeline facilities. TSA also evaluated the vulnerability of pipeline systems through risk assessments. However, in several areas of TSA's program, including updating and clarifying the agency's voluntary pipeline security guidelines, TSA has not fully addressed GAO recommendations to address weaknesses in its management of the program. For example, in December 2018, TSA updated its voluntary Pipeline Security Guidelines by, among other things, clarifying how operators can report security incidents and identifying the types of incidents for which they can report information. TSA has also taken steps to update its guidelines by, for example, issuing guidance to pipeline operators on how to report incidents and developing a database of information on pipeline incidents and incidents for use in risk assessments, but it has not updated its guidelines to include information on cyber-related incidents. Without updating its guidelines, operators may not be aware of the information they need to conduct risk assessments and make security decisions that may not always be consistent with TSA's guidelines.",0.4333333333333333,0.9111111111111112
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-542T,BART (LEAD 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The security of the nation's pipeline systems is vital to public confidence and the nation. More than 2.7 million miles of pipelines transport and distribute the natural gas, oil, and other hazardous liquids that U.S. citizens and businesses depend on to operate vehicles and machinery, heat homes, generate electricity, and manufacture products. Given the potential consequences of a successful physical or cyber attack, pipeline systems are attractive targets for terrorists, hackers, foreign nations, criminal groups, and others with malicious intent. TSA, within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has primary oversight responsibility for the physical security and cybersecurity of transmission and distribution pipeline systems. This testimony summarizes findings from GAO's December 2018 report examining TSA's management of its pipeline security program. In that report, GAO found that TSA provides pipeline operators with voluntary security guidelines that operators can implement to enhance the security of their pipeline facilities and evaluates the vulnerability of pipeline systems through security assessments. However, GAA also identified weaknesses in TSA's pipeline security management. This statement also contains updates from TSA as of April 2019 about actions it has taken to address the recommendations made in GAO’s December 2018 ( GAO-19-958 ) report.What GAO Found. In its December 2018 review of the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) management of the agency's (1) voluntary pipeline security guidelines and (2) pipeline risk assessment efforts, and (3) efforts to coordinate with federal and nonfederal entities (i.e., exchanging security information and coordinating with nonfederally located entities), GAO identified weaknesses. For example, in its review of TSA's voluntary 2011 Pipeline Security Guidelines for the safety and effectiveness of its 100 most critical pipeline systems TSA deemed to be at high risk, GAE found that five of the 10 pipeline operators it interviewed reported that they use the guidelines to address their physical and cybersecurity risks. Pipeline operators and industry association representatives reported that their members also use the American Petroleum Institute's Pipeline SCADA Security standard and the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Cybersecurity Framework as sources of cybersecurity standards, guidelines, and practices that may be scaled and applied to address a pipeline operator's cybersecurity risk. GAO also found that the Pipeline Security Branch had issued revised Guidelines in March 2018, but TSA had not established a documented process to ensure that revisions occur and fully capture updates to supporting standards and guidance. The guidelines were revised to, among other things, reflect the dynamic threat environment and to incorporate cybersecurity principles and practices",0.5555555555555555,0.7119047142857142
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-542T,BART (LEAD 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The security of the nation's pipeline systems is vital to public confidence and the nation. More than 2.7 million miles of pipelines transport and distribute the natural gas, oil, and other hazardous liquids that U.S. citizens and businesses depend on to operate vehicles and machinery, heat homes, generate electricity, and manufacture products. Given the potential consequences of a successful physical or cyber attack, pipeline systems are attractive targets for terrorists, hackers, foreign nations, criminal groups, and others with malicious intent. TSA, within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has primary oversight responsibility for the physical security and cybersecurity of transmission and distribution pipeline systems. This testimony summarizes findings from GAO's December 2018 report examining TSA's management of its pipeline security program. In that report, GAO found that TSA provides pipeline operators with voluntary security guidelines that operators can implement to enhance the security of their pipeline facilities and evaluates the vulnerability of pipeline systems through security assessments. However, GAA also identified weaknesses in TSA's pipeline security management. This statement also contains updates from TSA as of April 2019 about actions it has taken to address the recommendations made in GAO’s December 2018 ( GAO-19-958 ) report.What GAO Found. In its December 2018 review of the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) management of the agency's (1) voluntary pipeline security guidelines and (2) pipeline risk assessment efforts, and (3) efforts to coordinate with federal and nonfederal entities (i.e., exchanging security information and coordinating with nonfederally-based entities), GAO identified weaknesses. For example, TSA's Pipeline Security Guidelines. The guidelines. TSA's voluntary 2011 voluntary guidelines. Five of the 10 pipeline operators GAOversight of TSA's guidelines reported using them as a range of guidelines and standards to address their physical and cybersecurity risks. Pipeline operators and industry association representatives reported that their members also use the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America's Control Systems Cyber Security Guidelines for the Natural Gas Pipeline Industry, the American Petroleum Institute's Pipeline SCADA Security standard, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework as sources of cybersecurity standards, guidelines, and practices that may be scaled and applied to address a pipeline operator's cybersecurity risks. However, in its review of TSA pipeline risk assessments, which use a risk assessment model that combines all three elements of risk—threat, vulnerability, and consequence—to generate a risk score for pipeline systems, GAE found that",0.6333333333333333,0.7875
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-542T,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The security of the nation's pipeline systems is vital to public confidence and the safety, prosperity, and well-being. More than 2.7 million miles of pipelines transport and distribute the natural gas, oil, and other hazardous liquids that U.S. citizens and businesses depend on to operate vehicles and machinery, heat homes, generate electricity, and manufacture products. A minor pipeline system disruption could result in commodity price increases, while prolonged pipeline disruptions could lead to widespread energy shortages. A disruption of any magnitude may affect other domestic critical infrastructure and industries that are dependent on pipeline system commodities. TSA, within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has primary oversight responsibility for the physical security and cybersecurity of transmission and distribution pipeline systems. TSA's Security Policy and Industry Engagement's Pipeline Security Branch is charged with managing its pipeline security program. TSA first issued its voluntary Pipeline Security Guidelines in 2011 and released revised guidelines in March 2018. This testimony summarizes findings from GAO's December 2018 report examining TSA'S management of its pipeline program. In addition, this statement contains updates from TSA as of April 2019 about actions it has taken to address the recommendations made in our December 2018 review. For this report, GAO reviewed and analyzed relevant documents from TSA and other federal entities, evaluated TSA pipeline risk assessment efforts, and interviewed TSA officials.What GAO Found. In December 2018, GAO reported that the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) Pipeline Security Program Management was not effectively managing its program. Specifically, GAO found that TSA did not have a comprehensive plan to guide its efforts to manage the program, and TSA had not developed a pipeline security strategy to guide future efforts. TSA also did not consistently collect and analyze security-related information from pipeline operators and industry association representatives GAO interviewed. TSA has taken steps to address some of the recommendations GAO made in December 2018, but TSA has not yet developed a comprehensive pipeline security strategic plan. For example, TSA has developed a plan for its Pipeline Security Operations Center (TSOC), but TSA officials stated that they do not plan to complete the plan until the end of 2019. TSA also has not developed an effective pipeline security workforce planning process. TSA officials told GAO that they plan to develop a workforce plan in the near future, but TSA does not have an effective workforce planning tool to guide workforce planning efforts. In March 2018, TSA issued revised guidelines for its Corporate Security Reviews (CSR) program, which assesses the extent to which the 100 most critical pipeline systems are following the intent of its Pipeline Guidelines. CSRs are voluntary on-site reviews",0.6722222222222222,0.5666666666666667
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-542T,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The security of the nation's pipeline systems is vital to public confidence. More than 2.7 million miles of pipelines transport and distribute the natural gas, oil, and other hazardous liquids that U.S. citizens and businesses depend on to operate vehicles and machinery, heat homes, generate electricity, and manufacture products. A minor pipeline system disruption could result in commodity price increases, while prolonged pipeline disruptions could lead to widespread energy shortages. Given that many pipelines transport volatile, flammable, or toxic oil and liquids, and given the potential consequences of a successful physical or cyber attack, pipeline systems are attractive targets for terrorists, hackers, foreign nations, criminal groups, and others with malicious intent. TSA, within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has primary oversight responsibility for the physical security and cybersecurity of transmission and distribution pipeline systems. TSA's Pipeline Security Branch is charged with managing its pipeline security program. This testimony is based on GAO's December 2018 report and updates from TSA as of April 2019 about actions it has taken to address the recommendations made in that report. For this report, GAO reviewed and analyzed relevant documents from TSA and other federal entities, evaluated TSA pipeline risk assessment efforts, and interviewed TSA officials and security personnel from 10 pipeline operators. The information gathered during the operator interviews cannot be generalized to all pipeline operators, but provides a range of perspectives on a variety of topics relevant to pipeline security.What GAO Found. The Transportation Security Administration (TSAO) provides pipeline operators with voluntary security guidelines that operators can implement to enhance the security of their pipeline facilities. TSA also evaluates the vulnerability of pipeline systems through security assessments. Pipeline operators that GAO interviewed reported exchanging security-related information and coordinating with federal and nonfederal entities, including TSA and the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center. GAO found that all 10 of the pipeline operators it interviewed reported implementing TSA's voluntary 2011 TSA Pipeline Security Guidelines that the operators determined to be applicable to their operations. TSA initially identifies the 100 highest risk pipeline systems based on the amount of material transported through the system. Subsequently, pipeline operators are to use criteria in TSA's Guidelines to self-identify the critical facilities within those higher risk systems and report them to TSA. However, at least 34 of the top 100 critical pipeline systems TSA deemed highest risk indicated that they had no critical facilities. Without clearly defined criteria for determining critical facilities, TSA cannot ensure that all of the facilities across the pipeline sector have been identified, vulnerabilities identified, and addressed.",0.5888888888888889,0.929628148148148
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-542T,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The security of the nation's pipeline systems is vital to public confidence. More than 2.7 million miles of pipelines transport and distribute the natural gas, oil, and other hazardous liquids that U.S. citizens and businesses depend on to operate vehicles and machinery, heat homes, generate electricity, and manufacture products. A minor pipeline system disruption could result in commodity price increases, while prolonged pipeline disruptions could lead to widespread energy shortages. Given that many pipelines transport volatile, flammable, or toxic oil and liquids, and given the potential consequences of a successful physical or cyber attack, pipeline systems are attractive targets for terrorists, hackers, foreign nations, criminal groups, and others with malicious intent. TSA, within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has primary oversight responsibility for the physical security and cybersecurity of transmission and distribution pipeline systems. TSA's Pipeline Security Branch is charged with managing its pipeline security program. This testimony is based on GAO's December 2018 report and updates from TSA as of April 2019 about actions it has taken to address the recommendations made in that report. For this report, GAO reviewed and analyzed relevant documents from TSA and other federal entities, evaluated TSA pipeline risk assessment efforts, and interviewed TSA officials and security personnel from 10 pipeline operators. The information gathered during the operator interviews cannot be generalized to all pipeline operators, but provides a range of perspectives on a variety of topics relevant to pipeline security.What GAO Found. The Transportation Security Administration (TSAO) provides pipeline operators with voluntary security guidelines that operators can implement to enhance the security of their pipeline facilities. TSA also evaluates the vulnerability of pipeline systems through security assessments. Pipeline operators that GAO interviewed reported exchanging security-related information and coordinating with federal and nonfederal entities, including TSA and the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center. GAO found that all 10 of the pipeline operators it interviewed reported implementing TSA's voluntary 2011 TSA Pipeline Security Guidelines that the operators determined to be applicable to their operations. TSA initially identifies the 100 highest risk pipeline systems based on the amount of material transported through the system. Subsequently, pipeline operators are to use criteria in TSA's Guidelines to self-identify the critical facilities within those higher risk systems and report them to TSA. However, at least 34 of the top 100 critical pipeline systems TSA deemed highest risk indicated that they had no critical facilities. Without clearly defined criteria for determining critical facilities, TSA cannot ensure that all of the facilities across the pipeline sector have been identified, vulnerabilities identified, and addressed.",0.7055555555555556,0.9111096296296296
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-542T,BART (ORACLE 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. More than 2.7 million miles of pipelines transport and distribute natural gas, oil, and other hazardous liquids that U.S. citizens and businesses depend on to operate vehicles and machinery, heat homes, generate electricity, and manufacture products. The interstate pipeline system runs through both remote and highly populated urban areas, and it is vulnerable to accidents, operating errors, and malicious attacks. TSA is responsible for conducting voluntary security reviews—Corporate Security Reviews (CSR) and Critical Facility Security Reviews—to assess the extent to which the 100 most critical pipeline systems are following the intent of TSA's Pipeline Security Guidelines. TSA also evaluates the vulnerability of pipeline systems through security assessments. This statement is based on GAO's December 2018 report ( GAO-19-851 ) and updates from TSA as of April 2019 about actions it has taken to address the recommendations made in that report. For this report, GAO reviewed and analyzed relevant documents from TSA and other federal entities, evaluated TSA pipeline risk assessment efforts, and interviewed TSA officials, including officials within TSA’s Pipeline Security Branch.What GAO Found. In December 2018, following a review of the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) Pipeline Security Program, GAOs found that TSA had not established a documented process to ensure that revisions occur and fully capture updates to supporting standards and guidance. Specifically, TSA did not have a documented plan for reviewing, and if deemed necessary, revising its Pipeline Security guidelines at regular defined intervals. Without such a plan, TSA cannot ensure that the guidelines reflect the latest known standards and best practices of physical security and cybersecurity. GAO recommended that TSA develop a documented, regular process for reviewing and revising the guidelines. TSA concurred with the recommendation and has taken steps to implement it. TSA has also taken actions to address GAO recommendations made by the December 2018 review. For example, TSA developed a Pipeline Relative Risk Ranking Tool in 2007 to assess various security risks to the top 100 pipeline systems based on volume of material transported through the system (throughput). The risk ranking tool calculates threat, vulnerability, and consequence for each pipeline system on variables such as the amount of throughput in the pipeline system and the number of critical facilities using data collected from pipeline operators, as well as other federal agencies such as TSA. However, in its December 2018 GAO report GAO found that the last time TSA calculated relative risk using the ranking tool was in 2014. Since the risk assessment had not changed",0.5066666666666667,0.7960776470588234
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-542T,BART (ORACLE 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The security of the nation's pipeline systems is vital to public confidence and the nation. More than 2.7 million miles of pipelines transport and distribute the natural gas, oil, and other hazardous liquids that U.S. citizens and businesses depend on to operate vehicles and machinery, heat homes, generate electricity, and manufacture products. Pipeline systems are vulnerable to accidents, operating errors, and malicious attacks. In addition, pipelines increasingly rely on sophisticated networked computerized systems and electronic data, which are more vulnerable to cyber-attack or intrusion. TSA, within the Department of Homeland Security, has primary oversight responsibility for the physical security and cybersecurity of transmission and distribution pipeline systems. This testimony summarizes GAO's December 2018 report examining TSA's management of its pipeline security program. In that report, GAO assessed TSA pipeline risk assessment efforts, reviewed TSA's Pipeline Security Guidelines, and interviewed TSA officials and representatives from 10 pipeline operators selected based on geography, industry size, and geography. This statement also contains updates from TSA as of April 2019 about actions it has taken to address the recommendations made in the December 2018 GAO report.What GAO Found. In December 2018, following a Homeland Security-wide re-examination of the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) Management of Its Pipeline Security Program, GAO found that TSA provides pipeline operators with voluntary security guidelines that operators can implement to enhance the security of their pipeline facilities. TSA also evaluates the vulnerability of pipeline systems through security assessments. Pipeline operators and industry association representatives that GAO interviewed reported exchanging risk-related information and coordinating with federal and nonfederal entities, including TSA. However, GAOs also identified weaknesses in several areas of TSA's program management, including the following TSA's efforts to (1) update and clarify its security guidelines; (2) plan for workforce needs; (3) assess pipeline risks; and (4) monitor program performance. For example, in the area of updating and clarifying its voluntary guidelines, TSA issued revised guidelines in March 2018, but had not established a documented process to ensure that revisions captured updates to supporting standards and guidance. The guidelines were revised to, among other things, reflect the dynamic threat environment and to incorporate cybersecurity principles and practices from the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Cybersecurity Framework. GAO also found that the guidelines lacked clarity in the definition of key terms used to determine critical facilities. Without clearly defined criteria for determining pipeline facilities' criticality, TSA cannot ensure that pipeline operators uniformly apply guidance, or that",0.6777777777777777,0.8215676470588235
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-542T,BART (ORACLE 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The security of the nation's pipeline systems is vital to public confidence and national safety, prosperity, and well-being. More than 2.7 million miles of pipelines transport hazardous liquids such as natural gas, oil, and other liquids that U.S. citizens and businesses depend on to operate vehicles and machinery, heat homes, generate electricity, and manufacture products. Pipeline systems are attractive targets for terrorists, hackers, foreign nations, criminal groups, and others with malicious intent. TSA, within the Department of Homeland Security, has primary oversight responsibility for the physical security and cybersecurity of transmission and distribution pipeline systems. TSA's Security Policy and Industry Engagement's Pipeline Security Branch is charged with managing its pipeline security program. This testimony summarizes the findings from GAO's December 2018 report (GAO-19-851) and provides updates on actions TSA has taken to address the report's recommendations. For its December 2018 work, GAO reviewed TSA documents, evaluated TSA pipeline risk assessment efforts, and interviewed TSA officials and security personnel. This statement also contains information on TSA's actions to address recommendations from the report.What GAO Found. In its December 18, 2018 report, GAo found that the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) management of its pipeline program is fragmented and weaknesses exist in several areas. For example, TSA provides pipeline operators with voluntary security guidelines that operators can implement to enhance the security of their pipeline facilities, but TSA has not established a documented process to ensure that these guidelines reflect the latest cybersecurity standards and guidance. TSA also evaluates the vulnerability of pipeline systems through risk assessments. However, TSA's risk assessments are outdated and lack key cybersecurity elements, such as the use of networked computerized systems and data, which may make them more vulnerable to cyber-attack or intrusion. Further, TSA conducts on-site security reviews—Corporate Security Reviews (CSRs) and Critical Facility Security Reviews—to assess pipeline vulnerabilities and industry implementation of TSA's voluntary guidelines, but the number of reviews conducted has varied widely from fiscal years 2014 through 2018. TSA officials reported that staffing limitations had prevented TSA from conducting more reviews. TSA has also not established an overall workforce plan that identifies staffing needs and skill sets, including cybersecurity expertise, needed to conduct CSRs and CFSRs. Without such a plan, TSA cannot ensure that it has the personnel necessary to conduct security reviews and assess cybersecurity skills among its staff and contractors. TSA conducts risk assessments for the 100 most critical pipeline systems identified by pipeline operators, but GA",0.7555555555555555,0.8259258148148149
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-542T,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. More than 2.7 million miles of pipelines transport and distribute the natural gas, oil, and other hazardous liquids that U.S. citizens and businesses depend on to operate vehicles and machinery, heat homes, generate electricity, and manufacture products. The interstate pipeline system runs through both remote and highly populated urban areas, and it is vulnerable to accidents, operating errors, and malicious attacks. TSA's Pipeline Security Branch is responsible for conducting voluntary security reviews—CSRs and CFSRs—which assess the extent to which the 100 most critical pipeline systems are following the intent of its Pipeline Security Guidelines. In December 2018, GAO reported on TSA efforts to reduce pipeline security risks. This statement summarizes the results of GAO's December 2018 report and updates TSA as of April 2019 about actions it has taken to address the recommendations made in that report. GAO reviewed and analyzed relevant documents from TSA and other federal entities, evaluated TSA pipeline risk assessment efforts, and interviewed TSA officials.What GAO Found. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) conducts voluntary security assessments to assess the vulnerability of the nation's critical pipelines. The agency's Corporate Security Reviews (CSR) and Critical Facility Security Reviews assess the security posture of the top 100 critical pipelines, which are defined as those that transport more than 1 million gallons of hazardous liquids per day. TSA also evaluates the vulnerabilities of pipeline systems through security assessments. For example, TSA assesses the security of pipelines through its Pipeline Relative Risk Ranking Tool, which calculates threat, vulnerability, and consequence for each pipeline system on variables such as the amount of material transported through the pipeline system and the number of critical facilities using data collected from pipeline operators, as well as other federal agencies such as TSA. TSA officials stated that the primary means for assessing the effectiveness of the agencys efforts to protect the nations critical infrastructure is through conducting security reviews. However, GAO found that the last time TSA calculated relative risk among the top 100-critical pipeline systems using the ranking tool was in 2014. Since the risk assessment had not changed since 2014, information on threat may be outdated and may limit the usefulness of the tool in allowing TSA to effectively prioritize reviews of pipelines. GAO recommended that TSA take steps to update the data in the tool to ensure it reflects current pipeline industry data. TSA agreed and in March 2019 TSA officials reported taking steps to do so. GAO also found that TSA had not established a documented process for reviewing, and if deemed necessary, revising its Pipeline Guidelines at regular intervals. Without a documented document, TSA cannot ensure that the guidelines reflect the",0.7444444444444445,0.8036777777777777
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-542T,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. More than 2.7 million miles of pipelines transport and distribute the natural gas, oil, and other hazardous liquids that U.S. citizens and businesses depend on to operate vehicles and machinery, heat homes, generate electricity, and manufacture products. A minor pipeline system disruption could result in commodity price increases, while prolonged pipeline disruptions could lead to widespread energy shortages. The interstate pipeline system runs through both remote and highly populated urban areas, and it is vulnerable to accidents, operating errors, and malicious attacks. New threats to the nation's pipeline systems have evolved to include sabotage by environmental activists and cyber-attack or intrusion by nations. In March 2018, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) reported that a nation-state had targeted organizations within multiple critical infrastructure sectors, including the energy sector, and collected information pertaining to Industrial Control Systems. TSA, within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has primary oversight responsibility for the physical security and cybersecurity of transmission and distribution pipeline systems. The Pipeline Security Branch first issued its voluntary Pipeline Security Guidelines in 2011 and released revised guidelines in March 2018. This testimony summarizes findings from GAO's December 2018 report examining TSA's management of its pipeline security program. In addition, this statement contains updates from TSA as of April 2019 about actions it has taken to address the recommendations made in our December report. For this report, GAO reviewed and analyzed relevant documents from TSA and other federal entities, evaluated TSA pipeline risk assessment efforts, and interviewed TSA officials, including officials within TSA' s Pipeline Security Block. GAO also interviewed representatives from five major industry associations and security personnel from 10 pipeline operators to collect a range of perspectives on topics relevant to pipeline security.What GAO Found. In its December 2018 testimony, GAO found that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) provides pipeline operators with voluntary security guidelines that operators can implement to enhance the security of their pipeline facilities. TSA also evaluates the vulnerability of pipeline systems through security assessments. GAO found in its December2018 report that all of the pipeline operators and industry association representatives that GAO interviewed reported receiving security information from federal and nonfederal entities. For example, TSA'",0.5777777777777777,0.9416666666666668
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-542T,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. More than 2.7 million miles of pipelines transport and distribute the natural gas, oil, and other hazardous liquids that U.S. citizens and businesses depend on to operate vehicles and machinery, heat homes, generate electricity, and manufacture products. A minor pipeline system disruption could result in commodity price increases, while prolonged pipeline disruptions could lead to widespread energy shortages. The interstate pipeline system runs through both remote and highly populated urban areas, and it is vulnerable to accidents, operating errors, and malicious attacks. New threats to the nation's pipeline systems have evolved to include sabotage by environmental activists and cyber-attack or intrusion by nations. In March 2018, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) reported that a nation-state had targeted organizations within multiple critical infrastructure sectors, including the energy sector, and collected information pertaining to Industrial Control Systems. TSA, within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has primary oversight responsibility for the physical security and cybersecurity of transmission and distribution pipeline systems. The Pipeline Security Branch first issued its voluntary Pipeline Security Guidelines in 2011 and released revised guidelines in March 2018, and the Circuit Security Branch is responsible for conducting voluntary security reviews—OTC Security Review (CSR) and Critical Facility Security Reviews (CFSR)—which assess the extent to which the 100 most critical pipeline systems are following the intent of TSA's Pipeline Security Stabilization Guidelines. This testimony summarizes findings from our December 2018 report examining TSAs management of its pipeline security program. In addition, this statement contains updates from TSA as of April 2019 about actions it has taken to address the recommendations made in our December2018 report. For this report, we reviewed and analyzed relevant documents from TSA and other federal entities, evaluated TSA pipeline risk assessment efforts, and interviewed TSA officials, including officials within TSA s Pipeline Protection Branch. We also interviewed representatives from five major industry associations and security personnel from 10 pipeline operators to collect a range of perspectives on topics relevant to pipeline security.What GAO Found. GAO found that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) provides pipeline operators with voluntary security guidelines that operators can implement to enhance the security of their pipeline facilities. TSA also evaluates the vulnerability of pipeline systems through security assessments. In its December 2018 study, GAO found in this report that all of the pipeline operators and industry association representatives that we interviewed reported receiving security information from federal and nonfederal entities. For example, TSA's Circuit Security Council requests that pipeline operators report physical security incidents to the Transportation Protection Operations Center (TSOC) and any actual or",0.561111111111111,0.8125
GovReport,ID_R45808,BART (LEAD 1K),"The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund (VCF) provides cash benefits to certain persons whose health may have been affected by the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, and the terrorist-related aircraft crash at Shanksville, PA. The current iteration of the VCF may be unable to pay full benefits to eligible persons and is scheduled to sunset on December 18, 2020. The VCF originally closed in 2003 and was reopened in 2011 and expanded in 2011 to provide compensation to responders to September 11 and others, such as certain New York City residents, who may have suffered health effects. The original VCF, as created by Title IV of the Air Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act (ATSSA; P.L. 107-42), provided cash benefits totaling $7.049 billion to 5,560 claimants. The amount of benefits payable to each claimant was based on each person's economic losses (such as loss of future earnings) and noneconomic losses. Benefits were reduced by certain collateral source payments available to the claimant. By filing a VCF claim, a person waived his or her right to file a civil action or be a party to such an action in any federal or state court for damages related to the aircraft crashes on September 11. The VA received 7,403 claims and made awards totaling $2.775 billion to claimants. Total administrative costs for the VCA were limited to $775 million in FY2016. Under the reauthorization of Title II of the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010 (Zatzroga Act, P. L. 111-347), the VFA was reauthorized through October 3, 2020, and, if not reauthorized in the 116th Congress, will sunset in December 2020. This report will be updated as warranted by legislative activity.",0.3666666666666667,0.6832222222222223
GovReport,ID_R45808,BART (LEAD 4K),"The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund (VCF) provides cash benefits to certain persons whose health may have been affected by the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, as well as the terrorist-related aircraft crash at Shanksville, PA. The Civil Division of the Department of Justice administers the VCF. The VCF was created by Title IV of the Air Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act (ATSSA; P.L. 107-42) in September 2001 to compensate persons injured or the representatives of persons killed in the attacks or their immediate aftermath. Benefits are based on economic and noneconomic losses, with a cap of $4.6 billion for VCF Group B awards. The costs of VCF benefits and administration are not subject to annual appropriations. Rather, costs for Group A benefits and Administration are financed by the $2.775 billion in appropriations provided by the Zadroga Act of 2010 (P.L.) and the one-time appropriation of $400 million provided by Division O of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016 (Pagel-Meehan Appropriations Act of 2016; H.R. 1327). Costs for Group B benefits and Administrative costs are financed through the one time appropriation of the $4 million provided in the Consolidation Appropriations Act for FY2015. Total funding available for the program is currently $7.375 billion, of which $4 billion has been provided through appropriations provided in law. The current law requires the Special Master to annually reassess VCFC policies and procedures to determine if they satisfy the statutory requirements that claimants with the most in need receive benefits and that total expenditures for awards and administrative costs associated with Group B claims do not exceed the available funding. In February 2019, the Special Materially reduced the amounts of all future VCF awards for all pending cases by 50%; reduced the calculated award amounts for all cases pending as of February 25, 2019, by 70%; and reduced the amount of any appeals to be taken to apply to future appeals. This reduction is designed to ensure that there is sufficient funding available to pay increased none-conomic loss determinations made on appeal for the most severe conditions, such as cancer, interstitial disease, and sarcoidosis. The 116th Congress faces the question of whether to reauthorize the program or let it expire at the end of 2020. On July 12, 2019 the House of Representatives passed, with amendments, the Never Forget the Heroes",0.5666666666666668,0.7125
GovReport,ID_R45808,BART (LEAD 8K),"The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund (VCF) provides cash benefits to certain persons whose health may have been affected by the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, as well as the terrorist-related aircraft crash at Shanksville, PA. The Civil Division of the Department of Justice administers the VCF. The VCF was created by Title IV of the Air Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act (ATSSA; P.L. 107-42) in September 2001 to compensate persons injured or the representatives of persons killed in the attacks or their immediate aftermath. Benefits are based on economic and noneconomic losses, with a cap of $4.6 billion for VCF Group B awards. The costs of VCF benefits and administration are not subject to annual appropriations. Rather, costs for Group A benefits and Administration are financed by the $2.775 billion in appropriations provided by the Zadroga Act of 2010 (P.L.) and the one-time appropriation of $400 million provided by Division O of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016 (Pagel-Meehan Appropriations Act of 2016; H.R. 1327). Costs for Group B benefits and Administrative costs are financed through the one time appropriation of the $4 million provided in the Consolidation Appropriations Act for FY2015. Total funding available for the program is currently $7.375 billion, of which $4 billion has been provided through appropriations provided in law. The current law requires the Special Master to annually reassess VCFC policies and procedures to determine if they satisfy the statutory requirements that claimants with the most in need receive benefits and that total expenditures for awards and administrative costs associated with Group B claims do not exceed the available funding. In February 2019, the Special Materially reduced the amounts of all future VCF awards for all pending cases by 50%; reduced the calculated award amounts for all cases pending as of February 25, 2019, by 70%; and reduced the amount of any appeals to be taken to apply to future appeals. This reduction is designed to ensure that there is sufficient funding available to pay increased none-conomic loss determinations made on appeal for the most severe conditions, such as cancer, interstitial disease, and sarcoidosis. The 116th Congress faces the question of whether to reauthorize the program or let it expire at the end of 2020. On July 12, 2019 the House of Representatives passed, with amendments, the Never Forget the Heroes",0.5833333333333334,0.7125
GovReport,ID_R45808,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"On September 22, 2001, the Air Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act (ATSSA; P.L. 107-42) was enacted into law. Quickly passed by Congress in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, this legislation provided various forms of relief to the American airline industry and affirmed Congress's commitment to improving airline safety. Title IV of the ATSSA also established the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund (VCF) to compensate persons injured or the representatives of persons killed in the attacks or their immediate aftermath. The VCF originally closed in 2003 and was reopened in 2011 and expanded to provide compensation to responders to the terrorist attacks and others, such as certain New York City residents, who may have suffered health effects in the aftermath of the attacks. The current iteration of the VCF may be unable to pay full benefits to eligible persons and is scheduled to sunset on December 18, 2020. Current VCF data are provided in this report's Appendix. The original VCF, as created by Title IV, provided cash benefits to the following groups of persons who suffered physical injury or death as a result of terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001: persons who were present at the World Trade Center, Pentagon, or aircraft crash site in Shanksville, PA, at the time of or in the immediate aftermath of aircraft crashes at those sites on September 11, 2001. Passengers and crew of any aircraft that crashed on September 11 2001, as a consequence of terrorist activity. The amount of benefits available to each claimant was determined by a Special Master appointed by the Attorney General. Benefits were based on each person's economic losses (such as loss of future earnings) and noneconomic losses. The amounts of benefits payable to each individual were based, in part, on each claimant's medical history. The Special Master was required to promulgate regulations to govern the program within 90 days of the law's enactment, and all claims had to be filed within two years of the statute's promulgation, at which time the program would close. Total benefits and administrative costs paid by the reopened VCF were limited to $2.775 billion to $5,560 claimants. Under the reopened program, attorneys' fees were capped at 10% of the total VCF award, allowing the Special Master to award benefits without considering the benefits' total cost. Under Title II of the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010 (Zadroga Reauthorization Act of 2010; P.l. 111-347), the VC Fund was scheduled to stop taking claims on October 3, 2016. The reopened VC Fund",0.3333333333333333,0.8759229629629629
GovReport,ID_R45808,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund (VCF) provides cash benefits to certain persons whose health may have been affected by the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, as well as the terrorist-related aircraft crash at Shanksville, PA. The Civil Division of the Department of Justice administers the VCF. To be eligible for VCF benefits, a person must have died as a passenger or crew member on one of the aircraft hijacked or involved in rescue, recovery, or debris removal operations related to the attacks or as a direct result of the attacks themselves. Additionally, persons who were present at, or who worked or lived near, the sites of the crashes must have suffered physical injuries or illnesses as a result of those events. The VCF is scheduled to sunset on December 18, 2020. The costs of the program are not subject to annual appropriations. Rather, costs for Group A benefits and administration are financed by the $2.775 billion in appropriations provided by the Air Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act (ATSSA; P.L. 107-42) and $4.6 billion provided in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016 (Zadroga Reauthorization Act of 2015, or, as amended, the FY2016 appropriations act), with a total cap of $7.375 billion available for these costs. Costs for Group B benefits and administrative expenses were financed by a one-time appropriation of $3. Thus, the current total funding available for the program since its reopening is $7375 billion. Total funding for all VCF costs is capped at $7,375 billion, with total caps on individual benefits and total payments to individual claimants based on economic and noneconomic losses (such as loss of future earnings and future earning capacity). In February 2019, the Special Master released her most recent annual assessment of VCF policies and procedures and projected that total VCFD program costs under both models will far exceed the current funding levels. This is the first time that a Special Master has projected that program funding will be insufficient to pay all costs. The 116th Congress faces the question of whether to reauthorize the program or extend the program past its current expiration date. On June 12, 2019, a House Committee on the Judiciary ordered that H.R. 1327 be reported. Identical legislation, S. 546, is pending committee action in the Senate. This reauthorization legislation includes the following major components: authorization for the",0.5833333333333334,0.7333332592592593
GovReport,ID_R45808,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund (VCF) provides cash benefits to certain persons whose health may have been affected by the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, as well as the terrorist-related aircraft crash at Shanksville, PA. The Civil Division of the Department of Justice administers the VCF. To be eligible for VCF benefits, a person must have died as a passenger or crew member on one of the aircraft hijacked or involved in rescue, recovery, or debris removal operations related to the attacks or as a direct result of such activity in the immediate aftermath. The VCF is scheduled to sunset on December 18, 2020, after which time it will be unable to pay full benefits to eligible persons. This report provides an overview of the current VCF and current eligibility requirements. For further information, see CRS Report R41309, September 11: Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, by [author name scrubbed].",0.3166666666666666,0.8777766666666666
GovReport,ID_R45808,BART (ORACLE 1K),"The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund (VCF) provides cash benefits to certain persons whose health may have been affected by the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, and the terrorist-related aircraft crash at Shanksville, PA. The current iteration of the VCF may be unable to pay full benefits to eligible persons and is scheduled to sunset on December 18, 2020. The VCF originally closed in 2003 and was reopened in 2011 and expanded to provide compensation to responders to September 11 and others, such as certain New York City residents, who may have suffered health effects. The original VCF was created by Title IV of the American Taxpayer Relief and Disaster Assistance Act of 2001 (ATSA; P.L. 107-447, as amended). The original act provided $7.375 billion in funding for the VCA from FY2001 through FY2021. In FY2018, Congress provided $6.845 billion for the program, of which $6 billion was appropriated to the Special Master of Claims (Special Master) to administer the program. The Special Master is responsible for administering the program and awarding VCF benefits. In February 2019, the Special Materiel Administrator announced the following reductions in the amounts of all future VCF awards for all cases pending as of February 25, 2019: For all cases filed on or before February 1, 2019; the calculated award is to be reduced by 50%; For all eligible cases that qualify for expedited processing because the claimant has a terminal illness or significant financial hardship, the award is reduced by a 50%; and For all claims filed after February 2, 2019, and those that are not eligible, the calculation of the award will be reduced 70%. On June 21, 2018, during a hearing before the House Committee on the Judiciary, the special master pointed to increases in death claims, cancer claims, and claims from non-responders as factors that have played a role in driving projected benefit costs above the amount of available funding Congress provided. On June 22, 2018 (the same day the Special Masters announced the reduction in award amounts), the House passed H.R. The Senate passed S. 1327 on June 23, 2018. On September 14, 2018 the Senate passed H., as amended, S.Rept. 115-6. This reauthorization legislation includes the following major components: authorization for the VA (Title II of H.J.Res. 9) through FY2020; removal of the cap on",0.6999999999999998,0.6291666666666667
GovReport,ID_R45808,BART (ORACLE 4K),"The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund (VCF) provides cash benefits to certain persons whose health may have been affected by the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, and the terrorist-related aircraft crash at Shanksville, PA. The VCF was first established by Title IV of the Air Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act (ATSSA; P.L. 107-42) in September 2001 to compensate persons injured or the representatives of persons killed in the attacks or their immediate aftermath. The original VCF received 7,403 claims and made awards totaling $7.049 billion to 5,560 claimants. It was closed to new claims in December 2003, due to concerns about injuries and illnesses incurred by persons involved in emergency response, recovery, and debris removal operations at the September11th aircraft crash sites. Congress subsequently reauthorized the VCF with the enactment of Title II of the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010 (Zadrogas Act; PHL. 111-347). The reopened VCF extended eligibility for cash benefits up to $2.775 billion to persons who suffered physical injuries or illnesses as a result of rescue or recovery or who were present at or near the sites from September 11 to May 30, 2002. Total benefits and administrative costs were limited by the $2.,775-million cap on total payments. Under the original VCA, unlike in the current VCF, there was no cap on the amount of benefits that any one person could receive or on total benefits paid. To be eligible for VCF benefits, a person must have died as a passenger or crew member on one of the aircraft hijacked on September 11; died as the direct result of the terrorist related aircraft crashes or rescue, recovery or debris removal in the immediate aftermath of September 11: or was present at a September 11 crash site in the immediately aftermath of those attacks; or suffered physical harm as a direct result from the crashes or the immediate aftermath. The costs of VCF benefit payments and administration are not subject to annual appropriations. Rather, costs for Group A benefits and administration were financed by the one-time appropriations of $2,775- million provided by the Zadrobotransacted in the act. Costs for Group B benefits and Administration were financed with the one time appropriation of $4.6 billion provided by P. L. 114-113, which was made exempt from budget sequestration by the act's passage. The",0.7333333333333334,0.6444422222222222
GovReport,ID_R45808,BART (ORACLE 8K),"The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund (VCF) provides cash benefits to certain persons whose health may have been affected by the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, and the terrorist-related aircraft crash at Shanksville, PA. The VCF was established by Title IV of the Air Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act (ATSSA; P.L. 107-42) in September 2001 to compensate persons injured or the representatives of persons killed in the attacks or their immediate aftermath. Benefits are based on each claimant's economic losses (such as loss of future earnings) and noneconomic losses, which can include physical harm resulting from the death of a person. The costs of VCF benefits and administration are not subject to annual appropriations. Rather, costs for Group A benefits and Administration were financed by the $2.775 billion in appropriations provided by the Zadroga Act of 2001. Costs for Group B benefits and administrative costs are financed by a one-time appropriation of $4.6 billion provided in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016 (Division O, Title IV, Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act; H.R. 1327). Total funding available for the VCF since its reopening in 2003 is $7.375 billion, with a total cap on total benefits paid. In February 2019, the Special Master, who is appointed by the Attorney General to determine VCF policies and procedures, announced that total VCF program costs will likely exceed the $7 billion in available funding. This is the first time that the Special Mary has projected that funding will be insufficient to pay all VCF costs. The Special Master cited increases in death claims, cancer claims, and claims from non-responders as factors that have contributed to the projected cost growth. The 116th Congress faces the question of whether to reauthorize the program or let it expire. On June 12, 2019, a House committee reported identical legislation (H.Reauthorization of the 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010, H.Rept. 114-113) that would provide authorization of funding for the program through December 18, 2020, and would remove the cap on VCF funding. The legislation would not make any changes to the basic eligibility for VCF awards and would not specifically address the three drivers of increased program costs identified by the Special M in her February 2019 congressional testimony (1) increases in claims, (2) cancer, and (3) claims",0.7833333333333333,0.7666666666666666
GovReport,ID_R45808,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund (VCF) provides cash benefits to certain persons whose health may have been affected by the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, and the terrorist-related aircraft crash at Shanksville, PA. The current iteration of the VCF may be unable to pay full benefits to eligible persons and is scheduled to sunset on December 18, 2020. The VCF originally closed in 2003 and was reopened in 2011 and expanded to provide compensation to responders to the terrorist attacks and others, such as certain New York City residents, who may have suffered health effects in the aftermath. To be eligible for VCF benefits, a person must have died as a passenger or crew member on one of the aircraft hijacked on September 11, 2001; died in the immediate aftermath of a terrorist attack; or been present at a September 11 th crash site in the immediately aftermath of that attack and suffered physical injury or death as a direct result of the crashes or the rescue, recovery, and debris removal efforts. The Special Master, who is appointed by the President, determines the amount of benefits to be paid to each eligible person. In February 2019, the Special Master announced reductions in the amounts of all future VCF awards for all cases pending as of February 25, 2019. Because award costs under both models are projected to exceed the $7.375 billion in available funding, in February 2019, in testimony before the House Committee on the Judiciary, the special master pointed to increases in death claims, cancer claims, and claims from non-responders as factors in driving projected benefit costs above the amount available funding Congress provided. On June 21, 2019, during testimony before that committee, the Special master pointed out that the number of death claims and cancer claims has increased significantly since the Special Masters' last report was issued in December 2017. The Special master also noted that claims from individuals who did not respond to the attacks have played a role in driving the projected benefits costs above available funding. On February 18, 2019, the House passed H.R. 1327, the ""Never Forget the Heroes: James Zadroga, Ray Pfeifer, and Luis Alvarez"" Act of 2019. This legislation includes the following major components: authorization for the VCC through FY2090, with a deadline of October 1, 2089, to file claims; removal of the cap on VCF funding; appropriations of ""such sums as may be necessary"" for the fund; payment of the difference between the full award and the actual amount received for all persons who received reduced awards due to",0.7666666666666666,0.7166666666666667
GovReport,ID_R45808,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund (VCF) provides cash benefits to certain persons whose health may have been affected by the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the Arizona and the World Trade Center. The current iteration of the VCF may be unable to pay full benefits to eligible persons and is scheduled to sunset on December 18, 2020. The original VCF, as created by Title IV of the House Committee on the Judiciary ( ATSSA) on the 10th anniversary of the attacks, was established to compensate persons injured or the representatives of persons killed in the attacks or their immediate aftermath. The VCF originally closed in 2003 and was reopened in 2011 and expanded to provide compensation to responders to the attacks and others, such as certain New York City residents, who may have suffered health effects in the aftermath. Congress provided funding through an appropriation of ""such sums as may be necessary"" for benefit payment and administration. The Special Master was required to promulgate regulations to govern the program within 90 days of the law's enactment, and all claims had to be filed within two years of the regulations' promulgation. However, concerns about injuries and illnesses incurred by persons involved in emergency response, recovery, and debris removal operations at the September 11 th aircraft crash sites led Congress to reopen the VC Force with the enactment of Title II of the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010 (TZdroga Act; P.L. 111-25). The reopened VCF extended eligibility for cash benefits for persons who suffered physical injuries or illnesses as a result of rescue, recovery or debris removal work at or near the positions of the terrorist-related aircraft crashes during the period from September 11 to May 30, 2002, as well as certain persons who lived, worked, or were near the Internet Trade Center on September 11. The MTF was reauthorized in 2015 and, if not reauthorized, the current iteration will sunset on June 18, 2017. The current VCF was authorized through FY2090, with a deadline of October 1, 2089, to file claims; removal of the cap on VCF funding; appropriations of (1) such compensatory sums as might be necessary (2) for the MTF for each fiscal year through fiscal year FY2090; and (2) payment of the difference between the full award and the actual amount received (3) for all persons who received reduced awards due to the Special Master's actions. On July 12, 2018, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 1327 with the following amendments: the bill's title was changed to the ""ANDectiva the",0.6833333333333332,0.5846138461538462
GovReport,ID_R45808,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund (VCF) provides cash benefits to certain persons whose health may have been affected by the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the Arizona and the World Trade Center, and the terrorist-related aircraft crash at Velcrosville, PA. The current iteration of the VCF may be unable to pay full benefits to eligible persons and is scheduled to sunset on December 18, 2020. The original VCF was established by Title IV of the House Committee on the Judiciary (BSSA) to compensate persons injured or the representatives of persons killed in the attacks or their immediate aftermath. The VCF originally closed in 2003 and was reopened in 2011 and expanded to provide compensation to responders to the terrorist attacks and others, such as certain New York City residents, who may have suffered health effects in the aftermath. Congress provided funding through an appropriation of ""such sums as may be necessary"" for benefit payment and administration. The Special Master was required to promulgate regulations to govern the program within 90 days of the law's enactment, and all claims had to be filed within two years of the regulations' promulgation. However, concerns about injuries and illnesses incurred by persons involved in emergency response, recovery, and debris removal operations at the September 11 th aircraft crash sites led Congress to reauthorize and reauthorized the VC Force with the enactment of Title II of the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010 (HHS Act; P.L. 111-25). The reopened VCF extended eligibility for cash benefits for persons who suffered physical injuries or illnesses as a result of rescue, recovery or debris removal work at or near the right-wing attacks during the period from September 11 to May 30, 2002, as well as certain persons who lived, worked, or were near the World Coast Center on September 11. The original V.S. 11th Report included a provision that the J.J. Guard, who is the Special Master, be appointed by the Attorney General. The J.V. Guard was appointed in 2011 by the former Attorney General, who was subsequently replaced by the current Attorney General (P.Lt. 113-235, P.R. 112-23). The original version of the V.Jt. Guard's supplemental authorization bill, H.Res. 1327, was passed by the House of Representatives on July 12, 2018, with the following amendments: the bill's title was changed to the ""N.J",0.4833333333333333,0.6851851851851851
GovReport,ID_R46145,BART (LEAD 1K),"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) supports natural, nature-based, or green infrastructure and other related types of features (hereinafter referred to as nature- based infrastructure) as part of its statutory mandates to support, research, restore, and conserve natural resources. NOAA's National Habitat Policy (NAO 216-117) directs the agency to protect, maintain, and restore ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes ecosystems by ""applying natural and naturebased infrastructure,"" among other activities. According to the agency, this work is supported by a variety of statutory mandates and authorities. Congress has not defined in statute nature-by-nature or related terms for NOAA, nor has it explicitly directed NOAA to broadly support nature-related activities across the agency. However, across NOAA's publicly accessible documents and websites, the agency appears to use the terms natural infrastructure, natural, and green infrastructure interchangeably. NOAA defines natural infrastructure as ""healthy ecosystems, including forests, wetlands, floodplains, dune systems, and reefs, which provide multiple benefits to communities, including storm protection through wave attenuation or flood storage capacity and enhanced water services and security."" Similarly, NOAA defines the term green infrastructure as engineering systems where natural features are combined with more hard or structural engineering approaches to create a hybrid system. NOAA has identified several types of natural and/or green infrastructure features, including dunes, dunes created by combining natural features with hard or ""gray"" steel and concrete structures, and open lands and trees, and coastal dunes constructed by combining open lands with hard structures. NOAA also supports research and implementation of nature based on its National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Ocean Service (NOS), and Office of Oceanicand Atmospheric Research (OAR) programs that provide technical assistance and grants to entities to implement research and research on nature- and-restoration projects. The agency has also supported the implementation of community-based restoration projects through its Community-based Restoration Grants Program, which provides congressionally appropriated funds to support restoration activities implemented by institutions of higher education institutions; nonprofit and for-profit organizations; U.S. territories; and state, local, and tribal governments. NOAA maintains a project-tracking database that lists over 2,000 community- and regional-based nature-focused projects, many of which include nature based infrastructure and benefits multiple benefits. Congress may consider whether and how to support the implementation and research of nature-Based Infrastructure at federal agencies, including NOAA, with these objectives, among others",0.3999999999999999,0.7722222222222223
GovReport,ID_R46145,BART (LEAD 4K),"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) supports natural, nature-based, or green infrastructure and other related types of features (hereinafter referred to as ""nature-based infrastructure"") as part of its statutory mandates to support, research, restore, and conserve natural resources. According to NOAA, these features may include features that are completely natural, such as open lands and trees, as well as structures that incorporate varying degrees of hard or ""gray"" steel and concrete structures (such as bulkheads). NOAA defines natural infrastructure as ""healthy ecosystems, including forests, wetlands, floodplains, dune systems, and reefs, which provide multiple benefits to communities, including storm protection through wave attenuation or flood storage capacity, enhanced water services and security, and wildlife habitat."" Similarly, NOAA defines green infrastructure as ""[i]n hybrid systems where natural features are combined with more hard or structural engineering approaches to create a hybrid system."" Members of Congress may be interested in whether and how to support the implementation and research of these types of infrastructure features at federal agencies, including NOAA. Practitioners and decisionmakers have been using the term nature-by-nature-infrastructure since at least the late 2000s, although these types have been assigned various names over time. Nature-based infrastructures may continue to be appealing due to (1) stakeholder emphasis on infrastructure features that benefit both humans and the environment in multiple ways and (2) recognition that infrastructure may be longer lasting if it can adjust to changing environmental conditions in the short and long term. This report describes how NOAA characterizes nature and describes the agency's current activities supporting research and implementation of nature- based infrastructure. The report also discusses potential issues for Congress including (a) definitions in statute, (b) NOAA's authority to support nature-related activities, (c) how NOAA coordinates with other federal agencies and nonfederal entities, and (d) how the agency funds these activities.",0.7333333333333334,0.85
GovReport,ID_R46145,BART (LEAD 8K),"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) supports natural, nature-based, or green infrastructure and other related types of features (hereinafter referred to as nature–based infrastructure) as part of its statutory mandates to support, research, restore, and conserve natural resources. According to NOAA, these features may include features that are completely natural, such as open lands and trees, as well as structures that incorporate varying degrees of hard or ""gray"" steel and concrete structures (such as bulkheads). NOAA defines natural infrastructure as ""healthy ecosystems, including forests, wetlands, floodplains, dune systems, and reefs, which provide multiple benefits to communities, including storm protection through wave attenuation or flood storage capacity, enhanced water services and security, and wildlife habitat."" Similarly, NOAA defines green infrastructure as ""[h]eared systems where natural features are combined with more hard or structural engineering approaches to create a hybrid system."" Members of Congress may consider whether and how to support nature– based infrastructure activities at federal agencies, including NOAA, with these objectives, among others, in mind. This report describes how NOAA characterizes nature- based infrastructure and describes the agency's current activities supporting research and implementation of nature-related features. The report also discusses potential issues for Congress including (1) definitions of nature–related features in statute, (2) NOAA's authority to support such features, (3) how NOAA coordinates with other federal agencies and nonfederal entities, and (4) how it funds nature––based activities. Congress has not defined the term nature– and similar terms in statute for NOAA. However, the agency has interpreted its authorities to include support for nature-specific activities. For example, in P.L. 111-11, Congress directed NOAA to create the Coastal Green Infrastructure and Ecosystem Services Program (CESP) under the Coastal Conservation and Land Management Act (CELCP; 16 U.S.C. §1456a-6409). Congress has also instructed NOAA to conduct and support ""activities to conserve coral reefs and coral reef ecosystems."" NOAA has identified coral reefs as a type of naturebased infrastructure; coral reefs have been shown to buffer waves and provide protection from shoreline erosion. NOAA often supports nature–focused research and projects, and participates in interagency and inter-agency efforts to better understand, support, and prioritize nature-focused infrastructure activities. Some stakeholders contend that NOAA is already authorized by its statutory authorities to conduct nature–centric research and implement nature-",0.7666666666666666,0.8099999999999999
GovReport,ID_R46145,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) currently supports natural, nature-based, or green infrastructure and other related types of features (hereinafter referred to as nature-related infrastructure) as part of its statutory mandates to support, research, restore, and conserve natural resources. Practitioners and decisionmakers have been using the term nature- based infrastructure and supporting nature--based infrastructure features since at least the late 2000s (although these types of infrastructure have been assigned various names over time). Nature-based infrastructures may continue to be appealing due to (1) stakeholder emphasis on infrastructure features that benefit both humans and the environment in multiple ways and (2) recognition that infrastructure may be longer lasting if it can adjust to changing environmental conditions in the short and long terms. Members of Congress may consider whether and how to support nature-focused infrastructure activities at federal agencies, including NOAA, with these objectives, among others, in mind. This report describes how NOAA characterizes nature-oriented infrastructure and the agency's current activities supporting research and implementation of such infrastructure. The report also discusses potential issues for Congress including (1) definitions of nature based infrastructure in statute, (2) NOAA's authority to support such infrastructure, (3) how NOAA coordinates with other federal agencies and nonfederal entities on nature-specific infrastructure activities, and (4) how NOAA funds nature-inspired infrastructure activities and its total nature-funded infrastructure-related expenditures.",0.6333333333333334,0.9629629629629628
GovReport,ID_R46145,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) supports natural, nature-based, or green infrastructure and other related types of features (hereinafter referred to as ""nature-based infrastructure"") as part of its statutory mandates to support, research, restore, and conserve natural resources. NOAA's National Habitat Policy (NAO 216-117) directs the agency to protect, maintain, and restore ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes ecosystems by ""applying natural and natural infrastructure,"" among other activities. According to NOAA, this work is supported by a variety of statutory mandates and authorities. NOAA defines natural infrastructure as ""healthy ecosystems, including forests, wetlands, tidal wetlands, floodplains, dune systems, and reefs, which provide multiple benefits to communities, including storm protection through wave attenuation or flood storage capacity and enhanced water services and security."" Similarly, NOAA defines green infrastructure as ""[h]istered systems where natural features are combined with more hard or structural engineering approaches to create a hybrid system."" Often, multiple types of nature- based infrastructure features are used within a single project. NOAA has identified coral reefs, among other features that may be combined within a project, as an example. Members of Congress may consider whether and how to support the implementation and funding of these types of activities at federal agencies, including NOAA, with these objectives, among others, in mind. For example, Congress has not defined the term nature-specific infrastructure in statute for NOAA as it has for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). A NOAA-specific definition in statute may help the agency prioritize and manage its efforts related to nature-by-infrastructure activities. Such a definition may also limit the types of projects that are captured in a single definition, by inhibiting the development and adoption of new designs and features that are not captured in such a statutory definition. Further, a single federal definition may conflict with the various missions and activities of the different federal agencies involved, which could lead to a lack of coordination and information sharing. NOAA supports research, as well as implementation, of many types of natural infrastructure features through its funding for projects that may benefit both humans and the environment in multiple ways, such as restoring habitat, constructing structures to stabilize coastal areas, and providing underlying data for decisionmaking. Some stakeholders may argue that a statutory requirement for NOAA to coordinate with federal and nonfederal partners may facilitate information sharing, promote efficient use of available funding, and streamline permitting across federal",0.6666666666666666,0.8092592592592593
GovReport,ID_R46145,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) supports natural, nature-based, or green infrastructure and other related types of features (hereinafter referred to as ""nature-based infrastructure"") as part of its statutory mandates to support, research, restore, and conserve natural resources. NOAA's National Habitat Policy (NAO 216-117) directs the agency to protect, maintain, and restore ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes ecosystems by ""applying natural and natural infrastructure,"" among other activities. According to NOAA, this work is supported by a variety of statutory mandates and authorities. NOAA defines natural infrastructure as ""healthy ecosystems, including forests, wetlands, tidal wetlands, floodplains, dune systems, and reefs, which provide multiple benefits to communities, including storm protection through wave attenuation or flood storage capacity and enhanced water services and security."" Similarly, NOAA defines green infrastructure as ""[h]istered systems where natural features are combined with more hard or structural engineering approaches to create a hybrid system."" Often, multiple types of nature- based infrastructure features are used within a single project. NOAA has identified coral reefs, among other features that may be combined within a project, as an example. Members of Congress may consider whether and how to support the implementation and funding of activities that support nature-specific features and related activities across federal agencies, including NOAA, with these objectives, among others, in mind. This report describes how NOAA characterizes and describes the agency activities supporting research and implementation of these types of activities. The report also discusses potential policy issues for Congress, including (1) definitions in statute, (2) NOAA's authority to support nature based infrastructure, (including coral reefs), (3) how NOAA coordinates with other federal agencies and nonfederal entities, and (4) the extent to which Congress appropriates funding to NOAA for these purposes.",0.5666666666666668,0.9333333333333332
GovReport,ID_R46145,BART (ORACLE 1K),"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) supports natural, nature-based, or green infrastructure and other related types of features (hereinafter referred to as nature- based infrastructure) as part of its statutory mandates to support, research, restore, and conserve natural resources. According to NOAA, these types of infrastructure features may include features that are completely natural, such as open lands and trees, or may incorporate varying degrees of hard or ""gray"" steel and concrete structures such as bulkheads and floodwalls. Often, multiple types of natural and green infrastructure features are combined within a project. The selection of a project's type of natural or green feature often depends on a combination of available funding, space constraints, land or roof availability, technical feasibility, hydrologic impact, and community acceptance, among other factors. Some projects incorporate features that may be completely natural (e.g., open lands or trees), while others incorporate hard or gray concrete structures (e., bulkheads). According to the Department of the Interior's (DOI's) National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), nature based infrastructure can provide several benefits, including improved water quality, wildlife habitat, opportunity for groundwater recharge, recreation uses, and aesthetic appeal, among others. The extent to which these benefits are provided is partially dependent on the location and types of nature-related features used. Practitioners and decisionmakers have been using the term nature-by-design and supporting nature-biodiversity infrastructure features since at least the late 2000s (although the term has been assigned various names over time). Nature-based infrastructure may continue to be appealing due to (1) stakeholder emphasis on infrastructure features that benefit both humans and the environment in multiple ways and (2) recognition that infrastructure may be longer lasting if it can adjust to changing environmental conditions in the short and long term. Members of Congress may consider whether and how to support and manage the implementation of nature based on these objectives. NOAA supports nature-centric infrastructure activities through a variety of programs and activities. These activities fall primarily under three NOAA line offices: the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Ocean Service (NOS), and Office of Oceanographic and Atmospheric Research (OAR). Under OAR, the Climate Program Office and the National Sea Grant College Program (Sea Grant) both support research and implementation of natural, natural, and green features through competitive grant programs. Other NOAA programs may also have roles related to nature based upon their role in the agency, including reviewing projects that",0.7666666666666666,0.7833333333333333
GovReport,ID_R46145,BART (ORACLE 4K),"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) supports natural, nature-based, or green infrastructure and other related types of features (hereinafter referred to as ""nature-based infrastructure"") as part of its statutory mandates to support, research, restore, and conserve natural resources. NOAA's National Habitat Policy (NAO 216-117) directs the agency to protect, maintain, and restore ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes ecosystems by ""applying natural and natural and/or biophysical systems,"" among other activities. According to the agency, this work is supported by a variety of statutory mandates and authorities. Practitioners and decisionmakers have been using the term nature-by-way-of-infrastructure since at least the late 2000s, and advocates for this type of infrastructure have been advocating for its inclusion in infrastructure projects since the 1970s. According top NOAA officials, the benefits of using nature- based infrastructure include flood protection, improved water quality, wildlife habitat, opportunity for groundwater recharge, and aesthetic appeal, among others. Congress has not defined in statute nature- or related terms for NOAA, nor has it explicitly directed NOAA to broadly support nature and related activities across the agency. NOAA has interpreted some of its authorities to include support for nature-related activities. For example, in 2009 Congress directed NOAA, among other things, to create the Coastal and Estuarine Land Conservation Program (CELCP) to provide grants to nonfederal entities to protect ""important coastal and estuarine areas that have significant conservation, recreation, ecological, historical, or aesthetic values."" Congress has also instructed NOAA to conduct and support for coral reefs and other types of coral reef ecosystems. Congress may consider whether and how to define and describe in statute the types of activities that should be supported by NOAA. Some Members of Congress have proposed definitions for nature and similar terms for the agency within the context of new agency-administered grant programs. For instance, H.R. 1317 in the 116th Congress would provide definitions for natural, nature-, nature--, and nonstructural features to be used as criteria for new NOAA financial assistance programs. Congress also may consider how to fund nature and how-to-support-nature infrastructure activities at federal agencies, including NOAA. Congress funds NOAA research, restoration, and other activities supporting nature and nature based infrastructure primarily through the annual appropriations process; however, the agency does not track its spending on such activities. Some stakeholders have argued that a statutory requirement for NOAA to coordinate with federal and",0.8666666666666667,0.688888888888889
GovReport,ID_R46145,BART (ORACLE 8K),"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) supports natural, nature-based, or green infrastructure and other related types of features (hereinafter referred to as naturebased infrastructure) as part of its statutory mandates to support, research, restore, and conserve natural resources. NOAA defines natural infrastructure as ""healthy ecosystems, including forests, wetlands, floodplains, dune systems, and reefs, which provide multiple benefits to communities, including storm protection through wave attenuation or flood storage capacity and enhanced water services and security."" Similarly, NOAA defines green infrastructure as a ""engineered systems where natural features are combined with more hard or structural engineering approaches to create a hybrid system."" NOAA also supports research and implementation of such features in a variety of ways. According to the agency, many of the agency's nature- based infrastructure activities are related to restoration and conservation projects; the projects are typically local or regional in scale and take place within coastal or Great Lakes states. NOAA's National Habitat Policy (NAO 216-117) directs the agency to protect, maintain, and restore ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes ecosystems by ""applying natural and natural infrastructure,"" among other activities. Congress has not defined the term nature-by-way of NOAA in statute, nor has it explicitly directed NOAA to broadly support naturebased features or related activities across the agency. However, NOAA has interpreted some of its authorities to include support for such activities. For example, in 2009, Congress directed NOAA, among other authorities, to create the Coastal and Estuarine Land and Coastal Conservation Program (CELCP) under the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA; P.L. 111-1111). Congress established the CELCP to provide grants to nonfederal entities to protect ""important coastal and estuarine areas that have significant conservation, recreation, ecological, historical, or aesthetic values"" (16 U.S.C. §§6401-6409), which may include natural or open lands, identified by NOAA as nature based infrastructure. Similarly, Congress instructed NOAA to conduct and support ""activities to conserve coral reefs and coral reef ecosystems"" under the 16 U. S. Some stakeholders contend that NOAA is already authorized to support nature-related activities through its existing authorities. Others in Congress, however, have proposed legislation that would expand the type of nature-centric infrastructure activities NOAA currently supports. For instance, in the 116th Congress, H.R. 1317 would direct NOAA to ""improve the resilience",0.85,0.8041666666666667
GovReport,ID_R46145,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) supports natural, nature-based, or green infrastructure and other related types of features as part of its statutory mandates to support, research, restore, and conserve natural resources. Practitioners and decisionmakers have been using the term nature- based infrastructure and supporting nature based infrastructure features since at least the late 2000s (although these types of infrastructure have been assigned various names over time). Nature-based infrastructure may continue to be appealing due to (1) stakeholder emphasis on infrastructure features that benefit both humans and the environment in multiple ways and (2) recognition that infrastructure may be longer lasting if it can adjust to changing environmental conditions in the short and long terms. Members of Congress may consider whether and how to support nature-related infrastructure activities at federal agencies, including NOAA, with these objectives, among others, in mind. This report discusses potential issues for Congress, including (1) definitions of nature--based or related terms in statute, (2) NOAA's authority to support such activities, (3) how NOAA coordinates with other federal agencies and nonfederal entities on nature- and related infrastructure activities, and (4) how NOAA funds nature-oriented infrastructure activities. The report also discusses possible legislative options for Congress to consider, such as (1) requiring NOAA to track and/or report its spending on infrastructure projects, (2) requiring all federal agencies to report their nature-specific infrastructure expenditures, and (3) authorizing in statute an already established working group or task force to coordinate nature-focused infrastructure projects.",0.95,0.7666666666666666
GovReport,ID_R46145,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) currently supports natural, nature-based, or green infrastructure and other related types of features as part of its statutory mandates to support, research, restore, and conserve natural resources. Staff and decisionmakers have been using the term nature based infrastructure and supporting nature-related infrastructure features since at least the late 2000s (although these types of infrastructure features have been assigned various names over time). NOAA's nature- based infrastructure activities fall primarily under three line offices: the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Ocean Service (NOS), and Office of Oceanic and Agriculture Research (OAR). According to NOAA, many of the agency's activities are related to restoration and conservation projects; the projects are typically local or regional in scale and take place within coastal or Great Lakes states. NOAA defines nature based and related infrastructure as ""engineered systems where natural features are combined with more hard or structural engineering approaches to create a hybrid system."" According to the agency, various types of nature based or related infrastructure include open lands and trees, bulkheads, living shorelines, and coral reefs, among others. The nature of infrastructure is partially dependent on the location and type of features used. The extent to which nature based features provide benefits in addition to flood, erosion, and runoff management, such as improved water quality, wildlife habitat, opportunity for groundwater recharge, recreation uses, and aesthetic appeal, is also dependent on a variety of factors, including funding, space constraints, and other factors. Congress has not defined in statute nature based, or related terms for NOAA, nor has it explicitly directed NOAA to broadly support nature based activities across the agency. For example, the term living shoreline for the use within a new agency-administered grant program has not been defined. Congress may consider whether and how to define the term and the types of natural-based infrastructure for NOAA. A NOAA-specific definition of natural infrastructure and similar terms in statute may help the agency prioritize and manage its nature-oriented infrastructure activities. A definition also could potentially limit the types and use of nature-specific infrastructure, by inhibiting the development and adoption of new designs and features that are not captured in a statutory definition. Congress also may consider using one definition among all federal agencies to minimize the potential for confusion. Congress funds NOAA primarily through the annual appropriations process. NOAA reports its spending to Congress on a program-by-program basis, but nature based activity activities are not tracked specifically as line items in either the annual budget request or in congressional appropriations bills and reports. Congress",0.65,0.6461538461538462
GovReport,ID_R46145,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) currently supports natural, nature-based, or green infrastructure and other related types of features as part of its statutory mandates to support, research, restore, and conserve natural resources. FHA and decisionmakers have been using the term nature based infrastructure and supporting nature- based infrastructure features since at least the late 2000s (although these types of infrastructure features have been assigned various names over time). According to NOAA, nature infrastructure may continue to be appealing due to (1) stakeholder emphasis on infrastructure features that benefit both humans and the environment in multiple ways and (2) recognition that infrastructure may be longer lasting if it can adjust to changing environmental conditions in the short and long terms. This report describes how NOAA characterizes nature-related infrastructure and the agency's current activities supporting research and implementation of nature-oriented infrastructure. The report also discusses potential issues for Congress including (1) definitions of nature based and related terms in statute, (2) NOAA's authority to support nature based activities, (3) how NOAA coordinates with other federal agencies and nonfederal entities, and (4) how NOAA funds nature based activity activities and its total nature based expenditures. Congress has directed NOAA to support research, restoration, and conservation of natural resources in a variety of statutes. For example, it has defined green infrastructure in statute and directed the Department of Environmental Protection (EPA) to promote green infrastructure use, among other activities. However, Congress has not defined nature based or related terms for NOAA, nor has it explicitly directed NOAA or other federal entities to support such activities. According to the agency, it supports nature based projects primarily under three line offices: the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Ocean Service (NOS), and Office of Money and Atmospheric Research (OAR). According, many of the agency projects are related to restoration and conservation projects; the projects are typically local or regional in scale and take place within coastal or Great Lakes states. The nature-specific nature-base infrastructure activities fall under three separate line offices. For instance, NMFS's Restoration Center administers the community-based restoration grant program with congressionally appropriated funds to support projects that may use nature-type infrastructure. NMFS also administers the National Sea Grant College Program ( Salvador Grant) with funds from the BP Deepwater Horizon spill settlement. The Department of the Interior's (DOE) Department of Energy's Department of Defense's Environmental Protection Agency (DOES) supports research and the implementation of green infrastructure through competitive grant programs. The agency has also provided financial and technical support to the Nuclear Growth and Energy Administration (",0.5333333333333333,0.5751851851851852
GovReport,ID_R44606,BART (LEAD 1K),"The Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) has served as the financial institution for carrying out federal farm commodity price support and production programs since 1933. It is a wholly government-owned entity that exists solely to finance authorized programs that support U.S. agriculture. The CCC is subject to the supervision and direction of the Secretary of Agriculture at the Department of Agriculture (USDA). The CCCC mission was conceived mostly as one of commodity support, but over time it has expanded to include an increasingly broad array of programs, including export and commodity programs, resource conservation, disaster assistance, agricultural research, and bioenergy development. While CCC operates according to a large number of statutory authorities, its broad powers allow it to carry out almost any operation required to meet the objectives of supporting U. S. agriculture, and its significant borrowing authority has traditionally drawn little attention. For most of its history, CCC's responsibilities have been expanded through legislative directives such as the farm bill. In past years, Congress took actions to limit the discretional uses of CCC funds through restrictions in appropriations language. These restrictions highlight a tension between authorizers and appropriators when it comes to the use of the CCC. While these restrictions are no longer included, questions remain about what the CommodITY Credit Corporation is, how it operates, what its current uses are, and what it may be used for in the future. This report provides a brief review of the unique history, funding structure, general operation, and recent issues associated with its use. It will be updated as events warrant.",0.5166666666666666,0.9333333333333332
GovReport,ID_R44606,BART (LEAD 4K),"The Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) is a government-owned financial institution that exists solely to finance authorized programs that support U.S. agriculture. It is subject to the supervision and direction of the Secretary of Agriculture at the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The CCC mission was originally conceived mostly as one of commodity support, but over time it has expanded to include an increasingly broad array of programs, including export and commodity programs, resource conservation, disaster assistance, agricultural research, and bioenergy development. CCC is often misunderstood and often confused with USDA itself. While much of CCC's functional operations support USDA's program activities, the corporation has no staff of its own; rather, it operates through USDA agencies. These broad authorities that Congress has granted to CCC allow it to carry out almost any operation that is consistent with the objective of supporting agriculture. In the past, Congress has restricted the discretional uses of discretionary CCC funds through restrictions in appropriations language. While these restrictions are no longer in place, questions remain about what the CCC does, how it operates, what its current uses are, and what it may be used for in the future. CCCC is, in brief, a broadly empowered financial institution. The money CCC needs to operate comes from its own funds (including its $100 million capital stock, appropriations from Congress, and its earnings) and from borrowings. Most CCC-funded programs are classified as mandatory spending programs, and therefore do not require annual appropriations in order to operate. The corporation instead borrows from the Treasury to finance its programs. As the amount of money needed for CCC activities has grown over time, the borrowing limit has been steadily increased. At present, CCC borrowing authority is limited to $30 billion, an amount that has not been increased since 1987. CSCC is often described as using two different but different measures. The first is net expenditures, which is a combination of outlays and receipts. The second is net realized losses, which refers to the money that CCC will never recover (e.g., interest paid to the Treasury, program payments, program costs, and fees, and program and commodity inventory). The corporation's permanent, indefinite funding authority means that trade aid expenditures are reimbursed annually as a net realized loss, thus increasing total federal spending. The annual appropriation for CSC varies each year based on the net realized gain of the previous year. For example, the FY2019 appropriation (P.L. 116-6",0.6333333333333333,0.854920634920635
GovReport,ID_R44606,BART (LEAD 8K),"The Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) is a government-owned financial institution that exists solely to finance authorized programs that support U.S. agriculture. It is subject to the supervision and direction of the Secretary of Agriculture at the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The CCC mission was originally conceived mostly as one of commodity support, but over time it has expanded to include an increasingly broad array of programs, including export and commodity programs, resource conservation, disaster assistance, agricultural research, and bioenergy development. CCC is often misunderstood and often confused with USDA itself. While much of CCC's functional operations support USDA's program activities, the corporation has no staff of its own; rather, it operates through USDA agencies. These broad authorities that Congress has granted to CCC allow it to carry out almost any operation that is consistent with the objective of supporting agriculture. In the past, Congress has restricted the discretional uses of discretionary CCC funds through restrictions in appropriations language. While these restrictions are no longer in place, questions remain about what the CCC does, how it operates, what its current uses are, and what it may be used for in the future. CCCC is, in brief, a broadly empowered financial institution. The money CCC needs to operate comes from its own funds (including its $100 million capital stock, appropriations from Congress, and its earnings) and from borrowings. Most CCC-funded programs are classified as mandatory spending programs, and therefore do not require annual appropriations in order to operate. The corporation instead borrows from the Treasury to finance its programs. As the amount of money needed for CCC activities has grown over time, the borrowing limit has been steadily increased. At present, CCC borrowing authority is limited to $30 billion, an amount that has not been increased since 1987. CSCC is often described as using two different but different measures. The first is net expenditures, which is a combination of outlays and receipts. The second is net realized losses, which refers to the money that CCC will never recover (e.g., interest paid to the Treasury, program payments, program costs, and fees, and program and commodity inventory). The corporation's permanent, indefinite funding authority means that trade aid expenditures are reimbursed annually as a net realized loss, thus increasing total federal spending. The annual appropriation for CSC varies each year based on the net realized result of the previous year. For example, the FY2018 appropriation (P.L. 116-6",0.6333333333333333,0.854920634920635
GovReport,ID_R44606,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"The Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) has served as the financial institution for carrying out federal farm commodity price support and production programs since 1933. It is a wholly government-owned entity that exists solely to finance authorized programs that support U.S. agriculture. The CCC mission was conceived mostly as one of commodity support, but over time it has expanded to include an increasingly broad array of programs, including export and commodity programs, resource conservation, disaster assistance, agricultural research, and bioenergy development. This broad mandate, and its significant borrowing authority, has traditionally drawn little attention. For most of its history, CCC's responsibilities have been expanded through legislative directives such as the farm bill. In past years, Congress took actions to limit the discretional uses of CCC funds through restrictions in appropriations language. These restrictions highlight a tension between authorizers and appropriators when it comes to the use of the CCC (see ""Tension Between Authorizers and Appropriators"" box). While these restrictions are no longer included, questions remain about what the CCC is, how it operates, what its current uses are, and what it may be used for in the future. This report provides a brief review of the unique history, funding structure, general operation, and recent issues associated with its use.",0.6666666666666666,1.0
GovReport,ID_R44606,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"The Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) is a government-owned financial institution that has served as the financial institution for carrying out federal farm commodity price support and production programs since 1933. It is a wholly governmentowned entity that exists solely to finance authorized programs that support U.S. agriculture and is subject to the supervision and direction of the Secretary of Agriculture. The CCC mission was conceived mostly as one of commodity support, but over time it has expanded to include an increasingly broad array of programs, including export and commodity programs, resource conservation, disaster assistance, agricultural research, and bioenergy development. While CCC operates according to a large number of statutory authorities, its broad powers allow it to carry out almost any operation required to meet the objectives of supporting U. S. agriculture. This broad mandate, and its significant borrowing authority, has traditionally drawn little attention. For most of its history, CCC's responsibilities have been expanded through legislative directives such as the farm bill. In past years, Congress took actions to limit the discretional uses of CCC funds through restrictions in appropriations language. While these restrictions are no longer included, questions remain about what the CCC is, how it operates, what its current uses are, and what it may be used for in the future. Other CRS reports cover in detail programs and activities authorized through CCC.",0.6833333333333332,0.95
GovReport,ID_R44606,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"The Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) is a government-owned financial institution that has served as the financial institution for carrying out federal farm commodity price support and production programs since 1933. While it is the primary funding mechanism used in omnibus farm bills, its existence, use, and operations are frequently misunderstood and often confused with the U. One reason for this confusion may be because much of CCC's functional operations support U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) program activities. CCC was conceived mostly as one of commodity support, but over time it has expanded to include an increasingly broad array of programs, including export and commodity programs, resource conservation, disaster assistance, agricultural research, and bioenergy development. It is, in brief, a broadly empowered financial institution. The money CCC needs comes from its own funds (including its $100 million capital stock, appropriations from Congress, and its earnings) and from borrowings. In accordance with government accounting statutes and regulations, CCC is required to submit an annual business-type budget statement to Congress. This is typically released annually with the President's budget request. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) also plays a role in how CCC funds are administered through an apportionment process, which allows OMB to set a limit on the funds available for obligation and subsequent outlay. OMB apportions funds for select CCC programs and operating expenditures. Most CCC-funded programs are classified as mandatory spending programs and therefore do not require annual appropriations in order to operate, but instead borrows from the Treasury to finance its programs. As the amount of money needed to carry out its activities has grown over time, the borrowing limit has been steadily increased. At present, it is currently limited to $30 billion, an amount that has not been increased since 1987. The corporation's permanent, indefinite funding authority means that trade aid expenditures are reimbursed annually as a net realized loss, thus increasing total federal spending. This report provides a brief review of the unique history, funding structure, general operation, and recent issues associated with its use.",0.8166666666666668,0.9611111111111112
GovReport,ID_R44606,BART (ORACLE 1K),"The Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) has served as the financial institution for carrying out federal farm commodity price support and production programs since 1933. It is subject to the supervision and direction of the Secretary of Agriculture at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The CCC mission was conceived mostly as one of commodity support, but over time it has expanded to include an increasingly broad array of programs, including export and commodity programs, resource conservation, disaster assistance, agricultural research, and bioenergy development. While CCC operates according to a large number of statutory authorities, its broad powers allow it to carry out almost any operation required to meet the objectives of supporting agriculture. The nature of CCC's funding mechanism makes it an attractive funding mechanism. However, there is a tension between authorizers and appropriators when it comes to the use of the CCC. This tension has been exacerbated by the rise in the number of agricultural programs with mandatory budget authority from the authorizing committees, which has not gone unnoticed or untouched by appropriators. From FY2012 to FY2017, annual appropriation acts limited USDA's discretion to use CCC authority to remove surplus commodities and support prices. The FY2018 omnibus appropriation did not include this limitation, effectively allowing USDA to use its full authority, including its discretion for surplus removal and price support activities.",0.9,1.0
GovReport,ID_R44606,BART (ORACLE 4K),"The Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) is a government-owned financial institution that has financed a broad array of programs that support U.S. agriculture since its creation in 1933. It is a financing mechanism for farm commodity price support and production programs authorized in authorizing legislation such as the Agricultural Act of 1933, the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929, and farm bills such as those passed by Congress in the 1930s and the farm bills passed in the decades immediately following that act. The CCC is overseen by the Secretary of Agriculture and supervised by the USDA Secretary. The purpose of the CCC, as stated in the Commodities Credit Corporation Charter Act of 1948 (15 U. S.C. §714(c)), is to: (1) support agricultural commodity prices and support farm income and prices; (2) maintain balanced and adequate supplies of agricultural commodities; and (3) remove and dispose of surplus agricultural commodities. Over time, Congress has expanded CCC's mandate to include an increasingly broad set of programs, including export and commodity support, resource conservation, disaster assistance, agricultural research, and bioenergy development. While these broad powers allow CCC to carry out almost any operation that is required to meet the objectives of supporting agriculture, the corporation's mandate, and its significant borrowing authority, have traditionally drawn little attention from Congress. In past years, Congress took actions to limit the discretional uses of CCC funds through restrictions in appropriations language. While such restrictions are no longer included in appropriations, questions remain about what the corporation is, how it operates, what its current uses are, and what it may be used for in the future. This report provides a brief overview of the corporation, including its history, funding mechanism, management of its operations, and recent issues associated with its use.",0.7333333333333334,0.7925925925925927
GovReport,ID_R44606,BART (ORACLE 8K),"The Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) is a government-owned entity that exists solely to finance authorized programs that support U.S. agriculture. It is subject to the supervision and direction of the Secretary of Agriculture at the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The CCC mission was conceived mostly as one of commodity support, but over time it has expanded to include an increasingly broad array of programs, including export and commodity programs, resource conservation, disaster assistance, agricultural research, and bioenergy development. While CCC operates according to a large number of statutory authorities, its broad powers allow it to carry out almost any operation that is required to meet the objectives of supporting agriculture. This broad mandate, and its significant borrowing authority, have traditionally drawn little attention. For most of its history, CCC's responsibilities have been expanded through legislative directives such as the farm bill. In past years, Congress took actions to limit the discretional uses of CCC funds through restrictions in appropriations language. While these restrictions are no longer included, questions remain about what the CCC is, how it operates, what its current uses are, and what it may be used for in the future. CCC was created in 1933 to carryout the mandate of the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 (AAA). The purpose of the corporation is to provide financial support for farm commodity price support and production programs, and it is financed both through its own funds and from appropriations from Congress. The corporation's permanent, indefinite funding authority means that trade aid expenditures are reimbursed annually as a net realized loss, thus increasing total federal spending. The annual appropriation for CCCS is based on the net realized losses, which are the money CCC recoups from authorized activities (e.g., loan repayments, sale of commodity stocks, and fees). Net realized losses include all cash outlays minus all cash receipts. CSC is often described as a ""cash flow"" corporation, which is a combination of outlays and receipts. Net expenditures include CCC outlays, which represent the total cash equivalents of authorized activities, and net receipts, which represents the cash equivalents minus all receipts. Over time, Congress has authorized CCC to fund an increasing number of diverse programs and activities related to its charter. These include conservation, specialty crop support, and research. Some have suggested adding other agriculture-related activities to CCC, but this idea is often considered to be beyond the scope of the mission of the agency. The broad authorities that Congress has granted to C",0.7333333333333334,0.7422807017543859
GovReport,ID_R44606,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"The Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) has served as the financial institution for carrying out federal farm commodity price support and production programs since 1933. It is subject to the supervision and direction of the Secretary of Agriculture at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The CCC mission was conceived mostly as one of commodity support, but over time it has expanded to include an increasingly broad array of programs, including export and commodity programs, resource conservation, disaster assistance, agricultural research, and bioenergy development. While CCC operates according to a large number of statutory authorities, its broad powers allow it to carry out almost any operation required to meet the objectives of supporting U. S. agriculture. These restrictions highlight a tension between authorizers and appropriators when it comes to the use of the CCC. The CCC has no personnel of its own. Rather, USDA employees and facilities carry out all of its activities. The majority of CCC's functions are administered by the Farm Service Agency (FSA), which operates most of the commodity and income support programs. CCC is responsible for the direct spending and credit guarantees used to finance the federal government's agricultural commodity price and related activities that are undertaken by authority of agricultural legislation (such as farm bills) or the Charter Act itself. CCC has permanent indefinite authority to borrow from the Treasury (and also private lending institutions) within limits set by Congress. The borrowing limit has been steadily increased over time, and the annual appropriation for CCC varies each year based on the net realized loss of the previous year. The net realized losses are the amount that CCC, by law, is authorized to receive through appropriations to replenish its borrowing authority. The annual appropriations for CCC vary each year, and each year the net realization loss reimbursement is the amount CCC is authorized by law to receive from the authorizing committees. Although Congress as a whole makes final funding decisions, the rise in the number of agricultural programs with mandatory budget authority from the authorization committees has not gone unnoticed or untouched. From FY2012 to FY2017, annual appropriation acts limited USDA's discretion to use CCC''s authority to remove surplus commodities and support prices. The FY2018 omnibus appropriation did not include this limitation, effectively allowing USDA to use the CCC authority to mitigate retaliatory tariffs on a variety of U.s. agricultural products. Recent congressional action restoring CCCs authorityhas allowed for the Trump Administration's use of CCC to mitigate tariffs on agricultural products, along with other authorized uses. This increase in spending brings CCC close to its borrowing authorization limit of $30 billion. If the borrowing",0.9166666666666666,0.95
GovReport,ID_R44606,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"The Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) has served as the financial institution for carrying out federal farm commodity price support and production programs since 1933. It is a wholly government-owned entity that exists solely to finance authorized programs that support U.S. agriculture. The CCC mission was conceived mostly as one of commodity support, but over time it has expanded to include an increasingly broad array of programs, including export and commodity programs, resource conservation, disaster assistance, agricultural research, and bioenergy development. While CCC operates according to a large number of statutory authorities, its broad powers allow it to carry out almost any operation required to meet the objectives of supporting U. S. agriculture, including the following: making available materials and facilities in connection with the production and marketing of agricultural products; assisting in maintaining balanced and adequate supplies of agricultural commodities; and facilitating the orderly distribution of commodities. For most of its history, CCC's responsibilities have been expanded through legislative directives such as the farm bill. These restrictions highlight a tension between authorizers and appropriators when it comes to the use of the CCC. While these restrictions are no longer included, questions remain about what the CCC is, how it operates, what its current uses are, and what it may be used for in the future.",0.6166666666666667,0.9333333333333332
GovReport,ID_R44606,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"The Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) has served as the financial institution for carrying out federal farm commodity price support and production programs since 1933. It is a wholly government-owned entity that exists solely to finance authorized programs that support U.S. agriculture. The CCC mission was conceived mostly as one of commodity support, but over time it has expanded to include an increasingly broad array of programs, including export and commodity programs, resource conservation, disaster assistance, agricultural research, and bioenergy development. While CCC operates according to a large number of statutory authorities, its broad powers allow it to carry out almost any operation required to meet the objectives of supporting U. S. agriculture, and it is these same broad powers that make CCC the object of attention from various interest groups and from Congress. The mandatory funding nature of CCC activities makes it an attractive funding mechanism. Recent congressional action restoring CCC's authority have allowed for the Trump Administration's use of CCC to mitigate commodity price declines from retaliatory tariffs on a variety of U.N. agricultural products. The use of GA's discretionary authority for the FY2018 and FY2019 trade aid packages is perhaps less controversial than the total amount authorized. Each package is close to the total dollar amount expended by CCC annually in recent fiscal years, effectively doubling the annual net realized loss. This increase in spending brings CCC close to its borrowing authority limit of $30 billion. If the borrowing authorization limit were reached before Congress appropriates the net realized cost reimbursement, all functions and operations of CCC would be suspended, including those authorized in the recently enacted 2018 farm bill.",0.9333333333333332,1.0
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-388,BART (LEAD 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Since fiscal year 2008, the United States has allocated about $3 billion for Mexico under the Mérida Initiative. Through this bilateral partnership, State/INL and USAID have funded projects broadly related to the four pillars of the initiative—combating transnational criminal organizations, strengthening the rule of law and human rights, border security, and building strong and resilient communities—with the goals of mitigating the effects of the drug trade on the U.S. and reducing violence in Mexico. GAO was asked to review issues related to implementation of MérIDA Initiative projects. This report (1) examines the extent to which State/ INL follows key practices in monitoring MéridI Initiative projects and tracks project performance data against established measures; (2) examines how USAID tracks performance data; and (3) describes how State uses data from the Government of Mexico to help monitor the implementation of projects. To address these objectives, GAO reviewed relevant State and agency documents and interviewed agency officials in Washington, D.C., and Mexico City.What GAO Found. The Department of State's (State) Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (State/INE) generally followed eight key monitoring practices in its monitoring of 20 high-dollar value Méride Initiative projects, but did not consistently track project performance against established performance measures. For example, State generally followed the key practice of documenting project implementation plans and objectives, but it did not always follow the practice of conducting quarterly assessments of project progress. In addition, State did not fully document the results of its quarterly assessments, which are intended to assess project progress toward meeting project objectives. State officials stated that they plan to address these weaknesses in future quarterly assessments. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) followed five of the eight key practices and partially followed the remaining three in its oversight of 15 of its 20 Méridian Initiative projects that started between January 1, 2014, and December 31, 2016, some of which were still ongoing as of September 30, 2019, or later. However, USAID's oversight of the 15 projects was limited because USAID did not have a systematic process for monitoring the projects' progress toward achieving project objectives, as GAO previously recommended. In particular, GAOs found that USAID had not assessed project progress against measures established in project planning documents, such as annual progress reports. Without an effective process for overseeing projects' performance against measures, the agencies may not be able to effectively monitor the progress of",0.5333333333333333,0.6642857142857143
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-388,BART (LEAD 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Organized crime and violence continue to threaten security on both sides of the U. In October 2007, the United States and Mexico created the Mérida Initiative and committed to working together to address these issues. State/INL and USAID have implemented 445 Méridian projects active from fiscal year 2014 through fiscal year 2018, including some projects that started before this period and some that continued after this period. GAO was asked to review the implementation of Méridia Initiative projects. This report (1) examines the extent to which State follows key practices in monitoring MérIDA Initiative projects and tracks project performance data against established measures; (2) examines how State/InL uses data from the Government of Mexico to monitor project implementation; and (3) describes how State and Mexico use data to monitor implementation. To address these objectives, GAO reviewed documents and interviewed officials from State, USAID, and other U.S. agencies in Washington, D.C., and Mexico City, and assessed the agencies' monitoring of a nongeneralizable sample of 20 projects against eight key monitoring practices, derived from leading practices for monitoring foreign assistance that GAO had previously identified.What GAO Found. The Department of State (State) generally followed key practices for the 15 high-dollar value projects GAO selected for review and tracked performance data for these projects, but did not consistently track performance data or compare them to established measures for 4 of the 15 projects. These key practices are generally consistent with the Office of Management and Budget's guidelines for federal departments and agencies that administer United States foreign assistance and with related guidance, as well as State's and the UnitedStates Agency for International Development's (USAID) monitoring policies. For these 15 projects, State generally followed these key practices about half of the time. For example, State required that staff monitor these projects be certified as either a COR, GOR, or AOR, which helps ensure that they have the necessary knowledge and skills to perform the monitoring duties. However, of the four projects reviewed, one had a gap in the documentation for staff certifications, and four had gaps in documentation of designation letters, which are documents that designate monitoring staff with the necessary expertise and knowledge. State officials said that they focused on tracking implementation of the projects' activities and did not have procedures in place for monitoring staff to consistently follow all the key practices. Consistently tracking performance data would allow State/ INL to stay well informed of projects performance, take corrective",0.5666666666666668,0.8428571428571429
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-388,BART (LEAD 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Organized crime and violence continue to threaten security on both sides of the U. In October 2007, the United States and Mexico created the Mérida Initiative and committed to working together to address these issues. State/INL and USAID have implemented about 90 percent of MérIDA Initiative projects. GAO was asked to review the implementation of the initiative. This report (1) examines the extent to which State follows key monitoring practices in monitoring Mérida Initiative projects and tracks project performance data against established measures; (2) examines how State/InL uses data from Mexico to monitor project implementation; and (3) describes how it uses data to monitor implementation. To address these objectives, GAO reviewed documents and interviewed officials from State/ INL, USAID, the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Justice, and the Mexican government. To assess monitoring practices and project performance, GAOs reviewed a nongeneralizable sample of 15 State/inL and 5 USAID projects that started between January 1, 2014, and December 31, 2016, some of which were still ongoing as of September 30, 2019, or later.What GAO Found. The Department of State's (State) Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (State/INLY) followed key monitoring practice in the areas of assigning monitoring duties to qualified staff, planning a monitoring approach, and monitoring project implementation, but it did not consistently track performance data or compare them to established measures for the 15 Méridiana initiative projects reviewed. These practices are generally consistent with the Office of Management and Budget's guidelines for federal departments and agencies that administer foreign assistance and with related guidance, as well as State's and the UnitedStates Agency for International Development's (USAID) monitoring policies. State generally followed key practices about half of the time. For example, State generally assigned monitoring roles and responsibilities to qualified monitoring staff, planned a monitoring plan that included project objectives and project-level performance measures, and monitored project implementation. However, for 4 of the 15 projects reviewed, State did not have procedures in place for monitoring staff to consistently follow all the key practices. State officials said that they focused on tracking implementation of projects' activities. Consistently following key practices would allow State/INEL to stay well informed of projects performance, take corrective action when necessary, and help ensure that projects achieve their intended results. For the 2 other projects reviewed—1 for police professionalization and 1 for forensics laboratory",0.7666666666666666,0.71
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-388,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Since fiscal year 2008, the United States has allocated about $3 billion for assistance for Mexico under the Mérida Initiative, a bilateral partnership to combat crime and violence in Mexico. The United States and Mexico created the initiative in October 2007 and have funded projects broadly related to the four pillars of the initiative—combating transnational criminal organizations, rule of law and human rights, border security, and building strong and resilient communities—with the goals of mitigating the effects of the drug trade on the United states and reducing violence in the country. GAO was asked to review issues related to Mérida initiative implementation and objectives. This report (1) examines the extent to which the Department of State (State), Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (State/INL) follows key practices in monitoring Mérida Initiatives projects and tracks project performance data against established measures; (2) examines the effectiveness of the United State Agency for International Development's (USAID) monitoring of Mérida initiatives and tracks performance data; and (3) describes how State uses data from the Government of Mexico to help monitor the implementation of the initiatives. To address these objectives, GAO reviewed relevant State and USAID documents and interviewed agency officials from State, USAID, and the Departments of Defense (DOD), Homeland Security (DHS), and Justice (DOJ) in Washington, D.C., and officials from USAID in Mexico City. GAO selected a nongeneralizable sample of 15 high-dollar value State/Inl projects and five high-value USAID projects that started between January 1, 2014, and December 31, 2016, some of which were still ongoing as of September 30, 2019, or later. The value of the 15 State projects in our sample is about $88 million, and USAID funded 57 projects. GAO rated the agencies' monitoring of these 20 projects against eight key project monitoring practices, largely derived from leading practices for monitoring foreign assistance that GAO had previously identified. On the basis of our review, we assessed whether the key practices were “generally followed,” “partially followed,” or “not followed.” We rated the extent, if any of the critical elements of the key practice were conducted and documented, to a large or full extent, and “not tracked” if we did not receive evidence that any of these critical elements were conducted or documented. GAO also reviewed data from Mexico on Mérida projects and found that State and INL used data from this country to track project performance. State and",0.4333333333333333,0.8000000000000002
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-388,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Crime and violence perpetrated by transnational criminal organizations continue to raise security concerns on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. In October 2007, the United States and Mexico created the Mérida Initiative and, in doing so, committed to working together to address crime and violence, and enhance the rule of law in Mexico. State/INL and USAID have funded 445 projects under this bilateral partnership broadly related to these four pillars of the initiative with the goals of mitigating the effects of the drug trade and reducing violence. GAO was asked to review issues related to the implementation and objectives of this initiative. This report (1) examines the extent to which State follows key practices in monitoring projects and tracks project performance data against established measures; (2) analyzes the extent that USAID follows these key practices; and (3) describes how State uses data from the Government of Mexico to monitor project implementation. To conduct this work, GAO reviewed agency documents and interviewed officials from State, USAID, the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Justice, and the Mexican government in Washington, D.C., and Mexico City, among other locations. To review the key monitoring practices and project implementation data, we selected a nongeneralizable sample of 15 State projects and 5 USAID projects that started between January 1, 2014 and December 31, 2016, some of which were still ongoing as of September 30, 2019, or later.What GAOID Found. The Department of State's (State) Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (State/Narcotics Affairs) and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) implemented about 90 percent of the 445 projects funded under the Méridisprom fiscal year 2014 through fiscal year 2018. State generally followed key practices for monitoring these projects, but did not consistently track performance data or compare them to established performance measures. These practices are generally consistent with the Office of Management and Budget's guidelines for federal departments and agencies that administer United foreign assistance and related guidance, as well as State's and the agencies' monitoring policies. For the 15 projects reviewed (see figure) and 4 of the 4 projects GAO selected for analysis, State followed most of the key practices about half of the time, but inconsistently for the other half. Consistently tracking performance data and comparing performance data to established measures would allow State to stay well informed of projects performance, take corrective actions when necessary, and help ensure that projects achieve their intended",0.7166666666666667,0.7464102564102563
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-388,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Crime and violence perpetrated by transnational criminal organizations continue to raise security concerns on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. In October 2007, the United States and Mexico created the Mérida Initiative and committed to working together to address crime and violence, and enhance the rule of law in Mexico. State/INL and USAID have funded hundreds of projects broadly related to these objectives. GAO was asked to review issues related to the implementation and objectives of the initiative. This report (1) examines the extent to which State follows key practices in monitoring projects and tracks project performance data against established measures; (2) examines how State monitors project implementation; and (3) describes how State uses data from Mexico to monitor project implementation. To conduct this work, GAO reviewed documents and interviewed officials from State, USAID, the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Justice, and the Mexican government; selected a nongeneralizable sample of 15 State projects and 5 USAID projects with a total value of about $107 million; and assessed the agencies' monitoring of these projects against eight key practices for monitoring foreign assistance.What GAO Found. The Department of State's (State) Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs generally followed key monitoring practices for the 15 high-dollar value projects GAO assessed, but it did not consistently track performance data or compare them to established performance measures. These practices are generally consistent with the Office of Management and Budget's guidelines for federal departments and agencies that administer United foreign assistance and State's and the Agency for International Development's (USAID) monitoring policies. For example, State generally assigned monitoring duties to qualified staff, planned a monitoring approach, and monitored projects. However, for 4 of the 15 projects, State did not follow all of these practices. State officials said that they did not have procedures in place for monitoring staff to consistently follow all the key practices. Instead, officials said they focused on tracking implementation of the projects' activities. Consistently following key practices would allow State to stay well informed of projects' performance, take corrective actions when necessary, and help ensure that projects achieve their intended results. For the 5 projects we reviewed (2 of which were a subset of 15 selected projects), USAID almost always followed key practices—as shown in the figure—and for 2 of these 5 projects it consistently tracked performance data. For 1 project, monitoring staff provided documentation showing that staff responsible for monitoring a project on police training had been officially designated.",0.8166666666666668,0.8300000000000001
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-388,BART (ORACLE 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In October 2007, the United States and Mexico created the Mérida Initiative and, in doing so, committed to working together to address crime and violence, and enhance the rule of law in Mexico. Through this bilateral partnership, State/INL has funded MérIDA Initiative projects broadly related to the four pillars of the initiative—combating transnational criminal organizations, rule of laws and human rights, border security, and building strong and resilient communities—with the goals of mitigating the effects of the drug trade on Mexico and reducing violence. GAO was asked to review the implementation of Méridas Initiative projects. This report (1) examines the extent to which the Department of State (State), Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, follows key practices in monitoring Méridian Initiative projects and tracks project performance data against established measures; (2) examines State/InL's and the United State Agency for International Development's (USAID) adherence to key monitoring practices; and (3) describes how State uses data from the Government of Mexico to help monitor the implementation. To address these objectives, GAO reviewed relevant State and USAID documents and interviewed agency officials from State, USAID, and the Departments of Defense (DOD), Homeland Security (DHS), and Justice (DOJ) in Washington, D.C., and in Mexico City.What GAO Found. State's Office of International Relations (State/INR) generally followed key practices for monitoring foreign assistance projects in the areas of assigning monitoring duties to qualified staff, planning a monitoring approach, and monitoring project implementation. However, for a subset of four selected projects, State did not consistently track performance data or compare them to established performance measures. Consistently following key monitoring practice would allow State/inL to stay well informed of projects performance, take corrective action when necessary, and help ensure that projects achieve their intended results. For projects GAO examined, State generally followed the key practices about half of the time, and for the remaining half, it did not always follow them. USAID almost always followed key monitoring and tracked performance data, but did not develop monitoring plans that address risk. For example, the agency almost always assigned monitoring responsibilities to a qualified staff member and developed a monitoring plan that addressed risk assessments. In contrast, for the four projects that did not have a monitoring strategy, State's monitoring plan did not address risk assessments and did not include a risk assessment tool. State uses a variety of data sources to",0.9333333333333332,0.9333333333333332
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-388,BART (ORACLE 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Since fiscal year 2008, the United States has allocated about $3 billion for assistance for Mexico under the Mérida Initiative, a bilateral partnership that aims to address serious challenges to security and the rule of law. State/INL and USAID are the lead U.S. agencies for developing the initiative's programming. GAO was asked to review issues related to the implementation and objectives of the Méridida Initiative. This report (1) examines the extent to which State follows key monitoring practices and tracks project performance data against established measures; (2) examines State's monitoring and tracks performance data; and (3) describes how State uses data from the Government of Mexico to help monitor the implementation of MérIDA Initiative projects. To address these objectives, GAO selected a nongeneralizable sample of 15 high-dollar value State/initiative projects and 5 high–dollar value USAID projects that started between January 1, 2014, and December 31, 2016, and assessed the extent of the agencies' monitoring of these projects against eight key monitoring principles derived from GAO's Leading Practices for Monitoring Foreign Assistance. GAOsborne also reviewed State/INA's monitoring of the 15 projects' latest annual reports.What GAO Found. The Department of State's (State) Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (State/INA) generally followed eight key practices for monitoring foreign assistance projects GAO reviewed about half of the time. These practices are generally consistent with the Office of Management and Budget's guidelines for Federal departments and agencies that administer United States foreign assistance and related guidance, as well as State's and the U. S. Agency for International Development's (USAID) monitoring policies. State generally followed each of the key monitoring practice related to three aspects of monitoring projects: assigning monitoring duties to qualified staff, planning a monitoring approach, and monitoring project implementation. For example, State generally assigned monitoring duties and generally planned a monitored project implementation approach about two-thirds of time. State did not consistently track performance data for a subset of four selected projects and did not compare data to established measures for two selected projects. Consistently tracking performance data would allow State/A to stay well informed of projects performance, take corrective action when necessary, and help ensure that projects achieve their intended results. State has procedures in place to help ensure it has accurate and reliable performance data. For the five projects reviewed, State almost always followed each related key practice for monitoring implementation. State monitoring officials almost",0.8333333333333334,0.625
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-388,BART (ORACLE 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Crime and violence perpetrated by transnational criminal organizations continue to raise security concerns on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. In October 2007, the United States and Mexico created the Mérida Initiative and committed to working together to address crime and violence, and enhance the rule of law in Mexico. State/INL and USAID are the lead federal agencies responsible for implementing MérIDA projects, with the goals of mitigating the effects of the drug trade and reducing violence in Mexico, among other objectives. Since fiscal year 2008, State/ INL has allocated about $3 billion for MIDA projects. GAO was asked to review MIDA's implementation. This report (1) examines the extent to which State follows key practices in monitoring MIDA-funded projects and tracks project performance data against established measures, (2) examines how State tracks data from Mexico and monitors project implementation, and (3) describes how State uses MIDA data to help monitor project implementation. To address these objectives, GAO reviewed documents and interviewed officials from State, USAID, and the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Justice in Washington, D.C., and Mexico City, and assessed a nongeneralizable sample of 15 MIDA project monitoring practices against eight key practices for monitoring foreign assistance projects.What GAO Found. The Department of State's (State) Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (State/ INA) generally followed eight key monitoring practices in the areas of assigning monitoring duties to qualified staff, planning a monitoring approach, and monitoring project implementation; however, it did not consistently track performance data or compare them to established measures. These practices are generally consistent with the Office of Management and Budget's guidelines for federal departments and agencies that administer United States foreign assistance and with State's and the UnitedStates Agency for International Development's (USAID) monitoring policies. For example, State generally followed the key practices about half of the time for assigning duties to monitoring staff, but did not develop monitoring plans that addressed project risks. For a subset of four selected projects, State did not track performance measures against established performance measures. Tracking performance data can help State/InL determine whether projects are achieving intended results and take necessary corrective actions to improve project performance over time. For the four projects GAO selected to review, State monitoring managers did not establish procedures to collect and review project performance information, such as the number of people who completed a targeted number of hours of training or results of training",0.75,0.7833333333333332
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-388,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In October 2007, the United States and Mexico created the Mérida Initiative and, in doing so, committed to working together to address crime and violence, and enhance the rule of law in Mexico. Through this bilateral partnership, the U.S. has funded Mérida projects broadly related to the four pillars of the initiative—combating transnational criminal organizations, rule of the law and human rights, border security, and building strong and resilient communities—with the goals of mitigating the effects of the drug trade on the United State and reducing violence in Mexico, among other things. GAO was asked to review the implementation of Mérida initiatives. This report (1) examines the extent to which the Department of State (State), Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (State/INL), follows key practices in monitoring Mérida Initiatives and tracks project performance data against established measures; (2) examines the degree to which USAID follows key monitoring practices and tracks performance data; and (3) describes how State/Inl uses data from the Government of Mexico to help monitor the implementation. GAO reviewed relevant State and USAID documents and interviewed agency officials from State, USAID, and the Departments of Defense (DOD), Homeland Security (DHS), and Justice (DOJ) in Washington, D.C., and officials in Mexico City. GAO selected a nongeneralizable sample of 15 high-dollar value Mérida I initiatives and five high–dollar value USAID projects that started between January 1, 2014, and December 31, 2016. GAO also interviewed officials from the Department's Office of the Inspector General and the Office of Management and Budget.What GAO Found. In 2019, GAO reported on 14 leading practices for monitoring foreign assistance that agencies should incorporate in their monitoring policies to help ensure that they effectively manage foreign assistance, address impediments, and meet their assistance goals. For the 15 high–value Mérida initiative projects GAO reviewed, State/ INL generally followed the key practices about half of the time, as shown in figure 1. For these projects, the agency assigned monitoring duties to qualified staff, planned a monitoring approach, and monitored project implementation. Consistently following key practices would allow the agency to stay well informed of projects performance, take corrective action when necessary, and help ensure projects achieve their intended results. For a subset of four selected projects, USAID almost always followed key practices and tracked performance data, but did not develop monitoring plans that address risk. For projects we reviewed, USAID nearly always followed the eight key practices for tracking performance data and tracking project implementation, but it did not consistently",0.9833333333333334,0.8928571428571429
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-388,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In October 2007, the United States and Mexico created the Civil Security Initiative and, in doing so, committed to working together to address crime and violence, and enhance the rule of law in Mexico. Through this bilateral partnership, the U.S. has funded projects broadly related to the four pillars of the initiative--combating transnational criminal organizations, rule-of-law and human rights, border security, and building strong and resilient communities--with the goals of mitigating the effects of the drug trade on the UnitedStates and reducing violence in Mexico, among other objectives. Since fiscal year 2008, the United State has allocated about $3 billion for assistance for Mexico under the Civil Standards Initiative. GAO was asked to review issues related to Civil Security Agreement implementation and objectives. This report (1) examines the extent to which the Department of State (State), Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (State/INL) follows key practices in monitoring Civil Security Agreements projects and tracks project performance data against established measures; (2) examines the degree to which State follows key monitoring practices and tracks performance data; and (3) describes how State uses data from the Government of Mexico to help monitor the implementation of Civil Security Orders. GAO reviewed relevant State and USAID documents and interviewed agency officials in Washington, D.C., and Mexico City.What GAO Found. State generally followed key practices for monitoring foreign assistance projects about half of the time, but did not consistently track performance data or compare them to established measures for a subset of four selected projects. For example, State did not track performance for two of the four selected programs and tracked such data inconsistently for the other two projects. Consistently following key practices would allow State to stay well informed of projects' performance, take corrective action when necessary, and help ensure that projects achieve their intended results. For projects GAO reviewed, State followed eight key practices, including assigning monitoring duties to qualified staff, planning a monitoring approach, and monitoring project implementation. GAO found that State followed the practices about half the time for 15 of these projects, and for a nongeneralizable subset of the 20 projects, it did not follow the practices for four projects. GAO also found that USAID generally followed the key practices and tracked performance data for five selected projects, but it had not developed monitoring plans that address risks. USAID generally established roles and responsibilities for monitoring staff, but for two projects, the agency did not maintain documentation showing that it assigned staff with appropriate certifications. Developing monitoring plans to address risks would help establish the appropriate level of oversight needed for each",0.8833333333333333,0.721111111111111
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-388,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In October 2007, the United States and Mexico created theCLArida Initiative and, in doing so, committed to working together to address crime and violence, and enhance the rule of law in Mexico. Through this bilateral partnership, the U.S. has funded projects broadly related to the four pillars of the initiative--combating transnational criminal organizations, rule-of-law and human rights, border security, and building strong and resilient communities--with the goals of mitigating the effects of the drug trade on the UnitedS and reducing violence in Mexico, among other objectives. GAO was asked to review issues related to Civil initiatives. This report (1) examines the extent to which the Department of State (State), Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (State/INL) follows key practices in monitoring Civil initiatives and tracks project performance data against established measures; (2) examines the amount of performance data State/I/2 tracks against established performance measures; and (3) describes how State uses data from the Government of Mexico to help monitor the implementation of Civil projects. GAO reviewed relevant State and USAID documents and interviewed agency officials in Washington, D.C., and Mexico City.What GAO Found. State generally followed key practices for monitoring foreign assistance projects about half of the time, but did not consistently track performance data or compare them to established measures for a subset of the 20 projects GAO reviewed. For example, State generally assigned monitoring duties to qualified staff, planned a monitoring approach, and monitored project implementation. State provided documentation to demonstrate that monitoring managers generally followed these key practices about half the time. State did not have procedures in place to ensure that monitoring officials consistently followed key monitoring practices in the area of planning monitoring approach. State monitoring officials tracked performance data for four of the selected projects, but these data were inconsistently tracked for the other two projects. For projects GAO did not review, the United State Agency for International Development (USAID) generally followed the key practices of assigning monitoring duties, planning monitoring approaches, and monitoring project implementation for five of the 15 projects GAO selected. USAID generally established roles and responsibilities for technical staff responsible for monitoring projects, and for two of the five projects, it did not maintain documentation showing that it assigned staff with appropriate certifications. Developing monitoring plans to address risks would help establish the appropriate level of oversight needed for each project, which in turn could lead to more cost-effective management of these projects.",0.8833333333333334,0.7147619047619047
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-655T,BART (LEAD 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 is having profound effects around the world. Its global transmission was greatly aided and accelerated by air travel, which totaled more than 4.5 billion passengers in 2019, mostly before the widespread outbreak. In light of the resulting pandemic and warnings about the risks of air travel (see figure), U.S. passenger airline traffic fell by 96 percent in April 2020, as compared to April 2019. More than any other mode of transportation, air travel creates the potential for infection to move quickly from one part of the world to another. In order to identify technologies and solutions to improve the safety of the civil aviation system, the federal government conducts research and development (R&D) to advance technological leadership and foster a dynamic aerospace industry. FAA, along with NASA, is responsible for the management of civil aviation R&D. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) also sponsors health-related research involving air transportation. This testimony describes: (1) the U. S. aviation system's preparedness to respond to communicable disease threats from abroad and (2) FAA's management of its R & D portfolio, including the extent to which disease transmission on aircraft and at airports has been the focus of FAA research. This statement is based largely on reports GAO issued in 2015 on air travel and communicable diseases and in 2017 on FAA’s management of commercial aviation research. To conduct the prior work, GAO reviewed available documents and interviewed officials from the key federal departments with responsibilities for conducting aviation research and for preparing for and responding to such threats. GAO also interviewed a range of stakeholders to discuss aviation preparedness and research, and potential opportunities to improve those areas.What GAO Found. In December 2015, the Secretary of Transportation should work with relevant federal stakeholders to develop a national aviation-preparedness plan for communicable-disease outbreaks. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) within DOT is responsible, with support from the Departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and Health & Human Services, for developing a national plan for responding to a public health epidemic threat to the aviation system. However, the department has not yet developed such a plan. According to officials, the agency is working to develop an aviation-health emergency response strategy, but the strategy is not expected to be completed until at least fiscal year 2020. In 2017, FAA reported that it has taken steps to improve its",0.5333333333333333,0.9437254901960784
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-655T,BART (LEAD 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is having profound effects around the world. Its global transmission was greatly aided and accelerated by air travel, which totaled more than 4.5 billion passengers in 2019, mostly before the widespread outbreak. In light of the resulting pandemic and warnings about the risks of air travel and the potential spread of COVID- 19, U.S. passenger airline traffic fell by 96 percent in April 2020, as compared to April 2019. Since 2002, there have been six major public health epidemic threats with global ramifications, including the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003 and the Ebola virus disease in 2014. More than any other mode of transportation, air travel creates the potential for infection to move quickly from one part of the world to another. In order to identify technologies and solutions to improve the safety of the civil aviation system, the federal government conducts research and development (R&D) on this topic. FAA, along with NASA, is responsible for the management of civil aviation R&D. This testimony is based on GAO reports issued in 2015 and 2017 on (1) the U. S. aviation system's preparedness to respond to communicable disease threats from abroad and (2) FAA's management of its civil aviation research portfolio, including disease transmission on aircraft and at airports.What GAO Found. In December 2015, GAO recommended that the Secretary of Transportation (DOT) should work with relevant federal stakeholders to develop a national aviation-preparedness plan for communicable diseases. In the aviation system remains insufficiently prepared to limit the spread of disease through air travel. In that year GAO found that the United States lacked a comprehensive national plan to address the threat of disease transmission from abroad, though some individual airport and airline preparedness plans did exist. In June 2017, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a redesigned National Aviation Research Plan for the 2017-2018 fiscal years that addressed some but not all of GAO's recommendations. In addition, in the continued absence of a national plan, FAA has sponsored limited research into disease transmission into aircraft and airports. In 2015, in response to GAO recommendations, DOT and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agreed with the need to work with stakeholders to establish a national health-related research and preparedness plan. However, as of June 2020, DOT had not yet developed such a plan. GAO has included this open recommendation as one",0.6666666666666666,0.9633333333333332
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-655T,BART (LEAD 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is having profound effects around the world. Its global transmission was greatly aided and accelerated by air travel, which totaled more than 4.5 billion passengers in 2019, mostly before the widespread outbreak. In light of the resulting pandemic and warnings about the risks of air travel and the potential spread of disease, U.S. passenger airline traffic fell by 96 percent in April 2020, as compared to April 2019. Since 2002, there have been six major public health epidemic threats with global ramifications, including the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003 and the Ebola virus disease in 2014. More than any other mode of transportation, air travel creates the potential for infection to move quickly from one part of the world to another. In order to identify technologies and solutions to improve the safety of the civil aviation system, the federal government conducts research and development (R&D) on this topic. FAA, along with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, is responsible for the management of civil aviation R&D. This testimony is based on GAO reports issued in 2015 and 2017 on (1) the U. S. aviation system's preparedness to respond to communicable disease threats from abroad and (2) FAA's management of its civil aviation research portfolio. For this statement, GAO reviewed documents and interviewed officials from DOT, HHS, DHS, CDC, and FAA. GAO also interviewed a range of aviation stakeholders to discuss aviation preparedness and aviation research and potential opportunities to improve those areas.What GAO Found. In December 2015, in response to the outbreak of CORONAVDIA 2019, GAO found that the United States lacked a comprehensive national aviation-preparedness plan to limit the spread of communicable diseases through air travel. Although some individual airport and airline preparedness plans did exist, they were not comprehensive. In addition, the Department of Transportation (DOT) had not developed a national plan to address communicable-disease threats. In June 2018, DOT and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) agreed with GAO's recommendation to work with stakeholders to develop such a plan. In the absence of a comprehensive plan, the aviation system remains insufficiently prepared. In a separate but related recommendation, in 2015 GAO reported that 14 U.K. airports and 3 airlines had independently developed plans for responding to disease threats. These plans generally addressed the high-level components that",0.6333333333333333,0.8296296296296296
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-655T,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is having profound effects around the world. Its global transmission was greatly aided and accelerated by air travel, which totaled more than 4.5 billion passengers in 2019, mostly before the widespread outbreak. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) also sponsors health-related research involving air transportation. Since 2002, there have been six major public health epidemic threats with global ramifications, including the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003 and the Ebola virus disease in 2014. More than any other mode of transportation, air travel creates the potential for infection to move quickly from one part of the world to another. In December 2015, GAO recommended that the Secretary of Transportation develop a national aviation-preparedness plan for communicable disease outbreaks. This testimony is based largely on reports GAO issued in 2015 on air travel and communicable diseases and in 2017 on FAA's management of commercial aviation R&D. Specifically, this testimony describes: (1) the U.S. aviation system's preparedness to respond to communicable-disease threats from abroad and (2) FAA management of its civil-aviation research and development portfolio. GAO reviewed available documents and interviewed officials from the key federal departments with responsibilities for conducting aviation research and for preparing for communicable disease threats and responding to them.What GAO Found. The Department of Transportation's (DOT) Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) within DOT, along with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), is responsible for the management of the federal government's civil aviation research. In 2015, GAO reported that FAA had not yet developed a comprehensive plan for preparing the aviation system to respond in the event of an infectious disease threat from abroad. In addition, GAO recommended in 2015 that FAA develop a plan for developing a national preparedness strategy to guide its efforts to prepare the aviation sector for a compelling public health threat. In 2017, GAO reported on FAA management issues related to its commercial aviation research portfolio, including its lack of a comprehensive strategy for managing its research portfolio. In response to GAO's recommendations, FAA has taken steps to improve the development, tracking, and reporting of its research and innovation portfolio. For example, FAA is developing a new strategy for its commercial space-flight research portfolio that includes a focus on contagious diseases. However, FAA does not have a comprehensive strategic plan for its research on communicable",0.5666666666666665,0.9270588235294118
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-655T,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is having profound effects around the world. Its global transmission was greatly aided and accelerated by air travel, which totaled more than 4.5 billion passengers in 2019, mostly before the widespread outbreak. More than any other mode of transportation, air travel creates the potential for disease transmission to move quickly from one part of the world to another. In order to identify technologies and solutions to improve the safety of the civil aviation system, the federal government conducts research and development (R&D) to advance U.S. technological leadership and foster a dynamic aerospace industry. DOT, along with NASA, is responsible for the management of civil aviation R&D. This testimony is based largely on reports GAO issued in 2015 on air travel and communicable disease and in 2017 on FAA's management of commercial aviation research. Specifically, this testimony describes: (1) the continued absence of a comprehensive national aviation-preparedness plan to limit the spread of communicable diseases through air travel; and (2) the extent to which disease transmission on aircraft and at airports has been the focus of FAA research.What GAO Found. In December 2015, GAO recommended that the Department of Transportation (DOT) work with other federal agencies to develop a national plan to respond to communicable-disease outbreaks in the national aviation system. GAO found in 2015 that the United States lacked a comprehensive, national plan, though some individual airport and airline preparedness plans did exist. Additionally, the plans were often contained in multiple documents, and no federal agency tracked which airports and airlines had them. While all 14 airports and 3 airlines GAO reviewed in 2015 had independently developed plans, representatives from these agencies reported facing multiple challenges in responding to threats, such as coordination among responders and ensuring appropriate equipment and training. As of June 2020, DOT had not developed such a plan. In making this recommendation in 2015 GAO pointed to the Annex 9 to the Chicago Convention—an international aviation treaty to which DOT is a signatory—which contains a standard that obligates International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) member states to develop such a standard. DOT maintains that those agencies that have both legal authority and expertise for emergency response and public health—namely DHS and HHS—are best positioned to take the lead role in developing a plan within the existing interagency framework for national-level all-hazards emergency preparedness planning. In addition, FAA supports and coordinates a",0.7166666666666667,0.96
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-655T,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is having profound effects around the world. Its global transmission was greatly aided and accelerated by air travel, which totaled more than 4.5 billion passengers in 2019, mostly before the widespread outbreak. More than any other mode of transportation, air travel creates the potential for infection to move quickly from one part of the world to another. In order to identify technologies and solutions to improve the safety of the civil aviation system, the federal government conducts research and development (R&D) to advance U.S. technological leadership and foster a dynamic aerospace industry. DOT, along with NASA, is responsible for the management of civil aviation R&D. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) also sponsors health-related research involving air transportation. This testimony is based largely on reports GAO issued in 2015 and 2017 on air travel and communicable disease and FAA's management of commercial aviation research. Specifically, this testimony describes: (1) the continued lack of a comprehensive national aviation-preparedness plan to limit the spread of communicable diseases through air travel; and (2) the extent to which disease transmission on aircraft and at airports has been the focus of FAA research. To do this work, GAO reviewed available documents and interviewed officials from DOT, DHS, CDC, and HHS. GAO also interviewed a range of stakeholders to discuss aviation preparedness and research, and potential opportunities to improve those areas.What GAO Found. In December 2015, following up on its 2015 report on communicable infectious disease threats in the aviation sector ( GAO-15-958 ), GAO found that the United States still lacked a comprehensive, national plan to respond to the next aviation pandemic, though some individual airport and airline preparedness plans did exist. The Department of Transportation (DOT) agreed with GAO's 2015 recommendation that the Secretary of Transportation should work with relevant federal stakeholders to develop a national emergency preparedness plan. However, in June 2020, DOT still had not developed such a plan, despite GAO’s recommendation that it do so by the end of 2020. According to DOT, those agencies that have both legal authority and expertise for emergency response and public health—namely DHS and HHS—are best positioned to take the lead role in developing a plan within the existing interagency framework for national-level all-hazards emergency- preparedness planning.",0.7333333333333334,0.9144444444444444
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-655T,BART (ORACLE 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In 2015, GAO reported that the United States lacked a comprehensive national aviation-preparedness plan to limit the spread of communicable diseases through air travel, though some individual airport and airline preparedness plans did exist. GAO recommended that DOT work with relevant federal stakeholders to develop a national plan for communicable disease outbreaks. A comprehensive national plan would provide a coordination mechanism for the public-health and aviation sectors to more effectively prevent and control a communicable-disease threat while also minimizing unnecessary disruptions to the national aviation system. This testimony describes (1) the U.S. aviation system's preparedness to respond to communicable health threats from abroad and (2) FAA's management of its research and development (R&D) portfolio, including the extent to which disease transmission on aircraft and at airports has been the focus of FAA research. This statement is based on GAO products issued from 2010 through 2018, including a report on the current communicable air travel pandemic ( GAO-20-851 ) and a review of FAA's R&D portfolio, which was updated in June 2020.What GAO Found. As of June 2020, the Department of Transportation (DOT), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) stated that the federal government still has not developed a national aviation preparedness plan for responding to communifiable disease outbreaks from abroad. In making its 2015 recommendation in 2015 GAO pointed to Annex 9 to the Chicago Convention—an international aviation treaty to which the United states is a signatory—which contains a standard that obligates International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) member states to develop such a plan. In the absence of a plan, the aviation system remains insufficiently prepared to respond in a timely manner to communicable disease threats. For example, stakeholders GAO interviewed described actions taken by individual airlines and airports in response to the current outbreak of the communicable illness known as COVID-19, such as to cease operations to certain countries. This piecemeal approach points to the continued need for DOT to implement GAO's 2015 recommendation to coordinate a national effort to plan for and respond to such threats. GAOs continues to believe that DOT would be in the best position to lead the effort because FAA and DOT have stronger and deeper ties to, as well as oversight responsibility for, the relevant stakeholders that would be most involved in such a broad effort, namely airlines, airports, and other aviation stakeholders. FAA",0.85,0.8653846153846154
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-655T,BART (ORACLE 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Since 2002, there have been six major public health epidemic threats with global ramifications, including the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003 and the Ebola virus disease in 2014. More than any other mode of transportation, air travel creates the potential for infection to move quickly from one part of the world to another. In the United States, the roles and responsibilities related to preparing for, assessing, and responding to communicable disease threats in the civil aviation system require immense coordination among a number of federal agencies and aviation stakeholders. In December 2015, GAO recommended that the Secretary of Transportation should work with relevant federal stakeholders to develop a national aviation-preparedness plan for communicable diseases. In order to identify technologies and solutions to improve the safety of civil aviation, the federal government conducts research and development (R&D) to advance U.S. technological leadership and foster a dynamic aerospace industry. FAA is responsible for the management of the government's civil aviation R&D. This testimony is based largely on GAO reports issued in 2015 on air travel and communicable health and in 2017 on FAA's management of commercial aviation research. It describes: (1) the U. S. aviation system's preparedness to respond to disease threats from abroad and (2) FAA's efforts to manage its R&DI portfolio. GAO reviewed documents and interviewed officials from DOT and HHS to determine the status of the preparedness and preparedness plans.What GAO Found. The United States lacks a comprehensive national plan to limit the spread of infectious disease through air travel, though some individual airport and airline preparedness planning plans do exist. In 2015, following the deadly Ebola virus outbreak, the Department of Transportation (DOTD) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) agreed with GAO's recommendation to work with other relevant stakeholders, such as airports and airlines, to develop such a plan. However, as of June 2020, DOT, DHS, and HHS stated that the federal agencies still have not worked together and developed a national health-related aviation- preparedness plan to respond the next communicable epidemic outbreak. In addition, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has sponsored limited federal research on disease transmission onboard aircraft and in airports. FAA's research goals focus on areas like improving airport operations and air space management, and developing new technologies, which FAA has aligned to the Departmentof Transportation's (Dot) strategic goals related to safety, infrastructure, and innovation. Even so, FAA has funded",0.8000000000000002,0.9175
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-655T,BART (ORACLE 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is having profound effects around the world. Its global transmission was greatly aided and accelerated by air travel, which totaled more than 4.5 billion passengers in 2019, mostly before the widespread outbreak. In light of the resulting pandemic and warnings about the risks of air travel (including the potential spread of disease), U.S. passenger airline traffic fell by 96 percent in April 2020, as compared to April 2019. Since 2002, there have been six major public health epidemic threats with global ramifications, including the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) disease in 2003 and the Ebola virus disease in 2014. More than any other mode of transportation, air travel creates the potential for infection to move quickly from one part of the world to another. In December 2015, GAO recommended that the Secretary of Transportation work with relevant federal stakeholders to develop a national aviation-preparedness plan for communicable disease outbreaks. In order to identify technologies and solutions to improve the safety of the civil aviation system, the federal government conducts research and development (R&D) on this topic. FAA, along with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), is responsible for the management of civil aviation R&D. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) also sponsors health-related research involving air transportation. This testimony is based on GAO reports issued in 2015 on air travel and communicable diseases and in 2017 on FAA's management of commercial aviation research. It describes: (1) the U. S. aviation system's preparedness to respond to communicable-disease threats from abroad and (2) the extent to which disease transmission on aircraft and at airports has been the focus of FAA research. To conduct the prior work on air-travel-and communicable-, aviation-related R&Ds, GAOs reviewed available documents and interviewed officials from the key federal departments with responsibilities for conducting aviation research and for preparing for and responding to threats to aviation safety and security. For this statement on communicable Disease in Air Travel and Aviation R&Donations, which is based largely on prior GAO work, GAOS also contacted DOT, DHS, and HHS officials to determine the status of a national preparedness plan as recommended in GAO's 2015 report.What GAO Found. In a 2015 report (GAO-15-958 ), GAO found that the United States",0.5499999999999999,0.8655555555555555
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-655T,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In light of the resulting pandemic and warnings about the risks of air travel, U.S. passenger airline traffic fell by 96 percent in April 2020, as compared to April 2019. COVID-19 is only the latest communicable disease to raise concerns about the spread of contagion through air travel. In December 2015, GAO recommended that the Secretary of Transportation should work with relevant federal stakeholders to develop a national aviation-preparedness plan for communicable diseases. This testimony describes (1) the U. S. aviation system's preparedness to respond to communicable threats from abroad and (2) the Department of Transportation's (DOT) management of its research and development (R&D) portfolio, including the extent to which disease transmission on aircraft and at airports has been the focus of FAA research. This statement is based on GAO's prior work and interviews with DOT officials.What GAO Found. In 2015, GAO found that the United States lacked a comprehensive national aviation preparedness plan to limit the spread and spread of communicable illnesses through air transportation, though some individual airport and airline preparedness plans did exist. Accordingly, we recommended that DOT work with the Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Homeland Security (DHS) to develop such a plan. As of June 2020, DOT, DHS, and HHS stated that the federal government still has not developed a national plan. DOT and FAA have stronger and deeper ties to, as well as oversight responsibility for, the relevant stakeholders that would be most involved in such a broad effort, namely airlines, airports, and other aviation stakeholders. In response to the current COVID--19 pandemic and in the absence of a comprehensive plan, DOT officials pointed to ongoing efforts to engage with interagency partners at DHS and HHS, as, well as industry stakeholders, to better collaborate on the aviation sector's communicable-disease response and preparedness. For example, stakeholders described actions taken by individual airlines in response to FAA guidance, such as to cease operations to certain countries, and a piecemeal approach to establishing standards for safely continuing or expanding service, including various airline and airport policies regarding facemasks. This piecemeal approach points to the continued need for DOT to implement our 2015 recommendation. FAA has taken steps to improve its R&D portfolio management, but has Conducted Limited Research on Disease Transmission in Aircraft and Airports. FAA's research goals focus on areas like improving airport operations and air space management, and developing new technologies, which FAA has aligned to DOT's strategic goals related to safety, infrastructure, and innovation. However, according to",0.9166666666666666,0.9333333333333332
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-655T,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In light of the current pandemic and warnings about the risks of air travel, U.S. passenger airline traffic fell by 96 percent in April 2020. CO-19 is only the latest communicable disease to raise concerns about the spread of contagion through air travel. In 2015, GAO recommended that DOT work with relevant federal stakeholders to develop a national aviation-preparedness plan for communicable diseases. In this testimony, GAO describes (1) the U. S. aviation system's preparedness to respond to communicable-disease threats from abroad and (2) FAA's management of its civil aviation research and development (R&D) portfolio, including the extent to which disease transmission on aircraft and at airports has been the focus of FAA research. To conduct this work, GAO reviewed available documents and interviewed officials from the key federal departments with responsibilities for conducting aviation research.What GAO Found. The Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) within DOT are responsible for the management of the federal government's civil aviation R&D. FAA is also responsible for flight safety in the United States and for the safe and efficient movement of air traffic in the national airspace system, as well as for the safety of FAA-certificated aircrews worldwide. In 2015 GAO reported that the UnitedStates lacked a comprehensive national aviation preparedness plan to limit the spread to the aviation system of communicable illnesses, such as CO-19. GAO emphasized that a national plan would provide a coordination mechanism for the public-health and aviation sectors to more effectively prevent and control a communicable threat while also minimizing unnecessary disruptions to the national aviation system. As of June 2012, DOT, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) within the Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) stated that the federal federal government still has not developed a plan for responding to a future aviation pandemic. GAO found that FAA could be more strategic in how it develops its civil-aviation R&R portfolio, chiefly in identifying long-term research needs and in improving disclosure of how projects are selected. GAO also found that while FAA tracks and evaluates its research projects consistent with leading practices, it did not fully address all statutory reporting requirements. In response to GAO's 2015 recommendation, DOT officials pointed to ongoing efforts to engage with interagency partners at DHS and HHS, as also industry stakeholders, to better collaborate on the aviation sector's response and preparedness. While these actions are helpful, some aviation stakeholders have publicly highlighted piecemeal response efforts that may have led",0.8333333333333334,0.811111111111111
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-655T,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In light of the current pandemic and warnings about the risks of air travel, U.S. passenger airline traffic fell by 96 percent in April 2012. CO-19 is only the latest communicable disease to raise concerns about the spread of contagion through air travel. In 2015, GAO recommended that DOT work with relevant federal stakeholders to develop a national aviation-preparedness plan for communicable diseases. GAO was asked to testify on (1) the U. S. aviation system's preparedness to respond to communicable-disease threats and (2) FAA's management of its civil aviation research and development (R&D) portfolio. To conduct this work, GAO reviewed available documents and interviewed officials from DOT, DHS, and HHS.What GAO Found. The Department of Transportation's (DOT) civil aviation system is not prepared to respond effectively to the next aviation pandemic, such as CO-19, and FAA has not fully addressed GAO's recommendations to improve its R&D portfolio. In 2015 GAO found that the United States lacked a comprehensive national aviation preparedness plan to limit the spread and disruption of communicable illnesses through air transport, though some individual airport and airline preparedness plans did exist. In addition, GAO recommended DOT to work with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to develop such a plan. However, as of June 2014, DOT, the Departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and Health and Food Services (FEMA), and HHS stated that the federal government still has not developed a plan for responding to a communicable illness threat. In response, DOT has taken steps to improve collaboration among stakeholders and has engaged with stakeholders to help coordinate the response to a disease threat. However some aviation stakeholders have publicly highlighted piecemeal response efforts that may have led to some of the confusion and chaos that occurred earlier this year following the CO-19 travel bans and increased screening efforts. For example, stakeholders described actions taken by individual airlines in the absence of FAA guidance, such that they cease operations to certain countries, and a piecemeal approach to establishing standards for safely continuing or expanding service. This piecemeal approach points to the continued need for DOT to develop an aviation- preparedness plan. FAA has sponsored limited federal research into disease transmission onboard aircraft and in airports. FAA' research goals focus on areas like improving airport operations and air space management, and developing new technologies, which FAA has aligned to DOT's strategic goals related to safety, infrastructure, and innovation. Based on prior work and interviews with FAA officials, GAO found",0.8333333333333334,0.7745098039215685
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-329,BART (LEAD 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The Navy's VH-92A program is to replace the aging presidential helicopter fleet, which has been in service for several decades. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2014 included a provision for GAO to report on the Presidential Helicopter program annually until the Navy awards a contract for full-rate production, currently planned for 2021. In this report, GAO discusses (1) the extent to which the program is meeting cost, schedule, and performance goals and (2) challenges, if any, the program has experienced in developmental testing and in producing aircraft and plans for addressing the challenges. To conduct this work, GAOs compared cost estimates and program milestones established at the start of development to current estimates and milestone dates. GAO also examined and analyzed key acquisition documents including contractor monthly status reports, earned value management data, and Defense Contract Management Agency reports to determine the performance and cost status of the development effort.What GAO Found. The VH–92A presidential helicopter program is on track to meet the Navy's original cost and schedule estimates for development, but it is behind schedule. The program is about $1.2 billion behind schedule and $1 billion behind budget. The cost estimate for development is $2.1 billion more than originally estimated in 2005, and the schedule is $3.1 million more than initially estimated in 2009. The schedule is also about $600 million more behind budget because the program did not meet its schedule baseline for development. In addition, the schedule baseline does not reflect the Navy plans to deliver the aircraft to the Department of Defense (DOD) in fiscal year 2020 as originally planned. The prime contractor has experienced delays in delivering the first two prototype aircraft, and has not delivered the first three production aircraft to DOD as planned. These delays are due in part to the program's decision to use a modified version of an existing aircraft to begin development rather than the development of a new aircraft. The development of the VH‑92A system is still in the early stages of development and the Navy has not yet completed developmental testing of key system capabilities. While the Navy expects to complete developmental testing by the end of fiscal year 2019, it has not finalized plans for conducting operational testing of the system. Until the Navy completes testing, it will not be able to determine whether the system will perform as intended. The Department of the Navy and the prime contractor have taken steps to address developmental testing challenges, such as limiting the number of aircraft that will be produced and developing a",0.3,0.3166666666666667
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-329,BART (LEAD 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The Navy plans to acquire 23 VH-92A helicopters to replace the Marine Corps' existing fleet of VH3D and VH60N aircraft. The VH92A is expected to provide new helicopters for safe, reliable, and timely transportation for the President of the United States and other parties as directed by the White House Military Office. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2014 included a provision for GAO to report on the Presidential Helicopter program annually until the Navy awards a contract for full-rate production, currently planned for 2021. In this report, GAO discusses (1) the extent to which the program is meeting cost, schedule, and performance goals and (2) challenges, if any, the program has experienced in developmental testing and in producing aircraft and plans for addressing the challenges. GAO analyzed key acquisition documents and interviewed program officials to determine the performance and cost status of the development effort.What GAO Found. Since the Navy started the VH–92A program in April 2014, the total acquisition cost estimate has decreased by about 4.5 percent, from $5.18 billion to $4.95 billion (then-year dollars), while the program continues to manage its schedule and performance targets. Contractor officials attribute this to stable requirements, a low number of design changes, and streamlined processes and reviews. As of February 2019, the contractor estimated it would have accomplished nearly all its activities necessary to demonstrate performance specification compliance per the contract, by February 2019. The program is operating within its original approved schedule baseline of about 80 percent of development work, with the remainder to be completed by October 2020. Program officials expect to meet the key performance parameters, including providing a fully interoperable mission communications system by the time of the initial operational test and evaluation in March 2020. The success of programs depends, in part, on having an integrated and reliable master schedule that defines when and how long work will occur and how each activity is related to the others. The government-wide Integrated Master Schedule (IMS) that GAO assessed met best practices criteria in the GAO Schedule Assessment Guide. The Navy has experienced delays of about 5 months to the start of its operational assessment due to parts shortages and early integration problems during product development. Navy officials stated that they have adjusted schedule milestones accordingly and now project that the program will meet its key parameters. While the program made progress, it continues to face development challenges. Those challenges include issues associated with the aircraft's start procedures for the propulsion system",0.6333333333333333,0.9566666666666668
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-329,BART (LEAD 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The Navy plans to acquire 23 VH-92A helicopters to replace the Marine Corps' existing fleet of VH3D and VH60N aircraft. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2014 included a provision for GAO to report on the Presidential Helicopter program annually until the Navy awards a contract for full-rate production, currently planned for 2021. In this report, GAO discusses (1) the extent to which the program is meeting cost, schedule, and performance goals and (2) challenges, if any, the program has experienced in developmental testing and in producing aircraft and plans for addressing the challenges. To conduct this work, among other things, GAOs analyzed key program documents and interviewed program officials.What GAO Found. Since the Navy started the VH92A program in April 2014, the total acquisition cost estimate has declined by about 4.5 percent, from $5.18 billion to $4.95 billion (then-year dollars). Contractor officials attribute this to stable requirements, a low number of design changes, and streamlined processes and reviews. The program is also managing its schedule and performance targets. As of February 2019, the contractor reported having accomplished about 83.3 percent of development work, with the remainder to be completed by October 2020. Program officials expect to meet all key performance parameters, including providing a fully interoperable mission communications system (MCS) in time for initial operational test and evaluation in March 2020, and meeting the requirements for a low-rate initial production decision in June 2019. In addition, the Navy's Integrated Master Schedule Assessment Guide indicates that the program's integrated master schedule met the criteria for a reliable schedule. The success of programs depends, in part part on having an integrated and reliable master schedule that defines when and how long work will occur and how each activity is related to the others. GAO's research has identified sound schedule estimating as one of the key characteristics for reliable schedules. While the program continues to make progress, it faces development challenges that could affect its ability to deliver fully capable aircraft. Those challenges include issues associated with the aircraft's start procedures for the propulsion system, landing zone suitability, and the MCS. According to the program office, the performance requirements associated with these challenges may not be fully achieved until after the June 2019 production decision, which may result in the need to retrofit already built aircraft. These challenges have caused the Navy to delay the start of operational testing and evaluation by 3 months, a delay that is still",0.8333333333333334,0.9433333333333334
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-329,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The Navy plans to acquire a fleet of 23 VH-92A helicopters to replace the Marine Corps' existing fleet of VH-3D and VH-60N aircraft. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2014 included a provision for GAO to report on the Presidential Helicopter program annually until the Navy awards a contract for full-rate production, currently planned for 2021. In this report, GAO discusses (1) the extent to which the program is meeting cost, schedule, and performance goals and (2) challenges, if any, the program has experienced in developmental testing and in producing aircraft and plans for addressing the challenges. GAO analyzed program documents and interviewed program officials.What GAO Found. The Presidential Helicopter Program Office (PMO) and the prime contractor, Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation, have made progress in meeting the program's cost and schedule goals, but the program faces challenges in developing and producing the aircraft. For example, the PMO and the contractor have not fully developed the aircraft's mission communications system, which is expected to reduce the number of flights and increase the number and speed of aircraft in the fleet. The PMO has also not fully integrated the aircraft into the fleet's avionics, which could result in the aircraft not being able to perform as well as expected. The program has also experienced delays in the development of the aircraft, which has resulted in the cancellation of a number of test and evaluation activities. The prime contractor has also faced challenges in the production of aircraft, such as the need to modify the aircraft to meet the Navy's requirements. In addition, the Navy has not fully implemented its acquisition strategy to integrate mature technologies and an executive interior into an existing helicopter while minimizing modifications. The Prime Contractor and the program office have taken steps to address these challenges, but more work is needed to address them. For instance, PMO officials stated that they are taking steps to develop a new avionics system that will be integrated into the aircraft and that they plan to begin production in fiscal year 2020. PMO also stated that it is working with Sikorsky to address the challenges associated with the development and production of the executive cabin interior. However, the Prime Contractor has not yet fully implemented the acquisition strategy and has not developed a plan to fully integrate the executive interior. PMO is also not developing a strategy to fully address the development, production, and testing of the avionics system. The VH-92 A program faces several challenges in its development and manufacturing efforts, including the need for a more comprehensive approach to integrating mature technologies into an aircraft while minimizing modification. The development of a",0.3666666666666667,0.2666666666666666
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-329,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The Navy's VH-92A program is to replace the aging presidential helicopter fleet. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2014 included a provision for GAO to report on the Presidential Helicopter program annually until the Navy awards a contract for full-rate production, currently planned for 2021. In this report, GAO discusses (1) the extent to which the program is meeting cost, schedule, and performance goals and (2) any challenges, if any, the program has experienced in developmental testing and in producing aircraft and plans for addressing the challenges. To conduct this work, among other things: GAO compared cost estimates and program milestones established at the start of development to current estimates and milestone dates. GAO also examined and analyzed key acquisition documents including contractor monthly status reports, earned value management data, and Defense Contract Management Agency reports to determine the performance and cost status of the development effort; reviewed the program's Integrated Master Schedule and compared it against best practices criteria in the GAO Schedule Assessment Guide; and discussed the results of the schedule assessment with program officials.What GAO Found. Since the Navy began development of the VH–92A presidential helicopter in April 2014, the total program acquisition cost estimate has decreased by about 4.5 percent—from $5.18 billion to $4.95 billion (then-year dollars)—from the initial estimate of $6. Contractor officials attribute this to stable performance requirements, a low number of design changes, and streamlined processes and reviews. The program is operating within its original approved schedule baseline despite experiencing some delays due to technical challenges and new discoveries during development. As of January 2019, the contractor estimated it would have completed nearly all development activities to demonstrate performance specification compliance per the contract, by February 2019, and the Navy is now more than halfway through its ground and flight testing requirements needed to support Milestone C, the decision point for entering into low-rate initial production. Program officials expect to be on track to meet its key performance parameters, including providing a fully interoperable mission communications system (MCS) in time for initial operational test and evaluation in March 2020. While the program continues to make progress, it continues to face development challenges that could affect its ability to deliver fully capable aircraft. Those challenges include issues associated with the aircraft's start procedures for the propulsion system and landing zone suitability. According to the program office, the performance requirements associated with these challenges may not be fully achieved until after the low rate initial production decision, which may result",0.6833333333333332,0.8761904761904762
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-329,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The Navy's VH-92A program is to replace the aging presidential helicopter fleet. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2014 included a provision for GAO to report on the Presidential Helicopter program annually until the Navy awards a contract for full-rate production, currently planned for 2021. In this report, GAO discusses (1) the extent to which the program is meeting cost, schedule, and performance goals and (2) any challenges, if any, the program has experienced in developmental testing and in producing aircraft and plans for addressing the challenges. To conduct this work, among other things: GAO compared cost estimates and program milestones established at the start of development to current estimates and milestone dates. GAO also examined and analyzed key acquisition documents including contractor monthly status reports, earned value management data, and Defense Contract Management Agency reports to determine the performance and cost status of the development effort; reviewed the program's Integrated Master Schedule (IMS) and compared it against best practices criteria in the GAO Schedule Assessment Guide; and discussed the results of GAO's schedule assessment with program officials.What GAO Found. Since 2014, the Navy's $5.18 billion to $4.95 billion (then-year dollars) VH–92A helicopter program acquisition cost estimate has decreased by about $234 million or about 4.5 percent. Contractor officials have attributed this to stable requirements, a low number of design changes, and streamlined processes and reviews. The program is operating within its original approved schedule baseline of about 3 to 5 months due to some delays caused by technical challenges and new discoveries during product development. As of January 2019, the contractor estimated it would have completed nearly all development activities, such as ground and flight testing, by February 2019 and the program was on track to meet its key performance parameters, including providing a fully interoperable mission communications system (MCS) in time for initial operational test and evaluation in March 2020. While the program continues to make progress, it continues to face development challenges that could affect its ability to deliver fully capable aircraft. Those challenges include issues associated with the aircraft's start procedures for the propulsion system, landing zone suitability, and the MCS. According to the program office, the performance requirements associated with these challenges may not be fully achieved until after the low-rate initial production decision, which may result in a need to retrofit already built aircraft. Until these challenges are addressed, officials stated that they expect to be able to meet the schedule and performance",0.8666666666666666,0.8690476190476191
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-329,BART (ORACLE 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The VH-92A program intends to provide new helicopters for safe, reliable, and timely transportation for the President of the United States and other parties as directed by the White House Military Office. The Navy plans to acquire a fleet of 23 helicopters to replace the Marine Corps' existing fleet of VH3D and VH60N aircraft. Initial delivery of the VH92A helicopters is scheduled to begin in fiscal year 2020 with production ending in 2023. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2014 included a provision for GAO to report on the Presidential Helicopter program annually until the Navy awards a contract for full-rate production, currently planned for 2021. This report discusses (1) the extent to which the program is meeting cost, schedule, and performance goals and (2) challenges, if any, the program has experienced in developmental testing and in producing aircraft and plans for addressing the challenges. GAO reviewed program documents and interviewed program officials and contractor representatives.What GAO Found. Since the program started in April 2014, the total acquisition cost estimate for the Presidential Aircraft Program has decreased by $234 million or about 4.5 percent—from $5.18 billion to $4.95 billion (in then-year dollars)—from the initial estimate of $5 billion to the current estimate of about $4 billion. Contractor officials attribute the estimated decline in cost to stable requirements, a low number of design changes, and streamlined processes and reviews. The program is on track to meet its key performance requirements, including providing a fully interoperable mission communications system in time frame and meeting a key system capability requirement to land the aircraft without adversely affecting landing zones (including the South Lawn). The program has also met a key performance requirement to transport the aircraft in a cargo plane. The schedule for the Navy's initial operational test and evaluation has been delayed by 5 months due to technical challenges and new discoveries during development. Program officials expect to have enough information from government-led integrated testing and the operational assessment to move forward with the Milestone C decision. While the program continues to make progress in system development, it faces development challenges that could affect its ability to deliver fully capable aircraft prior to the start of initial operational testing and evaluation in 2020. Specifically, the Navy has experienced problems connecting the mission communications systems to secure networks, presenting a risk for the program. These problems have caused the Navy to delay the start date for the initial operational assessment by 3 months and the low-rate initial production decision by 3",0.9166666666666666,0.85
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-329,BART (ORACLE 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The VH-92A program is to replace the Marine Corps' aging presidential helicopter fleet. The Navy plans to acquire a fleet of 23 VH92A helicopters, which are to be integrated with an executive interior and mission equipment, and may include a fifth display in the cockpit. Initial delivery of the V-92As is planned for fiscal year 2020 with production ending in fiscal year 2023. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2014 included a provision for GAO to report on the Presidential Helicopter program annually until the Navy awards a contract for full-rate production, currently planned for 2021. In this report, GAO discusses (1) the extent to which the program is meeting cost, schedule, and performance goals and (2) challenges, if any, the program has experienced in developmental testing and in producing aircraft and plans for addressing the challenges. GAO reviewed key program documents, including those related to the program's development and acquisition plans, schedules, contracts, and executive summary reports; and interviewed key program officials.What GAO Found. The Department of Defense's (DOD) Navy's VH–92A presidential helicopter program is making progress toward meeting its development goals through the Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) phase of the program. Since GAO last reported on the program in April 2015, the total acquisition cost estimate for the VH‑92A has declined by about 4.5 percent—from $5.18 billion to $4.95 billion (in current dollars)—and total program acquisition unit costs have decreased by about the same percentage. According to the Navy, this is due to stable requirements, a low number of design changes, and streamlined processes and reviews. The program is operating within its original approved schedule baseline. The two development aircraft delivered to the government in July 2017 and four Development Model System Demonstration test aircraft, now in the modification stages, are production representative aircraft being built under the development contract. These aircraft will be used to demonstrate the aircraft's performance in government-led integrated testing beginning in March 2019 and in support of a decision on whether to enter low-rate initial production in October 2020. The remaining four aircraft will then be used in the initial operational test and evaluation scheduled to begin in March 2020, which will determine if the aircraft is operationally effective and suitable for its intended use. The results of that testing will also be used for a decision to enter full production in 2021. While the program continues to make progress, it has experienced some development",0.7833333333333333,0.8291666666666666
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-329,BART (ORACLE 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The Navy plans to acquire 23 VH-92A helicopters to replace the Marine Corps' aging presidential helicopter fleet. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2014 included a provision for GAO to report on the Presidential Helicopter program annually until the Navy awards a contract for full-rate production, currently planned for 2021. In this report, GAO discusses (1) the extent to which the program is meeting cost, schedule, and performance goals and (2) challenges, if any, the program has experienced in developmental testing and in producing aircraft and plans for addressing the challenges. GAO compared cost estimates and program milestones established at the start of development to current estimates and milestone dates, examined and analyzed key acquisition documents, and interviewed program officials.What GAO Found. Since the Navy started the VH92A program in April 2014, the cost estimate for the presidential helicopter has decreased by $234 million or 4.5 percent to $4.95 billion (then-year dollars). Contractor officials attribute this to stable performance requirements, a low number of design changes, and streamlined processes and reviews. While the Navy continues to manage the program's schedule and performance targets, the prime contractor, Lockheed Martin Company, reported completing about 80 percent of its development work and expects to have completed about 83 percent of that work by October 2020. The program is also managing its schedule within its original approved schedule threshold. Program officials expect to complete government-led integrated testing and the Navy's operational assessment in March 2019 to support the decision to enter into low-rate initial production, which is about 2 months prior to the Navy entering into initial operational test and evaluation in June 2019. According to the program office, the Navy expects to be on track to meet its key performance parameters, including providing a fully interoperable mission communications system by the time of the initial operational testing and evaluation scheduled to begin in March 2020. While progress has been made in meeting the program goals for cost, performance, and schedule, development challenges remain. Those challenges include issues associated with the aircraft's start procedures for the propulsion system, landing zone suitability, and the mission communication system's ability to connect to secure networks. The performance requirements associated with addressing these challenges may not be fully achieved until after the low rate initial production decision in June, 2019, which may result in a need to retrofit already built aircraft. The Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, is the site for the first two development aircraft, which are being used to conduct government-",0.9166666666666666,0.8677777777777779
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-329,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The Navy plans to acquire a fleet of 23 VH-92A helicopters to replace the Marine Corps' existing fleet of VH-3D and VH-60N aircraft. Initial delivery of the helicopters is scheduled to begin in fiscal year 2020. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2014 included a provision for GAO to report on the Presidential Helicopter program annually until the Navy awards a contract for full-rate production, currently planned for 2021. In this report, GAO discusses (1) the extent to which the program is meeting cost, schedule, and performance goals and (2) challenges, if any, the program has experienced in developmental testing and in producing aircraft and plans for addressing the challenges. GAO reviewed program documentation and interviewed program officials.What GAO Found. Since the program started in April 2014, the Navy's Presidential Helicopter Program Office (PHPO) has made progress in meeting its acquisition cost and schedule goals. The total VH- 92A program acquisition cost estimate has decreased $234 million or about 4.5 percent—from $5.18 billion to $4.95 billion (then-year dollars)—since the program began in April 2014. Contractor officials that the estimated decline in cost is due to stable requirements, a low number of design changes, and streamlined processes and reviews. Program officials told GAO they have adjusted schedule milestones accordingly and now project that the VH--92A is on track to meet its key performance parameters, including providing a fully interoperable mission communications system (MCS) in time for initial operational test and evaluation in 2020. The program has addressed delays resulting from technical challenges and new discoveries during development by delaying the start dates for the operational assessment, the low-rate initial production decision, and initial operational testing and evaluation by 5 months each. The program office acknowledged that, while solutions to any newly discovered problems may not be ready to implement at the start of production, it expects to have enough information to move forward with the Milestone C decision. Between August and December 2018, the program conducted three major test events—the Navy conducted 14 landings on the White House south lawn to assess approaches, departures, and operations in the landing zone. The Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida, installed MCS version 2.0 on one of the aircraft in support of the initial operational assessment and tested the ability to transport the aircraft to a cargo plane. These changes have caused the Navy to delay the start date of the VH-92 initial operational tests and evaluation, which is planned for March 2020. Program risk for this performance requirement has not changed since GAO's April 2018 report. As GAO reported last year, the VH-91A program was",0.95,0.9233333333333332
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-329,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The Navy's VH-92A program is to replace the aging presidential helicopter fleet, which has been in service for several decades. The VH- 92A program intends to provide new helicopters for safe, reliable, and timely transportation for the President of the United States and other parties as directed by the White House Military Office. The program plans to acquire a fleet of 23 helicopters to be delivered between fiscal years 2020 and 2023. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2014 included a provision for GAO to report on the program annually. This report discusses (1) the extent to which the program is meeting cost, schedule, and performance goals and (2) challenges, if any, the program has experienced in developmental testing and in producing aircraft and plans for addressing the challenges. GAO reviewed program documents and interviewed officials from the Navy, the contractor, and the Department of Defense.What GAO Found. The Coast Guard's (DOD) Navy-led development contract for the VH-92A helicopter program has reduced the total acquisition cost estimate from $5.18 billion to $8.5 billion (then-year dollars) since the program started in April 2014. The program has incurred delays of about 5 months to the start of its operational assessment due to parts shortages and early integration problems during product development. Program officials told us they have adjusted schedule milestones accordingly and now project that the VH-96A is on track to meet its key performance parameters, including providing a fully interoperable mission communications system (MCS) in time for initial operational test and evaluation in 2020. The Navy continues to reduce its acquisition cost estimates for the program. The total VH-92's acquisition cost has decreased $234 million or about 4.5 percent—from $5.17 billion to Timor billion (now-year-dollars)—since the program began in April 2014, due in part to stable requirements, a low number of design changes, and streamlined processes and reviews. These changes are now being incorporated into the four production representative aircraft. These modifications are to allow for improved visibility from the aircraft's forward door and the addition of a fifth multi-functional display in the cockpit (which is identical to the existing four displays) to improve situational awareness. The contractor is working with the program office to determine the best time to make these changes to the aircraft in order to minimize the effect on the production schedule. The final costs are still being negotiated; however, the Navy expects the cost of implementing these two engineering changes to be minimal relative to the program's total acquisition costs. The SEC-92A is operating within its original",0.6666666666666666,0.6098039215686275
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-329,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The Navy's VH-92A program is to replace the aging presidential helicopter fleet, which has been in service for several decades. The VH- 92A program intends to provide new helicopters for safe, reliable, and timely transportation for the President of the United States and other parties as directed by the White House Military Office. The program is scheduled to begin initial delivery of the helicopters in fiscal year 2020 with production ending in 2023. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2014 included a provision for GAO to report on the program annually. This report discusses (1) the extent to which the program is meeting cost, schedule, and performance goals and (2) challenges, if any, the program has experienced in developmental testing and in producing aircraft and plans for addressing the challenges. GAO reviewed program documents and interviewed officials from the Navy, the Defense Contract Management Agency, and the contractor.What GAO Found. The Department of Defense's (DOD) VH-92A program continues to reduce its acquisition cost estimate for the program from $5.18 billion in April 2014 to just over $5 billion (then-year dollars) in April 2014. The Navy has not added any key performance requirements to the fixed-price contract, thereby limiting cost growth. These changes are now being incorporated into the four production representative aircraft. These modifications are to allow for improved visibility from the aircraft's forward door and the addition of a fifth multi-functional display in the cockpit (which is identical to the existing four displays) to improve situational awareness. Program officials attribute that the estimated decline in cost is due to stable requirements, a low number of design changes, and streamlined processes and reviews. These improvements are expected to reduce the program's total acquisition cost by about 4.5 percent. The VA-92U program has incurred delays of about 5 months to the start of its operational assessment due to parts shortages and early integration problems during product development. The result is that the VH-923A is now on track to meet its key performance parameters, including providing a fully interoperable mission communications system (MCS) in time for initial operational test and evaluation in 2020. The VH-96A is operating within its original baseline, despite delays resulting from technical challenges and new discoveries during development. According to program officials, the performance requirements associated with these challenges may not be fully achieved until after the low-rate initial production decision currently planned for June 2014.",0.6666666666666666,0.6852941176470587
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-459,BART (LEAD 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In October 2015, all 33 crew members of the U.S.-flagged cargo vessel EL FARO were killed when the ship encountered heavy winds and seas produced by Hurricane Joaquin and sank en route to Puerto Rico. Subsequent investigations by the National Transportation Safety Board and the Coast Guard cited deficiencies in the vessel's SMS as a factor that may have contributed to the vessel sinking and the loss of lives. The Coast Guard is the lead federal agency responsible for ensuring that applicable U-S.- flagged vessels comply with the ISM Code by maintaining and implementing an SMS that aligns with domestic regulations. The Hamm Alert Maritime Safety Act of 2018 includes a provision for GAO to review the implementation and effectiveness of the SMS plans and evaluate the effectiveness of SMS plans to address the impact of heavy weather. This report responds to that provision and, in particular, addresses the following research objectives: (1) How does the Coast Coast Guard (a) verify that domestic commercial vessels' SMS plans comply with federal regulations and (b) conduct oversight of Recognized Organizations (ROs)? (2) To what extent do SMS plans identify the potential for specific shipboard emergencies and include applicable response procedures? GAO reviewed relevant Coast Guard regulations, policies, and guidance; analyzed a nongeneralizable sample of 12 SMS plans representing five different types of vessels (general cargo/oil/truck, container/ship, ferries, and offshore support vessels); and interviewed relevant Coast Coast guard officials and representatives of two ROs, which account for over 99 percent of SMS certificates issued on behalf of domestic vessels.What GAO Found. To verify that vessel owners' safety management system (SMS) plans for their vessels complywith federal regulations, the U.-S. Coast Guard uses three key processes and standards. First, during vessel inspections, Coast Guard officials review SMS plans for all applicable U.-sourced vessels. Second, during annual SMS audits conducted by two Recognized Organization (RO) that account for more than 99 percent (or about 2,400) of all SMS certifications issued to domestic vessels, the ROs assess SMS plans against federal regulations. Third, during SMS audits, ROs document any deficiencies found during the audits and take any applicable enforcement actions. In addition, to conduct its own SMS compliance verifications and oversight of ROs as part of annual vessel inspections aboard U.-ships, the United States Coast Guard conducts SMS compliance reviews of all applicable vessels. For example, in April 2018, the Coast",0.4666666666666667,0.5833333333333334
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-459,BART (LEAD 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In October 2015, all 33 crew members of the U.S.-flagged cargo vessel EL FARO were killed when the ship encountered heavy winds and seas produced by Hurricane Joaquin and sank en route to Puerto Rico. Subsequent investigations by the National Transportation Safety Board and the Coast Guard cited deficiencies in the vessel's safety management system (SMS) as a factor that may have contributed to the sinking and the loss of lives. The Coast Guard is the lead federal agency responsible for ensuring that applicable vessels comply with the ISM Code by maintaining and implementing an SMS that aligns with domestic regulations. In practice, in practice, the Coast CG delegates principal SMS compliance activities to third-party entities, called ROs, as authorized by federal law. Among their responsibilities, ROs are to review SMS plans, issue applicable vessel certificates, and conduct SMS compliance audits at the company level and aboard each vessel. The Hamm Alert Maritime Safety Act of 2018 includes a provision for GAO to review the implementation and effectiveness of Coast Guard oversight and enforcement of SMS plans. This report addresses the following objectives: (1) How does the Coast Coast Guard (a) verify that domestic commercial vessels' SMS plans comply with federal regulations and conduct oversight of ROs? (b) To what extent do domestic commercial vessel SMS plans identify the potential for specific shipboard emergencies and include applicable response procedures? GAO reviewed and analyzed relevant Coast Guard regulations, policies, and guidance, and analyzed a nongeneralizable sample of 12 SMS plans for 25 vessels representing five different types of vessel (general cargo/container/oil/support vessel, chemical/support/truck, ferries, passenger/trawler, offshore/shorebased ferries), among others. GAO also interviewed Coast Guard and RO officials.What GAO Found. The U. S. Coast Guard verifies Safety Management System (Sms) Compliance with International Safety Management Code requirements through recurring vessel inspections and has initiated efforts to enhance its oversight of Recognized Organizations (ROs) that perform SMS-related activities on its behalf. Recurrent vessel inspections are intended to provide Coast Guard marine inspectors with opportunities to verify the effectiveness of SMS, even if SMS oversight is not the primary purpose of the vessel inspections. In addition to conducting annual vessel vessel inspections, as part of its overall compliance activities, the USCG conducts a fleet risk index that identifies high-risk vessels for additional vessel oversight and more frequent inspections. Based, in part, on the investigative reports of the",0.6,0.8833333333333333
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-459,BART (LEAD 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In October 2015, all 33 crew members of the U.S.-flagged cargo vessel EL FARO were killed when the ship encountered heavy winds and seas produced by Hurricane Joaquin and sank en route to Puerto Rico. Subsequent investigations by the National Transportation Safety Board and the Coast Guard cited deficiencies in the vessel's safety management system (SMS) as a factor that may have contributed to the sinking and the loss of lives. The Coast Guard is the lead federal agency responsible for ensuring that applicable U-S.- flagged vessels comply with the ISM Code by maintaining and implementing an SMS that aligns with domestic regulations. In practice, in practice, the Coast CG delegates principal SMS compliance activities to third-party entities, called ROs, as authorized by federal law. Among their responsibilities, ROs are to review SMS plans, issue applicable vessel certificates, and conduct SMS compliance audits at the company level and aboard each vessel. The Hamm Alert Maritime Safety Act of 2018 includes a provision for GAO to review the implementation and effectiveness of Coast Guard oversight and enforcement of SMS plans. This report addresses the following questions: (1) How does the Coast Coast Guard verify that domestic commercial vessels' SMS plans comply with federal regulations and conduct oversight of Recognized Organizations (ROs)? (2) To what extent do domestic commercial vessel SMS plans identify the potential for specific shipboard emergencies and include applicable response procedures? GAO reviewed and analyzed relevant Coast Guard regulations, policies, and guidance; obtained and reviewed a nongeneralizable sample of 12 SMS plans for 25 vessels representing five different vessel types (general cargo/container/oil/support vessel, chemical/support/truck, ferries, passenger/trawler, offshore/shorebased ferries), and three ROs that certify vessels for ISM certification; and interviewed Coast Guard and RO officials. GAO is not making any recommendations in this report.What GAO Found. The U. S. Coast Guard verifies SMS compliance through recurring vessel inspections and has initiated efforts to enhance its oversight of third parties that perform SMS-related services and certifications on its behalf. The agency conducts annual vessel inspections of applicable U. In addition, the agency conducts a fleet risk index that identifies high-risk vessels for additional vessel inspection and SMS oversight. In April 2018, the federal agency issued guidance that identifies 21 potential shipboard emergency scenarios to be included in vessel SMS plan documents. The guidance states that it is not a substitute for applicable legal requirements, nor is",0.7333333333333334,0.8291666666666666
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-459,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In 2015, all 33 crew members of the U.S.-flagged cargo vessel EL FARO were killed when the ship encountered heavy winds and seas produced by Hurricane Joaquin and sank en route to Puerto Rico. Subsequent investigations by the National Transportation Safety Board and the Coast Guard cited deficiencies in the vessel's safety management system (SMS) as a factor that may have contributed to the ship's sinking and the loss of lives. The Hamm Alert Maritime Safety Act of 2018 includes a provision that GAO review the implementation and effectiveness of the CoastGuard's SMS plans and evaluate the effectiveness of them. This report addresses the following research objectives: (1) How does the Coast Coast Guard verify that domestic commercial vessels' SMS plans comply with federal regulations and (b) conduct oversight of Recognized Organizations (ROs) responsible for ensuring that SMS plans are in compliance with relevant international standards and federal regulations? GAO reviewed relevant Coast Guard regulations, policies, and guidance; analyzed a nongeneralizable sample of 12 SMS plans representing five different vessel types (general cargo/container, chemical/oil carrier, offshore supply/support, towing/tugboats, and passenger ferries); and interviewed Coast Guard officials and representatives of two ROs—the American Bureau of Shipping and DNV-GL—that, collectively, account for over 99 percent of the SMS certificates issued to U.F.-flag vessels.What GAO Found. The U. S. Coast Guard conducts SMS compliance verifications as part of annual vessel inspections, but it does not systematically verify that the SMS plans of domestic commercial vessel operators comply with applicable international standards or federal regulations. The Coast Guard's process for verifying SMS plans is based on the International Safety Management (ISM) Code, which requires ship owners to maintain an SMS that, among other things, spells out safety procedures and guides ship operations in emergency situations. However, Coast Guard guidance does not specify how SMS plans should be evaluated during vessel inspections. In addition, the guidance for conducting SMS compliance audits does not clearly define the roles and responsibilities of ROs, which are authorized by federal law to conduct SMS compliance inspections. The guidance also does not provide guidance on how to document SMS deficiencies and take actions to address them. In response to GAO's findings, the Coast",0.55,0.7399999999999999
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-459,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In October 2015, all 33 crew members of the U.S.-flagged cargo vessel EL FARO were killed when the ship encountered heavy winds and seas produced by Hurricane Joaquin and sank en route to Puerto Rico. Subsequent investigations by NTSB and Coast Guard cited deficiencies in the vessel's safety management system as a factor that may have contributed to the sinking and the loss of lives. The Hamm Alert Maritime Safety Act of 2018 includes a provision for GAO to review the Coast Guard's oversight and enforcement of SMS plans and evaluate the effectiveness of the plans to address the impact of heavy weather. This report addresses the following objectives: (1) How does the USCG (a) verify that domestic commercial vessels' SMS plans comply with federal regulations and (b) conduct oversight of ROs? (2) To what extent do domestic commercial vessel SMS plans identify the potential for specific shipboard emergencies and include applicable response procedures? GAO reviewed and analyzed relevant Coast Guard regulations, policies, and guidance; analyzed a nongeneralizable sample of 12 SMS plans for five different vessel types representing five different types (general cargo/container/support vessel, chemical support vessel, passenger/oil/truck carrier, ferries, offshore passenger/wing carrier, and ferries ferries). GAO also obtained copies of these plans from the vessel operators and DNV-GL.What GAO Found. To help ensure compliance with the International Safety Management Code (ISM Code—established in the 1990s to provide an international standard for the safe operation of ships and pollution prevention—the U. S. Coast Guard verifies Safety Management System (SMSM) compliance through recurring vessel inspections and has initiated efforts to enhance its oversight of Recognized Organizations (ROs) that issue applicable vessel certificates on its behalf, as authorized by federal law. Specifically, as part of its annual vessel inspection process, Coast Guard marine inspectors are to look for material deficiencies, such as poor condition of vessel structures, missing or defective equipment, or hazardous conditions that could indicate a potential SMS nonconformity, and identify deficiencies that individually or collectively warrant the detention of the vessel but do not indicate a failure or lack of effectiveness of SMS. The Coast Guard advises vessel operators to self-report or, in other words, proactively manage their vessels and report any deficiencies identified by the vessels' crew and report them at the beginning of any Coast Guard inspection. If the deficiencies identified during a vessel inspection are serious enough, the vessel is to",0.65,0.9066666666666666
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-459,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In October 2015, all 33 crew members of the U.S.-flagged cargo vessel EL FARO were killed when the ship encountered heavy winds and seas produced by Hurricane Joaquin and sank en route to Puerto Rico. Subsequent investigations by the Coast Guard and NTSB cited deficiencies in the vessel's safety management system as a factor that may have contributed to the sinking and the loss of lives. The Hamm Alert Maritime Safety Act of 2018 includes a provision for GAO to review the implementation and effectiveness of Coast Guard oversight and enforcement of SMS plans and the effectiveness of the plans to address the impact of heavy weather. This report addresses the following objectives: (1) How does the Coast guard (a) verify that domestic commercial vessels' SMS plans comply with federal regulations and (b) conduct oversight of Recognized Organizations (ROs)? (2) To what extent do domestic commercial vessel SMS plans identify the potential for specific shipboard emergencies and include applicable response procedures? GAO reviewed and analyzed relevant Coast Guard regulations, policies, and guidance; analyzed a nongeneralizable sample of 12 SMS plans for five different vessel types representing five different types (general cargo/container/support vessel types, generalist, chemical carrier, passenger/oilwing carrier, ferries, offshore support vessel, and ferries); and interviewed Coast Guard, RO, and vessel operator officials. GAO is not making recommendations in this report. The Department of Homeland Security provided technical comments on a draft of this report, which were incorporated as appropriate.What GAO Found. The U. S. Coast Guard verifications of vessel safety management systems (SMS) compliance activities are conducted as part of its overall vessel compliance activities, such as conducting annual vessel inspections. The Coast Guard delegates principal SMS compliance activities to third-party entities, called ROs, as authorized by federal law. Among their responsibilities, ROs are to coordinate with vessel operators to review SMS plans, issue applicable vessel certificates, and conduct SMS compliance audits at the company level and aboard each vessel. In 2018, in response to investigative reports of the El FARO sinking that made recommendations regarding SMS deficiencies associated with the ship's sinking, as well as other vessel safety-related deficiencies and deficiencies identified in the 2018 Coast Guard guidance, the agency took steps to enhance its oversight of the ROs that perform SMS-related services and certifications on its behalf. These efforts included establishing a new group to monitor ROs; developing new SMS related guidance and associated work instructions; increasing",0.7999999999999999,0.8123809523809524
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-459,BART (ORACLE 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In April 2017, a cargo vessel carrying hazardous materials sank in the Gulf of Mexico, resulting in the deaths of 47 people. Subsequent investigations by the National Transportation Safety Board and the U.S. Coast Guard cited deficiencies in the vessel's safety management system (SMS) as a factor that may have contributed to the sinking and the loss of lives. SMS plans are a key component of vessel operators' efforts to ensure that their vessels are in compliance with applicable federal regulations and international standards and regulations. SMS is intended to identify the potential for specific shipboard emergencies and include applicable response procedures to address them, among other things. The Hamm Alert Maritime Safety Act of 2018 includes a provision that GAO review the implementation and effectiveness of the Coast Guard's oversight and enforcement of SMS plans. This report responds to that provision and, in particular, addresses the following research objectives: (1) How does the Coast Coast Guard (a) verify that domestic commercial vessels' SMS plans comply with federal regulations, and (b) conduct oversight of ROs? and (2) What steps have the Coast Guards taken to improve SMS oversight? GAO reviewed relevant Coast Guard regulations, policies, and guidance; analyzed a nongeneralizable sample of 12 SMS plans for five different vessel types (general cargo/container, chemical/oil carrier, offshore supply/support, towing/tugboats, and passenger ferries); and interviewed Coast Guard officials.What GAO Found. The Coast Guard verifies SMS compliance as part of its overall vessel compliance activities, such as conducting annual inspections of applicable U. S.-flagged vessels. The agency uses a variety of processes and standards to evaluate SMS compliance during vessel inspections, document any deficiencies and take applicable enforcement actions, and conduct SMS compliance audits of third parties (ROs) responsible for ensuring that SMS plans issued by applicable U-S.-flagging vessels are compliant with applicable regulations and federal regulations. Among their responsibilities, ROs are to coordinate with vessel operators to review SMS plans, issue applicable vessel certificates, and carry out SMS audits at the company level and aboard each vessel. In recent years, the U Coast Guard has taken a number of steps to improve its oversight of SMS compliance. In particular, the Coastigencies established a new group to monitor ROs, developed new SMS-related guidance and associated work instructions, increased direct observations of RO, developed key performance indicators, and developed guidance to request internal investigations for certain RO deficiencies. It is too early for",0.8166666666666668,0.7333333333333334
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-459,BART (ORACLE 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In October 2015, all 33 crew members aboard the U.S.-flagged cargo vessel EL FARO were killed when the ship encountered heavy winds and seas produced by Hurricane Joaquin and sank en route to Puerto Rico. Subsequent investigations by the National Transportation Safety Board and the Coast Guard cited deficiencies in the vessel's SMS as a factor that may have contributed to the sinking. As a result of the incident, some in Congress have raised questions about the effectiveness of SMS plans. The Hamm Alert Maritime Safety Act of 2018 includes a provision that GAO review the implementation and effectiveness of Coast Guard oversight and enforcement of SMS. This report addresses the following questions: (1) How does the Coast Coast Guard (a) verify that domestic commercial vessels' SMS plans comply with federal regulations and (b) conduct oversight of third parties, called ROs? (2) To what extent do vessels' safety management system SMS plans identify the potential for specific shipboard emergencies and include applicable response procedures? GAO reviewed relevant Coast Guard and RO documents, observed vessel inspections and SMS audits, and interviewed Coast Guard officials and representatives of two ROs that, collectively, account for over 99 percent of the SMS certifications issued to U-flagged vessels on Coast Guard's behalf. GAO also reviewed a nongeneralizable sample of 12 SMS plans for U-S-flagging vessels.What GAO Found. The Coast Guard verifies that vessels' vessel safety management systems (SMS) plans for applicable U. S.-management systems (or plan excerpts) comply with the International Safety Management (ISM) Code by conducting annual vessel inspections, among other compliance activities. The plans GAO examined generally contain proprietary information and are not retained by the Coast guard or the ROs performing services on its behalf. In addition to conducting annual ship inspections, the U Coast Guard also conducts SMS compliance verifications as part of its overall vessel compliance activities, such as issuing applicable vessel certificates and conducting SMS compliance audits on behalf of the U. Coast Guard. Since the El FARO sinking, the agency has initiated several efforts to enhance its oversight of the vessels' third parties—called Recognized Organizations (ROs)—that perform SMS-related services and certifications on the vessel operator's behalf, including the following: Establishing a new group to monitor the global performance of U. sflagged vessel fleet and provide oversight of ROs. Developing SMS- related guidance for ROs, including directions for evaluating potential deficiencies and",0.8333333333333334,0.8833333333333334
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-459,BART (ORACLE 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In October 2015, all 33 crew members of the U.S.-flagged cargo vessel EL FARO were killed when the ship encountered heavy winds and seas produced by Hurricane Joaquin and sank en route to Puerto Rico. Subsequent investigations by the National Transportation Safety Board and the Coast Guard cited deficiencies in the vessel's safety management system (SMS) as a factor that may have contributed to the sinking. The Coast Guard is the lead federal agency responsible for ensuring that applicable U-S.- flagged vessels comply with the ISM Code by maintaining and implementing an SMS that aligns with domestic regulations. In practice, Coast Guard delegates principal SMS compliance activities to third-party entities, called ROs, as authorized by federal law. Among their responsibilities, ROs are to coordinate with vessel operators to review SMS plans, issue applicable vessel certificates, and conduct SMS compliance audits at the company level and aboard each vessel. The Hamm Alert Maritime Safety Act of 2018 includes a provision for GAO to review the implementation and effectiveness of the implementation of SMS plans to address the impact of heavy weather. This report addresses the following questions: (1) How does the Coast Coast Guard (a) verify that domestic commercial vessels' SMS plans comply with federal regulations and (b) conduct oversight of ROs? (2) To what extent do domestic commercial vessel SMS plans identify the potential for specific shipboard emergencies and include applicable response procedures? GAO reviewed and analyzed relevant Coast Guard regulations, policies and procedures, and interviewed Coast Guard and RO officials. GAO also obtained and reviewed a nongeneralizable sample of 12 SMS plans for U-flagged vessels, representing five different types of vessels (general cargo/container, chemical/oil supply/truck, offshore supply, shipbuilding, ferries, and ferries). GAO is not making any recommendations in this report. The Department of Homeland Security provided technical comments on a draft of this report, which GAO incorporated as appropriate.What GAO Found. The U. S. Coast Guard verifies vessel SMS compliance through annual vessel vessel inspections and has initiated efforts to enhance its oversight of Recognized Organizations (RO)—a term used to refer to an international organization authorized by the U Coast Guard to conduct vessel oversight and certification activities on behalf of the vessel operator—and has initiated additional efforts to oversee ROs since 2018. Recurrent vessel inspections : The U.S. coast guard verifies SMS compliance as part of its overall vessel compliance activities, such as conducting annual",0.7000000000000001,0.8111111111111112
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-459,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The U.S. Coast Guard is responsible for ensuring that domestic commercial vessels' safety management systems (SMS) are in compliance with applicable federal regulations and international standards. The Coast Guard's Office of Commercial Vessel Compliance (OCV) oversees the implementation of SMS plans and conducts SMS compliance audits at the company level and aboard each vessel. The Hamm Alert Maritime Safety Act of 2018 includes a provision that GAO review the implementation and effectiveness of Coast Guard oversight and enforcement and evaluate the effectiveness of the plans to address the impact of heavy weather. This report addresses (1) how the Coast Guard verifies that domestic vessels' SMS plans comply with federal regulations, and (2) the extent to which the 12 SMS plans GAO reviewed identify potential shipboard emergencies and include applicable response procedures. GAO reviewed relevant Coast Guard regulations, policies, and guidance; analyzed a nongeneralizable sample of 12 domestic commercial SMS plans representing five different vessel types; and interviewed Coast Guard officials.What GAO Found. The United States Coast Guard (USCG) verifies domestic commercial vessel SMS plans as part of its overall vessel compliance activities, such as conducting annual inspections of applicable U. S.-flagged vessels. In particular, the Coast Guards verifies that SMS plans are compliant with applicable regulations and conduct related oversight of third parties (ROs) responsible for SMS certifications and associated audits. Among their responsibilities, ROs are to coordinate with vessel operators to review SMS plans, issue applicable vessel certificates, and conduct SMS compliance audit activities at the vessel level. Coast Guards conduct SMS audits on a case-by-case basis, and ROs review SMS audits to identify deficiencies and take applicable enforcement actions. In addition, the USCG verifies that ROs have documented SMS compliance during vessel inspections. The USCG has taken positive steps to enhance oversight of ROs since the EL FARO incident. In 2018, the USCG established a new group to monitor ROs, developed new SMS-related guidance and associated work instructions, increased direct observations, developed key performance indicators, and developed guidance to request internal investigations for certain RO deficiencies. It is too early for GAO to assess the overall effectiveness of these Coast Guard efforts; however, GAO believes they are positive steps toward enhancing oversight of the ROs. The 12 domestic SMS plans that GAO reviewed do not address all potential emergencies included in Coast Guard guidance, but they do address the broad, functional requirement to identify potential vesselboard emergencies. For example, the 12 plans do not include all of the 21 potential vessel emergencies identified in the 2018 guidance. The guidance states that it",0.95,0.9477777777777776
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-459,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In October 2015, all 33 crew members of the U.S.-flagged cargo vessel EL FARO were killed when the ship encountered heavy winds and seas produced by Hurricane Joaquin and sunk en route to Puerto Rico. Subsequent investigations by the National Transportation Safety Board and the Coast Guard cited deficiencies in the vessel's safety management system (SMS) as a factor that may have contributed to the vessel sinking and the loss of lives. As a result of the EL IAO incident, some in Congress have raised questions about the effectiveness of SMS plans and the Army's oversight of third-party entities responsible for ensuring that SMS plans for applicable vessels are in compliance with relevant international standards and federal regulations. This report addresses (1) how the Army verifies that domestic commercial vessels' SMS plans comply with federal regulations and (2) how the Department of Transportation's Coast Guard conducts related oversight of ROs. GAO reviewed and analyzed relevant Coast Guard regulations, policies, and guidance, and interviewed Coast Guard officials and representatives of two ROs that collectively account for over 99 percent of the SMS certificates issued to U. S.-lagged vessels.What GAO Found. The U.P. Coast Guard is the lead federal agency responsible for maintaining and implementing an SMS that aligns with domestic regulations. The Coast Guard delegates principal SMS compliance activities to third parties, called Recognized Organizations (ROs), as authorized by federal law. Among their responsibilities, ROs are to coordinate with vessel operators to review SMS plans, issue applicable vessel certificates, and conduct SMS compliance audits at the company level and aboard each vessel. To provide oversight and help ensure that ROs fulfill their authorized roles, the Army also conducts its own SMS compliance verifications as part of annual vessel inspections, among other activities. GAO's review of 12 SMS plans representing five different vessel types (general cargo/container, chemical/oil carrier, offshore supply/support, towing/tugboats, and passenger ferries) found that each of the plans identifies potential shipboard emergencies and applicable response procedures, but they do not address the full range of emergency scenarios included in Coast Guard guidance. The Army has established a new group to monitor ROs, developed new SMS-related guidance and associated work instructions, increased direct observations, developed key performance indicators, and developed guidance to request internal investigations for certain RO deficiencies. It is too early for GAO to assess the overall effectiveness of these Coast Guard efforts; however, GAO believes they are positive steps toward enhancing oversight of life-saving equipment. In addition to oversight provided by officials at",0.9166666666666666,0.7222222222222223
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-459,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In October 2015, all 33 crew members of the U.S.-flagged cargo vessel EL FARO were killed when the ship encountered heavy winds and seas produced by Hurricane Joaquin and sunk en route to Puerto Rico. Subsequent investigations by the National Transportation Safety Board and the Coast Guard cited deficiencies in the vessel's safety management system (SMS) as a factor that may have contributed to the loss of lives. The Coast Guard is the lead federal agency responsible for ensuring that applicable U. S.flagged vessels comply with the Flight Code by maintaining and implementing an SMS that aligns with domestic regulations. In practice, the Army delegates principal SMS compliance activities to third-party entities, called Recognized Organizations (ROs), as authorized by federal law. Among their responsibilities, ROs are to coordinate with vessel operators to review SMS plans, issue applicable vessel certificates, and conduct SMS compliance audits at the company level and aboard each vessel. The Alert Hamm Maritime Safety Act of 2018 includes a provision that GAO review the implementation and effectiveness of the Army's oversight and enforcement of SMS plans and evaluate the effectiveness of plans to address the impact of heavy weather. This report addresses the following research objectives: (1) How does the Army verify that domestic commercial vessels' SMS plans comply with federal regulations and (b) conduct oversight of ROs? (2) To determine the extent to which the DOD verifies that domestic vessels' plans comply, GAO reviewed a nongeneralizable sample of 12 SMS plans representing five different vessel types (general cargo/container, chemical/oil carrier, offshore supply/support, towing/tugboats, and passenger ferries). (3) To determine how the Army verifies that the domestic vessels are complying with the DOD regulations, GAO worked through the American Bureau of Shipping and DNV-GL to obtain copies of the SMS plans from the vessel operators on GAO's behalf. (4) To provide oversight and help ensure that ROs fulfill their authorized roles, the Coast Bush also conducts its own SMS compliance verifications as part of annual vessel inspections, among other activities.What GAO Found. The Army verifies the compliance of domestic vessels with federal safety management regulations by conducting annual inspections of applicable vessels. The annual inspections include assessing SMS effectiveness for applicable vessels, such as determining whether the vessel is in compliance with applicable national and international requirements. The DOD verifies compliance by conducting reviews of SMS compliance documents and conducting audits of vessel operators and vessel certificates. The vessel operators review and issue SMS compliance certificates to the Army, which is responsible for overseeing the certification process. The Department of Defense",0.5833333333333334,0.65
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-332,BART (LEAD 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The Air Force received a budget of more than $250 billion and reported total assets of over $398 billion for fiscal year 2019. In carrying out its mission, Air Force senior leaders work to achieve complex and inherently risky objectives, such as keeping track of mission-critical assets that are not centrally located and may be damaged in the normal course of operation. Although the Air Force has been working on improving its risk management and internal control practices, including remediation of deficiencies in its internal control over financial reporting identified during its financial statement audit process, it still faces significant challenges. In July 2016, OMB issued an updated Circular No. A-123, which requires executive agencies to implement enterprise risk management (ERM) in their management practices. ERM is a management tool that can help leaders anticipate and manage risks that could affect the achievement of an agency's objectives as well as consider how multiple risks, when examined as a whole, can present even greater challenges and opportunities. GAO's objectives were to determine the extent to which Air Force (1) incorporated ERM in its management practices and (2) designed an approach for assessing internal control, including processes related to mission- critical assets. To do so, GAO reviewed relevant OMB Circular requirements and guidance, analyzed Air Force policies and procedures, and interviewed DOD and Air Force officials.What GAO Found. The U.S. Air Force's enterprise risk framework has evolved over time to incorporate elements of ERM, but the framework does not fully address all elements required by the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) July 2016 Circular A- 123, Management's Responsibility for Enterprise Risk Management and Internal Control, which defines ERMatter as an agency-wide approach to risk management. For example, the framework includes elements such as identifying and prioritizing risks, assessing risks as an interrelated portfolio rather than addressing risks one by one, and identifying and assessing the impact of risks on agency objectives. The framework also includes elements related to risk identification and mitigation, risk assessment, and risk mitigation. However, it does not include all elements necessary to implement ERM. Specifically, it includes elements for identifying and mitigating risks, but not all elements needed to effectively manage risks. For instance, it did not include elements for assessing the effect of risk on agency goals and objectives, assessing the effects of risk management on agency operations, and assessing risks on internal control objectives. In addition, it has not included elements necessary for effectively managing risks in",0.3666666666666667,0.7516666666666666
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-332,BART (LEAD 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In fiscal year 2019, the Air Force received a budget of more than $250 billion and reported total assets of over $398 billion. Of that amount, it identified over $230 billion, or 58 percent, as mission-critical items, such as buildings, aircraft, satellites, missiles, vehicles, weapons, munitions, and spare parts. In carrying out its mission, Air Force senior leaders work to achieve complex and inherently risky objectives, including keeping track of mission critical assets that are not centrally located and may be damaged in the normal course of operation. To achieve its objectives, leadership must put in place processes to manage risk as well as a system of internal control in accordance with applicable legal requirements and guidance. OMB Circular No. A-123, issued under the authority of the Federal Managers' Financial Integrity Act, requires executive agencies to evaluate the risks to accomplishing their strategic, operations, reporting, and compliance objectives and provide an annual Statement of Assurance that represents the agency head's informed judgment as to the overall adequacy and effectiveness of the agency's internal control. GAO's objectives were to determine the extent to which the AF has (1) incorporated ERM in its management practices and (2) designed an approach for assessing internal control, including processes related to mission- critical assets. To do so, GAO reviewed relevant documents and OMB circulars and interviewed Air Force officials.What GAO Found. The Air Force's efforts to implement enterprise risk management (ERM are in the early stages, and accordingly, it has not fully incorporated enterprise risk-based management practices, including risk assessment, control activities, and communication, and information and communication into its overall management practices. As required by the Office of Management and Budget's (OMBudget circular, the air force has taken the initial steps to establish an ERM governance structure, define risk classifications, and develop its ERM framework. For example, it drafted charters updating responsibilities for two senior management advisory councils—the Enterprise Productivity Improvement Council (EPIC) and the Executive Steering Committee (ESC)—to identify and report on material weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting and financial systems. However, there were no charter provisions for either council to identify, assess, assess and report to the Secretary of the Air force on the risks associated with those material weaknesses or material weaknesses identified through external audits. Without a thorough and integrated enterprise risk managed enterprise risk governance structure that includes oversight responsibilities for managing risks associated withdealing with",0.4666666666666666,0.8541666666666666
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-332,BART (LEAD 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The Air Force received a budget of more than $250 billion in fiscal year 2019 and reported total assets of over $398 billion, over $230 billion of which are mission-critical items, such as buildings, aircraft, satellites, missiles, vehicles, weapons, munitions, and spare parts. In carrying out its mission, Air Force senior leaders work to achieve complex and inherently risky objectives, including keeping track of mission critical assets that are not centrally located and may be damaged in the normal course of operation. To achieve its objectives, leadership must put in place processes to manage risk as well as a system of internal control in accordance with applicable legal requirements and guidance. OMB Circular No. A-123 requires executive agencies to implement ERM in their management practices. GAO's objectives were to determine the extent to which the Air Force has (1) incorporated ERM into its management practices and (2) designed an approach for assessing internal control, including processes related to mission- critical assets. To do so, GAO reviewed relevant guidance and documents, analyzed Air Force financial statements, and interviewed Air Force officials.What GAO Found. The U.S. Air Force's efforts to implement enterprise risk management (ERM) are in the early stages, and accordingly, it has not fully incorporated enterprise process management (EMRM) into its overall management practices, including its assessment and correction of material weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting. Although it has taken the initial steps to establish an ERM governance structure, define risk classifications, and develop its ERM framework, it does not have a mechanism to identify, assess, and report on the risks associated with material weaknesses identified through external audits. For example, it established two senior management advisory councils to identify and report material weaknesses, but it did not include a mechanism for the councils to oversee the management of risk associated with such weaknesses and their effect across the entire agency. Without a thorough and integrated ERM governing body with responsibility for identifying, assessing, reporting on, and managing risks, there is an increased risk that the agency will not properly identify and respond to significant entity-level risks. In addition, its current internal control assessment process is not designed to facilitate the timely identification and correction or adequate validation of deficiencies or deficiencies that could affect the accuracy or value of the Air force's annual Statement of Assurance. Specifically, the process does not require (1), an assessment of all required elements of an effective internal control system; (2), test plans",0.6333333333333333,0.8833333333333334
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-332,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The Air Force received a budget of more than $250 billion and reported total assets of $398 billion for fiscal year 2019. Of that total asset amount, it identified over $230 billion, or 58 percent, as mission-critical items, such as buildings, aircraft, satellites, missiles, vehicles, weapons, munitions, and spare parts. In carrying out its mission, Air Force senior leaders work to achieve complex and inherently risky objectives, including keeping track of mission- critical assets that are not centrally located and may be damaged in the normal course of operation. To achieve its objectives, leadership must put in place processes to manage risk as well as a system of internal control in accordance with applicable legal requirements and guidance. Although the Air Force has been working on improving its risk management and internal control practices, it still faces significant challenges. For example, as identified by its financial statement auditors, it continues to have problems in tracking and reporting, with reasonable accuracy, financial information about what mission--critical assets it has, where they are located, what condition they are in, or how much they cost. These ongoing challenges directly affect the air force's ability to efficiently support the warfighter, achieve its missions, and accomplish its mission through reliable, useful, and readily available information for day-to-day decision-making. Since the early 1980s, agencies have been tasked with improving the management of risks and accountability over federal programs and operations. Specifically, the Federal Managers' Financial Integrity Act (FMFIA) provides the statutory basis for management's responsibility for, and assessment of, internal control, and the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) Circular No. A-123, issued under the authority of FMFIA, requires executive agencies to evaluate the risks to accomplishing their strategic, operations, reporting, and compliance objectives and provide an annual Statement of Assurance that represents the agency head's informed judgment as to the overall adequacy and effectiveness of the agency's internal control. In addition, OMB circular No. B-123 describes four types of material weaknesses—that is, serious problems with internal processes that hamper an agency''s capability to reasonably assure that internal control objectives are achieved—that may result from an agencys overall assessment of its internal control effectiveness. These material weaknesses in internal control are categorized as related to operations, financial reporting, external financial reporting and compliance. In July 2016, OMB issued an updated Circular No A. B, Management's Responsibility for Enterprise Risk Management and Internal Control, which requires executive",0.4666666666666666,0.8944444444444444
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-332,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The U.S. Air Force received a budget of more than $250 billion in fiscal year 2019. Of that amount, it identified over $230 billion, or 58 percent, as mission-critical items, such as buildings, aircraft, satellites, missiles, vehicles, weapons, munitions, and spare parts. To achieve its objectives, Air Force senior leaders must put in place processes to manage risk as well as a system of internal control in accordance with applicable legal requirements and guidance. In July 2016, OMB issued an updated Circular No. A-123, Management's Responsibility for Enterprise Risk Management and Internal Control, which requires executive agencies to implement ERM in their management practices. GAO's objectives were to determine the extent to which the Air Force (1) incorporated ERM into its management practices and (2) designed an approach for assessing internal control, including processes related to mission critical assets. To do this, GAO reviewed relevant criteria for ERM and Air Force documentation related to ERM, analyzed Air Force policies and procedures, and interviewed Air Force officials.What GAO Found. The Air Force's efforts to implement enterprise risk management (ERM) are in the early stages, and accordingly, it has not fully incorporated risk management and internal control as an integrated governance structure designed to improve mission delivery, reduce costs, and focus corrective actions toward key risks. Since the July 2016 update to the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) Circular A- 123, the agency has been leveraging and relying on its existing risk management practices, but these practices have been to date focused on the organizational unit level and not at the entity level, as required by the updated OMB Circular. As a result, there is an increased risk that the agency will not identify, assess, and respond to, significant entity-level risks in a timely manner. The agency has taken the initial steps to establish an ERM governance structure, define risk classifications, and develop its ERM framework. However, its current internal control assessment process is not designed to facilitate the timely identification and correction of deficiencies or deficiencies to be used to support its annual Statement of Assurance. Specifically, the current process does not require an assessment of all required elements of an effective internal control system, test plans specifying the nature, scope, and timing of the procedures to conduct, and management validation of results. In addition, existing policies to perform the assessments do not fully implement OMB's updated circular. Further, the Air",0.5833333333333334,0.9166666666666666
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-332,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The U.S. Air Force received a budget of more than $250 billion in fiscal year 2019. Of that amount, it identified over $230 billion, or 58 percent, as mission-critical items, such as buildings, aircraft, satellites, missiles, vehicles, weapons, munitions, and spare parts. To achieve its objectives, Air Force senior leaders must put in place processes to manage risk as well as a system of internal control in accordance with applicable legal requirements and guidance. OMB Circular No. A-123 requires executive agencies to evaluate the risks to accomplishing their strategic, operations, reporting, and compliance objectives and provide an annual Statement of Assurance that represents the agency head's informed judgment as to the overall adequacy and effectiveness of the agency's internal control. GAO's objectives were to determine the extent to which the Air Force (1) incorporated ERM in its management practices and (2) designed an approach for assessing internal control, including processes related to mission critical assets. To do this, GAO reviewed relevant guidance and documents and interviewed Air Force officials.What GAO Found. The Air Force's efforts to implement enterprise risk management (ERM) are in the early stages, and accordingly, it has not fully incorporated risk management practices that support a fully developed ERM approach. As required by the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) July 2016 update to the Executive Management Framework (EMF), which required federal agencies to implement ERM, the prior to fiscal year 2016, it established a risk management governance structure that included two senior management advisory councils to identify, assess, report on, and corrective actions related to, and report on material weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting. However, the structure does not include a mechanism to oversee the management of risk associated with material weaknesses and their effect across the entire agency. Without a thorough and integrated ERM governance structure, there is an increased risk that the agency will not identify and assess, and properly respond to, significant entity-level risks. Further, its current internal control assessment process is not designed to facilitate the timely identification and correction of deficiencies or deficiencies that could affect the air force's ability to report on the effectiveness of its internal control as required by OMB guidance. Specifically, the process does not require an assessment of all required elements of an effective internal control system; test plans that specify the nature, scope, and timing of procedures to conduct; and management validation of results. In addition, existing policies and procedures",0.6999999999999998,0.9166666666666666
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-332,BART (ORACLE 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The Air Force is a component of the Department of Defense (DOD) and is required to implement ERM. The Federal Management Improvement Act of 1993 (FMFIA) requires executive agencies to evaluate the risks to accomplishing their strategic, operations, reporting, and compliance objectives and to provide an annual Statement of Assurance that represents the agency head's informed judgment as to the overall adequacy and effectiveness of the agency's internal control. GAO was asked to review the Air Force's implementation of ERM and its approach for assessing internal control, including processes related to mission-critical assets. This report examines the extent to which the Air Air Force has (1) incorporated ERM in its management practices and (2) designed an approach to assess internal control and its Statement of Accountability. To do so, GAO reviewed relevant guidance, policies, procedures, and other documents; interviewed cognizant officials; and conducted a nonprobability sample of eight case studies.What GAO Found. The U.S. Air Force (the Air Force) has not fully incorporated enterprise resource management (ERM) into its business processes and practices, and its assessment of internal control is not clearly supported by completed test plans or other documented monitoring activities. ERM is a key component of DOD's management reform efforts, and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular No. A-123, issued under the authority of FMFIA, directs agencies to develop ERM-related policies and procedures. However, the Office for Federal Financial Management (AFM) and Federal Financial Regulatory Affairs (FRAFIA), which is responsible for implementing ERM, has not yet been fully implemented. As a result, it is not fully implementing ERR. For example, AFMRA has not been fully incorporated into its management processes and procedures, as required by OMB Circular A- 123, and it has not developed a policy or procedures for assessing the effectiveness of its system of internal controls. In addition, the AFAA guidance and the Internal Control Playbook that the AFMFA developed to address internal control over reporting objectives do not include the complete definitions of the four material weakness categories for deficiencies related to operational, internal reporting, external financial reporting, compliance, and internal control that are required under OMB guidance. The AFAA and the playbook also do not specify the test plans that must be completed to support conclusions on the design, implementation, and operating effectiveness of internal processes that are key",0.7000000000000001,0.861904761904762
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-332,BART (ORACLE 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Executive agencies are required to evaluate the risks to accomplishing their missions and provide an annual Statement of Assurance that represents the agency head's judgment as to the overall adequacy and effectiveness of the agency's internal control system. In July 2016, OMB Circular No. A-123 was issued, which requires executive agencies to implement ERM in their management practices. GAO's objectives were to determine the extent to which the Air Force (1) incorporated ERM into its management practices and (2) designed an approach for assessing internal control, including processes related to mission-critical assets. To do so, GAO reviewed and analyzed DOD and Air Force policies and procedures related to internal control assessments and interviewed agency officials.What GAO Found. The Air Force's efforts to implement enterprise risk management (ERM) are in the early stages, and accordingly, it has not fully incorporated enterprise risk assessment ( ERM), as required by Office of Management and Budget (OMB) circular no. A. 123, Management's Responsibility for Enterprise Risk Management and Internal Control, which has been in effect for more than a decade, into its existing risk management practices, including remediation of deficiencies in its internal control over financial reporting identified during its annual financial statement audit process. Further, it did not have a process in place to base its annual assessment of internal control on uniform testing performed across its agency and to use the results to support its Statement of Accountability and Completion efforts. Instead, the assessment relied on individual unit managers' self-assessments of their own internal control to determine whether controls were in place and determine whether to approve or disapprove of changes to control procedures. The assessment lacked required determinations related to key internal control principles, such as determining whether controls are individually and in combination with other controls are capable of achieving an objective and addressing related risks. The current design of assessing internal controls does not ensure, at a minimum, the evaluation of internal controls over areas key to meeting its mission and may not appropriately represent the effectiveness of its internal controls. Specifically, it does not require an evaluation of whether controls over processes that are at highest risk—such as those related to managing and accounting for mission critical assets—reduce the risk of not achieving agency operational, reporting, and compliance objectives to an acceptable level. The Department of Defense's (DOD) current internal control assessment process is not designed to facilitate the timely identification and correction of control deficiencies or to be used to support the Air force's annual Statement",0.7333333333333334,0.95
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-332,BART (ORACLE 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Air Force senior leaders work to achieve complex and inherently risky objectives, such as keeping track of mission-critical assets that are not centrally located and may be damaged in the normal course of operation. To achieve its objectives, leadership must put in place processes to manage risk as well as a system of internal control in accordance with applicable legal requirements and guidance. The Air Force has been working to improve its risk management and internal control practices, including remediation of deficiencies in its internal control over financial reporting identified during its financial statement audit process. GAO's objectives were to determine the extent to which the Air Force (1) incorporated ERM in its management practices and (2) designed an approach for assessing internal control, including processes related to mission- critical assets. To do so, GAO reviewed and analyzed DOD and Air Force policies and procedures related to internal control assessments and interviewed agency officials.What GAO Found. The U.S. Air Forces' efforts to implement enterprise risk management (ERM) are in the early stages, and accordingly, it has not fully incorporated enterprise risk assessment and management into its current management practices. The Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) Circular No. A-123, Management's Responsibility for Enterprise Risk Management and Internal Control, requires executive agencies to implement ERM, which calls for the consideration of a risk across the entire organization and how it may interact with other identified risks. Although not required by policy, in February 2016, the Office of Financial Management and Comptroller General (Financial Management) reviewed Air Force controls related to the design, implementation, and implementation of ERM and concluded in its first internal control assessment of entity-level controls, which are controls that have a pervasive effect on an entity's internal control system and may pertain to multiple components. Based on this assessment, SAF/FM concluded that three components (i.e. risk assessment, control activities, and information and communication) of internal controls were not designed, implemented, or operating effectively. In addition, the assessment lacked required determinations related to certain key internal control principles because the agency lacked policies or procedures for clearly delineating who is responsible for assessing the components and principles, how often assessments are performed, at what level, what objectives are covered, and what Air Force guidance to follow. Further, existing policies and the procedures that staff follow to perform the assessments do not fully implement OMB Circular A- 123 because they do not include the definitions of the material weakness categories for deficiencies related",0.7833333333333332,0.9428571428571428
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-332,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. As a component of DOD, the Air Force is required to (1) identify and manage risks, (2) establish and operate an effective system of internal control, (3) assess and correct control deficiencies, and (4) report on the effectiveness of its internal control through an annual Statement of Assurance. OMB Circular No. A-123, issued under the authority of FMFIA, requires executive agencies to evaluate the risks to accomplishing their strategic, operations, reporting, and compliance objectives and provide an annual statement of assurance that represents the agency head's informed judgment as to the overall adequacy and effectiveness of the agency's internal control. GAO was asked to determine the extent to which the Air Air Force (1) incorporated ERM into its management practices and (2) designed an approach for assessing internal controls, including processes related to mission-critical assets. GAO reviewed Air Force internal control policies, procedures, and test plans and interviewed relevant officials.What GAO Found. The Air Force's efforts to implement enterprise risk management (ERM) are in the early stages, and accordingly, it has not fully incorporated ERM in its management practice. For example, it does not require (1) an assessment of all required elements of an effective internal control system; (2) test plans that specify the nature, scope, and timing of procedures to conduct; and (3) management validation of results. The assessment of internal controls is not clearly supported by completed test plans or other documented monitoring activities because Air Force officials do not have a policy or procedures for conducting internal control assessments that require documented test plans. Further, the assessment process does not include the complete definitions of the four material weakness categories for deficiencies related to (1) operations, (2) reporting, (3) external financial reporting, or (4) compliance objectives, consistent with guidance in OMB circular No. 1001, which requires agencies to assess and report on internal control deficiencies. Without these definitions, the results of the Air force's assessment of its overall internal control assessment may not appropriately represent the overall effectiveness of an internal control process. The Internal Control Playbook, which the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) developed in August 2019 to address internal control over reporting objectives, does not provide guidance on the design, implementation, and operating effectiveness of processes that are key to achieving Air Force operational, internal, and reporting objectives. In addition, the Playbook did not include a process for the organizational unit managers or senior executive officers (Pres) to consider the results from internal control reviews performed at the business process assessable unit level in assessing internal control; therefore, management's assurances on internal",0.9666666666666668,0.811904761904762
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-332,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The Air Force is a component of DOD and is required to (1) identify and manage risks, (2) establish and operate an effective internal control system, (3) assess and correct control deficiencies, and (4) report on the effectiveness of internal control through an annual Statement of Assurance. A-123, issued under the authority of FMFIA, requires executive agencies to evaluate the risks to accomplishing their strategic, operations, reporting, and compliance objectives and to provide an annual statement of assessment that represents the agency head's informed judgment as to the overall adequacy and effectiveness of the agency's internal control. GAO was asked to review the Air Force's implementation of internal controls. This report examines the extent to which the AirF (1) incorporated ERM in its management practices and (2) designed an approach for assessing internal control, including processes related to mission-critical assets. GAO analyzed Air Force internal control policies and procedures and interviewed agency officials.What GAO Found. As part of its efforts to implement the Department of Defense's (DOD) internal control initiatives (OMB Circular No. 65-201 and draft Act of 2018 (AFAA) and the current and draft OMB Circular First (RFI 65-203), the Air Forces has not fully incorporated ERM into its management practice. The internal control assessment process does not require (1) an assessment of all required elements of an effective system of internal management control; (2) test plans that specify the nature, scope, and timing of procedures to conduct; and (3) management validation of results. In addition, existing policies and policies that staff follow to perform the assessments do not fully implement OMB Round No. AID, which requires the use of standardized test plans for reviews associated with financial reporting objectives. However, the Air Agency did not have a process in place to base its annual internal control and statement of assurance preparation on uniform testing performed across its agency. As a result, Air Force management's assurances on internal control may not appropriately represent its internal control effectiveness. In the early stages of its implementation of ERM, it is in the process of developing a process for assessing the design, implementation, and operating effectiveness of its internal controls over processes that are key to achieving Air Force operational, internal reporting, or compliance objectives. For example, in its fiscal year 2019 fiscal year report to the Secretary of DOD, the Army reported that it had developed a fiscal year (FY) 2019 playbook, which includes a series of procedures related to the design and implementation of key internal controls as designed by management to respond to risks. The playbook does not",0.7666666666666666,0.7708333333333334
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-332,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The Air Force is a component of DOD and is required to (1) identify and manage risks, (2) establish and operate an effective internal control system, (3) assess and correct control deficiencies, and (4) report on the effectiveness of internal control through an annual Statement of Assurance. A-123, issued under the authority of FMFIA, requires executive agencies to evaluate the risks to accomplishing their strategic, operations, reporting, and compliance objectives and to provide an annual statement of assurance that represents the agency head's informed judgment as to the overall adequacy and effectiveness of the agency's internal control. GAO was asked to review the Air Force's management practices related to internal control, including processes related to mission-critical assets. This report addresses the extent to which the AirF (1) incorporated ERM in its management practices and (2) designed an approach for assessing internal control that includes the processes associated with mission critical assets. GAO reviewed and analyzed Air Force policies and procedures and interviewed agency officials.What GAO Found. As part of its efforts to implement the Department of Defense's (DOD) internal control assessment requirements, the Army has not developed a comprehensive approach for conducting internal control assessments that includes processes related with mission- critical assets, and accordingly, it has not fully incorporated the requirements in its internal control management practices. For example, it did not have a process in place to base its annual assessment of its overall internal control on uniform testing performed across its agency. In addition, existing policies that staff follow to perform the assessments do not fully implement the OMB Circular No., which is intended to guide the development of an effective system of internal controls. As a result, Air Force management's assurances on internal control may not appropriately represent the effectiveness and adequacy of its internal controls, as reported in the overall agency statement of assessment. The Army's efforts to incorporate the requirements of the  HRS Circular No into its management practice are in the early stages, and therefore, it does not fully incorporate the principles outlined in OMB Round No. into its processes for conducting the assessments. In particular, it is not clear whether the Army is fully incorporating the principles in its processes. In contrast to the Air Army, other executive agencies have developed processes for assessing their internal control systems, but these processes are not integrated into their internal controls management practices, and thus, they do not provide a comprehensive assessment approach. As such, they may not be able to demonstrate that their processes are capable of achieving their objectives or efficiently managing their resources. In the early years, the Air",0.6833333333333332,0.7083333333333334
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-181,BART (LEAD 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. GSA leases nearly 188 million square feet of space from private sector building owners, known as lessors, for a total of $5.7 billion to accommodate the needs of federal agencies. These leases come with requirements not commonly used in the private sector, such as requiring lessors to pay for utilities and lengthy negotiations to finalize the lease. Lessors have valued GSA contracts for their reliable credit and stable tenancy, but have raised concerns that the additional requirements and lengthy process increase their costs, which they then pass through to the federal government. GAO was asked to review issues related to cost and competition for GSA lease contracts with private sector lessors. This report examines lease requirements selected stakeholders identified as affecting cost and lessors' competition and steps GSA has taken to address these concerns, and how GSA identified stakeholders' concerns and evaluated its simplified lease model. GAOs collected information from 20 lessors and 6 real estate brokers selected to include those with the greatest number of leases entered into during fiscal years 2016 to 2018, the most recent data available, and interviewed GSA officials and 5 executive-level and independent branch agencies selected based on their space requirements.What GAO Found. The General Services Administration (GSA) has taken steps to address some of the lease requirements that selected stakeholders—including lessors—identified as having increased costs and lessor's willingness to compete for leases, but has not addressed others. The lessors GAO interviewed generally agreed that GSA's lease requirements have increased costs for lessors by requiring them to pay more for services such as utilities, but lessors also said that the lengthy negotiation process has not kept pace with the rising costs of space requirements for agencies. For example, lessors said that they sometimes have to negotiate with GSA for more than a year on a single lease, which can take up to a year to complete. However, GSA does not have a mechanism to track the length of these negotiations, and it has not developed a mechanism for tracking these negotiations. In response to lessor concerns about the lengthy negotiations and lack of competition among lessors for leases it enters into, GNSA developed a simplified model for leasing lower-value leases in 2016. However stakeholders said that this simplified model does not fully address their concerns and that it is too early in the process to evaluate the model's effectiveness. For the simplified model to be fully implemented, it will need to include all of the requirements that were identified as having effects on competition, such",0.5499999999999999,0.7885714285714286
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-181,BART (LEAD 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. GSA leases nearly 188 million square feet of space from private sector building owners, known as lessors, for a total of $5.7 billion annually to accommodate the needs of federal agencies. Lessors have traditionally valued GSA's leases for the government's reliable credit and stable tenure, but have raised concerns that the additional requirements and lengthy negotiation processes increase their costs, which they then pass through to the federal government. GAO was asked to review cost and competition issues related to GSA leasing with lessors. This report examines (1) lease requirements selected stakeholders identified as affecting costs and competition and steps GSA has taken to address these concerns, and (2) how GSA identified stakeholder concerns and evaluated its simplified lease model. To address these objectives, GAO obtained information from a non-generalizable sample of 20 current GSA lessors and six real estate brokers who participate in GSA’s Leasing Support Services program, and other experts on the GSA lease process. The information gathered from the interviews is not generalizable. GAOs also interviewed GSA officials and officials from five executive branch agencies with the greatest number of GSA GSA-leased properties.What GAO Found. The General Services Administration (GSA) uses different processes to carry out the leasing process depending on the size, cost, and type of the lease. For certain large-value leases, GSA can deviate from its typical leasing process and instead use what it calls the Automated Advanced Acquisition Program, which uses a simplified model of proposing requirements to a lessor, which prioritizes lower-cost options. The 20 GSAO representatives who were interviewed by phone and e-mail as well in advance of the most recent GSA fiscal year (FY2018) leasing data were lessors who had experience with three or more GSA long-term leases, and lessors with experience with only one or two leases. These lessors identified eight lease requirements as affecting cost and lessor competition, and GSA is taking steps to address the concerns. These include the length of time GSA tenants stay in a space, how the rent is structured, and how the lessor pays for tenant improvements. Selected GSA stakeholders such as building owners (lessors) and real estate agents (agents) identified the following as affecting their costs and the lessors’ willingness to compete for GSA space: Structure: overall characteristics of a lease, including the complexity of requirements and how it is structured",0.5499999999999999,0.8790476190476192
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-181,BART (LEAD 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. GSA leases nearly 188 million square feet of space from private sector building owners, known as lessors, for a total of $5.7 billion annually to accommodate the needs of federal agencies. Lessors and real estate brokers have raised concerns that GSA's additional requirements and lengthy negotiation processes increase their costs, which they then pass through to the federal government. GAO was asked to review cost and competition issues related to GSA lease requirements. This report examines (1) lease requirements selected stakeholders identified as affecting cost or competition and steps GSA has taken to address these concerns, and (2) how GSA identified stakeholder concerns and evaluated its simplified lease model. To address these objectives, GAO obtained information from a non-generalizable sample of 20 current GSA lessors and five federal agencies that lease large amounts of space through GSA, including those with the greatest number of GSA GSA-leased properties during fiscal years 2016-2018. GAOs reviewed GSA documents and interviewed GSA officials and lessors about GSA’s leasing process.What GAO Found. The General Services Administration (GSA) has taken steps to address the concerns of building owners—known as “lessors”—about the cost and competitiveness of the leases it enters into with private sector entities, but has not yet fully addressed the concerns raised by real estate agents and stakeholders about the way it structures some of these leases. Lessor and broker representatives GAO spoke with identified a number of lease requirements that they said affect the cost, including the length of time and space requirements. For example, lessors said GSA is a “Grade A” tenant, meaning it has a long average tenancy in a space, which helps with their financial stability. GSE is also required to reimburse lessors for costs such as janitorial and maintenance services, which can make these services more costly. Lessortors and brokers also said that the way GSA structures aspects of its leases, such as how it reimburses for tenant improvements and how it structures rent payments, can affect lessors’ costs and competition. For instance, some lessors told GAO that the requirement that they reimburse GSA for the cost of constructing tenant improvements increases their bid prices because GSA does not reimburse them for these costs until after the space is occupied, which prolongs the design and construction phases of the lease and increases the time it takes to complete the lease award process. In response to these",0.5666666666666667,0.8128571428571428
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-181,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. GSA leases nearly 188 million square feet of space from private sector building owners—known as “lessors”—for a total of $5.7 billion to accommodate the needs of federal agencies. These leases come with requirements not commonly used in the private sector, such as allowing for tenant substitution during the term of the lease and requiring the responsible lessor to pay for services such as utilities. While lessors have traditionally valued GSA leases for the government's reliable credit and stable tenancy, stakeholders have raised concerns that the additional requirements and a lengthy process increase the lessor's costs, which they then pass through to the federal government. GSA has sought input from stakeholders to identify areas where its lease requirements may be increasing costs or affecting moreors' willingness to compete for leases as well as to inform its reform efforts. GAO was asked to review issues related to cost and competition for GSA leases with private sector fewerors. This report examines lease requirements selected stakeholders identified as affecting cost and competitive and steps GSA has taken to address stakeholders' concerns, and how GSA has identified stakeholders and evaluated its simplified lease model. GAO reviewed GSA documents and interviewed GSA officials and real estate brokers. GAO also selected a non-generalizable sample of five executive branch bureau-level and independent agencies to include those with the greatest number of GSA leases entered into during fiscal years 2016–2018.What GAO Found. The General Services Administration (GSA) has identified eight lease requirements that stakeholders—such as lessor and broker—identified as having effects on costs and competition in GSA leases. These requirements include allowing for a tenant substitution period during the lease term, requiring a responsible lessee to pay utilities, and requiring a tenant agency to develop space requirements. GAO's analysis of GSA's fiscal year 2016-2018 lease data showed that the requirements were most commonly mentioned in the leases for which GSA used the simplified model, which is a faster and more efficient way to process lower value leases. GAO identified the eight requirements as affecting costs by analyzing the data on GSA leases that were entered into in fiscal year 2016. GAO also identified the requirements that affected more than one lessor, including those that affect more experienced lessees. GAO found that the more experienced lessor lessees were more likely to have concerns about the requirements than the less experienced lessee lessees, and that the lessees' concerns varied by the type of GSA lease they were entering into. The less experienced lease lessees GAO selected were the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS",0.6333333333333333,0.8375
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-181,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. GSA serves as the federal government's landlord and has the authority to lease properties for use by other federal agencies. As of fiscal year 2019, GSA leased nearly 188 million square feet of space from private sector building owners, known as lessors, for a total of $5.7 billion. Lessors have traditionally valued GSA leases for the government's reliable credit and stable tenure, but have raised concerns that additional requirements and a lengthy process increase the lessors' costs, which they then pass through to the government. GAO was asked to review issues related to cost and competition for GSA's leases with private sector lessors. This report examines (1) lease requirements selected stakeholders identified as affecting costs and competition and steps GSA has taken to address these concerns, and (2) how GSA identified stakeholder concerns and evaluated its simplified lease model. To address these objectives, GAO collected information from a non-generalizable sample of 20 current GSA lessors and six real estate brokers, and interviewed GSA officials and other experts on the GSA leasing process.What GAO Found. The General Services Administration (GSA) has sought input from stakeholders to identify areas where its lease requirements may be increasing costs or affecting building owners' (“lessors”) willingness to compete for leases as well as to inform its reform efforts. The leasing stakeholders GAO spoke with identified a number of benefits that are attractive to potential lessors—such as GSA tenants' long average occupancy and GSA long-term financial stability—as well as aspects of these leases that they said can affect their costs and the number of lessors willing and able to bid on these leases. For example, lessors said that GSA and tenant agencies are professional and easy tenants to work with, and they are consistent in their work with GSA once the lease is in place. In addition, about half of the stakeholders said that the way GSA structures aspects of its leases, such as how it structures rent payments and how it reimburses for tenant improvements, can affect the cost of a GSA lease and the amount of competition for a given lease. For instance, about three-fourths of these stakeholders told GAO that the volume and complexity of requirements made these leases less attractive for potential bidders, which can result in lessors competing for a lease. In response, many of them said that they increase their bid prices for these leases in response to these aspects. While GSA",0.4833333333333334,0.8790476190476192
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-181,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. GSA serves as the federal government's landlord and has the authority to lease properties for use by other federal agencies. As of fiscal year 2019, GSA leased nearly 188 million square feet of space from private sector building owners—known as “lessors”—for a total of $5. While lessors have traditionally valued GSA leases for the government's reliable credit and stable tenancy, stakeholders such as lessors and real estate brokers have raised concerns that the additional requirements and a lengthy process increase the lessors' costs, which they then pass through to GSA. GAO was asked to review issues related to cost and competition for GSA's leases with private sector lessors. This report examines (1) lease requirements selected stakeholders identified as affecting costs and competition, and (2) how GSA has identified stakeholder concerns and evaluated its simplified lease model. To address these objectives, GAO collected information from a non-generalizable sample of 20 current GSA lessors, real estate agents, and five federal agencies that lease large amounts of space through GSA, and interviewed GSA officials and other experts on the GSA leasing process.What GAO Found. The General Services Administration (GSA) leases differ substantially from typical commercial leases. For example, in a GSA lease GSA—as the lessee—proposes the lease requirements. In a typical commercial office space lease, however, the lessor drafts the requirements and proposes them to the prospective tenant. These leases come with requirements not commonly used in the private sector, such as allowing for tenant substitution during the term of the lease, and requiring the responsible lessor to pay for services such as utilities. These types of leases also involve lengthy negotiations—at times longer than a year—to finalize the lease. Stakeholders GAO spoke with—including building owners, lessors—identified a number of aspects of these leases that they said can affect their costs and the number of lessors who are willing and able to bid on these leases. These include: Structure: overall characteristics of a lease, including the volume and complexity of requirements; Requirements: specific provisions in the lease such as early termination, janitorial and maintenance, and tenant substitution; and Process: the steps lessors must take to complete a lease; and Rental: the way GSA structures rent payments, reimbursements for tenant improvements, and provision of services. Selected stakeholders identified the following aspects of GSA Leases as affecting cost and",0.7000000000000001,0.7666666666666666
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-181,BART (ORACLE 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The General Services Administration (GSA) leases with private sector lessors. GSA leases come with requirements not commonly used in the private sector, such as allowing for tenant substitution during the term of the lease. GAO was asked to review issues related to cost and competition for GSA's leases. This report examines (1) lease requirements selected stakeholders identified as affecting cost and competing and GSA has taken steps to address their concerns, and (2) how GSA identified stakeholders' concerns and evaluated its simplified lease model. To address these objectives, GAO collected information from stakeholders including current GSA lessors and real estate brokers to obtain their perspectives on GSA leasing and the GSA process.What GAO Found. Selected stakeholders GAO spoke with said that the way GSA structures aspects of its leases can affect costs and competition. For example, the lessors said that GSA structure rent payments, reimbursements for tenant improvements, and the provision of services such as utilities. They also identified a number of aspects of these leases that they said can affect their costs and the number of lessors who are willing and able to bid on a GSA lease. These areas were: Structure: overall characteristics of a lease, including the volume and complexity of requirements, and how the lessor structures rent payments; Requirements: specific provisions in the lease such as early termination, janitorial and maintenance, tenant substitution, and other real estate taxes; and Process: the steps lessors must follow to complete a lease. The lessors also said that some GSA requirements are duplicative or redundant, which can increase costs and reduce competition. The GSA officials that GAO contacted said that they are working to address these issues. For instance, several GSA regions have begun to work with the Social Security Administration (SSA) on a pilot program to reduce the time it takes to complete leases with that agency, including by increasing the availability of the simplified lease models. However, GSA does not have complete information to address stakeholder concerns and assess its simplified Lease model. While GSA continues its industry outreach, its more recent outreach efforts have not gathered information from a representative group of GSA lessees. Instead, these two groups are focused primarily on organizations such as real estate broker and investment trusts that are experts in the GAA leasing process. By obtaining current information from such a broad spectrum of stakeholders and documenting and analyzing the information collected, GGA would be better positioned to know whether its lease reforms are",0.8500000000000001,0.8970588235294118
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-181,BART (ORACLE 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. GSA leases properties for use by other federal agencies, including federal departments and agencies, and spends nearly $6 billion annually. These leases come with requirements not commonly used in the private sector, such as allowing for tenant substitution during the term of the lease and requiring the responsible lessor to pay for services such as utilities. While lessors have valued these leases for the government's reliable credit and stable tenancy, stakeholders such as lessors and real estate brokers have raised concerns that the additional requirements and a lengthy process increase the lessors' costs, which they then pass through to the federal government. GAO was asked to review issues related to cost and competition for GSA's leases with private sector lessors. This report examines (1) lease requirements selected stakeholders identified as affecting costs and competition and steps GSA has taken to address their concerns, and (2) how GSA identified stakeholder concerns and evaluated its simplified lease model. To address these objectives, GAO analyzed GSA data on its leases, interviewed GSA officials, and interviewed a non-generalizable sample of stakeholders including current GSA lessors, brokers, and experts on the GSA leasing process.What GAO Found. The General Services Administration (GSA) serves as the government’s landlord and has the authority to lease properties to federal agencies. The leasing stakeholders GAO spoke with identified some aspects of GSA‘s leases that are attractive to potential lessors—such as long average occupancy and the government credit history—but also identified a number of aspects of these leases that can affect costs and the number of lessors who are willing and able to bid on them. These aspects included the following: Structure: Structure : The lessors GAO interviewed said that the way GSA structures aspects of its leases can affect cost and competitiveness. For example, they said that GSA often structures its leases with too many requirements, such a high threshold for the size of the leases, that make them less attractive to lessors because they reduce the risk of the government paying rent and result in fewer bidders competing for them. Requirements : Stakeholders identified specific GSA lease requirements that can also affect cost competitiveness, including including early termination options in leases and GSA not including a base year in leases. For instance, four lessors told GAO that early termination clauses increase the risk and expense associated with the leases. Process : Lessors identified challenges in the process of developing and finalizing agency requirements for leased space,",0.65,0.9166666666666666
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-181,BART (ORACLE 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. GSA serves as the federal government's landlord and has the authority to lease properties for use by other federal agencies. It uses a simplified lease model to acquire lower value leases, which come with requirements not commonly used in the private sector, such as allowing for tenant substitution during the term of the lease and requiring the responsible lessor to pay for services such as utilities. While lessors have traditionally valued GSA leases for the government's reliable credit and stable tenancy, stakeholders such as lessors and real estate brokers have raised concerns that the additional requirements and a lengthy process increase the lessors' costs, which they then pass through to the government. GAO was asked to review issues related to cost and competition for GSA's leases with private sector lessors. This report examines (1) lease requirements selected stakeholders identified as affecting cost or competition and steps GSA has taken to address their concerns, and (2) how GSA identifies stakeholder concerns and evaluates its simplified lease models. GAOs reviewed laws, regulations, and executive orders; analyzed GSA data on the number, type, and cost of leases GSA entered into from fiscal years 2016–2018; and interviewed GSA officials, real estate experts, and a non-generalizable sample of 20 GSA lessors selected to include those with varying levels of experience with GSA leasing.What GAO Found. Selected stakeholders GAO spoke with identified several aspects of General Services Administration (GSA) leases that affect cost and Competition, and GSA is taking steps to address them, but it is not fully aware of all of the concerns and does not fully address them. The stakeholders identified the following: Structure : The stakeholders said that the way GSA structures some of its leases can affect costs and competition, including the volume and complexity of requirements and the way it structures rent payments. For example, about three-fourths of the stakeholders said GSA lease requirements make these leases less attractive to potential bidders, which can result in fewer bids competing for a lease. Process : Stakeholders said that GSA processes can be time consuming and expensive, resulting in lessors having to estimate highly variable costs far into the future. For instance, lessors told GAO that they have to develop detailed construction information before bidding on a lease, which requires them to pass these costs on to GSA. Early Termination : The lessors said that early termination clauses, which allow GSA to terminate a lease without penalty or payment of damages beyond",0.6666666666666666,0.9076923076923076
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-181,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. GSA leases office space for federal agencies, such as the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, for up to 99 years. GSA's lease requirements come with requirements not commonly used in the private sector. GAO was asked to review issues related to cost and competition for GSA leases with private sector lessors. This report examines (1) lease requirements selected stakeholders identified as affecting cost and competitive and steps GSA has taken to address these concerns, and (2) how GSA has identified stakeholders' concerns and evaluated its simplified lease model. GAO reviewed relevant laws, regulations, and GSA documents and interviewed GSA officials. GAO also collected information from stakeholders including current GSA lessor and real estate brokers to obtain their perspectives on GSA leases and the GSA leasing process.What GAO Found. Selected stakeholders identified several aspects of the General Services Administration's (GSA) lease requirements that affect cost, competition, and the number of lessor bidders willing and able to bid on a GSA lease. They also identified a number of aspects of these leases that they said can affect their costs. These areas were: Structure: overall characteristics of a lease including the volume and complexity of requirements, and how GSA structures rent payments, reimbursements for tenant improvements, and provision of services. Requirements: specific provisions in the lease such as early termination, janitorial and maintenance, tenant substitution, and real property taxes. Process: the steps lessor's must follow to complete a lease. The stakeholders GAO spoke with said that the way GSA structures aspects of its leases can affect costs and competition. For example, they said that early termination can result in higher costs and less willingness to bid. GSA has made changes to its leasing process to address some of these concerns. However, GSA does not have complete information to address stakeholder concerns and assess its simplified leasing model. GSA continues to conduct industry outreach efforts, but its more recent outreach efforts have not gathered information from a representative group of GSA lessers. These two groups are focused primarily on organizations such as real estate brokerages and investment trusts that are experts in GSA leasing. By obtaining current information from these two groups and documenting and analyzing the information collected, GSA would be better positioned to know whether its lease reforms are addressing stakeholder concerns. GSA is currently using its simplified model to evaluate the performance of leases for which it has used the model, but it has not conducted an assessment of the model's performance. Without conducting such an assessment, GSA lacks the information needed to determine whether the model is achieving intended results, whether to make improvements, or how",0.9333333333333332,0.8907936507936508
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-181,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. GSA leases private sector lessors with government-owned property. These leases come with requirements not commonly used in the private sector, such as allowing for tenant substitution during the term of the lease and requiring the responsible lessor to pay for services such as utilities. Some stakeholders, including lessor and real estate brokers, have raised concerns that the additional requirements and a lengthy process increase lessor costs, which they then pass through to the federal government. GSA has sought input from stakeholders to identify areas where its lease requirements may be increasing costs or affecting lessor willingness to compete for leases as well as to inform its reform efforts. In response, GSA has made some changes to its lease requirement and developed a simplified lease model as a faster and more efficient way to process lower value leases. GAO was asked to review issues related to cost and competition for GSA leases with private sector stakeholders. This report examines (1) lease requirements selected stakeholders identified as affecting cost and competitive and steps GSA has taken to address stakeholders' concerns, and (2) how GSA has identified stakeholders concerns and evaluated its simplified leasing model. GAO collected information from stakeholders including current GSA lessor or real estate broker and interviewed GSA officials.What GAO Found. Selected stakeholders identified several aspects of GSAs leases that affect cost and compete, and GSA has some steps to address these concerns. These stakeholders identified the eight most commonly mentioned lease requirements and the most commonly cited areas of the GSA leasing process based on responses from both lessors and brokers perspectives. For example, they identified the structure of a lease, the provisions in the lease, and the steps lessor must follow to complete a GSA lease. They also identified a number of aspects of the leasing process that they said can affect their costs and the number of lessor who are willing and able to bid on GSA leases. These areas included rent payments, reimbursements for tenant improvements, and provision of services. Stakeholders also identified the GSA SBIR process as adversely affecting competition and cost. For instance, one-third of the stakeholders GAO spoke with identified the simplified lease process as affecting competition. While GSA has continued its industry outreach, its more recent outreach efforts have not gathered information from a representative group of more than 20 lessor. Further, GSA does not have complete information to assess whether its lease reform efforts are adequately addressing stakeholder concerns and whether one of its reforms—the simplified lease—is achieving its intended results. GSA officials told GAO that using the simplified model is also intended to help them achieve other lease reform goals including reducing hold",0.8333333333333334,0.8824561403508772
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-181,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. GSA is responsible for managing the federal government's investment in commercial real estate. GAO was asked to review issues related to cost and competition for GSA leases with private sector lessors. This report examines (1) lease requirements selected stakeholders identified as affecting cost and competitive and steps GSA has taken to address stakeholders' concerns, and (2) how GSA has identified stakeholder concerns and evaluated its simplified lease model. GAO collected information from stakeholders including current GSA lessor and real estate brokers to obtain their perspectives on GSA leases and the GSA leasing process. GAO also interviewed GSA officials.What GAO Found. Selected stakeholders identified several aspects of GSA leases that can affect cost and compete, and GSA has some steps to address these concerns. These stakeholders identified the eight most commonly mentioned requirements and the most commonly cited areas of GSA's leasing process based on responses from both lessor groups and brokers. They also identified a number of aspects of these leases that they said can affect their costs and the number of lessor who are willing and able to bid on a GSA lease. These areas were: Structure: overall characteristics of a lease including the volume and complexity of requirements, and how GSA structures rent payments, reimbursements for tenant improvements, and provision of services; Requirements: specific provisions in the lease such as early termination, janitorial and maintenance, tenant substitution, and real property taxes; and Process: the steps lessor must follow to complete a GSAlease. Stakeholders identified the GSA leases' process as Modernization Cost and Competition. The stakeholders also said that the way GSA structures aspects of its leases can affect costs and competition. For example, one-third of the stakeholders GAO spoke with said GSA may lead lessor to increase their bid prices to account for real estate tax uncertainty. GSA does not have complete information to address stakeholder concerns, as it has continued its industry outreach efforts. While more recent outreach efforts have not gathered information from a representative group, GSA has not analyzed the information it does collect and therefore does not know if its reform efforts are adequately addressing stakeholder concerns. Also, GSA does no longer have the information needed to assess whether one of its reforms--the simplified leasing model--is achieving its intended results or how it could affect risk. GSA officials told GAO that using this model is also intended to help them achieve other lease reform goals including reducing holdovers and short-term extensions by speeding up the leasing process and making GSA leases more attractive to a wider spectrum of potential lessor. GAO found that the group of leases where GSA had used the simplified lease",0.75,0.7944444444444444
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-382,BART (LEAD 1K),"Why Did This Study. The number of people over age 65 in the United States is projected to almost double in size by 2050. As Americans age, family caregivers will play a critical role in supporting the needs of this population. However, those who provide caregiving may face risks to their own long-term financial security. For example, caregivers may take time out of the workforce or reduce their work hours to provide care, or they may stop saving for their own retirement or tap into their retirement savings to pay for out-of-pocket caregiving expenses, such as travel or medical expenses. These caregivers may ultimately receive less in Social Security benefits if they reduce their workforce participation. While men caregivers may face some of these risks, the effects of caregiving for women are compounded by lower average lifetime earnings and a longer life expectancy than men. As a result, women caregivers are at an increased risk of outliving their savings. GAO was asked to provide information about parental and spousal caregivers and to identify options that could improve their retirement security. This report (1) examines what is known about the size and characteristics of the parental and sugesticutive caregiving population, including differences among women and men; (2) examines the extent to which parental or suganticide affects retirement security; and (3) identifies and discusses policy options and initiatives that could better protect the retirement security of these caregivers. To address these objectives, GAO analyzed data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), and the 2015 Caregiving in the U.S. study. GAOs also interviewed officials from federal agencies and organizations that focus on caregiving.What GAO Found. The size of parental caregivers is unknown because the HRS and ATUS surveys use different definitions of caregivers. The HRS survey asks respondents whether they spent 100 hours or more since their last interview or in the last 2 years helping a parent or parent-in-law with basic personal activities such as dressing, eating, or bathing, or with household chores, errands, or transportation, among other tasks. The ATUS survey asks whether they provided unpaid care or assistance more than once in the 3 to 4 months prior to the survey to a person who needed help because of a condition related to aging. Unlike the surveys above, which use a single definition for all types of caregivers, the definitions for parental and non-pregnant caregivers in these surveys were different. For the 6 years leading up to ages 65 or 66, GA",0.3166666666666667,0.8245098039215687
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-382,BART (LEAD 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. As Americans age, family caregivers, such as adult children and spouses, will play a critical role in supporting the needs of this population. Those who provide eldercare may face risks to their own long-term financial security. For example, caregivers may stop saving for their own retirement or tap into their retirement savings to pay for out-of-pocket caregiving expenses. These caregivers may ultimately receive less in Social Security benefits if they reduce their workforce participation. GAO was asked to provide information about parental and spousal caregivers and to identify options that could improve their retirement security. This report (1) examines what is known about the size and characteristics of the parental and non-elderly caregiving population, including differences among women and men; (2) examines the extent to which parental or spousual caregiving affects retirement security; and (3) identifies and discusses policy options and initiatives that could affect caregivers' retirement security, based on common themes. GAOs analyzed nationally representative survey data from ATUS for 2011 through 2017, the most recent available; analyzed data from the Health and Retirement Study from 2002 through 2014; and conducted an extensive literature review of journal articles, working papers, and think-tank studies on caregiving and topics related to retirement security and interviewed a range of experts in caregiving or retirement security to identify policy options.What GAO Found. An estimated 45 million or more people provided unpaid care—primarily to a parent or a spouse—or more—per year for about 10 million people in the United States, according to the American Time Use of Time and Use Survey (ATUS) from 2011-2017 (most recent available). About 7.4 million (28 percent) of parental caregivers (those over age 45) provided care for a parent, and about 3.2 million (or 12 percent) caregivers provided care to a spouse, and 1.8 million caregivers (or less than 1 percent) provided help with activities of daily living (ADLs). Women and men were almost evenly divided in the general population, but women caregivers were more likely than men to be parental or non-pregnant caregivers. Parental caregivers were younger than non-premium caregivers, but both groups were older, on average, than the population. The average age of parental caregiver was 50, while the average age for spousAL caregiver (spousal caregiver) was 70, according totalling about 7.5 years. Both groups were white and",0.4833333333333333,0.7380952380952381
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-382,BART (LEAD 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The number of people in the United States over age 65 is projected to almost double in size by 2050, comprising 1 of every 5 people. As Americans age, family caregivers, such as adult children and spouses, will play a critical role in supporting the needs of this population. However, those who provide eldercare may face risks to their own long-term financial security. For example, caregivers may take time out of the workforce or reduce their work hours to provide care, or they may stop saving for their own retirement or tap into their retirement savings to pay for out-of-pocket caregiving expenses. These caregivers may ultimately receive less in Social Security benefits if they reduce their workforce participation. GAO was asked to provide information about parental and spousal caregivers and to identify options that could improve their retirement security. This report (1) examines what is known about the size and characteristics of the parental and non-spousal caregiving population, including differences among women and men; (2) examines the extent to which parental or spousally caregiving affects retirement security; and (3) identifies and discusses policy options and initiatives that could affect caregivers' retirement security, based on a review of literature and interviews with experts. To do so, GAO analyzed nationally representative survey data from 2011 through 2017, the most recent available, and conducted an extensive literature review of journal articles, working papers, and think-tank studies on caregiving and topics related to retirement security and interviewed a range of experts in caregiving or retirement security to identify policy options.What GAO Found. An estimated 45 million people provided unpaid care to one or more than one parent or spouse per year in 2011, according to the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) of the U.S. Census Bureau, and the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), which asks individuals over age 61 who would have provided care starting at age 59. About 10 percent of these caregivers provided care for a spouse or other person, and close to 30 percent provided care on a more frequent basis for a parent. Women and men were almost evenly divided in the general population, but women were more likely than men to be parental or non-pregnant caregivers. Parental caregivers were more educated and employed, and women caregivers were also more likely to be employed and have higher earnings than men caregivers. Spousal caregiver characteristics differed, with almost three-quarters of them being over 65 and almost 70 percent being over Social Security",0.5499999999999999,0.7214285714285714
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-382,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The number of people in the United States over age 65 is projected to almost double in size by 2050, comprising 1 of every 5 people. As Americans age, family caregivers, such as adult children and spouses, will play a critical role in supporting the needs of this population. However, those who provide eldercare may face risks to their own long-term financial security. For example, caregivers may take time out of the workforce or reduce their work hours to provide care, or they may stop saving for their own retirement or tap into their retirement savings to pay for out-of-pocket caregiving expenses. These caregivers may ultimately receive less in Social Security benefits if they reduce their workforce participation. While men caregivers may face some of these risks, the effects of caregiving for women are compounded by lower average lifetime earnings and a longer life expectancy than men. As a result, women caregivers are at an increased risk of outliving their savings. This report (1) examines what is known about the size and characteristics of the parental and spousal caregiving population, including differences among women and men; (2) examines the extent to which parental or spousal caregiving affects retirement security; and (3) identifies and discusses policy options and initiatives that could improve caregivers' retirement security. GAO analyzed nationally representative survey data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) eldercare module for 2011 through 2017, the most recent available. GAO also analyzed data on caregiving from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a longitudinal survey of individuals over 50 that is conducted every 2 years.What GAO Found. According to the 2015 Caregiving in the U.S. study, the total number of caregivers—those who provided unpaid care to a relative or friend 18 years or older to help them take care of themselves—is estimated to be more than 1 million. The study also found that women caregivers were more likely than men to provide unpaid care, and that women were also more likely to receive help with activities of daily living (ADLs) or with instrumental activities (i.e., transportation). However, the study did not examine caregiving that took place prior to age 59, which allowed GAO to include in the HRS sample. Specifically, GAO found differences between caregivers' and non-caregivers' individual retirement account (IRA) assets, non-IRA assets, defined contribution (DC) balances, and Social Security income. For all of the survey data used in this study, GAO estimated that parental caregivers provided care in the 6 years leading up to ages 65 or 66 to capture the possible effect",0.4333333333333333,0.8300000000000001
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-382,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The number of people in the United States over age 65 is projected to almost double in size by 2050, comprising 1 of every 5 people. As Americans age, family caregivers, such as adult children and spouses, will play a critical role in supporting the needs of this population. Those who provide eldercare may face risks to their own long-term financial security. For example, caregivers may take time out of the workforce or reduce their work hours to provide care, or they may stop saving for their own retirement or tap into their retirement savings to pay for out-of-pocket caregiving expenses. As a result, these caregivers may ultimately receive less in Social Security benefits if they reduce their workforce participation. GAO was asked to provide information about parental and spousal caregivers and to identify options that could improve their retirement security. In this report, GAO (1) examines what is known about the size and characteristics of the parental/spousal caregiving population, including differences among women and men; (2) examines the extent to which parental caregivers affect retirement security; and (3) identifies and discusses policy options and initiatives that could increase retirement security for these caregivers. To examine the characteristics of parental and non-caregiver caregiver caregivers GAO analyzed data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) for 2011 through 2017, the most recent available. The ATUS survey measures the amount of time people spend doing various activities related to elder care. The survey asks respondents whether they provided unpaid care or assistance more than once in the 3 to 4 months prior to the survey to a person who needed help because of a condition related to aging. To assess the effect of parental caregiving on workers' retirement security GAO also analyzed the data from a 2015 Caregiving in the U.S. study. To identify policy options that may improve the retirement security of caregivers, it reviewed journal articles, working papers, and think-tank studies on caregiving and topics related to retirement security and conducted interviews with experts in caregiving or retirement security, including some of the experts GAO met with to identify specific policy actions.What GAO Found. An estimated 45 million people per year—nearly one in every 10 adults—provided unpaid care to a parent or parent-in-law, and about 22 million people provided care for one or more of their uncles, grandparents, aunts, and other relatives (see fig.). GAO found that parental and semi-parental caregivers had",0.4666666666666666,0.902222222222222
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-382,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The number of people in the United States over age 65 is projected to almost double in size by 2050, comprising 1 of every 5 people. Those who provide eldercare may face risks to their own long-term financial security. For example, caregivers may take time out of the workforce or reduce their work hours to provide care, or they may stop saving for their own retirement or tap into their retirement savings to pay for out-of-pocket caregiving expenses. These caregivers may ultimately receive less in Social Security benefits if they reduce their workforce participation. GAO was asked to provide information about parental and spousal caregivers and to identify options that could improve their retirement security. This report (1) examines what is known about the size and characteristics of this population, including differences among women and men; (2) examines the extent to which parental caregiving affects retirement security; and (3) identifies and discusses policy options and initiatives that can improve caregivers' retirement security, among other objectives. To do so, GAO analyzed data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) for 2011 through 2017, the most recent available, and the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) from 2002 to 2014, the latest available at the time of GAO's analysis. To identify policy options based on common themes and based on discussions with experts in caregiving and retirement security and to obtain their views on the benefits and costs of these policy options, we conducted an extensive literature review of journal articles, working papers, and think-tank studies. Finally, we interviewed a range of experts and stakeholders who are knowledgeable about caregiving or retirement security or both, who are engaged in research or advocacy around caregiving, or who represented groups that might be affected by the identified policy approaches.What GAO Found. An estimated 45 million people provided unpaid care to a parent or a spouse, such as a spouse or caregiver, more than one child, in the U.S. from 2011 to 2017, according to Census data (see fig.). Women and men were almost evenly divided in the general population, but women were more likely than men to provide such care. About two-thirds of parental caregivers (about 23.4 million people) were married and almost half were over age 50, compared to about 10 percent of non-caregiver caregivers. Parental caregivers were more educated and employed than other types of caregivers. Women caregivers were also more likely to work part-time and have lower earnings than men caregivers. Some",0.7333333333333334,0.899047619047619
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-382,BART (ORACLE 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The number of people in the United States over age 65 is projected to almost double in size by 2050, comprising 1 of every 5 people. As Americans age, family caregivers, such as adult children and spouses, will play a critical role in supporting the needs of this population. GAO was asked to provide information about parental and spousal caregivers and to identify options that could improve their retirement security. This report (1) examines what is known about the size and characteristics of the parental and sucessful caregiving population, including differences among women and men; (2) examines the extent to which parental or sucessfully caregiving affects retirement security; and (3) identifies and discusses policy options and initiatives that could be implemented to improve caregivers' financial security. To answer these objectives, GAO analyzed nationally representative surveys—the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), and the 2015 National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP sponsored study, Caregiving in the U.S.—and conducted an extensive literature review of journal articles, working papers, and think-tank studies on caregiving and topics related to retirement security, and interviewed experts in caregiving or retirement security who are knowledgeable about caregiving, who are engaged in research or advocacy around caregiving (including experts from the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences), or who represented groups that might be affected by the identified policy approaches.What GAO Found. Women and men were almost evenly divided in the general population, but women were more likely than men to be parental or nonpaternal caregivers, according to ATUS data from 2011 through 2017. Parental caregivers were also more likely to be employed and to have higher earnings than spousals. In terms of education, women parental caregivers were almost equally likely to have completed some college or more, while women spousall caregivers were less likely to do so. Spousal caregivers were also likely to provide care daily compared to parental caregivers, and parental caregivers who lived in the same house as their parents were unsurprisingly more likely (36 percent) to provide daily care than those who did not (26 percent). Some caregivers experienced adverse effects on their jobs and on their retirement assets and income. According to GAO's analysis of data used in the 2015 Caregiving In the US. study, some caregivers experienced at least one of eight job impacts about which they were asked. For example, some spousally employed caregivers reported that they worked approximately 20",0.8666666666666667,0.8114285714285714
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-382,BART (ORACLE 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The number of people in the United States over age 65 is projected to double in size by 2050, comprising 1 of every 5 people. As Americans age, family caregivers, such as adult children and spouses, will play a critical role in supporting the needs of this population. However, those who provide eldercare may face risks to their own long-term financial security. For example, caregivers may take time out of the workforce or reduce their work hours to provide care, or they may stop saving for their own retirement or tap into their retirement savings to pay for out-of-pocket caregiving expenses. These caregivers may ultimately receive less in Social Security benefits if they reduce their workforce participation. GAO was asked to provide information about parental and spousal caregivers and identify options that could improve their retirement security. This report (1) examines what is known about the size and characteristics of the parental and non-caregiver caregiving populations, including differences among women and men; (2) examines the extent to which parental or spousAL affects retirement security; and (3) identifies and discusses policy options and initiatives that can improve caregivers' retirement security, based on a literature review of journal articles, working papers, and think-tank studies on caregiving and topics related to retirement security and interviews with experts in caregiving or retirement securityWhat GAO Found. About 26 million people—roughly one in 10 adults in the U.S. Caregiver characteristics were similar to those of the general population, but women were more likely than men to be parental or “spousal caregivers,” according to the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) data from 2011 through 2017, the most recent available national survey of household survey data. Women made up 52 percent of the overall population but represented 56 percent of parental caregivers (those who provided care to a year or more) and 63 percent of spousally- or married men caregivers. Parental caregivers were younger than spousals, but both groups were older, on average, than the general populations. Almost three-quarters of parental and almost three-fourths of the non-parental caregivers claimed Social Security retirement benefits, compared to less than 10 percent of non- parental caregivers. The majority of parental, non-Parental, and black and Hispanic caregivers were also more likely to work, had lower levels of education, and provided care that lasted several years compared to the majority of the caregiver population.",0.7333333333333334,0.7307692307692308
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-382,BART (ORACLE 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The number of people in the United States over age 65 is projected to almost double in size by 2050, comprising 1 of every 5 people. As Americans age, family caregivers, such as adult children and spouses, will play a critical role in supporting the needs of this population. Those who provide eldercare may face risks to their own long-term financial security, including reduced workforce participation and reduced Social Security benefits if they reduce their workforce participation. GAO was asked to provide information about parental and spousal caregivers and to identify options that could improve their retirement security. This report (1) examines what is known about the size and characteristics of the parental and sugousal caregiving population, including differences among women and men; (2) examines the extent to which parental or spousAL caregiving affects retirement security; and (3) identifies and discusses policy options and initiatives that could potentially improve caregivers' retirement security, among other objectives. To address these objectives, GAO analyzed data from three nationally representative surveys—the ATUS, HRS, and Caregiving in the U.S.—using data from 2002 to 2017, the most recent available. To examine the effect of parental and spouse caregiving on retirement security using HRS data, we conducted descriptive and regression analyses to examine differences between parental caregivers and non-caregivers in terms of retirement assets and income at or near retirement age, and Social Security income. We also conducted a literature review and interviewed experts in caregiving and retirement security to identify policy options that might improve caregivers’ retirement security and potential benefits and costs.What GAO Found. According to the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) data, about 26 million Americans provided unpaid care for someone in their household from 2011 through 2017, or about one in ten. Most caregivers (88 percent) provided care to a parent or a parent-in-law, and about 3.2 million (3.2 percent) also provided care for a spouse, according to ATUS data. Parental and spouse caregivers had similar demographic characteristics but different economic circumstances. Both groups were younger than the general population, but both groups were older, on average, than the 45- to 64-year-old age range. Women caregivers were more likely than men caregivers to be employed and to have higher levels of earnings, but women caregivers were also more likely to work part-time and have lower levels of employment and have less income. Spousal and nonrelative caregivers",0.6666666666666666,0.7666666666666666
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-382,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The number of people in the United States over age 65 is projected to almost double in size by 2050, comprising 1 of every 5 people. As Americans age, family caregivers, such as adult children and spouses, will play a critical role in supporting the needs of this population. GAO was asked to (1) examine what is known about the size and characteristics of the parental and spousal caregiving population, including differences among women and men; (2) examine the extent to which parental or spousal caregiving affects retirement security; and (3) identify and discuss policy options and initiatives that could improve caregivers' retirement security. GAO analyzed data from three nationally representative surveys—the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), and the 2015 National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP sponsored study, Caregiving in the U.S. Study. GAO also interviewed experts and stakeholders who are knowledgeable about caregiving or retirement security or both, who are engaged in research or advocacy around caregiving, or who represented groups that might be affected by the identified policy approaches.What GAO Found. Women and men were almost evenly divided in the general population, but women were more likely than men to be parental or spouse caregivers, according to ATUS data from 2011 through 2017. Parental caregivers were more than twice as likely to be employed and to have higher earnings than spousal caregivers and those in the overall population. In terms of education, women parental caregivers were most likely to have completed some college or more (69 percent) while women spousal caregivers were less likely to complete so (50 percent). Spousal caregivers were also more likely to provide care daily compared to parental caregivers, and parental caregivers who lived in the same house as their parents were unsurprisingly more likely. While the majority of caregivers were white, as discussed above, black and Hispanic caregivers were generally more likely (35 percent and 39 percent, respectively) to provide daily care than white caregivers. Some caregivers experienced adverse effects on their jobs and on their retirement assets and income. An estimated 68 percent of working parental caregivers and spousal caregivers said they experienced at least one of eight job impacts about which they were asked in the 2015 Caregiving study. Specifically, spousal caregivers who were ages 59 to 66 worked approximately 20 percent fewer annual hours than married individuals of the same age who did not provide spousal care. In 2014, spousal caregivers had lower levels of Individual Retirement Account (IRA) assets, non-IRA assets, and Social Security income compared to those who were not caregivers. Experts noted that public awareness is critical to helping people understand the implications of",0.9666666666666668,0.8933333333333334
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-382,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The number of people in the United States over age 65 is projected to almost double in size by 2050, comprising 1 of every 5 people. As Americans age, family caregivers, such as adult children and spouses, will play a critical role in supporting the needs of this population. However, those who provide eldercare may face risks to their own long-term financial security. GAO was asked to provide information about parental and spousal caregivers and to identify options that could improve their retirement security. This report (1) examines what is known about the size and characteristics of the caregiving population, including differences among women and men; (2) examines the extent to which caregiving affects retirement security; and (3) identifies and discusses policy options and initiatives that could help improve caregivers' retirement security",0.2166666666666666,1.0
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-382,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The number of people in the United States over age 65 is projected to almost double in size by 2050, comprising 1 of every 5 people. As Americans age, family caregivers, such as adult children and spouses, will play a critical role in supporting the needs of this population. However, those who provide eldercare may face risks to their own long-term financial security. GAO was asked to (1) examine what is known about the size and characteristics of the parental and spousal caregiving population, including differences among women and men; (2) examine the extent to which parental or spousal caregiving affects retirement security; and (3) identify and discuss policy options and initiatives that could improve caregivers' retirement security. To do this, GAO analyzed data from three nationally representative surveys—the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), and Caregiving in the U.S.; reviewed literature; and interviewed experts and stakeholders. GAO selected experts and stakeholder groups who are knowledgeable about caregiving or both, who are engaged in research or advocacy around caregiving, or who represented groups that might be affected by the identified policy approaches.What GAO Found. Women and men were almost evenly divided in the general population, but women were more likely than men to be parental and/or spousal caregivers, according to ATUS data from 2011 through 2017, the most recent available. Child caregivers were more educated and more likely to be employed and to have higher earnings than spousal caregivers and those in general population. Children and women were also more likely and less likely to have cohabited with each other, and male and female caregivers were less likely than male caregivers to be in the bottom two income quartiles.appreciably, women caregivers provided care more often than men caregivers, but men caregivers were not as likely to provide care daily as women caregivers were. The highest percentage of parental caregivers and spousal caregivers—more than half—reported that they went in late, left early, or took time off during the day to care, suggesting there is a positive relationship between frequency of care and cohabitation (see figure). Spousal caregivers also tended to work fewer hours, were less often to have a college degree, and were more often in self-reported poor or fair health. In addition, spousal caregivers at or near retirement age had lower levels of retirement assets, non-IRA assets, and Social Security income compared to married individuals who did not provide care. For example, spousal caregiver assets were 39 percent less in non-HSA assets than non-CIOs",0.8000000000000002,0.6714285714285714
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-125,BART (LEAD 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. FAMS, an office within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is tasked with promoting confidence in the nation's civil aviation system through the deployment of air marshals to protect U.S. air carriers, airports, passengers, and crews. GAO was asked to evaluate FAMS's workforce issues. This report (1) assesses the extent to which FAMS has taken steps to address air marshal health concerns; (2) assessES the extent that FAMS addressed air marshalist concerns about their work schedules; and (3) examines the number of discrimination complaints FAMS employees have reported to TSA and FAMS and assesses how FAMS is addressing these complaints. GAOs analyzed FAMS data for fiscal years 2013 through 2018 (the most recent available); visited six FAMS field offices selected to capture variation in mission type, number of schedule changes, and discrimination complaint rate; and interviewed FAMS officials and a TSA employee group.What GAO Found. The Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) has taken some steps to improve air marshall health and wellness, but has not fully addressed concerns about work schedules and discrimination complaints. In fiscal year 2018, the most recent year for which complete data are available, FAMS conducted a comprehensive assessment of the health and well-being of all FAMS personnel. The assessment found that the health status of all employees was generally good, but that some employees experienced health problems, such as musculoskeletal injuries, and that some air safety personnel were not as well-equipped as others to conduct physical fitness assessments. In response to this assessment, FAMS developed a plan to address health concerns. However, the plan does not address the health concerns of all air safety employees, and it does not fully address the concerns of some employees who are not as physically fit as others. For example, some employees are not able to participate in the annual physical fitness assessment because they are not physically fit enough to participate. In addition, the lack of comprehensive data on air safety staff's health status limits FAMS' ability to effectively manage air safety program costs. In the absence of comprehensive health and safety data, FAMI has not been able to effectively oversee air safety programs, which are a key component of the agency's risk-based security strategy. In October 2018, FAMA issued a new policy that requires air safety officials to submit annual health and fitness plans to the Secretary of Transportation for approval. FAMI's policy also requires FAMS to develop a",0.3833333333333333,0.5499999999999999
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-125,BART (LEAD 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. FAMS, an office within the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Transportation Security Administration (TSA), deploys armed federal law enforcement officers—air marshals—to provide an onboard security presence on selected flights of United States air carriers travelling within the United States and around the world. In recent years, FAMS has faced challenges addressing the impacts of air marshals' heavy travel requirements and often unpredictable schedules on their quality of life. GAO was asked to evaluate FAMS's workforce issues. This report (1) assesses steps taken to address air marshal health concerns; (2) assess the extent to which FAMS addresses air marshalist concerns about their work schedules; and (3) examines the number of discrimination complaints FAMS employees have reported to TSA and FAMS and assesses the extent that FAMS took steps to prevent discrimination. To address each of these questions, GAO analyzed FAMS data and documents, visited six FAMS field offices selected to capture variation in, among other things, types of missions, number of schedule changes, and number of complaints, and interviewed FAMS officials.What GAO Found. The Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) has had initiatives in place to assess air marshaled's health, but has not been as comprehensive in its efforts to assess individual air marshall's health as it has been in the past. For example, since 2004 FAMS—an office within TSA—has required air marshalls to obtain a medical examination at least every 2 years and has operated a Health, Fitness, and Wellness Program and a Hearing Conservation Program to help ensure air marshlsthat they meet its medical standards. In addition, since 2015 FAMS (which is now called the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association) has operated two health and fitness programs. However, Fams maintains limited health information on air marshali's in a data system. Specifically, FAM has not entered air marshalla's medical information, including their medical qualification status, into this system because such information is protected by law and is not suitable to maintain in this way. Instead, FAMA maintains the results of the medical exams—including their qualification status—in paper files. In the absence of a comprehensive data system to maintain medical information about air marshan's health and work schedules, FAMI relies on its medical staff to monitor air marshally's work hours and rest periods and to develop scheduling guidelines and protocols. However FAMS does not have a comprehensive set of scheduling guidelines",0.5333333333333333,0.7857142857142857
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-125,BART (LEAD 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. FAMS, an office within the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Transportation Security Administration (TSA), deploys armed federal law enforcement officers—air marshals—to provide an onboard security presence on selected flights of U.S. air carriers travelling within the United States and around the world. In recent years, FAMS has faced longstanding challenges addressing the impacts of air marshals' heavy travel requirements and often unpredictable schedules on their quality of life. GAO was asked to evaluate FAMS's workforce issues. This report (1) assesses the extent to which FAMS took steps to address air marshal health concerns; (2) assessed the extent that FAMS had taken steps to respond to air marshalist concerns about their work schedules; and (3) examined the number of discrimination complaints FAMS employees have reported to TSA and FAMS and the extent of steps taken to prevent discrimination. GAOs reviewed FAMS human capital and scheduling data and documents and interviewed FAMS management and air marshall supervisors and supervisors in headquarters and in six FAMS field offices selected to capture variation in, among other things, mission type, number of schedule changes, rate of discrimination complaint, and field office size.What GAO Found. The Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) has had initiatives in place to assess air marshaled's (air marshal) health, but has not comprehensively assessed the health of the workforce as a whole. For example, since 2004 FAMS requires air marshalls to obtain a medical examination at least every 2 years and has operated a Health, Fitness, and Wellness Program since 2015 to promote health and wellness. However, it has not analyzed health and fitness data to identify trends across the workforce to inform workforce planning decisions and identify potential health risks. Without information on the overall health and overall fitness of the FAMS workforce, management is not well positioned to ensure that it is capable of fulfilling its mission of promoting confidence in the nation's civil aviation system. Air marshals report being concerned about their health and have raised concerns about fatigue, mental health issues, and discrimination in the workplace. In all six field offices GAO visited, air marshalsefarers stated that key issues of concern were fatigue and health. In addition, in four of the six offices GAOs visited air marshally were concerned about being taken off of their scheduled missions on short notice so they could cover higher-risk missions. Air Marshals in all six offices stated that schedule unpredictability has made it",0.6166666666666667,0.7523809523809524
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-125,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Since the September 11, 2001, hijackings of four U.S. airliners, individuals with terrorist ties have continued to target the nation's civil aviation system. Attacks involving aircraft and airports in Egypt, Somalia, Belgium, and Turkey underscore the continued threat to aviation and the need for effective aviation security measures. To help address such threats, the Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS), an office within the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), deploys armed federal law enforcement officers—air marshals—to provide onboard security presence on selected flights of United States air carriers travelling within the United States and around the world. TSA considers FAMS to be an integral component of its risk-based security strategy. GAO was asked to evaluate FAMS's workforce issues, including air marshals' quality of life, schedules, and discrimination complaints. This report (1) assesses the extent to which FAMS has taken steps to address air marshal health concerns; (2) assesses the amount of steps FAMS and TSA have taken in addressing air marshal concerns about their work schedules; and (3) examines the number of discrimination complaints FAMS employees have reported to TSA and FAMS. GAO analyzed data from fiscal years 2013 through 2018 (the most recent full fiscal year of data available). GAO also interviewed TSA employees, FAMS management officials, and air marshal representatives.What GAO Found. FAMS, within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has taken some steps to improve the health and wellness of its air marshal workforce. For example, in 2013, FAMS established a health and fitness program to address health concerns related to musculoskeletal injuries. In addition, in 2015, FAMS began a pilot program to assess air marshal fitness. However, FAMs has not fully implemented the pilot program, and it is unclear whether it will be effective in addressing health concerns. In response to air marshal complaints about their schedules, TSA has taken a number of actions to improve air marshal schedules, including implementing a new scheduling policy that requires air marshal supervisors to review air marshal work schedules at least once a year. In 2017, TSA also implemented a new policy requiring supervisors to provide feedback on air marshal schedule changes. However in 2018, TSA did not implement the new policy because it did not have the resources to do so. TSA has also taken a variety of steps to prevent discrimination, including developing a plan to identify and address discrimination complaints and developing a process to report discrimination complaints to TSA. In 2012, FAMS created an action plan to prevent",0.8000000000000002,0.84
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-125,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. FAMS, an office within TSA, deploys armed federal law enforcement officers—air marshals—to provide an onboard security presence on selected flights of United States air carriers travelling within the United States and around the world. Since the September 11, 2001, hijackings of four U.S. airliners, individuals with terrorist ties have continued to target the nation's civil aviation system. Air marshals have faced longstanding challenges addressing the impacts of air marshals' heavy travel requirements and often unpredictable schedules on their quality of life. GAO was asked to evaluate FAMS's workforce issues. This report (1) assesses the extent to which FAMS has taken steps to address air marshal health concerns; (2) addresses air marshan concerns about their work schedules; and (3) examines the number of discrimination complaints FAMS employees have reported to TSA and FAMS and assesses steps taken to prevent discrimination. To address these objectives, GAO analyzed FAMS data and documents, visited six FAMS field offices selected to capture variation in: types of missions, number of schedule changes, and complaints, among other things, and spoke with FAMS officials, including those who oversee air marshans. Findings from these visits cannot be generalized to all FAMS locations but provide insight.What GAO Found. The Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS), within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has had initiatives in place to assess the health, safety, and well-being of individuals in its workforce, but has not comprehensively assessed the workforce as a whole. Long-standing concerns about the health and safety status and quality-of-life issues—including fatigue, mental health issues, and lack of a healthy diet—have been reported to FAMS. For example: In 2008, a FAMS Medical Issues Working Group reported that air Marshals had experienced various types of health issues—poor physical fitness as well as musculoskeletal injuries and upper respiratory infections—and that disrupted sleep patterns often resulted in fatigue and long hours and made it difficult to exercise and maintain healthy eating habits. In 2012, a DHS Office of Inspector General report on discrimination complaints found that employees' perceptions of discrimination and retaliation were extensive and led FAMS to create an action plan to prevent such occurrences. In fiscal year 2018—the most recent year for which complete data are available—FAMS's Office of Personnel Management (OPM) estimated that less than half (44 percent) of employees believed they were protected",0.6333333333333333,0.89
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-125,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. FAMS, an office within TSA, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), deploys armed federal law enforcement officers—air marshals—to provide an onboard security presence on selected flights of United States air carriers travelling within the United States and around the world. Since the September 11, 2001, hijackings of four U.S. airliners, individuals with terrorist ties have continued to target the nation's civil aviation system. To help address this threat, FAMS has faced longstanding challenges addressing the impacts of air marshals' heavy travel requirements and often unpredictable schedules on their quality of life. GAO was asked to review FAMS's workforce issues. This report assesses the extent to which FAMS (1) has taken steps to address air marshal concerns about their health, (2) has addressed concerns about work schedules, and (3) has reported discrimination complaints FAMS employees have reported to TSA and FAMS and assessed steps it has taken to prevent discrimination. To conduct this work, GAO analyzed FAMS data and documents, interviewed FAMS officials, and visited six FAMS field offices selected to capture variation in mission type, workload, and discrimination complaints.What GAO Found. The Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS)—an office within the Transportation Security Administration (TSA)—has had initiatives in place to assess the health and quality-of-life of its air marshan workforce, but has not comprehensively assessed the workforce as a whole. Air marshals in all six offices GAO visited stated that key issues related to their health were fatigue, mental health issues, and increased difficulty maintaining a healthy habits. In fiscal year 2018—the most recent year for which is available—less than half of the workforce surveyed believed they were protected from health and safety hazards. In addition, air marshalsees reported experiencing high injury rates during physical fitness assessments and declining overall health and wellness, which they attributed in part to the increasing average age of their workforce. Further, in March 2018 FAMS adopted a new concept of operations that increased the number of Special Mission Coverage (SMC) flights, which require air marshaled to be available 24 hours a day, seven days per week. However FAMS does not assess the overall health, fitness, and well-being of its workforce in a comprehensive manner that would enable it to look for broader health trends and risks. The agency collects health and fitness information on individual air marshlals and reviews these data at least every 2",0.7000000000000001,0.7785714285714285
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-125,BART (ORACLE 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. FAMS is responsible for ensuring the safety and security of the nation's air transportation system, including ensuring that air marshals are medically qualified to carry out their duties. GAO was asked to review air marshal health and scheduling issues. This report (1) assesses the extent to which FAMS has taken steps to address air mariners' health concerns; (2) examines FAMS's efforts to address their work schedules; and (3) examines the number of discrimination complaints FAMS employees have reported to TSA and FAMS and assesses FAMS' efforts to prevent discrimination. To address these objectives, GAO reviewed FAMS policies, procedures, and complaint data for fiscal years 2016 through 2018, the most recent year for which data were available; interviewed DHS and TSA officials; and conducted site visits to six FAMS field offices selected based on size, among other factors.What GAO Found. The Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) has taken some steps to improve the health and quality of life of its air marshers, but additional actions are needed. Air marshals in all six offices GAO visited stated that health issues are a key quality life concern. For example, according to one air marsher, he has been diagnosed with congestive heart failure, which has affected his ability to perform his duties. In November 2019, FAMS management officials provided GAO with a statement that said, in part, that ""understanding the overall health and wellness of our air Marshals is paramount.” They further stated that they now plan to create a working group to identify options to monitor the health of the workforce as a whole. However, FAMS does not have information about the number and proportion of its workforce medically qualified, which limits its understanding of the health issues of air marshlers. In addition, FAMA does not monitor the extent that air marchers' actual work hours are consistent with scheduling guidelines, limiting its ability to determine if air marshlers' work schedules are being balanced with the agency's operational needs. Air mariners in each of the six field offices that GAO contacted stated that schedule unpredictability—short-notice changes to their start times, missions, and at-home days—was a key issue. For instance, one air mariner stated that he was often late for work because he had to work at a time when his wife was sick. FAMA's standard operating procedures include scheduling guidelines and protocols for",0.5833333333333334,0.8023809523809525
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-125,BART (ORACLE 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Attacks on aircraft and airports in Egypt, Somalia, Belgium, and Turkey underscore the continued threat to aviation and the need for effective aviation security measures. FAMS deploys air marshals to protect U.S. air carriers, airports, passengers, and crews. GAO was asked to review FAMS's workforce. This report (1) assesses the extent to which FAMS has taken steps to address air marshal health concerns, (2) assessES the extent that FAMS addressed air marshAL concerns about their work schedules, and (3) examines the number of discrimination complaints FAMS employees have reported to TSA and FAMS and assesses FAMS' efforts to prevent discrimination. GAOs reviewed FAMS data on health and scheduling, discrimination complaints, and Fams employee complaint data. In addition, GAO visited a non-generalizable sample of six FAMS field offices selected to capture variation in, among other things, the number and rate of SMCs and air marshalist workload changes. GAOS also interviewed FAMS management, supervisors, and air Marshals in headquarters and in the six field offices.What GAO Found. The Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) has taken some steps to help address air Marshal Service's (FAA) workforce health concerns but has not comprehensively assessed the health of the entire workforce. Air marshals GAO interviewed in all six field office visited stated that quality of life issues, including sleep and fatigue, were key quality of work concerns. FAMA has established scheduling guidelines intended to balance mission needs with air marshall quality of lives. However, FAMS does not monitor the extent of adherence to these guidelines with regard to international missions, which would allow it to identify health and fitness trends that apply to all segments of the FAMS workforce. For example, when scheduling for flights to the U. S. from overseas locations is not known, FAMS typically does not learn of such missions more than 72 hours in advance. Without monitoring adherence to scheduling guidelines, FAMA is not well positioned to determine the extent these guidelines are serving their purpose to balance FAMS operational needs with the health and well-being of its workforce. In the absence of comprehensive monitoring of air marshALS' health and schedules, it is not possible for FAMS to determine whether air marshalls' work hours are consistent with scheduling guidelines. FAMs management officials stated that they do not monitor air marshl's actual work hours because they have not identified a need to do so",0.65,0.751904761904762
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-125,BART (ORACLE 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. FAMS deploys air marshals to help protect civil aviation against terrorist threats. Air marshals have faced longstanding health and safety concerns related to their work schedules and quality of life. GAO was asked to evaluate FAMS workforce issues. This report (1) assesses the extent to which FAMS has taken steps to address air marshal health concerns, (2) assessES the extent that FAMS took steps to respond to air marshals' concerns about their schedules, and (3) examines the number of discrimination complaints FAMS employees have reported to TSA and FAMS and assesses FAMS's efforts to prevent discrimination in the workplace. To address these objectives, GAO visited a non-generalizable sample of six FAMS field offices in Atlanta, Georgia; Dallas, Texas; Los Angeles, California; Newark, New Jersey; New York City, New York; and Seattle, Washington; analyzed FAMS data and documents; and interviewed FAMS management, supervisory federal air marshALS, and air marshalselegates in headquarters and the six field offices.What GAO Found. The Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) has assessed individuals' health, but has not comprehensively assessed the health of its workforce. Air Marshals have expressed long-standing health concerns—such as musculoskeletal injuries and sleep deprivation—and in all six offices visited, officials stated that health issues are a key quality-of-life concern. In 2013, a FAMS review of air marshall fitness noted that air marshaled high injury rates during physical fitness assessments and declining overall health and fitness levels, which they attributed in part to the increasing number of air mosely tasks assigned to special mission coverage missions (SMC). However, FAMS does not maintain medical information about its air marshalls' medical qualifications, including their medical history, which limits its ability to determine if its workforce is capable of fulfilling its mission. Further, in May 2015 FAMS initiated a Health, Fitness, and Wellness Program intended to address concerns with air marsh's fitness and injury rates and improve air marshlers' overall health. Since February 2016, it has used data from the program to track air marshls' mandatory participation in the assessments and to identify individuals who do not maintain their fitness levels or show improvement. However, it does not use or plan to use other data it collects to assess the health status of the workforce in a comprehensive manner that would enable it to",0.6666666666666666,0.8153846153846155
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-125,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. FAMS is responsible for securing the nation's air transportation system. GAO was asked to review FAMS's efforts to prevent discrimination. This report (1) assesses the extent to which FAMS has taken steps to address air marshals' health concerns; (2) assesses the steps FAMS took to address health concerns about their work schedules; and (3) examines the number of discrimination complaints FAMS employees have reported to TSA and FAMS and assesses the amount to which the agency has taken actions to prevent such discrimination. GAO reviewed relevant laws, regulations, and policies; interviewed officials from TSA and the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG); and visited six field offices selected based on geographic diversity.What GAO Found. The Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) has taken some steps to improve the health and well-being of its air marshal workforce. For example, in November 2018, FAMS management officials provided GAO with a statement that said, in part, that understanding the overall health and wellness of the workforce is paramount. In addition, FAMS officials stated that they now plan to create a working group to identify options to monitor the health of the entire workforce as a whole. Air marshals in all six offices GAO visited stated that health issues are a key quality of life concern. For instance, in one office, air marshal employees stated that schedule unpredictability—short-notice changes to their start times, missions, and at-home days—was a key issue. In another office, a female air marshal stated that she was concerned about her ability to perform her duties due to a lack of sleep. In a third office, an air marshal told GAO that he was concerned that he would not be able to perform his duties because of a medical condition. In other offices, a male air marshal said that he had difficulty performing his duties due in part to his lack of physical activity. In response to air marshal concerns about scheduling, FAMs has taken several actions to improve air marshal health, such as establishing a scheduling committee to review air marshal schedules. However, GAO found that FAMS does not have a plan to assess the health, fitness, and overall health of its entire workforce. Without such a plan, it is not well positioned to determine if scheduling guidelines are serving their purpose to balance air marshal's quality of living with FAMS operational needs, nor can it determine the extent that air marshal workloads are being balanced with the guidelines. From fiscal years 2016 through 2018, TSA's Civil Rights",0.65,0.7519607843137255
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-125,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Attacks involving aircraft and airports in Egypt, Colombia, Peru, and Turkey underscore the continued threat to aviation and the need for effective aviation security measures. To help address such threats, FAMS deploys air marshals to protect U.S. air carriers, airports, passengers, and crews. GAO was asked to review FAMS's efforts to prevent discrimination. This report (1) assesses the extent to which FAMS has taken steps to address air marshal health concerns; (2) assesses the amount of air marshal work schedules; and (3) examines the number of discrimination complaints that FAMS employees have reported to TSA and FAMS and assesses his/her level of discrimination. GAO reviewed reports, policies, and other documents and interviewed officials from headquarters and six field offices. GAO also interviewed DOES and DOES officials.What GAO Found. The Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) has established scheduling guidelines intended to balance mission needs with air marshal's quality of life. Air marshals in all six offices GAO visited stated that health issues are a key quality of their lives. However, although FAMS monitors certain information on workers' compensation claims and has plans to further monitor workplace injuries, it has not used or planned to use other information it collects to assess the health of its workforce in a comprehensive manner that would enable it to look for broader health trends and risks. Without information on the overall health and fitness of the FAMS workforce, FHA management is not well positioned to prioritize employee health and welfare or ensure that it deploys a workforce capable of fulfilling its national security mission. GAO found that regarding air marshal scheduling, the agency has established guidelines for shift length and rest periods, but has not monitored the extent that air marshal shifts and rest are consistent with these guidelines. In each of the six offices, air marshal stated that schedule unpredictability—short-notice changes to their start times, missions, and at-home days—was a key issue. FHS officials stated that they do not monitor other statistics that could provide more insight into actual work hours because they had not identified a need to do so but stated that more information could be helpful. Without monitoring the extent of air marshalls' shift and rest times, FAM's management is unable to determine if scheduling guidelines are serving their purpose to balance air marshal quality of lives with FAMS operational needs. GAO identified a number of other issues that could be addressed by FAMS management, such as the number and proportion of the air marshal workforce who are medically qualified, which limits the agency's",0.5499999999999999,0.7583333333333333
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-125,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Attacks involving aircraft and airports underscore the need for effective aviation security measures. To help address such threats, FAMS deploys air marshals to protect U.S. air carriers, airports, passengers, and crews. GAO was asked to review FAMS. This report (1) assesses the extent to which FAMS has taken steps to address air marshal health concerns; (2) addresses the extent of FAMS's actions to address marshal concerns about their work schedules; and (3) examines the number of discrimination complaints that FAMS employees have reported to TSA and FAMS and assesses his/her efforts to prevent discrimination. GAO reviewed reports and interviewed officials from headquarters and six field offices.What GAO Found. The Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) has established scheduling guidelines intended to balance mission needs with air marshal's quality of life. Air marshals in all six offices GAO visited stated that health issues are a key quality of their lives. However, while FAMS monitors certain information on workers' compensation claims and has plans to further monitor workplace injuries, it has not used or planned to use other information it collects to assess the health of its workforce in a comprehensive manner that would enable it to look for broader health trends and risks. In November 2018, FAMS management officials stated that understanding the overall health and wellness of the FAMS workforce is paramount. Without information on the health and fitness of the entire workforce, FPSS management is not well positioned to prioritize employee health and welfare or ensure that it deploys a workforce capable of fulfilling its national security mission. FPSS employees filed 230 discrimination complaints with the Transportation Security Administration's Civil Rights Division (CRD) in fiscal years 2016 through 2018, though employees may have reported additional discrimination complaints through other means. FPS's management has taken some steps to prevent or reduce discrimination, but has not fully implemented various efforts in future years. FPS has not updated its 2012 action plan to strengthen its efforts to address and reduce discrimination. FPS management has not assessed the health or fitness of its entire workforce by analyzing available data, which would allow it to identify any health and health fitness trends or risks among its workforce, take steps to mitigate these risks, make informed workforce planning decisions, and prioritize employee welfare to ensure that its workforce is capable of meeting its mission. FAMS does not monitor the extent that air marshal work hours are consistent with scheduling guidelines, limiting its ability to determine if air marshal quality is being balanced with the agency's operational needs. FPS marshals stated that schedule unpredictability—short-notice changes to",0.75,0.7186274509803922
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-221,BART (LEAD 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In a span of 14 days in September 2017, two major hurricanes—Irma and Maria—struck Puerto Rico causing billions of dollars in damage to its infrastructure, housing, and economy. Puerto Rico estimates that $132 billion in funding from 2018 through 2028 will be needed to repair and reconstruct the infrastructure damaged by the hurricanes. Estimating the costs to repair or replace damaged infrastructure is an important task to determine federal funding needed to support Puerto Rico's recovery. FEMA is the lead federal agency responsible for assisting Puerto Rico as it recovers from these natural disasters. Among other responsibilities, FEMA administers the Public Assistance program in partnership with the government of Puerto Rico, including officials from various levels of government who work together as partners in the recovery, providing grant funding for a wide range of eligible response and recovery activities. GAO was asked to review the federal government's response to the 2017 hurricanes. This report examines: (1) the status of FEMA's Public Assistance funding in Puerto Rico and any challenges FEMA and Puerto Rico face in developing Public Assistance projects; (2) the extent to which Public Assistance cost estimating guidance addresses specific conditions in the Puerto Rico environment and aligns with best practices for cost estimating; (3) FEMA's development of policies and guidance for the Puerto Rican Public Assistance Program, and challenges recovery partners have faced with these polices and guidance; and (4) the structures Puerto Rico has put in place to manage and oversee Public Assistance project funding. To address these objectives, GAO reviewed relevant laws and FEMA Public Assistance grant program guidance, and observed the data systems FEMA uses to develop, manage, and oversee individual projects.What GAO Found. As of September 30, 2019, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had obligated about $1.1 billion of the approximately $3.4 billion in Public Assistance permanent work funding that Puerto Rico had requested for repair or replacement of disaster-damaged publicly-owned facilities, roads and bridges, electrical utilities, among other activities. However, Puerto Rico continues to face challenges in developing projects that meet the conditions of the alternative procedures for Puerto Rico established by the Sandy Recovery Improvement Act of 2013. For example, the island's governor has stated that the island needs to rebuild its infrastructure to withstand future storms. In addition, the governor has said that the agency needs to develop a plan to guide its recovery efforts. FEMA's cost estimating process for Public Assistance Puerto Rico projects does not fully address the specific conditions that FEMA and the island have faced in developing these",0.3166666666666667,0.7547619047619047
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-221,BART (LEAD 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In a span of 14 days in September 2017, two major hurricanes—Irma and Maria—struck Puerto Rico causing billions of dollars in damage to its infrastructure, housing, and economy. Puerto Rico estimates that $132 billion in funding will be needed to repair and reconstruct the infrastructure damaged by the hurricanes. Estimating the costs to repair or replace damaged infrastructure is important to determine federal funding needed to support Puerto Rico's recovery. FEMA, a component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), administers the Public Assistance program in partnership with the government of Puerto Rico. The program provides funding for debris removal efforts, life-saving emergency protective measures, and the repair or replacement of disaster-damaged publicly-owned facilities, roads and bridges, and electrical utilities, among other activities. GAO was asked to review the federal government's response and recovery efforts related to the 2017 hurricanes. This report examines: (1) the status of FEMA's Public Assistance funding in Puerto Rico and any challenges FEMA and Puerto Rico face in developing Public Assistance projects; (2) the extent to which Public Assistance cost estimating guidance addresses specific conditions in the territory and aligns with best practices for cost estimating; (3) FEMA's policies and guidance for the program and any related challenges recovery partners have faced; and (4) the structures Puerto Rico has put in place to manage and oversee program funding. To address these objectives, GAO reviewed relevant laws, FEMA Public Assistance grant program guidance, and Public Assistance alternative procedures, and data on obligations and expenditures; analyzed Puerto Rico government data from September 30, 2017, through the most recent data available; and interviewed FEMA, Puerto Rico, and other relevant officials.What GAO Found. As of September 2019, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had obligated nearly $6 billion for Public Assistance grants and sub-grants (subawards) to 1,558 projects across Puerto Rico to assist state, territorial, local, and tribal governments, as well as certain types of private nonprofit organizations in responding to and recovering from major disasters or emergencies. However, the territory faces significant challenges in developing these projects. For example, according to GAO's analysis of FEMA data, as of October 30, 2018, FEMA had obligated $5.1 billion for emergency work projects, $487 million for permanent work projects (Category A and B), and $315 million for management costs (Category Z). Puerto Rico had expended $3.9 billion as of September 30 to reimburse sub",0.5,0.8064102564102563
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-221,BART (LEAD 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In a span of 14 days in September 2017, two major hurricanes—Irma and Maria—struck Puerto Rico causing billions of dollars in damage to its infrastructure, housing, and economy. Puerto Rico estimates that $132 billion in funding will be needed to repair and reconstruct the infrastructure damaged by the hurricanes. Estimating the costs to repair or replace damaged infrastructure is an important task to determine federal funding needed to support Puerto Rico's recovery. FEMA administers the Public Assistance program in partnership with the government of Puerto Rico, including officials from various levels of government who work together as partners in the recovery, providing grant funding for a wide range of eligible response and recovery activities. GAO was asked to review the federal government's response to the 2017 hurricanes. This report examines (1) the status of FEMA's Public Assistance funding in Puerto Rico and any challenges FEMA and Puerto Rico face in developing Public Assistance projects; (2) the extent to which Public Assistance cost estimating guidance addresses specific conditions and aligns with best practices for cost estimating; (3) FEMA's policies and guidance for the program and any related challenges recovery partners have faced; and (4) the structures Puerto Rico has put in place to manage and oversee Public Assistance Program funding. To address these objectives, GAO reviewed relevant laws and FEMA Public Assistance grant program guidance, compared FEMA's guidance to best practices in the GAO Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide, and interviewed FEMA and local, state, and federal officials.What GAO Found. As of September 30, 2019, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had obligated nearly $6 billion for Public Assistance grants and sub-grants (subawards) to help Puerto Rico respond to and recover from hurricanes Irma and Maria, but FEMA and the territory faced significant challenges in developing these projects. Specifically, as of this date, FEMA had obligated approximately $5.1 billion for emergency work projects, $487 million for permanent work projects (Category C through G), and $315 million for management costs (Category Z). Puerto Rico had expended approximately $3.9 billion as of September 2019—about 65 percent of total Public Assistance obligations. FEMA and officials from the central recovery office in Puerto Ricas identified challenges in implementing the Public assistance program, including delays in establishing a cost estimating process, the large number of damaged sites that require finalized fixed cost estimates, and challenges with the implementation of the flexibilities authorized by section 20601 of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 (Act) to",0.6833333333333332,0.8722222222222222
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-221,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In a span of 14 days in September 2017, two major hurricanes—Irma and Maria—struck Puerto Rico causing billions of dollars in damage to its infrastructure, housing, and economy. In its recovery plan, Puerto Rico estimates that $132 billion in funding from 2018 through 2028 will be needed to repair and reconstruct the infrastructure damaged by the hurricanes, exacerbating an already difficult financial situation in Puerto Rico, which had been operating under severe fiscal constraints prior to the storms. Estimating the costs to repair or replace damaged infrastructure is an important task to determine federal funding needed to support Puerto Rico's recovery. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)—a component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—is the lead federal agency responsible for assisting Puerto Rico as it recovers from these natural disasters. Among other responsibilities, FEMA administers the Public Assistance program in partnership with the government of Puerto Rico. The program provides funding for debris removal efforts; life-saving emergency protective measures; and the repair or replacement of disaster-damaged publicly-owned facilities, roads and bridges, electrical utilities, among other activities. FEMA and Puerto Rico are required to develop cost estimates before work can begin on large Public Assistance permanent work projects. GAO was asked to review the federal government's response and recovery efforts related to the 2017 hurricanes. This report examines: (1) the status of FEMA's Public Assistance funding in Puerto Rica and any challenges FEMA and the government face in developing Public Assistance projects; (2) the extent to which Public Assistance cost estimating guidance addresses specific conditions in Puerto Rican and aligns with best practices for cost estimating; (3) the extent that FEMA has developed policies and guidance for the program in Puerto; and (4) the structures Puerto Rico and FEMA have put in place to manage and oversee Public Assistance grant program funding. GAO reviewed relevant laws and FEMA Public Assistance guidance, including the April 2018 Public Assistance Program and Policy Guide, and the September 2018 and September 2019 revised Public Assistance Alternative Procedures. GAO also observed the data systems FEMA uses to develop, manage, and oversee individual projects.What GAO Found. As of September 30, 2019, FEMA had obligated about $3 billion in Public Assistance funds to Puerto Rico for a wide range of recovery activities, including debris removal, life- saving emergency protective, and repair and replacement of public infrastructure. However, FEMA has not obligated all of its Public Assistance fund for permanent work through alternative procedures as required by the Sandy Recovery Improvement Act of 2013. FEMA has implemented alternative procedures to obligate all Public Assistance project funding through the Emergency Management Mission Integrated Environment and the Integrated Financial",0.5333333333333333,0.7807692307692308
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-221,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In a span of 14 days in September 2017, two major hurricanes—Irma and Maria—struck Puerto Rico causing billions of dollars in damage to its infrastructure, housing, and economy. Puerto Rico estimates that $132 billion will be needed to repair and reconstruct the infrastructure damaged by the hurricanes. Estimating the costs to repair or replace damaged infrastructure is an important task to determine federal funding needed to support Puerto Rico's recovery. FEMA—a component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—is the lead federal agency responsible for assisting Puerto Rico as it recovers from these natural disasters. The Public Assistance program provides funding for debris removal efforts; life-saving emergency protective measures; and the repair or replacement of disaster-damaged publicly-owned facilities, roads and bridges, electrical utilities, among other activities. GAO was asked to review the federal government's response and recovery efforts related to the 2017 hurricanes. This report examines: (1) the status of FEMA's Public Assistance funding in Puerto Rico and any challenges FEMA and Puerto Rico face in developing Public Assistance projects; (2) the extent to which Public Assistance cost estimating guidance addresses specific conditions and aligns with best practices for cost estimating; (3) any challenges recovery partners have faced with these policies and guidance; and (4) the structures Puerto Rico, and FEMA have put in place to manage and oversee public assistance program funding. To address these objectives, GAO reviewed relevant laws and FEMA Public Assistance grant program guidance, including the April 2018 Public Assistance Program and Policy Guide, and the September 2018 and September 2019 revised Public Assistance Alternative Procedures Permanent Work Guide for Puerto Rico. GAO also reviewed data on FEMA's obligations and expenditures as of September 30, 2018, the most recent data available at the time of GAO's review; reviewed documentation on alternative procedures for Public Assistance; and interviewed officials from FEMA, the central recovery office, and six Puerto Rico government agencies and public corporations headquartered in San Juan, Puerto Rico.What GAO Found. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has obligated nearly $6 billion to support 1,558 projects across Puerto Rico to help Puerto Rico recover from Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Maria, but the territory and FEMA face significant challenges in developing these projects. Of this amount, FEMA has obligated approximately $5.1 billion for emergency work projects, $487 million for permanent work projects (Category C through G), and $315 million for management costs (Category Z). Puerto Rico has expended approximately $3.9 billion to reimburse",0.5499999999999999,0.9333333333333332
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-221,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In a span of 14 days in September 2017, two major hurricanes—Irma and Maria—struck Puerto Rico causing billions of dollars in damage to its infrastructure, housing, and economy. Puerto Rico estimates that $132 billion will be needed to repair and reconstruct the infrastructure damaged by the hurricanes, exacerbating an already difficult financial situation in Puerto Rico. Estimating the costs to repair or replace damaged infrastructure is an important task to determine federal funding needed to support Puerto Rico's recovery. FEMA, a component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), administers the Public Assistance program in partnership with the government of Puerto Rico, including officials from various levels of government who work together as partners in the recovery. On November 2, 2017, Amendment 5 to the president's disaster declaration for Hurricane Maria imposed a number of grant conditions, including that FEMA must obligate all large project funding for Public Assistance permanent work through alternative procedures as authorized by the Sandy Recovery Improvement Act of 2013. GAO was asked to review the federal government's response and recovery efforts related to the 2017 hurricanes. In this report, GAO examines: (1) the status of FEMA's Public Assistance funding and any challenges FEMA and Puerto Rico face in developing Public Assistance projects; (2) the extent to which Public Assistance cost estimating guidance addresses specific conditions and aligns with best practices for cost estimating; (3) FEMA's policies and guidance for Puerto Rico Public Assistance and challenges recovery partners have faced; and (4) the structures Puerto Rico and FEMA have put in place to manage and oversee Public Assistance grant funding. To address these objectives, among other things, we reviewed laws and FEMA Public Assistance guidance, analyzed Public Assistance data, and interviewed officials from FEMA, the Puerto Rico central recovery office, and six Puerto Rico government entities.What GAO Found. As of September 30, 2019, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had obligated nearly $6 billion in Public Assistance grants for 1,558 projects across Puerto Rico (see figure). Of this amount, FEMA obligated approximately $5.1 billion for emergency work projects, $487 million for permanent work projects (Categories C through G), and $315 million for management costs (Category Z). Puerto Rico has expended approximately $3.9 billion to reimburse subrecipients for completed work. As Puerto Rico is responsible for any costs that exceed fixed cost estimates for large infrastructure projects under the alternative procedures, FEMA has adapted its guidance for estimating costs to ensure that these estimates accurately reflect the total",0.6166666666666667,0.8833333333333333
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-221,BART (ORACLE 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In September 2017, Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, resulting in an estimated $70 billion in damage. Puerto Rico estimates that $132 billion in funding will be needed to repair and reconstruct the infrastructure damaged by the hurricanes, exacerbating an already difficult financial situation in Puerto Rico. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), a component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is the lead federal agency responsible for assisting Puerto Rico as it recovers from these natural disasters. Public Assistance is FEMA's primary means of providing funding to help Puerto Rico recover from the hurricanes. GAO was asked to review FEMA's Public Assistance program in the aftermath of the hurricanes in Puerto Rican communities. This report examines: (1) the status of FEMA's public assistance funding in the Caribbean and any challenges FEMA and Puerto Rico face in developing Public Assistance projects; (2) the extent to which Public Assistance cost estimating guidance addresses specific conditions and aligns with best practices for cost estimating; (3) FEMA's development of policies and guidance for the Public Assistance Program and any related challenges recovery partners have faced; and (4) the structures Puerto Rico and FEMA have put in place to manage and oversee Public Assistance funding. To address these objectives, GAO analyzed FEMA's obligations and Puerto Rican expenditures for Public Assistance from September 2017 through September 30, 2019, the most recent data available at the time of GAO's review; reviewed documentation on cost estimating and Public Assistance; and interviewed FEMA officials and officials from four Puerto Rico government agencies.What GAO Found. Since the 2017 hurricanes, FEMA has obligated nearly $6 billion in Public Assistance (PPU) program funding for 1,558 projects across Puerto Rico; however, FEMA and the Puerto Rican government face significant challenges in developing projects. Specifically, according to GAO analysis of FEMA data, as of September 2019, Puerto Rico had obligated $1.4 billion of Public Assistance and had spent $2.7 billion of this funding on projects. FEMA and officials in Puerto Puerto Rico stated that they face challenges in implementing the Public assistance program, including developing cost estimating policies and procedures for projects. For example, FEMA officials stated that the agency has not consistently established a cost estimating policy for projects in Puerto Ricas because of delays in establishing the guidance. In addition, officials from the central recovery office and four government agencies GAO spoke with stated that Puerto Rico faced challenges implementing Public Assistance because they did not consistently have the guidance they needed to implement the program. According to FEMA officials, FEMA",0.7666666666666666,0.7785714285714285
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-221,BART (ORACLE 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In a span of 14 days in September 2017, two major hurricanes—Irma and Maria—struck Puerto Rico causing billions of dollars in damage to its infrastructure, housing, and economy. Puerto Rico estimates that $132 billion in funding will be needed to repair and reconstruct the infrastructure damaged by the hurricanes through 2028. FEMA administers the Public Assistance program in partnership with the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and provides grant funding for a wide range of eligible response and recovery activities. GAO was asked to review the status of FEMA's Public Assistance funding in Puerto Rico. This report examines: (1) the extent to which Public Assistance cost estimating guidance addresses Puerto Rico conditions and aligns with best practices for cost estimating; (2) any challenges FEMA and Puerto Rico faced implementing the program; and (3) the structures Puerto Rico, FEMA and FEMA have put in place to manage and oversee funding. To address these objectives, GAO reviewed relevant laws, policies, and guidance, and analyzed Public Assistance data as of September 2019; conducted site visits to Puerto Rico; and interviewed FEMA officials.What GAO Found. Since the 2017 hurricanes, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has obligated nearly $6 billion for Public Assistance projects across Puerto Rico but has identified significant challenges in developing these projects. As of September 30, 2019, FEMA had obligated approximately $5.1 billion for emergency work projects, $487 million for permanent work projects (categories C through G), and $315 million for management costs (Category Z). Of the nearly $5 billion FEMA has obligated, Puerto Rico has expended about $3. FEMA and the Commonwealth's government have identified challenges in the development of projects, such as delays in establishing a cost-estimating guidance for projects and implementing certain program flexibilities. According to FEMA officials, these challenges include the large number of damaged sites that require finalized fixed cost estimates, and the implementation of certain flexibilities authorized by section 20601 of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018. FEMA has adapted its guidance to estimate Public Assistance costs to address post-disaster economic conditions in the aftermath of the hurricanes, but could take further action to align the guidance with GAO's Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide. GAO found that FEMA fully or substantially met nine of the 12 steps in the GAO Cost Guide. However, FEMA did not meet some of the steps in this guide. For example, FEMA's guidance does not include a statistical analysis of risk to determine a range of possible costs",0.9166666666666666,0.8583333333333334
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-221,BART (ORACLE 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In September 2017, two major hurricanes—Irma and Maria—struck Puerto Rico causing billions of dollars in damage to its infrastructure, housing, and economy. Puerto Rico estimates that $132 billion in funding will be needed to repair and reconstruct the infrastructure damaged by the hurricanes, exacerbating an already difficult financial situation in Puerto Rico, which had been operating under severe fiscal constraints prior to the storms. Estimating the costs to repair or replace damaged infrastructure is an important task to determine federal funding needed to support Puerto Rico's recovery. FEMA administers the Public Assistance program, which provides grants to assist state, territorial, local, and tribal governments, as well as certain types of private nonprofit organizations, in responding to and recovering from disasters or emergencies. GAO was asked to review the federal government's response and recovery efforts related to the 2017 hurricanes. This report examines, among other things, (1) the status of FEMA's Public Assistance funding and any challenges FEMA and Puerto Rico face in developing projects, (2) the extent to which Public Assistance cost estimating guidance addresses specific conditions in Puerto Ricas and aligns with best practices for cost estimating, (3) FEMA's policies and guidance for the program and any related challenges recovery partners have faced, and (4) the structures Puerto Rico and FEMA have put in place to manage and oversee Public Assistance grant funding. To address these objectives, GAO reviewed relevant laws, regulations, and FEMA Public Assistance guidance and data, and interviewed officials from FEMA, Puerto Rico government, and recovery partners.What GAO Found. As of September 30, 2019, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)—a component within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—had obligated nearly $6 billion for Public Assistance projects across Puerto Rico. However, FEMA and the territory face significant challenges in developing these projects. For example, FEMA has had delays in establishing a cost estimating process for projects, and the island has experienced delays in implementing the use of certain Public Assistance flexibilities, such as the ability to reimburse subrecipients for completed work. In addition, the island faces challenges in implementing other Public Assistance provisions, including the implementation of a manual reimbursement process for subrecipto FEMA that allows the central recovery office to access federal grant funds and reimburse Public Assistance recipients for work they perform. FEMA has adapted its cost estimating for Public Activities to address specific conditions and has met 9 of the 12 steps in GAO's Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide (GAO Cost Guide), but",0.8166666666666668,0.8576923076923076
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-221,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Puerto Rico was devastated by hurricanes Irma and Maria in September 2017. Puerto Rico estimates that $132 billion in funding from 2018 through 2028 will be needed to repair and reconstruct the infrastructure damaged by the hurricanes, exacerbating an already difficult financial situation in Puerto Rico. FEMA is the lead federal agency responsible for assisting Puerto Rico as it recovers from these natural disasters. GAO was asked to review FEMA's assistance to Puerto Rico in the aftermath of the hurricanes. This report examines (1) the status of FEMA'S Public Assistance funding in Puerto Rican and any challenges FEMA and Puerto Rico face in developing Public Assistance projects; (2) the extent to which Public Assistance cost estimating guidance addresses specific conditions in Puerto Rica and aligns with best practices for cost estimating; (3) the extent that FEMA has developed policies and guidance for the Public Assistance program and any related challenges; and (4) the structures Puerto Rico and FEMA have put in place to manage and oversee Public Assistance grant funding. GAO analyzed data on Public Assistance obligations and expenditures from September 2017 through September 30, 2019, the most recent data available at the time of GAO's review. GAO also interviewed FEMA officials and officials from Puerto Rico's central recovery office and four Puerto Rico government agencies.What GAO Found. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)—a component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—has obligated nearly $6 billion for Public Assistance grants to Puerto Rican government agencies since the 2017 hurricanes, but Puerto Rico faces significant challenges in developing projects. FEMA obligated nearly $5 billion in Public Assistance funds for 1,558 projects across Puerto Rico, according to data from September 2017. However, Puerto Rico is responsible for any costs that exceed fixed cost estimates for large infrastructure projects under the alternative procedures, and FEMA has adapted its guidance for estimating costs to ensure that these estimates accurately reflect the total costs of Public Assistance. GAO found that FEMA fully or substantially met nine of the 12 steps in the GAO Cost Guide for estimating Public Assistance costs, but it could improve its guidance to ensure all best practices in the guide are fully met. Officials from the central recovery offices and four government agencies GAO spoke with stated that they did not consistently have the guidance they needed to implement the program. According to FEMA officials, FEMA does not maintain a repository of public assistance policies and guidelines available to all relevant recovery partners, including subrecipients. Without real-time access to the totality of current applicable policy and guidance, recovery partners risk using guidance that has been revised or replaced. Developing a repository would improve the accessibility of the information and provide greater assurance that recovery partners are aware",1.0,0.8250000000000001
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-221,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Puerto Rico estimates that $132 billion in funding will be needed to repair and reconstruct the infrastructure damaged by the hurricanes through 2028. FEMA is the lead federal agency responsible for assisting Puerto Rico as it recovers from these natural disasters. FEMA administers the Public Assistance program in partnership with Puerto Rico, including officials from various levels of government who work together as partners in the recovery, providing grant funding for a wide range of eligible response and recovery activities. The alternative procedures also require that FEMA and Puerto Rico develop cost estimates before work can begin on large Public Assistance permanent work projects. GAO was asked to review FEMA's Public Assistance activities. This report examines (1) the status of FEMA funding in Puerto Rico and any challenges the agency faces in developing Public Assistance projects; (2) the extent to which Public Assistance cost estimating guidance aligns with best practices for cost estimating; (3) the extent of FEMA policies and guidance for the program and any challenge recovery partners faced; and (4) the structures Puerto Rico has put in place to manage and oversee program funding. GAO analyzed FEMA data from September 2017 through September 30, 2018, the most recent data available at the time of GAO's review. GAO also interviewed FEMA officials and recovery partners.What GAO Found. Since September 2017, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has obligated nearly $6 billion in Public Assistance grant funding to Puerto Rico for 1,558 projects across Puerto Rico. The majority of this funding is for emergency work projects because these projects began soon after the hurricanes struck and focused on debris removal and providing assistance to address immediate threats to life and property. FEMA has also obligated nearly $1.2 billion to reimburse subrecipients for completed work, about 65 percent of the total Public Assistance obligations. FEMA and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico face significant challenges in developing projects and implementing the program, including delays in developing cost estimating guidelines, the large number of damaged sites that require fixed cost estimates, and challenges with the implementation of flexibilities authorized by section 20601 of the Bipartisan Budget Act. FEMA' s guidance for developing cost estimates fully or substantially met nine of the 12 steps in the GAO Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide (GAO Cost Guide). However, FEMA could improve its guidance to ensure that all best practices are fully met. In response to the complexity of recovery, as well as the nature of change in a recovery environment, FEMA has iteratively developed, refined, and clarified Public Assistance guidance to respond and adapt to changing recovery conditions since the hurricanes. Officials from the central recovery office and four Puerto Rico government agencies GAO spoke with stated",0.95,0.8607843137254902
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-221,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Puerto Rico estimates that $132 billion in funding will be needed to repair and reconstruct the infrastructure damaged by the hurricanes through 2028. FEMA is the lead federal agency responsible for assisting Puerto Rico as it recovers from these natural disasters. FEMA administers the Public Assistance program in partnership with Puerto Rico, including officials from various levels of government who work together as partners in the recovery, providing grant funding for a wide range of eligible response and recovery activities. The alternative procedures also require that FEMA and Puerto Rico develop cost estimates before work can begin on large Public Assistance permanent work projects. GAO was asked to review FEMA's Public Assistance funding. This report examines: (1) the status of FEMA funding in Puerto Rico and any challenges FEMA and Cold Rico face in developing Public Assistance projects; (2) the extent to which Public Assistance cost estimating guidance addresses specific conditions in Puerto Street and aligns with best practices for cost estimating; (3) the extent of FEMA' policy and guidance for the Public Services program in Puerto Cuba and any challenge recovery partners faced with these polices and guidance; and (4) the structures Puerto Rico has put in place to manage and oversee Public Services funding. GAO analyzed FEMA data from September 2017 through September 30, 2018, and interviewed FEMA officials and recovery partners.What GAO Found. Since September 2017, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has obligated nearly $6 billion in Public Assistance grant funding to Puerto Rico for 1,558 projects across Puerto Rico. The majority of this funding is for emergency work projects because these projects began soon after the hurricanes struck and focused on debris removal and providing assistance to address immediate threats to life and property. FEMA has also obligated nearly $1.2 billion to reimburse subrecipients for completed work, about 65 percent of which has been spent on emergency work, according to FEMA data as of September 30, 2014. FEMA has taken steps to adapt its guidance to estimate costs to post-disaster conditions in Cold Rico, but strengthening its guidance could help FEMA provide greater assurance that its cost-estimating guidance is reliable. GAO's Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide (GAO Cost Guide) outlines 12 steps for cost estimation and assessment, which can be used across the federal government to develop, manage, and evaluate cost estimates. GAO found that FEMA cost estimating and assessment guidance fully or substantially met nine of the 12 steps in the GAO Cost Guide, but could improve its guidance. In response to the complexity of the recovery as well as the nature of change in a recovery environment, FEMA has developed and issued guidance that is specific to the implementation of the Public Affairs program in",0.8666666666666667,0.7277777777777779
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-281,BART (LEAD 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In 1996, Congress enacted the MHPI program in response to concerns about the effect of inadequate and poor quality housing on servicemembers and their families. Since then, private-sector developers and property management companies, hereafter referred to as private partners, have assumed primary responsibility for military family housing in the United States. They are currently responsible for the construction, renovation, maintenance, and repair of about 99 percent of domestic military housing—more than 200,000 homes on and around military bases—in the continental United States, Alaska, and Hawaii. Over the last few years, reports of the presence of lead-based paint and other hazards have raised questions about DOD's management and oversight of privatized military housing. The Conference report accompanying a bill for the Fiscal Year 2019 Department of Defense Appropriations Act included a provision for GAO to review ongoing issues within privatized housing. GAO assessed the extent to which the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and the military departments (1) conduct oversight of this housing, (2) have communicated their roles and responsibilities to servicemember and family members, and (3) have developed and implemented initiatives to improve privatized homes. GAOs reviewed OSD and military department policies and guidance related to the implementation of MHPI and interviewed OSD officials and representatives from each of the 14 private partners that are currently in charge of military housing projects in the U.S.What GAO Found. The Office of Defense Housing (ODH) and military departments do not conduct comprehensive oversight of the Military Housing Privatization Initiative (MHPI) because they do not have a consistent approach for doing so. The military departments use a variety of approaches to oversee MHPI-managed housing, but these approaches are not always consistent. For example, DOD's oversight approach focuses primarily on monitoring the status of housing projects, but it does not include a systematic approach for monitoring the condition of the housing. In addition, DOD does not have an established process for ensuring that private partners provide accurate and complete data on the condition and extent of problems they are experiencing with the privatized units they manage. As a result, DOD lacks information that could be used to assess the condition or progress of the privatizied housing. Furthermore, the lack of consistent oversight and inconsistent approach to oversight limits DOD's ability to ensure that it is effectively managing MHPI. DOD has taken some steps to communicate its responsibilities to private partners and servicemenbers and families, such as issuing guidance to clarify the roles",0.3999999999999999,0.8777777777777779
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-281,BART (LEAD 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In 1996, Congress enacted the MHPI program in response to DOD concerns about the effect of inadequate and poor quality housing on servicemembers and their families. Since then, private-sector developers and property management companies, hereafter referred to as private partners, have assumed primary responsibility for military family housing in the United States. They are responsible for the construction, renovation, maintenance, and repair of about 99 percent of domestic military housing—more than 200,000 homes on and around military bases—in the continental United States, Alaska, and Hawaii. Over the last few years, reports of the presence of lead-based paint and other hazards, such as mold and pest and rodent infestation, have raised questions about DOD's management and oversight of privatized military housing. The Conference report accompanying a bill for the Fiscal Year 2019 Department of Defense Appropriations Act included a provision for GAO to review ongoing issues within privatized housing. This report assesses the extent to which OSD and the military departments (1) conduct oversight of the condition of this housing, (2) communicate their roles and responsibilities to servicemember satisfaction with the housing, and (3) have developed and implemented initiatives to improve privatizied housing. GAO reviewed OSD, military department, and military department and private partner policies and guidance; interviewed OSD officials and representatives from each of the 14 private partners that are responsible at least 80 percent of the housing units in each military department; reviewed ground leases and other MHPI project documents for housing projects at 10 installations selected to represent each of OSD's four military departments and six private partners—including the five largest who own the majority of the units in the military department—as well as geographic and climate diversity; and conducted 15 focus groups with over 70 residents of the privatized homes on selected installations.What GAO Found. The Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and each of its military departments conduct a range of activities to oversee both the physical and financial condition of their privatized family housing and performance of the private partners. However, GAO found that these oversight efforts remain limited. Specifically, the scope of these oversight activities has been limited in the following areas: The military departments have taken steps to oversee the physical condition of the inventory of their private military housing projects, but the extent of these efforts is limited. For example, the rate of inspections of homes following change-of-occupancy maintenance varied among the installations GAO visited. Each military department has issued guidance",0.4666666666666666,0.8743589743589745
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-281,BART (LEAD 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In 1996, Congress enacted the MHPI program in response to DOD concerns about the effect of inadequate and poor quality housing on servicemembers and their families. Since then, private-sector developers and property management companies, hereafter referred to as private partners, have assumed primary responsibility for military family housing in the United States. They are responsible for the construction, renovation, maintenance, and repair of about 99 percent of domestic military housing—more than 200,000 homes on and around military bases—in the continental United States, Alaska, and Hawaii. Over the last few years, reports of the presence of lead-based paint and other hazards, such as mold and pest and rodent infestation, have raised questions about DOD's management and oversight of privatized military housing. The Conference report accompanying a bill for the Fiscal Year 2019 Department of Defense Appropriations Act included a provision for GAO to review ongoing issues within privatized housing. This report assesses the extent to which OSD and the military departments (1) conduct oversight of the condition of privatizewide housing, (2) communicate their roles and responsibilities to servicemember families, and (3) have developed and implemented initiatives to improve privatized homes. GAO reviewed OSD, military department, and private partner policies and guidance; interviewed OSD officials and representatives from each of the 14 private partners that own most of the U.S. military housing; and conducted 15 focus groups with over 70 privatized homeowner households.What GAO Found. The Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and each military department conduct a range of activities to oversee both the physical condition of the privatized units and the performance of the private partners. However, the scope of these oversight efforts has been limited. For example, GAO found that the rate of inspections of homes following change-of-occupancy maintenance varied among the installations it visited. OSD guidance provides for some measureable oversight activities, but it has not provided guidance clearly defining objectives for monitoring the physical conditions of privatize housing units. Without such guidance, the military services cannot be assured that their oversight activities will be sustained over time or be sufficiently consistent across projects, raising the risk that private partners may not provide adequate quality housing. Residents in GAO's focus groups indicated that they will no longer live in the homes following their current experience, and participants in 6 of the 15 focused groups stated that their current experiences with privatized living will affect the future career decisions for their family. DOD uses several",0.6333333333333333,0.8910256410256411
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-281,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Since 1996, private-sector developers and property management companies, hereafter referred to as private partners, have assumed primary responsibility for military family housing in the United States. They are currently responsible for the construction, renovation, maintenance, and repair of about 99 percent of domestic military housing—more than 200,000 homes on and around military bases—in the continental United States, Alaska, and Hawaii. Over the last few years, reports of the presence of lead-based paint and other hazards, such as mold and pest and rodent infestation, have raised questions about DOD's management and oversight of privatized military housing. The Conference report accompanying a bill for the Fiscal Year 2019 Department of Defense Appropriations Act included a provision for GAO to review ongoing issues within privatized housing. This report assesses the extent to which the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and the military departments (1) conduct oversight, (2) have communicated their roles and responsibilities to servicemembers and their families, and (3) have developed and implemented initiatives to improve privatized housing, among other things. GAO reviewed OSD and military department policies and guidance related to the implementation of the MHPI program and interviewed OSD officials and representatives from each of the 14 private partners that are responsible for privatized housing projects. GAO also visited a non-generalizable sample of 10 installations selected to represent each military department and six private partners—including the five largest who own the majority of privatized housing units—as well as geographic and climate diversity.What GAO Found. The Department of the Defense (DOD) has not conducted a systematic review of the condition of privatized residential housing on military bases to determine whether it is in compliance with the Military Housing Privatization Initiative (MHPI) program. OSD has issued reports to Congress on privatized housing for fiscal years 2015, 2016, and 2017, but these reports do not provide information on the status of the privatized housing on each of these bases. In addition, OSD does not have a systematic plan to assess the condition and performance of privatized homes on each military base. OSd and military departments have taken steps to improve oversight and communication, but they have not fully addressed the concerns raised by GAO in previous reports. For example, in 2018, GAO recommended that OSD revise guidance to improve the consistency and comparability in terms of the time periods of the information reported on the financial condition of its privatized housing programs, fully assess the effects of reductions in basic allowance for housing on the projects, clarify when project changes require notice, and define tolerances for project risks. DOD concurred with these recommendations and, as",0.5,0.9466666666666668
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-281,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In 1996, Congress enacted the MHPI legislation in response to DOD concerns about the effect of inadequate and poor quality housing on servicemembers and their families. Since then, private-sector developers and property management companies, hereafter referred to as private partners, have assumed primary responsibility for military family housing in the United States. They are responsible for the construction, renovation, maintenance, and repair of about 99 percent of domestic military housing—more than 200,000 homes on and around military bases—in the continental United States, Alaska, and Hawaii. Over the last few years, reports of the presence of lead-based paint and other hazards, such as mold and pest and rodent infestation, have raised questions about DOD's management and oversight of privatized military housing. The Conference Report accompanying a bill for the Fiscal Year 2019 Department of Defense Appropriations Act included a provision for GAO to review issues related to privatized housing. This report assesses the extent to which OSD and the military departments (1) conduct oversight of this housing, (2) have communicated their roles and responsibilities, and (3) have developed and implemented initiatives to improve this housing. GAO reviewed policies and guidance related to MHPI and interviewed officials from OSD, each military department, and each of the 14 private partners that own or manage most of the U.S. military housing, as well as a non-generalizable sample of 10 installations selected based on geographic and climate diversity.What GAO Found. The Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and each conduct a range of activities to oversee the condition of the privatized homes they manage, but these efforts are limited. Specifically, GAO found that the scope of oversight of the physical condition of these homes has been limited; performance metrics focused on quality of maintenance and resident satisfaction with housing may not accurately reflect private partner performance related to its condition; and there are no reliable or consistent data on these homes. The military departments have issued guidance outlining their respective oversight roles, but the extent of daily oversight of management and operations and periodic reviews of compliance with each project's business agreement varies among installations GAO visited. For example, Air Force officials told GAO that they are moving to a 100-percent inspection policy. Similarly, Army officials stated that they inspect 100 percent of homes that have completed change-of-occupancy maintenance, while Navy officials said that these homes are inspected 10 to 20 percent of the time. Performance-based incentive fees that private partners receive under",0.5499999999999999,0.9466666666666668
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-281,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In 1996, Congress enacted the MHPI in response to DOD concerns about the effect of inadequate and poor quality housing on servicemembers and their families. Since then, private-sector developers and property management companies, hereafter referred to as private partners, have assumed primary responsibility for military family housing in the United States. They are responsible for the construction, renovation, maintenance, and repair of about 99 percent of domestic military housing—more than 200,000 homes on and around military bases—in the continental United States, Alaska, and Hawaii. Over the last few years, reports of the presence of lead-based paint and other hazards, such as mold and pest and rodent infestation, have raised questions about DOD's management and oversight of privatized housing. The Conference Report accompanying a bill for the Fiscal Year 2019 Department of Defense Appropriations Act included a provision for GAO to review ongoing issues within privatized military housing. This report assesses the extent to which OSD and the military departments (1) conduct oversight of this housing, (2) communicate their roles and responsibilities, and (3) develop and implement initiatives to improve this housing. GAO reviewed policies and guidance related to MHPI and conducted site visits to a non-generalizable sample of 10 installations selected to represent each military department and 6 of the largest private partners that own most of the housing in each installation, as well as geographic and climate diversity; reviewed resident satisfaction data reported in DOD's reports to Congress for fiscal years 2015, 2016, and 2017; interviewed OSD, military department, and Navy officials and private partner representatives; and conducted 15 focus groups with over 70 residents.What GAO Found. The Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and each of its military departments conduct a range of activities to oversee the condition of their privatized homes, but these oversight efforts are limited in three key areas. The scope of oversight of the physical condition of housing has been limited. For example, GAO found that the rate of inspections of homes following change-of-occupancy maintenance varied by military department at some installations it visited. The military department oversight activities generally fall into two categories—daily oversight of management and operations and periodic reviews of compliance with each project's business agreements. However, the implementation and scope of these activities varies and can be limited. Specifically, in May 2019, the Department of the Army Inspector General reported that senior commanders and garrison staffs expressed confusion concerning the roles, responsibilities, authorities, and authorities regarding privat",0.6166666666666667,0.9228571428571428
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-281,BART (ORACLE 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Over the last few years, reports of the presence of lead-based paint and other hazards, such as mold and rodent infestation, have raised questions about DOD's management and oversight of privatized military housing. The Conference Report accompanying a bill for the Fiscal Year 2019 Department of Defense Appropriations Act included a provision for GAO to review ongoing issues within privatized housing. GAO assessed the extent to which the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and the military departments (1) conduct oversight of the program, (2) have communicated their roles and responsibilities to servicemembers and their families, and (3) have developed and implemented initiatives to improve the program. To conduct this work, GAO reviewed relevant laws, regulations, and guidance; interviewed OSD and military department officials; and visited 74 privatized homes.What GAO Found. OSD, the military services, and private partners have a range of oversight activities to oversee both the condition of the homes and the performance of the private partners. However, the scope of oversight has been limited. For example, OSD has not conducted a physical inspection of any of the privatized home projects GAO visited. In addition, OSE has not assessed the financial viability of the projects. Without such an assessment, DOD's oversight efforts could be compromised. OSE uses performance metrics to measure the performance and quality of the housing, but these metrics may not accurately reflect private partner performance related to the condition and resident satisfaction. For instance, some of the metrics used to assess the quality of maintenance are based on information collected from private partners, while other data are collected from OSE and other sources. In response to GAO's concerns, OSO has recently implemented initiatives that will increase the frequency of the physical inspections of homes and issue guidance to ensure consistency in the framework used to measure project performance. DOD has provided reports to Congress on resident satisfaction with privatized, but data in these reports are unreliable, leading to misleading results. Specifically, reported resident satisfaction data are unreliable due to variances in the data collected by OSD from the military service and OSD's calculation and presentation of the data. In some cases, the data are not complete or accurate. In other cases, data are incomplete or inaccurate. DOD is in the process of developing and implementing initiatives aimed at improving the condition, quality, and resident experience of the military housing program. While these initiatives are important, key challenges exist. Specifically: The timeliness with which they are able",0.8166666666666668,0.7999999999999999
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-281,BART (ORACLE 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Privatized military housing--more than 200,000 homes on and around military bases in the continental United States, Alaska, and Hawaii--is a housing choice for servicemembers returning from overseas deployments. The Conference Report accompanying a bill for the Fiscal Year 2019 Department of Defense Appropriations Act included a provision for GAO to review ongoing issues within privatized housing. This report assesses the extent to which OSD and the military departments (1) conduct oversight of privatized homes, (2) communicate their roles and responsibilities to servicemember families, and (3) have developed and implemented initiatives to improve privatized home conditions. GAO reviewed relevant policies and guidance; interviewed OSD, military department, and private partner officials; and visited a non-generalizable sample of 10 installations selected to represent each of OSD's, the military services', and six private partners' (including the five largest who own the majority of the housing in the United States) geographic and climate diversity.What GAO Found. The Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and the four military departments conduct some oversight of the physical condition of the privatized military homes (MHPI) maintained by private partners, but the scope of these efforts is limited. The military departments and private partners conduct oversight activities, such as physical inspections of homes, and OSD has issued guidance for overseeing privatized units. However, the scope and focus of these activities has been limited. Specifically, GAO found the following: GAO identified four key areas where oversight activities could be improved: (1)—Quality of maintenance and resident satisfaction—the military departments focus oversight on the quality of maintenance, while the private partners focus their oversight efforts on the condition of homes. (2)—metrics used to assess privatized partner performance—there is inconsistency in how the data on resident satisfaction with the condition and quality of the homes in the military housing portfolio are collected and reported to OSD. (3)—there is a lack of reliable or consistent data on the overall condition of privatised housing. (4) military housing offices have not effectively communicated their role as a resource for servicemen and women to obtain information and solutions to problems with privatized homeownership. (5) OSDOD has not assessed the risks of proposed initiatives aimed at improving privatized and has not fully assessed the impact of such initiatives may have on the financial viability of the MHPI projects. Without taking these steps, DOD cannot ensure that its efforts to improve the",0.8833333333333333,0.8523809523809525
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-281,BART (ORACLE 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. In 1996, Congress enacted MHPI in response to DOD concerns about the effect of inadequate and poor quality housing on servicemembers and their families. Over the last few years, reports of the presence of lead-based paint and other hazards, such as mold and pest and rodent infestation, have raised questions about DOD's management and oversight of privatized housing. The Conference Report accompanying a bill for the Fiscal Year 2019 Department of Defense Appropriations Act included a provision for GAO to review ongoing issues within privatized military housing. This report examines the extent to which OSD and the military departments (1) conduct oversight of MHPI, (2) have communicated their roles and responsibilities to servicemember families, and (3) have developed and implemented initiatives to improve privatised housing. GAO reviewed OSD, military department, and private partner policies and guidance; analyzed resident satisfaction data reported in DOD reports to Congress for fiscal years 2015, 2016, and 2017; and interviewed OSD officials and representatives from each of the 14 private partners that are responsible for privatized homes.What GAO Found. The Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and each military department conduct a range of activities to oversee both the condition and performance of the military housing inventory managed by the Military Housing Privatization Initiative (MHPI) and have recently taken steps to improve this oversight—such as increasing the frequency of the physical inspection of homes and issuing guidance to ensure consistency in the framework used to measure project performance. However, GAOngoing oversight efforts are limited in several key areas. For example, the scope has been limited in that the scope, as OSD has not clearly defined oversight objectives for monitoring the physical condition of privatised homes. In addition, the underlying indicators used to determine if a private partner has met a performance metric may be misleading if the indicators are not reevaluated on an ongoing basis to ensure they are accurate measures of the private partners' performance and an accurate reflection of the condition of the homes. The military departments conduct some oversight of the exterrine condition of homes, but the scope of these oversight efforts has also been limited. For instance, while the departments provide oversight of exterine condition through neighborhood tours to view amenities such as community centers, playgrounds, and pools owned, maintained, and operated by the private partner companies, and work order tracking systems that record, among other things, maintenance work requested and conducted on each housing unit, these data are not captured reliably or",0.6666666666666666,0.7777777777777778
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-281,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. The Department of Defense (DOD) is the largest purchaser of privatized housing in the United States. Over the last few years, reports of the presence of lead-based paint and other hazards, such as mold and pest and infestation, have raised questions about DOD's management and oversight of privatized military housing. The Conference report accompanying a bill for the Fiscal Year 2019 Department of Defence Appropriations Act included a provision for GAO to review ongoing issues within privatized military homes. This report examines the extent to which the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the military departments (1) conduct oversight of the physical condition of privatized homes, (2) have communicated their roles and responsibilities to servicemembers and their families, and (3) have developed and implemented initiatives to improve privatized housing. GAO reviewed relevant laws, regulations, guidance, and OSD and military department policies and procedures. GAO also interviewed officials from OSD, military departments, and the private sector.What GAO Found. The Office of Secretary of the Defense (OSD) and the Department of the Military Services (DMS) conduct a range of activities to oversee both the condition and performance of the private partners that manage privatized housing, but GAO's review showed that the scope of oversight has been limited. Specifically, OSD's physical inspection of homes is limited, and it is unclear whether this oversight is consistent with the framework used to measure project performance. OSD has also issued guidance to ensure consistency in the framework for measuring project performance, but this guidance has not been implemented in all privatized housing projects. In addition, GAO found that performance metrics focused on quality of maintenance and resident satisfaction may not accurately reflect private partner performance related to the condition of the homes. DOD provides reports to Congress on resident satisfaction with privatized housing but data in these reports are unreliable, leading to misleading results. DOD has provided periodic reports on the privatized housing program to Congress, but reported results on residents' satisfaction have been unreliable and are misleading due to (1) variances in the data the departments collect and provide to OSD; (2) OSD calculation and presentation of the data; and (3) a lack of reliable or consistent data on the conditions of the privatized homes. While DOD is in the process of developing and implementing initiatives aimed at improving privatized housing and increasing the department's focus on the condition, key challenges include the timeliness with which they are able to implement these initiatives, a shortage of resources needed for implementation, and concerns that implementation could have unintended negative impacts on the financial viability of the projects. While OSD is developing initiatives to",0.9666666666666668,0.9111111111111112
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-281,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. DOD is responsible for the construction, renovation, maintenance, and repair of about 99 percent of domestic military housing—more than 200,000 homes on and around military bases—in the continental United States, Alaska, and Hawaii. Over the last few years, reports of the presence of lead-based paint and other hazards, such as mold and pest and rodent infestation, have raised questions about DOD's management and oversight of privatized military housing. The Conference Report accompanying a bill for the Fiscal Year 2019 Department of Defense Appropriations Act included a provision for GAO to review ongoing issues within privatized military homes. This report examines the extent to which the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and the military departments (1) conduct oversight of the condition of privatized housing for servicemembers and their families, (2) have communicated their roles and responsibilities to servicemembers, and (3) have developed and implemented initiatives to improve privatized housing. GAO reviewed policies and guidance for the privatized housing program, visited a non-generalizable sample of 10 installations selected to represent each of the military department and six private partners, and interviewed officials from OSD, the private partners and military departments.What GAO Found. GAO found that the scope of oversight of military housing has been limited, performance metrics focused on quality of maintenance and resident satisfaction may not accurately reflect private partner performance, and past DOD reports to Congress on privatized housing resident satisfaction are unreliable due to inconsistent handling and calculation of the data. For example, GAO identified errors in OSD's data calculations, as well as the differences in how the data provided to OSD are translated, indicating the need for better internal controls, including a process for collecting and calculating resident satisfaction data and explanation of the collected and reported data to ensure they are reasonably free from error and bias and represent what they purport to represent. OSD and military department officials are collaborating on several initiatives aimed at improving the residents' experience with privatized housing and ensuring a consistent resident experience across installations. However, these initiatives have not been systematically or clearly communicated to residents, and military officials GAO met with acknowledged that there still appears to be a gap in residents' awareness of the role of some military housing offices. DOD and the private housing partners have identified and begun collaborating on a series of initiatives aimed to improve residents' experiences with the privatized homes they maintain. For instance, DOD and private partner representatives have identified several initiatives that could improve the resident's experience with the housing, but have not yet assessed the impact of these initiatives on the financial viability of the privatized projects. DOD has",0.8166666666666668,0.9333333333333332
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-281,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. DOD is responsible for the construction, renovation, maintenance, and repair of about 99 percent of domestic military housing—more than 200,000 homes on and around military bases—in the continental United States, Alaska, and Hawaii. Over the last few years, reports of the presence of lead-based paint and other hazards, such as mold and pest and rodent infestation, have raised questions about DOD's management and oversight of privatized military housing. The Conference Report accompanying a bill for the Fiscal Year 2019 Department of Defense Appropriations Act included a provision for GAO to review ongoing issues within privatized military. This report assesses the extent to which the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and the military departments (1) conduct oversight of privatization for servicemembers and their families, (2) have communicated their roles and responsibilities to servicemembers, and (3) have developed and implemented initiatives to improve privatized housing. GAO reviewed policies and guidance, visited a non-generalizable sample of 10 installations selected to represent each of military departments and six private partners, and interviewed officials from OSD and the private partners.What GAO Found. GAO found that the scope of oversight of the physical condition of privatized housing has been limited, performance metrics focused on quality of maintenance and resident satisfaction may not accurately reflect private partner performance related to privatized housing, and past DOD reports to Congress on resident satisfaction are unreliable due to the inconsistent handling and calculation of the data and therefore may be misleading. DOD has provided periodic reports on privatized housing to Congress, but data in these reports are unreliable and are misleading due to (1) variances in the data the military department collects and provides to OSD, and (2) OSD's calculation and presentation of data. For example, the data GAO identified in the OSD report may not be reliable, leading to the potential for misleading results. OSD has identified and begun collaborating on a series of initiatives aimed at improving the residents' experience with privatized housing; however, DOD and private partner representatives have cited several challenges that could affect their ability to implement these initiatives, including the timeliness with which they are able to implement initiatives, a lack of resources needed for implementation, and concerns that implementation could have unintended negative impacts on the financial viability of the privatized housing projects. DOD, the private partner, and military departments have identified and began collaborating on several initiatives aimed to improve residents' experiences with privatization, including improving the resident's experience with the military housing office and ensuring a consistent resident experience across installations. However, DOD has not assessed the risk of the proposed initiatives on the",0.7833333333333333,0.9333333333333332
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-336,BART (LEAD 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Improper payments—payments that should not have been made or were made in incorrect amounts under statutory, contractual, administrative, or other legally applicable requirements—are a significant problem in the federal government. For fiscal year 2019, federal agency improper payment estimates totaled about $175 billion, a $24 billion increase from the prior year. Further, as GAO has reported, although agencies report improper payment estimate data annually, the government is unable to determine the full extent to which improper payments occur or reasonably ensure that actions are taken to reduce them. In March 2020, Congress and the President enacted the Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019 (PIIA), which repealed IPIA, IPERA, and IPERIA and enacted substantially similar provisions to replace them. Under PIIA, the core structure of executive agency assessment, estimation, analysis (such as corrective actions), and reporting of improper payments remains consistent with the statutory framework in effect during the period of GAO's audit. This report examines (1) actions agencies have taken to identify root causes of improper payment for selected programs, (2) the extent that their corrective action plans correspond to identified root causes, and (3) the degree to which agencies monitored the progress and evaluated the effectiveness of implementing such corrective actions and communicated this information to appropriate stakeholders within the agencies. GAO selected a nongeneralizable sample of eight programs among six Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990 agencies for its review.What GAO Found. The eight programs reviewed by GAO identified improper payment root cause analysis and corrective action plan requirements under the Improper Payments Information Act (IPIA) and related Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance. However, the agencies did not fully adhere to these requirements or OMB guidance. For example, all of the programs did not identify the root causes for all of their reported improper payments, and none of the agencies documented the actions taken to correct those causes in their corrective actions. In addition, all eight programs did identify the causes of some improper payments identified in their programs, but did not document the actions that were taken to address those improper payments. OMB requires agencies to report on the results of corrective actions in their annual financial statements, but does not require agencies to document the completion dates of those actions. Without clearly documenting the actions to be completed, agencies may not be able to determine whether the corrective actions have resulted in the elimination of improper or non-improper payments. The agencies' corrective action actions for the eight programs that GAO",0.4666666666666666,0.6666666666666666
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-336,BART (LEAD 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Improper payments—payments that should not have been made or were made in incorrect amounts under statutory, contractual, administrative, or other legally applicable requirements—are a significant problem in the federal government. For fiscal year 2019, federal agency improper payment estimates totaled about $175 billion, a $24 billion increase from the prior year. The Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019 (PIIA), enacted in March 2020, repealed the IPIA and related provisions that were enacted in 2002, 2010, and 2012 and contains substantially similar provisions to those enacted in those years, respectively. Under PIIA, the core structure of executive agency assessment, estimation, analysis (such as corrective actions), and reporting of improper payments remains consistent with the statutory framework in effect during the period of GAO's audit. GAO performed this work under the authority of the Comptroller General to conduct evaluations on his own initiative and to assist Congress with its oversight responsibilities. This report examines (1) actions agencies have taken to identify root causes for selected programs, (2) the extent to which their corrective action plans correspond to identified root causes, and (3) how agencies monitored the progress and evaluated the effectiveness of implementing corrective action plan implementation and communicated this information to appropriate stakeholders within the agencies. To address these objectives, GAO analyzed improper payment root cause analysis and corrective action planning requirements under IPIA, OMB guidance, and federal internal control standards, and analyzed a nongeneralizable sample of eight programs from six Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990 agencies that had reported improper payments estimates greater than $1 billion for fiscal year 2018.What GAOtto P. Schiavoicedigital/iStock Photo: GAO-20-19-cv-1 The eight programs GAO reviewed—the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the William Ford Federal Loan Program (DFP), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI), the Old-Age, Survivors Insurance, Old-age, and Survivors Insurance program, the Pell Grant Program, the Supplemental Nutrition Income Program (Pell Grant), the Supplemental Security Disability Insurance Program (SSA), the Children's Health Insurance Program, and the Supplemental Services and Supportive Income Program for Persons with Disabilities (SSDI). GAO selected these programs for review because each had reported an estimate of at least $1.0 billion for FY2018 and for FY2019. In addition to reviewing the programs' root causes and corrective actions,",0.3166666666666666,0.7333333333333334
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-336,BART (LEAD 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Improper payments—payments that should not have been made or were made in incorrect amounts under statutory, contractual, administrative, or other legally applicable requirements—are a significant problem in the federal government. For fiscal year 2019, federal agency improper payment estimates totaled about $175 billion, a $24 billion increase from the prior year. The Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019 (PIIA), enacted in March 2020, repealed the IPIA and IPERA laws and enacted substantially similar provisions to replace them. Under PIIA, the core structure of executive agency assessment, estimation, analysis (such as corrective actions), and reporting of improper payments remains consistent with the statutory framework in effect during the period of GAO's audit. GAO performed this work under the authority of the Comptroller General to conduct evaluations on his own initiative and to assist Congress with its oversight responsibilities. This report examines, among other things, (1) actions agencies have taken to identify the root causes of fiscal year 2018 and 2019 improper payment improper payments for selected programs, and (2) the extent to which agencies monitored the progress and evaluated the effectiveness of implementing corrective action plans and communicated this information to appropriate stakeholders within the agencies. To address these objectives, GAO analyzed improper payment estimation methodologies, federal internal control standards, and OMB guidance; reviewed a nongeneralizable sample of eight programs from six Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990 agencies; and interviewed agency officials.What GAO Found. The Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, and Veterans Affairs and the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the Department of Labor (Labor) used the results of their fiscal year 2006 through 2008 improper payment compliance studies as the methodologies' basis for identifying the root cause(s) and developing corrective actions to reduce those root causes for the selected programs GAO reviewed—Supplemental Security Income Program, Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance Program, Child and Family Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Direct Loan Program, Pell Grant Program, and the William Ford Federal Student Aid Program. The Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) uses its Quality Control System to identify improper payments and determine improper payment rates for SNAP and CHIP. The Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) guidance directs agencies to develop and implement appropriate corrective actions that respond to the identified root causes to prevent and reduce improper payments.",0.4666666666666666,0.861904761904762
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-336,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Improper payments—payments that should not have been made or were made in incorrect amounts under statutory, contractual, administrative, or other legally applicable requirements—are a significant problem in the federal government. For fiscal year 2019, federal agency improper payment estimates totaled about $175 billion, a $24 billion increase from the prior year. Further, as GAO has reported, although agencies report improper payment estimated annually, the federal Government is unable to determine the full extent to which improper payments occur or reasonably ensure that actions are taken to reduce them. In March 2020, Congress and the President enacted the Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019 (PIIA), which repealed IPIA, IPERA, and IPERIA and enacted substantially similar provisions to replace them. This report examines (1) actions agencies have taken to identify root causes of improper payments for selected programs, (2) the extent of their corrective action plans to correspond to identified root causes, and (3) the extent that agencies monitored the progress and evaluated the effectiveness of implementing such corrective actions and communicated this information to appropriate stakeholders within the agencies. GAO selected a nongeneralizable sample of eight programs from seven agencies to review. GAO analyzed improper payment root cause analysis and corrective action plan requirements under IPIA and related Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance and interviewed agency officials. GAO also reviewed relevant federal internal control standards.What GAO Found. Agencies have taken actions to identify the root causes for improper payments identified in their programs for which they reported improper payments estimates. For example, agencies developed corrective actions to correct the root cause identified in the programs' estimates. However, GAO found that agencies did not consistently follow key criteria that agencies should use when identifying root causes and developing and monitoring related corrective actions plans. Specifically, GAO identified three key criteria agencies should follow when identifying the root reasons for improper payment payments: (1) the need for a systematic approach to identifying root reasons; (2) the need to identify and document the root reason for the improper payment; and (3) a process for documenting the root root cause. For the eight selected programs GAO reviewed, agencies generally followed these criteria, but did not always follow all three criteria. For each of the eight programs, agencies reported in their fiscal year 2018 agency financial reports (AFR) that they had identified the causes of the improper payments, but they did not provide a reasonable basis for determining whether the corrective actions they had developed for those root causes were consistent with the root-cause analysis requirements of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) or the Office of Inspector General (IG). For example: (1)",0.5833333333333334,0.7833333333333333
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-336,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Improper payments—payments that should not have been made or were made in incorrect amounts under statutory, contractual, administrative, or other legally applicable requirements—are a significant problem in the federal government. For fiscal year 2019, federal agency improper payment estimates totaled about $175 billion, a $24 billion increase from the prior year. Further, as GAO has reported, the government is unable to determine the full extent to which improper payments occur or reasonably ensure that actions are taken to reduce them. In March 2020, Congress and the President enacted the Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019 (PIIA), which repealed IPIA, IPERA, and IPERIA and enacted substantially similar provisions to replace them. Under PIIA, the core structure of executive agency assessment, estimation, analysis (such as corrective actions), and reporting of improper payments remains consistent with the statutory framework in effect during the period of GAO's audit. GAO performed this work under the authority of the Comptroller General to conduct evaluations on his own initiative and to assist Congress with its oversight responsibilities. For this report, GAO examined (1) actions agencies have taken to identify root causes for selected programs, (2) the extent that corrective action plans correspond to identified root causes, and monitor progress and evaluate effectiveness of the corrective actions, and communicate this information to appropriate stakeholders, among other objectives. To address these objectives GAO analyzed improper payment root cause analysis and corrective action plan requirements under IPIA and related Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance and federal internal control standards, as well as a nongeneralizable sample of eight programs among six Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990 agencies that reported an improper payment estimate greater than $1 billion for fiscal year 2018.What GAO Found. The eight programs GAO reviewed—the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Direct Loan program, the Pell Grant program, Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program, Supplemental Security Income Program, the Veterans Health Administration's Prosthetic and Sensory Aids Service, the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) program, and the Veterans Benefits Administration's prosthetic and hearing aid program—were reviewed and identified as susceptible to significant improper payments, as required by risk assessments, OMB guidance, or statutes. Of the eight programs, five—the Department of Agriculture's SNAP and Department of Education's Direct Loan and Pell Grant programs and the Social Security Administration's Oldage,",0.4666666666666666,0.8696969696969697
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-336,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Improper payments—payments that should not have been made or were made in incorrect amounts under statutory, contractual, administrative, or other legally applicable requirements—are a significant problem in the federal government. For fiscal year 2019, federal agency improper payment estimates totaled about $175 billion, a $24 billion increase from the prior year. The federal government is unable to determine the full extent to which improper payments occur or reasonably ensure that actions are taken to reduce them. In March 2020, Congress and the President enacted the Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019 (PIIA), which repealed IPIA, IPERA, and IPERIA and enacted substantially similar provisions to replace them. Under PIIA, the core structure of executive agency assessment, estimation, analysis (such as corrective actions), and reporting of improper payments remains consistent with the statutory framework in effect during the period of GAO's audit. GAO performed this work under the authority of the Comptroller General to conduct evaluations on his own initiative and to assist Congress with its oversight responsibilities. This report examines (1) actions agencies have taken to identify root causes for selected programs, (2) the extent that their corrective action plans correspond to identified root causes, and (3) how agencies monitored progress and evaluated the effectiveness of their corrective actions and communicated this information to appropriate stakeholders within the agencies. To conduct this work, GAO analyzed improper payment root cause analysis and corrective action plan requirements under IPIA and related OMB guidance and federal internal control standards, analyzed a nongeneralizable sample of eight programs among six Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990 agencies with outlays greater than $1 billion for fiscal year 2018, and interviewed agency officials.What GAO Found. The six agencies GAO reviewed generally used the results of their improper payment estimation methodologies as the basis for identifying the root causes of reported improper payments for the six programs reviewed. Specifically, the agencies reviewed a sample of payments to identify which payments were improper and establish an improper payment rate and analyzed the improper payment results to determine root causes. Four out of six agencies—the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services (HHS), Veterans Affairs (VA), and Labor (USDA), and the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the Supplemental Security Income (SSI)—developed corrective actions that corresponded to root causes identified for the selected programs. The remaining agency—the Agency for International Development (AIDD)—did not develop agency-level corrective actions for the programs reviewed that correspond to",0.6,0.8230769230769232
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-336,BART (ORACLE 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. GAO was asked to review the extent of improper payments for fiscal year 2010 through fiscal year 2008 through fiscal years that the Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Social Security Administration (SSA) received. This report examines (1) actions agencies have taken to identify the root causes of such payments for the selected programs, (2) the extent to which their corrective action plans correspond to identified root causes, and (3) agencies monitored the progress and evaluated the effectiveness of implementing such corrective actions. To conduct this work, GAO reviewed agency corrective actions for fiscal years 2008 through 2018. GAOs also interviewed agency officials.What GAO Found. The Improper Payments Information Act (IPIA) requires executive branch agencies to take various steps regarding improper payments in accordance with guidance issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Five out of six agencies—USDA, Education, HHS, VA, and SSA—used the results of their improper payment estimation methodologies as the basis for identifying the root cause of improper payment for the programs GAO examined. For example, USDA's improper payment estimate for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) was based on outdated information, which increases the risk that Treasury may not be identifying these payments' true root causes and therefore will lack quality information needed to develop appropriate corrective actions and reduce them. Four of the six agencies developed corrective actions that correspond to the identified root cause for the six selected programs that were identified in OMB guidance. However, three of the four agencies—the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Veterans Affairs—that did not develop corrective actions corresponding to the identify root causes either did not establish planned completion dates, monitor the progress, or measure the effectiveness. For the six programs reviewed, USDA and Treasury have not developed agency-wide corrective actions in their SNAP and EITC programs, respectively, that would better position these agencies to identify and reduce improper payments. Additionally, USDA, HHS and SSE do not have sufficient processes in place to measure the progress of their corrective actions to address the identified causes for improper payments, as required by OMB. Unless agencies develop and implement corrective action processes to effectively monitor and measure their progress, their ability to ensure that improper payments are appropriately addressed will be limited.",0.9333333333333332,0.7564102564102564
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-336,BART (ORACLE 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Improper payments—payments that should not have been made or were made in incorrect amounts under statutory, contractual, administrative, or other legally applicable requirements—are a significant problem in the federal government. The Improper Payments Information Act of 2002, as amended (IPIA), and related Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance, direct agencies to identify root causes of improper payments, develop corresponding corrective actions, and communicate related information to appropriate stakeholders. GAO was asked to review agencies' improper payment root cause analysis and corrective action plan processes. This report examines (1) actions agencies have taken to identify and address root causes for improper payments for selected programs, (2) the extent to which their corrective actions correspond to identified root causes, and (3) the level to which agencies monitored the progress and evaluated the effectiveness of their corrective action plans. GAOs reviewed agency documentation and interviewed officials from a nongeneralizable sample of six agencies selected based on fiscal year (FY) number of program beneficiaries, among other factors.What GAO Found. The six agencies GAO reviewed generally used the results of their improper payment estimation methodologies as the basis for identifying the root causes—or improper payments that should be stopped or reduced—for the selected programs GAO examined. For example, the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) uses data from the most recent detailed Internal Revenue Service compliance study to identify reported SNAP improper payments. The Department of the Treasury's Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a tax credit that offsets taxes owed by eligible taxpayers, and EITC recipients need not owe taxes to receive a benefit. Most of the selected agencies developed corrective actions that corresponded to identified Root Causes of Improper Payments for the selected program(s): Four out of six—Education, HHS, VA, and SSA—developed corrective actions corresponding to identifiedRoot Causes of the improper payments identified for these programs, in accordance with OMB guidance. For instance, Education developed a corrective action to address each of the six major root causes identified for its Direct Loan and Pell Grant programs, and VA developed a process for identifying and implementing related corrective actions. The four agencies, however, did not develop agency-level corrective actions to address SNAP's root causes. In contrast, USDA developed both agency- and state- level corrective actions for its state-administered Child and Nutrition Program (CHIP), prioritizing large dollar over smaller dollar value root cause categories",0.7666666666666666,0.6974358974358973
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-336,BART (ORACLE 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Improper payments—payments that should not have been made or were made in incorrect amounts under statutory, contractual, administrative, or other legally applicable requirements—are a significant problem in the federal government. For fiscal year 2019, federal agency improper payment estimates totaled about $175 billion, a $24 billion increase from the prior year. IPIA requires agencies to identify root causes of improper payments, develop corrective actions to address them, and report on the results of those actions. Related OMB guidance directs agencies to develop corrective action plans that correspond to identified root causes. GAO was asked to review agencies' efforts to address improper payments. This report examines (1) actions agencies have taken to identify the root causes for selected programs, (2) the extent to which their corrective actions correspond to the identified causes, and (3) agencies' processes for monitoring progress and evaluating the effectiveness of such corrective actions and communicating this information to appropriate stakeholders. To address these objectives, GAO analyzed improper payment estimation methodology and corrective action plan requirements under IPIA and OMB's related guidance, federal internal control standards, and agency documents and interviewed agency officials.What GAO Found. Five out of six agencies GAO reviewed—the Departments of Agriculture (USDA), Education, Health and Human Services (HHS), Justice, Veterans Affairs (VA), and the Social Security Administration (SSA)—used the results from their fiscal year 2018 agency financial reports as the basis for identifying the root cause of improper payment improper payments for the 16 programs GAO selected for review. Specifically, the agencies generally used a two-step process to identify improper payment root causes: (see table). First, agencies used data from the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) most recent compliance study of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for fiscal year (FY) 2018. However, the 2006 through 2008 EITC compliance study was conducted before IRS began collecting more recent data and therefore does not provide a reliable estimate of the percentage of EITCs paid in FY 2018. Thus, until IRS conducts a more timely analysis of the data, it will be uncertain whether identified root costs will be sufficiently relevant to inform decisions and evaluate risks. Second, most selected agencies developed corrective actions that corresponded to identified causes for the selected programs. Four out of the six agencies—Education, HHS, VA, and SSA—developed corrective actions corresponding to identified Root Causes of the improper payments identified for the programs that GAO examined, in",0.6333333333333333,0.8388888888888889
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-336,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. IPIA requires executive branch agencies to take various steps regarding improper payments in accordance with guidance issued by OMB, including the following: 1. reviewing all programs and activities and identifying those that may be susceptible to significant improper payments; 2. developing improper payment estimates for those programs and services that agency risk assessments, OMB or statutes identify as being susceptible to improper payments, and 3. analyzing the root causes of improper payments and developing corrective actions to reduce them. GAO was asked to review improper payments. This report examines (1) actions agencies have taken to identify root causes, (2) the extent to which their corrective action plans correspond to identified root causes and (3) the extent of agencies' monitoring of the effectiveness of implementing such corrective actions. GAO reviewed relevant guidance and agency documentation and interviewed agency officials.What GAO Found. Five out of six agencies—the Departments of Agriculture (USDA), Education, Health and Human Services (HHS), Veterans Affairs (VA), and Social Security Administration (SSA)—used the results of their improper payment estimation methodologies as the basis for identifying the root cause of improper payment for the selected programs GAO reviewed. Specifically, continued use of outdated information to evaluate EITC improper payments increases the risk that Treasury may not be identifying these payments' true root causes. USDA's IPIA corrective action plan guidance directs its components, including Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), to develop corrective actions that correspond to the identified root cause. OMB guidance directs agencies to develop and implement appropriate corrective actions for programs that are susceptible to large improper payments to prevent and reduce them, and Treasury did not develop corrective action actions that respond to the root root causes identified by s guidance. GAO found that four out of the six agencies developed corrective actions corresponding to the identification of root causes for the programs GAO examined, in accordance to OMB's guidance, and therefore did not have sufficient processes in place to monitor the progress and effectiveness of their corrective actions and communicate this information to appropriate stakeholders. For example, USDA and Treasury have not developed agency-wide corrective actions, respectively, that would better position these agencies to reduce and prevent them. Additionally, USDA, Education, and SSA do not have processes in in place that would allow them to monitor progress and measure the effectiveness and impact of their actions.",0.8333333333333334,0.8222222222222223
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-336,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. IPIA requires executive branch agencies to report on the causes of improper payments identified in their programs for which they reported improper payment estimates, actions taken to correct those causes, and the planned or actual completion dates of those actions. GAO was asked to review improper payments for selected programs. This report examines (1) actions agencies have taken to identify root causes, (2) the extent to which their corrective action plans correspond to identified root causes and (3) the extent that agencies monitored the progress and evaluated the effectiveness of implementing such corrective actions and communicated this information to appropriate stakeholders within the agencies. GAO reviewed agency documents and interviewed agency officials.What GAO Found. GAO found that five out of six agencies—USDA, Education, HHS, VA, and SSA—used the results of their improper payment estimation methodologies as the basis for identifying the root causes of selected programs' improper payments. Treasury used 2006 through 2008 tax year data to identify Reported Root Agents of Fiscal Year 2018 EITC Improper Payments. Treasury identified the root cause of EITC improper payments based on the most recent detailed 3-year EITC compliance study IRS conducted, using data from tax years 2006 through 2008. However, continued use of outdated information to evaluate EITC payments increases the risk that Treasury may not be identifying these payments' true root causes. GAO also found that most of the agencies developed corrective actions that correspond to the identified root cause, but they did not establish planned completion dates, monitor the progress, or measure the effectiveness. USDA did not develop agency-level corrective actions to address the root caused of EFSA improper payments and, as a result, did not monitor its corrective actions. Treasury did not have agency-wide corrective actions for fiscal year 2018, but it addressed improper payments through IRS's compliance programs and through outreach and education efforts to taxpayers and preparers. OMB guidance directs agencies to develop and implement appropriate corrective actions in response to the root reasons of improper payment to prevent and reduce them. However, USDA, Treasury, and others did not, as directed by OMB, develop agency corrective actions corresponding to the actual root causes for fiscal years 2002 through 2018. GAO is making seven recommendations to the Departments of the Treasury and USDA and to Education and HHS. GAO is not making any recommendations. The Secretary of Treasury should determine whether Treasury's current improper payment root cause analysis provides sufficiently relevant information that can be used as a basis for proposed corrective actions, and, if not, update the analysis using more timely data to ensure reliability for identifying root cause. The Department of Justice (HHS)",0.95,0.8074074074074075
GovReport,ID_GAO-20-336,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. IPIA requires executive branch agencies to report on the causes of improper payments identified in their programs for which they reported improper payment estimates, actions taken to correct those causes, and the planned or actual completion dates of those actions. GAO was asked to review improper payments for selected programs. This report examines (1) actions agencies have taken to identify root causes, (2) the extent to which their corrective action plans correspond to identified root causes and (3) the extent that agencies monitored the progress and evaluated the effectiveness of implementing such corrective actions and communicated this information to appropriate stakeholders within the agencies. GAO reviewed agency documents and interviewed agency officials.What GAO Found. GAO found that five out of six agencies—USDA, Education, HHS, VA, and SSA—used the results of their improper payment estimation methodologies as the basis for identifying the root causes of selected programs' improper payments. Treasury used 2006 through 2008 tax year data to identify Reported Root Agents of Fiscal Year 2018 EITC improper payments, based on the most recent detailed 3-year EITC compliance study IRS conducted. GAO also found that most agencies developed corrective actions that correspond to the identified root cause of EITC and therefore did not establish planned completion dates, monitor the progress, or measure the effectiveness. USDA did not develop agency-level corrective actions to address root causes for its SNAP improper payment program and, as a result, did not monitor its progress. Treasury addressed improper payments through IRS's compliance programs and through outreach and education efforts to taxpayers and preparers. However, Treasury did not have specific corrective actions for its EITC program, so it could not measure its effectiveness in reducing EITC payments. GAO is making the following seven recommendations—one each to Education and HHS and two each to USDA and Treasury. The Secretary of the Treasury should determine whether Treasury's current improper payment root cause analysis provides sufficiently relevant information that can be used as a basis for proposed corrective actions. Treasury should update its strategy for addressing root causes to include (1) coordinating with other agencies to identify potential strategies and data sources that may help in determining EITC eligibility and (2) determining whether legislative changes are needed, and developing proposals as appropriate, to help reduce EITC improperly payments. USDA, Treasury, and Education do not have sufficient processes in place to measure the effective of corrective actions, such as those related to the inability to authenticate taxpayer eligibility. Until agencies develop and implement a process that clearly links corrective action to effectively addressing improper payments and communicate this information, their ability to ensure that their actions will reduce improper payments will",0.9,0.8666666666666667
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-530,BART (LEAD 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Improper payments—payments that should not have been made or were made in an incorrect amount—are a long-standing, significant problem in the federal government, estimated at about $151 billion for fiscal year 2018. DOD's Defense Travel System (DTS) is the primary system used to process travel payments and accounts for most of the department's travel payments. In October 2016, DOD developed a DOD Travel Pay Improper Payments Remediation Plan to reinforce internal controls and accountability in the DOD travel pay program and help to reduce improper payments. GAO conducted this work under the authority of the Comptroller General to assist Congress with its oversight responsibilities. In this report, GAO examines (1) the amount DOD spent on DTS travel payments for fiscal years 2016 through 2018 and how much of those payments DOD estimated to be improper; (2) the extent to which DOD has implemented its Remedication Plan; and (3) the degree to which the department has established mechanisms to identify errors leading to improper travel payments, the root causes of those errors, and the cost-effectiveness of addressing root causes. To address these objectives, GAOs analyzed DTS data for fiscal periods 2016-2018, the most recent year for which complete data were available, and interviewed DOD officials.What GAO Found. The Department of Defense (DOD) spent an estimated $1.1 billion on Defense TTS travel in fiscal years (FY) 2016- 2018, of which an estimated 87 percent (about $764 million) was for approved trip purposes, such as airfares and hotels. The remainder of DOD's $365.32 million in estimated improper payments related to its travel program was for items such as meals, lodging, and transportation. The Defense Travel Management Office (DTMO), which is responsible for managing DOD's travel payment program, reported that it estimated that $84 million of the $365 million in improper payments for FY 2018 were for approved trips, which represented about 16 percent of the estimated improper payment amounts. However, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS), which reports the amount of improper payments in DTS, reported an additional $20.4 million in FY 2018 that it identified as improper. DFAS officials stated that they did not include this amount in their estimate because they believed that it was not included in the total improper payment amount reported by DTMO. Without including this amount, DOD cannot provide Congress with insight into the full extent of its estimated improper travel payment amounts",0.3833333333333333,0.5499999999999999
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-530,BART (LEAD 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Improper payments—payments that should not have been made or were made in an incorrect amount—are a long-standing, significant problem in the federal government, estimated at about $151 billion for fiscal year 2018. DOD's Defense Travel System (DTS) is the primary system used to process travel payments and accounts for most of the department's travel payments. In fiscal year 2016, DOD reported $365.32 million in improper payments related to its travel pay program. For fiscal years 2016 through 2018, the department reported $7.96 billion in estimated improper travel payments in DTS. GAO conducted this work under the authority of the Comptroller General to assist Congress with its oversight responsibilities. This report examines (1) the amount DOD spent on DTS travel payments for fiscal years FY 2016 through FY 2018 and how much of those payments DOD estimated to be improper; (2) the extent to which DOD has implemented its Remediation Plan; and (3) how DOD has identified and addressed the root causes of improper travel payment errors and the cost-effectiveness of addressing root causes. To conduct this work, GAO analyzed DOD travel payment data, reviewed DOD documentation, and interviewed DOD officials.What GAO Found. Using data from the Department of Defense's (DOD) Defense Travel Systems ( DTS) and travel payment estimates from the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS), GAO calculated that DOD spent an average of about $6.1 billion annually on travel payments using DTS in fiscal years (FY) 2016-2018, totaling about $18.3 billion in total payments for those years. Travel for active duty servicemememember members accounted for the largest portion of those travel payments, about $9.5 billion (52 percent). DOD's reported total travel payments increased by about $1 billion (16 percent) in nominal dollars and $0.68 billion in constant dollars from FY 2016 to FY 2018, for a total increase of approximately $1.6 billion (11 percent) during that time period. DOD estimated an annual average of $322 million in travel payments that were estimated to result in a monetary loss to the government, which represents amounts that should have been paid by the government and could be recovered. In response to GAO's prior recommendations, DOD updated its statistical sampling plan in FY 2017 to develop and report improper payment estimates for DTS, which is designed to estimate the dollar amount of improper payments, which includes both travel payments made in",0.5666666666666667,0.7141025641025641
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-530,BART (LEAD 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Improper travel payments—payments that should not have been made or were made in an incorrect amount—are a long-standing, significant problem in the federal government, estimated at about $151 billion for fiscal year 2018. DOD's Defense Travel System (DTS) is the primary system used to process travel payments and accounts for most of the department's travel payments. For fiscal years 2016 through 2018, DOD reported $365.32 million in improper payments related to its travel pay program. GAO conducted this work under the authority of the Comptroller General to assist Congress with its oversight responsibilities. This report examines (1) the amount DOD spent on DTS travel payments for fiscal years FY 2016 through FY 2018 and how much of those payments DOD estimated to be improper; (2) the extent to which DOD has implemented its Remediation Plan; and (3) how DOD has established mechanisms to identify errors leading to improper travel payments, the root causes of those errors, and the cost-effectiveness of addressing root causes. To conduct this work, GAO analyzed DTS data, surveyed 52 DOD components that manage travel payments processed by DTS, and interviewed DOD officials.What GAO Found. Using data provided by the Department of Defense (DOD) Defense Travel Systems (DDS), GAO calculated that DOD spent an average of about $6.1 billion annually on travel payments in FY 2016-FY 2018 through the use of DTS—a total of $18. Travel for active duty servicememembers accounted for the largest portion of those travel payments (52 percent) and for civilian employees (29 percent). DOD reported an estimated $9. DOD estimated an average annualized improper travel payment rate of about 5.3 percent (or $965.5 million) for those years. DOD established and has taken steps to implement a Remingiation plan aimed at reducing improper travel pay, but its approach may not manage risk effectively, many actions remain incomplete, and communication of requirements was lacking. In October 2016, DOD established a Remediated Plan for improper payments and a committee to monitor implementation by 10 components that it identified as key to addressing the problem. However, DOD did not consider available data on travel payment rates in selecting these 10 components to implement its risk-based approach. Further, the 10 components have not fully implemented the Remediate Plan requirements, and other components were generally unaware of the requirements in the Remingiate Plan and DOD's broader efforts to resolve",0.6666666666666666,0.6777777777777777
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-530,PEGASUS (LEAD 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Improper payments—payments that should not have been made or were made in an incorrect amount—are a long-standing, significant problem in the federal government, estimated at about $151 billion for fiscal year 2018. DOD travel payments are made to active and reserve or guard servicemembers and civilian employees and cover travel for both temporary duty and permanent change of station. DOD's Defense Travel System (DTS) is the primary system used to process travel payments and accounts for most of the department's travel payments. For fiscal year 2018, the department reported $365.32 million in improper payments related to its travel pay program. In March 2019, GAO reported on its priority open recommendations directed to DOD, including six open recommendations related to improper payments. This report examines (1) the amount DOD spent on DTS travel payments for fiscal years 2016 through 2018 and how much of those payments DOD estimated to be improper; (2) the extent to which DOD has implemented its Remediation Plan; and (3) the extent that DOD has established mechanisms to identify errors leading to improper travel payments, the root causes of those errors, and the cost-effectiveness of addressing root causes. GAO reviewed DOD documents and interviewed DOD and component officials.What GAO Found. The Department of Defense (DOD) spent an estimated $3 billion on Defense Travel Systems (DTs) travel payments in fiscal years 2016, 2017 and 2018, and estimated that about $3 billion of those expenditures were improper. DOD estimated that it spent an additional $1 billion in fiscal year 2018 on improper payments that were estimated to result in a monetary loss to the government. The estimated improper payments for DOD travel in fiscal 2017 and 2018 were about $1 billion and $3 billion, respectively. DOD spent about $390 million on DTS payments in 2016 and 2017 and estimated about $360 million in fiscal 2018 on those payments. DOD estimates that it estimated about $290 million in 2016 improper payments and about $340 million in 2017 improper payments, and it estimates about $330 million in 2016. DOD has not fully implemented its Travel Pay Immiscible Payments Remediation Plan (Remediation Plan), which was issued in October 2016. The Remediation Plan is intended to strengthen internal controls and accountability in the DOD travel pay system and help to reduce improper payments by identifying and addressing root cause of improper payments in DTS. The plan was developed in response to GAO's 2013 report on improper travel payment estimates and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance. DOD has taken steps to implement the Remediation Plan, but it has not yet fully implemented the plan's key components' roles",0.6,0.6460784313725491
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-530,PEGASUS (LEAD 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Improper payments—payments that should not have been made or were made in an incorrect amount—are a long-standing, significant problem in the federal government, estimated at about $151 billion for fiscal year 2018. DOD travel payments are made to active and reserve or guard servicemembers and civilian employees and cover travel for both temporary duty and permanent change of station. In October 2016, DOD issued a DOD Travel Pay Improper Payments Remediation Plan to reinforce internal controls and accountability in the DOD travel pay program and help to reduce improper payments. GAO conducted this work under the authority of the Comptroller General to assist Congress with its oversight responsibilities. This report examines (1) the amount DOD spent on DTS travel payments for fiscal years 2016 through 2018 and how much of those payments DOD estimated to be improper; (2) the extent to which DOD has implemented its Remediated Plan; and (3) the establishment of mechanisms to identify errors leading to improper travel payments, the root causes of those errors, and the cost-effectiveness of addressing root causes. To conduct this work, GAO reviewed DOD travel payment data, policies, and guidance related to improper payments, and interviewed DOD officials.What GAO Found. Using data from the Department of Defense's (DOD) Defense Travel System (DTS), GAO calculated that DOD spent an average of about $6.1 billion annually on travel payments to active duty and reserve military personnel through June 30, 2018. The largest portion of those travel payments—$9.5 billion per year—was for military personnel, who accounted for about 52 percent of the total. DOD's reported total travel payments increased by about $1 billion (16 percent) in nominal dollars and $0. According to data provided by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS), which is responsible for estimating the dollar amount of improper payments for DTS, an estimated $965.5 million (or 5.3 percent) of the $7.96 billion in travel payments made in those years were improper. DOD estimated an annual average of $322 million in DTS improper payments—an amount that represents both travel payments that exceeded the amount that was correct (overpayments) and those that were made for less than the correct amount (underpayments). These amounts do not necessarily indicate a monetary loss to the government. Source: GAO analysis of DOD data. | GAO-19-594",0.6833333333333332,0.8388888888888889
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-530,PEGASUS (LEAD 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Improper travel payments—payments that should not have been made or were made in an incorrect amount—are a long-standing, significant problem in the federal government, estimated at about $151 billion for fiscal year 2018. DOD's travel pay program has been challenged by inaccurate and inconsistent estimates of improper payment rates that do not allow for reliably tracking the rate of improper travel payments over time. Due, in part, to the DODIG's findings, in October 2016, DOD developed a DOD Travel Pay Improper Payments Remediation Plan to reinforce internal controls and accountability and help reduce improper payments. GAO conducted this work under the authority of the Comptroller General to assist Congress with its oversight responsibilities. This report examines (1) the amount DOD spent on DTS travel payments for fiscal years 2016 through 2018 and how much of those payments DOD estimated to be improper; (2) the extent to which DOD has implemented its Remediated Plan; and (3) the establishment of mechanisms to identify errors leading to improper travel payment errors, the root causes of those errors, and the cost-effectiveness of addressing them. To conduct this work, GAO reviewed DOD travel payment data, policies, and guidance, and conducted a web-based survey of travel administrators in 52 DOD components that manage travel payments processed by DOD's DTS.What GAO Found. Using data provided by the Department of Defense's (DOD) Defense Travel System (DTS), GAO calculated that DOD spent an average of $6. The Defense Travel Management Office (DTMO), the department's primary system used to process travel payments, reported $18. The largest portion of those travel payments was for active duty servicemembers, who accounted for $9.5 billion (52 percent) of the total amount of travel payments. According to DTS data, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) estimated that $965.5 million (or 5.3 percent ) of those total travel payments were improper. DOD established and has taken steps to implement an approach to reduce the improper payment rate that includes specific requirements for all DOD components as well as a committee to monitor the efforts of 10 components that DOD identified as key to addressing improper payments, but did not establish milestones for completing most of the actions outlined in the Remingiation Plan. GAO found that, based on its survey results, half of the components were unaware of these requirements. Further, the 10 components have not fully implemented the Rem",0.7333333333333334,0.688095238095238
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-530,BART (ORACLE 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Improper payments—payments that should not have been made or were made in an incorrect amount—are a long-standing, significant problem in the federal government, estimated at about $151 billion for fiscal year 2018. Both GAO and the Department of Defense Inspector General (DODIG) have reported on problems related to improper payments in the DOD travel pay program. GAO was asked to review DOD's efforts to address improper travel payments. This report examines (1) the amount DOD spent on DTS travel payments for fiscal years 2016 through 2018 and how much of those payments DOD estimated to be improper; (2) the extent to which DOD has implemented its Remediation Plan; and (3) the ability of DOD to identify the root causes of improper travel payment errors and the cost-effectiveness of addressing them. To address these objectives, GAO analyzed travel payment data from DOD, reviewed relevant laws, regulations, and guidance, and interviewed cognizant officials.What GAO Found. The Departments of Defense (Dod) and Veterans Affairs (VA) spent an average of $6.1 billion annually on Defense Travel System (DTS) travel payments—the largest component payment program for active duty servicemembers—for fiscal years (FYs) 2016-2018, an amount that DOD estimates to be $965.5 million in improper. DOD components reported over $9.5 billion in DTS-related travel payments in FYs 2016 through FY 2018, accounting for approximately 52 percent of the total amount of travel payments made. DOD reported to the Office of the following year: $6 billion, $3 billion, and $2 billion, respectively. DOD estimated that $1 billion of these payments were improper, and the remainder was not properly disbursed. DOD established and has taken steps to implement a DOD Travel Pay Improperceived Improper Payments Remedication Plan aimed at reducing travel payments that includes specific requirements for all DOD components as well as a committee to monitor the efforts of 10 components that DOD identified as key to addressing improper payments. However, DOD did not consider available data on improper payment rates in its selection of these 10 components to implement its risk-based approach. DOD has taken some steps to address the requirements outlined in the Remeduction plan, but it has not fully addressed all of the requirements. For example, DOD established a committee that is to monitor implementation of the plan by the 10 components identified as having the greatest potential for",0.8833333333333333,0.7785714285714285
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-530,BART (ORACLE 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Improper travel payments—payments that should not have been made or were made in an incorrect amount—are a long-standing, significant problem in the federal government, estimated at about $151 billion for fiscal year 2018. Both GAO and the DOD Inspector General have reported on problems related to improper payments in the DOD travel pay program. In October 2016, DOD developed a DOD Travel Pay Improper Payments Remediation Plan to address these problems. GAO was asked to review DOD's implementation of the plan. This report examines (1) the amount DOD spent on DTS travel payments for fiscal years 2016 through 2018 and how much of those payments DOD estimated to be improper; (2) the extent to which DOD has implemented its Remediate Plan; and (3) to what extent DOD has established mechanisms to identify errors leading to improper travel payments, the root causes of those errors, and the cost-effectiveness of addressing root causes. To address these objectives, GAO analyzed DTS data on travel payments and interviewed DOD and OMB officials.What GAO Found. Using Defense Travel System (DTS) data, GAOs calculated that the Department of Defense (DOD) spent an average of $6.1 billion annually on travel pay payments in DTS in fiscal years2016 through 2018, including an estimated $965.5 million in improper payments, and travel spending increased during that period by $1 billion (16 percent) in nominal dollars and $0.68 billion (11 percent) for constant dollars. DOD data show that out of 10 categories used to identify the purpose of travel, the category representing “training” accounted for the largest amount of travel payments. DOD estimated an annual average of about $322 million—or 5.3 percent of total DTS improper payments for those years—that the department incurred a monetary loss of $205 million (1.6 percent) from fiscal years 2017 and 2018 improper payments. The department established and has taken steps to implement a DOD Remedy Plan aimed at reducing travel payments that includes specific requirements for all DOD components as well as a committee to monitor implementation by 10 components that DOD identified as key to addressing improper payments (see figure). However, DOD did not consider available data on improper travel payment rates in its selection of these 10 components to include on the committee. Further, the 10 components have not fully implemented all of the requirements in DOD's Remediated Plan requirements, and other components were generally unaware of them.",0.9166666666666666,0.8743589743589744
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-530,BART (ORACLE 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Improper travel payments—payments that should not have been made or were made in an incorrect amount—are a long-standing, significant problem in the federal government. DOD's DTS is the primary system used to process travel payments and accounts for most of the department's travel payments. For fiscal year 2018, DOD reported $365.32 million in improper payments related to its travel pay program. In October 2016, DOD developed a Remediation Plan to address improper travel payments in accordance with OMB guidance. GAO was asked to review DOD's implementation of the Remediliation Plan. This report examines (1) the amount DOD spent on DTS travel payments for fiscal years 2016 through 2018 and how much of those payments DOD estimated to be improper; (2) the extent to which DOD implemented its Remedication Plan; and (3) the degree to which the plan established mechanisms to identify errors leading to improper travel payment, the root causes of those errors, and the cost-effectiveness of addressing root causes. To address these objectives, GAO analyzed DTS data, reviewed relevant documentation, and guidance, and interviewed DOD officials.What GAO Found. Using data from the Defense Travel System (DTS), GAO calculated that the Department of Defense (DOD) spent an average of $6.1 billion annually on travel payments through its Defense Travel Pay program from fiscal year 2016 (the most recent year for which complete data were available) through 2018. Of that amount, $965.5 million (or 5.3 percent) was estimated to have been improper. These improper payments represent amounts that should have not been paid and could be recovered. DOD officials were unable to explain why travel spending increased during fiscal years 2017 through 2018, but speculated that overall budget increases in fiscal years 2015 through 2018 corresponded with increases in travel expenses. DOD has taken steps to implement its DOD Travel Pay Improper Payments Remedicator Plan (Remediation plan), but its approach may not manage risk sufficiently, many actions remain incomplete, and communication of the plan's requirements was lacking. DOD selected 10 components to include on a committee that was established to monitor implementation of its Remingiation Plan, but it did not consider components' improper payment rates as part of its selection process. As a result, DOD may have excluded some components with relatively lower travel payments but higher rates of improper payments. Further, the 10 components have not fully implemented the plan requirements, and other components were generally unaware of the",0.85,0.7833333333333333
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-530,PEGASUS (ORACLE 1K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Improper payments—payments that should not have been made or were made in an incorrect amount—are a long-standing, significant problem in the federal government, estimated at about $151 billion for fiscal year 2018. GAO and the Department of Defense Inspector General have reported on problems related to improper travel payments in the DTS program. GAO was asked to review the extent to which DOD has implemented its Remediation Plan to address improper travel. This report examines (1) the amount DOD spent on DTS travel payments for fiscal years 2016 through 2018 and how much of those payments DOD estimated to be improper; (2) the extent that DOD implemented its Plan; and (3) the extent of DOD's mechanisms to identify errors leading to improper payments, the root causes of those errors, and the cost-effectiveness of addressing root causes. GAO analyzed DTS data and interviewed DOD officials.What GAO Found. DOD spent $18.3 billion annually on Defense Travel System (DTS) travel payments from fiscal year 2016 through 2018. Using DTS data, GAO calculated that DOD spent an average of $6.1 billion per year on DTS payments in those years, including an estimated $965.5 million in improper payments for those years. DOD estimated that it spent over $9.5 billion in improper travel payment rates for active duty servicemembers in fiscal year 2018, accounting for approximately 52 percent of the total travel payments. DOD established and has taken steps to implement a Remediation Plan aimed at reducing improper travel travel payments that includes specific requirements for all DOD components as well as a committee to monitor the efforts of 10 components that DOD identified as key to addressing improper payments. However, DOD did not consider available data on improper payment rates in its selection of these 10 components to implement its risk-based approach. The 10 components GAO reviewed took some steps to address the Plan requirements but did not complete all of the requirements outlined in the Plan. For example, the Army's corrective action plan did not address weaknesses in its sampling plan for determining improper payments at overseas offices, and it did not discuss identifying the root cause of the errors. DOD has established mechanisms to address errors that most frequently lead to improperly travel payments, but these efforts do not clearly identify the root reasons for the errors or the cost effectiveness of addressing them. For instance, DOD has required components to develop corrective action plans to identify and address the errors that are most frequently associated with improper payments but has not defined the term “root cause” to ensure a common understanding of the term across the department. Until DOD defines the term root cause, DOD travel management officials will likely",1.0,0.9433333333333334
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-530,PEGASUS (ORACLE 4K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Improper payments—payments that should not have been made or were made in an incorrect amount—are a long-standing, significant problem in the federal government, estimated at about $151 billion for fiscal year 2018. GAO and the DODIG have reported on problems related to improper payments in the DOD travel pay program. In this report, GAO examines (1) the amount DOD spent on DTS travel payments for fiscal years 2016 through 2018 and how much of those payments DOD estimated to be improper; (2) the extent to which DOD has implemented its Independence Plan to address improper travel payments; and (3) the extent that DOD has established mechanisms to identify errors leading to improper travel payment, the root causes of those errors, and the cost-effectiveness of addressing root causes. GAO analyzed DOD data on DTS payments and interviewed DOD officials.What GAO Found. The Department of Defense (DOD) spent an average of $6.1 billion annually on Defense Travel System (DTS) travel payments in fiscal years2016 through 2018—a total of about $18.3 billion in travel payments. DOD components reported over $9.5 billion in DTS travel payment disbursements for active duty servicemembers, accounting for approximately 52 percent of the total. DOD estimated that it spent an estimated $292 million annually on DTS improper payments for those years. DOD established and has taken steps to implement a Independence Plan that includes specific requirements for all DOD components as well as a committee to monitor implementation by key DOD components. However, DOD did not consider available data on the improper payment rates in its selection of these 10 components to implement its risk-based approach. DOD has taken some positive steps to identify the errors that most frequently lead to improper DTS travel, but GAO found some limitations with these mechanisms because they did not consistently identify the root cause of the errors. DOD identified 10 components as key to the effort to reduce improper DTS payments, but the components did not complete all of the requirements outlined in the Plan. As of March 2018, when GAO surveyed the 10 components, only four of the 9 components that responded had completed all the requirements. DOD's stated plan to require the reporting components to perform a cost-benefit analysis will meet the intent of GAO's recommendation, provided that the components are evaluating the cost effectiveness of planned corrective actions that address the root",0.9666666666666668,0.8357142857142857
GovReport,ID_GAO-19-530,PEGASUS (ORACLE 8K),"Why GAO Did This Study. Improper payments—payments that should not have been made or were made in an incorrect amount—are a long-standing, significant problem in the federal government, estimated at about $151 billion for fiscal year 2018. Both GAO and the DODIG have reported on problems related to improper payments in the DOD travel pay program. In this report, GAO examines (1) the amount DOD spent on DTS travel payments for fiscal years 2016 through 2018 and how much of those payments DOD estimated to be improper; (2) the extent to which DOD has implemented its Independence Plan; and (3) the extent that DOD has established mechanisms to identify errors leading to improper travel payments, the root causes of those errors, and the cost-effectiveness of addressing root causes. GAO analyzed DOD data on DTS payments and interviewed DOD officials.What GAO Found. The Department of Defense (DOD) spent an average of $6.1 billion annually on Defense Travel System (DTS) travel payments in fiscal years2016 through 2018—a total of about $18.3 billion in travel payments. DOD components reported over $9.5 billion in DTS travel payment disbursements for active duty servicemembers, accounting for approximately 52 percent of the total. DOD estimated that it spent an estimated $292 million in improper travel payment payments for those years. DOD established and has taken steps to implement a Independence Plan aimed at reducing improper payments that includes specific requirements for all DOD components as well as a committee to monitor implementation by key DOD components. However, DOD did not consider available data on improper payment rates in its selection of these 10 components to implement its risk-based approach. DOD has taken some steps to identify and address the errors that most frequently lead to travel payments but did not consistently identify the root cause of these errors. DOD's review of the 10 components identified as key to the effort to reduce improper payments found that the components took some steps but not all of the requirements outlined in the Independence Plan. As of March 2018, when GAO surveyed the 10 DOD components, only four of the 9 components that responded had completed all requirements. DOD identified the errors most frequently leading to travel payment errors as the root reasons for the errors, but GAO found that DOD did little to ensure that these errors were consistently identified. For example, DOD has not defined the term “root cause” to ensure a common understanding of the term across the department. DOD travel management officials will likely miss opportunities to make changes that could help to address the underlying causes of improper payments. GAO also found that 10 components that make up the committee responsible for monitoring",0.9666666666666668,0.8190476190476191