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Government Accountability Office (government + accountability_office)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	75%

Selected Abstracts

THE ECONOMICS OF HOMELAND SECURITY EXPENDITURES: FOUNDATIONAL EXPECTED COST-EFFECTIVENESS APPROACHES

CONTEMPORARY ECONOMIC POLICY, Issue 1 2007
SCOTT FARROW
While most economists expect some marginal conditions to result from basic expected value models involving government expenditures and homeland security investments, such models are not readily found in the literature. The article presents six basic models that all incorporate uncertainty; they also capture various problems involving technological limits, behavioral interactions, false negatives and false positives, and decision making with uncertainty and irreversibility. Recent reviews of homeland security programs by the U.S. Government Accountability Office are used to illustrate the relevance of the models.(JEL H100) [source]

Rail Safety: Targeting Oversight and Assessing Results

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW, Issue 1 2008
Jeremy F. Plant
Rail safety has emerged as a significant issue in the past two years as a result of two major factors: a statistical lack of improvement in rail safety in the past decade, and a catalytic event in the form of a major derailment involving loss of life at Graniteville, South Carolina, in January 2005. The convergence of long-term leveling of rail safety indicators and the shock of a major rail accident prompted the Senate Appropriations Committee to ask the Government Accountability Office to assess the oversight role of the Federal Railroad Administration, the modal agency of the U.S. Department of Transportation charged with overseeing rail safety. The report is a reminder of the continuing importance of regulatory activities and the general movement in federal management toward greater use of data and performance measures since the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993. [source]

Environmental cleanup of the nation's former nuclear weapons sites: Unprecedented public-private challenges at the largest facilities

REMEDIATION, Issue 3 2006
Henry Mayer
In 1994, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) initiated a contract reform program intended to strengthen oversight capabilities and encourage the creation of contract and incentive structures, which would effectively facilitate the treatment of onsite contamination and waste. The remedia-tion and disposal of these legacy wastes is the core of the Department's environmental manage-ment mission (Government Accountability Office [GAO], 2003). Despite a concerted effort toward achieving the goals of the reform, progress has been slow. Many projects continue to necessitate cost and time extensions above those originally agreed upon. Although the Department insti-tuted an accelerated cleanup program in 2002, promising to shave some $50 billion and 35 years from its earlier cost and schedule projections, there have been delays in critical project areas that call into question the attainability of the proposed reductions (GAO, 2005). Numerous explana-tions have been offered as to why achieving these goals has proven so difficult, many of which have concluded that flawed contracting practices are to blame. This article concludes that the root of the problem is much deeper and that the organizational criticisms aimed at DOE are as much a legacy as the waste itself. Although the focus of this article is on large former nuclear weapons sites, these types of contracting and organizational issues are often found at other gov-ernment and private complex hazardous waste sites. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source]

Transitions in Defense Management Reform: A Review of the Government Accountability Office's Chief Management Officer Recommendation and Comments for the New Administration

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW, Issue 6 2008
Philip J. Candreva
The Government Accountability Office believes the answer to the U.S. Defense Department's persistent management problems is to be found in the creation of a new position, chief management officer, to oversee defense business transformation. The recommendation for this position is reviewed and used to raise questions and spur inquiry in the areas of evidence-based reform, the relationship between policy and administration, auditor overreach, and sustaining reforms through transition. The latter portion is expanded in this time of transition, and recommendations are made to the new administration to develop a management agenda, to the defense career executives to facilitate the transition, and to the next comptroller general to consider how the Government Accountability Office's varied roles produce outputs that align with the desired outcomes in both the policy and administration domains. [source]