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document.write('<li class="rss-item"><a class="rss-item" href="http://www.gao.gov/pdfs/GAO-10-11?source=ra" title="In Process..." target="_self">GAO-10-11, Budget Issues: Electronic Processing of Non-IRS Collections Has Increased but Better Understanding of Cost Structure Is Needed, November 20, 2009</a><br />');
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document.write('<li class="rss-item"><a class="rss-item" href="http://www.gao.gov/pdfs/GAO-10-39?source=ra" title="In Process..." target="_self">GAO-10-39, Defense Acquisitions: Further Actions Needed to Address Weaknesses in DOD\'s Management of Professional and Management Support Contracts, November 20, 2009</a><br />');
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document.write('<li class="rss-item"><a class="rss-item" href="http://www.gao.gov/pdfs/GAO-10-260T?source=ra" title="Recent cases of corporate fraud and mismanagement heighten the Department of Justice\'s (DOJ) need to appropriately punish and deter corporate crime. Recently, DOJ has made more use of deferred prosecution and non-prosecution agreements (DPAs and NPAs), i..." target="_self">GAO-10-260T, Corporate Crime: Prosecutors Adhered to Guidance in Selecting Monitors for Deferred Prosecution and Non-Prosecution Agreements, but DOJ Could Better Communicate Its Role in Resolving ...</a><br />');
document.write('Recent cases of corporate fraud and mismanagement heighten the Department of Justice\'s (DOJ) need to appropriately punish and deter corporate crime. Recently, DOJ has made more use of deferred prosecution and non-prosecution agreements (DPAs and NPAs), in which prosecutors may require company reform, among other things, in exchange for deferring prosecution, and may also require companies to hire an independent monitor to oversee compliance. This testimony addresses (1) the extent to which prosecutors adhered to DOJ\'s monitor selection guidelines, (2) the prior work experience of monitors and companies\' opinions of this experience, and (3) the extent to which companies raised concerns about their monitors, and whether DOJ had defined its role in resolving these concerns. Among other steps, GAO reviewed DOJ guidance and examined the 152 agreements negotiated from 1993 (when the first 2 were signed) through September 2009. GAO also interviewed DOJ officials, obtained information on the prior work experience of monitors who had been selected, and interviewed representatives from 13 companies with agreements that required monitors. These results, while not generalizable, provide insights into monitor selection and oversight. Prosecutors adhered to DOJ guidance issued in March 2008 in selecting monitors required under agreements entered into since that time. Monitor selections in two cases have not yet been made due to challenges in identifying candidates with proper experience and resources and without potential conflicts of interests with the companies. DOJ issued guidance in March 2008 to help ensure that the monitor selection process is collaborative and based on merit; this guidance also requires prosecutors to obtain Deputy Attorney General approval for the monitor selection. For DPAs and NPAs requiring independent monitors, companies hired a total of 42 different individuals to oversee the agreements; 23 of the 42 monitors had previous experience working for DOJ--which some companies valued in a monitor choice--and those without prior DOJ experience had worked in other federal, state, or local government agencies, the private sector, or academia. The length of time between the monitor\'s leaving DOJ and selection as a monitor ranged from 1 year to over 30 years, with an average of 13 years. While most of the companies we interviewed did not express concerns about monitors having prior DOJ experience, some companies raised general concerns about potential impediments to independence or impartiality if the monitor had previously worked for DOJ or had associations with DOJ officials. Representatives for more than half of the 13 companies with whom GAO spoke raised concerns about the monitor\'s cost, scope, and amount of work completed--including the completion of compliance reports required in the DPA or NPA--and were unclear as to the extent DOJ could be involved in resolving such disputes, but DOJ has not clearly communicated to companies its role in resolving such concerns. Companies and DOJ have different perceptions about the extent to which DOJ can help to resolve monitor disputes. DOJ officials GAO interviewed said that companies should take responsibility for negotiating the monitor\'s contract and ensuring the monitor is performing its duties, but that DOJ is willing to become involved in monitor disputes. However, some company officials were unaware that they could raise monitor concerns to DOJ or were reluctant to do so. Internal control standards state that agency management should ensure there are adequate means of communicating with, and obtaining information from, external stakeholders that may have a significant impact on the agency achieving its goals. While one of the DOJ litigating divisions and one U.S. Attorney\'s Office have made efforts to articulate in the DPAs and NPAs what role they could play in resolving monitor issues, other DOJ litigation divisions and U.S. Attorney\'s Offices have not done so. Clearly communicating to companies the role DOJ will play in addressing companies\' disputes with monitors would help increase awareness among companies and better position DOJ to be notified of potential issues related to monitor performance.');
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document.write('<li class="rss-item"><a class="rss-item" href="http://www.gao.gov/pdfs/GAO-10-45?source=ra" title="When a consumer uses a credit card to make a purchase, the merchant does not receive the full purchase amount because a certain portion of the sale is deducted to compensate the merchant\'s bank, the bank that issued the card, and the card network that pr..." target="_self">GAO-10-45, Credit Cards: Rising Interchange Fees Have Increased Costs for Merchants, but Options for Reducing Fees Pose Challenges, November 19, 2009</a><br />');
document.write('When a consumer uses a credit card to make a purchase, the merchant does not receive the full purchase amount because a certain portion of the sale is deducted to compensate the merchant\'s bank, the bank that issued the card, and the card network that processes the transaction. The level and growth of these rates have become increasingly controversial. The 2009 Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act directed GAO to review (1) how the fees merchants pay have changed over time and the factors affecting the competitiveness of the credit card market, (2) how credit card competition has affected consumers, (3) the benefits and costs to merchants of accepting cards and their ability to negotiate those costs, and (4) the potential impact of various options intended to lower merchant costs. To address these objectives, GAO reviewed and analyzed relevant studies, literature, and data on the card payment market and interviewed industry participants, including large and small card issuers (including community banks and credit unions), card processors, card networks, large merchants representing a significant proportion of retail sales, and small merchants from a variety of industries, and academic experts. GAO provided a draft of this report to the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and federal banking regulators, and we incorporated their technical comments where appropriate. According to Federal Reserve analysis, total costs of accepting credit cards for merchants have risen over time as consumers use cards more. Part of these increased costs also may be the result of how Visa and MasterCard competed to attract and retain issuers to offer cards by increasing the number of interchange fee categories and the level of these rates. Concerns remain over whether the level of these rates reflects market power--the ability of some card networks to raise prices without suffering competitive effects--or whether these fees reflect the costs that issuers incur to maintain credit card programs. Issuers, particularly smaller issuers such as community banks and credit unions, report relying on interchange fees as a significant source of revenue for their credit card operations, and analyses by banking regulators indicate such operations traditionally have been among the most profitable types of activities for large banks. Some consumers have benefited from competition in the credit card market, as cards often have no annual fees, lower interest rates than they did years ago, and greater rewards. However, consumers who do not use credit cards may be paying higher prices for goods and services, as merchants pass on their increasing card acceptance costs to all of their customers. For merchants, the benefits of accepting credit cards include increased sales and reduced labor costs. However, representatives from some of the large merchants with whom we spoke said their increased payment costs outstripped any increased sales. These merchants also reported that their inability to refuse popular cards and network rules (which prevent charging more for credit card than for cash payments or rejecting higher-cost cards) limited their ability to negotiate payment costs. Interchange fees are not federally regulated in the United States, but concerns about card costs have prompted federal investigations and private lawsuits, and authorities in more than 30 countries have taken or are considering taking actions to address such fees and other card network practices. Proposals for reducing interchange fees in the United States or other countries have included (1) setting or limiting interchange fees, (2) requiring their disclosure to consumers, (3) prohibiting card networks from imposing rules on merchants that limit their ability to steer customers away from higher-cost cards, and (4) granting antitrust waivers to allow merchants and issuers to voluntarily negotiate rates. If these measures were adopted here, merchants would benefit from lower interchange fees. Consumers would also benefit if merchants reduced prices for goods and services, but identifying such savings would be difficult. Consumers also might face higher card use costs if issuers raised other fees or interest rates to compensate for lost interchange fee income. Each of these options also presents challenges for implementation, such as determining at which rate to set, providing more information to consumers, or addressing the interests of both large and small issuers and merchants in bargaining efforts.');
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document.write('<li class="rss-item"><a class="rss-item" href="http://www.gao.gov/pdfs/GAO-10-56?source=ra" title="The Department of Defense (DOD) implemented the post-deployment health reassessment (PDHRA), which is required to be administered to servicemembers 90 to 180 days after their return from deployment. DOD established the PDHRA program to identify and addres..." target="_self">GAO-10-56, Defense Health Care: Post-Deployment Health Reassessment Documentation Needs Improvement, November 19, 2009</a><br />');
document.write('The Department of Defense (DOD) implemented the post-deployment health reassessment (PDHRA), which is required to be administered to servicemembers 90 to 180 days after their return from deployment. DOD established the PDHRA program to identify and address servicemembers\' health concerns that emerge over time following deployments. This report is the second in response to a Senate Armed Services Committee report directing the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to review DOD\'s administration of the PDHRA, and to additional congressional requests. In this report, GAO examined (1) the extent to which DOD\'s central repository contains PDHRA questionnaires for active and Reserve component servicemembers who returned from deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan and (2) how DOD monitors the administration of the PDHRA to Reserve component servicemembers. To conduct this review, GAO performed a quantitative analysis using DOD deployment and PDHRA data, reviewed relevant PDHRA policies, and interviewed DOD officials. DOD policy requires that the military services electronically submit PDHRA questionnaires to DOD\'s central repository. Based on two separate queries to this repository in 2009, GAO did not find PDHRA questionnaires for a substantial percentage of the 319,000 active and Reserve component servicemembers who returned from deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan between January 1, 2007, and May 31, 2008. GAO\'s first query on April 15, 2009, showed that only 77 percent of this population of interest had questionnaires in the central repository, leaving approximately 74,000 servicemembers without questionnaires in the repository. On September 4, 2009, GAO queried DOD\'s central repository again to update its April 2009 data and found that DOD\'s central repository was still missing PDHRA questionnaires for about 72,000 servicemembers, or 23 percent of the servicemembers in GAO\'s original population of interest. When PDHRA questionnaires are not in DOD\'s central repository, DOD does not have reasonable assurance that servicemembers to whom the PDHRA requirement applies were given the opportunity to fill out the questionnaire and identify and address health concerns that could emerge over time following deployment. DOD uses four methods to monitor the contractor, Logistics Health, Inc. (LHI), that administers the PDHRA to Reserve component servicemembers. The four monitoring methods are: (1) reviews of periodic reports from LHI; (2) inspections of LHI\'s administration of the PDHRA; (3) feedback on LHI\'s administration of the PDHRA from military service officials; and (4) weekly telephone discussions with LHI staff. These methods are used to help ensure that the objective of the PDHRA program is being met for Reserve component servicemembers. Through these methods, DOD identified a number of potential problems that may pose risks to the PDHRA program objective and to the welfare and safety of Reserve component servicemembers. However, GAO found that when monitoring the administration of the PDHRA to Reserve component servicemembers, DOD does not maintain clear documentation that is consistent with federal internal control standards. GAO found that the documentation generated by DOD generally did not clearly describe the potential problems, the actions taken to address the problems, and whether these actions had resolved the problems. Overall, this lack of clear documentation does not allow DOD to have reasonable assurance that potential problems related to the administration of the PDHRA to Reserve component servicemembers have been addressed and resolved.');
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