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Daily Archives: July 13, 2011

Treasury Mandates Electronic Invoicing to Cut Taxpayer Costs, Improve Efficiency

News releases: “In support of President Obama’s “Campaign to Cut Waste” across the federal government, the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced today that it is mandating that all Treasury Bureaus implement the Internet Payment Platform (IPP), an electronic invoice processing solution, by the end of fiscal year 2012. Additionally, in fiscal year 2013, Treasury will require that its commercial vendors submit their invoices using IPP. This initiative will both improve government efficiency and cut costs for taxpayers. Moreover, vendors who use IPP will collect quicker payments for their services, receive greater assurances that their invoices are received and processed accurately, and have immediate online access to their invoice status for all agencies using IPP. Treasury estimates that adopting IPP across the federal government would reduce the cost of entering invoices and responding to invoice inquiries by as much as 50 percent or $450 million annually. These government-wide savings equal roughly one quarter of the $2.1 billion of the efficiency savings that the President’s 2012 Budget called upon agencies to identify.”

New GAO Reports – TSA Security Issues, Financial Literacy Programs, National Data Collection Efforts, Protecting Federal Facilities, Residential Appraisals

Aviation Security: TSA Has Taken Actions to Improve Security, but Additional Efforts Remain, GAO-11-807T, July 13, 2011 Cost and Legal Authority for Selected Financial Literacy Programs and Activities, GAO-11-781R, July 13, 2011 Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, Dating Violence, and Stalking: National Data Collection Efforts Underway to Address Some Information Gaps, GAO-11-833T, July 13, 2011 Protecting… Continue Reading

CDC Trial and Another Major Study Find PrEP Can Reduce Risk of HIV Infection among Heterosexuals

“A new CDC study called the TDF2 study, along with a separate trial released today, provide the first evidence that a daily oral dose of antiretroviral drugs used to treat HIV infection can reduce HIV acquisition among uninfected individuals exposed to the virus through heterosexual sex. The CDC TDF2 study, conducted in partnership with the… Continue Reading

Chairman Bernanke's Semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the Congress

Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, Semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the Congress Before the Committee on Financial Services, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., July 13, 2011 “The Economic Outlook – The U.S. economy has continued to recover, but the pace of the expansion so far this year has been modest. After increasing at an annual… Continue Reading

Report – Achieving Effective Supervision: An Industry Perspective

Achieving Effective Supervision: An Industry Perspective, “prepared by the Effective Supervision Advisory Group under Mrs Kerstin af Jochnick, Managing Director of the Swedish Bankers’ Association – addresses the issue of how to make supervision more effective both nationally and globally in the light of the financial crisis. It argues that such supervision has a central… Continue Reading

Report – Macroprudential Oversight: An Industry Perspective

The report Macroprudential Oversight: An Industry Perspective stresses that the Institute of International Finance strongly supports the development of macroprudential oversight and tools but encourages regulators to balance the need for rapid progress with a degree of caution and a willingness to learn and adapt in the light of experience. The report mainly takes the… Continue Reading

WHO report on the global tobacco epidemic, 2011: warning about the dangers of tobacco

“This report is the third in a series of WHO reports on the status of global tobacco control policy implementation. All data on the level of countries’ achievement for the six MPOWER measures have been updated through 2010, and additional data have been collected on warning the public about the dangers of tobacco. The report… Continue Reading