U.S. Patent and Trademark Office: Hiring Efforts Are Not Sufficient to Reduce the Patent Application Backlog
Published: 2008-02-27T00:00:00

Fast Facts:

Highlights:
section_title: Why GAO Did This Study
paragraphs: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) helps protect U.S. competitiveness by granting patents for new ideas and innovations. Increases in the volume and complexity of patent applications have extended the time for processing them. Concerns continue about the agency's efforts to attract and retain qualified patent examiners who can meet the demand for patents and help reduce the growing backlog of unexamined patent applications. In 2007, GAO reported on (1) USPTO's process for making its annual hiring estimates and the relationship of these estimates to the patent application backlog; (2) the extent to which patent examiner hiring has been offset by attrition, and the factors that may contribute to this attrition; and (3) the extent to which USPTO's retention efforts align with examiners' reasons for staying with the agency. GAO recommended that USPTO comprehensively evaluate the assumptions it uses to establish its production goals. USPTO agreed to implement this recommendation once it determines the effect of recent initiatives designed to increase the productivity of the agency through a more efficient and focused patent examination process. This testimony is based on GAO's 2007 report, which was based in part on a survey of 1,420 patent examiners. See, GAO, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office: Hiring Efforts Are Not Sufficient to Reduce the Patent Application Backlog, GAO-07-1102 .
section_title: What GAO Found
paragraphs: USPTO primarily determined its annual hiring estimates on the basis of available funding levels and institutional capacity to train and supervise new patent examiners, and not on the basis of the number of patent examiners needed to reduce the existing backlog of patent applications or review new patent applications. USPTO's process for identifying its annual hiring estimates is generally consistent with accepted workforce planning strategies. However, because this approach does not consider how many examiners are needed to reduce the existing backlog or address the inflow of new applications, it is unlikely that the agency will be able to reduce the growing backlog simply through its hiring efforts. Although USPTO is hiring as many new patent examiners as its budget and institutional capacity will support, attrition is significantly offsetting the agency's hiring efforts, and agency management and patent examiners disagree about the causes of attrition. Specifically, from 2002 through 2006, one patent examiner left USPTO for nearly every two hired--70 percent of those who left had been at the agency for less than 5 years. This represents a significant loss to the agency because new patent examiners are primarily responsible for the actions that remove applications from the backlog. According to USPTO management, patent examiners primarily leave the agency because of personal reasons, such as finding that the job is not a good fit. In contrast, 67 percent of patent examiners identified the agency's production goals among the primary reasons they would consider leaving the agency. These goals are based on the number of applications patent examiners must complete during a 2-week period. However, the assumptions underlying these goals were established over 30 years ago and have not since been adjusted to reflect changes in the complexity of patent applications. Moreover, 70 percent of patent examiners reported working unpaid overtime during the past year in order to meet their production goals. The large percentage of examiners working overtime to meet production goals and who would choose to leave the agency because of these goals may indicate that these goals do not accurately reflect the time needed to review applications and are undermining USPTO's hiring efforts. The retention incentives and flexibilities USPTO has provided over the last 5 years generally align with the primary reasons patent examiners identified for staying with the agency. Between 2002 and 2006, USPTO used a variety of retention flexibilities, such as a special pay rate, performance bonuses, and a flexible work place to encourage patent examiners to stay with the agency. According to USPTO management, their most effective retention efforts were those related to compensation and an enhanced work environment. GAO's survey of patent examiners indicates that most patent examiners generally approved of USPTO's retention efforts, and ranked the agency's salary and other pay incentives as well as the flexible work schedule among the primary reasons for staying with the agency.

section_title: Letter
paragraphs: I am pleased to be here today to discuss GAO’s recent report on the U.S.  Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).  Protecting intellectual property  rights and encouraging technological progress are important for ensuring  the current and future competitiveness of the United States.  As you know,  USPTO helps protect the nation’s competitiveness by issuing patents that  protect new ideas and investments in innovations, ranging from new  treatments for diseases to new wireless technology applications.   However, recent increases in both the complexity and volume of patent  applications have lengthened the time it takes the agency to process them  and raised concerns among intellectual property organizations, patent  holders, and others about the quality of the patents that are issued. Over  the last 15 years, the number of patent applications that have not yet been  reviewed, called the backlog, has continued to grow—increasing since  fiscal year 2002 by nearly 73 percent to about 730,000 applications.
USPTO relies on a workforce of nearly 5,000 patent examiners to review  and make decisions on patent applications.  The number of patent  applications that can be reviewed in any given year is determined by,  among other things, the number of examiners hired, as well as the overall  size and experience of the patent examination workforce.  Patent  examiners are assigned a biweekly “production goal,” which represents  the number of specific actions and decisions that patent examiners must  make about patent applications they review in a 2-week period.  USPTO  assesses patent examiners’ performance on their ability to meet their  goals.  However, as we noted in 2005 and again in 2007, the assumptions  underlying the agency’s production goals have not been updated since  1976.
Since 2000, USPTO has implemented a variety of human capital  flexibilities, such as recruitment bonuses and law school tuition  reimbursement, to help attract and retain enough patent examiners to  meet the growing demand for patents.  Nevertheless, the rate of attrition  for patent examiners has continued to increase, especially among patent  examiners who have been with the agency for less than 5 years.
My testimony today summarizes findings from GAO’s 2007 report,  specifically (1) USPTO’s process for identifying its annual hiring estimates  and the relationship of these hiring estimates to the patent application  backlog; (2) the extent to which patent examiner hiring has been offset by  attrition at USPTO, and the factors that may contribute to patent  examiners’ decisions to leave the agency; and (3) the extent to which the  retention incentives and flexibilities USPTO has implemented align with  patent examiners’ reasons for staying with the agency.  This report was  conducted in accordance with generally accepted government auditing  standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to  obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for  our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe  that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings  and conclusions based on our audit objectives.
In summary, we found the following:  In each of the last 5 years, USPTO identified its projected annual hiring  estimates primarily on the basis of how many new patent examiners it has  the budget and supervisory and training capacity to support, and not on  the existing backlog or the expected patent application workload.   Although USPTO’s process for identifying its annual hiring estimates is  generally consistent with accepted workforce planning strategies, this  process does not consider how many examiners are needed to reduce the  existing patent application backlog or address the inflow of new  applications. As such, it is unlikely that the agency will be able to reduce  the growing backlog simply through its hiring efforts.
Attrition is significantly offsetting USPTO’s hiring progress, and agency  management and patent examiners disagree about the causes for this  attrition.  From 2002 through 2006, one patent examiner left USPTO for  nearly every two the agency hired. Of those who left, 70 percent had been  at the agency for less than 5 years.  This represents a significant loss to the  agency because new patent examiners are primarily responsible for the  actions that remove applications from the backlog. According to USPTO  management, patent examiners leave the agency primarily for personal  reasons, such as the job not being a good fit or family reasons.  In contrast,  67 percent of patent examiners we surveyed as part of our 2007 report  identified the agency’s production goals as one of the primary reasons  examiners may choose to leave USPTO.  Moreover, 70 percent of patent  examiners reported working unpaid overtime during the past year in order  to meet their production goals.  Such a large percentage of patent  examiners, who are working extra time to meet their production goals and  choosing to leave the agency because of these goals, may be an indication  that the production goals do not accurately reflect the time patent  examiners need to review applications and are undermining USPTO’s  hiring efforts.
The retention incentives and flexibilities USPTO has provided over the last  5 years generally align with the primary reasons patent examiners  identified for staying with the agency. According to USPTO management,  the most effective retention efforts were those related to compensation  and an enhanced work environment.  Specifically, between 2002 and 2006,  USPTO used a variety of retention flexibilities, such as a special pay rate,  performance bonuses, flexible work place, and a telework program to  encourage patent examiners to stay with the agency.  Most patent  examiners who participated in our survey indicated that they generally  approved of USPTO’s retention efforts, and ranked the agency’s salary and  other pay incentives, as well as the flexible work schedule, among the  primary reasons for staying with the agency.
subsections: section_title: Background
paragraphs: To obtain a patent, inventors—or more usually their attorneys or agents— submit an application to USPTO that fully discloses and clearly describes  one or more distinct innovative features of the proposed invention and pay  a filing fee to begin the examination process.  USPTO evaluates the  application for completeness, classifies it by the type of patent and the  technology involved, and assigns it for review to one of its operational  units, called technology centers, that specializes in specific areas of  science and engineering.  Supervisors in each technology center then  assign the application to a patent examiner for further review to determine  if a patent is warranted.  In making this determination, patent examiners  must meet two specific milestones in the patent examination process:  first  actions and disposals.
First action. At this milestone, patent examiners notify applicants  about the patentability of their invention. After determining if the  invention is new and useful, or a new and useful improvement on an  existing process or machine, patentability is determined through a  thorough investigation of information related to the subject matter of  the patent application and already available before the date the  application was submitted, called prior art. Prior art includes, but is not  limited to, scientific publications and U.S. and international patents.
Disposal. Patent examiners dispose of a patent application by  determining, among other things, if a patent will be granted—called  allowance—or not.
Patent examiners receive credit, called counts, for each first action and  disposal, and are assigned production goals on the basis of the number of  production units—comprised of two counts—they are expected to achieve  in a 2-week period. The counts in a production unit may be any  combination of first actions and disposals.
The production goals that are used today to measure patent examiner  performance are based on the same assumptions that USPTO established  in the 1970s.  At that time, production goals were determined based on the  belief that it should take a patent examiner a certain amount of time to  review a patent application and achieve two counts based on their  experience (as determined by their position in the agency) and the type of  patent they are reviewing.  As a result, these goals vary depending upon  the patent examiner’s position based on the federal government’s general  schedule pay scale (GS) and the technology center in which the patent  examiner works. For example, a GS-12 patent examiner working on data  processing applications is expected to achieve two counts in 31.6 hours,  whereas a GS-12 patent examiner working on plastic molding applications  is expected to do so in 20.1 hours. GS-7 patent examiners working on  those types of applications, however, are expected to achieve two counts  in 45.1 and 28.7 hours, respectively. Patent examiner achievements are  recorded biweekly, and, at the end of each fiscal year, those patent  applications that have not been reviewed for first action are counted as  part of USPTO’s inventory of unexamined applications, otherwise known  as the patent application backlog.
section_title: USPTO’s Annual Hiring Estimates Are Determined by Funding and Institutional Capacity and Are Unlikely to Reduce the Patent Application Backlog
paragraphs: In each of the last 5 years, USPTO has identified its annual hiring estimates  primarily on the basis of available funding levels and its institutional  capacity to train and supervise new patent examiners, and not on the basis  of the number of patent examiners needed to reduce the existing backlog  or review new patent applications.  Although this process is consistent  with workforce planning strategies established by the Office of Personnel  Management (OPM) and has enabled the agency to better match its hiring  estimates to its institutional capacity, USPTO’s ability to reduce the patent  application backlog simply through its hiring efforts is unlikely.
Specifically, USPTO begins the process of identifying projected hiring  estimates as part of creating its budget submission for the Office of  Management and Budget (OMB) 18 months before the start of the hiring  year in order to meet OMB’s submission timeline.  After considering  expected funding levels and available patent examiner workforce data,  USPTO considers its institutional capacity to supervise and train patent  examiners.  For example, in identifying its fiscal year 2002 hiring estimate,  USPTO determined that funding availability would limit the number of  patent examiners the agency could hire, and established its estimate on  the basis of the number of patent examiners the agency had hired in the  most recent year.  However, in fiscal years 2003 through 2006, USPTO  determined that funding would not be a limiting factor, and the agency’s  hiring estimates were based primarily on its institutional capacity to  supervise and train patent examiners.
USPTO considers a number of factors in determining its institutional  capacity to supervise and train new patent examiners.  For example, it  determines its supervisory capacity by considering the number of  additional patent examiners who can be placed in a technology center.   This number is limited by the number of supervisors available in each  center who can sign patent application approvals and rejections and  provide on-the-job-training for new patent examiners.  Although new  patent examiners can review the prior art relating to patent applications,  only supervisors can authorize a new patent examiner’s decision to  approve or reject a patent application.  In an effort to avoid delays and  inefficiencies in initial and final decisions on patent applications, the  agency tries to ensure that the supervisor to patent examiner ratio is about  1 supervisor for every 12 patent examiners.  Similarly, USPTO’s training  capacity is determined by the number of patent examiners the agency  believes it can train in a year.  Training capacity was based on 2- or 3-week  courses offered throughout the year and were led by supervisory patent  examiners.  The courses could accommodate about 16 patent examiners  each, and in fiscal year 2004, according to USPTO, the agency offered  about 28 training sessions.
Because USPTO’s projected hiring estimates are established at least 18  months in advance of the hiring year, the agency continually refines the  estimates to reflect changes that might occur during this period.  For  example, in 2002, when it created its budget submission to OMB, USPTO  projected it would hire 750 patent examiners for fiscal year 2004.   However, due to budget constraints, the agency actually hired 443 patent  examiners in fiscal year 2004.  Figure 1 shows USPTO’s projected and  actual hiring numbers for fiscal years 2002 through 2006.
The differences between projected hiring estimates and the number hired  occurred primarily because of funding availability. In fiscal years 2003 and  2004, according to USPTO, the agency’s appropriations were significantly  less than the agency’s budget requests.  As a result, the agency could not  financially support the number of new patent examiners it had initially  planned to hire. In fiscal years 2005 and 2006, however, USPTO hired more  patent examiners than originally planned because the agency’s  appropriation for those years was greater than anticipated.
The way in which USPTO identifies annual patent examiner hiring  estimates is generally consistent with workforce planning strategies  endorsed by OPM.  For example, OPM recommends that agencies  regularly track workforce trends to ensure updated models for meeting  organizational needs; base decisions on sources of information such as  past workforce data; and include in its workforce planning process a  workforce analysis system that identifies current and future losses due to  attrition.  We found that USPTO generally followed these processes.
Recognizing the need to increase its institutional capacity to hire more  patent examiners, USPTO has taken steps to increase its training and  supervisory capacity.  To increase its training capacity, USPTO  implemented an 8-month training program in fiscal year 2006 called the  Patent Training Academy.  According to USPTO, the academy provides the  agency with a constant annual training capacity for 1,200 new patent  examiners for each of the next 5 years.  Moreover, USPTO officials believe  that the academy may indirectly improve the agency’s supervisory  capacity because new patent examiners should be better prepared to start  work in a technology center and therefore will need less supervision and  on-the-job training. USPTO plans to monitor new patent examiners after  they have graduated from the academy to determine if the agency can use  this approach to increase its institutional capacity and, therefore, its future  annual hiring estimates.
Even with its increased hiring estimates of 1,200 patent examiners each  year for the next 5 years, USPTO’s patent application backlog is expected  to increase to over 1.3 million at the end of fiscal year 2011. The agency  has also estimated that if it were able to hire 2,000 patent examiners per  year in fiscal year 2007 and each of the next 5 years, the backlog would  continue to increase by about 260,000 applications, to 953,643 at the end of  fiscal year 2011.  Despite its recent increases in hiring, the agency has  acknowledged that it cannot hire its way out of the backlog and is now  focused on slowing the growth of the backlog instead of reducing it.
section_title: Attrition Has Significantly Offset Hiring over the Last 5 Years, and Agency Management and Patent Examiners Disagree about the Reasons for Attrition
paragraphs: Although USPTO is hiring as many new patent examiners as it has the  annual funding and institutional capacity to support, attrition has  continued to increase among patent examiners—one patent examiner has  been lost for nearly every two hired over the last 5 years.  For example,  from the beginning of fiscal year 2002 through fiscal year 2006, USPTO  hired 3,672 patent examiners.  However, the patent examination  workforce only increased by 1,644 because 1,643 patent examiners left the  agency and 385 patent examiners were either transferred or promoted out  of the position of patent examiner.  As shown in figure 2, approximately 70  percent of the patent examiners who left the agency had been at USPTO  for less than 5 years, and nearly 33 percent had been at the agency for less  than 1 year.
The attrition of patent examiners who were at the agency for less than 5  years is a significant loss for USPTO for a variety of reasons.  First,  attrition of these staff affects USPTO’s ability to reduce the patent  application backlog because these less experienced patent examiners are  primarily responsible for making the initial decisions on patent  applications—the triggering event that removes applications from the  backlog.  Second, when these staff leave USPTO, the agency loses up to 5  years of training investment in them because patent examiners require 4 to  6 years of on-the-job experience before they become fully proficient in  conducting patent application reviews.  Third, the more experienced  examiners who have the ability to examine more applications in less time  have to instead devote more of their time to supervising and training the  less experienced staff, thereby further reducing the agency’s overall  productivity.  Finally, these workforce losses reduce the pool of potential  supervisory patent examiners for the future and therefore impair USPTO’s  ability to increase its supervisory capacity and, ultimately, its hiring goals.
We found that USPTO management and patent examiners disagree  significantly on the reasons for the agency’s attrition. According to USPTO  management, personal reasons are the primary reasons that cause patent  examiners to leave the agency.  Some of these reasons include the  following:    The nature of the work at USPTO does not fit with the preferred  working styles of some patent examiners, such as those with  engineering degrees who are looking for more “hands-on” experiences.
Many patent examiners enter the workforce directly out of college and  are looking to add USPTO to their resumes and move on to another job,  rather than building a career at the agency, otherwise known as the  “millennial problem.”
Patent examiners may choose to leave the area, as opposed to choosing  to leave the agency, because their spouse transfers to a position  outside of the Washington, D.C., area; the cost of living is too high; or  the competition is too high for entry into the Washington, D.C., area  graduate and post graduate programs for those patent examiners who  would like to pursue higher education.
According to USPTO management, the agency has a number of ongoing  efforts to help address these issues.  For example, the agency is  developing a recruitment tool to better assess applicant compatibility with  the agency’s work environment; targeting midcareer professionals during  the recruitment process; and considering the creation of offices located  outside the Washington, D.C., area to provide lower cost-of-living  alternatives for employees.
While Patent Office Professional Association officials—the union that  represents patent examiners—agreed that in some cases personal reasons  may contribute to patent examiners leaving the agency, they believe that  the unrealistic production goals that the agency sets for patent examiners  is primarily responsible for attrition.  Specifically, according to union  officials unrealistic production goals have created a “sweat shop culture”  within the agency that requires patent examiners to do more in less time  and has therefore been a significant contributor to patent examiners’  decisions to leave USPTO.  To call attention to this concern, in April 2007  the union joined the Staff Union of the European Patent Office and other  international patent examiner organizations in a letter declaring that the  pressures on patent examiners around the world have reached such a level  that in the absence of serious measures, intellectual property worldwide  would be at risk.  The letter recommended, among other things, an  increase in the time patent examiners have to review patent applications.
Patent examiners who participated in our survey generally agreed with  union officials. Specifically, approximately 67 percent of patent examiners,  regardless of their tenure with the agency, said that the agency’s  production goals were among the primary reasons they would consider  leaving USPTO.  Moreover, we estimated that 62 percent of patent  examiners are very dissatisfied or generally dissatisfied with the time  USPTO allots to achieve their production goals; and 50 percent of patent  examiners are very dissatisfied or generally dissatisfied with how the  agency calculates production goals.  In addition, a number of respondents  noted that the production goals are outdated, have not changed in 30  years, and some technologies for which they evaluate applications had not  even been discovered at the time the agency’s production goals were set.   Fifty-nine percent of patent examiners believed that the production system  should be reevaluated, including altering the production goals to allow  more time for patent examiners to conduct their reviews.
We and others have reported in the past that the assumptions underlying  the agency’s production goals were established over 30 years ago and have  not since been adjusted to reflect changes in science and technology.   Moreover, USPTO uses these production goals to establish its overall  performance goals for patent examiners, such as the number of first  actions to be completed in a given year.  However, from 2002 through  2006, the agency missed its projections in 4 of the 5 years.  Furthermore,  according to our survey, patent examiners are discontented with the  actions they have to take in order to meet their production goals.   Specifically, 70 percent of patent examiners who participated in our  survey reported working unpaid overtime to meet their production goals  during the last year, some reporting working over 30 extra hours in a 2- week period.  In addition, we estimated that 42 percent of patent  examiners had to work while they were on paid annual leave in order to  meet their production goals.  The percentage of patent examiners working  while on paid leave was significantly higher for those with longer tenure at  the agency.  We estimated that 18 percent of patent examiners who had  been at USPTO from 2 to 12 months worked to meet their production  goals while on paid leave, compared with 50 percent of patent examiners  with over 5 years’ experience.  As one respondent to our survey explained,  “Vacation time means catch up time.”  Another respondent summed up the  situation as follows: “I know that the production goals are set to keep us  motivated in order to help get over the backlog but if a majority of  examiners cannot meet those goals without relying on unpaid overtime or  annual leave then something is wrong with the system.”  According to our  survey results, 59 percent of patent examiners identified the amount of  unpaid overtime that they have to put into meeting their production goals  as a primary reason they would choose to leave USPTO, and 37 percent  identified the amount of time they must work during paid leave in order to  meet their goals as a primary reason to leave the agency.
Even though the agency has not been able to meet its productivity goals  for the last 4 years, this extensive amount of unpaid overtime patent  examiners have to work in order to meet their production goals does not  appear to be a concern for the agency.  When we asked USPTO  management about the agency’s policy for unpaid overtime to meet  production goals, the Deputy Commissioner for Patent Operations told us,  “As with many professionals who occasionally remain at work longer to  make up for time during the day spent chatting or because they were less  productive than intended, examiners may stay at the office (or remote  location) longer than their scheduled tour of duty to work.”
section_title: Retention Incentives and Flexibilities Provided over the Last 5 Years Generally Align with the Primary Reasons Patent Examiners Identified for Staying at USPTO
paragraphs: From 2002 to 2006, USPTO offered a number of different retention  incentives and flexibilities, as table 1 shows.
According to USPTO management officials, the three most effective  retention incentives and flexibilities that they have offered are the special  pay rates, the bonus structure, and opportunities to work from remote  locations.  More specifically:    Special pay rate. In November 2006, USPTO received approval for an  across-the-board special pay rate for patent examiners that can be  more than 25 percent above federal salaries for comparable positions.   For example, in 2007, a patent examiner at USPTO earning $47,610  would earn $37,640 in a similar position at another federal agency in  the Washington, D.C., area.
Bonus structure. The agency awards bonuses to patent examiners who  exceed their production goals by at least 10 percent.  For example,  according to USPTO, in fiscal year 2006, 60 percent of eligible patent  examiners who exceeded production goals by 10 percent or more  received a bonus. As table 2 shows, USPTO awarded 4,645 bonuses to  patent examiners that totaled over $10.6 million in fiscal year 2006.
Opportunities to work from remote locations. In fiscal year 2006,  approximately 20 percent of patent examiners participated in the  agency’s telework program, which allows patent examiners to conduct  some or all of their work away from their official duty station 1 or more  days a week.  In addition, when USPTO began a “hoteling” program in  fiscal year 2006, approximately 10 percent of patent examiners  participated in the program, which allows some patent examiners to  work from an alternative location.
According to the results of our survey, patent examiners generally agreed  that compensation-related retention incentives and efforts to enhance the  work environment were among the most important reasons they would  choose to stay at USPTO, as table 3 shows.
Current total pay (excluding benefits)
The availability of the flexible work schedule program  The availability of a hoteling program   The availability of a teleworking program   The recent implementation of a special pay rate increase  The ability to be promoted to the next GS level  The availability of the law school tuition program  The availability of monetary awards  Access to an on-site fitness center  The availability of a transit subsidy program  The availability of on-site child care  The availability of flexible spending accounts (i.e., the program  that allows you to pay for eligible out-of-pocket health care and  dependent care expenses with pre-tax dollars)
The availability of an on-site health unit  Activities offered by the Work-Life Committee   Despite USPTO’s efforts to hire more patent examiners annually and  implement retention incentives and flexibilities over the last 5 years, the  agency has had limited success in retaining new patent examiners.
Because the agency’s production goals appear to be undermining USPTO’s  efforts to hire and retain a qualified workforce, we recommended in 2007  that the agency comprehensively evaluate the assumptions it uses to  establish patent examiner production goals and revise those assumptions  as appropriate.
The Department of Commerce agreed with our findings, conclusions, and  recommendation and agreed that the agency’s hiring efforts are not  sufficient to reduce the patent application backlog.  It stated that USPTO  is implementing initiatives to increase the productivity of the agency that  will result in a more efficient and focused patent examination process.   Once USPTO determines the effect of these initiatives on patent examiner  productivity, it will reevaluate the assumptions used to establish patent  examiner productions goals.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement.  I would be happy to  respond to any questions that you or Members of the Subcommittee may  have at this time.
section_title: Contacts and Acknowledgments
paragraphs: For further information, please contact Robin M. Nazzaro at (202) 512-3841  or nazzaror@gao.gov.  Other contributors to this statement include  Vondalee R. Hunt, Assistant Director; Omari Norman; Jamie Roberts; Carol  Herrnstadt Shulman, and Lisa Vojta.
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