Congress established the PSOB program in 1976 to demonstrate appreciation for men and women in public safety careers and assist in their recruitment and retention, among other purposes. The program provides death, disability, and education benefits to public safety officers and their families in the event of the officer’s death or permanent and total disability resulting from employment. While Congress established that funding for death claims is mandatory, funding for the disability and education portions of the program is discretionary. As such, in fiscal year 2009, Congress appropriated “such sums as are necessary” for death benefits (approximately $119 million), $5 million for disability benefits, and $4.1 million for education benefits. In fiscal year 2009, after adjusting for inflation, the onetime lump-sum death and disability benefits were $315,746, and the maximum education benefit was $915 per month. By law, PSOB death and disability benefits are provided in addition to other benefits to which the officer is entitled and generally should not affect the receipt of other benefits, including state and local benefits. (See app. II for more information on benefits provided by the 5 states we contacted and app. III for benefits provided by all 50 states.) In addition, if officers qualify for Social Security Disability Insurance (DI), their DI benefits are not affected by the receipt of PSOB benefits. The PSOB program is administered by the PSOB Office, a unit of BJA within DOJ’s Office of Justice Programs (OJP). It employs a total of 10 staff, including the program director, and had an administrative budget of $3,000,000 in fiscal year 2009. In fiscal years 2006 through 2008, a total of 1,632 PSOB claims were filed. The majority, or about 57 percent, were death claims; about 32 percent were education claims; and about 11 percent were disability claims, as shown in figure 1. To qualify for program benefits, claims must be associated with an officer who worked for a public agency in one of the following official capacities: rescue squad or ambulance crew; employee of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) who is responding to a federally declared disaster or emergency; state, local, or tribal officials who are working in cooperation with FEMA during a federally declared disaster or emergency; or fire or police department chaplain. For survivors to qualify for death benefits, an officer’s death must have been the direct and proximate result of an injury sustained in the line of duty. The Hometown Heroes Survivors Benefits Act of 2003 expanded program eligibility to include public safety officers who die as a direct and proximate result of heart attacks or strokes while on duty or within 24 hours after engaging in a nonroutine stressful or strenuous physical public safety activity or training. To qualify for disability benefits, the public safety officer has to be permanently and totally disabled as the direct result of catastrophic injury sustained in the line of duty that permanently prevents the individual from performing any gainful work. An officer’s spouse or children may also qualify for education benefits only after the officer’s eligibility for death or disability benefits has been established. Spouses may receive education benefits at any point during their lifetime, while children generally may receive benefits until the age of 27. In addition, educational assistance is provided for a maximum of 45 months of full-time enrollment and students must maintain a cumulative C average. Consequently, claimants can apply for PSOB education benefits multiple times over several years. Typically, the officer’s employer (i.e., the state or local agency for which the officer worked at the time of the death or disability) assists with filing death and disability claims on the officer’s behalf, while spouses and children seeking education benefits typically file on their own behalf. By statute, the BJA director is authorized to use no less than $150,000 of appropriated program funds to maintain and enhance national peer support and counseling programs to assist families of public safety officers who have died in the line of duty. To that end, the PSOB program funds two organizations, COPS and NFFF, and expects them to use a portion of the money to assist claimants and agencies with filing PSOB program claims. Before the PSOB Office drafts an initial determination about whether a claimant will receive program benefits, it requires claimants to submit documentation for each type of claim, some of which must be signed by the officer’s employer. See table 1 for a list of basic documentation required for each claim type. Upon receipt of all the required documentation associated with a claim, a PSOB benefits specialist reviews the claim and its supporting documentation and drafts an initial determination on whether to approve or deny the claim. This draft determination is then reviewed by a senior benefits specialist, the PSOB director, and OJP’s Office of the General Counsel (OGC) before a final determination is rendered. Furthermore, some death claims are reviewed by a contracted pathologist and all disability claims are reviewed by independent medical reviewers of various medical specialties and subspecialties who provide additional information as to whether claims meet medical standards for eligibility. A claim may go through different phases of the process multiple times if at any phase DOJ officials determine that more information may be needed to make a determination. If a claim is denied, claimants have a right to appeal to a hearing officer, who reviews the claim and makes a second determination, which is independent of the initial denial. If the hearing officer denies the claim, the claimant may appeal to the director of BJA. And finally, claimants can appeal claims denied by the director of BJA to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Figure 2 illustrates the process for death and disability claims, while Figure 3 lays out the process for education claims. A May 2004 Attorney General’s memorandum directed the PSOB Office to make a determination on all filed PSOB claims within 90 days of receiving all necessary information and identifying all potential beneficiaries. The memo also directed the PSOB Office to then draft written determinations and send all claims to OGC within 30 days for review. Upon receipt of the draft determination and necessary supporting documents, OGC should complete its review and submit recommendations for any changes to the PSOB Office within 45 days. However, if at any point, PSOB program officials or OGC attorneys determine that more information or documentation is needed to make a determination, the 90-day, 30-day and 45-day clock is reset. All federal executive branch agencies are required by the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA) to set strategic goals, measure performance, and report on the degree to which goals were met in an effort to ensure government accountability and enhance public awareness about agencies’ accomplishments. Agencies are also subject to the Federal Managers’ Financial Integrity Act of 1982, which requires that they establish and maintain systems of administrative controls. GAO and OMB have established guidelines for implementing these two acts. The guidelines include establishing goals and performance measures, monitoring progress—including collecting reliable data on program outcomes—and communicating program operations and outcomes to relevant stakeholders such as Congress and the public, including program participants. While GPRA is applicable to the department or agency-level, performance goals and measures are important management tools applicable to all levels of an agency, including the program, project, or activity level, consistent with leading management practices and internal controls related to performance monitoring. On the basis of our sample, as of April 2009, the PSOB Office had closed and approved most death and all education claims opened in fiscal years 2006 through 2008. By contrast, an estimated 31 percent of disability claims were closed during that same time period, and we could not reliably determine the outcomes of these claims. The majority of disability claims remained pending because they took significantly more time to process than death and education claims. While we estimated that about 80 percent of all PSOB program claims initiated in fiscal years 2006 through 2008 were closed as of April 2009, we found that the closure rate varied by type of claim—about 100 percent for education claims, 78 percent for death claims, and 31 percent for disability claims. Similarly, of the closed claims we reviewed, 100 percent of education claims and about 80 percent of death claims were approved. However, we were unable to reliably determine the extent to which closed disability claims were approved because our stratified sample produced an insufficient sample size of closed disability claims considering the relatively longer time frame to process disability claims. (See fig. 4.) Most education claims were associated with law enforcement officers, as opposed to other types of officers such as firefighters or corrections officers. During fiscal years 2006 through 2008, about 15 percent of education claims were filed by the officer’s spouse, while about 85 percent were filed by the officer’s children. Accordingly, the age of education claimants at the time they began to receive benefits was between 18 and 46, with an average age of about 22 years. In addition, we found that education claimants had received benefits for about 2 and 3 years, on average, at the time of our review and that each claimant received, on average, between $3,300 and $6,140 per year. As with education claims, most death claims were associated with law enforcement officers and were for full-time employees. In general, the most frequently cited causes of death were motor vehicle accidents, heart attacks, and gunshot wounds. The average age of the officers at the time of death was 46 years. Officials told us that death claims were denied because the claimant was deemed ineligible—for example, the deceased did not die in the line of duty or did not meet the definition of a public safety officer. Although we were unable to reliably determine the outcomes of closed disability claims, our sampling methodology allowed us to determine demographic characteristics for all disability claims initiated during our time frame. Specifically, most initiated disability claims were associated with law enforcement officers, and the average age of the officers at time of disability was 42 years.