Transcripts For CSPAN Homeland Security Department Reauthorization 20180208

Sharing. Thetor ron johnson chairs committee. This is one hour 45 minutes. Sen. Johnson morning to this roundtable. We will come to order. I want to welcome our participants. We have the honorable elaine , the honorabledy george scott, and the honorable john kelly from the dhs. Discussndtable is to the attempt to reauthorize dhs. The house has passed their bill. They had a memorandum of understanding to consolidate that process under the department, the community of the Homeland Security in the house. It is more messy here in the senate which is not unusual. The committee has taken up in past authorization of the psa and coast guard. There are a number of components , my staff keeps telling me 50 of dhs under the authorization. That is what we are here to talk about today. Think it is accurate to say the house authorization and this is what we do in these authorizations. We take with the they do and codify it. Testimony it is pleasing to see how many recommendations the department has made to improve their operation. This has not been an easy department to establish and operate. Together. S called missions trying to develop that unity of mission. We helped a little in the last congress in that effort. We are trying to codify these things. There are a couple of key changes, or new departments that want to codify the weapons of mass destruction office. I think we want to figure out to focus the mission, do the renaming. We talked about doing that on a must pass piece of legislation. There is a great desire to do it. It is a matter of how do we get is efforts signed into law. Need to be items worked out. Authorization for fema grants. What we do with federal protective service. We continue to have those discussions. Maybe that is something we can have a conclusion. My last point, i want to talk about the one glaring omission by the house authorization. Maybe it is too controversial. It is something i think the Department Needs, a very serious thatat the jurisdictions you are responsible to. In my briefing, we got this chart from the committees. How many committees and subcommittees you actually do have the responsibility to report to. Some of your information is pretty interesting. The number of hearings the dhs is 300 andpate in 304. Witnesses are in the 400 levels. As the oversight committee, we strongly believe in Agency Responsibility in terms of reporting to us, and transparency. It needs to be more streamlined. , im not sureing of any other way of doing this. We are open to ideas. We need to reduce that burden. From my standpoint, i want to make sure the department is focusing on its mission to keep america safe and secure. That my Opening Statement be entered into record. Thank you mr. Chairman. Confused why this is a roundtable instead of a hearing. I hope someone can speak to that. This is an administration that prides itself on getting rid of regulations, and im told the reason we are doing this is because he did not have time to get testimony from omb. Is that right . Is that why it is not a hearing . Sen. Johnson this is a conversation between staff and dhs. To actually pass this authorization. To me it is not a big difference. Sen. Mccaskill i think it is important, the reauthorization of dhs. It rises to the level of a hearing. I was under the impression it was something the department did not have ample opportunity to prepare for the hearing. If it was just a choice of the chairman, and you and i have a difference of opinion on whether or not this rises to the level of a hearing. Ive got a number of things i would like to talk about today. I wont have time to talk about all of them. I continue to be concerned about acquisition and how well the department handles acquisitions. About the most egregious examples. Press about the most egregious examples. We entered into a contract to deliver meals, and clearly they did not deliver on that contract. They do not perform under that contract. Debarmentdrill down and suspension, and why that is such a hard thing to do in the federal government. I can assure you my colleagues, the chairman, if it was his company, a private business, any that somebody that was a supplier, and they screwed up time after time, do you know what that business would do . They would quit doing business with them. The federal government never seems to quit doing business with anybody who screws up. I dont get it. I would like to get to the bottom of that. I obviously have questions that i will spend time on. I am concerned about the privileged dispute in the i. T. Report. This is groundbreaking. It is unprecedented. It is very bad. I want to get to the bottom of it. I will put my written statement in the record since we have great attendance this morning. Everybody has questions. Lets move to questions i will ask my written statement be put in into the record. Sen. Johnson it is my understanding you have an Opening Statement. Lets begin with the honorable elaine duke. From the department of Homeland Security. Thank you. I will give one Opening Statement for the department. Thank you for having both of us here today. Clare grady as the undersecretary of management is our chief management officer. m the deputy secretary there is a strong linkage to that. Hopefully with the two of us, we can cover all the areas today. You have been great partners. We are looking forward to having some open and honest dialogue. , the threatsear against our country, we welcome an authorization that will give us updated authority and support , and updated accountability for the country, which we support. Torecognize that we have ensure that we carry out the mission on behalf of the country, and that we are serving our 45,000 employees. We think passage of the authorization act would be helpful in executing our authority and responsibilities. Over the past year at dhs, i have been working on a unity effort at the dhs. Looking at how we as the headquarters operate and support. Community, subject i think yours, proposal mr. Chairman, consolidating some of the committees would be a great parallel to what we are trying to do at headquarters. Weve made great progress. We have to do more in this area. What we are looking for in an authorization bill overall is something that does what you say and codifies some of the efforts. But does not go so far as to thatte and legislate areas would be difficult to change or take away essential flexibility for the secretary. So, finding that right balance. We feel like areas in an authorization bill that will help us with personnel, things such as hiring retention, and fax ability, and management of our employees would be helpful. We can discuss this on a level of detail now or in discussions with you in the Ranking Member later. Also, the depend department in cyber. We have the senior official performing the duty of the undersecretary. An accounting of weapons of mass destruction. We are looking forward to coming up with some agreements that can provide you information that will help you form your authorization bill. Sen. Johnson mr. George scott is the managing director for the accountability office. Thank you chairman johnson, raking member mccaskill. And members of the committee. Tom pleased to be here discuss opportunities to further strengthen the department of Homeland Security. Over the past 15 years, dhs has a range of operations while making significant progress in addressing the highest area of transforming the department and strengthening its management functions. We consider dhs to be a model for how other agencies should work to address their high risk issues. There are a number of key areas our Department Needs to improve. We authorization provides the opportunity to reflect on the progress the department has made, and help to align the dhs commissions, roles, and responsibilities to counter new and emerging threats to the homeland. I would like to discuss specific examples where we think legislation to reauthorize the department will help. In terms of departmental organization, codifying the roles and responsibilities of National Protection row grahams directorate would help on cybern dhss focus security. Also, renaming the office to better reflect those responsibilities would be a positive step. The area of great protecting Critical Infrastructure, congress could help required dhs to provide stakeholders providing Cyber Security protections, particularly sectors that work with the department on a voluntary basis. It is important for dhs to better understand to what extent those efforts are yielding positive results. While the department has made progress addressing Financial Management issues, including opinion onn Financial Statements for five consecutive years, significant challenges remain. In particular, the department continues to struggle with his Financial System modernization efforts and oversight is warranted. Workforceto develop a with the skills necessary to ,phold a control environment and congress could require that are meant to develop a comprehensive strategy for doing so. Finally, no discussion of the department will be complete without touching on the area of Acquisition Management. The department has taken a number of important steps in response to recommendations to improve oversight of these acquisitions. To reestablish the joint ensuring the department continues to follow sound acquisition processes will help increase accountability. Concludes my statement, and i look forward to answering questions that you have. Sen. Johnson thank you. Our final participant is john kelly. Good morning chairman johnson. And raking member mccaskill. And members of the committee. You for inviting me to discuss dhs reauthorization act. And to position dhs to address emerging threats. To fulfill its vital mission, and successfully protect and secure our nation, dhs must continue to overcome challenges that hinders its efforts. Over the last two years, my office has issued reports that address the challenges that face dhs. Many of those challenges congress addressed, the dhs reauthorization act. Implementation of our recommendations, dhs can continue to improve its operations and reduce fraud, waste, and abuse. If the doorman ignores these challenges, it will be difficult for dhs to effectively address new and emerging threats to the homeland. Isour last two reports, dhs management and challenges, we highlighted two of the longstanding challenges. First, dhs is leadership must commit itself to ensure that dhs operates more as a single entity than rather a confederation of components. The Department Leadership must establish and enforce a strong control environment. Internal troll environment is weak. It affects all aspects of its missions. Including immigration enforcement, protection against terrorist acts, natural disasters, and Cyber Security. Fortunately, the dhs authorization act reinforces the for unity by streamlining oversight, accountability, and illuminating redundancy. Another important is Acquisition Management. In fiscal year 2017, dhs spent more than 33 billion on contractual services, supplies, and assets. Dhs Acquisition Management system is critical in filling its mission. Acquisitioning Management System is inherently complex. Dhs annually spends tens of billions of dollars on a broad range of assets and services, inkling ships, aircraft, surveillance towers, nuclear systems, equipment, and information. To its credit, dhs has approved acquisition processes however challenges remain. Provisions of the dhs authorization act, implement efficiencies across components, and better ensured accountability, the safeguarding billions of taxpayer dollars. Strengthenso aviation security. Is the threat of terrorism more evident than aviation. Terrorist needling to get through wants. Terrorists need only to get through once. Our work is identified in tsa screenings and operations. We have conducted nine audits on passenger back its baggage. I cannot talk about the results in a classified setting. Its failures were caused by a combination of technology and human error. Leadership understands the gravity of our findings in this moving to address those. We recently audited all air marshals, service contributions, tsas security. The detailed results are classified. I can state that the funding could be discontinued and reallocated to higher priorities. Focus isour primary the integrity of 240,000 departmental employees. Of dhshe vast majority employees and contractors are honest and hardworking public servants, much of our investigative case load concerns allegations of corruption on part of dhs Law Enforcement personnel and government contractors. Grants authorization act the right to first refusal, we suggest the act explicitly grant that write to us. The Inspector Generals play a Critical Role in ensuring transparent, honest, effective, and Accountable Government area did the public must have a fundamental trust to hold accountability. Chairman, this concludes my comments. I welcome your questions. Sen. Johnson one of the reasons i like this roundtable approach, it allows a free flow of questioning, and we can stay on one topic. We have a time limit of five minutes. The yellow light goes off when there is one minute left. If you have a followon question pertinent to what another member is asking, we can cover the topic then and there as opposed to 15 minutes, a halfhour later, ring up the topic again and rehash it. Just raise your hand. That will add to the discussion. I will defer my questioning and turn it over to senator mccaskill. Im a littlel confused about the process. But we will forge ahead. Sen. Johnson it will be good. An. Mccaskill if this is round table, i hope you will not cut people off from asking questions. Lets start with the thing that concerns me because of my work as a former auditor. The Inspector General conducted an extensive review of the departments implementation of the president s travel ban. Hit a roadblock was the Inspector General expected to release his findings. Not only did it take months for the department to respond to the Inspector General, the department decided to assert rutledge that had never been used before. Privilege that had never been used before. The irony is you are evoking a process privilege and implementation of a travel ban. If there was anything that was not deliberate, it was that. It occurred without adequate notice to the department. Anybody with common sense could look at it and see that. The irony is you are using a deliberative process, privilege to block information to the public. Are we allowed to see this information, ms. Duke . Concern over the deliberate process was, it has to be protected. We have to be evil to have discussions with the president and the administration. It is under litigation. That is the issue here. Protectportant that we this. We provide the report. To the congress, the important thing to know is that with the reduction, it does state what the process was. We believe that with the deliberate of process, it gives adequate information what happened with the travel ban. Sen. Mccaskill i think it is outrageous. I dont understand it. The government is sued all the time. We cannot use litigation as an excuse to stop permission from the Inspector General. We cannot do that because then every department will say we are under litigation. Is this an executive privilege . This the white house exerting this privilege or your department . There was report that came under different privileges. The ig got all that information. It wasnt issue of whether it could be made public through a public report. So, the ig does have the information. Sen. Mccaskill but ig cannot share that with me. Correct. Sen. Mccaskill or the chairman of the committee. We will be happy to have a discussion with that you. I will come in and talk to you. Sen. Mccaskill im going to need more explanation about this. This could be a trend. All of a sudden we could have igs all over the government saying this is a delivered of process. We cannot talk about this. Then our oversight is done. We find it unusual for an ig report to be focused on discussions within the executive branch. A lot of the report was focused thoseil notifications, type of things. Normally, and i g report would be focused on how dhs implemented the travel restriction. Sen. Mccaskill somebody who has asd as many ig reports anybody in this room, emails are always a part of those reports. Emails i think the deliberative process, we are in the early ges to how we sen. Mccaskill i want to know what is hidden with the public. The recruiting contract. We have asked for information on the recruiting contract. Itasked january, was competitively bid . It was. Sen. Mccaskill the best we could get is paying 40,000 for every job . We looked at it from the perspective of competitive selection representing what was needed at a fair price. It in its entirety. The necessary staff for Border Patrol agents, and even despite the effort of using a range of options including retention incentives and Different Things we had done for recruiting perspectives, we have an average net loss of 400 position every year. This year we are down another hundred. We need to do something above and beyond what we were able to do, with the intent to hire an additional 5000 Border Patrol agents. We look at it carefully and said this is a surge need. To push on all the flexible he from a hr perspective. We have to meet that surge. We ordered the contractor who has a proven check record for the ability to a conns that. Sen. Mccaskill 40,000 per employee is outrageously high. Paying 40,000 to hire somebody we are going to pay 40,000. , forolks where i live people who think the government has lost its mind, that is exhibit a. I understand the concern. We structured it so we pay for actual formal job offers. We are not paying for effort. We are paying for delivering results. Sen. Mccaskill 40,000 per . That includes initial startup costs. Those are towards recruiting efforts. And all of the branding and efforts of the front. If you do a net division, you come to a figure close to that. What we are focused on is getting results, and it is a scalable contract. I will be inl just to get the contract file. Will it come soon . We will share that information with you and be happy to discuss it. Sen. Mccaskill will it come soon . I will look into the exact date. Sen. Mccaskill two weeks . We have protected information within that. To providingted that information to you and being transparent about the process. Sen. Mccaskill two weeks . Sen. Johnson two weeks two weeks. Sen. Mccaskill there is a boatload of money coming your way. If we cannot trust your spending it right. If we cannot trust decisions are made on related factors and by professionals, this is not going to go well. , these these issues issues that we are confronting today are critical. Senator mccaskill has done a great job outlining two areas. Reportannot see an ig and all the attachments, we are not doing oversight. If we have a problem hiring people, you got her up problem retaining people. Who are you talking to . What are the other strategies being deployed to maintain staff . I spend a lot of time on the northern border. I talked to Border Patrol. I talk about the challenges. With a few tweets you could get them to stay. Instead of paying 40,000. You could walk into a high school and recruit high school students. Youre not being creative enough. Hard work and requires different thinking. The 40,000 to hire a job that pays 40,000 . There is no one that thinks that is a good idea. Senator you raise a good point about retention activities. You may have heard about our leadership here that is focused on having a considerate effort on why we are losing people. Looking at that about leadership fact that wet, the went up in the survey, the largest increase in government shows that is working. We are hearing from our employees what they want, and we are addressing that. We can talk more about that. Additionally, and Border Patrol especially where it is difficult to recruit, a lot of that has to do with certain duty, we are looking at legislative proposals that might help. Some things, including if wheree goes to a location it is not desirable, can they have first choice . We can do it internally. You need to get your house in order. We are getting asked to appropriate a lot of money. If that money is just going to be poofed. We look back and say, in our rush to get this done, we did not do our oversight, shame on us. I want to talk about chairman johnsons chart. This was one of the , improving this government oversight. Somehow by bringing in more Defense Authorization structure to the department of Homeland Security. I think that is the direction we need to head. That was the recommendation that the 9 11 commission made that was never followed through. We had jurisdictional turf battles that go with this. If we are going to do the right kind of oversight, we cannot have this disparate jurisdictional challenges. This is more to the chairman and Ranking Member. We have to assert our jurisdiction here. We are to talk about how going to do a broader oversight. If it makes sense for you guys to be consolidated into the agency that you are consolidated into, it makes sense for the committee on Homeland Security to have broad and consistent oversight with the mission of the agency. When we do not have that, we do not have a plan. We do not have oversight when we have not figured this out. Maybe there are ways to tear down these barriers. I know the house is trying a different kind of select committee. Can any of you comment on the authorization process that the house is going through, and whether you think that is a more to give you narrow focus point of contact and oversight . Specifically comment on the house process, but we agree on the consolidation of authority. We are hoping an authorization bill will be a step in that direction. What we see from this committee is a holistic look. When you talk about acquisitions, you talk about a program but you talk about the system. Youre talking about the system because your committee in others they have such a narrow slice that we are not looking at the full system. I agree with everything you are saying. I know the house is trying to do similar efforts to consolidate the authority, and we think we would get more comprehensive oversight with a consolidation of jurisdiction. Sen. Heitkamp you cannot force that. Weve got our jurisdiction here. But lets not pretend that we are going to get a broad authorization in oversight capacity here with this kind of mixed jurisdiction. Toncourage this Committee Start asserting its jurisdiction and talking about this as a problem. Are also not we going to pretend we can solve that problem overnight. Sen. Heitkamp ron, how old is the agency . 15 years. It is not overnight. Pretending that 15 years of dispersed jurisdiction here is acceptable, and we have to wait longer. We have to get this problem fixed, especially when youre going to get 25 billion extra. Sen. Johnson we are recommending some kind of commission to point out we are putting our nations security at risk by having dhs so scattered. We are on the same page here. It is how you fix it. I will follow on the theme of accountability. The last two questioners, that deals with the grantmaking that occurs within your agency. Tens of billions of dollars of money has been put out in various grants since 9 11, and taxpayers have a right to know that money has made us safer. If it has not, we need to make changes accordingly. Reviewingnd fema is the threat hazard identification and risk assessment. That agenciescess and states used to undertake each year. These are not being currently used to drive grant allocations . I will have to get back to you. I dont have the answer right now. That would be important. My understanding is they are not. Yet, they are making these assessments. They should get to the point where they have data. Actual metrics to look at before grants are provided. I agree, but i cannot give you the answer to that question right now. Related to that, does the language require assessments and information . Do they have the potential . Im not familiar with that. In general, the house bill the house bill does essentially what we have been recommending for over a decade, which is encourage ima to better assess from yeartoyear the effect of the preparedness grant. You mentioned the process, fema does use that but that is developed by the state. The knot relies on the states assessment. What we do not know year in and year out is how these grants are making us safer and building our abilities. We do not know what our investment of 50 billion is buying us year in and year out. That is troubling. We do not know what 50 billion is buying us . What would be your recommendation . Fema needs to come up with its own quantitative measure theseoyear of how preparedness grants are building our capabilities. That is what is not being done now, and what we would like to see. Another important point is, with all the investment on preparedness and disaster grants, it is not clear what the impact is on the post disaster side, because that is exploding. Were spending more every year on that. Right now, it may not be buying down the cost on the back and. On the back end. Been a proposal to consolidate some of this grant process, which is fragmented. Has the ig done an assessment on whether the consolidation would increase efficiencies in these programs and better align them to National Priorities . We have not initiated a review in that area. We have been looking at the preparedness rants, and doing work on the disaster systems grants. We have identified a number of challenges that exist. And senatornson mccaskill, we sent them a letter in june making suggestions on how fema can improve their structure and oversight on disaster systems grants. There were a number of legislative proposals and changes. To the extent that across various Grant Programs there are opportunities to harmonize requirements, opportunities to streamline requirements. There opportunities for additional efficiencies. The grantmaking ross s, and the Grant Administration process. In a matter of practice, to an extent that can be taken to streamline grantmaking, that is a positive thing. With the necessary oversight of the grants, it is important not just to get the money out the door, but make sure we have necessary oversight mechanisms in place to make sure the grant money is properly spent. Honorable e lane duke, a question for you on Cyber Security. When we are dealing with cyber toeats, and the challenges make sure we are hardening the is,est link, my concern although the federal government has a lot to do to strengthen our Cyber Security efforts, times concerned about state and local governments that do not have the same resources that we have here at the federal level. There is that week link in the overall system. I am working with a colleague to get theways we can department of Homeland Security to work with state and local governments that are voluntarily asking for assistance and expertise within your department. Talk a little about what you believe we can do to help state and local governments, and if there are specific actions we should be taking here in the committee to assist you in your efforts. Locals can state and be assisted by the federal government on a voluntary basis. We think the same for Critical Infrastructure. The federal government can play a role in the integration, not in an involuntary way. ActCyber Security agency will help with that. , wewhat we are looking at already have deployed tools. That is the number one thing we can do. Locals, letd vertical infrastructure you some of the tools we have deployed. That can be done more. We are doing evaluation. We are going out and doing risk assessments of structures. For the State Government and local governments. , wehink the collaboration are looking at overall, and training is another area. Securityrepositioned agents the psas throughout the andsdiction to do onsite help with remediation. Those are federal employees that are out there. We think more needs to be done in this area. Things, we think it can do that by having Critical Infrastructure and ciber, and realized that cyber is a cross cut across everything. It is not a standalone function. Know about fema grants, state and locals love that. We dont know if they are actually working. It is a concern. One of then questions i want to ask about,. N 2014, we wrote legislation this committee strongly supported it. To upgrade your abilities in the cyberspace. We are concerned about the lack of retention, and being able to attract topflight talent. That was three years ago. We asked for a report three years out. Report a few days ago, which is great. I saw it for the first time last night. It says dhs has missed all kinds of deadlines. I understand the need to help state and local, and harden our own, but if you do not have the personnel to do it, it is challenging. Tell us, what are your specific recommendations right now on how to get dhs back on of the mentioned, yesterday we highlighted the urgent need of the department. The department has made some progress categorizing and signing certain codes and Cyber Security positions. There are some concerns with the accuracy of some of the information they provided. The estimated about 95 of the positions were identified. We found it was really around 79 because the department excluded some vacant positions. Recommendations including for dhs to a enhancement procedures around identifying these vacant positions and developing specific plans to identify and report on critical cyber needs. Our expectations within the next they should be, further along in addressing some of its critical Cyber Workforce needs. One of then recommendations was to have accountability and someone responsible for every aspect. In 2002 in the legislation that created the department. I have wondered sometimes since and whether we created a behemoth and something that is too difficult to manage. Having said that, the risk that we face in an increasingly dangerous world, i think we need to focus on keeping it safe. In the 9 11 report, this was talked about, but i agree with but the chairman and other colleagues have said about that. It is difficult for you. The testimony to have had to give over the last year. For you to focus on your core function because you are focuses at focusing on so many committees and subcommittees. If were not taking that jurisdiction seriously and ensuring that we do have authorizations, we are going to continue to have even more version of that responsibility. Erosion of that responsibility. Im glad you are doing this. I hope we can do this in a bipartisan basis as part of the first step of a much broader issue. Have you managed to this department when it has so many different silos . Raise ght i have to we push and write letters. We asked some questions about the management, we do not make these investigations public until we report, but we need the information. We have been given a minimal amount of documents and we need help their. There. Information and you guys have not been responsive. Made phone calls and sent emails and status updates, but we need the information that is back to december 6. Just a couple of weeks ago, we asked you guys for information on the procedures to protect unaccompanied alien children. Deep concern about the lack of accountability. We are simply looking for what we were told at the time you were doing which is an agreement youre going to have. We were told it would be done a year ago. You still have not done it. We need to figure out a way to get the information to us and find out why you have not encompassed that and look you can do to push to protect these kids. Weeks, butfor four we need to have a response. My apologies senator, i was not personally aware of that. I will give this committee and update next week. Last point, my with regard to the hearing and report from last week on the fact that dangerous chemicals and synthetic opioids are coming and yourcountry customs and Border Protection people are not able to stop it, we need to pass the stop act. For some other things in that report and that is that dhs work better with the Chinese Government to deal with it in china. Can you tell us what has happened with regard to china and their willingness to help us stop this poison from coming into our communities by stopping at the source . We have not made progress with china. The biggest thing is that percentage of packages we contract has over doubled. We are making more progress. The Chinese Government has been very cooperative. Has not been cooperative. They have been cooperative in tracking packages. Institute alping us tracking system with the mail service. We do not have a tracking system in the u. S. Ofhave very good tracking. Hl, ups sen. Portman only half of those packages have that advanced electronic data on it. They are not there yet, just so you know. Have you actually get china to do what they say they want to do . Here, chineseing government officials said they want to cooperate more with the u. S. But that was in extension of some kind of an olive branch to you to get with them and begin to crack down. To actually stop these labs. Poisonre creating this that is coming into our communities and to begin to prosecute some of these people that are involved. My question is what more can we do on that front . We have been working with them regularly in terms of quickly through the department of state in terms of working with china, but it is not just a chinese progress problem. It is hard to discuss everything in this environment, but the transit to some countries, problems were looking at that and stopping that not only in china but in some other countries. We support the stop act. We are hitting it from many angles. It is a Challenging Program problem. Sen. Portman your own people it is primarily from china right now. We know we have a huge issue here. It is the number one killer in my home state of ohio. Thank you for pushing the chinese more on helping to stop this at the source. Sen hassan so his treatments of that we can reduce the demand in this country for opioids. If you take that back to your colleagues. We cannot arrest our way out of this, we have to do everything to get out of this. We would love the administrations help. I have three areas to explore. You talk about election securitys Critical Infrastructure. I wanted to ask you to share with us more detail. What specific actions has the department taken in 2017 and 2018 to advance the mission . Principally, we are doing assessments of the systems as requested by the state and local governments. We are also made available our safe system for checking rosters. Cyber security side, it is primarily focused on assessments. With information sharing, we are working with a multiinformational center to provide best practices, information on strategic and and alsorisks providing security clearances to state and local officials. Sen. Hassan so youre working to make sure that state officials have the appropriate are about 37 into getting into the interim. Making progress, we are giving oneday clearances in the interim gap. Hassan are you working to access for elected officials to have skiffs . Thatou working to ensure state Election Officials are coordinating with both the states Homeland Security advisor and Information Officer . Yes. We have come to understand that there is essentially a tight se state. We are developing separate and individual information sharing protocols per state. Sen. Hassan because of time i wanted a lot of couple of other issues and then we may be able to talk more about that. I would like to touch upon an initiative being spearheaded by the dhs office of intelligence and analysis in the chief imitation officer. As i understand it, our existing framework is still in its initial phase of development, but it promises to bring important capabilities to dhs analysts and their effort to try to keep out foreign fighters and those who wish to do us harm. Can you describe for us the value of the dhs data project and the priority the department places on this initiative . I cannot tell you how strong its value is. It is a topy priority. What it does, it doesnt several things. One is a systems issue. , we are at better communicating between Law Enforcement and intelligence information and also coordinating intelligence. Initiative to be the chief officer as the overall unity of effort. Intelligence,g but having intelligence communicate with Law Enforcement at the Law Enforcement sensitive level. The timeliness and accuracy. Things are moving at lightning speed. We do not have the years of tracking a criminal anymore. We are all focused on this. T requires management sen. Hassan i look forward to working with you on that. Had one other issue thehave been talking about change and wanting to put Cyber Security into the title. I am a little concerned that Cyber Security is more important i am wondering what authorities was an independent operational Cyber Security component need to retain in order to be successful. I am over time, if you want to give a brief answer and then work it into the rest of the discussion on this that would be great. I think that cyber is not just a name change. It does come with the authorities and undersecretary. We can talk more about that. Sen. Hassan thank you. Sen. Lankford thank you all for doing this. Typically rings is all of the bad news first, and they brought us good news here. Have hearings just two years ago talking about the hr system and about how difficult this has been for dhs. Now i am hearing that the numbers are changing in terms of the time. For hiring. Customs used to be for customs and Border Control where are we now in the process . Those numbers are definitely coming down. The other thing that we look out is the number of applicants we need to hire a single person. That number was well into the triple digits. It is not in the double digits, but it is still too high. One of the things were looking ,t his we have been taking keeping the numbers at an average. In some cases, an individual can be an outlier with 800 days. It is headed in the right direction, not as fast as we would like. Human with the head of capital and the chief Financial Officer for each of the component that has had hiring challenges to track that. Lankford if there are specific legislative request that you have to that, we need to know. There are 120 different hiring authorities that are sitting out there. If there are things that you see, we are doing our own work, but if you see things we will be glad to do that as well. We do have a couple. One would be expanded authority to waive polygraphs. We can give you more detail. Also to some expanded hiring authorities. We would like a delegation similar to department of defense. Those for youte or your staff to be able to have flexibility without asking permission. We changed, first volley went to the fbi to get some best practices and time in the types of polygraph we do. It has percent pushed up the number. Fortionally we were looking the ability to waive in certain classes of lowrisk people. That would include local Law Enforcement. Current ts dod with clearances as well. Ishink the allinone hiring really helpful, but expanded ability to waive would be good. Work do has ongoing personally looking at the challenges the department is facing in terms of Border Patrol agent hiring and we anticipate hiring reporting on that later this year. One thing i would caution is that it is important to understand the root causes us to what is preventing you from hiring the right people and targeting them initially, but also the need to balance the goal of hiring additional agents and making sure we are not in some way compromising the quality of the agents we are getting. I know that is something we are well aware of, but i think it is important to emphasize the having a goal to hire is one thing, but having a process to make sure you hire the right people is another thing. Sen. Lankford i dont think theres anyone at this table who disagree with that. If there is a specific need that you see we are doing some work that is identifying limitations in the abilities to hire the individuals. Also in secret service, there are training restraints. Sen. Lankford how much facility sharing and reuse . We use . We are looking at not only facilities for initial training the also shooting ranges and those types of facilities for consolidation. We have export things like exploredg ranges things like mobile firing ranges. Lankford let me just make a couple of quick comments. We have done a lot of work on this and was very pleased to be able to hear your answers for the cooperation. Frustrations we have in going through this was how long it took after the last election for individual states to even be notified. The common answer was that we live anyone with clearance. To hear you are actively pursuing that is very helpful to know. We are trying to make that consistent from here on out that there is a ongoing cooperation. What you have mentioned before, thank you for doing that. We think that is exceptionally important. That this whole table has talk about metrics. This committee passed out called the a bill taxpayers right to know that works unidentified the metrics and programs as to what is out there. It has not crossed the floor. If we can get that done, that will help us all. It is a nonpartisan bill. Were looking forward to being able to get that done. You. Harris thank i could not agree more and i thank you for your leadership on those points. A troubled by the exchange i had with senator portman he asked if you are part familiar with the request that he made to a department and you are not aware of that. On the issue of election Cyber Security, as you know the midterm elections are around the corner, i believe voters go to the polls in texas on march 6. While dhs has provided a risk and Vulnerability Assessment to some states, other states remain on a long waiting list i am told. The waiting list being as long as nine months. I would like to know what is your timeline for getting these done . We have made measures in terms of prioritizing and making the list short. Harris can you give me a date . The ninemonth weightless is probably actually about six months old. Take election infrastructure and put at the top. We have another five or 10 in the hopper ready for the beginning of april. Whether he cans requested for risk and Vulnerability Assessments. There are states that have the capacity to be able to conduct their own Technical Assessment of security networks. We are focusing and doing a lot of awareness on those states that need additional help. Sen. Harris how many states have requested that it be done . Five has been done and another 11 are in the q cue. Sen. Harris my question is how many have requested . 16. April is the timeline for completing the requested. My hope is that we have more come in. Sen. Harris i would want to know that you are aware of the 16 states at least and what their dates are for their primaries and that it would be your goal to have their assessment complete before their primary actually occurs. I am concerned that you dont know the timeline given that we have unanimous consensus among Intelligence Committee that russia interfered in the election of the president of the u. S. It would seem to you to visit be a high priority for the department of Homeland Security and you be clear about the timelines. I have other questions. Part of my understanding is that this delay in processing these requests are that you do not have skilled workers to complete the scans, is that correct . Or is that not the problem . Delay is that the risk and Vulnerability Assessment capability is also servicing other Critical Infrastructure sectors and in fact also federal highvalue assets assessments. We have put at the top of the pile the state and local Election Officials right now. We have to prioritize others and put those at the top. We are looking at ways to increase training, to bring additional personnel on, and also there is an equipment requirement that we are occurring additional quitman. Equipment. Harris do you have the necessary funding and resources to provide the states with their requests and get this completed in a timely manner . For those that have requested right now, we have the capabilities to conduct. Harris; how many state Election Officials have applied for security clearances . Approximately 37 have submitted the paperwork. We have one final secret issued. We have about 17 interim secrets. This changes on a daily basis. We have the opportunity to do daily oneday regions read ins on any issue that may come up. Harris those daily oneday read ins mean that if you want to have some consistent information that is happening, you have to call in every day . It depends on the bulk of the information and intelligence we want to share. It would require me to be an person with those folks are have local intelligence officials that they day. Harris that seems extremely bureaucratic. It is also for additional staff. We are at the point right now where one senior elects official first day, and two additional staff. Harris what percentage have actually received those clearances . I think were probably at the 50 30 rate for senior Election Officials. That is including an interim secret level. And him secret get effectively the same access as permanent secret. This assetsritized of the wedding and issuing the clearances and will continue to do so in advance of the 2008 teen 2018 elections. Sen. Harris please give us ask a precise timeline on when they will be completed. Thank you, i have nothing else. The question i have for you, have we identified in every individual or individuals that need to be identified and can effectively handle whatever information you provide them . We have an individual statebystate protocol for notifying whether it is a state commissioner of elections or a secretary of state. We are working through those individual processes right now. My question is, do we have those individuals identified for every state . Yes sir. Yes, we have them identified. Jones i want to talk a little bit about budgeting. It is an unusual situation with sworn in asin a u. S. Senator we immediately start shutting down the government, that has been a concern of budgeting during the campaign. Heard secretary mattis being pretty vocal about the Defense Department and the negative effects these continuing crs half have. Can you address that . Shutdowns are disruptive. Employees that go through a. Or theyre not sure if they are going to get paid. That have to go to work and others dont. There is a true employee issue. We have to focus on the mission because under acr or a shutdown, you are at last years level and it constricts us in adopting to priorities. We cannot do new starts so if any emerging need comes up, we cannot address it because we cant serve something new in a missionary a mission area. Our new under secretary has with a lot of time planning and restructuring. Also a huge burden operationally because you do not know what your budgets will be for the next year. We are in the middle of the Second Quarter of the fiscal year without a full budget telling us what we have for the year. In terms of operational planning hiring effortson and acquisitions, we are hamstrung until that gets resolved. That has a Ripple Effect throughout especially when you of it compress spending very important resources for very important capabilities and it is now in a compressed. Of time compressed period of time. On a difficult to operate number of shortterm crs. Does it add costs . It does because you enter into shortterm decisions and if you had the full budget available at the beginning of the fiscal year. The federal government traditionally spends too much in the Fourth Quarter anyway. These shortterm crs push it. Ven further this past week a cnn reporter found some pretty sensitive documents in the back of an airplane which could have jeopardized a lot of things. What happened and what was found and what can be done to stop that . The actual leaving of the documents will be handling under a personnel matter. Else, thatanything is a breach of our responsibilities of our employees. In terms of the material in the documents, that is something we are working on. It is old information. It is that we tend to call a hot wash of what we see and what we are looking forward to. That will be handled on our personal system. Anything that can be done to try to stop that . Be an isolated incident, but still it can be a pretty serious isolated incident. Both official use only and classified information is very important. I think this is a reminder to all employees may hear about of how careful we have to be. Important responsibility of being a Civil Servant is protecting the. That. We have expanded our cyber Threat Program to go beyond to ensure information that we are monitoring usage and taking appropriate action if we identify its potential vulnerability. Making sure we are safeguarding against infiltration and inappropriate use of the information. Thank you mr. Chairman. I would like to pick up on what senator jones talked about shutdowns. What percent of the personal and dhs were considered essential and required to come to work . Approximately . It was about 70 . Most of the individuals that were determined to be nonessential or individuals who work on longerterm actions. We did nothing that would compromise national security. You literally sent about 30 of your workforce home . Unfortunately, i have been around here when they had a shutdown and everybody gets paid eventually. Is there anything, she was isking about authorization, there anything we can do it authorization to make this more clear cut and protect your department . I support the end Government Shutdown act, which if we dont startr act together, you funding at the current level. Wide and a government Government Shutdown act. Is there something in his authorization we can take advantage of . We actually had not considered that, but that is not just the day of, this shutdown is the weeks leading up to it. Of the biggest portions of our workforce is a transportation Security Officers are in the low end of the scale. Having to wait for the money could be critical for them. Give that some thought. Im hoping to mark this bill up. Week, itt get by next will hopefully be the following week. Give that some thought. Timehe situation is every there has been a Government Shutdown, everybody gets the back pay. It is incredibly unfortunate that there is this level of dysfunction, but lets look at addressing that maybe here. Disaster Workforce Flexibility is something that could help us in responding to future disasters. We have a major core workforce and fema. We have no way to tradition the best of those into the federal workforce. Press none of provisions would look at and an authorization bill. Abilityion, having some to do noncompetitive temporary appointments. They are looking at some of the things with recruiting from high schools and the pathways program, but some of those workforce structure flexibilities that we could have similar to dods. Were looking at incentives for families in some of the isolated areas. Can i give preference for spouses for federal employment, those type of things that would help make this not as nondesirable location. Know is held Something Like 25 informational meetings with , if those things are outside of comments made from those meetings, get a list of those compiled and get some proposals. Thingsist all of these and if we can come to an agreement here on a bipartisan basis, i think those are some good initiatives included here. We will have those today. Been largely a subject of ongoing conversations with staff. We will work with you on a. That. Contract big for bid for the tribute meals . We do not have a Small Business set aside, no. You had no ability to find the previous problems with the failure and defaults . Were looking at what happened. It was terminated quickly. I do not have information that i have seen relative to the Due Diligence we had on the front and. That is something were looking at an understanding what happened. We do have a robust suspension of the department program. Peopleended about 190 last year. We are in the process of updating our suspension and Department Instruction to make sure we are currently reflecting best practices. We are going to be moving to a case Management System to ensure that we have markedly documentation and tracking. To be juggling to show up again, maybe not in dod but another, how are we going to doing them so somebody, so he could hiring them . Anytime you terminate, there is a notification that is provided. Sen. Mccaskill widen the happened, they clearly had defaulted on a number of government contracts. They had been a number of government context of a defaulted on, but from what i read about it, you all did not have any flag in the system that would have shown up. My suspicion, not based on facts, is because the dollar value was below the simple Acquisition Threshold and it may have been a loophole in terms of reporting. That is my speculation not information i have verified. Sen. Mccaskill we will dig into it and lets are together and try to get to the bottom of it. I would really like to know what the federalengthen government there. What has happened is rather than go through the process of suspension and department, you just default the contract and that actor then remains a viable contractor in the federal system. I agree because of the due process, it has probably been taken to an extreme. Sen. Mccaskill along to you think it takes . Yearsestimate is over two because you typically allow things to go to the process. As is the case of the contract we are discussing, the company has disputed the termination. We are working through that while it is being resolved, you cannot put them on the edpartment list debarr list. Inform. Available to we require our Contracting Officers to look at past performances of companies in addition to suspension and environment because our goal is still for the company to perform all. Sen. Mccaskill you are only looking in your department . Know, across the government. That is something that we are looking into. On the responsibility termination, there is a government wide repository. Under your Government Affairs role, information is not regularly entered and that. If you matched the number of government contracts against the number of contracts that are reported in the performance system, it is woefully underreported. Sen. Mccaskill i would let to get to the bottom of that and see if we can get something of this reauthorization that be helpful with this. The other thing i was a about fema is it is not like you guys dont know what youre going to have to buy meals, right . Kate has the kind of standing qualification for emergency mail that then youfema can draw on when these currents happen . The idea that we go with an unknown company to deliver 30 million meals seems bizarre to me. Think the combination of the number of storms of the response and isolated location is puerto for example, another contractor not go well. We have a number of instances were he went beyond what we. Ould normally use we had just the amount of response in the amount of effort in multiple sites just hacked into all the sources. Because of the fact that you have three simultaneous situations you are trying to deal with . Writes. Sen. Mccaskill that makes a feel a little better. Mission in puerto rico was bigger and longer than anybody had anticipated. Thank goodness for all the charitable work that went on because clearly the government failed on the job. I want to briefly ask about this vetting center. We have six or seven Different Things a government that do this, where we creating a new one . The intent of the National Vetting center is a consolidation system. Sen. Mccaskill what are you consolidating . We dont know yet. The details are to be worked out that the president has announced it. But we are looking for is having intelligence that are available for vetting and for Law Enforcement people. That is one of the biggest responsibilities right now to get intelligence information. That is one of the problems we are trying to solve. Sen. Mccaskill so some of these are going to weigh and we are not been to have the fbi national center, the terror watch system and the National Targeting Center . The need looking at for reducing all of those standalones by having a multiagency presence. Sen. Mccaskill i am going to be cranky if it is just an addon and you do not get rid of some of these areas. It would drive me nuts. It would drive me nuts too. Sen. Mccaskill i wanted to be there is a fly on the wall when you get between the fbi and the state department and all of these people give up their centers. If you could do that, we can deftly get jurisdiction away from finance judiciary and [laughter] wantll watch you work and to get this done, if you can teach us how to do this, i have a bad feeling this is going to be an addon and just another layer of complexity and overlap and frankly with still gaps in the system. Clarify,o quickly youre saying that we went over the capacity . Yes sir. We are always seeking to bring in new vendors and also to keep requirements whenever possible to best meet our needs. Suppliers to have the approved and just succeeded exceeded their capacity . Yes. Sen. Hassan i want to return to the issue of nppd and Cyber Security. The advocates of the bill that has passed the house said that nppd needed to be renamed in order to per improve the morale of workers and attract the best and brightest cyber professionals. I do have a hard time thinking that a name change really does all of that and i understood stand that you are understand that you are saying it is more than just a name change. They called for an independent beyond just changing the name, this committee needs to hold hearings and specifically consider the possibility of creating a separate Cyber Security component at dhs. Understand your first answer piece. As it is all of a i understand that but i think Cyber Security is as important as border security. It is important as marine security. So, i am having a hard time understanding why we do would not follow the report and elevate this to the command that it needs to be elevated to. It is being elevated to an operating component and that is substantial and that it will have everything and needs to operate. It will be our eighth operating agency. That is important. Call. A judgment trade, we have customs with in it, because there was a decision that even though those are independent, they go together. It is a judgment call on cyber and Critical Infrastructure. What are the benefits of those being together as opposed to being absolutely separate. I think in the current draft, having the undersecretary as cyber and having the cyber and Critical Infrastructure under willolitical appointees allow for the integration but also allow for one big piece of the organization to truly focus on cyber. It is a judgment call. Hassan have you all of ss the feasibility of creating a. Omponent at dhs to answer whether or not we are looking into that, the answer is yes. Agencystarting up an that is focusing on protection. Have a look at name changes being mrl issue . We have not. I have actually. They have lost their branding and that is an issue to them. People love being part of an organization. I think it is an issue. Sen. Hassan i understand that and Cyber Security is a whole different kind of border. It takes a different mindset and different kind of expertise then maybe protecting buildings does. I think it would become for us to explore this more as a committee. Just a couple of things. 1997, geo designated Server Security as a white house areas. On to includeded the critical cyber aspect of this. Nppd, we do believe that the focus on cyber is needed. Support secretary we believe a name change will help. I think it is also important that as we go through this transformation of nppd into the in terms oftion, want to go to this transformation, it is also important to build clear expectations as to what exactly the missions and goals are. It is really important that whenever we create something new, it is clear what we want to do and how we will know whether it is working or not. We like the provision in the current draft that says the secretary can consider moving that. My guess was you were itching to Say Something about this. How could you tell . [laughter] talk about that in the operational. Three quick things. I did come out of the private sector. Asking, this is exactly what the nppd creates. The important is the linkages of the two. That is how it is going in industry. They are in it strictly linked inextricably linked. They would have to look across an entire enterprise and say. Hat is our fiscal risk it is important that we keep them together because what i need to be doing from a field force perspective is when i go and engage any company out there, when we are knocking on the door, we need to be a single point of entry. If they have physical requirements, we can work with them. If they have Cyber Security requirements, we can work with them. If we can consolidate those into a single storefront somewhat, i think that is the way to do this. Has i appreciate thatsan and i think this is been helpful. Mikes mics. Why am concerned about is the possibility of the cyber sublimated. Ting there is no greater risk right now to our country. You may disagree but that is what i think about first thing in the morning. Hassan while i was governor i got reports of the number attempted attacks everyday. We need to keep on it. Absolutely, yesman. Yes maam. Had to come in with those and specifically are there any recommendations that you have particular problems with and obstacles we can help with just briefly on the . That . We are trying to figure out was addressed to j o or . Jones whoever can answer it best. Every six months or so we are sending over priority recommendations to the department. We have continued to receive responses to the issues we have raised. We give the Department Credit among the agencies they really seem to take this seriously. They are continuing to make progress. Our expectation is it will be providing secretary a new letter within the next month or so. We track all of the outstanding recommendations, the high priority ones we focus on and make sure we are completing. One of the things import dermabrasion at some of the regulations are shortterm and some take much longer. We track when it should be completed and track milestones associated with completion of that. Not all of the recommendations are a quick fix. A lot of them are systemic and take involved effort. We make sure that and make meaningful progress on a regular basis. Is there anything on the . Etter that could help thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, senator jones. I dont think we have any further questions. We want that list and work with you closely. Members and staff, to do whatever we can to approve this authorization and add the things we can had that can be passed. Lets roll up our shirtsleeves and get this thing done. I want to thank all the witnesses your services, come here and doing a good job of answering our questions. Adjourned. Thank you. Pleasure to meet you. [crowd noise] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] is just a matter of following through. One of the issues she raises is appropriate. The admit the answer is the magnitude of these disasters. Suppliers. Pproved it exceeded capacity. Andto react indirect emergencies. This is a difficult department to manage and we are trying to improve. The results of the Inspector General show their making some improvements so we keep doing it. Thanks. I was challenged a few times. This weekend on American History tv on cspan3, sunday at 10 00 a. M. Eastern, from the west point center for oracle for oral history, growing up in a military family and his service in vietnam. Viewpoint where you can see what was going on. From watching the rockets come and explosions are going off. Said it kind of looks like the fourth of july. And i said, no it doesnt. People are dying with those things land. It doesnt happen on the fourth of july, and she started crying. With the upcoming winter olympics, we are featuring two films. The United States team is causing excitement here. They were pregrain underdogs pregame underdogs and now they have upset all predictions by winning this game. Their play running them the first gold medal number one by u. S. Team hockey. Scholars explore the relationships between ronald reagan, george h. W. Bush and Mikael Gorbachev during the end of the cold war. 1989en you look back to when bush comes in, and then you look at bush and gorbachev, from gorbachevs point of view, bush is not up to what reagan had been. Watch American History tv every weekend on cspan3. Cspan where history unfolds daily. In 1979, cspan was created as a Public Service by americas cable Cable Television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. On wednesday, congressional leaders announced an agreement on a twoyear budget that would avert another Government Shutdown. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has come out against the deal because it doesnt deal with daca immigration applicants. Alyssa called attention to the issue in an eight hour speech, the longest inhouse history. Watch her remarks as to spend at