Transcripts For CSPAN3 Federal Officials Testify On Government Waste Fraud And Mismanagement 20170215

This hearing will come to order. Good afternoon. I want to welcome our witnesses. Appreciate your thoughtful testimony and your willingness to spend time here with us today. I ask consent that my written Opening Statement be entered into the record. Without objection. This hearing really is what this committee is all about. Particularly on the Governmental Affairs portion. We have a Mission Statement that we developed last congress with my former Ranking Member senator and no Ranking Member add very good addition to it. The original one is to enhance the economic and national and senator asked we have more efficient accountable government. Thats what the gao does. Thats what Inspector Generals do. And so we certainly appreciate your work. I dont know how many times i have said it, others have said youre our favorite folks in government. You give us the information that really can make government more efficient, more effective and accountable. Todays hearing is on the gaos high risk series. This is something thats been prepared by gao since the early 90s. Facts speak for them selves and just last ten years, gao reports that about 240 million over the tenyear period, enacting their recommendation answers 24 billion per year. Igs play a key role under that as well. Senator grassley and i sent a letter requesting the igs last control give us a list of all their recommendations that are outstanding. They have been implemented. The result was 15,222 net potential savings of about 87 billion. Even if the federal government, thats real money. And its really folks like you that can make a huge difference. Todays hearing what we decided to do is because we have listened to mr. Dedario testify beautifully without notes and he can speak an awful lot but rather than have him completely on hot seat we thought we would invite two inspectors generals he, we have mr. Mike missal and mr. John roth, Inspector General of the Homeland Security, to testify in terms of their department and activity and high risk list and we invited mr. Thompson. And we didnt invied you here to be on the hot seat. I wanted to bring in the director. And the census is under this jurisdiction. I wanted to bring in director and get your viewpoint in terms of how a director, one of these agencies listed on the high risk list. How you view that, what are your challenges in getting off the high risk list, and how seriously you take it. I truly appreciate what we will good easy on you here and appreciate you coming. Again looking forward to the hearing. I dont want to spend much more time. I will send it off to senator mccaskill. Thank you. I consider the gao one of the most important entities in washington, d. C. An independent nonpartisan agency that investigates how the federal government spends tax dollars. You support us in meeting our oversight obligations under the constitution and helps us improve ksbility in t improve accountability in the government. It is factbased, nonpartisan, fair and balanced. At the beginning of each congress you release a report of Government Programs at high risk due to vulnerabilities he to fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement. Shortly after the release of the report the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs committee invites you the leader, comp troller to testify. I appreciate this hearing is one of our first, full committee hearings, of the 115th congress. Your 2017 high risk report provides us with a list of priorities for how this committee can target and root out waste, fraud and abuse. For example, your report says the federal government oversees more than 80 billion in Taxpayer Fund for Information Technology investments. The poor management as we know leads many i. T. Contracting to fail or experience significant cost overruns. Contract oversight is not a new problem in government. But it remains one of the attractable and most important problems out there. While most dedicated employees are dedicated servants, there are highlights that more is needed to ensure it is working effectively and efficiently on behalf of the American People. There are critical skill gaps within the federal work force that could pose risk to american tax dollars and american lives. It is alarming even after the large scale cyber breach at the office of Personnel Management and medical wait list scandal at apartment of veteran affairs that the gap by gao still include cybersecurity and nursing. Gao added to 20 Census Program to its list of high risk areas. Knowing our census is rapidly approaching im grateful that director thompson is here to provide a status update on the program. The cost has written over the last couple decades. With the 2010 being the costliest u. S. He is nottus costliest u. S. Census in history. Billions had to be scrapped at the last minute to be sure the census was done on time. Giving the Important Role the census plays in accounting our role as well has taxpayer dollars to community and im eager to know how they plan to effectively manage costs. Im grateful to inspectors general roth and general da dero and thompson with their work with the veterans fairs respectively. Afairs respectively. Fairs respectively. As former state auditor i consider accountability many of the most important park of my work here in the senate. Last week President Trump signed into law the gao oversight act ai and bipartisan measure i cosponsored to ensure gao has full access to the National Data base of new hires. A key tool for cutting waste and fraud as well as allowing states to aggressively pursue Child Support payments. The law also strengthens gaos ability to take legal action if an agency refuses to provide gao with information necessary to perform its functions. This law is a great example of what our committee can do when we Work Together to promote accountability in the federal government. The federal government is a complex system of agencies that spends more than 3 trillion annual by on behalf of the American People. We are members of a public trust to ensure the tax dollars are used well. Thank you so much for being here today. Thank you, mr. Chairman, for having the committee. I look forward to questions. If you will all rise and raise your right hand. Do you swear the testimony you will give before this committee will be the truth, whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god . Please be seated. Our first witness is mr. Eugene da dario. Mr. Da dario has been comptroller in the Accountability Office since 2010. Plor than 40 Years Experience at the agency including comptroller chief officers and head of the management division. Comptroller dodaro. Thank you. Ranking members, senator mckaskill. Im pleased to be here he to discuss the latest addition to the gaos high risk program. Im pleased to report that many of the areas on the list in 2015 have shown improvements and are in a position now that they meet or partially meet all five criteria for coming off the list. Leadership, have to have the capacity, have to have a good action plan, monitoring effort, and demonstrate progress. This is the hardest to meet that actually show you are reducing the risk or making progress in fixing the problems address. This progress is due to commitment by some of the Agency Leaders as well as as a staff in the agencies, omb and congress. Im very pleased that the congress in the past, 114th Congress Passed over 12 bills that addressed high risk areas and were part of the reason why we are showing this program and Congress Held over it 50 countries on areas discussed in gaos high risk program. Im pleased this committee is sponsoring a number of bills, holding a lot of hearings and im very appreciative of that. But congress is key to making progress. If you look at almost every area that we identified as achieving progress, congressional actions have been instrumental in achieving that degree of progress. One area that met all of the criteria, managing the sharing of terrorismrelated information. This is a very important area for the safety of our country and can i ensure this committee while it is coming off the list it doesnt mean it is out of sight. We can keep an eye on it and make sure that things stay on track in that area. Another area, i know this committee is interested in, is the department of Homeland Security and have shown steady progress. They have improved their ability to monitor the action plan they have in place. They need to focus on their acquisition programs, fixing their Financial Management systems and improving employee morale. Those are the things they need to continue to do. There are a number of areas on the list however that need substantial attention. And these i would particularly site for this committees attention. First is Veterans Health care. Added that to the list and 2015 for a number of very Important Reasons that i can elaborate on in q a, but im concerned they only made limited progress. Defense department management, we talked about that several times before this committee. They are still the only Major Federal Agency that has been able to pass the test of an audit. Information technology and acquisitions and operations of senator mccaskill mentioned. That is an area that while seeing progress needs significant more oversight and attention to make sure it gets fixed. Cybersecurity. Both cybersecurity as it relates to federal governments own Information Systems but also like the electricity grid, Financial Markets, air traffic c control system and others. We added cybersecurity across the government as high risk area to the list in 1997. This is a 20year anniversary. We have been trying to get agencies to move on that area and despite even breaches, we have a thousand recommendations still outstanding in the cybersecurity area. And reforming the Housing Finance system, this is one area that was not addressed coming out of the Global Financial crisis. Fannie mae and freddie mac are in private security that they have been since 2008. Many have moved through federal government, directly through federal Housing Administration who had to get infusion from treasury, between 1 trillion and 2 trillion, 7 of mortgages are for Single Family homes are directly or indirectly supported by the federal government. We need to address fannie and freddie and get the private sector back into the Financial Market as well to reduce risk on the federal government. We are adding three new areas this year. First is iff federal efforts to help Indian Tribes and their members. We are very concerned. We looked at education programs. Schools are in poor condition. Not properly staffed. Health care area, no Quality Standard for health care. A lot vacant positions. Distributing funds if it is not available in indian area hospitals. Using programs from the 1830s. And using striebs the tribes th promote oil on their lands and it is just slow and they arent able to generate that revenue that could help them deal with a number of their issues. Secondly, growth and environmental liability for their he government. To despice of waste from Nuclear Weapons complex as well as commercial power plants. The liability right now is approaching onehalf trillion dollars. I believe it to be understated because the problems we have seen for one example with dod and not properly estimating Environmental Liabilities for cleaning up after Defense Department operations and installations as well. Now the federal government spends billions every year to clean up the waste but liability keeps going. Not enough risk based Decision Making in those areas but we have ra number of outstanding declarations. Last area is the census. We have added that to the list because of the fact the last census was over 12 billion costly as of and in order to contain costs they have introduced a lot of novel concepts using the internet, developing address lists, from spatial and other means rather than going door to door canvassing. And also using administrative records. And new Information Technology. All of these things add to the risk. And they final plans have not been put in place yet. We look forward to working with this committee and i look forward to answering questions today at the appropriate time. Thank you very much. Thank you mr. Dodaro. Next witness is mr. John thompson from the Census Bureau. Mr. Thompson was president and ceo of the National Opinion research center. Director thompson . Good afternoon chairman johnson. Ranking member mccaskill and members of the committee. I appreciate the opportunity to update you on the census. We remain on the Critical Path it readiness. 2020 census as been added to the most recent high risk list from the government Accountability Office. Both 2000 and 2010 censuses were also on this list. Which is a reflection of the complexity scale and importance of conducting the fair and accurate census. This decade the complexity is heightened as we replace a paper and pencilbased design with Innovative Technology that will save taxpayers billions of dollars. We have robust controls in place to mitigate risks inherent in carrying out constitutionally mandated task. As we test the operations in roughly 50 systems that comprise the 2020 census we are wear of the many risks the program faces. Thats why we are working rigorously to mitigate those risks. In final years of the decade Risk Management is critical to our Operational Plan for 2020. Another important part of our preparations is continuing to work with their colleagues at gao and office of the Inspector General at the department of commerce. I discussed the steps we take to mitigate risk in greater detail in my written testimony for the record including the risk of funding uncertainty. Today i want to highlight the following specific risk areas were concentrating on. First, cybersecurity, fraud detection and ensuring the publics trust. Were actively securing our systems and devices for the fields tests while enshiring we prevent fraud and cyberattacks. We will use a layer of defense sfr strategy to protect administrative records. Second insuring systems readiness. Develop and field tested concept systems and design supported by findings from the census tests. Now that we have awarded nearly all key contracts for 2020 we are finalizing our system of systems ahead of the 2018 end to end census test. Third, field procedures through testing. Fourth managing the integrated master schedule for 2020 census and supporting programs. Lastly, dock thing and validating our 2020 he is nottus life cycle cost estimates. Census testets are key to finalizing our designs and reducing risk. Last year we tested core census operations in Harris County texas and los angeles county, california. Additionally, we tested our address canvassing pro ved usai in northern carolina and st. Louis, missouri. We learn many lessons and use that to refine operations and mitigate risks of a census. The Census Bureau planned test operations in 2017. These involve Critical Systems and operations that must be tested ahead of the 2018 end to end census test. The 2018 end to end sonsus te c test is the final field test before the 2020 census. Field operations will begin in august 2017 with a census date of april 1, 2018. Will conduct the test in three areas, pierce county, washington. Prove dent county, rhode island. And blue field beckley oak hill area of west virginia. Collectively itll cover about 7 770,000 housing unit. We will also produce prototypes of our data release products, making sure that all of these census work individually and in concert with each other is critical. Using lessons from 2018 will make any necessary adjustments to ensure we are ready for the census and final eyes our plans for operations. We have been traps parennsparen. We have held quarterly management reviews. We publicly document and track our biggest decisions. Sharing our master schedule with the gao every month for example. There are many challenges ahead but were confident that with the appropriate funding levels we can successfully execute the 2020 census. I need to neat 2017 and 2018 are critical years he in the census cycle. The funding that we receive in these years will have a great effect on the outcome of the 2020 census including the achieving 5 billion in cost savings. We are now less than six months away for the 2020 census but there is not yet clarity regarding the programs funding in 2017. In january, uncertainty about the 2017 fiscal 2017 budget required us to make difficult decisions to descope aspect of the program and pause others to mitigate uncertainty risk. This will lead to more work in 2019 to a delay in opening three of our six Regional Census Centers in 2017 and to the elimination of advertising in the 2018 end to end census test. It will also lead to deep cuts to program and Test Management operations despite the gao and Inspector General giving them critical for a program of this flexibility. We are planning an innovative modern design for 2020 that will bring the census into the 21st century. Our approach takes advantage of new technologies, and data sources while minimizing risk. With the funding we requests we can execute the design that will save taxpayers billions of dollars. I thank the committee for your interest in our work. I look forward to discussing challenges we face and how to address them and continue in the p productive relationship with the gao in the years ahead. Thank you. Thank you. Next is mr. Michael missal. Inspector general of the department of veterans affairs. Inspector general michael was at knl gates where he led the regulatory practice groups. Thank you. Chairman johnson, Ranking Member mckcaskill and members of the committee. Caskill and membe the committee. We seek to prevent and protect fraud, waste and abuse and make meaningful rec ommendations to bring effectiveness throughout v. A. Programs and operations. Our goal is to undertake impactful work that will assist v. A. And provide the appropriate and Timely Service answers benefits that veterans so deservedly earned. Ive had the great privilege of serving as Inspector General since may 2, 2016. Since that time, i have fully immersed myself in the work prior its and policies of the oig. We made a number of enhancements since i started including a Mission System and value statement, transparency, fons team, and being more proactive in our review areas. The oig shares a similar mission with gao. It is important that we have a strong relationship with gao to ensure that we avoid duplication of effort as much as possible. To that end, one of the first things i did when i started was to meet with comptroller general dodaro and some of his senior staff. Our offices have had a number of discussions since that time to promote coordination and effective oversight. Gao added managing risk including health care to its high risk in 2015 and remains on high risk list just issued for 2017. Gao focused its concerned in five broad areas. Ambiguous policies and inconsistent. Oversight and accountability. Information peck knoll yi. Training for v. A. Staff. And unclear resource needs and allegation priorities. While our work is determined by what we believe is the most effective oversight of v. A. , a number of our reports address concerns he in these same five areas. As committee requested i will highlight sampling of oig work in each of the areas replacing v. A. Health care on its high risk list. It should be noted that many of the oigs reports to fit in more than one area. We issued a number of reports in the last few years he including policies and inconsistent pro processes. Our review of the Health Eligibility center found they had not made sure essential Health Care Eligibility data. We made 13 recommendations in that report including one focused on controls to ensure future enrollment date yar accurate and reliable before being entersed into the enrollment system. Proper oversight by manament would ensure programs and operations would work effectively and efficiently. Our september 2016 report on the Denver Replacement Medical Center is an extremely costly example of the result of inadequate oversight. Through all phases of the project we identify various factors that significantly contributed to delays in rising costs. This occurred due it a series of questionable Business Decisions he and mismanagement by v. A. Senior officials resulting in a project areas behind schedule and costing more than twice the initial budget of 800 million. We made five recommendations and v. A. Management concurred with all recommendationes. We requested information pr v. A. On the implementation status and will keep them open until v. A. Provides satisfactory evidence of implementation. As we have reported in our list of v. A. s Major Management challenges he within v. A. s annual Financial Report we he is have frequently identified struggles to design, pr cuocured or identify. We have issued a number of reports outlining access issues and are working this area is continuing. Wait times and schedules issues was the inadequate lack of or incorrect train prague vi incorrect Training Provided no v. A. Staff. We have allegations of wait time manipulation through years 2015 and 2016 after allegation the phoenix v. A. Health care system surfaced in 2014. As we have reported in more than 90 administrative summaries of investigations and other reports issued the lack of training for schedulers and understanding of process by managers created a system in which long wait times were not accurately portrayed to management. V. A. Needs to accurately forecast the demand for Health Care Services in both near term and longterm. Oig is required by section 301 of the choice act to review vha occupations with the largest staffing shortages in our most recent report issued in september 2016 we identified medical officer, nurse, psychologist, physician assistant and physical therapist medical technologist as critical occupations with the largest staffing shortages. In conclusion, oig is committed to providing effective oversight of the programs and operations of the v. A. A number of our reports address a five broad areas noted by ga and placing v. A. Onity risk list. We will ton list reports that provide v. A. , and congress with what we believe will help v. A. Operate programs and services in a manner that will effectively and timely deliver services to veterans and spend taxpayer money appropriately. Mr. Chairman, this concludes my statement. And i would be happy to answer any questions that you or other members of the tcommittee may have. Our final witness is mr. John roth. In addition to previous work for the fda, mr. Roth has 25 years career as federal prosecutor including chief of staff to the Deputy Attorney general. Mr. Roth . Thank you for inviting me here to testify here today. We listed six. One creating the unified department, two, employee morale and engagement. Three, acquisition management. Four, grants management. Five, cybersecurity. Six, improving management fundamentals. Additionally with the new administration, the department will face new responsibilities. We understand significant investment the department will be making to satisfy its obligations under the president s executive order to construct a southern border barrier. And the importance of spending that investment efficiently and effectively. The department historically performed very poorly in this area. As many recall prior efforts to fortify the southwest border were cancelled in 2011 as being too expensive and ineffective. In a Pilot Program in arizona dhs spent br 1 billion to build a system over 53 miles of the states border before abandoning the initiative. We must not allow that to be repeated. Given risks involved our office will use a life cycle approach he to monitor the departments actions to strengthen physical security of the nations southern border. An audit approach means we can audit it through its life span before it is partially completed before looking at it. We have an opportunity to stop waste and mismanagement before money is spent rather than simply identifying it after the fact. Our first report will address Lessons Learned from the departments prior secure Border Initiative and other relevant acquisitions related to securing our borders. We hope to have this out in the next six weeks. We plan to review the kp comprehensive study and that executive study requires to be complete within 18 will 0 dayw. Complete within 18 will 0 dayw0. Similarly, the department will face a number of challenges and executing the president s executive order directing the department to hire additional 5,000 Border Patrol agents and 10,000 immigration officers. We completed an audit that highlighted numerous bottle necks. In fiscal year 2015 for example it took average of 282 days over nine months to hire a Border Patrol agent. Measured from the time the Job Announcement closed to the date the applicant was hired. Again we think this is an unacceptable level of performance and look to make recommendations for improvement. As with the acquisition area, we initiated further audits for the Human Capital strategies and to ensure the department can quickly and effectively hire a diverse work force. We will did this continuously throughout the process rather than wait for the hiring to be completed. Finally we will continue to focus on dhss highly troubled grants management program. We have found deficiencies in which fema holds grantees responsibility. In fiscal 2015 for example, we found a questioned cost rate of 2 t 29 . Whi we believe the root cause of this problem includes failure of leadership and inability or lack of desire to hold grantees accountable and systemic issues that may only be fixed with systemic fixes. Mr. Chairman this concludes my testimony. Im happy to answer any questions ou or other members of the committee may have. Thank you, mr. Roth. Let me start with, mr. Dodaro. R the committee may have. Thank you, mr. Roth. Let me start with, mr. Dodaro. You talk about cybersecurity. This is the 20th anniversary of being on the high risk list. Every other witness talked about Information Technology challenges orrish ice of cybersecurity. Can you summarize or give me kind of the main reason why it is so difficult to get heads or the departments up to speed from the standpoint of cybersecurity . Yes. This has been a long standing quest that ive been on. And when we first started this we actually built a computer lab that simulated the operating environment of the agencies and were able to hack into their systems to show them how easy it was to get into their systems. We still didnt get a lot of attraction or attention because people thought, who is going to do that. I can see this coming years ago. Even with the breaches now, people are not theres not a sense of urgency yet as much as i think there should be across the federal government. Lit me interrupt. Are you seeing any increased attention theres some. It is not resulting in meaningful improvements and in many cases that i think. Gostd h government had a slow start. It is saddled with systems that decades old. Security wasnt built in up front. You cant patch them fast enough and te havent been replaced with more modern systems with technology built in the front. The work force is not is not where it should be. And theres not enough followthrough to see that recommendations are being implemented. A lot is management attention too. Weakness can result in police not being aware of anything and downloading Malicious Software into the system. There is a well defined best practices for having a comprehensive cybersecurity in place. Agencies do not have this comprehensive program in place. I think this needs continual attention over time. But part of the mill stone are improving cybersecurity. We did reports im happy to share with the committee. Some of them one at the department of defense was operating still on a floppy disk. And on one hand nobody will hack into it. On the other hand it isnt sustainable. I cant emphasize how concerned i am about how vulnerable that we are and that extends he in 2003 we extended it to Critical Infrastructure protection across the country. There needs to be sharing between the federal government and private sectors. A lot of reluctance to share information. And in this regard on security threats. And the threat is evolving much faster than the agencys ability to keep up with it. We did finally pass, and i would say the table stakes first step in cybersecurity here, and also this Committee Federal cybersecurity enhancement act. In terms of imposing the einste einstein agency, is this slow implementation . Yes. Those things help. And it gives a sense of reporting. But not enough. Not enough to match the threat, in my opinion. Weve had real problems in toma. Other senators have had problems as well. One of the questions i have for you in your office which i believe you took over with the pretty troubled office and i appreciate the fact now you have instituted Mission Statements and trying to address tra, overall, what percent, i dont expect a precise answer here, what percent of your reports involve investigations on specific instances. And over all inspections just in general trying to address problems in particular the v. A. Health care system. A very high percentage. We have a number of reports that come out. Health care unit will do reports on specific cases much like you mentioned in toma and either facilities. We do national report. And an inspection as well. Audits could be national but we could focus on a situation, a very healthy split on those. Almost a 50 50 thing . Hard to estimate. But it is probably more than 50 on individual situations at this time. I was wondering, if you are just overwhelmed by individual instances, taking up all your ig time versus concentrating on the daytoday aught audits. Were trying to clean out work as we started. Ught audits. Were trying to clean out work as we started. Ght audits. Were trying to clean out work as we started. Ht audits. Were trying to clean out work as we started. T audits. Were trying to clean out work as we started. Audits. Were trying to clean out work as we started. Audits. Were trying to clean out work as we started. I would like to move to more national work, more audits of programs et cetera and moving in that direction. Inspector general roth, you are talking about the challenges department has in terms of the executive order. Implementing reports and hiring individuals. Hiring has been a real problem. You talked about hiring bottle necks, can you quickly describe those in the remaining seconds i have in my time . Certainly. We did a [ inaudible ] with regard to secret service and cvp. What we found are there are bottle necks in advance of planniplan. They wouldnt have the right Personnel Service to work the systems that they needed to work. That is one problem. Second problem they had is that the systems they had were antiquated. They didnt talk to each other so the actual flow of paper and flow of bodies through the system didnt work as well as it needed to. And in the third is the frankly the polygraph system that secret service and cvp have under place. Can you quick describe the bottle neck of the polygraph system . Sure. Lack of personnel or lack of it is that. For example, i will just use secret service as an example. Thats a duty a secret service age wont have as along with duties. He get to the polygraphs when he gets them. That will drop low on priority scale and that backs up the higher end they are able to do. What we have recommended to secret service eaas well as cdps a number of special polygraph operators who could do that work as their sole job. It would seem to me that these bot em necks he could be overcome. True. Thats why we want to do a life cycle approach. Warn them about what is coming and have them prepare in way that makes sense. Thank you. Senator mccaskill. In 200 9d gao did a report that included that there was no kind of cost benefit analysis on the effectiveness of physical bare years along the border. To your knowledge has that cost benefit a analysis which required in Major Business expenditure, has that ever been done . A cost benefit analysis . Not to my knowledge. I dont think so. Okay. Should no. The answer is definitely no. In your opinion, at gao, is something that will cost billions of dollars begin without a cost benefit analysis . No. And would it be typical to begin a multibillion dollar project without any appropriated funds . That would be difficult. No. I understand the administration is relying on previous authorization for Border Security which i certainly support Border Security. But do we know how much even, how much this will cost based on what you looked at . Last time we looked at it in a 2009 report, estimates giften that time, it was 6. 5 million per mile for fencing or barriers that for Pedestrian Crossing and about this 1. 8 for vehicle crossing at the that time. Of the 2,000 mile border, there is about 650 miles where this fencing exists. Now two thirds of the remaining were federal government doesnt own. It is either a state or its private sector land. So it has to be either bought or publicly condemned . Yes. And that part of that happened with the 650 miles as well. So the federal government would take land from the ranchers that live along the border . Or buy from them. Or whatever. There would have to be negotiation. There is a lot of rugged terrain on the boreder that would have to be dealt with as well. And acquisition that both the Inspector General from dhs and gao has seen that the departments ability to manage large acquisitions is one of the reasons they are still on the high risk list. Part of that would have to be improving how they go about carrying out acquisitions. About the prior expenditures, i would have to go back and take a look. Maybe there is some authorities there hasnt hasnt been used. But generally speaking you have to get a new appropriation. Let me move now to census. Im trying to i looked at the contract. I havent looked the the contact but i looked at the amount. We entered into a contract for almost a billion dollars. 887 plil hemillion for t rex lt summer to integrate. We have had some bad experience summer to integrate. We have had some bad experience. Integrators contracts have had a rocky history in terms of success. I noticed when ways preparing for this hearing you ask them to integrate 50 different systems. Why do we need to make it that complimented, mr. Thompson . Why integrate 50 symptoms. . Cant we count that without integrating systems . . Thank you, senator. We do need all that we have 34 operations in place for the that were planning to do for the 2020 census and they are supported by about 50 systems as you mentioned. We gave your staff copies of those systems yesterday. And so the systems have to take to each other. Why 50 . Im somebody who just landed from another planet. Explain to when what you are doing with 50 systems. Why do they all have to be combined . Especially since were Self Reporting i think for the first time on the internet. Yes. Why dont i understand . Let me give you some examples. We have one system we allowed people to respond on the internet with. That has to be integrated and talked to our con krotrol syste. So we can collect the information theres one. 49 to go. Right. So then we have to be able to do the in person response. So we have to have a control system for that so we have to know okay. People that dont understand, you have to find them and talk to them. Then an instrument that collects the information from the people that dont respond. So we have to give our the handheld, hopefully this time. Right. Which we had to scrap last time. I understand that. I can go on but there is a need for each of the systems. We have carefully looked at systems we need. We dont want to make it overly complicated. 50 sounds very complicated, mr. Thompson. And it may be that you absolutely have to have all 50. But i dont think youre on schedule. I think youre having to some of it is funding, i agree. You need to have an end to end test i believe youre planning for 2018 . Yes. You need have more tests in 2017. You are scrapping some projects. You are going to do like in Spanish Speaking areas, and i just worry that were going to have deja vu all over again. We are making this more complex than it needs to be. Are you more confident that i mean, it seems to me in this day and age asking people to respond on the internet and on that let me briefly go to another item. I think people are reluctant to give their personal information over the internet. Are you working with dhs right now . Are you working with other people in the area of cybersecurity so youre confident you will have the protection of that data that will be reassured people . Every person who responds over the internet will save us real money. Yes. We, working with dhs. We are working with the Natural Institute of standards and technology. We are working with private contractors to do testing of the systems that we have. We do take that very seriously and we are trying to work with the best on that. We also by the way employ the einstein software on our Internet Connections so we are protected by that too. We worked with dhs to get that in place. We take that seriously. Thank you. Mr. Thompson . Senator carper. Thank you. The work that is done at gao, on a lot of areas, especially in the high risk list. I said for years it is our todo list. And you and i met earlier this week and we talked about significant progress is made. One is with respect to property management, Real Property management. Would you explain why you think we finally got the ball in the end zone on that . First administration finally issued the National Strategy to deal with this the layout with goals and measures to really have a good plan. To make progress you need that. Secondly Congress Helped a lot with passage of two bills at the end of last calendar year. One it would create an independent board to make recommendations to sell or dispose of high Value Property that federal government has. And thats a good step forward. I believe. And secondly, the second bill codified property management, gave it some todo lists, if you will, of Congress Giving it to them. To improve the data, to regularly report hopefully it will result in a reduced reliance on leasing as well. Thats an area that still needs to be addressed. Federal government leases property for decades that it would have been far cheaper to build rather than lease. So we are trying to get the agency to focus on high value lease answe leases he and do high cost comparison in those areas. E and comparison in those areas. And comparison in those areas. And d comparison in those areas. So some leaderships, strategies, good support from the congress, all these are ingredients to the progress. Good, thank you. The term called fisma, federal Information Security Management Act i think it stands for. Thats been around forever, and frankly not too effective in terms of realtime security for federal. Gov domain. We passed fisma legislation, i think a number of us on the panel worked on that. Dr. Coburn worked on this when he was with us as well. Burn wo he was with us as well. Burn wor he was with us as well. And general roth, do you have a sense for how the passage of that legislation is being implemented for good or for not . The idea is to make it realtime and not after the fact. Yes. Continuous monitoring. I have to say from dhss point of view, we have somewhat different experience from what mr. Dodaro. There was a real sprint based on some of the high profile hacks that had occurred in other agencies to try to get for example Continuous Monitoring online to get all components to actually report the results to a central headquarters location. To get, to factor authentication on every machine in every user having two factors and a card they stick in plus a pass word. Then lastly to get whats known as authorities to op, which is basically a license, certification by the chief Information Officer that those systems in fact are effectively locked down according to fisma standard. We have seen i think some improvement of obviously with dhs a long way to go. But particularly in the last year we have seen some improvement. One of the things weve done is make it possible for dhs so compete for Cyber Warriors he and pay with the person will policies and take it off and compete with us against National Securi Security Agency or private sector. Anyone know if that is making a difference yet . We did over a year ago. Anybody have a feel for that . Okay. When johnson became secretary and i subjected that they do what jane used to do when she was deputy secretary at dhs, that is go every month or two to gao and sit down whether it was jean or the top folks and just let mer her go through high ris list. My sense is that they did that. And my sense is that it made a difference. Would you just confirm or deny that for us . Yes. Yes. No, no, the relationship weve had with the department of Homeland Security is a model of on how to deal with the high risk list. When i first met jane she was puzzled as to why they were on the list. I sent a 20page letter over. Here is everything you need to do. She said i understand. They developed a plan and every so many months they report to us. We have quarterly meetings. And they made real progress. We agreed on 30 things that needed to be done and measure ped. They fully met 13 of them now. They have a ways to go in the remaining piece. Ive suggested that model that could be used in place particularly at the v. A. With those areas. And as well. We just confirmed new secretary to the v. A. , who i think is a good one. Yes. And predecessor was. And bob mcdonald. We have Inspector General for the v. A. , right . And one of the pieces would be to spend time with you and develop constructive relationship, good working relationship and you and your folks can help. And the same idea with gao and high risk list. Right. Right. I try to meet with every cabinet official. Talk about the high risk area. Weve ahad a series of meetings with the amb and gao. Which i was involved in. Which i have benefit in and showing progress. Mr. Thompson, how are you doing . Doing fine, thank you. Nice to see you. Nice to see you. Give us one thing we can do at our end in addition to what we have done with respect to the census to make sure the next census comes in on time on budge and the maybe underbudget. One or two things that this committee and Congress Need to do to become a good partner. Thank you for the opportunity, senator carper. As i said in my testimony and my oral testimony, one of the issues that were dealing with is the uncertainty of funding. I know this isnt appropriations. But i know that weve gotten good support so far from both the congress and from omb and administration and if that continues what will be very good. Like i said we are in a very, very pivotal year right now. And in 2017. And we would like to get some uncertainty lifted there and we are looking forward to working with the administration on the 2018 budget and with congress. So support there. Also, hip with administrative records. We have talk before about getting access to Additional Data base and new hires and data base there is heapful. Thank. Thank you. I appreciate holding this hearing regularly and there is an opportunity for us to gauge progress on some of these high risk areas and some of these topics you have discussed with others. But the two that jum mup out to are Real Property. You talk about in your report the need for us to move more rapidly from leases to ownership with there is a long term lease thats not Cost Effective and you talk about physical security at federal buildings. And i want to probe those further. But the one that troubles me is the number of facilities that are not being used or are not fully used and yet we cant seem to transfer those to either cities or states or private sector or nonprofit needs. This is where senator carper and i and chairman and i and others have worked on this together. Can you give us, mr. Dodaro, a report on that Real Property high risk that you over the years have identified . Where are we on the disposal of these properties . Yeah. One example is [ inaudible ] pli my understanding is they received a successful bid and they will receive transfer on that. I think with what Congress Passed last year to set up the independent board to identify high value real properties. Some properties arent worth a lot or need a lot of repair. The agencies havent had enough money in order to put in to fix up properties to make them appealing or attractive to sale. One area that i think hasnt been explored very much and other area on our list is the Postal Service and they add lha lot of vacant space that i thought would be rented out and that could create other vacant space that could be sold and transferred. So the bottom line and answer to your question is theres been some progress incrementally but not as much you said there is been progress and that two bills were passed finally. They shouldnt have taken so long. One provides for inventory. Another provides for the commission. Is that part of the reason you think things are better just because by set in place now new laws in relationship to this and now i suppose our job is along with you, to monitor the implementation of that and make sure it is done right . Thats exactly right. And in my opinion, and my experience, over several decades now, that most Major Management improvements that succeed in the government have a stat story underpinning to them. Because it degrees continuity and certainty over time and congress can hold people accountable. Can you tell us this the value is of those buildings that are not being used at all or only partly being used . Yeah, i dont have that information at the ready. Ill be happy to see whats available and provide it for the record. Its an extraordinary number and it is a great opportunity to save some taxpayer money too. With regard to the Cyber Security, you talked about this earlier, but one of the challenges you cite in your report is the agencies and departments have that workforce. With regard to dhs, looking at mr. Roth, we have specific legislation that was meant to address that to try to attract the best and retain some good people. For both of you how is that working . Are you pleased with it . Is it something you think were making progress on or not . Go ahead. Ant it seems like the chief officer at dhs is trying innovations with regard to hiring i. T. And cyber specialists. Our plan was to let them go for a little bit before we do have a formal audit, but i think they are using this opportunity to try to hire as many as they can. The legislation was started back in 2014 and it was to establish some common language and job codes specific to Cyber Security because we had identified that as a problem that it was difficult to hire people because we had not provided this sort of standardization as to what the job descriptions were and job codes. Then we got some of the legislation passed as it real estate relates to dhs. I dont know that were making the progress we should be. When you look at whats happening with regard to the hacking, not just in government, but all over now, this is a huge priority and these people are in high demand, that is the people that have the skills to push back or go on the offense. You can, mr. Roth, from your time at dhs you see progress in this area and if not what do you think with e need to do . The government is not subject to the same rules. Youre like the test case here. Is it helping . Is it working . As i said, we havent done a formal audit of it so its difficult to make a formal conclusion, but we see dhs trying different things. They had a job fair in which they brought a number of people who were qualified under that i. T. Specialist and were able to provide offers on the spot. So were hopefully, but again until we until do a formal piece of work its difficult to conclude. Can you do that work on it and let us know how its working . One of the aspects was a central database. It seems common sense, but it wasnt being done. Is that being done now to your satisfaction . Is there a database where people know what the needs are . My understanding is they recently held one of the first job fairs that did it. We will bring this request back and it seems like its how long would it take you to get back to us . It takes six to nine months to do a full fledged audit. Can you speed that up and get back to us in six months . Ill do what we can. Its an urgent issue to be sure we have the capability to push back and go on the offense where necessary. Thank you very much. Senator langford. Thank you for the work. Ive got about 45 questions in seven minutes here so let me try to get through as many as i can. A request for you as well, this congress changed the w2 forms and the acceleration of that. A small delay in the returns coming to try to deal with identity they. Is that something a year from now youll be able to tell us how it went . When do you think well get results on that . We will review the use of that for this filing season. Im very pleased and appreciative that the congress acted on our recommendation to do that. I think it will be tremendous helpfully. We will report on that. Thats one that should have been done before. Weve lost billions of dollars in that over the past several years. For those of us that work in indian policy, i was surprised to be able to see some of the indian issues for the first time were on the highrisk list. My question was is this a new issue or a first time to look at the indian issues . Its not the first time to look at the issues. It reached a threshold from my standpoint when i saw it on multiple fronts. Schools, health care, Energy Resources and i thought it was time to elevate the attention. It is clearly a National Tragedy some of the things that are happening in some of the Indian Country and so glad to be able to see it reach that limit. This needs to be addressed. Can i ask specifically on the health care side, when you look at the health care are you examining the differences between tribes that run their health care or between the Indian Health Service Running the health care . Theres some locations where the tribe operates the facility, but the operational system is different whether the tribes running it or whether its being run nationally. Weve been focused on the federal facilities, not the tribe facilities. Even though they have an ihs footprint there in the middle of it as well . So far. That may be a good control to look at it at some point to examine it because there are some obvious differences between how they run and whats happening to see the differences as were looking for solutions long term. Thats a good point. Vets health care. Let me ask about the issue on choice. Theres been some conversation ongoing about v. A. And occasion y occasionally giving the Choice Program in the locations the way the law states . Weve done some reports that weve already issued. We also have some work thats in progress right now. It does appear that progress is being made like for instance with respect to network providers, the physicians who are providing the health care outside of the v. A. , those numbers have increased fairly dramatically according to v. A. Theres still issues there with respect to the Choice Program that were looking at. Were looking at access. Were looking at payments as well, as well as the sharing of records. When a veteran goes out into the community, theres an issue in terms of making sure the records get back to v. A. So we have those records as well. Is there a way to get an accurate number of the cost per patient per procedure that actually includes everything the private sector would include . When ive asked for a cost for certain items, those were different colors of money. Obviously in the private sector they cant do that so we cant get an accurate cost of what things are other than its always more expensive in the private area, but we cant find out what it is from the v. A. How do we get that number . We have not looked into that. Ill take that back and see whether we can get that done. That would be helpfully. Obviously every business has to do that to calculate the actual cost. It would be helpful to have an apples to apples comparison as we deal with issues in the v. A. The Social Security administration is not completely done with everything they need to do, especially in the disability. One of my great frustrations is weve talked with them on the occupational grid. You know full well what that is, but for everyone else the occupational grid is a big diction areaaary of all jobs in america because according to disability you cannot be employed by any job available in the economy. Since 1978 that list has not been updated. There seems to be slight changes since 1978 and the type of jobs. My recollection from your report is weve spent 178 million updating the job dictionary of the jobs in america and we still dont have that dictionary, is that correct . I think youre accurate. Ill double check. Were concerned they havent finalized the ability to use assistive technologies in that area. I think personally that Congress Needs to act to update some of the disability laws that underpin the process that the Social Security administrations following. If you wait for them to do this job, its not going to get effectively reformed. I could not agree more and i would tell you when we get the grid updated, we need to have a mandate that the grid is periodically updated on a routine basis rather than waiting every 40 years to update. We might want to update it more often than that and do other work that needs to be done. Mr. Thompson, the last time we talked about the American Community survey, you were testing pilots on trying to remove some of the mandatory language to see how that would work. For people that get it often hate the American Community survey. How is that going and the testing and removing some of that mandatory under penalty of law language . We have been working on testing some of the language and we have down some focus groups and were at the point where weve come up with some language that we believe is not as threatening. When will that be piloted out in the public . Weve done it in the public. Were doing one more test this year. On the internet filing for the census, may i assume youre combining that with the Online Filing of taxes because millions of americans file their taxes online. Is there a possibility they can file their census work at the time they file their taxes . Right now were looking at a separate system for census and for the irs. Theres no way that people could fill out census work while they complete their taxes . We would love to work with the irs and have them be able to direct people to our site to fill it out, but we havent but they couldnt complete their taxes and complete their census work . Not at the current point in time. Not by 2020 if thats not being tried . No, sir. Senator tester. Thank you. I think its a great idea, senator langford. The only issue with that is john can correct me if im wrong, but i think the census thing is on a particular day, who is resident and how many people were resident on april 1st date. So youd have to people youre filing dates are different than that. Move it to april 15th. At any rate, first of all, thank you all for your testimony. This is for you gene and mike, mainly with the veterans Choice Program. Can you tell me how reactive the v. A. Has been with your recommendations of being on the high list . Have they taken this seriously . Have they drug their feet . What have they done . With regard to the recommendations that we made, theyre beginning to take some action on that, but we had new ones. There are still over 100 that are outstanding. Im very concerned they dont have a good plan for addressing the high risk areas. We say that in our report. Did you tell them that . Yes. I met with secretary mcdonald three times. One to tell him we were putting them on the high risk list and then to offer them a way to come off the high risk and then examples to help them understand best practices. We had the meeting, but theres been little uptake. Mike, where do you interest face on this process . A number of areas they identified are areas where we are looking at as well. How is their response to you been . Has it been proactive or what the heck . They say theyre committed to adhering to the recommendations that we have. Have you seen that commitment in action . Seei saying it is one thing and doing it is another. For example at vha where we had our last semi annual report, there were 563 outstanding recommendations. Theyve reduced that to 320 some odd. I believe theyre trying, but there are still areas which give us great pause. Im very concerned that theyre not moving in the direction with the progress that id like to see. Im planning to meet with the secretary to talk about this. Theres a disagreement also we have with them on wait times. We think theyre waiting too long to measure wait times. Theres an appointment scheduled and theyre not measuring the whole experience. I could go and on. Gene, you have a lot of fans in congress. I think you can tell the secretary that i say this as Ranking Member on v. A. , if they dont take this seriously, were gonna and we will do what we need to do to hold them accountable to make sure your suggestions are given not just lip service, but actual productivity on it. Its been pointed out by the chairman and Ranking Member and yourself, you have saved a bunch of money. Efficiency is not a bad thing. You can certainly utilize that. You brought up the Housing Finance system in your opening remarks and thats something that weve worked on a bit. I agree with what you said. Taking the taxpayers off the hook and getting it out of conservetoreship is really important. Do you look at the legislation that we do . Theres legislation that gets to some of your points, but i dont know if gets to your points . If were asked to look at legislation and comment on it, we will. Have you been asked to look at the legislation a few years back on housing . Weve developed criteria for evaluating legislative proposal. We dont do it proactively unless were asked and id be happy to do it. Youve already done it, you said . No, weve developed criteria for how we could evaluate a legislative proposal. I was so concerned and commissioned a study on my own authority is how can you solve this . We have those and we can compare them to any legislative proposals. Well get that in front of you. Last month there was a report regarding the refugee ban. This is for you mr. Roth. When would you anticipate this to be completed . Some of it depends on the departments response. Weve already started a number of field interviews with the various airports, the individuals, the cvp officers there. Weve requested documents. Weve gotten good cooperation from cvp. Were going to be started the highlevel interviews hopefully as early as next week. We dont know how long its going to take because we dont know what were going to find, but this ought to be weeks and not months and were working as quickly as we possibly can. I appreciate that. Have you had any difficulties getting the documents you need . No, the cooperation has been very good. All right. So there are no findings you can share with us today, i would assume. No, but we understand the urgency and were moving as quickly as we can. One closing comment. The census figure because the technology should be going down and not going up, this should be costing less and not more. You can probably get ahold of facebook and they can tell you where everybody lives today or on the first of april. It wouldnt hurt to maybe interface with those folks to find out how they can help and save money. We do talk to google and facebook quite a bit to understand how they can help us. Ill ask you the same question, talk is one thing and doing is another, okay. Thank you very much. As long as you brought it up, appreciate you looking at our charts. Ill give director thompson a chance to respond. Why has the cost, for example, per household, increased by such a dramatic amount . These are inflation adjusted dollars. Why is that . Again, mindful of the fact you just started in this decade. Right. So i started working at the Census Bureau as a career person in 1975 and i worked there through the 2000 census and i was the career executive for the 2000 census so i have a lot of experience. I know there are two underlying causes for this. One, which is not the major cause, is that the population has grown, but that doesnt explain this growth. The other factor is that weve been doing the same census process since 1970. We mail it out, they get mailed back and we capture the information off the forms and we go out and collect the information from those that dont self respond. That operation has always been a paper and pencil operation. As our population has gotten more complex and communications gated communities and more languages, the only way you can adapt a paper and pencil process to that is to put more people on it. So just to give you an example, in 2000, we determined that the job had gotten so difficult for the people supervising the enumerators, we had to give them an extra assistant and that added 250 million to the cost of the 2000 census. Its been the fact weve had a paper and pencil process and its just weve had to throw more and more people at it. Its not the requirements increased in terms of what youre collecting, its really the complexity of the population . The basic census questions have been essentially the same since 1970. Weve had a long form and a short form. The short form has been about the same. In 1980, hispanic origin was put on the short form. Its been about the same length. I believe another contributing factor is the fact that the census has been done through mail process, but the Response Rate has gone down considerably since 1970. I think in 1970, 78 or over 70 and now its on the low 60 . If people arent responding, then they have to go send people out to their homes. Even if you use the internet and the question is or facebook not everybody is on facebook will they respond . Thats been a challenge for people, particularly as the d o demographics change in the country and theres hard to enumerate areas in the country. I think the question is how willing are the American People to provide the information. My guess is we will be holding a hearing on this in the future, so that would be a good upfront give an explanation of that. Senator harris. Thank you for your years of service. I have a few questions for you. You indicated in fy 2015 that it took on average about nine months to make a hire at i. C. E. , is that correct . Yes. If it takes that long for each person that needs to be hired to fulfill the directive from the executive order, that it would take 11,250 years to process an additional 15,000 officers. Im sure it would not take that long, but you have assessed how long it would take you based on current standards to bring on board the 15,000 new officers that are directed . We havent. The only thing we looked at was the last time there was a surge of deportation officer hirings. That number that is reflected in my testimony almost quadrupled. Wh the log jams are going to get greater so we want to look at this earlier. Theyre not hiring one at a time. I would say thats from the moment that the announcement has closed to the time that that person is actually hired, but then of course theres training and onboarding that would have to go on. So that nine month number is longer. You have been given a time line for when those 15,000 new officers should be brought on board . We have just started our work on this area so we dont have any information yet as to what the departments plans are in this area. Has there been any discussion about a goal in terms of a date that would be completed . Not yet. Some of this depends on what the departments planning is. What we do is like with audits well look if its an acquisition well look at the phase of figuring out what the need is for example or the requireme requirements. Then we will basically follow the department through that process. I dont think the department has yet started or im not aware if the department has started an initial process of figuring out how it is theyre going to onboard this many people. I appreciate that in your testimony you indicated that you will audit with the aim of ensuring that dhs can quickly and effectively hire highly qualified and a diverse workforce, is that correct . Yes. Based on my experience as a prosecutor in california, we know when we bring Law Enforcement officers on board, we want to bring them on board after weve had an ability to vet who they are and ensure they actually will be able to perform their job in a correct manner. Do you have any concern that with this historic goal of bringing on 15,000 new officers, i understand there are 7,000 there now, we might compromise our ability to bring on highly qualified officers . Certainly the last time cvp had a hiring surge, there was a concern about the level of quality that they were getting and as a result, for example, thats when congress stepped in and instituted mandatory polygraphs for example. Thats an issue any time you try to increase the hiring, the worry is you will reduce the quality. Thats something we will look at as we move forward. Can you give us about three months an update on what you believe Congress Might do to ensure were bringing on highly qualified officers . This will be a process so i cant commit to when were going to get the first product out there that will describe what the department is doing, but we will do this on an ongoing basis and as an i. G. Were committed to keeping the congress informed. What would i ask you as a time line to come back and report the status of the quality of officers who are being brought on board . I think in about three months were going to know a lot more. Thats fantastic. Thats great. Three months well know more. I dont know if well have the answer. You know i would like to know too. We expect you to come back. Were happy to brief anybody on the committee who would like to hear about it. Thank you. So one of the concerns that we have had across the country in ermz terms of Law Enforcement officers is that we are hiring and training with an eye toward bias and justice concerns. What in your audit is detexteding adetextecting and tracking and train so we avoid implicit bias and we encourage procedural justice . We havent looked at that issue. Again, this series of audits is going to be more mechanically based, how do you take a great number of people and try to fit them through a finite pipe. We do a lot of civil rights investigations, excessive use of force, those kinds of policing issues, which we will continue to do of course as our mandate, but we havent specifically looked at that issue. What would be your recommendation based on your experience that we could do to audit beforehand so we can prevent what otherwise would be something youre going to have to react to afterward, which is there will be distrust and there could be very unintended and serious consequences, including legal consequences, if were rushing through this large number of people without properly vetting them on this issue and particularly when were talking about i. C. E. Agents and the issues at play. One of the issues is a leadership issue. This committee will have the opportunity to look at what the nominees are for these various positions and get the kinds of commitments that i think would be required to send the message to the rank and file as to what is the appropriate level of conduct that the rank and file has. If youre asking me my advice, my advice is to take the process very very seriously when it comes to the i. C. E. And cvp director. Thank you. Senator paul. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, if you want to save money on the census, maybe we could give people a 100 deduction on their taxes and then those who sign up for welfare, make it part of signing up for welfare. I bet you 95 of the public either pays taxes or receives something from government. Why not say estimate how many kids youre going to have and what your income will be on april 1th. Its all an estimate to a certain extent and maybe we should charge people to use the census data. We dont do any charging, right . No, sir. Companies love this data. Companies could be charged for it. I bet you i could run the Census Bureau without any money, if youll sell it to me. I think thats a great idea. If youll sell it to me. Anyway, we shouldnt just stick to rules. We have a rule it has to be april 1st. Make it during that year and say the census is for that year, but pay people for the time to fill it out. If you let people have a 100 deduction, which is no more than a 33 reduction in their taxes, they would do it probably. Compare that to the postage that you send out on millions and millions of things and then you mail them again and then you have somebody knock on their door, you could get a lot done through the tax system and through the welfare system as well. People sign up for welfare and Social Security, all that stuff. Still make it voluntary and for the people who sign up, it should be a requirement for signing up for government benefits, but those who want to do it on their tax return give them a benefit. Can i ask, do we have three cosponsors on that one here . Think about it. Think about outside the box. Lets work on Something Like that. I have a great deal of respect for those who look in government to try to figure out waste. Sometimes ive thought maybe after doing it for a couple of years we should put you in charge of the organization and maybe we would get more effect from your recommendations, but i have watch waste since i was a kid. I remember the Golden Fleece awards and i scratched my head and cant scientifically say this, but the more we try to get rid of it, the more it stays the same, the more its still there. My question in general is not that its your fault youre finding it, but you find it. How often do you think as a guess when you find it are we getting rid of the problem . Ill give you one example that we use in our waste report was the 300,000 in tvs at the va that were the wrong connection, stuck in a closet and are still not being used. You found that. That came to their attention. Do you think you fixed a systemic problem when you found that problem so it doesnt happen again or do you think we need more done to fix the systemic problem that you found in that particular stancinstanc . That was one report. The dollars werent that large, but that got a lot of publicity and attention out there. Hopefully that would have a deterrent effect for others, but i think we need to expand the work that were doing with respect to finding waste and we are trying to be more proactive. Were expanding our data analytical capability. How often do you feel like youre satisfied by the organization that youre inspecting that it gets fixed . For a particular situation were satisfied, but we know thats not going to be the only problem. I think theres significant issues out there. I guess thats the question is are we finding waste, fixing it and then waste keeps cropping up, or do we have some of the waste that weve had decade after decade and its not going away despite people finding it. Are we eliminating some waste and new waste is popping up . If its new waste popping up then what do we do as an incentive to have less waste in the government . My guess is they have to make a profit and payroll. Each month you make adjustments and the government is probably slower. One of the things ive introduced is legislation that would give bonuses to Civil Servants that find waste. We would give people a financial bonus if they find waste. Everybody here is actually supportive of it, republican and democrat, but whether or not we can try to introduce some incentives like that into government so waste is an inherent problem and waste is worse in the government than the private sector, bring a private sector thing into that. I think a program like that, were looking for ways to get more information and were trying to find things on our own, but thats going to be limited given the people we have. Any opportunity there is for others out there, we have a hotline where we look at every contact that comes in and wed love more contacts to that hotline. Anybody else to give bonuses to employees to find waste . If we did that at the doj, i would have retired a long time ago. Anything that would help identify waste would be welcome. On your point about how much is systemic versus how much is solvable, its a mixture of both. Over 75 of our recommendations are implemented over a fouryear period of time. Ill give you one example. We give recommendations to stop particular weapon systems. The technology is not mature, theyre not ready to go into production, but yet different weapon systems will come up that will have a similar problem. Some things get stopped completely and are not bought at all. Same thing with i. T. Systems, but its a systemic problem. I think thats great if youre fixing 75 of the problem, that would beenormous, if thats true, but it probably shows another problem is the generation of more waste and some waste is in the eye of the beholder and its the view of what government can do. I think one of the reasons for that is that most federal programs get funded year after year without having to prove that theyre effectively accomplishing their objectives. The burden is on us now to prove somethings not working to get it stopped. One quick point is that the people we have here are doing their job in what we want them to do, but its bigger than their job. Theyre finding the waste and were eliminating it. We have to change the incentive of government because theyre finding as much as they can and we can try to be better, but its still not enough because theres enormous amount of waste in government. I think we need to go beyond what we normally do. I think these are great ideas and im looking forward to your subcommittee generating more of these. Im serious about that. Id like to work with you and maybe on the census proposal as well. We need another opportunity to sit down and go through the census and the process because i have some questions too, but i dont want to spend my time talking about the census. I want to again congratulate gene for the great work that they do. We work hard to craft legislation to improve Program Management across the federal government. Our bill was signed into law finally in december and i was pleased when you gave us a shoutout in your testimony, the Program Management and improvement act. I think if its properly implemented and we tend to be aggressive in oversight can foster prevention for waste. So im really excited about the opportunity to work with you and make sure its implemented, make sure that the ideas that were in that bill actually see the light of day going forward. But i want to talk about this idea of waste, fraud and abuse and whistle blowers. Mostly i think john and michael as igs, you know weve been working with your organization to try and get one portal where people on this dias can look where people can try and discover a systemic kinds of waste, systemic frauds that are going on. Have you both participated in that effort and is there any recommendations you would make to us about how we can provide Greater Transparency on ig reports . Were deciding who goes first. We agree whole heartedly with more transparency. We would support efforts to get more information. With respect to whistle blowers, weve had our staff trained with respect how to ensure we treat whistle blowers so we get the information we need. Anything that can help us are you familiar with the work that were doing or the work that the associations doing, the Ig Association . Yeah, were very active. So youre familiar with the portal thats being developed . Yes. Do you see this as a mechanism to provide more systemic when gao issues a report, we know where to go. We dont have to go to interiors goa, but with the ig reports, each one of the agencies have their own separate way of doing things. I think getting everybody on to one portal, not saying you have to abandon what youre already doing, but to me is a way to really examine whether we have a lot of cross pollination we can do to avoid waste, fraud and abuse. Weve spoken as igs together. I think there is strong support for that idea to do it. I agree we wouldnt abandon what were doing individually as an agency, but having one portal i think would be very helpful. Were going to be very aggressive at this issue. John, have you looked at the draft portal . Yes, we participate in it. I cant tell you right now the very status of it, but i know there is a lot of excitement within the ig community to have a single point of contact in which basically every ig report gets published. From my colleagues here, i think this is amazing because this has been done without any appropriation. Its been done through volunteer work. The Postal Service has been great providing the background and some of the technical support. We think we can improve it more with a little bit of attention to an appropriation so were going to be working hard on that provision because i think sunshine is a huge component. I want to go back to you, gene. We talk about this quite often when you appear either in our subcommittee or before the full committee. What tools do we need to give you . What can you recommend to us that we should be doing in our oversight function that we arent currently doing or we arent aggressive enough on . Well, first im very appreciative of the gao bill that sara mentioned in her opening remarks to give additional access. Thats been signed into law now. That was very helpful. I think if we run into problems getting information, were not currently having any right now, id want the committees support to help us get the information that we need. I would suggest for those the highrisk areas, id like to see more hearings on the highrisk hears. We flag individual ones that need legislative action to actually address the issue. Many of them require executive branch actions, but a fair number require legislative action to address the highrisk problems. So id like to see more hearings and attention on those highrisk areas. So were i feel were well supported. Obviously a word on our budget wouldnt hurt. I cant go by without taking this opportunity. Just tell us whats happened to your budget in terms of the growth of the overall federal expenditure and what weve given our eyes and ears out there what weve given you to examine it . Were operating under a continuing resolution thats less than last years funding. Im not replacing people as they leave. We cant afford it until we have an appropriation for the year. Are you subject to the hiring freeze . No, but i dont have a budget. Thats a heck of a way to run a company. We came out of the sequester in 2013 at the lowest staffing level weve been since 1935. And so weve clod back some of that, but i believe we need to be at least 3,250 people. Right now were under 3,000 and going down unless we get an appropriation for this year. Have you ever calculated that for every dollar of investment in gao managed well by you, what that would return in terms of last year was 112 for every dollar invested in gao. We returned over 63 billion in financial benefits. The year before it was 70 billion. Were a good investment. The point that i want to make, i guess, before i conclude here is that we are so often penny wise and pound foolish and i dont think that Congress Takes its oversight responsibility as serious as what it should. I think that you are that aud auditor for us whether its a management audit or fiscal audit and we autoought to have a full function congress thats going to be aggressive. If people think these are just one offs, which i think in the past they have, then you feel a little bit of heat and it goes away. We need to turn up the heat and make sure that every dime we spend of taxpayer money gets spent in a way that that taxpayer would spend it themselves. So i really appreciate all the work that all of you do. Continue to send suggestions and ideas. Were very curious and interested in what we can do to help. Thank you very much, senator. It sounds like gene had that calculation unless hes really quick with math. Thats a softball question. He asked me to ask him that question. I was expecting to see a 20 payment here. No, it cost him a lot more than that. Gene, watch out you have a gift limit. Just real quick, how many hearings were held in the last congress, other than the one in this committee or maybe the Oversight Committee in the house, on the highrisk list . 250. Over 250 hearings. Different hearings on the high risk. On areas covered by the highrisk area. Thats pretty good. Its good and 12 bills came out. Thats why you saw progress. 12 pieces of legislation. So congress there are very few highrisk areas that make progress without congressional attention and oversight, the prompt action and without statutory changes and without funding. Some of these areas the congress funded, gaps in weather satellites that helped them put in plans that get implemented. Any lasting change has to have some statutory the committees jurisdiction to take this highrisk series seriously and they hold hearings on those recommendations with those departments and agencies . Yeah, but its not evenly distributed. Most of the hearings were held on Cyber Security. There was a lot on veterans affairs. Theyre not theyre not uniformly focused on some of these areas. I asked the senator if she would be willing to sign on, two of us and you, to the committees jurisdiction asking them to hold hearings on specific highrisk areas. If you want to prepare those letters, well sign them. This works. Im happy to do so. I appreciate that support. I think its very helpful. Thank you all for, first of all, what you do. How many dollars to one . 112. Ig, your return on investment. It was 35 to one. You have to up your game. No, thank you very much. Director thompson, thank you. I realize this was different for you coming to this setting. We will hold a hearing on the census. Again, i think senator pauls suggestions are intriguing. Maybe we can look at some of the out of the box thinking to drive improvements. I would look forward to it. Thank you for your time and your testimony and your work. The hearing record will remain open for 15 days until march 2nd at 5 00 p. M. For submit of statements and questions for the record. This hearing is adjourned. Cspan, where history unfolds daily. In 1979, cspan was created as a Public Service by americas Cable Television companies and is brought to you