The tsa precheck. This is an hour and 25 minutes. Good morning, everyone. Welcome. The subcommittee on transportation and Maritime Security will come to order. I would like to start by welcoming mr. Dan bishop of North Carolina to the committee. Welcome, sir. Delighted to be here. I look forward to working with you, sir. The subcommittee is working today to receive testimony on one year later, the implementation of the tsa modernization act and without objection, the chair is authorized to declare the subcommittee at recess at any point. I want to thank you Ranking Member lesko and other members for joining us today. One year ago today, congress enacted the First Comprehensive reauthorization of the tsa known as the tsa modernization act. The act incorporated substantial number of bills and provisions that originated in this committee. It stands as a testament to the committees longstanding bipartisan efforts to conduct oversight of tsa. I thank my colleagues ms. Watson coleman and mr. Catsko in advancing the legislation in the last congress that i am happy to carry on with Ranking Member lesko in this congress. The tsa modernization act enhances the nations transportation security, and the act is too comprehensive to describe in a few minutes that we v but i would like to highlight a few key points. First, the act established a fiveyear term for the tsa administrator to provide stability to the agencys leadership, and sadly, the current chaos and vacancies within the dhf have undermined the efforts. Administrator pushkey has been forced to wear two hats. I commend the administrator for answering the call to duty, but the role of the tsa administrator is a fulltime job that requires full time dedication to ensuring the security of our Transportation System. I hope that the president will nominate permanent leaders to fill many of the dhs vacancies and thus provide the tsa with a stable leadership that congress envisioned when it passed this legislation. In addition to establishing the administrators term, the tsa modernization act first pushes tsa to enhance the Strategic Planning efforts and secures the public areas of airport and surface Transportation Systems and improving the security of air cargo transportation. And we appreciate tsas reporting on the directives and the reporting to the legislation as far as the transparency and updating the committee on the progress. Although tsa has made significant progress on imt pleming the act, i am still concerned that tsa has not yet complied with the provisions that present some of the committees biggest priorities in the act. First, tsa is late is providing this committee with a report on recommendations to reform the Personnel Management system, and as you know the subcommittee recently highlighted the issues facing the tsa workforce in the hearing in may. Transportation Security Officers serve on the front lines and securing our nations Transportation System and yet among the lowest paid workers in federal government. They are also not afforded some of the basic workplace protections that most other Government Employees enjoy. Improving working conditions for these officers is key to the tsas evolution as a professional National Security agency, and i look forward to hearing more about this status of the important report. I will ask for unanimous consent to enter into the record a letter from the American Federation of Government Employees. Second, tsa is substantially late in providing a strategy that was due in february regarding plans to open procurement process to a Wider Network of Technology Companies including participation of Small Businesses. Tsa relies on the small number of vendors today to provide many of the screening technologies in use at airports nationwide. As you know, Small Businesses in particular face difficulties in competing for ts, awara awards procurement policies and evaluation processes. I am looking forward to finding out what processes are open and fair to all. And finally tsa is overdue for providing a substantial enhan enhancement to transportation security. As you know mass transit and other service Transportation Systems are particularly vulnerable to terrorist attacks and it is important for tsa to complete these tasks. Tsa must work to come into full compliance with the requirements of the tsa modernization act as soon as possible. Once again, id like to thank tsa and the gao for being here today and i look forward to wou conversation. With that, i would like to turn the conversation over to the Ranking Member lesko for the opening statement. Ms. Lesko. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I wanted to welcome as well representative dan bishop from North Carolina. Welcome. This is great committee. And you are going enjoy it. Very important. And i wanted to thank the witnesses for being here and the tsa officers and other employees who are here from tsa and dhs, and thank you for being here and participating. I am pleased that this subcommittee is meeting today to oversee implementation of last years bipartisan reauthorization of the transportation security administration, and the tsa modernization act, and terrorists of course continue to target both surface, and Aviation Transportation in the ways that are constantly evolving, and the tsa modernization act is going to recognize this reality and provide the communication with the agency. And this is marking the first ever reauthorization of the tsa since the agency was created in 2001 following the terrorist attacks in 2011. And since doing, congress provided its oversight with direction and accountability to the federal government and the resources appropriated to protect the traveling public. The tsa modernization act took measurable steps to update the offices and programs within tsa and make the agency more prepared for the current and the evolving threats to transportation security. Some of these provisions included the establishment of a fiveyear term for the tsa administrator, authorizing the use of thirdparty explosive detection for canines for passenger and cargo screening and providing Additional Resources is and information to the flight deck programs and rolling out new objectives for the tsa precheck. Now a little more than a year after ten actment, it is prudent for the subcommittee to have the bicameral and bipartisanship that passed this landmark legislation as we examine how effectively tsa has been working to implement the law. I commend administrator pikoski who is serving doubly as the ac deputy secretary of the department of Homeland Security, for working closely wi lly with congress on this legislation last year and to his teams dedication to providing updates on implementation status. This work, along with congressional oversight, has resulted in 87 of the laws required actions for tsa being either successfully completed or on track for successful completion in a timely manner. For many of these provisions, g arc o serves as the committees watchdog on implementation and its review of tsa programs, office and security mitigation efforts. So i am pleased that they are represented here today as well. I look forward to hearing from tsa and gao today on the status of outstand progress visions in the law as well as what the agency has accomplished over the last year in fulfilling its statutory requirements, thank you, and i yield back the balance of my time, mr. Chairman. Thank you. Other members of the subcommittee are reminded that under the Committee RulesOpening Statements may be submitted for the record. I want to welcome the panel of witnesses. Our first witness, miss patricia cogswell, is the acting de inin administrator for tsa. Prior to joining tsa, she held several leadership positions within the u. S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement and dhs including as acting undersecretary for dhs intelligence and analysis. Our next witness, mr. William roswell, is a director at the gaos Homeland Security and justice team where he is responsible for leading gaos work on aviation and surface transportation security. Mr. Russell has over 17 years of experience at gao and was previously assistant director in gaos contracting and National Security acquisitions team. Without objection, the witnesses the full statements will be inserted in the record. Now i ask each witness to summarize their statements for five minutes beginning with miss cogswell. Welcome, maam. Good morning, distinguished members of this committee. On behalf of tsas employees i want to express our appreciation for the continued support of congress, the productive relationship we have with this subcommittee and as well as the Government Accountability office as well as the authorities provided by the act of 2018. Implementing the modernization act is a priority for tsa. I am grateful for the invitation to testify about our heefforts. Since its creation following the september 11th attack, our ongoing commitment to ensuring transportation security has enabled public and commerce to continue traveling securely and freely. 18 years later the reality is the Transportation Systems remain highly valued targets for terrorists and their methods of attack are more decentralized and opportunistic than ever. We must face a constantly evolving threat environment in the cyber and physical realms. Our most important asset is our people. I am very proud of the 63,000 dedicated professionals who make up our work forbeforce and prer values of commitment. We secure and facilitate transportation for an average of 85 million passengers, 2. 56 billion in cargo, and critical transportation infrastructure around the country. Earlier this year, a significant portion of our workforce went without pay for 35 days during the partial government shutdown. Despite financial and personal hardships, they showed commitment to their mission. We are grateful to congress to explore ways to prevent this from happening again and we stand ready to help you. 2018 was an important year for tsa and its direction. Not only did we release our strategy and administrators intent, highlighting our Strategic Priorities and improving security and safe guarding the Transportation System, accelerating action and committing to our people, but the tsa modernization act became law, the first rethundershowers of our agency. 2019 has been the year of implementation. We have conveyed through eight progress meetings with this subcommittees staff anded a e as of today tsa has implemented more than 60 of the 180 requirements man daytodayed by the act and 72 of those with deadlines. Conducting a global Aviation Security review, creating an air cargo division, establishing a surface transportation security Advisory Committee, niche yafting a Pilot Program to test Ct Technology for air cargo, executing an automated exit lane technology Pilot Program in phoenix airport. Additionally, consistent with the tsa modernization act, requirements to grow precheck enrollment and limit precheck lanes to those with known traveler numbers we successfully conducted two pilots, both ensuring the feasibility and throughput for tsa use of precheck only lanes as well as the future lane experience model, where nonprecheck e passengers designated as lower risk would receive alternative screening procedures. Continuing to evaluate risk and assessing Technology Policy and procedures in place, to address that risk is critical to our mission execution. Recent examples of where we have done so consistent with the modernization act include updating the federal air marshal concept of operation through prioritized Mission Deployment strategy focused on highrisk travelered and revised Risk Assessment models as well as implementing changes to assess insider risk including setting a subcommittee on ways to improve airport controls. Tsa plans to produce a roadmap for mitigating insider risk in all modes of transportation. Tsa also recognizes our strategic success depends on our workforce. Tsa commissioned a Blue Ribbon Panel of public and private sector Human Capital experts to review tsas Human Capital policy and policy processes and reestablished our National Advisory council, comprised of advisers from our uniformed workforce. Through recommendations from these groups and others tsa developed a number of workforce initiatives we are implementing such as our twotier performance system, our model officer Recognition Program and our career procession. Thank you for this opportunity to testify before you today. Tsa is grateful for the authorities provided through the mod ern saiization act. Id like to recognize mr. Bill russell to sum rise his statement in five minutes. Sir . Good morning, members of the subcommittee. Im pleased to be here today to discuss tsa progress to implement the tsa modernization act. It included provisions to improve Aviation Security, screening technologies, oversight of passenger screening processes and surface transportation. The act also included a number of provisions for gao to review tsas progress. This statement summarizes past work and observations from some of our ongoing work in assessing tsas actionings for selected areas. Overall, this body of gao work shows that tsa has made progress consistent with provisions under the act but can improve in a number of areas. First, in terms of international Aviation Security, tsa took steps to strengthen assessments of foreign airport operators. For example, since our december 2017 report tsa further enhanced its foreign airport assessments by capturing better data on vulnerabilities so they can be mitigated. In addition, the act included a provision for gao to review security directive ts for airports in Foreign Countries that offer departure points to the u. S. Tsa may issue new directives for domestic air care yas and emergency amendments for foreign carriers if vulnerabilities indicate an need need for air carriers to implement additional security measures. In our review of this process, we found that tsa did not fully define how to coordinate with industry representatives prior to updating directives, which can lead to some difficulties in implementing needed changes. Tsa had also not yet fully determined whether to cancel or incorporate many longstanding security directives into air carrier security programs in full accordance with tsa policy. Weve made several recommendations to address these issues and tsa concurred with them. The modernization act included provisions related to oversight of passenger screening rules. Tsa developed screening rules by considering passenger who is may rerequire enhanced screening. We found that oversight of this process has improved. Tsa cord nates rule reviews and notifies an expanded set of dhs and tsa stakeholders of rule changes as called for under the act. We also found that while tsa tracked some data related to rule implementation, it does not comprehensively measure rule effectiveness. We recommended that tsa explore Additional Data sources for better measuring their effectiveness of these rules. Tsa is currently reviewing this recommendation. In terms of screening technologies, we review the process used by tsa to deploy those technologies to airports and in our forthcoming report we found that tsa considers risks in its deployment decisions but has not fully documented them. We foumd after screening technologies have been deployed to airports, tsa does not fully ensure these technologies continue to meet detection requirements even though performance of that technology can degrade over time. We made several recommendations to address these issues and tsa is reviewing them. Per the act, we also reviewed tsa pipeline security efforts. We found that tsas management of key aspects of this pipeline security can be improved although coordination with pipeline operators is good. For example, tsa needs to better evaluate the number of staff and resources that it devotes to pipeline security and to include a Strategic Plan that can help effectively identify the skills and comp ten ti v etencies nece carry out responsibilities. Tsa concurred with those recommendations to address the issues and has efforts under way. In conclusion, tsa has taken important steps to improve security and response to the tsa modernization act, but additional actions will be needed Going Forward and we will continue to review tsa progress for these remaining portions of the act. This contincludes my prepared remarks. Off minute left. Thank you. I thank all the witnesses for your testimony and remind each member that he or she will have five minutes to ask questions of our panelists. And now id like to recognize myself for the first set of questions. Miss cogswell, as you know, part of the tsa act, congress codified a fiveyear term fo