Without objection. This hearing really is what this committee is all about particularly on the Government Affairs portion. We have a Mission Statement that we developed last congress with my former Ranking Member, senator carper and my new ra Ranking Member had a very good addition to it. The original one was to enhance the economic and National Security of america. Senator mccaskill suggested we add and promote efficient and more efficient, effective and accountable government. Thats exactly what the gao does and Inspector Generals do. We certainly appreciate your work. I dont know how many times i have said and others have said, youre our favorite folks in government. You give us the information to make government more efficient and effective and accountable. Todays hearing is really on the gaos high risk series, their list, something prepared by gao since the early 90s. The facts speak for themselves. In the last ten years, they report about 2 240 million over that 10 year period by enacting their recommendations by making government more effective, 24 billion per year. Igs play a key role in that as well. Senator grassley and i sent a letter and requested the igs last Congress Give us a list of all their recommendations that are outstanding. They have been implementedn the result was 15,222 net potential sa savings, 87 billion. Even in the federal government, thats real money. Its really folks like you that can make a huge difference. Todays hearing, what we decided to do is we listened to mr. Dodaro testify beautifully without notes and he can speak an awful lot. Rather than have him completely on the hot speed, we decided to invite mr. Mitchell and mr. John roth, department of Homeland Security, to testify in terms of their department and the activity on the high risk list and invited mr. John thomson, director of the Census Bureau. We didnt invite you to be here to be in the hot seat. I really wanted to bring in a director under this committees jurisdiction. I wanted to bring in a director and get your viewpoint in terms of how a director of one of these agency is listed on the high risk list, how you view that, what you do, what are your challenges trying to get off the high risk list and how seriously you take it. I appreciate it. Well go easy on you here. We truly appreciate you coming. Looking forward to the hearing and i dont want to spend much more time. Ill hand it over to you senator mccaskill. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Know that mr. Dodaro knows this, i consider gao one of the most important entities in washington, d. C. Its an independent nonpartisan agency that investigates how the federal government spends nontax dollars. Your work supports us meeting our oversight obligations under the constitution and helps us improve accountability in the federal government. The important thing is you provide information objective, factbased, nonpartisan, fair and balanced. At the beginning of each congress, you release a report of Government Programs of high risk due to vulnerabilities and high waste and fraud and mismanagement. Shoreli shortly after the report we invite you to testify. I appreciate this hearing is one of our first full Committee Hearings of the 115th congress. Your report provides us with a list of priorities how this committee can target and root out waste, fraud and abuse. Your report says the federal government overseas more than 0 80 billion in taxpayer funds for Information Technology investments. Poor management, as we know leads many it contracts to fail or significant cost overruns. Contract oversight is not a new problem in government but remains one of the most important problems out there. While most Government Employees are dedicated public servants, the high risk report highlights that more work is needed to insure the federal breaks performance effectively and efficiently for the american people. This includes several skill gaps in the American Workforce that could pose risks to american tax dollars and american lives. It is alarming even after the large scale cyber breach at the office of Personnel Management and the medical wait list scandal at the department of veterans affairs, some of the federal skills gap identified still include cybersecurity and 234u nursing. This year, gao added the 2020 Census Program to its risk of high risk areas, knowing our next census is rapidly approa approaching, im grateful director thompson is here to provide a status update on the program. The cost has risen over the last few decades with 2010 being the costliest in history. Billions of dollars were wasted on programs that had to be scrapped at the last minute in order to insure the 2010 census was done on time. Given this challenge and the Important Role it plays counting our citizens as well as alloc e allocating precious taxpayer dollars to communities, im eager to learn how the bureau plans to effectively manage costs this time while simultaneously modernizing the Census Program. Im grateful to directors roth and missile for joining the director thompson here today to improve and discuss the homeland programs respectivrespectively. When theres ineffective oversight and accountability in government money gets wasted and mismanagement gets unaddressed. As a former state auditor i consider Government Accountability as the most important work in my time in senate. Last week President Trump signed into law the gao oversight act and i cosponsored to insure gao has full access to the National Database of new hires, a key tool for cutting waste and fraud in many of the governments largest programs as well as allowing states to aggressively pursue Child Support payments and the law also strengthens their ability to take legal action if they need it to perform its functions. This law is a great example what our committee can do when we Work Together to promote accountability in the government. It is a complex system of agencies spending more than 3 trillion annually on behalf of the american people. We are members of the public trust to insure those tax dollars are used well. Thank you for being here today and mr. Chairman for having this committee and ill look forward to questions. Thank you, senator mccaskill. It is the tradition of this committee to swear in newitness, if youll raise and raise your right hand . Do you swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth so help you god . I do. Please be seated. Our first witnesses is mr. Eugene dodaro. He has been the comptroller general of the account Exhibit Office since 2010 and more than 40 years of experience at the agency including acting come paroler general and chief acting officer and head of the accou accounting division. Comptroller dodaro. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman. Good afternoon to you, Ranking Member senator mccaskill. Im very pleased to be here today to discuss the latest edition of gaos high risk program. Im pleased to report many of the 32 areas on the list in 2015 have shown improvement and in a position now they either meet or partially meet all five criteria from coming off the list. The five criteria are leadership, you have to have the capacity, a good action plan, mantoring effort and demonstrate some progress. This is the hardest to meet to show youre reducing the risk or making progress fixing the problems addressed. This progress is due to commitment and advice from the Agency Leaders as well as staff in the agencies, o achld b a. And congress addressed high risk areas and why were showing this progress. Congress had over 250 hearings on areas discussed in the high risk programs. Im very pleased this committee was sponsoring bills and holding a lot of hearings and im very appreciatedtive of that. Congress is key to making progress. We look at almost every area we identify as achieving progress, congressional actions been instrumental in achieving that degree of progress. One area met all the criteria coming off the list, managing the sharing of terrorism related information. This was a very important area to the safety of our country. I could assure this committee, while its coming off the list it doesnt mean its out of sight. We will keep an eye on it to make sure things stay on track in that area. Another area is the department of Homeland Security. Theyve continued to show steady progress and proved their ability to monitor the action plan they have in place. They really need to focus on acquisition programs, fixing their Financial Management systems and improving employee morale, those are the key things they need to continue to do. There are a number of areas on the list that need substantial attention. These, i would particularly cite to this committees attention. First is veterans heart attack. Veterans healthcare. Added that to the list in 2015 for a number of important reasons. That i can elaborate on in the k q a. Im concerned theyve made limited progress. Financial management, we talked about it a number of times, the only federal agency that hasnt been able to pass the test of an audit. Information technology and acquisitions and operations, senator mccaskill mentioned. Thats an area we have seen some progress needs circuit more oversight and attention to make sure that it gets fixed. Cybersecurity. Both Cyber Security as it rel e relates to federal governments own Information Systems but also Critical Infrastructure, like the electricity grid, Financial Markets, air Traffic Control system and others. We added cybersecurity across the federal government as a high risk area to the list in 1997. This is the 20 year anniversary. Weve been trying to get agencies to move on that area and despite even the breaches, we have a thousand recommendations still outstanding in the Cyber Security area. Then, reforming the Housing Finance system. This is one area that was not addressed coming out of the global good morning crisis. Fannie mae and freddie mac are still in conservatorship theyve been in since 2008. A lot of the risk has moved to the federal government either directly or indirectly, directly through the federal Housing Administration who had to get an infusion from treasury between 1 and 2 billion a few years ago. 70 of all the mortgages right now are either for Single Family homes or 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 the risk on the federal government. Were adding three new areas this year. First is the Fort Lauderdale efforts the federal efforts to oversee programs to help Indian Tribes and their members. Were very concerned, we looked at the education programs, schools in poor conditions, not properly staffed, no quality standards for healthcare, a lot of vacant position, distributing funds to send people to private sector care if its not available in indian hospitals, theyre still using a formula they used in the 1930s. It needs attention. Also where the tribes want to exploit oil and gas on their lands but they need federal permitting and licensing explore oil and gas on their lands and its slow. Theyre not able to generate that revenue to help them deal with those issues. Secondly, both to dispose of waste from Nuclear Weapons complex as well as from commercial power plants. The liability right now is approaching 1 2 trillion dollars. I believe it to be understated because of problems we saw one example for d. O. D. And not properly estimating environmental viabilities for cleaning up after department op rehabilitations as well. The federal government spends millions of dollars every year to clean up this waste but it keeps growing, not enough Decision Making in those areas and we have a number of outstanding recommendations. The last is the census, as you mentioned. We added that to the list because the last census was over 12 billion, costliest ever. In order to contain costs they introduced a lot of novel concepts using the internet. Address lists from spatial and other means rather than doortodoor canvassing and using administrative records. All these things add to the risk. Final plans have not been put in place yet. We look forward to answering questions from this committee. Thank you. Mr. Thompson is the director of the Census Bureau. Before that he was president and ceo of norc, known as 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 2020 census. Im proud to report today we remain on the Critical Path to rea readiness. The 2020 census has been added to the most recent high list risk from the Government Accountability office. Both the 2000 and 2010 censuses were also on this list a reflection of the complexity, scale and importance of condu conducting a fair and accurate census. This decade, the complexity is heightened as we replace the paper and pencilbased design with Innovative Technologies that will save taxpayers bill n billions of dollars. We already have robust controls in place to mitigate the risks of carrying out this constitutionally mandated task. As we plan and test the 34 operations and roughly 50 systems that comprise the 2020 census, were aware of the many risks the program faces. Thats why were working rigorously to moderate and manage and mitigate those risks. In the final years of the deca e decade, Risk Management is critical to our Operational Plan in 2020. Other important part is continuing to work with the colleagues at the gao and inspector of commerccommerce. I discuss it in greater detail in my testimony for the record including overarching risk of funding uncertainty. Today, i want to highlight following specific risk areas, were concentrating on. First, cybersecurity, fraud detection and insuring the publics trust. Were actively securing our sk m skims and devices for the went went census and 2020 census and field tests insuring we prevent Cyber Attacks and we will use a layered strategy. Second, insuring systems read readiness. We developed and field tested proof of concept systems and the design is supported by findings from the census tests. Now that weve awarded nearly all the key contracts for 2020, were finalizing our systems ahead of the 2018 end to end census test. Third, refine our field procedures through testing, fourth, managing the integrative master schedule for the 2020 census and its supporting progr programs. Lastly, documenting and valid e validating our 2020 census life cycle cost estimates. Census tests are key to final e finalizing our designs and reducing risks. Last year, we tested core census operations in texas and los angeles county, california. Additionally we tested our address canvassing procedures and systems in parts of North Carolina and st. Louis, missouri. We learned many lessons from these tests and were using those lessons to refine our operations and mitigate the r k risks of an innovative census. In addition, the Census Bureau has planned test operations in 2017, these involved Critical Systems in operations that must be tested ahead of the 2018 end to end census test. The 2018 end to end census test is the final major field test before the 2020 census. Field operations will begin on august, 2017 with a census day of 2018. Pierce county, washington, providence county, rhode island and blue field beckley oak hill area of west virginia. Collectively it will cover about 77,000 housing units. Well test and prove in nearly all of the 2020 census operat n operations, procedures and field infrastructure. We will also produce prototypes of our geographic and data release products making sure all of theisen sus systems work individually and in concert with each other is critical. Using the lessons from 2018 will make any necessary adjustments to insure were ready for the census and finalize our plans for operations. Weve been transparent how were approaching the redesigned census and held public Quarterly Program management reviews, we publicly documented and tracked our biggest decision and shared our master schedule with the gao every month. There are many challenges ahead. Were confident with appropriate funding levels we can success l successfully execute the 2020 census. I need to note 2017 and 2018 are critical years in the census cycle. The funding we receive in these years will have a great effect on the outcome of the 2020 census including achieving 5 million in cost savings. Wi were six months away from field work on the census but not yet clarity regarding the programs funding in 2017. In january, uncertainty about the fullback iscal 2017 budget us to make difficult decision s on scopes of the p