And effective government that serves the people. We have to ensure that every taxpayer dollar is spent responsibly. We do that by conducting oversight of the executive branch and examine Government Programs and policies that affect every american. Mr. Cummings and i, and our predecessors here at the committee, didnt invent the concept of this oversight of the executive branch. It comes from the constitution, and comes from the need to be responsive as we represent the people of the United States of america. Today, we will hear from a group of senior legislative liasons from five different agencies, all with the troublesome track records when cooperating with request for information. I and sympathetic to the idea that they get bombarded from so many different committees. Not only in the house, but in the senate as well. It is a large task, agencies so massive and so big, spending billions upon billions of dollars. Department of Homeland Security has been invited to discuss a request related to the secret service and tsa. Tsa has ignored basic fundamental requests such as appearing at hearings. We invited the administrator to testify at a hearing scheduled a month later. Be did before the hearing the day before the hearing the administrator backed out and cited a scheduling problem. We invited the Justice Department to address a position on withholding the memos that guided investigative personnel when dealing with gps tracking devices. We also hope to get an update on our request for the complete lois lerner files. An official with the state department is here to address specifically the difficulty of obtaining documents in our investigation entering its third year. The staff always approaches the production of documents and a halfhearted manner. That is very problematic. Today, there is a story about providing inaccurate information as it relates to Hillary Clinton and her emails. We will ask you some questions about that. The office of management and budget is here to address a response to a subpoena i sent to the office of information and regulatory affairs. This is an office created by congress. Its job is to review proposed regulation. To create the impairments that it is cooperating, omb offered a number of pages of documents it has produced. To my fellow members, here is a flashing signal that maybe there is a problem. When they want to talk about the number of documents they have produced, im not interested in that. Im interested in the percentage of documents you have produced. It is a little trick to say, we have provided 100,000 of this or 50,000 of that. Tell me what percentage of the documents we get. If we want 100 of the truth, we need 100 of the documents. Until we get them, it makes us think that you are hiding something. The office of Personnel Management has been invited to discuss the effort to produce materials with response to the data breached investigation. By theburdened investigators by applying inexplicable reductions. Publicly available information has been repeatedly redacted by opm. In some cases, our investigators have found answers more readily by visiting the website. It leaves us with the conclusion that perhaps they have a lot to hide. If something is embarrassing, that is not a reason to keep it from the congress. A successful working relationship between the Congressional Committee and the executive Branch Agencies require effort, communication, and good faith on both sides. We need transparency and need to Work Together. We have a lot of good staff, a lot of good people. We are not here to disparage any one persons reputation, but we are here to get answers, and we need to make sure we get those documents. We need your help in doing so. With that, i recognize the Ranking Member, mr. Cummings. Rep. Cummings i strongly support the authority of this committee to obtain the necessary documents as part of our investigation. These documents are a critical tool to investigate waste, fraud, or abuse, eliminate duplication. And prove the effectiveness and efficiency of government and determine if Congress Needs to change our laws to improve the lives of the American People. Of course, we rely on other sources of information, witness testimony, interviews, briefings, and meetings. Documents are unique. They give us the ability to understand what happens over time without having to rely on uneasy memories or the selfserving recollection of those being investigated. Committeese authority because i have been in the chairmans seat. I know firsthand how oversight can be spiteful by slowing documents or withholding information to which congress is entitled. I remember very well the fights we had with the Bush Administration over their refusal to provide documents we needed. I remember how those actions impaired our ability to do our work. I support this chairman in his efforts. Unfortunately, i have also seen how investigations can be used as a form of political attack, rather than a search for the facts and a search for the truth. I have seen how massive, repeated, and over wrought document requests have been used as a partisan weapon. I have seen how they can grind down agencies to force them to diverge personnel and waste millions of taxpayer dollars in the process. The hearing today is important to recognize the difference between these two we need to recognize not only the significant demands that have been placed on the agencies, but what they have provided to date. For example, the state department has just experienced one of, if not the most, most amending years in terms of congressional inquiries. The state department is currently reporting to nine different committees, including the benghazi select committee. It has been inundated with requests unlike any Previous Year on record. In 2015, the Oversight Committee a loan launched nine investigations relating to the state department. In response, the department provided more than 21 gigabytes of information. That as part of our investigation of Embassy Construction, more than 160,000 pages of documents were produced. The committee wants additional documents. I have signed on to some of those document requests myself. It is inaccurate to suggest that the state department has intentionally withheld the documents we need. With that said, the state department is notorious for an extreme report Record Management system. This problem dates back several administrations. Ive been incredibly frustrated in the past with the state departments inability to run the most basic document searches and produce documents in a timely manner. In my opinion, the solution to this problem is not to shame the heads of the legislative Affairs Offices. Many officials worked in congress previously. They fully understand our needs and our rights to the information. They are among some of our most Effective Advocates within the agency. Instead, if we really want to address this problem, we can take to key steps. First, congress can conduct a detailed review of Agency Information management practices, including document preservation, collection, and redaction. We can support longterm efforts to upgrade and improve their systems so they take less agency time to implement and provide congress what it needs more quickly. Im talking about efficiency and effectiveness. This work will pay dividends to congress, the press, and the american public. The second thing congress can do is to take a closer look at itself. Put a mirror up to our faces. We can in end the politicallymotivated headlines. We can end duplicate requests. We can ask for only what we really need, rather than everything under the sun. We can work with agencies to understand the legitimate interests in protecting certain classes of information, well giving accommodations for what we need to do our job. That is the balance that we should seek. That is the balance we should work towards. So, in closing, mr. Chairman, i hope we can explore some of these issues here today, and i look forward to the testimony of our witnesses. I yield back. Rep. Chaffetz i hold the record open for five legislative days for any written statements. I recognize our panel of witnesses. Assistant secretary of the bureau of legislative affairs at the United States department of state. Assistant attorney general for legislative affairs at the department of justice. The honorable assistant secretary of the office of legislative affairs of Homeland Security. Associate director for legislative affairs at the office of management and budget. Director of office of the Congressional Affairs for the office of Personnel Management. Thank you for being here. All witnesses are sworn before they testify. If you will please stand and raise your right hand. Thank you. Do you solemnly swear or affirm the testimony you are about to give will be the whole truth, nothing but the truth . Thank you. Let the record reflect that all witnesses answered in the affirmative. You know the drill here. We are trying to keep it to five minutes. We will give you a little latitude. We will obviously insert your entire written statement into the record. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member cummings, and members of the committee, i appreciate this opportunity to testify. The state department is committed to working with congress. Secretary kerry spent 30 years and congress and believes strongly in the importance of congressional oversight. Since he arrived at the state department, his instructions to the department have been to be responsive. I share his commitment. I spent my entire career as a capitol hill staffer. I have Great Respect for the role in oversight. I will address the request for documents at length. It is important to underscore that our willingness to work with congress is not limited to documents. The state Department LegislativeAffairs Office provided 2500 briefings to the hill on foreignpolicy issues. We worked with consular affairs. Everything from loss reports to missing constituents overseas. We arranged over 500 congressional member and staff delegation trips abroad and have appeared at 168 congressional hearings and responded to 1700 congressional letters. With crises around the world and congress focused on foreignpolicy, we are working hard to meet all responsibilities and recognize that cooperating with investigations is one of them. We at the state department have struggled to keep pace with the increasing demands of requests, which have expanded the number and complexity. We are responding to dozens of investigations by nine different committees, involving hundreds of requests for hundreds of thousands of pages of documents. This is twice as many as last year. While some of the investigations are our focus, others are broad and complex. Let me be clear, we know it is our responsibility to answer these questions, and we are working to improve the way respond, making it more useful for congress and the pace of our response. Historically in responding to congressional requests, we follow a process similar to other requests, relying on the same infrastructure and technology. As requests increase him a we found both were competing for the same resources. To compensate, we pulled together ad hoc teams from functional and regional bureaus to respond. We pulled people from the work of diplomacy to respond to congress. This system is not sustainable. We needed to institutionalize the way we process documents to speed up the pace of delivery. We knew we had upgrade our technology. This year we have been transforming the way we respond. I worked with my colleagues at state to create a congressional document Production Branch in which involves personnel and new software to facilitate reviews and production. We are grateful that congress enabled us to establish this new entity to provide additional personnel and technology. Weve been able to process more quickly requests from this committee, select committee on benghazi, and other committees. Our new unit is enabling us to respond to more committees simultaneously than ever before. Because the Production Branch is only a few months old, its impact is not apparent yet. This committee should see the results as we work on your request. Additionally, we have made tangible improvements to the way we produce documents to congress. We heard from staff, including yours, who had concerns that we were providing documents in a way that was not userfriendly. We used to provide documents on paper, without coding, that enabled you to find and organize them. We would hand of her boxes of documents. After meeting with staff, who told us how hard it was to use documents in this format, we change the way we give you documents and now provide them electronically with easily searchable base numbers. We can now provide documents organized by date or custodian. The ability to review is vastly expanded. The move towards electronic document processing has improved our ability to provide documents quickly and enjoy them and easier to review. I would like to summarize where we are and where we hope to go. We are working on nine investigations for your committee. We have provided over 160,000 pages to the committee for Embassy Construction and have participated in for hearings and many meetings and briefings. I do note that i did here with the chairman said, and i understand. We have been collecting documents for the five requests outlined in your december 18 letter, and are committed to producing thousands of pages, along with providing briefings on the matters described in the letter. In closing, while we have implemented significant improvements, we are striving to do better. The obstacles to responding is not one. It is a question of balancing resources in response to multiple, largescale request from a number of different committees. We are trying to find innovative ways to respond better and faster. I look for to working with you and your staff to ensure the state department and Congress Work together to provide transparency that should be the hallmark of our government. Rep. Chaffetz thank you. You are now recognized for five minutes. Good morning. Rep. Chaffetz if you could is that better . Rep. Chaffetz thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to respond to the committees information requests, including those related to policy and geolocation and other Surveillance Technology in the wake of the Supreme Court 2012 decision. I assure the committee that we value the Important Role of congressional oversight, and as the attorney general has stated repeatedly, the department is committed to accommodating information needs consistent with Law Enforcement come National Security, and prosecutorial responsibilities. The department appreciates oversight is a critical underpinning of the legislative process. Consistent with the bite we play some congressional oversight, since the beginning of the 114 congress, the department has testified and 60 congressional hearings and provided extensive information and more than 1800 letters responding to increase from committees and members. In every instance, we strive to provide as much information as possible without compromising our Law Enforcement and National Security efforts, or our prosecutorial responsibilities. In addition to these sensitivities, the Department Also has an obligation to protect Certain Executive Branch institutional interests, including confidentiality of client communication, attorney work product, and internal deliberation. We are committed to working in good faith to accommodate the committees legitimate oversight interest and hope the committee will likewise continue to engage in good faith with the department in a manner that recognizes the important Law Enforcement and confidentiality interests presented in some cases. In particular, we trust the committee recognizes the importance of ensuring the departments investigative and prosecutorial decisions are made without regard to Political Considerations or a perception of political influence or pressure. Such political influence and the mere Public Perception of such influence can undermine significantly our Law Enforcement efforts and in criminal matters shake Public Confidence in the justice process. We recognize it is difficult when interest come into potential conflict. That is why the constitution envisioned that the branches would engage in a process of accommodation. This longstanding and wellaccepted approach has been up lloyd by administrations for decades and supported by Top Department officials, democrats and republicans alike. Consistent with this approach, the department has made efforts to respond to the committees information requests regarding policies on geolocation and other Surveillance Technology. As the committee is aware, these requests represent significant confidentiality interests. They include sensitive Law Enforcementrelated confidential work product prepared in anticipation of litigation, specifically internal deliberations of department prosecutors about the