Employee with the company and ive watched her be involved with knowledges and universities and the key to almost all of them to succeeding is leadership. If you have strong leadership, be it a company, school, university or agency, i will show you an agency or school or entity that on its way to be more effective with everything that they do. We make it too hard. A hearing withng the federal management subcommittee going through the gao highrisk list. One of the issues we focused on was the cost of Weapons Systems overruns. The cost is gone from 200 billion per year to about 400 billion per year. First the number two person for acquisition the air force, we said talk to us about how long you have been in your job, what kind of turnover you got from your predecessor. This was in the Bush Administration. Had beeny position vacant for 18 months before i got there. There had been an acting person in place but not a Senate Confirmed the person. I said toind of me about your direct reports. He said there are six of them but only to our fold. Go three or four years forward with the Current Administration ,nd the person who is before us same job, new administration, what kind of turnover do you get . My job had been vacant for 18 months and we have an acting person in place. Its no wonder we have these huge Weapon System cost overruns. We had to be secretary of Homeland Security who said to us when she and Janet Napolitano took over leadership of that agency, she said call jean who runs the gao and sam going to comes on your doorstep and go through your highrisk list. Until we have addressed the things that need to be a addressed, we want to get off your highrisk list and lo and notld, they did, especially just being honorable but gaining an unqualified audit for stop unqualified audit. With new leadership of jeh johnson, they are determined to lower it again. Otheresson are there for deputy secretaries out of that experience with Homeland Security trying to get off the highrisk list . Particularly with respect to dod which has been on the highrisk list forever. For a of appropriate Financial Management. They deny they have proper payments and are not even auditable. The marines are trying to get close, but its a very slow process. Give us some advice on a huge asked why hethey robbed banks, they said thats where the money is to give us some advice, please. I think you said it already. The vacancies are killers. Going to see substantial change when you dont have longterm leadership that can be held accountable for the changes that need to take place. There are a lot of things that can be changed with respect to the appointment process, reduce the number of people going through the pipe, certainly around the management positions would be our number one recommendation. You have the under for management who did a traffic job at dhs and is responsible for amazing things. Peace, andht spot you mentioned how important it is to find things that work, that is not happening. Has the only to my knowledge integrated platform on all the Management Issues across the whole department. Ofry other agency i know looks at it and says we would like the same thing. We need to see that wrought up and repeated across government. Was around long enough to Pay Attention to those issues. It youre always going to be in the position of being behind the eight ball. If you dont have people in place for the necessary time to be will to focus on the change efforts that require years and years to push through and they have to be at a senior enough level to maintain the pressure and maintain it over time, you dont need Senate Confirmation for those decisions. You have ample opportunity to control it through the Senior Leadership or secretary to have an infrastructure that could keep their eye on the ball. I think we will need a fundamentally important change. The key reasons its a phenomenally wellmanaged organization is that the leader has a 15 year term. That kind of timeframe, they own your organization. Right now, political appointees are awarded for Crisis Management and policy development, not the longterm health of the organization they run. They are gone before anyone can hold them accountable. Thats my proper point of advice. To oversee that not only a dod, have your Senior Management position be career folk and make them a performance contract. The one pushback you get on this issue is will they actually be part of the senior team . Theres a legitimate question to be asked. This one is clearly not working in the present system and i think you ought to be trying the other way. I think an effort to create a chief management officer within anddepartment of defense the deputy secretary or undersecretary there is that position today. I seem to recall when we try legislatively, i think gordon england said he wanted to be, as a deputy secretary, he should have dual deputyd also have secretary for management. Look, youd dont want to manage the issue. Thats not always the norm. You need something in place to deal with the variety of personalities that come in. By and large, people selected on the clinical side are not focused on management. They will be drawn into the policies and youll lose that on the management. At a senior enough level to drive the management focus you need. If you look at a couple of the positions, one is the director of the senses. Senses director is appointed for i think five years. They gave the commissioner of the irs a situation we need more of that. Size should not do one its all and recognize you have a combination of political leaders. Some phenomenal managers who have them into the political process and you want to allow that kind of turnover. That kind of infusion of new ideas and energy, that kind of leadership will stop one of the challenges is getting the Senior Executive service to step up to plate and that they have that authority. Vacancies, they should be leading and can be leading. Goals with free frequent goals and frequent oversight, i go back to where robert was, that needs to happen from the political and executive withr leadership, but also congress. He mentioned the security on a regularcess basis, really driving some change in there are huge opportunities and you cant do a few areas where there will be some coming and going at the same time, if you have congress and the administration regardless of Party Working together and the career executive, using the goals, using the measurement and data on a regular basis and being transparent about it, you can get some real change. The meeting i discuss that that National Academy of public it ministration will host will involve omg, gao, in each of the organizations responsible for the highrisk areas. Will help agencies understand the factors gao uses to judge what on the list and what comes off the list. Its not hard. They are difficult issues, but the basic issues are there. Clearly or should focus, implemented to some degree and you can see the implementation of those actions. They have an unheralded multiadministration process whereby they meet regularly, says progress on these plans to remediate highrisk areas, what gao hopes will happen in the near future is a reinvigoration of that process so you can nudge some areas that have not really made sufficient progress forward little faster. Nominated tota was secretary of defense and he and i were colleagues together in the house and i have huge admiration for him. He came by to chat with me a week or so after he had been aboutmed and we talked the gao and highrisk and we focused on Financial Management in the dod. I dont know is i dont know if he had given it much thought. My thought is they did not stop about did not talk about improper payments. He and i talked about at that day and he went back to the pentagon and said were going to get serious about this. He was succeeded by chuck hagel, another one of our colleagues here who i have huge respect for. We had some conversation and he that of all the other things they are expected to do, fight wars and put down the department of defense will become a better fiscal steward of their operation. Marines aree the actually leading the way. As their proud auditor, we are sidebyside trying to get them there. Hands on deckl moment. The things that are really hard to do, its like turning an aircraft carrier. Two get people on the bridge, you got the folks in the engine room. The department of defense, these areas, it turning an aircraft air. One of the things i think we are going to do and we had talked a have aabout this is hearing where we have army, navy, air force, marines and maybe coast guard. Actually done this and what im interested in doing is engendering a little friendly interservice rivalry. We about the three of you are going to try that as well. We have witnesses and are doing oversight hearings and i will say at the end what advice would you have for us, the legislative ,rath legislative branch what can we do to support the initiatives we are talking about today. Oftentimes, they say more justight will stop importantly that its being done well. Ive never heard gotcha hearings all stop ive never held a gotcha hearing. I dont think thats the way we should see government. Every now and then, we want to get some people straightened out but sometimes we overlook the fact that we need to put a spotlight on good behavior. Do you want to say thing on this front . Sure. To the extent these issues reduce leadership vacuums, its important to recognize responsibility flows to vendors. Haveuld be useful to additional attention paid to this particular problem through whatever means are available. , whatvendor lockin do you mean by vendor lockin . The use of a proprietary Technology May make it more difficult to switch to a different vendor in the future. It may not be technology could be any number of aspects. Costt factoring in the during the initial planning process, its easier to bring things under budget but can ultimately be much more expensive than lead to sub par Contractor Solutions that need to be avoided. The use of open technologies is one way to address that problem. Importantly,r more attention to the procurement system more broadly and workforce, its known that that workforce is aging in part because the complexity of the fa are makes it difficult to bring new people and and a is exasperated further by problems endemic to this work, particularly agencies that do a lot of procurement. Would im very hopeful congress will actually ask questions about agencies to make sure they are paying attention to this kind of opportunity that needs serious effort as well. Can we talk about strategic sourcing a little bit . I dont think it has been mentioned here. We covered a lot of ground. We Services Talk more about that, drill down on that. The administration has suggested that before an agency procures a new Financial System, it will have to consider migrating that to an existing agency which offers the same services to other agencies so there is not duplication of Financial System procurements. To mises give us an example of that. In need now, the hud is of a new Financial System. It includes a system for monitoring the finances of the agency, preparing it for audit, any number of financial activities. Before it will purchase a new system and implement a large Financial Technology system, it will need to strongly consider and likely migrate to another agency, say the department of treasury, which already provides Financial Services to other agencies. They have implemented the system before. Theyve got customers and are responding to customers and thats a way to ensure a successful implementation of a lower cost. Your overlap and duplication work is instructive here. You documented the overlap in duplication and government programs, not all necessarily bad, but something to Pay Attention to. Imagine procuring Financial Systems or services or procuring pencils or procuring the really excellent Consulting Services of grant thornton. I have heard about them. All of this overlap and duplication is multiplied exponentially when you are buying goods and services. Push hard enough on reducing the amount of spend by in this way. I want to speak to three opportunities related to strategic sourcing. Its great the administration has a goal on strategic sourcing and is committed to expanding it. Why do you think that happened question mark i think they first asked the question how many of these similar things are we buying and actually looking at how many of these similar things they were buying and the different prices , they saw aying real opportunity and so to the vendor. The commodity purchases that every agency is buying, it makes sense to look at the pricing and say with our opportunity both to compare prices and to get scale offers from the vendors themselves. See theellent to administration pushing in that direction. I want to talk about shared services which is one part of the federal government Offering Services to the other. That priority goal, where they are going to compare cost and quality so other parts of the federal government actually have some basis to choose where to buy. Providing herald Provider Services were things incredibleits an opportunity and im optimistic for serious progress in this area. The thirdto raise area. People are not commodities. You cannot strategic source commodities and it would be great if Congress Gave legislative authorities to the federal government to do so,uitment across agencies as max said, cyber security, there are lots of various economists where why should you expect every agency to get expertise in figuring out who the best schools are providing areas, why for those not allow some specialization and let one agency do all the if they get 50 great people, and only get 10, why not let the other agents hired of other agencies hire the other 40. I think thats and dan are doing a great job on this issue. Its one where there is a lot of opportunity. You ask about the department of commerce. The acting deputy secretary theyre going to get the number wrong but literally save hundreds of millions of dollars by getting ahead on this issue. They had leaders that understood the possibilities and that opportunity is there and you have some terrific people who will push on that. There is a, it common thematic there and weve done a report on that i would like to submit for the record. Its on the talent issues or the purchasing of goods and services, imagine as the integrated enterprise offers opportunities for efficiencies and effectiveness. Theres a big opportunity if we pursue that direction. Finally some of the risk i know you are interested in Customer Service issues. One important thing to mary to these efforts is the focus on creating Customer Service and government. They are providing an Important Service to the public and provides a lot of services to internal customers, both in the Mission Support and mission area. Some interesting things have been done at hhs. Guaranteee pension program, that is something i hope thats something this committee can initially come to because that would truly transform the way government works. If you wanted to act as an enterprise, thats one of the issues we will run up against. Building that in the front end would be very important. Thank you. From the shared services perspective, we think theres tremendous opportunity there. Sometimes theres a tradeoff for centralization but theres the opportunity, as has been pointed out for specialization expertise to be developed. To mindple that comes is at regulations. Gov, a system used voluntarily by agencies. In part, theres a funding dynamic whereby the cost to maintaining separate systems is lower than an individuals contribution would be even know that contribution would lower the overall system costs and cost taxpayers less money. Some centralizing efforts. How wenking through could operate more efficiency more efficiently. Theave already mentioned initiatives but thats analogous to what we could see in the future. I want to talk a little bit about workforce morale. The folks on our staff have heard this more than they want to remember. I recount listing to npr on my way to delaware. On my way to catch the train, i listen to npr news at the top of the hour around 7 00 will stop about a year ago, they told that an International Study being done, asking thousands of people what is it you like about your work. What brings you satisfaction . Some people like doing paid, some people like benefits, some people like pensions or occasions. Some people like the folks they work with, some people like the environment in which they work. Thing most people identify was the thing they like about the work as they felt what theyd were doing is important and were making progress. Again, what they were doing was important and they thought they were making progress. We do make some pretty Good Progress from time to time, but we could always do better. Thinking about employee morale, intuitively i think if i , thatorking for somebody we are not going to have a revolving door and not have an acting will be confirmed and another act in for a year or more. We talked a little bit about that. Rankandfile if i were a rankandfile federal not like towould call on a nameless, faceless bureaucrat. Most employees are hardworking, dedicated people and we dont give them the kind respect. Sometimes people just want to know they are valued. I think it might have been you, but you may have noted in your recentny that the rankings of best places to work