We did galloped last congress and the new Ranking Member the original was and to promote Accountable Government that is what the gao does and the Inspector General. We appreciate your work item no how many times we have said this. You give us the information. So todays hearing is on the highrisk series something that has been prepared that has ben from the early 90s over last tenures reporting to under 40 million to make government more efficient 21 million per year and senator grassley and i and to be implemented the result was 15,222 saving 87 billion. That is real money even with the federal government. And to speak a lot and thought we would invite to Inspector Generals for the Veterans Affairs from the department of homelands security tier testify been even John Thompson to be in the hot seat. And to get the viewpoint how they are listed on the highrisk list and the challenges. And looking forward to the hearing. To senator macassar school. I know that you know, this but with those important entities of washington d. C. In nonpartisan agency that has always spends your tax dollars. With that legislative obligations under the constitution and to be objective and fact based and non partisan and fair and balanced at the beginning of each congress you released a report of higher risk did to vulnerability is and mismanagement. We invited you to testify and i appreciate this hearing is one of the first and that provides us with a list of parties have taken root out waste fraud and abuse. And with Information Technology investment in leaves many m. I. T. Contract Team Projects and it was one of the most important problems out there. But the high risk highlights more work is needed to ensure the federal roxy on behalf of the American People. In with that critical skill gap with the federal workforce with risk of tax dollars and lives. And the medical scandal at the department of Veterans Affairs and the still include cybersecurity. This year gao added the list knowing that the next census in is approaching i am grateful he will have an update on the program. With the census to be the most costly in history billions of dollars were wasted at the last minute to ensure that the census was done on time given the role that the census plays to allocate precious taxpayer dollars by an eager to learn how they are managing this time while modernizing the program. I am grateful to the comptroller to discuss their work with governor programs as part of farmland security and Veterans Affairs. With effective oversight and mismanagement will go unaddressed i consider Government Accountability as the most important part of my work here in the senate. The gao access and bipartisan measure to have full access hickey tool to cut the largest programs to legislate the Child Support payments also to take legal action if refuses to provide gao with the information necessary to perform its function will we could do to promote accountability to the federal government with 3 trillion annually into being sure that those are used well in accord to questions. Please rise and raise your right hand. Do you swear the testimony you will give is the truth, though all truth, nothing but the truth so help you god . Pc did. Be seated the first witness is the comptroller general of the meditates Government Accountability office since 2010 his acting is comptroller general. Mr. Chairman and afternoon to you i am please to be here today with a highrisk program many of those areas that were on the eldest have shown improvement and rna position no for all five criteria coming off the list to have the capacity to have a good action plan and monitoring efforts this is the one that is the hardest to meet to fix the of problems this is due to the commitment by Agency Leaders and the congress of the past 114th Congress Passed over 12 bills to address those high risk areas that is part of the reason were shelve this progress with over 250 hearings so i am very pleased this committee in particular and i am appreciative of that if you look at almost every area of congressional actions one area is managing the sharing of information with the safety of our country i can assure you while coming off a list we will keep an eye on it to stay on track on that area. With the department of Homeland Security they have a improve their ability to monitor their action plan and with their acquisition programs and improving employee morale. There are number of very is on the list that i went site attention is Veterans Health care. 2015 for a number of very Important Reasons why a and the very concerned they would limit progress talking about that several times with the only Major Federal AgencyInformation Technology acquisition the area while we have seen some progress and as a relates to federal government with a critical ever structure and Financial Markets and we added cybersecurity at the high risk area with a 20 Year Anniversary we are trying to get agencies moved in that area with 1,000 recommendations in the cybersecurity area this is one area with Fannie Mae Freddie mac are still and there distributorship lot of of risk as move to the federal government directly to the federal Housing Administration between one and 2,000,000,000. 70 percent of all of mortgages right now breather directly or indirectly supported by federal government and then to get the private sector back to reduce of threats from the federal government we are adding three new areas the sheer with the federal efforts to provide oversight to help Indian Tribes not properly staffed Health Care Area allied of vacant positions to send people with the private sector there still using that formula and also where the tribes want to exploit oil and gas on their land it takes forever and they are not able to generate that revenue. Second with the liabilities for the federal government waste from Nuclear Weapons and commercial fire plans the liability approaching one half trillion dollars with one example from dod with the Defense Department operation and the federal government spends millions every year to clean up waste but the liability keeps going with a number of outstanding recommendations as we mentioned because the last census was 12 billion in debt introduce the Novel Concept including the internet like an address list and also using technology. And the accord to working with the committee. And president ceo from the National Opinion research center. Director . I appreciate the opportunity to update you on the census sample of to report port the path to readiness. With the most recent high risk from the gao the 2000 and 2010 consensus also on the list with importance of conducting a fair and accurate census it is tight and the Innovative Technology we only have controls them place to mitigate the risk and as we plan through the 20 20 census we are aware of the risk that is wary we work to mitigate Risk Management is critical. Another part of the preparations and respect from the department of commerce and prior written testimony in detail and with those specific risk areas to concentrate on. And to ensure the public to secure the system and the field test to ensure to prevent cyberattacks. To protect that data of those administrative records. To develop and field test from findings and now that we have ahead of the 2018 census test. Third, procedures protesting and forth, with the master schedule and to look at the life cycle process. Since this test is the key to finalizing the design. And then Harris County texas additionally we tested our procedures and North Carolina in st. Louis missouri. We have learned many lessons of these test to mitigate the risks and in addition addition, the Census Bureau has test operations in 2017 that must we tested the end to end census test is a finer major field test and Field Operations for april 1, 2018 with those three areas am Providence County road violent in the oak hill area of western daniel. And recall of that 2020 census operation with field infrastructure to reduce prototypes to make sure that all of these were in concert with each other using the lessons from 2018 to finalize the plans. Transparent of how we have the redesigned census to publicly documented hour biggest decisions. There are challenges ahead but with the appropriate funding levels we could execute the census. And with that since this cycle including achieving 5 million. Net with that field work for the field but test it is not yet funding from 2017. In january with the budget requires to make difficult decisions to find that uncertainty rest. To was a delay of the opening the Census Centers and the elimination of advertising in the end to end since this test and that is critical for complexion. And with that documentation and planning necessary for mitigation for the gao to conduct. And the approach takes advantage to the methodology with that finding we requested i think the committee for interest in the work and delacorte to discussing your challenges today with that productive relationship with the gao in the years ahead. Now the Inspector General for the department of Veterans Affairs as a partner at the law firm leading the policy. Members of the committee hickey for the opportunity to discuss the work of the office of Inspector General how we provide oversight of the programs and seek to have fraud and waste and abuse to make the effectiveness throw programs and operations property for. And being more proactive in our review areas. I believe that these changes will enable us to do additional impactful work in a timely manner. Oig shares a similar mission with fao. It is important we have a strong relationship with gao to avoid duplication of effort as much as possible. One of the first things i did when i started to meet with come proller general dodaro. We had a number of communications and discussions since that time to promote coordination and. Improving Va Health Care to its biannual highrisk list in 2015 and remains on the highrisk list that was just issued for 2017. The gao focused its concerns in five broad areas. Ambiguous policies and inconsistent process, inadequate oversight and accountability, Information Technology challenges, inadequate training for va staff, and unclear resource needs and allocation priorities. While our work is determined by what we believe is the most effective oversight of va, a number of our reports addressed concerns in these same five areas. As the committee requested i will highlight sampling of oig work that resulted in gao placing Va Health Care on its highrisk list. It should be noted that many of the oig reports could fit in more than one area. We have issued a number of reports in the past few years that include vas ambiguous policies and inconsistent process. Our review of the Health Eligibility center determined that va had not effectively managed its business process to insure consistent creation and maintenance of essential Health Care Eligibility data. We made 13 recommendations in that report, including one focused on controls to insure that future enrollment data are accurate and reliable before being entered into the enrollment system. Va concured with the recommendations and provided sufficient information to close all recommendations in all october 2016. Proper oversight by management would insure that 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 identified various factors that significantly contributed to delays and rising costs. This occurred due to a series of questionable Business Decisions and mismanagement by va senior officials, resulting in a project years behind schedule and costing more than twice the initial budget of 800 million. We made five recommendations and va management concurred with all recommendations. We recently requested information from va on the implementation status of the recommendations and will keep them open until va provides satisfactory evidence of implementation. As we have reported in our list of vas Major Management challenges within vas annual financial report, we have frequently identified va struggles to design, procure, and or implement functional i. T. Systems. I. T. Security is continually reported as a Material Weakness in our consolidated Financial Statement audits. Va has a high number of legacy systems needing replacement. Moreover, after years of effort focused on replacement of vas Legacy Software a new scheduling system is still not in place. Vas issues with Scheduling Software is related to the inability to define its requirements and determine if a commercial solution is available or if it must design a system. Replacing systems has been a major challenge across the government, and it is not unique to va. We have issued a number of reports outlining access issues and our work in this area is continuing. One prevailing theme of the oigs work related to wait times and scheduling issues was inadequate, lack of or incorrect Training Provided to va staff for scheduling appointments. We conducted extensive work related to allegations of wait time manipulation through fiscal years 2015 and 16 after the allegations at the phoenix Va Health Care system surfaced in april 2014. As we have reported in more than 90 administrative summaries of investigations, and other reports that have been issued, the lack of training for schedulers and lack of understanding of the process by their managers created a system in which long wait times were not accurately portrayed to management. Va needs to accurately forecast the demand for Health Care Service is in both the near term and the long term. The oig is required by section 301 of the choice act to review va 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 and medical technologist as critical occupations with the largest staffing shortages. In conclusion the oig is committed to have effective oversight and operations of va a number of our reports address the five broad areas noted by va in placing Va Health Care on its highrisk list. We will continue to provide reports that provide va, the congress an public with recommendations that we believe will hp va operate its program and services and will effectively and timely deliver benefits to citizens and employ taxpayer money appropriately. Mr. Chairman, this concludes my statement and would be happy to answer any other questions you and the committee would have. Thank you, mr. Missal. Final witness is john roth. Inspector general for the department of Homeland Security since march of 2014. In addition to previous work for the food and Drug Administration mr. Roth had a 25 year career as federal prosecutor including chief of staff to the Deputy Attorney general. Mr. Roth. Chairman johnson, Ranking Member mccaskill and members of the committee thank you for inviting me to here to testify today. Homeland security faces longstanding challenges and we at inspector focused our energy on management challenges which we published in november. We listed six. One creating a unified department. Two employee morale and engagement. Three, acquisition management. Four, grants management. Five, cybersecurity. Six, improving management fundamentals. Additionally with a new administration the department will face new responsibilities. We understand the significant investment that the department will be making to satisfy its obligations under the president s executive order to construct the 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, sbinet were canceled in 2011 as being too expensive and ineffective. In Pilot Program in arizona. They spent system to build 53 miles of the states border before abandoning the initiative. We must not allow that to be repeated. Given the ri