Everyone here wants the same thing and that is to serve americas businesses the best we can. Those of us out here on the dais at the lincoln advantage of issue and let us know how we are doing all the time and on an ongoing basis as head of an agency i sometimes worry that too often you most fear from your own folks and from other washington bureaucrats fear that is the only explanation for why the six to nine gao identified concerns and problems havent been addressed. Yesterday wasnt the first time these issues have been raised. Yesterday we heard some pretty serious concerns both by members of this committee and from our gao witness who testified here yesterday about the management of the sba. Administrator maria contrerassweet, since you are with us yesterday will recap is briefly although im sure your staff is already given you a rundown. I told the gao witness yesterday that this kind of reminds me of being a parent. If your teenagers room is the mass and then stuff from all over the place, lets say there are 70 items thrown on the floor comes to exceed nine to be exact and mailed to pick up seven items, you dont get the 62 remaining on the floor and raised their allowance for having made some progress. The ongoing problems that the sba in gao identified span the entire bread from Information Technology and security to staff Management Issues from Disaster Response to land in and contract being and districts on both sides of the aisle are paying the price for your agencys failures. What we have here is the failure of confidence in the sba and unfortunately for good reason. Before the hearing is over, i hope to hear a commitment to resolve as many problems as possible by june 30th of this year. I do appreciate how successful youve always done to members of the many and i request your officer providing Monthly Updates to ours have documenting your progress. If i were you, i would start with these i. T. And cybersecurity deficiencies. That is what worries me the most and i will tell you why. We have seen the irs said, state department, opm, even the white house pack. Small businesses trust the sba, your agency with their information. Often times very Sensitive Information that they dont want a rival business or neighbors or the Chinese Government to have access to. Yesterday, gao told us this information is not adequately secured and that cannot continue you want to make this simple. We are asking you to do your best to fix it. I would not yield to the Ranking Member for the opening statement. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you are holding this important hearing. The only agency in the federal government charged specifically with helping Small Businesses grow and succeed, the Small Business and an assertion is critical to our nations Overall Economic health. All of the functions are to strengthen and preserve the Real Foundation of our economy. For Small Businesses to fully reap the benefits from sbas program, it is important to operate efficiently and effectively, investing taxpayer dollars wisely. One of the most important roles of these committees conducting vigorous oversight of the sba and its activities so we know the agencies serving Small Businesses while spending taxpayer dollars wisely. Yesterday the Committee Heard from the Government Accountability office and described the management report requested by myself and former chairman grades. Gao testified about a wide range of very management challenges, many of which have persisted for years. I do fully recognize that many of these problems before the administrator trained to tenure and furthermore demonstrated them. Without that, there is still much work that needs to be accomplished in terms of addressing gaos recommendation with only 15 out of the 63 recommendations there needs to be patrolling and prove that the agency. Without that, i understand the frequent changes in Political Leadership create difficulties for management. That is not an excuse, but rather every environmental sba function. So here you are. You will be sked to respond for 64 recommendations that have been made not only on the leadership, but for previous administrations. I feel optimistic of your commitment to tackle those issues and you are here to discuss how you intend to execute those recommendations by gao. First and foremost the agencys complex organization of structure may be its ability to form its nation effectively. Yesterday i was raised time and time again that sbas operation as a silo resulting in inefficiencies and obligations. There also continues to be significant Information Technology as well. The agency has yet to implement more than 30 recommendations, made by the office of Inspector General completed to i. T. Security. This raises concerns of whether the sba data assistant are potentially vulnerable to breaches. The sba Standard Operating Procedures are often in need of updating. If the agencys own admission, 74 of these provisions require revision and 31 should be counseled while another nine still need to be shipped. Yet we have a meaningful timeframe as to when all of these will be accomplished. It is my hope that today administrator contrerassweet on where the procedure stands. These are some of the longstanding issues raised for theres always room for improvement, i was heartened to hear that sba has accepted and i look forward to learning how the administrator is instituting change. I recognize that a political appointee is in the difficult position of boss and having to answer for the work of her predecessors as well as the career officials that often drive many peak agency decisions. But that i would like to thank the administrator for being here. I know your schedule is busy. As always we appreciate your participation. I yield back. Thank you remaster the generally yields back here to Committee Members have opening Opening Statements i asked they be submitted for the record and a brief explanation of titles out here which you are already familiar with. We operate under the fiveminute rule. Youll be given five minutes to testify. If you need with an eye, we will give you leeway since we only have one witness feared although he kept it within three minutes. We are not asking you do that. We will restrain ourselves by the same rules, five minutes ago back and forth between republicans and democrats of course. We all know who you are. Im not going to give a long explanation of who the administrator is but the 24th administrator of the u. S. Small business administration. Sure into, we welcome you here this morning. You are recognized for five minutes or perhaps a longer if you need it. Thank you. Let me just thank you and Ranking Member for last class and all the members of the committee for engaging in the work and giving me this opportunity to testify before you today. I would like to open just quickly with a review of fiscal year 2015. It was one of the most successful years in our agencys history. Sba reached historic levels for Small Businesses lending under our flagship sevenday guarantee loan program, extending a whopping 23. 5 billion in gross approvals. This represents a 22 increase in the number of loan approval to prior last year. A 23 increase in the dollar amount compared to 2014. These things matter because fda data shows that conventional lending has only returned to 84 of prerecessionary levels. The nocaps in the marketplace is a very purpose for which sba was created. We make notable progress increase in sevenday loan with the greatest difficulty accessing capital important emphasis. The dollar value of our laws is you are 22 to women, 23 to minorities and 103 to veterans. Our number of loan approvals of 29 again i just said that. These successes would not have been possible if not for the swift work of your committee. Due to her recordbreaking year, sba ran up against our statutory lending cap before the end of our fiscal year as the urging of our stakeholders, and mutual stakeholders in less than a week. In less than a week, you pass a fourpoint lead billion dollars increase in our sevenday Lending Authority and ushered the passage onto the house floor. Your leadership allowed entrepreneurs across the country to continue to access the requisite capital they need to start repair and grow their businesses. Sba also shattered our record for Small Business investment under our fdic program. We grew our portfolio by 10 to a record 25 billion. In fy 16, and the sevenday, 504 and fdic Program Share a Common Thread and i know youll appreciate this. All these programs are expected to operate at zero subsidy this fiscal year. Thanks to this committee for working across the aisle to include an omnibus bill the permanent reinstatement of the final four of the title for authority and an increase in sbic family fund limit. Policy changes will inject muchneeded capital into our Small Business ecosystem. Another priority for the sbas federal contract team. The u. S. Government awarded an alltime high of 24. 99 , while low for our mandated congressional mandate of 23 of government contracts to Small Businesses supporting about 550,000 american jobs. We reached historic procurement bubbles of the small disadvantaged businesses and firms by veterans. To summarize, sba achieved a record your Small Business lending, record your investment in a record year in contracting with no taxpayer subsidy needed to maintain this momentum. This is the context in which our hearing takes place today. Let me take an opportunity to acknowledge the Government Accountability office are helping to confirm the areas of shared concern and for construct a suggestion to address them. For my first days in office, i have prioritized the need to modernize sba operations enterprisewide to respond to the technological, demographic and globalization changes that are transforming our Small Business economy. To that end i agree with many recommendations and appreciate the opportunity to address them to fully bring mr. Chairman and the sba the 21st century. By corporate, the government and Community Banking experiences will be brought to bear to make sure that you feel comfortable and the American People feel confident in our system whether it be the Enterprise Risk Management board that ive established and all the other systems have put in place. Weve implicated a number of measures but my background started three business impressed upon me the importance of them return on investment with putting precious taxpayer dollars to use. We have to take every measure to use those dollars wisely based on the best available data. In july 2014, i established an Impact Evaluation working group within this union and Refining Program evaluation of orangeburg a Real Development programs. Ive held numerous meetings with key Resource Partners, sbc score stressing the importance of meaningful metrics. We are currently providing indepth evaluation across the agency. This includes comprehensive assessment of the sbic program in our history and collaboration with that wanted to make sure confidence that we went to the library of congress to do this work. Our report is due out this spring. Weve also made significant strides in addressing Information Technology challenges included in the gao report. We are well under way of a major upgrade of our i. T. System. It starts with a comprehensive Network Infrastructure modernization to give our system rater capacity, transparency and reliability. We are in the final stages now is moving our entire email system into the cloud for more security and reliability and capacity. We are investing in mobile technology, recognizing our sba staff must go beyond the walls of the federal offices and go to consumers and Small Businesses where they are. We also want project to modernize blending in Contracting Systems to reengineer our disaster Credit Management system, something i care deeply about. The entire modernization agenda complements our work to update and manage partner platform, the outward facing part of sba by bringing advances such as automation, digital signatures. An online matchmaking to the entrepreneurs that we serve. These are timesaving a are timesaving accosting and Technology Enhancement that have encouraged Community Bankers to come back to sba in many instances or to expand their lending. Weve taken important steps on our Capital Management efforts. Im proud to work alongside the thousands of hardworking, dedicated Public Servant that sba and Resource Partners are committed to ensuring the agency has the talent required to effectively serve it americas entrepreneurs. We are currently crafting a a comprehensive work plan will include a Skilled Staff assessment and make a closure plan. We have taken steps to address the sbas aging workforce not just unique to sba but across the federal government challenge. As the program i understood that we wanted to offer employees an opportunity to make decisions to create openings so we could begin to fill competency gaps. Sba is organizing our president ial Management Fellows Program to increase our end pact working with veterans, attracting more peace corps to our programs and i know youre going to love this. We installed the firstever key learning officer at sba. Ive been on the job for 20 months and im proud of the progress, but the truth is i could not have done this without your commitment and im grateful for your support. As a result of your leadership in daily efforts of dedicated staff, i inherited an agency highly leveraged, operating effectively and focused on advancing and fulfilling our statutory mission. Again, the proof of the pudding is in the tasting and eating and a record of our historic achievements speak to that. Theres always room to improve enough over here to talk about today. Guess im committed to working with you to improve the services and give Small Businesses the agency that they deserve and that taxpayers expect. Thank you. Thank you at a yield myself five minutes to begin the questioning. Not an administrator, as they mention in my opening statement, the gao witness yesterday testified sbas i. T. Security, the i. T. Security believes the Sensitive Information of Small Businesses and their owners vulnerable to hackers, theft, fraud. Get the sba has failed to implement more than 30 of the office of Inspector Generals recommendations related to i. T. Security big and small and individuals ask those. What is being done to address these problems and when will it be completed . That is a fair question, chairman. I think Technology Drives increasingly more and more of our lesser mike her way to smartphones and so it has to be an essential part of our strategy at sba. Just as an example to show you the progress since i arrived and i was here the last time i was here you asked me about the load Management Accounting system. That is the main body with which we interact with our Lending Partners, an important function and purpose and it had been there for a while working its way through and i committed to use that i would get that done and we did. To say that we are now off the mainframe and we have an interoperable, compatible system with todays technology where we can plugandplay systems is a wonderful achievement that even many fortunate companies dont achieve and many in government. I am proud the sba has argued she that. Let me ask you this. My time is limited as you know. I would like your commitment to resolving the gao recommendations by jim 30th and having our staff briefed on the progress on a monthly basis. Do i have that commitment . I commit to reporting to you on a regular basis and will work with god be to make your deadline. We are shooting for the 30th. Lets get it done. Mr. Chairman i was able to catch the pope while he was here and it confused me with the ability you closer than i did. Let me move on to another question. When the gao interviewed your district personnel so that they could do their review, your folks insisted on having a lawyer present. When the gao is here, trent kelley, member of this committee who happens to be a former prosecutor and District Attorney himself made an observation. He said in his experience when people lawyer up as your folks did, it often means they have some in the hide. Who made the decision to have a lawyer present. The need to do that when the gao an arm of congress is just performing its duty a