Issues. Something my boss does, something small, but we think significant, goes down to the senate florior every month to tk about employee at dhs doing extraordinary things from tsa to s t, i. C. E. Employees, doing simple things, doing their job, going above and beyond its something small but we think important. Part of the management unity effort mentioned earlier. And this is something that were closely looking at in the senate. And and i know the house as well. Some of the proposals require legislative language to move some of the boxes around dhs. Thats something that were closely looking at. Finally on management, ill close with st. Elizabeths, a dhs consolidated headquarters, something my boss has supported and we issued actually a staff report last congress on looking at the saint es project. You talked about 22 different agencies, scattered over 4050 building as loan, having a simple meeting it can be a task going across town. Has operational benefits for the department but also has fiscal benefits for the taxpayer, upwards i believe close to billion. 1 billion over 30 years in terminating the leases across the government, across d. C. That would have to be wed be consolidated in headquarters if at st. Elizabeth. This is something we continue to monitor, continue to watch and i believe in dhs appropriations and senate it got a good mark. Were happy with that. So thats on the oversight part some of the things that were looking at. Cyber and border will continue to be big issues and i think theres a couple of things, and the Emergency Management right now, dealing with tenyear anniversary of katrinkatrina, a sandy coming up as well, another anniversary. Looking at fema issues. And then the bioke kekbiochem, well be closely looking at well. Lastly, on legislation, before i get into this years legislative efforts i want to take a minute to talk about last years legislative efforts. We finished very strong, id say, with pretty significant bills in the last weeks of congress, right before we went off to the holiday break. We passed three cybersecurity bills, bipartisan bills, with dr. Coburn, our Ranking Member at the time, chairman carver. One bill dealt with cyberworkfor cyberworkforce. You cant hire them fast enough or keep them competing with the private sector and just among different agencies. What we wanted to do is dhs equal footing. Were putting a lot of new responsibilities on dhs and cyberworld. We wanted to make sure they had on equal footing in their ability to hire and retain cybertalent. We gave similar authorities to nsa to bring on people faster and pay them more so they can compete with nsa and maybe the private sector. So that bill was passed last year. Dhs cyberworkforce authority. We pass the a bill on federal Information Security management act, its the law that governs. Gov, civil federal networks. What weve try to do is key things. One, clarify rules and responsibilities between dhs and omb. As lawyers, we can all appreciate clarity in the law. Its not often there, but we try. And what we tried to do here define rules between omb, dhs, for those of you, the law that was written in 2001, 2002, dhs was just Getting Started and omb has a handful of people to oversee federal Network Security what happen we triedmemoranda, e responsibilities to dhs. So what we tried to do is ensure that the law is up to date with is covers reality, really. And so, we decided authority between omb, dhs on federal Network Security. Thats where we are today on that one. We tried to move away from essentially compliance check lists, paperwork exercises, to more of a realtime and continuous diagnostics, monitoring, the buzzwords that youll hear. We have realtime security in place for federal agencies and for today, with all of the federal hacks were hearing about, this is incredibly important we move in this direction. Finally we put into place federal data breach standards, essentially by memorandum, we put into law, memorializing need for federal data breach policies in place. Last cyberbill ill mention is a legislation that authorized or codified dhs cybercenter, national cybercommunications and integrations center. We spent a lot of money supporting this federal cybercenter at dhs. We wanted to give it real teeth and clearly define its rules and responsibilities. Again, as lawyers, something that we heard a lot from the private sector and from other and from dhs they had trouble negotiating with and talking to the private sector because they just werent clear on what the center could do legally and what they can and what they couldnt do. We clearly defined their rule and it also helps with working with other agencies. Now they exactly know, everyone knows what dhs, what the center is supposed to be doing. Provide be predictability and certainty for both the government and private sector. And finally, joan will probably talk about this, cfats authorization. We authorized it four years, a program carried by Appropriations Bills year to year or every couple of years. We gave a fouryear authorization and provided for lower risk facilities and joan was a key author on that piece. Im sure shell chat about that. Looking at this year, quickly, weve moved 14 bills through our committee as of the first six months, and about five or six of those are dealing with discrete Border Security issues. Another five have deal with Emergency ManagementCommunications Issues and a couple of others in different areas one i want to focus on is cybersecurity and that is the federal enhancement act, bill introduced by senator carp somewhere cosponsorered by senator johnson. First, authorizes a federal intrusion network detention detection and prevention system commonly known by einstein, run by dhs. We mandated, put it in place within a year, we also look at early not only address known threats, theres been a lot of criticism about einstein because its ability to detect known threats. We want to get to things we dont know about. We put into place language in the bill that will try to get to that issue of getting to those unknown and to those zero threats. But really, at end of the day, einstein language was, again there, legal ambiguity what dhs could and couldnt do with respect to another agencys information. Every agency has their own laws in place and how they control their information and there were questions what they could and couldnt share with dhs. So this bill will try to clarify that. We can speed up adoption of einsteins abilities, which is 50 of the government. That was kind of the real reasoning behind that and to push it forward as fast as possible. The bill also requires certain best practices and leading practices, cyberhygiene. We try to put those in place and require that upon agencies. Finely the bill, this was an amendment that was added at markup, a bill offered by senator colins and warner and marked up by senators mckcaskil and ayotte, giving dhs authority to direct better cybersecurity hygiene at other federal agencies. So this was something that was added at markup. So that was a big bill we pushed out in july. So moving to information sharing. The bill now well, in this past july, brought up, information sharing bill. Its the bill sponsored by senators feinstein and burr, and moved out of the intelligence committee. This bill, in short, would authorize organizations, companies, to share cyberthreat indicators with the federal government, which you only get Liability Protections for sharing of that information if you share through dhs portal or with a couple theres a couple of exceptions. So thats the bill generally, theres a lot more nuance to it, happy to talk about that further. There was an agreement reached at the end of the session the last period, with about 21 amendments and at this point those 21 amendments some type of action will be carried out on those amendments and were waiting on timing now. So september, we know iran will be one of the first things we do and we have fiscal issues and budget talks as well. Were waiting to see what will happen with cybersecurity bill but we have this agreement in place and thats a great step. I want to end on budget. End of fiscal years coming up, those are discussions well be having and i look forward to seeing whats there, too. Thank you. I think your framework, dividing out under the leadership and oversight management and budget, is something obviously the department we operate within and i think it feeds directly into joans comments next on sort of where things stand for the department, where the Homeland Security act plays into our necessary joint priorities and in keeping in mind, as well, that we have a robust and sometimes complex over sight structure on the hill with the committees. So with no further comments, joan. Thank you. First, thank you, everyone, for being here this morning. Its a great opportunity to be able to discuss with you some of chairman mccalls priorities for the committee. Some of our successes and challenges that we face. Writing law is not an easy thing, you have to get a lot of parties with a lot of opinions to come together and agree to move something forward which always requires some level of compromise and thats not easy to achieve. But we certainly do our darndest to try to move the ball forward as much as we can. As steve was saying, we do conduct a lot of oversight of the department. Lots of hearings, letters, briefings, all of that good stuff. And its very important. I mean it helps us understand what the departments priorities are, how theyre implementing the mission that we have the direction weve given them, how theyre carrying that out. But to a certain extent, oversight is limited. The real power from Congress Comes from legislation. And as i said just a minute ago, that can be a difficult challenge. So this year, one of the most important things theyre were working on in our committee to try to do the first ever reauthorization of the department. A lot of people are surprised when they learn that the department has actually never been reauthorized. And some people think, you know, maybe thats not that important or its more of an academic exercise but it does have a real world impact on what the department is doing, what its priorities are, what guidance were able to convey with more strength than just making sort of suggestions in oversight hearing. Ill get into what the challenges are there. But just to begin with, the department is now approaching 15 years, its been 13 years since Homeland Security act was drafted. A lot of people will say the department is sort of entering its teenage years. And we agree with that. I think the department has some things in common with teenagers. For one thing, its still working to establish its identity. Thats definitely something teenagers struggle with. Having been created out of 22 separate components, thats a difficult challenge. There are various cultures and traditions and protocols across the department. And trying to bring that altogether and create one dhs has been challenging. I know the department has obviously still working on that. Another, i think, aspect of its growth that the Department Might have in common with teenagers is that its trying to establish itself and earn the respect of its peers. And i think this is important especially with with respect to the authorization. Authorization would help to give i dont want to say legitimacy but a vote of confidence from the congressional standpoint to the department that it should be taken seriously and that it is on the level with other agencies within the executive branch. And another thing that the department has in common with teenagers and, im sure many of you have teenagers, its not always good with its money. Doesnt always make the best decisions and spend wisely. So thats something that were continually looking at as well. How is the department allocating funds, is the allocation directly relate td to its missi. Is the spending of dollars directly related to making homeland more secure. All of those things are struggles or challenges for the department and issues that our committee is looking at as well. But in failing to authorize the department as i said, its difficult for us to give firm guidance, because everything is sort of a very strong suggestion without legislation behind it. Also, from a congressional standpoint, concern for us is that when were failing to provide that guidance, were basically ceding our responsibility to the executive branch. Dhs is certainly not the quild we wild west. Everybodys going crazy over there. The secretarys doing a great job and thousand of excellent employees making things happen there. But to allow dhs to, in some respects, provide oversight for itself is not really the way its supposed to work. So authorization would be very important from that respect as well to try to take back some of the authority and responsibility that congress is supposed to have in this realm. Also, just in reality, and i dont mean this to sound scary or anything like that, but Homeland Security is jeopardized in some respects when we cant pass bills that are really necessary to help the department prioritize. Obviously, members of congress have very strong opinions on all sorts of things including counterterrorism, Border Security, et cetera, but without passing legislation, its its very difficult to mandate certain approaches and certain priorities for the department. I have a few interesting statistics here for you to give you a sense of the challenge we face on the house side with our fractured jurisdiction. And 2014, dhs came up to the hill to brief congressional offices 1,742 times. In one year. The department testified before Committee Hearings 123 times and provided 180 witnesses. So, as you can imagine, this demands time, resources, and energy and certainly it has been argued that it takes away from the department foe cutting on actually implementing the mission. Many of you may know this already, but if you dont, you might be surprised to learn that dhs actually reports to more than 100 committees and subcommittees on the hill. The senate is more, i dont want to say organized, but maybe thats the word, where theyre reporting and oversight is limited. Homeland Security Committee on the house said, were sharing jurisdiction with six or seven major other committees and then, like i said, its over 100 committees and subcommittees that have to weigh in on a lot of the legislation that we plight propose. So that is very challenging. Its been that way for a long time. From the beginning, thats been the jurisdictional structure on the house side. Basically, when the Homeland Security committee was formed there were a lot of other committees already that had oversight parts of department or parts of those components. To ask those committee to give up all of their oversight was not a reasonable ask at the time. What resulted was this fractured jurisdiction where dhs is reporting to a lot of masters, if you will. So this is a challenge. It has resulted in a lack of authorization for the last decade or more, and thats something that is going to be difficult to change without a change in the actual jurisdictional structure. So we have black letter law or rules in the house that tell us exactly what our committee, committee on Homeland Security, has oversight of. And the same applies to various other committees, transportation, infrastructure, judiciary, commerce, for example. Theres a lot of overlap. But it can be difficult to actually get a law passed on a specific topic when, say, three committees need to weigh in. Now youve got to get together house, and is that the, democrats and republicans, to agree, which is hard enough, the senate and the house have to agree, and then several committees have to agree on the same piece of legislation as well. So, again, this is challenging. Its something that we have been speaking with house leadership about, maybe rethinking that jurisdiction, though it would be difficult and politically difficult, to be honest, as well. But regardless, the committee and chairman mccall are committed to trying to get a reauthorization done this year. So weve been working diligently on trying to reach out to the other committeed that do share jurisdiction to engage them in the process to literally share legislative language with them and solaicit their input, feedback, incorporate their ideas because at this point, one committee cant do the authorization. Its going to take all of us to come together and make this a priority and agree to find Common Ground and in some cases make compromises. So that has been a major legislative priority. Obviously, Border Security, cybersecurity, counterterrorism remain front and center for chairman mccall. But in addition to that, he feels this in authorization is the right thing to do. That its very important and that Congress Needs to take back its responsibility and authorities to provide guidance to the department. Im happy to take any questions that you might vaughn the specifics of the authorization. Its been in progress for over a year now. Weve got a lot of language written. Were in the process of, as i said, talking to the other committees and trying to make progress and move the ball forward. Were planning to begin markups of the language when Congress Comes back in september, fingers crossed, everybody give us good energy, wed like to see this on the floor before christmas and say that we did accomplish an authorization this year. Great. Thank you, joan. I think you probably will have more than the energy of the people in the room, energy of a lot of folks of the department with respect to the deal of the reauthorization. Im reminded talking about oversight, that secretary ridges comments, among during his first year, when working with him as an adviser, i think i dont know if he colloquially said this or said this in a hearing we need a quick return on letters, witnesses, you didnt respond to this, why arent you accomplishing the following goals, and this is within our first year and he did say, you know, i we can do the work, paraphrasing, we can do the work, we can plan the work, we can tell you about the work but we cant be telling you what we want to without the space and time to be back there actually doing it. I think that we try to give that absolutely appropriate deference to comm