Today to discuss employee morale at the department of Homeland Security. Concerns about morale transcend party, nearly eight years ago my republican colleagues on this Committee Held a hearing on the same subject. Today, the subject of the hearing coincided with a recently released best places to work in the government rankings released by the partnership for public service. Unfortunately, the results indicate a strong need for improvement. This, year as has been the case since 2012, the dhs ranked last out of all large federal agencies. They also rank last out of the seven National Security agencies. I am particularly concerned by the fact that after a few years of minor improvements and government raul, in 2019, employee morale at the dhs decreased again. Given the Critical Mission of the department, i fear the consequences should the department not take urgent. And drastic action to improve employee morale, well have greater challenge to face. I also worry about this environment affects the well being of the more than 200,000 hard working dhs employees from Border Patrol agents and officers working throughout my district to the thousands more keeping america safe. These employees deserve better. Its true that lifting morale is challenging when the Department Remains a target of criticism and scrutiny. And morale may be low because dhs employees are engaged in tough jobs on the front line. Yet this is clearly not the whole picture. Such explanations fail to account for the fact that morale has alwayd been low. Headquarter offices and support components like the office of intelligence and analysis, the management director receive poor ratings from employees as well. Ina sits toward the bottom while other officers in the Intelligence Community have some of the highest morale governmentwide. Even more concerning is the fact that the office of counter weapons of mass destruction, debuted on the list as the lowest ranked office. This is a failure of leadership. According to the partnership while many factors influence agts siagency ranking, effective leadership is the key driver for morale. Despite these concerns there were some bright spots that i hope we can learn from and apply at dhs wide. The coast guard and u. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services have both consistently received high scores from employees and are currently ranked in the top 25 of all federal offices. Finally, the secret service, which is historically struggled with low employee morale has shown signs that a multiyear effort to respond to feedback from employees and their families is beginning to pay off. I understand that therecently launched a similar effort to identify and address some of the primary concerns facing employees. I hope to hear more from do you about this afternoon about these efforts as well as help Congress Might be able to act to give the Department Additional tools to improve morale. I also look forward to hearing from mr. Steer about what models throughout government the department should be looking to as it pursues these efforts. Finally, i look forward to getting an outside and objective perspective from mr. Curry about what dhs is doing well and what risks it exposes itself to under current circumstances. Before i concludes i would like to take a moment to highlight some of the work this committee has done. In 2019, i cosponsored legislation introduced by chairman thompson, the dhs morale recognition learning and engagement act creating the morale act. Im grateful to my republican colleagues to their support in this legislation. Thank you to the witnesses for joining the subcommittee this afternoon. The chair recognizes the ranking member. Im pleased you called this hearing today. The morale of the department of Homeland Security is of the utmost importance. I thank you for being here. Dhs has been besieged with issues of low morale, high level vacancies since its inception. Some of the struggles understandable from an agency created by combining so many unique entities. Almost 17 years after its creation we need to see some Real Progress in this area. The work the department does make this is too important to ignore. Dhs employees over 200,000 individuals dedicated to protecting the homeland and American People. Its imperative to our security that those individuals are satisfied in their jobs and supported by Department Leadership and have support from the people of this country in their mission to secure the homeland homeland. Survey shows though 87 feel they do important work, 63 felt there was no consequence for employees who under performed and only 36 felt motivated by their leadership. These Employee Viewpoints are not new. Similar numbers were reported at hearing during the obama administration. The responses to these questions show fundamental issues with the leadership of dhs and its components. While the employees value their work, they do not feel valued in the workplace. This is a problem that starts at the top. I was pleased the find out dhs has established an employee and Family Readiness council that employees face. I believe the physical attacks on the offices of immigration and Custom Enforcement and verbal attacks as well as the department as a whole members of congress and the media absolutely undermine employee morale. Every day employees strive to carry out Critical Missions to protect the people of this country. They should not be blamed for failings that we as a congress has not acted to fix. Good morale can help drive progress and ensure mission success. Dhs needs to develop a clear vision for addressing the root causes as well as metrics to measure its success. It needs to develop ways to motivate and reward performance. I look forward to hearing from our Witnesses Today on the causes of the low morale at dhs as well as the steps dhs should take to address it. I yield back. Thank you. Other members of the committee are reminded that under the Committee RulesOpening Statements may be submitted for the record. I now welcome our panel of witnesses and thank them for joining us today. Our first witness is chief Human Capital officer of the department of Homeland Security. She has dedicated more than 38 years to a career in public service. 32 of those years in human resources. She was appointed to her current position in january 2016. Our second witness, mr. Chris curry is a director on the Homeland Security and justice team. He leads the agencys work on National Preparedness and Critical Infrastructure protection issues. Mr. Curry has been with gao since 2002 and has been the resip yents resipient of numerous agency awards. It recognizes exceptional Civil Servants and numerous development programs. Before joining the partnership he had a career spanning all three branches of government. I ask each witness to summarize his or her statements for five minutes beginning with miss angela bailey. Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the department of Homeland Security sustained efforts to enhance employee morale and engagement. Dhs employees are on the nations frontline, performing extremely difficult work under challenging conditions. Think of our transportation Security Officers screening passengers weighing being to make flights. Or female employees leaving their families to deploy to a disaster site alistair conditions. For Border Patrol agents trying to humanely deal with the volume of violence. In addition, think of ice whose work led to capturing el chapo, the notorious drug cartel leader. One of our coast guard employees works during Hurricane Florence contributing to saving 75 lives. It is all difficult, critically difficult, and thankless work it can put our employees under harsh public scrutiny simply for doing their jobs. At the same time they are performing these duties, our employees worry about life challenges as well. Bank student loan debt. Picking up kids on time. Taking care of family members or missing another family obligation like a vacation, birthday, or anniversary due to work. This is why we see dhs Employee Engagement as a team effort. Our scores reflect the hard levels we have undertaken. Our leaders are actively engaged. Our Union Representatives take personal time to take a fallen agents little boy to a baseball practice, and our employees volunteer to. Perhaps this is why the dhs employee index improved again, by two Percentage Points in 2019. And nine Percentage Points since 2015. During the same period, the government wide score increased only 4 Percentage Points. In 2019, positive responses increased on 55 of the 71 questions. Opm shows us as one of the most improved three large agencies and gao rated our efforts as a result of our continued improvement. The corner stone is the collective support including the dhs Employee Engagement committee. This progress is the result of paying attention to feds data and reaching out to employees to solicit feedback on root causes of dissatisfaction. Its a textbook example and it has paid off. In 2018, cites receiving the support experienced an 8 increase in the eei and in 2019, sites improved edsites improved 5 . In one case by 15 Percentage Points. We have instituted leadership and employee and Family Readiness or efr. Its designed to build a more robust infrastructure of support for employees and their families. In 2019 our efr council began work on the top five issues our employees experience on the daily basis. We continue on these in 2020 plus we have added two new focus areas, social connectedness and wellness. My office will continue to enhance our efforts and support the Department Leadership. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today and department would not be successful without your support and the support of our brave men and women who sacrifice each day to make our country safe. I look forward to your questions. Thank you for your testimony. I recognize mr. Curry to summarize your statement for five minutes. Thank you. We appreciate the opportunity to be here today. I want to say from the beginning we have tremendous respect for the men and women at dhs and the hard work they do every day. I know that nobody cares more about this problem than the leadership or the department. Since 2003, dhs has been on our high risk list. A big part of that is because of Human Capital management challenges. A big part within the Human Capital area has been employee morale and the things that lead up to what creates a persons morale. Over the last five years, particularly, we have seen a number of positive changes in this area. We have seen dhs make steady progress and do it in years when sometimes other Government Agencies have seen a decrease. They are making slow and steady progress but obviously theres a lot more that needs to be done. Theyve done this by implementing a number of recommendations across a number of agencies. For example, they have implemented our recommendations to develop Employee Engagement plans. Not just the whole department but the components themselves that identify the root causes of morale issues. These root causes are varied. A lot of these have to do with management issues. Do i trust my supervisor . Do i think our agency has the ability to hire the people to do their jobs . These are the things we see across government. A lot dont have the level of morale that dhs has now. I also want to say as was said, dhs morale scores are still toward the bottom of large departments. I think you have to look within dhs to really get a better sense of those numbers. The department is huge. The components are so varied and different and different in size too. What plagues tsa will be different in who the coast guard faces. Its been around for many years and has a strong leadership culture. Its understandable they will get to the point where they face morale issues. Theres a few things i want to point to moving forward that we need to focus on moving forward. The Human Capital and morale issues be held at the same standard of accountability as the mission side. Otherwise, they will not have the incentive to address the issues like they will on a mission side. Also, i think there needs to be a focus on a few specific components. The focus needs to be where the most impact can be made. Lastly, i think you need to continue oversight in terms of these types of hearings and the components and really to drive this home. Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I look forward to the questions. Thank you for your testimony. I recognize mr. Steer to summarize his statement for five minutes. Thank you so much. I cant imagine better Opening Statements than both your chairwoman and your ranking member, crenshaw. I thought they were Pitch Perfect and exactly right. This is fantastic that youre having this hearing. I want to start by highlighting that i think miss bailey is easily one of the best capital officers and is doing fabulous work. One of the most important things i can advocate for is continued focus on the good and not just the bad. The more you can do to service the good, the more you will do to address the bad. Lots of good things are happening. Since 2015 the department has come up nine points. All those things need to be encouraged and reenforced. I want to focus on 12 or 10 ideas that can make it even better. Finding ways to move more aggressively. Part of it is building on things that are there. I want to point to leadership in the secret service. No one better for that position. He turned it around. I think theres a lot more he can do. You heard from chris. He would be fantastic for you to do this on an annual basis. If theres a regular set of hearings, leadership know this is priority for your perspective and they will pay more attention to that. The normal course is one of the powers you have in your oversight is to direct attention and focus on the good things. Number two would be to hold leaders accountable. Most political appointees are selected because they are policy experts and not necessarily have a lot of management expertise. Having performance plans for political appointees as for career employees would be an example of things you could use to direct things that are advantage oriented and hold them accountable. Number three, we need to provide continuity in the Senior Management ranks that doesnt exist today. We ought to be creative and think about igs. They dont turn over every administration. We can think about operational versus policy positions. Creating continuity in managing continuity in management positions would have phenomenal impacts. Gao has a 15year term. Thats the kind of thing you need in management positions. You need to provide budget stability. Shutdowns are the wort. Its craziness, burning down your own house. Got do change that. We also dont need crs and thats something again in congresss house. Career folks are there day in and day out. They need to be invested in ways that dont i think they could be doing poll surveys. One of the challenges it comes very late and can be improved. We need to ensure those Senior Leaders have management experience. They are running huge organizations, often they need to be on board differently. We need to enhance the Leadership Development of the career workforce we need to work on the culture of recognition and begin to pull up the good things. I want to end on this one, im you need to have president ial appointees confirmed people in greater numbers. Right now the agency has the fewest number of Senate Confirmed positions in place even though the human record was confirmed today. That created another vacancy any organization. They are at 41 . Very challenging for any organization. Phenomenal people can be in those jobs, but if they are substitute teachers in an acting capacity. We need to look at that as well. Thank you. Impeccably timed, thank you. The one thing i did not say is its released important, my name is actually pronounced dire. If i had an extra second, i thought i would mention that. I apologize. Its okay. I have been called much worse. Thank you for steering me in the right direction. I thank all of the witnesses for their testimony. Our around each member that they have five minutes to question the panel. We will now recognize myself for questions. According to the best places to work rankings, since 2012, the department of Homeland Security is ranked last among all large federal agencies. I want to start with mr. Curry. What are your reactions to these rank actually i will start with miss bailey. What are your reactions to these rankings . Do you believe the department suffers from low morale . I appreciate the question. With regard to the rankings, it is something that we absolutely should Pay Attention to. We Pay Attention to fed scores in total. One of the things we try to do is pivot off of that and look down into the root causes. Get out into the field and talk not only to leadership but employees themselves. I have gone down to the border several times and gone to the fema installations, the tsa, a variety of places, and sat down with the employees, and really talk through with them. Do you believe the dhs suffers from low morale . I believe we have room for improvement, but as far as from a morale standpoint one of the other things we also have to look at is the fact that as was mentioned earlier, 86 of our employees will put in the extra effort to get the jobs done. So despite everything they are doing, the austere conditions, the difficult work and, sometimes thankless jobs that they have. They still come to work every day and try to do the very best they can. And its clear you have some exceptional employees and we need to recognize that as we work to improve morale so that folks feel supported. Mr. Curry, misses bailey pointed out some reasons for the austere conditions. Do you feel that that is a full explanation for the low morale challenges . No way. There are a lot of agencies across government that have extremely Difficult Missions under under intense public and congressional scrutiny. Its not enough just to chalk the reasons out to that. What we see in the root cause analysis, and in the responses to the survey is there are a lot of Core Management issues that come in play here. Things that all of us want in the workplace that we come to every day. Do i trust my supervisor . Does management communicate with me . Do i understand how im rated . Our other employees held accountable . These are Core Management issues that all agencies, private and public face. I think dhs is made a lot of progress over the years maturing as a department. But where they are with the scores now show we still have a long way to go. Mr. Steyer, anything to add . I think the real issue again is leadership. We see it in our research that about two thirds of the Employee Engagement scores are driven by perceptions of leadership. Thats where the biggest gain can be made here. Its important to give kudos to the things they have done already, and understand that we are talking about an average. We are talking about components that are exceptional, and then ones that are struggling some more. Pulling that apart is valuable. The other thing i would suggest, is even within those components, when you pull them apart, you can see huge variation. That tells you a lot about what is actually possible. As a mind exercise, if you took every component at their highest score over the rankings we have done, it would be at 15 points higher. We know there is a higher ceiling. Give another external it, is there still a higher ceiling. Were talking about the higher ceiling. In terms of the Current Situation about where we are, water the risks associated with not going back to the high ceiling or finding those moments for increased moral . I wanted to mention this. I think sometimes there is a tendency to look at Human Capital matters and morale separately from the mission. They are not separate. It has been proven that places that have much more higher morale do better work and have less turnover, which is a huge problem in customs and Border Protection. So morale has a huge impact. Thank you. Ill yield my time for now since i dont have time for another question. The chair recognizes mr. Crenshaw. Thank you chairwoman. I want to start with flexibility in hiring and firing. Its one of the major issues. Thats one reason i proposed the anti border corruption improvement act, which would streamline hiring and see, by giving waivers to law enforcement. There is an issue with underperformers and how you deal with underperformers. They can staff morale and energy from an organization. Beginning with miss bailey, maybe you could address that and how that does affect morale and i will leave it to the rest of the panel, as well. There is no doubt that under performers have a negative impact on morale. It is a colleague issue. It is something we focus our attention on. One of the things we just established every single component participates on that. We brought in our offices have official responsibility as well as our Security Offices to look at all the allegations, look at how we are handling those disciplinary actions, him play based actions, and seeing that we are not just consistent but handling these things in a timely fashion so that they are not just hanging out there. Nothing is worse than us not just taking action, and not doing it in a timely manner. It is something we are dog about and making sure to address it. How long does it generally take too far an employee . We looked into that. He can take from 120 to 240 days to remove an employee. What about hiring . Flexibility in hiring, pocket that improve morale . One of the things we have introduced is the advanced hiring act. It has a twopronged approach to it that i think would help us to enhance our flexibility with hiring. Right, now there is a number of ways for veterans to be hired, what we would love to do is consolidate that to ones that we could hire any veteran, whether we are at a military transition center, university, a blackout event, wherever we are. Our ability to hire veterans. We have talked to agencies and National Organizations as well with regards to this. We really think its important that we have the ability to hire veterans. The second prong of this is once we maintain 20 of more of our veterans, that we have the ability to be able to hire the rest of our employees. We will come back to blackout hiring. Before we do, mister korean mr. Steyer, anything to add . I think one of the things it does is to allow people that we know are already vetted to not have to undergo vetting again. There is no way to argue that doesnt make sense. Hiring and firing are very concrete things, but organizations that have a strong work culture, if it takes a year to fire someone, if they know the leaders are giving real feedback to people and they are being held accountable within the agency, that makes a difference for peoples morale. I think its deeply entwined with the morale of the organization. Having the right people, doing the work right, is important as well. I do think these are issues that ought to be focused on. The legislation she spoke about is a step in the right direction. On the hiring side, it is way too challenging. On the firing side, one thing i would advocate for is that this is, in my view, a management problem as opposed to a worker problem. Managers are not selected for their capabilities around hiring and firing people and they are not held accountable for it. There are also some ways you might do it that are easier to change the overall system. One proposal we have had is you have a yearlong probation period. After that, you become non probationary. Why . Shouldnt there be an affirmative choice from a manager that you meet the qualifications necessary to stay . Managers are not actually doing their jobs. If you do that you will have many fewer people to fire. There are solutions to this that are more than simply lets fire people faster thank, you the chair will now recognize other members for questions they may wish to ask. I will ask members who were present at the start, based on seniority, alternating between majority and minority. They will be recognized in order of their arrival. Chair now recognizes the gentlewoman from california, congresswoman thank you. Did you take the survey . Yes. The first question on the survey says would you recommend your organization as a good place to work . Absolutely. Considering everything, how satisfied are you with your job . Very satisfied. Considering everything, how satisfied are you with your organization . Very satisfied. Why do you think your responses are so very different than those of your colleagues in your department where you work, given that it rained so low . Any idea . For one part of this, i think my scores are reflective of many employees within dhs, as we have said before, you have uscis, some of the highest ranking component scores. Secret service has gone up by 15 points miss bailey, i am asking specifically about dhs is Management Directorate he had houses the office of Human Capital officer. Is that where you work . Its ranked in the bottom 25 of federal offices and his scene morale decrease over the last two years. So i am asking why you think your responses are so very different than your colleagues. Do you have any idea why that might be the case . One of the things we really need to do is dig in deeper from the management level. I will tell you we spend a tremendous amount of our time looking at the components and seeing where they are addressing their root causes. One of the areas that i would like to focus my attention is digging in deeper into that issue. Why are my scores this way because i have fantastic leadership that supports me every step of the way. The money i need with regard to employee Family Readiness programs. I have top level support for what were trying to do. Thats the viewpoint i see. Are those efforts that are being made now the ones you have mentioned that you want to see . Do you know if theres something being done on that to dig deeper . Deeper . Absolutely. They are being deployed across the department. Okay. You testified in your Opening Statement that workers are simply doing their job. Do you remember saying that . Yes. Well, employees in the department have been asked to carry out policies, some of which they dont agree with. What do you think that does to employee morale . As employees of the department of Homeland Security, it is our responsibility to carry out the policies of the administration. Do you think carrying out policies you donet agree with decreases employee morale . I believe there are areas in which we can work with our employees to help them better understand our policies, to ensure they are able to carry those out to the best of their ability. Lets talk about the separation of women and children. How has the policy of separating women and children from their parents affected dhs employee morale . You just said lets help them understand why they should do that. Theres a good example of policy that we heard people did not agree with. They had to carry it out. How do you explain to that employee and say, this is why you should be doing this and this is why its good policy. One of the things we do is really do is sit down with the employees and just have a conversation with regard to the policies. Make sure they are able to carry out im asking a very specific question. Its a very specific question. Do you think that employees who had to carry out this inhumane policy to separate children from their parents, do you think that helped employee morale . Its a yes or no. No without the data to look at that. You dont know the data about the impact that it had on children and parents and what that has done to employees . You, yourself, mentioned that these employees are mothers and fathers. You dont think there was an impact . That there was an employee who has children to see these children ripped away from their parents as parents themselves. You want to see data on that . Really . Thats kind of sad because you just got to look at parents and ask them and your coworkers. Theres no data to look at here. Theres plenty of data about the impact im Mental Health impacts this has had on children and parents. If you dont start by identifying that, thats a concern. With that i yields back. The chair now recognizes for five minutes the gentleman from louisiana. Thank you. I dont know if my mic is on. The liepgtghts not functioning. Thank you for appearing today. I have a couple of pages to my questions so were going to move rather quickly. One references the responsibility of inflammatory rhetoric coming out of this body and how that might affect morale. Let me ask if its yes or no across the board. Have any of you been a member of the military or member of Paramilitary Organization like the police force . Madame. Lets me clarify, outside of administration have you worked or been in the field . Its not a derogatory question. You just need to clarify. No, sir. No. Let me share with you that my experience and i believe my veteran colleagues on this committee would likely agree that morale has a tendency to be unit specific or Company Specific when measured generally and platoon specific or individual specific. Theres always that guy thats the light of the group and lends increased morale to his colleagues, his brothers and sisters that hes served with. The vastness of dhs and how its structured or not structured im going to get to. Before i get there, lets talk about inflammatory statements. Members of this congress, for example, made accusations that dhs was intentionally killing young immigrant children, made comments that dhs exists within a cultural of violence and racism. Made comments that dhs is a rogue agency operating beyond the bounds of the law. Made comments that dhs is running concentration camps along the southern u. S. Border. On top of that, months of denial that a crisis at our southern border even existed followed by months of delay to issue supplemental funding to address it. I ask the panel, yes or no, do you acknowledge the vetriol from elected officials has contributed to the very morale that were discussing . Do you think demonizing rhetoric coming from members of congress and shared heavily by the media can have damaging affects . Yes, and i have seen the personal effects of. It mr. Curry . I have no way of measuring, it but i dont see how it could help. Good answer. Mr. Steyer . Certainly, public figures who denigrate Civil Servants, that will cause a reduction in morale. Moving quickly to my next phase, of the 17 agencies mr. Steyer that you stay they rank 17 of 17 large agencies, says dhs have the dubious distinction of being the only large agency that has never been fully authorized by this congress . I believe that is correct. I believe you are correct. The 115th congress, we passed a bill authorizing the dhs which did not go anywhere. Many members of this congress voted against that full authorization and it could not get past closure in the senate to get to the floor vote. The dhs, you said it operates with jurisdiction over dhs. That is precisely what full authorization would fix because it currently exists as a fractured agency with you have jurisdiction across eight or nine committees rather than focus on one central controlling command and one committee which, should be this committee, this committee as a whole with oversight responsibility isnt. How would suggest to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. We focus on fixing the problems that we know to exist, that we should function as a congress and bring full authorization to dhs and address the words we used out of this body. I yield. Thank you very much. We are going to do a second round of questions of people want to stick around. I appreciate the comment in terms of focusing on what we can change. With, that mr. Steyer, you mentioned in your opening comments some of the improvements that have been made through components like the coast guard, Cyber Systems as well as the secret service. Can you provide some highlights for Lessons Learned there that might be applied more Department Wide . Certainly. Again it comes down to leaders doing great jobs. He may have been the first non secret Service Agent to become the head of that component. He turned it around and did a fabulous job. It underscores another recommendation which would be that you have Something Like that in the secretary for management position, you would see all kinds of great things that could happen. Begins with the point chris made, which is that fundamentally the mission is about people. It is about having people who were the right folks in the job, who were supported and doing what they care about. Another thing we have not yet cited, which i think is phenomenally powerful, it is true at dhs untrue across the entire government. The people are there for the mission. It is close to 94 of the workforce who would go the extra mile to get the job done. Interestingly, nasa is the Number One Agency in the rankings. Those numbers are not that fundamentally different. Mission numbers are the same. It is the leadership numbers that changed. You asked for specific examples and begins at the top with leaders you see this as a primary part of their function and a relationship of trust with the workforce so that they are able to believe that their voices being heard in a fundamental way. A lot of this stuff seems straightforward and basic, but in truth it is not done all that often. Mr. , curry anything to add . I would like to piggyback off that issue of trust. There has been a concerted effort by the leadership to listen to the employees and not is listen to them but show them how theyre implementing their suggestions and implementing their feedback, because that builds trust. There is a lot of specific things you can do to address. That thank you mister curry. Can you explain any efforts you have ongoing to listen to the employees and then show you are responding to their feedback . I think one of them is our readiness initiatives. Its something i would like to talk about. The scores only tell you a bit of the picture. Going down and speaking and trying to understand what it is that could help them, not just on the job as a whole person. Some of the things we have looked at is the general stress. When you are out on the border, and i have witnessed agents whose hands are shaking as they are trying to process a six year old they found abandoned in the desert, i have witnessed when these that came across my desk, just today before i came in here another Border Patrol agent died. Seeing all of these things, we know that we have to treat this issue as the whole person. It is not just about the employee. Can you specifically say how you are responding to Employee Feedback . In a meeting with them, we know that general stress, dealing with personal relationship issues, mindfulness training to help them with general stress, we have delivered stronger bonds training to help them with personal relationships. We have delivered Financial Literacy to them. We have also created a Mental Health website to help them with their Mental Health as well as introduce them to Employee Assistance programs and independent care. Those are examples of how we have listened to them. Quickly, one of the main concerns that was highlighted was the failure of leadership opportunities. Can you explain any plans you have four new programs within that space . Its not just about our ses, we have fantastic programs. One of the other things we are doing is trying to go down much deeper into the organization and provide Leadership Development training for all of our employees. We have joined duty programs, bridges programs that help with the seven 9 11 level. What we are really trying to do is create a leadership casually with every employee, not just our leadership. Thank you very much. My time is expired. I now recognize my colleague, the gentleman from texas, mr. Crenshaw. Thank you. Regarding the question, assuming it was asked in good faith, about the decrease in morale because of policies that needed to be implemented for, the child separation policy, it was ended in june of 2018, in 2019 we had a decrease and ice morale. I dont yell at cbp agents, i talked to them. I talked to hundreds of them. It is pretty obvious to me what worries them, and the fact that people are attacking i. C. E. Facilities and verbally attacking them, from the highest places in government, it is pretty obvious what keeps them awake at night. But back to what is working, i mentioned before that i wanted to get to the black hat hiring, a lot of people dont know that is. That involves cyber workforce, which is extremely important, considering what will inevitably be an increase on Cyber Attacks on the homeland, as we engage with actors like russia, china, iran, and non state actors in the need to protect our infrastructure and private industry. Tell me about black hat hiring and how that is increasing our hiring flexibility. One of the things we did, and thank you to congress, we received title six authority which gave us the authority to look at our Cybersecurity Workforce and recreate everything about the way we recruit, higher, retain, pay, compensate our cyber workforce. We have taken full advantage of that, giving us the opportunity to go into some of these different conferences, hold job hiring events, and be able to hire the spokes on the spot. We are able to do market sensitive pay, so that we can pay them how much they should be paid and not be tied to the antiquated gsa stem. We will also eliminate the 1929 system that does not work for anybody. Instead, what we will do is work with subject Matter Experts to ensure that the capabilities we are going to hire people for match the mission we have a need for. I have full support of cessna, as well as our ceo community, and we will implement that this year. How many more employees do you expect to hire under that program . I am not sure if it will be more employees, it will be, we will hire about 150 more this, year and 350 more next year. Mostly under yes thats right. And our cia so community. A question that has come up before to me is thinking outside the box and the ability of Border Patrol and i. C. E. To be more flexible switching between Border Patrol and i. C. E. Because of locational prevalence. If you think of the military on shore duty versus sea duty. Has there been discussion of that . Is that feasible . With that help morale . We track all of that. One of the things we have done for cbp, after serving so long on the border it is like a deployment. What we have is a Rotation Program where they can then off to go to another location. I. C. E. Has a lot more urban locations so their spouses and families have opportunities they might not have had on a border town. We have a lot of those. We also have instituted retention incentives as well as special pay, critical pay, everything we can think of to ensure that they are given what they need to do the job. In my limited time left, recently there was a win for paid family leave and federal government. How do you anticipate that playing out with both morale and also readiness . I think it goes into effect in october, so oh pmo regulated and we have to see with that. It is just like any other flexibility. Today they can use family medical leave act, they can you sick, leave annual leave. I think well manage the same way we do every other flexibility, and i dont anticipate well have a lot of difficulty because well be able to plan nine months in advance that we can plan for the readiness will need to address. Thank, you i yield back. Thank you, i now recognize for five minutes the gentleman from california. Mr. Steyer and mr. Curry, the u. S. Secret service is one of the departments that had been experiencing some negative moral, bad moral, decreasing morale, and for the last several years there has been a turnaround. The u. S. Secret service director, mr. Rand off elise, was a part of the turnaround. I want to talk a bit about when you denigrate employees. The president of the United States was doing that with the director of the u. S. Secret service while he was turning it around. He ridiculed him, calling him names before he fired him. What do you think that does two employee morale . As i said, i dont think they can help, but i think employee morale is frankly a lot more complicated when youre looking at an agency across 15 to 20,000 people. There are just a number of factors theyre going to have a voice to that survey. I understand. Im trying to ask, do you think that is a negative impact, when the president of the United States is basically calling names of the director of the u. S. Secret service, who has been turning around the secret service to increase morale . I dont have any data showing what kind of impact that has on morale across such a large organization. It certainly does not help morale but i think there are so many factors that go into individual morale, and the component of moral, i think is a difficult question to answer. Congresswoman, i think there is no question that when Senior Leaders, in any as part of our society, have negative things to say about their employees or the Civil Servants that are there as career and meritbased employees, its a bad thing. We ought to have thank you for saying. That we have lawyers across the board understand it is a problem that weve seen not just now, but it one that weve seen for decades. And i think its a mistake, because fundamentally these are folks that are working for the American People. Theyre working not for any particular policy that the Political Leadership decides, theyre working on the basis of supporting the constitution of the United States. So fundamentally one of the things that we do as an organization is a service to america medals where we try to highlight Great Stories of federal employees. Wed welcome were actually getting nominations right now. We would welcome nominations from any of you on the panel. We need to create a culture of recognition. In my view, focus on the good, youre going to create more uplift than anything else possible. Mr. Stier, there are currently 13 senior positions vacant from the secretary to the deputy secretary to the heads of cbp and i. C. E. Most of these roles are filled by acting officials. Yes. What effect does a lack of permanent leadership have in an organizations ability to promote that positive change youre talking about . The metaphor for me, its like the substitute teacher. You can be an amazing educator, but if youre the substitute teacher you dont yourself perceive your job as the longterm difficult problems and those on the outside, the class, the children, other teachers, dont see you as that longterm partner, either. So it is it diminishes the ability of leadership to do their job well. And its a mistake. So i would say that part of the problem here is a systemic one. We have 1,200 Senate Confirmed positions. Thats too many to actually get through the senate. So one of the things we would advocate for is fewer senateconfirmed positions and then taking aggregating the operating ones like the undersecretary for management away from the policy ones and trying to create longterm continuity among them. One of the best things this committee could do for the department of Homeland Security is to keep texalice in the job as the confirmed individual in there for a lengthy period of time. You would see huge improvement. So creating that as a structural option woobuld be fantastic. I yield back. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from louisiana, mr. Higgins. Thank you, madam chair. Ms. Bailey, would you clarify for the committee and for the American People watching, the survey that were referring to across the agencies of dhs, how exactly is that survey administered to employees . The federal Viewpoint Survey is administered it goes out by opm to every employee who is on the rolls by i think its october 1st. So its online . It is online. Is it mandatory or voluntary. Its voluntary. And in your experience, do folks that are unhappy make a little more noise than folks that are unhappy . We make a tremendous effort to make sure everybody fills out the employee viewpoint. What kind of effort . A great deal of encouragement . You said its voluntary. Yeah, so sometimes we hold contests, we do Different Things to we have leadership really support. So at the field level as a creative interaction, within that unit to encourage participation in the survey . Yes, because it gives us valuable information that allows us to have at least have a jumpingoff point to thank you. I just wanted to clarify for all of us and for those watching that this is a voluntary survey and dhs is doing its best to force it, to permeate it through the entire agency. Its quite a challenge to get everyone to fill out that survey, isnt it . Yes, it is absolutely a challenge, because not everybody has a computer. Its not washington, d. C. So thank god. Pulling a tso off the line to take this can be a little bit challenging. But we have figured out a way to do it. So let me ask your opinion about stress, mr. Stier. Generally speaking, is it your experience that when an individual is in a period of stress, theyll be less satisfied with their job, especially if thats the cornerstone of whats creating the stress, their job, will they would be less satisfied with their job or more satisfied . Im going to just offer you a quick anecdote and give you an answer that may not be what youre expecting. When we first did the best place towork rankings the very first year, the office of management and budget was the number one ranked budget. Number one overall Employee Engagement, they were the last on work life balance. And the reason they were number one is they were working as hard as possible, they were working like dogs, but they knew that what they did was important and they felt important. So i would say to you it depends on the nature of the stress. This is a missionoriented workforce. They care about what theyre doing. Sometimes stress is part and parcel of achieving mission and then its going to be okay. If its stress for wrong reasons, when you dont know who your boss is going to be, when you dont have the information you need to do your job well, if you dont know that youre going to get the help that you need, that kind of stress not good for morale. In the department of Homeland Security, some of the stresses were dealing with, a complex woven web of challenges for the men and women youre dealing with on the border, remote areas, difficult to have opportunities for family there. Youre dealing with incredible volumes of crossings on the border that weve never seen before. The types of crossings have certainly changed over the course of the last several years. So if one and ill leave you with this question, mr. Stier, in my remaining time, if any reasonable person could have projected the kind of volumes of crossings that were dealing with on the border and the totality of circumstance that dhs is dealing with, and if one would have presumed five or six years ago that the department would still remain not fully authorized by congress, would a reasonable perspective from five or six years ago have projected a decline in morale, a challenge to morale within the agency based upon what were dealing with right now . I think its entirely dependent upon the leadership. So im with you on the issue of the only recommendation from the 9 11 commission that hasnt been enacted is the one youre describing, which is congress should create a mirror to the executive branch. So entirely with you that that creates a lot of trouble for the department to have multiple oversight bodies. There should be one. But i would say to you that all the challenges youre describing, good leaders can manage them and good leaders that are both political and career that have continuity, because again i think its the shortterm nature of the leadership that is a source point of a lot of the challenge, would be able to manage the kinds of difficulties youre describing very well. Excellent. Very thoughtful and insightful answers. Mada, chair, i yield. Thank you for holding this hearing. Thank you. And i thank all of the witnesses for their valuable testimony and the members for their questions. Before adjoining, i ask unanimous consent to submit two statements for the record. The first is from the union which represents custom and Border Protection officers, and the second is from the American Federation of Government Employees who represent nearly 100,000 dhs employees. Without objection, so admitted. The members of the Sub Committee may have additional questions for the witnesses and we ask that you respond expeditiously in writing to those questions. Without objection, the committee reusiness, the subcommittee stands adjourned