Transcripts For CSPAN Federal Officials Testify On Government Waste Fraud And Mismanagement 20170218

Particularly on the Government Affairs portion. We have a Mission Statement that we developed last congress with my former Ranking Member senator carper and then my new Ranking Member had a very good addition to it. The original one was to enhance the economic and National Security of america and the senator suggested we add for efficient and effective Accountable Government and thats what the gao and Inspector Generals do. We certainly appreciate your work. I dont know how many times ive said it, youre our favorite folks in government. You give us the information that really can make government more efficient and effective and accountable. Todays hearing is really on the gaos high risk series. Their list. This is something thats been prepared by gao since the early 90s. The facts speak for themselves. Just the last ten years, a gao report that 240 million over a tenyear period by enacting their recommendations to make government more efficient and effective. Thats 24 billion per year. Of course, igs play a key role in that as well. Senator grassly and i sent a letter requesting the igs last Congress Give us a list of all their recommendations that are outstanding. The result was 15,222 net potential savings about 87 billion. So even in the federal government, thats real money. Its really folks like you that can make a huge difference. Todays hearing what we decided to do is because weve listened to without notes and he can speak an awful lot but rather than have him completely on the hot seat there, we thought wed invite two Inspector Generals, mr. Mike missil and mr. John rock testify in terms of their department and the activity in the high risk list. And then we also invited mr. John thompson to be here not for the hot seat. I wanted to bring in the director, this is obviously the census is under this committees jurisdiction. I wanted to bring in the director and get your viewpoint in terms of how one of those agencies is listed on the high risk list. How you view that. What you do. What are your challenges in trying to get off the high risk list and how seriously you really take it. I truly appreciate it. Well go easy on you here. We truly appreciate you coming. Again, looking forward to the hearing. Ill turn it over. Thank you, mr. Chairman, for holding this important hearing. I really i know that i really consider gao the most important entity in washington d. C. Its an independent, nonpart Season Agency that investigates how the federal government spends tax dollars. Your work supports us in meeting our legislative and oversight obligations under the constitution and helps improve accountability in the federal government. The important thing is you provide information thats objective, fact based, nonpartisan, fair, and balanced. At the beginning of each congress, you release a report of Government Programs that are high risk due to vulnerabilities to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. Youre invited the leader comptroller to testify. I appreciate this hearing is one of our first full Committee Meetings of the 115th congress. Your 2017 high risk report provides us with a list of priorities of how this committee can target and root out waste, fraud, and abuse. For example, your report says the federal government overseas an 80 oversees 80 billion in taxpayer funds for information and technology investments. But many i. T. Experience significant cost overruns. Contract oversight is not a new problem in government but it remains one of the while most Government Employees are dedicated public servants, the high risk report highlights that more work is needed to ensure that the federal mccarcinomas Skill Mission critical skill g mccaskill to its list of high lovac areas. Knowing that our next census is rapidly approaching, im grateful the director is here to provide a status update on the program. The cost of the census has risen over the last decades with the 2010 census being the costliest u. S. Census in history. Billions of dollars were wasted on programs that had to be scrapped at the last minute in order to ensure the 2010 census was done on time. Given these challenges and the Important Role the census plays in counting our citizens as well as advocating precious taxpayer dollars to communities im eager how the bureau expects to effectively manage costs and monitor the brand. Im grateful to the Inspector Generalals for joining us here today to discuss work to improve Government Programs at the department of Homeland Security and veteran affairs respectively. Has full access to the National Database on new hires. A key tool for cutting waste and fraud in many of the governments largest programs as well as allowing states to aggressively pursue Child Support payments. The law also strengthens gaos ability to take legal action if an agency refuses to provide gao with information necessary to perform its functions. This law is a great example of what our committee can do when we Work Together to promote accountability in the federal government. The federal government spends more than 3 trillion annually on behalf of the American People. We must ensure those tax dollars are spent well. Thank you so much for being here. Ill look forward to questions. It is the tradition of this committee to swear in witnesses. So if youll rise and raise your right hand. Please be seated. Our first witness is mr. Eugene dodaro. He has more than 40 years of experience with gao include willing as acting comptroller general, chief operating officer, and head of the accounting management division. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman. Good afternoon to you. Im very pleased to be here today to discuss the latest addition to gaos high risk program. Im pleased to report that many of the areas of the 32 areas on the list in 2015 have shown improvement and are in a position now that they either meet or partially meet all five criteria for coming off the list, leadership, capacity, a good action plan, monitoring effort, and you have to demonstrate some progress. This is the one thats the hardest to meet, to actually show youre reducing the risk or making progress in fixing the problems addressed. This progress is due to commitment by Agency Leaders as well as staffing the agency and the congress. Im very pleased thatted the congress in the past 114th Congress Passed over 12 bills to address high risk areas and were part of the reason why were showing this progress and Congress Held over 250 hearings on areas discussed in gaos high risk program. So im pleased this committee in particular was sponsoring bills, holding hearings. I appreciate that. But congress is key to making progress. If you look at almost every area that we identify as achieving progress, congressional action has been instrumental in achieving that degree of progress. One area has met all the criteria coming off the list managing the sharing of terrorismrelated information. This was a very important area to the safety of our country and i could assure this committee while its coming off the list it doesnt mean its out of sight. Were going to keep an eye on it. Make sure that things stay on track in that area. Another area is department of Homeland Security. Theyve continued to show steady progress. Weve theyve improved their ability to monitor their action plan that they have in place. They really need to focus on their acquisition programs, fixing their Financial Management systems, and improving employee morale. Thats what they need to continue to do. There are a number of areas on the list, however, that need substantial attention. These i would particularly cite to this committees attention. First is veteran healthcare. I added that to the list in 2015 for a number of very Important Reasons that i can elaborate on in a q a. But im very concerned that theyve only made limited progress. Defense department Financial Management. Weve talked about that several times before this committee. Theyre still the only Major Federal Agency that has not been able to pass the test of an audit. Information technology and acquisitions and operations that senator mccaskill mentioned. Thats an area that needs significant oversight and attention to fix. Cyber security. Both Cyber Security as it relates to federal governments own Information Systems but also Critical Infrastructure like the electricity grid, Financial Markets, air Traffic Control system and others. We added the federal government as a high risk area to the list in 1997. This is the 20thyear anniversary. Weve been trying to get agencies to move on that area and despite even the breaches, we have a thousand recommend additions that are still outstanding in the Cyber Security area. And then reforming the Housing Finance system. This is one area that was not addressed coming out of the Global Financial crisis. Fanny may and freddie mac are still in conservatorship that theyve been in since 2008. A lot of the risk has moved to the federal government either directly or indirectly. Directly through the federal Housing Administration who had to get an infusion of treasury between 1 and 2 billion a few years ago. 70 of all the mortgages right now are either for Single Family homes or directly or indirectly supported by the federal government. We need to address fanny, freddie, and get the private sector back into the Financial Market as well. Provide oversight over programs to help Indian Tribes and their members. Were very concerned. We looked at the education programs. Not properly staffed. Healthcare area. There are no quality standards for healthcare. A lot of vacant positions. Not properly staffed, no quality standards for healthcare, a lot of vacant position, distributing funds to send people to private sector care if its not available in indian hospitals, theyre still using a formula they used in the 1930s. It needs attention. Also where the tribes want to exploit oil and gas on their lands but they need federal permitting and licensing explore oil and gas on their lands and its slow. Theyre not able to generate that revenue to help them deal with those issues. Secondly, both to dispose of waste from Nuclear Weapons complex as well as from commercial power plants. The liability right now is approaching 1 2 trillion dollars. I believe it to be understated because of problems we saw one example for d. O. D. And not properly estimating environmental viabilities for cleaning up after department op rehabilitations as well. The federal government spends millions of dollars every year to clean up this waste but it keeps growing, not enough Decision Making in those areas and we have a number of outstanding recommendations. The last is the census, as you mentioned. We added that to the list because the last census was over 12 billion, costliest ever. In order to contain costs they introduced a lot of novel concepts using the internet. Address lists from spatial and other means rather than doortodoor canvassing and using administrative records. All these things add to the risk. Final plans have not been put in place yet. We look forward to answering questions from this committee. Thank you. Mr. Thompson is the director of the Census Bureau. Before that he was president and ceo of norc, known as the National Opinion research center. Director thompson. Good afternoon, chairman johnson, Ranking Member, mccaskill and members of the committee. I appreciate the opportunity to update you on the 2020 census. Im proud to report today we remain on the Critical Path to rea readiness. The 2020 census has been added to the most recent high list risk from the Government Accountability office. Both the 2000 and 2010 censuses were also on this list a reflection of the complexity, scale and importance of condu conducting a fair and accurate census. This decade, the complexity is heightened as we replace the paper and pencilbased design with Innovative Technologies that will save taxpayers bill n billions of dollars. We already have robust controls in place to mitigate the risks of carrying out this constitutionally mandated task. As we plan and test the 34 operations and roughly 50 systems that comprise the 2020 census, were aware of the many risks the program faces. Thats why were working rigorously to moderate and manage and mitigate those risks. In the final years of the deca e decade, Risk Management is critical to our Operational Plan in 2020. Other important part is continuing to work with the colleagues at the gao and inspector of commerccommerce. I discuss it in greater detail in my testimony for the record including overarching risk of funding uncertainty. Today, i want to highlight following specific risk areas, were concentrating on. First, cybersecurity, fraud detection and insuring the publics trust. Were actively securing our sk m skims and devices for the went went census and 2020 census and field tests insuring we prevent Cyber Attacks and we will use a layered strategy. Second, insuring systems read readiness. We developed and field tested proof of concept systems and the design is supported by findings from the census tests. Now that weve awarded nearly all the key contracts for 2020, were finalizing our systems ahead of the 2018 end to end census test. Third, refine our field procedures through testing, fourth, managing the integrative master schedule for the 2020 census and its supporting progr programs. Lastly, documenting and valid e validating our 2020 census life cycle cost estimates. Census tests are key to final e finalizing our designs and reducing risks. Last year, we tested core census operations in texas and los angeles county, california. Additionally we tested our address canvassing procedures and systems in parts of North Carolina and st. Louis, missouri. We learned many lessons from these tests and were using those lessons to refine our operations and mitigate the r k risks of an innovative census. In addition, the Census Bureau has planned test operations in 2017, these involved Critical Systems in operations that must be tested ahead of the 2018 end to end census test. The 2018 end to end census test is the final major field test before the 2020 census. Field operations will begin on august, 2017 with a census day of 2018. Pierce county, washington, providence county, rhode island and blue field beckley oak hill area of west virginia. Collectively it will cover about 77,000 housing units. Well test and prove in nearly all of the 2020 census operat n operations, procedures and field infrastructure. We will also produce prototypes of our geographic and data release products making sure all of theisen sus systems work individually and in concert with each other is critical. Using the lessons from 2018 will make any necessary adjustments to insure were ready for the census and finalize our plans for operations. Weve been transparent how were approaching the redesigned census and held public Quarterly Program management reviews, we publicly documented and tracked our biggest decision and shared our master schedule with the gao every month. There are many challenges ahead. Were confident with appropriate funding levels we can success l successfully execute the 2020 census. I need to note 2017 and 2018 are critical years in the census cycle. The funding we receive in these years will have a great effect on the outcome of the 2020 census including achieving 5 million in cost savings. Wi were six months away from field work on the census but not yet clarity regarding the programs funding in 2017. In january, uncertainty about the fullback iscal 2017 budget us to make difficult decision s on scopes of the program and uncertainty funding lists. This will add to more work in 2019, to a delay in opening three of our six Regional Census Centers in 2017 and the elimination of advertising in the 2018 end to end census test. It will lead to deep cuts in program and Test Management operations despite the gao and our Inspector General deeming them critical for a program of this complexity. I must stress we need Adequate Funding to do development, validation and documentation and planning necessary for Risk Mitigation in which the gao has urged us to conduct. We are planning an innovative modern design for 2020 that will bring the census into the 21st century. Our approach takes advantage of new technology and data sources while minimizing risks. With the funding we requested we can execute the design that will save taxpayers billions of dollars. I thank the committee for your interest in our work. I look forward to discussing the challenges we face and how were addressing them and continuing a productive relationship with the gao in the years ahead. Thank you. Thank you, director thompson. My next witness is mr. Michael missile. He is the Inspector General of the department of Veterans Affairs, prior to services to Inspector General. He was a partner at the law firm where he led policy and regulatory practice groups. Thank you. Chairman johnson and ranking senator mccaskill. And the members of the committee. We seek to prevent and detect fraud, waste and abuse and make meaningful recommendations to drive economy, efficiency and effectiveness throughout vas programs and operations. Our goal is to undertake impa impactful work that will assist v. A. Providing appropriate and Timely Services and benefits veterans so desearchrvedly earn insuring proper distribution of taxpayer funds. I have had the privilege of serving since may 2nd, 2016. Since that time i fully immersed myself in the work, policies of the oig. We made a number of enhancements since i started including iss issuing a Mission Vision and value statement, increasing transparency, creating a Rapid Response team, expanding our Data Analytics capabilities, being more proactive in our review areas. I believe these changes will enable us to do additional impactful work in a timely manner. The oig shares a similar mission with gao. It is important we have a strong relationship with gao to insure we avoid dupetation of effort as much as possible. To that end, one of the first things i did when i started was to meet with comptroller general dodaro and his senior staff. Our offices have had a number of discussions and communication since that time to promote coordination and oversight of v. A. Gao added managing risks and improving v. A. Healthcare to its biannual high risk list in 2018 and remains on the list for 2017. The gao focuses concerns op on am biggie ounces policies am big gus you olympicss, oversight and accountability. Inadequate training for v. A. Staff and unclear resource needs and allocation priorities. While our work is determined by what we believe is the most effective oversight of v. A. , a number of our reports address concerns in these same five areas. As the Committee Requests i will highlight single of the work with gao placing v. A. Healthcare on the high risk list. It should be noted many of the reports could fit in more than one area. We issued a number of reports in the past few years that include v. A. s ambiguous policies and inconsistent processes, a review of the Health Eligibility center determined the v. A. Had not effectively managed its business processes to insure effectiveness creating maintenance of eligibility data. We made 13 recommendations in that report including one focused on controls to insure future enrollment data are accurate and reliable before being entered into the enro enrollment system. V. A. Concurred with the recommendations and provided sufficient information to close all recommendations in october 2016. Proper oversight by management would insure 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 factor that significantly contributed to delays in rising costs. This occur due to a series of questionable Business Decisions and mismanagement by v. A. Senior officials resulting in a project years behind schedule and co costing more than twice the initial budget of 8 800 million. We made five recommendations and v. A. Management concurred with all recommendations. We recently requested information from v. A. On the implementation status of the recommendations and will keep them open until v. A. Provides satisfactory evidence of implementation. As we have reported in our list of v. A. s Major Management challenges within v. A. s annual million report we frequently identified v. A. s struggles to design, procur and or implement functional i. T. Systems. I. T. Security is continually reported as a Material Weakness in our consolidated Financial Statement audits. V. A. Has a high number of legacy systems needing replacement. Moreover, after years of effort of replacement of legacys Scheduling Software, a new scheduling system is still not in place. V. A. s issues with Scheduling Software are related to its inability to define requireme requirements, if a commercial solution is available or if it must design a system. Replacing systems has been a major problem cross the government and not unique to v. A. We issued a number of reports outlining access issues and our work in this area is continuing. One prevailing theme of the work related to wait times and scheduling issues were i inadequate lack of to provide training for v. A. Staff for scheduling appointments. We conducted extensive work for wait time manipulation through 2015 and 16 after the allegations at the Phoenix Healthcare system surfaced in 2014. As we 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 long wait times were not accurately portrayed to management. Swra needs to accurately v. A. Needs to accurately forecast services in the longterm and short term and they are required by the choice act to review v. A. Occupations with the largest staffing shortages. In our most recent reported issued in september 2016, we identified medical officer, nurse, psychologist, physician assistant, physical therapist medical technologists as the occupations with the largest shorta shortages. In conclusion, the oig is committed to providing effective oversight over the operations of v. A. A number of reports address the five broad areas of v. A. Placing v. A. Healthcare on its high risk list. We will continue to produce reports that provide v. A. , congress and the public with recommendations we believe will help v. A. Operate its programs and services in a manner that will effectively deliver serv e services to veterans and spend taxpayer money appropriately. This concludes my statement and ill be happy to answer any other questions you or the committee may have. Thank you, mr. Missile. Our final witness is mr. John roth, who served as Inspector General since march of 2014. In addition to doing previous work for the food drug administration, mr. Roth had 25 years as a 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 testify today. Homeland security faces long standing challenges and we at the office of Inspector General have focused on Major Management and performance challenges in november, we listed six. One, creating a unified department, two, employee morale and engagement. Three, acquisition management, four, grants management, five, cybersecuri cybersecurity, six improving management fundamentals. Additionally with the new administration the department will face new responsibilities. We understand the significant investment the department will be making to satisfy its obligations under the president s executive order to conduct a southern border area to do that efficiently and effectively. The department has historically performed very poorly in this area. Prior efforts to fortified the southwest border known as sbi net were cancelled in 2011 as being too expensive and ineffective. In a Pilot Program in arizona dnh spent about a billion dollars to build a system across by the way miles of the states border before abandoning the initiative. We must not allow that to be repeated. Given the risks involved our office will use a life cycle approach to physically insure the southern border. Lifestyle audit approach means we can audit the Program Throughout its life span rather than waiting for it to be completed or partially completed before looking at it. In this way we have an opportunity to stop waste and mismanagement before the money is spent rather than identifying it after the fact. Our first report will address Lessons Learned from the First Initiative and other acquisit n acquisitions to securing our borders. We hope to have this report out in the next six weeks. We plan to recrview the comprehensive review required within 180 days. Future audits will also address the planning, design, acquisition and construction phases of the southern border barrier. Similarly, the department will face a number of challenges executing the president s executive order directing the department to hire an additional 5,000 Border Patrol agents and 10,000 immigration officers. We recently completed and audit that highlighted the number of bottlenecks in federal higher. In 2015 it took an average of 282 kdays over nine months to hire a Border Patrol agent from the time the Job Announcement closed to the date the applicant was actually hired. Other positions likewise encountered similar significant del delays. Again, we think this is an unacceptable level of performance and look to make recommendations for improvement. As with the acquisition area, we have initiated the first in a series of audits to further review the departments Human Capital strategies to insure the department can quickly and effectively hire a day versefied workforce and will continue to do this throughout the process racer than waiting for the higher to be completed. Finally we will focus on the highly trowblt grants mana lly management program. In report after report we see fema holds them accountable and the ore sigversight to monitor assistance grants is ineffective, inefficient and vulnerable to fraud, waste and abuse. In 2015 we found a questioned cost rate of 29 unacceptably High Percentage and serves as an illustration of femas continual failure to adequately manage grants. We believe that the root cause of this problem includes a failure of leadership, inability or lack of desire to hold gra grantees accountable and syst systemic issues that may only be cured by systemic statutory fixes. We have started to explore with this Committee Staff potential solutions and we look forward to working with you on this important issue. Mr. Chairman, this concludes my testimony. Im happy to answer any questions you or the committee may have. Thank you, mr. Roth. Let me start with mr. Dodaro. In your testimony, you talked about cybersecurity, the 20th anniversary being on the high risk list. Others talked about challenges and cybersecurity. Can you summarize or give me the main reason why its so difficult to get agency heads or get the departments up to speed from the standpoint of cyb cybersecurity . Yes. This has been a long standing quest ive been on. When we first started this, we built a computer lab that simulated the operating environment of the agencies able to hack into their systems to show them how easy it was to get into their system. We still werent getting a lot of traction or attention. People thought, who is going to do that . You could see this coming years ago, as we became more dependent on technology. Even with the breaches now, theres not a sense of urgency yet as much as i think there should be across the fgt. Let me stop. Because of these high profile brea breaches, are you seeing any increase to attention . Theres some and a lot of scrambling going on but not resulting in meaningful improvements in as many cases as i think. Two cases going on. The government got a very slow start in this area despite our ur urgings. Secondly its saddled with a bunch of legacy systemings decades old where security wasnt built in up grafront and they cant patch them fast enough and they havent been replaced with more modern systems with technology built in the front. The workforce is not up to where it needs to be in order to be am in to to be able to take care of this issue and not enough follow through to see theyre impleme implemented. A lot is management, too. You need technical people. A lot of weaknesses can result in employees not being aware of anything and downloading Malicious Software into your system. Theres a welldefined best practices for having a comprehensive effective cyb Cybersecurity Program in place. Time after time we find agencies do not have this comprehensive program in place. Theyre not responding to incidences when they do happen as fast as they need to in order to reform the problem. This needs continual attention over time. These legacy systems are part of the millstone around the agencys efforts to improve cyb cybersecurity. We did a report recently, im happy to share with the committee, of the oldest systems in the federal government. Some of them one, at the department of defense was operating still on a floppy disc system, on the one hand they said, nobodys going to hack into it. On the other hand, you know cybersecurity. Its going to be not sustainab sustainable, over time. I cant emphasize how concerned i am about this and how vulnerable that we are. That extends in 2003, we extended to it the Critical Infrastructure protection across the country. Most of the Computer Resources are in the private sector hands. There needs to be sharing between the federal government and private sectors, a lot of reluctance to share information on this regard in security threats. The threats are evolving much faster than the agencys ability to keep up with it. We did finally pass the table stakes first step in cyb cybersecurity legislation here, the senate intel subcommittee and this committee, the cyber finance community enhance act. They gave a lot of authority in terms of imposing cybersecurity on the new einstein system of the agencies. Has that had any effect whatsoever or just slow implementation . Those things help. There have been five different bills passed, thats one of the most important ones you cite, gives a sense of importance and urgency to it, some progress but not enough. Not enough to match the threat, in my opinion. Inspector general missile, obviously weve had real problems and other senators have had problems as well, specific problems. One of the questions i have for you, in your office, i believe you took over with a pretty troubled office, i appreciate the fact youve instituted Mission Statements and trying to address that overall, what percent of your reports involve investigations on specific instances, either through whistleblowers or things you read in the news of course we referred a number of those to you, versus overall suspicions in general to address the problems in the v. A. Healthcare system . A very High Percentage. We have a number of different reports that come out. Our healthcare unit will do reports on specific cases much like you mentioned in toma and other facilities and we have a very vibrant suspiciinspection as well. Audits and we could focus on an individual situation. A healthy split of those. Almost a 5050 type of thing . Hard to estimate. Probably more than 50 right now. I was wondering if youre overwhelmed by individual instances taking up all our agi time versus concentrating on daytoday audits to improve the overall system. Thats one of my goals. Were trying to clean out a lot of the work that was there when i started, a lot of the more individual cases. What id like to move for is more impactful work, where were doing more National Healthcare revi reviews, were doing more audits of programs, et cetera, and were moving in that direction. Inspector general roth, you were talking about the challenges the department has in terms of the executive order implementing the reports, hig r highering the individuals. Hiring has been a real problem. You talked about hiring bottlene bottlenecks, can you describe those in the remaining seconds i have on my time . Certainly. We did an audit regard to secret service and cvp. We found bottlenecks were the result of lack of advance planning. They wouldnt have the kind of right personnel specialist available to work the systems they needed to work, one problem. The second problem they had was that the systems they had were antequated, they didnt talk to each other and the flow of paper and bodies through the system didnt work as well as it needed to. The third is the frankly the polygraph system that both secret service and cvp have in place creates significant bottlenecks with regard to getting people on board. Can you quick describe the bottleneck of the polygraph system . Lack of personnel or it is that. Ill use secret service as an example. Thats a collateral duty that a special agent would have in addition to the duties that he unfortuna normally has of investigation. Basically he gets to the polygraphs when ever he gets to them. That will always drop low on that priority scale and backs up the higher theyre able to do. What we recommended to the secret service as well as the cvp, enhance, have a number of specialized polygraph operators who could do that work as their sole job. It would seem to me these bottlenecks could honestly be easily overcome . Absolutely. It requires advance planning and why we want to do a life cycle approach on this higher, warn them about whats coming and have them prepare in ways that make sense. Good. Senator mccaskill. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Back in 2009, gao did a report that concluded Borders Protection had not completed a cost analysis of physical borders zplrngts borders . To yourlage h laglage knowledge knowledge, has that ever been done . A cost benefit analysis . Not to my knowledge. I dont think so. No. The answer is definitely no. Definitely no. In your opinion at gao, should something that is going to cost billions of dollars begin without a cost benefit analysis . No. And would it be typical to begin a multibillion project without any appropriated funds . That would be difficult to do. No. Sy undi understand the administration is relying on a previous authorization for border security. I support border security. Do we know how much this is going to cost based on what youve looked at . The last time we looked at it in the 2009 report, the estim e estimates given at that time was 6 6. 5 million per mile for fen e fencing or barriers that for Pedestrian Crossing and 1. 8 for vehicle cross iing at that time. Right now, theres about of the 2,000 mile border, theres about 650 miles where this fe e fencifence ing exists. Twothirds of the remaining where the federal government doesnt own. Its either state or private sector land. Its going to have to be either bought or publicly conde condemned . Yes. Part of that happened with the 650 miles as well. So the federal government would be taking land from the ranchers that live along the border . Or buy from them or whatever. Thered have to be negotiations. Theres ownership issue of the border. Theres a lot of rugged terrain along the border that would have to be dealt with as well and the acquisition area that both the Inspector General from dhs and gao have seen the departments ability to manage large acquisiti acquisitions, is one of the reasons theyre still on the high risk list. Part of that would have to be improving how they go about carrying out acquisitions. With regard to the Legal Authority about the prior expenditures, id have to go back and take a look at that. Maybe there is some authority there that hasnt been used yet. Generally speaking, youd have to get a new appropriation. Let me move now to census. Im trying to i looked at the contract, not the contract, i looked at the amount, we entered into a contract for about a billion dollars, a lot of money. 887 last summer to integrate. We had a lot of bad experience and mr. Dodaro can speak to that. Integrators have had a rocky history in terms of success. Youre asking them to integrate 50 different systems. Why do we need to make it that complicated, mr. Thompson . Why do we need to integrate 50 systems . Cant we count people without integrating all those different systems . Thank you, senator. We do need all we have 34 operations in place for the were planning to do for the 2020 census and supported by 50 systems, as we mentioned, we gave your staff copies of those systems yesterday. The systems have to talk to each other, which is why why 50 . Im somebody who just landed from another planet, explain to me what youre doing with 50 systems. Why do they all have to be combined for counting people especially since were going to be doing self reporting, i believe, for the first time on the internet . Yes. Why . I dont understand. Let me give you some examp examples. So we so we have one system tha we allow people to respond over the internet with. That has to be integrated and talked to our control system so we know how many people have responded over the internet so when we want to go out and collect the information okay. Theres one. Right. 49 to go. Right. Right. So then we have to be able to do the inperson response. So we have to have a control system for that, so we have to know okay. For people that dont answer, you got to go out and find them and talk to them. Right. There has to be an instrument that collects the information from the people that dont respond. So we have to give our interview the handhelds, hopefully this time. Handheld device. Which we had to scrap last time. I understand that. I mean, i could go i could go on, but there is a need for each one of these systems. Weve really, really carefully looked at the systems that we need because we dont want to make it overly complicated. Well, 50 sounds very complicated, mr. Thompson. It may be that you absolutely have to have all 50, but i dont think youre on schedule. I think youre having only solve some of it is funding, i agree, but you need to have an endtoend test, i believe youre planning for 2018. Yes. You were going to do like in spanishspeaking areas. I just worry that were going to have deja vu all over again, that were making this more complex than it needs to be. Are your confident that, i miea, it seems to me in this day and age, asking people to respond on the sbesrnt, internet, and on te briefly go to another item. People are going to reluctant to give their information over the sbes internet unless theyre reassured with the security. Are you working with dhs, Cyber Security so youre confident youre going to have the protection of that data that will reassure people . Because every person who responds over the internet is going to save us real money. Yes. We are working with dhs. We are working with the National Institutes of standards and technology. We are working with some private contractors to try to do Penetration Testing of seriously. We also, by the way, do employ the einstein software on our Internet Connections so we are protected by that, too. We work with dhs to get that in place so we take that very seriously. Thank you, mr. Thompson. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Senator carper . Thanks. Thanks so much. We appreciate more than you know the work thats done at gao on a lot of areas. But especially in preparing the highrisk list. And ive said for years that for me, for my staff and i, it is our todo list, and i think for this committee, democrats and republicans, its our todo list. You and i met early this week, we talked about areas where progress has been made. One of those is with respect to Property Management. Real Property Management. Would you explain why you think we finally got the ball in the end zone on that . Yes. First, the administration finally issued a National Strategy to deal with this, to lay out with some goals and some measures to really have a good plan. To make progress, you need that. Secondly, Congress Really helped a lot with the passage of two bills at the end of last calendar year. One, it would be creating an independent board to make recommendations to sell or dispose of some highvalue property that the federal government has. Thats a good step forward. I believe. And secondly, the second bill codified the federal council, Property Management council in place, gave it some todo lists, if you will, of Congress Giving it to them to improve the data, to regularly report. Hopefully it will result in a resulted reliance on leasing as well. Thats an area that still needs to be addressed. You know, federal government leases some property for decades that it would have been far cheaper to build rather than lease. So were trying to get the agencies to focus on some highvalue leases and doing a cost comparison in those areas. So, and theyre starting to improve the accuracy of the information and the Property Management database. So some leadership, some strategies, good support from the congress, all these are ingredients to the progress. Good. Thank you. The term called fizma, a law called fizma, federal Information Security management act, i believe thats what that stands for. Yes. Thats been around forever. Frankly not too effective in terms of realtime security for federal the dotgov do main. We passed fisma legislation, i think a number of us on this panel worked on it, dr. Coburn worked on this when he was with us as well. And general, do you all have any sense for how the passage of that legislation is being implemented and for good or for not . The idea is to make it realtime, not after the fact yes, Continuous Monitoring, i will will have to say from dhs point of view, we had a somewhat different experience than what mr. Dodaro recounted, think in the last year of the administration, there was a real sprint based on some of the highprofile hacks that had occurred in other agencies to try to get, for example, Continuous Monitoring online, to get all components to actually report the results to a central headquarters location. To get twofactor authentication on every machine and every user having two factors, in other words, a card that they stick in plus a password. Then lastly to get whats known as authorities to operate, which is basically a license, a certification by the chief Information Officer that those systems, in fact, are effectively locked down according to fisma stanstandard. We have seen, i think, some improvement, obviously with dhs, theres a long way to go, but particularly in the last year, we have seen some improvement. One of the things we did in this committee is to make it possible for dhs to compete for cyber warriors. In terms of the kind of pay and personnel policies that they could offer to compete, whether its against National Security agency or the private sector. And does anybody know whether or not thats making a difference yet . We did over a year anybody know . Anybody have a feel for that . Okay. I when jay johnson became the secretary, became the deputy secretary of the department of Homeland Security, i suggested to name them, go every month or two to gao, sit down, whether it was jean or top folks and liter go through the highrisk list that pertains to the department of Homeland Security. My sense is they did that and made a difference. Can yukon fiou confirm or deny . The relationship weve had with the department of Homeland Security is a model to dole weah the highrisk list. When i first met jane, she was puzzled as to why they were on the list. I sent a 20page letter over, heres everything you need to do. She said, i understand. She developed a plan and every so many months they report to us. We have quarterly meetings and they made real progress. We agreed on 30 things that needed to be done, needed to be measured. They fully met 13 of them now. They have a ways to go on the remaining piece. Ive suggested that model that could be used in place particularly at the v. A. With those areas as well. So that we just confirmed a new secretary of the v. A. , dr. Shulkin, whos going to be a good one. Yes. His predecessor certainly was, bob mcdonnell. We have the Inspector General for the v. A. , right . Correct. And one of my pieces of advice to dr. Shul kin, spend time with you and develop constructive relationship, good working relationship to figure out how you and your folks can help the v. A. Going forward, and the same idea with gao own the highrisk list. Right. Right. I try to meet with every cabinet official, talk about the highrisk area. Weve had series of meetings with omb, agency on the highrisk list and gao which i personally participate in and thats, i think, had some benefits and showing progress. Go ahead. Mr. Thompson, how are you doing . Im doing fine, thank you. Very nice to see you. Nice to see you. Give us one thing that we can do at our end in addition to what weve already done with respect to the census to make sure the next census comes in on time, on budget, maybe even under budget. What are one or two things this committee and the Congress Need to do to be a good partner . Thank you for the opportunity, senator carper. So as i said in my testimony, in my oorral testimony, one of the issues were dealing with is the uncertainty of our funding. I know this isnt appropriations, but i know that weve gotten good support so far from both the congress and from omb and the administration and if that continues, that will be very good. Like i said, we are in a very, very pivotal year right now, 2017, wed like to get uncertainty lifted there and we also are looking forward to working with the administration on the 2018 budget then with the congress. So support there. Also help with getting administrative records. I mean, i know weve talked before about getting access to the National Database. The new hires. Your support there would also be helpful . Good. Good to see you all. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I appreciate you holding this hearing regularly and this is an opportunity for us, you know, to gauge progress on some of the highrisk areas and some of these topics youve already discussed with others, but the two that jump out to me are Real Property and you talk about in your report the need for us to move more rapidly from leases to ownership where theres a longterm lease, its not cost effective. You also talk about physical security at federal buildings. And i want to probe those a little further. The one that always troubles me is the number of federal facilities that are not being used or not fully used and yet we cant seem to transfer those to either cities or states or private sector or nonprofit needs. And this is where senator carper and i and the chairman and i and others have worked on this for years. Can you give us, mr. Dodaro, a report on that part of the Real Property high risk that you over the years have identified . Where are we on the disposal of these properties . One example we my understanding is they received a successful bid and theyll be transferring that so theres some progress but not a lot. Thats why i think this legislation that Congress Passed last year to set up this independent board to identify some high value real properties. Some of the properties arent worth a lot of need a lot of repair. The agencies havent had enough money in order to put in, to pick up the properties to make them appealing or attractive to sale. One area that hasnt been explored very much, another area on our list, the Postal Service. They have a lot of vacant space i think could be perhaps rented out to the other agencies and could create other vacant space that could be sold and transferred. So the bottom line to answer your question is theres been some progress incrementally, but not as much as id like one reason you say theres been progress, year end, we did pass those two bills finally. Right. They shouldnt have taken so long. One does provide for inventory, another does provide for this commission. Is that part of the reason you think things are going better just because we have set in place now some new laws in relationship to this and now i suppose our job is along with you to monitor the implementation of that, make sure its actually done right . Thats exactly right. In my opinion, in my experience over several decades now, that most Major Management improvements that succeed in the government have a statutory underpinning to them because it brings a degree of continuity and certainty over time and congress can hold people accountable. Yeah. Can you tell us this afternoon how many square feet, how many buildings or what the value is of those buildings that are either not being used at all or are only partly being used . Yeah, i dont have that information at the ready. Ill be happy to see whats available and provide it for the record. Its an extraordinary number and it is a great opportunity to save some taxpayer money, too. With regard to the Cyber Security, you talked a little bit about this earlier, wun bbu of the challenges you cite in your report is the agencies and departments having Cyber Security workforce with regard to dhs, working at mr. Roth, we have specific legislation that was meant to address that to try to attract some of the best and brightest and retain some of the good people. For both of you, hows that working . Hows the framework working . Are you pleased with it . Is it something that you think were making progress on or not . Go ahead. Anecdotallanecdotally, it se the chief Human Capital officer at dhs is trying some Innovation Solutions with regard to hiring sort of i. T. Specialists and cyber specialists. Our plan was to let this go for a little bit just to have them get their sea legs before we do a formal anecdotally, using this opportunity to try to hire as many as they can. The idea of the legislation, this was started back in 2014 with senator bennett, myself, it was established some common language and job codes specific to Cyber Security because we had identified that as a problem that it was difficult to hire people because we had not provided this sort of standardization as to what the job descriptions were and job codes and then we got some of the legislation passed as it relates to dhs and frankly i just dont know that were making the progress that we should be. Clearly when you look at whats happening with regard to the hacking not just in government but all over now, this is a huge priority and these people are in high demand, people who have Cyber Security skills to be able to push back or go on the offense. You think, mr. Roth, from your time at dhs that you see progress in this area, and if not, what do you think we need to do . The rest of the government is not subject to the same rules that you are under this legislation. So if its youre sort of the beta, youre like the test case here. Is it helping . Is it working . As i said, we havent done a formal audit of it, so its very difficult to make a formal conclusion, but anecdotally, we see dhs trying different things, for example, they had a job fair in which they brought a number of people who were qualified under that i. T. Specialist and, you know, were able to provide offers on the spot. So, you know, were hopeful, but, again, until we actually do a formal pieces of work on it, its difficult to conclude. Could you do that work on it and let us know how its working . One of the aspects as i recall was a central database to simply, which seems common sense but wasnt being done, is that being done to your satisfaction . Is there a central database now where people know what all the Cyber Security needs are and as you said, when theres a jobs fair, can people give an offer quhout havi quho without having to go through a long process . People werent patient enough to wait for the government response . They needed to know right away, theyre getting the job or not, they had other offers in private sector . Right. My understanding is they recently held one of the first job fairs that, in fact, did that. This is anecdotal, what theyre telling me. We vbt evaluahavent voolevalua how long will it take you to audit it . Typically takes six to nine mont months to do a fullfledged audit. Can you speed that up and get back to us in six months . Well so quhdo what we can. Obviously an urgent issue to make sure we have the capability to be able to push back and go on the offense when necessary. Thanks very much. Senator langford. All of you, thank you, for the work thats ongoing. We appreciate it very much. I got about 45 questions in 7 minutes here. Let me try to get through as many as i can. Mr. Dodaro, just a request for you as well, this congress changed the w2 forms and the acceleration of that small delay, excuse me, in the returns coming to try to deal with identify theft and deal with fraud. Is that something a year from now youll be able to tell us how it went . Obviously thats just being implemented right now. When do you think well get results on that . Yes, we will review the use of that for the filing season. Im pleased the congress acted oun o on our recommendation to do that. We think it ill be tremendously helpful. Thats one we should have done before, we obviously lost billions of dollars in past several years with the lack of action. For those of us that work in indian policy, i was a little surprised to be able to see that some of the eindian issues for the first time were on the highrisk list. My question for you is was this a firsttime issue or the first time to look at the ipd indian issues . It reached a threshold from my stand poicpoint when i saw i multiple fronts. Right. Schools, health care, energy resources. I thought it was time to elevate the attention. No, its clearly a national tragedy, some of the things that are happening in some of the indian country. And so glad to be able to see it reach that limit. This is something that needs to be addressed. Can i ask specifically on the health care side, when you look at the health care, are you examining the differences between tribes that run their health care or between the Indian Health Service Running the health care . Theres some locations where the tribe builds it, operates a dpilt, facility, so theyd be listed under ihs. Its different whether the tribes running it or its being run nationally. Yeah. Weve been focused on the federal facilities. Not the tribes facility. Theyre in the middle of it so far. Exactly. We havent looked at that. That may be a good control to look at at some point to be able to examine. There are obvious differences between how they run and whats happening to see the differences as were looking for solutions. Okay. In the long term. Thats a good point. Vets health care. Let me ask about the issue on choice. Theres been some conversation ongoing about v. A. And occasionally giving the appearan appearance, at least, of dragging their feet on implementing choice and some of the pushback on that. What are you experiencing . Does it look like v. A. Is currently actively implementing the Choice Program in the locations and the way the law states . Question, weve done some reports weve already issued. We already have we also have some work thats in progress right now. Does appear that progress is being made like, for instance, with respect to network providers, the physicians were providing the health care outside of v. A. , those numbers have increased fairly dramatically according to v. A. Theres still issues there with respect to the Choice Program that were looking at. Were looking at access. Were looking at payments as well. As well as the sharing of records. When a veteran goes out into the community, theres an issue in terms of making sure the records get back to v. A. So that the v. A. System will have those records as well. Okay. Terrific. Is there a way to be able to get an accurate number of the cost per patient per procedure that actually includes everything the private sector would include . When ive asked v. A. Before for a cost for certain items, capital expenses, all those things were all different colors of money. Obviously in the private sector, they cant do that. So we cant really get an accurate cost of what things are other than its always more expensive in the private area. But we really cant find out what it is for v. A. How do we get that number . We have not looked into that. I think there would be challenges to getting that but i certainly will take that back and see whether we can get that done. Okay. That would be very helpful. Obviously every business has to do that to be able to calculate what the actual cost is including capital cost and depreciation and such. It would be helpful for us to have an apples to apples comparison as we deal with issues in the v. A. In the days ahead. Social Security Administration is not completely done with everything they need to do especially in the disability area. Very small progress youve noticed. One of my great frustrations is, we talked with them at length on the occupational grid. You know full well for what that is. For everyone else tracking that, occupational grid is basically a big dictionary of all jobs in america because according to disability, you cannot be employed by any job available in the economy. Since 1978, that list has not been updated. There seems to be slight changes in our economy since 1978 and the type of jobs. My recollection from your report is weve currently spent 178 million updating the job dictionary of the jobs in america and we still dont have that dictionary. Is that correct . I think youre accurate. Ill double check on that area. Were particularly concerned they havent finalized the ability to use assistive technologies in that area. I think personally that Congress Needs to act to update some of the disability laws that underpin the process that the social Security Administrations following. I think if you wait for them to do this job, its not going to get effectively reform. Yeah, i could not agree more. I would tell you when we get the grid updated, we need to have a mandate the grid is periodically updated on a routine basis rather than waiting every 40 years to be able to update it. We might want to update it more often than that plus do other disability work that desperately needs to be done. Mr. Thompson, let me ask you about the American Community survey. Last time you and i talked a little bit about it, you were testing out some pilots on trying to remove some of the mandatory language to see how that would work. Obviously, for people that get it often hate the American Community survey. Hows that going and the testing and removing some of that mandatory under penalty of law language . So we have been can you turn your microphone on there as well . Sorry. So we have been working on testing some language. Weve actually done some focus groups looking at the language and we are at the point where we have come up with some language that we believe is not as threatening. Okay. And wed be happy to share that with you. Great. When will that be piloted . Out in the public . Were doing an additional okay. We already tested it in the public. Were doing one more test this year and then well be ready to go. Great. That would be helpful to see. On the sbirinternet filing for cens census, are you combining that with theline fion the online fi taxes . Is there a possibility they can file their census work on the same tie p time they do their passes or two different passwords, two different systems, two different requests from people to be able to do their taxes at one point online but their sun scensus at anothe point . Were looking at a separate no way people can fill out their census work while theyre completing their taxes . We would love to work with the irs and have them be able to direct people to our site to fill it out, but we havent they couldnt complete their taxes and also compete their census not at the current point in time. Not by 2020 certainly if its not being tried . No, sir. Thank you. Senator tester . Thank you, mr. Chairman. And i think its a great idea, senator lankford, and, yes 20 the only issue with that, john can correct me if im wrong, but i think the census thing is on a particular day. Whos a resident, how many people are a resident on april 1st date, so youd have to have people, you know, with their filing dates are different than that. So you wouldnt be able to colate the specific dates. Move it to april 15th. At any rate, thats not why i came. First of alls, thank you all for your testimony. This is for you, gene and mike, painly with the veterans Choice Program. Can you tell me how reactive, either one of you, the v. A. Has been with your recommendations of being on the high list . Have thigh taey taken this pret seriously . Have they dragged their feet . What have they done . With the rencommendations weve made, theyre beginning to take action. Weve had new ones. There are still over 100 that are outstanding, senator tester. Im very concerned they dont have a good plan for addressing the highrisk areas. We say that in our report. Did you tell them that . Oh, yes. I met with secretary mcdonnell three times. Once to tell him we were putting him on the highrisk list. He agreed. Second to tell him they werent having a good plan to come off the highrisk list. The third time, offer gao in different areas, i. T. , for example, to help them understand best practices and how to do this. We had the meeting. Theres been very little update. Mike, where do you interface on this process . We interface because a number of the areas identified in gaos highrisk area are also areas were looking at as well like, for instance, i. T. Is one area where we have a group focused on that. So what hows their response to you been . Has it been proactive . Or has it been, ah, what the heck . They they say theyre committed to adhering to the recommendations that we have. Have you seen that commitment in action . I mean, seeing it is one thing, doing its another. In some respects, yes, like, for instance, for vha where we had at our last semiannual report, there were 563 outsta outstanding recommendations. Theyve now reduced that to 320someodd. So i believe theyre trying but theres still some areas which give us great pause. Im very concerned, senator, that theyre not moving in the direction with the progress that id like to see in the area. Im planning to meet with secretary shulkin to talk about this. Theres a disagreement also we have with them on wait times. We think theyre waiting too long to measure wait times. Theres an appointment scheduled. Theyre not measuring the whole experience. The i. T. Systems. I could go on and on. Gene, you have a lot of fans in koecongress, you do. I think you can tell dr. Shulkin that, i say this as Ranking Member on v. A. , if they dont take you seriously, were going to. Well do what we need to do to hold them accountable to make sure youre getting actual productivity on it. As pointed out by the chairman and the ranks membie rachnking yourself, youve saved a lot of money. Efficiency is not a bad thing. You can certainly utilize that. You brought up the Housing Finance system in your opening remarks, gene, and thats something weve worked on a bit. And i agree with what you said, you know, taking the taxpayers off the hook and getting it out of conserveshativeship is reall important. Do you ever get a chance to look at any of the legislation that we do . Is that within your purview to see if it actually solves the problem . Theres legislation that gets to your points but im not sure if it gets to your point. If were asked to look at the legislation and comment on it, will we. Have you been asked to yes, we do. It basically says what i already said. Good. Thats what i thought it said, too. Yeah. But weve developed criteria for evaluating legislative proposals. Id be happy to look at any legislative proposal but we dont do it proactively unless were asked. Id be happy to do it. But youve already done it, you said. No, no, no. Weve developed criteria for how we could evaluate a legislative proposal against the criteria that we think needs to be done. But i was so concerned, and commissioned a study on my own authority, how could you solve this . What are the principles you need to address . We have those. We can compare them to any legislative proposal. Super. I think well do our best to get that in front of you so we can get your recommendations to make sure were not pushing something that doesnt solve the problem in its entirety. Be happy to. Thank you. Last month, senators durbin and duckworth, a report regarding President Trumps refugee ban. This is for you, mr. Roth. When would you anticipate this to be completed . Some of it depends on departments response. Weve already started a number of field interviews with the various airports, the individual s, the cvp officers there. We requested documents, gotten very good cooperation from cvp. Were going to be starting the highlevel interviews hopefully as early as next week. We dont know how long its going to take, we dont know what were going to find. My direction is this ought to be weeks, not months and working as quickly as we possibly can. Appreciate that. Have you had any difficulties getting the documents you need for the investigation . No, the cooperation has been very good. All right. And so there are no findings you could share with us today, i would assume . No. B but we understand the urgency and are moving as quickly as we can. I appreciate all your work. Just a closing comment, this is not why i came here at all. The census figure because of technology should be going down, not continually going up. This figure should be costing the taxpayers less, not more. Get ahold of facebook, they can tell you where everybody lives today or on the 1st of friapril. Exactly. Wouldnt hurt to maybe interface with those folks to find out how they can help you and save money. Thank you, senator. We actually do talk to google and facebook quite a bit to understand how they can help us. Okay. Ill ask you the same question i asked dodaro. Talk is one thing, doings another. Okay . All right. Thank you very, very much. Senator tester, as long as you brought it up, appreciate you looking at our charts. Ill give director thompson a chance to respond, why has the cost, for example, per household, increased by such a dramatic amount . You know, these are inflationadjusted dollars, 12 dimes times in terms of total dollars spent. Mindful of the fact you just started in this decade. Right. No, no, i actually so i started working at the Census Bureau as a career person in 1975. And i worked there through the 2000 census and i was the career executive for the 2000 census. So ive got a lot of experience with the census costs. I think i dont think i know there are two underlying causes for this. One is which is not the major cause, is that the population has grown. But that doesnt explain this growth. The other the other factor is that weve been doing the same census process since 1970. Essentially. And that is, you know, we mail out, they get mailed back, we capture the information electronically off the forms then we go out and we collect the information from those that dont selfrespond. And that operation has always been a paper and pencil operation. And as our population has gotten more complex, and you know, communications gated communities, different, more languages, the only way you can adapt a paper and pencil process to that is to put more people on it. So just to give you an example, if 20 in 2000, we determined that the job had gotten so difficult for the people supervising the enumerators we had to give them an extra assistant. And that added 250 million to the cost of the 2000 census. The fact that weve had a paper and pencil process and its just we just had to throw more and more people at it. Its not the requirements increased in terms of what youre collecting, its really just the complexity of the population . The basic census questions have been essentially the same since 1970. I mean, weve had a long form and short form. The short form has been about the same. In 1980, hispanic origin was put on the short form. Its been about ten questions. And the long form, the acs now, its been about the same length. Mr. Dodaro . Yeah, mr. Chairman, i believe another contributing factor is the fact that the census has been done through mail process but the Response Rates gone down considerably since 1970. I think in 1970, john was, like 78 , now its down to low 60 s so if people arent responding, they have to go send people out to their homes and even if you use the internet, the question is, facebook, not everybody is on facebook. Will they respond . And thats been a challenge for people, particularly as the demographics change in the country and theres notably a number of hard to enumerate areas in lowincome and minor populations that theyre working hard on with special projects. So i think, you know, qthe question is, how willing are the American People to provide the information . My guess is we will be holding a hearing on this in the future. That will be a good upfront, give an explanation of that. Senator harris . General roth, thank you for your years of service. I have a few questions for you. You indicated in fy2015 that it took on average about nine months to make a hire at i. C. E. Is that correct . Thats correct. My rough math tells me if it takes that long for each person that needs to be hired to fulfill the directive from the executive order, that it would take 11,250 years to process an additional 15,000 officers. Im sure it will not take that long, but have you assessed how long it would take you based on current standards to actually bring onboard the 15,000 new officers that are directed . We havent. The only thing that weve looked at is the last time that there was a surge of deportation officer hirings, for example, that number that is reflected in my testimony actually almost quadrupled. In other words, when you try to put more people through the same pipeline, the log jams are going to get even greater. So thats why we want to sort of take a look at this earlier. Again, theyre not hiring one at a time. Sure. Serially. Theyre trying to do it sequentially. And i would say thats from the moment that the announcement has closed to the time that that person is actually hired, but then, of course, theres training and all sorts of onboarding that would have to go on, so that ninemonth number is actually quite a bit longer. And have you been given a timeline for when those 15,000 new officers should be brought onboard . We have just started our work on this area so we dont have any information yet as to what the departments plans are in this area. Has there been any discussion about a goal in terms of a date that that would be completed . Not yet. Some of this depends on what the departments planning is, so what we do, like audits, well take a look, for example, if its an accusation, well look at the phase of figuring out what the need is, for example, or the requirements. And then we will basically follow the department through that process. So i dont think the department has yet started or at least im not aware the department has actually started the process. The initial process of figuring out how it is that theyre going to onboard this many people. And i appreciate that in your testimony, you indicated that you will audit with the aim of ensuring that dhs can quickly and effectively hire highly qualified and a diverse workforce. Is that krejcorrect . Thats correct. I think thats the department eegs gos goal as well. Right. Based on my experiences as a prosecutor in california, we know that when we bring officers, Law Enforcement officers onboard, we want to bring them onboard after we had an ability to vet who they are and ensure theyll be able to perform their job in a correct manner. Do you have any concern with this historic goal of bringing on 15,000 new officers, i understand there are only 7,000 there now, that we might compromise offer abiliur abilit on highly qualified officers . Certainly he the last time cvp had a hiring surge there was a concern about the level of quality that they were getting and as a result, for example, thats when congress stepped in and instituted mandatory polygraphs, for example. But thats always an issue any time that you try to increase the hiring, the worriy is your going to reduce the quality. I think that is something we will look at as we move forward in this process. And can you then give us, in about three months, an update on what you believe congress should do in this circumstance to ensure we are bringing on highly qualified officers . As i said, this will be a process, so i cant really commit to as when were going to get the first product out there that will sort of describe what the department is doing. But we will certainly do this on an ongoing basis and of course as an i. G. , were committed to keeping congress fully and currently informed. What would you recommend i ask you as a timeline for when you would come back to report the status of the quality of the officers who are being brought onboard . I think in about three months were going to know a lot more about what the department thee months, thats fantastic. Thats great. Three month, well know more. I dont know if were going to have the answer. You know i would like to know, too, so i will expect you to come back. We can arrange it through the cheryl and Ranking Member. Were happy to breief anybod on the committee who could like to hear about it. One concern across the country in terms of Law Enforcement officers, were adequately hiring and training with an eye toward implicit bias and procedural justice concerns so what is your audit is attracting the departments ability to hire in a way we look for implicit bias and also train so we avoid implicit bias and encourage procedural justice . Right. We havent looked specifically at that issue. Again, this series of audits is going to be more mechanically based. That is, how it is that you take a great number of people and try to fit them through what is really a finite pipe. Yep. We do, of course, as part of what we do a lot of civil rights, Civil Liberties investigations, excessive use of force, those kinds of policing issues which we will continue to do, of course, as our mandate, but we havent specifically looked at that issue. What would be your recommendation based on your experience that we could do to audit beforehand so we can prevent what otherwise will be something youre going to have to react to afterward, which is there will be distrust, there could be unintended and serious consequences including looet l consequences if were rushing through this large number of people without properly vetting them on this issue . In particular when were talking about i. C. E. Agents and the issues that are at play. Well, i mean, i think one of the issues is a leadership issue so this committee obviously will have the opportunity to take a look at who the nominees are for these various positions and get the kinds of commitmentes that i think would be required to send the message to the rank and file as to what is the appropriate conduct the rank and file has. If youre asking me my advice, my advice is take it very, very seriously when it comes to the i. C. E. Director and cvp director. Thank you. Thank you. Senator paul . Thank you, mr. Chairman. If you want to save money on the census, maybe we could, lets see, give people 100 deductible, deduction on their taxes, and then those who sign up for welfare make it part of signing up for welfare. I bet 95 of the public pays taxes. Have them sign up and use the data. If it happens on different dates, change the rules. Why not just say, estimate how many kids youre going to have, what your income is going to be on april 1st. An estimate to a certain extent. Maybe we should charge people too use the census data. We dont do any charging, right, for census data . No, sir. Companies love this date a, right . Its important to know what incomes and how many people of a certain age, companies could be charged for. Ill bet you i could run the Census Bureau without any money. If youll sell it to me. I think thats a great idea. If youll sell it to me. But anyway, we shouldnt just stick to rules. We have a rule it has to be april 1st. Make it it has to be sometime during tht year that year. Pay people for the time to fill it out. I guarantee if you let people have a 100 reduction, 33, 34 reduction in their taxes, they would do it probably. Theyd probably fill it out. Compare that to the postage that you send out on millions and millions of things and then you male them again and have somebody knock on their door. You could really get a lot of it done through the tax system and probably through the welfare system as well. For anybody that signs up. People sign up for welfare, sign up for social security. All that stuff. Still make it voluntary and for the people who sign up, it should be a requirement of signing up for government benefits. For those who want to do it on their tax return, give them a benefit. Getting back to the subject of can i ask, do we have three cosponsors of that one here . Think about it. Think outside the box and we happy to look at it. Lets work on Something Like that. I have a great deal of respect for noithose who look throughout government for waste and try to fix things. I think, in fact, sometimes i thought maybe after doing it for a couple years we smouhould putu in charge of the organization and maybe wed get more effect from your recommendations. But i also watched waste since i was a kid. I remember william proxmire, Golden Fleece awards in the waste. I scratched my heads and cant scientifically say this but i say the more we are trying to get rid of it, the more it stays the same. The more its still there. So i guess my question in general is, not that its your fault, youre finding it, well start from mr. Missal is that, you know, you find it, how often do you think as a guest, when you find it or getting rid of the problem ill give you one example, we used in our waste report from our digging was the 300,000 in tvs at the v. A. That were wrong connections, stuck in a closet, bought before the renovation. I think to my mind, are still not being used. You found that that came to their attention, maybe that person does it again. Do you think you fixed a systemic problem when you found that problem . So it doesnt happen again . Or do you think we need more done to fix the systemic problem that you found in that particular instance . Yeah, that was one report that the dollars werent that large compared to a number of things we do, but that got a lot of publicity and attention out there. Hopefully that would have a deterrent effect for others. But i think we need to expand the work that were doing with respect to finding waste and we are trying to be more proactive. Were expanding our Data Analytics capabilities so we can look for outliers which would give us a better indication. When you find waste, is it fixed 100 of the time, 50 of the time, 20 . Just a guess. For that particular situation, we will have any situation. Any situation of finding waste. Houm how often do can you peopfeel l youre satisfied by the organization that youre suspecting that it gets fixed . A particular situation, were satisfied but we also know thats not going to be the only problem that i think theres significant issues out there. So i guess thats the question is is are we finding waste, fixing it then waste keeps cropping up or do we have some of the waste that weve had for decade after decade, its not going away, despite the people finding it . Thats a big question. Are we eliminating some waste and just new waste is popping up . If its new waste popping up, then what do we do as an incentive to get less waste in government . Do we have more waste in government . Is it less quickly fixed than it is in the private marketplace . My guess is you have to make a profit, make a payroll each month, you quickly make adjustments and the governments probably slower. One of the things that ive introduced and if anybody wants to, i can comment on it, is legislation that would give bonuses to civiler is vach er s find waste. We have a Whistleblower Program for malfeasance. Not much is news. To give people a financid. To give people a financial whether or not we could try to introduce some incentives into that like government so if waste is an inherent problem, waste seems to be worse in government than the private sector. Well start with mr. Missal and anybody else who wants to respond. I think a program like that, were always looking for ways to get nr informatiomore frfginfor proactive, find things on our own. Any opportunity there is for others out there, we have a hotline where we look at every contact that comes in. And so wed love more contacts to that hotline. Bonus to employees to find waste . Well, if we did that, the gao, i could have retired a long time ago. We would have to exempt you, sir. But i would say anything that would help identify things as a positive outcome would be very welcome. On your point about how much is systemic versus how much is solvable, its a mixture of b h both, over 75 , almost 80 of our recommendations are implemented over a fouryear period of time. Ill give you one classic example. We make recommendations to stop particular Weapons Systems. The technologys not mature, theyre not ready do go on the production, but yet different Weapons Systems will come up that will have a similar kind of problem. So that has both, some things get stopped completely and theyre not bought at all. Same thing with i. T. Systems. Theres a systemic problem there about one quick comment. I think thats great, if youre fixing 75 of the problem, that would be enormous. If thats true. It may well be. But it probably shows that we have another problem, then, the generation of more waste. Right. And some waste is in the eye of the beholder and the philosophical view of what you think government i think one of the reasons for that, senator, is that most federal programs get funded year after year without having to prove that theyre effectively accomplishing their objectives. Its hard and the burden is on us now in the Accountability Community to prove something is not working to get it stopped. One quick point before i finish, the people we have here are doing their job in what we want them to do. Its bigger than their job. Theyre finding the waste and eliminating it. We have to change the inseptembincentives somehowingi as much as they can. Theres an enormous amount of waste in government. Not sigh saying you dont do yo job. First of all, senator paul, these are great ideas. Im really longing forward to your subcommittee to generate more of these. Im serious about that. This is really good. Id like to work with you and maybe director on census proposals as well. Good ideas. Senator heitkamp . Thank you, mr. Chairman. I think from all the attention the census has gotten, we probably need to have a whole other opportunity to sit down and kind of go through the census. And the process. Vy questioi have questions, too dont want to spend my time talking about the census. I want to again congratulate gene for the great work gao does. Senator ernst and i as you know worked very hard to craft legislation to improve Program Management across the federal government. Our bill went on to be signed into law, finally, in december and i was really pleased when you gave us a shoutout in your testimony, the Program Management improvement and accountability act. I think if its properly implemented and we tend to be very aggressive in oversight, can foster prevention for waste. And so im really excited about the opportunity to work with you, make sure its implemented, make sure that the ideas that were in that bill actually see the light of day going forward. But i want to talk about this idea of waste, fraud and abuse and whistleblowers. Mostly, you know, i think john and michael, as i. G. S, you know that weve been working with your organization to try and get one portal where people on this dais can actually go out, look where people can try to discover systemic kinds of waste, systemic frauds that are going on. Have you both participated in that effort and is there any recommendations you would make to us about how we can provide Greater Transparency on i. G. Reports . Were deciding who goes first. We agree wholeheartedly with more transparency. We, you know, would support efforts to get more information. We, with respect to whistleblowers, weve had our staff trained with respect to how to ensure that we treat bhi whistleblowers with respect, that we get the information from them that we need. So anything that can help us are you familiar with the work that were doing or the work that the associations doing, the i. G. Association . With sigi, yeah, were very active. So youre familiar with the portal thats being developed . Yes. And do you see this as a mechanism to provide more systemic you know, when gao issues a report, we know where to go. Its not we dont have do go to, you know, interiors, gao, dont have to go you know, but with the i. G. Reports, each one of the agencies have their own separate way of doing things. I think getting everybody on to one portal, not saying you have to abandon what youre already doing, but to me is a way to really examine whether we have a lot of cross pollination that we can do to avoid waste, fraud and abuse. Absolutely and weve spoken as i. G. S together. I think there is strong support for that idea to do it. I agree with you that we wouldnt abandon what were doing individually as an agency, but having one portal i think would be very helpful. Yeah. Were going to be very aggressive on this issue. John, have you looked at the draft portal. Yes. We participate in it and i cant tell you right now the very status of it, but i know that there is a lot of excitement within the i. G. Community to have a single point of contact in which basically every i. G. Report gets published. I think this is just for my colleagues here, i think this is amazing but this has all been done without any appropriation. Right. Its been done just through volunteer work. Kind of the Postal Service has been great providing the background and some of the technical support. We think we can even improve it more with just a little bit of attention to an appropriation and so were going do be working very hard on that provision because i think sunshine is a huge component. I want to go back to you, gene, we talk about this quite often when you appear either in our subcommittee or before the full committee. What tools do we need to give you, what can you recommendation to us that we should be doing in our oversight function that that we arent currently doing or we arent aggressive enough on . Well first, im very appreciative of the gao bill that senator mccaskill mentioned in her opening remarks to give us additional access authorities. Thats been signed into law. Now that was very helpful. I think if we run into problems getting information, were not currently having any right now, id want the committees support to help us get the information that we need. I would suggest for those the highrisk areas, id like to see more hearings on the highrisk areas. We flag individual ones that need legislative action to actually address the issue. I mean, many of them require executive Branch Actions but a fair number of them also require legislative action to address the highrisk problems and so id like to see, you know, more hearings and attention on those highrisk areas and so were i feel were well supported. Obviously a word on our budget wouldnt hurt. You know, i cant go by without taking this opportunity. So just tell us whats happened to your budget and in terms of the growth of the overall federal expenditure and then what weve given our eyes and ears out there, what weve given you to examine it. Yeah, were operating under a continuing resolution thats less than last years funding. So im not replacing people as they leave it at gao. We cant ain order it. Are you summbject to the hirg freeze . No, but i dont have a budget. Thats a problem with all the heck of a way to yeah, everybody. We came out of the sequester in 2013, though, just to put this in perspective, at the lowest staffing level weve been since 1935. All right . And so weve clawed back some of that but i believe we need to be at least 3,250 people at the gao. Right now were under 3,000 and going down unless we get an appropriation for this year. So have you ever calculated that for every dollar of investment in gao managed well by you, what that would return in terms of last year was 112 for every 1 invested in gao. The year before, it was 70 billion. Well were a good investment. I mean, the point that i want to make, i guess, before i conclude here, is that we are so often penny wise and pound foolish, and i dont think that Congress Takes its oversight responsibility as serious as what it should. And i think that you are that auditor for us, whether its a management audit, whether its a fiscal audit. And we ought to have a fully funded functional gao and then a fully functional committee and congress thats going to be absolutely aggressive because if people think these are just oneoffs which i think in the past they have, then, you know, you feel a little bit of heat and it goes away. We need to turn up the heat and make sure that every time we spend of taxpayer money gets spent in a way the taxpayer would spend it, themselves. Continue to send suggestions and ideas. Were very curious and interested in what we can do to help. Thank you very much, senator. Thanks, senator. Sounds like gene had them at calculation which is really quick at the math. Thats what you call softball mr. Chairman, he asked me to ask him that question. I was, pebl expecting to see payment here. Oh, no, it cost him a lot more than that. Gene, real quick. Watch out, you got a gift limit. Just real quick, how many hearings were held in the last congress other than the one in this committee or maybe the Oversight Committee in the house on the highrisk list . 250. There were 250 hearings. Different hearings on the highrisk on areas covered by the highrisk area. Thats pretty good. Its good. And 12 pieces bills came out. Thats why you saw progress. 12 pieces of legislation. So congress there are very few highrisk areas that make progress without congressional attention on oversight, the prompt action on the agency or without statutory changes and without some funding. I mean, some of these Areas Congress funded, gaps in the weather satellites that helped them put in contingency plans that got effectively implemented. So any lasting change has to have some statutory again, the committees jurisdiction, take this highrisk series very seriously and actually hold hearings on those recommendations with those departments and agencies . Yeah, but its not evenly distributed across the highrisk areas. Most the hearings were held on Cyber Security, a lot of Veterans Affairs after the issues and so theyre not theyre not uniformly focused on some of these areas. I just asked senator mccaskill if shed be willing to sign on to letters, two of us and you, the justs diction asking them to hold hearings on specific highrisk areas. If you want to prepare that list, well do those letters and sign them so thank you for what you do. You have to up your game. Thank you very much. I realize it is a little bit different for you. We will hold a hearing. I think senator pauls suggestions are intriguing. May we take a look at out of the box thinking. I would look forward to it okay. Thank you for your time and testimony, your work. Hearing record will remain open for questions for the record. This hearing is adjourned. Cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] announcer President Trump will weekendsupporters this in melbourne, florida. It is the first rally since his inauguration. We will have live Coverage Later today at 5 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. Sunday on cspans washington journal, this the result of our third survey of president ial historians. The survey was completed by 91 historians and ranks the president s in 10 different categories like public persuasion, relations with congress, and moral authority. Join us live sunday morning at 8 00 a. M. Eastern to see which u. S. President s received top billing in the president ial Leadership Survey on cspans washington journal. This week, President Trump welcomed canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to the white house to discuss bilateral issues, including trade and border security. Afterwards, the two held a joint News Conference with supporters. This is 25 minutes. Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States and the Prime Minister of canada. President trump thank you. Prime minister trudeau, on behalf of all americans, i thank you for being with us today. It is my honor to host such a great friend, neighbor, and ally at the white house. Very special place. This year canada celebrates the 150th year of confederation. For americans, this is one of