Transcripts For CSPAN2 Management Of Federal Programs And Agencies 20170823

I am a fellow, prod to have you all here, and also i am one of your two cohosts from representing the school of Public Policy and Public Administration, where we prepare lots and lots of wonderful students for federal service as well as service in a variety of part of the public and nonprofit sector. Im delighted to be here for several reasons. Good to see a lot of my old friends. With 12 of our faculty are not the fellows. At least a couple of us are here at this sort of midsummer, a lot of people at the beach and its great you all are you. Its an important topic, and we are delighted to be here to invite you to host, and also its wonderful always to see gene dodaro. Just a couple months ago i was up on this stage giving, being part of the arthur awards commission to give gene a Lifetime Achievement award. I dont know if you know that but he was an Arthur Flemming award winner very early in his career. Its an award that goes to federal leaders early in their career, and as i said it was great to give that to gene because he did as well. So i was just here and now im here again think its great to have gene today are here on the stage again. So thank you. Im going to pass the baton to terry gerton who i am just so excited is our leader at napa. I have just been delighted to see all the wonderful things shes doing at napa, and im sure those of you in the audience from napa would agree with me. So thank you for having this idea and thank you for letting us participate. Terry gerton. [applause] well, thanks kathy a thanks to all of you for joining us here on an august wednesday for not being on recess, and instead coming to join us for what we think is a very, very timely event. I would also like to thank kathy and gw school and also barbara and the American University school of Public Administration for sponsoring the event today. For those of you who may not be fully with the academy, we are a nonpartisan, nonprofit congressionally chartered organization, charged with identifying emergency issues against a federal, state and local governments improve their performance. The academies mission is to provide trusted advice, advice that is timely, actionable, and objective on Public Management issues. And the source of our expertise is our membership, r 850 fellows who are current and former cabinet officials, members of congress, governors, mayors, legislators, jurists, business executives, public managers and scholars. They are elected fellows because of their distinguished contribution to the field of Public Administration through scholarship, civic activism and government service. Issue were celebrating our 50th anniversary pic since our establishment in 1967, the academy has responded to multitude of request for assistance from agencies across the government, and is undertaken numerous studies on issues of particular interest to congress, the administration, and stakeholders in general. We are in the business of making government work and we have a great partner in that effort in the government accounting office. I have to confess when i was in the government i didnt always see gao that way, and you might not either, but their biannual publication of the high risk list generates a powerful tool for improving government at the federal level. The dreaded high risk list as some people call it has often been portrayed as a room at the hotel california. You can check in but you can never leave. Or sometimes its a personally address invitation for leaders of selected agencies to spend some time with her closest friends in congress. And so i reaction to being on the high risk list is often defensively we want to help her down, defend our agency and her efforts and hope the headlines go away quickly. But there is a different approach thats possible and especially useful. And theres no time like the present when agencies are polishing up the reform plans that are due to omb at the end of september to examine the Lessons Learned by those agencies who responded positively to their appearance on the high risk list and issues raised by gao. It has embraced the challenge, embraced the challenge we can learn lessons from them about how to address that, how to get off and more poorly how to stay off the list. So thats why im so pleased today that weve got a great event that can bring both insight and action to that objective. In that way i think our conversation can be of great use to each of you as you work to improve your agencies operations to omb as they can set the strategy and the practice of governmentwide reform, and the members of congress and citizens who all just what government work better. I think youll find todays discussions and presentations informative and challenging. With also provided you with a copy of the 2016 report from the ibm center for the business of government called managing risk, improving results come lessons for improving government management from gaos high risk list. The report was written by doctor don kelly was a napa fella, a professor and former dean and the school of Public Policy at university of maryland. We will close today session with facilitated table conversation that will give you the opportunity to submit your insights of the day with the city nearest you. I hope you will continue to work through these issues within and across your circles of collaboration so that together we can make government work and work for all of which is the vision of the academy. So again thank you for being here and spending your morning with the spirit i will be followed by barbara who is currently on sabbatical and joining us but having just recently stepped down after serving for five use as a dean of the school of Public Administration at American University. Barbara. [applause] thank you, terry. I am pleased to be here. I am very pleased that American University school of Public Affairs can partner with the National Academy of Public Administration and cosponsor with George Washington university school. This important event. I have a personal interest in this as well as a professional interest. I study as the scholar accountability so this is for me a great morning breakfast and i look forward to the conversation and want to look a lot. But also i am dedicated to the notion that Public Management is the way to address some of the important problems weve got in the world. And so these kind of discussions about how to improve government in these days is particularly important. Now, we know the state and federal Government Agencies and the challenges of operating at high levels of effectiveness have been much in the news of late. But these are perennial issues and the worker gao shows that. These perennial issues of effectiveness requires sustained and serious attention, and our keynote speaker today is someone who is able to lead in that direction. He is able to lead the discussion about what agencies can do to become more effective in their operations, not telling them what their missions are but if they embrace their mission how they might be able to address it in a more effective way. Now, its my pleasure to introduce mr. Gene dodaro, but in the stream i think he needs probably very little introduction. Many of you know his work and most of you will know the work of the Government Accountability office. Gene is our eighth comptroller general and as head of the u. S. Officer Government Accountability he was confirmed to the position in 2010, though he started earlier than that in an interim position. They liked his work so much they kept them. In the Government Accountability office, gene works with the congress and the administration on Major Management reform initiatives. With the agency he helps oversee the development and issuance of hundreds of reports and testimonies each year the coded various congressional committees and individual members of congress. Thithis is a pretty exacting grp of individuals. They have clear expectations what they want, and they dont always get what you want in their reports. So its a delicate act to speak truth to power, and thats one of the things Government Accountability office can do. These reports and the testimonies that are given to congress are part of the products that gao produces to help save money, saving billions of dollars in taxpayer expenditures and contributing to improvements in Government Operations and wide range of government services. Now, gene has testified before Congress Dozens of times on a Foreign National issues. These include nations longterm fiscal outlook as well as efforts to reduce and eliminate overlap and duplication across the federal government. For example, gene has led efforts to fulfill gaos new audit responsibilities under the doddfrank wall street reform and Consumer Protection act. A longterm project of gao has been the development of the high risk list. It focuses on agencies that they specific challenges such as reducing improper payments under medicare or medicaid or improving the pentagons business practices. And those are just bookends of the range of competent issues. Nobody knows the high risk list better than gene. What causes agencies to be listed on it, how agencies get off it, and what it takes to stay off it. More importantly, no one has more insight into the positive change that can happen when Agency Leaders commit to implementing the kind of Management Practices and process controls that can mitigate risk, knowing the problem give you a chance to address the problem. So the worker gao helps our agencies. The work of gao helps our congress. The worker gao helps our country. Please join me in welcoming the leader of that agency, mr. Gene dodaro. [applause] thank you very much, barber, for that kind introduction. I want to thank you and kathy for helping sponsor this program and napa and terry for organizing it. Im very pleased to be here, so good morning to all of you. I would like to talk a little bit about the genesis of the high risk list and efforts associated with helping agencies navigate their way off the list. When i was at my confirmation hearing and Congress Asked me what some of my Top Priorities were, in addition to trying to get the federal government on a more sustainable longterm fiscal path, i mentioned high risk list. And at gaos role is not going to identify areas of high risk but to help agencies appropriately, given our independence, help them get off the list. And thats the way we view success at gao is helping the government operate better, more efficiently and effectively by solving these highrisk problems. The High Risk Program had its genesis in the late 1980s in some scandals that had occurred in the federal government. And congress became concerned that these major breakdowns occurred in their view with little warning. And so they asked gao to come up with a list of programs that have major problems and that were at risk of having major breakdowns, so that actions can be taken to avoid Serious Problems and avoid crises. So we began with developing a list based on the work that we are done at the gao. We identified 14 areas, and then we started to get into a routine when we updated the list with the beginning of each new congress to allow congress to have this list to upset its oversight agenda, and in doing that it also coincided with the beginnings of new administrations as they came in and took over their responsibilities in government as well. Now the list initially focused on fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement in the federal government. But over time weve added the areas in need of broadbased transformation. Because we felt it was very important to have the federal government be responsive to changes in the environment, both internationally and domestically to prepare it self to meet contemporary challenges. And those that are likely to be confided in the future. So its not only solving management problems but its preparing government for the future to make sure that it meets its responsibilities. So good example of transformation and that we identified is protecting the public and medical products safety. It was set up to oversee Domestic Production of pharmaceuticals in the United States, medical devices, but most ingredients for pharmaceutical medical, medicine right now, about 80 of the ingredients and about half of finished drugs come from foreign manufacturers. So fda had to change its practices to look for in a global marketplace to make sure they were protecting Public Safety rather than just Domestic Production in the United States. So in 2000 as the program evolved, we worked with the executive branch to clearly specify the criteria that gao uses in identifying which high risk areas to include on the list. And so we spelled those out and we included things such as Public Health and safety. National security, Homeland Security, those issues they could have an economic effect on our country. And areas that were large dollar risk, anything to be in the list has to be about a billion dollars or more to be at risk. Importantly, in that document is also the criteria that we use to today agencies off the list or to reduce the area of risk. And those five criteria are leadership commitment, as barbara mentioned, sustained leadership commitment is imperative and sort of a prerequisite to attacking these problems at the agencies. The agencies have to have the capability, this is the resources and the people and the skills necessary to address the problems at hand. Thirdly, they have to have an action plan. They need a very specific plan with goals and measures and milestones to track progress. Since these are among the most significant problems the federal government is facing, they dont get stalled overnight. And so you need to have a good plan to get there and measure your progress along the way. Then you have to have, fourthly, a monitoring effort to make sure that you are staying on top of this, making refinements and necessary adjustments as things proceed. And then finally you have to demonstrate progress. You dont have to have the risk completely solved down to zero, but you have to have it under management as much as possible. And yet to demonstrate you are actually fixing some of the problems, the root causes of the high risk areas, and demonstrating that you are making necessary improvements. Then we decide to do this, to focus the agencies attention on what actions are needed. We developed a couple of other techniques over the years. One is that weve had for the last several administrations regular meetings between omb, the Deputy Director for management is usually the convener of the meetings, with gao and with the agencies on the high risk list. So in addition to bilateral discussions between gao and agencies, omb has become involved in the process, and is helpful from a resource allocation standpoint and also since many of the high risk areas involve multiple agencies, not just the Single Agency on the list, to a omb involved. And congress recognized the importance of this last year in 2016. The past the Program Management improvement accountability act. And that basically requires the deputy at omb to do a portfolio review of the area that gao identifies as a highrisk area, and create a government wide council to focus on improving program and project management, and to review the areas that gao has identified as high risk and make recommendations to omb as part of this process. So thats very important process as well. The other part of the evolution that we started in 2015 was to give a greater level of specificity to the agencies as to what their progress was as they proceeded in a highrisk area. So we developed a rating criteria for each of the five areas that i mention that are important to get off the list. And so we decided that they either met, partially met, or did not meet each of the five criteria is to give them a more specific scorecard. And a roadmap to follow. And then in our discussions with them, individually and with omb, we talk about what specifically remains to be done in each of those five criteria areas that i mentioned earlier in order to get off the list. And in some agencies weve identified very specific things that they need to do. For example, the department of Homeland Security in terms of transforming and managing the department, since it was created in 2003 it had been on the high risk list. We identified 31 different actions that needed to be taken, and the department of Homeland Security reports on those actions every six months in terms of their selfassessment on how well they are doing against gaos criteria. We can evaluate their selfassessment and provide our views. And so that area has been narrowed over time but right now it is focused mainly on the Management Integration functions within the department, particularly Acquisition Management and financial management. As well as Human Resource management at the department. But its been a very significant way to achieve progress over time by getting greater specificity and greater clarity on how well the agencies are thd making progress addressing the high risk areas. Our latest update was in february of this year, 2017, as the new congress was convening and we had a new administration. There have been 32 areas on the high risk list coming off of 2015. We reported that 23 of the 32 areas had either met or partially met all five criteria for coming off the list. This was a very significant amount of progress, over a twoyear period from our last report. We are very pleased about that. During that twoyear Period Congress passed 12 specific laws directed to helping agencies address the high risk areas. A couple examples would be one every on the list is assessing and managing toxic chemicals at epa. And Congress Gave epa Greater Authority to get information from Chemical Companies that would put them in a better position in order to make those determinations to better protect Public Health and safety from toxic chemicals. That was a very significant move. Congress also created a couple of councils in the Property Management area which has been on the list for a while because we believe the government had too much unneeded excess property, needed to manage that area better, and those laws gave additional impetus to help deal with some of the Property Management issues across the federal government, just examples. 12 laws were passed that addressed this. We designate also for each highrisk area where Congress Needs to act as well as the executive branch agencies. Also embraced by various administrations as part of their management agenda for improving the federal governments operation. And so, among the areas of progress that we cited in our 2017 report we took one off the list completely, sharing regarding terrorist information. Obviously, after 9 11, this was a big concern and it was a National Security issue that needed to be dealt with and we added it to the high risk list and weve been working with the director for National Intelligence operations and the agencies on that list. Now, this was very complicated area because it involved multiple federal agencies, it involved the state and local communities as well, and the private sector, and various sectors of our economy. Congress passed legislation requiring information sharing environment to be created and the dni led that effort and really made a lot of progress over the years. Here again, we identified by 2013 nine specific things that needed to be done and over the ensuing years, each of those areas were addressed successfully to our satisfaction to take them off the list. Now, does that mean theres zero risk associated with this . Of course not. What that means they have a process to manage the list, to share information appropriately to protect us against terror related incidents and im very pleased theyre part of the panel and you can get their perspective how we Work Together with them to have them make progress to achieve that end result to be off the list. Now, when we take something off the list, i always mention to the agency and the congress, just because its off the list doesnt mean its out of sight. So, we keep an eye on some of these areas over time and some have, indeed, been added back to the high risk list if they slip in terms of their progress over time. The sustained attention is really an underpinning of this issue, not only within the administrations, but across administrations and i view the high risk list as a good way to also ensure sustained attention across administrations and across congresses over time in order to achieve these goals. We also have narrowed high risk areas, you know, terry mentioned in the comments about the gao high risk list. The urban legends if you get on, you never get off. Thats not true. Weve taken over 20 areas off the high risk list over the years and weve also narrowed areas. One area youre going to hear from in the panel is the supply change management at dod which was one of the charter members back in 1990, that was on the list, along with medicare and dod Weapons Systems quickses and doa and nasa. Theyre still on the list and making great progress, but in the supply Chain Management area, they were actually able to we took the inventory component off the list. In addition, they have a very good corrective action plan and congress got involved in supporting the need for the corrective action plan and theyve implemented, theyve actually been reducing excess inventories over there, so theyve made Good Progress and tangible progress in addition to having a better Management Structure in place, so, we felt we needed to narrow that area to demonstrate and recognize the progress that they have made in that area. Now, we also, as issue, identify new high risk areas, we identified three this past year, one was the 2020 census, which we believe has a number of risks are are not yet managed appropriately. The last census cost 12 billion most costly in history. The current 2020 census does not yet have an effective cost estimate in place. Theres a number of new areas that theyre thinking about using, for example, using administrative records to reduce the need to send people doortodoor, if theres nonresponses to the questionnaires that are sent out about you these risks arent fully managed yet. Weve made a number of recommendations to them, about 30, only six have been implemented fully so far. Second was environmental liabilities. Environmental liabilities that are due to the Nuclear Weapons cleanup activities and also, cleaning up military activities are now approaching half a trillion dollars. We believe that number is probably underestimated and the federal government is spending tens of billions of dollars to clean up the activities, but the liability keeps growing. So we really dont have a Cost Effective way to manage this enormous and growing challenge to the federal government. Third, as we saw a pattern of federal programs that are supposed to help Indian Tribes and their members, were falling way short, both in the education area, and deterioration of some of the schools, staffing problems, hospitals do not have Quality Assurance standards in place and also, it was taking a long time to get approval from federal Government Agencies to allow the Indian Tribes to exploit resources on their on land. Thus depriving them of some of the resources and capabilities to help solve their own problems. So, these are the areas that we identified on the list. Now, im committed at gao to this effort. I mentioned in the last administration if they got the agency head or deputy or senior officials from the department at the meeting with the omb Deputy Director that i personally would attend those meetings to focus on this and bring all the gao resources to bear. So i participate ly participated on these high risk areas over the year and i plan to do that as well. And we have the responsibility, also, under the Program Management approvability act ombs efforts to address these high risk areas as well. So im determined to do this. I have eight and a half years left on my 15year term at the gao, so, i plan to stay focused on this as one of our Top Priorities. Id be happy to take any questions at this point before we get into the panel discussion, if, terry, time permits. Yes. We just need to get you a microphone. Microphone. Thanks. Im meredith summers with news radio, thank you for your time this morning. How do you think the government reorganization will affect the high risk list coming in here . One of the areas that weve pointed out, maryor mary, a number of the high risk areas in recent years have involved multiple agencies working on an issue so hell be interested to see to what extent those areas will be addressed in the government reorganization effort. To aid the government reorganization effort from gao standpoint, ive sent letters to all major heads of all major departments and agencies in the federal government outlining open gao recommendations, not only from our high risk list, but from the open recommendations we have for overlap, duplication, and fragmenttation in the federal government and prioritize what i thought were key issues that the agency had need to personally identify on. Because at any one time, even though 77 of our recommendations are implemented it would probably be 4 or 5,000 open recommendations in gao, but i prioritize ones that i thought were important and i wanted to get that to them so they could consider that in their reorganize effort. So its a perfect opportunity for them to look at open goa recommendations and see if they want to embrace that as part of their reorganization efforts. So well wait and see, but weve done our part, weve given them the information to help them make informed decisions and im in the process of meeting with all the new heads of departments and agencies and their Leadership Teams there and halfway through that process. So, doing appropriate outreach giving our independence. Thank you very much. One of the things thats always amazed me is how some of the programs stay on for year after year after year after year and so im wondering, many times in government in terms of management weve used the shame game. For example, about the red light, green light, yellow light under the president s management agenda under bush. Im wondering how do you get the attention . It seems like when you see things like contracting the dod, i dont know, forever, you know . I was just wondering, are you coordinating at all with the offices of Inspector General, maybe holding them accountable to say, guys, what are you doing here . You know . Are you helping fix these problems . One of the areas, kathy, that we look at to help inform us about the high risk areas is the igs are required by law to produce Major Management challenges for each of their departments and agencies and that area is, you know, that list that they develop is a very important source and many of their management challenges they identify at the agencies overlap with our high risk areas and so theyre working on that, very importantly. One really important area is in Cyber Security. You know, i became concerned back in the 1990s about Cyber Security. We designated Cyber Security as a high risk area across the federal government in 1997. This year was the 20year anniversary of designating that. So, nobody could say we didnt warn people that this was a problem and weve made thousands of recommendations over the years and weve worked with the igs and the congress to get the federal Information Systems management act. So a lot of Cyber Security work right now is done by the igs as part of that legislation so theyre integrally involved in helping the agencies solve the high risk areas. We designate in 2003 Critical Infrastructure protection as well, the electricity grid, financial markets, our power systems, Telecommunications Systems as well. So these are important areas. So the igs are partners with us in addressing these high risk areas, both through their own designation of management challenges and working with us on governmentwide issues across the time. You have to be persistent and keep addressing these issues. Im not going to take anything off the high risk list until its appropriate to take it off the list, and so, some things, you know, weve picked some of the biggest management problems in the federal government and some of the problems are issues change over time. One good example is the Medicaid Program. Weve added the Medicaid Program after we added medicare, but the Medicaid Programs now through the expansion and through the Affordable Care act and other areas changing over time and medicare, medicaid, are among the Fastest Growing federal programs, so theyre having difficulty managing improper payments in those areas. The last estimate of improper payments by the federal agency governmentwide in 2016 was 144 billion dollars. And 60 billion was medicare and 36 billion was medicaid. And enforcement of our tax laws was another area, we added in 1990. Thats still an issue. We most recently added Identity Theft, you know, when we first put it on in 1990, there was no Identity Theft where people were stealing other peoples identities and filing fraudulent tax returns. So, the problems change. Some of these programs that have been on a long time have inherent risk issues, but its made more difficult by not having Good Management processes in place. A lot of the contract Management Areas have been on for a number of years. We had an interagency contracting area that we eventually removed that was managed properly, and changes were put in place, but the contracting Management Issues at nasa, dod, and doe have been on a list for long time and theyre just difficult Management Issues for them to do. Were trying to we put together a cost guide to help them do better cost estimating of these major projects, thats making some headway and so theres been some progress in these areas, but not enough yet. Y yes. Charlie clark with government executive. Theres a high number of vacancies that the Trump Administration is struggling to fill. Im wondering if gao noticed any slowdown in reporting to you at all or progress in some of these Program Reforms . Not yet. We have very effective working relationships with the agencies, charlie. We and our liaisons have been working with us over time, so, you know, we havent really noticed any major issues at this point. Were still working through the process with the agencies under our normal kind of procedures, but thats one of the reasons im having the meetings with the new leadership of the departments and agencies is to firmly establish a constructive working relationship with gao, where we get the information we need as quickly as and prudently as possible and we get our drafts in a timely manner to keep our commitments to the congress to publish our reports on time. So, nothing out of the ordinary yet, but something to keep an eye on as we go forward. Yes. Hi, im julie crump, with omb. At your hearing for both the high risk and duplication when it came out this year i was there and i heard a few senators and representatives commit to writing legislation on areas that made sense to them that were not so political. And so, im wondering if this this congress, if they have actually done that . I know they have in the past. Im wondering about this one. Yes, we have supplied a number of committees, including those that held the hearings on the high risk list with our recommendations for legislative actions and the overlap duplication and fragmenttation area, we had a list, appendix to my testimony 53 different recommendations we have for the congress for the legislative actions and theyre considering those Going Forward. Im hopeful they will be embraced. So far in the first six years for overlap duplication and frag mentation work, so far the federal government will save 136 billion and a lot of that was through legislative actions by the congress to implement our recommendation, some of which were included in the bipartisan budget acts for 14 and 15 and 16 and 17 as well. Its been one of the ways that congress has been staying under the caps, the discretionary caps and budget control act in order to avoid sequestration, and im hopeful there will be additional acts on our recommendations. Yes. I think this will have to be my last no . Okay. In the distinction between the underlying natural riskiness of an activity like Cyber Security and management, it must be difficult to distinguish the management contribution to the overall risk from the underlying. How do you do that well or maybe the answer is its obvious in the cases we look at . Its always an important area for us to focus on from a fundamental fairness issue. But lets take Cyber Security where you mentioned. Most of the attacks involving areas of known weakness that havent been patched or havent been fixed and so while there is an inherent problem, there are known things that could be done to reduce agencies vulnerability. I am still concerned, despite all the intrusions in the federal systems, you know, inappropriate accessing to those systems, that federal agencies are not moving with enough urgency to address known problems. We right now have one thousand open recommendations to the agencies, just in the Cyber Security sphere alone. And so, i think in that area, you cant eliminate and none of those areas we ask for zero risk, thats impossible, but there are things that can be done and weve offered very specific ways that that risk could be reduced in vulnerability and also, when there is an incident, you know, that we the agencies respond appropriately and well to reduce their visibility. So, its an important distinction. We never identify an area thats just based on, you know, inherent risk. We always feel that there are management actions, things we put on the list, there are management actions that could be taken by the agencies to mitigate the risk Going Forward and thats really the focus of this, is mitigating your risk, reducing your risk to the lowest possible activity, down to the inherent risk part that you mentioned and doing as best as you can and try to identify how the risk will morph over time. Obviously, the Cyber Security challenges today are a lot more dramatic than they were when we put them on in 1997. And so you need to continue to evolve to the risk and the only way you do that is having a management attention to the risk to begin with. You cant just say, well, thats the way it is, its, you know, nothing we do will have an effect. That is not Good Management approach. Hi, im Carden Cordell from fed scoop, and while we have legislation in the senate to address monetization. Weve seen others reassigned or leave for other agencies. Can you talk about what the impact may be and your monitoring of that . Ive been noticing that myself and thats an area to be concerned about and i was involved in the original legislation working with the congress in the klinger cowan bill to establish chief information offices in the federal government and also, most recently, the federal reform act has strengthened the role of cios. We need strong cios and cfos in the government. The investment that the federal government has made every year, about 80, 90 billion and we feel that the federal government does not get an adequate return on that investment. In fact, in 20 i think its 2013 or 15, i cant remember which year we designated Information Technology acquisitions and operations across the federal government as a high risk area. So its on our high risk list. So if people arent in place in Senior Management position to manage that risk, thats of concern to me. And so, well be watching that and see, you know, what impact that thats going to have. Both in terms of the vacancies, but also in terms of what it will do to the pace of implementing the reforms under fatar to give the ceos more authority and thats an area to Pay Attention to and we are. Chase gunner with federal computer week. On the Cyber Security front, in addition to fulfilling the open recommendations for agencies, what steps can Congress Take or can the administration take to increase that urgency you spoke about . Secondly, do you have any early take aways on the federal hiring freeze . Yeah, the in terms of the Cyber Security area, in the last several years, congress has passed at least five different pieces of legislation that address the Cyber Security issue and i know theyre focused on it and a number of committees, ive had a number of conversations with members about it. And theyll stay focused on implementing, but theyve taken a lot of legislative action, both in terms of the work force issues, they required a number of reports, and so i dont expect attention in the congress to wane with regard to Cyber Security issues. With regard to the hiring freeze, we have ongoing effort right now to look at what impact that it had, you know, during that period of time that was in effect. And so, we will see. We looked at the hiring freezes in Prior Administrations, you know, and obviously we judge they werent an effective tool for managing government. It was better to manage based upon having a good work force and Strategic Plan in place and then deciding what you have. You know, the other area on the high risk list that we designated in 2001 was strategic Human Capital management across the federal government. Its still on the list now because of already existing critical skill gaps in departments and agencies across the federal government. So, to the extent to which that might be compounded by hiring freezes, now, they made some exception, it wasnt for a long period of time so, well have to wait and see, but ill see what the facts are based on the work that weve done and we should come out with a report later this year. Leadership commitment is the number one item on the list for agencies to get themselves off the high risk list and you just touched on an area that has been of interest of mine, which is Senior Leader development in our federal agencies. Im wondering though, the complementary leadership component of that which is the political appointees and turnover of appointees. How do you keep sustained improvement in place when you have sometimes very frequent turnover of appointees in some of the agencies that have some of the most significant challenges . Yes, the real anecdote to that turnover, which is going to be inevitable, all right . Given our system of government, is to have a well defined plan in place, thats written, a written plan with written measures, written goals, written milestones that people can be held accountable for that will transcend administrationsme administrationsment and i try to work with the administration if theres a plan in place. One of the reasons i designated health care at the veterans 2015, in my opinion they were not going to be revolved in the last years of the administration that was going to the next administration. Were working really hard with the new administration. Fortunately, the new head secretary was in the Prior Administration as well, so that helps, but what were working with va right now, on a written plan in place. If you have a good written plan and good institutional commitment throughout the organization, that plan is then shared with the congress and you have, you know, stability there in terms of the Committee Structures as well, some of the members, that can help transcend changes in leadership in the departments and agencies. But i continually meet with new leaders in the executive departments and agencies. And its one of the great advantages i have with the 15year term in government is to have continuity. And i take that continuity very seriously in terms of trying to make sure that i use that perspective that i have to help new leaders as they come in to the federal government maintain continuity for things that are being done well that should be continued as well as things that havent been done so well and need attention and need a fresh perspective and new ideas. So, to me, those are the tools that you use in order to make sure that the efforts by the federal government continue, despite whoever is in charge. Okay. Well, thank you very much for your time and attention. [applaus [applause] gene, thank you so much for spending so much time with us this morning. Theres nothing like hearing from the source directly to get fundamental insight and ideas about how to solve these problems. As our panel is getting set, were going to continue that trend and expose you directly to the folks in three agencies who are dealing with their agencies challenges on the high risk list and id like to introduce our panel chair to you. Sally ann harper is the president for association for federal enterprise risk manageme management. So she knows about which shes about to speak. She was also previously the chief Financial Officer and chief Administrative Officer for gao. And most important to me, shes an academy fellow and vicechair of our board. So sally ann, thank you so much for joining us today and all of our panelists. I think youre going to find this exciting. We will have a q a time at the end so be prepared as you listen to their remarks. Thank you. Thank you, terry. Good morning, everybody, we have a distinguished panel here and the format that we are going to use this morning will be that i am going to introduce one panel member at a time. They will tell their story about where they are on the high risk list, the progress they have made and how they have done that, and when each of the panelists has had a chance to do that, i have a few questions for them, but most importantly, maybe, we also would appreciate the questions that you may have about the progress that they have made. So i am going to start by talking about the department of defense. They manage about 4. 9 million secondary inventory items such as spare parts, with a value of well over 92 billion. Effective and efficient supply change management is critical for supporting the readiness and capability of the force and helping to ensure that dod avoid spending resources on unneeded inventory that could bet are be applied to defense and other national priorities. So speaking to dods progress in supply Chain Management is kristin french. She assumed her current position as the Principal Deputy assistant secretary in july of 2016, and is concurrently serving as acting assistant secretary of defense for logistics and material readiness. She is a graduate of the u. S. Military academy at west point, and she retired from military service as a Brigadier General in november of 2015. Kristin. Thank you, sally ann. Thank you all for having me here today. And i really enjoyed any opportunity i can to tell the story of how were doing in the department of defense. Before i start though, i want to explain to you a little about who i am in the pecking order of the dod. As you know, its a Large Organization and we do have some new Senior Leaders that have come in over the last few months. First of all, of course, secretary mattis is the secretary of defense and his deputy secretary is mr. Pat shanahan who has been on board about a month. He was an executive so he comes in with a lot of business experience and helping us on defense reform. Under secretary mattis, he has five undersecretaries of defense, one for policy, one for intelligence, one for personnel and readiness, one for crom p troller and then the last one is Acquisition Technology and logistics and i am under that undersecretary of Defenses Office and thats miss ella lord, been on board about two weeks now and her position is shes recently come from textron systems as the ceo of textron system. And our part is atl, the logistics part. You probably know that were going through a restructure as we look at acquisition reform. Our job is to be the advisor from all things logistic, from supply chain to transportation and maintenance and operational contract support and logistics for Weapons Systems. So, we, as was said, we are some of the initial areas that they looked at in 1990. And the area im going to talk about specifically is supply Chain Management. So, i have a little bit of our history here to tell you about our story. So, 1990, 25 plus years ago, we were called out as having high risk in supply Chain Management. And so therefore, we knew that it was a problem, and, of course, you remember desert is storm, there were a lot of talks about all the material that was all over the battlefield and how we didnt have good accountability of our supply chain. So we really looked at it as an area that we knew we had problems in, but it was almost too hard to solve. So, over the, really, the two decades we kind of looked at the problem and knew it was a problem and didnt do a whole lot about it, and so, we realized that it was a big elephant and we didnt know where we were going to go. So, in 2000 basically 10. They had help with that and Congress Said they wanted us how to develop a plan how to get off the high risk list. If you think about it, we had already hit 9 11 and we had been told over and over and also talked to congress about our problems within inventory, but we didnt get at it. So we needed to find ways to get at the problem and how we were going to solve it and one of those, it was easy one, gao and congress ordered us to have a comprehensive Inventory Management Improvement Plan how we would get after supply chain. One they think i want to tell you though, we decided we had to have some best practices in place and ill go over some of those, but the five areas mentioned that really helped us. Helped us focus how we were going to get at the high risk area and take a look at how we would get off the list in the future. So, but some. Best practices, ill talk about on and on over the course of my discussion today is to be collaborative and to be open and honest about where our problem areas are, have plan and commit resources to it, continue to measure, continue to measure, continue to measure our issues, and our ways and then also engaging Senior Leadership, and so, we focused on those five areas and i want to tell you a little about what we did. So, 2010 is when we started looking at knowing that we had to get on it and we didnt have, like i said, a really good plan, but the first thing was, was to get leadership commitment. And the leadership started working with gao regularly. I think in the past we looked at gao as being the enemy, we didnt want to talk to them. We felt they were going to report on us and it wasnt worth the time to talk to them oneonone and talk to their leaders about how to get at the problems. But our leadership was committed and again, i arrived in 2016. I had been in the department as an army colonel from 2009 to 2011, and i knew that around the ten time frame we were getting at, we had to get at the issue, we hadnt committed to it. So, as i was leaving the pathat we started that engagement with gao and i would tell you that thats a very good Success Story now. We have Senior Executives, we have Senior Leaders across all the services that are involved and committed on trying to get at inventory. I do want to tell you though that the supply chain, or Inventory Management has been split up into three separate areas and we are focusing on all three of them individually so we have different action plans for all three. And ill talk about the other two and theyre still on the high risk list. So, overall, supply Chain Management inventory is the part that we were able to get off the list in february, and we had a small celebration when we got off the list there, but two others were still working onment so the leadership commitment was big, but the action plan was even bigger and that was what i mentioned a minute ago, which was the comprehensive Inventory Management Improvement Plan which was provided us a road map. We started it around 2010 and we really got at it over the last couple of years, and it included 83 milestone actions. Thats a heck of a lot of milestones we had to meet and im proud to say that we completed all of them. Our mantra was dont buy what is not needed and dont keep what is not used. And it sounds easy, but as you look at the inventory that we have in the military, we have Weapons Systems that are 40, 50, 60, 70 years old. We have b52 bombers, i think the last was built in the 60s and we are still flying them today. We have to keep inventory thats available to support our Weapons Systems, but we want to make sure we dont buy what is not needed and dont keep what is not used and it takes a lot of effort. So, what we found was the action plan really has worked and weve continued to work at making a commitment to not just do those 83 areas, but look at where we need to improve even further and so, in 2015, we expanded the focus and we looked at, really looked at inventory levels and not just, not buying whats not needed, but how are we managing our inventory. And weve added 25 more milestones to our list, and so far, seven of those have been completed and the rest are underway. So, we are doing a work in progress. And as gao just mentioned we know they can come back and put us back on the high risk list, we dont want that so we have to find ways to work through it. Weve institutionalized best practices and a defenseman ul 40. 01 volumes one through 12 on dod supply chain material management procedures, continually updating and putting together not just a plan, but actually documenting and codifying what weve done and what we need to continue to do. The other thing, third area that was he thinks med is that was mentioned was capacity and continuing to support it. Weve found that we are a limited work force so we have to look at other outside agencies to help us with some studies and analysis and weve done that and thats helped us get some best practices with business, and look at how we can take inventory and decrease our amount. And what we did was we put together three working groups that were meeting monthly to work through the way ahead, and again, theyre all with our inventory, forecasting demand planning is one group. Inventory retention is another and supply chain metrics was the third. We brought in subject Matter Experts from gsa, from the defense agency. From u. S. Transportation command and the military services, and we worked through a monthly battle rhythm. We also upped it to a quarterly event with our Senior Executives and its called a supply Chain Executive Steering Committee and that has members from all those agencies working together quarterly and making sure were going over the actions and working through the way ahead. And in the fourth area, the gao mentioned was monitoring. We monitor regularly and we did that by setting up standard across the department of defense metrics and that was hard to do. Every Service Measure is differently. It had to take a collaborative effort across the department of defense to agree on metrics we were going to use. We have 23 enterprise level metrics that we measure and that we use against some third party folks to come in and help us build those metrics. Things like the excess on hand, due in potential future excess, forecast error biases, on and mon and on used across industry and now in dod. I would tell you thats a good news story. Were not there in other parts of department of defense and we want to get standardized metrics across all of our logistics functions. It will help us maintain oversight and better perform some of our efficiency goals and our way ahead. But the monitoring is critical. And we continue to do it. And how do we do it . We have a semiannual review with each service to come in and brief us out on their metrics, to review how theyre doing and make sure theyre meeting the standards. And if not, we bump it up a level and theyll come to the next level and brief out what the levels are. Usually its something theyve planned to do, if theyve had a bump in their metrics and they know theyve got to get at it and improve for the next time. Its a semiannual review. We call tt Inventory Management review and its a fullup event every six months with the services and my office in atnl. And then the fifth area is demonstrated progress. So im going to give you some numbers just to tell you, so dod has about 145 billion dollars we spend in logistics every year, about a 600 billion Dollar Department of defense budget. Over 25 of the budget is spent on logistic services, well, im proud to say that our inventory has gone down over the past several years. So, right now, 97 billion dollars in inventory, but its 7. 5 billion down from over 105 billion in 2012. In the last four years, weve improved over 7 billion of decreased inventory. Weve also been able to take a look at contract managed government owned inventory. Inventory we have that we have either let contractors use for performance based logistic contracts or they have in their sights that we know are going on government equipment. We have been able to have better visibility. Weve managed to previously reported 9 billion that wasnt previously reported is now being reported that were managing and holding the contractors accountable for inventory that federal government owns. And we have also decreased excess 3. 5 billion dollars, reduced on hand excess since a high point in march of 2012. So a lot of good news story as we look at inventory going down, having better visibility of inventory and managing inventory across the department of defense. Also, another key number that we have is due in potential future excess. Weve dropped over 1 billion since fy 09. So, really, lot of good news stories in communication, collaboration and commitment have all brought us success, like i said in february we got a great new story where we pulled inventory off the high risk less. Saying that though, we have two other areas that are a part of our supply chain that are currently on it. One is asset visibility. It was added in 2005. And if you think about 2005, we had been at war for a couple of years in iraq and afghanistan, and people were complaining they had no in transit visibility and no ability to see their cargo en route. So, what happened is gao pulled that as separate item under supply chain. We showed them right away things we were doing across the department to improve our numbers and visibility of assets and so, what weve agreed upon with the gao is we have put together a strategy, not an action plan, but a strategy of improving dod asset visibility. Because we have so many good news things weve done over the past decade, they were comfortable with us diagnose doing a strategy instead of a storm al plan. Congress helped us in fy 15 telling us to get at it. Weve been working on dodwide metrics. Our team is working hard it make sure we can get that area off the high risk list. The third area is supply is distribution. In 2005 that was added to the list and they directed in 2015, part of the mdaa, a material and distribution plan. Woo were getting at that, also, and theyre happy with our progress and theyll continue to let us march and relook at in 2018, and make sure that we continue to work towards similar efforts that weve done for our inventory area. The fourth area though, thats in my area of responsibility, that is part of the dod high risk, is you would see that in 2012, theres a dod contract management high risk and thats what gets tough with gao. They break down into a subarea, subtask as part of that overarching high risk area. And my office is responsible operational contract support. So, we have the operational contract support, ocs part of the dod contract management high risk on our part of the high risk list. We are proud to say that two of the five criteria we have partially we have met and three areas that weve partially met and thats capacity, monitoring, and demonstrated progress, but we really are bringing gao into our discussions about ocs. Weve done a lot of improvement the last few years and one of the examples of how weve learned to work with gao on a closer basis, weve asked them to attend some of our sessions, some of our meetings and in fact, in june, we had an operational contract support summit where they attended with us and sat in and were very happy with the results. So, a lot of good news stories, we are not going to guarantee, woo were going to be off in 2019 for those three areas and thats our goal and were working through a lot of ways ahead. I would tell you that, again, the biggest thing, well talk about it during the q a, we had to overcome was the thought that they were not part of our regular discussion throughout the two years, that we wait until the reports about to come out and then get blindsided. We need to have a regular two way communication with gao and make sure that they understand some of our concerns, we understand their concerns, but we do appreciate, we sincerely appreciate the five areas theyre focused on for us to get off the list. We just dont do well if we dont have a way to track our improvement, and track our metrics to make sure that were moving towards success of getting off the list. So, again, a real good news story for inventory, the other three areas were working on and he think that well have a good news story in the future. Thank you very much. Thank you, kristin. We are going to turn we can clap for kristin. Thank you, thank you for the inventory. Clap for the inventory. [applause] were going to turn from our attention to dod and their place on the high risk list and look at va, Veterans Affairs. Veterans Health Administration operates one of the Largest Health care Delivery Systems in the nation with 168 medical centers and more than a thousand patient facilities organized into Regional Networks. They have faced a growing demand by veterans for its health care services, due in part to Service Members returning from the United States military operations in afghanistan and in iraq and also in the aging veterans population. And that trend is expected to continue. The total number of veterans rose from 7. 9 million to almost 9 million, from fiscal year 2006 through fiscal year 2016. Over that same period, vas bugetary resources have increased substantial i from 37. 8 billion in 2006 to 91. 2 billion in fiscal year 2016. Id like to introduce dr. Carolyn clancy, who is the deputy undersecretary for health for Organizational Excellence at the department of Veterans Affairs and she has oversite of vhas quality performance, safety, risk management, systems engineering, oversight, ethics accreditation programs. Prior to her current position she served as the interim undersecretary, the largest integrated Health System as well as the director for emergency for research quality. And she is going to tell you where their progress is to get off the gao high risk. Good morning, its a pleasure to be here and i want to have a shout out for napa. When we were first put on the high risk list 2015, the first thing we did when we heard about shortly thereafter an napa workshop was to send a whole lot of people over here and it was hugely helpful to us, please keep up the good work. So, probably late january, early february before the official announcement, leaders gao came over and told us they might put us on the high risk list. I figured it was pretty much a done deal, but didnt want to be official until there was actually an announcement and indeed, they did. I will say just in terms of criteria for getting off the list, leadership commitment has not been an issue since this happened. Then secretary bob mcdonald and now secretary David Shulkin have been supportive of our effort to get it right. Which does not mean it has been really, really easy. Understand that we are both a Government Organization and a Health Care Organization. You heard sally ann say how large and farflung it is and what that means is that we have all of the regulations of the private sector and then a whole lot more with the gao, the ig and so on, so forth, but we also have the joint Commission Accreditation and on and on. A lot of convergence, but not 100 across all of those entities. So in the spending of 2014, we had a big access crisis. Phoenix, an i remember arizona was the facility where a lot of this broke. It was clear we had systemwide programs. In fact, about a dozen years ago, napa did a study for us or helping us look at how much care we buy out of the network. Like the canadian system buying services out of the u. S. Because it made more sense. The future for us is actually not being a closed integrated system, but rather part of a high performing network. Focusing on our foundation l a services that we do exceptionally well and our responding and addressing the unique needs of the veterans we serve, but also taking advantage of estimates from private Sector Health facilities in the community. That itself is a very big shift and i think the work getting off the high risk list will position us well to actually step up to that challenge. Gao identified five areas of risk for us, inconsistent policies and procedures, fragmented oversight and accountability. Information technology challenges. I would dare you to find a Health Care Organization anywhere, certainly in this country and probably around the globe in the developed nation, anyway, who wouldnt recognize i. T. As a big challenge. Training that was siloed and not necessarily strategically linked to priorities for the Health Care System and bugetary resources and allocation of putting. Other than that, we were in great shape. So, these are really symptoms of core problems that we have to address if were going to respond to all of our challenges and most importantly, make sure that wherever veterans seek our assistance they get safe, timely, high quality care. Notice how those words just rolled off my tongue. There is no problem in the va Health Care System that doesnt exist almost everywhere else in health care, at least somewhere. What we have is a whole lot more transparency, which is a gift, but its also a doubleedged sword. The more transparent we are the more, the Higher Expectations go and so forth. At the time of the crisis, in addition to the gao placing us on their high risk list, the congress was also very helpful. They passed a bill giving us a new, Brand New Program in Additional Resources to buy care in the community, to relieve the burdens on access. And in addition to that, they gave us resources to enhance our own internal infrastructure and put in motion a variety of oversight mechanisms. Very, very robust and comprehensive set of independent assessments, as well as a commission on care, which actually gave us a lot of good advice and so forth. So, were not suffering from lack of input for sure. And what the gao really, really wanted us to do. We got partial credit after the first two years for leadership commitment and for submitting an action plan in the area where we did the best was actually addressing some of the shortfalls in policy, inconsistencies and ambu guty. Our policies range from some of the most sophisticated in the country often paired with academic affiliates because were affiliateed with 130 of the nations medical schools, goes to after world war ii, to much, much smaller facility in highly rural areas. In fact, one of our challenges in terms of access is that roughly one in five americans lives in a rural area. For the veterans we serve, thats one in three. So, in some of the communities, capacity for providing health care anywhere, whether its va or in the community, is highly variable. We have some logical advantages to that end as well, and in terms of telehealth because we have the largest footprint in the country, but nonetheless, a tall order to pull this together. So, one of the challenges we have with policies just to make this concrete was writing policies that would fit both our most sophisticated complex facilities as well as those located in smaller areas of the country that would smaller than those paired with Academic Centers and so forth. I will say there had been work done before so having this high on the list gave the internal work a huge boost. At the with the assistance of gao, and they have been very helpful, even when sometimes they feel theyre being too helpful, to be quite honest, they challenged us to develop a root cause assessment, how did we develop these underlying risks or symptoms of our problems. And what we did was to actually use an organizational frame work that integrated findings from the independent assessments, Inspector General reports. And professor reports, to come up with a list of six short root causes and were working rapidly to develop more robust action plans. By way of getting started, for those of you who might be new to this or new to it in the near future, the first thing we did with Bob Mcdonalds very enthusiastic blessing was to convene a crossdepartmental work group to develop action plans to address the root causes. We took advantage of omb sir lahr 1722 and ongoing modernization efforts that all departments are working through to ensure the Sustainable Solutions are developed and implemented across the enterprise. And dr. Shulkin, who you may have heard mr. Dodaro refer to as someone then leading the Health Administration is now our secretary. So we have the advantage of that continuity, and he is quite committed not only to tra addressing the underlying risks, but high level challenges. Access no surprise, commune ca Community Care. And some come out of our core budget and some out of a separate budget and were working with the congress to consolidate those and make it easier. Weve used this as an opportunity to engage employees across the organization. Probably wont be a shock to know that when we issue policies from headquarters. Sometimes theyre not met with instantaneous enthusiasm and so we took the opportunity to actually have some listening tours and thats ongoing, to find out, you know, what are we doing thats driving you nuts and how can we make sure that were getting your input earlier and in a way that makes the policies or oversight procedures and so forth more effective. The car is what is the best treatment and so forth. And of course there are benefits issues as well. Right now you are talking about two administrations in the same department. That doesnt always go well. One of my colleagues whom i have a huge amount of respect and listen, we are doing our work. It is those guys. I would do the work in government have never, ever heard this before. When he watched the hearing i kept pushing back on not you said you are right, we have to do a lot better. The gao is right and we cannot card game and we are going to do it. I hadnt seen him before we were put on the highrisk list. Secretary chopin has identified as i said four areas, and this is with a lot of input from the gao that we will address her spirit access and Community Care are right at the top of the list. Getting off the air missions for how rapidly we can do that. What really motivates people as the notion we are underlying challenges that are barriers joy sense of mission. I cannot overstate the sense of Mission People have a v8. It may be four years this week and it was a huge treasure to me. I worked at hhs for a lot of years before that. The sense of the mission is palpable. In the notion that activities are pursuing with the best of intentions are misguided in the way is a very, very powerful motivator to the difficult work of change. We are focusing a great deal now on shifting from a react if mode of dealing with problems and as i mentioned earlier, we have a lot of and put in theres always something to react to to get ahead of the curve and be proactive. Its very interesting about this in the context of our modernization expert is invariably modernization expert says the focus and you just heard from my colleague at the department of defense, we need the right analytics and metrics and so forth. Our part of va which is about 90 and yes we need terrific analytics and theyve got some great people, but its got to be tightly tied to action has to be oriented so we can get her act of information rather than waiting for crises and problems to the marriage. We have also struggled a lot, but are continuing to work on making sure that our data are reliable because we were a number first Health Systems to become immersed in electronic records. We have an amazing amount of electronic data. Choosing the right contracts, the pressure seems that some people would refer to it continues to be a challenge, but one i think we are getting a lot closer. We have to be much, much smarter about how we use our budget and getting ahead of the curve. I think that this is a very powerful force. I must say sometimes its a little bit like the recent researcher i had. The Technology Available if you freely shattered the bone sinuous has changed quite dramatically. Not so long ago i would have gone home with hardware on the outside and i wouldve been casting a shadow on the sunlight and much, much more prolonged convalescence. Its been about three weeks and i can move my wrist a lot, which feels almost immaculate spirit in at the same time the spots appeared in the day when i think, when will this be over. I dont want to suggest that every moment of this experience is part of one joyful journey. But i think more and more people are starting to see this is a hugely helpful tool in our journey forward and again what motivates us is that it will help us close the gap between our aspirations and reality veterans experience. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. [applause] we are now going to turn our attention to the office of personnel management. In 2001, Human Capital management was added to the gao highrisk list and specifically Critical Skills are part of what is at issue here. Agencies have skill accounts for a number of Different Reasons come in sufficient numbers people in the right place with the right skills to do the work. The current budget and longterm fiscal issues, nature and change im very honored to have veronica of the logo, the Principal Deputy associate your for the u. S. Opposite all management and play Services Division who is going to be talking about what opm is doing to remove this particular item from the highrisk list. Her current responsibilities include formulating and implementing Human Capital Management Strategies and policies to support federal agencies as they accomplish their missions. She has earned her law degree in washington d. C. And is also a member of maryland and michigan bar. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. As my voice coming through okay . A little louder, okay. See, is that a little better . Im going to talk with you about the challenges come a little bit about the history where we are and weve been on the gao list in the future probably come off of the gao list. One question i have for the group is how many of you are hiring managers . And if you executives . Have you ever been hiring managers . How many of those if you have been hiring managers think strategic Human Capital was her responsibility at that time . That is a good ratio given the number of people in the room. The reality is when you talk about Human Capital management, strategic Human Capital, everyone always thinks the same thing. That is someone elses responsibility. That belongs to the Human Capital officers in the building, and maybe the h. R. Directors. H. R. Specialist are supposed to enable me to do my job but im not directly responsible for how that looks up in my agency. And there is the crux of the problem because the reality is we must all be responsible for how Human Capital functions within each of our organizations be at the executives who helped identify the skills areas needed and what kind of talent is needed, the managers helping implement that, the line supervisor whos helping engage employees so they dont want to leave and coworkers to see themselves as Leaders Within the organization to help achieve the mission of the agency. As stated earlier back in 2001, this area of strategic Human Capital management was placed on the gao highrisk list. We remained there for 10 years. We were able to apply some strategies that make the differences, but it was at that time gao asked us to begin focusing on closing the skills gap, especially looking at missioncritical occupations. In 2011, opm engaged very closely to figure out how we could Work Together to identify missioncritical occupations and start addressing skills gaps throughout government. 2014 what we found us who are making as much progress as we wanted to send what we develop as a data driven repeatable process that would allow agencies to figure out where do i have some real skills gap within my organization in a missioncritical occupation of figure out what we can do from a government white is. We looked at a data points unimagined for specific areas looking at twoyear retention. Retirement rate an applicant quality. If you think about what is happening during these years, we had everything from sequestration. We had agencies on continuing from a couple of different years. And then we had a hiring freeze. As you can imagine, that has an impact how people are able to retain talent as well as how they are able to hire. We have the repercussions of those larger policy issues facing us. We issued a memorandum about a year and a half ago, asking each of the agencies to conduct real cause analysis and develop an action plan on how they were going to address the root causes as missioncritical occupation. The agencies reviewed all of their data and we found all of them have been working with us to address those missioncritical occupation gaps. But i will tell you is interest wanes because it is very difficult to continuously work on these areas to put up of the attention on them, that not being able to see those metrics change. Not seeing those improvements as quickly as you would like because of the very nature of Human Capital. While we did also do is identify government skills gap areas including acquisition, economists, auditors and h. R. We also had done some work on i. T. And specifically cybersecurity. I know that its been a large topic of what we talk about today, especially with the gao director. Because of all the work we had done over the prior 15 years when we got to developing the cybersecurity work for strategy, we were able to do some very interesting analysis and look at enterprisewide solutions. We see ourselves inching towards improvements. When we issued that strategy for cybersecurity back in june or july of 2016, we set a goal of how many people we would hire by january. We exceeded that goal by 20 governmentwide. I bring this up to say that it is this kind of careful analysis that will get us there, but it also means having the willing coordination across all the agencies. In 2017, gao entered the highrisk report and we were labeled to show we met leadership commitments. In some of our other areas with partially met, but ultimately we do know that more work needs to be done to show the demonstrated progress. I am starting to see the glimmers across government. I was most excited when i was involved in the Strategic Planning and i started hearing our cfo and cio and all the different organizations talk about a skills gap area. How are we going to address the skills gap areas within our workforce . I rose off the tongue, natural part of how they thought about Strategic Thinking within the agency in a south we are making progress. If you use that technology for five years ago, people would shake heads and say im not sure what that means. Im not connected to this concept. What we are also seeing across the governmentwide skills gap areas, excellent strategy employed and they will not go as far to say if the data is approving a goodness. I will say we are employing excellent strategy shared across the different groups and we see the agencies within their own missioncritical occupations applying some of the same strategies to achieve results. Thisll be a long time coming. One of the things we are noticing this for some of the agencies, the analysis required on a quarterly basis to give updates is a challenge. We are looking and thinking about how can Business Intelligence tools that opm Safety Agencies as they do this work so it doesnt become just a data pool and exercise of what might seem like futility if theyre not seeing metrics built, but rather than an exercise of where they see success and how they can improve it in other within their workforce. I know that we are running short on time, so lets go ahead and get started with questions. Thank you, veronica. Please. [applause] each of our panelists has discussed their journey with how they are moving forward to take their weaknesses off of the highrisk list. A couple of areas have, that are consistent across the areas that one has been the relationship holding that has been necessary in order to be able to make progress. Another has been the use of Data Analytics and metrics that something important in order to show progress. The action plan a more Strategic Planning that help tell people where you are going. All of those are important. What i havent heard in what i would like to hear is if you had to address one major obstacle that has been sent they knew it had to work pretty hard to overcome, what would you say that major obstacle would be . Veronica, why dont we start with you . So, one area for the rest that has been a challenge is a common understanding of what the metrics should look like. When we talk about this book with the agencies come and have a clear idea of how they need to dig into those metrics within their own workforce. We had heard from gao that they wish to see more of a task force style were agencies are comparing to each other. What we find is the different occupations and needs of the agencies are different from one another that would like to give them the flexibility to do the analysis that will work given their workforce. Under our 250 regulations that were just issued in january, what weve done is ask the agencies to connect quarterly reviews, looking at the data appears some of this will be missioncritical occupations. Some in other areas of concern for Human Capital. We find that the very fact a way for the agencies to on this issue. The challenge really has been how do we come to the same understanding of what the metrics should we and how we pursue the change management Going Forward with the agency. Thank you. So i think i would say that a challenge for us and im pretty up to mistake that we will get there, but its difficult when veterans cant get care today, you do something today to fix that problem. You are not waiting for a fully blown strategies for a formal document that has been circulated in forms enhanced by thoughtful atkins so forth. There are actions that have to be taken very, very rapidly, sometimes because inability to get care can lead to delays the live pretty important effect of veterans and so forth. On one hand weve got this whole effort gathering steam and traction. It didnt address the underlying causes of how we get there. At the same time weve got to be fixing problems right now. Integrating those has at times been a little challenging because people will look at the expectations from our colleagues at gao in terms of how they present the work that theyve been doing. It looks like the facilities with occupations. You did that the best practices you are doing up at the different label again, trying to find a convergent path will continue to be a problem. Particularly because he comes fresh out of the Health Care System which is the biggest problem is a very action oriented me change now kind of person. We will get there, doing internal challenge. I mentioned earlier getting the services to agree to the common metrics they were going to be used at the enterprise level. As i said earlier, each service has a way of doing tracking and managing and spending money on their areas and therefore they have had a decade with Information Systems on how they track and manage their inventory. Sometimes we have metrics were 80 of the good news story, other times nine and at 90 . How did you get services to agree on one matcher everybody uses and it took a lot of persistence and a lot of dedication by supply leaders to make the services agreed to a standard set of metrics. Once the metrics were agreed upon, we have new leadership coming in and they fall right in saying that his standard matcher. And so its really help the metrics were agreed upon by the services and data force, and we could now continue to manage and measure how we are doing across the board. I want to continue that another parts of our portfolio of standardized metrics. It helps our Senior Leadership along with part 18 now understand what is happening across the enterprise. The extra mile challenge we had these gaos team of auditors. Reality, just like any organization you have change. People are constantly coming and going. Weve been on the list since 1990. Theres no way the same team has been with us for 25 years. As you get new auditors on board, no matter what you are dealing with, someone who might not have been around our business and our area, our lexicon, are acronyms and we have to take some time to teach them how we do business, explained to them how the government operates in department of defense and how we want to have this area approved an action plan. We have one team doing a complete changeover of the Audit Team Members for one of our areas still upon the highrisk list and that causes a bit of a delay because we had to explain to them how we are doing things and how we are seeing this they would interact with us on a regular basis. We were blessed to have the team from 2015 on for the inventory work with us and really get to the next hurdle. For some of the other areas, we are working through it and they think that is a Lesson Learned for us to have the communication with gao so we dont change holistically but maybe individual members. So i will build upon that point. In each of your discussions commend issue of Relationship Management has come out. You just talked about managing the relationship with gao. Often if you end up on the highrisk list, you find that others kind of pile on and Inspector General developed a new interest in that area and within the agencies other people developing you have your congressional oversight. Could you talk more about your strategies for managing all those relationships . I will start by saying you know we will have gao looking on a subject and before we know it and sometimes other agencies and other organizations looking at that topic and how do we manage it all is we have to have a Senior Leader who is managing it and having all of those touch point to make sure that they are consistent in the message in working through the different organizations as they look at our areas. Its all about feedback and communication there has to be a speed that wouldve been that communication. Again, having a Senior Leader became top of person they are responsible for managing and across those different agencies. We have the same phenomenon. In fact, sometimes pending on timing of the report were people will have internal confusion, or someone is talking about the ig report that they call it the gao report because its all the same topic. Usually a slightly different bias or. One of the strategies we used this year was to share our assessments with the inspect or general. They use the strategy of Major Management challenges and in a funny way, the risk areas identified for us by vga out in the highrisk list are almost a mirror image of the Major Management challenges. In both instances, you have to figure out the logic model that can expand. Having testified that several hearings where i felt like the humans damage in ig here that it made sense if there were more transparent rather than months. So i will leave it at that. We are still working on it. Thank you. Or challenges a little bit different. Although the ig will sometimes address these issues, other gao reports that have a tangential relationship to this area and we find ourselves going into other meetings talking about skills gaps when they are related to something other than Human Capital. With that being said, what is most interesting is opm is here to be the ambassador for all agencies. So they dont see that as something other gao list. In some cases, we are lucky and not to have some company with her misery, like in cybersecurity were all the agencies are getting the same kinds of questions we are getting an study is happening across government. Does actually help us because we are able to find agencies who are willing to partner and really apply some pressure were needed to make these kinds of changes. But in many instances, it does not feel like a opm is the one making their requirements. It seems to some agent did that we are the ones instituting the burden, not understanding in fact this is part of all of our work. This is how we do Human Capital and if we are not trying to close skills gaps, im not sure we are doing Human Capital at the agencies. Our challenge is slightly different. Not so much involvement, but far more gao studies that are related in the challenge with the agencies. Thank you. We have some time for questions from the audience. We are going to grab a microphone for you and adam will come around. Theres one in the middle of the room there. Good morning, everyone. I feel like your experiences kind of nearer my teams experience. And from the office of major immigration. My name is anna marie. Specifically, dr. Clancy, you talked a little bit about your issue with pushing a policy for the Headquarters Level two different types of organizations. My question is how do you successfully perform vertical integration . Is it a matter of looking at integration of different tiers in making different requirements or you talk about your listening to her. Is it just making sure you build everything and so the policy relates to everyone . How do you do that successfully when you have different cultures in one organization . Be my piece of cake. No im kidding. Last night effectively we are talking about the Headquarters Level 18 Regional Networks and below that any number, eight, 10, 12 facilities with affiliated clinics and again, if you know much about health care or anything about it, health care looks kind of different in montana than a dozen Downtown Manhattan and you could go on and on. Its what makes it interesting, too. We had a lot to do to clean up our policies. First the number had expired and so forth that may make changes to the overall format as well as the process of getting input. We are still chipping away of input on the ground. Ive been astonished by how much people want to provide that input. Im told, i was not there, then one of these listening to her someone had to gently place urging its okay you can go back and finish your session away. We are not going to vaporize at 5 00 because he had a lot he wanted to share a policies and so forth. The lines of authority and decision rights between headquarters and the regional level is something we are still working through a number of areas. Probably a more challenging area we are in the early phases of is is overlapping policies at the Headquarters Level where it has been known to occur that some policies appear to contradict each other. Some policies are extremely broad. For example, patients safety. Others focus on a specific condition or situation. 99 of the time this is not intentional. The other 1 people are aware but they cant figure out how to resolve their differences. That is going to take more work on our part, but it is squarely within our sites to address. Does that help . Other questions. Taiko mcgeary chapel with the census bureau, new member of the club so to speak. Thank you. I just was wondering, i heard a couple of reflections on her cause analysis where its just beginning i just wondered if any panel member could elaborate on the process he followed and the pitfalls you came across and how you resolve those. Root cause analysis. Thank you. So what i will tell you is before we instituted the basis by which agencies were to conduct the root cause analysis come a lot of people were creating strategy without identifying the causes. Im sure all of us have had that experience and what was helpful as we did training for 140 different agencies and walk them through that process. I think it is over the course of about six months where we met with them i want to say by mentally. Is that right . And then we met with them individually. But we also did this also did as those eight data points we talked about how we pull that data for the agencies ourselves and distribute it to them instead based on what you believe to be your root cause issues, please take a look at this data, talk to us if you have questions and we started helping them formulate action plans. Our folks really did hold their hand throughout the process and gave them the tools they needed to be able to do that analysis. We did not expect the agencies to be able to do it just at the gate with the guidance and some direction. That was probably the most important thing we did and now we are starting to see some progress being made. What is difficult for the agencies is to put enough effort into really executing against those action plan because the regular work can get in the way. And so i would just add that after you do that work and how the action plans coming you will have to find friendly ways to allow them to review what progress has been made, review what work has actually been done. I will give you a quick example. Weve always had the government wide areas come together on a quarterly basis and meet with the director to talk about how they are doing on their action plans, what they are noticing in their data. Those who benefit is, but interest was not as high as it used to be in the discussions werent as robust. What weve decided to do is now we are having one hour meetings over the phone, having a quick sequence of questions, allowing them to share that information. Sometimes my point venus to get stuck in the root cause analysis and people dont get into their reactions. Monomers aker said that earlier. We have to keep doing our work as we are doing our analysis. We have a sort of twopronged approach. One is to do this through caused assessment at the enterprise level across all of the fibrous areas. In addition to that, each of the risk areas is doing their own. We havent quite gotten to that phase yet although i can see it over the horizon where we are going to find some issues to reconcile. Starting with the enterpriselevel first, almost by definition incorporates areas of interdependent. For example, i could write a brilliant policy that if i cant tell you how people are reading it much less following that, it will not be helpful. Thats bifurcated into ambiguous policies here and oversight there. On one level theres been a little bit of internal competition. The policy people think they are cause of assessment is the best and im going to grant that 100 . Again, integrating all of that up is going to be a little bit challenging because of the areas i would argue are a challenge for any large government department. Fragmentation is a fact of life. We are working through it, but theres no way will get rid of it altogether. The root cause analysis was very difficult because we did not have standard data to look at. If you dont have standard data, you cant validate where you think the issue areas are in focus expert. It started in 2010 when we are directed to do an inventory Improvement Plan can get at what our issues are that started us on the road for standardizing metrics finding a way to buell two i hate to say Great Services on how they were doing a business and then hold people accountable. Thank you. David bird talk about professional services council. I wouldve been secretary for inches when the first highrisk list came out in dod Inventory Management was on it. If you look at the internal communications we have at the time, my opinion was we would never be off the list as long as there is a gao. That is not the point of my question however. If you look at the history of the progress list, there are two different kinds of categories of efforts jail looks at. One is for the end of cells is in the high risk and very much objective of the agency built into that. The others, whether its personnel and skills gaps, Inventory Management, dessert means to a much larger said the agencies get involved in. I would suggest in the general hinted at this a little bit in his remarks. It would behoove us and they realize that question with you guys is does this make sense look a little more on achieving the end result rather than perfect in the process along the way. That might be a better path for ge to focus on in the agencies themselves to focus on implementing the rest of our lives. This is kind of one of those things is a long lecture what you think about that. Its a question of what do you think about that . Does that make sense and how do you approach that dealing with congress . Thank you for that question because ive been thinking as i sit here is very tactical. We are talking about how we are achieving each of the five areas in terms of a gao sets forth and how we get off the highrisk list. The reality is we are doing all this to make sure we have the right talent government to achieve our missions. When we are able to step back, thinking about the metrics more strategically, looking up entire occupations and how we will address the specific issues up in those occupations we are able to do that. We are able to remember why it is reduce Human Capital. We are able to think more strategically and oftentimes they get involved in the menasha of making the process work. To me cybersecurity is a great example. Weve been able to accomplish good works very because they look at our objectives and how we will achieve it. I guess i will just say i dont want to overstate the seed that direct connection to the end goal. Serving a term secretary as the year of our crisis, when i had to testify on this, it seems selfevident to me. It was easy for me to be persuasive that yes we have to get better in scare right now, though we are not back. I think many people get out. I tend to get more traction in dealing with people that way. Im not sure its quite as bold as the distinction he drew, but a very good question. I concur that is a great comment because we definitely need a process to get at the end results. We cant just magically say this is going to be fixed and again and mentioned earlier we change of leadership. We have to have a plan in place to stabilize the way a hug. This is definitely important for us to get to our end state, which is a high risk, but more than that dont buy what is not needed and dont keep what is not used. It is more efficient and a better manager of tax air money. We are really proud of being taken off the list this year because we believe we had done that and we are continuing improvement as we talked about earlier. More actions working for the way ahead. It is critical we understand it is for the longterm. I will add one more thing i get asked a lot of times why we are like walmart or amazon or other companies that are just in time or do things differently than we do. I would tell you the reality is we have to manage older Weapons Systems. We have to look at how we do business to be able to surge whenever the crisis comes our way. There are some things we learn from industry, but also thinks the government has to do based on our mission to sustain and support whatever the nation calls. Again, i think its a great question and we have to remind people who were doing this for the greater good of our support of basically the security of our nation. Any other questions . Hi, as we are starting our process, i was wondering if he could speak a little bit more about your engagement with gao, like when you engage them after youve done your root cause analysis are drafting your action plan. Thank you. I can start out by saying we have some averse offers that talk weekly to the staffers and team members and several times a week leadership needs to on a regular basis be mostly quarterly depending on the availability of the leadership. It is a constant communication and i will continue that we want to have that open door back and forth. Yeah, i would agree that the frequent communication is very helpful. I will say there are times when weve held off having meetings because we have their own issues to help resolve internally. Its going to be an ongoing question of going to guess the finest in the census as well. Is a valuable investment of time to schedule a meeting when in fact we are not on the same page altogether. I dont mean we are at war or anything. Im a mumble, i think we may have had too high a bar for thinking we all set to go in their commitment to every syllable of what we were sharing to get feedback from gao. We are about to start stepping it up on a more regular basis. With the frequency reports, i can imagine theres ever a week when we are not in touch with gao on a regular basis. I will just add we communicate fairly regularly. We also invite them to some of our trainings. The root cause analysis, for example, we would invite them and those were effective means for us as well because people saw commitment not only from opm, the gao. We have time for one more question. I have one final question for you. [inaudible] i can start out by saying first of all thank you for having me here today. Its great to be able to talk about successes and way ahead. Youve got to be commended as weve all mentioned it is all leadership involvement, getting out root causes of issues and following through and continuing to work on the areas and we started this for inventory 20ton full throttle and it took a six plus years to get off the list. I would tell you its not going to happen overnight. It can be done. Thank you. My first advice would be to not get on the list. One of the comments made a couple of years ago by someone who is famously understated, theres a certain amount of stickiness to getting on this list, meaning that performs commode actually seen statistics hugely helpful. I think the other thing that the gao gives you a terrific framework for what you need to do and if theres any advice i have, it would be dont like it then in the way of trying something in sort of a plan approach. It does not have to be perfect before we launch any piece of this plan. We are probably going to need to try another things before we get a definitive path forward. My advice to be remember why youre doing it. Sometimes it gets so involved simply forget the longterm goal. What is their mission and how are they going to achieve that with the people they have . Keep going back to that other ways you can get caught up into have i met the promise that he worried more about the approach rather than the goal. Please join me in thanking our panel. [applause] it was lovely to meet both of you. [inaudible conversations] what a great panel. Thank you so much for being transparent and frank and practical with us. The activity is not over. I could see and appear giving you my brilliant insight, though what we had that each of your tables as a designated table discussion facilitator and we will spend about 20 minutes kind of going through what you heard and how you can put into this at your own organization. At 11 10 we will have a quick wrapup. If you need to freshen your coffee now is the time to do it, but we want to engage in this table conversation. For a panelist take off, join me in a round of applause again. [applause] and now ill turn you over to your table facilitators. Thank you. [inaudible conversations] this affected have somebody else have a better life, too. I dont care what anybody says. Born in a log cabin and builtin singapore. [inaudible] my political history was i tell people when i was born in 1946 in perry, georgia, they sound democrat on your birth certificate. I made a political decision called truth in our typing in the name be to change parties. The only people who were doing security were the people in the military. So this is really a hobby. There were jobs and people were putting things online and theres money at risk. All the sudden, hackers started getting jobs doing security. Up next, Homeland Security officials talking about the technology they are using to secure the nations borders and testify before the house Homeland Security and border and Maritime Security last month. It is about 90 minutes. Victory in Homeland Security subcommittee on border and Maritime Security comes toward her. The committee is meeting today to examine the role of technology in the border security. I recognize myself for an opening statement. Border security no onesizefitsallol