araya chairs the house subcommittee hearing. >> subcommittee and oversight, management and accountability, will now come to order. without objection, the chair is authorized to declare the subcommittee a recess at any time and let me thank everyone by joining us today. this month, as you know, we've commemorated 20 years since the tragic 911 cowardly attack on our country, that essentially led to the creation of the homeland security and this committee. as we look back on the last two decades it's impossible to ignore how much has changed. the threats to our homeland and the ones we've faced today have grown beyond foreign terrorists to include cyber attacks, climate change and domestic violence extremism and to meet these new threats, the department of homeland security has evolved as well. a department that was one barely more than a collection of 22 federal agencies has matured to become more cohesive and therefore more effective, but ensuring the department's many components work together coordinated in tandem is a daily effort that still needs much more work. over the years, several secretaries of homeland security have made it a priority to unify the departments, and to consolidate management functions within a strong, centralized head quarter and many dhs components existed for decades before the department was created and each had its own histories and each its own coasters. and though these agencies have been brought together under one umbrella, they don't always work together as they should. and dhs headquarters often lack the ability to adequately coordinate these policies, resources and oversight as a whole. we have made progress. today, dhs has created new offices to better coordinate information sharing, strategic planning, and overlapping operations, and today, i look forward to hearing from two representatives from dhs's management directorate about how the department has changed and evolved over the last 20 years and how it's taking on new and evolving challenges. and i also look forward to hearing from the government accountability office which has provided consistent oversight over the department since its creation, especially through its biannual high risk list which is a report that identifies government operations with significant vulnerabilities to fraud, waste and abuse, and risk management. when this department, dhs, was first created, gao added implementing and transforming the new department of homeland security to its high risk list and in 2003, gao noted that such a task was, and i quote, an enormous undertaking that will take time to achieve in an effective and efficient manner, close quote but that failure to do so, in open quote, would expose our nation to potentially very serious consequences, close quote. in dhs has transformed itself over the last 20 years and its designation on the high risk list has changed as well. now, gao's recommendations are more focused on improving the department's management functions. and although dhs has made significant progress on over the years, it continues to struggle with integrating and strengthening the core functions that affect every single aspect of the agency. this includes the management of information technology, human capital, acquisition, finances. all of which are housed within department of management directorate. these remain on the list in many ways because they are issues that offer the most form of challenges to a decentralized headquarters. the constant push and pull between operational components and headquarters have hampered the department' ability to develop a strong and unified approach to these core issues, but taking on these problems is key to ensuring the dhs can continue to protect the homeland from all threats, those we faced 20 years ago and those we are facing now, and those we will face in the future. i do look forward to hearing more about how dhs has grown into the agency it is today, as well as how we can help them, we can help them, continue to mature and meet these enduring and evolving challenges. and with that, i thank you again all for joining us today and i would like to recognize the ranking member of the subcommittee, the gentlemen from michigan, mr. peter mayor for his opening statement. mr. mayor, welcome. >> thank you mr. chairman for holding this important hearing today and thank you to our witnesses from dhs and gao. this hearing comes at a critical time for department of homeland security, dhs was created in the wake of the most devastating terrorist attacks to occur on u.s. soil when we lost americans on 9/11, we vow as a nation to prevent another such attack from occurring again, we pass the 20th year anniversary this month and find ourselves facing a multifacetted threat landscape. we see those resembling those that led up to the attack 20 years ago. united states has withdrawn from afghanistan and there is real concern that the swift taliban takeover of the country, coupled with the mismanaged u.s. withdrawal, has left a vacuum in which terrorist groups will reconstitute and proliferate. at the same time, dhs is leading the enormous task of vetting and resettling thousands of evacuees from afghanistan into the united states. operation allies welcome will be a complicated, time consuming effort for the department and dhs does not have the luxury of focusing solely on this issue. the threat landscape has expanded beyond the actions of foreign terrorist organizations like al qaeda that served as the original catalyst for the creation of the department but dhs must be ready to handle increasing level of new threats including cyber attacks, migrant surges on the border and influence in security as foreign actors seek to influence our democracy. dhs must be prepared to handle all these threats and well, we recognize the dedicated work in the department and its employee and see all they accomplished over the past 20 years. it is no easy task to create a new organization and am even more difficult to combine 22 distinct entities into one cohesive unit. while dhs made great strides over the year it is remains lacking in key areas, department of accountability published a list in march of this year, delineates high risk program operations as well as a status report of the government' effort to address these high risk areas. this year, gao advised the department must continue integrating strategy for high risk management out lining progress for strengthening and innovating information technology, financial management, human capital management and acquisitions, by gao's assessment, dhs is still lacking capabilities to build capacity in programs, it and financial, these are critical to the security and safety of dhs's numerous missions at home and abroad, specifically, of the five functions assessed for every operation dhs is meeting three of them, only partially meeting two, capacity and progress demonstration functions. i cannot express how vital it is that dhs have the proper people, systems and resources in place to reduce risk in programs and operations. this could not be clearer than dhs's efforts to help afghan evacuees, dhs employed an administrator to lead the group in charge of vetting and setting evacuees from afghanistan, this gives dhs the incredible responsibility for the lives of 10s of thousands of evacuees while style dealing with other domestic challenges including the on going covid-19 pandemic and fallout from the worst hurricane season on record. the demands on dhs personnel are could mean pounded by shortables of personnel in key areas of the department, cited as limiting factor in a 2021 report. before coming to congress, i witnessed first hand as countries struggle with these crises around the world, i led disaster response organizations in the u.s. and broad, spent close to two years in afghanistan as a conflict analyst with humanitarian working to help aid workers, without the full support of my coworkers i would have been at a loss in these disaster relief efforts. similarly, without proper capacity at every level in dhs, each of its components will struggle for success. in terms of dhs's ability to demonstrate progress, i'm interested to learn what steps dhs takes or plans to take to resolve these high risk areas. it's imperative we see the department' acquisition processes, it systems and financial oversight capacity as well as human capital management functioning at the highest possible levels with the current global threat landscape in massive flux, we cannot leave anything to chance with the programs and orientations meant to leave our homeland secure, mr. chairman, thank you for holding this hearing and i look forward to hearing our witness's testimony today and working closely with the department to ensure it reaches its full and vital potential. >> i want to thank the ranking member for his comments and i want to thank the ranking member also for your service to our country. duely noted, thank you very much. members are also reminded that the committee will operate according to the guidelines laid out by the chairman and the ranking member in the february third colloquy regarding remote procedures and without objection, members on the subcommittee shall be permitted to sit and question the witnesses, that is members not on the subcommittee shall be permitted to sit and question the witnesses. if i can, i'd like to turn now to our panel of witnesses, first we have mr. chris curry, mr. curry is a director on homeland security and justice team at the government accountability office or gao, he leads the agency's work on emergency management, disaster response, and recovery, and dhs management and high risk issues mr. curry has been with gao since 2002 and has been the recipient of numerous agency awards including ameritory service award in 2008, welcome, mr. curry, second witness, served as acting secretary for management at dhs, in his role, oversees all aspects of the department's management functions including financial, human capital, information technology, pro curement, security, and asset management. mr. alice has served in many senior leadership roles since joining department in 2012 and most recently served as director of the secret service. and our final witness is ms. angela bailey, chief human capital officer at dhs. ms. bailey is responsible for the department's human capital program, including human resource policy, recruitment and hiring, and employee development. she's dedicated more than 40 years as a career public service with 34 of those years in human resources. and ms. bailey was appointed to her current position in january of 2016. and without objection, the witnesses statements will be inserted into the record and i will now ask each witness to summarize his or her statement in five minutes and i'll begin with mr. curry. welcome, sir. >> thank you sir, chairman curry, ranking member meyers and others it's an honor to be here to discuss gao's work on dhs. as you and the ranking member said in opening statement, dhs has been on gao's high risk list since opening its doors in 2003, we did this because combining 22 separate agencies was a massive challenge, many of the agencies had challenges from the start and the effective creation was critical to national security as well. i think it's important in this hearing to reflect over the last 20 years on how dhs has evolved and the tremendous transformational progress they have made there are several reasons for the progress you talked about in your opening statement, first has been leadership commitment. at gao we have more than 30 high risk areas across government and many more that we've taken off the list over the years there's not an ang agency or management team more committed to addressing these issues than the ones at dhs, for example they meet with us quarterly, do a strategy twice a year and we've seen tremendous commitment to these issues. second, dhs devotes resources to these issues and measures progress which is critical. for example, dedicated teams manage each individual outcome area and ensure accountability in the agency. another reason for progress has been consistent congressional oversight over 20 years. hearings like this one and in the senate keep the spotlight pointed on this issue and encourage steady progress. as a result, dhs transformed from a fragmented department without a clear culture to the third largest cabinet agency with almost 250,000 people and arguably the most diverse mission in all of government. i personally seen this over the last 19 years working with the department. however, while progress has been made, it's still the newest department. and more work is needed before we can take it off our high risk list. specifically, we monitor dhs's progress across several key areas including human capital, it management, so far, addressed 13 of the areas we major and working to address the remaining 12. i'd like to highlight some of the most challenging areas left to address. in the area of acquisitions, dhs continues to implement more disciplined processes to better manage acquisitions across the department however in our most recent look at acquisitions we found 10 of the 24 major acquisition programs we looked at did not meet cost or schedule goals. in some cases, this was because dhs under estimated a program's complexity or the requirements needed for the program. financial management has been another very challenging area. while dhs made progress, the initial challenge was so great that there is still a long way to go, to use a private sector analogy, you can imagine if 22 large cooperations had to combine financial systems and processes. for example, dhs now received a clean audit opinion on its financial statements for eight years straight which is a major achievement, however it struggles to modernize several of its financial systems, specifically, dhs needs to effectively implement its long term systems modernization efforts at the coast guard and particularly at fema who manage this lion share of the department's dollars and grants out the door. fema's system is over 25 years old and manages a huge, well over a hundred billion dollar portfolio, they only begun steps toward the modernization of fema. and lastly, i have to talk about employee morale, this has been of much focus over the years and the story is way more complicated than simply saying dhs ranks last among large departments. no issue largely frustrates the folks on this hear from dhs more. we've understood root efforts how to address th the bottom line is some dhs component advise higher morale scores. larger components like tsa and cdp consistently rank low and are bring the collective scores down. what we've seen is more focused oversight and attention is needed on the components and more accountability by their leadership. it is very hard for top level dhs action to trickle deep into the components to make change. component heads and management are the key to making progress in the respective agency and see we recently made a number of recommendations to ensure this happened. this concludes my statement, and i look forward to the questions. >> thank you very much, mr. curry. now i'd like to recognize mr. alice to summarize his statement for five minutes. good afternoon, it's a privilege to appear before you today along with chief human capital officer andrew bailey to discuss the maturation department of homeland security functions, as well as the challenges chris laid out for us. dhs employees rise to every challenge and challenges are many, management directive provides vital mission support services designed to enable frontline operators to more effectively rerespond to these challenges. since the founding of the department in 2003, challenge for leadership has been to input numerous diverse organizations brought together in the aftermath of 9/11, most had unique and longstanding management practices and systems already in place. because of these challenge as, gao designating in transforming dhs as high risk in 2003, after a decade, gao acknowledged the department's significant progress in 2013, narrowing to work on access program information, information technology, human capitol, integrative management functions across the department. i'm pleased to report, dhs mostly addressed the 30 high risk outcome and see gao is a valued partner this these efforts, to sustain progress, we're working closely with gao to narrow and rescope designation for dhs management functions with the goal of removing it from the list in the near future. so i want to highlight specific challenges and successes. dhs leadership long made supporting work force a top priority, all the more so during the covid-19 pandemic, andy will discuss these efforts in more detail. as a chief acquisition officer of the dparkts i oversee all major acquisition programs and recognize a critical royal in sound management meeting needs. all mostly addressed, we're on track to close the mostly addressed outcomes by demonstrating sustained projects with existing initiatives and program over sight, specifically maturing and enhancing acquisition program health enhancement procedures. dhs made substantial process in ensuring capability and see gao recognized that success with five to six it outcomes fully addressed. the sixth outcome, enhanced it security, considered mostly addressed and in january of 2021, gao informed the dhs cio. over the last year, cio made progress to the conditions raised, in my statement to the record. very proud, financial audit opinion, we believe we'll earn ninth opinion, and rooted in outdated financial system so the financial system modernization program will provide modern, efficient compliant business systems including financial procurement and asset management functions. there are many asset management outcomes focus on procurement and management systems used by fema and ice and dhs is moving forward, we expect significant progress over the next three to five years. secretary managing all that is responsible driving progress across the direct are the with respect to management functions so even while dealing with the immediate threat of covid, management director remained focus on long term issues, for example, the significant environmental and financial benefits, to national capital strategy, includes consolidation of dhs considerations on elizabeth campus and within the national region so fully focused on opportunitys for small business and recognized by small business administration with an a or a+ grade on small procurement score card for the past 12 years. since placed on a high risk list, dhs made tremendous progress with respect to central issue that is result in gao's high risk designation, we appreciate the strong partnership and willingness to continue our discussions about respoking events, moving management functions from high risk list and list and thank you again for the opportunity to appear before you to discuss the department's management functions and challenges and i welcome any challenges you have. >> thank you, mr. alice, and i'd like to recognize ms. angela bailey to summarize her statement in five minutes. >> thank you mr. chairman, distinguished members of the subcommittee, it is a privilege to appear before you today alongside mr. allous, deputy secretary for management to provide additional information about our one remaining human capital outcome and employee engagement efforts. i was here early this last year talk with the sun committee and am pleased to report continued progress despite the challenges we face. dhs is a living, breathing organization made up of more than 240,000 human beings. i worry about the same things all americans worry about, they struggle with student loan debt, childcare responsibilities, taking care of sick or elderly family members, missing another vacation, birthday or anniversary due to work obligations and on top of that, everyday our people perform some of the most difficult, dangerous, and at times heartbreaking and thankless work in the nation and they do it well. our people work through holidays and nights and weekends, always vigilant and ready, but you the work they do is often directly affected by some of the most critical issues facing society like the pan democrat squk natural disasters that dominate media headlines. for example, over 80% of dhs employees worked unpaid during previous government shut downs and 65% have held the front lines during the covid-19 pandemic. we can't change the work, but we can continue to explore and implement ways to support our people affected by that work. through our efforts on dhs initiatives like employee and family readiness and leadership and other developmental programs, we have increased support for our employees and their families across the department. our operational components continue working to meet employee and family needs through their efforts like resilience and suicide prevention programs at u.s. customs and border protection, intensive local action planning at select airports by tsa, emergency back up child care in fema, diversity, inclusion, awareness programs within the u.s. coast guard consisting of over 100 change agent and see taking action to rebuild morale and provide opportunities for employees to voice their concerns and share feedback at uscis after the furlough threat in 2020. why also share ideas and best practices with each other, leading frchl to u.s. immigration and customs enforcement, adapting tsa's successful local action planning to their own organization's resources, structures and needs and headquarters implementic emergency back-up child care as well. federal employee view points scores reflect the positive effects of these efforts, for example, cdp's employee engagement index otherwise known as eei increased 15 percentage points since 2015 and tsa's eei increased 11 percentage points, the overall dhs eei increased 13 percentage points, in fact five of our components, equal or surpass the government-wide average. in an agency as large, diverse, and geographically distributed as dhs this is significant. it is so significant that both opm and gao recognized the hard work gone into these positive trends. i would like to thank the gao team for continuous support and its productive relationship that they have had with us. all of this hard work has really led to us being able to achieve fully addressed on all but one human capital outcome and we're close on the one that remains, it is a very productive partnership. as mr. curry and alice noted, for the remaining human capital outcome the department made significant progress with continued implementation and sustainment of a variety of programs, the remaining work is to institutionalize the use of dhs-wide training data to inform human capital programs in 2022, thank you again for the opportunity to testify today, the department would not be successful without your support, and the work of our brave men and women who sacrifice each day to make our country safe. i look forward to your questions. >> i want to thank again all our witnesses today for the time and testimony. i want to remind the subcommittee, each one of us will have five minutes to ask questions of the panelists and i'll recognize myself now for five minutes of questions. not too long so i'll start with ms. bailey. great progress, looks like we're doing good work at homeland security. my question to you is focused on moral, and we've talked about this in the past. this is what i see as around interesting challenge of homeland 240,000 employees, that's bigger than most of my cities in california, that's big, yet each of the individuals working for you is part of that line of defense for the homeland. fbi officers, nobody can deny the fact they should be paid will, have benefits, they should be 30 year career agents, the best of the best at what they're doing. yet, you have tsa employees at the airport who are there, a lot of them part time, a lot of them struggling to get health benefits until recently with tsa, turn over is unbelievable yet those are the folks watching, monitoring that screen, looking at people trying to figure out whether there's something there that could get into an airplane that could do us major harm. how can we help snu not you by yourself, but we, as a legislature, help you make the argument that we need to bring these people up to speed, need to make them professionals, we need to pay them well, make sure that they're added to, you know, their, they know their mission, we pay them accordingly. please. >> thank you for your question, mr. chairman. yes, tsa, you raise a very important point for us and one that we have put a lot of attention and effort into. i know mr. pikosky is fully wear , aware of the efforts, raising the pay, in some locations can be paid more to work at a local retail or fast food restaurant than they can for tsa so it is a primary concern of ours and something we intend to address. the second issue is also has to do with making sure that we provide them their mspv appeal right and see pliesed to say this week, we worked a deal with mspv to make sure they have the appeal right to see them and with regard to the actual morale or engagement in working life, some of the things we're pleased about are the initiatives we put into our employee and feeling ready initiatives. >> what do we need to pay those folks full time, instead of part time? you know, flipping hamburgers, my daughter did that last summer, she got paid well, but she wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. i want to make sure that our tsa employees aren't there part-time and wanting to get out of that job for the next job that offers them a dollar more an hour. >> right, that's a very good question as well, mr. chairman, and one of the things we are striving to do is get the balance between part time and full time appropriate, because there are some instances where we found where our employees do want part time so they can raise their families or they can continue to go to school and have different opportunities. the other thing we really stress within tsa is it's also a foot into the federal government, a foot into dhs and we find many of our tsas have the opportunity to promote within tsa and/or go on to cdp, secret service and then on to i.c.e. so we found having specific career progression through the law enforcement community is something they've really valued and look forward to us putting more effort into that as well. >> couple of things i would argue that the typical fbi agent probably knows that they can go maybe parttime or some of the other federal agents can go part time depending on the family situation. tsa employees, get an opportunity to become fbi agent, move on, but how do you make it attractive to them to be there for 30 years? and i've got 30 seconds left, you're not going to answer that in 30 seconds but, you know, these are some of the issues we got to work on. again, the weakest link in the chain is one that will break and we can't afford any, you know, failures in our defense of the homeland. so i look forward to working with all of you. i want to criticize you and work with you to ensure we help the situation. with that, recognize ranking member for five minutes of his questions. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and thank you to those statements from all of our witnesses here today. mr. curry, i just wanted to follow up a little on what the chairman was mentioning in terms of concerns on the employment side, on the morale side. you had mentioned that if you take out i believe it was coast guard and tsa from the broader dhs work force, then it would be a much different picture. can you elaborate a little bit more on what is distinctive about the tsa and coast guard relative to the rest of the dhs work force? and also, in that, to what extent, you know, both the tsa being a wholly new creation with a very unique mission relative to the rest of the dhs and also the coast guard, you know, having that duelling role of, you know, uniformed defense and of, you know, quasimilitary capacity depending on its orientation. >> yes, sir, if i said that, i was incorrect, it's tsa and customs border protection so cbp are the two -- >> i apologize, but yeah, also, just if you could, you know, better truncate, you know, how you view those cultural difference snooze and actually i think you make a great point, because the coast guard morale is pretty high. they were a legacy component well before dhs had a strong mission, strong tie to the department of defense as you probably know well but let me talk about tsa and cbp, first of all they're by far the largest components, together, over 100,000 employees. i think also secondly, they really do represent what ms. bailey was saying, front line, have to be there day in and out, protecting our borders, scanning international pass port and see cargo, you know, all the tough things that we think about at dhs and i have to tip my cap. we have tremendous respect for those folks. you know, they don't have the luxury of working remotely like a lot of us in the professional world have been able to do over the last year and a half and covid impacted them hard but they are the largest, i think have the toughest mission. everything they do is under constant public scrutiny, you think of other federal workers, they don't have someone watching them do their job everyday so i just think they have a tremendously difficult mission and then what we just talked about with tsa. this is why, in our view, it's so critical that he woo really zone into these components and figier out how culturally we can make changes and frankly, hold their leadership accountable, ms. bailey and mr. alice from dhs stand point with do a lot and they have but unless the supervisors and managers deep kwn those components feel koupt accountability for morale i don't think it will be a huge priority. >> i want to pull up a little bit to the 40,000 foot level. on the whole, you know, the gao's high risk lins is something that dhs has been on for close to 20 years. can give a bit of a sense of how unique that is to dhs? other agency that is have been on it a very long time? i know dod is in a special category there but among more comparable executive branch agencies. >> yes, sir, dod always in a special category but yes, there are some that have been on since the inaugural list in 1990, for example, medicare, been on the whole time, but others have been on for less than that, 4 to 6 year that is have gone on and come back off. also, there's some that have gone on, come off, and then gone on again. couple years later, because the problems came back. so i wouldn't say it's out of the realm of ordinary that something is big and complicated as the department, and here's the other part, it's not just the management issues. it's the criticality for national security. i wouldn't say it's an odd thing that they're still on the list. >> thank you, mr. curry. my time running short so just want to pass mr. alice really quick. gao narrowed down the high risk area in 2013 recognizing key mission-related areas such as the homeland security review but dhs not published a qshr since 2014, seven years ago. any plans for completing that in short term, sir snu. >> yes, secretary promised to produce that, from plan and see policy not through management so i can direct a more specific answer them if that's okay. >> thank you, very much, mr. mayor and another chair, will recognize other members for questions for witnesses in occurrence with the guidelines laid out by chairman and ranking member in february third colloquy, i'll recognize members in order of seniority, alternating between the majority and minority, and members are reminded to unmute themselves when they are recognized for question, and let me start out with mr. torous from new york, welcome. >> i think there's a more senior member on so i'm happy to defer. >> mr. langovint, is that who we're talk begun. >> i thought i saw congressman tidus -- >> is that who -- thank you mr. tores. >> thank you very much mr. tores, i don't mean to cut a line but i appreciate you recognizing that, thank you mr. chairman, i'd like you to direct my question to ms. bailey and the diversification of the work force. i think we strengthen the work force if we do diversify and so that's something that i've been working on. there are a number of hbcus, hispanic serving institutions, our veterans out there, the ones we reach out to them and bring them in the stronger they become, i had a bill that passed in the committee and i thank the chairman for his support of t passed the house, it was in the aa that we approved but now got to get it out of the senate. it's called the homeland security acquisition professional career program act and it codifies training programs in the institutions i mentioned for our work force, i wonder if you can comment on having a diverse, professional, supplying things we need to keep our country safe. >> yes, thank you very much for the question. it is something that we've been working extremely hard at. one of the things that i'm really proud about is that the dh work force is actually 47% diverse and in fact, higher than the government wide average of 38% and often i'm asked if, you know, what if, that's because of tsa and cdp but even if you take them out, we're still 40% diverse. our hispanic population is at 22%, women represent 35%, and in our nonliable occupations such as my own, up to 48% and in ses have 31% women representation. our veterans are at 26%, we have maintained exemplary rating since fy 17. so we have put a tremendous amount of effort into recruiting and going out and making sure that we really seek talent from all segments of society. we've also put much effort into making sure that our leadership development programs help raise up everyone within the department so that they are ready, capable, to be able to go into our ses ranks. so, the one area i would say, but it remains a challenge for us, is our representation of women in law enforcement and mr. mayorkas has challenged us to be able to get to 30% by 2023. there's an initiative that's going on within the women in law enforcement community, to, i think, a 30 by 2030 but we've challenged that to make that 30 by 2023. so with that, we look forward to working with you to ensure that we can improve our diversity even more, but we are really heading toward 50% of dhs. we'll have some type of diverse representation across all of our components. >> well, i'm glad to hear those numbers. i also hope that you really target minority serving institutions. when you do recruiting, because often they're not aware that these career opportunities exist and further more, i don't know what your policy is on internships or mentorships but those often work well to bring in people to some of these professions. >> absolutely, congresswoman. i -- you hit the nail on the head. our internship programs, in fact, this summer we just did a cyber sprint and we hired over 300 people and put another 500 tentative job offers so like 800 people and we created a cyber honors program, the secretary has created a secretary cyber honors program and with that, so we put folks into that as well. so internship programs are hugely beneficial for us and going to these minority serving institution as where we've found tremendous talent so we're very supportive of those efforts happen. >> thank you, go over there to the senate and tell them that so they'll pass this bill. i want to send through. thank you very much, thank you again, mr. tores, i yield back. >> i can hear you now, can you hear me? great. thank you mr. chairman, ranking member meyer, and all the guests here today. you know, i have a question, normally, i don't know who wants to answer this, but, you know, i live in a rural district with a smaller airport and, you know, the president's executive order on vaccination for these federal employees is set to take effect prior to thanksgiving. you know, that's a heavy travel period and one of the busiest weeks of the year. i guess my question is, in a smaller airport like in my district, there's going to be a significant vaccine requirement, especially if that area is smaller, can you walk us through what plan dhs has for employee that is are not going to be vaccinated at that time? that could be detrimental not just to dhs or tsa employees but to a lot of different facilities. can anybody answer that? >> yes, ma'am, i'll start off and let angie pitch in also, first off, we want to fully engage the work force with what the intent of the administration on the vaccination program. so first off is to lay out the timeline for those vaccinations, and then make available a location where they can get vaccinated which are fairly wide, even in numerous locations through your local pharmacy so you want to start in that area and then, you know, we want to encourage them, certainly don't want to lose employees over vaccinations, i mean that's kind of our starting point as we work this down and i think really communicating with them and making available vaccines is a critical part of this effort. angie, you want to fill in more on that? >> yeah, i would say we had our o-vow, operation vaccinate our work force where we partnered with va to provide as much vaccination support as we could to our mission critical positions and that included our tsa operations and like the small airport you mentioned. 77% of those folks that were eligible that had requested it actually did get their vaccinations. on whole, dhs is 64%, we've had employees respond, we're at 64% of our workforce has been vaccinated. and that's on par with the nation as well. so to mr. alice's point, we're going to put a full press on educating our work force, make sure we can get them as many facts as we can to make an informed decision, created a time table when to have the first shot and second shot and working with omb, privacy and civil right and see civil liberties to make sure we have a reasonable accommodation process in place to address anybody who has a medical or religious exemption. so we -- we're not in the business of removing our employees. we're in the business of trying to make sure we educate them, that we provide them every opportunity to get vaccinated or to put in for a reasonable accommodation because this nation's security and safety is, you know, it's a national security issue for us to make sure we have every dhs employee we can on board. >> well it is a national security risk because if you have these rural area and see that's where i'm seeing, you know, i'm also in the doctor's caucus and when we look at the statistics nation-wide, we see these rural areas are the ones that have the, a lower, i guess, a lower percentage of vaccination. so i guess my question is again, what is the plan when we don't have employees to work those stations? you know, i pushed for precheck in a lot of rural areas. people don't know what they don't know and we want them to know that they can go ahead, if they are a lower risk, go ahead and sign up for you that precheck. but what are we going to do, we can't afford to close those smaller airports so does dhs have a plan to fill those spots in case they do have to lay them off for that? >> yeah, i think i would say, as we can describe, ma'am, that our intent is to encourage employees into vaccination. i mean, if there are shortages in the airports, we'll have to address those in stride through additional hiring or moving, you know, temporarily moving employees to keep things open. i think, actually, the specific with the question best referred to tsa, i want to speak to them addressing the operations part of it. >> well, i know it's coming up on us pretty darn quick, got about a month and a half to get a strategy put together but thank you for your answers and with that, i yield back, sir. >> thank you, now recognize mr. tores. yes? >> i'm sorry, mr. chair, i think mr. langevin is on, he is more senior. >> he is, but he's not on the committee? >> oh, he's not? >> i want him to be on the committee but i have to send him i guess more flowers before i decides to. >> i just assumed he was more senior. so -- i have the glimpses of seniority. as all of you know, january 6th was obviously a wakeup call about the depth of domestic terrorism in the united states, particularly within the ranks of law enforcement. i know at dhs, that's the largest law enforcement agency in the federal government. secretary my yarks in april said he was going to conduct a review how to best prevent, detect, and respond to domestic terrorism particularly within the ranks of dhs domestic extremism. i am curious, what is the status of the review? and when can we expect to see the findings of the review. >> he just testified, the secretary did a few days ago on this particular topic and made the note that this is one of our most important missions to not only provide national intelligence about the domestic extremists but to ensure -- not our headquarters but our department is secure in that regard, too. in that regard. we have instituted he hadtation on how to identify a risk. >> i am asking what's the status of the review and when is the report coming out? >> he did commit to providing the report to the committee, the whole committee ask. that is due back to him in october some time. depending on his timelines, it should be sometimes after that. >> thank you. my next question is for gao. i know, mr. currie, you identified tsa as a troubled entity within dhs as well as border pa he will tro. i am curious, what is your assessment of i.c.e.? >> well, in terms of the morale score, sir? >> performance, morale, you classified dhs as a high risk agency. if i understood your testimony, tsa is a disproportionate driver of that, i want to know where i.c.e. ranks. >> there is a few issues in terms of management. one, we have morale concerns there, them being a law enforcement organization within the department that doesn't have as high a morale as some other components. there is a concern there that needs to be addressed. it's not that i am less concerned about i.c.e. than ts ar ocdp, but they are smaller. they have a tremendously difficult mission right now, too. i am concerned about their work force and the morale the work force, too. the other thing we look at, too, is in the management area, their financial systems, too. i.c.e. has one of the oldest legacy financial management systems, left over from before the department start asked they have a ways to go before they are able to modern oiz that as well. we have concerns there. >> does dhs have its own financial? why not have shared or centralized systems? >> well, that -- that question is the question on financial matters. >> i guess, mr. secretary, why not have -- >> that was the goal of -- from the beginning, was to centralize. at the very beginning the idea is we are going to take 22 legacy agencies, some were created, some were existing, and we are going to put all of these together into one system. very quickly we saw that was just not possible. right now there is a hybrid. some still have the old systems. fema's is over 25 years old. >> why is it not possible? >> for example, with fema,ing it's just a matter of first they got started a little bit late trying to modernize them and then there were so many different systems just within fema's systems. at one point they were managing 20 different grant programs with different systems. >> it is impossible to create one centralized system that can administer all those grants? >> nothing is impossible but i can say over 20 years to do this across dhs under one system has been very difficult. now they have been able to do this in some components and be successful. i think they are just down to some of the most challenging components. >> i want to quickly interject bass i heard a contribution between the two testimonies. you identify 30 management areas and you said dhs has made progress in 18 of those or has achieved its goals in 18 of these. the secretary said 22. what's the diss connect between your two testimonies. >> well, there is different ratings. i was referring to those that are fully address asked completed. there are others that are partially. so i think that was the difference. >> of everything that remains, what is the most urgent? >> right now i think the most urgent -- i classify urge end and challenging as the same. the most challenging are the hardest to address, they need to most focus and the most resources. financial management is going to take the longest to address across the department. there is still a lot of work to be done. dhs said there is a horizon of probably at least five years until some of these issues are addressed. i am concerned about that. but i continue to be concerned about morale, too. while we give dhs a lot of credit because there has been consistent steady progress and improvements last year -- almost every government agency improved last year. i don't think anybody at dhs would say they are where they want to be in terms of their employee morale. it has cascading effects, affects recruitment, affects retention. it has a major impact on the mission. that's another area i am concerned about. >> my time expired, long expired. >> thank you, mr. torres. now, mr. meijer, unless you object -- do you have any other republican members on our side right now? >> mr. chairman, i am not seeing any of my colleagues on this side of the aisle. >> unless you object, i go to mr. langevin. >> thank you. i thank you for allowing me to sit in on this subcommittee. i am proud to be on the homeland security committee, i haven't had the pleasure of serving on this committee, maybe in the future. but glad i could participate in this subcommittee hearing and i thank the witnesses for their testimony. i would like to start if i could with ms. bailey. what percentage of cyber security billettes within the department of homeland security are unfilled right now? obviously cyber security is the national security challenge of our time and we need all hands on deck, we need every billet filled, and i know dhs is still underresources there in terms of bodies. can you give me an idea of how many are unfilled right now? >> i think we have well -- thank you for your question, congressman. i -- you know, eye not sure. i have to get back to you on the exact number. i know we have close to 10,000 positions that are identified as being -- as being identified as being cyber and one of the things that we are trying to do with our sprint was to at least address 10% of our -- of our vacancies. so i think that we are somewhere around 80%, but i really need to get back to you -- 80% filled, not vacant. so i need to get back to you with regard to the exact number. >> you would say probably 20 to maybe 30% is a reasonable estimation? >> i think it is around 10% to 20% because we had a really significant push this summer and we far exceeded what we wanted to be. i think -- i think we are somewhere around 2,000 vacancies if i am not mistaken. so this summer we were able to again get almost 1,000 of those filled. >> i strongly hope that when i get the actual numbers it is closer to the 10% not 20% or more. 20%, i would characterize that rate as unacceptable, and you feel that it is troubling. i find that's a troubling statistic. but could you please explain to the committee what you plan to do to address this vacancy rate going forward? >> certainly. and i -- i do want to make sure that i was clear on this. we have around 2,000 -- we had around 2,000 vacancies this summer and we filled almost 800 of those 2,000. so we have made significant progress against making sure we have all of our positions filled. with regard to what we are doing, with congress's support we were able to implement our cyber talent management system, which will give us an incredible ability to recruit and hire, pay and retain, train our cyber work force that we have never been able to do within the federal government. so that will give us the ability to reach out to and establish partnerships with some of the minority serving institutions as well as, you know, being able to qualify folks who have maybe been successful in a haka on thi -- hack athon. being creative and breaking apart everything that is known as far as civil service goes we will have the van to be able to again really go after the talent that's in this nation, pay them in accordance with what the market is paying, and then be able to recontain them in a way we have never been able to before. >> thank you. very important. let me ask you this, if congress granted dhs the authority to implement its cyber talent management system in 2014, now the department is now preparing to launch that system. so the authorities in question give the department broad authority to create new positions necessary to carry out its responsibilities. so what roles and responsibilities does the department envision ctms helping to fill? what resources does the department require to meet these hiring goals? >> well, we do plan to use that to fill to variety of our cyber security needs, everything from forensics to network investigations to what you would consider typical cyber security positions. so in working with cisa and with our cio we have been able to really identify the kinds of skills that they need so we can get the talent into those particular positions. we anticipate right aft bat of bringing in close to 150 people and then just keep expanding it from there. you know, across the board. so i think -- i think you will pleased with where we are by next spring considering that we will have it fully implemented and ready to recruit and hire on day one. >> thank you. thank you. mr. chairman, i had one last question at this time but i -- >> please go ahead. go ahead and ask it, sir. >> thank you. last question, i would like to focus on the soft security and notice of security agency. given a cisa is a new agency with a new mission it is important that they be able to hire the talent necessary for that position. scholarships that brings in outside talent could be helpful. how is the department supporting and empowering cisa to ensure it can bring on the cyber security talent it needs. >> one of the things that we are doing is working very closely -- i have a very good relationship with -- with our -- with both the direct score the deputy director of cisa. and it gives us the opportunity to really dive this and figure out exactly where they have their needs. we are really making use -- we will make use of our cyber talent management system to address many of the needs that you have addressed. the friendship programs or the internship programs, all of those will still exist as well, by the way. so, you know, we are not just simply going and saying ctms is the only thing we are going do. we will use all the hiring authority, including the schedule a hiring authority that we have which allows us to reach deep down in and really get the talent we need. >> i sure hope so. it is a vital mission. is it that you could come and brief us on ctms in, say, december or so? >> yes, absolutely. absolutely, congressman. more than happy to come brief you on ctms. >> all right. thank you very much, i appreciate the extra time, and allowing me to ask questions of the subcommittee today thank you very much. >> mr. langevin, please, come by any time. we would love to have your sharing of good comments on the committee, of course. are there any other members of the committee that have not asked a question? any other members? then i would ask mr. peter meijer if he is interested in going for a second round of questions. are you okay with that? >> absolutely, mr. chairman. >> i want to follow-up. i will start out with five minutes here. i want to kind of follow up with some of mr. langevin's thoughts there. you know, one of my prior lives, i used to chair a committee in sacramento, california, that had jurisdiction over some of the biggest pension funds in the western world and the challenge was always trying to keep the good asset managers working for calperes. once wall street figured out they were good we would lose them because we could not afford to pay them what wall street was willing to pay them. my question is, how do we keep the good cyber folks on our payroll and not have them essentially taken away by the private sector? >> two aspects. the appeal for the mission. i have had some people call me, they want to work for the department not because it pays well. they want to do it because they are interested in protecting the nation. and there is an appeal to them because of the mission of the department. i think that's an important part of it that we had discussed kind of yesterdays. that's a key part. obviously, that's how the military appeals to people. they are not doing that job because they are getting a lot of money. they feel it is a service to the nation. i think that's a key part. >> miss bailey? >> i would also say, to add to what mr. -- said. this is a field in which they are not going to stay with us for 30 years. private, public, doesn't matter. what we have done is created a system in which they can come in and out of federal government very easily. today under the current civil service rules you can't do that. when you come in, often what happens is wherever you leave and then come back in you can't be paid for any of your experience or education that you have received. opm just changed some of those rules recently. but we designed ctms with this in mind, that this is not only a generation, it is an occupation where talent is not going to stay with us. we need make sure that when they are here they are given the kinds of resources and experiences they are looking for and wherefore they go out to private sector we keep track of them, and then whenever we have new opportunities we reach out to them and bring them back in. it's something we actually have planned for rather than trying to assume they are all going to want a 30-year career. >> thank you very much. with that, i will call on mr. peter meijer for his questioning. thank you very much, sir. >> thank you, mr. chairman. miss bailey, i just had a brief question. during covid congress gave agencies special schedule a covid hiring authority. can you share a little bit more about how dhs utilized that hiring authority and if you think that hiring authority might be a positive model for the future? >> yes. it was -- thank you for your question, ranking member. it was a -- it was an important authority. i will tell you that it was mostly used by cisa. and where they could go out and get some of the talent they needed. we actually only used it for about 52 positions. and headquarters used it for some of their positions as well. so is it important? sure. i mean every time we are giving a new hiring authority we make full use of those hiring authorities, i will tell you that. one of the things that i will say that i would love to see us do -- we have over 100 special hiring authorities on the books that can be used by all agencies. one of the thing we would really like to do is neck that down. and we have our enhanced hiring agent that actually had made it into the last congress. but one of the things that we would love with that is the ability to just have one streamlined hiring authority for our veterans, and then make sure that we maintain 20% veterans on board at all times binn dhs, and then have the ability to go out and make partnerships and relationships with all of the different academias as well as the universities as well as private sector and some of these different specialized groups to be able to bring that talent on board within dhs. so that -- you know, if i had my dream, that would be it, that would could really have our enhanced hiring agent be something that compliments what we are trying to do with our kinder talent management system. >> thank you, ms. bailey. and mr. curie, just kinds of sticking a little bit on cyber, but pivoting over to the acquisition side of the house -- i know that obvious ho dms has faced challenges in effective low executing that portfolio. we have seen that with the coast guard cutter acquisitions and also at cisa's national cyber security protection system. the gao report mentioned that one action that remains is for dhs to establish and effective will he operate the joint requirements council to review and validate component driven capability components that drive the acquisitions and also work to identify and eliminate unintended redundaredundancies. can you share where there has been progress in this area and conclude what has been been done? >> there has a lot of progress. we know the joc to though it is the right organization with the right elements overseeing. we want to spend some time validaing this, though, and actually seeing the results over the next six months. we do still have some concerns that while there is a lot more act ri sigs discipline and process, we still want to see more programs within cost and schedule. we want to see more successes. i just don't think we are seeing enough actual successes. you know, it is not just about having the discipline in the process. the whole purpose of this is you want the see effective implementation of these programs into homeland to achieve the mission of we haven't seen enough of that yet to feel that that's not a high risk issue. >> are there any other applications across the government within d.o.d. or more specialized agencies or components that you look at as a model, or rars that you would suggest that dhs emulate? >> well, there is no doubt that acquisitions is tough across all federal government, especially d.o.d. i mean, it's hard for me to say d.o.d. is better. they have challenges, too, as you know well. but i think that -- dhs has a unique challenge here though because a lot of times what they are trying to do is trying to apply commercially available technologies or other sort of things to a very, very specific homeland application. i think that's where sometimes we run into some challenges. for example, usm and i were talking the other day about the biodetection system. the dhs is trying to implement a system that will, within minutes, detect a bioattack in our homeland. well, it is very, very difficult because the technology is just not available yet. so the idea is got but it is just not ready to go into homeland. whereas you might be able to use a technology like that on a more experimental basis in the war fighter scene or in theater or something like that. dhs just has a number of unique challenges. >> thank you mr. currie. my time is expiring and we also have had a vote called. with that, i yield back. >> horace, did you want to answer a couple of questions. >> i would love to ask a couple of questions. >> you have about 12 minutes, go ahead. >> actually, we are going vote on one of my bills. i have a bill that would require the undersecretary for management, i believe, to issue department-wide guidance to require dhs contractors to submit a bill of materials identifying the origin of software components. and the legislation was meant as a response to solar winds. my response for the undersecretary is what actions have the agency take tony shore up our cyber security this the wake of solar winds? >> yeah, so, in the wake of solar winds we are identifying unified -- models. solar winds is more complex than just looking at isma scores. those kinds of evaluate the knowns. in this case this is what we call a zero day exploit. so a lot of this is going to address our cyber security doe mains, access control, audit and accountability risk management systems and communication protections. it's based on the main establishing d.o.d. and cnmc cyber security model -- then fix. which is going to help ensure the contractors' network are secure. it will also include implementation to a zero -- architector, supply chain management system, and then enhance our cyber security provider program and our identity management systems. >> can i ask a question about einstein in particular? my understanding is that einstein lacks the capacity to detect anomalous threats intruding? is that correct? what are we doing to address this deficiency? >> einstein was formed to address known threats. by definition, a zero day exploit is not going to be an einstein-protected. >> are we created an einstein 4 or a new capacity to confront unknown anomalous threats? >> it would be a new entity. zero trust architecture, secure supply chain making sure contractors are secure on their side. >> what's the time line for finalizing that? >> with all of these efforts we are just getting them under way. i would give that a couple of years to be fully implemented. >> all right. that was the extent of my question, i wanted to follow up on the supply chain security. i don't know if gao has any thoughts on dhs's preparedness in relation to a supply chain attack like solar winds. >> wim not a supply chain expert but we have done a ton of work in that area. and i can get you that information. >> that would be great. that's the extent of my questioning. >> thank you mr. torres, miss hash barger, i believe you are next. >> i think i am good. if i have question, i will just give it to you in writing. thank you, mr. chairman. >> i want to thank all of you, i want to thank the witnesses for being here today for your testimonies and members, for your questions. members of the committee may have additional questions of the witnesses. we ask that you respond expeditiously to them when they ask them in writing. the chair reminds members that the committee record will remain open for ten business days ask. without any further objections or business, this committee hearing is now adjourned. thank you very much. download c pan's new mobile app and stay up to date with live video coverage of the day's biggest political events from live streams of the house and senate floor and key congressional hearings. the white house events, and supreme court oral arguments. even our live interactive morning program, washington journal, where we hear your voices every day. c-span now has you cover. download the app for free today. up next, the veterans affairs departments ongoing efforts to modernize its medical supply chain.

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