Transcripts For CSPAN2 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20141103 :

brought to you as a public service by your local cable or satellite provider. aneesh chopra, in your book, "innovative state," the first three words are "government doesn't work." why do you say that? >> guest: i think it captures the spirit if you ask the american people in general, are you satisfied, the numbers are at an all-time low, and the perception is it isn't working. and even early days in the obama administration we saw some of the more challenging launches of services that really we shouldn't expect today in successful, modern, tech-driven economy. and closing this gap was a big part of the motivation both for my term of duty in public service as well as why i wanted to write the book. >> host: the subtitle is how new technologies can transform government. >> guest: yes. >> host: how does the u.s. government use technology, and does it do it successfully? >> guest: well, we're moving in the right direction, to be sure. i try to spend a lot of my time thinking about american history in the book. you go back to our founding fathers who have had a long tradition of actually having government not just keep pace, but often lead the private sector in the use of technologies to solve problems. i noted, for example, that one of the founding technologies of ibm had its origins in a census bureau employee who faced seemingly insurmountable odds to calculate the number of people in this country in the late 1800s. so governments have long experience and history of having the capability to solve and deliver better services. it's really been in the last several decades where we've seen atydivergence between the capacy of the private sector and the public, and i think we're ready to close that gap. >> host: why did that diversity happen? >> guest: well, there are a lot of reasons. in the late 1990s, there was a bipartisan movement -- and it is bipartisan -- to modernize the government. at that time while there was political consensus, there wasn't as much technological capacity. at the time that president clinton and al gore launched their reinventing government initiative, there were only 200-plus web sites on the worldwide weapon. web. the technologies of the day really hadn't reached what we're seeing in the private sector of big data, mobile technologies, cloud computing. these are more recent capabilities, and for history, culture, act acquisition, thesee not been part of our oppositional dna in the public sector. >> host: what was your goal when you became the chief technology officer? >> guest: serve my president. really as an enabler to advance the broader agenda that he put forward, whether it be fixing health care, helping us not only recover, but to build upon a new foundation for our economy and strengthening our public safety system, to name just a few. >> host: what was some of the issues you ran into in that position? >> guest: first and foremost, i think you struggle from three perspectives if you take a big picture after this. first and foremost, there are longstanding ways of operate. if you ask the average employee in the government how likely are you to be able to open up your information to the public, the perception is, no, no, i can't, i've got limits. i've got a cultural, technical or maybe even a policy barrier that says i can't open up. so we kind of walked into an environment where some of the entrenched circumstances made it more difficult to achieve the objectives. the second thing we came across was just a bit of -- i wouldn't call it a gap in technology and talent, but i might say that's a shorthand for it. i literally walked in on my first day, had a computer that was connected to the internet but wouldn't allow me to access my linkedin profile or other social media sites for fear it was going to cause risks for white house personnel. so i was literally constrained in my literal access to technology. and last but certainly not least, we've had -- wouldn't call it much of a talent gap, but if you think about the private sector, the idea of new product development and innovation and r&d have been central to the success of large swaths of our american economy. we didn't have that same r&d focus on transforming government services delivery. and so that wasn't a muscle we'd historically worked on in the proverbial gym. so with these limits and constraints, the one advantage we had that trumped all of it was a president who focused on this and was commitmented on day one. and that really trumped a lot of those limits in those early days. >> host: do you think that you made heldway in the culture -- headway in the culture gap? >> guest: i think we planted seeds, and my successor has built on those seeds, and we're now seeing a much broader impact on the principlings that i outline in innovative state; the opportunity to open up more day day --ty to, to collaborate, thinking about tapping new problem solvers through challenges and prizes, and on occasion like in recovering healthcare.gov after its challenging launch, putting together a bit of a lean start-up in how do you organize and manage such things so that specific projects get delivered at internet speed and with success as opposed to some of the more traditional challenges we face. >> host: you talk about the procurement process and how that -- let me just quote: our government has gotten bigger, more bloated and not necessarily better. its modern acquisition culture accepting of exorbitant costs and lengthy delays, rarely considering novel alternatives, etc., etc. >> guest: and that's a legacy born of relatively good intentions, and that is a couple things. one, that in the interest of fair play, that we wanted to make sure everybody had a shot to compete for government business. and, thus, you have to be very specific about what you're looking for so that you can have an objective way of evaluating whether you choose a partner a or partner b to provide that service. well, that's great if you're buying furniture or pencils, because we sort of know what those things are. but you're trying to define a new way of serving health insurance to the american people through digital means, it may not be as easy to define at the outset all the thousands of requirements one would otherwise do to make a fair and open comparison. the notion of agile development that will build, learn, engage the public, solicit feedback, add revisions, that iterative process has a lot more to do with procuring talent than particular approaches to software development. and there's been a bit of a myth busting that needed to be dope to say we can't -- to be done to say we can't do some of these things. and we learn that fixing procurement is in part a congressional issue. but it's also a sort of cleaning up operational administrative capabilities. and you see with the president's launch of the new u.s. digital service one of its clear mandates is to mythbust what can or can't be done on procurement. some of the stuff can be done administratively. >> host: i wanted to ask you about that, because there was a chief technology officer which was you for a while. >> guest: yes. >> host: there's a federal chief information officer. >> guest: yes. >> host: and now there's a u.s. digital services administrator. >> guest: yes. >> host: are we starting a little bit of overlap here? >> guest: oh, no. let me be a little clearer about responsibility and why this is so critical. at the outset, when the president appointed the chief technology officer, he named them an assistant to the president which basically means a policy adviser. and so as we've looked at the role that i played and how my successor, todd park plays, it's a direct report to the president in the senior staff meetings and engaging on the policy issues to say as we craft new policy or reform old policies and manage really important initiatives on behalf of the white house, are we properly utilizing technology, data and innovation? it's really a collaborative role because health care reforms focused on health care reform, but there were passages making sure we have a modern i.t.-infused infrastructure for the health care system. that's an important role. the government managed $80 billion of i.. the spending. you want to be effective and efficient in how you organize your purchasing power and operationalize the capability that is, you know, the servers that operate the medicare system or how we operate web sites at immigration. so we have a chief information officer who sets, basically, agency-wide or, you know, kind of administration-wide policy on how we better utilize the $80 billion, get more with less. and now as an an extension of these two voices -- policy, focusing on the external, solving problems, and policies to fix the internal operations -- you're now seeing more support structures in place. the digital services arm makes government work better, and that is a very natural extension of some of the work we started early in the first term. >> host: when it comes to that $can 80 billion -- $80 billion spent on i.t., should -- is it centralized, is it coordinated, should it be? >> guest: you know, i find this a tough question because one can make the argument that centralization leads to economies of scale, but you lose that sort of focus, if you will, on end state applications. the truth is it's going to be a dynamic continuum based on the need and the circumstances in question. at a minimum, you want to make sure that every decision at the agency level is made with the best information at hand as to how to go about solving a problem. as an example, the use of cloud computing technologies provided by the government, private sector or through hybrid means. an agency says i'm going to use the public cloud to service my needs to provide a function critical to my d., but in another circumstance, i might want to have a lot of that infrastructure on premise so that i can actually meet the need. it's not a one-size-fits-all in how do you manage the monies, it's to make sure each decision is infused with the best decisions. what are my options for infrastructure? how do i staff up and get the talent i need to produce the applications? how do i engage my public cusser the to know what a they're looking for, and how might i open up as many of these interfaces as possible? >> host: aneesh chopra, something else you address is whether or not those services should be contracted out or managed by a dedicated federal work force. >> guest: you know, i will say this, if there's one message in the book to take away, the notion that an innovative state is characterized by handshakes and handoffs. and this speaks to your question as to who should do what. the handshakes are what washington's been doing lately, maybe behind the curtain and not as well reported in the media, which is shaking hands on some of the key principles of an innovative state -- opening up data, issuing challenges and so forth. that means that the opportunity to have a more open government starts with a bipartisan commitment to lay that foundation. but what's critical in an innovative state is that you're handing off to the more than people, entrepreneurs and innovators, academic, federal, state and local levels of government to take that raw data and build more interesting products and services. let's take weather. you and i have the right to go visit weather.gov. wonderful service. exciting that we have all the capability to predict the weather. and great to have a web site that the government supports that makes sure you can see what you want to see. but if that was the only option we faced, if that was the only way we could learn about what we should be wearing, we'd be constrained and frustrated. noaa, the agency that's responsible for the weather service, has opened up the underlying data and invites weather.com, yahoo! weather apps, your print and tv friends to do whatever they will on top of that data. so now we've got a $5 billion private industry born in large part because we've opened up all that sensor, satellite data that would otherwise be cost prohibitive for any one company. imagine if each company had to buy their own satellites. we bear that burden as a public utility. and if we do that across health, energy, education, safety, all these domains of government, we can start to see a much more vibrant, innovative state that isn't characterized by is the government's web site working, but rather, can i get the information i need whether i access directly from the government or through these more personalized services? even healthcare.gov has a handoff. the "u.s. news & world report," one of its first assignments is launching the health insurance finder powered by the data we released in the first version of healthcare.gov back in july of 2010 focusing on an inventory of all the public and private insurance options available. that site's still live today. you can visit the health insurance finder and have a wonderful user experience, but the information that powers it is provided by the federal government. >> host: well, take it to a 2.0. how else would this system of open government work in health care? >> guest: well, it's an amazing opportunity because if you ask the question what do we ultimately want, whether you're a republican or democrat, you want a system that's high quality, lower cost and delivers satisfaction to the people who consume it. the former administrator of medicare and medicaid refers to this as the triple aim. i think it's bipartisan in the goal. one of the ways you get there is you realize that a third of the money we spend in health care is wasted, and wasted could be defined as you could have gotten care in a cheaper setting that might have been better for you, or you shouldn't have sought that particular care at that time if you'd known that you were getting worse earlier treatment, you might have prevented the need for that surgical procedure down the road. so where's the biggest source of data? in one location it's the medicare claims file. and for the first time we are opening up that data, protecting patient privacy, to be sure, but making sure folks can start to get a handle on if i'm at risk of blindness, should i see dr. can x or dr. y, and what's the likelihood he or she will prescribe a cheaper $50 drug to avoid blindness versus a $2,000 drugsome that practice pattern is now transparent and public to people can start making informed decisions about the care that they seek. and support services are increasingly being born to help aid you in making those decisions. >> host: what are some of the security and privacy concerns especially when it comes to electronic health care? >> guest: the most important thing we must do is strengthen -- if we're going to use the internet, we've got to strengthen the internet so that it can provide more secure privacy-protecting capabilities. i've often referred to this as an internet within the internet, and so in health care it's the birth of the health internet. so you and i might interview each other to schedule this appointment today, but today you and your doctor aren't e-mailing your sense thetive records on your gmail account. but, thankfully, we worked collaboratively with the private sector to say, hey, can't we use e-mail but just add some encryption and security that weren't present in the traditional forms? so within 90 days a coalition of public and private stakeholders kale together and -- came together and said let's achieve consensus, and today every american can, if they wanted to, get a secure health e-mail account that's called the direct project where you can get a direct, standardized e-mail system, and it's in many cases. i have one for microsoft health vault, i get all of my health records transmitted to my personal account, but you can choose another option if you like, and that's just going to continue to flour you should. so you want to take advantage of the internet as a communications medium, but you want to have an internet on top of the internet that's more secure and more reliable and more focused on your privacy. and be that's coming, and that's working in a collaborative spirit to be brought to you. >> host: aneesh chopra, how did you become secretary of technology in virginia? >> guest: i was a constituent of virginia and working in a private sector at the advisory board company, writing research studies among things how to use the internet to make an impact in health care, getting back to the topic we just had. and then-governor mark warner asked if i would serve on a couple of his boards or commissions. he asked me to serve on the meld care -- sorry, the medicaid board, and a task nows called the electronic records task force. so after i had done that when governor kaine was elected, governor warner said, hey, aneesh served me pretty well, i met with governor kaine, and we had a specific conversation. and his vision of a cabinet position called secretary of technology was not someone who'd go off and do their own work, but would collaborate with the health secretary and say, hey, how might we bring technology to support your mission or education secretary or public safety. and so that's, essentially, the pitch i made and the conversation that we had. had a wonderful time. virginia's been best managed state, place to raise a family, and it's had a long bipartisan tradition on insuring that we infuse our government with the best technologies and the most appropriate models for innovation to solve problems. very proud of that experience. >> host: people listening to this conversation are going to say, wow, that's all great and wonderful, but this revolution that you're talking about really hasn't occurred because so much is still dealt in paper and phone call. >> guest: you know, it's funny, it's changing. in just the last several years, the percentage of doctors, for example, that are on an electronic health record system went from maybe in the teens, you know, right in the gunning of the obama administration -- beginning of the obama administration, to well over a majority of doctors today are putting your information into digital form. and according to your own privacy rights, every american has the right to an reck tronic copy of -- electronic copy of his or her data if your doctor or hospital stores it electronically. do you know about that right? if you're watching this show today, did you know that you could access this? if you're on medicare, you have the ability to download three years of your medicare claims history. why? because you might want to know what your medication list is so you've got an accurate depiction, or you might store it and share it with a doctor so they have the best information so they avoid mistakes because they didn't have exactly what you're on today, and there was an adverse reaction. this is all live. part of the reason i wrote the book is some of these things are available but may not be as widely understood by the american people yet. we'll get there. >> host: what's the x prize? >> guest: the x prize is a wonderful story about how entrepreneurs in the private sector tapped into the zeitgeist to say, hey, just because you're the best health care i.t. programmer doesn't mean that you're the only person that can solve a particular health i.t. challenge. what about this chemist or this physicist or maybe even that actor? there's talent all over our country or world. and the x prize was born of a spirit that if we issued challenges or prizes, unexpected solvers might show up and blow our minds away with what's possible n. the wake of the bp oil spill, we remember the imagery, terrible imagery, of all that oil gushing into the gulf. the last real period of innovation in how you remove oil from the surface of the water was in the wake of the exxon valdez. so the x prize foundation said i wonder if we could doweling the rate of oil -- double the rate of oil cleanup not in a decade, but in a year the traditional industry players said, we can't make it that fast. it was a public/private partnership, but the x prize foundation sponsored and ran the competition. a tattoo artist from las vegas was among half a dozen teams that successfully met the challenge and doubled the goal. but the winning team tripled the goal. if you provide a stretch goal and a prize that motivates folks to show up, like charles lindbergh responded to a prize which convinced hum to fly -- him to flay across the atlantic, see what our country can do, our nation can do. if we give 'em a chance to connect to prizes and challenges like the x prize in the private sector or challenge.gov which we created in the public sector, imagine how much progress we could make in meeting the needs of our great country. >> host: but you also say that charles lindbergh probably wouldn't have pursued his goal if the government had been sponsoring that. >> guest: well, it's an interesting story. how does one balance the entrepreneurial spirit of our country with the notion that government can't be entrepreneurial? and the way you square that circle in some causes is collaboration. so you have the x prize foundation sponsor, market and provide outreach with government support. it also might flip and say, well, there's certain challengings that the american people are really motivate today go for example, and you can use challenge.com. so let's take the current challenge we're overcoming at the v.a., helping with the appointment scheduling process to make sure that our veterans who deserve world class treatment options have the ability to self-schedule to the v.a. system. i wrote in the book even though we spent nine years on a $100-plus-manager -- something project, scrapping that, in less than one year we had three teams demonstrate successfully that their off-the-shelf tools could plug right in and run that self-scheduling feature all within that year. and so people respond to these challenges even if not everybody would. and you're going to see a mix. you're going to see the purely private, the private with some public sport and then the purely public. but this is a bipartisan act of congress. every federal agency can issue challenges and prizes up to $50 million of prize money. and that was through the america reauthorization of the competes act, again, a bipartisan handshake that led to the handoff to those entrepreneurs and innovators. >> host: aneesh chopra, you've mentioned bipartisanship. this book, when you read it, sounded like it could have been written by a republican. >> guest: sure. i honored james pinkerton combining with elaine kamarck who is a wonderful policy adviser to then al gore calm together and said, hey, why don't we work together on ez issues regardless of who wins. let's put an agenda together that says let's move beyond this left/right divide, let's modernize. there should be plenty of debate about the role of government in society, but once you make the decision government's doing x, let's do it in most effective and efficient man per. and i think that's the -- manner. and i think that's the spirit and why i'm so confident that this is going to be the decade of problem solving. >> host: how far along are we in this so-called revolution, and are you seeing a sea change in attitudes in the federal work force? >> guest: well, absolutely seeing a sea change. we're probably in the second, maybe third inning of this particular play or this guam, and the sea change is this: i've had experience in the private sector, i've had no state government experience and federal government experience. the talent across all settings of my life, world class. i've met some the best and brightest people work anything the federal government, working in the state government and working in the private sector. there isn't a difference in talent and passion. what's exciting about the public sector employees is that they have an added mission orientation which is what compelled them to potentially take a lower pay in order to solve a particular problem. they've been operating in a system that a's constrained. one -- that's constrained. one of the most exciting things about todd park, he was a chief technology officer at hhs, and secretary sebelius launched an every six month problem called hhs innovates honoring the employees who have been innovative. and it's not like they've never been innovative, but maybe they've been doing it under the radar, quietly, fearful it might get them in trouble. and you can start to see the culture change. wait a minute, you're telling me i can do this? my wife and i just had a baby boy, we're very proud, we've got three beautiful children. installing that infant car seat is a chore, and making sure that a it fits properly, difficult. apparently, 50 percent of us install these car seats improperly. who knew that the department of transportation has the database of every place in the country where you could get that car seat checked. well, at a department of transportation event a government employee said, hey, what if we made this more available to you? that weekend someone built an iphone app that would allow anyone to use the gp schip in their phone to figure out where i am, where's the nearest place to get my car seat checked, and it was no muss, no fuss, it was an inspired government employee who said we have this piece, can you work with it? all of a sudden a small little tool was made available that my life just a wee bit better. >> host: how far along are we when it comes to open government? how much of the government is open to folks online? >> guest: well, it's getting better. it's hard to measure the percentage of data that's open. i'll give you an example. if you count data sets, we're in the ten of thousands of data sets that you can access now on data.gov. you can download them, you can connect to them increasingly with web services, you can run a new application that's fueled in part by that data. but if you ask yourself all the places where we collect information can i get what i want? not yet. but president obama has made it clear this is a commitment he's made not just in his day one memo calling for open government, but his subsequent orders. congress with the most recent data act has said financial transactions data shall be made more open. and piecemeal parts, the medicare database is slowly opening up, the affordable care act had provisions to make that easier to access and other data sets are coming online. but here's the point, we will no longer have a debate of whether we should or shouldn't open, it's going to be a pace at which we find new assets and bring them to bear. and what new data should we be collecting we haven't been? labor market information, how well performing is our system? is there a skills gap in this country? why is it so hard for veterans to find jobs and so many employers are saying i want to sure a veteran, yet the unemployment rate for veterans is much higher amongst the younger cohort? part lu it's going to be informed -- partly it's going to be informed by new data that we'll make available to the american people. how might we better plan and allocate resources to match the skills that are in demand with the skills that are in the supply of talent? we're going to get there, but this is a movement that won't stop. it's just going to build on itself. >> host: and we've been talking with aneesh chopra, former chief technology officer of the united states. innovative state is the name of the book, how new technologies can transform government. >> c-span, created by america's cable companies 35 years ago and brought to you as a public service by your local cable or satellite provider. >> today the international foundation for electoral systems holds a daylong forum on electoral trends in the u.s. and around the world. speakers include electoral experts, lawyers, law scholars and election reform advocates. the event begins with a discussion on the impact of the 1965 voting rights act and the role of the federal government in future electionings. elections. live coverage guns at 9:15 -- guns at 9:15 a.m. eastern on c-span2. >> throughout campaign 2014 c-span has brought you more than 130 candidate debates from across the country in races that will determine control of the next congress. and this tuesday night watch c-span's live election night coverage to see who wins, who loses and which party will control the house and senate. our coverage givens at 8 p.m. eastern with results and analysis. you'll also see candidate victory and concession speeches in some of the most closely watched senate races across the country. we want to hear from you with your calls, facebook comments and tweets. cam pawn 2014 -- campaign 2014 election night coverage on c-span. >> the 2015 c-span student cam video competition is underway, open to all middle and high school students to create a 5-7 minute documentary on the theme "the three branches and you" showing how a policy, law or action by the executive, legislative or judicial branch of the federal government has affected you or your community. there's 200 cash freezes for students and -- prizes for students and teachers. on how to get started, go to student cam.org. >> the u.s. chamber of commerce held its third annual cybersecurity summit tuesday in washington d.c. this panel focused on global information sharing and cooperation between private sector industries that are faced with cybersecurity threats. this is about 45 minutes. >> okay. once again, welcome back to the u.s. chamber of commerce's third annual psycher security -- cybersecurity summit.d we've got a great panel for you. i'm going to turn things over tr adam cedric, and he's going to run this panel on the global issues and international issuesg surrounding cybersecurity policy. and then after that we're goings to take a little break.h i'll tell you more about thatg t and transition into lunch. about and transition into lunch. while you are sitting there thinking, please write down any questions you have for the keynote speaker admiral rogers. we will do a q-and-a with him appear so if you want to write it down and bring it up to me, feel free to do so and we will take care of that during the q&a. with that let me tell you that adam has been leading the framework development and partnership process for nist. we are very happy to have him here today. thank you, adam. >> thank you for having me here today. so this panel is going to cover some international issues. the title is the international dynamic global approaches, cyber security policy, partnerships and innovation. so those are all topics we would like to cover. how do we develop policies that are protective of the industry but also think about the global dynamic and how do we keep the policies that also encourage innovation and efficiency and economic prosperity. so, joining me today, we have tom dukes from the department of state, frank from oracle, angela from microsoft, ursula from european parliament, barones from pauline jones and the minister state security counterterrorism at the home office in the uk government, and then hyan song. i'm going to take a similar approach that matt did with the panel and i'm going to ask each of the panelists going from left to right to say a few words about themselves and their background and the role and the organization and then specifically how it relates to cybersecurity and the international aspects. start with you. >> i'm tom dukes the deputy security at the state department and part of a relative in the new office stood up at the same time basically as the white house put out the international strategy for cyberspace. our office was created to eventually have a core of cyber diplomats and policymakers that would both help develop and execute a u.s. priorities and strategies into diplomatic engagements across the full range of cyber issues. we are talking everything from cybersecurity to internet freedom and economic development, cybercrime come international security and internet governance. and we have a -- we have grown from a group of five of us and now we are basically up to 20 people and the focus on a wide range of things but particularly for this panel on helping spread the message on the importance of creating a culture of cyber security around the world this is something that was highlighted in the president's international strategy and it really is a focus for the the states on recognizing and carrying out the responsibility to secure the critical infrastructure that is used for ict fiber. we do a lot of things in the furtherance of that but that i can come back to you later but there is a robust international diplomatic effort the u.s. state department believes in cooperation with industry, civil society and the partners to try to create the right kind of environment and things like the nst framework or the products that we are trying to help the rest of the world see the benefit of adopting and incorporating. >> i handle the cybersecurity policy and a few other issues at oracle and the government affairs office and i focused not just on the u.s. but a lot of international markets for the simple reason i'm sure everyone in the world knows how global the cybersecurity is but from the perspective of the company like oracle where do we call a commercial global off-the-shelf technology company meaning that the database of the servers and the cloud solutions that we so have the same solutions that we so to the government agency of the u.s., the german bank, the japanese carmaker. you know, we build them and then we so than globally. so having the cybersecurity cybersecurity policies, requirements, mandates, you name it that are eight different from country to country and from public to private sector. it's something where we bring a lot of innovation to a love of the rnd and with a huge return from the security perspective people can precisely sort of leverage that economy of scale around the world. so when we look at the framework fact that that it is international precisely but also the nature of the content is based on international standards and best practices is just the right approach not just the business model model but also how the cybersecurity is best managed. >> thinks. angela? >> like my colleagues i would like to say thank you to the chamber for hosting us and everybody in the audience for joining this panel. my name is angela and i'm the director of the cybersecurity policy strategy at microsoft. in that role, i need across a variety of issues and critical infrastructure supply-chain risk management all the way up to international security and stability issues. at microsoft we run our cybersecurity policy work out of engineering so that we can actually bridge the security expertise and experience that we have and help them manifest in the policy environment really taking the demonstrable practices that have demonstrable results help them manifest than in the policy environment. prior to the work i led to the developing and emerging markets, and in that that role i traveled quite frequently to asia and europe and talked quite a bit of critical infrastructure and cyber security issues. one of the things and one of the reasons we think the framework is important is that it is an example of leveraging public-private partnerships to help create policies that can be applicable and useful in this environment and other ones and that is what i will be talking about today. >> let's go now to ursula. >> i am an officer at the european parliament washington, d.c. das office. our washington, d.c. office is the only office established by the parliament outside of the eu. i would like to thank first commerce for inviting me to speak at this panel. i would like to say a few words about the european parliament for those that might not be aware of what our organization is. our organization as a legislator for the european union. we legislate together with the council, which are the representatives of the government of our member states. and i think that our legislative role when compared to the u.s. system could be compared to the house of representatives. the committee and the parliament which has the jurisdiction over cybersecurity is the internal market committee. it's because achieving the high level of cybersecurity is important to the conclusion of what we call the digital single market. .. it's taken man dressed, and i'my council to the bank of england which gets me into the -- the bank has been active recently in the city of london including a national institution through paces with regard of pen testing but also the adviser to national grid which is a adviser in uk which has, in this country, to your we get into the issues of national resilience. it's very important and enough the lights go out, nothing happens. i'm also -- cyber city challenge which is a charitable organization which does receive certain amount of government support which is engaged in encouraging young people to go into cybersecurity as a career. we took a lot of our initial inspiration from this country. the other end of the educational sphere i'm a member of the engineering and physical sciences and research council which is one council of the group of uk research councils to allocate money for centrally important research activity in the uk and a certain that has gone into cyber and into the creation of training courses to increase what certainly we regard in uk as being a really serious skills gap we possess in this area. and, finally, just one other thing which i've gotten involved in on a personal basis. uk is very london focused and one of the things we need to do is spread the message around the rest of the country. happen to come from yorkshire and, indeed, the single largest help the database in the world is also being the nhs rock your seed there. but it provides the most extranet opportunity for the development in an important area based on analytics. one of the things, as the city underpins this activity in creates frankly new industry that we do cybersecurity by design and that we, from the outset create a system which is multidisciplinary, and were all the contributors actually are on the same base, talking the same language on cyber. >> my name is haiyan song. some of you asked what this splunk do, just a quick introduction. splunk focuses on machine data, focus on getting value and accessibility usability out of data. a simpler way for me to explain that concept is everybody knows google is a company, is also a verb people use to go find information on the internet, and this blog is also a company. it can be used as a word to also go find information in machine data. machine data otherwise that's generated from your devices and applications, from network of servers and so on and so forth. i think with this crowd is easy to understand the value that machine data and logs bring into security visibility and risk management, and that so we are set out to do. and one of the things i think the framework has brought to the industry is common language will be can explain the approach and methodology and we can blame how the solutions we develop fit into the framework. so with that context, what we do is really give you the ability to help protect the monitoring all the aspects you have, and most importantly we shine in the areas of helping you protect novelties. and i know -- the accessibility of the date information so you can practically reduce been on a tiny to respond to incidents. and from all perspectives its global for multiple reasons. the threat landscape is global and it's not having borders or boundaries. they are coming from all different angles. and the customers we serve our very global as well. they have multinational sort of after mistakes, and we facilitate the implementation of the security program in a way that we also need to support the regulations and requirements from a different region, like europe has certainly more strict regulations on privacy. and so in a way what we do truly has a global nature, and we work with a lot of customers as an ecosystem we work with partners as well because they bring a lot of insight and intelligence into the battle that we have against adversaries, and we truly believe it takes a village to do this. our role is to better facilitate that system coming together to do a good job, getting the visibility, and tie that with the understanding of how it relates to your business, your vision of the agency, that's a whole risk based approach and something we believe in. >> great. i think as another look level study question i would be interested to hear panelists reactions to what they think the international reaction to the framework has been, not only in the eight months since the final framework was released but also throughout the development of framework. is their general international awareness of the framework and similar policy, similar public-private partnerships? do we have a sense of what the initial reaction has been? i will start with angela. >> certainly. i do think there's a fairly high degree of awareness of the framework on a national basis. as i said earlier, i spend time going out and meeting with the government customers and enterprise customers in different places around the world. most recently have been to india, korea and japan, and each one of those environments, both enterprises, critical infrastructures, small businesses, innovators and the government policymakers are unaware of the framework. i think there is, there are some misperceptions, things were people may not necessarily really understand what the framework is. and i wanted to highlight two of those they think are really relevant for having this conversation here one is the discussion of who develops the framework, right? there's a lot in the united states industry led that in some people call the framework the nist cybersecurity framework. so internationally there's some confusion about, well, how is this develop? is this a government thing or an industry think? and in each case many of those questions actually are concerned because the other into the wasn't involved. one of the things i like to highlight is it wasn't even just a traditional public-private partnership that was used to develop this, that he truly only stakeholder approach. you had government entities from the u.s. u.s. private sector from the u.s. u.s. government and industry from other countries engaged. yet some of the hacker and security to nearly involve. and even civil society because of the privacy component. i think that's one of the misperceptions, and the other one that i think is really important is people tend to confuse the general risk management approach of the framework from the implementing mechanism that have been outlined in the executive order. one of the things i try to do is make sure those are clearly differentiated from each other. in the risk management approach, the are controlled based approach and outcomes based approach. we taken outcomes based approach has more demonstrable results to the ecosystem and that's what the framework does. on the implementing mechanism side there's a voluntary implementing mechanism and then regulatory implementing mechanism. i think it's important to separate those two because it is unrealistic to expect that every country around the world is going to take the same kind of approach to implementing mechanism. they have different market drivers, different ownership models. it in the risk management approach to the degree to which we can foster more outcome based risk management, that creates, raises the boat of security and privacy across the board and also helps create that environment that frank mention of being able to work across geographic boundaries. >> thank you. anything to? >> just quickly. i think i would agree with pretty much everything angel just said. very strong interest in the framework without it was developed and the content of the framework. also a lot of misunderstanding of both actually. they look at -- it's a government agency so the framework it's a regulator in terms of its a revelatory mandate. and so spent a lot of effort put in by a lot of people, nist and a lot of companies to dispel those myths. but you understand so that how you're running against regulatory political and policy cultures that are just very different. just have a natural tendency in the u.s. to put more trust and have more experience with public-private partnerships. there isn't a kind of comfort level and experience in a lot of foreign countries, which is unfortunate because really obviously the security policy is one where these public-private partnerships are most apt to be effective. >> great. urszula, you may want to give us some perspectives on what you were seeing in the eu and also how that relates to our policies here in the u.s.? >> sure. the eu is, we decided to regulate certain things at the eu level and actually the important thing is to highlight that the regulation that we have launched, it is not yet complete. they were probably consultations prior to this, and actually over 66% of stakeholders were in favor of certain type of security matters being regulated, and over i think over 84% of the respondents were in favor of those matters being regulated at the eu level. so i think there was a very different culture in the eu in general in terms of regulation. that's the first important thing to highlight. so we have two main instruments of the cybersecurity strategy which we put in place in 2013, and the first one is a proposal for the nist directive come at this directive is right now being debated between the european parliament and the council. so the european parliament has adopted its position already, and we are now going through negotiations. and then there is, there is a public-private platform, the nist platform. so they're two separate things, like angela, you mentioned it's important to differentiate between the two approaches, and they have also very different scope. the nist directive which is by definition the directive is a legal act which is addressed to the member states, not directly to the stakeholders but to the member states. it receives certain obligations on member states like obligation to establish national authorities to stop the competence, computer teams that would react to the incident. it also establishes the obligation of cooperation between the member states which is a very important and needed thing because to remember that we are working here with 28 different systems. it also establishes certain obligations on the market operator. now, the definition of the market operator also needs to be understood at the beginning of the, the commission proposed from the executive branch proposal. this definition comprised both the internet enabler, public administrations, and critical infrastructure operators. the parliament is now proposing to limit the definition of the market operator, enhance the number of entities to whom they directly will apply to the critical infrastructure and public administrator, administrations. so those market operators which will eventually find a way to the final text of the directive say, they will be obliged to report certain cybersecurity incidents. now again, the parliament has proposed a number of safeguards to make sure that the scope of reporting is clear and that there is no insecurity amongst market operators as to what needs to be reported. and it is the nis platform which like it mentioned is public-private platform for discussions and for developing those voluntary centers. it has been a lot of participation across sectors. we have over 200 organizations which are participating in -- it's called actually network and information security platform. so we have different participation from the member states, from the research and academia, from the industry. the platform is currently working on its first set of guidelines. we will have another meeting towards the end of november, and the platform is also a good forum for the international stakeholders to get involved. so also the u.s. stakeholders. >> great. thanks, urszula, and i'm pleased to say we have representatives from the european commission at our workshop in tampa the next couple of days, and also looking at doing a targeted meeting in brussels to talk about similarities between the nis platform approach and the approach we're developing here in the cybersecurity framework. you want to talk about about what you're seeing in the uk? i will say the uk because it is unique in their the only other country that hosted a workshop for us when we are develop the framework, and i'm happy to say that provided commerce that the process and actually will also be participating in tampa this week. could you give us a sense of what some of the priorities are and what you're looking at in terms of these global cybersecurity policies? >> what was the level of awareness of the framework, there certainly is in the uk. not least because of the multinational nature of the companies, particularly across uk-u.s. and so we are aware and interested in higher policies -- how our policy going to develop your. one of our preoccupations as a trading nation is trying to ensure that isn't the divide -- divergent so companies face the prospect of not only different but possibly conflicting regulatory and policy. so we do follow and, indeed, i think we talk to each other rather closely about that. the battle in uk has been going for some time, and it follows a national security strategy in being risk-based. we have not gone for regulatory approach. we don't want regulatory approach to the government i'm sure a unit is in favor on all of the whole state. the whole approach is being very much emphasis on public-private partnership with -- [inaudible] so if i look at the framework and then i compare it with what has happened in the uk, though the written material is sort of differently presented, the issues are essentially the same. you can take to documents, issues by the uk which is advice to companies, none of this i might say is mandatory. it's heavily incentivized and why? because there's a second option which is cyber central and ..identified in the framework. and we are making the essential mandatory for doing business with government. so a minimum platform is being set on performance. the issues that we now face i think are more having put in place a framework, actually getting it implement it. that's a big job. that's the big job around the country. i think the level of awareness in the uk has increased very visibly, but it is not yet total. i disagree i have to confess with one thing that was said at the last panel. i don't myself believe that the likelihood of attack is related to the size of the corporation the most -- much more likely return to the size of your assets in which offer to attack. consequently smes are in this gang in a big way, and some of them are the most intimate parts of our industrial and commercial they need protection. we have as a country paid particular attention to enabling affordable security to become available. so quite a lot has gone into the practical implementation of how you actually get affordable security, and the security service that offers advice at the center, at the center, however, the whole system actually is information sharing. i know you might want to talk about that perhaps in more detail, but we regard that as being absolutely crucial element in the whole gang. we wowe will increasingly to see private sector own that. we have less inhibiting, we have a more stringent industry background -- privacy background in uk venues can we have a less inhibiting competitive competition law framework. so it's perfectly possible in uk to share information both between companies and with governments without falling foul of competition law. and we do a very much you were able to overcome some the problems that there are here, but we regard that is an absolutely crucial. we have now put the information sharing partnership inside the uk first which is the mechanism for detection response to and recover from incidents so that we tried to great a one-stop shopping. i would say that we have got the stage of creating quite a lot of the structures that we need. are they working perfectly yet? know. are they extensive in of? have found the trick of being able to cascade down the information on the system fast enough? we are getting there but we are not there entirely. but we are, i think, i would say that we've gone from awareness to a degree of national a mobilization. i wouldn't want to exaggerate how far we've got but i think we're getting there, to the perception in the country but that's the really important this is naval. one last thing i would say is, you can tell there's quite a lot difference in what i said and what others have said. the uk has to be and i think part of one of those member states who wanted to see the initial scope of the regulation -- not regulation, directive contractor we can live with the scope now, particularly as it concerns our national infrastructure we do regard to a certain degree of military standards as necessary. where we are in disagreement, remain in disagreement, the whole question of the nature and that is breach reporting which is also an active sensitive issue. clearly, really the extent to which people and shareholders and particularly private individuals have the need to know and the right to know when their data has been breached. they are we would not oppose it, but we are concerned about not requiring breach reporting so early in an incident that actually inhibits and hampers initial recovery. >> thanks, pauline. so we talked a little bit, heard a little bit about some of the complexities in terms of legal regimes and cultures and regulatory approaches. tom, you have to manage all of this. so when you provide advice to countries about smart cybersecurity policies or when you're communicating to those countries about what our policies are, what are the lessons learned and what are you hearing from across the indices about what other governments are doing in this area? >> thanks, matt. the question to a lot of credit i'll try to focus in on a few things. what we see is, if you look at where the rest of the world is in terms of tackling these issues, you've got about say roughly 25 or 30 countries that have gotten to the same place the u.s. has in terms of, if you focus on what we did in starting in 2009 with the comprehensive cyber policy review that then led to a number of things including the international strategy in 2011, u.s. went through this very involved process of getting our arms around not just cybersecurity but the full range of issues and then taking steps to put together a policy that addressed both government needs, domestic, international role of industry and civil society as well. that's carried through and furthered thing such as the president executive order which led to the development of the framework. so what we see is there is a small group of the most developed countries that have essentially taken a lot of steps, including i would say what the european union has been doing, to tackle this. there are probably 25 or so developing countries that are fairly deep in the process of developing national strategies. and most of these are very much focused on cybersecurity kind of protecting critical infrastructure dealing with cybercrime threats. but then you have most of the rest of the world that is really, while most other countries have recognized the need for a strategy and a need for developing national approaches, they just haven't really been able to get out of the box yet and start meaningfully developing those strategies. that's where things like the cybersecurity strategy is very useful because it provides something that we can offer to other governments, you know, regional groupings around the world like the african union or the organization of american states or asean as an example of how they think about doing this. one things that we do see increasingly across our indices is a real growing interest by essentially every country that we have diplomatic relationships with in discussing cyber, particularly cybercrime and cybersecurity cooperation. i just came from a dialogue with the bangladeshi government just a few minutes before this, and it was yet the latest example this week of every time we have a bilateral discussion with another country now, whether it's stoke in terms of political, military affairs, security, economic development, there is a desire to talk about the role of cybersecurity, i.t. development. there's a huge interest after. one of the things we done in the department is we focus a lot on the internal capacity building. so training our diplomats to be able to engage on these issues and to understand, particularly with a focus on economic development aspect of this, that taking the right approach, the approach that we think is right that we advocate in terms of cybersecurity is really going to be a critical step that needs to be taken to get you to the point you can really benefit from all the economic and social benefits that we believe the flow from really embracing digital society, really getting serious about leveraging the internet to help carry out sort of future development. those are some of the things we were doing. i will say that one thing that we have to keep in mind that is just a reality of where we are in the training, some might say the european union, we have a comprehensive sort of approach to this, he sadr city framework helps in a lot of ways. it answers one piece of this, but without comprehensive legislation that addresses a whole host of issues, information sharing, liability, there are just -- we don't have a complete system yet. and so we like to point to what we have. it would be great if we had a much more comprehensive approach in place so that we can help countries kind of learn from our whole issue experience. we often, not all an apologetic way, but with a smile telling other countries to look, there's certain things we think you can learn from that we are done, our experience, but there's certain things that we would like you verfor much to look at seriously about the framework, but the u.s. has a unique experience of getting where we got. we have a very large, complemented government structure and so we would talk to others, don't try to copy us too much, but you can certainly learn from what we learned. and going through the process of developing a real comprehensive national strategy that includes significant input from city -- civil society is which is the foundation of what has to be done. government isn't able to go through that, then they will never be able to get to these harder steps of tackling these were specific issues on cybersecurity and other cyber policy issues. >> that's great. so we have talked a little bit about kind of the government-to-government conversations and also developing policies that are informed i industry and put documents like the framework. so as we think about kind of moving forward and next steps, what are the right forms we can have with these conversations, where should these conversations take place during government-to-government, industry the government, and where are those forms were truly robust industry to industry conversations that should be taking place? we talked a little bit about international standards. that's certainly one form. as you guys think about the right ways to continue dialogue, where should we be looking? i will start with franck. >> one way to answer a question like that is to also know where not to start. and since -- i would say don't start there. don't start with the itu. it has a lot of strengths. it has an impressive legacy of open to develop infrastructure around the world, but i don't think that, that technology issues, in particular are their strength. i think they're pretty far outside of their mode of expertise and where they would be we could effectively both from policy and technical perspective. also institutionally because it is, while there is industry participation in the itu it is largely government. that also is i think something that will hold them back. and, finally, i think they would be duplicating and, therefore, weakening and distracting away from other international fora that are addressing that issue. so that's what i would say. i guess it depends on what aspect of side we're talking about. if you talk about product assurance, there are some forms including the recognition of arrangement where the issue is addressed and addressed will at the international level. if you're talking about broadly cyber risk management, which is what the framework does or addresses, then it depends on sort of what will happen with the framework over time, whether it's an effort that continues to be coordinated and nurtured by nist or whether sort of taking a life of its own with a new sort of institutional house. >> do you have any thoughts on that? >> i don't. i was going to kick back to angela. but certainly, i mean, the thought i would have on that is, as i said, the framework is inherently, even though it was sort of developed as a result of an executive order from the government, the government of the united states, from the president, and sort of course and aided by government agencies, nist, it is inherently an international effort. the substance of the framework is international. and so finding sort of a house of the framework that enables it to continue to be vast, both in its substance and in its use, that it continues to be international i think that is essential, is essential. >> i don't think i can think of better concluding thoughts than that, so thanks a lot, franck, and thanks to the participants today. and thanks again to the chamber. i think i've only missed one of their awareness events, so let's keep them going and thanks for hosting us. >> thank you to the panelists. appreciate your time. [applause] >> okay. what we're going to do is take a 15 minute break. what i would suggest if you just put your things under chairs, the tailoring folks wil who comn and serve the meal and then you can go next door for little bit and we will rejoin here at 12:15 for our keynote speaker, admiral johnson -- i mean rogers. sorry about that. [inaudible conversations] >> throughout campaign 2014, c-span has brought you more than 130 candidate debates from across the country in races that will determine control of the next congress, it is tuesday night watch c-span's live election night coverage to see who wins, who loses come and which party will control the house and senate. coverage begins at 8 p.m. eastern with results and analysis. you will see candidate victory and concession speeches in some of the most closely watched senate races across the country throughout the night and into the morning we want to hear from you with your calls, facebook, 10 tweets. campaign 2014 election night coverage on c-span. >> ahead of the midterm elections tomorrow, the international foundation for electoral systems is holding a daylong forum looking at election trends and races around the u.s. debated today from election experts, lawyers, law scholars and reform advocates. this is the first panel of the day getting set a. they will take it in depth look at the 1965 voting rights act and the role of the federal government in the election. this is the first of three panels c-span2 is covering today. later in the afternoon focus on free speech, political action committees and the future of campaign finance reform. at 4 p.m. eastern the last of the day we'll take a look at how the americans with disabilities act and an international treaty on persons with disabilities has extended political rights. you are watching live coverage set to get underway shortly here on c-span2. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> all right. great. thank you all very much. for being here today. i'd like to get started so we can stay on schedule. i will -- and to our panel from some of to montgomery and beyond the 965 voting rights act and the future role of the federal government in elections. my name is chad, director of the center for applied research at ifes and i'm joined by daniel. history professor of law at ohio state university. he's an expert on election law and voting rights specializing in electoral reform issues. is also the author of election law in a nutshell, and co-author of election law cases and materials. i'm also joined by brendan, of counsel, he has a litigation focused practice assisting clients of trial and appellate matters before courts and federal agencies. he was counsel to shelby county, alabama, in his jumpsuit section four and five of the voting rights act. just a couple of very quick reminders. for translation english is on channel seven arabic is on channel eight, infringes on channel nine, and spanish is on channel 11. yesterday's discussion we're going to try to keep each panelist comments short, about 10 minutes each but they will have questions such as attendance and and the rest of the time for questions and answers. a level playing field at the heart of genuine democratic elections. ifes works to support the right of every person to free and fair elections. our work and, therefore, includes promoting equal rights, justice and inclusion are marginalized or underrepresented groups so that they can participate fully in political life. voter -- litigation to protect equal rights and equal voting rights continues to be a subject of both litigation and debate. the landmark case of shelby county v. holder result in the supreme court striking down section four b. of the voting rights act of 1965 and effectively removing the coverage formula determining which jurisdictions require federal preclearance before enacting changes to their voting laws. in a tent to share insights on the american electoral system, here at the u.s. election program this panel will discuss the implications of shelby into broader context of voting rights and political conclusion. today, brendan will speak about the lead up to the filing of the action, including prior litigation and the 2006 reauthorization of the voting rights act. he will also discuss the recent changes in several states including texas, north carolina, ohio and wisconsin, and how and whether preclearance would have affected the implication of these laws. after brendan space, dan will providprovide more context of te voter rights act and the preclearance process. the context preceding decades including what it was and wasn't doing. you'll also discuss what has happened since 2013, including new state laws and practices in litigation challenges that under the constitution of section two of the voting rights act. so without i will hand it over. spent thanks, chad, for inviting me to be on this penalty. i want to start out by saying i am here to give my perspective as someone who participate in the actual litigation of the case and to provide that you need protection for you all to you. basically the backdrop of all this is that here in the united states we have kind of dual regulation of election to the states with primary responsibility, that we have u.s. federal constitution which provide certain fundamental turn these covering amongst other things voting rights act and so with that situation you have basically states with primary power except that they can do anything i would violate the united states constitution to congress also has the ability to coin force the fundamental right in the united states constitution. that's where the voting rights act comes in, so 1965 congress makes the determination to our additional measures to be taken to enforce those fundamental rights. so there were a bunch of different provisions of the vra, but one of which was section five. so what section five did was kind of unique in comparison to some of the other things that were going on in the voting rights act. it set up for lack of a better term a prior restraint, basically said states can't do anything, change the election laws in any way until they get approval from the united states attorney general to make that change, which was, it's hard to overstate how much of a shift that was from kind of the baseline system that we have to, kind of flips it on its head but those only in certain areas of the country. as chad mention, those were designated in section 4-b of the voting rights act. so that set up the former, who has tried to go to the process. everybody else which is kind of under the baseline system. so that's where section five comes in. it was controversial from the outset, what's interesting is that congress put a provision right in the act that allowed to jurisdictions to bring constitutional challenges to this, so that's something that you see sometimes in election laws were there some question about the constitutionality of it and this was not an exception to that. so, in fact, the state of succulent and several other states to the congress up that offer unchallenged it immediately. the supreme court upheld section five and other provisions of the voting rights act at the time, funny but given the circumstances that existed in the early 1960s leading up to this that was a justified use of enforcement power. it was challenge challenge agaia couple of occasions, section five was, and again upheld both times. the thing about section five also is about it was limited in time period. so you had a situation where initially it was only, supposed to be in place for five years and then reevaluated, and, in fact, it was. so 1970 every authorized. in 1975 they reauthorized. in 1982 and set to expire again in 2007. so by the time 2005 came around they were thinking about this again. it was still in place. basically unchanged in terms of the formula. it's a congress took up the task again at that point. the relevant committees of both houses of congress held hearings on whether this continued to be justified. they took in a lot of evidence. some of it in my view better than others, other evidence, but they held a lot of hearings. they compiled what's been described throughout the litigation as a 15,000 page record that they thought justified this particular action, which nobody can say that they didn't work hard at this. so that was basically the reauthorization process. what was kind of important at the time was though they were she's concerned about going forward kind of on the same basis that had formed a the justification for the original act. going forward on the same coverage formula is history enough to justify this type of thing? or do we need to look at more modern circumstances to which we going on the ground today? ultimately, they got i think some bad advice about updating the coverage formula. some folks came in and testified and said, basically history is enough, plus current circumstances in those jurisdictions but you don't need to look at everybody and say, well, where should this be going forward? you should look at is it still justified in the eyes of the country where you had the law. i think ultimate that is what doomed the act kind of when we get to the litigation. but there's also testimony about things happening in other areas of the country, things happening in areas of the country that were covered by the voting rights act that did not justify continuing coverage. and so the testimony was kind of a mixed bag on that, but from the perspective of litigator and some who brought case that we're here to talk about today, in our view at least an interview of many of many covert jurisdictions there was a lot of evidence of constitutional violations, violations of the united states constitution, to justify continued use of this particular provision. so at the time that was something that was debated and a couple of senators in fact thought, you know, there was constitutional -- that if they ended up voting for, and kicked the debate to the court. so that's where the first challenge to that after 2006, case called northwest austin, they saw two things can one was to get out of coverage so they asked for what is called a bailout. that asked for the court to declare that they were basically on good behavior for 10 years. that would put them on kind of a paroled system, for the lack of a better term, maybe out but they will be subject to continue to monitor and. and that they also asked section five to be declared unconstitutional. that went up to the supreme court in 2008-2009, and 2009 the supreme court ruled on the bailout question, allowed them to bail out and kind of duck the constitution question which raised it again for someone to bring a challenge. so that's background, to tell you how basically we got where i came in. we've been doing some work for the project on fair representation which is a group of folks were interested in fairness in elections and things of that nature. some of it has led to litigation, others have not the we've been doing a bunch of the most within. and by the time northwest austin decision came out, we thought we had a good shot of actually getting the actual litigation. so thought about discussing with people the possibility of bringing on a jurisdiction that actually challenge the act. so we did that. we had written a couple of amicus briefs. nobody paid any attention to those in the supreme court, but after that point that was basically where it was. so we ended up speaking with some folks in shelby county, alabama, which was the jurisdiction that was covered under the act by virtue of, the state of alabama was covered in shelby county was a county in the state so by virtue it was a covered jurisdiction to shelby county itself has been kind of a model of voting rights to be honest with you, for a decent time. there have been some cities and towns within the county that had on issues in comply with section five but shelby county itself was pretty good. so we signed them on. they decided to file a complaint and so we get there. one of the things that we decided to do from the outset though was to bring to claims which ended up being important i think. the first was a challenge to section 4-b itself, which was a coverage formula. the second was to bring a challenge to section five. so because of some things the court had said in northwest austin about coverage being outdated we thought that breaking it down in that way would really crystallized the issues for the courts when they were addressing that issue, and that's ultimately the way that we proceeded and openly the way the court ruled. it rolled on section 40 issue finding a coverage for those outdated and did not respond to current conditions. it did not rule on the section five issue. so basically the baseline of that we have today is congress creates a new format, section five will be back in place, but as of right now it's not because there's no valid coverage formula. >> let me just start by thanking ifes for bringing us all here today, for inviting me, and to thank all of you for being here. it is a great honor to be among such a group of people from around the world who care about democracy as much as we do. the foundation of democracy coming in a democracy, is the right to vote. this right has long been recognized as fundamental by our supreme court, even though our constitution does not explicitly protect voting rights as such. our courts since the 19th century, however, has said that the right to vote is fundamental because it is preservative of all rights. none of our interests, be they in education, employment, health care, whatever it might be, are safe unless were able to vote and participate as equals in democracy. i say this by way of introduction because, although this principle has long been proclaimed in the united states, and it has not always been respected. and even today in the united states there are practices which diminish, dilute or impair voting rights by some of our citizens. so let me come in my brief remarks, start by providing some context, both on the united states unusual electoral system, and on history before moving to the question of what the preclearance provisions of the voting rights act were and were not doing at the time that the shelby county case, which brand and discuss, was decided last year. so for some context on the u.s. election system, we are very unusual into major respects here in the united states. the first is a profound decentralization of our system. elections are not run at the national level as in the united states. we have no entity with the general responsibility for managing elections your as is the case in most other countries. rather, elections are run for the most part under the laws of the 50 states, and they are actually administered at the local apple, literally by thousands of counties and municipalities, each of which has authority for actually running the day-to-day operations of our voting system at the local level. we have not just one voting system nor even 50 in the united states, but literally thousands. the other distinctive characteristic come some would say pathology, of the u.s. election system is artisanship. what i mean by that is that in most states the chief election official is someone who is either elected or appointed by their party and runs for office as a candidate for their party or is appointed by someone who's elected as a candidate of their party. that is to say, the chief election official in those states is in that sense eight partisan -- in that sense is a partisan. this creates an inherent conflict of interest between the chief election officials responsibility to serve the interests of all voters, to create a level playing field, and that officials interest in serving his or her party and advancing to the ranks of his or her party. it is a problem that is by the way well-recognized among other democratic countries which is why the chief election authority in most countries enjoys some degree of insulation from partisan politics. it, however, unfortunate a lesson that we in the united states have yet to learn. next, let me give a little bit of historical context. for most of this country's history, racial minorities, most notably african-americans, have been systematically denied the votes in much of this country. that was still the reality 50 years ago in 1965, when the voting rights act was adopted. and there is no question, as brendan pointed out, that things have changed considerably in the intervening period. at the time of the voting rights act, blacks were systematically kept from voting or even registering throughout the southern states, which are still for the most part states that were covered at least as of 2013 when the court decided the shelby county case. so what was the voting rights act doing, and what wasn't it doing? there has been in recent years a lot of discussion in the united states of vote suppression, practices that allegedly make it more difficult for eligible citizens, especially racial minorities and poor people to vote. voter id, which you will be hearing about in the next hours panel is the most prominent subject of criticism by those who complain of vote suppression, but there are other practices such as registration rules limits on absentee voting and early voting data also been criticized with instances of vote suppression. the perception is that the preclearance provisions of the voting rights act were in -- were an effective tool against these vote suppression practices. the reality, however, was that they were quite rarely used to stop those practices. with the preclearance provisions of the voting rights act were most often used was with respect to what we call vote dilution at the local level. so, for example, new lines were drawn for city council elections in the united states, state and local budgets are the bodies particularly have a responsibility not only for running elections but for drawing a district lines from which people are elected to office. allegations are sometimes made that those lines dilute the strength of minority votes. so the preclearance provisions that brendan discussed what moche -- mostly used and in my view most effective with respect to these local practices, at-large elections, redistricting and so on. that's what was really lost by the supreme court's decision in shelby county. i'm not especially interested in really getting that decision here. i disagree with the court decision. i tend to think that the places that the problems 50 years ago are still the places the worst problems of race discrimination today. that said, these issues that i discuss, and i presume we will discuss further on this panel, making it more difficult to vote and have one vote count, it's a real national issue. and at some point i would like to see the united states congress take action to establish a baseline of uniform rules or registration, identification, and early voting so that the many people who move across state lines in the united states know what the rules will be foreboding when they move. as it stands now, you move across state lines, you may face entirely different rules regarding registration, identification, when you can vote, and so on. we have, in my opinion, a lot to learn from the rest of the world when it comes to the way we run elections, including the protection of voting rights in the united states. >> i think adding to that list of the federal issues ought to be the way the interaction people have with voting, what is the machine or type of fund that takes place. because some machines are more accurate than others. also a huge issue in the united states is absentee voting, and a lot of litigation now comes up about absentee voting. and that, to come is different for each jurisdiction. but i think now we can turn to what happened after shall become and what happens since then. >> yeah, sure. you know, basically there was a call almost immediately to update the coverage formula which was what was struck down in the supreme court's decision in shelby county. it took a little bit for a draft bill to come out but eventually went dead, and so we have to think a little bit about what are the options for updating it if there is a desire to do so and kind what's the situation if they don't do that? i think i will start with the latter question first which is, section five was as i mentioned at the beginning only one provision of the voting rights act. section two applied nationwide and i could does address a lot of the diluted principles and practices that professor trejo was speaking about. in fact, mainly used for those purposes. trouble is -- not trouble, the unique feature of section five was that stopped things in its tracks before i practiced a place where in section two comes after the fact. so that was a think actually what was lost and to build a target is practices generally. so there is still a judicial mechanism for targeting these practices in section two of the voting rights act. there's also section three of the voting rights act which is what's called bail in, which creates a situation where every jurisdiction is found to have violated the united states constitution in terms of voting rights, then that jurisdiction can be brought into the type of preclearance process section five used to have kind of as a default rule in certain areas of the country. that is directly responsive to ongoing constitution of violations and can respond to current conditions in jurisdictions. and then, of course, there's the constitution itself. there's a cause of action to bring an action against a state, or local jurisdiction based on a violation of folks constitutional right. to all of these things still exist. the one thing that does not exist is a prior restraint. the thing that stops the practices before they start. and so to my mind what's going to need to happen is folks are going to think long and hard about is that prior restraint something that has to come back, or are the claims and causes of action that currently exist on the books sufficient to do with the types of voting discrimination that everybody agrees still exist today. because there are things are going across the country and nobody will deny it i think that violate the united states constitution. and so that's the question in my mind is whether that's going to be necessary. to my mind the draft bill that was, at least i don't think was appropriately addressed that particular concern. i think it was more of the move to do something quickly as opposed to trying to strike the right balance. and so in that respect there's going to be a modification of that section three bail in that would've responded to not constitutional violations but other types of violations. in my mind in reading the supreme court's decision, and this is just as an outside observer, well, i wasn't outside observer -- reading the supreme court's decision to which i have no particular insight more than anyone else, i don't think that that type of bail in we be constitutionally sufficient. and then i think a coverage formula of the type that is not going to respond to constitutional violations but is going to respond to some other types of violations or statutory violation is probably not going to pass muster either. so those are things they're going to have to think about. i'm not in charge of any of these things. so i'm just kind of observing this from the outside, but to my might if congress is going to go that route it would probably be such a challenge again that would have a reason chance of succeeding. those are my views on kind of the landscape of were section five stands after the shelby county decision spent i don't know if we have this crush about specific states, what happens maybe speak with sure. let me answer talk about two things. first, the legislative picture at the federal level which brendan addressed and secondly, what's going on in the courts. the bottom line in terms of what our congress is likely to do is nothing. we have enormous party polarization and stalemates. there has been a bill proposed, mostly democratic support which as a brendan mentioned would create a new coverage formula and would require disclosure of the impact of voting changes. are some features of this bill i really liked, others about which i am less enthusiastic to put the bottom line is that in this very divided congress, it's not going anywhere. knower is any voting rights bill going to go anywhere. and then i would love to see bill that imposed greater standards at the federal level over all these issues. and my resolve some of the -- might resolve some of the contentious debates without over the years, since 2000 over voting. but that's not likely to happen anytime soon. so as a strictly the case where these controversies wind up being ultimately resolved is in the courts. we've seen significant increase in litigation over voting rules in recent years, really since the 2000 election, which first brought these matters into court, and some of the restrictions that it mentioned earlier, voter identification, limits on where and how you can register to vote, restrictions on absentee and early voting, rules regarding the counting of provisional ballots, voting technology. all of these practices have been challenged in court. in fact, in my state alone every single one of the practices that i just mentioned has been challenged. this is to be expected. when you have partisan legislative bodies making the rules for elections, when you have partisan election officials for the most part running elections, questions about this conflict of interest that i mentioned earlier are inevitably going to arise. and in our system the institution that is most insulated from partisan politics is the court. so in my view it's quite appropriate that the courts be the arbiters of these disputes regarding the fairness of the election rules, and whether not there really is a level playing field as chad earlier mentioned. we have seen litigation very recently over election rules. for cases are notably notable, my state in ohio regarding restrictions on early voting, as well as same-day registration. a case in north carolina involving a law enacted right after shelby county that imposed variety of restrictions on voting, including on early voting, same-day registration, imposing a voter id requiremen requirements. and then lawsuits in two more states, wisconsin and texas, both involving voter identification rules. the lower courts have not come out the same way on all these cases, as we lawyers say they are still percolating through the lower court system. and it remains to be seen exactly what the supreme court will do. the supreme court actually issued or got involved in three of these cases just this past year that did not issue an opinion on the merits in any of those cases. i tend to think that its involvement had more to do with its concerns about court orders issued very close to the election than it did about what exactly the court thinks on the merits of these cases. but at some point i suspect these issues are likely to come back before the united states supreme court, possibly very soon. >> i don't know give anything on some of -- >> in particular in the context of section five since that we're here to talk about, i think it's important to point out that the states that were just mentioned, north carolina was partially covered by the voting rights act. there were roughly 40 counties, at least 40 of the 100 north carolina were covered. the state of ohio was not, although covered by section to of the voting rights act like the rest of the country. and in the state of wisconsin is also not. in terms of particularly in light of the fact the supreme court ruled on the coverage formula i think this is actually a very good illustration of some of the issues with the coverage formula as it existed at the time come at the time a reauthorization in 2006 and at the time it was struck down. a lot of these hot button, fundamental voting rights cases, out of areas of the country like ohio and like wisconsin bat, and i think anybody could agree that this is just wanted to come out of those areas of the country as they are anywhere else. we could debate whether coverage should properly, a lot of the original ares today as well, but i think everybody would agree in the state of ohio in the last three to five years it's been as likely as anyone else to have a big decision come out on fundamental voting rights. it's pertaining to early voting primary in the last couple of election but same-day registration as you mentioned. dozen other things as well. and then wisconsin has been in the news as well for voter id. in terms of the coverage form i think that's constructive. and what we've seen before, during and after kind of the timeframe of when the shelby county decision came out of the supreme court is that we are not seeing this isolated problem in certain errors of the country, and we are seeing problems come out of other areas as well spent if i could respond, i really almost entirely agree with what brendan just said, you know? i do think that this goes to a common misperception about the shelby county case. the perception is that we've seen this massive wave of voting restrictions since shelby county. well, there's really one state where you could say voting restrictions were adopted as a direct response to shelby county, in my view. north carolina, right? the state legislature enacted this bill that it mentioned moments ago. what really triggered these changes was the fact, if we're going to be very honest about this, that in 2010 republicans did very well in elections across the country. so that in 2011 we had a lot of republican governors and republican dominated state legislatures. and in this country racial minorities, particularly african-americans and latinos, both overwhelmingly democratic. so the allegation and the perception, at least among many democrats, is that republican legislatures have adopted these rules in order to make it more difficult for democratic meeting -- leading people to vote. that was the perception but it was really the turnover in legislatures in 2010 that triggered this wave of voting restrictions rather than shelby county. and it is certainly a national issue, voting rights, which is why i in the end like to see a national voting rights act, a voting rights act for this century. i prefer that to the geographically limited coverage formula that we had under the old voting rights act. >> i think in this conversation i think it's interesting to note that the coverage formula from section four determines which states that the civil rights act really applied to in regards to preclearance of election law. and then section five was what allowed the federal government to look at those laws but there's still section two in the civil rights act that allows the federal government to prosecute individual cases when they find something that runs counter to the constitution or the voting rights act. i don't know if either one of you, put you on the spot, if you think about how turning to section two, if it's still an effective tool, yes or no? and i think the reason why it's interesting because that's more the way in which you all would prosecute something would be an individual action of an individual person or party, which is still available under section two spent since brendan responded to this earlier, why do i take the first crack at the question, and it's a very important one. section two of the voting rights act prohibits election practices that result in the denial or abridgment of the vote on a -- on account of race. it's mostly been used in vote dilution cases in the past. for example, in cases challenging the way that legislative districts are drawn on the ground that they weakened the collective voting strength of a racial minority group. the important difference between a section to case and the old regime under section five, as brendan pointed out, is that plaintiffs have the burden in section two. they have the burden of showing a discriminatory result. and these cases, as i'm sure he knows as well, can be really, really expensive to litigate for both sides. .. >> the justice department, under or old system, had responsibility for reviewing all those changes and either granting preclearance, denying preclearance or, as it did in many cases, requesting more information, right? and so i think that the preclearaneq

Related Keywords

Japan , Alabama , United States , Chad , Germany , North Carolina , Texas , Ohio State University , Ohio , Shelby County , Virginia , Wisconsin , Guam , Brussels , Bruxelles Capitale , Belgium , Washington , District Of Columbia , London , City Of , United Kingdom , Bangladesh , India , Spain , Americans , America , Bangladeshi , Spanish , German , Japanese , American , Pauline Jones , Al Gore , James Pinkerton , Charles Lindbergh , Las Vegas , Adam Cedric ,