[Congressional Bills 115th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 5221 Introduced in House (IH)]

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115th CONGRESS
  2d Session
                                H. R. 5221

 To prohibit the use of funds to develop, test, deploy, implement, or 
    administer the Disability Case Processing System, and for other 
                               purposes.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                             March 8, 2018

    Mr. Grothman (for himself, Mr. Loudermilk, and Mr. DesJarlais) 
 introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on 
                             Ways and Means

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
 To prohibit the use of funds to develop, test, deploy, implement, or 
    administer the Disability Case Processing System, and for other 
                               purposes.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. ELIMINATION OF SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION DISABILITY 
              CASE PROCESSING SYSTEM.

    (a) Findings.--Congress finds the following:
            (1) In 2014, whistleblowers informed the Committee on 
        Oversight and Government Reform that the Social Security 
        Administration (in this Act referred to as the ``SSA'') has 
        spent nearly $300,000,000 on a failed information technology 
        modernization project known as the Disability Case Processing 
        System (in this Act referred to as the ``DCPS'').
            (2) On July 25, 2014, the Chairman of the Subcommittee on 
        Social Security of the Committee on Ways and Means of the House 
        of Representatives requested that the SSA Inspector General (in 
        this Act referred to as the ``SSA IG'') conduct an 
        ``investigation into the SSA's management and failed 
        implementation of the DCPS costing the taxpayers close to $300 
        million to date.''.
            (3) The SSA IG, in its November 2014 initial report, stated 
        that it had concerns with the SSA's approach and recommended 
        that the SSA not spend more funds until it determined whether 
        the commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software could be used.
            (4) In May 2016, the SSA IG reported that the SSA had spent 
        over $300,000,000 on the DCPS project, ``for which it would 
        receive little benefit'', and according to the SSA, it would 
        still need $90,000,000 to $165,000,000 to deliver the first 
        release of the new Core DCPS between July and December of 2016.
            (5) The SSA IG reported in September 2016 that, since its 
        inception 8 years earlier, the SSA's reported costs for the 
        DCPS project were $356,000,000. SSA estimated it would still 
        need an additional $122,000,000 through 2019 for the project.
            (6) In its September 2017 report, the SSA IG reported that 
        the SSA's goals were to deliver full functionality of DCPS by 
        April 2018 and full deployment systemwide by September 2019, 
        bringing the total expenditure for the DCPS project to over 
        $500,000,000. However, even after 3 years of reporting on DCPS, 
        the SSA IG concluded that ``given the uncertainty of the future 
        growth of the backlog and SSA's ongoing development velocity, 
        we were unable to conclude whether the Agency's release goals 
        were reasonable.''.
    (b) Prohibition on Funding for DCPS.--None of the funds available 
to the Social Security Administration for any fiscal year may be used 
to develop, test, deploy, implement, or administer the Disability Case 
Processing System or any substantially similar program unless 
specifically authorized by Congress.
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