[House Hearing, 108 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
PROGRESS IN ADDRESSING MANAGEMENT
CHALLENGES AT THE DEPARTMENT OF
HOMELAND SECURITY
=======================================================================
HEARING
of the
SELECT COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MAY 6, 2004
__________
Serial No. 108-48
__________
Printed for the use of the Select Committee on Homeland Security
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/
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SELECT COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
Christopher Cox, California, Chairman
Jennifer Dunn, Washington Jim Turner, Texas, Ranking Member
C.W. Bill Young, Florida Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi
Don Young, Alaska Loretta Sanchez, California
F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts
Wisconsin Norman D. Dicks, Washington
David Dreier, California Barney Frank, Massachusetts
Duncan Hunter, California Jane Harman, California
Harold Rogers, Kentucky Benjamin L. Cardin, Maryland
Sherwood Boehlert, New York Louise McIntosh Slaughter, New
Lamar S. Smith, Texas York
Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Peter A. DeFazio, Oregon
Christopher Shays, Connecticut Nita M. Lowey, New York
Porter J. Goss, Florida Robert E. Andrews, New Jersey
Dave Camp, Michigan Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of
Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Florida Columbia
Bob Goodlatte, Virginia Zoe Lofgren, California
Ernest J. Istook, Jr., Oklahoma Karen McCarthy, Missouri
Peter T. King, New York Sheila Jackson-Lee, Texas
John Linder, Georgia Bill Pascrell, Jr., North Carolina
John B. Shadegg, Arizona Donna M. Christensen, U.S. Virgin
Mark E. Souder, Indiana Islands
Mac Thornberry, Texas Bob Etheridge, North Carolina
Jim Gibbons, Nevada Ken Lucas, Kentucky
Kay Granger, Texas James R. Langevin, Rhode Island
Pete Sessions, Texas Kendrick B. Meek, Florida
John E. Sweeney, New York
John Gannon, Chief of Staff
Stephen DeVine, Deputy Staff Director and General Counsel
Thomas Dilenge, Chief Counsel and Policy Director
David H. Schanzer, Democrat Staff Director
Mark T. Magee, Democrat Deputy Staff Director
Michael S. Twinchek, Chief Clerk
(II)
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
STATEMENTS
The Honorable Christopher Cox, a Representative in Congress From
the State of California, and Chairman, Select Committee on
Homeland Security.............................................. 1
The Honorable Jim Turner, a Representative in Congress From the
State of Texas, and Ranking Member, Select Committee on
Homeland Security.............................................. 2
The Honorable Robert E. Andrews, a Representative in Congress
From the State of New Jersey................................... 26
The Honorable Norman D. Dicks, a Representative in Congress From
the State of Washington........................................ 44
The Honorable Jennifer Dunn, a Representative in Congress From
the State of Washington........................................ 5
The Honorable Bob Etheridge, a Representative in Congress From
the State of North Carolina.................................... 40
The Honorable Sheila Jackson-Lee, a Representative in Congress
From the State of Texas: Prepared Statement.................... 4
The Honorable Zoe Lofgren, a Representative in Congress From the
State of California............................................ 32
The Honorable Bill Pascrell, Jr., a Representative in Congress
From the State of North Carolina............................... 38
The Honorable John Shadegg, a Representative in Congress From the
State of Arizona............................................... 35
The Honorable Pete Sessions, a Representative in Congress From
the State of Texas............................................. 29
The Honorable Christopher Shays, a Representative in Congress
From the State Connecticut..................................... 41
WITNESS
The Honorable James M. Loy, Deputy Secretary, Department of
Homeland Security
Oral Statement................................................. 6
Prepared Statement............................................. 10
APPENDIX
Questions and Responses for the Record
Responses from the Honorable James M. Loy:
Questions from the Honorable Sheila Jackson-Lee................ 54
Questions from the Honorable Louise M. Slaughter............... 53
Questions from the Honorable John E. Sweeney................... 47
Questions from the Honorable Jim Turner........................ 50
PROGRESS IN ADDRESSING MANAGEMENT
CHALLENGES AT THE DEPARTMENT OF
HOMELAND SECURITY
----------
Thursday, May 6, 2004
House of Representatives,
Select Committee on Homeland Security,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:42 a.m., in Room
2318, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher Cox
[chairman of the committee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Cox, Dunn, Shays, Camp, Shadegg,
Sessions, Turner, Dicks, Frank, Slaughter, DeFazio, Lowey,
Andrews, Norton, Lofgren, McCarthy, Pascrell, Etheridge, Lucas,
and Chandler.
Chairman Cox. [Presiding.] Good morning. A little over a
year has passed since the Department of Homeland Security
opened for business on March 1, 2003. With the stroke of a pen,
the President and the Congress created the third largest
cabinet department and with it a remarkably lengthy to-do list.
The task that we set before the leaders of this new Department
required creative thinking and extraordinary energy, as we are
now keenly aware, also definite persistence.
The Homeland Security Act not only created entirely new
functions, such as intelligence fusion, infrastructure
protection and cybersecurity that had to be built from scratch,
but also required the merger of 22 government agencies into one
coherent whole. That is a management challenge of the first
magnitude.
Secretary Ridge and you, Admiral Loy, have taken command of
not one but many distinct organizations, each with its own
operating culture and mission, and you have had to undertake
this complex merger in a near constant heightened alert
environment and while under unprecedented scrutiny from the
administration, the Congress and the American public.
There has been no greater challenge to leadership in any of
our Federal agencies, and I want to commend the Secretary and
you, Admiral Loy, for the remarkable progress that you have
made in one short year. Some of the Department of Homeland
Security's accomplishments over the past year have been
visible. Others have taken place behind the scenes.
Everyone has been able to see our airports, seaports and
borders hardened, and a good deal of publicity has surrounded
the Federal government's grants of billions of dollars for
States, local governments and first responders to help prepare
our communities for terrorist attacks. Less visible but just as
important is the dramatic improvement in intelligence and
information sharing among Federal agencies and their State and
local partners.
Today, we have asked Admiral Loy to join us to talk about
all of these accomplishments and the many remaining management
challenges. While the operational and analytical elements of
the Department have been busy preventing and protecting us from
terrorist attack, the Department's managerial leadership has
been developing an overarching strategic plan to guide the
Department's future.
You have been working on integrating legacy systems and
procedures in order to achieve a more centralized, mission-
focused structure. This integration is critical to the long-
term success of the Department and its mission to make America
safer. It will be, therefore, a continuing focus of
congressional oversight.
Admiral Loy is the Deputy Secretary and the functional
equivalent of chief operating officer who is leading this
effort, and by all accounts your leadership is visionary and
firm. Thank you on behalf of the American people for your
dedication and hard work and we welcome your testimony today.
Management Directorate, which Admiral Loy oversees, has
been tasked with consolidating administrative support systems
Department-wide and enhancing interoperability of the many
legacy IT systems within the Department. We hope to learn more
today about the effectiveness of these efforts and to offer our
support to ongoing efforts to consolidate and integrate DHS
operations as quickly as possible.
This committee has an important role to play in working
with the Department during this merger integration process. By
focusing on milestones and setting goals for management
improvements, this committee can help the Department to
implement your strategic plan--a plan that is in place and that
will build upon the successes of the past year.
We look forward to working with you, Admiral Loy, on
setting achievable goals and milestones for implementing your
strategic plan and in making sure that this plan is tied to the
5-year budget that you will be submitting to Congress later
this month.
We also look forward to working with you as we continue to
develop our DHS authorization bill. The committee clearly wants
this authorization process to be an institutionalized means of
helping the Department, now and over the long-term. As you
know, one of the ideas that we have discussed is elevating the
Department's cross-cutting management functions into your
office in order to provide clearer lines of authority and
responsibility with respect to IT personnel, procurement, and
finance functions.
We will work with you to ensure that these and other
reforms that we may adopt help you to do your job better, which
is our goal. I thank you again for your appearance today and
now recognize the ranking member, Mr. Turner from Texas, for an
opening statement.
Mr. Turner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome, Admiral Loy.
We appreciate your presence here, and I know I speak for
everyone on the committee when I say thank you for your
continued service to our country.
I know you face a daunting challenge in trying to oversee
the integrating of the 22 legacy agencies and 180,000
employees, and I know it is a difficult job, and I know that
you are well aware, as we all are, that some of the management
challenges that you deal with are unique to your agency and
that failure to carry them out correctly could subject us to
serious exposures in terms of our national security, and I know
you carry that burden every day.
We are here today, of course, to try to review the progress
of the Department more than one year after its establishment to
review your achievements and to probe some of the remaining
management challenges that we know must be overcome.
I want to applaud you for your progress. The issuance of
the first strategic plan earlier this year was a needed step,
and I think it is clear the Department one year into its
existence is much more mature today, and its structure seems to
be gaining greater clarity.
There are issues, of course, that we all know remain and
some that have come to my attention, including my concern about
the widely reported accounting irregularities involving a
suspected $1.2 billion shortfall, which we understand led two
of your departments' front-line units to declare a hiring
freeze earlier this spring. I would like to know whether this
suspected shortfall was the result of an internal accounting
error or failure of coordination between Department components
or whether it is really a true budget shortfall.
With a total budget of $36 billion for this fiscal year, I
know you agree that it is critical that the Department be able
to account for its finances with precision and be overseen by a
strong Chief Financial Officer.
Information technology is another area that remains, I
think, a management challenge. I am concerned the Department
may be falling short on integrating the basic systems that
would improve daily operations and improve information sharing
and ensure that the Department is a unified and well run
agency. It is troubling to me, as described by an official
source in the press, that the Department may not know, for
example, how many employees it actually has. And, obviously,
that kind of information in the press undermines the
credibility of the Department. And I am not sure I understand
why that kind of information would not be in existence.
I also find it somewhat troubling that the Chief
Procurement Officer and the Chief Information Officer appear to
be organizationally weak and may not have sufficient authority
over the hundreds of legacy agency systems and functions for
which they are responsible.
I know there have been a number of initiatives made in this
area, such as the Investment Review Board to examine purchases
over $50 million, and additional reforms may be needed to
ensure the Department's purchases and use of IT are
appropriately coordinated.
I also am concerned with the reports that there is a high
degree of turnover among executives in the IT and contracting
areas. Clearly, such occurrences in high turnover would hamper
the ability of the Department to accomplish its mission.
And, finally, I want to briefly touch upon the new pay-for-
performance system for employees. We all understand the vital
mission of protecting the homeland depends upon a highly
skilled and highly motivated workforce. We know we can invest
billions in technology, have the best strategies available,
but, ultimately, our security lies in the hands of the
dedicated men and women who work every day in your Department.
I hope the Department continues to develop its human
resources system, and as you do so seek to ensure fairness,
transparency and employee involvement in the overall process.
Unless our employees are appropriately compensated and
experience job satisfaction, we know their morale will suffer
and our homeland security will be compromised. As a former
military officer, I know you understand very well the value of
the highly motivated and dedicated workforce.
The Department clearly has had to blaze a pathway into some
unchartered territory in the last year. It has made some
mistakes, but it is finding its way and it is making progress.
And I know that through your leadership, Admiral Loy, along
with Secretary Ridge, that the Department is committed to
addressing each of the management challenges that I mentioned
in accomplishing the vital mission of protecting our country.
So our committee is here in a bipartisan way to help you
accomplish your task. Only by letting us know what your
problems are and where the Congress needs to step forward and
help can we do our job to join with you in protecting our
Nation. Thank you again, Admiral, for being here. Thank you,
Mr. Chairman.
Prepared Statement of the Honorable Sheila Jackson-Lee
I would like to thank Chairman Cox, Ranking Member Turner, and our
witness today, Honorable James Loy for making today's hearing happen.
The subject of this hearing has been a harbinger of evil that we,
unfortunately, must address if we expect to truly secure our nation
before the next terror threat occurs or before another person is
injured or killed. The thorough and proper integration of 22 separate
agencies into one umbrella is no small task; therefore, there is always
room for improvement. In this case, however, quick and complete
improvements are necessary to save lives. The management and functional
problems that existed when each pre-DHS division of government continue
to exist now, and in fact, the integration of these divisions may have
exacerbated a lot of those problems. For four (4) of the seven major
agencies (i.e., Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Customs Service, Transportation
Security Administration, the Office of Domestic Preparedness, the u.S.
Coast Guard, and the Secret Service) that became DHS on March 1, 2003,
auditors reported 18 material weaknesses (i.e., a condition that
precludes the entity's internal control from providing reasonable
assurance that misstatements, losses, or noncompliance would be
prevented or detected on a timely basis) in internal control for fiscal
year 2002. In addition, for five (5) of the seven (7) major agencies,
auditors reported that the agencies' financial management systems were
not in substantial compliance with the Federal Financial Management
Improvement Act (FFMIA) of 1996. These statistics are very troubling
when we think about the reality that the Homeland Security Act
essentially conglomerated the material weaknesses and proven inability
to comply with the FFMIA.
For example, according to a GAO study released on September 10,2003
(GAO-03-1134T) with respect with the former Immigration and
Naturalization Service (INS), for both FY 2001 and 2002, auditors
reported that INS did not have a reliable system for providing regular,
timely data on the numbers of completed and pending immigration
applications, and the associated collections of fees valued at nearly
$1 billion for FY 2002! What this means is that over the course of
these fiscal years, INS did not accurately or regularly determine the
fees that it earns without relying on an extensive service-wide, year-
end physical count of over 5.4 million pending applications.
Supposedly, INS has been working on a new tracking system to facilitate
its inventory process. I would like to know the progress of this
system. How can we realistically rely on the Administration's newly
announced immigration policy when we know from the above data that it
may well have been created based on significantly estimated performance
and fee data?
In addition, relating to the problems arising from the
conglomeration of the different agencies and from a conversation that I
had with a member of the Houston Airport System, there needs to be an
``intermodal law enforcement mechanism'' to ensure that law enforcement
is in a position to react quickly once the magnitude of the emergency
has been determined. For example, at Bush Intercontinental Airport in
Houston, there is a concern that more law enforcement agents are
needed. When an emergency arises that falls outside the scope of the
Houston Police Department's (HPD's) jurisdiction, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) is the next first responder to receive the call of
duty. This period of problem identification and jurisdiction
determination creates a time lag that puts lives in serious jeopardy.
The FY 2004 budget did not fund the addition of law enforcement
personnel, so we are now in a quandary.
In addition, with respect to the hiring cap for professional and
administrative positions at TSA for airports, I spoke with a
constituent at the Houston Airport System and he complained that the
cap is creating a major source of vulnerability. Houston has 3
airports, and two of them are considered ``high traffic'' or extremely
busy. Furthermore, at Bush Intercontinental Airport, there is a
proposal to add as many as 18 new TSA checkpoints in the expansion of
its international wing. With this kind of expansion at other airports
around the nation coupled with ever- increasing air travel, we need to
make some serious changes in the way TSA and other divisions manage
their duties.
I hope that we can arrive at some positive solutions to these
problems so that the vulnerabilities that are being created don't
escalate.
Thank you.
Chairman Cox. Thank the gentleman. The Vice Chairman of the
full committee, the gentlelady from the State of Washington,
Ms. Dunn.
Ms. Dunn. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. After the
tragic events on September 11, Congress and the President acted
swiftly to create the Department of Homeland Security, a
department designed to remedy internal government problems and
to make it much more difficult, if not impossible, for
terrorists to assail our way of life.
The issue of homeland security was not at the front of most
Americans' minds before the attacks on September 11, and the
organization of Federal government reflected that fact.
September 11 was our wake-up call, and the President and the
Congress answered that call.
The Department of Homeland Security is a demonstration of
our commitment to protect Americans and to prepare in case of
another attack. Creating the Department of Homeland Security
has been a gigantic undertaking. Mergers of this magnitude are
unusual if not unprecedented, whether we are talking about the
private sector or the public sector. DHS combined the efforts
of 22 separate entities, all responsible for some piece of the
security puzzle, into one department focused on a new mission--
to protect our homelands.
Today, we look to the Deputy Secretary of the Department of
Homeland Security, Admiral Loy, to guide us through the
management strategy for continuing to build a strong and
focused Department. We know that managing 22 legacy agencies
and organizations is an extraordinary assignment. We understand
the structural and cultural barriers that hinder transformation
in a merger situation. We applaud the leaders of the Department
for making significant progress over this last year, and we are
here to support and encourage Department-wide implementation of
mission-driven policy.
The mission of the Department of Homeland Security is
perhaps the most important mission that we, the Federal
government, will ever undertake. I am pleased that we have
individuals like Admiral Loy leading the effort, because I know
he also understands it, and I look forward to your testimony,
Admiral Loy.
Chairman Cox. Thank the gentlelady. I would advice members
that Admiral Loy has agreed to be with us for this hearing till
12:30. All members are free to make opening statements under
our rules. Those members who waive opening statements will have
an additional 3 minutes added to the time allotted for their
questions. And so at this time, I would ask if there are
further opening statements?
If not, Admiral Loy, we have, of course, your prepared
testimony, and you are recognized for purposes of summarizing
it for us orally.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JAMES M. LOY, DEPUTY SECRETARY,
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Admiral Loy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Cox, ranking
member Turner, distinguished members of the committee, I am
pleased to appear at the hearing of the House Select Committee
on Homeland Security. The Department of Homeland Security
appreciates the support we have received from this committee as
we have worked with you to establish and refine this Department
in support of our unified effort nationally to prevent and
deter terrorist attacks and to protect against and respond to
threats and hazards of all kinds to our Nation.
Authorizing oversight from the Congress is an enormously
important function. It provides ideas, and it provides the
reinforcement of direction and provides programmatic support as
part of the annual dialogue between the executive and the
legislative branches. Secretary Ridge and I and the rest of DHS
recognize the value of that discourse and we try to look
forward to holding up our end of the conversation.
The Department of Homeland Security has indeed made, we
believe, significant organizational strides during the first
year of our operation. Nearly 180,000 employees and a budget of
over $31 billion were brought under DHS just a little over a
year ago.
We are in the midst really of three full-time jobs at the
Department. First, we are executing the merger that has been
described--22 executive branch elements coming into one
cabinet-level agency. Second, we are trying to do that without
detrimental impact on mission accomplishment; in fact, our
challenge, of course, is to make significant improvements in
meeting that mission. And, third, and last, we are forging a
new identity in culture, born in the ashes of September 11,
2001 and dedicated to ensuring to the very best of our ability
that such events never recur.
Any one of these challenges is a very heavy lift. All three
together properly draw the attention of many to applaud, to
constructively criticize or to wonder aloud as to what it is
that we are really doing. That review is welcome. We certainly
do not have a corner on the market of good ideas, and although
we are very proud of what we have gotten done this past year,
we still know we have a long way to go, and we welcome the
assistance of all to help us secure America.
I believe the committee interests cross all three of our
challenges, but I also sense that today we are principally
interested in governance. Setting up the management structure
of DHS was debated well, of course, in the creation of the
Homeland Security Act. On the other hand, as often is the case,
every bill is not perfect, and there are areas properly
available for us to review, and I look forward to that
discussion.
I would like to just offer quick comments in three areas
and then take your questions. First, there are many noteworthy
accomplishments to review from year one. Among the Department's
accomplishments in consolidating inherited support systems
during its first year are these: 8 payroll systems that have
been reduced to 3, and the Department expects to be using only
1 system by the end of 2004; 22 human resource offices that
have been reduced to 7; 13 contracting offices that have been
reduced to 8; 19 financial management service providers that
have been reduced to 10.
DHS has initiated an ambitious management initiative called
eMerge2, designed to produce a consolidated enterprise solution
for a variety of administrative functions, including
accounting, budgeting and acquisition.
DHS has instituted and designed the Future Years Homeland
Security Program, the FYHSP, the parallel, if you will, to the
Department of Defense's FYDP, with the goal of tying overall
strategy to a 5-year resource plan outlining long-range goals
and resource requirements.
In February, the Department proposed new regulations for
human resource management. The goal of the effort was to design
a flexible and competitive system viewed as an opportunity to
take an historic step in Federal government employment policy.
The public comment period at the tail end of this project ended
on March 22, 2004, but I must say how proud we are at the
inclusive nature of that process from beginning to end.
We had an 80-person team that was designing this new
system. That team included representatives from all walks of
not only our Department but the unions that represent our
employees and everyone else that we felt had an equity in the
system along the way.
There are over 3,500 comments now in the public docket from
the comment period, and at the present time DHS and OPM, our
partner in this effort, are analyzing those comments. Officials
hope to issue final regulations later this year after the meet-
and-confer process has concluded. Following the issuance of
final regulations, the system, as proposed, will be phased in
over several years.
We have also made progress in consolidating and integrating
operational programs. For example, there is currently now on
the shelf an interim national response plan and a national
incident management system. There is in final review the first
formal version of that national response plan. This represent
an effort to consolidate from as many as 12 different
contingency plans which used to be on the shelf a single way
that this Department will coordinate the requirements
associated with any national hazard, manmade or otherwise, that
comes towards this country's direction.
The Department has taken steps towards consolidating its
first responder grants and programs; as Mr. Turner mentioned,
those grants and programs that support the first responder
community, always the first on the scene and most often the
last to leave any kind of an event. The One Face at the Border
Program was designed and implemented consolidating three very
different border inspection functions into one. That has now
proven itself over months of use as to be a constructive change
to the way we welcome people through the portals of our
country.
Several programs and ideas that were free-standing and set
asides of themselves have now been integrated to forge a curb-
to-cockpit system of aviation security for our Nation that is
admittedly not yet complete but is, oh, so much better than
that which was in place on that day back in September of 2001.
It still remains clear that we have challenges that lie
ahead. I would offer that information technology, further
systems integration, information sharing, and issues about
interoperability are areas that continue to deserve and receive
serious attention in the Department. These are initiatives
underway that have not culminated in a final game plan as to
how best to do them. More on that thought in just a moment.
A secondary of attention from my opening remarks is vision.
As the chairman mentioned, on the occasion of the first
anniversary of this Department in 1 March, the Secretary
published our first strategic plan. This was an effort
undertaken by the leadership cadre of the Department--off-site
together, no facilitators in place, just us trying to figure
out the best way to forge our future.
The national strategy for homeland security and the
Homeland Security Act of 2002 served to mobilize and organize
our Nation to secure the homeland from terrorist threats. To be
successful, complex missions required a focused effort from all
society. This is an all-hands evolution for our country.
One primary reason for the establishment of the Department
was to provide the unifying corps for the vast national network
or organizations and institutions involved in efforts to secure
our country. In order to better do this and to provide guidance
to the 180,000 men and women in the Department who work every
day on this important task, the Department found itself
required to develop its own strategic plan.
The new vision and mission statements plus the strategic
goals therein will provide the framework for the thousands of
action items that will focus to daily operations of the
Department. I would trust that each of you have seen copies of
our plan at this point. We will certainly make sure they are
sent to you if you have not.
The vision, very clearly: Preserving our freedoms,
protecting America, we secure our homeland. I think its
simplicity offers focus. Our mission: We will lead a unified
national effort to secure America. We will prevent and deter
terrorist attacks and protect against and respond to threats
and hazards to the Nation. We will ensure safe and secure
borders, welcome lawful immigrants and visitors and promote the
free flow of commerce.
The core values of the Department of Homeland Security are
personal attributes expected of every employee. I watched it
work almost magically with my service in the Coast Guard for
over 40 years. Core values are enormously important as that
third job we undertake to build DHS identity and culture.
Those are simply three: Integrity, service before self,
each of us serves something far greater than ourselves;
vigilance guarding America, relentlessly identifying and
deterring threats that pose a danger to the safety of our
people; respect, honoring our partners, honoring the concepts
for which America stands--liberty, democracy, civil rights--and
act on such things as our constitutional duty requires.
And seven action oriented strategic goals: Awareness,
prevention, protection, response and recovery and then service
and organizational excellence as mandates from the Secretary to
all of our workforce to take us where we want to go.
Objectives are arranged under each goal, and there are
literally hundreds of milestones, activities and projects
associated with each objective. Our planning mandate is to link
each and every such activity and project to a line item in the
2006 budget as it comes forward and display its owner and
timeline to any and all who would look.
I personally review those milestones monthly and demand the
metrics necessary for objective monitoring of progress. This
strategic plan has given the DHS workforce the confidence of
knowing where their work fits into the big picture and the
comfort that it all makes sense and that the boss has a solid
game plan and the will to exercise it.
And, lastly, Mr. Chairman, I offer this simple notion that
a department like ours with thousands of very important
activities must take the time to prioritize our work. Secretary
Ridge gave us all kudos for work well done in year one and then
quickly delivered a set of seven key priorities for us to
concentrate on in year two. They are information sharing and
infrastructure protection, interoperability, integrated ports
and borders, new technologies and tools, better prepared States
and communities, improved customer service for immigrants and a
21st century department.
I will leave that list just on the table as a menu of
things that you perhaps would like to discuss, but please know
we have taken each of them, made a senior department official
personally responsible for it, had a 20-page paper developed
that described our intention for specific goals, responsible
owners and milestones. We turned a solid information brief to
the Secretary to be sure we were on the right track, and in
several instances are setting up program shops to manage our
progress in that subject area.
Mr. Chairman, there has been a tremendous amount
accomplished since this Department was created, and we are
cognizant of how much more work remains to be done. I tried to
identify several areas as I prepared my testimony where the
Congress might look to help us.
One of the biggest challenges that faces us at the moment,
in particular, is the need to consolidate the Department's
headquarters location in a single place. This co-location will
serve to improve communications, provide efficiencies and
better establish our identity as a department. We are working
with the Armed Services Committees to expand our presence at
the Nebraska Avenue complex, and I seek your support to that
end.
Beyond that, we have asked Congress to delay the deadlines
for biometrically based passports to be mandatory at our
borders. I personally wonder if high consequence areas like
nuclear, biological and cyber are properly organized and
recognized in the Department. I even wonder if adequate
attention can be given to major policy judgments from a small
shop well hidden inside the Chief of Staff's organization.
These are just a few of the areas the Secretary will seek
your support on as we take stock after year one and try to make
adjustments to how we do business. Mr. Chairman, thank you for
allowing me to run on just a bit. There is just an incredible
array of work being done and to be done in this new department.
Again, we are proud of our work so far, appreciative of the
committee's support, but mostly the Secretary and I are proud
of our workforce--180,000 plus strong who day after day make
their contribution to securing our homeland. They deserve the
resources and support they need to do their work and the very
best leadership and management that we can muster. We are
trying hard to give them that every day.
I look forward to your questions, and thank you very much,
Mr. Chairman, for allowing me to make an opening statement.
[The statement of Admiral Loy follows:]
Prepared Statement of Admiral James Loy
Chairman Cox, Ranking Member Turner, distinguished members of the
Committee--I am pleased to appear at this hearing of the House Select
Committee on Homeland Security. The Department of Homeland Security
appreciates the support we have received from this Committee as we have
worked with you to establish and refine this Department in support of
our unified national effort to prevent and deter terrorist attacks and
protect against and respond to threats and hazards to the nation.
I would also like to acknowledge the tremendous work of the
Department's management team and their dedicated staff in keeping DHS
on track and focused on our ultimate goal of transforming a formerly
disparate set of organizations into a cohesive 21st century Department.
This reorganization of government has presented the biggest `change
management'' challenge of all time. Never before have we witnessed a
full-scale government divestiture, merger, acquisition and startup all
coming together at once--certainly not on this scale. Neither have we
seen a consolidation of this size occur with such national importance
and urgency and in such a short amount of time.
Our biggest challenge was to establish the Department, transfer her
employees in from other agencies, and establish a working
organizational environment while making sure that we did not lose a
step in accomplishing all of the critical missions with which we were
charged.
This reorganization and transition required looking beyond old
agendas, missions, cultures, histories and processes . . . and coming
together as one holistic enterprise. It required--and finally enabled--
employees from many different organizations to rally around a single
mission: to deter and prevent terrorist attacks, to protect our people
and infrastructure and respond to threats and hazards to our nation in
a way that is respectful of individual privacy and civil liberties . .
. ultimately, to secure borders, but also keep open the doors so
characteristic of, and essential to, this welcoming and economically
thriving country.
In the post 9/11 world, our employees renewed their respect for the
importance of their jobs and recognized the need to do them differently
and better. And so our charge was to unify that sense of purpose and
mission. Our charge was to make it easier for them to do their jobs
and, as a nation, approach the protection of our people and our way of
life in a smarter, more effective and more efficient way. Sec.
When the President laid out his direction and the Congress created
the Department of Homeland Security, the expectations were clear that
this Department be unlike any other within the federal government. At
the core of these expectations was the priority of developing a model
agency for the new century that supports in an effective, efficient and
rational manner the unified national effort to secure America.
In order to respond to new and different 21st century threats, this
Department's organizational identity must incorporate the
characteristics of flexibility, innovation, efficiency and
responsiveness. The Department's ability to become a modern, agile, and
integrated organization is essential to adequately support this
Department in its efforts to confront the challenges of the new century
in a bold way.
The definition of a 21st century Department is a consolidated and
focused Department that seeks to integrate, with laser-like precision,
the various resources and efforts across the federal government in
order to prevent, protect against and respond to terrorist attacks that
threaten the American way of life. Inherent in this definition of a
21st century Department is the need for DHS to be organized and to be
able to provide the highest quality of support service for the men and
women on the front lines in the war on terrorism. Just as this
Department was created to execute a mission unlike any other agency in
government, so should the delivery of service be as unique in
supporting this critically important mission.
The Department of Homeland Security has made great organizational
strides during the first year of operations. Nearly 180,000 employees
and a budget of $31.2 billion were brought under DHS a little more than
a year ago.
At the same time, from the start, we also had to remain focused on
our operational activities--that is, while we worked swiftly to get
servers up, systems consolidated, a stapler on every desk--we had to be
squarely focused on the protection of the country.
Operationally, one of the top priorities achieved by the Department
was to integrate specific departmental functions to enhance
efficiencies and create greater accountability in one seamless border
service. For the first time in the country's history, all agencies of
the United States Government with significant border responsibilities
have been unified into one agency of our government, Customs and Border
Protection (CBP); one agency, one face, to manage and secure the
Nation's borders.
Strategic Planning, Financial Management, & Budget
The Department's first high-level Strategic Plan was released in
February. This Strategic Plan sets forth the vision and mission
statements, core values, guiding principles and strategic goals and
objectives that provide the framework to guide the actions that make up
the daily operations of the Department. The full breadth of our
activities is guided by the high-level goals of: Awareness, Prevention,
Protection, Response, Recovery, Service, and Organizational Excellence.
The Department's Strategic Plan reflects the determination of our
nation to prevail against terror, to protect our homeland and to
improve the way we serve our diverse customers. Describing who we are
and what we do, it conveys the beliefs and values that govern our
conduct. It outlines what we will accomplish. This document provides
the vision and direction, as well as the goals and objectives for the
Department while our detailed budget plan describes how we will achieve
those results. Each program in the budget plan will be linked to our
goals and objectives and will have timelines and ownership associated
with specific performance.
One of the biggest strategic challenges currently facing DHS is the
need to consolidate the Department's headquarters operations in one
location. This collocation will significantly improve the
communications, efficiency, and effectiveness of the Department's
management and day-to-day direction. Without Congressional approval,
however DHS cannot fully move into its preferred headquarters--the
Nebraska Avenue Complex (NAC), which is currently an active military
base. DHS, the Navy, and the General Services Administration have
jointly submitted a legislative proposal to establish the DHS
headquarters at the NAC. We believe Congress should pass this
legislation as a stand-alone bill so that the Department can
consolidate its headquarters as soon as possible. Every day that DHS
fails to consolidate its operations, the Department is hobbled in
achieving its ultimate goal of protecting the American people and the
homeland.
Equally important to this Department is sensible financial
management and sensible financial management requires informed
financial and management decisions. To ensure policy decisions are made
based on sound rationale, such as a program's contribution to our
strategic goals and measurable results, DHS has put in place a
comprehensive planning, evaluation, and investment review process.
At the core of this process is the Future Years Homeland Security
Program--FYHSP. Section 874 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002,
requires the Department to prepare the FYHSP. The FYHSP process will
help ensure that current and out year program requirements are properly
identified, planned, and aligned with DHS goals and priorities and have
measurable meaningful performance outcomes. The Department's first
FYHSP is expected to be provided to Congress this month.
In the past year, an Investment Review Board (IRB) and Joint
Requirements Council (JRC) were established. The JRC identifies
crosscutting opportunities and common requirements among DHS
Organizational Elements for investments and aids in determining how
best to ensure that the Department uses its resources wisely and in the
best interest of the American public. The IRB is an executive committee
that reviews high-level investments for formal entry into the annual
budget process and also serves as a forum for discussing investment
issues and resolving problems requiring senior management attention.
Specifically, the IRB and JRC review major capital investments to:
Integrate Departmental priorities, resource planning,
investment control, budgeting, acquisition, and investment
management to ensure resources are wisely used.
Ensure that spending directly supports and furthers
DHS's mission and provides optimal benefits and capabilities to
stakeholders and customers.
Identify poorly performing programs and investments so
corrective actions can be taken.
Identify duplicative efforts for consolidation and
mission alignment when it makes good sense or when economies of
scale can be achieved.
Over the past year, DHS has streamlined the number of financial
management service providers in the Department from nineteen to ten
with a continual focus on further consolidations. We are implementing a
consolidated bankcard program that is reducing the significant number
of bankcard programs for purchase, travel, and fleet throughout the
Department among the 22 legacy entities to three. We developed and
delivered to Congress on time, the Department's FY 2005 President's
Budget and accompanying Congressional Justifications. We subjected
ourselves to, and successfully completed, an audit of our consolidated
FY 2003 financial statements. We have also made strides in our attempt
to build one financial system for the Department. Most importantly, all
of this has been accomplished with no negative impact on mission
operations.
Essential to sound financial management is a sound and robust
financial management system. When DHS was created, we inherited over
100 resource management systems from the 22 organizations that were
merged to create DHS. Few of these systems are integrated, several are
outdated and many have limited functionality. To address this problem,
the Department has undertaken a resource transformation initiative
entitled eMerge\2\. The goal of eMerge\2\, which stands for
``electronically Managing enterprise resources for government
effectiveness and efficiency'', is to improve resource management and
enable the bureaus to move ``Back Office'' effectiveness and efficiency
to ``Front Line'' Operations.
eMerge\2\ is a business-focused program that seeks to consolidate
and integrate the Department's budget, accounting and reporting, cost
management, asset management, and acquisitions and grants functions.
Once procured and developed, the solution will be rolled out in several
phases focusing first on those organizations most in need of improved
basic financial management services. eMerge\2\ is currently in the
midst of an exhaustive requirements definition and design phase, which
is expected to evolve into a solutions acquisition phase this summer.
As eMerge\2\ is implemented over the next few years, it will greatly
enhance Departmental visibility, oversight and accountability of
component operations and financial management.
Holding managers accountable for achieving established goals and
results is integral to DHS's financial management and planning. Towards
this end, the performance budget forges a strong link between resources
and performance, shows what is being accomplished with the money being
spent, and establishes accountability for the levels of performance
achieved. The Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) complements the
performance budget by providing the Department an objective means of
assessing the value and contribution of individual programs to
achieving the Department's objectives. It also provides a tool for
assessing how the program is being managed.
Shared Services
In July 2003 an integrated project team was established to realign
and transform support services for the 68,000 mission delivery
employees assigned to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),
Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and Citizenship and Immigration
Services (CIS). This was especially difficult because ICE was highly
decentralized, and CBP was highly centralized. The team was to develop
a basis for shared services, consolidate services where appropriate to
realize economies of scale, and ensure accountability. The result was
that CIS, ICE, and CBP each became primary service providers for
selected services. For example, CBP provides facilities acquisition and
management, ICE provides supervisory leadership training, and CIS
provides records management. For some services, however, the three
components remain self-supporting. Those services include procurement,
personal property, budget, and labor and employee relations. This
effort within the Department is referred to as the ``Tri-Bureau''
effort.
On March 1, 2003, DHS faced the daunting task of supporting 22
different components receiving services from nine different parent
agencies. To provide continuity of service, DHS signed Memoranda of
Understanding (MOU) with each of the parent agencies to continue that
support. Then, on May 1, the Under Secretary for Management established
a transition team to consolidate support services throughout the
department. The team identified 255 unique services in the 22
components and DHS headquarters resulting in 3,457 separate services
requirements. The services were catalogued under eight lines of
business: administrative services, human resources, information
technology, procurement, financial management, civil rights, legal, and
security. By October 2003, the department was supporting 1463 of the
3457 services, and it is the expectation that most of the services will
be provided by DHS by the end of FY 2004.
The Department's Office of Administrative Services has been able to
consolidate 35% of Administrative Services functions through the Tri-
Bureau effort. Additionally, DHS has consolidated 22 different personal
property management systems down to 3 and will utilize one, single
property management system with implementation of the emerge2
initiative.
The Department has also managed to consolidate 22 different
processes for each administrative support service across the
Department, such as mail, printing, vehicles, etc., down to 8
processes. Further implementation of the shared services strategy
utilized under the Tri-Bureau effort will allow even further
consolidation of these processes to occur.
The consolidation of processes and systems supports the DHS goal of
being a 21st century Department. Above all, supporting the DHS
organizational elements in their mission is the top priority. The use
of national standards, proven management controls, and a practice of
continuously improving program performance are enabling the Office of
Administrative Services to effectively develop and implement a
consolidated approach for the management of DHS safety, environmental
management, records and publications, real property, personal property,
and mail operations.
For example, asset management and mail management consolidation
studies are currently underway within the Department. The intent of the
real property consolidation studies, as part of our overall asset
management plan, is to assess and analyze the Department's real
property portfolio to develop the most effective and efficient profile
that best supports the organizational mission.
The Asset Management Board is responsible for coordinating and
reviewing the policies, procedures and utilization of the physical
assets of the Department including real and personal property. The
board ensures consistent priorities for capital improvement projects at
all levels. In addition, the Board oversees a system of asset program
councils that bring together program experts and users to define
guidance, metrics and requirements. These councils serve multiple
roles: program management oversight and control, strategic sourcing
initiatives, and development of new joint requirements.
Additionally, integrated and standardized mail handing and
management processes are currently under development to improve the
security, movement, and delivery of mail across DHS, and the
development of consolidated mail facilities are already improving the
productivity and safety of the DHS mail operations.
Procurement & Acquisition
Within the procurement and acquisition arenas, the Department has
consolidated acquisition support for the 22 legacy agencies within 8
major procurement programs within DHS. Acquisition support for S&T,
IAIP, CIS, ODP, the Office of the Secretary and Under Secretary for
Management, as well as other headquarters customers has been
consolidated within one major acquisition program.
DHS is currently managing several complex enterprise-wide
acquisition programs. The U.S. Coast Guard's Integrated Deepwater
System (IDS) Program, for example, is one of the largest performance-
based acquisition programs in the United States. The Coast Guard, one
of the nation's five armed services, is a military, multi-mission, and
maritime service within the Department of Homeland Security. This
service is responsible for the protection of the public, the
environment, and U.S. economic and security interests in the maritime
domain--including America's coasts, ports and inland waterways as well
as international waters.
In order to meet America's 21st-century maritime threats and
challenges, the Coast Guard initiated the Integrated Deepwater System
(IDS) Program in the late 1990s. The Deepwater Program is intended to
provide the capability and capacity for the Coast Guard to meet all
maritime missions legislatively mandated in the Homeland Security Act.
Deepwater assets are needed to perform missions in ports, waterways,
coastal areas, and extending seaward to anywhere the Coast Guard needs
to take appropriate action and respond 24 hours a day, every day, in
various environments from Arctic to tropical and equatorial climates
throughout the world. The Deepwater Program will recapitalize and
transform the Coast Guard to ensure it has the necessary platforms and
systems to continue to meet these and future missions and sustain its
operational excellence well into the 21st century.
The Office of Small and Small Disadvantaged Business Utilization
(OSDBU) has created a robust and innovative outreach program for its
constituency. Outreach includes counseling on how to market to DHS and
its buying activities and provides opportunities for these small
businesses to engage both federal government employees and large
business concerns that may be interested in the supplies or services
these firms offer. The OSDBU has conducted extensive outreach to the
Department's business partners and has assisted in the development of a
website designed to assist the private sector in realizing business
opportunities with the Department.
DHS has also implemented new and consolidated acquisition policies
and procedures (Homeland Security Acquisition Regulations and Homeland
Security Acquisition Manual) that are among the most flexible in the
entire federal government. Under them, simplified selection procedures
are authorized for ``commercial item'' purchases of $7.5 million or
less--that's 50 percent higher than most agencies--and red tape can be
slashed altogether for so-called ``micro-purchases'' under $7,500,
triple the normal amount. Publication of this regulation and guidance
was another major step in combining the cultures of 22 disparate
agencies by ensuring that these organizational elements now operate
under a single, DHS-wide program regulation.
We've also established a department-wide program for strategic
sourcing and supply chain management. Specifically, DHS has initiated
14 cross-functional commodity councils tasked with creating sourcing
strategies for goods and services acquired throughout the Department.
Councils govern a wide range of requirements, from simple items such as
office supplies, to more sophisticated requirements, such as boats and
their maintenance, or complex IT infrastructure needs. Accrued savings
in excess of $1M is expected for consolidation of handgun testing
requirements. Combining office supply needs will result in realized
savings of 55 percent off retail pricing arrangements. For DHS
Headquarters alone, approximately $750,000 was saved over a six month
period. Significant savings have been realized in the early stages of
this initiative--for FY 05, a total of $100 million is expected to be
realized.
In February of 2004, DHS announced its partnership with the
Department of Defense's EMALL program, which is an internet-based
marketplace that allows purchasers to access DoD's wide variety of
vendors and catalogs and enhances DHS' ability to provide a one-stop
shopping experience to acquire the goods and services needed to support
DHS' mission. The partnership with DOD EMALL enables DHS to participate
in one of the largest existing government-to-business exchanges and
will result in a projected savings for the Department in FY 05 of $8
million.
Human Capital
In the area of human capital, we have made tremendous strides
towards organizational efficiency and unified policy. The Department
has managed to consolidate the 22 different human resource servicing
centers that existed and reduced the number down to seven with the goal
of consolidating down to three or fewer of these centers. Additionally,
the eight different payroll systems have been consolidated down to
three, with the goal of utilizing one, single payroll provider for the
entire Department by Spring 2005.
Our Human Capital office has also established unified policies on
performance management and Senior Executive Service performance
appraisals.
As the Congress recognized with the passage of the Homeland
Security Act, DHS has been given a critical responsibility. Our mission
is to protect the country from terrorists and keep terrorists? weapons
from entering the country. We can't afford to fail. We need the ability
to act swiftly and decisively in response to critical homeland security
threats and other mission needs. It is essential that we continue to
attract and retain highly talented and motivated employees who are
committed to excellence--the most dedicated and skilled people our
country has to offer. The current system is too cumbersome to achieve
this goal.
The existing system was designed for a different time. The world
has changed, jobs have changed, missions have changed . . . and our HR
systems need to change as well to support this new environment. The
current system, while it has many positive features, is insufficient to
meet our needs.
The Department, in conjunction with OPM, had an historic
opportunity to design a system that meets our critical mission
requirements and is responsive to DHS employees. We understood
Congress' desire to allow employees to participate in a meaningful way
in the creation of a new system. With OPM Director James' support and
leadership, we engaged in an unprecedented collaborative effort to
create the new system. Over 80 DHS employees, supervisors, union
representatives and OPM staff were appointed to a Design Team. During
the spring of 2003, that team conducted 64 nationwide town hall and
focus group meetings to gain input from employees in all major DHS
components. They also contacted over 65 public and private sector
organizations and human resource experts as part of their research. The
Secretary appointed a Senior Review Committee to guide the work of the
Design Team and to review all the options developed by the Team. The
Committee included both DHS and OPM leaders and the three Union
Presidents from the largest DHS unions.
In developing these proposals for a new human resource management
system, the Secretary and the Director accepted the guiding principles
developed by the Senior Review Committee and the Design Team. These
principles state that the Department of Homeland Security must ensure,
first and foremost, that such systems are mission-centered. Such
systems must be performance-focused, contemporary, and excellent. They
must generate respect and trust; they must be based on the principles
of merit and fairness embodied in the statutory merit system
principles; and they must comply with all other applicable provisions
of law. We have worked hard to solicit the input of our employees and
their representatives, the general public, and other interested parties
during the thirty day public comment period.
We are proposing a system that has a stronger correlation between
performance and pay and greater consideration of local market
conditions. Our proposal contains three major changes to the current
General Schedule pay structure: first, we have proposed open pay ranges
eliminating the ``step increases'' in the current system which are tied
to longevity; second, we are proposing that pay would be adjusted by
job type in each market not across all job types in each market; and
third, we are proposing to create performance pay pools where all
employees who meet performance expectations will receive performance
based increases.
The proposals for performance management are designed to foster
high levels of performance and to ensure that good performance is
recognized, rewarded, and reinforced. The system will be designed to
make meaningful distinctions in performance and to hold employees
accountable at all levels. We are proposing to phase in the performance
management system before making any adjustments to pay based on that
system. We are fully cognizant that this is one of the biggest
challenges that lies ahead and that there is detailed work that must be
done before we can implement the new system.
Our proposed labor relations construct meets our operational needs
while providing for collective bargaining and encouraging consultation
with employee representatives. One of the most significant changes
which we have proposed is the scope of bargaining over management
rights. In the face of a committed and unpredictable enemy, the
Department must have the authority to move employees quickly when
circumstances demand; it must be able to develop and rapidly deploy new
technology to confront threats to national security; and it must be
able to act without delay to properly secure the Nation's borders and
ports of entry. We propose that the Department not be required to
bargain over the exercise of these rights. Our proposal provides for
consultation with employee representatives both before and after
implementation when circumstances permit. We have proposed to retain
the same bargaining obligations as we have today concerning the
exercise of the remaining management rights.
We recognize that these are significant changes. They are necessary
for the Department to carry out its mission and fulfill the
requirements of the Homeland Security Act to create a 21st century
system that is flexible and contemporary while protecting fundamental
employee rights. We have developed these proposals with extensive input
from our employees and their representatives. And we continue to
encourage a dialogue as we proceed through the regulatory process.
The comment period for the proposed regulations closed on March
22nd--there are approximately 3,500 comments in the public docket
including comments from members of Congress, the unions representing
DHS employees, other employee groups, individual employees, and members
of the general public. Those comments are being analyzed at this time.
As required by the Homeland Security Act, DHS and OPM are reviewing
all the recommendations from employee representatives and will prepare,
after full and fair consideration of those recommendations, a
Congressional notification which highlights those recommendations which
have been accepted and those which have not been accepted.
DHS and OPM have worked with the Director of the Federal Mediation
and Conciliation Service to draft procedures to govern the
legislatively-mandated ``meet and confer'' process--we will be reaching
out to employee representatives who commented on the proposed
regulations to include them in this process as appropriate.
Additionally, DHS and OPM have continued to have discussions with the
three major unions representing DHS employees--to ensure a clear
understanding of their joint comments and to agree on the process going
forward.
We hope to issue final regulations later this year after the meet
and confer process has concluded--and to begin, as indicated in the
preamble to the proposed regulations, a phased approach to implement
the regulations across DHS. We have asked for over $100 million to
support the implementation of the regulations including monies to
support training of our managers in the new system--implementation will
continue throughout the next two fiscal years.
In the interim, our employees continue to do outstanding work on
behalf of the American people. We are proud of all we have accomplished
in our first year. And, we are especially proud of the employees who
have made it possible.
Information Technology
Information technology will provide the Department of Homeland
Security a competitive edge as it transforms into a 21st century
agency. There is no mission endeavor that will not benefit by
exploiting information technology to prevent terrorism, or to
facilitate the movement of goods and people. Whether it is sharing the
latest geo-spatial data with our federal, state, local, and tribal
partners, or processing immigration benefits, information technology
will enable smarter, more customer friendly solutions for America.
Further, modern back-office systems to provide a responsible accounting
of the taxpayers? funds and to manage a highly motivated workforce must
be deployed quickly and cost effectively to manage our 180,000 employee
workforce.
Merging 22 agencies, also presents information technology
challenges for our 21st century agency. Rationalizing disparate
technologies with conflicting business rules, consolidating data
centers and networks, getting the right information to border agents,
preventing cyber attacks against our mission critical systems, or even
having a common email system must be achieved to help detect and deter
future terrorist attacks.
The challenge facing the IT function of DHS is very complex. For
example, to accomplish its dual mission of border security and trade
facilitation, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is modernizing
its operational processes and the information technology that supports
them. As an integral component of ``Smart Borders,'' the web-based
Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) will provide CBP officers with
the state-of-the-art tools and enhanced information they need to
decide--before a container or other cargo reaches the border--what
should be targeted because it is high risk, and what should be
expedited because it complies with U.S. laws. The burden of paper-
intensive manual processing of goods will be significantly reduced,
facilitating the movement of commerce, and reducing costs for both
government and the private sector. The ACE will provide a single,
centralized, on-line access point to connect CBP and the trade
community, enabling businesses and their CBP account managers to have a
national account view of their trade activity. Through the creation of
a shared data warehouse, ACE will enable border enforcement agencies
access to a large volume of information, streamlined data collection,
and a significantly enhanced capability to share and analyze
information. The ACE will ultimately be delivered to all ports,
locations, and transportation modes.
Ultimately, there are three major areas of focus with regard to
information technology within the Department. The first is to ensure
that the men and women on the front lines of the Department have all
the IT enabled solutions, tools, and training they need to safeguard
the United States and to deliver the Department's safety and service
related missions. We must deliver new mission solutions with quality
and speed, in a secure and cost-effective manner.
The second area of challenge addresses the integration of existing
IT enabled solutions. Guided by our Enterprise Architecture, the
Department is identifying opportunities to consolidate and rationalize
mission solutions. For example, in mission areas like threat
identification and management, identity credentialing and
collaboration, we have identified multiple solutions in use within the
various organizational elements of the Department. The IT role is to
facilitate the operators and subject matter experts in our agencies in
determining the optimal number and nature of mission solutions needed.
Finally, the third area of challenge is to realize efficiencies and
economies of scale that the President and Congress desired by creating
DHS. We must rapidly identify and eliminate overlap and redundancy
within the IT infrastructure, as well as in key IT support programs
including Information Security. At the same time, we must ensure that
we maintain mission operations while we restructure, integrate, and
consolidate our IT infrastructure.
In his proposal for creating the Department nearly two years ago,
the President highlighted the use of enterprise architecture techniques
to improve both the sharing and use of information. The President
stated that the ``development of a single enterprise architecture for
the department would result in elimination of the sub-optimized,
duplicative, and poorly coordinated systems, and processes, that are
prevalent in government today. There would be rational prioritization
of projects necessary to fund homeland security missions based on an
overall assessment of requirements rather than a tendency to fund all
good ideas beneficial to a separate unit's individual needs even if
similar systems are already in place elsewhere.''
The Department's leadership has discussed the vision and strategy
of DHS and how that strategy must fulfill the President's vision;
additionally, that vision must be supported by a disciplined capital
planning and investment control process that is guided by business-
driven enterprise architecture. Version 1 of the enterprise
architecture describes a target information management infrastructure
that will be dramatically different from the one DHS has today. One
that will provide timely, accurate, useful and actionable information
to all individuals who require it all the time. We believe this effort
was truly unique in the federal government in that we delivered a
comprehensive and immediately useful target enterprise architecture in
less than four months.
Version 1 of the Homeland Security Enterprise Architecture (HLS EA)
defines the enterprise architecture at a conceptual level and outlines
a general transition strategy that must be broken down further for the
architecture to be implemented.
Version 2 is currently on track for completion early in the 4th
quarter, FY04. Along with continuing the hard work of developing
greater detail, we will continue reaching deeper to find more
opportunities for consolidation and opportunities to develop new and
improved mission support capabilities enabled by information
technology. Version 2 of the enterprise architecture, together with the
associated transition plan, will serve as the basis for further
improving DHS mission performance and facilitating IT alignment,
integration, and consolidation.
By creating the Department, the Congress took a great step toward
bringing together many of the Federal agencies involved in homeland
security--Customs, INS, FEMA, and others. We've put significant efforts
into integrating these functions, both at the level of technology and
at the level of operational processes. We've built and continue to
optimize a single DHS wide-area network, and we've established a common
e-mail domain and Department-wide collaboration capabilities.
Under the direction of Secretary Ridge, the Department was tasked
with the creation of an integrated information technology (IT)
infrastructure that supports the missions of the Department and is
accessible by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. To
carry out that activity, the DHS CIO, with representation from every
major DHS directorate and key agency/bureau, established the goal of
``One Network'' by December 2004 and ``One Infrastructure'' by December
2005.
The DHS IT Infrastructure Roadmap, completed in FY 2003, delineates
the integration, consolidation, and transformation of existing DHS
infrastructures into a single world-class IT infrastructure capable of
supporting real-time information flow throughout DHS. The Roadmap
focuses on centralizing development of standards and protocols,
improving transportation of information, and streamlining processes and
procedures, to achieve a centrally managed, homogeneous IT
infrastructure with an integrated network, consolidated data centers,
and standardized collaboration and desktop environments.
Immediately after the Department's formation last Spring, the key
Federal agency partners laid the policy basis for information sharing
in a Memorandum of Understanding that gives priority to preventing
terrorism and mandates faster and broader exchange of law-enforcement
and intelligence data. Additional MOUs and operating agreements
implementing this policy have been developed around specific needs.
Watch List Consolidation, Interoperability, Information Sharing, &
Infrastructure Protection
In May, the President establish the Terrorist Threat Integration
Center (TTIC), and DHS immediately assigned staff on site to coordinate
information exchange, while technical staff have been working closely
to establish secure communications for automated operations.
Following issuance of HSPD-6, Secretary Ridge, Attorney General
Ashcroft, Director of Central Intelligence Tenet and Secretary Powell
established a framework for interagency cooperation to set up the
Terrorist Screening Center for initial operations on December 1. DHS,
FBI, and State Department staff have moved into this joint operations
center, and have established the secure communications and systems to
create a consolidated Watch List for use by all key agencies. At the
same time, the agencies are planning for a 2004 milestone to further
automate the distribution of these data by establishing direct system-
to-system links, based on a common data format.
Agreed standards for data exchange are a key enabler for integrated
computer systems. DHS is leveraging work already under way in the
Department of Justice through its GLOBAL Information Sharing Initiative
and the Intelligence Community's Metadata Working Group. Our goal is
maximum use of common data formats so that Federal and local partners
can build systems that will immediately interoperate with others,
without expensive customization.
In March, Secretary Ridge announced the initial deployment of the
first component of the Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN).
This component, based on software adapted from the Department of
Defense, will provide secure communications between DHS and 100-plus
sites in all 50 states and major cities. Additional capabilities will
be added to the HSIN framework, which is designed to create a shared
collaboration space among all Federal, State, and local entities
partnering in the homeland-security mission.
Whether fighting a fire or responding to a terrorist attack,
efficient and effective emergency response requires coordination,
communication, and the sharing of vital information and equipment among
numerous public safety and security agencies. As the National Strategy
for the Physical Protection of Critical Infrastructures and Key Assets
makes clear, ``systems supporting emergency response personnel,
however, have been specifically developed and implemented with respect
to the unique needs of each agency. Such specification complicates
interoperability, thereby hindering the ability of various first
responder organizations to communicate and coordinate resources during
crisis situations.''
In line with the needs of emergency response providers and the
National Strategy cited above, DHS has developed intradepartmental
program offices to address several key homeland security priorities.
Accordingly, DHS is establishing a program office to significantly
improve interoperability, allowing firefighters, police officers and
other emergency personnel to communicate and share equipment with each
other during a major disaster. The Directorate of Science and
Technology (S&T) within DHS has been tasked to lead the planning and
implementation of the Office of Interoperability and Compatibility
(OIC) in coordination with other DHS programs. By coordinating and
leveraging the vast efforts spread across the federal government, OIC
will reduce unnecessary duplication in programs and spending, identify
and promote best practices, and coordinate federal activities related
to research and development, testing and evaluation, standards,
technical assistance, training, and grant funding related to
interoperability.
In a related vein, the Department has announced the formation of a
Federal Advisory Committee on Data Integrity, Privacy and
Interoperability to advise the Secretary and the Chief Privacy on
programmatic, policy, operational, administrative and technological
issues within the Department that concern privacy, data integrity and
data interoperability. This Advisory Committee will serve an important
function to ensure that DHS decision-makers have available the
expertise of leading authorities on these matters as policies
concerning data sharing are developed and implemented.
There has been a tremendous amount accomplished since this
Department was created, and we are fully cognizant that much more work
remains to be done. We must also focus on further refining ourselves
and our identity both operationally and organizationally. Some of these
steps to accomplish this objective have been laid out for you today. We
look forward to continuing to work with the Committee and the Congress
in furthering our national goal of ensuring the security of this great
nation.
Chairman Cox. Thank you very much, Admiral Loy. We are, of
course, on both sides of the aisle very proud of the 180,000
plus people that work at the Department of Homeland Security.
And as I mentioned and Mr. Turner mentioned and Ms. Dunn
mentioned, the operational side of DHS couldn't be more
important and more noticed by us in Congress and by the
country.
The importance of the operational side and the analytical
side of DHS is one of the reasons that your management
challenges are so great, because at the same time that the
Nation expects you to execute all of these functions and
perform all of these analyses and undertake all of these
activities, we also want you to consummate this merger. We also
want you to build from scratch brand new pieces of this
enormous cabinet department that didn't exist before.
I want to, just for flavor, put before you three quotations
from different observers about the management challenges that
DHS faces and ask you to react to them as scene setters. First,
Professor Donald F. Kettle, who is a public administration
expert, offers the observation that, quote, top officials have
been able to devote relatively little time to the vast
management problems of getting such a large operation up and
running, because senior officials are so buried under the
pressing day-to-day operational issues and have little energy
and less time to devote to resolving management issues.
Second, the General Accounting Office has observed that,
``The challenges in integrating disparate organizational
cultures and the major transformation that DHS is undergoing
requires a strong Chief Operating Officer to elevate attention
to and integrate management initiatives and institutionalize
accountability for addressing them.''
Third, ``Most independent experts,'' this is a quotation,
``Most independent experts consistently find that successful
change management initiatives can take from 5 to 7 years.''
Given the challenges that DHS faces in merging 22 agencies,
many with their own long-standing management challenges, the
organizational transformation that you are trying to work, I
would ask you to take into account some of these comments are
critical, some mere observations, and tell us the following:
First, how long do you believe it will take before the
Department can achieve what you would consider to be full
integration? And for that purpose, imagine your aspirational
goal for what full integration could theoretically mean.
Second, do you see yourself as filling the job description
of the strong chief operating officer? And I don't mean for you
to have to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses but rather
the box that you have on the chart. Is that job that you hold
responsible for being the strong chief operating officer that
GAO says that we need?
Third, is there anything that we can do organizationally,
that Congress can do to assist you in this respect so that this
taffy pull that Professor Kettle mentions that you have got to
do two things at once--you have got to run the place, and then
you have got to tackle the management challenges--that it isn't
a distraction but rather we can do both simultaneously?
One option, as you know, this committee is considering is
transferring the components of the management directorate to
the Office of the Deputy Secretary. TIOs, by way of example,
and the Department of Transportation and Commerce are located
in the Office of the Secretaries, elevating positions such as
the CIO and the CFO would enable them to more easily and more
efficiently guide Department-wide policy efforts.
What are your thoughts? Do you agree that reform such as
that might help enhance overall management of the Department?
Admiral Loy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a very wide-
ranging question. Let me see if I can take it in pieces. First
of all, with respect to how long it will take, of course we all
have as a reference point the last time we tried this kind of
reorganization in the Federal government was about 1947, and it
took us about 40 years, and that just got us to Goldwater-
Nichols where we had an awful lot more work to do after that.
So that standard is certainly something that we are not abiding
by.
I truly believe, sir, given where we have come from, and
even some of the numerical references I tried to give you in my
opening testimony where we started with 19 of these and are at
10 now on our way to 1; where we started with 22 of these and
we are on 7 now, on our way to 1. There is a bit of evidence
there that suggests even in the face of sort of saying, ``Well,
we took the low-hanging fruit, the easy stuff early and the
rest of the way to 1 is going to be very difficult,'' that that
functional integration effort, I believe, by the time this
Department is celebrating its third birthday should largely
have been accomplished. And the framework associated with it
should in fact be in place, including largely the cultural buy-
in, if you will, from the 22 disparate organizations that came
together to form the new department.
I think we at the top of the organization have to stress
this DHS identity. The notion that it is a ``one team-one
fight'' slogan, if you will, from Secretary Ridge is a very
real rallying cry for many in the Department.
And I also believe that it has an enormous amount to do
with keeping the other leaders in the organization--the agency
heads, the undersecretaries--on board with the direction that
we are going. That is why all of those players were in the room
when we went off to our off-site to develop the strategic plan.
I was not interested in someone being able to say, ``I didn't
have my opportunity to see where we were going and now I am not
going there.'' They were all in the room, believe me, and they
all contributed, and what we ended up with, with our vision,
mission and goal set, is a package deal bought into by every
member of that leadership team. The ownership that we walked
out of there with is a statement about everybody going in that
direction.
So I would think, sir, that at end of the third--when this
organization is celebrating its third anniversary, we will have
accomplished this framing integration effort functionally that
we have set out to do.
This notion of whether or not the Deputy Secretary is the
right place to push that, I think without a doubt, sir, that it
is. It is the only place that the entire Department comes
together, and the committee's expectation of what the COO ought
to get done should rest with that position in the Department.
To that end, I look forward to conversations and work with
you on whether or not organizational elements such as you
suggest with respect to the Undersecretary for Management would
be better served in an adjusted position within the Department.
At the moment, I feel absolutely no qualms in reaching to the
Undersecretary for Management and as necessary to the CFO-CIO.
I spent personally an awful lot of time with the CIO, with the
CFO, with others at that level.
We have arranged a meeting standard in the Department where
the Secretary personally meets with all of the undersecretaries
and his direct reports once a week. I attend that meeting and
then have another meeting with a widened horizon that pulls all
those players to the table, and I am able to hear literally on
a weekly basis from every one of those places inside the
Department.
So how you go about the engagement process I think is
absolutely crucial, and I think the right place you put the
responsibility is in the Deputy Secretary's chair.
What can the Congress do to assist? You have offered at
least an initial notion, sir, with your comment about the
Undersecretary for Management. I suggested in my opening
comments that there are a couple of places that we have come to
recognize where if the threats to this Nation are really looked
at carefully in terms of maybe a pie chart that has segments
about the threat itself, the likelihood of the threat and the
consequences of the threat, several things to me have literally
jumped off the table with respect to the consequence piece.
So I offered in my opening remarks at least a short
inventory of things nuclear, of things biological and of things
cyber that may actually be something that we want to focus our
attention on organizationally as well as functionally. We have
not made those judgments yet inside the Department, and I have
not taken to the Secretary any recommendations in that regard,
specifically, but those are several things, sir, that we are
already talking about.
Chairman Cox. Thank you very much for your complete answer.
I look forward to working with you on these aspects and
challenges.
The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Turner?
Mr. Turner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you again,
Admiral Loy. Now, sometime if I take a big picture view of what
we are facing and the challenge we are trying to overcome, it
strikes me sometimes that we have yet to really fully
understand and comprehend the changed world that we live in.
For decades, we all knew that protecting the national security
was carried out primarily by the Department of Defense--the
Army, the Navy, Air Force, the Marines.
Admiral Loy. Coast Guard, sir.
Mr. Turner. Coast Guard. Absolutely, yes, sir. And in the
post-September 11 world, we were confronted with the fact that
the enemy was one that we have not dealt with before and that
this war against our terrorist enemies is not going to be won
by simply toppling states that may be terrorist havens, because
terrorists can find havens in many places in the world. And by
our actions to merge 22 agencies, I think what we were really
saying is that we now have 22 new agencies who must be
dedicated to the same mission as the Department of Defense, and
that is national security.
And the Congress, to my knowledge, has never hesitated to
fund whatever is necessary in the Department of Defense to
protect our national security, but I am convinced that we have
a long way to go in terms of fully carrying out the task of
securing the necessary resources, necessary programmatic
efforts necessary to protect the national security in this new
environment.
And I am pleased to hear your thinking, particularly along
the lines of your personal efforts to try to think in terms of
the threat, the likely threat and the consequences, because it
clearly is the catastrophic event that we must fear the most.
I hope you will take a look at a bill that I introduced
Tuesday to try to move us forward in a more rapid pace in the
area of bioterrorism to deal with the--.
Admiral Loy. Certainly will, sir.
Mr. Turner. --piece of the picture that I think is being
neglected.
But when I think about the fact that a lot of those
agencies, let's say Customs and Border Patrol, for example,
were engaged prior to the merger in a task that we all knew was
important, that is protecting our borders against illegal
immigration, and yet we know that there are estimates now that
in spite of all those previous efforts, there are somewhere
between, I am told, 7 to 12 million illegal immigrants in this
country today.
And so all of a sudden in the post-September 11 environment
we have decided that there can't be any because one of those
illegals might be a terrorist. And so we are trying to
reconstruct the agencies of government to ensure that what was
previously just a law enforcement function that it didn't work
perfectly, we could all probably live with it without great
danger, and so we ended up with 7 to 12 million illegal
immigrants in this country. Now we have declared we can't have
any. And that is a major shift in the responsibility of
government.
I have had a lot of concerns about this issue of
information sharing. I am sure the 9-11 Commission is going to
be full of recommendations for us on how to solve the
information sharing task, and you and I had a conversation in
my office a few weeks ago about the need that I see and I think
you share to develop a comprehensive intelligence information
sharing system that can collect intelligence and share it among
a wide variety of Federal agencies in real time so that when
you are looking at someone who is crossing our border and you
work for the Customs and Border Patrol agencies, you can say,
``I can find out what my government knows now about this
individual that is coming across the border.'' And so that
local law enforcement officials when stopping somebody who
might be speeding and looks suspicious can find out in real
time what all of our government agencies know.
I have concerns that, even sitting on some of the
classified briefings we have from time to time, that different
agencies of government who brief us on threats are not even
saying the same thing. So, if you will, address this issue that
I know you have concern about. I think I suggested once that
you look at what the Miracle Foundation software was to try to
develop a comprehensive information sharing system.
Are we working toward that end? Are we still working within
the FBI and still working within DHS to improve IT and yet have
we come to grips with this concept of total intelligence
information sharing in real time and how we are going to have
to go about getting that?
Admiral Loy. Yes, sir, I am happy to comment on that. Just
this last week I have been personally involved three or four
hours a day in an eligible receiver exercise which puts at the
table all the players in the Federal government with a scenario
being played out. This particular one had to do with a ship
coming towards the United States, and a lot of inputs to the
exercise offered insight that there might be something on that
ship that we were very concerned about. And then proceeded to a
national capital region kind of scenario where in fact there
was already a device somewhere in the United States, and more
and more evidence became focused on the capital region.
I only use that as a forum to offer for you that the
sharing process you were describing, such that whether the
agency found it out or whether the Bureau found it out or
whether some longshoreman on the port in Norfolk observed it
and made it an observation to whomever and passed it up the
line, through the course of this exercise this week I felt
better than I have ever felt with respect to all players seeing
all information and being able to make judgments toward their
responsibilities attendant to that.
I would extend your concerns, because I know you have them,
sir, as you expressed them, about the sharing process among
Federal agencies to include the down-the-line--that horizontal
sharing is very, very important, and I think the establishment
of TTIC and the TSC are concrete steps along the path toward
where we want to be in that regard.
Now, are they permanent steps or not? I think that is a
judgment to be taken down the road when TSC, for example, who
is in the process of developing the integrated watch list has
accomplished its purpose, although it is a dynamic one with
people coming and going on to that list every day. Once that
purpose has been accomplished, is that the final organizational
placement, a freestanding agency for our terrorist watch list?
I think that is to be determined down the road.
But the TTIC organization, which absorbs all source
intelligence, foreign and domestic, to grapple and have at
their analytical table, if you will, the means to think through
the bigger picture, that process seems to be working very, very
well. John Brennan, I believe, is doing one of the most
positive jobs that is being done in our Federal government as
the Director of TTIC.
I was just in New Hampshire last week, sir, Kentucky the
week before, announcing the establishment of the Homeland
Security Department's piece of that action, which is to take
the products of an all-source intelligence activity and read
them through the lenses of the homeland security glass and then
share them vertically down through State and local activities
to get to the other end. This little chart is just a little
depiction of the homeland security information network that we
delivered and activated in New Hampshire and in Kentucky just
last week, which will be at 50 State and 6 territories and 50
of our largest urban centers to the point where that traffic
police officer will have at his disposal real-time information
about who he might be dealing with as he pulls over someone for
a speeding violation.
So we are well on the way to accomplishing your vision, I
think, Mr. Turner. Lots of work still to be done and the edges
and the marginal adjustments to those things to make sure they
are right, but I think your vision is no different than that of
all of us who are working so hard to make it happen on the job.
Chairman Cox. Gentlelady from Washington, Ms. Dunn, is
recognized for 8 minutes.
Ms. Dunn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. I have a
couple of questions, Admiral. According to a study by a leading
consulting firm, most corporate majors fail to deliver results
that meet expectations. The study found that the failures were
most often attributable not to flawed vision but to poor
integration. This is obviously not your average two-party
merger. We are dealing with 22 distinct organizations with
distinct cultures. What are the control mechanisms that you as
a manager of this project are focusing on, number one? And
given the reality of the political climate and the pressure to
get things done as quickly as we can, with your priority list
constantly changing, how do you decide what is or is not a
realistic expectation?
Admiral Loy. It is a great question and one that we pour
over daily in the Department, Ms. Dunn. I think I would answer
it this way: The Secretary, by way of the strategic plan with
respect to functional excellence in five action goals and two
service goals, if you will, has challenged each and every
member of the Department to rise to the occasion and be part of
the new way of doing business in government. That last goal,
called organizational excellence is all about forging a 21st
century cabinet-level agency, not being bound by the baggage,
if you will, or even the legacy sometimes enormously proud of
may of those agencies that came together with us on March 1
last year.
We have forged over the course of this year not only those
evens strategic goals but then these theme areas which the
secretary has now sort of pulled into a core of absolute that
we believe are the crucial keys to the functional integration
of the Department at the other end of the day.
So 3 years from now, as I indicated to the chairman, when
we wake up on that March the 1st, if we have played our cards
right, if we have led and managed well, if we have delegated
well to people who perfectly are able to the job done that we
asked them to get done, as long as we are clear and provide
them the resources to do it, I think we will be where we want
to be in these seven core theme areas. So that is about the
things that make a difference as to whether our homeland will
be secure.
It is about better critical infrastructure protection, it
is about better information sharing, to go back to Mr. Turner's
point, it is about better interoperability. God knows if we
learned a single lesson from the horrors of September 11 in New
York it was that the firemen could not talk to the police
officers, who couldn't talk to the EMTs, who couldn't talk to
their base. That is totally unacceptable.
So when the interoperability theme was provided and a rose
was pinned on one senior leader in the Department to be
responsible for that, his responsibility is not to live within
his little cell and make it happen. His responsibility is to
reach wherever he needs to reach to pull together the
wherewithal to make that happen.
I am personally monitoring those things month after month
after month, looking at the milestones and the individuals
responsible for that work, and it is that commitment, if you
will, I believe, that will make a difference to allow this
merger, which you properly describe as enormously challenging,
to succeed at the other end of the day.
I mean it is trite to say failure is not an option and such
things as that. It is far more fundamental to have in place the
mechanics necessary to take us from where we are to where we
want to be.
Ms. Dunn. Very interesting. Thank you. You actually
answered my second question, so let me put to you another one.
I appreciated your detailed description about the progress the
Department is making in consolidating the functions of the
systems and so forth. And so let's talk for a minute about
program consolidation. It seems to me that one of the critical
benefits gained from consolidating all those agencies is that
all components would be able to take advantage one mission-
centered R&D program. What is your response to that
observation? And how are we making sure that R&D efforts are
also being coordinated Department-wide?
Admiral Loy. Two things. First of all, you are absolutely
right on point with a very important part of what we are trying
to do. The science and technology directorate, under Dr.
McQueary's direction, is responsible for this particular one.
And his outreach with respect to functionally integrating the
R&D efforts as well as other science and technology
applications for the Department is where we hold him
responsible over time.
There is probably--some might see it as a complication, I
don't perhaps necessarily do--but in the law that created the
Department, there is at least two organizations, the Coast
Guard and the Secret Service, that have been decreed in the law
to ``stay in tact,'' quote, unquote, as they came into the
Department, for very good reasons. But what I imagine, for
example, with respect to the R&D process is a several-fold
approach. One, what do we do with laboratories inside the
Department and laboratories that are outside the Department but
actually can bear on what we are doing in DHS? The integration
of those efforts functionally are a fundamental absolute for
Dr. McQueary to have some degree of control over what is going
on there.
The second thing is about customer requirements. Dr.
McQueary should not sit in his cubicle and imagine what are the
right R&D programs to be defined for the Department of Homeland
Security, he must be aggressively accepting and challenging his
customers, including the other directorate chiefs and
undersecretaries in the Department to define for him the things
that will make their work better.
For example, having spent a couple of years at the
Transportation Security Administration, I can tell you that our
goal there is in the longer-term to get away from heavily
people-dependent technologies at our airports and on the way
toward some smaller, faster, better box that will be the
enabling device 3, 4, 5 years from now to replace lots and lots
of people with a capable piece of technology that can do the
security job that we want done at the airport.
So I would offer that that is not where Dr. McQueary would
logically wake up in the morning, but I can tell you Dave Stone
wakes up in the morning thinking about that, so Dr. McQueary's
review of customer requirements has to be a complete one. And
when that is complete, then the Secretary can help Dr. McQueary
define priorities in terms of what his budget allows him to get
on with. But in that scheme, he is serving a customer base that
is, as the Department, representative of R&D needs across the
Nation.
Chairman Cox. The gentlelady's time has expired. The
gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Andrews is recognized for 8
minutes.
Mr. Andrews. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Admiral,
for your testimony and more importantly for your service to the
country. It is very much appreciated.
Admiral Loy. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Andrews. This morning, if a person who was on the CIA
watch list tried to board an airplane, would the TSA know that
in real time? Would the know the person who tried to get on the
airplane is on the CIA watch list?
Admiral Loy. To the degree the--you are referring--we have
two lists, sir, that are in use, if you will, at the airports,
and they are actually used by the airlines as well as TSA for
the moment. That is what the CAPP system is all about at the
moment. And the means by which we offer insight to the no-fly
list and the selectee list offers guidance as to whether or not
that person gets on the airplane at all, no-fly list, or
whether he gets on the airplane with secondary screening if he
is on the selectee list.
Mr. Andrews. Is there anybody who is on the CIA watch list
who is not on these two lists that the TSA has?
Admiral Loy. Sir, I am not sure what you are referring to
as the CIA watch list. The CIA makes a contribution to these
two defined lists that are if not real time certainly within a
24-hour window updated daily.
Mr. Andrews. Isn't there supposed to be one list? Isn't
that what an integrated watch list is?
Admiral Loy. Actually, it is the Terrorist Screening Center
that is developing an integrated single watch list for all of
us to use across the Nation, and when that product is complete,
that is precisely the list that we will be using, sir.
Mr. Andrews. Okay. So it is at least logically possible
that the CIA has a list of people that they are watching
because they are worried about them and that some of the people
who are on that CIA list are not on the same list that we are
using to keep people off of airplanes. Is that right?
Admiral Loy. It is conceivable, but in my practice, sir,
the CIA, the Bureau and others who can make a contribution to
either of those lists I just described, one is associated--the
no-fly list are those terrorists that have been deemed so or
those who associate with terrorists, and the selectee list is
just a lesser level of concern but offers us a chance to not
just pass them through primary screening but require that they
go through secondary screening.
Mr. Andrews. But we are still relying upon someone at CIA
or FBI to insert that information on the list that TSA is
using, correct?
Admiral Loy. That is correct, sir.
Mr. Andrews. So if TSA doesn't ask or CIA or FBI don't
offer the information, it doesn't wind up on the list, doesn't
wind up on the list that keeps people off an airplane.
Admiral Loy. That would be correct. My experience has been
they do project those names forward and we put them on the
list.
Mr. Andrews. Okay. Isn't that why we wanted an integrated
watch list, so we wouldn't have any possibility of someone
getting to it 48 hours late or forgetting to ask? Isn't that
why we wanted it?
Admiral Loy. One of many reasons, but, yes.
Mr. Andrews. Okay. Why don't we have one? We are two and a
half years after September 11. I mean I know almost nothing
about running an intelligence operation, and I know even less
about software, but what is the big deal about taking a list
that the CIA and the FBI had, merging it into one secure, well
vetted, limited access database that everybody uses? Why
haven't we done this in 30 months?
Admiral Loy. That particular chore was assigned and is
precisely the reason that the President chose not to wait for a
maturing process of a new department to come into vogue but
rather establish the TSC to stand up and do that job. That is
exactly what they are doing.
Mr. Andrews. But the job isn't done yet. The TSC hasn't
done it. Is there something more complicated here than saying
everybody who is going to make a contribution to a list that
people have got to worry about has got to put them all in the
same list and same database? Is it more complicated than that?
Admiral Loy. It is a very complicated system, sir, but I am
not the one responsible for that at the moment. I would be
happy to find out from the Director of the TSC and get back to
you.
Mr. Andrews. Well, you know, we are here talking about
management issues, and, boy, if this isn't a management issue,
I don't know what is. And this is not a rhetorical question.
There may be something far more complex about how to do this
than what I just said, and if there is, I welcome to hear it,
but I haven't heard it yet, and I just don't understand why all
of the intelligence sources that are out there working on these
problems, they are not contributing to a common database that
has very secure access, very limited use by very trustworthy
people.
I just don't get this, and we have had various people from
the Department before the committee over about an 18-month
period now giving us deadlines that don't get met and
procedures that don't seem to come about. I appreciate the fact
that you will get us an answer from someone who is supposed to
be doing the answer, but we have had that before, and I just
don't understand this.
And I will tell you something: The number one job of the
Department is not simply to make us safer, it is to build
confidence in the public that we are in fact safer. And this is
not a confidence-building measure here, and I understand that
you have been given--you and your colleagues have been given
probably the most difficult organizational merger in the modern
history of the United States, public or private sector, and if
the issue here were that the health benefits weren't uniform
among different agencies, I am sympathetic to that but I
understand.
Admiral Loy. Yes, sir.
Mr. Andrews. If the issue were that you have got stovepipe
computer systems that can't necessarily share data in an
efficient way, I understand. If the issue were that you haven't
worked out the encryption technology so that you can carefully
limit such a secure database as the integrated watch list, I
would understand. What I do not understand is that we are here
2 years later and we still don't have this in place. I mean can
you tell us when we will? I mean I know it is not your specific
responsibility, but when is this going to happen?
Admiral Loy. I think the goal is to have it done very soon,
sir. I don't have the dates in my mind as to what the TSC
Director is obligated to accomplish, but I know she is on
track, and I will be happy to talk with her today and ask her
to get back to you on the specifics of her responsibility.
Mr. Andrews. I appreciate that, and not just me, but the
committee.
Admiral Loy. Sure.
Mr. Andrews. I know that Mr. Turner has worked on this
issue, Mr. Cox has worked on this issue, a lot of people have,
and I do not mean this as any way an attack on the
administration. It is a question that I think needs to be
answered. And if I have missed some technical explanation,
please tell me, but I think everybody at the Department is
responsible for this.
I think you very succinctly said that the goal of the
Department is to deter and then prevent, if possible, attacks
on the homeland. That is the best I have heard it said. But you
can't deter and prevent if you don't know who it is you are
trying to guard against. And if we have viable operational
intelligence about who it is we are going to guard against and
it is not shared among all the agencies that have that function
responsibility, then we have a huge problem.
Final thing I want to say this: Interoperability, there is
not a person who follows this issue that doesn't understand
that this tower babble problem is a big deal. The amount of
money the administration put in the budget for interoperability
this year is zero--zero. Now, I am not in favor of spending a
whole lot of money until we figure out how to fix the problem,
but part of figuring out how to fix the problem must include
calling together the experts in this field to design a system
that works. Why did you propose nothing in the fiscal year
budget for interoperability if it is a problem?
Admiral Loy. Well, there is an awful lot of money in the
budget in a variety of different programs that we feel do need
to be brought together to provide this interoperability
solution that we are all looking for, whether it is an interim
or temporary patch process of which there are very, very good
products out there to help us do that or whether it is the
design of an entirely new system that over time we need to go
to.
In many of those places where there is a system that is
serving the police officers and a separate one serving the
firemen and a separate one serving EMTs or whatever, the
dollars associated with those programs are what we find a means
by which we can integrate the wherewithal from the combined
budgets of those separate systems as disparate systems. That is
what I think functional integration is all about.
Mr. Andrews. Well, and I see my time is up. I would say
with all due respect that paying for solving interoperability
problems by depleting other resources is not the way to do
this.
Admiral Loy. Well, I was not suggesting we would deplete
sources, sir. I would suggest we would use those resources in a
smarter way than they have been used disparately to this point.
Mr. Andrews. It isn't very smart if the money comes from
training or biochem suits for first responders, and I don't
know what else is in the budget that it would come from. So
thank you very much, Admiral, I appreciate it.
Chairman Cox. The Chair would note with to the gentleman's
questions about the Terrorist Screening Center that the
committee just had a hearing on this subject a few weeks ago.
The committee is very, very concerned with this. I would also
note that the question whether the Terrorist Screening Center
should come under the responsibility of the Department of
Homeland Security is a very good one. It is one that the
committee is interested in, but the gentleman is well aware
that it is not the responsibility presently of the Department
of Homeland Security, it is the responsibility of the
Department of Justice and the FBI. I hope we will continue to
do this question.
Mr. Andrews. Will the chairman yield just for a moment? I
do note, and I did say, that I think the committee has been
very diligent in pursuing this issue. I hope that diligence
continues, because we should not let some jurisdictional
barrier get in the way of getting an answer to this question.
Chairman Cox. The gentleman's point is well taken. The
gentleman from Texas, Mr. Sessions, is recognized for 8
minutes.
Mr. Sessions. I thank the chairman. Admiral Loy, welcome--.
Admiral Loy. Morning, sir.
Mr. Sessions. --to this subcommittee. We, as you have
heard, place great value upon your competency and your capacity
to serve this great Nation in homeland security.
I would first like to start by saying that I had an
opportunity several weeks ago to be with your Air and Marine
Interdiction and Operations Unit in San Angelo, Texas and
Corpus Christi under the direction of Colonel Charles
Stallworth who is doing a fabulous job. The men and women who I
came into contact with are very proud not only of the
Department and the achievements that have been made but also of
their job and the ability that they have to perform that duty.
And I think that speaks well of many other things which the
Department is doing well and hopefully will continue to do.
I also, sir, have had an opportunity over the last couple
weeks to talk to Judge Bonner and Mike Garcia who worked for
one of our former colleagues, Asa Hutchinson, who I think is
doing a fabulous job also. The nature of the questions that I
would like to have you address are specifically two.
One about the aerostats, which are these balloons, tethered
balloons, which are along our Southwest border. They were
transferred to the Department of Defense. The Department of
Defense over the last few years has had a change of focus for
them, taking from necessarily those functions that they were
doing to war, and I believe that there has not been a proper
focus put on the proper manning, funding and utilization of
those aerostats.
Secondly, the question I have deals with essentially legal
immigration into this country with a visa. And it is my hope
that there would be some discussion, and I am interested in
hearing from you today, about those avenues which where people
come in. There are about 130,000 of them that stay. I have had
direct conversations, as I alluded to, With Judge Bonner and
Mike Garcia about a willingness of this Nation to understand
about everybody that comes here, everybody that does not leave,
a process.
Once again, we are dealing with legal people, but they have
come to this country and said that they would come here under
the provisions that we said and they should leave under the
provisions that we have laid out. And I believe that it is in
the best interest for us to have a legal framework that it is
very difficult for us if we do not follow our laws and to
insist that our laws be well understood.
And so I am interested in a discussion about aerostats, and
if you tell me you don't know a lot about it, I can understand
that. I would like to ask that you follow up. And, secondly,
about the discussions that are taking place over the some
130,000 people that violate our laws and the things that I
believe need to be done, could realistically be done in that
endeavor. And I appreciate the gentleman's response.
Admiral Loy. Yes, sir. Thank you. With respect to
aerostats, I go back a long way with aerostats in the
counterdrug efforts of my time in the Coast Guard and working
diligently with the Border Patrol, with the then legacy Customs
Service and INS as well as DEA and all the other players that
were involved in that process and recognize the value of what
the aerostat offers in terms of border value, sensor value,
eyes in the sky, if you will, at the other end of the day.
I think there probably was waning of interest in terms of
what was actually associated with the aerostats along the
Southwest border of the United States, which I assume, sir,
that is the ones you are talking about, because we have got
them elsewhere as well. And their contribution, which was
largely hinged in the tail end of 10 years ago to the drug
trade and what we were trying to do on the counternarcotics
effort, that probably did wane in terms of focus and interest.
Certainly, in terms of the DOD's responsibilities that are so
widespread at this point would continue, I would think, to have
them less focused on the maintenance and the manning and the
staffing and the support to them at this particular point in
time.
But what I can tell you is since September 11 there has
been a dramatic resurgence of interest in border control writ
large, whether it is up to 1,000 Border Patrol agents on the
Canadian border where we used to have fewer than 400, whether
it is the R&D, to go back to Ms. Dunn's question about focusing
on UAVs as a different way of dealing with sensors over our
borders, maritime or land borders with Mexico or Canada.
So the notion of whether or not aerostats play dramatically
into our concern level about border issues is, I would think,
on the rise and rising. And so we would be remiss, I would
think, to set aside the use of the aerostats for the moment
until there is a better mousetrap in place, so to speak, to
take the place of what they are providing us in the way of
censoring capability.
So I am an old fan of them and a current fan of them until
we get something better in place that would serve the purpose
that they serve for us as a piece of the bigger picture of
border control.
Mr. Sessions. It would be my hope with respect to this, if
I could, Admiral, to pass along that I will in a letter to you
about perhaps the information which I had received about those
activities related to the utilization of that. And I will be
pleased to do that and would appreciate a response back. And
you can give it to me. It does not have to be to the committee.
Admiral Loy. Honored to do so, sir.
Mr. Sessions. So that I can deal with it on an issue basis
where I receive factual information and perhaps just not
heresy.
Admiral Loy. Sure. You bring up the issue with respect to
migrants, and I would say there are three things that are very
important for us to hold on to, because that is a very complex
question. First of all, visa policy for the United States of
America. We inherited the responsibility for visa policy from
other executive branch agencies as it came in our direction.
The Secretary has asked Undersecretary Hutchinson to take on
the challenge in very quick fashion of examining the visa
policy of the United States of America, together with the State
Department and all the other players, and get back to him in
very short order--I believe there is a scheduled briefing for
the Secretary next week--as to the overview, if you will, of
visa policy in our country.
Second point is about portal control, if you will, and we
as a Department are now responsible for that. I can suggest, as
many of you know, that legacy INS was unable over the course of
the last 20 years to develop an adequate entry-exit system for
the United States of America. In the course of 7 months we
stood up US-VISIT where millions of people have now come and
gone through that particular system and effected, if you will,
a control of the borders at the portals of entry to our
country.
We have now in 114 airports, 15 different seaports, we will
have US-VISIT at the 50 busiest land border crossings of our
country by the end of this year and at all of them by the end
of next year. All of that is associated with the ongoing work
with our international colleagues in terms of standard setting
about passports and all the affiliated things that are
connected to that.
So border and portal control, a function now the
responsibility of our Department, we have made, we believe,
dramatic steps forward in establishing the end game with
respect to that.
And then, lastly, with respect to the naturalization
process itself, many of those folks you are describing may very
well be coming to our country with every intention of becoming
honorable Americans at the other end of the day. Today, a
system we inherited, by the way, is a broken system with 8-or
9-year waits for that process to run its course. The President
has very clearly said, ``Make that no longer than 18 months,''
and we are in the business of establishing clear pilot programs
that will prove to us the means by which we will get that
backlog reduced to where it should be in a reasonable system,
as the President has directed us to do.
So it is a complex question, sir, that you ask. I believe
we have--our intentions are honorable and in the right
direction with respect to those three aspects of it, and I hope
in there somewhere was the answer to what you are concerned
about.
Mr. Sessions. I thank the gentleman. In fact, I believe
that there should be some very specific things that this
administration would come into contact with that, and my point
would be is that we live in a legal framework of this country,
and if we do not enforce the laws of this country, we allow
other people to come and take advantage of that, and they
become criminals. It would be my hope that there would be an
immediate response that we would know who was nearing the end
of their term, that they would be expected to leave and that we
would not allow anything other than that and would take them on
an expedited basis, perhaps for legal.
I will follow up with a letter to you and would expect a
response accordingly. And I thank the gentleman and thank the
chairman.
Chairman Cox. The gentleman's time has expired. The
gentleman from California, a member on the Subcommittee on
Cybersecurity, Science and Research and Development, Ms.
Lofgren is recognized for 8 minutes.
Ms. Lofgren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you,
Admiral Loy. There are many things I would like to ask you
about, and I am not sure there will be time to ask them all,
but I do want to focus in on the Cybersecurity Subcommittee.
Over the past year and a half, members of this subcommittee
have spent a lot of time looking at what I think are sometimes
very complex issues involved in securing the Nation's critical
cyberinfrastructure. And as we have done that, we have looked
at the Department's commitment to pursuing a sound strategy on
cybersecurity, and I think members of the subcommittee have
serious concerns about our accomplishments in that area.
We are concerned that we are not doing an adequate job, in
all honesty, and recently--well, the concerns really lie with
whether we are sufficiently implementing the national strategy
to secure cyberspace, whether staffing is adequate--I think
that was mentioned earlier--not only in terms of the actual
number of staff but the number of temporary employees, the
turnover and also the placement of the division sort of buried
down in the bowels of the bureaucracy and whether it is getting
the attention that we need, and, furthermore, concerns about
channels of communication between that division and the top
levels of the Department.
And in fact last week Chairman Cox, Ranking Member Turner,
Chairman Thornberry and myself sent a letter to Secretary Ridge
regarding the cybersecurity mission at the Department. Have you
seen this letter? Are you aware of the letter?
Admiral Loy. Yes, ma'am. We have gotten your letter.
Ms. Lofgren. And we have asked, the four of us, for a
response by Monday, May 10. Do you think the Department will be
able to meet this deadline that we have asked them to meet?
Admiral Loy. I certainly--it is now very much clear in my
mind that that was the deadline that you are asking for, Ms.
Lofgren. We will try very hard to do that, and I will take that
back as I go back today.
Ms. Lofgren. Okay. Thank you very much, and I would just--I
hate to be a nag but I also wanted to raise an issue because it
has happened repeatedly that we have asked Mr. Liscouski and
others to follow up with questions that we have not had answers
to at the Department, and we just don't get answers. It is like
the questions go in, it is a black hole, months go by, we never
get answers. And I am wondering in your management capacity if
you could check and see what is the problem there on getting
answers back to the committee.
And also, again, we take our oversight commitment very
seriously, and I am proud to say that the Cybersecurity and
Science Subcommittee has operated in a very bipartisan manner.
We not only have Chairman Thornberry work as a team but our
staffs have worked as a team. We see this as not a party
mission but an American mission.
We never get testimony in a timely manner from people
within the division. The rules are that it be 48 hours in
advance. Sometimes we get it an hour before the hearings begin.
That is really not--it is happening over and over again, even
after we complain. And it does not give the committee time to
fulfill its obligations of oversight. So I would like you also,
if you would, please, to find out what is the problem there so
that we can get that corrected.
I would also like to talk just a little bit, it is not in
the Cybersecurity Subcommittee, but about the Immigration
Service, former Immigration Service, and that function. I also
serve on the Immigration Subcommittee in the Judiciary
Committee, and that whole function has been troubled for many
years, as you have acknowledged, but I am fearful that we are
not making the progress that we should make, in all honesty.
The President has indicated he wants the backlog to be
decreased. In fact, the backlog is growing. It is not
shrinking, it is growing, and the time for processing is
growing. And that, actually, although sometimes it may seem
that it is not a security issue, I mean these are petitions of
American citizens for their husbands or wives or adoptions, it
is a whole mish-mash, but the fact that it is not--that our
processes are not computerized sufficiently does I think pose a
threat to the United States.
In September of 2003, the GAO did a report and pointed out
that in order to get information about financial information,
that the INS would have to go and do hand counts to get--that
is on page 4 of the GAO report--hand counts to answer the
questions. Well, what that tells us is that it is on paper. I
mean they can't actually get a computerized report. In January
of that same year, the GAO again pointed out that the
application workload has to be corrected, that the visa
operations needed attention and that its weakness in technology
management that is very much a problem.
Now, you mentioned US-VISIT, and I think that is a very
good start, but I want to bring some concerns to your
attention, because I think we are sewing some problems for down
the road. Two years ago I asked NIST what it would cost for
them to set a biometric standard that could be utilized, and
they said it wasn't a funded activity but that for about $2
million, they had the lab capacity, they could provide the
biometric standard. Well, that never happened. They were never
funded. DHS had funds but they never actually provided the
funds to NIST. And as of this moment, those biometric standards
have not actually been developed nor adopted.
Consequently, we are now engaging in an effort that is
going to lead to a multiplicity of biometric standards that may
or may not be suitable for a common database. For example, US-
VISIT is using two index figures. However, the international
biometrics that are pursuing with machine-readable passports is
going to be facial recognition. The two are not going to
provide a common database. Furthermore, it is not necessarily
going to be compatible with the watch list.
And what we need, and I think the sooner we do this the
better, is that we need to have some common standard or a
multiplicity of standards. There is no reason why we can't have
more than one biometric, but we need to have some
standardization or else we will end up in 2 or 3 years with a
system-wide problem that is similar to what we had with the
INS.
I would also urge, and I may actually even offer as
amendments to our authorization, that we insist that the INS do
something--I keep calling them the INS out of habit--.
Admiral Loy. No problem.
Ms. Lofgren. --that they computerize--I mean we can track
our Fed Ex package online, but you cannot find out where your
application is for your spouse if you are an American citizen
with repeated askings over 2 or 3 years. They are filing by
name and a number still, but they ought to be filing matters by
biometrics, because you can have duplication of names but you
cannot have duplication of biometrics. And it ought to be the
same biometrics that is being utilized by our national security
agencies, by the FBI, by the State Department. All of these
things are highly doable. It is just a matter of management and
making them happen.
And so I don't know you, but you have a reputation as a
manager. I am asking you, really pleading with you, to exert
some management control in this area and to make it happen,
because I think until we--and we can integrate these legacy
systems. I mean we can get off the shelf actually to integrate
these legacy systems, which is why I say this is a management
issue, it is not a technology issue, and I hope that you will,
next time I see you, be able to tell me that we have solved
these problems, and I look forward to the answers to our
question on Monday.
Admiral Loy. Thank you.
Ms. Lofgren. Thank you very much.
Admiral Loy. May I just for a moment, sir? Thanks, Ms.
Lofgren. Very, very excellent questions and issues across the
board, as you described. Just a moment on several of them.
First, with respect to cyber, both the Secretary and I have
recognized that we have perhaps not found organizationally the
right focus that cyber deserves, if you will, and I think of
SCADAs and so many other systems that are so dependent there
that it is one of those things that as I think about
consequences it sort of jumps off the chart as does nuclear,
like does bio and other such things. So we are thinking very,
very along the same lines, if you will.
I had a meeting 2 weeks ago where I called together folks
from industry, folks from--observers that could help us help
the chairman, if you will, of our NCSD, our National
Cybersecurity Division inside IAIP. There is a great book
called, ``Black Ice,'' that if you haven't read it is what
prompted me to have this meeting because it sort of was a
confirming scare tactic almost. We are taking cyber very, very
seriously, and over the course of the next weeks we will be
going in the directions that are you describing as needed.
I apologize, ma'am, for the responsiveness commentary that
you are describing, and I promise you that I will go back, find
this letter, see if it is possible to answer on Monday and if
not, call you and let you know that's to be the case.
On CIS issues, again, this is something the Department
inherited. As you keep using the phrase INS, I keep saying they
are not there anymore. We have really broken INS into three
pieces, and the ICE piece is working very well. The pieces that
found their way into CBP are working very well. The piece that
continues to offer services to the immigrant population is
where the managerial concentration needs to be to press on. So
that is where I am going.
Ms. Lofgren. If I may, I know my time is expired. The three
divisions cannot work well unless they all work well. For
example, the terrorists that came in through--and that helped
destroy the towers--should never have been admitted, because
they had applied for a change in status to a student visa off
their visitors visa. Had that been computerized instead of on a
piece of microfiche sitting in a box, the officer at entry
would have denied them entry.
Admiral Loy. You are right.
Ms. Lofgren. And I don't fault the officer. He didn't have
the data. And so you can't do the job unless it is all working
together.
Admiral Loy. All those challenges are very real. The IT end
of CIS is something we are working on hard. We have just hired
a new CIO to help them in that process of sorting out what they
need to do, and integrating that, as both the chairman and Mr.
Turner have indicated, into the bigger picture of IT
integration Department-wide is part of our challenge.
Chairman Cox. The gentlelady's time has expired. The
gentleman from Arizona, the chairman of the Subcommittee on
Emergency Preparedness and Response, Mr. Shadegg, is recognized
for 5 minutes.
Mr. Shadegg. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, let me thank
my colleague, Mr. Shays, for deferring to me. I need to be
elsewhere, and so he agreed to let me go first and I appreciate
that.
Admiral I want to thank you for being here, I want to thank
you for your testimony. I frequently say both here and at home
that you and the Secretary have I think the second and third
toughest jobs in Washington, D.C. I give the President the
toughest job. But I, quite frankly, think standing up a new
department is phenomenally difficult, trying to bring together
the agencies you have to bring together. Get them working
together in a concerted fashion is very difficult. I appreciate
your bringing to that task the expertise and the knowledge and
the dedication that you have. I appreciate your work in the war
on drugs in the past where I think our paths first crossed.
I also want thank you for the Arizona Border Control
Initiative. It has made a huge difference--.
Admiral Loy. Sure has.
Mr. Shadegg. --it has been a tremendous success, and I
appreciate it very much.
I really wanted to discuss two specific kind of discreet
issues. The first is the whole issue of the EP&R Division. I
have a concern that the EP&R Division, Emergency Preparedness
and Response Division, brought to the task the mentality of
FEMA, which is a reactive mentality to an emergency or a
disaster which cannot be prevented and therefore must be simply
reacted to. And I have had conversations on the topic of this
with people at the directorate who kind of look at it and say,
``'Well, all emergencies are the same. If it is a forest fire
or a flood or a hurricane, we have to go in and do our cleanup
job.''
And I see Department of Homeland Security as different than
that. Indeed, I think the chairman and I have a very strong
belief that this Department is about preventing attacks, not
necessarily getting good at scooping up victims of an attack. I
noticed that the emergency management grants, the fire grants
and the homeland security grants are now being administered by
the Office of State and Local Grant Coordination.
I guess my question of you--my first question of you before
I switch to a different topic is do you still believe the
Emergency Preparedness and Response Division should be focused
on all hazards, and if so, is it appropriately within the
Department of Homeland Security or should it be somewhere else?
And should the function of preparedness for a terrorist attack,
which I think is a different mindset because you can stop a
terrorist attack, should that be what remains within DHS?
Admiral Loy. Sir, as you well know, the President has just
signed HSPD-8, which is about preparedness in general.
Interestingly, the word, ``preparedness,'' was a large part of
that off-site conversation I mentioned with the leadership
cadre of the Department.
I think at the moment the so-called FEMA mindset you
described is something that we certainly have to work on so as
to make sure that the response and recovery functionalities of
the Department are reflective and appreciative of the
awareness, prevention and protection, sort of the pre-event, if
you will, functionalities of the Department.
So we are working very hard to make sure they are aware of
that. And, of course, through IAIP, concentrating on prevention
and protection and the awareness piece that I believe is
absolutely an imperative to come in front of all of it. In
other words, if we truly understand what is going on in the
domain we are responsible for, we can build better prevention
and protection and even response and recovery protocols. But
the front end has got to be focused on information,
intelligence, the sharing thereof, the analysis thereof and the
understanding thereof.
I don't have an immediate problem with the FEMA mentality
in EP&R as the response and recovery agents, so to speak, of
the Department, but I do want them to appreciate that the
Department's responsibility is across the board.
Mr. Shadegg. Appreciate that, and it is an ongoing concern
on my part.
Let me flip to a different topic. I recently met with
Marsha Florian, who is the TSA Federal Security Director at Sky
Harbor Airport in Arizona. It is one of the largest airports in
the Nation. We are the fifth largest metropolitan area in the
Nation. We have 100,000 passengers each and every day, 1,500
flights every day. It is the world's busiest three-runway
airport and it faces a lot of challenges.
As you know, there is this artificial cap that has been
placed on TSA employees by Congress, and I understand that in
Phoenix, Arizona, as a result of that cap, we are literally
forcing those people to work much longer hours than they are
used to. We are trying to get the job done I think with too few
employees to meet an artificial cap that I am not certain
serves the public.
I do know that there can be dire economic consequences if
we drive people away from air travel because they can't get
through security lines in a reasonable amount of time, and of
course everyone appreciates the fact that if in fact by trying
to do the job with too few people we let something slip
through, that is a catastrophe in itself.
And I am interested in finding out whether or not the
Department has looked at this issue, whether or not the
congressional demand that you come down to, 45,000 employees,
is an unreasonable demand for you to be able to do the job, and
if it is, whether you are willing to come forward to the
Congress and make that point? And if not, if you think you can
do it with 45,000, how do you deal with an airport like Sky
Harbor where, quite frankly, the caps on the use of personnel,
at least I think, are currently causing delays and may be
causing the possibility of a breakdown in potential security?
Admiral Loy. Quickly, sir, this is obviously a topic that
could take an awful long time to answer, but let me give you my
quick answer. My experience at TSA is this, sir: We at TSA very
likely overhired initially when we were pushing 55,000; 56,000;
57,000 screeners. I think the focus that was offered by the cap
became a constructive influence to make sure we were being
efficient and effective along the way.
I further believe that two other things play here. One is
the full-time/part-time challenge; in other words, the activity
profile of an airport, even one as busy as Sky Harbor, has
peaks and valleys to it associated with the day and with the
week. So we are working very hard to try to live within the cap
as it relates to full-time and part-time mix, varying at every
given airport, in the hands of the Federal Security Director
like Marcia is at Phoenix, to get the right package there for
that particular airport.
But I also believe that now we are literally back to pre-
September 11 throughput, and in a place like Sky Harbor well
beyond, there needs to be a mechanical device of some kind in
the appropriations process that says when the throughput is
wherever it is and it is growing and there has not been that
technological breakthrough that we think will eventually be the
answer, we need to be attendant to that as it relates to
adequacy of TSA screeners at those airports.
We have to challenge TSA to devise that. I didn't get it
done while I was there, so I have challenged them to devise
that mechanical means to help us understand the predictive
nature of if the throughput is going up, what is the attendant
increase in screeners that would be appropriate?
Mr. Shadegg. My time has expired, but let me on that point
make two points. One--.
Chairman Cox. The gentleman's time has expired. Please be
brief, because we have only got 10 minutes left in the hearing.
Mr. Shadegg. I will be very brief. My understanding is that
some airports that were very efficient at the outset are now
being punished by the fact that they were being efficient and
if they are being pressed down after having been efficient in
the beginning, they are hurting. Second, I believe the American
people and I know that I would support an increase in the cap
if you cannot get the job done with that arbitrary cap. It was
created when the bill was passed without knowledge really of
the task we were undertaking. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Cox. The gentleman's time has expired. The
gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Pascrell, is recognized for 8
minutes.
Mr. Pascrell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Admiral,
for your service. I just want to make rapid questions here, and
if you would make your answers brief, I would appreciate it.
Admiral Loy. Sure.
Mr. Pascrell. We do not have a universal watch list, true
or false?
Admiral Loy. True.
Mr. Pascrell. We do not have a risk assessment which would
highlight our most vulnerable assets, true or false?
Admiral Loy. False. We have a pretty decent process by
which we are prioritizing the critical infrastructure of our
Nation.
Mr. Pascrell. Do we have a risk assessment then for the
Nation which we have been asking for, a national risk
assessment? Yes or no?
Admiral Loy. I do not have a piece of paper to give to you,
sir, but the effort of the aftermath of HSPD-7 will yield that
for us. Our goal is to build precisely that.
Mr. Pascrell. My next question, Admiral, is you know we
have discussed interoperability. This panel is very clear about
it, the first responders are very clear about it. It is a
disaster out there ready to happen again. Are you telling me
that there is enough money in the budget that we do not have to
have any money in the line item of interoperability, that is
communication for our first responders, that we will have
enough money in the rest of the budget left over from whatever
program?
Admiral Loy. I am going to actually ask if I can get back
to you, Mr. Pascrell, on that, because I have put into motion a
challenge that is not only about communications
interoperability but includes equipment and training and the
rest of that notion that is, I believe, an imperative for our
Department. I have not got the budget feel that I would need
for that quite yet, sir, so I will be glad to get back to you
when I do.
Mr. Pascrell. My next question is what relationship do you
have with the FCC in trying to get them to provide the adequate
enough number of bands for our first responders which is a
current problem and is a critical situation? And, secondly, is
the FCC cooperating with you?
Admiral Loy. So far they are, sir.
Mr. Pascrell. What are they doing to cooperate? Tell me.
Admiral Loy. Well, they are attending the meetings that we
are holding to develop whatever the plan is for the
distribution of the bandwidth necessary to satisfy first
responders' needs as a critical imperative for our country.
Mr. Pascrell. So they are going to meetings.
Admiral Loy. They are helping us develop the plan, sir.
Mr. Pascrell. Would you provide to the committee what plans
we are talking about?
Admiral Loy. Yes, sir.
Mr. Pascrell. So that we can communicate that to first
responders all over the United States.
You know, Admiral, you talk about the melding, the
consolidation of grants. There is a very serious problem here
as far as we are concerned and that is you have melded the fire
grants, which have been very successful by everyone's
estimation, you have melded them with everything else. Fire
grants go directly to communities. They do not go through the
State so that no State--no State--can skim off any money that
is going directly--it has been highly successful. Do you intend
to change that process?
Admiral Loy. No.
Mr. Pascrell. No. So we are going to continue. We are going
to meld the money, but we are going to maintain that
category--.
Admiral Loy. We are not even going to meld the money. Those
are specified--.
Mr. Pascrell. Well, how do you meld the programs without
melding the money?
Admiral Loy. Well, all we are trying to do is offer for
their benefit, because they asked for it, the State and locals
an opportunity to have a one-stop shop for the administrative
processes associated with grant administration.
Mr. Pascrell. Do you realize the danger, Admiral, in doing
that is that you will meld the basic needs that existed before
September 11, which prompted and precipitated the Fire Act of
1999, you are melding those basic needs with the terror needs
of our police and our fire all over this country?
Admiral Loy. I guarantee you, sir, that won't happen.
Mr. Pascrell. Well, then why do we have less money for fire
grants for 2005 than in 2004? In fact, $250 million less and
$655 million less for the COPS Program. If we are trying to
defend America, how can we justify that?
Admiral Loy. Well, I can justify it, sir. If you look at
the total number of dollars, in the window between 1999 and
2001, we distributed from the Federal government, from the
Congress of the United States about $1.3 billion. From 2002 to
2004, we distributed over $13 billion which was over a 900
percent increase.
Mr. Pascrell. Admiral, Admiral, you are doing exactly what
we predicted was going to happen 5 months ago, and that is--.
Admiral Loy. I am just giving you an aggregate number, sir.
Mr. Pascrell. Excuse me, sir. Excuse me, sir. What you are
doing is consolidating very basis needs with needs dealing with
prevention in response to terror. It is an absolute sham as far
as I am concerned, and it does not do justice.
I want to get quickly to the two questions that you and I
have talked about, and that is the employees. Have any of our
employees within the Department, within DHS, lost their
collective bargaining rights as of today?
Admiral Loy. I think only in the effort with putting
together legacy Customs agents and legacy INS agents into the
new CBP officer role. The promotion process that offered all of
them constancy and consistency in their respective duties and
responsibilities took them to a level where they were no longer
appropriately represented in the bargaining process. They
were--.
Mr. Pascrell. Excuse me, what does that mean. You took them
to a level that they are no longer appropriately--.
Admiral Loy. They are now 13s as opposed to 12s, and it
took them out of the window of the bargaining package that was
there before.
Mr. Pascrell. Could you translate that for me what you just
said, I am sorry.
Admiral Loy. Yes, sir. I didn't say that well--.
Mr. Pascrell. I am trying to follow you.
Admiral Loy. --and I apologize.
Mr. Pascrell. No, you said it well, but I didn't understand
you.
Admiral Loy. In the recent efforts to recognize the
differences in pay associated with INS players who went into
the portal effort and became CBP officers and from a different
source legacy Customs officers came, there were differences in
the pay scales associated with what they had used to do with
their legacy agencies. Their new responsibilities in One Face
at the Border offered the requirement that we would merge all
of that into a single package and we made absolutely certain
that no one lost any pay by promoting, if you will, advancing
in the pay scale the folks that came from INS, and the
equivalency there offered them a point on the scale where they
dropped away from being represented collectively.
Mr. Pascrell. Thank you for clarifying your answer. I would
like to yield so that Mr. Etheridge will have some time.
Mr. Etheridge. I thank the gentleman, and I know time is
running short.
Chairman Cox. Mr. Etheridge, just to advise you, I will not
count this time that I am speaking against you, but literally
the time has gone out just now.
Mr. Etheridge. Okay.
Chairman Cox. So I would yield to the gentleman to put a
question but hopefully we will come back with more time.
Mr. Etheridge. I will wait for my turn.
Chairman Cox. If that is correct, then the gentleman's time
is expired. The gentleman from Connecticut, Mr. Shays, is
recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Shays. thank you, and I may not even need to use my 5
minutes. Welcome, Admiral.
Chairman Cox. If the gentleman would suspend. Admiral Loy,
we understand by prearrangement that you are here until 12:30.
What is your schedule at this moment? Might you stay for an
additional 10 minutes?
Admiral Loy. I can, sir.
Chairman Cox. That being the case, the gentleman is
recognized for 5 minutes and we will--.
Mr. Shays. Thank you very much. Admiral, I think you have a
mammoth task to bring together the people all over the country
and have those synergies work well. Ultimately, though, if you
do succeed, it will be a tremendous contribution to our
country.
I would like to focus in on how you deal with the following
while you are trying to reorganize. And the following is I
happen to believe there will be a terrorist attack or more
during the course of this year. We have to deal with the World
War II Memorial, we have to deal with the G8 Summit, we have
two conventions, we have the presidential election and then the
inaugural. And I would like to know how you get involved in
these issues as the Deputy and how you task your folks to deal
with these issues?
Admiral Loy. Sir, I think you are right on to reflect on
the schedule of events in front of us. It begins with the World
War II Memorial and includes the conventions, it includes the
Olympics, it includes the G8 Summit, it includes a number of
high-profile events coming at us.
We began, at the Secretary's direction, at the President's
direction, I might add, 3 weeks ago an interagency security
planning effort that, if you will, takes a HSPD7 and puts it on
steroids--accelerates it, focuses it in such a fashion that we
are enormously attentive between now and over the course of the
next six to 8 months to the intelligence stream going by and
the attendant requirement to upgrade our security paradigms
wherever we would think that to be the most appropriate.
We would happily come perhaps in closed session, sir, and
help you understand precisely what we are doing in that regard,
but you have very correctly recognized an upcoming window that
in wake especially of the Madrid bombings and what appears to
at least have been a political consequence reached on the basis
of terrorist behavior, that we will watch carefully, for
example, the Italian elections and the Polish elections and the
Philippine elections that will also happen before our own.
What we have done, sir, is establish five working groups
inside the Department with the attendant reach requirement to
go all places necessary to pull together a game plan that we
will present back to Secretary Ridge by the end of this month
and hold into place in a sustained manner across that window of
time you just described.
Mr. Shays. Let me just make a comment, and I don't need an
answer, but I hope and pray that when the Department issues
warnings and if we go to an elevated level, that we don't have
the department say, ``Just do what you normally do.'' If, for
instance, we believe that you are at greater risk by going to
an event, let people like adults decide whether they want to
go. They may, for instance, decide to go to the Olympics but
not take their 4-year-old children or 10-year-old child or
whatever. They may decide to go to the convention but maybe
they will change their behavior a little bit. And I know you
don't want to discourage from going but allow them the adult
decision.
I can tell you this: I will ask for any briefings during
that time, and if I believe that there is something that that
public needs to know about, while I won't disclose it, I will
certainly voice my concern and say what I would be doing as a
Member of Congress based on what I have seen. I hope that you
will treat the American people like adults and do that.
Admiral Loy. Yes, sir. I am with you on the general notion
that, first of all, I think it is our obligation to share
information that we have that would put anyone in danger as to
what the information is and allow those judgments to be taken
by our citizens.
Chairman Cox. Gentleman's time has expired. Mr. Etheridge
is recognized for his full five minutes.
Mr. Etheridge. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I trust I won't
take it all. I am going to return, Admiral Loy, back to a point
that was made earlier as it relates to CIS. I realize that is
one area of a broad area of responsibility, as others have
said, but in our office and I know in a lot of other offices,
this is an area that we get overworked in tremendously. It
would be a lot easier if we got a lot more prompt response.
Last year, the independent auditor's report indicated that
the Bureau of Citizen and Immigration Service process for
tracking and reporting the status of applicants and related
information was inconsistent and inefficient. Now, I would
contend, and our response in our office, that hasn't changed a
lot. And every person that is come before this committee, I am
going to say to you, I have raised this same question, when are
we going to be computerized--you have heard this already.
Admiral Loy. Sure.
Mr. Etheridge. They will say, ``Well, we have got a
timeline.'' Last time I asked, I said, ``Please give me a
data.'' Well, I get a date and the date slips. And others have
talked about it here. But I am going to give you just one
example, there are a lot of other examples, but when you have
to keep going back and you keep going back, it takes up time, a
tremendous amount of personnel time for our folks, for the
people at INS and the service areas.
It is just bogging down, and part of the reason, and it was
talked about a few minutes ago, so I am going to repeat it
again, because I think it has got to be on the record, we have
got to get it done, these things are not computerized; they are
in boxes. They are still in paper boxes. And when it takes up
for just a I-130 visa application for people who are citizens
of this country now, when they are just trying to reach out to
their spouse, over 2 years to get something moving, that is
unacceptable.
Admiral Loy. It is unacceptable, I agree, sir.
Mr. Etheridge. And what I want to know is what specific
steps is DHS management tracking this system that you are going
to address the inefficiencies and get a handle on this backlog,
because as was said a few minutes ago, it is not getting less,
it is growing, and I fear if it continues to grow, we aren't
going to be able to deal with the issues, and the violations
are going to get even greater.
Admiral Loy. Yes, sir. I think this issue is an absolutely
right square one for us to take and address with the leadership
and management necessary to make it right. It is a system that
has plagued our country, frankly, for tens of years, and when
this brand new department inherited the responsibility for it,
that was recognized by this President who indicated, ``Let's
get that backlog management from whatever those horrible
numbers are down to something that is reasonable.'' That is
precisely where we are going.
We have established five major pilot programs to reengineer
the processes inside each one of the systems you were
describing, whether it is the I-130 or the many other systems
that they are responsible for, and get out of there things that
don't need to be done and make more efficient things that do
need to be done.
What I can tell you, sir, is that the IT piece is well
recognized, but there is--I don't have a date on the horizon
that I would even pretend to share with you at this time.
Mr. Etheridge. Admiral, I know we are struggling because we
don't have an answer for it right now. Can you get back with a
timeline?
Admiral Loy. I will be delighted to get back for you, sir,
a game plan to fix that.
Mr. Etheridge. So we can have a timeline of--please.
Admiral Loy. You bet.
Mr. Etheridge. So we will have it in writing. If you will
do that, I appreciate it. And, finally, let me move to one
other issue and a lot of the stuff I have here has already been
covered.
In looking over the report, the Inspector General's report,
the Division Chief Information Officer and others had a
turnover of about 45 percent, which is substantial since the
Department opened its doors. And we have heard that a number of
the directorates, such as IAIP, are having problems getting
people to take positions they need to move them into and fill
some of the gaps. And they are now being filled with
contractors.
My question is can you help us understand why the turnover
is as high as it is and how we are planning at DHS to address
the turnover and the directorate staffing needs? And if it is
being staffed by contractors, how long will this last and how
long before we will staff it with full people, and is there a
cost savings?
Admiral Loy. Yes, sir. Let's take the IAIP piece first. One
of the things that I asked the committee's support of as we
engage with the Armed Services Committees and others is to get
this Nebraska Avenue complex thing behind us. Let's get that
established as the headquarters for the foreseeable future with
the attendant office spaces there that are appropriate to allow
us to hire up IAIP to its allotted FCE.
General LaBute has committed to not only me but to the
Congress in the form of the Appropriations Committee a hiring
plan that at 50 per month over the course of the next several
months he will find himself hired up to complement.
In the meantime, the combination of contractors and
detailees, if you will, from attendant agencies inside the
Department, has enabled him to get on with some of the work
that he is responsible for, certainly the most important work.
I am one who will challenge him as to whether or not the
budgeted input you were just describing, the good steward input
associated with whether or not he can get done, what is the mix
that is best appropriate for him to deal that with? President's
management agenda includes an outsourcing notion that offers us
an opportunity in this cabinet agency to establish a manpower
paradigm that may very well be different than what has been
used in the executive branch in the past. And if contractors
and outsourced functionality is the best way for us to get done
what we need to get done, that is the way we plan to go.
Mr. Etheridge. Thank you. And only one thing I would say on
the contracting and I will yield back my time. I want us to be
careful because contractors have already gotten us in trouble
in some others areas of the world--.
Admiral Loy. Indeed.
Mr. Etheridge. And we don't want that to happen again. And
I hope we will have more to say about that later, and I yield
back, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Cox. Gentleman from Washington is recognized.
Mr. Dicks. Thank you, and I will be very brief because I
know we have got to go to a vote.
Admiral Loy, it is good to see you again. I consider you
one of our best public officials, and I am glad to see you in
this job. And our colleagues have outlined a number of
challenges for you, the information we have on the
implementation of the utilization of information technology
being one of them, and I am very glad to hear this mentioned
time and time again.
All of the reports done by all the outside agencies keep
pointing to this one area, and the database on counterterrorism
is the kind of the thing that has to get done. And if you can
get anything else done, I would try to work on that watch list
database so we have one area where we can check all the names.
To let this go on and on without bringing it to culmination is
simply unacceptable.
Admiral Loy. We will be a demanding customer.
Mr. Dicks. All right. Number two, on the TSA limit, I
didn't realize and staff informed me today, this was something
that was done in the Appropriations Committee. I would love it
if you guys could come up with some language that would help
us. I am prepared to talk to the chairman who is a member of
this committee about that as well.
We have the same problems in Seattle. You and I talked
about that at some length earlier. You have got to have enough
people--you have got to give them the ability to manage. Set a
limit on dollars or whatever, but you have got to give them the
ability to manage the situation, so if you need more people at
a particular time, you can do it. I think an arbitrary limit,
especially now that traffic has recovered, doesn't make any
sense.
And the other thing I would just mention since you are a
top official in the Department: we had a hearing yesterday on
the whole question of port security, and I don't think the
position of the administration is tenable--that port security
is just going to be handled by the local port authority. We are
not getting anywhere near the money that the Coast Guard says
we need to do port security adequately. And Congress has had to
add the money for port security. This is the first year that
Congress even had an appropriation request for money for port
security from the administration. But we have got to figure out
a better solution than this, and to let this thing go on and
not protect our ports.
Just remember what happened when we had the lockout on the
west coast just for a few days. All of a sudden it was
affecting the economy of the entire country. And if we don't
make sure we have got good security at these ports, we are
leaving ourselves open to a major vulnerability. And the Coast
Guard has, I think, laid out what is necessary--$1.5 billion
the first year and $7.5 billion over 10 years, and we are not
anywhere near that. I hope you will take a look at that because
of your background, your expertise and experience as the
commandant of the Coast Guard.
Admiral Loy. I will, sir.
Mr. Dicks. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Cox. The gentleman's time has expired. Thank you
very much, Admiral Loy, for being with us all morning and part
of the afternoon. The record will remain open for members to
submit written questions for a period of Ten? And we would
appreciate the Department responding to those formally as well.
Admiral Loy. Will do, sir.
Chairman Cox. The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:42 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
----------
Questions and Responses for the Record
The Honorable James M. Loy Responses
Questions for the Record from the Honorable John E. Sweeney
1. Admiral Loy, a recent GAO study (June 30, 2003) analyzed federal
government efforts to coordinate geographic information system (GIS)
activities. The study concluded, ``to date, the potential of GIS has
not been fully realized. While steps have been taken to improve the
coordination of government GIS efforts, much more work still needs to
be done to round out a comprehensive set of standards and to ensure
that they are broadly applied.'' I am concerned that this is
particularly true within the Department of Homeland Security. Are you
supportive of efforts to consolidate GIS activities under the Chief
Information Officer at DHS? Are steps being taken to achieve this goal?
Answer:
The DHS Geospatial Management Office (GMO) has been established
within the DHS Office of The Chief Information Officer (CIO) and is
currently operational within the Department. The GMO is responsible
within the Department to coordinate geospatial information needs,
requirements and other related spatial data activities that support the
Enterprise Geospatial Information System (E-GIS) capability. The GMO
will provide clear and concise policy direction across the Department
as needed for an E-GIS geospatial information capability. The GMO will
guide the development and execution of the implementation plan for the
geospatial enablement of DHS mission systems. The plan will provide a
common set of geospatial data management and processing capabilities
that will be incorporated into the emerging Homeland Security (HLS)
Enterprise Architecture. This will allow the Department to further
enable awareness, prevention, protection, response, recovery of the
homeland security mission.
The GMO has already produced a significant body of work, including
a strategic plan, and a forward-looking Enterprise Architecture for
Geospatial activity in the HLS mission space. While standards are an
essential piece they can not alone resolve the challenges in achieving
effective geospatial management. We believe the key to interoperability
is the overall strategy, of which standards are a critical component.
Through the GMO, we are developing a full strategic solution for the
HLS mission and for the Department. Although DHS does have significant
challenges of coordinating the activities of the 22 incoming agencies
from which it was formed, the opportunity is in front of us to affect
an enterprise solution set which will make a significant contribution
to the interoperable solutions which the National Spatial Data
Infrastructure (NSDI) has been fostering over the last 10 years.
Additionally, the Department is a partner agency of the President's
Geospatial One-Stop initiative. The purpose of this government-wide
effort is to provide Federal, state, local, and tribal agencies with
single-point of access to map-related data enabling consolidation of
redundant data. Its goal is to improve the ability of the public and
government to use geospatial information to support the business of
government and improve decision-making. Through this initiative and the
work under the Federal Geographic Data Committee, the Department is an
active participant toward achieving the shared goals of improved
geospatial management and coordination.
The President's budget included $5 million for the coordination of
geospatial management activities within the CIO's office. I am
concerned that this falls far short of what is needed to move forward
in this area. The GAO study suggested, ``Priority should be given to
ensuring that the federal government promotes common GIS standards
wherever practicable, facilitates participation by all stakeholders,
and as a result reduces redundant systems and data collection efforts.
What steps is the Department taking with these limited resources to
meet these objectives?
Answer:
The Department maintains its goals of coordinating geospatial
activities across the DHS enterprise, continuing to develop and
implement the Geospatial View of the DHS Enterprise Architecture,
consolidation of capital asset planning, and promoting a well defined
and documented strategic approach to interoperability of information
systems utilizing the power of location and time in a Geospatial
reference frame. The DHS Operational Elements? Geospatial efforts
contribute greatly to the overall DHS Geospatial activities. Based on
the current funding levels, the Department will be able to accomplish
the initiation of the identified need in fiscal year 2005.
Across the Federal government, work on common standards continues
under the Geospatial One-Stop initiative. Through partnership with
state and local organizations, Geospatial One-Stop developed thirteen
standards to improve sharing and use of geospatial data. The Federal
Geographic Data Committee is now building from these initial standards
to identify other opportunities for standards development.
Some of my colleagues have introduced bills to consolidate GIS
activities within the CIO's office at DHS. Could you provide the
committee with your views on these proposals?
Answer:
The Department has analyzed each of the bills to which you are
referring. While they each share a common goal of legislating the
introduction of a program management office for geospatial activities,
under the DHS Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO), they
diverge in details beyond that. Each has a varying level of detail
defining business approaches, policies, and descriptions of the
``geospatial landscape'', and in varying ways, appear to define the
solutions to some of the well known issues. Senators Akaka, Collins,
and Lieberman have proposed the amendment, ``A bill to provide for
additional responsibilities for the Chief Information Officer of the
Department of Homeland Security relating to geographic information.'',
to S.1230 that DHS supports. This amendment provides the DHS OCIO the
authority and responsibilities necessary to meet the geospatial goals
and objectives required of the Department.
2. I expressed my concern two months ago to Secretary Ridge that
S&T is not moving quickly on SAFETY Act applications for procurements
of anti-terrorism technologies. In fact, I have heard complaints the
directorate is reviewing the applications for qualification almost like
an FDA drug approval process.
The SAFETY Act was meant to replace Public Law 85-804 as mechanism
for addressing insurable liability exposure for high-risk homeland
security procurements. The process that DHS/S&T has in place currently
is not expedited the deployment of the technologies needed for these
procurements and they are being held up. The information requested is
extremely excessive, the process is too bureaucratic, and there is not
a lot of confidence S&T will qualify anything any time soon.
U/S McQueary went on the record stating no company spent more than
120 hours completing a SAFETY Act application. I know for certain that
one company spent 700 hours on the SAFETY Act application and an
additional 300 hours--for a total of over 1,000 hours--on just one
application for one anti-terrorism technology.
I am especially concerned that New York will remain vulnerable to
future acts of terrorism if we don't see a more aggressive approach in
getting these solutions deployed immediately (before the RNC),
especially technologies that have already been used by the government/
military, and are now being modified for homeland security purposes.
Specifically, when will the bulk of current applications be
approved? How many projects--Federal, state, and local--do you expect
to approve for SAFETY Act coverage this year based on the number of
applications submitted thus far?
Answer:
Your question, and other similar questions from other members of
Congress, expresses concern that the process established by the
Department to implement the SAFETY Act is overly complicated,
burdensome, operates to deter applications, and, perhaps most
importantly, is more comprehensive than intended by Congress. I
understand your concerns and your desire for a more streamlined
process. However, I believe the process the Department has implemented
is consistent with the minimum requirements of the Act.
The statute is quite specific in the elements the Secretary is
required to consider when evaluating an application for either tier of
SAFETY Act protection. Destination, the lower tier, which provides the
seller with a limitation on liability, requires consideration of at
least the following seven criteria:
1. Prior United States Government use or demonstrated
substantial utility and effectiveness.
2. Availability of the technology for immediate deployment in
public and private settings.
3. Existence of extraordinarily large or extraordinarily
unquantifiable potential third party liability risk exposure to
the seller or other provider of such anti-terrorism technology.
4. Substantial likelihood that such anti-terrorism technology
will not be deployed unless protections under the SAFETY Act
are extended.
5. Magnitude of risk exposure to the public if such anti-
terrorism technology is not deployed.
6. Evaluation of all scientific studies that can be feasibly
conducted in order to assess the capability of the technology
to substantially reduce risks of harm.
7. Anti-terrorism technology that would be effective in
facilitating the defense against acts of terrorism, including
technologies that prevent, defeat or respond to such acts.
Certification, which affords the higher level of protection of the
presumed government contractor defense, requires the Secretary to (1)
conduct a ``comprehensive review of the design of such technology and
determine whether it will perform as intended,'' (2) determine if the
technology ``conforms to the [s]eller's specifications,'' and (3)
determine that the technology is ``safe for use as intended.'' In
addition, the statute requires each applicant for certification to
conduct a safety and hazard analysis on the technology and to provide
the results as part of the application.
If the Department was to limit its role in evaluating applications
for designation to conducting a basic analysis of the technology to
confirm that it actually works and would not pose an inherent risk of
injury to others, the Secretary would only be considering criterion 7
and part of criterion 6 rather than all seven criteria as required by
the Act. While the Department does not interpret these requirements to
require the actual testing of each technology by DHS, it does believe
compliance with the statutory requirement to review ``all scientific
studies that can feasibly be conducted'' for every application for
designation and the requirement to conduct a ``comprehensive review''
for applications for certification necessitates at least the level of
review established by our existing procedures.
You also expressed concern with the number of hours some companies
have invested in completing The SAFETY Act application. To obtain
specific data on this issue, the Acting Director, Office of SAFETY Act
Implementation, personally spoke with each company that submitted a
full application to obtain feedback regarding the time and effort each
company invested in completing the application. The responses indicate
that the amount of time was proportional to the size of the company,
with small to medium sized organizations spending considerably less
time completing the application then did large corporations. Overall,
most organizations spent approximately 150 hours to complete a full
application. The least amount of time reported to complete an
application was 25 hours and the most was 1000 hours.
Discussions by the Acting Director, Office of SAFETY Act
Implementation, with the single applicant that spent the 1000 hours
indicate that the extensive amount of time required for this applicant
to complete the application was primarily a result of its internal
decisions on how to address the application and its existing internal
policies and procedures, not from the complexity of the application
itself. Confirmation of this assessment came from discussions with two
applicants of similar size; one reported its application took no more
than 100 hours across the entire company and the other reported 200
hours. Based on this information, the Department is confident that it
is the business practices of the particular applicant resulted in the
extraordinary investment of time in the application and not the
application or the Department's implementation of the Statute.
Nevertheless, the Office of SAFETY Act Implementation has substantially
completed a major revision of the application kit, including the
application forms, their instructions, and general information on the
SAFETY Act and the Office of SAFETY Act Implementation. These changes
were based on comments solicited from applicants, industry
associations, and congressional staffers. The Department believes the
revised application kit addresses the issues raised in your question
and will be well received by industry once issued. The revision is
currently being finalized at the Department level.
I do share your desire that our process not cause applications to
be unduly delayed and I am confident this is not the case. As of May
21, 2004, the Department has received 84 pre-applications and 18 full
applications. In addition, there are an additional 50 pre-applications
and 22 full applications in various stages of completion on the SAFETY
Act web site. With the exception of one pre-application still under
review, all of the pre-applications have been reviewed and comments
provided to the applicants. Of the full applications received, 11 were
deemed incomplete, eight have been evaluated by the Office of SAFETY
Act Implementation and are now awaiting final action by Under Secretary
McQueary, and three are in various stages of the evaluation process.
Let me assure you that the Department is sensitive to the issue of
timeliness, and we are proud that the evaluation of each complete
application for designation or certification under the SAFETY Act has
been accomplished in less than the 90 days allocated in the interim
regulations. Final action on the eight applications by the Under
Secretary for Science and Technology is imminent and will be within the
30 days allocated in the interim regulations for each of the pending
applications. In summary, each and every application for designation or
certification under the provisions of The SAFETY Act has been processed
within the time frames set forth in the interim regulations.
Finally, you ask for a prediction on the number of applications the
Department anticipates receiving for the balance of this year. This is
the first year of a new program and we have no basis to provide a
numerical estimate. The Department does believe the imminent
announcement of the first group of designations and certifications,
coupled with our various outreach programs, will generate a significant
increase in the rate of applications for the balance of the year. The
Department would be pleased to provide periodic status reports
regarding the number of applications received to your office and
Congress if desired.
3. In TSA's procurement of homeland security related technologies,
is TSA requiring as part of its solicitations that companies bidding on
such solicitations apply for coverage under the SAFETY Act? If not, why
not?
Answer:
TSA does not include in its solicitations for transportation
security related technologies the requirement that companies bidding on
such solicitations apply for coverage under the SAFETY Act. Neither the
SAFETY Act itself nor any other provision of law requires that
companies apply for such coverage. Applying for coverage under the
SAFETY Act is a discretionary act; contractors may choose to apply for
such coverage, but whether one does so or not is a business decision on
the part of the company.
Questions for the Record from Ranking Member Jim Turner
Enhancing the Strategic Focus
4. In addition to dealing with day-to-day challenges, one of the
responsibilities of senior management is to think strategically--over
the long term--about the priorities of the Department, and ensure that
its workforce, its programs, and its processes are all working together
to achieve desired results. I think this is especially important for
the Department of Homeland Security. While you have a lot on your plate
to deal with every day, it's vital for you and your colleagues to make
sure that you think strategically about how best to protect our
country, using all sources of information that now reside in the new
Department to help you chart your future course. Related to this point,
I think it's important to have concrete performance standards and
metrics in place that can be used to determine whether the Department
is truly achieving its objective of making us safer from the multitude
of threats we face. Along these lines:
Would the Department benefit from a dedicated strategy office that
could, in part, look at the long-term threat posed by terrorism to the
United States, analyze and evaluate ways in which terrorists could
attack us over the long-term, and make recommendations on the long-term
strategy and investment priorities of the Department?
If not, what office in the Department is currently engaged in such
strategic work? Do they have ready access to you and Secretary Ridge?
It does not exist, should it be created?
ANSWER:
The Department agrees that strategic thinking and planning is vital
to ensuring homeland security. It is also important that we establish
concrete performance milestones and metrics to determine how well we
are achieving our strategic goals and objectives. The Department
already has put in place the structure to support these issues. The
Department established the Program Assessment and Evaluation Office
(PAE), under the office of the Under Secretary for Management. PAE
handles development and coordination of the strategic plan, tracking of
strategic issues and coordination of performance based Planning,
Programming, Budgeting and Execution (PPBE). PAE coordinates with all
of the organizations within DHS to ensure that all planning and
programming is cohesive and tracks performance through quarterly
accountability reports.
The Department's first high-level Strategic Plan was released in
February. This Strategic Plan set forth the vision and mission
statements, core values, guiding principles and strategic goals and
objectives that provide the framework to guide the actions that make up
the daily operations of the Department. The full breadth of our
activities is guided by the high-level goals of: Awareness, Prevention,
Protection, Response, Recovery, Service, and Organizational Excellence.
The Department' Strategic Plan and additional planning guidance
provides focused guidance for departmental objectives and provide the
standards for accurate and concise measurement of agency performance.
To help match the Department's resources with operational strategy,
the Department has instituted a long-term comprehensive planning,
programming and budgeting system to support development of the Future
Years Homeland Security Program (FYHSP). This is a step-by-step
strategic decision-making process and links the threat assessments,
resource constraints, and the policy intentions of our political
leadership to the thousands of detailed readiness actions needed to
meet the missions of the Department of Homeland Security. The system
aligns resources to programs that support the Department' objectives,
demonstrate accountability, are performance driven, have identified
long term benefits, and meet the Department's priorities.
Direct input into the Department's strategic planning and
programming process comes from the Information Analysis and
Infrastructure Protection (IAIP) Directorate. IAIP is a full partner
and consumer of all intelligence-generating agencies, such as the
National Security Agency, the CIA and the FBI. IAIP coordinates and
develops the long-range strategic assessments concerning the nature of
the terrorist threat facing the country. Based on the threat
assessment, IAIP and other components of the Department such as the
Border and Transportation Security Administration, Coast Guard, Science
and Technology Directorate, Emergency Preparedness and Response
Directorate develop short-term and long-term strategies to counter the
projected threat. In addition, the Department has established an
Operations Integration staff to coordinate interagency strategy and
operational planning. The heads of these organizations have direct
access to both the Secretary and Deputy Secretary.
Status of Implementing GAO Recommendations
5. The Congress looks to GAO to recommend improvements in
government operations. Along that line, I asked GAO to provide the
status report on the Department's activities to implement previous
recommendations GAO has made, including to its legacy agencies. GAO
informs me that of the several hundred recommendations it made to DHS,
appropriately 110 are what GAO considers ``key'' recommendations.
Indeed, many of these recommendations are targeted to specific
program areas within the various Department directorates. However,
others are intended to improve operations and management department-
wide. As an example, last August GAO recommended that, in developing
its enterprise architecture for computer systems, the Department should
coordinate with various federal law enforcement agencies, state and
local authorities, and the private sector to foster information-sharing
initiatives and to eliminate possible confusion and duplication of
effort.
What is the status of your fully implementing GAO's
recommendations? What are the factors that may limit your ability to
implement more?
Answer:
Per the chart below, as of May 2004 GAO reports an estimated 354
recommendations for DHS and 112 of these are high priority; and 103 of
the total recommendations are considered closed. Of the high priority
recommendations, over half are pending review for completion at GAO. It
also should be noted that the preponderance of the open recommendations
are associated with legacy agencies prior to the establishment of DHS
and some date back as far as 1997. As a result, it is extremely
difficult or impossible for current DHS personnel to assure
implementation for recommendations associated with legacy departments.
We have assessed these recommendations and are in on-going negotiations
with GAO to close those identified with the legacy organizations.
Status and Priority of GAO Recommendations to DHS
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Priority Code Open Under Review * In Progress Closed Total
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
High 30 4 44 34 112
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Moderate 55 5 19 17 96
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Low 77 10 7 52 146
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total 162 19 70 103 354
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes:
* Under review means that DHS
has taken action and provided
some documentation in response to
the recommendation that they believe
should be sufficient to close the
recommendation. That action and
documentation are `under review' by
the GAO team that initiated the
recommendation.
# In progress means that DHS
is taking action in response to
the recommendation but has not
fully implemented it.
All `closed' recommendations
have been closed by the GAO
initiating team.
Suspected $1.2 Billion Budget Shortfall
6. In March of this year, DHS announced a hiring freeze at two of
its frontline units, CBP and ICE because accounting staff were
uncertain if a suspected $1.2 billion budget shortfall was real or an
accounting irregularity. DHS reportedly has three different pay systems
that do not use the same budgeting principles and budget codes. What is
the department doing to better integrate its financial systems to
ensure that such an incident is not repeated?
Answer:
Staff from the Department's Office of the Chief Financial Officer
(CFO), Border and Transportation Security (BTS) Directorate, and the
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) have briefed your
staff on the circumstances and facts surrounding the alleged $1.2
billion shortfall as reported by The Wall Street Journal. The
Department also established a review team composed of staff from the
CFO' Office, BTS, USCIS, and the U.S. Coast Guard to assess the
situation. The review team engaged in a detailed budget reconciliation
effort between the three bureaus. The team examined the allocation of
resources and services throughout the three bureaus, and this effort
resulted in an immediate internal realignment of $212 million. A
subsequent internal realignment of approximately $270 million is
possible, pending additional discussions and coordination on the final
documentation and billing. There is no $1.2 billion shortfall as
reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The Congress has recognized that funds may need to be realigned
between ICE, CBP, and USCIS. In the Joint Explanatory Statement (H.
Rpt. 108-280) accompanying the Department of Homeland Security
Appropriations Act, 2004 (Pub. L. 108-90), the Congress recognized that
the budgetary resources may need to be realigned. Specifically, the
Congress noted: ``The conferees are aware that the Department is
conducting a comprehensive review of administrative and other mission
responsibilities, particularly as they affect ICE and other agencies
that have inherited multiple legacy missions. While funding provided by
this conference agreement is based on the best possible information
available, the conferees understand there may be a need to adjust
funding to conform to the decisions resulting from the review.'' A
similar statement was included under the heading discussing CBP.
While unrelated to the budget review discussed above, when DHS was
established one and one half years ago, it blended 22 distinct agencies
and bureaus inheriting a myriad of redundant management functions,
processes, and systems: for example, 40 general ledgers, 30 different
procurement processes, and 20 different approaches to managing travel
costs. In fiscal year 2005 DHS will implement the new finance/
accounting/budget resource management system, eMerge2
(Electronically Managing Enterprise Resources for Government Efficiency
and Effectiveness), that will transform disparate business and
financial management systems into one, uniform, electronic solution for
the Department. It will support a ``one environment'' model with common
core processes that is critical to the success of DHS. eMerge2
will provide decision-makers with critical business, budget,
accounting, procurement, grants, assets, and travel information in near
``real time;' and eliminate stovepipes between components.
The Department is committed to the security of the nation and we
will continue to work towards successful operation of the three
bureaus--CBP, USCIS, and ICE. To that end, we will continue to work
with the Congress, to ensure that funds are aligned to mission
objectives and are consistent with congressional intent.
Questions for the Record from Rep. Louise M. Slaughter
The proposed regulations eliminate the Merit System Protection
Board of its current authority to modify agency-imposed penalties in
DHS cases involving removal and adverse actions of employees.
7. Please explain (a) why has the standard of evidence for MSPB
cases been drastically decreased when it is the committee's
understanding that agencies currently win over 80 percent of their
cases brought before the MSPB? (b) how does this comply with the
Congressional intent of the Homeland Security Act that employees are
entitled to fair treatment in any appeals that they bring and are
entitled to due process?
Answer:
We note the concern you and other members of Congress have
expressed on this issue and are examining this issue very closely as we
draft the interim final regulations for the Department of Homeland
Security.
8. The Homeland Security Act requires that the new system ensure
that employees may organize and bargaining collectively. Yet, the
proposed regulations practically wipe out full collective bargaining
rights by allowing DHS to set working conditions through non-negotiable
department regulations.
How does this comply with the Congressional intent of the DHS Act
that employees have meaningful collective bargaining rights?
Answer:
The proposed regulations still require bargaining over procedures
and appropriate arrangements over lay-offs, retention, discipline,
leave, and promotions. In addition, bargaining over procedures and
appropriate arrangements for other core management rights is not
prohibited and may occur at the discretion of management. If no
bargaining occurs, management through a consultative process is
required to consider union views and recommendations.
9. The proposed regulations also severely curtail if not eliminate
collective bargaining rights over most core day-to-day operational
decisions, such as the assignment of work, the deployment of personnel,
and the use of new technology by DHS personnel. Other issues would have
to have a ``significantly effect a substantial portion of the
bargaining unit'' before even being subject to post impact and
implementation bargaining.
Could you please define for the committee, the Department's
definition of ``significant impact'' and ``substantial portion'' of a
bargaining unit?
Answer:
The intent of this change is to focus bargaining on matters that
are of significant concern and relieve the parties of potentially
lengthy negotiations over matters that are limited in scope and effect.
The proposed Homeland Security Labor Relations Board will have
jurisdiction over negotiability and duty to bargain disputes and will
through case law or advisory opinions further define these terms.
10. The proposed regulations reassign many of the functions of the
independent Federal Relations Labor Authority (FLRA) to a new ``in-
house'' DHS Labor Relations Board, composed exclusively of members
appointed by the Secretary.
Why do the proposed regulations gut the ability of the FLRA, an
independent arbiter with decades of experience, to make these
decisions? At a minimum, why can't employee representatives' have a
role in appointing members of this ``in-house'' DHS Board?
Answer:
DHS believes that an independent Homeland Security Labor Relations
Board dedicated to adjudicating DHS cases will provide a needed mission
focus and homeland security expertise to dispute resolution. In
addition, having a single Board oversee a unified dispute resolution
process will promote more efficient and effective decision making. It
should be noted that the regulations do propose that the FLRA continue
to oversee representation elections and retain its jurisdiction over
the handling of unfair labor practice charges concerning the rights and
obligations of individual employees.
While the proposed regulations require that the Secretary appoint
the Board members, the regulations are silent on how candidates and
potential candidates might receive consideration. We plan to consider
different ways to accomplish this while at the same time recognizing
that Board independence is critical.
11. The proposed regulations create the establishment of two new
entities, the DHS Labor Relations Board and an internal DHS panel to
consider appeals involving mandatory removal offenses. Yet, in the
proposed regulations, it is clear that the department is uncertain as
to what type of judicial review will be available from decisions of
these new groups.
Can you please describe to the committee what type of judicial
review the department envisions?
Answer:
The Department supports providing its employees with an opportunity
for judicial review of certain agency actions. As the proposed
regulations state however, OPM and DHS lack the statutory authority to
confer jurisdiction to hear appeals in the U.S. courts of appeals or
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The proposed
regulations specifically sought public comment on this issue and we
hope to be able to identify a strategy for ensuring judicial review
similar to what employees currently have.
12. The new personnel regulations create a new pay for performance
system and pay banding for all DHS employees.
Has there ever been a study, report or private sector analysis on
how a pay for performance pay system would work in a law enforcement
setting where teamwork is essential?
Answer:
Performance management systems used to reward employees are not
inherently structured to focus on individual performance. Many such
systems require that employees exhibit such behaviors or skills as
ability to work within a team, efforts to foster team building and
interaction, etc. Such systems can provide rewards based on the
accomplishments of an organizational unit or a team. The design efforts
currently under way at the DHS are mindful of the critical need for
employees to work together in teams particularly in the law enforcement
arena. Thus, the performance management system that will be developed
and the pay for performance system associated with it will include the
kinds of elements that will foster this close working relationship,
while emphasizing individual achievement where this is appropriate,
e.g., in administrative support occupations, or scientific research.
13. In addition how will a supervisor be able to accurately assess
the performance of an employee who they might see only a few times a
year?
Answer:
The envisioned performance management system will allow managers
and employees to collaboratively plan performance objectives that are
linked to the Department of Homeland Security Strategic Plan. Several
things can be done to help a supervisor to accurately assess the
performance of an employee that the supervisor might see only a few
times each year, including visits to the remote worksite where the
employee is located. Supervisors will be required, based on the
language in the proposed regulations, to provide periodic feedback to
an employee on his or her actual performance as compared to the
supervisor's performance expectations, including one or more formal
interim performance reviews during each appraisal period (5 CFR
9701.407(b)); review of work products that an employee produces,
including activity reports, investigative case reports, and the like;
and, discussion of employee work with peers and customers. In addition,
an employee, under procedures being developed, will be asked to provide
input to the performance appraisal in order for the supervisor to have
as complete a picture of the employee's accomplishments as possible.
Questions for the Record from the Honorable Sheila Jackson-Lee
Transformation of DHS
14. What are the most pressing management challenges facing the
department, and what is currently being done to address them? What are
the key barriers you face in meeting these challenges?
Answer:
To develop our organization's capacity for change and to speed our
integration, there are several management challenges that are currently
being addressed through the office of the Under Secretary for
Management (OUSM). DHS has now reached the next level of sophistication
in its evolution as a Department. Achieving management efficiencies and
improvements, as envisioned by the Homeland Security Act, are a key
linchpin in the overall strategic effort to create one DHS and should
be coordinated by a cohesive organization to ensure maximum return on
investment.
We are blending 22 distinct agencies and bureaus, each with its
employees, mission, and culture, into a single, unified Department
whose mission is to secure the homeland. Simultaneous with that
harmonization and integration effort, we are devising new processes and
infrastructure to integrate the Departmental offices. primary focus in
OUSM is Business Transformation. We need to transform multiple legacy
business practices, and their legacy infrastructure, into harmonized or
single business practices across the enterprise. We have the
opportunity to build the 21st century department and that will be
accomplished by business transformations. Examples of enterprise-wide
transformations include eMerge 2 (Electronically Managing
enterprise resources for government effectiveness and efficiency);
MAXHR (the unitary human capital management system) and, the
Homeland Secure Data Network (HSDN) (secure communications backbone for
not only the DHS enterprise but also secure communications with all
federal, state, local and tribal Homeland Security stakeholders.
Integrating our actions and making DHS a cohesive, capable and service-
oriented organization whose cross-cutting functions are optimized to
protect our nation against threats and effectively respond to disasters
is one of our Guiding Principles in the DHS Strategic Plan.
These programs are currently being executed with varying degrees of
management integration and consistency across lines of business,
including formal risk assessment, integrated timelines and cohesive
measurement activities. We continue to aggressively solve immediate and
real business gaps while at the same time, defining and implementing
new business operations and building Department wide infrastructures
and processes. As a result, we require a formalized and systematic
approach for defining, chartering, supporting, synchronizing, and
measuring change programs for the foreseeable future.
15. Does DHS have an overall plan or strategy to integrate the
department, with implementation goals and a timeline, and has it
dedicated a senior leadership team to lead and manage the integration
and transformation process?
Answer:
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was established to bring
together various federal organizations with homeland security functions
and to ensure the integration of their operations to achieve the
Department's common mission of leading the unified effort to protect
America. Since its inception in March 2003, DHS has continued to work
towards the comprehensive integration of the original 22 agencies that
were combined to create the Department. The creation of functional
directorates and the restructuring of legacy organizations is the
foundation for this integration. The Department's Strategic Plan and
the seven key priorities identified for the second year serve as the
unifying core of our continuing commitment to coordinate and integrate
the missions of our five directorates and three distinct reporting
agencies. The Secretary's key priorities includes specific actions that
the Department is committed to achieve by March 1, 2005, and lay the
foundation for longer-term federal, state, and local integrated
initiatives that significantly enhance homeland security capabilities
throughout the nation.
In December of 2003, the Secretary created an integration staff
that would help the Department achieve seamless mission and operational
planning across the five directorates and three distinct reporting
agencies. The Headquarters Operational Integration Staff (I-STAFF) was
formed to assist the Department's Leadership Team in coordinating and
integrating department programs and missions at the headquarters level,
as well as vertically at the regional level. The I-STAFF is also
charged with the planning and implementation of a unified DHS regional
structure.
16. How is DHS balancing its efforts to integrate the department
with ensuring the continued delivery of services of its legacy
agencies? How is DHS ensuring the balance between its homeland and non-
homeland security missions?
Answer:
The continued integration of Department programs enhances the
delivery of services to external stakeholders by building a cohesive
and coordinated Department-wide operational mission that supports our
goal of leading the unified effort to protect America. The five
programmatic directorates and three distinct reporting agencies are
charged with coordinating a broad spectrum of homeland security
missions which include securing borders and transportation systems,
maritime security, responding to and recovering from all-hazards
incidents, critical infrastructure protection, information analysis,
and scientific research and development. The I-STAFF ensures that these
homeland security missions are coordinated and integrated horizontally
across all DHS headquarters directorates and distinct reporting
agencies, and that integrated departmental efforts are conducted at the
field and regional level. In addition, the I-STAFF is helping to build
Department-wide capabilities by ensuring the seamless integration of
threat monitoring and operational response activities; formalizing the
processes and protocols to enable executive decision-making during
periods of heightened alert; establishing a process for headquarters
and regional participation in the National Homeland Security Training
and Exercise Program; and developing a comprehensive regional
implementation plan that facilitates the Department's transformation
toward a fully-functioning DHS regional structure.
While homeland security missions are the critical priority for the
Department, non-homeland security missions are an integral part of the
Department's efforts to support the National Strategy for Homeland
Security.
17. GAO has noted that one option could be adopting the Chief
Operating Officer concept to elevate and integrate key management and
transformation efforts, and to institutionalize accountability for
achieving these changes. Has DHS considered implementing such a
position?
Answer:
The Director of the I-STAFF is charged with leading the effort to
integrate cross-directorate strategic, operational and contingency
planning; providing synchronized support for operational response and
crisis decision making; managing national homeland security education,
training and exercise programs and leading the development,
implementation and oversight of the DHS regional structure. Through the
implementation of I-STAFF programs and initiatives, the I-STAFF
Director establishes the mechanisms and protocols that ensure that
programs and operations are integrated into a cohesive Department-wide
operational vision that supports the unified DHS mission. The I-STAFF
Director reports directly to the Secretary of DHS.
18. Have DHS's employees and other interested parties been involved
and engaged in developing the department's integration and
transformation strategy? How has this strategy been communicated to
DHS's employees and to other interested parties?
Answer:
DHS employees from every directorate and distinct agency have
played an integral role in realizing the Department's promise to
achieve seamless mission planning and execution in helping to achieve
the ultimate goals of preventing and deterring terrorist attacks and
protecting and responding to threats and hazards to the nation. The I-
STAFF alone is composed of approximately 50 DHS staff detailed from
every directorate, agency and office within the Department. As
representatives of their respective directorates, agencies and offices,
these individuals form the nucleus of an integrating and coordinating
staff that promotes interdepartmental and interagency initiatives that
enhance homeland security missions throughout the nation. In addition,
DHS employees within the field and regional offices have formed local
coordination networks that integrate varying operational missions
within specific cities and regions to ensure the effective and
efficient delivery of homeland security services to our external
stakeholders.
DHS employees are kept informed of transformation and integration
initiatives through a number of communications methods including
memoranda from the Secretary, directives and guidance from Under
Secretaries and agency heads, weekly newsletters, informational e-mails
and the DHS web site.
19. DHS recently released a strategic plan that sets forth goals
and broad objectives for the Department. How is this plan being
integrated into the Department's planning processes and operations to
make achievement of these goals a reality?
Answer:
The Department has prepared a Future Years Homeland Security
Program (FYHSP)--a five-year resource plan that reflects the vision of
how we intend to preserve our freedoms, protect America, and secure our
homeland. The Department's strategic plan is the basis for the FYHSP.
This FYHSP will ensure the Department takes a strategic approach to
budgeting and a long-term view in developing the Department of Homeland
Security program priorities and operational strategies. As a planning
document, the FYSHP is the culmination of efforts to examine
departmental priorities and the five-year ramifications of program and
budget decisions. Our strategic plan is the roadmap for the Department
and provides the cornerstone of the FYHSP. This year's FYSHP reports
how our five-year budget links directly to our strategic goals. The
Department will review priorities and plans yearly with a long-term
view of where we want to go and the best way to get there and adjust
subsequent FYHSPs accordingly.
Great strides have been made in instituting a comprehensive and
cyclic planning, programming, and budgeting system to align the
Department' five-year resource requirements with strategic goals in
light of competing programmatic priorities and limited resources.
However, the Department is continuing to further assess and refine
programs and activities and their potential impact on upcoming budget
requests.
To support development of the FYHSP, the Department implemented a
comprehensive Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS). The
PPBS is a strategic decision-making process. It links strategic
direction in light of threat assessments and resource constraints to
the thousands of detailed readiness actions needed to meet the missions
of the Department of Homeland Security.
In addition, the Performance Budget Overview (PBO), the annual
performance plan sent to Congress with the President' Budget, is
organized by strategic plan goals. The fiscal year 2004 PBO shows how
each program supports DHS goals, as well as program performance goals
and measures. Throughout the year, progress is monitored by a Quarterly
Performance Report, again organized by strategic goals and objectives.
Each program reports on its key performance measures, with a
consolidated report provided to senior leadership for review and
assessment of progress in meeting our FYHSP and strategic plans.
20. The department has experience significant turnover among the
senior executive ranks in key positions. Since DHS opened its doors,
divisional CIOs have turned over at a rate of 45 percent. How is DHS
ensuring that continuity of leadership remains intact during this
critical period of transformation?
Answer:
Our current executive recruiting strategy continue to attract
highly qualified and diverse applicants. Leadership positions are
filled quickly. DHS has also established a workforce planning process
that helps us identify potential occupational gaps in our key
leadership positions. We have created a One DHS leadership model to
ensure that our leadership pipeline is prepared when future leadership
positions become available. We are also at the beginning stages of
designing and developing a One DHS Leadership curriculum and a One DHS
Senior Executive Service Candidate Development Program. Assisting with
retaining key leaders is our new pay and performance system for Senior
Executive Services members. Pay will be based on individual performance
and/or contribution to the agency's performance. The Department will be
able to ensure that those senior executives demonstrating the highest
levels of individual performance will be rewarded appropriately. Once
the Department receives certification from OPM, the pay cap will also
be raised to the Executive II level which will be an incentive for the
senior leadership.
Financial Systems
22. In March of this year, DHS announced a hiring freeze at two of
its frontline units, CBP and ICE because accounting staff were
uncertain if a potential $1.2 billion budget shortfall was real or an
accounting glitch. DHS reportedly has three different pay systems that
do not use the same budgeting principles and budget codes. What is the
department doing to better integrate its financial systems to ensure
that such an incident is not repeated?
Answer:
Staff from the Department's Office of the Chief Financial Officer
(CFO), Border and Transportation Security (BTS) Directorate, and the
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) have briefed your
staff on the circumstances and facts surrounding the alleged $1.2
billion shortfall as reported by The Wall Street Journal. The
Department also established a review team composed of staff from the
CFO's Office, BTS, USCIS, and the U.S. Coast Guard to assess the
situation. The review team engaged in a detailed budget reconciliation
effort between the three bureaus. The team examined the allocation of
resources and services throughout the three bureaus, and this effort
resulted in an immediate internal realignment of $212 million. A
subsequent internal realignment of approximately $270 million is
possible, pending additional discussions and coordination on the final
documentation and billing. There is no $1.2 billion shortfall as
reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The Congress has recognized that funds may need to be realigned
between ICE, CBP, and USCIS. In the Joint Explanatory Statement (H.
Rpt. 108-280) accompanying the Department of Homeland Security
Appropriations Act 2004 (Pub. L. 108-90), the Congress recognized that
the budgetary resources may need to be realigned. Specifically, the
Congress noted: ``The conferees are aware that the Department is
conducting a comprehensive review of administrative and other mission
responsibilities, particularly as they affect ICE and other agencies
that have inherited multiple legacy missions. While funding provided by
this conference agreement is based on the best possible information
available, the conferees understand there may be a need to adjust
funding to conform to the decisions resulting from the review.'' A
similar statement was included under the heading discussing CBP.
While unrelated to the budget review discussed above, when DHS was
established just over one year ago, it blended 22 distinct agencies and
bureaus inheriting a myriad of redundant management functions,
processes, and systems: for example, 40 general ledgers, 30 different
procurement processes, and 20 different approaches to managing travel
costs. In fiscal year 2005 DHS will implement the new finance/
accounting/budget resource management system, eMerge2
(Electronically Managing Enterprise Resources for Government Efficiency
and Effectiveness), that will transform disparate business and
financial management systems into one, uniform, electronic solution for
the Department. It will support a ``one environment'' model with common
core processes that is critical to the success of DHS. eMerge2
will provide decision-makers with critical business, budget,
accounting, procurement, grants, assets, and travel information in near
``real time;'' and eliminate stovepipes between components.
The Department is committed to the security of the nation and we
will continue to work towards successful operation of the three
bureaus--CBP, USCIS, and ICE. To that end, we will continue to work
with the Congress, to ensure that funds are aligned to mission
objectives and are consistent with congressional intent.
23. What is the implementation milestone for the ``eMerge'' system
and are there factors impeding its development and implementation?
Specifically, how will DHS use the $56 million requested for fiscal
year 2005?
Answer:
eMerge\2\ has a planned implementation strategy involving three
phases. The phases were designed around the unique needs of each of the
organizational entities making up DHS. The three phases are as follows:
o Phase I--Most in Need . . . . Building the Foundation;
targeted for implementation beginning Fall 2004
o Phase II--Improving Functional Integration . . . . Migrating
to Standards; targeted for implementation beginning Spring 2005
o Phase III--Providing for Uniqueness . . . . Unifying
Operations; targeted for implementation beginning Fall 2005
The solicitation will require a proposal for the solution and
specific implementation plans and timetables.
At this point, there are no significant impediments to development
and implementation, however the eMerge\2\ program does employ a risk
management effort and has identified several significant risks to which
the program is sensitive. A few of the more critical risks are:
o Budget--Obviously, any reduction in the current budget would
seriously impact the program.
o Infrastructure Readiness--eMerge\2\ is dependant upon the
readiness of the IT infrastructure to support implementation.
Any risks associated with IT infrastructure rollout ultimately
affect eMerge\2\ rollout.
o Stakeholder Resistance--Any large implementation project
always runs the risk of stakeholder resistance. eMerge\2\
therefore, is employing a comprehensive change management plan,
addressing issues through careful analysis, outreach, training
and interaction.
The eMerge\2\ budget for fiscal year 2005 will be applied to the
following areas: We will continue to refine the business requirements,
acquire and implement a solution, perform a gap analysis at each
implementation site, make preparation for data migration, and employ
portfolio analysis, communication and change management and program
administration.
24. The DHS/IG reports that in its first audit of the department's
financial statement, KPMG rendered a qualified opinion and cited
several internal control weaknesses for the financial systems. How is
DHS working to correct these problems?
Answer:
The Department's fiscal year 2003 Performance and Accountability
Report includes the auditor's report on internal control. The fiscal
year 2003 report presented a total of 14 weaknesses in internal
control, seven of which are considered material to the consolidated
financial statements. In response, the Department' CFO has required
each affected organization to develop detailed, measurable clean action
plans (CAP) to resolve and correct these weaknesses, including
weaknesses in information controls in its financial systems. Commencing
April, the CFO initiated monthly CAP meetings with each DHS
organization CFO to discuss the status of action and underlying
milestones to resolve these weaknesses. All CAP actions must be
sufficient to enable the auditors to complete their testing to the
extent necessary to render an independent report containing an opinion
on the consolidated financial statements, among other things, and a
report on internal controls by the accelerated due date of November 15,
2004. To date, Department organizations are making measurable progress
in addressing weaknesses specific to their organization. The
Department's CFO implemented an automated tracking system for use in
monitoring individual weaknesses in internal control at the
organization level. The CFO anticipates rolling this system out to the
organizations in the near future for their use in tracking organization
weaknesses in internal control that may not warrant tracking at the
Department level.
25. DHS is the largest federal agency that is currently not under
the Chief Financial Officer Act of 1990. In light of this, what steps
is the agency taking to ensure its compliance to appropriate laws and
guidelines governing federal financial management?
Answer:
The Department's CFO chairs the Department's CFO Council. The CFO
Council has a mission and agenda similar in scope with councils chaired
by CFOs at CFO Act agencies. The CFO Council is comprised of senior
management officials from each of the Department's directorates,
bureaus and offices. The council's primary purpose is to advocate
financial management across the Department, including compliance with
applicable laws and regulations. Within the CFO's organization, the
Director, Office of Financial Management, chairs the Department's
Financial Management Working Group. This group, which also serves as
the Department's Accounting and Auditing Committee, comprised of
Department managers responsible for federal financial management in the
Department, develops and promulgates Department-wide financial policy
and accounting standards in such areas as the Debt Collection
Improvement Act, the Federal Managers? Financial Improvement Act,
Improper Payments Information Act, among many others. The working group
also conducts special studies into all exposures drafts issued by
central agencies that impact the Department's financial management
operations. The working group supports the basic premise that financial
management is a responsibility shared by all offices.
Proposed Human Capital System
DHS is currently developing final regulations for a pay and
performance management system for employees. The President's fiscal
year 2005 budget requests $102.5 million for this effort. Under the
system, the GS grade and step configuration would be replaced with pay
bands, with performance-based pay increases, that will be applied to
newly-formed occupational ``clusters''. The proposed regulations would
also impose new requirements on collective bargaining and the
Department' handling of employees' adverse actions.
26. What is the status of issuing final regulations for the new
system and what key barriers confront the department as it moves toward
their adoption?
Answer:
The final regulations for the new DHS human resources system were
posted at the Federal Register on January 26, 2005.
While a number of challenges will confront DHS once the final
regulations are issued and the Department begins system development and
implementation, the main challenge is to complete training and
development of our managers and supervisors, who will be required to
make the critical day-to-day decisions.
27. How is the department ensuring that the rights of employees are
preserved under the new system and how are the views of the groups
representing DHS employees and the federal workforce being considered
in the process?
Answer:
The Homeland Security Act of 2002 requires DHS to adhere to merit
system principles and to avoid prohibited personnel practices.
Employee involvement has been a critical component to date and will
continue to be so. DHS has honored its commitment to a collaborative
process through communications to all stakeholders regarding the
design, development, and implementation of the new human resources
system. A formal meet and confer process with employee representatives,
as required by the Homeland Security Act, began in June and concluded
in August. It has been followed by continuing conversations with
employee representatives.. The Department is providing weekly
newsletters, and announcements on the DHS internet website. An email
address was created to solicit input from employees, and there have
been hundreds of questions and comments submitted.Sec.
Contract Management
The DHS/OIG has reported that a major challenge for the department
is the management and identification of procurements, with DHS
struggling to compile and maintain a detailed and accurate listing of
its contracts. The DHS/OIG has also reported that during its first year
of operation, the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) relied
extensively on contractors to accomplish its mission, but some
contracts were written without clearly defined deliverables, and TSA
lacked staff to provide adequate oversight.
28. What is the department doing to improve its procurement
operations, including merging in contracts from legacy agencies, to
ensure that it has appropriate control over this function?
Answer:
Many significant actions have been accomplished to date to improve
the overall operation of the Department' procurement function. These
include:
1. Issued the Homeland Security Acquisition Regulation (HSAR). The
HSAR supplements federal regulations and promulgates specific DHS
policies, procedures and delegations. This represents another major
step in combining cultures of disparate agencies and ensuring
consistent operation under a single, DHS-wide procurement regulation.
2. Established department-wide program for strategic sourcing and
supply chain management. Specifically, 16 cross-functional commodity
councils have been tasked to create sourcing strategies for goods and
services acquired throughout the Department. Councils govern a wide
range of requirements, from simple items such as office supplies, to
more sophisticated requirements, such as boats and their maintenance or
complex IT infrastructure needs.
3. Established a comprehensive Investment Review Process (IRP). The
IRP integrates planning, controls, budgeting, acquisition, and the
management of investments to ensure public resources are wisely
invested. The IRP is predicated on the principle that cross functional
teams are necessary for the proper program management throughout the
entire acquisition life-cycle. The Investment Review Board (IRB) that
manages this process is chaired by the Deputy Secretary.
4. Created a robust and innovative Small and Small Disadvantaged
Business outreach program. The program includes dependable guidance on
marketing to DHS while providing abundant opportunities for small
businesses to engage both federal government representatives and large
business concerns interested in their supplies or services.
5. Developed a strategic acquisition workforce career development
plan that addresses education, training and experience requirements for
the entire acquisition workforce as well as recruitment, retention,
intern and certification programs.
6. Finally, the Chief Procurement Officer is in the process of
developing a comprehensive oversight and compliance program to be used
in the assessment of all DHS acquisition functions. The program will be
multi-faceted and will include the use of the Government Accountability
Office framework, on-site reviews of our operational procurement
offices, and performance measure and metrics.
29. The Chief Procurement Officer (CPO) does not have direct line
authority over procurement operations for legacy agency components
inherited by DHS, and the office is experiencing staffing shortages.
How does the department plan to further empower the CPO and address its
resource problems for the procurement function?
Answer:
The CPO commissioned a study to determine the number of operational
contracting positions that are required to support the functions that
transferred into the Department without this support. We are currently
discussing this study with the affected organizations and working
quickly to finalize the numbers and begin immediate recruitment of the
necessary contracting professionals. These individuals will be placed
in the Office of Procurement Operations in DHS headquarters. This
office reports directly to the Chief Procurement Officer.
The remaining seven operational activities do not report directly
to the CPO; however, all contracting authority is granted through the
CPO and the CPO retains oversight responsibility for these
organizations. That said however, we are currently analyzing options to
determine the feasibility of creating a direct reporting relationship
to the CPO.
Information Technology
30. Do you worry that the Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a
sufficiently robust tool to drive needed IT integration within DHS in
light of the fact that, according to GAO, less than 10% of all federal
agencies with EAs have ever moved past writing EAs to actually
implementing plans with tangible products and projects?
Answer:
DHS is developing a business driven, ``actionable EA'' which
integrates traditional EA tools with portfolio/performance management
techniques to drive mission transformation projects. Mission
transformation guides where IT integration must occur to meet mission
requirements. These portfolios of projects will then be continuously
assessed for their likelihood of enabling the department to achieve its
strategic goals and objectives. Our EA work to date points to several
potential transformation programs. One example is an Enterprise
Services portfolio, which will be driven by the CIO to create ``One IT
Infrastructure'' for the department to integrate networks, email, data
centers, and operations centers. Another example is a Traveler
portfolio, which will be driven by the Under Secretary for Border and
Transportation Security to facilitate the lawful movement of people
across our borders and via our transportation systems and will focus on
screening and credentialing technology integration. Using EA in this
fashion has resulted in tangible products and projects for the
department.
31. Does the DHS Chief Information Officer have sufficient power to
drive IT integration within DHS they do not even have direct line
authority over divisional Chief Information Officers and all of the
systems and projects that they manage?
Answer:
The DHS CIO plays a key role in all levels of the department's
investment review process. The CIO serves as a member of the
department's Investment Review Board and, is the Chair of the
Enterprise Architecture Board. In these capacities, the CIO provides
input into and influence upon Department-wide IT Investment decisions.
The CIO has recently established the Infrastructure Transformation
Office, the goal of which is to transform the multiple IT
infrastructures within DHS and as required, to direct and manage the
change for all infrastructure assets and investments including people,
processes, and technologies. The CIO is initiating a process, similar
to that currently in process in the Infrastructure Transformation
Office, where projects are managed centrally, inlcuding the management
of IT assets, people, processes, practices, funding, and operations,
however those assets remain in their organization. For example, the ITO
is authorized to establish the necessary projects and organizational
elements required to create the One Network, One Infrastructure. This
includes driving and managing the change for all infrastructure assets
and investments; including people, processes, and technologies. The CIO
will leverage the use of Organizational Element staffs in additional
areas, such as enterprise architecture and network management, to
ensure accomplishment of department-wide IT goals and objectives.
In addition, the Department has issued a Management Directive that
deals with the functional integration of the IT functions within DHS.
This Management Directive (MD) establishes the Department of Homeland
Security' (DHS) vision and direction on the authorities and
responsibilities of the leadership of the Department' Chief Information
Officer. It reinforces our commitment to create a unified 21st century
department in both mission accomplishment and support systems
performance as quickly as possible. As such, this directive is the
principal document for leading, governing, integrating, and managing
the IT function throughout DHS.
The DHS Chief Information Officer (CIO), through the functional
integration concept, will be held accountable for designing the system
to optimize the IT function, setting the standards for functional
performance, creating the department-wide policies and processes,
providing the automated solutions to yield greater efficiencies, and
nurturing the development and success of centers of excellence.
Organizational Element heads will likewise be accountable to support
these progressive business functions as a key part of their commitment
to mission accomplishment.
32. According the DHS Inspector General's office, turnover among
divisional Chief Information officers has been 45 percent since DHS
opened. Can you help us understand why turnover has been so high, and
how DHS can make important progress on integrating IT systems when it
can not retain its top IT executives?
Answer:
DHS is facing, as are many other federal agencies, a ``graying'' of
the workforce. Many of the senior executives in the IT community are
either eligible to retire, or are within several years of being
eligible. These retirements will have a severe impact on the IT senior
leadership; this event highlights the importance of having succession
and career planning strategies to develop and retain the more junior
members of the workforce; it is that junior workforce who must be
equipped with the knowledge and skills to move into senior management
positions. To this end, the DHS CIO Council has identified as one of
its top priorities IT Human Capital. This initiative is focused on
identifying the current skills available within the DHS IT workforce,
and providing the training and development needed for IT employees to
move into senior leadership positions.
33. It is our understanding that DHS is falling short on a number
of basic technology projects that would improve DHS daily operations.
DHS has still not rationalized such basic systems for its own employees
in important administrative areas like accounting, acquisition,
procurement, grant management, asset management, and budgeting and
cost-accounting. What role did poor systems integration play in the
recent discovery of a $1.2 billion budget shortfall in DHS' Immigration
and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Immigrations Services
(CIS)?
Answer:
DHS recognizes the value and importance of integrated systems of
accounting, acquisition, procurement, grant management, asset
management, budgeting, and cost-accounting. When DHS was established in
March 2003, it blended 22 distinct agencies and bureaus inheriting a
myriad of redundant management functions, processes, and systems: for
example, 40 general ledgers, 30 different procurement processes, and 20
different approaches to managing travel costs. In FY-2005 DHS plans to
implement the new finance/accounting/budget resource management system,
eMerge2 (electronically Managing enterprise resources for
government efficiency and effectiveness.) This system will transform
disparate business and financial management systems into one, uniform,
electronic solution for the Department. It will support a ``one
environment'' model with common core processes that is critical to the
success of DHS. eMerge2 will provide decision-makers with
critical business, budget, accounting, procurement, grants, assets, and
travel information in near ``real time;'' and eliminate stovepipes
between components.
There never was a $1.2 billion shortfall in ICE. However, to
examine the budget situation, the Department of Homeland Security
established a review team composed of staff from the CFO's Office, BTS,
CBP, ICE, CIS, and the Coast Guard to assess this situation. The review
team engaged in a detailed budget reconciliation effort and examined
the allocation of resources and services throughout the bureaus.The
Congress has recognized that funds may need to be realigned between
ICE, CBP, and CIS. In the Joint Explanatory Statement (H. Rpt. 108-280)
accompanying the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act,
2004 (P.L. 108-90), the Congress recognized that the budgetary
resources may need to be realigned. Specifically, the Congress noted:
``The conferees are aware that the Department is conducting a
comprehensive review of administrative and other mission
responsibilities, particularly as they affect ICE and other agencies
that have inherited multiple legacy missions. While funding provided by
this conference agreement is based on the best possible information
available, the conferees understand there may be a need to adjust
funding to conform to the decisions resulting from the review.'' A
similar statement was included under the heading discussing CBP.
The Department is committed to the security of the nation and we
will continue to work towards successful operation of CBP, ICE and CIS.
To that end, we will continue to work with the Congress, to ensure that
funds are aligned to mission objectives and are consistent with
congressional intent.
34. Help us understand what you have done and are doing to rectify
the following problems. It seems hard to believe, but DHS may not even
know how many employees it has at any given time. In September, 2003,
DHS CIO Cooper was quoted as saying that, ``The Department keeps a
running hand-tallied list of its staff, with the total varying from
190,000 to 225,000 depending on which of the 22 component agencies 24
human resources systems are consulted.'' Furthermore, pay and personnel
systems still need to be integrated despite DHS promises to ``[merge]
the personnel and pay systems of all DHS component agencies into a
single system,'' and that, ``the new system was targeted for completion
by the end of the [2003].'' $102.5 million is requested for DHS
Departmental Operations to support the creation of new human-resources
systems. Nonetheless, DHS predicts that a central administrative system
``may be years away,'' and acknowledges that DHS officials are just
beginning to ``set the initial requirements for the merger project.''
Answer:
We are able to report the number of employees who work for DHS at
any given time; however at present this reporting requires assembling
information from 3 different payroll providers. At the time of its
standup, DHS components received payroll services from 8 different
payroll providers. Significant efforts during this past year have
resulted in the consolidation from 8 to 3 payroll providers--the
National Finance Center (NFC), the Department of Transportation (DOT),
and the General Services Administration (GSA). DHS intends to move to
one payroll provider, and the NFC has been identified as the target
end-state provider.
DHS employees serviced by GSA have been converted to NFC in August
2004, leaving only DOT payroll accounts to be migrated. Conversion of
DOT payroll services this fiscal year is not possible due to various
technical and schedule-related risks, but is planned for August 2005.
DOT provides service to TSA and Coast Guard. Until such time as a
consolidated database exists for reporting purposes, interim procedures
have been established to receive bi-weekly data feeds from DOT,
providing us with consolidated workforce information.
With respect to broader HR enterprise technology solutions, DHS
plans to partner with the OPM/OMB ``HR Line of Business'' initiative to
identify and deploy an integrated human resources system. The current
schedule for deployment includes a prototype in early fiscal year 2005,
with a rapid implementation during 2005-2006.
35. The President's budget request for fiscal year 2005 includes
$4.4 billion for information technology spending at the Department of
Homeland Security. Of that, $226 million is requested for ``Department-
wide Technology Investments'' for ``cross-cutting initiatives that help
the 22 pre-DHS components merge into one.'' Please provide detail on
the major components of that $226 million, and whether the CIO has
direct and authoritative control over those dollars.
Answer:
The CIO, through allocations to him, has direct control and is
responsible for executing the Department-wide IT Investment fund. In
fiscal year 2005, approximately $226 million was requested for the
Department-wide Information Technology Investments account, including
$100 million for Wireless activities, $31million for Security
Activities, and $95 million for Information Technology services. The
wireless funding is being used to replace legacy border components,
specifically to upgrade and/or replace older infrastructure components
and for the enablement of enhanced capability and broader coverage. The
wireless activities include funding for new investments in radio
infrastructure along the nation' borders; which continues an effort to
coordinate wireless initiatives and infrastructure across federal,
state, local, and tribal government.
A total of $31 million is being used for Security Activities, which
includes:
$10 million to support the Federal Watch List and Integration
program. fiscal year 05 activities include:
establishing operational system interfaces for DHS
organizations that receive data from the Terrorist Screening
Center for use in watch list operations;
completing the development of the To-Be model for
enhancing DHS processes that employ data from the terrorist
screening DB;
developing the plan to move to that To-Be environment;
and construction of plans for the use of biometrics in
terrorist screening
$21M to support the Homeland Security Information Technology and
Evaluation Program. fiscal year 05 activities include:
the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO)
partnering with the Office for Domestic Preparedness (ODP) in
managing the Homeland Security Information Technology
Evaluation Program (ITEP).
State Administrative Agencies (SAAs) will be
encouraged to submit candidate information technology
demonstration projects. The fiscal year 2005 ITEP projects will
build on those of fiscal year 2004 to further demonstrate novel
uses of existing, ``state-of-the-market'' information
technology to remove one or more significant barriers in
homeland security mission critical areas.
$95 million is being used for general information technology
investments.
$ 9 million is being used for Enterprise Architecture (EA) efforts
in order to:
develop, implement, and maintain a comprehensive and
integrated EA;
establish processes for maintaining and maturing the
EA;
develop a decision support methodology to select,
control, and evaluate DHS Information Technology (IT)
investments;
develop a detailed master plan for the alignment of IT
investments with the EA business and data model.
$4 million is being for our Enterprise Service Delivery Environment
(Portal Technologies) to:
support information sharing by integrating current
internal and external websites to be more customers focused;
enhance the core enterprise service delivery
environment.
$5M is being used to support the Department' Geospatial Activities,
which include:
collaborating with the Wireless Program Office on a
joint IT initiative. The GeoWireless Program initiative is
centered around three pilot projects designed to effect an
operational decision support capability utilizing interoperable
wireless and geospatial technologies. These projects include:
o Miami Situational Awareness--Combination of
geospatial and wireless technologies providing
situational awareness, strategic and tactical decision
support capabilities for the combined Miami Air and Sea
Port facilities. Enable delivery of and remote update
of decision support capability, and enable real time
situational awareness.
o ENFORCE Case Management System--Spatially enabling
the ENFORCE system, and leveraging wireless and
geospatial technologies to enable remote update and
access. Enable interoperable interaction with critical
decision support systems with a spatial and temporal
context.
o Geospatial Service Center--Create internet enabled
geospatial mapping and information services which
deliver critical information to remote service points,
and further extend services through wireless
technologies, to the field. Enable delivery of and
remote update of decision support services, and enable
real time situational awareness.
$56 million is being used to develop and integrate the Department'
financial management system (eMerge 2)
$21 million is being used to support the Department' Human Resources IT
Systems, which includes:
awarding a contract to support design, development,
and implementation of new HRIT system;
developing governance models, configuration management
processes and other program management processes
36. How is DHS addressing the following urgent IT--related problems
highlighted by the IG and in the press:
According to the Inspector General's office, ``the lack of an
agreed upon IT infrastructure'' prevents the Office of Information
Analysis's Risk Assessment Division from communicating ``with [state,
local, and private sector] partners inhibits the exchange of
information;''
According to the Inspector General's office, IAIP officials have
``expressed concerns that IAIP lacked connectivity to access sensitive
databases maintained at other federal agencies, thus hampering their
efforts to conduct business on a daily basis;'' and
According to Information Week, the office of the CIO has had
problems sending or receiving secure email.
Answer:
The CIO has recognized that in order to address the challenges
noted above, there was a need to create an organization which would
have full authority to transform the multiple IT infrastructures within
DHS and as required, directing and managing the change for all
infrastructure assets and investments including people, processes, and
technologies. The CIO established the Infrastructure Transformation
Office (ITO) with full time representation from the major
organizational elements with the responsibility to establish the
department' single IT infrastructure. The ITO Program, under the
direction of the CIO and with the advice of the DHS CIO Council is
responsible for program management and implementation of the DHS wide
``One Network, One Infrastructure.''
The objective of the Infrastructure Transformation Program is to
centralize management of IT assets, people, processes, practices,
funding, and operations in order to achieve improved IT Infrastructure
interoperability. The ITO is authorized to establish the necessary
projects and organizational elements required to create the One
Network, One Infrastructure. This includes driving and managing the
change for all infrastructure assets and investments; including people,
processes, and technologies.