[House Hearing, 109 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
HEARING ON IT ASSESSMENT: A TEN-YEAR VISION FOR TECHNOLOGY IN THE HOUSE
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HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON HOUSE ADMINISTRATION
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, SEPTEMBER 27, 2006
__________
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COMMITTEE ON HOUSE ADMINISTRATION
VERNON EHLERS, Michigan, Chairman
ROBERT W. NEY, Ohio JUANITA MILLENDER-McDONALD,
JOHN L. MICA, Florida California
CANDICE MILLER, Michigan Ranking Minority Member
JOHN T. DOOLITTLE, California ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania
THOMAS M. REYNOLDS, New York ZOE LOFGREN, California
Will Plaster, Staff Director
George Shevlin, Minority Staff Director
HEARING ON IT ASSESSMENT: A TEN-YEAR VISION FOR TECHNOLOGY IN THE HOUSE
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WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2006
House of Representatives,
Committee on House Administration,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:10 a.m., in room
1310, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Vernon J. Ehlers
(chairman of the committee) Presiding.
Present: Representatives Ehlers, Mica, Doolittle, Brady and
Lofgren.
Staff Present: Peter Sloan, Professional Staff Member; John
Clocker, Senior Manager for IT Strategy and Planning; Fred Hay,
General Counsel; George F. Shevlin, Minority Staff Director;
Charles Howell, Minority Chief Counsel; Sterling Spriggs,
Minority Technical Director; Stacey Leavandowsky; and Jared
Roscoe.
The Chairman. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. The
Committee on House Administration will come to order, and I
welcome you all here.
I would like to advise all of you to turn off your cell
phones, pagers, and other electronic equipment, as I have
already done, so that we will not have our business interrupted
this morning. Thank you.
Today's hearing is on the IT Assessment Initiative. IT, of
course, as everyone in this room knows, is information
technology, but our vast sea of listeners throughout the
building may not realize that, so I wanted to make that clear.
The Assessment Initiative outlines a 10-year vision for the
future years of technology in the House of Representatives.
This hearing will focus on several key business decisions
called To-Be Visions, which the House needs to agree upon
before implementing a strategic technology plan. We will talk
about specific technologies to implement these To-Be Visions at
a future hearing.
The issue of using technology to improve House operations
is not a new one. In 1995, as Chairman of the House Computer
and Information Services Working Group, I championed the Cyber
Congress Plan, commonly resulting in what is commonly referred
to as the Booster Report. As part of that effort, we created a
new standardized e-mail platform that would replace the 11
separate e-mail systems used across the House. As challenging a
task as it was, today we reap the benefits of being on a common
e-mail platform as well as having other uniform software
choices that allow for enhanced collaboration and improved
technical support.
And just talking about that, information technology churned
through my mind because I recall the incredible task we had at
that time. Now it is impossible for us to realize today, but
back then, as you know, the House operated as a fiefdom, 435
individual operations, each selecting its own computer, each
selecting its own software, none of which talked to each other.
And I was astounded when I got here and found it was easier to
send an e-mail to Timbuktu than to send it 20 feet down the
hall to a colleague. And that is why I was given the thankless
job of trying to reform it. I am pleased that it all worked
out, even though you would not believe the recriminations and
criticisms I had to deal with at that time. I think it will be
smoother this time.
It is my hope that the findings we will examine today and
over the next few weeks may reveal a similar opportunity to
invest in the future of the House through the use of
technology.
On our first panel today, we are pleased to have Kathy
Goldschmidt of the Congressional Management Foundation, and
Larry Bradley from Gartner Consulting, who will discuss the
results of the study. They were heavily involved in the study
from beginning to end.
These findings are the product of extensive research with
key stakeholders, including detailed interviews of 128 Members,
managers and staff throughout the House and the legislative
branch.
The interviews that the CMF and Gartner team conducted were
designed to capture the challenges that House staff face each
day, the impact of technology on their work, and what
improvements we can make in our systems and processes to help
House employees do their job better.
As any researcher will tell you, any theory, no matter how
well formed, must be tempered with the challenges and
complications of real life situations in order to paint an
accurate picture of their true effect. To provide this
additional practical context, our second panel will consist of
several experts on the administration and operations of the
House.
Jim Cornell, House Inspector General, will discuss the
potential impact on the failure to embrace technology on the
future operations of the House. Bill Livingood, the House
Sergeant at Arms, will discuss the convergence of IT security
and physical security and the implications for IT planning and
decision making.
Karen Haas, Clerk of the House, will describe previous
efforts to implement new technology into existing processes
within the legislative process and the Office of the Clerk.
Pope Barrow, House Legislative Counsel, will provide
insight into the challenges of drafting legislative language
and how technology could improve that process.
And finally, Jay Eagen, Chief Administrative Officer of the
House, will provide a historical perspective on technology in
the House, our current state, and where we go from here.
And just reviewing this list of names reminds me of all the
interviews and meetings I had with your predecessors 11, 12
years ago, and some of the difficulties we encountered at that
time. We have a good team together this time, and I don't think
we will have those difficulties again.
I would also like to announce that at the conclusion of
this hearing the committee will make available all of the IT
assessment research and recommendations on an internal House
Web site,
http://it.house.gov. Furthermore, we are soliciting general
comments from any members of the committee or House staff
members on the contents of this study. All may submit your
comments at the above-mentioned Web site. The comment period
will run through January 2007 in order to provide the 110th
Congress freshmen an opportunity to participate.
I thank all of our witnesses for their presence here today,
and I look forward to receiving their testimony.
At this time, I would like to recognize Ms. Lofgren for any
opening remarks she may have.
Ms. Lofgren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to ask
unanimous consent to submit Ms. Juanita Millender-McDonald's
statement in the record. She could not be present here today.
The Chairman. Without objection, so ordered.
Ms. Lofgren. I don't have a formal opening statement. I did
have an opportunity to be briefed on this process as a
relatively new member of the committee. And I recall, as you
do, first arriving here and being a little bit stunned by the
technological situation. Certainly we have made great strides
and there is more to do. I look forward to hearing the
testimony.
I would note that for reasons I cannot fully understand,
since we are adjourning on Saturday, the Judiciary Committee is
in markup, and I may have to zip out for a vote or two, but I
would certainly not want to disturb the testimony. So proceed
if I have to do that for a minute or so. I will be back.
This is important stuff, no matter--we have issues, but
then we have the Congress itself, and to have the tools that we
need so that we are transparent and efficient is important. And
technology I think is the key to that. So I thank you, Mr.
Chairman, for recognizing me.
The Chairman. And I thank you for those comments.
It has been 10 years since the plan was implemented.
Ideally we should be doing this every 5 years, not every 10
years, and I hope that will be the pattern in the future.
I would like to welcome our first panel of the day. We have
with us Kathy Goldschmidt of the Congressional Management
Foundation, and Mr. Larry Bradley of Gartner Consulting.
Welcome to you both, and I am pleased to have you here.
And I hate to reminisce all the time, but you would be
amazed at some of the roadblocks I encountered. When we did the
first report, there were some objections raised on our
competence to do it. And someone who had no knowledge of
computers was asked to review it and came out with some
negative comments, at which point--I am very level minded, I
don't get excited too easily--I said I don't mind having my
work criticized, but it has to be by someone who is competent.
And so we agreed on Gartner Corporation to do the review of our
plan. And for an extra $10,000 we found that we were right. And
I have always had a warm spot for Gartner Corporation since
that time. We always like people who agree with us.
I am very pleased to welcome both of you, and please begin
with your testimony.
STATEMENTS OF KATHY GOLDSCHMIDT, CONGRESSIONAL MANAGEMENT
FOUNDATION; AND LARRY BRADLEY, GARTNER CONSULTING
STATEMENT OF KATHY GOLDSCHMIDT
Ms. Goldschmidt. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee,
thank you very much for having me here today to discuss the
House IT Assessment Project.
As you said, I am Kathy Goldschmidt. I am Deputy Director
of the Congressional Management Foundation. We are a
nonpartisan nonprofit that has been providing management
services to Congressional offices for almost 30 years.
The House IT Assessment Project was initiated by this
committee and the Chief Administrative Officer to develop a 10-
year vision and plan for technology in the House. To support
the project, the House engaged Gartner and the Congressional
Management Foundation.
Larry Bradley and I have brought our own expertise and the
considerable expertise of our organizations to this project. We
have also channeled the knowledge within the House to create a
roadmap for technology over the next decade.
Although technology is at the heart of this project, we
didn't spend the bulk of our time talking to technology
experts; instead, we spent most of our time talking to the
people who conduct the work of the House. We let the challenges
and opportunities they identified and the processes they use
guide us in identifying technology to help them, their offices,
and the institution become as effective and as efficient as
they want it to be.
We are conducting this project in five stages. First, we
did research to understand the current state of technology in
the House.
Second, we facilitated roundtables with members, officers
and senior managers to provisionally agree on a vision for the
House in the future.
Third, we conducted a gap analysis to identify the
difference between where the House currently is and where it
wants to be.
Fourth has been a working group with House officers to
discuss how major technology decisions are made now and how
they could be made in the future.
And finally, we are developing a high level strategy, a
roadmap to help guide the House in obtaining its vision.
I am going to spend the remainder of my time discussing
what we learned about the current state of technology in the
House, and Larry will address the vision and the next steps.
As Mr. Ehlers mentioned, to identify the current state we
interviewed 128 people, including Members, officers, senior
managers, professional and administrative staff, and technology
specialists. We also reviewed literature on technology and
operations in the House over the last 10 years. Through this
research, we identified some findings that have resonated
throughout this project, and we have categorized these as
forces for change and institutional challenges.
The forces for change are six factors that are exerting
pressure on the House to more quickly and thoroughly integrate
technology. The first force for change is the budget crunch,
which is placing pressure on the House to minimize costs.
Changing how technology is procured and used in the House is
one way to save money.
Second is the need for the House to be prepared for future
security crises in which technology will play a significant
role.
Third is the increasing comfort of new Members with
technology, since the businesses and State legislatures they
are coming from use technology significantly different from the
House.
Fourth are increasing demands by constituents and the press
for information, which technology can help meet.
Fifth is the continuing integration of technology into
society, which is placing pressure on all institutions to use
technology more effectively.
And finally, sixth, are the demands of the legislative
cycle which technology can help members and staff meet as
effectively as they would like to.
Despite these pressures for change, however, the House
faces challenges in its efforts to integrate technology. The
challenges are not the result of anything the House has been
doing wrong; rather, they stem from practices that have been in
place for decades, coming into conflict with modern
capabilities and demands. At this time in history traditional
operations throughout our society are being tested by modern
technologies, and all institutions are being forced to adapt.
The four factors that seem to be the greatest hurdles to
technology in the House now are: First, the lack of standard
legislative document formats and policies makes it difficult to
implement technology to increase sufficiency, enhance access,
or reduce the cost of producing legislative documents.
Second, the lack of House wide technology coordination
sometimes leads to conflicts, redundancies and higher costs
because offices often implement technology in a vacuum.
Third is the fact that the House operates disparate systems
throughout the institution, which prevents it from taking
advantage of economies of scale, shared support services and
enhanced capabilities provided by enterprise systems.
And fourth is the general lack of resources in House
offices. Although technology has placed all kinds of new
demands on Members and staff, their resources aren't keeping
pace with the demands.
The forces for change are exerting pressure on the House to
expand its use of technology and the challenges are exerting
resistance. For the House to adapt most effectively to the
demands of the Information Age, these challenges will need to
be directly addressed and overcome.
Through our current state research we laid a solid
foundation for the House IT Assessment Project. I am going to
leave it to Larry to discuss the vision of the future that the
House built on this foundation. I hope that together we will
provide you with not only a good idea of what we have done, but
also with an understanding of the positive impact this project
could have on Members, staff, and the institution in the years
to come.
Thank you, again, for having me here today.
[The statement of Ms. Goldschmidt follows:]
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The Chairman. Thank you. Mr. Bradley.
STATEMENT OF LARRY BRADLEY
Mr. Bradley. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank
you for giving us the opportunity to come here today and to
discuss the IT assessment with you.
My name is Larry Bradley, and I am an Associate Director
with Gartner Consulting. And Gartner is the leading IT research
and market analysis firm in the world. Along with Kathy, I have
been one of the primary analysts and authors of the IT
assessment.
I will spend my time today focusing on the visions for
technology in the House over the next decade and the next steps
for obtaining these visions.
Once we identified the current state of technology in the
House, we needed to define where the House wanted to go, where
it wanted to be in the future. To develop these visions, we
conducted a series of workshops with members, senior managers
from leadership, committees, Member offices, as well as House
officers, legislative branch officials and high level IT
executives and administrators. Through these workshops, we
developed a series of vision statements on which workshop
participants provisionally agreed. We grouped these statements
into five categories.
The first, for the legislative process, the participants
outlined a vision for greater electronic access to legislative
information and greater automation of legislative document
production. Their vision includes the ability for Members to
electronically access relevant documents in Chambers during
committee and floor debates. It also includes the ability for
Members to see in real time the changes that amendments are
making to bills and bills are making to public law.
Another component of their vision is more timely updates to
the U.S. Code, so that there is always an official version of
public law in order to draft new legislation.
They also identified the need to include electronic
documents in the official legislative record.
And finally, they envisioned timely searchable access by
Members and staff to all legislation before it is considered on
the House floor.
Second, for Member office operations, the participants
envision a future where Member offices spend less time and
money managing technology, but also realize significant
benefits. Under this vision the House will provide commodity
technologies, services and support to realize cost savings and
improve the level of service.
The vision also provides for staff in both Washington and
the district to have improved access to information, services
and technical support.
And finally, the participants envision the House providing
more services to help Member offices deal with constituent
demands.
The third area, for Members themselves, the participants
defined a vision where technology would provide Members with
more effective information access and improved communications
from wherever they are.
Then fourth, in order to achieve these visions, underlying
process and capabilities must exist to support the institution.
In this area of institutional operational support, the
participants identified a vision where there would be greater
coordination of major technology projects.
The House would also provide enhanced services,
capabilities and cost savings through greater centralization.
Under this vision, the House would assign jurisdiction for
technology planning to a single organization. This would help
provide a more explicit process for strategic technology
decision making, stakeholder involvement, and requirements
gathering from Members and staff.
The participants also envisioned involvement of Members in
technology decisions that have a significant impact on the
House.
And fifth, the participants discussed the role of
leadership in technology and decision making, and determined
that leadership should have a role in working with the House to
determine the direction of institutional technology adoption.
Throughout the process of developing these statements, the
participants acknowledged the challenges in attaining the
visions and the trade-offs that would have to be made.
The key point that emerged is that technology changes are
easier than the cultural and organizational changes. The House
would realize significant benefits by attaining the visions,
but because they touch on some well-established business
practices and cultural assumptions, the changes will require a
great deal more than just choosing and implementing new
technologies.
Our final task is to develop a strategic technology road
map, which we are currently in the process of doing. We will
lay out the critical components and milestones for achieving
the visions. The steps in this task include: First, providing a
more focused description of the House IT visions; second,
identifying critical technologies and supporting management
processes necessary to implement the vision; and third,
developing the final report and conducting briefings with House
stakeholders. This road map will provide the House with an IT
strategy that includes high level recommendations and direction
for achieving the visions over the next decade.
Once this project is complete, however, the House will
still have significant work to do over the next 10 years to
achieve the visions. The House will need to first vet and
approve the House IT strategy. This will require a business
case where benefits, risks and costs are thoroughly analyzed,
then socializing and communicating the strategy and its
benefits with key stakeholders and the House at large to win
support.
Second, once the strategy has been approved and vetted, the
House will then need to develop individual implementation plans
for specific pieces of the House IT strategy, and then the
House will be able to begin executing and implementing the
strategy.
Again, we thank you for the opportunity to brief you on the
House IT Assessment, and we now look forward to answering any
questions you may have for us.
[The statement of Mr. Bradley follows:]
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The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Let me begin with some questions. First one. In your
testimony--and I don't recall which of you said that or if it
is in the report--you discussed that no office or entity has
the authority or mandate to plan and coordinate technology
projects. Maybe I am partial to the committee, but I thought
the committee had that authority. Are you saying we don't have
that authority? And are you saying it because it is dispersed
or shared with three officers of the House, or is there some
other reason?
Mr. Bradley. Yes. When we were doing our research, one of
the things we identified is that although the Committee on
House Administration does have responsibility for a large
portion of the House, there are pieces of it that it doesn't
have responsibility for. And so there are other organizations,
the Rules Committee, for example, the Committee on
Appropriations that all have pieces or they all have
responsibility for some areas of strategic technology decision
making, and that there is no one office, no one organization
that has the ability to look across all the different pieces of
decision making. So where Appropriations has the view and most
of the finances, House Administration only has a limited view
for the areas that it has direct responsibility over.
The Chairman. All right. Is this clarified in your report
as to who has which authority?
Mr. Bradley. I don't know if we list all the different
components of which areas have authority over what pieces. One
of the parallel processes that we are working on is IT decision
making workshops, where we did go into more depth on who
actually has the ability to make decisions in which areas, and
that report will be released as well. In the current report
there is some information on that.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Ms. Goldschmidt, you have mentioned in your testimony
disparate systems. Could you explain what you mean by that?
Ms. Goldschmidt. Right now, as you mentioned in your
opening statement, IT was the case in 1995 when you did the
work, the previous work, there still are basically 448 or
more--actually, more with the committees and leadership offices
and institutional offices--different small businesses that make
their own decisions or largely make their own decisions about
technology. And so although there are House standards and there
are some policies to have similar systems, offices for the most
part get to make their own decisions about what technology,
hardware, software they buy, what equipment they use, and to
some degree how they use it, and so they are not always
compatible with one another. And it makes the support of these
systems more difficult and more expensive.
The Chairman. Well, that leads to another question. The
previous chairman of this committee had a key role in
technology in the Ohio legislature where they had adopted a
system whereby the computer stays with the office, when you
move from one office to another you move from one computer to
another. We are currently discussing something similar here. It
would save a huge amount of money in our moves every 2 years if
we could treat computers as we treat telephones; in other
words, they belong to the office. And frankly telephones are
now small computers, so the analogy is quite apt.
In your interviews and discussions with Members and staff,
was this broached at all? And furthermore, do you have any
recommendations on that proposal that we simply move the files
from one office to another, but not the computers, not the
telephones, not the file drawers, et cetera? Any comments?
Mr. Bradley. Sir, we did talk about sort of the ownership
of data and the ownership of computers and applications, and it
was something that there was concern about where people, you
know, store sensitive information on their work stations on
their desktops, and so one of the things that would need to be
done is to make sure that that information can be removed from
the desktop, and then the hard drive being wiped clean so that
the person is secure in knowing that their information is not
going to be exposed to somebody else. And so that is something
that, you know, would provide a great deal of benefit to the
institution if those work stations would stay so you didn't
have to move them. And there are ways of limiting how much work
it will take to move that information from one computer to
another, and to quickly wipe those machines clean and prepare
them for the next user.
The Chairman. Did you make any estimates of how much money
we would save?
Mr. Bradley. No, we did not. But one of the things we did
look at is that currently the House spends about 33 percent
more on supporting Member offices than similar organizations
that have similar, what we call complexity and size profile.
And so, you know, we do see that there is significant area for
improving the cost savings in the area of supporting Member
offices and their computers.
The Chairman. Thank you. My time is expired.
I recognize Ms. Lofgren for 5 minutes.
Ms. Lofgren. I am wondering if you have a concept on how we
can get more Member buy-in on this. In looking through the
reports, I notice that the Members who participated in the
interview were all Members of this committee, and there has
been an effort to outreach, but an unsuccessful effort.
As my colleagues know, the 435 of us, plus commissioners,
are an independent group and will pay attention when they feel
that their traditional prerogatives are being abrogated. So I
think this is not really a technology issue so much as a
sociological issue, how do we do the up front successful
integration with them. And I wonder if you have any suggestions
on that score.
Mr. Bradley. Sure. One of the things that we have developed
is the idea of what we call a Mobile Member Working Group. And
essentially what we would like to do is recruit technology
savvy Members who are interested in developing what the Member
of the future would look like.
One of the things that was discussed is that really if you
want to get Members' attention, you have to have other Members,
so it is sort of a network effect. If we can get a core group
of Members who are really interested in technology, in
developing this vision of what the Member of the future is
going to look like, they can begin working with the technology
implementers to develop this vision, to develop how they want
to be operating as Members. And then from there, they can act
as champions, they can act as the carriers of the message to
the other people, the other Members, and then slowly begin
building that.
The other thing is also that if you begin developing sort
of a more formalized IT decision making structure, then what
you will be able to do is you will be able to target Members
and provide them only the information that they need and the
decisions that they need to make so you can limit how much time
they need to spend either preparing or engaging and answering--
--
Ms. Lofgren. Well, our Members are all over the board.
There are some colleagues that are white-out-on-the-screen
people, and other people who could, you know, build a computer
from the parts you buy at Fry's and everything in between. So I
think we need a matrix that we don't share with anyone, because
none of us--and none of our colleagues wants to admit that they
are white-out-on-the-screen people, but whether it is the chief
of staff or the Member themselves doing the decision making.
I am wondering--and I am not making this proposal, but I
had a chance to go through some of this with the staff, which
was very helpful yesterday, and in the course of our discussion
we mentioned that this is a very large organization, the House
of Representatives, without a CIO. Do you think that that would
be something we should look at or not? And have you had a
chance to consider the pros and cons of that?
Mr. Bradley. Yes, we did take a look at that. And one of
the things, as we were going through and exploring how decision
making is made in the House, it seemed more appropriate to have
more of a steering committee or, you know, a council that made
decisions, because with the traditional organization of the
House, there are different organizations as we talked earlier,
like Appropriations, like Rules, who have specific
responsibility for areas in the House and the way the House
operates. So it actually seemed to be more appropriate to have,
you know, limited steering groups and limited councils of
people to make decisions collectively.
Ms. Lofgren. I will yield back, Mr. Chairman, I know that
time is short.
The Chairman. I yield to Mr. Mica for 5 minutes.
Mr. Mica. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Interesting. A couple of
things I don't know if you considered. One of the things when
you get to IT and use of technology is the sort of the loss of
documents, too. In the past--and I was talking with a librarian
of Congress some time ago, but in the past there has been a
great history compiled of Congress and the executive branch
through hard documents. I don't know if any thought has been
given to technology and how we retain some sort of the
legislative history and development. Drafts are wiped out with
a click of, you know, a button or a key, that we don't have the
history that we had before. Is this something you all looked
at--or a record of development of legislation and other
documents?
Ms. Goldschmidt. It is not something that we looked at in
depth, but it is an issue that we raised in our discussion of
the legislative process. The Library of Congress currently has
a project that is looking intensively at this as well. And so,
you know, what we suggested is that the House consider looking
at and working with the Library of Congress----
Mr. Mica. One of your concerns is that there weren't
standards. Probably great histories have already been lost as
we have become more reliant on computers and technology because
we don't have those hard drafts that we used to have, unless
somebody has printed a copy along the way. But it is just a
part of sort of a gap that is going--that started and will
continue. And maybe there should be some standards for
retention of some of this material.
And I noticed that again you have so many different
systems, and you cited that, everything sort of being developed
on itself. I was trying to buy just a--well, the acquisition of
technology is one that just blew my mind. Trying to buy a
laptop through the House of Representatives is a 30-day ordeal
that never ended. I couldn't find a standard--I couldn't find a
model, and then when you got it, the operational capabilities--
and I think that is repeated 435 times. That is just an
acquisition. Then there are other issues of interoperability
that haven't--I don't think have even been addressed with some
of the stand-alone equipment or equipment that is taken for
granted in the private sector. Is that also something you
found?
Mr. Bradley. You know, one of the things that we did look
at is that, you know, the House has made a couple attempts of
putting in some of these more centralized processes, these more
centralized capabilities. And generally what it has been is it
has sort of grown up from the bottom. So HIR or CAO, they come
up with a good idea, and they are trying to put this process in
place, capability in place, but because they are having to do
it in isolation, and you know, it has--there are a lot of
challenges in trying to get it to work correctly. And so as you
take sort of these half steps, it makes it difficult to really
develop a very efficient process and an efficient way of doing
it.
And so, you know, looking at what our findings say is that
there needs to be more of a sort of top down buy-in, more of
this institutional decision to put in these processes or put in
these capabilities, and that increases the chance of them being
more effective.
And so we did look at--when we talked to people in our
interviews, there was sort of this tension between, you know,
the attempts of the House to centralize things or to provide
shared services, but that it was never really something the
institution as a whole decided to do. It is generally one
office trying to do good, and without that coordination,
without working together, you know, the obstacles are just too
high for most of them.
Mr. Mica. Sometimes it just seems like we are spending a
lot of our time inventing and reinventing the wheel.
Maybe this hearing will help us find a better way. Thank
you.
The Chairman. The gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. Doolittle, do you have any questions?
Mr. Doolittle. No, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Just a few follow-ups. What comments did you
find about the availability of technical service, whether TSRs
or other means? I sense a lot of frustration in my colleagues
about the time it takes, so most of them hire a staff that has
at least one IT knowledgeable person of varying degrees of
competence to deal with the day by day, and some even hire
someone who is basically full time IT, and they fill their
other time with office duties. This strikes me as being an
inefficient way.
What did you hear and what is your opinion on that issue?
Ms. Goldschmidt. We heard comments to that effect, that
there is a lot of frustration. The way the House is structured,
their technical support right now, the offices do have or are
expected to have somebody in the office to do day-to-day
things. There is also the House TSRs, and then there are the
systems integrators, which are really to provide the bulk of
the technical support for an office.
And the frustration, the tension that we heard most was
that these are not always coordinated, not always on the same
page, and there is finger pointing among them. And this is one
of the issues that led to the conclusion or to the vision of a
more centralized technical provision. So it would include, you
know, commodity hardware and software as well as support being
provided by the House. And that would reduce the likelihood of,
you know, the dissatisfaction with different people saying
different things, doing different things, and not knowing who
is responsible for what. There would be one entity with well-
trained staff to provide technical support.
The Chairman. And that leads to my next question, which is
having, for example, a centralized server system. And that is
rife with political angst on the part of Members, which would
have to be dealt with. But I would be surprised if there is any
other organization of our size that has this many distributed
servers around, basically a server in every office, which adds
tremendously to the cost of the total system.
In your discussions with Members and others, did you find
receptivity to centralizing servers, taking them out of the
offices and ensuring their security to the satisfaction of the
Members, which is key. And I know when I computerized the
Michigan Senate, the only way I could sell this plan was to
have a bank of Republican servers and a bank of Democratic
servers, even though as you know they can exchange information
as easily as if they are in the next room or as if they are
next to each other. What did you encounter in this and what is
your recommendation?
Mr. Bradley. When we discussed it with Members and their
staff, there was a lot of concern about letting go of that
physical control. They feel like the server sitting on their
desk run by somebody that, you know, they can point to and say,
you know, you are responsible for this, it gives them a feeling
of comfort, and that there would be a fair amount of resistance
to letting go of that. But I don't think it is something that
is insurmountable. There are ways of ensuring that security and
ensuring the independence of the organization. One of the
concerns was if the--if HIR is appointed by the majority, then
the minority may have concerns about that. But using the
Inspector General, using a lot of modern management processes
and technologies, all of those concerns can be alleviated.
A major part of this, though, would be the communication
effort and educating people on the fact that really having that
server in your office, it drives up cost a great deal, and
actually reduces the security of the system rather than
improving it; that having that more centralized function can
give you the security and much better performance at a much
lower cost.
The Chairman. Thank you. And the last quick question. Did
you interview or talk to individuals in district offices about
their likes or dislikes with the system?
Ms. Goldschmidt. We did. And their primary concerns were
the speed and availability of their systems, and the
availability of information. They feel kind of--especially
those in districts that have significant time zones, Alaska,
Hawaii, the West Coast, where it is harder for them to just
pick up the phone and call the D.C. staff and get the
information that they need. And so they had significant
concerns about expanding information available to them so that
they could find information on their own, and improving the
speed of their systems.
The Chairman. All right. I can vouch for myself. When I use
the computer in my district office, I find it extremely
frustrating. And frankly, I use the computer in my home office
most of the time simply because it is faster working over the
Internet than working over a T-2 connection.
Thank you very much for your responses. This will conclude
the first panel, and I appreciate your participation and your
suggestions.
I next would like to ask the second panel to come forward.
We have with us Mr. Jim Cornell, House Inspector General;
the Honorable Wilson Livingood, Sergeant at Arms of the House;
the Honorable Karen Lehman Haas, Clerk of the House; Mr. Pope
Barrow, House Legislative Council; and the Honorable James
Eagen, Chief Administrative Officer of the House.
I would first recognize Mr. Cornell.
STATEMENTS OF JIM CORNELL, HOUSE INSPECTOR GENERAL; THE HON.
WILSON S. LIVINGOOD, SERGEANT AT ARMS OF THE HOUSE; THE HON.
KAREN LEHMAN HAAS, CLERK OF THE HOUSE; M. POPE BARROW, HOUSE
LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL; AND THE HON. JAMES M. EAGEN, CHIEF
ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICER OF THE HOUSE
STATEMENT OF JIM CORNELL
Mr. Cornell. Mr. Chairman, and Members of the committee, I
am pleased and honored to appear before you today in my
capacity as Inspector General of the House.
First I would like to commend the committee for the work
that has been initiated to increase the awareness of the
House's need for a comprehensive strategic IT planning process.
We endorse the Gartner IT assessment methodology and concur
with their reported findings.
We believe that the House would be well served in
considering the visions set forth in the Gartner report and
adopting the related recommendations. If fully implemented,
they would also address prior OIG audit recommendations. Our
past audit work demonstrates that strategic IT planning has
been a longstanding need here at the House.
Since 1995, my office has conducted five audits related to
this topic. In our June 2002 report, we stated that the House
did not have a plan to project its technology needs or to
develop an effective IT strategy. Our report concluded that
without a mandate, the House would never have an entity-wide
strategic IT plan that would serve the interests of the entire
House.
We provided three options for consideration; one, appoint a
House level nonpartisan Chief Information Officer; two, create
a House level IT Steering Committee; or three, delegate
centralized IT planning and management authority to an existing
House officer. The Gartner report, which points to a steering
committee approach built around key stakeholders and decision
makers, meets the intent of this recommendation.
It is important to note that industry best practices call
for effective strategic IT planning. The IT Governance
Institute, internationally recognized for setting standards and
performing research in information systems security and
assurance, developed the Control Objectives for Information and
Related Technology, commonly known as COBIT, as a framework for
assessing, managing and optimizing IT investments. This
framework consists of linking business goals to IT goals,
providing metrics and maturity models to measure their
achievement, and identifying the associated responsibilities of
business and IT process owners. The linking or strategic
alignment of IT resources with the organizational business
strategy is one of the five cornerstones of IT governance.
The Gartner report appropriately focuses on the need for
creating a vehicle for setting the strategic vision and
carrying out the technology planning process. Once this
decision-making vehicle is in place, we recommend that the
House consider the remaining areas identified in COBIT so as to
achieve the full intended benefit of IT governance--they are
value delivery, resource management, risk management and
performance measurement.
Looking forward, as the House implements its IT vision, my
organization stands ready to assist. Through our independent
reviews, we will provide assurance that the strategic IT
planning process is designed, implemented and sustained with
the appropriate controls to ensure confidentiality and security
for all House stakeholders. As we did with the House-wide
deployment of Active Directory, where we played a critical role
in evaluating and testing the Active Directory forest design
and the related alert system, the OIG will provide review
assistance dealing with deployment of the plan to mitigate the
overall risk to the House, and to ensure integrity and equity
in the process.
In closing, I would like to stress that the cost of not
implementing a coordinated House-wide strategic IT plan is
quite high. Without one, the House will continue to incur
increased unnecessary cost for its information technology
resources because it will be required to support multiple
platforms, maintain overlapping technologies, and will not
benefit from the economies of scale experienced by other
organizations similar in size.
Nonstreamlined operations and disjointed, incomplete
information could also cause a lack of responsiveness to
customers and unduly complicate the ability to secure our House
technology infrastructure. Case studies have shown these types
of failings often result in adverse publicity and decreased
stakeholder confidence in the organization.
In contrast to this scenario, a fully implemented,
coordinated House-wide strategic IT plan would provide Members
with an improved support structure and timelier access to
information, which in turn would better enable them to produce
quality legislation and make informed decisions.
Mr. Chairman, and Members of the committee, thank you again
for providing me this opportunity to share my thoughts with you
today, and for your interest and leadership in developing a
strategic IT plan for the House.
[The statement of Mr. Cornell follows:]
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The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Livingood.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. WILSON S. LIVINGOOD
Mr. Livingood. Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee,
I am honored to appear before you today to discuss the
Information Technology Assessment and ten-year vision for IT in
the House of Representatives.
I am here to provide you with my thoughts on the impact of
this 10-year vision as it relates to the functions of the
Office of the Sergeant at Arms.
My staff and I were active participants throughout the
study, providing input for the current state report through
interviews with personnel from Gartner and CMF. In addition, my
staff participated in the focus groups as part of the To-Be
Vision, and IT decision-making workshops. We found the study to
be thorough and complete. Gartner and CMF included all
pertinent offices within the House that support service
operations, and also acquired feedback from the many
stakeholders that participate in transmitting data through the
House.
The use of information technology within the Office of the
Sergeant at Arms is mainly focused on supporting the security
functions of the House. The production of identification
badges, distribution and inventory control of parking permits,
wireless communications inside and around the House Chamber,
and during special and emergency events are all areas that rely
on IT infrastructure for consistent and reliable operations.
There are a number of instances where centralizing and
standardizing the information technology functions and
equipment in the House could be useful to my office. As a
member of the U.S. Capitol Police Board, I have seen the impact
of information technology on the physical security systems of
the Capitol campus. The ability of autonomous systems to share
information is dependent on compatible hardware and software,
in addition to the proper information, security controls to
ensure the data is not compromised.
One example of this is communications during emergency
events, both among the office staff and with outside offices
and agencies, which relies on various forms of wireless
communications--from BlackBerry devices to two-way radios to
cellular devices. The ability to utilize these forms of
communication to notify Members of an emergency situation and
to provide accountability of Members during these events could
be more effectively implemented in a centralized IT environment
using systems that are interoperable.
Another area that could be beneficial to House operations
is the idea of a Federal identification badge. Currently, the
agencies of the executive branch of the government, pursuant to
the Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 are
implementing an identification badge that will be valid across
all agencies of the executive branch using digital
authentication.
Although current business processes in the House do not
provide an effective means of implementing all the requirements
of this directive, my office, in conjunction with the U.S.
Capitol Police, has been reviewing these standards to determine
if certain points or portions of the directive could be more
easily achieved should the IT process change.
Another area of interest I have been exploring is the use
of so-called SmartCards to blend the ideas of physical security
and access security. SmartCards are ID badges with computer
chips built in to store large amounts of data. These cards
could be used to provide access to secure areas of the Capitol
complex, and also as a means of authentication for House staff
to access their computer accounts and e-mail. To implement this
vision, however, the physical security access control systems
managed by the Capitol Police, the Active Directory
authentication system managed by HIR, and possibly the ID
badging system managed by my ID section would have to share
information across various platforms. Centralization and
standardization of information systems would be necessary to
implement a system such as this.
Mr. Chairman, I thank you for the opportunity to give you
my thoughts on this vision, and hope that we have been able to
share some insight into the effect and the need for
standardization and centralization of IT services in the House
of Representatives.
[The statement of Mr. Livingood follows:]
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The Chairman. Thank you.
Ms. Haas.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. KAREN LEHMAN HAAS
Ms. Haas. Thank you. Mr. Chairman and members of the
committee, I am pleased to appear before you today regarding
the 10-year technology vision for the House of Representatives.
I was introduced to this project shortly after becoming
Clerk late last year, but the Office of the Clerk has been
engaged in this project since its inception in 2004. Hopefully
my testimony will further our efforts to ensure the House of
Representatives proceeds along a path of greater efficiency.
Due to time constraints, Mr. Chairman, my brief comments
will focus on three examples of technology advancements and the
importance of a long-range plan to resolve outstanding policy
questions.
The Office of the Clerk has been a longtime active partner
in advancing technology in the House. Since the late 1990s we
have worked with the House Legislative Counsel in cooperation
with the Secretary of the Senate, the Library of Congress, and
GPO to implement a vision of this committee to bring
standardization to the creation and transfer of legislative
documents.
An agreement was reached to use extensible markup language
otherwise known as XML, for the exchange of legislative
documents. To date, customized XML based applications allow
House Counsel to draft 98 percent of bills, resolutions and
amendments in XML. This represents the cross-organizational
standardization of text that needs to occur in order to more
fully exploit the electronic dissemination of legislative text.
Ms. Haas. There is more work to be done before we reap the
full benefits of a fully electronic process for creation,
distribution and presentation of legislative documents. The
scope of the initial effort must be expanded to allow every
entity in the legislative process access to these tools.
Future plans should include the creation and exchange of
additional legislative documents in XML, committee reports,
hearings, House Calendars and journals. This is not a simple
endeavor and can only happen if the effort is part of a fully
coordinated plan that ensures that all parties are committed to
its success.
The second technology advancement is electronic
authentication of digital signatures. In between the issue of
standardization and access to data is the matter of the
official version. Currently, paper is regarded as the official
version for legislative documents. For example, although an
electronic version accompanies nearly 99 percent of introduced
bills, an original signed hard copy must be submitted on the
Floor of the House while in session in order for it to qualify.
While respecting the primacy of the printed version as the
official version, we must consider the importance of having a
means to associate the electronic version of legislation to the
printed official version that derives from it. This is critical
if Members and staff are going to be allowed access to reliable
electronic documents.
The solution to this problem lies in the area of electronic
authentication. We have deployed the first and only official
use of electronic authentication in the form of an outsourced
digital signature certificate for the filing of lobbying
disclosure forms. We would envision an agreement on an
electronic authentication standard, a mechanism suitable for
legislative and other documents, would be one of the critical
areas of concern for the House in the near future.
With regard to on-time availability of legislative
information in committee and the House Chamber settings, I
share the views of those who recognize that it is not just a
matter of deploying equipment and software, but rather it is a
fundamental policy issue of determining how our rules and
procedures would have to be changed to accommodate the
immediate access being discussed.
The third technology advancement is electronic filing for
lobbying disclosure. Since electronic filing became mandatory
in 2006, we have realized over an 80 percent on-time compliance
rate, with the filings becoming instantly accessible for public
viewing on our terminals at the Legislative Resource Center.
Under current law, the information that must be provided to
the Senate and House by a registered lobbyist is mandated, but
the process for filing is not. As you are aware, in the House
we require registrants to file electronically, while the Senate
does not. This has resulted in two entirely different computer
systems and databases that provide challenges to the filer,
challenges to the Office of the Secretary of the Senate and the
House Clerk, as well as additional expense.
These are only a few examples where coordinated policy
guidance and established procedures could help the efficiency
of our process, reduce costs, and benefit Members, staff and
the public as we strive to make accurate information available
as quickly as possible.
Mr. Chairman, in conclusion, I would liked to again thank
the Committee for the invitation to appear here today. The
Committee should be commended for the leadership you have shown
in moving the House forward technologically, while recognizing
many of the important challenges we must deal with as an
institution. I look forward to continuing the partnership that
has developed through this process and to further advancements
in the use of technology in the legislative process.
The Chairman. Thank you.
[The statement of Ms. Haas follows:]
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The Chairman. Mr. Barrow.
STATEMENT OF M. POPE BARROW
Mr. Barrow. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank
you for the opportunity to testify at this important hearing.
First let me briefly explain the functions and duties of
our office. The Office of the Legislative Counsel is the
legislative drafting service for the House. We provide
assistance in connection with virtually every bill, amendment,
and conference report produced by the House.
The office is nonpartisan and neutral as to issues of
legislative policy. We maintain strict confidentiality with
each client. We also provide some services ancillary to
drafting. One of these is the preparation of reported bills for
the committee in the format needed by the Clerk of the House
and the GPO. We also prepare a portion of each committee report
showing the changes made in existing law. This is known as the
Ramseyer.
We participated in the preparation of the Gartner Report,
and we concur by and large with the findings of the report. Our
operations are highly dependent upon information technology and
upon interaction with other House offices, especially the Clerk
of the House and the various House committees. Unfortunately,
when it comes to information technology, coordination has
fallen short.
Members and their staff often ask us questions relating to
our software systems. For example: Why does it take so much
longer now for your office to prepare drafts than in the recent
past? How can we edit your drafts with our software and send
them back to you for your review and further revision? Why are
you having so many problems producing Ramseyers for the
committees? Why did you stop giving committees up-to-date
versions of the laws in our jurisdiction?
These questions can only be answered if you understand the
limitations of the information technology that we and other
House offices rely on and how it is currently put in place.
Each House office involved in the legislative process,
including ours, to quote the Gartner Report, ``is independently
responsible for identifying, acquiring and supporting
technology to conduct its work with little coordination or
standardization of processes, formats and technologies.''
Let me first briefly describe the recent history of our
document composition software. We were using a very old,
essentially an obsolete, text-editing system. A few years ago
it began to break down completely. We needed to bring a new IT
solution on line. With no IT expertise of our own, when the
Clerk of the House offered to develop a new bill-editing
software for us as well as for the Clerk's own use, we
accepted.
The new software using XML, extensible markup language,
allows for instant publishing on the Web and offers other
opportunities for the Clerk's Office to function much more
efficiently. We now use the XML program for the composition and
editing of all legislative documents.
The cooperation between our office and the Clerk's Office
is an unusual example of two House institutions working
together to bring an IT solution on line. That is the good
news.
The flip side is that the software is designed best to fit
the Clerk's operation and is not ideal for our office. It is
also not well adapted for use by other House offices with which
we need to collaborate.
The developers were aware of this, but did not have the
authority or the budget to expand beyond the scope of the
Clerk's functions and our basic functions. An example may help.
Our clients often wish to revise draft legislative language
provided by our office and have that highlighted in text. This
is known as red-lining. But no Member staffs are working with
the XML editor, nor are many committee staffs. And even if they
did, they couldn't collaborate in this way because the program
does not provide this feature.
Another example: Members who have served in State
legislatures often ask why bills amending existing law do not
show the changes made in existing law. There are several
reasons. As I mentioned above, we do prepare a document, the
Ramseyer, showing these changes in connection with reported
bills. This is required by the House rules. We prepare this
manually. It is now more difficult than ever before because we
need to get our old software and the new XML software to work
together, and it is a tricky process.
The result is that our ability to provide these Ramseyers
to the committees on time has deteriorated. This failure has a
House-wide impact because a committee report without a Ramseyer
does not comply with the House rules. To consider the bill, the
rules have to be waived, and the waiver can sometimes be
controversial.
It would be possible with XML to automatically and almost
instantaneously show the effect of proposed bills on existing
law. State legislatures and other foreign legislatures already
do this. Within our office we are attempting to build a
solution on our own so that we can better meet the committee's
need for Ramseyers. However, even if we built it, we couldn't
deploy it throughout the entire House for use by Members and
committee staffs.
There is another reason why it is so difficult to depict
changes made in existing law, and it has nothing to do with
information technology. The reason is that we do not have an
accurate, current, and official version of existing Federal
law, as amended, on paper or in electronic form. Nor does
anyone else. To be positive Federal law, the kind you need for
legislative amendments, a U.S. Code title must be enacted as
such by Congress. Only 24 of the 50 titles, less than one-third
of the volume of Federal laws, is officially codified.
The effort to codify all Federal law in the United States
Code foundered many, many years ago, so most Federal law is not
part of codified positive law titles. The nonpositive law
titles are completely different in form and numbering and
cannot be used for legislative amendments. Members who have
served in State legislatures are used to having all State laws
in a single official State code easily available in printed or
electronic form on a current basis. That is not the case in the
House. So we are left with most Federal law in uncodified form.
There is no entity responsible anywhere for providing an
official amended version of these laws.
Our office, various universities, private businesses,
various other people, all cut and paste each new Public Law,
often many new Public Laws, into the original to provide a best
guess as to what the official amended law would look like. None
of these documents are official, and the degree of accuracy is
unknown. So that means that any document provided by anyone
showing changes made in the existing law would rely on an
unofficial, and possibly an inaccurate, base.
To draft amendments to these nonpositive laws, we need to
manually maintain the best current electronic database of them
that we can, albeit unofficial and possibly inaccurate. We used
to use this database to provide committees, upon their request,
compilations of the various laws in their jurisdiction. These
would be unofficial, but the committees often found them very
useful and printed them for their members and staff. Some
posted them on their Web sites.
We can no longer provide the committees with these
documents. Our database of Federal laws have become so
difficult to maintain, with part of it in XML and part being
done in the old software, that we are unable to continue
providing this service. I have been hearing some complaints
from a number of committees about this.
The solution to these problems really requires an overall
entity of some kind with responsibility for providing IT
solutions that work for all components of the House, including
our office, the Clerk's Office, the Members and the committees.
We endorse the conclusions of the Gartner Report
specifically regarding the fragmented feudal structure of IT
planning and implementation in the House with individual
compartmentalized silos of IT development leading to
inefficient business decisions. The ultimate solution, we feel,
will require the imprimatur of the Majority and Minority House
leadership.
Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you again
for the opportunity to present my perspective on the
information technology issues addressed by the Gartner Report,
and I am happy to try to answer any questions you may have.
The Chairman. Thank you very much for your accurate, but
depressing report. I came from a State legislature and had the
same questions. I finally came to the conclusion that the
present system was maintained to deliberately confuse new
Members, and no one has yet disproved that. Thank you for your
comments.
[The statement of Mr. Barrow follows:]
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Mr. Eagen, for the final word.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. JAMES M. EAGEN, CHIEF ADMINISTRATIVE
OFFICER OF THE HOUSE
Mr. Eagen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ms. Lofgren, Mr.
Doolittle. Thank you for your time, and I am very excited to be
here to participate in this hearing.
The CAO was very pleased to participate in the development
of the House IT assessment, and we are supportive of many of
the recommendations and observations in the report.
I would like to thank the committee for sponsoring the
initiative and for establishing the comment period that the
Chairman referenced in his opening statement. This approach is
consistent with the recommendations of the study to make House
IT decision-making more transparent.
I would also like to recognize Kathy Goldschmidt and Larry
Bradley for their work. They had an arduous job of listening to
128 different people give their take on the challenges of IT
decision-making and the state of our systems, and to compile
them in the manner they have has been very helpful and very
effective.
The Chairman has noted that he intends to have another
hearing on the more detailed aspects of the recommendations in
the study, so I would like to focus on what I consider to be
some high-level, important aspects of the study for the
committee's consideration.
First, the title of the study may give the wrong impression
that what we are doing is picking nifty technology bells and
whistles. It is not. The primary focus needs to be on business
processes. How does the House see its primary business
processes evolving in the next decade? And then and only then
how can technology be employed as an enabler of those evolving
business processes.
Many of the House's business processes today flow from
traditions and precedents established over the past two
centuries. As we look to the recommendation of the assessment,
it is important that we first consider our processes and
institution and how Members, staff, and the broader House
community, including the public, believe those processes may
need to evolve to better support the legislative process and
operations of the House.
The many innovations recommended in the 10-year road map
will require a coordinated and collective vision that includes
processes and procedures to improve decision-making with regard
to House information technology.
Second, when contemplating a new vision of House business
processes, it must be done with an eye to the future; not just
the next 10 years, but well beyond. When I consider the future
of the House of Representatives, I think of my son and the
rapid pace of change he will see in his lifetime. He is 8 years
old, and I think there is a very good chance that he will live
to see the year 2100. In the next century, technology will be
even more integrated into our daily living than it is today.
This will result in profound changes to the institution of
Congress, for its Members and for our American citizens.
We can expect an increased demand from constituents to have
access to their Representatives and their government on a real-
time basis. This will mean that notions mentioned in the House
IT assessment, such as mobile Members and expanded electronic
access to legislation and the legislative process, are
inevitable. Through technology, I fully expect that Members and
staff will be legislating anywhere, any time.
My point here is simple. If we ask ourselves, do we expect
technology to have a significant impact on the House by the
year 2100 within our young children's and grandchildren's
lifetimes, and the answer is yes, let's bring that same mind-
set to this study and begin that process now.
Third, and finally, when we consider the technology and its
impact upon our institution as fairly recent, we must look to
the future and consider how decision-making must mature to keep
pace with these changes, which leads me to what I believe is
the fundamental recommendation of the House IT assessment:
Improving IT decision-making.
We must recognize that while Congress has existed for over
two centuries, the use of technology as we define it today is
still in its infancy. I first arrived on Capitol Hill in the
early 1980s, about a quarter century ago, when we were still
using typewriters. There was no e-mail. There was no Internet.
House Information Services had only come into existence a few
years before. We then evolved to large word processors the size
of refrigerators, then to desktops and laptops, and most
recently to today's ubiquitous PDAs or BlackBerries.
Within the CAO we have already begun operating under an
inclusive and coordinated model with the development of our
Balanced Scorecard Strategic Plan, the CAO Technology Strategic
Plan, our Capital Investment Planning and Control Strategy, and
the establishment of our Portfolio Management Office. This
oversight in strategic planning allows us to look to the future
and align our resource planning accordingly.
We are also establishing these plans and oversight
procedures to ensure that once we have committed the resources
to delivering solutions, they are delivered as cost effectively
and efficiently as possible. Even with these efforts, we won't
achieve our grandest goals on behalf of the House because we
cannot reach them in isolation. We support establishing a
structure to coordinate institutional technology decisions in a
way that effectively involves stakeholders, leadership,
Members, committees, staff and technology experts throughout
the process.
Mr. Chairman, Members, the various volumes of the House IT
assessment contain a set of well-thought-out, high-level goals
for the institution, a myriad of specific technology solutions
and even a draft road map on how they may be carried out over
the next decade. Speaking for the employees of the CAO, we look
forward to working with the committee to deliver them. And I
will be happy to respond to any questions you may have.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
[The statement of Hon. Eagen follows:]
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The Chairman. And I thank all of you for your excellent
testimony. It is clear to me that there is much work to be
done, and a great deal of it rests with coordination among all
of you.
That raises another question, which, Ms. Haas, you referred
to in a sense in your work with the Senate. I recall that over
the years that has often been a stumbling block. At the same
time we have so much to gain from working more closely with
each other.
I just wanted to ask all of you, do you see any hope of
developing a much closer working relationship, perhaps using
combined resources, with the Senate, with regards to
information technology? Or do you think this is a bridge that
is too hard to cross or even build?
Ms. Haas. If I could speak to that first, Mr. Chairman, I
am optimistic. We are working with them currently within our
XML Working Group. They are participating, as you are aware.
But we are also working with them on another front, and we are
reaching out to the Secretary of the Senate when it comes to
electronic lobbying filing, and we have--they may be considered
baby steps at this point--but we are working very closely with
them, sharing information and supporting them, because we both
have a very important stake in this process.
And so at this point, I am very optimistic. We are still
very early on, but we have a lot of work to do.
The Chairman. Does anyone else wish to comment on that?
Mr. Eagen. I do, Mr. Chairman. I have three very tangible
practical examples of hope in this area. And I concur with
Karen's perspective that the chances are good that those
opportunities can be accomplished.
The first is as a practical example that traditionally the
telephone exchange, the telephone operators that have been
doing services for the House and the Senate have been organized
as a joint facility between the House and the Senate. It was
located on the Senate side, run by Senate managers, but the
House supplied half of the personnel. Over time we came to
recognize that this was an inefficient management structure,
that half the people were paid by one organization and so
forth, and through negotiations with the Senate, came up with
an arrangement where now they are all Senate employees, and the
House has a contract with the United States Senate to provide
telephone exchange services to both institutions. And as far as
I know, there has not been a single complaint. No one even
noticed.
The second example is that after the anthrax and 9/11
circumstances, we obviously had to do quite a bit of
reinvention of our mail systems here in the House, and part of
that was to add security features and make sure that the mail
was delivered safely. And the Senate is now contracting with
the House for some of its mail processing, packages
specifically. And so we are doing those House and Senate
packages together at one facility.
Finally, and probably the biggest example of success comes
with the institutions' alternative computer facility. After 9/
11 and anthrax, the institutions made a decision that we were
quite vulnerable with our redundancy systems, and we needed to
establish those kinds of capabilities at a remote location. We
could have done it independently and probably doubled and
tripled the cost. Instead, the House and Senate agreed to work
together to establish a central facility, and in the end the
Library of Congress, the Government Printing Office, the
Congressional Budget Office, the Capitol Police have all joined
us together to save costs and work together across those normal
invisible barriers that exist in the Capitol.
The Chairman. Thank you. I think each of you has a
different set of problems. We could have a meeting like this
every week to try to work through those. And in some respects I
think we need an IT czar for the House or perhaps eventually
for the Hill to try to work out all of these issues and
coordinate everything.
This has been a constant problem. In the previous
reorganization and planning, we had to work it all out. It took
endless amounts of time to meet the needs of every user, and
now we are facing precisely the same problem.
So let's tuck that in the back of our minds as perhaps
eventually an objective to develop a combined system. But the
immediacy of the problems that we face means that we have to
take action on a lot of things right now, too.
Mr. Livingood, you mentioned the IT and emergency services,
and, frankly, I have been very disappointed in the progress in
that area. For example, when we evacuated the building, I
personally received an all-clear on my BlackBerry after I was
back in the building. Now why didn't I wait for the official
all-clear? Because it came over television that there was an
all-clear in effect, so we all went back in the building. We
shouldn't have to depend on local TV stations.
Similarly, the event this past week with the deranged
person racing through the halls of the Capitol armed with a
pistol, I was shocked. I was in Michigan at the time. I got the
message that said, ``Please stay in your offices and lock the
door,'' and I discovered that message was sent out some time
after the perpetrator had been captured.
We have to have immediate notification of emergencies like
that. Do you see that possibility developing?
Mr. Livingood. Very definitely. We have the technology. In
those two instances--and we have been working on this, not only
the technology, but the human error. Those two instances that
you mentioned were basically human failure. And----
The Chairman. It seems to happen over and over and over
again.
Mr. Livingood. Well, it has happened at least in the last
6, 7 months several times, twice that I know of. And we have
taken steps as late as yesterday evening to try to remedy that
with the command center of the Capitol Police. And we are
taking action to increase--we have been told they would have a
communicator in there to run these systems. That was not quite
the case. That has not been the case.
So we have asked that they again rededicate someone on all
shifts that will be right at the equipment to immediately
transmit on the annunciators or whatever method we need to
transmit it on instructions to the staff, Members and visitors
in the buildings.
The Chairman. Thank you. My time has expired.
Ms. Lofgren you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Lofgren. Well, I think this is a very helpful hearing.
And, Mr. Eagen, as you were talking about when you first came
here, I was remembering when I first came here as a staffer
right out of college in 1970. And we had--it was precomputer.
We had what was then called a robotype machine, which was a
paper with little holes. It would break about every fifth
letter, and we would have to tape it together. And we would--
rather than get our copies of bills on line, because we did not
have a fully formed Internet, we would go over to the bill room
over to the first floor of the Capitol, and it was very quaint,
and you would have to physically get the bills. So we certainly
have made progress since then, but there is much more to do.
And as I listened, I mean, there are technical issues, but
I think really the more serious--the technical issues can be
solved. It is the policy issues that are going to be tougher to
do, because really what we are talking about is making this
whole thing more transparent to the public. You know, the
lobbying registration should be on line and searchable to the
public. You shouldn't have to come over to the Capitol to see
that.
As the legislative process proceeds, the public as well as
Members ought to see what is being discussed in draft form, and
that is not really the way we legislate today.
So I think that there are going to be some difficult policy
issues that are going to take some leadership within the House
through the House leadership and the committee structure. And
it is really a change of the way we do business in the House
that we are talking about. And I think that may be a hard
adjustment for some, but it will be welcomed by the public, and
it is really the way we ought to do the public's business.
I was going to ask about the Senate as well, but I think we
are not really completely all on the same page on our side of
the Hill yet either. We have a lot of work to do.
The one thing I did want to mention, you mentioned your 8-
year-old son. I have two children a little bit older than that,
and thinking back to 1906, 100 years ago, and hopefully our
children will be here to greet the next century, we have lost
so much. And I worry, and I know the Librarian is focused on
this, too, about the electronic records. They won't turn to
dust, they will--we will have no history. And there is a group
that is formed out in Silicon Valley to look at open standards
for documents so that we can make sure that we actually have
accessible to historians or our successors what it is we are
doing today and in 100 years or 200 years, because our Republic
will go on.
Have you had any interface with that broad group yet? And
if not, any of you, how might we help pull their energetic
efforts together with the government with the goal of
preservation?
Ms. Haas. I haven't had any dealings at this point with
this organization. I would love to get more information from
you. As was mentioned previously, there is an ongoing working-
group-type structure with the Library of Congress in
conjunction with the National Archives. So this is something
that is very active and ongoing, so if I could get that
information from you.
Ms. Lofgren. Maybe we ought to work it through the Library
if they are taking the lead.
Ms. Haas. Absolutely. I think that is an excellent idea.
Ms. Lofgren. Thank you very much.
And I guess the only other question I had was for Mr.
Barrow. You know, we stopped codifying a long time ago, and I
can't actually imagine that--I guess the Judiciary Committee
has the major role, but not the exclusive role--that the
committee which I have served on now for 12 years is actually
going to drop everything else and go into codification. That is
just not going to happen.
Do you think that the lack of codification is substantively
a deficit on a policy basis for our country? And if so, legally
could we form a commission to do the detail work? Obviously,
the Congress would have to adopt it, but a commission to really
move us forward on codification? Do you think that would be
worth doing?
Mr. Barrow. I am not sure what the solution is. The Law
Revision Counsel which currently is the institution in the
House that has the responsibility for the codification of
Federal laws. They do have the technical capability to do that
and have been doing so at a very slow pace, because there is no
constituency pushing for this. Like you, I can't see the
Judiciary Committee taking time off to do this from all the
things they are being pressed to do.
Additionally, when they codify a series of laws that are
currently uncodified, other committees have jurisdiction over
all those laws, and there is going to be some friction over the
actual language that is involved, because it is impossible to
recodify an uncodified title without changing something. The
numbering, the wording, and other things are going to be
changed and that makes people very nervous.
So it is a difficult process. They do every 3 or 4 years
manage to get another title codified, but it has been a very
slow process.
Ms. Lofgren. And we are getting farther behind.
Mr. Barrow. Yes, they are getting farther behind. I talked
to the Law Revision Counsel yesterday, and he feels that the
bulk of the uncodified laws is growing faster than they are
able to codify. This is relevant to the IT situation because we
can't provide electronic official documents if there is no
official document anywhere, electronic or paper. It becomes an
institutional impediment.
Ms. Lofgren. Thank you.
The Chairman. The gentlewoman's time has expired.
The Chair recognizes Mr. Doolittle for 5 minutes.
Mr. Doolittle. Thank you.
Just so I understand, Mr. Barrow, is one of the reasons we
don't have more codification that frequently laws are put under
appropriations bills? Does that have something to do with it,
and therefore they are, by definition, uncodified?
Mr. Barrow. No, I don't think that is the reason. The bulk
of our laws are amendments to these Public Laws, and there are
official copies of each Public Law. But when that Public Law,
no matter what committee it came from, is amended at this
point, there is no official version of the law, as amended,
that anyone has responsibility for maintaining unless it is
amendment of a codified U.S. Code title. In those cases, with
24 titles, we do have that.
We don't, however, have that on a current basis even now
because the Law Revision Counsel does not have the resources or
the manpower to be able to provide those documents at the time
we need to make amendments. It takes 18 months to 2 years to
get those documents from them.
Mr. Doolittle. Well, it sounds like we have been applying
the same approach in the past to our border security that we
apply to this. It is just not important enough to do? With
money, couldn't we solve the problem? It sounds like it.
Mr. Barrow. It would take more resources, but I think it
would also take some impetus from the leadership essentially
that this is an important thing to do.
Mr. Doolittle. This is the first time I have ever heard
that stuff is going on. It is interesting to hear it. I would
certainly--I mean, the State legislatures, it works just fine.
It is amazing that we can't do it here. Can we subcontract with
commercial services or something to have them do it?
Mr. Barrow. You could do that. The Law Revision Counsel has
the ability to do this. With additional resources, they, I am
sure, could do it. What happens, however, is they get a title
ready to be codified, and it may take 4 years or so or longer
even before anything happens politically. Sometimes it just
does not happen. And now they are down to the more difficult
titles where there is much more political controversy, so it is
even less likely to happen.
Mr. Doolittle. I am interested in this, but I have two or
three other areas that I want to ask about. So I will learn
more about it.
Mr. Eagen, for 5 years I have been trying to get--it turns
out they are called ``nodes,'' put around the campus so that we
have BlackBerry reception wherever we go, and we don't lose it
in HC-5 and other places, and that Verizon isn't having better
service than Cingular or any of the others. And every time I
ask over these 5 years, I am told, yeah, we are going to do
that. It is 6 months away.
So it is 5 years later, and I am wondering, and I am told
that 4 months ago my staff was assured that in 6 months from
then we would have these nodes in place. So we have 2 months
left. Are we going to have these things installed by Christmas?
Mr. Eagen. Actually all the House buildings are done and
have been done for about a year.
Mr. Doolittle. Awesome. They are done, but they are not
turned on?
Mr. Eagen. No. They are turned on, and all the carriers are
using the repeaters.
Mr. Doolittle. Are you intentionally blocking HC-5?
Mr. Eagen. I meant the House buildings. The Capitol is the
last--I was going to say something, and I held back
fortunately--the Capitol is the last location that needs to be
done, and, of course, the CVC will need to be done as well. We
have a contract in place to do that. There are some issues with
that contract at the moment, but our plan is to finish that
work, yes, and have it all be accessible.
The Capitol was held off as the last location for two
reasons. One is the sensitivity of the architecture, and that
putting those--they are repeaters, I think is the name that is
used in the industry, and the wiring that goes to those
repeaters is always more challenging in the Capitol. And
secondly then security sensitivity, and we had those same
challenges in the House office buildings that in locations
where there has been security-sensitive briefings or hearings
and those kinds of things, you have to handle those locations
in a different manner and plan them out more carefully so that
there could be positive disconnects and so forth established so
that penetrations through that technology don't have an adverse
effect on the content of the discussions.
Mr. Doolittle. When would you anticipate that the Capitol
will be up to speed in this area?
Mr. Eagen. I will have to get back to you Mr. Doolittle. I
don't have them at my fingertips, the planned completion date.
I do know that we have had recently a contractual issue that we
are working through right now that impacts that completion
date. So I will have to get back to you.
Mr. Doolittle. Would it be reasonable to believe that this
should be completed at the time the visitor center comes on
line?
Mr. Eagen. I know that we had established a contract and
agreement with the Senate as to how the visitor center would be
handled. I think, without having the completion dates at my
fingertips to give you with a valid assurance, I think, yes,
that is generally the plan. But I would want to get back to you
and confirm that before you hold me to it.
Mr. Doolittle. Well, please do. I am interested in having
that situation taken care of. Thank you.
The Chairman. The gentleman's time has expired. I
appreciated your questions, as I had some of those same
questions.
Just one final wrap-up.
Mr. Eagen, you discuss seat management, which is the term
that is used for what I talked earlier about, treating
computers like telephones. From your standpoint, and you would
bear the burden of setting this in place through your office
and HIR, do you see anything that would give us cause in trying
to pursue this, other than the political and perception
problems?
Mr. Eagen. I think it is definitely worth pursuing in the
House. We need to go into it with our eyes wide open. And
actually I thought Mr. Doolittle might ask about the subject,
because it is something that he has been equally interested in
in the past. And as a result of some of his inquiries, we
actually are doing a pilot with seat management and using CAO
as the pilot audience.
And so we have made a shift over where we have gone to a
contractor and have installed so far about two-thirds of our
organization on a seat management methodology. And to explain
seat management, there is a lot of different flavors of it, but
essentially it is taking the desktop that all of us use, or a
laptop for that matter, and treating it as kind of a commodity,
and that the hardware and potentially portions of the software
are centrally managed and centrally acquired and standardized.
In CAO, that is somewhat relatively easy to do. We do have
some places where we have some high end users where a standard
desktop configuration, either from the power of the machine or
the software, may need to be adapted.
In Member offices, though, or even committees for that
matter, it becomes a bit more of a challenge because
historically the operating principle here has been to give
offices full discretion and full choice. And therein lies the
trade-off. With standardization you have the potential for
economies of scale on the acquisition of the hardware. You have
opportunities for standardization of support because you are
going with certain desktop features. But it is certainly a
challenge to choice and discretion. And where does the House
want to be positioned?
I think there are prospects to do that, but it goes back to
business decision-making. Are we going to stay with as much
decentralization and as much choice as we have traditionally
offered Member offices, or are we willing to move somewhere to
the middle? I could see a seat management that offers perhaps
tiers of support.
You were mentioning the different kinds of Members that we
have around here with the White Out versus those that are high-
tech. Perhaps there are tiered levels of seat management
support depending on the office's business practices and
preferences. The more choice you have, the less
standardization, the more cost, but less customization as well.
So those are the trade-offs as I see it.
The Chairman. Yes, it is a difficult problem, and a decade
ago I went through this. Actually it is very difficult, as I
found out, to network 11,000 computers and do it properly. And
that is a very challenging technical problem. But I found the
political problems were much, much greater than the technical.
Mr. Eagen. Mr. Chairman, if I may, there is another aspect
to this that would certainly directly confront this committee,
and it would be the budgetary aspect. Right now through the
Members' representational allowance, most of the control over
the in-office technology decisions is vested with the Members.
And so if the House wanted to contemplate some kind of method
like this, that would be one of the hurdles to confront. One
option would be, well, you add more moneys perhaps into my
budget, and we do this centrally; but, of course, that adds
more money to the House budget, and we are in relatively
challenging budgetary times.
The other option would be to have a pooled share of
resources, and would the Members be willing to make
contributions from their accounts to something like that?
The Chairman. Well, there are technical problems, there are
budgetary problems, but the political problems outweigh it. At
least in my experience, having 435 system analysts in 435
offices, plus the committees, telling their boss that I am an
idiot because I was trying to do something that might cost them
their job; and their Member of Congress then would go to Newt
Gingrich and tell him I am an idiot. I fought a lot of
political battles to get what we got, and I gave up on the
centralized service system. That was an impossibility at that
time. I think it is a possibility now, but it will not be easy.
Mr. Eagen. Actually, you shouldn't give up hope. We are
moving in that direction.
The Chairman. Well, we already have it in one facility, and
so there is no reason not to have it in two. We need to
remember the budgetary issue, as it does save money for the
institution. So that is something we have to investigate.
Let's see, I was going respond to one comment you made, but
I have forgotten it. Do you have any further questions?
Ms. Lofgren. No, I just--obviously we are about to adjourn,
but I think this is a topic that we will revisit, and I am glad
that this will be posted not only for current Members, but
freshman Members to review. For the freshmen, this is something
I am sure that they have no idea what they are walking into.
But I think that if we could make some decisions in the early
next year time frame, that we will be making progress. And I
really appreciate the participation of all the witnesses. Very
helpful. Thank you.
The Chairman. I second that. And what is heartening about
this, every year we get new freshmen who are far more computer
literate than the people they are replacing in general.
I also just wanted to comment, Ms. Lofgren, on your issue
about preserving records. I was involved in the state of
Michigan in allowing all the county clerks to maintain their
records in electronic form, but no one had thought about long-
term preservation. I managed to get an amendment, which to my
knowledge is still working well, that they had to maintain the
algorithms and the software, and whenever there is a major
change, they had to change everything over to the new
algorithms and new software in order to maintain a permanent
record. That is troublesome, but it is important. Otherwise we
will lose the records in 5 years.
Ms. Lofgren. On that point, Mr. Ehlers, it is not just the
legislative branch, but we are really failing governmentwide on
that whole issue. We might be a leader in changing that.
The Chairman. Actually we are failing nationwide, not just
govermentwide.
Mr. Doolittle has another question and is recognized.
Mr. Doolittle. Well, I would just like to--I don't know if
you were hinting at this or not, Mr. Eagen, but now that Apple
has moved to the Intel chip, is that making all of this desired
harmony a little easier? Or is that just a tiny part of what
you are even talking about?
Mr. Eagen. It is really just a tiny part of it.
Mr. Doolittle. Well, okay. Thank you for your work, and
encourage you to make these things happen as quickly as
possible.
The Chairman. Now that you have two Macintosh aficionados
here, we assume that will be part of the next step in improving
information technology in the House of Representatives.
With that, I thank all the witnesses for their
participation. Speaking for myself, it has been extremely
beneficial to get a better handle on not only the issues, but
also the problems that each of you face. And it helps me to
recognize all the different things that have to be done. And it
has been very, very helpful to me, and we will continue to have
dialogues on this topic in the future, more frequently and in a
less formal setting than this.
Thank you all for your ideas and your participation. With
that, the meeting stands adjourned.
We have just a few wrap-up things. I ask unanimous consent
that Members and witnesses have 7 calendar days to submit
material for the record, including additional questions of the
witnesses, and for those statements and materials to be entered
in the appropriate place in the record.
Without objection, the material will be so entered. [The
information follows:]
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The Chairman. I ask unanimous consent that staff be
authorized to make technical and conforming changes on all
matters considered by the committee at today's hearing. Without
objection, so ordered.
Having completed our business for today and for this
hearing, the committee is hereby adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:51 a.m., the committee was adjourned.]