[House Hearing, 115 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
PRIORITIES OF THE HOUSE OFFICERS
AND LEGISLATIVE BRANCH
ENTITIES FOR FY 2018 AND BEYOND
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON HOUSE
ADMINISTRATION
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
FEBRUARY 6, 2017
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on House Administration
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available on the Internet:
www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/house/administration/index.html
________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
24-695 WASHINGTON : 2017
____________________________________________________________________
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office,
Internet:bookstore.gpo.gov. Phone:toll free (866)512-1800;DC area (202)512-1800
Fax:(202) 512-2104 Mail:Stop IDCC,Washington,DC 20402-001
Committee on House Administration
GREGG HARPER, Mississippi, Chairman
RODNEY DAVIS, Illinois, Vice ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania,
Chairman Ranking Member
BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia ZOE LOFGREN, California
MARK WALKER, North Carolina JAMIE RASKIN, Maryland
ADRIAN SMITH, Nebraska
BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia
PRIORITIES OF THE HOUSE OFFICERS AND LEGISLATIVE BRANCH ENTITIES FOR FY
2018 AND BEYOND
----------
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2017
House of Representatives,
Committee on House Administration,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 5:00 p.m., in Room
1310, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Gregg Harper
[Chairman of the Committee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Harper, Davis, Comstock, Walker,
Smith, Loudermilk, Brady, Lofgren, and Raskin.
Staff Present: Sean Moran, Staff Director; Kim Betz, Senior
Advisor; Cole Felder, Counsel; C. Maggie Moore, Legislative
Clerk; Erin McCracken, Communications Director; Rob Taggart,
Deputy Legislative Clerk/Oversight; Alex Attebery, Staff
Assistant; Katie Patru, Deputy Staff Director for Outreach and
Communications; Jamie Fleet, Minority Staff Director; Matt
Pinkus, Minority Senior Policy Advisor; Khalil Abboud, Minority
Chief Counsel; Eddie Flaherty, Minority Chief Clerk; Teri
Morgan, Minority Deputy Counsel; and Meredith Connor, Minority
Staff Assistant.
The Chairman. I now call to order the Committee on House
Administration for the purpose of starting today's hearing on
the operations and priorities of the House officers and
legislative branch entities. A quorum is present, so we may
proceed.
I would like to start off by thanking my colleagues and our
witnesses for your attendance today. I know how busy everyone
is, and we appreciate your flexibility and willingness to
appear this afternoon. I would also like to thank our witnesses
for their hard work and assistance during our New Member
Orientation, for their help in creating a very smooth
transition for Members and their staff into the 115th Congress,
and especially for the incredible amount of work that went into
securing and hosting the Presidential inauguration. We know
many months of preparation went into ensuring our government
carried out the sacred peaceful transition of power from one
administration to another.
2017 marks the Committee on House Administration's 70th
year of existence. We are holding this hearing earlier than
usual because I felt it was prudent that we as a Committee have
an opportunity to hear from each of you as we start this
Congress. We share a common goal of serving both the public and
our Members and staff. I believe that this Committee and your
agencies will only be successful in accomplishing that goal if
we work together. We want to know you priorities, needs, and
expectations for 2017 and 2018. We also want to hear from you
about any issues that are pending or may come up this Congress.
I look at this hearing as a way to put it all out on the table
so we can speak and have this discussion.
Each of you plays a unique and critical role in serving the
public as well as Members and staff. For example, the Architect
of the Capitol maintains the buildings and grounds across the
Capitol complex and Supreme Court so that we can conduct
business on behalf of the American people. The Library of
Congress is the collector and protector of the world's largest
assemblage of catalog books, photographs, films, maps, sheet
music, and more things than we can mention. The Government
Publishing Office is responsible for the collection,
production, distribution, and preservation of public
information for all three branches of government. The United
States Capitol Police is charged with keeping our Nation's
democracy safe. We must meet the demands of today. That
includes, among other things, protecting against ever-evolving
technologies.
Like many organizations, you have to protect your
infrastructures from those who wish us harm. Your agencies are
also forced to meet their missions in a very difficult budget
environment. This is when priorities become essential, as well
as using the resources allocated by Congress wisely.
Again, I look forward to hearing from you today, working
with you in the future, and I thank you for your appearance
before our Committee today.
I would now like to recognize my colleague and Ranking
Member, Mr. Brady, for the purpose of providing an opening
statement.
Mr. Brady.
[The statement of The Chairman follows:]
Mr. Brady. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for
holding this hearing.
I first would like to introduce our newest member of our
Committee, Congressman Jamie Raskin from Maryland. Congressman
Raskin has big shoes to fill succeeding my friend my friend
Chris Van Hollen, who moved over to the House of Lords down the
hall, otherwise known as the United States Senate. Jamie will
be a great asset to this Committee. During his decade in the
Maryland senate, he was a leader on campaign finance and
election reform issues.
And to our witnesses today, a word of caution: Jamie is a
local member. So he represents many of your employees. So I
expect him to be paying very close attention to how your
agencies run. So, welcome, Congressman Raskin.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you so much.
Mr. Brady. I would like to be brief because I want to hear
from our agencies. But I have four quick comments.
Chief, your team did an excellent job with the
inauguration, the Women's March, and all the activities
surrounding the start of the new Congress. Sean Gallagher did a
great job on Inauguration Day. So I want to make sure you knew
we were paying attention. Also, I want to personally thank you
for you coming into my city, the city of Philadelphia, and
making me proud. Your office did an excellent job under tough,
tough circumstances. Hot as could be with their vests at the
checkpoints, and they really, really did a professional job and
made everybody--made me proud of the job that you do, and let
everybody know that you do the same exact job in D.C. So I want
to thank you for that.
To the Librarian, I look forward to having you in
Philadelphia soon. I understand you are coming to see me, and I
wanted to acknowledge that I thought David Mao did an excellent
job as Acting Librarian, and I am sad to see him go. And I know
we will have your work cut out for you. But you can handle it,
I am sure.
Stephen, your team did a great job on all the moves--though
Weidemeyer always does a solid job. As someone who has a new
suite in the Rayburn Office because you kicked me out of the
Cannon--but that is okay; I like the Rayburn better now--I am
continually impressed with your organization. And you did a
great job for all of us. And I know it was a tough time because
Members being moved when we don't have to move because of the
remodeling of the Cannon, but it fit in well. And I thank you
for that. Thank you from my office and doing a great job with
that too.
Davita, thank you for always being available to me and my
team and helping us work through some issues from time to time.
I want you to know that I very much appreciate how difficult
your job can be.
So that is all I have to say, Mr. Chairman. We are lucky to
have these witnesses working for us, and I look forward to
hearing from them.
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Brady.
And I would also like to introduce our new Members to this
Committee. Not new to Congress, but new to the Committee: Barry
Loudermilk and Adrian Smith.
Welcome. We are glad to have you here.
I am glad you mentioned David Mao, who we will miss. I
can't believe he is having to work late on his last day at the
Library of Congress.
But you are very much appreciated for all your hard work,
Dr. Mao. And we wish you the very best in the future.
Does any other Member wish to be recognized for the purpose
of an opening statement?
As a housekeeping matter, the hearing record will remain
open for 5 legislative days so that Members may submit any
supplemental materials they wish to include.
I would now like to introduce our witnesses for today.
First, Stephen Ayers was appointed by the President and
confirmed by the Senate to serve as the Architect of the
Capitol in 2010, making him the 11th Architect of the Capitol.
Mr. Ayers is responsible for the entire Capitol complex
facility, management, operations, and including reasonable and
responsible renovation and sustainability programs. He is also
responsible for all the works of art in the Capitol,
maintaining and restoration of the murals, outdoor sculptures,
and other architecture elements throughout.
And we welcome you, Mr. Ayers.
Mr. Ayers. Thank you.
Dr. Carla Hayden was sworn in as the 14th Librarian of
Congress on September 14, 2016. Her appointment to this
position also marked the very first time in our Nation's
Library that we have had it led by a woman and an African
American. She is a librarian's librarian, dedicating her entire
career to pursuing the accessibility of libraries in
communities. In her short time leading the Library, Dr. Hayden
has already demonstrated her commitment to continuing the
tradition of collecting, preserving, and making available a
vast collection of educational resources, and protecting these
collections for future generations.
The Committee welcomes you, Dr. Hayden.
Davita Vance-Cooks became the 27th individual to direct the
U.S. Government Publishing Office in 2013. Ms. Vance-Cooks is
the first woman and first African American to lead the agency
and has served in a variety of management roles at GPO since
2004, I believe. As Director, Ms. Vance-Cooks has guided the
agency towards cutting costs while at the same time modernizing
GPO to improve services. Specifically, GPO has focused on
expanding the electronic availability of government information
via public apps, bulk data downloads, and of course e-books.
Welcome back, Ms. Vance-Cooks.
Ms. Vance-Cooks. Thank you.
The Chairman. On March 21, 2016, Matthew R. Verderosa was
sworn in as the Chief of the U.S. Capitol Police. Chief
Verderosa is the ninth Chief and has served in numerous roles
with the U.S. Capitol Police since, I believe, 1986, including
positions in the Uniformed Services, the Patrol Division, the
Internal Affairs Division, and the Training Services Bureau. As
Chief of the U.S. Capitol Police, Chief Verderosa is
responsible for commanding a force of sworn and civilian
personnel who are dedicated to providing comprehensive law
enforcement, security, and protective operations services to
the U.S. Congress, Members, staff, millions of annual visitors,
and the surrounding complex.
Welcome back, Chief Verderosa.
Chief Verderosa. Thank you, sir.
The Chairman. Again, we thank each of you for joining us
today. The Committee has received your written testimony. At
the appropriate time, I will recognize you for 5 minutes to
present a summary of that information. Of course, you know how
the light system works. When it goes yellow, you have 1 minute.
And then red means bring it in for a landing at some point.
The Chair now recognizes the Architect of the Capitol,
Stephen Ayers, for 5 minutes.
STATEMENTS OF THE HONORABLE STEPHEN T. AYERS, ARCHITECT OF THE
CAPITOL; THE HONORABLE CARLA HAYDEN, PH.D., LIBRARIAN, LIBRARY
OF CONGRESS; THE HONORABLE DAVITA VANCE-COOKS, DIRECTOR,
GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE; MATTHEW R. VERDEROSA, CHIEF OF
POLICE, UNITED STATES CAPITOL POLICE
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE STEPHEN T. AYERS
Mr. Ayers. Thank you, Chairman Harper and Ranking Member
Brady, and Members of the Committee. I really appreciate the
opportunity to be with you today to provide an overview of the
Architect of the Capitol's operations, achievements, and goals.
In 1793, George Washington laid the cornerstone of the
United States Capitol, and construction began on Dr. William
Thornton's winning design. Dr. Thornton is known as the first
Architect of the Capitol. And today, nearly 225 years later,
our Capitol campus has grown to more than 17.4 million square
feet of space, spanning 36 facilities and 570 acres of grounds.
Today the campus is home to more than 30,000 daily occupants
and millions of visitors throughout the world and the United
States.
In fiscal year 2016, we inspired more than 2.2 million
visitors to the Capitol Visitor Center to explore the roots of
our country's government through stories and hands-on
activities. In addition, 1.2 million visitors to the United
States Botanic Garden were informed about the important, often
irreplaceable, value of plants to the well-being of our
society.
Our mission to serve the Congress and the Supreme Court,
preserve America's Capitol, and inspire memorable experiences
recognizes the trust placed in us as the builder and steward of
our country's most iconic landmarks. The 2,100 talented and
dedicated men and women of the AOC proudly work 24 hours a day,
7 days a week, and 365 days a year to balance the
responsibility of preserving historic buildings while meeting
the demands of a modern workforce. Viewed from a distance, our
buildings are inspiring and impressive. But up close, they are
distressed as weather and age and deferred maintenance have
destroyed their stone exteriors. The integrity of our buildings
is threatened by water infiltration, which can have disastrous
consequences.
The Congress continues to make good investments in stone
preservation, our top priority, to reduce the risk for which we
are extremely grateful. We have been able to make good progress
to improve our infrastructure, and recently completed several
major projects across the campus, including the first
restoration of the United States Capitol dome and rotunda in
more than 50 years, the initial phase of the Cannon House
Office Building renewal, and the United States Capitol stone
preservation project, the successful conservation of the
Ulysses S. Grant Memorial, just to name a few.
The eyes of the Nation and the world are upon us each and
every day. And we are honored to support so many high-profile
events, including the 58th Presidential inauguration, where our
team of professionals completed all of the necessary
construction well ahead of schedule. We are pleased to play an
important role in welcoming each new Congress. This year, our
teams managed moves for 199 House Members in just 24 working
days with not a single injury. And we are very proud of that.
Our project prioritization process allows us to maximize each
and every taxpayer dollar as we go about executing these
essential projects. Yet risk remains. And we look forward to
continuing to work with the Congress to address the growing
backlog of preventive maintenance projects, today estimated at
more than $1.5 billion.
Improving the energy efficiency of our campus is also a
central concern. And over the last 10 years, we have achieved a
30.9 percent reduction in energy usage. Further reducing energy
consumption remains an agency priority, and we have established
a new 10-year goal of achieving an additional 20 percent
reduction in energy consumption by the end of 2025.
We strive to be a world-class organization providing
superior service to our clients. And we appreciate this
Committee and the congressional community for your continued
support. Thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Ayers follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Ayers.
The Chair now recognizes the Librarian of Congress, Dr.
Carla Hayden, for 5 minutes.
Dr. Hayden.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE CARLA HAYDEN, PH.D.
Ms. Hayden. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman Harper, Ranking
Member Brady, Members of the Committee. It is a great honor to
appear here today for the first time, Chairman Harper, Ranking
Member Brady, Members of the Committee.
I would like to start by thanking each of you that I have
had an honor to meet for your warm welcome, your offers of
support, and the commitment that you have expressed for the
Library since I have been in the position. You and your
predecessors in this body built the Library, and it remains one
of the greatest gifts and legacies that Congress has given to
the American people.
I would also like to recognize Deputy Librarian Dr. David
Mao. As you know, David served as the Acting Librarian of
Congress for an entire year. And during that time, he led many
efforts to improve Library management and operations. David has
accepted a leadership position at the Georgetown University and
will be leaving the Library later this month. So I wanted to
personally thank him for his service and thank him for making
my transition so much easier.
I was asked recently what my favorite thing is about being
the Librarian of Congress. And what it is, is that every day I
have the opportunity to discover something new, from letters
written by Rosa Parks to photographs of early inaugurations
through history to a letter that Albert Einstein wrote to
Sigmund Freud. These treasures are rivaled only by the staff.
During my first months at the Library, I conducted a
listening tour, meeting with staff and learning about our
operations. It has been the highlight of my first 4 months to
meet these incredibly dedicated and skilled public servants. I
have assembled my senior leadership team and established our
communications channel so we can work effectively and
efficiently for the institution. I have met with many Members
of Congress to learn more about your perspective on the
Library. And I have also met with dozens of groups and
individuals in the creative community and other users of the
Copyright Office. And, finally, I have taken some initial steps
toward increasing the Library's accessibility, both onsite and
online. We have opened the Librarian's Ceremonial Office and
expanded the hours of our Young Readers Center. We have
launched a new home page that is more dynamic. And as many of
you know, I am now tweeting, allowing me to interact directly
with Library users around the globe. It has been a stimulating
and energizing 4 months. And it is just the beginning of, I
hope, a very exciting dynamic time.
The Library has undertaken a visioning effort that involves
analyzing trends at other information-based organizations. I
have been working with our new strategic planning officer to
strengthen how we plan, develop goals, and track our progress.
We are also formulating a Library-wide digital strategy. Of
course, a digital strategy hinges on good IT, information
technology, fundamentals. As this Committee is very much aware,
the Library has had some challenges in the area of information
technology. But I am pleased to report that important progress
is being made.
Among the recommendations the Library received was to hire
a chief information officer. In September of 2015, Bernard
Barton, Bud, began as CIO. He joins me today. Under his
leadership, we have made steady progress in implementing
recommendations made by the GAO and the Library's inspector
general to improve information technology services, most
importantly in the areas of better defined investment planning,
cybersecurity, and centralization. I appreciate all that Mr.
Barton and his staff have done, and I look forward to reporting
in the future, not just on improvements, but also on IT
innovations at the Library of Congress.
Another critical priority is collection stewardship. The
Library opened an interim storage facility this year. And high
on my priority list is also the modernization of the Copyright
Office. As always, service to Congress is the core mission of
the Library. And the Congressional Research Service and Law
Library stand ready to serve you.
Thank you very much, and I am delighted to be here today.
[The statement of Ms. Hayden follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Hayden.
The Chair now recognizes the Government Publishing Office
Director, Davita Vance-Cooks, for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE DAVITA VANCE-COOKS
Ms. Vance-Cooks. Good evening. Chairman Harper, Ranking
Member Brady, and Members of the Committee on House
Administration, thank you for inviting me to address priorities
for fiscal year 2018 and beyond.
I am pleased to state that today the GPO is in a good
place. We are a digital publishing operation with a diversified
product and services portfolio, and we have won multiple
digital innovation awards. We have a wonderfully engaged
workforce committed to the mission of keeping America informed.
And it is because of them that we have achieved so much.
In the results of the fiscal year 2016 Employee Viewpoint
Survey, GPO's engagement score was 9.3 points higher than the
governmentwide score. Our finances for fiscal year 2016, as
confirmed by our KPMG annual audit, were the strongest they
have ever been in the past 5 years. Our congressional
appropriation requests over the past 5 years have been
relatively flat. We have successfully halted the growth of our
overhead spending costs, and our budgeted staffing level of
1,750 employees is the lowest this century.
Our productivity exponentially increased because we
embraced digital equipment, digital products, and digital
processes. For example, Mr. Chairman, with your approval as the
Chairman of the JCP, we put into operation a zero make-ready
press, called a ZMR. It allowed us to, A, phase out three
outdated presses installed back in 1979, and, B, it allowed us
to cut the page rate for publishing congressional hearings, the
first such rate reduction in memory. Our digital repository
database, called FDsys, and its newly introduced successor,
called govinfo, supports openness and transparency. This
database now holds more than 1.6 million titles in the Federal
Government information. And we now have retrievals of nearly 40
million documents per month.
As we look into the future, we will continue to focus on
modernizing our operations and providing value to our
stakeholders. And I want you to know that we are strategically
positioned to meet the demands of 2018. First, we will continue
to implement strategies to improve our employee engagement
because our employees are the best assets we have.
Second, we will implement the first phase of our new
digital composition system that composes bills in XML. It will
also include a feature for modernizing the publishing of
hearings as requested by this Committee.
Third, we will develop a new cost accounting system to
simplify the ratemaking process and provide visibility and
transparency to our costs and billing.
Fourth, we will continue to strengthen our partnership with
the network of 1,148 Federal depository libraries across the
Nation by collaborating on projects which will improve program
flexibility. By the way, there are 34 Federal depository
libraries in the districts represented by the Members of this
Committee.
Fifth, we will continue to strengthen our partnership with
the private-sector printing industry by automating our print
procurement program. This program produces three-quarters of
all the orders we handle, provides highly competitive prices,
and supports tens of thousands of jobs nationwide, primarily in
the small business sector. In fiscal year 2016, the dollar
value of the awards for the States represented by the members
of this Committee was $197 million.
Sixth, we will release govinfo from beta, and we intend to
earn designation as the first Federal agency to meet the
international standards of a trusted digital repository.
And, lastly, after 5 years of collaboration and cooperation
with the Department of State, we are ready to launch the U.S.
Government passport--the next gen. Now, as you can imagine,
cybersecurity is a challenge, and we are a member of the
Committee on Cybersecurity to look into it. Thank you for
approving the $2 million to address that issue.
And, in closing, where legislative changes are concerned, I
respectfully ask for a change in the JCP rule that requires the
GPO to request approval before making an expenditure over
$50,000 or an interagency agreement over $20,000. These
thresholds were set over 30 years ago, long before we had
financial controls and an IG and annual audits. The other
legislative branch agencies don't have this requirement, and I
am asking for parity.
Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Brady, and Members of the
Committee, this concludes my openings remarks--on the money.
[The statement of Ms. Vance-Cooks follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Outstanding. Thank you so much.
The Chair now recognizes the Chief of the Capitol Police,
Matthew Verderosa.
Chief.
STATEMENT OF MATTHEW R. VERDEROSA
Chief Verderosa. Thank you, sir. Good evening, Mr.
Chairman, Ranking Member Brady, and Members of the Committee.
Thank you for this opportunity to discuss the United States
Capitol Police and our mission to protect Congress. It is my
honor to serve as Chief of Police, and I am honored to be here
with you today. I am joined here today by my executive team and
my executive management team, including our Chief
Administrative Officer, Richard Braddock; our General Counsel,
Gretchen DeMar; and our new Chief of Operations, Assistant
Chief Steve Sund. Steve Sund comes to us from the Metropolitan
Police after serving 25 years, bringing significant senior
command and operational experience to the department.
Also joining me today is the department's Inspector
General, Fay Ropella, as well as the USCP Fraternal Order of
Police Gus Papathanasiou.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to begin today by thanking the
Committee for its steadfast support of the United States
Capitol Police and its mission. The regular discussions that we
have had with you and your staff are greatly appreciated, as
they allow us the opportunity to provide the Committee with
important updates about our activities, challenges, and areas
of focus. In addition, I am grateful for the Committee's
engagement and feedback so the department may continue to
effectively meet the needs of the House of Representatives and
that of Congress. Additionally, I would like to thank the
United States Capitol Police Board for its guidance and support
as we carry out our complex security and law enforcement
operations.
I would like to take this opportunity to recognize the
women and men of the United States Capitol Police. On a daily
basis, they publicly demonstrate how the American freedoms that
we hold dear are carried out in our Nation's Capitol. They work
tirelessly to ensure that the Congress is able to conduct its
legislative responsibilities without disruption, all the while
exhibiting the utmost respect for the Constitution and the
protection of First Amendment liberties. I am thoroughly
impressed with the performance and their commitment as they
constantly rise to the occasion and to handle whatever comes
our way.
Last May, I had the pleasure of appearing before the
Committee to provide an overview of the department's management
plan for fiscal year 2017 and beyond. As I stated then, it is
the responsibility of the USCP to do everything possible to
protect and safeguard Members, staff, and visitors each day in
an open and complex environment as the threats and risk we face
today are increasingly sophisticated and dynamic. In
coordination with the Capitol Police Board and oversight
committees, the USCP has developed a multiyear strategy that
provided for growth of the department to fulfill three critical
new mission sets: enhancement of the House garage security, the
addition of pre-screeners and overwatch personnel at various
building access points, and the continued use of enhanced
portal scanners.
I am pleased to report that, after reallocating internal
resources to begin to address these emerging priorities, the
department has deployed the House garage security screening
initiative for approximately 60 percent of the House Buildings.
By working in concert with the Architect of the Capitol's
Rayburn Garage renovation project, the department is expected
to complete the final stage of this initiative when specific
security milestones are accomplished with the Rayburn Garage
redesign and buildout in fiscal years 2018 through 2019.
However, staffing of security posts is dependent, obviously,
upon additional resources.
Additionally, the department has begun to increase its
capacity for pre-screeners and overwatch personnel at various
office building access points by leveraging our new K9 teams
and subject interdiction officer capabilities. This initiative
will become more visible to the congressional community in the
coming months.
And to complete the list, the department has had great
success in utilizing the enhanced portal screeners on visitors
wishing to enter the House Chamber during major events, such as
the State of the Union and joint meetings of Congress. While
additional resources are necessary in the outyears to complete
these initiatives and to provide the necessary stationary
posts, I remain confident in the department's ability to meet
these new mission sets within the next several years and
continued support of the Capitol Police Board and Congress.
I do want to note that the new responsibility assigned to
the department of protecting and securing O'Neill House Office
Building, which will take effect later this spring, will likely
impact the overall schedule to complete these other efforts.
This new responsibility requires significant resources and was
not anticipated at the time the department established the
three primary security initiatives in 2016. With this in mind,
we have been working closely with the Capitol Police Board,
House Sergeant at Arms, and oversight committees, and our chief
of operations, and CAO to help develop a plan to ensure this
mission is successfully enacted as well as receives the
necessary resources for implementation. Once the department has
had the opportunity to benchmark and analyze the relevant data
and trends following the addition of the new House Office
Building to our critical security infrastructure, we will
continue to look for efficiencies and examine the potential for
reapportioning personnel as appropriate.
I look forward to discussing many of these new initiatives
with you, and I am happy to answer any questions you should
have.
[The statement of Chief Verderosa follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Chief Verderosa.
Committee Members will now ask questions of the witnesses.
Each Member is allotted 5 minutes to question the witnesses. To
help each Member track the times, we will use the same timing
devices. And I will begin by recognizing myself for 5 minutes.
Dr. Hayden, if I can start with you, I want to again thank
you for taking the time to meet with us this afternoon. And I
am always amazed by the Library's statistics: 164 million items
in all formats and languages, 1.8 million onsite visitors, and
93 million visits to your website. I mean, the numbers go on
and on, and they are very impressive. Your testimony describes
a number of initiatives that the Library will be focused on
during the remainder of the fiscal year and into 2018. What do
you anticipate as your challenges as you meet those goals?
Ms. Hayden. In meeting the increasing demand for the
Library's resources, the challenge that I share with some of my
colleagues here, in fact, have quite a bit to do with the
technological capacity as well as the modernization of many of
our operations. I mentioned that Mr. Barton has joined us, and
quite a bit of progress has been made. And so that will be a
continuing need as well as storage capacity for those
collections will remain something that the Library has a major
responsibility for these unique collections and items that make
up quite a bit of that 162 million items.
The other challenge is to concentrate on making sure that
the Library is run efficiently and effectively, centralizing a
number of operations, particularly information technology. And
also to--and this challenge is actually an opportunity to make
more people aware throughout the Nation in particular of the
resources that are available already and digitized for use in K
through 12 classrooms, teacher education outreach, and letting
people know about what the Library already has. We have been
called one of the best kept secrets. And we don't want to be
secret anymore.
The Chairman. Well, I can assure you that you are known by
the Members and our staffs. And coming off what was a very
successful new Member retreat in January, how will CRS continue
to support our new Members and their staff and other Members,
of course, that have been here? And if you could just talk for
a moment about how you are planning on improving the CRS to
better assist Members and staff.
Ms. Hayden. The Congressional Research Service, I have
often called it the special forces of the Library. Their
primary mission is to serve Congress and its staff with the
best analysis on policies and topics up-to-date. The
strengthening of the subject specialists in Congressional
Research Service operations is key. And we are working to make
sure there is successful recruitment and retention of those
subject specialists, as well as making sure that the
Congressional Research Service has the information technology
capacity to serve Congress and staff in the latest ways.
The Chairman. All right. Well, you know, you've talked a
lot already about information technologies and what you are
doing to invest in that. And so, as we look at that, of course
I have got one example here in my hand, the Library is
partnering with the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to help
provide U.S. currency readers to sight-impaired individuals to
help identify their currency. Unbelievable. Are there other
initiatives that perhaps you could highlight today?
Ms. Hayden. And thank you for demonstrating a wonderful
device that is allowing people who are visually challenged to
operate seamlessly in the world. And the National Library
Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped is an
important smaller part of the Library, but so important. The
Library Service for the Blind operation is looking at even more
capacity in handheld devices that will allow braille on demand.
And so, right from an email, the braille will be touchable and
instantaneous. So, instead of working and waiting for the
translation, it will be instantaneous. So that is just an
example of what technology can allow the Library to do for all
citizens.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Dr. Hayden. My time has
expired.
I will now recognize the Ranking Member, Mr. Brady, for 5
minutes for questions.
Mr. Brady. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I just have two quick questions I would like to ask all
four panelists and have you each respond briefly. You know,
information is power, and our computer systems and networks are
under attack every day. I have had briefings from the CAO and
the Sergeant at Arms. So, before you submit your budget
requests, I would like to know, what do you need to protect
your information systems? And do you have all the money and
people that you need to protect them while you are protecting
us?
Unrelated but equally as important, I would like to get a
snapshot of your relationship with your respective unions. I
hear from them that things are not going well, and it has been
relatively quiet. I am a little worried about that. But I
recently--but I wanted to know from each of you that you are
committed to a good relationship with your organization
workforce.
Mr. Ayers, you are very little, but I know you got a great
relationship.
Dr. Hayden, we have talked in the past, and with your
predecessor, we did a lot of work there with a lot of your
security people there. And we work well with them. Director
Cooks, you have about 18 of them, I think, because every one of
them is in my office every day just about. But they seem to be
happy. So I hope that you are working well with them.
And, Chief, I know we have a new Gus Papa back there, a new
minted Chairman, you call him. I call him President of the
Union. And I probably shouldn't say this, but he said some nice
things about you. So I think that--but that is not a real big
deal because your predecessor nobody said nice things about,
including me. But you are doing an excellent job there. And the
proof of it, you have all your job security people here behind
you all. So I guess you have--I hope you continue to have a
good relationship.
So, real briefly, just if you could respond, all four of
you briefly. Thank you.
Ms. Hayden. Well, I will start because I am the newest. And
I have been able to have several meetings and establish regular
meetings with the Library's three unions. And they have been
very productive because we are working on things that will
allow us all to work together and be proactive. And there have
been some exciting things coming. I was even invited to the
holiday party. So I think that is a good start in terms of
that. But we are working very much together on it.
And with cybersecurity, the Library is participating in a
legislative branch cybersecurity working group and has a fiscal
year 2017 request in for strengthening our cybersecurity
capacity.
Ms. Vance-Cooks. Okay. Lady next? Okay. Great. Two things:
In terms of cybersecurity, we recently had approval of $2
million to address that issue. And we are using it to address
it in terms of enhancement programs as well as implementation.
To give you an example, for an enhancement, we are going to
truly try to strengthen our firewall configuration and our
router configuration and our DDoS configuration as well. And
then, in terms of implementing new things, we are looking at
the inside threat capacity as opposed to just the outside
threat because it does matter. You can get it from both the
outside as well as internal.
In terms of the unions, we have 13 unions. Okay? And the
good news story is that our unions and our management work well
together because we want the same thing: we want the GPO to be
a good place to work. And I am proud to say that, just last
week, we signed another wage negotiation. We are in the middle
of wage negotiations for a 5-year period. We work well
together. I would characterize it as productive.
Chief Verderosa. Thank you, sir, for the questions. In
terms of cybersecurity, my CIO and our CISO have direct access
to me and the executive team. We participate actively in the
leg branch organization. We also are going to focus in this
fiscal year on vulnerability and risk threat management
training, threat assessment, and sharing with our partners, not
only in the leg branch, but with other Federal partners. I
think we have a great plan. I think we are going to leverage
some cross-servicing within economies of scale within the leg
branch.
And in terms of the unions, I have two unions: The
Teamsters and the FOP. I think, throughout the course of my
career, I have always had a good working relationship with both
unions. Officer Papathanasiou and I go back a long time in
terms of working the House division together. And I think we
both--we see opportunities rather than impediments. And I think
we work wherever we can to come to common ground and fix the
issues. And, frankly, I value the working relationship because,
at the end of the day, we are both in this for the same thing:
to have the best treatment for our employees and to get the
most effectiveness and efficiency from the workforce. And I
think we both are aligned very closely on that goal. And I have
a great working relationship with Karen Gray-Thomas, who is our
spokesperson for the Teamsters. And, you know, frankly, we have
a great workforce, and I continue to look forward to working
with both unions.
Mr. Ayers. And thank you, Mr. Brady.
We too have a strong IT system in place that is backed up
at the alternative computer facility. And we use an active-
active system. And throughout the day, our network may be run
out of a building here on campus or a building there, and no
one knows the difference. It is quite amazing to me.
From a cybersecurity perspective, you know, we have done
multiple penetration tests. We have had the House IG review our
system. We are implementing the National Security Agency's top
10 mitigation strategies. We are pretty comfortable with where
we are on that. And like Ms. Vance-Cooks, we too have multiple
unions that care for our employees, and we have collective
bargaining agreements in place with them. I meet and my deputy
meet quarterly with all of our unions. Our unions are staffed
with really top-notch officers. And we have a great working
relationship, open, honest, and transparent, and respectful
discussions.
Mr. Brady. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, Mr. Ayers, for Bill Weidemeyer. You got a
gem there.
Mr. Ayers. I am going to regret that, Mr. Brady.
Mr. Brady. Absolute professional.
Mr. Ayers. Thank you.
Mr. Brady. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Brady.
The Chair now recognizes the Vice Chairman for the
Committee, Mr. Davis, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chief Verderosa. I know you mention in your testimony about
the new security protocols and screening in and around the
House Office Buildings and the garages. I would like your--you
know, a little more--if you could go into a little more of what
that has meant to our ensuring that there is a secure perimeter
around our Capitol Buildings and in the garages. And I want to
know if, you know, are there some standard security protocols
that you guys follow at the Capitol Police at these screenings
checkpoints? And also, are we achieving consistency throughout
the Capitol complex and vehicle entry points with the screening
process that you guys have extended?
Chief Verderosa. Certainly. I will answer the second part
first if I may. We strive for consistency in everything that we
do. I want the staff and the Members to know what to expect
when they enter into the buildings. And we have been training.
We actually, several years ago, revamped our entire security
screening process to a unified approach. So the way you get
screened in the House Buildings is the same as you get screened
at the Senate Office Buildings as well. That entails looking at
best practices in the industry. We partnered with TSA and the
Marshal Service. And we looked at what we had already been
doing to develop our protocols. And we have standardized this
process. It is a quite lengthy. We have a 40-some-odd page
directive that deals with virtually every scenario that you
could have in screening. So, obviously, it is closely held. But
we look at the division level supervisors going out and
ensuring that they provide the feedback necessary for the
officers in the field. We also bring our officers in for
periodic retraining and recertification in security screening.
It is the same with the automobile checks although the closer
you get to the Capitol, the more stringent the checks become.
We want to keep the threat as far away as we can.
Mr. Davis. Well, speaking of that, Chief, you know, what
does your current security posture look like within the Capitol
Police?
Chief Verderosa. We are always operating at a very high
level. So, when we have major events around the world,
obviously, we are closely connected in the intelligence side,
on the high side, and we are also working with our partners and
various other institutions to determine what in fact the known
intelligence is, what are the best practices that they are
seeing, and we leverage all that information and provide that
information through lookouts, BOLOs, intelligence bulletins,
and other various means of communication to all of our
employees.
When we see events around the world, obviously, we are
looking for copycat and other types of information that may
lead us to believe that a threat may be imminent, warranted, to
take additional information. That is particularly when you see
a show of force, a more intensive show of force.
But we are always operating at a very high level. We have
assets in and around the perimeter, both physical security
assets, operational assets in terms of personnel that are
assigned to various access points. Some are seen, and some are
not seen. We are employing an additional--as one of the
initiatives with the Board, the Capitol Police Board, we are
employing additional assets outside of access points. For the
next several years, we will be building up our team to provide
eyes-on outside doors. As opposed to having them having the
fight at the door, we are going to try to keep the battle
outside the buildings.
Mr. Davis. And that is here and around the Capitol.
Chief Verderosa. That is correct.
Mr. Davis. Can you give an assessment of how is your team
working with increased threat levels maybe out in the rest of
the country and in Members' district offices? How do you
coordinate any activity that could be viewed as a threat that
you hear about? How do you coordinate your activities with
local law enforcement?
Chief Verderosa. That is a great question. And we have a
very active Protective Services Bureau. I have approximately
35, 40 investigators that look at intelligence and threat
assessment. And what they do is they have outreach through the
Sergeant at Arms Office for not only planned events, but we are
also monitoring active social media, we are monitoring all
sources of both classified and unclassified information to
determine whether or not a Member of Congress or a Senator is a
target of demonstration activity, is a target of an nefarious
effort, a criminal act. And we also provide--on the positive
side, we provide--we go out and actively do security awareness
briefings. We coordinate threat assessment briefings for not
only staff here on the Hill but district offices as well.
Mr. Davis. Well, thank you, Chief. My time is up, but I do
want come tour that shooting range still too.
Chief Verderosa. Absolutely. We are ready. We have been
operating for about 6 months.
Mr. Davis. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Davis.
And now the Chair will now recognize Ms. Lofgren for 5
minutes.
Ms. Lofgren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I am glad to be getting an early start on oversight
this year. I think it is a good thing. And it seems that some
of the issues in past years have been resolved in many cases.
So that is very encouraging. And we will continue to work with
these wonderful leaders as the year goes on.
Dr. Hayden, it is a thrill to see you here, the new
Librarian of Congress. You were introduced as the first female
Librarian of Congress, first African American. But I think you
are the first librarian Librarian of Congress. Maybe not. But
it has been a long time.
Ms. Hayden. In 50-something years.
Ms. Lofgren. Yes. Been a long time. And it is great to have
a librarian's librarian there.
You in your testimony identified the need for IT upgrades.
And I am so appreciative that that is a focus that you have.
And the staff works very hard. At least the staff I have met
over there love the Library; they are dedicated to it. But the
technology is antiquated. In particular, I am interested in the
Copyright Office, which has antiquated--I mean, there is a lot
that needs to be done in terms of upgrading that technology. Do
you feel you have the resources at this point necessary to do
those upgrades? Or do you have a strategy to get to where you
think we need to be there?
Ms. Hayden. There is definitely a strategy. And I want to
emphasize the helpfulness of the GAO reports and inspector
general recommendations that provide the roadmap and help with
our strategy and overall IT strategy. The Copyright Office has
a number of unique IT needs that can be supported, and Mr.
Barton, who is here with me today, the CIO for the Library, has
been able to really coordinate the Library's strengthening
infrastructure, technology infrastructure, with the special
needs of not only the Copyright Office but CRS, for instance,
that has specialized needs. And so the support, and there are
fiscal year 2017 and will be 2018 requests to make sure that
the modernization--IT modernization for the Copyright Office
continues, particularly in the areas of registration, copyright
registration, and a searchable copyright database of the
records. That is a major focus.
There are 32 million copyright records. This is getting a
little in the weeds with the--like a card catalog that have
been digitized, but they are not searchable. And so the main
focus will be making sure that the Library's IT infrastructure
can support those special needs.
Ms. Lofgren. That would be a major advance in terms of----
Ms. Hayden. Yes.
Ms. Lofgren [continuing]. Protecting intellectual property.
Ms. Hayden. Yes.
Ms. Lofgren. That would be very----
Ms. Hayden. For the users and----
Ms. Lofgren [continuing]. Which this office is key for
that.
Ms. Hayden. Yes. And I think people might not realize how
vital the Copyright Office is to the creative input and output
of the Nation.
Ms. Lofgren. Speaking of that, I know you are in the
process of hiring a new permanent registrar. Any timeline on
that process?
Ms. Hayden. The Library asked for public comment on the
aspects of the registrar's not only qualifications and what
might be needed in the next few years, but also the office
itself. We received almost 5,000 public comments in a little
over 5 weeks. And so we are reviewing those, and we will be
working to incorporate some of those comments and suggestions
into the formal opening up of the position. So very shortly you
should be seeing something.
Ms. Lofgren. Very good. I see my time is almost up. Let me
just close by talking to the Chief.
I think when we talked, I had a complaint that the
screening on the Senate and the House side seemed discordant.
It is greatly improved. And now I think it is consistent. So I
want to thank you for attending to that. I know there are a lot
maybe things that are bigger on the scene. But it is nice to
have consistency in both bodies. And I appreciate that very
much.
Mr. Chairman, I would yield back.
The Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Lofgren.
The Chair will now recognize Mrs. Comstock for 5 minutes.
Mrs. Comstock. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I wanted to also thank Dr. Hayden for her interest in the
online work with the Library. And I wanted to--I know--thank
you for coming by with your staff and discussing that and our
shared interest in how we can use technology to really make the
Library's vast collection more available.
And just for the benefit of those that might be watching C-
SPAN, but also could you maybe paint a little--a better picture
on how we can use this from, you know, from the children's
events that you have and the collections available there on up?
And just, you know, maybe give a little bit more vivid picture
of how--you know, the possibilities of how we can utilize that
going forward.
Ms. Hayden. And as a former children's librarian, I have to
say my eyes light up when I think about the fact that we are
now able to live stream programming from Washington, D.C., to
anywhere in the world. And we just started that this past
Saturday when we opened the Young Readers Center in the
Jefferson Building on Saturdays. And we live stream to four
States, and had direct responses from the young people in the
audiences. They asked the author questions and they were able
to get responses. And the children in the Jefferson Building
were able to wave and do all kinds of things with the others.
So that was an experiment, and we are expanding that.
We already have so much online for K through 12 educators,
teaching with primary sources. And one of my first experiences
in--and I mentioned earlier that I have been amazed at all of
the wonderful things that are available at the Library, a
scanner that is the size of a queen size bed that can scan rare
and old maps that could never be put on display or used that
are now able to be scanned and then downloaded and printed out
and used by anyone.
Also, traveling exhibits are coming and downloading all
types of photographs. And my most recent experience was with
the inauguration display that we had where we had the
inauguration route of Abraham Lincoln. And that only comes out
maybe once every 5 years. We were able to duplicate that and
people could touch it and trace the route. So there are so many
possibilities that technology makes possible to spread the
Library of Congress throughout the world, but definitely
throughout the Nation.
Mrs. Comstock. All right. Thank you. And as a daughter of a
librarian, I do appreciate having a librarian in this position.
Now, you said it was--the program was shared with four
States and you are expecting to grow that. Are there--if people
want to participate in schools, they contact you?
Ms. Hayden. Oh, yes. Yes. Schools, community centers, rec
centers. And particularly in rural areas that might not have
the opportunity to have Newbery and Caldecott, award-winning
authors that are there. So we really are going to focus on
rural areas, and making that also connect to our traveling 18-
wheeler that I am working on now. Yes, an 18-wheeler, library
on the move, that will be on both coasts and in the middle that
can just pull up in Bakersfield, anywhere, and you can interact
with Library materials and have dedicated staff that can
explain things too. So it is an exciting time. Libraries are--
--
Mrs. Comstock. Thank you. Thank you. And I really
appreciate those efforts.
And I yield back my time.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
And the Chair is happy to recognize our new member to the
Committee and to Congress, Mr. Raskin, for 5 minutes. Welcome.
Mr. Raskin. Mr. Chairman, thank you for your very warm
welcome, and thank you also to Mr. Brady for his warm welcome.
As the Representative of the Eighth Congressional District
which borders the District of Columbia and a native to this
area, it is quite an exceptional thrill and honor for me to be
on this Committee overseeing our extraordinary Capitol campus.
I am delighted to say I have been able to draw on the resources
and the work of all of your various offices already in just
about a month in office. And all of you I want to thank for
being very responsive.
A special hello to Dr. Hayden, who was in Maryland before
she came to the Library of Congress. And my father-in-law, who
was a librarian for a long time, got the chance to meet Dr.
Hayden and described it as like meeting the Beatles.
So I have got one very quick--pretty much a yes or no
question for all of you, and then I have got a couple questions
for Dr. Ayers. So as a local representative, I have been
hearing from a number of my young constituents who have been
disappointed in the last several weeks that they had jobs they
thought they were going to get in different parts of the
Federal Government, but because of the hiring freeze, they are
now closed out. And I just wanted to make sure that each of
your offices is actually open for young people who are looking
to be in the public service now. And I don't know if we could
just go down the line. Perhaps, Chief, you could start.
Chief Verderosa. Yes. We are hiring as needed based on our
position availability.
Mr. Raskin. Terrific.
Ms. Vance-Cooks. We are very interested in hiring pathway
interns. Okay? And I notice in the latest document on the
hiring freeze that we can do that. And so you will see that.
Mr. Raskin. Terrific.
Ms. Hayden. Very similar. And also volunteer opportunities
that will lead and position young people to be right there and
have the experience when the positions are open. So we also
have internships and fellowships.
Mr. Raskin. Gotcha. You mean when the hiring freeze is
lifted, the position----
Ms. Hayden. When there is an available position, they
have--already have experience and have worked in the Library.
Mr. Raskin. Gotcha.
Mr. Ayers. And we are continuing to recruit new employees,
and also we have a summer intern program where we recruit about
100 or more summer interns to work for about 12 weeks for us.
And that program is usually announced in the month of February
as well. And we will start them in May or June.
Mr. Raskin. Terrific. Dr. Ayers, let me stay with you for a
second, if I could. And I am so impressed by the work of your
office, and all of us get to enjoy working in this awesome and
most beautiful Capitol campus of any democracy or any nation on
Earth. It is really extraordinary. So I regret that I have to
raise a matter with you that is an issue not of your own
making. But I wanted to take this opportunity to ask you about
this whole incident that has taken place with the removal of
one of the paintings that a Member of Congress brought forward
as part of the Congressional Art Competition.
And I want to know whether, first, is it correct that this
is unprecedented, that there has never been a removal of a
piece of art from the Capitol campus on political grounds
before?
Mr. Ayers. That is my understanding as well.
Mr. Raskin. Okay. And so my understanding, and, again,
correct me if I am wrong, was that up until that removal, we
basically had the American rule of free speech. If you look at
a painting or a sculpture and you don't like it, you just go to
the next one, and maybe you like that one more, or you go to
the next one, but you don't remove it or petition for its
removal. Was that basically the rule up until this took place?
Mr. Ayers. Well, again, I am not familiar that a piece of
artwork was ever moved. There has been public perceptions about
pieces of artwork. I can recall a statue of George Washington
by Greenough, you know, more than 100 years ago that was placed
in different places in the Capitol building because the
public's perception of President Washington. And ultimately,
that sculpture was moved out of the Capitol and today is in the
Smithsonian.
Mr. Raskin. But are you now supposed to be regulating the
potential political incorrectness or offensiveness of art
because of this incident?
Mr. Ayers. No, I wouldn't say that. I think this particular
artwork competition that happens on an annual basis, there are
a set of rules, that it is my responsibility to enforce those
rules. And so just that narrow focus. I think if you are
talking a broader view of sculpture or artwork, that really
comes under the Joint Committee in the Library.
Mr. Raskin. I see. Because my office people have raised
with me questions of other works of art now as being offensive
or politically incorrect in the wake of the removal of that
piece of art. So I appreciate it. Thank you very much.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Mr. Raskin. And again
welcome.
At this time, the Committee will recognize Mark Walker for
5 minutes.
Mr. Walker. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to our panel
for being here today. A little bit late in the day, but
appreciate your willingness to come out.
I have a few questions, if I could direct them to the
director of the GAO, Ms. Vance-Cooks, if that is okay, just for
a few minutes. I was looking at your resume, and if this
doesn't work out, it looks like your experience in the
insurance industry--we might could use you around here these
days. But we--quite impressive. It certainly is.
I do have a few questions regarding certainly the printing
office, if I could do so. As you know, we hear a lot about
openness and transparency in--in both sides, really, as far as
that being our goal, certainly striving to do so. Is there
anything concrete or something that you would hope to do this
upcoming year that would promote those transparency goals,
anything in the works, and would you be okay to speak to those?
Ms. Vance-Cooks. Sure. Thank you for the question. In fact,
there are several things that we are doing right now that I
would like to highlight.
The first has to do with digitization of content,
especially historical content. This is critical for openness
and transparency. As we sit here today, I am proud to report
that we are collaborating with the Library of Congress, friend
right here, to digitize the bound Congressional Record all the
way back to 1873. And we are also working and collaborating
with the OFR to digitize the Federal Register all the way back
to its inception in 1936. So right away, you can see that we
have a lot of historical digitized content that is about to go
out into the public.
Secondly, with our govinfo FDsys digital database, it is
important to remind everyone that this is a huge repository
database that we build every single day. Every time we publish
a document, we feed it into the FDsys govinfo database. And
that is why it is growing exponentially. And as we sit, it has
1.6 million titles. Over 40 million of those documents are
retrieved and downloaded every month across the world. So you
can see that when we start to increase that database, we are
also increasing openness and transparency.
And then we also are doing a lot of work with XML bulk
data. We actually are a member of the legislative branch bulk
data task force. And we worked very diligently with the members
to make some of this data available in XML, specifically the
bill text, the bill summary, and bill status information. The
beauty of this is simple. When you have XML data available, the
transparency advocates love it because they can take that data
and they can repackage it. They can repurpose it and create a
different product. That too allows us to go into openness and
transparency.
And last but not least is the fact that we are working
diligently with a lot of libraries across the Nation in our
FDLP program to preserve some of the historical collections
actually in tangible format. We have what we call preservation
stewards. And were are working with them. We have three
already. One is in Kentucky. And they have agreed to preserve,
for example, all of the documents for the WPA. That is major.
That is going to be wonderful when we can really spread it out
across the United States. So I hope that is helpful.
Mr. Walker. I promise we didn't rehearse this before. Very,
very good answers there.
Ms. Vance-Cooks. Thank you.
Mr. Walker. And you really touched on the second one, my
question, as far as how often do you maybe review this process
to make sure that you are doing the digital world. But maybe
let me drive to this. Any work being done as far as projected
cost savings by moving this from the paper world to the digital
world? Have you looked into that at all?
Ms. Vance-Cooks. We are starting to look--that is a great
question too. Because we are starting to look into it and
trying to figure out how to monetize digitized content. And
that is pretty difficult at this point. But what we can see is
that when we no longer print the tangible copy, we are having
great savings. And a good example, of course, is when we talked
about the ZMR press, for example. When we actually installed
that press and we started to realize that we were printing
faster and having less waste, we realized that we could reduce
the rate that we normally would charge. And we reduced the rate
by 7 percent. So that is an example of how we can attempt to
monetize----
Mr. Walker. Sure. Let me squeeze one more thing in here
just for time purposes. If we are reducing cost savings, it may
be sometimes--I know there is a lot of people have been scoping
out the property over there. Is it possible at some point that
this would be a reduction in size as well? And that would be my
last question. I will let you wrap it up there.
Ms. Vance-Cooks. You mean a reduction in the employees?
Mr. Walker. The actual physical property, the actual
employees, et cetera. Yes.
Ms. Vance-Cooks. Well, right now, we are sitting with 1,750
employees, the lowest we have had in a century. But what we
have been doing with the space is consolidating our members or
our employees into certain areas of the building, and we have
been renting out the rest. In fact, we rent out space to the
Architect of the Capitol, and we rent out space to Chief of
Police. We rent out space to the International Commission on
Religious Freedom and the Senate Sergeant at Arms. And later on
this year, OFR is going to move into our building, which is
great because we do a lot of work with the Federal Register.
And also NARA has asked for quite a bit of space for their
archives. We are going to archive their legislative documents.
Mr. Walker. Thank you, Director Vance-Cooks.
Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Walker.
The Chair will now recognize Mr. Smith for 5 minutes.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the
agency heads here today. I appreciate your service, not only to
those of us here on the panel or even all of Congress, but to
the American people.
To Mr. Ayers, thank you for outlining in your testimony. I
was wondering if you could perhaps elaborate on the maintenance
needs and obviously deferred maintenance. We have some projects
underway now, whether it is Cannon renewal or the Rayburn
parking garage, that kind of separated themselves perhaps from
some other deferred maintenance projects and how you prioritize
addressing these projects, especially as it relates to health
and safety issues.
Mr. Ayers. A great question. And we have a really mature
project prioritization process in place that helps us
distinguish and bubble up the most important priorities to the
top of our Capitol improvement project list. And we will look
at deferred maintenance and Capitol renewal, capital
investment, and Capitol construction. And our algorithm moves
deferred maintenance to the top of that list.
So the theory that you want to take care of what you have
before you build new holds true in our project prioritization
process. But not only that, we look at mission and economics
and energy and environmental stewardship, historic
preservation, regulatory compliance. All of that comes into
this prioritization process. And we then will filter those
projects out by whether we can do them, are we ready to execute
them, how critical they are to the functioning of the Congress
and the like. And this has been in place for a number of years.
And it has really been a fantastic tool both for us to be able
to put forth to the Congress what we believe are the most
important projects, but also for the Congress to use to
validate a process that we have gone through to ensure they are
making the right investments.
Today, our deferred maintenance stands at--or backlog of
deferred maintenance stands at $1.5 billion and continues to
grow each year. Obviously, from a strategic perspective, we
have got to continue to work to drive that down. Deferred
maintenance should never be zero, nor should it be $1.5
billion.
Mr. Smith. Sure. Can you give us an update on the Rayburn
parking and Cannon renewal? Are we on time and otherwise?
Mr. Ayers. We are, both on the Rayburn parking garage which
we recently kicked off. It is on time and on schedule. And we
are looking forward to continuing to work with this Committee
who has been really helpful in kicking off that first phase,
the first of four phases in the Rayburn garage. And each of
those will take a year and a year and a half. So this is a
multiyear, more than $100 million investment in that building.
And the ability to reach out to members and communicate what is
going on has been really invaluable for us working with this
Committee.
Similarly, on the Cannon renewal project, you know, we have
another 8 years to go in that--in the renewal of that building.
We remain on budget. We remain on schedule. And looking forward
to continuing to work with this Committee to keep members
informed of the progress of that work.
Mr. Smith. All right. Thank you.
I yield back.
The Chairman. The Chair will now recognize Mr. Loudermilk
for 5 minutes.
Mr. Loudermilk. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank to
all our panel for being here.
And spending 30 years of my life in the IT sector, I have a
lot of concerns, as many do, with cybersecurity and access to
information. And in our jobs, that is a balance, providing the
access to public and transparent information, but at the same
time protecting the information that should be protected.
Unfortunately, the Federal Government has become notorious
throughout the Nation as being the most insecure of most of
major organizations in this Nation.
Prior to coming to this Committee, I served on the Science,
Space, and Technology Committee, which we conducted several
investigations into cybersecurity breaches. And I remember
asking the inspector general after one: How would you rate the
Federal Government's cybersecurity posture on an elementary
school grading scale? And he said D minus, which was of grave
concern. So I know we do have a lot of work to do there. So
most of my questions will be geared around that. I do have a
lot of questions. And what I don't get to, because of time, we
will submit for the official record, if that is all right, Mr.
Chairman, but--
The Chairman. Yes, sir.
Mr. Loudermilk. And I do know that many of you are making
strides in that direction. And, Dr. Hayden, thank you for
coming by our office. I really enjoyed our chat. And really
excited about you being on board. And I know that you are
already taking steps in moving in the right direction following
a lot of the IG's initiatives or recommendations. I got a
couple of questions, though, just for clarity, so I can
understand.
I understand the centralization that you are going through
with the IT, and I commend that. I think that is very
important. A lot of organizations get into trouble because they
don't centralize. But in the memorandum that was sent out
recently, you stated that top level supervisors of staff
conducting IT activities throughout all service units will
report through the CIO. Those not currently reporting to the
CIO will be placed on a detailed assignment to the CIO. My
question is what type of activities are those that you are
realigning or restructuring to the CIO?
Ms. Hayden. Centralization, especially in an organization
like the Library of Congress that has several very mission-
oriented areas--copyright----
Mr. Loudermilk. Right.
Ms. Hayden [continuing]. CRS, Library services, National
Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped--those mission
critical aspects will be protected and maintained with IT
centralization. The centralization centers more on security and
making sure that there is cross-departmental coordination of
security as well as procurement and coordination of general
effort. There are opportunities for lapses in security when you
have siloed IT departments that are not even working together.
And so the Library of Congress in that memo that you
referred to really--and this was a very pointed GAO
recommendation--needed to centralize IT aspects of operation
without physically, in some instances, removing the people from
their actual--the CRS people are still in--located in CRS, and
copyright. They report through----
Mr. Loudermilk. But functionally, they are working for----
Ms. Hayden. Functionally, they----
Mr. Loudermilk [continuing]. Copyright Office.
Ms. Hayden. Right. And you need that.
Mr. Loudermilk. But operationally they report to this CIO
so----
Ms. Hayden. Right. And also an important aspect, and this
was another GAO recommendation, is a project management unit.
So that if, for instance, CRS has a specialized IT need and
they are contracting out for a project, that there is a
centralized project management office that is overseeing all IT
projects and just being quality control on that.
Mr. Loudermilk. Okay. And I appreciate that, because
working in this field we worked a lot of businesses that did
not have centralization. And you had aspects--IT resources in
other departments that weren't under the direction of the CIO.
Therefore, it is hard to implement cybersecurity and updates
and those things that are important. So--and I think I see your
CIO nodding in agreement with this.
Ms. Hayden. Yes. Mr. Barton. Yes.
Mr. Loudermilk. I agree with that. And thank you so much.
Ms. Hayden. Thank you.
Mr. Loudermilk. Look forward to working with you.
Chief.
Chief Verderosa. Yes, sir.
Mr. Loudermilk. Similar type questions. But I know that
from a--from my experience in working in the IT field,
everything is risk management. You know, you put--you can put
the most secure network system in the world, but it is
unuseable, so you have this balance. How--what role, that you
can speak of, does the Capitol Police play in our IT
infrastructures predominantly for the House of Representatives?
Chief Verderosa. Well, in reference to the House, we are
more of an enforcement when there is a violation. The House has
a chief administrative officer who controls the IT areas and
how they interact with each individual employing office. So we
do partner on the legislative branch cross committee in terms
of sharing information, looking at ways to combine efforts in
terms of security, training. Of course, we are always our worst
enemy when it comes to our weakest links are our employees that
are falling----
Mr. Loudermilk. Right.
Chief Verderosa [continuing]. Victim to phishing
expeditions and those types of things. So I think that across
the enterprise, the entire leg branch, we have a very good
working group. We don't control--we control our own and our own
infrastructure, both classified and unclassified, and we work
very closely with our inspector general to close audit
recommendations in terms of whether it is a system issue on our
financial statements or whether it is an IT specific
enterprise.
Mr. Loudermilk. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, may I close with one quick question for the
Chief just to bring closure to that or----
The Chairman. Unless Mr. Brady objects, you may ask the
question.
Mr. Loudermilk. Understanding you have an investigatory
role there, does the Capitol Police have investigators that are
forensic experts in the IT field for cybersecurity or is that
something----
Chief Verderosa. We do.
Mr. Loudermilk. You do?
Chief Verderosa. We do.
Mr. Loudermilk. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking
Member. I appreciate it.
The Chairman. Thank you very much. And I want to thank each
of you for coming today. This is a special place. And I know
everyone in here is an institutionalist and respects it and
loves this--what we do. And the only thing I would say is, you
know, we are all in this together. So we really don't want--we
don't like surprises. Do we, Chief? Nobody likes surprises. So
if there is a problem or something is coming up, talk to us
about it and give us that advance notice.
But again, thank you. Thank you to the Members for being
here.
Without objection, this hearing will recess until tomorrow
where we will hear from our second panel of witnesses, and we
will also have a markup.
[Whereupon, at 6:22 p.m., the Committee was recessed, to
reconvene on Tuesday, February 7, 2017.]
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2017
The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 11:09 a.m., in Room
1310, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Gregg Harper
[Chairman of the Committee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Harper, Davis, Walker, Smith,
Brady, and Raskin.
Staff Present: Sean Moran, Staff Director; Katie Patru,
Deputy Staff Director for Outreach and Communications; Kim
Betz, Senior Advisor; Cole Felder, Counsel; C. Maggie Moore,
Legislative Clerk; Erin McCracken, Communications Director; Rob
Taggart, Deputy Legislative Clerk/Oversight; Alex Attebery,
Staff Assistant; Jamie Fleet, Minority Staff Director; Matt
Pinkus, Minority Senior Policy Advisor; Khalil Abboud, Minority
Chief Counsel; Eddie Flaherty, Minority Chief Clerk; and
Meredith Connor, Minority Staff Assistant.
The Chairman. The Committee on House Administration will
reconvene for the purpose of continuing its hearing on the
operations and priorities of the House officers and legislative
branch entities. As I indicated yesterday, the hearing record
will remain open for 5 legislative days so that members may
submit any materials they wish to include.
A quorum is present. So we may proceed.
I want to thank my colleagues and our second panel of
witnesses for coming this morning to continue our discussion on
priorities for fiscal years 2017 and 2018.
Before we start, I want to thank our House officers for
their hard work and partnership with our Committee during New
Member Orientation, the transition into the 115th Congress, and
especially for the incredible amount of work that went into the
planning and preparation and hosting of the Presidential
inauguration. We understand and appreciate the incredible
undertaking that it was. And we commend you for the attention
to detail and the precise execution of this event by your
teams.
As you know, while I am not new to the Committee, I do have
a new role as Chairman. I look forward to learning about your
priorities, your needs, and expectations for the year ahead
during this hearing. As I said yesterday, we all share a common
goal, and that is to serve the public, the Members, and their
staffs. We can only accomplish that goal if we work together. I
am going to keep this short so we can hear from our witnesses,
but I want to thank you again for appearing here today.
I would now like to recognize my colleague and Ranking
Member of the Committee, Mr. Brady, for the purpose of
providing an opening statement.
Mr. Brady.
[The statement of The Chairman follows:]
Mr. Brady. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for holding
this hearing.
I have no statement other than to thank our witnesses. I
spent a fair amount of time with Paul and Phil recently, and as
always, their judgment and professionalism has made this a
better, safer institution.
It is always good to see Karen, who is always available to
our Members for whatever they need. Usually it is because they
lost a card or whatever. But her team is professional and gives
all the Members a lot of confidence in our legislative process.
We are lucky to have these three working for the House.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Brady.
Does any other Member wish to be recognized for the purpose
of an opening statement?
We are honored to have yet another distinguished panel of
witnesses before us. Karen Haas was sworn in as Clerk of the
House of Representatives on January 5, 2011. This is her second
appointment to this position, having previously served as the
House Clerk from 2005 to 2007. Ms. Haas has a strong working
knowledge of the House, as she served on Capitol Hill as a
legislative staffer, a Floor Assistant to a former Speaker, and
a Staff Director for a House committee.
Paul Irving was sworn in as the Sergeant at Arms of the
United States House of Representatives on January 17, 2012,
during the second session of the 112th Congress. He is the 36th
person to hold this post since 1789. Mr. Irving previously
served as an Assistant Director of the U.S. Secret Service from
2001 to 2008 and served as a Special Agent with the Secret
Service for 25 years.
Phil Kiko was sworn in as the Chief Administrative Officer
of the House of Representatives on August 1, 2016. This is the
second time Mr. Kiko is serving as the CAO. In the mid-1990s,
Mr. Kiko joined the team, the then newly formed CAO, as an
Associate Administrator for Procurement and Purchasing, and
helped establish the procurement office. Mr. Kiko has a long
record of dedicated service both in the House and throughout
the Federal Government. He has most recently served as the
Staff Director and General Counsel for two House committees,
including this Committee from 2011 to 2013. Mr. Kiko also
worked in two other House committees and also served as Chief
of Staff in a Member's congressional office.
Again, we thank each of you for being here today and to
share your upcoming testimony. The Committee has received your
written testimony. At the appropriate time, I will recognize
you for 5 minutes to present a summary of that submission. You
know how the light system works. You have 5 minutes. When it
gets to yellow, you have a minute left. And when you get to
red, we just ask you to end sometime before the day is over and
bring it in for a landing.
The Chair will now recognize the Clerk of the House, Karen
Haas, for 5 minutes.
STATEMENTS OF THE HONORABLE KAREN L. HAAS, CLERK, UNITED STATES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES; THE HONORABLE PAUL D. IRVING,
SERGEANT AT ARMS, UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES; AND
THE HONORABLE PHILIP G. KIKO, CHIEF ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICER,
UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE KAREN L. HAAS
Ms. Haas. Thank you. Chairman Harper, Ranking Member Brady,
and Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to
testify today regarding the priorities of the Office of the
Clerk for the upcoming year. My staff and I appreciate the
guidance and support we receive from the Committee.
The primary responsibility of our office is to support the
legislative process. We have just completed a successful
opening to the 115th Congress, but there is much work to be
done for the remainder of this fiscal year and next. We intend
to continue our efforts to make the legislative process as
transparent as possible, improve business practices, and look
for efficiencies wherever possible.
Two ongoing major projects, our website redesign and
updates to the Electronic Voting System, should be completed
during this year. The website redesign provides legislative
data in a dynamic and user-friendly approach. It has robust
search capabilities, more detailed vote data, and easy access
from any device. We have been testing the site with internal
House customers and expect to launch early this year. The
updates to the voting system include new wiring, modernized
voting boxes, and internal components, as well as improvements
for the visually impaired user. We anticipate testing a
prototype soon and hope to deploy in August.
In our continuing effort to reduce overall printing and
provide timely information, we released a beta version of a
revised House telephone directory website. This website makes
contact information publicly available and easily accessible.
We are encouraging all offices to update their individual
information as they incur staffing changes. Having information
that is accurate and easily accessible will help drive users
from the printed version to the electronic option. Over the
last several years, we have cut the number of directories
printed, and we expect to see more dramatic cuts as users
transition to the electronic format.
We have also been busy working with our partners, including
the Office of Legislative Counsel and the Government Publishing
Office, on a new and unplanned project. A newly adopted House
rule, known as the comparative print rule, will take effect at
the end of this calendar year. It requires that a document be
prepared showing the changes to current law proposed by every
bill, joint resolution, and amendment before they may be
considered on the House floor. Although similar to the current
Ramseyer rule, this new rule will apply to more legislation and
require quicker turnaround than the existing rule. We have been
meeting regularly to understand the scope of this project and
determine how best to comply with this requirement. In
particular, we are trying to determine how much of the work can
be automated and how much will require legal staff to ensure
accuracy. At this time, we are unsure of the impact that this
project will have on our projects, staffing, and budget.
In closing, I appreciate this chance to share our upcoming
priorities for the next fiscal year. All the divisions within
the Office of the Clerk diligently work together every day to
provide support for the legislative process in the House of
Representatives. We strive to do more with less, to increase
efficiencies, and improve transparency while still providing
top-quality service, products, and information to Members,
staff, and the public. We enjoy our longstanding collaboration
with the other House officers and look forward to continuing to
work with their organizations and staff to provide support to
the House community.
I am happy to answer any questions. And thank you.
[The statement of Ms. Haas follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
The Chair now recognizes the House Sergeant at Arms, Paul
Irving, for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE PAUL D. IRVING
Mr. Irving. Good morning, Chairman Harper, Ranking Member
Brady, and Members of the Committee. I appreciate the
opportunity to appear before you to discuss the Sergeant at
Arms' priorities for 2018 and beyond. Before beginning, I would
like to say that it is truly an honor to have the opportunity
to serve this institution, and I look forward to continuing to
work with you.
As Sergeant at Arms, I am responsible for the oversight of
security matters which relate to the House of Representatives.
I also serve as a member of the U.S. Capitol Police Board,
which is statutorily charged with oversight of the U.S. Capitol
Police. And I work with the Board to support the Capitol Police
in its mission to protect and serve the Capitol community.
My office has been involved in a number of very important
new and ongoing projects, which I would like to highlight.
First, the House garage security enhancement project is
designed to move the entire Capitol complex closer to 100
percent screening by bringing the House Office Buildings into a
secure perimeter in line with the Senate Office Buildings and
the Capitol. As you know, the first phase has been completed:
staffing the Ford Garage, the Cannon and Longworth Underground
Garages. And the next phase of this initiative will incorporate
the Rayburn Garage into the screening protocol. This will occur
concurrently with the Rayburn Garage rehabilitation project,
which will entail the buildout of selected elevator lobbies to
accommodate the screening equipment and dedicating certain
elevators to those screening areas. The Cannon Garage screening
checkpoint will likewise be developed simultaneously with the
Cannon renovation project.
In addition to these initiatives, I have been prioritizing
various security enhancements to further augment our external
security posture. These projects will enhance the security
coverage of the Capitol while maintaining the openness and
park-like structure of the grounds.
Our 2018 priorities include installing an underground alarm
around the perimeter of the Capitol, bolstering the physical
structure of the outer planters in the Olmsted wall, and
financing a study to upgrade the lighting on the east plaza of
the Capitol.
Another exterior security initiative entails the life-cycle
replacement of post-9/11 physical security infrastructure
requirements such as the barriers and kiosks. Many security
barriers and kiosks were installed over a decade ago and are
beyond their life cycle and must be replaced. Additionally, the
installation of reinforced windows is a vital part of this
initiative to upgrade and strengthen the exterior facades of
the House Office Buildings.
Along with these enhancements, I have been working closely
with the Board and the Capitol Police to increase manpower at
the most heavily used entrances throughout the Capitol complex
in order to increase presence for prescreening. A core
component to this prescreening initiative is the use of highly
specialized K9 teams.
Within the Capitol, in addition to existing magnetometers,
continued implementation of enhanced screening portals in the
Capitol Visitor Center will provide an additional layer of
security for the House galleries. Visitors are now able to be
screened for powders, liquids, and other nonmetallic objects.
Finally, in partnership with the Capitol Police, my office
maintains a strong, effective outreach program with Member
offices regarding district office security. We will continue
this aggressive outreach as Members are active in their
districts furthering the work of the House of Representatives.
As always, I am grateful for the unyielding support from
this Committee as we strive to maintain the delicate balance
between implementing strong security measures while
simultaneously allowing free and open access to the Capitol
complex. I remain vigilant and focused on security
preparedness, striving to adhere to the strict level of fiscal
responsibility entrusted to us by the Congress. I will continue
to keep the Committee informed of my activities and will be
happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Irving follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
The Chair now recognizes the Chief Administrative Officer,
Phil Kiko.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE PHILIP G. KIKO
Mr. Kiko. Chairman Harper, Ranking Member Brady, and
Members of the Committee, I welcome the opportunity to present
the CAO's current priorities. I would also like to express my
appreciation for my fellow officers, Karen Haas and Paul
Irving.
As the Committee is aware, I began my tenure on August 1.
Since then, I have had the opportunity to meet nearly every one
of the more than 600 talented and dedicated employees,
discussing what they do. This was very productive as it enabled
the receipt of direct and unfiltered information and input in
an attempt to obtain the pulse of the organization of the CAO.
My history with and understanding of the CAO, as was
indicated, is one that dates back to the formation of the CAO
organization in the mid-1990s. An examination of the CAO's
current operations compared with today's needs of the House
community serves as the basis for the priorities of the 115th
Congress. However, the immediate priorities do not represent
the complete CAO picture, only a snapshot in time.
The CAO strategic plan, cybersecurity, and customer service
are three of my top immediate priorities. Led by an internal
cross-functional team, the strategic planning process started
in August and included input from CAO employees representing
every business unit. Employing all staff surveys and
solicitations for input, offsite meetings, focus groups, the
strategy team spent approximately 5 months refining and
developing the organization's mission and vision to convey the
draft strategic plan, which was sent to the Committee last
week.
Not unlike the original CAO charter, the new mission and
vision statements focus on being an essential resource for
Members and staff by providing outstanding customer service. In
the coming days and months, as we work to finalize and
operationalize the plan, we welcome the Committee and other
stakeholder input.
Another immediate priority is protecting the House's IT
infrastructure and the data it supports. Maintaining the
House's cybersecurity is critical. It is made increasingly
difficult by ever-evolving cyber threats. Cyber attacks occur
in varying ways, targeting the House as a whole as well as
individual network users. To successfully protect the House
network and its users, a robust cybersecurity posture must be
maintained. There is a constant assessment and reassessment of
the House's IT infrastructure, which results in ever-evolving
and updating strong countermeasures and subsequent investments.
Success requires a unified front that creates a stronger, more
controlled IT environment. It requires vigilance and active
participation by every individual with access to the House
network. And it requires strict adherence to and enforcement of
current and future House information security policies.
Noncompliance with these policies increases the level of threat
posed to the institution as a whole as well as Members and
staff individually. The CAO cannot do it alone. All the members
of this Committee and staff have been very supportive of our
cybersecurity efforts, and we look forward to continued close
collaboration.
Last but not least, I want to mention customer service.
Whether it is technology services provided to the D.C. and
district offices; financial services, such as processing
vouchers or helping Members get more bang out of their buck
through the procurement team; or caring for the children of
Members and their staff, the CAO provides a myriad of services
relied upon by each Member office. Providing each office with
top-notch service needs to be a priority. The heart of the
CAO's existence is to serve Members in the House and their
staff. Every day, CAO employees strive to do so. In my previous
work on four different committees, the Members' standard was
perfection or at least to strive for perfection. And that is
the standard I think that should be utilized in providing
services to the Members of this Committee and to the House.
Nothing less will do. Thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Kiko follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you Mr. Kiko.
Committee Members will now ask questions of the witnesses.
Each Member is allotted 5 minutes to question the witnesses.
And I will begin by recognizing myself for 5 minutes.
Mr. Kiko, in your testimony, you described the process of
formulating the CAO's strategic plan, which included input from
each business unit within the organization. Can you explain
briefly the steps going forward as you finalize and come up
with a way to make this plan work?
Mr. Kiko. Yeah. So what the process will be going forward
is--and this is a similar process that was followed when the
CAO was created and a very similar process that we used when I
was at the Department of the Interior. But now that we have had
all this input from various individuals within the CAO, we
basically are going to move forward on four different concepts
to try to nail things down with more particularity. These are
customer focus, process, stewardship, and employees.
For customer goals, we need to establish a baseline for
customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is the Congress,
the Members, the other officers, district offices, staff,
everybody that uses our services, and the outside public as
well.
And for process, we need to take a comprehensive look at
our services, including how they are used as well as how
consistent and accurate the CAO is in providing the services.
Using that information, we will try to establish target service
levels that will be consistent and accurate.
For stewardship, we need to make sure that we are investing
in resources that are being utilized by the House and not waste
money.
And for employee goals, when all the top three are done, we
are going to start to overhaul our performance standards for
all of our employees so they tie back into this, into the
concepts that I just articulated.
On Thursday, we are having an all-staff discussion about
the plan. And that is an all-employees meeting that we are
going to roll this out. And, obviously, a strategic plan is of
no value unless it is developed by those responsible for its
execution. So we are going to have continuous input from staff
and other stakeholders. Once finalized, we want to start to
operationalize the plan. And it is a 5-year strategic plan, and
I hope to have most of this done by the end of 2018.
The Chairman. Okay.
Mr. Kiko. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
This is really a question for all of you. Every Congress,
each of your offices works closely with us on the transition
and New Member Orientation activities. With the majority of the
transition-related activities behind us and all of the things
well underway, what, in your opinions, over these last weeks
went well? Are there any areas that you think that we can
improve on for the experiences of the Members-elect in the
future? And I will start with--ladies first. I will go with
you, Ms. Haas.
Ms. Haas. Mr. Chairman, I think each cycle things continue
to improve. And the one item that I found this time that I
thought was extremely helpful was the focus on opening day. I
am not sure previously Members had gotten a lot of information
about what to expect on opening day. So, when you had the
session and were providing that information as well as you
heard from some of the Members directly, I think that was
really a helpful addition to the program.
The Chairman. Okay.
Mr. Irving.
Mr. Irving. Okay. Yeah, I will echo Karen's sentiments.
This year was a little more challenging during the transition
than others with the advent, not only of the inauguration,
which caused a lot of logistical issues in January, but also
the construction, the Rayburn Garage rehabilitation, and other
issues that caused a couple of logistical challenges. And
everyone rose to the challenge. And I appreciate the work of
this Committee during New Member Orientation because that
certainly helped with our parking and identification issues. So
I think it went about as smooth as we could have expected.
The Chairman. Mr. Kiko.
Mr. Kiko. I think there are a couple of things. With regard
to the CAO, with regard to all the responsibilities we had, I
do think a couple of things stand out. In addition to all the
effort that was put in by the staff, we did improve our role in
the Member-elect one-on-one briefings. I thought that was very
helpful. And also we used, to a much greater extent than I have
seen in the past, sharing technology so we knew exactly where
every Member-elect was in every part of the process.
Was one of your questions improvements too?
The Chairman. If you have a suggestion for improvements, we
would like to hear that as well.
Mr. Kiko. All right. Well, I guess I would like to say that
we are going to take a very close look at the after-action
reports. And I also think that we need to expedite district
office setup. I know that there are some issues with regard to
the leases always being a 2-year cycle, and the leases run out,
and they have to be renegotiated. But we also need to figure
out a way to expedite--to figure out a way to get around that
process so we can get technology in the district offices
sooner. The one other thing is there is always--there seems to
be a problem with inventory that is transferring from the old
office to the new office. And sometimes some of the inventory
is not very good, but the Members-elect still want to use it
because, if they don't have it, then they don't have anything.
So we have to improve that process too.
The Chairman. Great. Great suggestions. Thank you.
I now recognize the Ranking Member of the Committee, Mr.
Brady, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Brady. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
For our Sergeant at Arms, I would like to thank you. I
thanked the Chief of Police last night, and I want to thank you
for the great job you did in Philadelphia for the Democratic
National Convention. It was done with the utmost
professionalism, class. Everybody raved about the job that you
had done as integrating with our police force and also with the
Capitol Police and no arrests. And it was a tough, tough week.
It was only 99 degrees, I think. And you guys and gals had to
be out there in full uniform, some of you with some vests. You
know, so I want to publicly thank you for the great job you
did.
Also, could you tell me--our offices here, this Capitol is
a fortress--is there anything we can do, you can do, or we need
to do for our district offices to keep our staff and our
visitors safe? Any advice?
Mr. Irving. The district offices are certainly a challenge
because of the sheer magnitude number of offices that we have
in the House in our districts. Therefore, we use a very, very
aggressive outreach approach to Members with security awareness
training to ensure that those offices are aware of the full
force multiplier approach that we utilize with State and local
law enforcement to assist. We aggressively reach out to all the
law enforcement coordinators in the districts to ensure that
they are doing everything that they can do to ensure that they
abide by and use the checklist that we provide for district
office security. Not only the office itself, the residents, but
also anytime a Member is out with a townhall appearance or a
field hearing or any other public appearance in the district,
we want to be aggressive and ensure that there is adequate
security. So we liaise very aggressively with local law
enforcement. As the Chief noted yesterday, the Capitol Police
has a very aggressive Threat Assessment Section that will
certainly reach out. We will dispatch officers to districts to
conduct site security surveys if need be and do other security
assessments. So, to answer your question, in short, it is
outreach, aggressive outreach, on security awareness for each
district.
Mr. Brady. Thank you.
Madam Clerk, we noticed the new voting board. Anything else
that we are doing to improve--any other work to be done on the
House floor? I know Members come up to me from time to time and
want more voting boxes. I would imagine that they would
probably want a voting box right in front of each one of them.
But I never requested that because I think that they--I don't
think that is valid to have. But anything new going on on our
House floor?
Ms. Haas. So, with the current upgrade to the EVS, you are
going to see new voting stations. They are going to look
visually pretty similar to what we have. We are going to have
LED lighting on the new voting stations. They will also have an
audio feedback for the visually impaired. As far as additional
stations, we currently don't have the ability to add, but we
have built that into the new upgrades.
Mr. Brady. Thank you. Thank you.
Mr. Kiko, we had a lot of discussion about inventory
recently. And it has been an issue that has come up on our
financial statements. The auditors called it a significant
deficiency, which I don't agree with. But what is your plan to
better manage and control inventory both inside the CAO and the
Members' offices?
Mr. Kiko. Thank you. Although we have had clean audit
opinions, we have had significant deficiencies over property
and equipment since fiscal year 1913 [sic]. And I expect
another deficiency in fiscal year 1916 [sic]. So I am sort of
hoping--let me just tell you what we have done and what we need
to still do.
In fiscal year 2016, the CAO conducted the third annual
wall-to-wall physical inventory of CAO-accountable equipment
and capitalized assets to develop a baseline inventory. We then
established a central management business unit within the CAO
to better track this equipment. Asset Management is now
responsible for the central receiving, management, and disposal
of assets within the CAO. We just recently hired a new director
that did some of this stuff with the Architect of the Capitol.
And we then implemented new scanner security to more
efficiently capture asset information. It is my hope that we
can have this cleared up by fiscal year 1918 [sic].
Mr. Brady. Thank you.
Again, Mr. Chairman, I think we are most fortunate to have
them. They have to deal with all our egos and personalities.
They do it professionally, with class, and do an excellent job.
And, again, thank you for the job you are doing. Thank you
for continuing to do it.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Brady. I couldn't agree with
your assessment more.
And at this time, I will recognize the Vice Chairman of the
Committee, Rodney Davis, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thanks to all of
you.
Mr. Kiko, I was a little shocked when I heard you say
``fiscal year 1913.'' I was wondering if you were here at that
point.
Mr. Kiko. I meant 2013. Thank you.
Mr. Davis. Well, we appreciate what you are doing. And
thank you for, you know, putting up with our humor too.
I appreciate some of the comments that were made in regard
to, you know, an after-action report on looking how we can do
things better, you know, looking at our next swearing in.
Obviously, this January 2 was different than my previous two,
being a Federal holiday. I hope that the Committee can continue
to work with the three of you through Chairman Harper to ensure
that we have an even better process going forward after you get
those after-action reports.
Ms. Haas, you and I have talked about the upgrade to the
Electronic Voting System. I appreciate what you are doing
there. And I know that this is kind of a followup to some of
the previous questions. But I know that it was supposed to be
done by August when we first talked. Can you let the Committee
know what you are doing to ensure that this process is moving
ahead as quickly as possible to get toward being on schedule?
And what are you doing to address the IG recommendations?
Ms. Haas. Sure. Thank you. So you are correct. We had hoped
to be able to transition to the new Electronic Voting System
last August. We did put all the wiring in during the August
recess of last year, but because we are using new technology,
the new microprocessors that were engaged in the testing did
not meet the standards that we expect. So they had to go back
and find a different microprocessor. So our vendor is still
working on the prototype. We expect to have that within the
next couple weeks.
We have weekly telephone conference calls with our vendor
to ensure that we are making progress on our effort. One of the
things that is really challenging is that the technology that
we are using is state-of-the-art technology, and with our
voting system, it has to be 100 percent. So we are going to
make sure that that testing is done completely with our vendor.
And then, once we receive it, we will do additional testing
before we deploy. August is the ideal time to go forward with
the system because we need to do all the installations on the
House floor and test it fully again. So we need a several-week
break for the install. So we are pushing weekly with updates
from our vendor to ensure they are meeting that timeline.
Mr. Davis. What about any other IG recommendations?
Ms. Haas. So you are correct. We had a couple remaining
items from the IG. As of last week, we sent them an updated
memo on the outstanding items. There are two items that are
tied into the EVS upgrade. We are not able to make those
updates until this upgrade is complete. So we have addressed
all of the ones that we could at this point. The remaining two
will be addressed as part of this next upgrade.
Mr. Davis. Thank you. Thank you.
Mr. Kiko, Mr. Harper actually made a wager with me that I
couldn't make you laugh earlier. I won. So let's see if I can
do it again.
I wanted to ask you: As you know, I helped lead a review of
the financial processes in the last Congress, and you and I
have talked about this on occasion; how do we make it work
better for our offices, and also how do we make it work better
for the folks you have working for you in the Office of
Finance?
Do you think the Finance Office is following our
recommendations that were made during that review process that
you and I have talked about?
Mr. Kiko. I think they are. I mean, we support the
standards. And we do believe--and I have looked into this--that
they provide the right amount of controls. Having said that, we
would like to, I know, make some fine-tune adjustments so that
we are not just chasing small dollars, you know, so that we are
going after the right amount. Training is still key for the
staff to make sure there aren't mistakes. There is an issue
with regard to we have to make sure that there is knowledge
management, that everybody understands what the regulations
are, and there is consistency. So I know that they are trying
to comply. And I think there is going to be some reports, you
know, on that. In addition, we have an assessment for the
Finance Office that is going to be an outside assessment that
will help tamp that down further.
Mr. Davis. When do you anticipate that assessment being
brought to completion?
Mr. Kiko. In September.
Mr. Davis. September. Okay. Well, thank you. And please
offer our thanks to the men and women who work in the Finance
Office. I know they do a great job on a daily basis.
Mr. Kiko. Thank you.
Mr. Davis. Thank you.
I yield back.
The Chairman. The gentleman yields back.
I will now recognize Mr. Walker for 5 minutes.
Mr. Walker. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Kiko, thank you again for your time yesterday. I
appreciated getting a little more background. I hope we can do
that again. Very informative for us.
Mr. Brady already touched on a little bit of where I was
wanting to go, Mr. Irving, with some of the district concerns
that seem to be growing. I know, even at our conference this
morning, we talked about it. So I won't go too much in there.
You did mention the law enforcement coordinator program. Could
you take maybe 30 seconds and expound a little bit more on,
specifically, what consists of that?
Mr. Irving. Yes. We ask each office, each district office,
to appoint a law enforcement coordinator, who is the point of
contact between the office and local law enforcement but also
to our office and the Capitol Police; and remain vigilant of
any item security, you know, item or issue in the district; and
ensure that they maintain a liaison with local law enforcement,
let them know, again, if a Member is going to be out and about
in the district, if they foresee anything, and likewise
maintain a liaison with us.
Mr. Walker. Are you getting Member participation to the
level that you feel like it should be?
Mr. Irving. It is outstanding. We are over 90 percent now.
Mr. Walker. Wow.
Mr. Irving. There are a few here and there that we need to
update, but generally speaking, we have a very, very positive
response to the program.
Mr. Walker. I am glad to hear that. I know it is hard to
speculate or predict, but if we look out over the next year or
two for protests or for things that are happening here around
the Capitol, can you talk a little bit about some of the
preemptive work that you guys are doing?
Mr. Irving. Yes. Absolutely. In the district, for example,
the Capitol Police have a very robust Threat Assessment Unit
that looks at open-source information and also works with
Member offices to foresee any potential demonstrations or
security issues in the district. If they do foresee a
demonstration or something that might be a little volatile,
they will reach out to local law enforcement for assistance,
and again, if it warrants, I will authorize Capitol Police to
go to that Member district as well.
In town, we also have an uptick in the demonstration
activity. Capitol Police does an outstanding job at
demonstration management. They have a number of what they call
CDU, or Civil Disturbance Units or platoons, that are actively
engaged when we foresee that we are going to have issues and do
a great job. So the key is to stay ahead of it with
intelligence and with other information to ensure that we have
the manpower to address it.
Mr. Walker. Under the First Amendment, we want to make sure
that everybody's opportunity to protest, to speak out on things
they believe in, is always protected. You did use the term
``civil disobedience.'' So you are going on record, I guess, to
say that there is some kind of plan if it reaches that place--
and we certainly hope it doesn't--or worse, that you guys feel
confident that whatever the venue or the event, the protest or
the demonstration, that we would have an adequate plan in
place?
Mr. Irving. Yes. And I very much appreciate you qualifying
that. It is rare, really, that we get true civil disobedience.
Most people that come to the Capitol exercise their First
Amendment rights in a very, very peaceful manner. So the
Capitol Police are very respectful of the First Amendment
rights and have a very established process in place for permits
and demonstrations. We always ensure that we do the best that
we can to be on the forefront of that.
Mr. Walker. I am glad to hear that. I just have one other
question. Can you outline the current programs and initiatives
you offer to the D.C. staff, such as the Office Emergency
Coordinator Program--in case there was an emergency, since it
is a new season, new time, I just want to make sure that, from
an update standpoint, would you take just a second and address
that?
Mr. Irving. Yes. We also continually update our Office
Emergency Coordinator Program to ensure that each office here
in D.C. has a representative that liaises with our office and
also ensures that the emergency management procedures of each
office is up-to-date and everyone is trained and versed in
emergency management procedures, such as what to do in case of
a fire, what to do in case of an emergency relocation, and
those sorts of items. So yes. We also have fantastic
cooperation, and a very high percentage of offices also
volunteer and help out.
Mr. Walker. Thank you, Mr. Irving.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I will yield back.
Thank you.
The Chairman. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair will now recognize Mr. Smith for 5 minutes.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you. For our witnesses here today, I appreciate your
service. Obviously, you have a very integral role in the
operation of the House of Representatives, Congress in general.
So I am grateful for your service.
Mr. Kiko, your testimony talks a lot about customer service
and so forth. And I can certainly appreciate that. I am glad
that you highlight that. I am just curious; have there been any
current benchmarks established in terms of being able to kind
of gauge where we are now and where we might want to go in the
future?
Mr. Kiko. Not yet. I mean, I think that is the next step,
probably within the next couple of months. We are just rolling
out the strategic plan to all the offices, all the staff in the
CAO, on Thursday, and then they are going to look at the
strategic plan. And then we are starting to establish those
benchmarks soon thereafter. But we don't have anything yet
although some of the efforts, you know, that we have had in the
past, like what Congressman Davis was talking about on voucher
processing and those kinds of things, those will fold into some
of that. But we have not established any benchmarks yet.
Mr. Smith. Okay. Thank you.
Ms. Haas, your testimony alludes to the changes made this
past January in the rules package requiring each bill,
resolution, amendment, et cetera, that comes to the House floor
to have a comparative print. Is your office the lead with
respect to implementing this rule change? What steps have you
taken to move forward?
Ms. Haas. Yes. I think we are taking the lead in this
project. And we are working very closely with Leg Counsel. Much
of the work has to come from the Office of Leg Counsel. But I
think we have the technical expertise. But we may need to go
outside to get additional assistance with the other IT projects
that we already had in the pipeline. So we have been meeting
weekly at this point, and we are trying to narrow down the
scope of the project.
Mr. Smith. Okay. Very well. Thank you.
I yield back.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much.
The Chairman. The gentleman yields back.
Mr. Brady, anything else?
Without objection, all Members will have 5 legislative days
to submit to the Chair additional written questions for the
witnesses, which we will forward and ask the witnesses to
respond as promptly as they can so that those answers may be
made a part of the record.
I just want to thank each of you for being here today. You
know, this Committee has oversight responsibilities. And the
one word no one wants to hear is ``surprise,'' and so if there
is a problem or something going on, please come to us. We are
all in this together, and I appreciate your attendance today.
Without objection, this hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:49 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]