Congressional Record, Volume 163 Issue 163 (Wednesday, October 11, 2017)

[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 163 (Wednesday, October 11, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H7955-H7957]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

{time} 1600
FITARA ENHANCEMENT ACT OF 2017

Mr. RUSSELL. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the
bill (H.R. 3243) to amend title 40, United

[[Page H7956]]

States Code, to eliminate the sunset of certain provisions relating to
information technology, to amend the National Defense Authorization Act
for Fiscal Year 2015 to extend the sunset relating to the Federal Data
Center Consolidation Initiative, and for other purposes.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The text of the bill is as follows

H.R. 3243

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

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the ``FITARA Enhancement Act of
2017''.

SEC. 2. ELIMINATION OF SUNSET RELATING TO TRANSPARENCY AND
RISK MANAGEMENT OF MAJOR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
INVESTMENTS.

Subsection (c) of section 11302 of title 40, United States
Code, is amended by striking the first paragraph (5).

SEC. 3. ELIMINATION OF SUNSET RELATING TO INFORMATION
TECHNOLOGY PORTFOLIO, PROGRAM, AND RESOURCE
REVIEWS.

Section 11319 of title 40, United States Code, is amended--
(1) by redesignating the second subsection (c) as
subsection (d); and
(2) in subsection (d), as so redesignated, by striking
paragraph (6).

SEC. 4. EXTENSION OF SUNSET RELATING TO FEDERAL DATA CENTER
CONSOLIDATION INITIATIVE.

Subsection (e) of section 834 of the National Defense
Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015 (Public Law 113-291;
44 U.S.C. 3601 note) is amended by striking ``2018'' and
inserting ``2020''.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from
Oklahoma (Mr. Russell) and the gentlewoman from the District of
Columbia (Ms. Norton) each will control 20 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Oklahoma.

General Leave

Mr. RUSSELL. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members
may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks
and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from Oklahoma?
There was no objection.
Mr. RUSSELL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I speak in support of H.R. 3243, the FITARA Enhancement
Act of 2017, introduced by Mr. Connolly, Mr. Issa, Ms. Kelly from
Illinois, and Mr. Meadows earlier this year.
Today, the Federal Government spends more than $90 billion on Federal
IT, with approximately 75 percent of this money spent on archaic and
legacy IT. This means we are paying more for less: less capability and
less security. Meanwhile, major Federal IT investments often result in
multimillion-dollar cost overruns and delays.
This state of affairs led the Government Accountability Office to
designate Federal IT acquisition and management as high risk in 2015,
meaning this area is at high risk of waste, fraud, abuse, and
mismanagement.
In 2014, Congress passed the Federal Information Technology
Acquisition Reform Act, otherwise known as FITARA, to address some of
these IT challenges.
Congress has maintained a watchful eye to ensure agencies fully
implement the requirements of FITARA and use it as a vital oversight
tool. In fact, the Oversight and Government Reform Committee has held
five hearings on FITARA implementation.
The committee also created a FITARA scorecard to hold Federal
agencies accountable for meeting FITARA requirements, some of which
sunset in the near term.
This bill will help us facilitate Congress' oversight efforts by
extending key FITARA requirements to improve Federal IT.
For example, this bill extends requirements for agencies to publicly
report schedule and cost information and to assess the risks of major
IT investments. This bill also extends requirements for each agency to
regularly assess its IT portfolio, look for opportunities to reduce
duplication, and find savings.
Finally, the bill will help us continue to hold agencies accountable
for consolidating and optimizing their data centers by extending these
requirements--and GAO's verification of these requirements--through
2020.
The GAO, which has been instrumental in assisting Congress oversee
FITARA implementation, supports extending the FITARA sunset dates.
Mr. Connolly from Virginia and Mr. Issa from California have been the
key leaders on the original FITARA law, and they have come together
again to sponsor this bill, along with Representatives Meadows and
Kelly.
The FITARA Enhancement Act is truly a bipartisan effort in making
sure Federal agencies get their information technology management and
acquisition houses in order.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bill, and I reserve
the balance of my time.
Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the
gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Connolly), the sponsor of the bill.
Mr. CONNOLLY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, Darrell Issa, the
cosponsor of this bill and the cosponsor of the original FITARA; and my
good friend from Oklahoma (Mr. Russell) for his able management today.
The Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act, or FITARA,
was enacted 3 years ago. It represented the first major reform of the
laws governing the procurement and management of Federal IT since the
Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996.
FITARA is the framework for IT procurement and ensures the Federal
Government is making smart and effective investments to modernize its
IT, which is badly needed.
It has seven pillars:
First, it enhances CIO authorities, responsibilities, and
accountability.
Second, it enhances transparency and improves risk management by
requiring detailed information on investments to be published on the IT
dashboard.
Third, we increased the frequency of portfolio reviews from annual to
quarterly and included key decisionmakers from the agency and OMB to
not only look for ways to increase efficiency, but to eliminate
duplication.
Fourth, we built on the Federal data center consolidation effort to
push agencies to realize big savings from this low-hanging fruit.
Fifth, people. Recognizing that Federal IT success is only as good as
the people behind it, FITARA calls for expanding the training and use
of IT professionals.
Sixth, FITARA seeks to maximize new tools like the Federal Strategic
Sourcing Initiative, taking a page from the private sector to reduce
duplicative spending on common purchases and off-the-shelf items.
Finally, FITARA advances a government software purchasing program to
allow for purchasing licensing agreements that can be made available
for use by all Federal agencies.
FITARA is a rubric for IT procurement that, hopefully, someday
enables initiatives like the Modernizing Government Technology Act to
build on our success of improving how the government acquires and
modernizes IT.
When the stakeholders met on Federal IT from government agencies and
industry, both Mr. Issa and I constantly were reminded of why previous
major IT reform efforts had fallen short of their potential: the lack
of robust implementation plan and congressional oversight.
As Mr. Russell indicated quite clearly, in that latter regard, we
have robust oversight, and it will continue.
One of the things we had in FITARA were some sunset provisions, in
the hope and expectation that, by having that, we would encourage
cooperation and implementation. That cooperation and implementation is
uneven throughout the Federal Government.
The GAO, or Government Accountability Office, recommended that we
have this bill to extend those sunset provisions to buy a little bit
more time to get with the program for those Federal agencies.
So that is what this bill does, but it builds on FITARA, which is the
framework for IT procurement and modernization.
Mr. Speaker, I urge passage of the bill.
Mr. RUSSELL. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the
gentleman from California (Mr. Issa), an original cosponsor of this
bill and also the former chairman of the Government and Oversight
Reform Committee.
Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, no one has ever had a better partner on a
piece of

[[Page H7957]]

legislation than I have had. The best way I can describe Mr. Connolly
is, like anyone else who came to a realization of something, he came to
it with a great deal of zeal. This partnership, which began before the
passage in 2014, to modernize a 1996 initiative that had fallen short,
has been his passion and mine.
Normally, when you are chairman, people talk about what divides the
committee. But nothing united us more than recognizing that over $80
billion was being spent--and much of it needlessly. We don't achieve
what we want to because there is never enough. Part of it is how we
procure.
Prior to the passage of this legislation, it certainly was possible
to have major pieces of procurement have somebody in charge who could
not, in fact, change or drop the expenditure and who could not simply
say: This isn't working. On top of that, often the people who did have
the authority lacked the expertise. This has been true in all sorts of
areas. There is much more work to be done.
Unlike Clinger-Cohen, which went on for 18 years before being
updated, we were just 3 years past the implementation of this bill.
With Congressman Connolly's effort, we are coming back and making real
changes--ones that can continue the process and speed it up.
Obviously, there are some areas like the IT dashboard and others that
simply need to be continued to be renewed. This bill does it.
When I first talked to Mr. Connolly, he was the best known for
absolutely wanting to consolidate processing centers; consolidate these
server farms that had proliferated. The number he had at the time
turned out to be, although exorbitant, less than a quarter of the
number we found. So there is more work to be done.
Procurement has to be done smart and is often consolidated. With the
help of my colleague and Senator Warner, the passage of the DATA Act
allowed us to find, with greater detail, redundancy of expenditure.
So as we reauthorize FITARA, we also have the information to
consolidate purchasing across vast numbers of agencies, eliminate
redundancy, and, in fact, buy better. More needs to be done.
As Mr. Connolly said so accurately, more money is spent on legacy
systems than is spent on new systems that will actually save money and
provide better services both to government workers and to the public.
So as we reauthorize the bill, I look forward to the oversight that
the Oversight Committee has done and is able to do, and I look forward
to continuing to work with my partner from Virginia, Mr. Connolly.
Mr. Speaker, I urge passage of the bill.
Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this bill, H.R. 3243, the
FITARA Enhancement Act.
FITARA is bipartisan legislation that has made significant strides in
reforming government IT and making agencies more accountable. I thank
Representative Connolly for all his hard work on this bill, as well as
my good friend who has just spoken, Mr. Russell.
This bill would extend three provisions of FITARA that are set to
expire. These provisions include the provision on Federal data center
consolidation; transparency and risk management of major IT systems;
and agencies' IT portfolio, program, and resource reviews, also known
as PortfolioStat.
These provisions provide transparency and accountability for agencies
and should be continued. GAO reports that if we allow these provisions
to expire, we will miss out on major savings. IT spending makes up
roughly $100 billion of government spending each year. We cannot afford
to allow this legislation that will save funds and help modernize IT
assets to simply expire.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to strongly support this bill, and
I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. RUSSELL. Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Gowdy, Mr. Connolly from
Virginia, and Mr. Issa from California for this important and continued
work that will not only improve IT and reduce duplication but will
continue to save billions of taxpayer dollars.
Mr. Speaker, I urge adoption of the bill, and I yield back the
balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the
gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Russell) that the House suspend the rules
and pass the bill, H.R. 3243.
The question was taken.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. In the opinion of the Chair, two-thirds
being in the affirmative, the ayes have it.
Mr. RUSSELL. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, further
proceedings on this motion will be postponed.

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