[House Hearing, 112 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
TRANSPARENCY AND FEDERAL MANAGEMENT IT SYSTEMS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY, INFORMATION
POLICY, INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS AND
PROCUREMENT REFORM
of the
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JULY 14, 2011
__________
Serial No. 112-83
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov
http://www.house.gov/reform
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71-984 WASHINGTON : 2012
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COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
DARRELL E. ISSA, California, Chairman
DAN BURTON, Indiana ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland,
JOHN L. MICA, Florida Ranking Minority Member
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
PATRICK T. McHENRY, North Carolina ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
JIM JORDAN, Ohio Columbia
JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
CONNIE MACK, Florida JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
TIM WALBERG, Michigan WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
JUSTIN AMASH, Michigan JIM COOPER, Tennessee
ANN MARIE BUERKLE, New York GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
PAUL A. GOSAR, Arizona MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois
RAUL R. LABRADOR, Idaho DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
PATRICK MEEHAN, Pennsylvania BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa
SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee PETER WELCH, Vermont
JOE WALSH, Illinois JOHN A. YARMUTH, Kentucky
TREY GOWDY, South Carolina CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut
DENNIS A. ROSS, Florida JACKIE SPEIER, California
FRANK C. GUINTA, New Hampshire
BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas
MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania
Lawrence J. Brady, Staff Director
John D. Cuaderes, Deputy Staff Director
Robert Borden, General Counsel
Linda A. Good, Chief Clerk
David Rapallo, Minority Staff Director
Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental
Relations and Procurement Reform
JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma, Chairman
MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania, Vice GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia,
Chairman Ranking Minority Member
JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut
TIM WALBERG, Michigan STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
RAUL R. LABRADOR, Idaho JACKIE SPEIER, California
PATRICK MEEHAN, Pennsylvania
BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on July 14, 2011.................................... 1
Statement of:
Kundra, Vivek, Federal Chief Information Officer, Office of
Management and Budget; Roger Baker, Assistant Secretary for
Information and Technology, U.S. Department of Veterans
Affairs; Lawrence Gross, Deputy Chief Information Officer,
U.S. Department of the Interior; Owen Barwell, Acting Chief
Financial Officer, U.S. Department of Energy; and Joel
Willemssen, Managing Director of Information Technology
Issues, Government Accountability Office................... 7
Baker, Roger............................................. 17
Barwell, Owen............................................ 27
Gross, Lawrence.......................................... 22
Kundra, Vivek............................................ 7
Willemssen, Joel......................................... 36
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Baker, Roger, Assistant Secretary for Information and
Technology, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, prepared
statement of............................................... 19
Barwell, Owen, Acting Chief Financial Officer, U.S.
Department of Energy, prepared statement of................ 29
Connolly, Hon. Gerald E., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Virginia, prepared statement of............... 5
Gross, Lawrence, Deputy Chief Information Officer, U.S.
Department of the Interior, prepared statement of.......... 23
Kundra, Vivek, Federal Chief Information Officer, Office of
Management and Budget, prepared statement of............... 9
Lankford, Hon. James, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Oklahoma, prepared statement of................... 2
Willemssen, Joel, Managing Director of Information Technology
Issues, Government Accountability Office, prepared
statement of............................................... 38
TRANSPARENCY AND FEDERAL MANAGEMENT IT SYSTEMS
----------
THURSDAY, JULY 14, 2011
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy,
Intergovernmental Relations and Procurement Reform,
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:48 p.m. in
room 2157, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. James Lankford
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Lankford, Farenthold and Connolly.
Also present: Representative Issa.
Staff present: Will L. Boyington, staff assistant; Hudson
T. Hollister, counsel; Tegan Millspaw, research analyst; Peter
Warren, legislative policy director; Christine Martin, staff
assistant; Jaron Bourke, minority director of administration;
Amy Miller, minority professional staff member; and Cecelia
Thomas, minority counsel/deputy clerk.
Mr. Lankford. Committee will come to order.
This is a hearing on Transparency and Federal Management of
IT Systems of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
We exist to secure two fundamental principles. First,
Americans have a right to know that the money Washington takes
from them is well spent. And second, Americans deserve an
efficient and effective government that works for them. Our
duty on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee is to
protect these rights and it is our solemn responsibility to
hold government accountable to taxpayers because taxpayers do
have a right to know what they get from their government.
We have worked and will work tirelessly in partnership with
citizen watchdogs to deliver the facts to the American people
and bring genuine reform to Federal bureaucracy. This is the
mission of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
I am going to submit my opening statement for the record.
[The prepared statement of Hon. James Lankford follows:]
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Mr. Lankford. As the ranking member has also chosen to do,
is that correct?
Mr. Connolly. That is correct, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Gerald E. Connolly
follows:]
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Mr. Connolly. I just want to join you in welcoming our
panel and also particularly, Mr. Vivek Kundra who is,
unfortunately, going to be leaving Federal service. I have
known Vivek for a long time and he has provided very visionary
leadership in the Federal Government. I certainly hope his good
work will not be discarded but in fact attended to because I
think he set us on the right path in terms of U.S. technology
policy.
Thank you. And with that I'll also submit my full statement
for the record.
Mr. Issa. Mr. Chairman, could I have just a moment?
Mr. Lankford. You most certainly may. I recognize the
chairman of the full committee.
Mr. Issa. I only came up to make a quorum but if this is
the last time we get you on the cheap because somebody is going
to scrape you out and pay you what you are worth, then we will
miss you. Hopefully, you will still come back in some new role
because you have been a great bipartisan friend to the
committee.
Mr. Kundra. Thank you for your kind words.
Mr. Issa. You deserve that and more.
I will come back later on but thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Lankford. Thank you.
With that, all Members may have 7 days to submit opening
statements and extraneous material for the record.
I would like to now welcome our panel of witnesses. We have
already spoken several times already about Mr. Vivek Kundra. He
is the Chief Information Officer at the Office of Management
and Budget, and the first time the Federal Government has had
that, so you get to be the pacesetter. As I mentioned to you
earlier, that is always the person who does the greatest amount
of work. Everyone else builds on your work from here on out.
Mr. Roger Baker, Chief Information Officer of the
Department of Veterans Affairs. Thank you for being here. Mr.
Lawrence Gross is Deputy Chief Information Officer of the
Department of the Interior. Mr. Owen Barwell, Acting Chief
Financial Officer of the Department of Energy. Mr. Joel
Willemssen is Managing Director of Information Technology
Issues at the Government Accountability Office [GAO].
Pursuant to committee rules, all witnesses will be sworn in
before they testify. If you would please rise and raise your
right hands. Thank you gentlemen.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Lankford. Let the record reflect that all witnesses
answered in the affirmative. You may be seated.
In order to allow time for discussion, I will ask you to
limit your testimony to 5 minutes. There is a countdown clock
in front of you with which I am sure all of you are familiar
with. It will count down from five to zero. If you go a little
bit over, we will be fine with that.
As I mentioned to everyone before, we do have votes that
will be called sometime in the middle of this afternoon and we
are going to honor your time as much as we possibly can and to
be able to get straight to questions as quickly as we can and
hopefully get a chance to get this hearing finished.
With that, I would like to recognize Mr. Kundra for 5
minutes.
STATEMENTS OF VIVEK KUNDRA, FEDERAL CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER,
OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET; ROGER BAKER, ASSISTANT
SECRETARY FOR INFORMATION AND TECHNOLOGY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
VETERANS AFFAIRS; LAWRENCE GROSS, DEPUTY CHIEF INFORMATION
OFFICER, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR; OWEN BARWELL, ACTING
CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY; AND JOEL
WILLEMSSEN, MANAGING DIRECTOR OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ISSUES,
GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
STATEMENT OF VIVEK KUNDRA
Mr. Kundra. Good afternoon, Chairman Lankford, Ranking
Member Connolly and members of the subcommittee.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify on the
administration's ongoing efforts to move the government to a
more open, transparent and participatory entity.
Over the last 2\1/2\ years, our efforts to shine light on
government operations have taught us 10 key principles that we
must apply as we scale transparency across all Federal
spending. I would like to talk about these key lessons that
we've learned.
Number one, that we must build end-to-end digital systems
to reduce errors and protect the integrity of the data across
the Federal enterprise.
Number two, build once, use often. Across the Federal
Government, there are over 12,000 major IT systems with
thousands and thousands of data bases behind those systems.
That leads to the complexity of the enterprise which is the
U.S. Government and some of the issues around data quality.
Number three, tap into the golden sources of data. What I
mean by that is that we shouldn't be relying on derivative data
bases, data derived from other data sources and massaged, but
we should go directly to the very transactional systems that
are used to do business on a day to day basis.
Number four, release data in machine readable formats and
encourage third party applications. Washington doesn't have a
monopoly on the best ideas and we have seen what happens when
you democratize data. You have the ability to get innovation in
ways that were structurally impossible before.
Number five, employ common data standards. Think about what
would have happened if railroads across the country had
different standards in terms of railroad track gauges. We
wouldn't have had the impact we had during the industrial
revolution and the transcontinental railroad that created so
many jobs and opportunities and created innovation across the
board. In the same way, data and having common data standards
is vital as we think about transparency.
Number six, use simple, upfront data validations. If you go
back in time and think of recovery.gov in the early days, there
were phantom congressional districts because data wasn't
validated upfront. A simple data validation upfront would have
prevented phantom congressional districts from being entered to
begin with.
Number seven, release data as close to real time as
possible. If you think about some of the innovations and
applications in the ecosystem that have been developed such as
mobile apps that allow you to see, on a real-time basis landing
of flights across the country, allowing the American people to
make decisions based on that data, it is because that data is
real time. In the same way, when it comes to transparency, we
should be able to get data on a real-time basis as someone is
charging or conducting a transaction on a credit card all the
way to procurement.
Number eight, engineer systems to reduce burden. It is
critical to make sure that as we think about transparencies, we
look at this $3.7 trillion model in terms of how do we shine
light on all of that funding, that we make sure we are not
creating more burdens. A simple example, when it comes to
student aid applications, is that the IRS and Department of
Education decided to share data, therefore we were able to
eliminate about 70 questions that students had to fill because
that data was already prepopulated.
Number nine, protect privacy and security. This is critical
especially in the age of Facebook and Twitter which is that you
can create a mosaic effect without really thinking about it. It
is one thing to release data, for example, when it comes to
health care at a State level; it is another thing to release it
at a zip code level. In rural parts of the country, there may
be one person who has that condition and you could tie that to
a Facebook account. So we have to be vigilant when it comes to
protecting the privacy of the American people and also national
security.
Number 10, provide equal access to data and incorporate
user feedback on an ongoing basis.
These 10 principles are grounded in the work we have done
and the hard lessons we have learned. I would like to share
three examples of what is possible by making government more
open, transparent and participatory.
Number one, when we looked at the $80 billion we spent on
information technology, we launched an IT Dashboard and parked
online the picture of every CIR right next to the IT project
they were responsible for. The results were we were able to
reduce the budget of poorly performing IT projects by $3
billion.
Number two, by launching Recovery.gov, what we've seen is
an unprecedented low level of fraud, waste and abuse below 0.6
percent.
Number three, by launching Data.gov, we started with 47
datasets in May 2009. Today, we have over 390,000 datasets on
every aspect of government operations and 29 States have
followed this model, 11 cities, and 21 countries. But what we
have seen is applications being developed that somebody in
Washington couldn't have even imagined.
This committee has long recognized the importance of an
open, transparent government and I appreciate its ongoing
support for these efforts. Going forward, it will take all of
us, Congress, the executive branch agencies, and recipients of
Federal funds working together, to deliver on an open
government that works for all Americans.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify. I look
forward to any questions you may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Kundra follows:]
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Mr. Lankford. Thank you.
Mr. Baker, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF ROGER BAKER
Mr. Baker. Thank you, Chairman Lankford, Ranking Member
Connolly and members of the subcommittee, thank you for
inviting me to testify alongside my colleagues today.
As the Assistant Secretary for Information and Technology,
the VACIO is uniquely positioned for a Federal CIO, controlling
all IT resources and staff at the Federal Government's second
largest department. In effect, the VACIO runs a $3 billion IT
services company, with its primary customers being the Health
and Benefits Administrations at the VA.
In this role and as the former CEO of a private sector
company, I bring an operational perspective to today's hearing.
Since my confirmation in 2009, I have been a strong supporter
of this administration's efforts to eliminate wasteful spending
and implement real transparency in the way we do business.
Over the last 2 years, we have focused on running the VA IT
organization like a company, driving the fiscal and IT process
disciplines necessary to dramatically improve cost efficiency,
reliability and customer satisfaction. In that effort, one of
the key challenges has been the difference in financial
management approaches between the private and the public
sectors.
As a private sector CEO, I became accustomed to a constant
flow of data regarding revenue, costs and cash-flow that
provided an effective means for monitoring, measuring and
forecasting the performance of projects, programs and business
units within my organization. Effective cost accounting and
strong financial management systems are the lifeblood of
companies that must compete on a daily basis just to stay in
business.
While the private sector is concerned with revenue,
expenditures and cash-flow, the public sector focuses on
appropriations and obligations. This results in core financial
systems that, while performing exactly as intended, simply are
not designed to provide the type of detailed, real time cost
data necessary to effectively manage a business. To draw an
analogy, managing IT projects using Federal financial systems
is the equivalent of crossing Pennsylvania Avenue using a
photograph taken 30 days ago.
Transparency, and particularly the IT Dashboard, has
provided broad visibility to this problem. As the GAO aptly
points out, the information VA systems originally provided to
the IT Dashboard was frequently old or inaccurate. Of greater
concern to me was that that information was precisely what was
being used by IT managers and department leadership to manage
our IT projects.
With strong encouragement from OMB and from VA's Deputy
Secretary, we have implemented both short term and longer term
projects to address these issues, including implementing
several new systems that will better track actual costs,
including labor hours at the project level.
The President's call for more transparency in government
and this committee's work are important to making our
government run better. Especially in these economic times, it
is critical that our financial management systems provide clear
and accurate data that is as transparent as possible.
VA will continue to strive to excel at both management
efficiency and transparency and build on the successes of our
existing strong management and transparency efforts.
Again, thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member and
committee members, once again, for the opportunity to be here
today.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Baker follows:]
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Mr. Lankford. Thank you, Mr. Baker.
Mr. Gross, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF LAWRENCE GROSS
Mr. Gross. Thank you, Chairman Lankford and members of the
subcommittee.
I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to
present the Department of Interior's efforts to improve
transparency through technology improvements and financial data
standardization.
I am Lawrence Gross, and I am Deputy Chief Information
Officer at the Department of the Interior. If I may, I would
like to submit our full statement for the record and summarize
our testimony.
Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, the Department of
Interior has a unique public facing mission, that of protecting
America's great outdoors and empowering our future. The
Department protects America's natural resources and heritage,
honors our cultures and tribal communities and supplies the
energy to power our future.
In order to meet this unique mission requirement and
engender the public trust now and into the future, cost
effective, fully integrated, 21st Century technology must play
a central role. The Department recognizes the critical role
that technology and information quality plays in meeting our
mission and as a result, have taken aggressive steps to provide
21st Century technologies to the Department employees and to
improve the access and quality of data to the public.
Specifically, the Department has three major initiatives
that will, over the next few years, retire duplicative
financial management and reporting systems by moving forward to
continue to retire and integrate enterprise-wide financial
management systems. Specifically, we will be deploying the
financial management business system; second, we will be
modernizing our information technology infrastructure through
our recently launched, self-funded IT modernization initiative,
which we anticipate will result in savings to the public of
$500 million over a 4-year period; and third, an alignment with
the Office of Management and Budget TechStat process, we have
implemented a vigorous governance process that we call within
DOI, IStat.
This process will improve the management and oversight of
the Department's IT investment portfolio. Mr. Chairman, the
Department fully understands the budget environment and we are
confident that these initiatives will contain costs and
significantly improve the Department's ability to meet its
mission and to fulfill the demands of the public for
transparent access into the operations of the Department.
I welcome any questions you or members of the committee may
have. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Gross follows:]
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Chairman Lankford. Thank you, Mr. Gross.
Mr. Barwell, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF OWEN BARWELL
Mr. Barwell. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member
Connolly, and members of the subcommittee.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak about the Department
of Energy's business systems. I would like to start by
providing a brief overview of them.
In January 2003, the Department launched the Integrated
Management Navigation System, now known as iManage, to
consolidate, standardize and streamline the Department's
business and finance systems and processes. The functions and
scope of this effort include finance and cost accounting,
travel, payroll, budget formulation and execution, procurement
and contracts management, facilities management, human capital
and information management.
Today, the strategic objectives for iManage are connecting
our people, simplifying our work and liberating our data, and
we continue to work to improve financial and business systems
and to use these systems to provide greater transparency in
support of Presidential priorities.
The full suite of systems was substantially deployed in
2008. Since then, the iManage program has continued to invest
in software upgrades and operational performance improvements
pursuant to an integrated enterprise architecture. The core of
our business systems is the iManage Data Warehouse, IDW, the
central data warehouse that links common data elements from
each of the Department's corporate business systems.
IDW serves as a knowledge bank of information about
programs and projects including budget execution, accumulated
costs, performance achieved and critical milestones met. As a
key component of the iManage program, the Department relies
heavily on IDW for executive management and operational
reporting, as well as for external requests for data.
While our work is not done, I think it is important to
recognize our accomplishments in deploying and integrating
these systems and tools. For example, one of the key outcomes
of implementing the STARS Accounting System has been that the
Department has received a clean audit opinion since fiscal year
2007 based on the consolidated financial statements generated
by STARS.
Also, since 2008 when STRIPES, our procurement system,
first came online, the Department had made 29,000 separate
grant awards totaling $40 billion, including significant
funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
During that same time, the Department has also made 67,000
contract actions worth a total of $47 billion.
The real test of these systems came in implementing the
Recovery Act, providing transparency of our performance through
recovery.gov. We helped over 4,500 Recovery Act recipients
submit quality and accurate information into
FederalReporting.gov for public viewing. The information was
also cross-checked internally using our business intelligence
tools to identify and address any data quality issues.
The advantage of having STRIPES fully deployed has been the
increased speed and accuracy of procurement as well as
increased vendor participation. By enhancing the integration
and interoperability of our acquisition and financial systems,
workload performed by the financial personnel was reduced and
in some cases, eliminated.
In addition to these accomplishments, I would like to
highlight our integration with governmentwide corporate
systems. While an ongoing effort, it is important to note that
the Department's deployment of iManage has taken the need for
governmentwide systems' interoperability into account.
STARS, our accounting system, is fully integrated with
governmentwide financial reporting systems, FACTS I and FACTS
II operated by the Department of the Treasury. Our Funds
Distribution System uploads information directly to the Office
of Management and Budget's MAX system to expedite
apportionments. STRIPES interfaces with governmentwide
procurement systems, including Grants.gov, FedConnect, Federal
Business Opportunities and USASpending.gov.
As I have mentioned, the Department's efforts to improve
its financial systems is unfinished business and challenges
associated with implementing systems, business processes and
organizational changes remain. With each successive system
upgrade or integration effort, we learn from our experience and
apply the lessons we have learned in a rigorous and systematic
way to increase the likely success of what we do.
To address these challenges, the Department is working to
continue to improve the capability, integration and
transparency of our systems within the constraints of the
Department's resources. iManage 2.0, the second generation of
the program now being deployed, is shifting much of its focus
from collecting and storing data to analytical and other value-
added functionality to support the Department's mission.
Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Connolly and members of the
subcommittee, I am pleased to be here today representing the
Department of Energy and I am pleased to answer any questions
that you may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Barwell follows:]
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Mr. Lankford. Thank you, Mr. Barwell.
Mr. Willemssen, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF JOEL WILLEMSSEN
Mr. Willemssen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member
Connolly and Congressmen. Thank you for inviting us to testify
today.
As requested, I will briefly summarize our statement on two
OMB Web sites, the IT Dashboard and USASpending.
OMB's IT Dashboard displays detailed information on about
800 major Federal IT investments, including assessments of
actual performance against cost and schedule targets. For
example, as of March 2011, the Dashboard had slightly over 300
major investments in need of attention. Specifically, 272
investments representing $17.7 billion in fiscal year 2011
spending were rated as yellow and needing attention, and 39 at
about 2 billion were rated as red with significant concerns.
Looking at the site yesterday, we note that since March,
the dollar figures for yellow ratings decreased by about $4
billion, but the red ratings, meaning significant concerns,
nearly doubled from 2 billion to 3.8 billion.
As noted by the Federal CIO, the Dashboard has greatly
improved transparency of IT investment performance. However,
our reviews have also found that the data on the Dashboard are
not always accurate. Specifically, in reviews of selected
investments from 10 agencies, the Dashboard ratings were not
always consistent with agency performance data.
To address these issues, we made recommendations to the
agencies to comply with OMB's guidance to standardize activity
reporting, to provide complete and accurate data to the
Dashboard on a monthly basis, and to ensure that CIO ratings
disclose issues that could undermine the accuracy of investment
data. We also made several recommendations for improvements to
OMB.
Drawing on the information provided by the Dashboard, OMB
has initiated efforts to improve the management of IT
investments needing attention. According to OMB, these efforts
have enabled the government to improve or terminate IT projects
experiencing problems and along with other OMB reviews, have
resulted in a $3 billion reduction in life cycle costs.
Our recent and ongoing work has identified other
opportunities for using the Dashboard to increase efficiencies
and savings. For example, the Dashboard showed that as of
yesterday, Federal agencies were investing in hundreds of
systems with similar functions such as over 600 human resource
management systems costing an estimated $2.45 billion for
fiscal year 2011 and almost 100 public affairs systems at about
$226 million for FY-11.
While the Dashboard focuses on IT investments, OMB has
another reporting mechanism, USASpending.gov, that provides
detailed information on Federal awards such as contracts, loans
and grants. Last year, we reported on this Web site. Among our
findings was that in a random sample of 100 awards, numerous
inconsistencies existed between USASpending and the records
provided by the awarding agencies.
Each of the 100 awards had at least one required data field
that was blank or inconsistent with agency records. These
errors could be attributed in part to a lack of specific OMB
guidance on how agencies should fill in certain fields and how
they should validate their data submissions. Accordingly, we
recommended that OMB include all required data on the site and
share complete reporting and clarify verification guidance.
OMB subsequently issued guidance to improve the quality of
the data, although we have not subsequently gone in and tested
a sample of that data against underlying agency records.
That concludes the summary of my statement and I look
forward to your questions.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Willemssen follows:]
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Mr. Lankford. Thank you.
And with that, I recognize myself for 5 minutes to begin.
Let me talk through several issues here.
Mr. Kundra, let me start off and I am going to run through
your list of 10 is a great list and it is a good thing to be
able to pass on to the person that's after you. Let me just
mention a couple of things on it.
Six and seven on that validating data upfront and releasing
data in real time seem to be conflicting at times. When you
have to validate data, obviously that slows the process down
and you've got to get it out in real time, and so that seems a
challenge.
You and I spoke before about my priorities on data from the
Federal Government and that is that the American people get a
chance to see it as fast as possible and as accurate as
possible. That puts six and seven right there together on your
list. Whether that be USASpending, whether that be Grants.gov,
whatever it may be, Data.gov, they get a chance to see the
information, see it as complete as they can, can research it,
cross it, everything else they need to be able to do.
The second aspect of our data, to me, that is very
important is for the decisionmakers, whether they be in the
agency or legislators, whoever it may be, that's going to make
a decision, it has to be accurate and complete. How do we
accomplish six and seven? Do you have ideas you can pass on and
say where does the priority land between validating data
upfront and releasing data in real time?
Mr. Kundra. Absolutely, when I talk about validating data
upfront, what I mean by that is the example I used as far as
congressional districts were concerned, which is that there is
no need for people to go in and enter that information if they
can just do a drop down. It is how you would actually architect
and engineer systems.
But, the preferred path would be that people don't actually
have to enter data if that data is available in another source.
This is a challenge that I faced when I used to work in the
Commonwealth of Virginia for the Governor and we were building
a small Women and Minority Dashboard. Part of it was that
everybody was asking agencies for the data, and I asked a very
simple question, can't we just go to the credit card companies
and actually get the data directly from them. We know that data
is being generated and credit card data is actually stored
there, why do we have to actually ask people to self report.
That not only reduced the burden but it actually also
allowed us to get real data. It wasn't people saying this is
what I did, but it's data that we were getting directly from
the very data bases that stored it. So, with six where we are
talking about the validation upfront, what that allows you to
do is make sure that people don't even have an option. In life,
a lot of it is about defaults, so if the defaults are very
complicated, you are actually going to end up with a degree of
error that's going to be very high.
Second, in terms of real time, we should actually try to
get machine-to-machine interactions where possible. So, in a
credit card case, imagine if we had to ask everybody for every
credit card transaction to go and to enter it on some
centralized system. It would be burdensome, you would spend
more money actually entering that data than you would
generating value out of that data.
Mr. Lankford. We had the same issue and the agencies were
terrific to be able to respond to our requests for additional
information on processes and systems and what's in place and I
do want to thank all the agencies because I'm sure that was
very time consuming.
One of the things that came out was that there was a lot of
manual input still of data. How do we get through that because
that's where we get a lot of inaccuracies, that's where it
takes a month to be able to get information. In this current
time, especially with the budget issues, we're dealing with
accurate, immediate data is very important that we can get and
then generally reducing the number of mistakes. How do we start
working through that process so there is fewer manual input and
more automatic like what you're mentioning?
Mr. Kundra. So, I think part of what the President has done
with the Executive order that sets up the Government
Accountability and Transparency Board is actually going to be
to do a total reset in terms of how the government is operating
when it comes to transparency. What I mean by that is there is
a simple question before us which is that if the Treasury
Department is actually writing most of the checks and literally
before a check is issued, the Treasury Department can have an
Internet payment portal that allows you to get that data right
from where the checks are being issued. On the manual side,
that is a more complicated issue and what I mean by that is if
you look at contracts, for example, there are certain agencies
when you look at the pre-award phase, where they are writing
the RFP and then they put the RFP on the street, then they make
an award and then thy've got to manage that contract. Agencies
at a different or a very different evolutionary cycle when it
comes to some of their processes are end-to-end paper, or some
of them actually go from paper they go to digital and others
are all end-to-end electronic.
So, the way we have to attack this problem is two pronged.
One is go to the golden source which would be creating some
type of Internet payment portal so the default is just digital.
We know somebody is writing the check, why aren't we just going
to them? Why are we asking the recipient to fill in all this
paperwork when the government is the one that's issuing the
check? Second would be to modernize on the back end some of
these outdated systems that are paper-based.
Mr. Lankford. Thank you.
And with that, I am going to pass on 5 minutes to Mr.
Connolly.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And of course votes have now been called.
Mr. Lankford. I'm going to make a quick comment and not
take up your time. We will go through the votes being called.
It should take about 20 minutes for this first series of votes.
I want to make sure we get through all three of us that are
here to be able to do that and then we'll probably buzz back
off and we'll try to evaluate from there.
Mr. Connolly. It was my understanding Mr. Chairman that
there will only be one series of votes.
Mr. Lankford. Right, but the first one is a 15 minute vote,
so we will make sure all three of us get our questions in.
Mr. Connolly. Well, I won't be back, so perhaps you will
indulge me.
Mr. Lankford. Is that a promise?
Mr. Connolly. I am going to leave you guessing, at any
rate, but thank you.
And, I am going to urge you to please to make concise
answers because there is an issue of time.
One of the things Mr. Willemssen, you focused on and so
have you about transparency and accountability and how the IT
Dashboard has really helped. And I assume, from your point of
view, all of your point of view, it's unprecedented in terms of
transparency and accountability in the Federal Government,
would you agree?
[Chorus of agreement.]
Mr. Connolly. I make that point because we sometimes on
this committee, not the subcommittee, but on the committee, the
full committee, we hear statements about how the lack of
transparency by the Obama administration but as a matter of
fact, frankly, this tool is unprecedented and there is lots of
transparency and accountability.
Now, I headed up a very large government for 5 years and
one of the concerns I always had about IT investments was
absolutely transparency and accountability are very important
from a public policy point of view and how we serve the public,
but we have to have metrics to go beyond that. What about
productivity improvement?
And so my question to especially Mr. Kundra and Mr.
Willemssen is how have we used these tools to improve the
efficiency of delivery of services? Are we in fact achieving
productivity gains in the public sector with these massive
investments in IT and shouldn't we, if we don't?
Mr. Willemssen. I would say from an efficiency perspective,
one of the great benefits of the Dashboard is the fact that it
can identify governmentwide investments in similar functions so
that you can potentially look for duplication that could
potentially be eliminated and save money.
Mr. Connolly. But are we doing it?
Mr. Willemssen. The administration is in the process of
doing that. It is a bit of a carryover from the prior
administration's line of business effort to try to look at
investments across agencies and instead of agencies rebuilding
and reinventing the wheel, trying to reuse consistent with one
of Vivek's 10 points, trying to reuse what's already out there
rather than rebuild and reinvest and a lot more money being
spent to do something that is already working well.
I will let Vivek speak for himself. I think they are in the
process of doing that. We would like to see a litte bit more.
Mr. Connolly. Vivek. I mean Mr. Kundra.
Mr. Kundra. We see major results. For example, through
these tools, we have been able to identify the fact that we
went from 432 data centers to 2,000-plus data centers in a
decade, and we're cracking down on those data centers, shutting
down 800. We have already shut down 67 data centers and are on
track to shut down 137.
But in terms of productivity, we have also seen as a result
of this, we were able to see where we had inefficient
technology such as collaboration. So GSA, for example, migrated
17,000 employees to a system and so did USDA, saving not only
$42 million but using modern technologies to accelerate
business processes. And the VA has some really good examples
when it comes to veterans benefits and cutting down the time it
takes, actually numbers of days, and I'll let Roger speak to
that, through these investments as far as when we are issuing
those benefits.
Mr. Connolly. Before Roger does, you mentioned the data
centers and how they exploded sort of without rhyme or reason,
and you have called for a 40 percent reduction by 2015. I have
introduced a bill, the Federal Cost Reduction Act, to make that
statutory, just in case other people go away, and would double
that goal over the next 5 year period. Is that a piece of
legislation you think would be helpful in this regard?
Mr. Kundra. The data center provisions, absolutely,
especially if we look at the ultimate vision, from my
perspective, is that we would end up as a nation basically
building three digital Ft. Knox's, three major data centers as
we think about it. There is no reason to have over 2,000 data
centers across the Federal Government.
Mr. Connolly. Mr. Chairman, I am going to ask if you would
be willing to indulge me by giving me one extra minute because
I am not coming back.
Mr. Lankford. Without objection.
Mr. Connolly. I thank my colleagues.
Thank you and Mr. Chairman, I hope you will join us in that
legislative effort because I think it is a good bipartisan
piece of legislation that could actually save us some money and
codify what Mr. Kundra has so ably begun.
Mr. Baker, I didn't want to cut you off, you wanted to talk
about the Veterans Administration experience?
Mr. Baker. I would just point out one thing with the system
we built for the new GI bill, if you recall that's putting now
hundreds of thousands of veterans into college, billions of
dollars. The new system that we introduced and that changed the
processing time for the main claim when veterans go into
college from 42 minutes to 7 minutes. That reduction was
hundreds of head count in processing those claims, and clearly
you can equate the reduction in the head count needed to the
number of people, I'm sorry the dollars needed to process those
claims.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you. I think I have with your
indulgence, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Kundra, you talked about a new
app economy. What did you refer, what did you mean by that
reference?
Mr. Kundra. What I mean by the new app economy is that the
390,000 plus datasets that are out there in the public domain
now will allow us to tap into the ingenuity of the American
people in ways that we haven't before. We actually worked with
Congress on the America Competes Act which allows every agency
now to issue challenges up to $50 million. So the old path of
acquiring technology was only going through a grants process or
through a long, drawn out procurement process.
Now an agency can go out there and say for 5 million or 10
million, here is a problem that we are trying to solve and
we're looking for applications rather than RFPs. Already we
have seen, for example, is that developers have taken data that
comes out of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency and
created apps that allow you to track what is going on within
your specific location.
And we have also seen in terms of apps apps that have been
built that allow you to see based on your iPhone, you can scan
a product and see whether it has been recalled or not to apps
that allow you see on a real time basis what the closest train
station is sent to you and when trains are coming in both
directions to stimulus funding and where it is being spent.
So huge, huge improvements in terms of innovative apps that
are being created. Hundreds of these have already been built.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you and thank you, Mr. Chairman, for
your courtesy, and you, Mr. Farenthold, I appreciate it.
Mr. Lankford. Thank you.
Mr. Farenthold, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Farenthold. Thank you very much. I;m going to be quick.
We actually have nine votes it looks like here, so it may be a
while before we are able to get back.
Mr. Kundra, my question to you is, as we are starting to
gather all of this data and strive toward real time, what sort
of effort is being taken into data analysis to detect waste,
fraud and abuse and to find for instance on a list of payees,
the outliers?
Mr. Kundra. So, one of the lessons learned through the
Recovery Act implementation was to actually use these forensic
technologies and business intelligence platforms. So there was
an entity called Pelletier that mined a lot of data and allowed
us to see how we could slice and dice and cube through
terabytes and petabytes of data. We are looking at the same
technologies and applying them now to health care and other
domains across the Federal Government, and the Recovery
Operations Center is actually the model that is being scaled.
Mr. Farenthold. Thank you very much and Mr. Baker, we do a
lot of case work with the Veterans Administration in the
district office and a constant complaint is the length of time
some of this stuff takes to process. I notice you had one
example of how you are getting some processes down to the
minutes. That isn't true throughout the agency. I'm hearing
reports of years from someone coming out of DOD before they
actually get into your data base where you all aren't getting
the data or they are not being able to get their exams quick
enough. What is being done to address those problems?
Mr. Baker. Thank you Congressman, we have, and are working
a major investment in the IT side to turn that entire paper-
bound process for benefits administration at the VA into a
paperless process that will then begin to allow us to really
work on the business processes there. We want to do the same
thing with compensation and pension benefits which is exactly
what you are talking to, that we did with education benefits
which is fully automate them, and take those processes and get
a sixfold improvement on the processing time for those.
Mr. Farenthold. Do you have a timeframe on getting
something like that implemented?
Mr. Baker. Yes, we will implement in 2012. We have been on
the path of that implementation for about 18 months at this
point. Full implementation of it will occur during 2012.
Mr. Farenthold. Alright that's basically all I've got. I
will yield back the remainder of my time.
Mr. Lankford. Thank you. Mr. Barwell, let me ask you a
quick question. Not to mention the great names for your system,
the STARS and the STRIPES system, but integrating that with
Treasury and with OMB, is that a reproducible system that can
be done in other agencies? How long did it take to process that
and how is that working?
Mr. Barwell. The FACTS I and FACTS II systems have been in
operation for some time now, I am not sure of the exact date
when this came in, but the procedures for uploading financial
information into FACTS I and FACTS II are well established and
the process is pretty mature. I think it is applied
consistently across the government too.
Mr. Lankford. Mr. Kundra, are all other agencies
experiencing that same type of system where it's immediately
put into their system and then it's populated out as well and
it's that integrated and seamless or are there other agencies
that are not experiencing that same kind of success?
Mr. Kundra. Now I wish that was the case across the entire
Federal Government but given that different agencies have
either successfully implemented whether it's financial systems
or contracting systems versus others who frankly, we've have
had to terminate those systems because after years and years of
attempting, we continue to throw in millions of dollars and
nothing was really happening.
Part of what we are looking at is making sure that across
the entire Federal Government, that we demand that within a 6-
month period, there be meaningful functionality if an IT
project is started. The Department of Defense, for example,
spent 12 years and $1 billion on an integrated human resource
system that had to be terminated because it didn't operate and
we kept throwing good money after bad money.
Some of these departments don't have the capacity frankly
to execute or deliver, so the leapfrog for us is actually going
to be literally moving to Cloud solutions. So the challenge
before the private sector is to actually help us stand up
Cloud-based systems so that on day one, we can start using them
rather than having to wait 12 years before we can use them.
Mr. Lankford. Obviously that is unacceptable in a
technology environment to wait 12 years to be able to integrate
that. That is a lot of different versions and languages and
everything else you are going to work through in that process.
Data.gov and USASpending.gov are some great ideas. They
have good information that's being loaded onto them. Obviously,
we need much faster information, we need to make sure that
information is accurate. Let me just ask a quick question about
Data.gov. What is your goal for the actual data that's on
there? Because the variety of data in the different agencies is
plentiful. Some of them have quality data, some of them have
very old data, some of them have data that no one's going to
look for but there is other data they would love to see.
The basics for me is I think everyone should be able to go
to not only an agency Web site but also a central location and
see how many different departments, how many people work in
that department, what is the budget of that department, what
are they accomplishing, what are the documents that can come
out of that to be able to show just the basics. If they see a
name that's a bureau, they should be able to search for that,
find it, get the data, find out more about it, rather than it
is hidden out there somewhere and you can't even discover what
it is. Your goal for Data.gov?
Mr. Kundra. Sure, so let me lift up in terms of a single
entry for all Americans is actually USA.gov. That platform
should become the single platform across the entire U.S.
Government. Today, what we realized is a lot of thugs who come
onto USA.gov they are actually looking for driver's licenses or
passports. And so these are State services or they are Federal
services, and the idea is that for an average American person
they shouldn't have to navigate the Federal bureaucracy to
figure out what service they want. They should be able to just
go on USA.gov, search, which is what they can do today and find
that information.
The goal for Data.gov, the dream there is that we want to
create this platform which we have, with 390,000 data sets, but
it should be millions of data sets.
Mr. Lankford. Right, because much of that data is very old
that is on there.
Mr. Kundra. Some of it is real like the FAA data. In other
cases, it is old data from Medicare/Medicaid, but we believe
there is a billion dollar opportunity for entrepreneurs to
create applications and build a data curation layer. I will
give you one example.
There is a site called Hospitalcompare.gov. Most people
don't even know what that site is and never really visited it.
As soon as we took that data and democratized it, Bing decided
to take that data and said, it is interesting, this is a very
rich data set. It actually has the name of hospitals, how
patients rate it, the outcome based on the surgeries or
operations.
So now what happens if you go to Bing.com and do a search
for Georgetown Hospital or George Washington Hospital, right on
that search box it will show you what do patients think of
Georgetown Hospital, what do they think in terms of outcomes
and ratings. That is the vision, which is to democratize that
data, allow the private sector to build innovative applications
and generate new jobs.
Mr. Lankford. Which, by the way, we would completely concur
with that. That is the twofold that I was talking about before,
the American people being able to see it, research it, pull it
down and democratize the data and then decisionmakers be able
to get very accurate, fast information and know it is reliable.
I do appreciate your time. I'm going to do this considering
the votes are going to take a little over an hour so it looks
like I'm going to go ahead and dismiss this hearing and let you
all be able to get back to your lives. Your written testimony
will go in the permanent record. Obviouisly, there were
multiple Members that couldn't make it based on a hearing that
just came and just finished up but I don't want to be able to
keep you all waiting that long period of time.
If we have additional questions, do you mind if we write
you a quick question and be able to follow up on that? Let the
record show everyone answered in the affirmative. I do
appreciate that and we will try to follow up quickly if we have
additional questions.
With that, this meeting is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 2:33 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]