[Senate Hearing 113-333]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 113-333
NOMINATION OF BETH F. COBERT
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
NOMINATION OF BETH F. COBERT TO BE DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR MANAGEMENT
OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET
__________
OCTOBER 2, 2013
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COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas JOHN McCAIN, Arizona
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri ROB PORTMAN, Ohio
JON TESTER, Montana RAND PAUL, Kentucky
MARK BEGICH, Alaska MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming
TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire
HEIDI HEITKAMP, North Dakota JEFF CHIESA, New Jersey
Richard J. Kessler, Staff Director
John P. Kilvington, Deputy Staff Director
Lawrence B. Novey, Chief Counsel for Governmental Affairs
Troy H. Cribb, Chief Counsel for Governmental Affairs
Deirdre G. Armstrong, Professional Staff Member
Keith B. Ashdown, Minority Staff Director
Christopher J. Barkley, Minority Deputy Staff Director
Andrew C. Dockham, Minority Chief Counsel
Joelle Cannon, Budget Director, Office of Senator Coburn
Laura W. Kilbride, Chief Clerk
Lauren M. Corcoran, Hearing Clerk
C O N T E N T S
------
Opening statements:
Page
Senator Carper............................................... 1
Senator Coburn............................................... 4
Senator Johnson.............................................. 12
Senator Chiesa............................................... 16
Senator Ayotte............................................... 22
Prepared statements:
Senator Carper............................................... 27
WITNESSES
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Beth F. Cobert, to be Deputy Director for Management, Office of
Management and Budget
Testimony.................................................... 5
Prepared statement........................................... 29
Biographical and financial information....................... 31
Letter from the Office of Government Ethics.................. 47
Responses to pre-hearing questions........................... 51
NOMINATION OF
BETH F. COBERT
----------
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2013
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:07 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Thomas
Carper, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Carper, Coburn, Johnson, Ayotte and
Chiesa.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN CARPER
Chairman Carper. The Committee will come to order.
Good morning, everybody.
Ms. Cobert, great to see you and your family. Your mom,
your husband, daughter, another friend right behind you. It is
great to see you.
We are here to consider your nomination to be Deputy
Director for Management at the Office of Management and Budget
(OMB).
This Committee comes together at an unfortunate time for
the American people, for Congress, and for our democratic
process. Much of our government, as you know, is officially
closed for business and hundreds of thousands of public
servants have been forced to stay home. It is not fair to them
also not fair to the people who we are here to represent, who
pay their taxes and will not get the government services they
expect and deserve.
I think this is an embarrassing avoidable failure that
highlights the dysfunction that has dominated Congress for the
past several years. But I am happy to say it does not
characterize this Committee where we have a great relationship
and work, I think, really well together.
Our current method of stopgap, crisis governing is no way
to run a government or a business let alone a Nation of our
size and stature. This type of crisis governing with last-
minute stopgap funding measures and government shutdowns is
actually the most inefficient, expensive way to govern. We need
to do better and we can if we begin working together once again
stopping some of these needless acts of political
brinksmanship.
Much of the work of our congressional Committees is
suspended at this time. I believe it is essential and Dr.
Coburn believes it is essential for this Committee, though, to
meet today to consider Ms. Cobert's nomination, and we will
have another hearing immediately after this one for the two
other nominees for the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC).
The Deputy Director of Management, if you ask most people
in this country how important is that, they would not have any
clue, because most of them are not familiar with this position.
But to Dr. Coburn and I, to our staffs, to the Members of
this Committee, it is a really important job. It is really
important for not just OMB and it is not just important for the
Administration. It is really important for our country. It is
important for us because we look to create, I talked with you
earlier when we met, about leverage and trying to leverage.
Dr. Coburn and I, even Senator Johnson and Senator Chiesa
and others, we are trying to figure how do we get better
results for less money in everything we do. And, you or the
person who holds your position in the past and in the future,
you are just a key person in making that happen.
But the Deputy Director of Management is one of the top
three leaders at the Office of Management and Budget. In the
midst of this very partisan time, one thing that Republicans
and Democrats agree on is that we need to make every effort to
find savings through better management of our government.
I said it before but something that is important and bears
repeating often is that to achieve a long-term solution to our
fiscal problems we need to do three things. We need entitlement
reform that saves money, saves these programs for our kids, for
our grandchildren, for your kids and for their children; and
also does not savage old people or poor people.
We need tax reform in my view that raises some money for
deficit reduction; and we need to look at everything we do and
ask this question: how do we get a better result for less money
in everything that we do.
In the years that I have served on this Committee, many of
them with Dr. Coburn, a couple of them with Senator Johnson and
only a couple of months with Senator Chiesa and we have one of
your constituents out there, 90 years old, is that right?
She came all the way down on the train today and it is a
thrill to see her and her daughter will be introducing her in
just a minute.
But in the years that I have served here with Dr. Coburn
and others and with presidents of both parties, we have worked
to try to find ways to better manage our government programs
and our government and we put our noses to the grindstone. I
think we have achieved some good results.
Maybe one of the best results is what we have done with
respect to improper payments. Improper payments are payments
that are, as we know, not necessarily fraud but just a mistake,
paying the wrong beneficiary or the wrong contractor or paying
them too much or may be too little.
More effective management and oversight has led to enormous
savings, enormous savings, by preventing these errors by
agencies across the government. In fact, improper payments have
been on a downward trend dropping from $121 billion in fiscal
year 2010 to $108 billion in fiscal year 2012. We are looking
forward to see how we did in 2013. We should know that before
long.
But while a lot more work needs to be done to identify,
recover, and prevent improper payments, it is clear that we are
making progress and we need to keep it up.
We have helped to improve government management in other
ways as well. For example, over several years our Committee has
given focused attention to the challenges faced by the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in integrating its
separate management systems into one department. The Government
Accountability Office (GAO) recently recognized the
department's substantial progress in this area.
Likewise, our Committee, GAO, and a number of Federal
agencies have all worked to focus attention on wasteful
spending that can occur in interagency contracting which occurs
when one agency spends money through a contract negotiated and
managed by another agency. I was pleased to learn earlier this
year the GAO removed interagency contracting from its high risk
list of troubled government operations.
Our Committee has much more important work ahead to address
other serious, often long-standing management problems. The
management of Federal real property is added example. One of
the first things that Tom Coburn and I did was visit a post
office, a big old abandoned post office building in, I think it
was in Chicago, to figure out why we have buildings like that
all over America where we spend a lot of money maintaining
them, and securing them, providing for the utilities but nobody
is there. We are not really using it or we are underutilizing
them.
But what there is still going on is that there is too much,
still too much duplication, something that Tom focused on a
whole lot, and wasteful spending in Federal information
technology (IT) projects.
We just need to tap into billions of dollars in potential
savings through strategic sourcing. We had a hearing here on
that just about a month or so ago with our friends from the
General Services Administration (GSA), and that is one of the
ways where we can leverage the government's buying power to get
discounted prices when the government buys things.
As my dad would say, that is just common sense. And of
course, we face a major management challenge in recruiting,
training, and retaining a Federal workforce for the future. The
list goes on and on.
I just want to say just a quick word. We have a lot of
Federal employees who did not come to work today, not because
they did not want to, not because they did not need to, because
we told them not to; and I would just say to folks who serve,
whose life work is to serve the people of this country, we
appreciate them, we appreciate the hard work that they do and a
lot of times they get a bad rap.
I have heard my colleagues call them faceless bureaucrats,
and I hate that when I hear that. These are people who have
good hearts, are good servants, and they deserve our respect.
We work hard. We expect them to work hard and give the
taxpayers a day's work for a day's effort.
But saving money is not the only reason to have good
management. We deliver better service to the American people
when we have good management. It is the case in every area of
the government from border security to Social Security.
Unfortunately, delivering quality services are the harder in
this area of stopgap, crisis governing with agencies struggling
to do the best work they can despite uncertainty about their
budgets.
So, I am eager to help move of this nomination forward, get
a Deputy Director for Management. I think Dr. Coburn is eager
to get you on the job and go to work with Sylvia and the gang
and get us on the road to where we need to go in terms of our
management and our budget, to help promote long-term management
reforms. They are going to deliver better results and save some
money for taxpayers.
And with that, I will turn to Dr. Coburn and then I will
introduce you and give you the oath so you can testify. Thank
you.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COBURN
Senator Coburn. Well, welcome. We are glad you are here. I
would like to say, first, for the record, it takes a certain
amount of courage and patriotism to give up a very well-paying
job to come and do service for your country. It is not
something you have to do. It is something you choose to do, and
you have actually chosen one of the most difficult jobs in
Washington because of the problems.
So, I want to recognize publicly the sacrifice that you
will be making should you be confirmed, and I believe you will
be, both in terms of your family, your two children and your
husband, but also the travel that will be involved and the
terribly long hours that are associated with this job.
I also very much appreciated our conversation yesterday. I
think you have a great understanding of what the real problems
are. The Office of Management and Budget is just that. It is an
office of budget and management and too often it is about the
budget and not the management.
So, I welcome you here today, applaud your sacrifice and a
willingness to do it. My hope would be we would have more
experienced people from the private sector fulfill positions
such as this one; and I look forward, following your
confirmation, to work closely with you in terms of changing.
I would just say it is not billions. It is hundreds of
billions that the American people are not getting any value
for, and it does not have anything to do with our employees. It
has to do with Members of Congress and the fact that we are
inappropriately not overseeing the areas where we can make a
difference and I hope with your guidance at OMB, we can work
together so that we can highlight for the American people where
we are failing, not to recognize failure but to recognize
problems so that we can change it.
The next 20 years in front of this country are going to be
very difficult in terms of our finances and it has to start
with good management. And so therefore, I appreciate you being
willing to sacrifice.
Thank you.
Chairman Carper. Thank you, Dr. Coburn.
At this point in our hearings, we always ask our witnesses
to rise and to take an oath; and if you could do that at this
time, I would appreciate it. Raise your right hand. Do you
swear the testimony you will give before this Committee will be
the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help
you, God?
Ms. Cobert. I do.
Chairman Carper. Please be seated.
Let me take just a moment just to share publicly just a
one-pager on part of your background. Beth Cobert, senior
partner at McKinsey and Company, where she has worked for
nearly 30 years. She is the firm's global leader for functional
capability building, responsible for fostering skills among
over 9,000 consulting staff at the firm, 9,000. Ms. Cobert is
also a global leader of McKinsey's marketing and sales practice
and chairs the firm's pension fund.
From 1980 to 1982 prior to working at McKinsey and Company,
she worked as an analyst at Goldman Sachs. Ms. Cobert received
her Bachelor of Arts from Princeton, her Master of Business
Administration from Stanford Graduate School of Business; and
as Dr. Coburn has said, we are grateful.
Obviously, you do not have to do this job. For you to
basically leave a great job with a great company and to take on
this responsibility and for your family to be willing to share
you with our country, for your mom and dad to have raised you
and instilled the kinds of values in you that led you to this
place today and to your husband for his willingness to be
supportive and to encourage you in this way and your son who is
here and your daughter who cannot be here, we are just grateful
that they share their mom with all of us.
With that, your whole statement will be made part of the
record. Feel free to summarize as you wish and then we will ask
you some questions.
TESTIMONY OF BETH F. COBERT\1\ TO BE DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR
MANAGEMENT, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET
Ms. Cobert. Thank you, Chairman Carper, Dr. Coburn, and
Members of this Committee for welcoming me today. It is an
honor to be considered by this Committee as President Obama's
nominee for Deputy Director for Management of the Office of
Management and Budget.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Cobert appears in the Appendix on
page 29.
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I am very pleased that some of my family could join me
today, including my husband Adam Coith, my son Peter Cioth, and
my mother Shirley Cobert. My husband and children, including my
daughter Talia, who could not join us today, have been
exceptionally supportive over the years even when the demands
of my job and community commitments meant time away from them.
I greatly appreciate their support as I take on this new role.
I would like to especially recognize my mother. She and my
late father were role models to me of the importance of being
engaged, involved citizens in giving back to the community.
My mother is still an active volunteer at age 90, including
continuing to be a stalwart in civic engagement efforts in
adult education programs in Montclair, New Jersey, where I was
raised.
I want to thank President Obama for nominating me to this
position, and I also want to thank Director Burwell and Deputy
Director Deese for their support and confidence in me.
Finally, I want to thank Members of the Committee and their
staff for taking the time to meet with me. If I am confirmed, I
look forward to continuing our conversations and strengthening
the vital relationship between OMB and this Committee.
If confirmed, I would hope to help advance the effort to
improve government management and performance. I would focus on
the four pillars the President has emphasized in his second
term management agenda--effectiveness, efficiency, economy, and
people.
These pillars form the base of strong government
performance. Improving how the Federal Government delivers
services to the public, including through the enhanced use of
new technologies, will increase our effectiveness. Eliminating
waste and finding operational savings in programs, processes,
and systems will build efficiency.
Taking steps to ensure the government is enhancing economic
growth, such as opening up government data to create new
businesses and economic opportunities and the ongoing effort to
speed up the Federal permitting process, will strengthen our
economy; and importantly, focusing on how the government
attracts, develops, retains, and optimizes a first-class
Federal workforce will help us ensure that the best and
brightest are serving in the Federal Government and enable us
to compete successfully in a 21st-Century economy.
I believe that these are the right pillars on which to
focus our government's management efforts. Given the tremendous
fiscal constraints our government is operating under, it is
more important than ever that we carefully integrate management
efforts into our budget processes and the delivery of
government services. I believe the President's management
agenda will ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent wisely and
that we are maximizing the value of the services we deliver.
If confirmed as Deputy Director for Management and also in
my role as Chief Performance Officer, I would work with
Congress and the dedicated staff at OMB and Federal agencies to
drive this agenda forward on half of the American people.
I recognize that the Administration, working with Congress,
has already made great strides in the management area, steadily
improving the effectiveness and efficiency of our government.
And, I want to commend Steve VanRoekel, who currently serves as
Acting Deputy Director for Management, for his outstanding
work.
As Chairman Carper noted, I come from the world of
management consulting. I am currently a director and senior
partner at McKinsey and Company where I have worked since 1984.
I believe my experience and skills as a management consultant
would serve me well in the position of OMB's Deputy Director
for Management as well as the designated role of Chief
Performance Officer.
Over the last 29 years at McKinsey, I have worked with
corporate, nonprofit, and government entities on key strategic,
operational, and organizational issues. I have led major
projects to generate performance improvements, to process
streamlining, and enhanced customer service, improve deployment
of technology, more effective marketing programs, and
strengthened organizational effectiveness.
I have also held leadership roles at McKinsey in people
management, including recruiting, training, developing, and
performance evaluation of staff. These represent the same areas
of performance improvements that are at the heart of President
Obama's second term management agenda.
If confirmed, I will work to build on the Administration's
successes and utilize my knowledge of private and public sector
best practices to help make even further progress.
Again, I want to thank the President for giving me this
opportunity to serve and the Committee for considering my
nomination. I look forward to answering any questions you may
have.
Chairman Carper. Well, thank you, thank you for that
statement. I have three questions. In every confirmation
hearing we have, I try to remember to ask these three
questions. I will start with those.
Is there anything you are aware of in your background that
might present a conflict of interest with the duties of the
office to which you have been nominated?
Ms. Cobert. No.
Chairman Carper. Do you know of anything personal or
otherwise that would in any way prevent you from fully and
honorably discharging the responsibilities of the office to
which you have been nominated?
Ms. Cobert. I do not.
Chairman Carper. Do you agree without reservation to
respond to any reasonable summons to appear and testify before
any duly constituted Committee of Congress if you are
confirmed?
Ms. Cobert. I do.
Chairman Carper. Thank you.
Ms. Cobert. You are welcome.
Chairman Carper. As I noted in my opening statement, you
have quite a distinguished career in the private sector. You
are one of the senior leaders of one of the largest, most
successful consulting firms I think in the country, maybe in
the world.
Tell us a little bit more about the roles you have played
at McKinsey and how you will translate that background into the
responsibilities that you will be assuming if you are confirmed
as Deputy Director for Management.
Ms. Cobert. Sure. I think that the experience that I have
had at McKinsey and in working with my clients at McKinsey
translate quite directly to the roles I would be playing as
Deputy Director for Management, if confirmed.
There are a number of specific topical areas where I have
worked with clients of different sizes and in different
industries to help make real improvements in performance. I
have worked with clients on better deployment of technology, as
I mentioned, trying to make the more standard parts of that
technology more efficient and to use technology tools to enable
them to deliver better customer service.
I have worked with companies on procurement programs,
trying to help them buy smarter, to buy what they needed at
right prices, and to make sure they are buying the right
things, what they need to deliver against their goals and not
more.
I have worked on a range of issues about strengthening
performance management systems, something that I think is at
the heart of the process of generating a mindset of continuous
improvement, of using data and learning from that data to help
make performance better and to build a mindset and a culture
where the individuals doing their jobs everyday are thinking
about how they can do their work better.
So, there are a number of things in that arena in terms of
working with my clients. I have worked with them on issues
around customer service, how do you simplify processes so that
customers are better served; and what I have found in that
experience is when you simplify that process you not only make
it better for customers, you make it better for the people
doing the work.
You create opportunities for people to spend their time
doing things that are more in line with their performance
versus fixing mistakes in a process. So, there is a set of
things there.
I have also spent a lot of time within McKinsey around
people, personal leadership and personal development. I had
been involved in efforts around recruiting, how do we bring
great talent into the firm, how do we take people at the
beginning of their careers and help them build the skills to be
successful, how do we instill within them a process of thinking
systematically about issues, of being able to break down a
problem and look at the facts, and follow up to make sure
things were being done.
I have worked on training. I have worked on career
development. And so, that is the content of the work.
I think there is another element around the way that I have
worked as a consultant that would be particularly helpful in
the role of Deputy Director for Management at OMB, if I have
the honor of being confirmed.
At McKinsey we often had a small team of McKinsey folks
coming into an organization trying to make change happen at a
much larger scale. To me that is analogous to what OMB is
trying to do in working with the agencies. To do that you have
to find a way to tap into the expertise that exists in the
client organization as the way of OMB has to tap into the
expertise of agencies.
You have to listen to stakeholders. You have to learn about
different perspectives, be open to having input and have a
process of going back so they understand what you have done
with that input and the decisions that you have made, and you
have to find a way to get people to own the solutions and your
recommendations because a small team of McKinsey people,
without the commitment of our clients, cannot make change
happen.
And when we think about what we are trying to accomplish,
when I think about what I was trying to accomplish at McKinsey,
it was about making change happen. It was about making change
stick.
And so, those topical areas and that ability to leverage a
small team to create change on a larger scale are experiences
that I think are particularly relevant for the role of Deputy
Director for Management.
Chairman Carper. Good. When you and I met, we talked about
leverage; and I mentioned that one of the things that Dr.
Coburn and I did when we were leading a Subcommittee of this
Committee called Federal Financial Management (FFM), we sought
to leverage the effectiveness of a small Senate Subcommittee.
To get better results for less money has really been our focus
for a long time.
And, we did that by working with OMB. We did that by
working with GAO, we did that by working with the Inspectors
General (IGs), by working with the General Services
Administration, working with a number of groups in the private
sector.
And, we did that I think to some success and now we get to
lead the full Committee, and we are still attempting to
leverage the effectiveness of the full Committee with the help
of all the members, Democrat and Republican, and all our staff.
And, these partnerships are just extremely important.
One of the things that we have going for us who have been
here for a few years, we have relationships with our colleagues
and also with folks in OMB and GAO. I met yesterday Gene
Dodaro, who is Comptroller General, and with a number of the
IGs. Dr. Coburn really shepherds and follows the IGs. We are
trying to make sure we have IGs at all the right spots.
One of the problems we face right now is, as I said to you
before, is I call it executive branch Swiss cheese. And we have
so many senior positions that are vacant and yours is important
one to fill. We are anxious to get it filled.
Talk to us about in terms of leverage about how you plan to
develop some of the relationships. When I met with Gene Dodaro
yesterday, I said we have a new woman coming in over as Deputy
for Management over at OMB, and he is anxious to meet with you
and begin to partner with you. How do you plan to reach out to
develop and cultivate the kind of relationships that will
enable you in the next 3 years and 3 months, hopefully, to be
especially effective?
Ms. Cobert. Sure. If confirmed as Deputy Director for
Management, I think establishing those relationships,
establishing that open dialogue is a very important part of
this role and what it will take to be successful and to have
impact.
I know that everyone in those roles shares the same
commitment about trying to make sure that the Federal
Government is being effective, is being efficient, is not
spending money, is trying to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse.
So, we come with the same goals.
I think there is a very important dialogue to be had and I
would want to delve deeper into those things. I also want to be
able to take advantage of what they have learned and the
reviews that they have undertaken over time, not only just
address a set of specific issues but to understand and work
with them and think about what are the underlying root causes
that are creating some of these issues. How do we tackle those
that, when we solve one problem, we do not see it occur in
another place.
So, those relationships with GAO, with the Inspectors
General would be an important element for me to take on, if
confirmed in this position.
Chairman Carper. OK. One of the areas that I said earlier
that Dr. Coburn and I have focused on is improper payments. We
like to say where you cannot measure, you cannot manage. You
probably said that a few times in your life.
The folks at the Department of Homeland Security have made
progress as measured against some of the metrics set up by GAO.
They have actually made reasonably good progress. They are in a
position auditable now, have not been audited yet, have not at
least passed an unqualified audit. But we still have problems
at the Department of Defense (DOD).
The last Secretary, Leon Panetta, when he was literally
going through his confirmation hearings, just like you, one of
the things we talked about is, how to get Department of Defense
not just off the high risk list for not having auditable
financials, but how do you do so in a way that actually enables
us to save some money, provide for the needs of our warfighters
and save some money for the taxpayers?
I have had the same conversation with Chuck Hagel, and they
are still years away from being able to get an unqualified
audit. And, I would just urge you to reach out, maybe to
Secretary Chuck Hagel if you have a chance, but also the Deputy
and just to reiterate, as we have, how important it is that
they be able to meet this requirement under the law. And, if
you have any comments on how you might do that, I would love to
hear it. They probably do not know who you are from Adam. I
hope they will soon.
Ms. Cobert. I do not have comments on the specifics, but I
share your belief that having accurate, reliable financial
information is absolutely a vital starting point. You need to
have that information to understand operations, to understand
where money is being spent, and to be the foundation for
important management decisionmaking processes.
So, I would want to understand what could be done. I would
want to understand what could I do in my role, if confirmed as
Deputy Director for Management, to help move that important
process forward.
Chairman Carper. Good. Well, our role is to do oversight
and we focus on it big time and we will continue to do this.
Sometimes we think the expectation is these folks know we are
going to have them before this Committee and we are going to be
asking these questions, why have you not made more progress.
So, we will be playing our role, and we want to play it,
whether it is good cop, bad cop. But we have got to make more
progress here. Thank you.
Dr. Coburn please.
Senator Coburn. Thank you again for being here.
One of the difficulties we have as Members of Congress,
especially if you want to do oversight, is getting
responsiveness out of the Administration. I have over 100
letters outstanding that have not been answered or recognized
by agencies, and I believe you and I have had a good
conversation.
Will you affirm to the Committee that you will be
responsive in terms of our letters and inquiries?
Ms. Cobert. I would absolutely affirm to the Committee that
I would be responsive. I know Director Burwell has made it a
very important priority for the overall team at the Office of
Management and Budget to ensure that there is an effective
dialogue that sets the appropriate level of responsiveness, and
I share that commitment with her and the rest of the leadership
team at the Office of Management and Budget.
Senator Coburn. And the other thing, and Senator Carper
touched on this, we have done a lot of things through the years
to try to get better. We have the IG Act. We have the
Government Accountability Office. We have the Congressional
Research Service (CRS).
And when you look, one of the problems is most of the
agencies do not pay any attention to their reports because of
all the open recommendations that we have year after year after
year, we have all these things on the GAO high risk list and
they do not get addressed. And, you and I talked about really
having somebody on your staff that has knowledge of all the
recommendations that the IG has made by agency and the GAO has
made by agency and how does that fit into the overall
management change or process change there.
And so, I was excited to hear that you concurred that is
important information, maybe not to follow every one of those
but at least to have the input of here is an opinion that the
agency is not addressing and then measure whether or not that
is effective.
Would you agree with that?
Ms. Cobert. I do. As we discussed, understanding the GAO
reports, understanding their findings, understanding what
actions are underway, understanding how OMB can interact most
effectively with that process is something I believe is an
important input as we set priorities for the management agenda,
as we understand what areas to focus on.
So, getting that level of understanding would be an
important priority for me, if confirmed.
Senator Coburn. We discussed, and I know you know this with
your experience, but we have a bill that is a bipartisan bill
called Audit the Pentagon Act; and it has got a hammer in it.
The Constitution says that you have to give an account for
what you spend, and unfortunately the Pentagon cannot. They
spend half $1 trillion a year and they cannot account for where
they spent the money.
And, the hammer in that is we take the payment function out
of the Defense Department and put it at Treasury where all the
rest of the payment is, and we have not gotten a lot of support
from that from our members because the Pentagon is fighting
that so hard.
But the fact is the reason why we are in trouble in our
Defense Department is because we have no significant, good
metrics with which to manage the decisions we make.
And so, one step on that is auditing the Pentagon and
making sure they can pass an audit, not a qualified opinion,
but an unqualified opinion to where they can actually meet the
expectations of what the Constitution literally says. Now,
every other agency can do that except the Pentagon. So, I think
it is pretty important.
The Department of Homeland Security has 455 open,
outstanding GAO recommendations that they have not addressed.
That is just the Department of Homeland Security.
So, we have thousands. We spent the money to research it.
We spend the money to look at it, but we have thousands of
recommendations all across the government agencies that are not
being addressed.
And so, my hope would be is that you really actually spend
some personal time looking at how much of this is accurate. We
have found on this Committee that GAO is not right 100 percent
of the time but they certainly are right in raising problems,
and their solutions may not be the best because they do not
have all the insight.
But I just think it is important to me and I think Senator
Carper and this Committee that somebody inside OMB is actually
paying attention. We are spending all this money on GAO and IGs
and it does not look like we are getting progress in terms of
moving on the recommendation, and especially at the Department
of Homeland Security.
So, I would take a little issue with Tom on how much they
have improved. I think they have a long ways to go with 455
open recommendations. But again, I appreciate your being here;
and as I said in my opening statement, you have my full
support. I will help you get through the Senate and I will help
you do whatever you need to do over there to help us as
Americans be more successful and better stewards of the
taxpayers money.
Thank you.
Ms. Cobert. Thank you.
Chairman Carper. Before we turn to Senator Johnson, let me
just go back to something that Dr. Coburn said.
We have too many departments where we have no confirmed
Inspector Generals. A big one is the Department of Homeland
Security, and it is a huge problem. We have been in this
situtation over 2 years. For about a year one of our colleagues
held up a nominee. Then, for basically 2 years we have had
someone in an acting capacity. That person is under
investigation by a Subcommittee of this Committee, and
meanwhile the Administration has been unable to vet somebody
and get somebody to us as a nominee. Not a good situation.
And, I would ask you that you make it at early priority
getting the Administration to get somebody nominated to be the
Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security.
Some of these 400 recommendations that Tom talked about,
the IG should be working on some of these ads are well.
Senator Johnson.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOHNSON
Senator Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Cobert, I would like to join Senator Carper and Senator
Coburn in just thanking you and your family for your
willingness to serve. I mean, this is just an absolutely
fascinating nomination. I commend whoever found you.
Senator Coburn. Sylvia.
Senator Johnson. Sylvia. I mean, that is fabulous. We are
looking forward to our meeting tomorrow.
Ms. Cobert. Great.
Senator Johnson. Your skill set is exactly, I think, what
this government needs across the board and I would like to see
hundreds of people with your background.
You listed the number of different areas that you have
consulted on. I am interested in just having you describe what
your process was when you go into a business, and you talked
about a small team trying to make large-scale impact. I mean,
there is nothing larger scale than this as a financial entity
and the task is really overwhelming. So, can you just tell me
what your process was and what your process will be?
Ms. Cobert. Sure. Thank you for the question and thank you
for your kind words.
Let me try and describe some principles about how I have
tried to work at McKinsey and maybe illustrate that with one
example that might be helpful here. At McKinsey we have a
number of principles that underlie our approach to any problem.
One is being clear what is the objective we are trying to
maneuver against, what kind of performance are we trying to
deliver for customers, for the business, for the people who are
working in that business.
So, we start with a clear objective because that is the
objective that is going to drive our recommendations. There is
then a process of looking at data and formulating hypotheses
it. What are some alternatives for how things can work and what
are the facts going to show us.
We then spend a lot of time thinking about data. That data
can take the form of understanding financial performance. It
can be understanding feedback from customers. It can be looking
at changes going on in the economy. So, you can understand what
the actions might be involved and what the costs and benefits
might be.
And finally, there is a process of testing alternatives,
building recommendations, and importantly, once you have a set
of recommendations, developing a set of metrics where you are
going to measure performance.
You are going to be dogged about coming back again and
again to say what did we do, did it work, is it delivering the
way we thought it would, and if not, what are we going to do to
change things.
I can think about an example of a telecommunications
company I worked for which was plagued with problems of when
they were signing individuals up phones were coming back,
customers were not satisfied, peoples would then drop the
service.
So, they had gone to all of this trouble to bring these
customers on board but they got them on board and then they
left again because the process of getting them engaged did not
work. It involved lots of different parts of the company.
You had to find out what was happening at the frontline at
the store when people walked in. You had to find out why things
were sometimes getting delayed in getting their service turned
on. You had to find out whether you had actually put them in
the right contract in the first place, one that really fit
their needs, because if they ended up in a program that did not
work, they then were either paying too much or not getting the
services they really wanted.
We did that through a process of working with individuals
from all of those different parts of the organization. We
looked. We had people from the finance function. We had people
from the frontline. We had people from the call centers who are
getting the calls from the angry customers. We had people from
the logistics group who were actually supplying the phones back
and forth.
And, what we tried to do in that case was get a picture of
the process end to end from the view of the consumer--what were
the customers seeing, what was working for them, and how do we
start to measure it in a way that took it from the customer's
perspective?
Each of those individual groups were trying to do their job
well. Someone was counting whether they were putting the data
in it accurately but they did not know what happened when the
data left their shop.
So, what we did there is say how can we bring this
together, how could we collectively redesign a process, and in
this case how did we put in new metrics, metrics that were not
just about getting in people's hands but having those people 30
days in, 60 days in still be customers and be highly satisfied
customers.
So, it is that mix of the end product which was keeping
customers, getting them happy, the data from the different
places, getting people to own that, and then having something
to measure at the and to see if he were being successful.
Senator Johnson. I mean, not to put words in your mouth but
to me it sounds like you are describing a basic strategic
planning process. I mean, would you go in there and did you
have a basic strategic planning process that you would
implement kind of the first thing out of the box?
Ms. Cobert. There is a strategic planning process which you
would then translate into operational activities, which you
would translate into a budget. So, it is that whole cycle, and
then into performance metrics and evaluation.
Senator Johnson. It is interesting. You said you first
started with objectives. I guess from my standpoint, that would
be the second step. I mean, really is it not the first step in
the strategic planning process trying to ascertain reality and
really getting the facts on the ground? I do not want to
quibble with you but I think it is somewhat important in terms
of my next question.
Ms. Cobert. Sure. I think both of those go together so it
has to be iterative. When we think about objectives, they are
pretty broad objectives as opposed to the tactical objectives.
So, they do relate to the context.
And again, I think it is important to be iterative. As you
learn more about the context, you can go back and check those
objectives. So, this process of sort of learning and feedback
is very much embedded.
So, we find sometimes it is helpful to start with where do
we think we want to go, how do we adjust that, and then how do
we refine it before you make a firm commitment.
So, the two go together.
Senator Johnson. OK. From my standpoint, we are dealing
with the reason I came here, and by the way I have a pretty
similar business background from the standpoint of the number
of years in the private sector and then all of a sudden being
here.
We are dealing with the fiscal situation here. We are
dealing with financial problems. It requires numbers. If there
is one thing that has driven me nuts as an accountant is the
inability to come up with a common set of numbers and being
able to just get information.
So, I guess, that is my next question. Do you basically
agree with that assessment? Is that going to be a primary goal
of yours is trying to describe our problems numerically?
Ms. Cobert. I do think having reliable financial data, as I
said earlier, is a critical priority. You need reliable data.
And I think there have been a number of efforts underway to try
and make that data more available, more visible to the public.
I have also found that as you use data more, as you use it
to make decisions, the individuals who are generating that data
begin to even more recognize its importance, depend on it for
reliability. If people are going to use it to assess their
performance, if someone is going to hold them accountable,
their interest in having accurate data to start with gets much
higher.
So, I believe there is a lot of value there. I know that
there has been efforts on that and I know that there is more to
do.
Senator Johnson. OK. Again, I am just looking forward to
working with you. Just my final comment is, if you are going to
solve a problem, you first have to admit you have one, and we
do not have enough people in this town truly admitting the
depth of our problem; and second, you have to accurately
describe it.
You have to define it; and from my standpoint, we are not
dealing with just a 10-year budget window problem. We really
are dealing with a 30-year demographic problem. We have made
all of these promises to the baby boom generation. We did not
make adequate provision to pay for them.
So, I have been working with the White House trying to
define this over 30 years. What are our long-term debt and
deficit issues, and I am hoping that you will work with us to
come to common understanding in terms of what the depth of that
problem is and then start trying to format the solutions.
I keep calling it the solution menu, just putting in
options so we are actually dealing with real information, not
demagoguery, but describing this with real information. That is
certainly what I am looking forward. With your background I
think you are in a perfect position to work with us to do that.
So, thank you.
Ms. Cobert. Thank you.
Chairman Carper. Thank you, Senator Johnson.
Now, we will hear from Senator Chiesa.
And I would just say to your mom from New Jersey out in the
audience, Ms. Cobert, you have two good senators and we are
going to lose this one maybe by the end of this month but he
has taken and filled the shoes of Frank Lautenberg very well
and he has been a joy for us to serve with. So, I think you can
be proud of the representation you have here.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CHIESA
Senator Chiesa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome
especially to my fellow New Jerseyan, Mrs. Cobert. Nice to have
you here today.
I have not had a chance to meet with you before the
hearing. You answer your question with a precise analytical
mind.
How did you come to the decision to uproot your life and
take on this enormous responsibility on the other side of the
country?
Ms. Cobert. When presented with this opportunity, it was
actually a very clear decision in my mind. My parents raised me
with a set of values that said community service and public
service is valuable and important.
My father was a veteran. My parents have both been active
volunteers in Montclair as long as I can remember. I have also
had a great deal of personal involvement in community
organizations. One of the things I am proudest of over the last
few years was being the chair of the United Way of the Bay Area
and the programs we put in place with the private sector, with
government, with the city of San Francisco, with companies
large and small, and with many citizens.
Last summer, for example, we helped to organize a joint
effort between the city of San Francisco and businesses across
the city to create 6,000 jobs for high school youth, setting
them on a path to employment and economic prosperity over time.
So, it is those two things and also, frankly, this
Administration's commitment to thinking about management, how
can we build management within government for the 21st Century.
In working with organizations of all types, I have seen the
opportunities that exist when you really try and tackle that,
when you think about how you can deploy technology, when you
think about the skills you need in the workforce.
So, it was the combination of the values with which I was
raised, my own experience and the awards I have gotten from
public service, and the opportunity to work with this
Administration, with Members of Congress to try and really make
a difference today when we really need, as the Senators have
said, more effective management in government.
Senator Chiesa. Thank you. You talked in one of your
answers about identifying waste, fraud, and abuse. Honestly, it
drives the people crazy when they hear about whatever the story
may be, many of them sensationalize.
I think it is hard, at least I do not know the precise
figure that we attach to the losses that are attributable to
those things. In your own mind, have you done any preliminary
assessment as to, of those three: waste, fraud, abuse, the
thing most troubling to you in the Federal Government right
now?
Ms. Cobert. The issue of waste, fraud, and abuse
collectively is a big issue; and if confirmed to take on this
role, it is getting to the specifics of that is important.
I know that there are many efforts underway, through
efforts working with this Committee, to move forward. I think
there are clear opportunities. For example, how is the
government effectively using data to understand those issues
even before they occur, doing those in a way that respects
obviously the importance of privacy and information sharing.
But there are opportunities to do that.
I have seen in the private sector, for example, when you
can use information technology and data to understand where
there are patterns which you then can go look at.
I know that some of the efforts like the do-not-pay list
are a way of trying to get to those issues before they occur.
It is always easier to tackle those things before the money
goes out than trying to recover it later.
So, I think there are a number of opportunities there; and
if confirmed, I would want to learn more about what is the best
and highest impact place to move forward.
Senator Chiesa. Can you talk a little bit about, in your
private sector experience, the things and tools that you used
at McKinsey to address--because I am sure when you go into
these problems, you talked about that telecommunications
customer-service operational issue that you dealt with.
You must also get called in where someone is just throwing
their hands up in the air, we cannot understand where all of
our money is going.
Is there an internal investigations focus? Is there an
accounting focus? How did you go about addressing those issues
at McKinsey?
Ms. Cobert. Sure. When we came in, as McKinsey we are
management consultants, not auditors. So in general, our focus
was on what is the most effective way that clients are spending
their money and is it accomplishing the goals that they set
out.
In doing that, it typically involved working with
individuals from across the organization to understand the
specifics of what was being spent and to what end.
Accounting records are a place to start, integrating those
with understanding of who those payments were. We used a lot of
analytical tools around looking at patterns and payments. Lots
of people at McKinsey, including myself, looked at how do you
use statistics to say where are the patterns, where is the
deviation from the norm, what might be causing that.
And again, I think the core thing is to keep asking why. It
is a series of questions. When you see a pattern, what does it
indicate?
The other piece in the network that we typically try to do
was to say let us tackle the biggest problems first. So, let us
try and identify the areas that there is the biggest
opportunity for impact both because they represent the most
dollars and they represent something that is catchable.
So, trying to set priorities was another important way
trying to get at those issues. You are going after places where
there is the biggest impact in your actions.
Senator Chiesa. Great. Well, you have an extraordinary
background. It is a big job to take on. You and your family are
to be thanked for the commitment that you are making and you
will have my support.
So, thank you.
Ms. Cobert. Thank you.
Senator Chiesa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Carper. You bet. Thank you very much.
I think I mentioned when we met, we talked a little bit
about the General Services Administration; and for reasons I
cannot really explain, I have historically kind of overlooked
the importance of their role in helping us get to better
results for less money, trying to create almost a change of
culture here in the Federal Government that focuses on that.
But Administrator Dan Tangherlini was here, my gosh, a
month or so ago, for a hearing on strategic sourcing, and my
guess is you have dealt with that in the past to some
considerable extent to see how companies in the private sector
actually save money by using strategic sourcing.
Would you talk with us specifically about that subject and
whether what you worked on in the private sector might be
transferable to the public sector and how you might build on
that experience?
Ms. Cobert. I had considerable experience working with a
range of companies to improve their sourcing efforts, to think
about strategic sourcings; and I certainly look forward, if
confirmed, to working with the GSA on this issue. I think it
presents a real opportunity for the Federal Government.
In creating those efforts, I think there has been a couple
of things in mind. One is how do you bring disparate parts of
an organization together to leverage their buying power. It is
important in that process to understand where their needs are
common so you can actually take advantage of things and where
there might be places that are unique. So, you can leverage
your buying power.
Another important element that we found, that I found in
strategic sourcing is making sure you are buying the right
things, not just that you are getting the best price but you
are actually buying the right things for the right price.
I can think of one of the clients that I served in the
financial services where the folks at the frontline needed very
high-powered, very light, very robust laptops because they were
doing a lot of work in the field that involved a lot of
graphics. They needed powerful machines.
So that became the standard of what everybody was using
across the company; but when you looked at what the needs were,
there were other people who needed something that was much
simpler.
So, the way to save money and get people what they need was
to actually not buy them an expensive laptop for a low price
but to actually buy them the laptop that had what they needed
but not more.
So, there is both taking advantage of leveraging buying
power and making sure you are buying smart, and in bringing
people along in that process so they can see the benefits to
themselves and their organization to making it tangible, in
this case, to the owners of these business units.
The other elements that I thought were really important was
actually having a talented procurement group in the case of
here the acquisition workforce who understands the commodities
that they are buying. They understand the needs of the
different users so they can be an effective partner in thinking
about how to buy cost-effectively, how to buy what you need,
how to manage demand.
So, I think that it is another elements and a challenge
here as well as, again, in the Federal context thinking about
how do you engage small business in that effort and take
advantage of the great services and products that can be
procured through many small businesses.
Chairman Carper. One of the things that Dr. Coburn has
focused on a whole lot is duplication and trying to eliminate
duplication where we have it. One of the areas in terms of the
IT world where we have duplication is, in some cases, the data
centers.
In some cases, we have the IT projects where we spend a lot
of money and just do not get the kind of result that we need.
If you will, talk to us about, what we can do on the data
center side in order to reduce all the ones that we have, to be
able to get better results for less money in this regard too,
because there is a lot of money to be saved. I think we saved
some money and we put a big effort, put a spotlight on this,
but talk to us about that.
Ms. Cobert. I know that getting greater efficiency and
effectiveness out of IT has been a priority for this
Administration. I know that Steve VanRoekel in his role as
Chief Information Officer has made this a very important
priority and that I understand the Administration is making
progress.
But in the world of technology there is always more to do
and there is always something new. I come from the Bay Area
where the world of technology is sort of exploding around us
with lots of opportunities to continue to be more effective and
efficient.
So, I understand that there have been efforts underway on
data centers and I know that there is more work to be done. I
think processes that have been put in place as best I can
understand them as a citizen around PortfolioStat, around
TechStat, create the kind of discipline around measuring
performance, looking at how you are doing and figuring out
where there are savings.
And I think, while it is important everywhere, it is
particularly important around IT as the capabilities of IT
continue to evolve a mindset that says we have now gotten
improvement but what is the next step. This continuous
improvement mindset is particularly critical.
And also, it is critical to think about this as a
responsibility not just of the IT department but of the users.
The IT department really needs to have that dialogue so that
you are, in fact, getting the services that you need, not more,
not less.
What are the requirements that the businesses or the
mission side is asking for and what is the best way to deliver
them, because often times as I have seen in the private sector
experience, and I can think of one case in this issue, for the
folks on the business side it was a relationship management
system and they wanted a number of elements in it that to them
seemed logical and they started to build the system to do that.
When they actually had a discussion with the IT folks and
said, look, if we track this data a slightly different way it
will cost a lot less, they were able to say, OK, let us change
what we are specifying.
So, it is a matter about being disciplined about
specifications and having a dialogue that says how can we make
this better, how can we have these metrics in place.
And so, looking at how to continue the efforts around data
centers, and around PortfolioStat, TechStat I think that would
be an area that I absolutely would want to continue going
forward. There is a lot of opportunity there.
Chairman Carper. How are you going to find time in your
life to do all of these things plus still try to be a daughter,
a wife, a mom? There are only 24 hours in a day. How do you do
this?
Ms. Cobert. Setting priorities is one thing. I also have
had the privilege of getting to know some of the staff at OMB
in this process and it is a terrific set of people.
They are hard-working. They are dedicated. They believe
quite strongly in the mission that they have taken on around
management effectiveness; and so working with them, working
with agencies and figuring out how to take advantage of them
and work with them together will be really important.
Chairman Carper. Good. Well, when Sylvia was nominated by
the President, I reached out to Erskine Bowles with whom she
had worked in the Clinton White House and who just said
extraordinary things about her and her abilities and all; and
when Sylvia was going through the process, Dr. Coburn and I
were very impressed with her and wanted to get her confirmed
and confirmed quickly.
And, I pledge to her that we would do whatever we could to
move her nominees that the President would submit to us for her
leadership team at OMB. I think you are the last major piece,
your position would be the last major piece.
When you look at the team that you will lead, there may be
some other folks that we need to confirm. I do not think so but
there may be. I just do not know off the top of my head. But in
terms of your direct reports, do you have any idea like how
strong they are, the positions that are filled, are going to
need to be filled?
Ms. Cobert. I know that there are some open positions
still, the office of Federal Financial Management position.
Chairman Carper. Yes.
Ms. Cobert [continuing]. We have an interim, for example.
So, I would want to work closely with Director Burwell,
with Deputy Director Deese, with the folks that are in those
roles now to understand how we can bring in people who have
great talent, who have dedication, who have a mix of
experiences and who have a commitment to working
collaboratively with each other, with this Committee, with the
agencies to make progress on our agenda.
Chairman Carper. All right. I have said this before. I
think it bears repeating. The Administration needs to nominate
good people for positions that require confirmation.
We have wonderful people that are willing to step up and
serve in an acting capacity. We are grateful for that. But the
Comptroller General recently said to me, in terms of the
effectiveness, he said it makes all the difference in the world
if you have Senate-confirmed rather than in an acting
positions.
My message to you back to the Administration and I have
used every avenue I can think of is they need to send us good
names. They need to be vetted properly. We have a
responsibility to vet and then to the good, confirm them; if
not, turn them down. But treat them with respect. But we have
to fill these positions.
The last thing the last question I would have is this.
Sometimes we look at people's academic records. We look at
their work experience and all of that but we do not talk about
the values that they bring to the job and you talked a little
bit about your mom and dad.
Just in closing, tell us a thing or two that you learned
from your mom and dad that sort of prepares you for this, maybe
a thing or two that you learned in your role as a spouse to
your husband and maybe a thing or two you learned as a mom to
these two kids that you have raised, that you both have raised,
would you just close with that?
Ms. Cobert. Sure. There are a number of things that I have
learned from my parents, from my husband, from my children that
guide the way I approach frankly whatever task I take on.
The first is about doing the right thing, that it starts
with doing the right thing and a sense of values and purpose.
Second, about hard work. If you are going to take something on,
you have to do it well. And so really delivering against the
best of one's capabilities.
Third, and I learned this actually, when I was in high
school I worked at the textile manufacturing company where my
dad worked and so I actually got to see him as a manager
firsthand which is something you did not get to see as a kid,
and I saw him being an incredibly thoughtful listener to the
folks that were working for him and really thinking about how
he could make them better. He might have had an answer but he
wanted them to discover it.
So, this process of listening and collaborating and
learning from others is something that is really important.
I also through all of them have actually learned that
really the important objective function is the goal, how we
build support to a goal. It is not about taking credit. It is
not about who gets it done. It is about whether it gets done.
And if I can contribute to that, that is great. So, it is about
this collective leadership and partnership.
And finally, it is about taking responsibility for the
things that you are responsible for. If you say you are going
to do something, you live up to those commitments and you do
it. And probably, and this one may be from my husband, but
certainly from my children. Patience.
I still work hard on that one. I am not sure I fully
internalize that as much but just coming to things with a sense
of patience and also assuming goodwill. That the individuals,
as you said earlier, who are coming to work everyday are coming
to work trying to do a good job and you start with that basic
belief and your role is to figure out how you can help
facilitate that.
So, those are some of the values that I would bring to the
role of Deputy Director, if confirmed.
Chairman Carper. Those are great values. We would all do
well to embrace them.
I have been joined by Senator Ayotte. She is just pulling
into her chair and pulling up to the dais. Our nominee, Beth
Cobert, is just wrapping up but you are recognized if you would
like to make a statement or to ask a question feel free if you
like and I know you just sat down.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AYOTTE
Senator Ayotte. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Carper. None of the rest of us are very impressed
with her so maybe.
Senator Ayotte. No. I appreciate it. I am impressed with
her qualifications, and I believe already you have been asked
the questions about the data center consolidation and that was
at the top of my list and obviously looking back at what OMB
had said about it.
So, I appreciate that you are going to focus on this so
that we can really get this right and save money and also make
sure that we are achieving our goals.
As the Deputy Director for Management at OMB, you will have
obviously an opportunity to lead efforts to prioritize and
implement governmentwide efficiency improvements.
Can you identify some examples of your experience in the
private sector that have led to improved efficiency and what
you think you could bring in terms of this position to improve
efficiency within the Federal Government because in this
position I think your private sector experience is going to be
able to help us save money in so many ways where we know there
are tremendous inefficiencies right now existing in the
government?
Ms. Cobert. Sure. I can think about examples from a number
of different disciplines that are relevant to the role of
Deputy Director for Management where I had hoped to bring that
experience. Let me highlight a couple of examples for you.
I have done some work with a large business services firm
looking at their IT expenditures; and in that place, we sort of
framed it as a function of looking at what we called the
factory, how did they get their basic infrastructure working
well to be reliable, to be efficient, and to meet their
business needs as their business was growing.
What could they do themselves, what were places where they
too could consolidate their data centers or look to cloud-based
solutions as an alternative to building systems themselves.
So, that is something in the IT world. I have done some
work with a number of clients on purchase services and
procurement, making sure that they were leveraging the buying
power in this case of a broad-based enterprise across the
United States that had different business units purchasing
differently.
So, how could they leverage that buying power, how could
they standardize things by having uniform cell phone contracts
that actually recognize that they were sending lots of
individuals overseas, and so you could actually negotiate
different kinds of rates for that.
How could they make sure that they were buying the right
things. It was a company in financial services and getting
accurate and timely market data was important but it was really
important for people who were sitting on trading desks to have
daily, real time data. It was not so important for people in
different roles; and so if they got data that was delayed by a
few hours, it cost 50 percent less.
So, you are thinking about what you are buying, how you are
leveraging buying power, how you are doing the right thing.
I did work with an insurance client looking at their entire
customer service operations and thinking about from the
consumers perspective how could they do a better job of filling
requests to change policies.
As we looked at that from the customer's perspective, one
of the things that we saw that the customers actually wanted to
do it themselves. So, in this case it was how to take a process
that, instead of having to talk to somebody on the phone, you
could actually go on their Web site and get that changed done,
get it confirmed.
It was much more efficient for the company. They did not
have to have somebody taking it down. It was much more accurate
because you are not getting miscommunications, and it enabled
those resources that instead of spending time doing things like
processing address changes or extending terms of policies those
individuals could have dialogues with customers about what were
the additional products and services that they needed.
So, they were able, in fact, to transform that service
staff into a sales staff and get both lower costs and better
revenue from that effort. Those were a couple of examples.
Senator Ayotte. Do you think you will be able to translate
that now going to work for OMB and, just having been around
here only for a couple of years--I got elected in 2010--I worry
that there are so many GAO reports that sort of sit on a shelf
of very good ideas about how we can implement efficiency, how
we can find savings, and I know both the Chairman and the
Ranking Member in particular have focused on wanting to get
those things done.
And as you go into the sort of government setting, how do
you see you translating that and making things happen, because
I think that is the great frustration that all of us share and
the American people often as we see roadmaps of good people who
have looked at it, whether it is GAO or others who have made
important recommendations and they never get implemented?
Ms. Cobert. So, I think there is a lot to learn, as I said
before, from the reports from GAO, understanding what is there,
understanding the root causes of the problems.
And, I do believe there is an opportunity to apply these
lessons from the private sector. I think it takes real
discipline. I think it takes being consistent and having clear
goals, holding people responsible, and being consistent and
coming back.
If things are not making progress, why? Why not? What is
getting in the way and how do you help remove those roadblocks
and how do you help build that commitment, not just at OMB but
in the agencies to make these changes so that they can deliver
better government services and do so with greater efficiency?
So, that disciplined performance management is one way to
get there, being clear about priorities, and understanding what
are the constraints and trying to help work with agencies and
work with Congress to get those removed.
Senator Ayotte. Thank you. I appreciate your willingness to
serve in this position, and let me just say that you will find
many partners here who want to help you with this and I hope
that you will use this Committee as a resource to help you
implement efficiency and savings and the things that you would
like to do to make a better service within OMB and within the
overall government that we can help you with that.
So, thank you.
Ms. Cobert. Thank you. I know this Committee shares that
commitment and I look forward to working with this Committee
and their staff on pushing this agenda forward.
Senator Ayotte. Great. Thank you.
Chairman Carper. Senator, thank you so much for joining us
with everything else you have going on.
Thank you.
We are going to wrap it up here.
Dr. Coburn, any parting comments? OK.
I will just go back to reiterate a couple of things if I
could. You mentioned when I asked you the values that you have
inherited or brought from your mom in your role as a daughter
and you said at the end one of the things that you learned from
being a spouse and being a mom is patience, the importance of
patience. That is a great one. I always heard all of my life
patience is a virtue, and I believe that.
Conveying a sense of urgency is also a virtue, and I think
you have probably spent your life, your life's work conveying a
sense of urgency in the work you have done for McKinsey and
Company. And I would just say in this role you will need it
more than ever, being able to convey that sense of urgency.
And, there is no way you could do all of this by yourself
or even with your team that you can do it by yourself. We need
each other pulling in the same direction and we need our
friends at GAO. We need those IGs. We need those IG positions
filled. We need the kind of close working relationship with Dan
Tangherlini and everybody that he leads at GSA, and we need
folks outside of the government, folks outside the government
to work with us.
And if we get all of us pulling in the same direction, we
can get a whole lot done. And, we have gotten a fair amount
done even when we are not all pulling in the same direction.
So, I would just say that in closing.
Again, our thanks to your mom. Mrs. Cobert, again thank you
so much for making the trip, thanks for riding Amtrak. As an
old board member of Amtrak, thank you for taking the train. To
your husband who is up there listening in, looking down
probably on his daughter and you and your family in absentia
thank you to him.
To your husband, to Adam Cioth. That is a great name but
Adam, thanks for all you do with your life and especially for
helping raise these two kids and for sharing Beth with all of
us.
And for Peter, it was very nice to have met you. I wish you
well back at Tufts.
Maybe someday I will get to meet your daughter Talia but we
wish her well at Northwestern. Ask her not to beat up on my
Buckeyes too much.
Any last words?
Ms. Cobert. I just would like to thank this Committee for
the time, for their willingness to engage in this dialogue, and
I look forward to working with you, if confirmed.
Chairman Carper. All right. Let me say in closing the
nominee has filed responses to biographical and financial
questionnaires, answered prehearing questions submitted by the
Committee and had her financial statements reviewed by the
Office of Government Ethics.
Without objection, this information will be made part of
the hearing record with the exception of the financial data
which are on file and available for public inspection in the
Committee offices.
The hearing record will remain open until noon tomorrow for
the submission of statements and questions for the record.
Tom, my staff just told us that the majority leader's
office is saying that they are not going to entertain
nominations on the floor, debating and voting on nominations on
the floor which, it is not something I discussed with him. I
was not happy to hear that.
Can you cast a light on that?
Senator Coburn. I am not aware that there is a statement of
that, but to me that would be indicative of the whole mindset
of the problem in Washington today. The entire government is
not shut down. The Senate is not shut down, and the fact that
we would not process a nominee that is important and vital to
establishing what we need at OMB seems to me like you are
shooting at your own feet.
Chairman Carper. All right. We have tried for months now by
unanimous consent to have a chance to go to conference on the
budget resolution. We have not been very successful yet, and
maybe we can try that approach here with a little more success.
Thank you very much. And with that, I bid you all good bye
and we will look forward to working with you, God willing, in
the months and years to come.
We are going to adjourn this hearing and invite our second
panel to start in the second hearing.
With that, this hearing is adjourned.
Thank you.
Ms. Cobert. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 11:15 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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