will come to order and i welcome all of you here i would like to first of all have to devise all of you to turn off your cell phones pagers other electronic everyone in this room know this is information technology that our vast sea of listeners throughout the valley may not feel like so i want to make that clear clear the assessment initiative outlines a ten year vision for the future use of technology in the house of representatives this hearing will focus on several key business decisions called to be visions which the house needs to agree upon before implementing a str technology plan we will talk about specific technologies to implement phase two b visions at a future hearing the issue of using technology to improve house operations is not a new and in one nine hundred ninety five  created a new standardized email platform that would replace the southern part of the eleven separate e mail systems used across the house as challenging a task as it was today would reap the benefits of being on a common email platform as well as having other uniform software choices that allows for enhanced collaboration and improved technical support and just talking about the concern t o my mind because i recall the incredible task we had ten it's impossible for us to realize today that back then as you know the house operated as a fiefdom four hundred thirty five individual operations each selecting their own computer each selecting their own software none of which talk to each other and i was astounded when i got here and found it was easier to send an email to timbuktu than the senate twenty feet down the hall to kelly and that's what i was give them a thankless job of trying to reform and i'm pleased that it all worked out even though you would not believe the recriminations and criticism i had to deal with at that time i think it will be is my hope that the findings will we will examine today and over the next few weeks may reveal a similar opportunity to invest in the future of the house through the use of technology on a first time today we are pleased to have goldsmith of the congressional management foundation and larry black radley from gartner consulting who will discuss the results of the study they were heavily involved in the study from beginning to  these findings are the product of extensive research with key stakeholders including detail the interviews of one hundred twenty eight members managers and staff throughout the house and the legislative branch the interviews that the c m s and gartner team conducted were designed to capture the challenges that house staff each each day the impact of technology on their work what improvements we can make in our systems and processes to help how some players do their job better as any researcher will tell you any theory no matter how well formed must be tempered with the challenges and complications of real life situations in order to paint an accurate picture of the true effect to provide this additional practical context our second panel work consist of several experts on the administration  operations of the house jim cornell house inspector general discuss the potential impact of failure to embrace technology on the future operations of the house the livingood the house sergeant at arms will discuss  convergence of i t security and physical security and the implications for ita planning and decision making karen haas clerk of the house will describe previous efforts to implement two new technology the challenges of drafting legislative language and how technology could improve that process and finally jig and chief administrative officer of the house will provide a historical perspective on technology in the house  current state and where we go from here and just reviewing this list of names reminds me of the all the interviews and meetings i had with your predecessors levin twelve years ago and some of the difficulties we encountered at that time we have a good team together this time and i don't think we'll have those difficulties again i would also like to announce that at the conclusion of this hearing the committee will make available all of the i house staff member or on the contents of the study almost submit your comments at the above mentioned website the comment period will run through january two thousand and seven in order to provide one hundred tenth congress opening statement i did have an opportunity to to be briefed on this process as a relatively new member of the committee and i recall as you do first arriving here and being a little bit stunned by the technological situation certainly we've made great strides and there's more to do i look forward to hearing the testimony i would note that for reasons i cannot fully understand since we are joining on saturday the judiciary committee is in a markup and i may have to zip out for a vote or two but i would certainly not want to disturb the testimony so proceed if i have to do that for a minute or so i will be  back this is important stuff no matter we have issues but then we have the congress itself and to have the tools that we need so that we are transparent and efficient is enormously important in technology i think is the key to that so i thank you the future i would like to welcome our first panel of the day we have with us kathy goldsmith of the congressional management foundation and mr larry bradley consulting welcome to you both and i'm pleased to have you here and i hate to reminisce all the time but you'd be amazed at some of the roadblocks encountered when we did the first report there were some objections raised compliments to do  members of the committee thank you very much for having me here today to discuss the house like to assessment project as you said i'm kathy goldsmith i'm deputy director of the congressional management foundation for a nonpartisan nonprofit that's been providing management services to congressional offices for most thirty years how thank you sussman project was initiated by this committee and the chief administrative officer to develop develop a ten year vision and plan for technology in the house to support the project the hous create a roadmap for technology over the next decade although technology is at the heart of this project we didn't spend the bulk of our time talking to technology experts instead we spent most of our time talking to the people who conducted the work of the house we let the challenges and opportunities they identified and the processes they use guide us in identifying technology to help them their offices and the institutions becomes effective and  want to be or conducting this project in five stages first we did research to understand the current state of technology in the house second we facilitated roundtables with members officers and senior managers to provisionally agree on a vision for the house of the future third we conducted a gap analysis to identify the difference between where the house currently is and where it wants to be forth has been a working group with house officers to discuss how major technology decisions are made now and how they could be made in the future and finally we're developing a high level strategy a roadmap to help guide the house in attaining its vision i'm going to spend the remainder of my time discussing what we learned about the current state of technology in the house and larry will address the vision in the next steps as this trailer's mentioned to identify the current state we interviewed one hundred twenty eight people including members officers senior managers professional and administrative staff and technology specialists we also reviewed literature on technology and operations in the house over the last ten years through this research we identified some findings that have resonated throughout this project and we've categorize these as factors for change and institutional challenges the forces for change are six factors that are exerting pressure on the house to more quickly and thoroughly integrate technology the first force for change is the budget crunch which is placing pressure on the house to minimize costs changing how technology is parked your to and used in house is one way to save money second is the need for the house to be prepared for sea future security crises in which technology will pay a significant role third is the increasing comfort of new members with technology since the businesses and state legislatures they're coming from use technology significantly differently from the house fourth or increasing demands of by constituents in the press for information which technology can help meet this is the continuing integration of technology into society which is placing pressure on all institutions to use technology more effectively and finally six of the demands of the legislative cycle which technology can help members and staff meet as effectively as they'd like to despite these pressures for change over the house faces challenges its effort to integrate technology the challenges are not the result of anything the house has been doing wrong rather they stem from practices that have been in place for decades coming into conflict with modern capabilities in the man's at this time in history traditional operations throughout our society are being tested by modern technologies and all institutions are being forced to adapt the four factors that seem to be the greatest hurdles to technology in the house now are first that the lack of standard legislative document formats and policies makes it difficult to implement technology to increase efficiency and hence access or reduce the cost of producing legislative documents second the lack of housewife technology coordination sometimes leads to conflicts redundancies and higher costs because offices often implement technology in a vacuum third the fact that the house operates disparate systems throughout the institution which prevents it from taking advantage economies of scale shared support services and the enhanced capabilities provided by an enterprise systems and forth is the general lack of resources in house offices although technology has placed all kinds of new demands on members and staff the resources aren't keeping pace is pace with the demand the forces for change are exerting pressure on the house to expand its use of technology and the challenges are exerting resistance for the house to adapt most effectively to the demands of the information age these challenges will need to be directly addressed and overcome through a current state research we laid a solid foundation for the house eighty seven project i'm going to leave it to larry to discuss the vision that the have a vision of a future that the house built on  i hope that together will provide you with not only a good idea of what we've done but also with an understanding of the positive impact this project could have on members staff and the institution in the years to come and thank you again for having me here today thank you mr bro today focusing on the vision for technology in the house over the next decade and the next steps for obtaining these visions once we identify the current state of technology in the house we needed to divine where the house wanted to go where it wanted to be in the future to develop these visions we conducted a series of workshops with members of managers from leadership committees member offices as well as house officers legislative branch officials the first for the legislative process the participants outlined a vision for greater electronic access to legislative information and greater automation of legislative document production their vision includes the ability for members to electronically access relevant documents and chambers during committee and floor debate it also includes the ability for members to see in real time the changes that amendments are making to bills and bills are making to public law another component of their vision is more time to the us code so that there is always an official version of public law in order to draft new legislation they also identified the need to include electronic documents in the official legislative record and finally t by members and staff to all legislation before just considered on the house floor second from member office operations the participants in vision a future where member offices than less time and money managing technology but also realize significant benefits under this vision the house of provide commodity technologies services and support to realize cost savings and improve the level of service the vision also provides for staff in both washington and the district to have improved access to information services and technical support and finally the participants in vision the house providing more services to help member offices deal with constituent the man's the third area for members themselves the participants a vision where technology would provide members with more effective information access and improved communications from wherever they are then forth in order to achieve these visions underlying processes and capabilities must exist to support the  area of institutional operational support the participants identified a vision where there would be greater coordination of major technology projects the house would also provide enhanced services capabilities and cost savings through greater centralisation under this vision the house would assign jurisdiction for technology planning to a single organization this would help provide a more explicit process for strategic technology decision making stakeholder involvement and requirements gathering from members and staff the participants also in vision and involvement of members and technology decisions that have a significant impact on the house and fifty the participants discuss the role of leadership in technology decision making and determine that leadership should have a role in working with the house to determine the direction of institutional technology adoption throughout the process of developing the statements the participants acknowledged the challenges in attaining the visions and the tradeoffs that would to be made the key point that emerged is that technology changes are easier than the cultural and organizational changes the house would realize significant benefits by attaining the visions but because they touch on some well established business processes and cultural assumptions the changes will require a great deal more than just choosing and implementing new technologies our final task is to develop a strategic technology roadmap which we are currently in the process of doing we will lay out the critical components of milestones for achieving the visions the steps in this task include first providing a more focused description of the house i teach business second identifying critical technologies and supporting management processes necessary to implement the vision and third developing the final report and conducting briefings with house stakeholders this roadmap will provide the house with an i t strategy that includes high level recommendations and direction for achieving the visions over the next  once those praja it is complete however the house will still have significant work to do over the next ten years to achieve the vision the house will need to first that improve how site the house i teach strategy this would require a business case where benefits risks and cost of thoroughly analyze then socializing and communicating the strategy against benefits the key stakeholders in the house at large to one support second once the strategy has been approved the vetted the house will then need to develop individual implementation plans for specific pieces of the house  a strategy and then the house will be able to begin executing and implementing the strategy again we thank you for the opportunity to brief you on the house i t assessment and we now look forward to answering any questions you may have for us thank you authority on mandates to plan and coordinate technology projects maybe i'm partial to the committee but i thought the committee at the authority are you saying we don't have that or so already are you saying it because it's to dispersed or shared with three officers of the house or there's some other reason when we were doing our research one of the things we identified is that although the committee on h administration does have responsibility for a large portion of the house there are pieces of it that it doesn't have responsibility for and so there are other organizations the most committee for example the committee on appropriations that all have  or they all have a sponsor now only for some areas of strategic technologies and making and there's no one office no one organization that has the ability to look across all the different pieces of decisions on which areas about report will be released as well the current reports there is some information on that  systems could you explain what you mean by the right now as you mentioned in your opening statement was the case in ninety five when you do the work of the previous work there are basically five hundred forty four hundred forty or more actually more with the committees and leadership offices and institutional offices different small businesses that make their own decisions are largely make their own decisions about technology and so although there are house standards and there are some policies to have similar systems officers for the most part get to make their own decisions about what technology hardware software that they buy what equipment they use to some degree how they use it and so they're not always compatible with one another and makes the support  from one office to another you move from one computer to another current and i just discussing something similar here i would say the huge amount of money in there so i moved every two years if we could treat computers as we treat telephones other words they belong to the office and frankly telephones are no small computers so the analogy yours is quite apt in your interviews and discussions with members  staff was this privileged furthermore do you have any recommendations on that proposal that we simply move the files from one of us to another but not the was something that there was concern about where people store sensitive information on their workstations on their desktops and so one of the things that would need to be done is that make sure that that information can be removed from the desktop and then the hard drive point so that the person is secure and knowing that their information is not going to be exposed to somebody else and so that is something that would provide a great deal of benefit to the institution if workstations would stay on so you have to move them and there are ways there are ways of limiting how much work it will take to move that information from one computer to come for five minutes i'm wondering if you have a concept and how we can get more member buy in on your site looking through the reports i noticed that the members who participated in the interview will members of this committee and there's been an effort to outreach but an unsuccessful effort has man got a cold the  as my colleagues know the four hundred thirty five of us plus commissioners and are an independent group and will pay attention when they feel that the traditional prerogatives are being abrogated so it's i think this is not really a technology issue so much as a sociological issue how do we do the upfront successful it a gratian with them and i wonder if you've got a need suggestions th so on that score one of the things that we developed was the idea of what we call a mobile number working group and essentially what we would like to do recruit sort of technology savvy members who are interested and developing w member of the future would look like one of the things that was discussed that really if you want to get members attention you have to have other members so it's sort of a network effect that if we can get a core group of members who are really interested in technology and developing this vision of what the member of the future is going to look like they can begin working with the technology implementers to develop this vision to develop you know how they want to be operating as members and then from there they can access champions they can act of the carriers of the message to the other people the other members and then slowly again building that the other thing is also that if you begin developing limit how much time they need to spend preparing or engaging in that answer as well and we're all i mean the members are all over the board i mean there's some of our colleagues that are white out on the screen people and other people who could  you know build a computer from the parts you buy of fries and everything in between so i think we need a matrix that we don't share with anyone because none of us and none of our colleagues want to admit that they're white on the screen people but whether it's the chief of staff or whether it's the member themselves who's doing the decision making i'm wondering and i'm not since i'm making this proposal but i had a chance to go through some of this with the staff which was very helpful yesterday in the course of our discussion we mentioned that it's this is a very large organization the house of representatives without a c e o do you think that that would be something we should look at or not have if you had a chance to consider the pros and cons of  because with the traditional organization of the house there are different organizations as we talked earlier like appropriations like roles where the specific technology is the sort of the loss of documents too in the past and i was talking with the librarian of congress some time ago but in the past there's been a great history compiled of congress and the executive branch through hard documents i don't know if any thought has been given to technology and how you know how we retain some of the sort of the legislative history and development drafts are wiped out with a click of you know button or a key and that we don't have the the history that we had before is this something  at a record of development of legislation and other documents it's not something that we looked at in depth but it is an issue that we raised in our discussion of the legislative  process the library of congress currently has a project that's looking intensively at this as well so you know for that what we suggest is that the house consider looking at and working with the library of y that haven't i don't think of even been addressed with some of the standalone equipment or equipment that's taken for granted in the private sector is that also something you found  are they come up with a good idea and they're trying to put this process in place to put this capability in place because they are having to do it in isolation and have there are a lot of challenges in trying to get it to work correctly and so as you take sort of the task that makes it difficult to really develop a very efficient process and there's no way of doing it and so you know looking at what  findings that it is that there needs to be more of this sort of top down vine and this more of this institutional decision to put in these processes and processes of put in these capabilities and that increases  the the chance of them being more effective and so we did look that when we talk to people and in our interviews there was sort of this tension between you know the attempts of the house to centralize things or to provide shared services but that it was never really it was never really something the institution as a whole decided to do it's generally one office trying to do good and without that coordination without working together they just the obstacles are just too hard for most of the sometimes it seems like we're spending all the time a lot of time on our time inventing and reinventing the wheel and maybe th comments did you receive from members or others about the technique or they'll go to post service whether to the sars or some other means since a lot of frustration in my colleagues the time it takes them so most of them frustration the way the house of structure their technical support right now the officers do you have are expected to have somebody in the office to do day to day things there's also the house t s r and then there's the systems integrators which are really to provide the bulk of the technical support for an office and the frustration the tension that we heard most what it is that these are not always coordinated not always on the same page and there's finger pointing among them and this is one of the the issues that led to the conclusion or to the vision of a more centralized  technical provision so it would include you know commodity hardware and software as well as support being provided by the house and that would reduce the likelihood of you know this dissatisfaction with different people saying different things doing different things not knowing who's responsible for what there would be one entity with well trained staff to provide technical support leads to my next question which organization of our size that have this many distributed service servers around basically a server in every office which adds tremendously to the cost of the total system and your discussions with numbers and others to do find the receptivity to centralizing servers taking them out of the offices and ensuring their security to the satisfaction of the members which is the key and i kno computerized the michigan senate the only way i could sell this plan was to have a bankrupt republican servers in the bank of democratic servers even though as you know they can exchanges information as easily as if they were in the next room as if they were next to each other what did you encounter in this know what is your recommendation when we when we discussed it with members and their staff there was a lot of concern about letting  be a fair amount of resentment for letting go of that but i don't think it's something that insurmountable that there are ways of ensuring that security ensuring the  dislikes with the system we did and their primary concern concerns were the speed and availability of their systems and the availability of information they feel kind of especially those who are in districts that have significant time zones alaska hawaii and west coast where it's harder for them to just pick up the phone and call the c staff and get the information they need and so they had significant concerns about expanding information available to them so that they could find information on them and improving the speed of their systems  i can vote for myself when i use the computer at my district office i find it extremely frustrating and frankly i use a computer in my home office most of the time simply because it's faster working like the second panel to come forward like to commend the committee for the work that has been initiated to increase the awareness of the house's need for strategic comprehensive i t planning process we endorse the gartner idea assessment and concur with their report findings we believe that the house would be well served in considering the vision set forth in the gartner report and adopting the related recommendations that fully implemented they would also address prior of i g audit recommendations our past audit work demonstrates that strategic i t planning has been a longstanding need here at the house since nine hundred ninety five my office has conducted five audits related to the in our june two thousand and two report we stated that the house did not have a plan to project its technology needs or to develop an effective id strategy our report concluded that without a mandate the house would never have an empty watch to teach a plan that would serve the interests of the entire house we provided three options for consideration one appoint a house level nonpartisan in chief information officer to create a house level ip steering committee or three delegate centralized citee planning and management authority to an existing house office or the gartner report which points to the steering committee approach built around key stakeholders and decision makers made the intent of this recommendation it's important to note that industry best practices call for effective strategic i t planning institute internationally recognized for setting standards and performing research and information systems security and assurance the valve the control objectives for information and related technology commonly known as  framework for assessing managing an optimizer ip investments this framework consists of business goal of linking business goals to i t goals providing metrics and maturity models to measure their achievement and identifying the associated responsibilities of business and i t process owners linking or strategic alignment of i t resources with the organizational business strategy is one of the five cornerstones of ip governance the gartner report appropriately focuses on the need for creating a vehicle for setting the strategic vision and carrying out the technology planning process once this decision making vehicles in place we recommend that the house consider the remaining areas ident organization stands ready to assist through our independent reviews we will provide assurance that the strategic eyeteeth planning process is designed implemented and sustained with the appropriate controls to ensure confidentiality and security for all house stakeholders as we did with the house wide deployment of active directory where we played a critical role in evaluating and testing the active directory forest design and the related alert system the eligible provider of you assistance during the deployment of a plan to mitigate the overall risk for the house and to ensure integrity and equity in the process in closing i would like to stress that the cost of not implementing a coordinated housewives strategic i t plan is quite high that one the house will continue to incur increased unnecessary costs for its information technology resources because it will be required to support multiple platforms maintain overlapping technologies and will not benefit from the economies of scale experienced by other work in zation similar in size non striking mind operations and fish jointed incomplete information could also cause a lack of responsiveness to customers and unduly complicate the ability to secure our house technology infrastructure case studies that show me types of failings often result in adverse publicity and decrease stakeholder confidence in the organization in contrast to a scenario of fully implemented coordinated housewives strategic i t plan would provide members with an improved support structure and time their access to information which in turn with better enable them to produce quality legislation and make infor chairman and members of the committee i'm honored to appear before you today to discuss the information technology assessment and tenure vision for i t in the house of representatives i'm here to provide you with my thoughts on the impact of this ten year vision as it relates to the functions of the office of the sergeant at arms my staff and i were active participants through out the study providing input to the current state report interviews with personnel from gardiner and c m s in addition my staff participated in the focus groups as part of the to the vision and i t decision making workshops we found the study to be thorough and complete gardner and c m s included all pertinent offices within the house that support service operations and also acquired the back from the many stake that practice to pay in transmitting data through the house the use of information technology within the office of the sergeant at arms is mainly focused on supporting the security functions of the house the production of identification badges distribution and inventory control parking permits wireless communications inside and around the house chamber and during special and emergency events are all areas that rely on i t infrastructure for consistent and reliable operations there are a number of instances where of centralizing and standardizing the permission technology functions and equipment in the house could be useful to my office as a member of the u s capitol police board i have seen the impact of information technology on the physical security systems of the capitol campus the ability of an autonomous systems to share information is dependent on compatible hardware and software in addition to the proper information security controls to ensure the data is not compromised one example of this is communications during emergencies events both among the office staff and outside offices and agencies which relies on various forms of wireless communications from blackberry two way radios to sell your devices the ability to utilize these forms of communications to notify members of an emergency situation and to provide accountability of members during these events could be more effectively improved in a centralized i t environment using systems that are interoperable a narrow the area that could be beneficial to the house operations is the idea of a federal identification badge currently the agencies of the executive branch of the government pursuant to homeland security presidential directive twelve are implementing an identification badge that will be valid across all agencies of the executive branch using digital all the negations although current business processes in the house do not provide an effective means of employment implementing all the requirements of this directive my office in conjunction with the u s capitol police has been reviewing the standards to determine if certain points or portions of the directive could be more easily achieved should the i process change another area of interest i have is exploring the use of so called smart cards to blend the ideas of physical security and x x security smart cards or id badges with computer chips built in to store large amounts of data these cards could be used to provide access to secure areas of the capitol complex and also means an occasion for house staff to access their computer accounts and e mail to implement this vision however the physical security access control systems managed by the capit police the active directory of education system managed by h i r and possibly the id badge ing system managed by my id section would have to share information across various platforms centralization and standardization of information systems would be necessary to implement a system such as this mr chairman i thank you for the opportunity to give you my thoughts on this day can and hope that we've been able to share some insight into the effect and the need for standardization and centralization of i t services in the house of representatives of the clerk is beneath gaged in this project since its inception in two thousand and four hopefully my testimony will further our efforts to ensure the house of representatives proceeds along a path of greater efficiency due to time constraints mr chairman my brief comments will focus on three examples of technology advancements and the importance of a long range plan to resolve outstanding policy questions the office of the clerk has been a long time active partner in advancing technology in the house since the late one nine hundred ninety s we have worked with the house legislative council in cooperation with the secretary of the senate the library of congress and g p o to implement a vision of this committee to bring standardization to the creation and transfer of legislative documents and agreement was reached to use extensible markup language otherwise known as x m l for the exchange of legislative documents to date customized x m l based applications allow house counsel to draft ninety eight percent of bills resolutions and amendments in x m l this represents across organizational standardization of checks that needs to occur in order to more fully exploit the electronic dissemination of legislative text there is more work to be done before we reap the full benefits of a fully electronic process for creation distribution and presentation of legislative documents the scope of the initial effort must be expanded to allow every entity in the legislative process access to these tolls future plans should include the creation in exchange of additional legislative documents in x m l committee reports hearings house calendars and journals this is not a simple endeavor and can only happen if the effort is part of a fully coordinated plan that ensures that all parties are committed to success the second technology advancements electronic authentication  digital signatures in the tweeny is of standardization and access to data is a matter of the official version currently papers regarded as the official version for legislative documents for example although an electronic version  companies that nearly ninety nine percent of introduced bills and original designs hard copy must be submitted on the floor of the house while in session in order for it to qualify while respecting the primacy of the printed version as the official version we must consider the importance of having a means to associate the electronic version of legislation to the printed official version that derives from it this is critical if members and staff are going to be allowed access to reliable electronic documents the solution solution to this problem lies in the area of electronic authentication we have deployed the first and only official use of electronic authentication in the form of an outsource digital signature certificate for the filing of the lobbying disclosure forms we would envision that an agreement on an electronic authentication standard and that it is them suitable for legislative and other documents would be one of the critical areas of concern for the house in the near future with regard to on time available it of legislative information in committee and the house chamber settings i share the views of those who recognize that it is not just a matter of deploying equipment and software but rather it is a fundamental policy issue of determining how our rules and procedures would have to be changed to accommodate and media access being discussed the third technology advancements electric fun electronic filing for lobbying disclosure since electronic filing became mandatory in two thousand and six we have realized over an eighty percent on time compliance rate with the filings becoming instantly accessible for public viewing the terminals of the legislative resource center under current law all the information that must be provided to the senate and house by a registered lobbyist is mandated but the process for filing is not if you are aware in the house we require registered registrants to file electronically while the senate does not this is resulted in two entirely different computer systems and databases that provide challenges to the file or challenges to the office of the secretary of the senate and the house score as well as additional expense these are only a few examples of areas where coordinated policy guidance and established procedures could help the efficiency of our process reduce cost and benefit members staff and the public as we strive to make accurate information available as quickly as possible mr chairman in conclusion i would like to again thank the committee for the invitation to appear here today the committee should be commended for the leadership you have shown in living house forward technologically while recognizing many of the important challenges we must deal with as an institution i look forward to continuing the partnership that has developed through this process and to further advancements in the use of technology in the legislative office and the office of the legislative council is the legislative drafting service for the house we provide assistance in connection with virtually every bill moment conference report produced by the hell yeah this is nonpartisan to neutralize two issues legislative policy we maintain strict confidentiality with each client we also provide some ancillary services to direct one of the uses for preparation of reporting bill for the committee in the format made by the clerk of the house and the g p s we also prepare sion of each committee report showing the changes made in existing law this is known as the rams are but we participated in the preparation of the gardner report and we concur by and large with the findings of the report our operations are highly dependent upon information technology and a fun interaction with other house offices especially the clerk of the house and the various house committees unfortunately however when it comes to information technology coordination has fallen short members and their staff often ask us questions relating to our software system for example why does it take so much longer now for your office to prepare a draft than in the recent past how can we edit your drafts with our software and send them back to you for your review and for further revision why are you having so many problems producing ram sires for the committees why did you stop giving committees up to date versions of the laws in our jurisdiction these questions can only be answered if you understand the limitations of the information technology that we and other house offices rely on and how that technology is put in place currently each house officer involved in the legislative process including ours to quote the garden report independently is responsible for identifying acquiring and supporting technology to conduct its work with little coordination for standardization of processes formats and technologies let me first briefly describe the recent history of our document composition software we were using a very old essentially obsolete text editing system few years ago it began to break down completely we needed to bring a new id solution online with no expertise of our own when the clerk of the house offered to develop a new bill editing software for us as well as for the clerks and use we accepted the new software using x m l extensible markup language allows for instance publishing on the web and offers other opportunities for the clerk's office to function much more efficiently we now use the x m l program for the composition and editing of all legislative documents the cooperation between our office and the clerk's office is an unusual example of two institutions working together to bring an i t solution online that's the good news is the flip side is that the software is designed best to fit the clerks operation in the drift not ideal for our office is also not well adapted for use by other with which we need to collaborate the developers were aware of this but did not have the authority of the budget to expand the project beyond the scope of the clerk's functions and our basic functions and example may help our clients often wish to revise draft legislative language provided by our office and have that highlight in texas is known as redlining but no member staffs are working with the x m l editor nor a committee staff and even if they did they couldn't collaborate in this way because the program doesn't provide this feature another example members who have served in state legislatures often ask why bills amending existing law do not show the changes made in the existing law there are several reasons as i mentioned above we do prepare prepare document the rams are showing these changes in connection with the reported bills this is required by the house rules we prepared this manually and it is now more difficult than ever before because we need to get our old software and then the x m l software to work together and it's a tricky process the result is that our ability to provide these rams eyes to the committees entente has deteriorated this failure has a house wide impact because a committee report without iran's ire does not comply with the house rules to consider the bill the rules have to be waived and the waiver can sometimes be controversial it would be possible with x m l to automatically almost instantaneously show the effect of proposed bills on the existing law other states legislate state legislatures and other finally slater's already do this and within our office we are attempting to build a solution on our own so that we can better meet the committee's need programs ours however even if we built it we couldn't deploy it throughout the entire house for use by members and committee staff is another reason why it is so difficult to depict these changes made in existing law and it's nothing to do with information technology the reason is that we do not have an accurate current and official version of existing federal law as a mint either in paper or electronic form nor does anyone else to be positive federal law the kind that you need for legislative amendments a us code title must be enacted as such by congress only twenty four to fifty titles less than one third of the volume of federal laws is officially codified the effort to kind of file federal law into the united states code foundered many many years ago so most federal law is not part of codified positive law titles the non positive law titles a completely different form and numbering and cannot be used for legislative amendments members who have served in state legislatures are used to having all state laws in a single official state code usually available in print or electronic form on a current basis that is not the case in the house so we are left with most federal law and codified form there is no entity responsible anywhere for providing an official amended version of these laws our office various universities private businesses various other people all cut and paste each new public law after many new public laws into the original to provide a best guess as to what the official law would look like none of these documents are official and their degree of accuracy is on them so this means that any document provided by anyone showing changes made in the existing law would rely on an unofficial want to possibly an accurate draft amendments to these gun positive laws we need to manually maintain the kernel electronic databases on them that we can all be at unofficial and possibly inaccurate we need to use this database to provide committees find their brick were used to use this database to provide committees upon their request compilations of the various laws in their jurisdiction these would be unofficial but the committees often found them very useful printed them for their their members and staff some posted them on their website we can no longer provide the committee's with these documents our database of federal laws that they come so difficult to maintain with part of it in x m l and part being done in the old software that we are unable to continue providing this service i have been hearing coming from complaints from a number of committees about this the solution to these problems really requires an overall entity of some kind with responsibility for providing i t solutions that work for all components of the house including our office the clerks office the members and the committees we endorse the conclusions of the gartner report specifically regarding the fragmented feudal structure of i t planning and implementation house with individual compartmentalized silos of ip development leading to inefficient business mr chairman lofgren mr doolittle thank you for your time and very excited to be here to participate in this hearing the c e o was very pleased to participate in the development of the house i t assessments and were supportive of many of the recommendations and observation i'd like to thank the committee for sponsoring the initiative and first stablish in the comment period that the chairman referenced in his opening statements this approach is consistent with the recommendations of the study to make house id decision making more transparent but also like to like to recognize kathy goldschmidt and larry bradley for their work they had a arduous job of listening to one hundred twenty eight different people give their take on the challenges of i t decision making and the state of our systems and compile them in the ma they have it's been very helpful and very effective the chairman has noted that he intends to have another hearing on the more detailed aspects of the recommendations in the study so i'd like to focus on what i consider to be some high level important aspects of the study for the committees consideration first the title of the study may give the wrong impression that what we're doing is picking nifty technology bells and whistles it's not the primary focus needs to be on business processes how does the house see its primary business processes of valving in the next decade and then and only then how can technology be employed as an enabler of those evolving business processes many of the houses business processes today flow from traditions and precedents established over the past two centuries as we look to the recommendation of the assessment it's important that we first consider our processes and institutions and how members staff and the broader house community including the public believe those processes may need to evolve to better support the legislative process and operations of the house the many innovations recommended in the ten year roadmap will require a coordinated and collective vision and that includes processes and procedures to improve decision making with the guard to house information technology second when contemplating a new vision of house business processes it must be done with an eye to the future not just the next ten years but well beyond when i consider the future the house of representatives i think of my son and the rapid pace of change he will see in his lifetime he's eight years old and i think there's a very good chance that he'll live to see the year twenty one hundred and the next century technology will be even more integrated into our daily living than it is today this will result in profound changes to the institution of congress for its members and for our american citizens we can expect increased demand from constituents to have access to their representatives and their government on a real time basis this will mean that motions meant notions mentioned in the house idea assessments such as mobile members and expanded electronic access to legislation and the legislative process are inevitable through technology i fully expect that members and staff will be legislating anywhere anytime my point here is simple if we ask ourselves do we expect technology to have a significant impact on the house by the year twenty one hundred within our young children and grandchildren's lifetimes and the answer is yes let's bring that same mindset to this study and begin that process now third and finally when we consider the technology and its impact upon our institution is fairly recent we must look to the future and consider how decisionmaking must mature to keep pace with these changes which leads me to what i believe is the fundamental recommendation to house i t assessment improving id decision making we must recognize recognize that while congress has existed for over two centuries the use of technology as we define it today is still in its infancy i first arrived on capitol hill in the early one nine hundred eighty s about a quarter century ago when we were still using typewriters there was no email there was no internet house information services had only come into existence a few years before inclusive and coordinated model with the development of our balance scorecard strategic plan the c e o technology strategic plan our capital investment planning and control strategy and establishment of our portfolio management office this oversight strategic planning allows us to look to the future and align our resource planning accordingly we are also establishing these plans and oversight procedures to ensure that once we've committed the resources to delivering solutions they're delivered as cost effectively and efficiently as possible even with these efforts we want to achieve our grandest goals on behalf of the house because we cannot reach them in isolation we support establishing a structure to coordinate institutional technologists visions and a way that effectively involves stakeholders leadership members committees staff and technology experts throughout the process mr chairman members the various volumes of the house ip assessment contain a set of well thought out high level goals for the institution a myriad of specific technology solutions and even a draft roadmap on how they may be carried out over the next decade speaking for the employees the c e o we look forward to working with the committee to deliver that and i'm happy to respond to any questions and thank you very much and thank all of you for your excellent testimony it is clear to me that there is much work to be done and a great  developing a much closer working relationship perhaps combined resources with all the aspects of the senate with regards to information technology or do you think this is a bridge that's too hard to cross or even if i could speak to that first mr chairman i i'm optimistic we are working with them currently within our x m l working group they are participating as you are aware but we're also working with them one other friends them are reaching out and secretaries sign it when it comes to like tronics lobbying filing and we have they may be considered baby steps at this point but we are working very closely with them sharing information and supporting them because we both have  very import were we have both have an important stake in this process and so at this point i'm very optimistic we're still very early on but we have a lot of work to do it when i was first to comment on that i do mr chairman i have  three very tangible practical examples of hope in this area and i concur with karen's perspective that the chances are good that those opportunities can be accomplished the first is as a practical example that traditionally the telephone exchange the telephone operators that have been doing services for the house and senate had been organized as a joint facility between the house was located on the senate side run by senate managers but the house supplied half the personnel over time we came to recognize that this was an inefficient management structure that how people are paid by one organization so forth and so with the senate came up with an arrangement where now they're all senate employees and the house has a contract with the united states senate to provide telephone exchange services to both institutions and as far as i know there hasn't been a single complaint and no one even notice a second example is that after the anthrax and nine eleven circumstances we obviously had to do quite a bit of reinvention of our mail system here in the us and part of that was to add security features to make sure that the mail was delivered safely and the senate is now contracting with the house for some of its mail processing packages specifically and so we're doing those house and senate packages together at one school and finally and probably the biggest biggest example of success comes with the with the institution's alternative computer facility after nine eleven and anthrax the institutions made a decision that we were quite vulnerable with our redundancy systems and we needed to establish those kinds of capabilities at a remote location we could have done it independently and probably doubled and tripled the cost instead the house and senate agreed to work together establish a central facility and the and the library of congress government printing office the congressional budget office the capitol police have all joined us together to save costs and work together across those normal invisible barriers that exist in the capital thank you i think each of you has a different set of problems and we could we could have a meeting like this every stations similarly to the event this past week with a deranged person racing through the halls of the capitol armed with a pistol i was shocked if i was in michigan at the time i got the message that said please stay in your offices and lock the door and i just covered that the message was sent out some time after for traitor had been captured we have to have a media notification the emergency is like that do you see the possibility of developing a very definitely we have the technology in those two instances and we've been working on this not only technology but the human er r those two instances that you mentioned were basically human failure and when it seems to happen over and over and over again it has happened at least in the last six seven months several times twice that i know of and we have taken steps and as a late as yesterday evening to try to remedy that with it's in the command center of the capitol police and we're taking action to increase we had been told they had a communicator in there to run the systems and that was not quite the case has not been the case so we have asked that they again rededicate someone all shifts that will be right at the equipment to immediately transmit on the enunciators or whatever method we need to transmit it on instructions to the staff members and phone i think it's very helpful hearing in the street and as you were talking about when you first came here i was remembering when i first came here as a staffer right out of college in one nine hundred seventy and we had it was free computer we had what was then called a robo type machine which was a paper with little holes that would break about every fifth letter and we would have to tape it together and we would rather than get our copies of bills online because we didn't have a fully formed internet we go over to the bill were over on the first floor of the capitol and it was very quiet and you'd have to physically get the bill so we've certainly made progress since then but there is much more to do and as i listen i mean there are technical issues but i think really the more serious the technical issues can be solved it's the policy issues that are going to be tougher to do because really what we're talking about is making this whole thing more transparent to the public you know the lobbying the registration should be online and searchable to the public you shouldn't have to come at the capitol  to see that as the legislative process proceeds the public as well as members ought to see what's being discussed in draft form and there that is not really the way we legislate today so i think that there are going to be some difficult policy issues that are going to take some leadership within the house through the house leadership in the committee structure and it's really a change of the way we do business in the house that we're talking about and i think that may be a hard adjustment for some but it will be welcomed by the public and it's really the way we ought to do the public's business i was going to ask about the senate as well but i think we're not really completely all on the same page on our side of the hill yet either so we've got a lot of work to do the one thing i did want to mention you mentioned your eight year to greet the next century we've lost so much and i worry and i know the librarian is focused on this too about the the electronic records or they won't turn to dust they'll turn t have no history and there is a group of that's formed out in silicon valley to look at open standards for documents so that we can make sure that we actually have  historians or our successors what we're doing today in a hundred years or two hundred years because our republic will go on have you had any interface with that broad group yet and and if not any of you how white might we  pulled their energetic efforts gather with the government with the goal of preservation i haven't had any anywhere any dealings at this point with with this organization and love to get more information from you as was mentioned previously there is an ongoing working group type structure with the library of congress in conjunction with the national archives so this is something that's very active and ongoing still if i could get that information from you or maybe we ought to work at through the library if they're taking the lead absolutely i think that's an excellent idea very good thank you very much and i guess the only other question i had is for mr barrow you know we stop caught applying a long time ago and i can't actually imagine that i guess the judiciary committee has the major role but not the exclusive role that the that the committee which eyes serve down there for twelve years is actually going to could legally could we form a commission to do the detail work obviously the congress would have to adopted but it commission to really move us forward on codification do you think that would be worth doing capability to do that and have been doing that at a very slow pace because there's no constituency rushing for this that's why i don't like you i can see that you judiciary committee taking time off do this from all the things that they're being pressed to do additionally when they kind of pine a series of laws that are currently on codified other committees had years taken over all those laws and there's going to be some friction over over the actual language that's involved because it's impossible to recount a fi and on codified title without changing something and numbering the wording and some things are going to be changed that makes people very nervous so it is a difficult process and they do every three or four years managed to get another title codified but it's been a very slow process and it does getting farther behind yes they're getting farther behind they've told me i talked  laws are put onto appropriations bills images that have something to do with it and therefore they are by definition no i don't think that's the reason that the bulk of our laws are amendments to these public laws and they're our official copies of each public law but when that public law no matter what committee came from is amended at that point there's no official version of the law does not have the resources or the manpower to be able to provide those documents at the time we need to make amendments it takes eighteen months to two years to get them those documents from them well it sounds like that's  applying the same approach in the past to our border security that we apply to this we just it's just not important enough to do it with money to solve the problem sounds like it would take more resources but i think it would also take some impetus from the leadership essentially that this is an important thing to do well i don't think any of this first time i've ever heard that's that's that's what's going on it's interesting to hear that i would certainly be i mean the state legislatures do all works just fine it's amazing that we can do it here what can we subcontract with private there with commercial services or something to have them do it you could do that the large and council have the ability to do this with additional resources they can sure it could do it what would happen if our ways they get a title ready to be codified and it may take four years or so before longer even before anything happens politically that can make that happen sometimes it just doesn't happen and now they're down to the more difficult titles where they're much more political controversy and so it's even less likely to happen i'm interested in this but i've got two or three others i want to ask about so learn more about a mystery for five years i've been trying to get it turns out they're called no put around the campus so that we have blackberry reception wherever we go and we don't lose it in eighty five in other places and that verizon isn't having better service than singulair and of the others and every time i ask over these five years i'm told they are going to do that six months away so it's five years later and i'm wondering when and i'm told that six four months ago my staff was sure that in six months from then we'd have these nodes in place so we've got two months left are we going to have these things installed by christmas actually the all the house buildings are done awesome and have been done for about a year well they're done that now that they're not turned on or something or they're turned on and all the  carriers are using those repeaters well then are you intentionally blocking eighty five transmission i said that i should have clarified i meant the house building the cow the capital is the last i was go something i held back fortunately capital is the last location that needs to get on in the course the c d c will need to be done as well we have a contract in place to do that there are some issues with that contract at the moment but  plan is to finish that work yes and have it all the accessible the capital was held off as a last location for two reasons one is the sensitivity of the architecture and that putting those repeaters i think is the term that is used in the industry  and the wiring that goes to those repeaters is always more challenging on capital and secondly then the security sensitivity and we had those same challenges in the house office buildings that in locations where there may be security sensitive briefings or hearings in those kinds of things you have to handle those locations in a different manner and plan them out more carefully so that there can be positive disconnects and so forth established so that penetrations through that technology don't have an adverse effect on on the content of the discussions when would you then dissipate that the capital will be up to speed in this area i'll have to get back to you mr doolittle i don't have my fingertips the plan completion date i do know that we have had recently a contractual issue that we're working through right now that impacts that completion date so i have to get back to you when it be reasonable to believe that this should be completed at the time the visitor's center comes on line i know that we had established a contract an agreement with the senate as to how the visitor center center would be handled i think without having the completion dates at my fingertips to give you with a valid assurance i think yes that's generally the plan but i would want to get back to you and confirm that before you hold me to it well please do because i'm interested in having that situation taken care of thank you gentlemen stand has expired  political and perception problems i think it's definitely worth pursuing in the house we need to go into it with their eyes wide open actually i thought mr do a little might ask about this subject because it was something that is equally been of interest in the past and as a result of some of these inquiries we actually are doing a pilot with seat management and using c e o as a pilot audience and so we have we have made a shift over where  we have gone to a contractor and have installed so for about two thirds of our organization on a seat management methodology and explains the management there's a lot of different flavors of it but essentially it's taking you know the desktop that all of us use or a relatively easy to do we do have some places where we have some high end users where a standard desktop configuration either from the power of the machine or the software may need to be adapted the member offices though or even committees for that chance it becomes for that matter becomes a bit more of a challenge because historically the the operating principle here is been to give offices full discretion and full choice and therein lies the tradeoff  with standardization you have the potential for economies of scale in the acquisition of the hardware you have opportunities for standardization of support because you're going with certain desktop features but it is  certainly a challenge to choice and discretion and where does the house want to be you want to be positioned i think there are prospects to do that but it goes back to kind of the business decision making we're going to stay with this much decentralization and as much choice as we have traditionally offered member offices are we willing to move somewhere or somewhere in the middle i could see a seat management that offers perhaps tiers of support you were mentioning you know the different kinds of numbers that we have around here with a white out versus those that are high tech and perhaps there's tiered levels of seat management support depending on the offices is this practice preference is the more choice you have the less standardization the more cost network eleven thousand computers and do it properly and that's a very challenging technical problem but i found the political problems were much much greater than the tech because i think as chairman by me there's there's another aspect to this that certainly would directly confront this committee and it would be the budgetary after all right now through the numbers representational allowance most of the control over the office technology decisions with the members and so if the house wanted to  mplate some kind of method like this that would be one of the hurdles to confront you know one option would be well you add more monies pops into my budget and we do this centrally of course that adds more money to the house budget and we're in a relatively  challenging budgetary time option would be to have some kind of pooled share of resources and would the numbers be willing to make contributions from their accounts to something like that but other technical problems there a budgetary problems but the political problems at least in my experience having four hundred thirty five system analyst and four hundred thirty five offices plus the committees telling their boss that i was an idiot because i was trying to do something so and so there's no reason to have it in two and it would be important thing to remember and the budgetary issue is does save money for the institution so that's something we have to investigate we will revisit and i'm glad that this will be posted not only for current members but freshman members to review this is for the freshmen this is something i'm sure that they have no idea what they're walking into and  but i think that if we can make some decisions in the early next year timeframe that will be making progress and i really appreciate the participation of all the witnesses very helpful i second  issue about preserving records i was so involved in the state of michigan in allowing all the county clerks to maintain the records in electronic form that no one had thought about long term preservation i managed to get that amendment which to my knowledge is still working well but they have to maintain the algorithms and the software and whenever there's a major change they have to transfer everything over to the new algorithms new software in order to maintain a permanent record that's troublesome but it's very important otherwise for loser records in five years on that point let's realize what we're it's not just the legislative branch but we're really failing government wide on that whole issue well i just like that i don't know if you're hanging at this or not mystery in bed now that apple's move to the intel chip is that is that making that all of this desired harmony a little easier or is that just a contest aficionados here we assume that will be part of the next step and improving information technology in the house of representatives with that i thank the witnesses all the witnesses for the of speaking for myself it's been extremely beneficial to get a better handle on the issues not only but also the problems that each of you face and it helps me to recognize all the different things that have to be done