testing one two three four five six seven eight one two three four five six seven eight twenty three may very interesting one two three hearing will come to order this afternoon i want to welcome everybody to this afternoon's hearing on the department of homeland security science and technology directorate research and development efforts at the directorate are crucial to supporting not just the missions of the agencies within the h s but our country's first responders all over this nation in the world this subcommittee continues to do all it can to assist the directorate in it mission to deliver quality technical solutions to all of its stakeholders in past hearings this subcommittee has made many recommendations to the directorate and i'm very pleased to see that some of these recommendations have been acted upon in response to stakeholder and subcommittee requests the directorate has added a thirteen integrated product team to give local fire rescue and police workers a direct voice in federal research priorities i'm also pleased to see that funding for basic research is now twenty percent of the direct to its portfolio as you know this subcommittee firmly believes that basic research plays a critical critical role in the  process by increasing the president's basic research at the directorate it has shown a commitment not only to solve today's problems but also to position itself to meet future challenges while there have been many improvements at the directorate i continue to have some concerns all of the integrated product teams now include all of the major stakeholders there seems to be an inconsistent there seems to be some inconsistency with  efficiently and effectively the i p t operate i would like to hear from the witnesses about ways we can ensure that the ip ts are properly organized to enable the highest levels of collaboration amongst the directorate between the directorate and its shareholders stakeholders finally there is one area of great concern that has yet to be addressed by the directorate over the course of multiple hearings this subcommittee has expressed concern about the lack of a comprehensive threat assessment as a foundation for determining research priorities the current strategic plan does little to define the direction of research activities and is not grounded in a formal threat assessment i don't find it acceptable i think the subcommittee has troubles with the thought that plans are made without reference to a proper analysis of threats and the dangers they pose especially when considering that we rely on the directorates plans to protect our country from all future threats while i'm encouraged by progress in many areas of the science and technology directorate i am somewhat frustrated at the lack of such a crucial element in the effect in the effectiveness of almost a one billion dollar research enterprise i'm eager to hear the witnesses expert opinions on these concerns and moreover i would strongly encourage the incoming under secretary to address these issues with most urgency at this point i would like to recognize my friend and colleague the gentleman from nebraska for his opening statement thank you mr chairman for calling this hearing today to examine the activities of the department of homeland security science and technology directorate in two thousand and two this committee played a key role in shaping the creation of d h s specifically calling for the establishment of an s n t directorate within the new department to fund  d and advise the secretary on s n t related policies well you can see growing pains always present a challenge in the seven years since its creation the directorate has demonstrated respectable progress refining its roles and responsibilities and instituting a sound organizational structure and operating processes however one of the critical policy challenges committee recognized in two thousand and two still remains development of a true strategic plan to inform prioritize and guide the work of the direct in one sense the absence of a strategic plan reflects the magnitude of the challenge inherent in the department's mission from our transportation infrastructure to our food and agricultural system to our land and sea ports of entry just to name a few the diversity of potential terrorist threats and targets to the homeland is certainly endless this makes the management and policy issues associated with quantifying and prioritizing risks and associated s and t activities a monumental task but the high degree of difficulty doesn't make it any less important without an effective strategic plan the directorate has no foundation from which to systematically guide development of priorities and measure performance toward objective so i hope and expect the director will expedite such a plan in the coming months i also look forward to hearing from the administration scuse me and other witnesses regarding a number of other more specific issues which are important to the success of the directorate and the department going forward among these are the evolution of the s and t director its integrated product teams and the balance in focus on activities across the r and d pipeline from basic research to technology development i certainly think the witnesses for taking your time today and i look forward to the discussion thank you thank you very much mr smith if there are any other members who wish to submit opening statements the statements will be added to the record at this point and now it's like to introduce our witnesses for this afternoon first mr brad buswell is the acting undersecretary of the science of technology director e at the department of homeland security mr phil deploy is the chairman of the homeland security science and technology advisory committee mr david berto is the senior advisor and director of the defense industrial initiatives group at the center for strategic and international studies and finally dr cindy williams is the chair of the committee on the d h has science and technology directorate of the national academy of public administration and she is also the shapiro visiting professor internet affairs at the elliott school of international affairs at george washington university and a principal research scientist at the security studies program at mit each of you will have five minutes for your spoken testimony your written testimony will be included in the record in their entirety and when you complete all of your testimony  we will begin with questions and each member will have five minutes to question the panel mr buswell please proceed thank you very much chairman ranking member smith and other members and staff it's an honor to appear before you here today and it's an honor to appear with such a distinguished panel i commend you on the assembly look forward to talking to you today about the progress that we've made in developing the science and technology director e and placing ourselves in a position to to provide advanced technological solutions to protect the american people and to protect the critical infrastructures that we depend on as you said mr chairman the director has charged with providing technical support and tools to the d h s operating components and as importantly army perhaps even more importantly to our nation's first responders those brave men and women who are on the front lines of homeland security every day let me just start by saying i'm grateful for the for the strong leadership of secretary  of the importance of science and technology and securing our nation is also repeatedly underscored the importance of strengthening strengthening the relationships with the state local tribal and territorial agencies and i think  he is making significant inroads in that in that regard as you mentioned in your opening statement also greatly appreciate the leadership of the congress and the subcommittee supports the informed counsel of both members and staff has been has been invaluable to our the delivery of advanced technological solutions to our customers and i'm pleased to report that that restructuring is been fully implemented and we're wholly engaged in responding to the near and the long term technology capability needs of the components and and othe customers you civically asked that i address three areas of interest the subcommittee that interest to the subcommittee first of all our priorities in developing the research and development portfolio the role of the capstone integrated product teams and industry in determining those priorities and the role of basic research both in the overall s and p portfolio and specifically at the university based centers of excellence the first two are really closely intertwined the research and development priorities of the customers share those ip ts so they establish their capability priorities based on their assessment of risk in the mission areas for which they're responsible this gets a little bit to your to your point of comprehensive threat assessment  we have we rely on our customers to to incorporate the threat that they as they see it into their overall risk assessment and identify technology gaps in a priority way to address those those  risks the customer driven captain i p t process directly drives about fifty percent of our overall investment but it also importantly informs the rest of the portfolios basic research and innovation what we learn from our stakeholders through the process about their operations and about their future capability needs helps influence those other investments that we also make and within the invite innovation in the basic research portfolio for those reasons all three of the portfolio members basic research innovation and transition are participants in the i p t process as i said the more insight that we gain the better we understand the better we are positioned to identify promising areas of research and explore innovative solutions that are outside the development time frame or risk tolerance of the near term focused i p t process while there is room for import for improvement in any process i'm pleased with the progress we've made in implementing and institutionalizing the caps ts as you said i'm especially proud of the addition this year of the thirteen capstone i p t in support of the first responders happy to provide more information on that during the q and a session if you're interested let me talk quickly about the briefly about the basic research portfolio basic research really fulfills two very important roles in in our in the s and t directorate first it lays the foundation for future technology development it's  what we used to kept keep the technology pipeline full we invest in projects that are addressing capability needs for which we have no near term solution or with existing or near existing technologies or the solutions or are of  high a risk for the customers to be able to rely on it it also allows us to make investments based on what science has to offer so with a small investment we may be able to cultivate a promising technology that would yield a significant life saving capability secondly our investment in basic research which is conducted primarily at our national laboratories and our university based centers of excellence also serves to develop the scientific workforce that this country will need to continue developing scientific understanding and technology in the homeland security area specifically for as far as we're concerned but in all areas well into the future and given the broad spectrum of science and technology requirements associated with the homeland security mission  we value our relationship with the department of energy national laboratories and with their renowned interdisciplinary capabilities and as well as the university based centers of excellence let me let me conclude by addressing a topic  congressman smith raised about the development of a strategic plan the last reteaching plan that we published was in june of two thousand and seven following a major reorganization of the directorate and the research portfolio as was appropriate at that time  that plan was focused on establishing the business practices that were necessary to make the s and t director relevant to the homeland security enterprise based upon the strategic goals and objectives that are identified being identified in the forthcoming quarter  thousand and eight we call the homeland security science and technology advisory committee i don't know how that pronounced pronunciation comes from that acronym but stablished assessment panel in response to tasking from the undersecretary and then the newly introduced capstone i p two structure management of these efforts the panel completed review in the fall of two thousand and eight and published its findings in this report the undersecretary briefly the panel concluded among other things that during the previous two years the s and p directorate had done a very commendable job of providing structure and direction at the un a as it developed process is to define and collect capability gaps and establish an organization to enable a customer interface that is the capstone i p t structure the panel also commanded the director for the expansion of the university centers of excellence program which performs basic research in train students in research areas of interest to homeland security among its findings the panel reported that although dia the h s and t had the h s s n t it promulgated a strategy in two thousand and seven it was very broad it was not adequate for stablish ing priorities among the many projects and programs actually completed an entire cycle of the process and contact with first responders was very limited among the s and t projects further integration of the university centers of excellence into the overall work  inconsistent among the divisions and the director had made only limited review of the legacy projects that his projects were initiated before the capstone i p t structure was adopted they had not limit made reviews to ensure that they were still relevant and still had a customer after the completion of the initial review the panel was tasked to conduct a broader review of the director's programs to include basic and applied research and to again examine the i p t process such as another cycle of collection prioritization and funding had occurred after the first review was completed the panel has not completed its work on this tasking so the remainder of my observations are not the observations of the panel but my own opinions based on our discussions with many members of the directorate customers within the operating components of the h s and some scientist and other agencies who have been members of working groups supporting these ip ts in the year between our two reviews very significant progress was made in the directorate the centers of excellence were aligned with divisions within the directorate and are now kept much better informed as to the existing projects and issues and is in stated a thirteenth capstone i p t was established to bring first responders into the system a systems engineering f f r t c was added to the directorate which would be a great asset in the determination of requirements system design and in development testing an evaluation and all the capstone ip ts have completed at least one complete cycle of the process at this time and have made a lot of recommendations for further improvements is my opinion first there is continuing strong support for the structure both within the director and among most of the i p t customers our there should still significant differences in processes for the prioritization of capability gaps among the i t p i p t s and even among different working groups within customers into the process some of the customers still do not fully understand their roles in the prioritization of the gaps and third one of the major irritants for customers is the continued existence of legacy projects these projects consume a significant fraction of the resources allocated the ip ts the panel has given an estimate of thirty to forty percent of the total resources and they are not part of the annual prioritization process as the acting  undersecretary has recently asked to asked the panel to add a review of these project legacy projects to its current task and finally it's my opinion that the capstone i p t structure and processes have resulted in major improvements in the work  director and further improvements we've made as the structure and processes are refined thank you very much dr  thank you mr chairman congressman smith it's a great privilege to be here today and i echo mr boswell's comments that i feel honored to be in the company of the panel that i'm sitting with here so i'm extremely grateful to you i know that my statement today and my responses to any questions you may have are my own views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the institution for which i work i would also note that i'm not sure that they don't reflect those use either but that's neither here nor there this committee of course says as has been noted played a key role from the beginning in s and t and i think i note in my statement the dichotomy that apparently exists inside the enabling statute to this day that on the one hand the s and t directive is responsible for r and d that supports any and all elements of the department and on the other hand there to have a focus both from a strategic planning point of view and a prioritization point of view on chemical biological radiological and nuclear c b r and elements i say that not because i think there is actually confusion in the department in this regard i don't actually think there is what i think that shows is it reflects still a very strong emphasis on the terrorist threat as the driver behind r and d when in fact a legitimate assessment of all threats and risk would say that there are risks that are much broader than and in some cases overlap significantly with what we would define as terrorist threats and i think i come from a background that says it all has it's an all risks and all threats assessment process is is inherently important to any strategic plan not just simply the that which is defined in the statute we know from from the history of management that strategic plans do set agendas for agencies but only if they're actually incorporated into the budget resources drives policy way more than policy drives resources and as a result of that i think it's important to pay attention not only to the plan but to look at the execution of that plan as it's reflected in the budget and in the implementation of that budget there is one problem i would note that a little bit of an example in that regard of the difficulty of integrating across the department since the creation of domestic nuclear detection office there's a little bit of a potential dichotomy with responsibility for absentee funding in the department with radiological and nuclear being dictated more by d n d oh by s and t and that i think makes it harder to have an integrated  t plan i believe actually d h s s itself can fix this problem but it's something that i would know it may be worthy of the committee's attention down the road i have three comments on your three questions first from a strategic planning perspective it's really critical that a strategic plan be connected to the larger homeland security enterprise it's impossible for an s and t strategic plan by itself to have the validity necessary to say that we've spending our money on the most important priorities i think it has to flow from a broader homeland security in a prize wide strategic plan linked in turn to a d h s s level strategic plan because there's so much of homeland security that's outside v h s or even outside the federal government but there are two other elements have to come into play one is those plans have to be assessed against current capability you know to identify capability gaps and capability shortfalls and be able to prioritize what you need to do to fill those gaps and then in turn the budgets have to be built reflecting some kind of a judgment of where the risks are and where the benefits are of filling those gaps or addressing those gaps in the budget this is not only prudent management it's essential for risk reduction and threat reduction and i think this committee can encourage the h s towards that broader planning process tied to capability assessments with regard to the ip ts certainly echo what my colleague to the right has said they are playing a very useful role here they're not a substitute for formal prioritization and strategic planning process however i think they augment it rather than replace it with respect to basic research i think there are two important questions one is how much is done but the second is how do you manage that so it eventually leads to useful homeland security applications that tie to threats the tide of risks and the tide of first responder needs my own view is that it needs to be linked to solving some kind of a capability gap that's been identified or some kind of a strategic shortfall and and so far that's difficult in part because the d h s s process for determining we're higher meant is fragmented and in some cases nonexistent with most e h s components unable to execute a rigorous requirements process and then finally i think it's important to focus on the transition from research into programs or into outcomes and results whether that be in corporation a production of hardware or systems that are fielded or the provision of standards or intellectual property or even technical assistance that makes people smarter buyers whether in d h s or in the broader community and i think that kind of planning for transition needs to occur up front the process that i lay out here of course is not easy it's hard to develop broad plans it's hard to have a structured planning process it's hard to do the capability assessments it's hard to show how they reflect in the budget but i think is important for you to lay that out as what you desired outcome is and try to get that from from the government with that's conclude my remarks and we'll stand ready for your questions thank you very much mr byrd dr williams please proceed thank you mr chairman congressman smith it's a real pleasure to appear before you today to discuss the research priorities in the s and t directorate of the department of homeland security between june two thousand and eight and june two thousand and nine i chaired a panel of the national academy of public administration or napa that conducted the study of the  offered findings and recommendations in several areas my remarks today focus on three of them strategic plans the establishment of research priorities in the directorates transition portfolio and the directorates role in basic research let me start with strategic plans the s and p directorate is responsible for two distinct strategic plans an internal plan to guide its own work and a federal wide plan for civilian efforts to counter chemical biological and other emerging terrorist threats the directorate published an internal strategic plan as mr buswell mentioned in june two thousand and two that plan describes the directorate structure the roles of it it's integrated product ts it's mechanisms for reaching out to other organizations and its plans for workforce development but it does not meet the criteria of a strategic plan as the term is generally applied today across federal government among other things things the plans mission statement understates the directorates range of responsibility and the plan itself lacks a statement of long term goals and it does not discuss key extraneous factors that could affect progress we also found process weaknesses with regard to strategic planning including a lack of involvement by key extremal stakeholders and the lack of a systematic scan of the environment the panel recommended that t follow a strategic planning process outlined by the government accountability office and o m b to develop a plan that can guide its work toward a set of specified goals we found that the director does not made progress on a strategic plan for the wider federal effort at all to be fair among federal departments d h s s has only the third largest budget for homeland security research and development after the department of health and human services in the department of defense to produce a federal research strategy with any teeth s and she would need white house support we recommended that s m t work with the white house office of science and technology policy and other federal departments to develop that broader plan let me turn now to the establishment of priorities in the transition portfolio as n t is i piccies bring the directorate staff together with customers to establish priorities for projects  i teach these appear to be useful vehicles for involving d h s s internal stakeholders in setting research priorities and for stimulating information exchange across the department nevertheless we identified several problems as an example it appears that when the ip cheese were formed little guidance was provided on how to operate them each ip devised its own structure and processes through trial and error earlier this year s and t was beginning to develop standardized practices but we still found substantial variation in structure processes customer satisfaction and accomplishments among the piccies and finally let me turn to s n t's role in basic research basic research is the seed corn for the development of future technologies and no other organization in federal government has the mandate or the wherewithal to sponsor basic research in key areas related to homeland security such as border protection immigration aviation security that said our panel found several potential weaknesses in this area and i'll highlight just one that's that many of the directorates basic research projects are awarded without competition and without external scientific peer review other federal research organizations routinely use competitive processes including extra peer review to good effect our panel recommended that the h s s and t follow suit mr chairman that concludes my prepared remarks and i look forward to any questions thank you very much dr williams and now it is  have done i believe that cowen's goal was to increase basic research to twenty or twenty one percent and you have hit that metric i think that on the basic is whether a systematic risk assessment and a strategic plan based on least in part on that risk assessment would be helpful to the s and t directorate and helpful s i i think that there was some concern from outside that previously perhaps the vice president's office drove priorities by a tremendous amount i'm gratified to hear that it's become a more customer driven process and i think that is commendable but they're a completely customer driven process may not hit the risks that you want to hit and i'd like you to tell this subcommittee what has prevented the s and t directorate from  engaging in a more systematic risk assessment and then i'd like to encourage the rest of the panel to address what a more systematic strategic plan and also  the answer to your question would have you know does a systematic or comprehensive risk assessment help us in prioritizing our technology development is absolutely and the way that i think that helps us do that is it helps the components whom we serve identify their priorities in a more systematic way let me let me just say that as part of the q h is our steering committee i don't want to get out in front of the headlights usurp the secretary's prerogative on that q h is our but there is there is a substantial effort within that within that organization to address this risk assessment process and to define the scope with which the department to address that and i think will will be hearing more about that over the coming months and s and t is delighted to provide input to that to that risk assessment whether it be scientific modeling input or other kinds of capability gap identification process is that we have in place and i think that over the long term that will be a very valuable tool for the department writ large and identifying the operational requirements that it needs to address both with technology and other ways as mr burton said though it's this is a difficult thing to do and we're committed to doing it because it's the right thing to do and it's the only way to get the get the best return for the investment or prior hearings on this topic have been somewhat contentious it's rewarding to see that there's been progress made on the basic research front on the i p t front and i look forward to a report a year or two down the pike that we will be making that we have made progress on systematic risk assessment and a strategic plan mr britto dr dean floyd dr williams would you care to add to this discussion about the strategic plan and about risk analysis i'd like to  place it strikes me that the assessment of threats risks and vulnerabilities is crucial to the development of goals and priorities and that has to be the thing that starts the ball rolling on any strategic plan and only with a f strategic plan will they the organization be able to decide on whether it should prefer this over that this transition work over some other transition possibly in a completely separate part of the department of homeland security now one of the problems they've said they have faced in the past was that they didn't have that threat and risk assessment coming down from the top of the department or even across the federal government and i can understand that that's an issue for them but and they're hoping that the quadrennial homeland security will produce a threat and risk assessment that they'll be able to work with to establish their own internal goals if that should not happen if for some reason the threat and risk assessment comes down from the top appears to be lacking it strikes me that they still need to do something on their own to establish the threats and risks that they believe they're working to even if it's dead wrong over the long term even if it's not what they want five years from now they need something internally to start the ball rolling and to be part of their strategic planning mr buswell are you waiting for the quadrennial review to supply you with  we want to make sure that we're providing the technologies that are of the highest importance to the department and that's the way we intend to approach this i'm confident that the department will be able to establish strategic goals and   effort because of the threat constantly changes so i'm confident that we'll have some input into into our strategic plan now keep in mind you know from my perspective science and technology should be not the end of the whip but but but the handle of the whip and as the strategy changes we ought to our long term focus ought to result in smaller changes within the s and t portfolio assuming that we're investing in things that are relevant to homeland security then maybe some other things some other strategic initiatives might can offer near term solutions you know things policy changes and tactics changes and those kinds of things i would note two things that i think are in addition to the comments of my colleagues have made here today one is that we have a tendency to evaluate the efficacy of planning by how well it predicts the future and that's the wrong metric to to determine whether or not planning was of any value to us its real value is in how well it prepares us to deal with the future that we can't predict and so it's possible under that kind of a rubric to look like you're fully compliant with o m b circular a eleven's requirements for strategic plans and you give g a o something that they can check or not check everything that you have or have not done and yet it has done nothing to actually prepare you better to deal with a future that you can't predict so we need to be careful that we don't get caught up into a checklist mentality for the value of strategic planning a big element of that value comes from the process itself and threat assessment and risk assessment as well as incorporating existing legislation and existing strategies and stakeholder input all of all of that comes into play  but what that process needs to produce is something that looks like strategic guidance something that says to everybody involved in the homeland security enterprise this is what's important this is what you need to spend your time and effort on this is where you spend your marginal dollars when they become available this is how you know how to prioritize that strategic guidance is a clear and important element of this process and if it's not present people have to make assumptions and the assumptions may not be consistent either across the enterprise or over time thank you mr prince how just emphasize the point i made earlier that this does have to be an enterprise wide effort and certainly the operating components must be a part of this this plan that can't be produced in the director dr williams notes in her testimony that the national review of science and technology found that many basic research projects funded by science and technology are done so without competition or peer review and that the directorate should work to make peer review competition standard unless it is clearly not feasible mr buswell do you agree with the finding and recommendation and if so how would you say it is being addressed well thank you in general agree that competition is good and that peer review is certainly one one means of selecting ensuring that we're selecting high quality projects and that those projects are being executed in a high quality way peer review using both internal and external reviewers as i said is a valuable way to do that as the dr williams panel noted we have had quite a bit of success in the center of excellence selection process which fundamentally does select some of the projects that a good number of the projects that are conducted in the basic research portfolio through both internal and external review in series and i think you know as i said the goal is that to make sure that we're getting out of the investment what what we need what we think we should let me also say that all proposals that come in from through the through the broad agency announcement process are in effect peer reviewed those those proposals are reviewed by a panel of experts subject matter in general yes i think that more competition is good we establish a lot of that competition through the selection of the centers of excellence university based centers of excellence and we intend to continue to do that we've been very successful in that in that realm and then the other part of this is i said the two pillars of basic research are the centers of excellence and the and the dio a national laboratories and we have started a renewed effort within the director ensure that the investments that are going to the national laboratories are being done in the best to the best effect of the taxpayer dollars are to you know in the best interest of the government and i look forward to strengthening that process indicators of progress little or no consequence for missing them elaborate on the finding and certainly a recommendation and then mr buswell if you could provide reaction from the department's perspective one of the things the panel looked at was whether the directorate has processes in place to know what's going on inside of its projects are have a established milestones are the projects meeting their milestones and we noticed that there are milestones established but that it seemed as though the majority of projects were missing their milestones and and there was very little consequence at the time that we looked at the directorate for missing a milestone in fact the main consequence seemed to be to renegotiate the milestone and sort of start fresh with a new milestone on the same project what what we thought should be happening is that for one thing there wasn't a good record of what is going on that's causing so many projects to miss their milestones is there one thing that's happening continually are the milestones just not realistic from the beginning and so we suggested that they do systematic some systematic mattick effort within the directorate to pull together what's known about the milestones and why projects are missing them and see if they can start to identify any patterns in regard milestone using milestones as a metric of success in the program management is only as good as the milestones that you establish so we've taken a two pronged approach to this one we're looking at milestone  development what is a meaningful milestone and what isn't a meaningful milestone what are we actually using to decide at some point in the process whether approach for a project should go forward or not i mean is this is this actually going to result in a technology that will be of benefit to the department or a benefit to the first responder community and so what are the key decision points what are the key phase gates that we want to meet in those in managing those analysis and evaluation i've tied the six division heads performance evaluations to their divisions meeting of milestones and so it's track very carefully they they watch their program managers their programs or managers are evaluated on meeting those milestones and and that's an effective tool i think to making sure that that happens now there is always unintended consequences our goal is to is to get technological capabilities to our customers our goal is not to to properly manage projects so i need to make sure that i'm not  managers who may come across a technology that leaps their program of record you know they have they would have no incentive to abandon the program of record because they're getting they're getting measured on whether they're meeting the milestones in that program or not in order to adopt this leap ahead technology so there's a balance here that i need to that i need to make sure i keep which is you know maybe meeting seventy five percent of the milestones is a reasonable number i don't know that's where we started we started with setting the of seventy five percent milestone completion we achieved that metric this year so if those are good milestones then maybe where they're but at the same time i i want to continue to reward those program managers who abandon their program of record because they've found something that will actually deliver a capability sooner than their program would have ok thank you thank you mr chairman thank you very much mr smith talk oh would you prefer to be for your questions right now miss big about explain for us the role of the directorate in addressing this threat in the focus of science and technology and bio preparedness yes ma'am let me start by saying that the principal role of the of the directorate in you know in the national bio defense effort has to do with the threat assessment and determination process so what is what are the highest threats what are the threats that we have to worry about above all others whether that's due to the likelihood that that a terrorist could get could get a hold of this material whether it's due to the consequences of a successful attack using using the particular pathogen and there are a lot of things that go into that threat assessment so one of the one of our one of our major efforts is this biannual bioterrorism risk assessment that's that's been delivered to the federal community and drives the investment priorities across the federal government in bio defense whether those whether those investment priorities are and are in surveillance video surveillance environmental or other kinds of surveillance whether that's in the prioritization of vaccine development  within the h h s enterprise or other kinds of you know intelligence community activities that might occur so the threat assessment is fundamental to to the activities of bio defense across the across the government the second thing that we that we do within the s and t directorate that really isn't done anywhere else in the government and so it is a unique mission that we have has to do with the bio forensics aspect of things should there be a successful attack such as happened in two thousand and one we now have the national bio forensics laboratory at fort dietrich that d h s s and he operates that we maintain chain of evidence we do those kinds of things that will eventually result in result in successful attribution and prosecution of folks who do that kind of thing thank you then just one other question cybersecurity research it seems like the bulk of the activities are operational focused and are in the national protection and programs with that in mind could you talk about the direct directorate cybersecurity aaron the portfolio and and if if there's any new technologies like the smart grid that are being included in research assessments  the importance by committee such as the subcommittee and then the identification within within the president's own agenda so so the input function if you look at funding that way is going the right direction in my opinion and and we're about where we should be i think for for the near term the key then becomes how do you link the priorities of that research to the overall priorities of both the department and the  nation and that is an area that we can improve significantly and i'm working closely with with the with the folks already in p p t fill writing who's the deputy undersecretary in p p d and is really responsible for the department cybersecurity effort we meet we need bi weekly in a steering group that identifies not just the r and d priorities but what are the cybersecurity priorities for the department and how from a collective effort within the department can we best advance those priorities  so i will tell you that there's a lot of work to be done in cybersecurity but there's a lot of people doing work as well so so the integration of all of the efforts that are going on both in the in the in the public and the private sector is   to expand upon that but we do have we do have a number of priorities and in smart grid technology for example to the extent that we can prevent attacks on the grid from cyberspace fundamental to the continuity of those systems which are which are important to the security in the stability of the country then we will invest in those in cooperation with the department of energy who has who also has responsibility for the reliability of the electric gr operation and it seems to be a practice that's resorted to by darpa and has had for quite frequently is there a way to stretch that concept over  technical experts out of the private sector or other you know other civil service on a term basis and the term is five years can be extended if it's for up to two up to two more years under certain circumstances we would like we have the authorization to hire twenty of these folks we currently have eleven they are tied to the h r portfolio primarily it's about a forty four million dollar a year portfolio eleven's about the right number to manage programs in that in that funding area to stretch that beyond what we're doing right now we would need to increase the the innovation portfolio funding level which i'd be delighted to do but right now that we're about at the right place i think with that you're right it's a valuable tool gives a special hiring authority special compensation authority so that we can get really top quality people out of out of the private sector and out of other areas of government to manage these kind of programs it's paying off very well for us and any particular way to expand that program that would there be certain focus to where you would use these three to four to five year assignments the focus that i would use on is in the highly innovative kinds of research in the things that are very high risk higher risk than we typically address in the caps and i p t process but that's what the innovation portion of the portfolio is for it addresses the high risk prototypical demonstrations that again because they are high risk with a significant probability of failure customers can't camera while we're looking in the innovation portfolio at the gigapixel camera what can we do with a gigapixel camera that that we can do with incremental improvement that we do we tend to pursue lower risk in the caps and i p t process so that's the area i think that those and that's the area that we have the authorization to do to do that kind of hiring and to me that makes the most sense because you want to get people in that are fresh out of the technology development arena you know to do to manage those kinds of yes or i would like to add one additional thought to your question of opportunities for expanding what i think is a very useful potential to augment enhance the government's capability to get a workforce here when when the s and t directorate was originally established i think it was in vision that would have a more substantial and more powerful role in the acquisition side of the department homeland security than has evolved over time i think we have an opportunity with the new administration to reevaluated we consider that when i go back to the point i made about there needs to be a better planning for transition of research into programs that's one of the areas where i think not only could the s and t director play a better role across the department but where in fact the opportunity for the term appointments and the capability that they bring both at the individual in the collective level would offer tremendous new capability for the entire homeland security enterprise anyone else  very good job of rotating people in and out of washington d c whether it's for a multi week internship or for a few months or in some instances for a few years for positions as significant as being a program manager  process and i'd like the panel to comment on how how useful this might be and then mr buswell i'd like you to respond outside of the formal program of twenty  the private sector for bringing people in and out because it's not just for the benefit of the s and t directorate i think the residual benefit for the rest of the country is an appreciation for how the agency works and besides the we call it the eleven zero ones because it comes from the defense authorization act section eleven zero one so these these these eleven employees that we have are affectionately termed eleven are ones there are also a number of fellowship opportunities that we take advantage of presidential management fellows aaa s fellows those kinds of things that i think are very valuable in getting people into the understanding of  the federal government research and development unity our scholars and fellows program within the centers of excellence is also one of the fundamental things that i think we're doing to to improve that understanding and to get that rotation we have we have funded over the last six years over four hundred of these scholars and fellows across the country in areas of academic development that we think are fundamental to homeland security they do internships in the summertime with the national laboratories and other other federal research development and of these and and we think that that's really valuable we don't have enough statistical information yet on the graduates to understand whether they're not they're pursuing careers in the federal government at least to start with but we're hopeful that it will result in you know a ten to twenty percent perhaps participation  of our scholars and fellows graduates in long term federal employment the other area that we can utilize and we do utilize to a certain extent is the intergovernmental personnel act authorities where we're able to bring on folks from state and local governments or from nonprofit organizations that can then work as they have really all the authorities of a federal employee with  certain limitations dealing with their parent organization you know conflict of interest limitations as you would expect but but to a large extent they're able to gain a greater understanding of of the way that we work with india h s and they can take that back to their parent organization at the end of a two year period and and and utilize that to the benefit of their organization and to the benefit of our organization as well thank you very used the word insularity in our report and that may have changed over the past few months but we were concerned that the directorate wasn't reaching out enough to the outside world and that that caused t potential problems one is that that limits the access to the ideas and innovations that are going on on the outside for those who are working inside the director but secondly as you pointed out it limits the ability of the community the wider community to learn what's going on inside the department of homeland security and to start thinking about the problems that department has we noticed particularly in our discussions of  need for a peer review process and in several interviews we were told explicitly by by members of the staff in the directorate that peer review from outsiders wasn't needed because the world's experts but if they are the only world's experts it tells you we are desperately in need as a nation of getting their thinking their expertise out to a wider community so that they won't be the world's experts in the future and that thought build value for us into the into the notion of having much more external peer review thank you dr  very good example of this kind of code connectivity last summer in the summer before the kim bio i p t annually holds a three day meeting in which they invite a lot of people from throughout government and academia and they review their nearly all of their projects each year and and ask for their comments and certainly suggestions where other things are going on and it was one of the best meetings like the tended anywhere in the government  but i believe that's the only i p t that has done that as far as i know but i think they've done it now for several years so modify emulation yes absolutely mr britto thank you sir i think there's one other potential advantage to an expansion such as mr tom coats offered and you continued in the discussion here and that is the benefit back to the user community i think one of the real challenges in homeland security s n t is that the user often do not know the art of the possible they're trying to set a request or requirement based on what they think they need without having really defined the problem without knowing the art of the possible and i think one of the downstream benefits of expanding this kind of involvement with people is their benefit upon return and going back to where they've come from and if we build that into the process there could be some additional advantages downstream thank you very much i think this will be a topic of continuing interest to the subcommittee do we have any further inquiries on this side mr taco i understand that you all have worked very hard in your testimony i'd like to offer you a moment to comment  on any thoughts that you think would be helpful for the subcommittees  britto i do have one final thought for you to keep in mind as you're evaluating d h s s performance in this regard it's been my observation from my time in washington that much of the federal government tends to do its research work and the beneficiary or the customer is outside the government it's the general population or some subset of the general population they may not know who they are at the time the research is done but that's that's the goal of those programs in some agencies the defense department being perhaps the primary one here the beneficiary of the research is actually internal most of the research that the defense department does it does for itself it's the ultimate consumer of that research and that tends to have a different focus a different validation process maybe even a different peer review process the h s is a hybrid of the two and in some cases that makes it much more complex and much more difficult for for all of those elements to be welded together and i think it's useful as you set your bar of how d h s s is performing to keep that in mind that it really is a hybrid much of what it does it does for itself or at least for the broader first responder community much of what it does it also does for the external community and sometimes those are two different processes to different standards so i would leave that just for your thought thank you very much mr britto dr williams if i could bring up one other point we talked about how important the internal process is once you're inside an i p t for for making sure that the priorities that are set within an ip key have something to do with the customer's needs and what the customer is asking for but one of the astonishing things we found was there is no transparent mechanism at all to compare priorities and reallocate the transition funds among the various ip ts and that means the brought allocation of money across the directorate doesn't necessarily reflect the priorities or allow for taking advantage of emerging opportunities that may happen in one area as opposed to the other it also means that the  bottom of the funded projects i p t may be significantly less important to d h s as a whole than something that's close to the top of the unfunded projects in another i p t again because there's no comparison and work across the ts for setting priorities now some of this goes back to the fact that there is no strategic plan with no genuine strategic plan there is no stablish goals that everybody agrees to and that makes it hard to try to divide the money up in a different way among the i p t the way it was divided last year but it strikes struck us that something needs to be done about that they need an explicit mechanism within the director right for dividing money among the piccies thank you very much dr williams and thank you all very much for contributing to our consideration to contributing to mr buswell in that and the department's consideration i think it's fair to summarize that much progress has been made since the series of hearings began we will continue this series of hearings and we look forward to making additional progress with the s and t directorate and with the n d o we do face some different challenges as mr burton pointed out that this is a hybrid organization with  significant consumption within the department but also a large customer base for its products outside the department that presents some special challenges i want to thank all the witnesses for appearing this afternoon the record will remain open for weeks i expect that they'll be some submitted questions about the i p t s and consistency and members and the staff may seek answers to any follow up questions that the comm