the chief procurement officer at the department of homeland security ms nancy gunderson is the deputy assistant secretary for the office of grants and acquisition policy and accountability for the u s department of health and human services where she also serves as the departments suspension and debarment official as i have mentioned before we  years and find it to be extremely important i also want to thank gao for an outstanding report in this are even though they didnt address the air force they addressed some important issues their recommendations are recommendations that we agree with  that encourage referrals i am hesitating on the referrals a little bit because one of the features of the air force is not to rely upon referrals referrals are important procedures to increase referrals are important but we do a lot more than deal with our in box and respond to referrals from other agencies i will get to that in a second the areas that are somewhat unique perhaps to the air force are at least why we think we are strong in this area we think are both structural and policy  related the structural areas are the full time dedicated staff we have through the entire fifteen years of my tenure in this position and before that had a full time staff and more recently we have expanded that to a full time field staff  though there are only three in my office in headquarters air force another unique part is that i am a full time debarring official that is very unusual in the federal government i personally think that is extremely important and i praise the air force for doing that it was before my time it has nothing to do with me but i think that is an important feature there are only three or four agencies in the whole federal government that have the full time debarring official i think that is an important feature for some of the reasons that i will talk about also separation from the acquisition chain i think is critical in this area the air force and the whole dod started doing this in the early s as a result of an ig report dod ig report recommending that it be structured that way i agree with them and i think the defense department is doing that correctly that way we are independent of the acquisition chain we certainly coordinate with them and they are partners with us but i dont wait or expect the acquisition people to approve of what i am doing i am empowered to do what is right and that is the third important feature of the air force and that is the empowerment the senior leaders of the air force and of dod have supported what i have done throughout my tenure recognize as an independent area i coordinate everything but i am empowered to do what is right and the example that i used in the written testimony attest to that then another feature is perhaps it is unusual or unique to the defense department and that is the fraud remedies program i also manage within the air force so i am overseeing two missions one is coordinating and making sure the air force gets all the remedies criminal civil contract and administrative done  we are the inside lawyers really for the justice department in making those kinds of decisions because of that we have real visibility into cases and we can reach out and do suspensions and debarments even when nobody refers t us that is where the outreach and the proactiveness that i was talking about comes in where we dont wait for referrals we monitor cases from the investigators their case status reports if there is some case that looks like it is necessary to do a suspension or debarment to protect the interests of the government we will reach out to that investigator ask for the report and will do a debarment even though nobody is asking us to do that debarment and even if people are objecting to it we going to do it if that is the right thing to do on the policy side of this the fact based cases is an important part of what we do i think there are a lot of agencies that only do debarments or suspensions where there is an indictment or a conviction  and i think that is ill advised that is just delegating all of your power to the justice department if they dont have the resources to do a case they wont do it but we in the air force are still worried about that so we will reach out and do a debarment anyway based upon facts commercial case or a personal income tax evasion or anything more than jaywalking probably we are going to be concerned about it because if they are defrauding a commercial customer they are going to defraud us finally the  use i talk about this a lot because of the stick of debarment we are able to influence proactively the defense industry i think we go out and talk to the defense industry and we give them incentives to improve their programs and processes to avoid the georgia currently i am still the coordinator for that program also epa provides three of the six instructors for the three or four courses that we offer each year now the epa program has really two elements to it it has  statutory debarment and it also has the discretionary the statutory are the clean air and the clean water act and the discretionaries can be taken under either the non procurement rule which you have heard some testimony about as well as the far part coordination with the oig for example or the office of enforcement that we have or any other state or federal investigative body or any public or private source that may provide us with information like provide the respondents the opportunity to be heard to present information and arguments in opposition to the proposed debarment when i make a final decision it is on behalf of not only the epa but all federal agencies now under procurement rule as we have implemented it at epa there is an additional safeguard in that the respondent can appeal my decision to the director of the office of grants and debarment prior to taking any court action under the administrative procedures act just as a frame of reference and the numbers are not magical but just as a frame of reference in the last fiscal year our initial numbers indicated we took ninety eight proposed  one hundred and eleven suspensions one hundred and fifteen discretionary debarments and approximately forty two statutory debarments also we entered into three administrative agreements now the rate of epa dollars spent is approximately four to one and that is why we use the non procurement rule rather than the far both rules are reciprocal so you can of course any action under one is binding on the other also you can use  rule for acquisition as well as non acquisition matters so it is available if you want to do it for a contract direct acquisition process the written guidance that epa has we have implemented for example  of our rich history of protecting the taxpayers dollars we continue with this effort and even in these hard times we have been able to continue to have the personnel necessary i am pleased to be able to talk about it today and i look forward to your little bit less than a year there was an ig review of dhs suspension and debarment we took that to heart the under secretary for management who is my boss put together a task force we studied all the best practice organizations the immigration customs enforcement is one of those best practices within dhs that we studied we came out with a model and since i have been on board so a little bit less than a year the secretary approved the new program for suspension and debarment it follows all the best practice th outlined we are committed to getting this right we are going to have dedicated staff we are going to have detailed policies and procedures we are going to have an active referral process and we are going to have a system for tracking referrals suspensions and debarments this is going to happen in  ranking member connolly and members of the subcommittee thank you for this opportunity to appear before you to discuss the department of health and human services grants and acquisitions policies and practices and in particular our use of suspension and debarment and our oversight practices as  deputy assistant secretary for grants and acquisition policy and accountability i serve as the departments suspension and debarment official and am responsible for providing department wide leadership in the areas of grants and acquisition management my office oversees and supports the departments thirteen subcommittee and the gao in highlighting the policies and practices from which hhs may learn the department is committed to the effective use of suspension and debarment as a tool to support successful grant and acquisition management hhs also believes that twenty nine grant recipients between two thousand and six and two thousand and ten in fiscal year two thousand and eleven we also debarred six grant recipients and these debarment cases were based on financial misconduct as investigated by our office of the inspector general and scientific misconduct as investigated by our office of research integrity in cooperation with the affected universities and research institutions through our contract administration processes from fiscal year two thousand and nine through two thousand and eleven hhs terminated we are in discussions on how best to dedicate staff and resources to this function and related oversight activities and in particular to create a contractor integrity team we are currently assessing the policies and practices of other agencies for contract related suspension debarment in order to tailor best practices to our organization and issue detailed policies and procedures we also intend to create an electronic desk reference to implement the new policy and provide our contracting officers with associated reference materials and uniform decision making tools regarding referrals for suspension and debarment financial responsibility determinations and other performance remedies additionally we also plan to establish an electronic case referral and tracking process for both grant and contract related concerns understand their responsibilities and are able to identify and refer cases of fraud misconduct and the abuse of the publics trust in the departments grants and acquisition programs hhs strongly agrees with the need to protect taxpayer dollars  and is committed to using its grants and acquisition management practices to serve as careful stewards of these funds thank you for the opportunity to testify before the subcommittee and about hhs use of suspension and debarment in dealing with its grantees and contractors i am glad to answer any minutes or so i would say on our votes and our time to be able to come back we will get restarted here as soon as we can with our questions and we will re engage again i apologize for the delay but we stand in recess until we have finished up voting thank you