testing one two three four five six seven eight one two three four five six seven eight change it twenty three eighteen remember one two three four five six seven and eleven twelve national men's basketball championship if you understand the priority there i do welcome everyone to the committee's second hearing on oversight related to the american recovery and reconstruction act these hearings or titled follow the money after the character in the movie and in the book all the presents man the deep throat character who told bernstein and woodward to trace the money back to find out where the corruption  began now we're at the front in trying to figure out where the money is going to go and we hope we will not end up with anything is sorted as that was but perhaps pa starting this effort and knowing at the outset the care that must be taken we can avoid it our hearing in march featured inspectors general describing their efforts to establish the oversight mechanisms called for in the in the act  of the new recovery accountability and transparency board he has before him the daunting task of sitting at the top of the recovery act oversight pyramid he has to marshal the capabilities of the data management operation trying to turn a massive amount of information into answers to the questions we all have are we improving the economy how many people have we put to work or how many jobs have we saved he was job description is very similar to mr deniz except that his jurisdiction covers all the federal government mr girard will bring us up to date on the progress our science agencies have made in using their recovery act  time that we are asking for the state and local governments to play a significant role in monitoring recovery act projects that should concern us as it will directly affect our ability to build a system that can follow the recovery act dollar as it leaves our treasury and then goes to use one example to the department transportation from there to the department transportation in north carolina and eventually becomes asphalt  will also raise some questions about the methods of reporting performance as recovery act and issues advance traditionally oversight has been an after the fact focus when someone has done wrong and by the time we get here the money's already gone and there's nothing much we can do about it except scold the people who were responsible perhaps provide a good deterrent for others to make the same mistakes but with the recovery act we are trying to set out a new approach giving the people all the american people the opportunity to look at the wall data or as wall as possible and bring to bear their own experience there on experience  and some knowledge from places we may not have expected to help us avoid spot the danger ahead we are in essence deputizing the entire american citizenry to help the oversight of this program a whole industry is growing up around the release of the national weather service data benefiting other important sector of the economy like agriculture and utilities that model works  the weather service takes seriously yes responsibility provide high quality data checked for accuracy and integrity and we need recovery act data to do the same thing very often discovery of the misuse of public resources cannot happen without the willingness of someone to step forward to say something's wrong to blow the whistle that can be a life altering decisions for those who who do blow the whistle and there is pressure to avoid  damaging the organization of which they are part sometimes intense pressure the recovery act adds to the protect protections that whistleblower blowers get outside of the federal government because those folks will be perfectly positioned to tell us if something is going wrong we had to have to make sure that potential whistleblowers know that those protections will be effective and that they are safe to do their duty to step forward has told me for some time of his concern that small for small or is too sions like heroes it is for them it is not easy to find out about the opportunities in recovery act and i've heard the same thing from elected officials in small towns in my district tell me the same thing trying to figure out a way to get access to some of the funds for worthy projects in their own communities funds in the recovery act are supposed to be destroyed to based upon competition so that all the best ideas should be in the running but as we try to speed those funds into the economy i think we're all concerned that there is a fair chance that that less competitive projects don't w nt out by default because they have access to better information every august washington goes into a slumber known as the august recess dr brown and dow kemper and i will not sleep through august we will be home in our districts talking to people there is our chance to find out how congress is doing how we are doing and with his hearings these hearings we want to make sure that we can answer questions about recovery act  again we're trying to spin five hundred billion dollars or so the total amount of recovery is closer to eight hundred billion but about six hundred sick more than six percent of it is spending as opposed to tax cuts  and we're trying to spend it quickly in the same time spend it efficiently without waste or b s which is no small task and that i now recognize dr brown the ranking republican on the committee cheryl let me welcome our witnesses here today i think i shook hands with the two in the first panel i apologize for not having shook hands with the witnesses but welcome we're glad to have you this is the second hearing that this committee has held on this very important topic the stimulus act oversight well it's no secret that my colleagues on this side of the day s and i voted against the stimulus bill this committee does have an obligation to make sure that if taxpayers money is going to be spit that it be done appropriately as i said at the previous hearing that in a fine waste fraud and abuse is a non partisan endeavor in addition to providing oversight of stimulus funding is also important for congress to accurately assess the effectiveness of the act by using metrics to track success and evaluate outcomes without this congress is simply spending money based on  how it determine the ultimate funding level for that act like the tarp bailout funding level seem to have been chosen arbitrarily as if drawn from a hat because presumably the anticipat results were as well the president advertised three point five million jobs as a result of this act yet i'm not sure how many folks would be able to explain where that number came from or how it will be ultimately verified perhaps it came from the same hat the funding level was pulled from the national bureau of economic research the group of economists tax tasked with determining the start and end of economic downturns announced that december two thousand and seven was the start of the current recession their research also indicated that economic downturns have usually lasted between six and sixteen months since the great depression take into consideration that most of the stimulus spending won't occur until after two thousand and ten and that the c b o t term in that the stimulus bill will actually decrease gross domestic product in the out years back crowding out private investment and one has to wonder what we're doing for this what we're doing this for children and grandchildren who ultimately are going to pay for this deserve an answer the stimulus bill put taxpayers on the line for three point two seven trillion dollars when you add debt servicing and the count for a program extensions under the obama budget the national debt will double in five years and triple in ten that's outrageous add to that that the revelation that the federal government has already run out of money halfway through this fiscal year and we have a recipe for disaster whether or not you agree with the underlying act we still have to make sure that the government is capable of spending this money appropriately with as little waste fraud and abuse as is possible and in a manner that directly benefits our country in order to determine if that does in the benefit the nation we need to clarify we need to clearly define metrics for this success simply put the american people need to know what they got for their money since the stimulus bill was sold as a means to jumpstart our economy and create jobs it is important to deneb five baselines track progress and evaluate whether those outcomes were the result of a stimulus act or about other means and a second panel will hear from outside groups who can contribute greatly to ensuring that the funds are spent appropriately in a transparent and accountable manner with with the agency's inspector general's o m b g a o and the rat board and congress overwhelmed by the size of the spending everyday citizens and outside groups will prove to be critical in ferret out waste fraud and abuse that can also help evaluate not only the effectiveness of the spending but also whether the ministration is followed through on its ambitious promise of transparency and accountability in addition to the witnesses appearing before us i would also like to include in the written record a letter from the americans for tax reform their letter  creation concerns with employment metrics and also some of the challenges associated with transparency and accountability thank you mr chairman i look forward to the witness's testimony and you'll back the rest of my time recovery accountability transparency board established by h r one and is formally the inspector general of the department of the interior mr gene daraya is the acting comptroller general of the united states accountability government accountability member having five minutes to question the panel is a practice of this committee or the subcommittee to receive testimony under oath do either of you have any objection to taking an oath the record can reflect that neither did you also have the white to be represented by counsel do either of you members of the subcommittee and i want to thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the efforts and progress of the recovery board my testimony today will address the current status and mission of the board and after i make my opening remarks i'll be glad to answer any questions chairman the members of the board and i view the board as having a dual mission first the board is responsible for establishing maintaining a web site the purpose of which is not only to foster historic levels of transparency of recovery funs but to do so in a user friendly way second the board will coordinate and conduct oversight of recovery funds to help minimize fraud waste or mismanagement i'm pleased to tell you that the board continues to advance its mission of accountability and has recently taken several ten specific i g s and a chairperson the working group was created to foster participation in input from all twenty eight i g s that oversee agencies receiving recovery funds the working group is co chaired by the department of transportation's i g n a former was on the board staff working group has already identified a number of projects such as creating a recovery work plan suggesting ways to improve the single lot of process in identifying high risk programs in the agencies beyond the federal government community the board is interacting with many others involved in the outreach in the oversight of recovery funds as part of its initial outreach the boards for chairman compliance staff is meeting with senior procurement executives from each agency receiving funds the board staff is also developed a compartment checklist to assist federal agencies charged with spending recovery funds it is our hope that this type of agency outreach can help prevent fraud waste and mismanagement of cover funds before it happens the is also reaching out to assist states with new recovery act responsibilities this week for example i'm hosting a visit from the new recovery i g of california a state that will be receiving more than forty five billion dollars in recovery act funds i will be introducing her to the i g f who are overseeing monies headed for california the board staff and the recovery teams at o m b and g a o i hope to host similar meetings with oversight officials from other states and cities in the future last week i spoke as i have several times before at a meeting of high level state officials who convened in washington to discuss recovery fund implementation issues in addition on may twentieth i'll be speaking to a gathering of state i g s and our lando on each of these occasions i deliver the message and the other to the board's continuing development or recovery dot gov each committee is currently composed of three board members these committees meet in addition to the regular board meetings and then report back to the entire board on the status of these critical initiatives as well as giving recommendations for moving forward the boards of accountability committee for instance will discuss strategies for not only receiving reports of fraud waste and mismanagement and referring them to the appropriate i g but also analyzing and developing reports in light of available open source data these reports will make the boys referrals more value added for the i g s and will also contribute to risk based predictions about potential fraud on the i t side the board's recovery dot gov committee is working to provide strategic direction on entire range of i t efforts that are before the board as a chairman it's important to remember that the creation of the website is involving process with multiple phases it's not a single event now that the first phase of getting recovery dot gov is up and running has ended we are moving quickly to implement the second phase of development the board is beginning to manage the web site's design and content all in b will still retain responsibility for the reporting guidance and the verification of the data and g s a will continue to host the website  work with the board to collect and store the data i'm confident that this division of labor will provide the best opportunity to maximize recovery got gobs use as a transparency and accountability to meekly confident that we will have the opportunity to have the opportunity to achieve unparalleled citizen participation on the subject of citizen been protests patient we also hope to employ the creative and innovative ideas the public may have for the future retirees dot gov the boy just this past week hosted  electric town hall with napper and i want to be designed to engage the public recipients and i t professionals at our local state local local and tribal partners while my impression was that we would get a high level of participation the overwhelming response to our electric town hall surpassed even my wildest expectations at the end of this event the site had received well over four point two million hits over eight hundred citizens had taken the time to register online and we feel we have close to five hundred fifty solid ideas now in the process of assembling and analyzing these ideas which will then allow us to move quickly to a competitive process for vendor selections this chairman i think i've run out of time so why don't i just here with you and ranking member brown and congresswoman comp are very pleased to have this opportunity to discuss how g a o has been working with the broader accountability community to carry out our responsibilities under the recovery act the act the science g a o range of responsibilities to include by monthly reviews of the uses of the recovery funds by selected states and localities given the intergovernmental nature of this task it's been a priority from the beginning to make sure that we're coordinating properly with the broader accountability community soon after the act was passed out reach to the inspector general community and within a couple of weeks of the x passage we met with seventeen inspectors general with their representatives also outreach to the state community we had a conference call with over forty six state audit offices and dozens of local audit offices across the country  we've coordinating of course with them mr de veiny board functions as well now this coordination activity we're really served us well as we took our teams to the field in order to fulfill their responsibilities by monthly reviews we selected sixteen states and the district of columbia to do a logic to the study over the next two or three years of the uses of the funds recovery funds by those jurisdictions and what impact th ose funds would have in those localities the sixteen states in the district of columbia are expected to receive over two thirds of the amount of recovery act funds flowing to states and localities now during fiscal year two thousand and nine there's estimated outlays of forty nine billion dollars that are expected to go to states and localities and then the question answer period i can talk about the project that outlay ratio rate over the next few years if you'd like and how the composition of the funding will be changing from two thousand and nine to two thousand and twelve to the states and localities but in for fiscal year two thousand and nine over ninety percent of the forty nine billion dollars to be distributed to the states and localities is going to be in the health area education area and transportation area three largest programs there are the medicaid program which is the federal matching share in the highways area for the transportation area and the state stabilization fund in the education area so we focused largely on those three programs in our first bimonthly review and our report was issued last month now basically in terms of the uses of the funds most of the funds were drawn down in the medicaid area the sixteen states in the district allocation of about sixteen point nine billion dollars they are collectively drawn down seven point nine billion dollars or about forty percent forty seven percent of their allocation in the highways area about fifteen point five billion dollars had been allocated to the seventeen jurisdictions about three point three billion had been obligated by obligated that means the federal department of transportation and the state department transportation had agreed on projects so there were about nine hundred fifty projects but most of them were in the competitive bid stage during the april and may timeframe and were not yet awarded so that there was not a significant amount of recovery at funds yet distributed in the transportation area in the state stabilization fund area but over twenty billion was allocated to the states but before they can award spend the money they have to submit an application to the department of education who reviews it and then gives them the ability to spend the money of the sixteen states at the time our report was issued only two states california and illinois had received approval from the department now we made a series of recommendations to strengthen the accountability features at the state level big concern was at the state's rounder fiscal constraints and they had cut back some of their accountability and oversight mechanisms both in the management area an audit area and we suggested that only be clarify whether or not recovery act funds can be used and used to strengthen the state and local kind ability mechanisms is very important and also we made a recommendation to more effectively use the single audit process which is a standard accountability tool to make sure that it can be more effective in  providing adequate oversight over the recovery act funds earlier in two thousand and nine before the vast majority of sponge funds are spent in two thousand and ten two thousand and eleven we also suggested i want to be provide greater guidance on methodologies to be used to report the number of jobs created and the number of jobs preserved now with regard to the r and d funding in the agencies that we reported to you on within this committee's jurisdiction in march of the almost twenty two billion dollars in r and d funding as of last week basically three hundred forty two million dollars of that had been obligated largely in the department of energy in the office of science for funding some renovations at the national laboratories and so but i'd be happy in the question answer session to talk more about our recommendations in this area and any other questions you would like to post to me thank you very much thank you the standards the committee of set another with this is a set you both very close to your time limits and i think it's probably a good thing that men in your position or will followers look forward to seeing if the benefit of your example with that twenty member of the committee i do now recognize myself for five minutes of questioning and each member here will have a turn mr denny the president president obama promised a level of transparency see through the internet recovery dot gov the public  trying to assemble in terminations in different forms from different agencies and put it all in one usable format although that seems like that ought to be something readily accomplished we find out that years later and millions of dollars later what appeared to be a very qualified bitter got the contract and what they produce is worse than what they started with how do you intend to provide that level of transparency to see how who actually got the contract to pour asphalt mr chairman obviously it will probably be done through the recovery dot gov website and as i mentioned in my testimony that website is evolving and developing and i will be the first to admit today that website doesn't give you that kind of information the information quite frankly is very out as  go back and come back in yet but it will have to be the website will have to be ready to receive the data that comes pouring back into the government in october is the big day so we have a challenge here we have about one hundred forty days to move very quickly from this electric town hall which i described where we got all these great ideas to in the next week or two moving into some sort of a competitive process and get the vendors working it's an enormous challenge the integration issues are profound but i'm optimistic by nature a little bit of mixing little bit of  and i think it can be done and my hope and our goal on the board is that you know come october or shortly thereafter the american public will be going to see the data that they so desperately wan see and we will ensure that that site gets better and better and better as time goes on but we're not going to stop in october obviously because mr danny are you going to build an ip team within your agency or are you going to  on private contractors how do you plan to proceed well we've already we've already assembled a team good a good solid i t team i think i've got the best and brightest in government we've sort of stolen them if you will from other agencies borrow them and and in some cases put a lot of leverage on agencies to provide us with the very best people they have combined with some contractor help we have and the vendors that will be involved in the building of this  that will be usable in a single format understandable first of all i want to say i think that the goals that are set up by the legislation and by the implementing guidelines are very laudable goals and i think set a standard for transparency and accountability in federal spending that haven't been set before that being said there will be definitely implementation challenges associated with making sure the data is complete it's accurate it's timely and it's in an understandable format and so those things can be achieved with a lot of effort but it will be a challenge and a stretch goal if you will for the agencies in order to be able to achieve that one of my earlier responsibilities was to help orchestrate the first ever financial audit of the federal government's financial statements and and believe it or not part of one nine hundred ninety seven there was never a financial audit done of any federal department agency let alone the finance consolidated statements of the u s government and that was a monumental achievement but it took time and effort it can be done and i think the commitments there but west to wait to see how implementation unfolds following the example set by the witnesses my time is expired dr brown is like not for five minutes thank you mr chairman i have a question for both of you gentleman guidance only requires that money be tracked two layers down for example a state and city would have to report data but not the contractor or sub contractor do you intend to require additional reporting beyond the o m b guidance and do you believe two layers of accountability are enough to satisfy the president promised that quote every american will be able to go online and see where and how we're spending and i'll answer that by saying that if i could make a wave a magic wand i would want to follow a dollar from cradle to grave as i said earlier the division of labor here as it  always is responsible for providing the guidance as to what needs to be reported they're also going to be responsible for scrubbing the data which is my fellow mentioned it's going to be an enormous challenge to make sure  in the future after a few quarters of gone by and we see where the missing gaps are and when and i'm going to push them very hard to give me as much data as possible the way down to the ultimate consumer i'd like to see them as talk like to do that so two layers is not enough i'd like to get it down to where we can see where it went at the end of the day that's from an accountability standpoint and i agree completely with what mr devane you just said you know my understanding is that based upon him put that had been received by state local fishelson others that o m b is a real valuating the guidance that they have i know this issue came up when i testified on this subject before the senate and the expectation is and the hope is that more complete reporting will be included in the next set of expanded it definitely needs to be on the manager screen to make sure there's adequate accountability and if you have that and the real challenge will be make sure it's in the cost effective piper reporting approach but you need more complete reporting agree with both of you and i think this promise that the president's made is unfillable and it's going to be unfortunately already saved one hundred fifty thousand jobs i don't know where you got that figure may be pulled out of the hat like a lot of these figures are now also point out that the bureau of labor statistics show one point three million jobs lost since the president took office given that you're tasked with with providing accountability with independents how do you plan to verify that actual number of jobs created we haven't really received any information about that on the website to the recovery board it hasn't come in to us i'm assuming that those figures come from the council of economic advisors which has been working in the jobs area and information forthcoming information hopefully soon will be coming forward about how to count jobs so we don't have it yet i eagerly await it soon as i get it we'll put it up well i appreciate that and i hope that you will verify the numbers i think  very probably these numbers just picked up a clear blue sky and are not authenticated are fine and capable at this point but anyway let me carry on her testimony ms br describes congress decision not to provide meaningful protections for federal whistleblowers with respect to stimulus funding since quote simply absurd unquote separate from the separate from the absence of such protections former position as specter general interior i don't intend in bandon that practice so now when i was when the board hears from a whistleblower we're going to make sure that the appropriate i g gets the information and if there's any charge of retaliation i'm going to be pretty aggressive about making sure that we try to put a stop to that thank you very much up trust that you will all of forward to you doing so  an even better example for all of us recognize for five minutes i thank you i thank you both for coming today and speaking in front of us as a new member of congress and someone who who did vote for the recovery act  obviously i feel a lot of obligation to make sure that this money is spent in the way those of us who voted for it intended so instead of any with that in mind looking to the future when you close down your office in two thousand and thirteen what would you consider a success could you describe that to me please well that we've we've held a fraud waste or mismanagement to an absolute minimum that we've been able to prevent that from happening as opposed to merely detecting it after it happened with respect to the web site my my hope is that this web site will serve as a prototype for how we provide transparency american people for years to c i think if we do this right we take our time to do it right and that transparency becomes part of what we do every day that folks in the future will look to this this website as a model for how to build a future models to to democracy is the process i mean this is the very first time that i can recall that every dollar is being tagged by by a i've asked my staff particular back in my district to try to track what they can within my district can you give me any suggestions on what i should be trying to do back in my district you know trying to make the transparency and accountability there for the people of the third district pennsylvania well i'm hoping to give everybody in the third district of pennsylvania an opportunity in the not too distant future to be able to for instance to go on that website and put in a zip code and  the expenditures in their neighborhood or look at across the country we can't do that now but i'm very confident that in the coming months in the short short amount of months we're going to be able to do that for a summertime fall and of the year when do you well i'm not so i stay awake a little bit night worrying about october tenth which is when the when the data comes rushing into the government from the recipients and so by then it has to work ok thank you mr tidd r o g a o has also been conducting extensive work on the government's resources what improvements may be made to enhance an agency's ability to intervene and prevent misuse of funds at a time when speedily completing a grant or contract action is also being emphasized the acquisition area is one as you mention that we have tracked a number of federal contracting activities on our high risk list and the acquisition work for syria in particular is important that there be adequate numbers of people that are there in order to track some of the contracting activities it's been a particular area we focus on the partment a defense where they've doubled the amount of spending on contract services for for over the past several years but the acquisition workforce is growing less than one percent so having their adequate numbers of people important people have to be trained properly has to be adequate reporting and monitoring of those activities is also important that the proper contracting vehicles be used that there be competition and contracting whenever possible to ensure that the government has the best prices available for the services that they're trying to contract with so those are some of the fundamental things that  think in this area i know from the recovery act that the inspectors general have been focused on trying to provide some best practices as we have up front to try to deal with the contracting activities and following these best practices to minimize potential problems going forward but it's an area to keep an eye on as the recovery act money gets distributed over the next few years thank you very much thank you we do have votes coming up shortly but i'll recognize myself for a second round of questioning and we should have time for all three of us to ask a second round in the second panel policy after a series of i now recognize myself for five minutes  out it may be true that not all of the accountability we would and transparency we would like to achieve with the recovery act is achievable right now but the first step in achieving a government that is accountable and transparent is to let people to to office who want to be transparent and accountable and to see those obstacles not excuse for being a paik and unaccountable but as something to try to overcome and continue to try to overcome and it is in our experience and trying to provide as much transparency and accountability as possible now will improve our efforts later he will be a continuing effort to get more and more accountable more and more transparent mr darawshe in your testimony you say the department of energy i believe that mr whitaker has a couple of graphics that i think is dangerous place here for  have more access to information then than the general public would be but that doesn't mean that the web sites could not be improved and additional level of detail there and i think that's the expectation going forward but we did it through a normal question i mean this is a stretch goal for agencies to have that level of detail timely reporting it could be achieved but there needs to be disciplined process is put in place to make sure that when it is posted it's complete accurate and timely and i particularly aware of the legal requirements of the recovery act and that is worrisome that if they don't know about it they're not going to do it very well what efforts  either you making to try to make sure that all those in government agencies know what the requirements are we have we have our compliance parent compliance staff out there talking to the cheaper german officers of each of the agencies i'm not sure what agency referring to but there's the visit there's the the opportunity i had to speak to the cabinet on a couple of occasions in talking about you know the the the work that we were seeing an initially was sloppy that mistakes were being made it's probably true that this is goes on all the time but sunlight is never been shown on this this work before so i know the vice president for instance challenge the secretaries to make sure that though those kinds of guidance pieces that are coming out on be get down to the lowest level which is not always the case in most big departments and every time we have an opportunity to interact with those levels we're trying to be helpful informative to them as to what the rules really are to the inspectors general to work with the federal departments and agencies not what we will plan to do is coordinate with them if we see some gaps or or other areas that we can help out and we will do that as part of our coordination of follow up activities and my time is far to brown for five minutes like chairman just going along with what the chairman is just asking state and local governments and even the private sector being overwhelmed with both funding and new use stimulus money to increase their ability to comply with transparency and accountability requirements and do you have any recommendations on how the federal government can assist state and locals in meeting these requirements for both of you please i would say you know in our first report cards in the last month we recommended that all be clarified this very point some of these programs programs that allow for administrative expenses to be recouped a certain percentage of them there's an direct cost rate allocations that are in some of the programs that there's a lot of confusion out there at the state and local level and we recommended at o m b clarify this and i think they have a number of options vailable to them in order to do this my our understanding is they're looking at this very carefully and hope to clarify it sun i think is a very important issue because i do believe that a number of states have very legitimate concerns about their ability to implement adequate accountability and this clarification is very important and sort of a same thing i think o m b is about to clarify that issue and maybe bring a little help to the states i hear this every time i talk to them and when asked if i would be supportive of even legislation that might help in this area i've  been personally responded yes so they need help they're overwhelmed with this responsibility as you know the federal i get a conservative amount of money to perform oversight in the states didn't get anything so i'm empathetic to that situation i want to help them i will do anything to help them and be very supportive of any effort to make sure the money gets down to them thank you appreciate that and there's legislation that's going to help mitigate this issue but i think this act has tremendous unfunded mandates all the way down even to the local contractor that people just don't understand in fact a lot of states have looked at opting out of various parts of the site for that reason the survey you note in your testimony that you held an online dialogue to receive comments on how best to structure the recovery dot gov website and how to best collect  what if any notable consensus a theme a march from the well i'm still waiting for the official results from napa which was our partner in this but my understanding is there's there's a number of really good solid ideas that emerge from this exercise some very notable people wrote to us and suggested things as part of the process people were able to engage in running dialogue and vote and actually vote at the end of the day so i haven't seen the tallies of the votes but you know we had been looking already of course at what's out there but the people that i have doing that told me they were surprised by some of the ideas we've got to consider them but we've got to do it very quickly when you expect announce on how you plan to incorporate any suggestions as a result of that dialogue well i think we're going to move very quickly to the dialogue is being shaped by napa to select the buckets of information we've got we're going to take a look at that and we're going to move very quickly to having some people in to show us things as opposed to just talking about them and do that in a competitive way in a very short period of yet and as you as you may know there's an advisory panel that is supposed to be appointed by the president to provide the board with expert advice i'm very much interested in having some performance people or a performance person on that panel and it made that known i want to i want to very quickly get my hands around that as soon as i can find the time to once was the vendors a selective that's being built and i want to go back to the metrics and and try to many during the drafting of the recovery act there was concern among the inspectors general that the board had been given too much power to determine what investigations they would be allowed to pursue or that there was insufficient protection against political interference with investigations and ultimately the language in the act made it clear that the inspectors general retain their independent discretion is when i ask if you're comfortable with x language learning the board's authority in this area well if i had written i may have written it differently i certainly am not about to tell an inspector general that they should not investigate something i don't think i would ever do that i think i have i'm expressing the view of the tell somebody not to investigate something so that language it's implied in the language that the board would do that when i'm going to do that ok but here that's all i have i don't have any  i don't have any further questions either not yet been called votes i suppose it makes sense to excuse this panel thank you very much for being here and we will continue to talk with you about how to do this and we'll all just be at ease for a second while everyone gets free p well again i understand this to bilbray will be substituting for dr brown for the second panel and he will be here momentarily but i will now introduce our second panel  dr clarence newsome is the president of shell university in raleigh a well regarded institution i think literally across the street from my district dr gary bass is the founder and executive of products technology and innovation and the chief information officer of on dia incorporated which has created the private stimulus watch web site recovery dot  org as you know from having been here before you will each have five minutes for your spoken testimony your written testimony will be included in the record when you have completed your spoken testimony oral testimony we will begin with questions and each member will have five minutes to question the panel it is a practice of the subcommittee to take testimony under oath do any of you have any objection to taking  do you swear to tell the truth and nothing about the truth each of the witnesses took the oath we all now began with on ok i'll start again that good afternoon chairman miller and members of the subcommittee on science and technology i thank you for hosting this hearing to learn about how historically black colleges and universities species use as we call them predominately black institutions p b s and other into the beneficiaries of the recovery and reinvestment act funds are faring in excess of those dollars i am delighted to be here is the president of show university a united negro college fund n c f institution and i'm delighted to be here as a member of the board of directors of the national association for equal opportunity in higher education  show is the first weekly of the h b c used to have been founded in the south to colleges one school and ten departments employ one hundred twenty faculty members to serve approximately twenty eight hundred students by providing a variety of academic offerings that are geared toward today's employment market with the initial phases of the work of car risk completed on the recovery act the legislation states that the goals of the recovery act include and i quote to provide investments needed to increase economic efficiency by sparing technological advances in science and health unquote the h b c you community particularly through an f b o has at all times suggested expanse research capabilities with this in mind i would like to share with you some of the challenges that show university has experienced in seeking to access recovery act funds while i refer to specific instances of shaw i can assure you that of institutions around the nation like shaw have had similar experiences in trying to access these funds one of the largest challenges facing shaw in a private institution in north carolina is the lack of a mechanism for independent institutions to receive funds through the recovery act the state of north carolina thus far has limited funding to state institutions and state agencies leaving shaw university and many of those unable to receive even the slightest assistance from these funds moreover it is not clear at this point whether private and independent colleges will be able to participate in any meaningful way in the stimulus funding that has been made available to the state and reaching out to federal institutions in order to seek assistance from recovery act funding show h continuously been met with uncertainty on the part of the agencies as to a process or procedure to direct these monies to private institutions in addition many agencies impose time constraints that make those funds all but inaccessible to such institutions one instance of this is a requirement that funds be spent within two now or of a timeframe after receiving them or even after applying for them for many private institutions of higher learning is the really impossible to get the three estimates on each portion of the job as required by federal law signed the contracts and schedule construction of the work before the time limit has expired although these challenges are made more difficult by the fact that many of the institutions seeking the swans are not planning to use them to begin a new program but to take a hit a full isolated program and expand it to improve interest infrastructure and vastly improve academic programs by institutionalizing to tional lies in them so they can be studied more extensively and more inclusively than the current arrangement allows i want to share with you one example along that line mr chairman at this point in order to stay within my time frame we have a wonderful program going on in bertie county north carolina with  an experiment producing bio diesel fuel by way of growing canola seed although i want to just flash a picture up here right quick and show you how we are doing this is a coal plant that is mostly grown in canada we are able to expand this program we will be able to expand this program significantly with the help of some of these recovery act funds if they are made not only made available to the in s f but made available to us by way of process that allows those funds to reach us have some recommendations that i would like to share perhaps upon the time that we come up a question and answer session but at this point in time i would say thank you very much for giving me an opportunity to come and share with you thank you dr nissen i should say that part of history shall university that shell university was where the student nonviolent coordinating so far in the two and a half months since the law's been signed into action but it's not all we want and i think that's why we're hearing today transparency is a high priority but it is not the end game transparency is simply a tool to get us to the accountability that we've been talking about today in that context i want to summarize the testimony written testimony by raising five challenges we have the first challenge is who reports if we don't get this sub recipient reporting if we don't get down to the local lowest level or the the smallest denominator we will not achieve true accountability second question is related to the testimony we just heard how is the money to be obtained and allocated we have grants we have fed does the fed does op stack of we have state web sites but it is not clear how group can actually apply and get that money and there is a great fear this law was designed around both recovery and reinvestment that one of the objectives is to ensure equity and so we have to make sure that the money is reaching those areas where it was intended to go the third question is what's going to be reported we've heard a fair amount about how data is going to come in i want to talk about three kinds of data a lot of emphasis has been put on the jobs data which we need not only greater definition of jobs as was mentioned by the previous panel but i think we need related information including what are the wages being paid what kinds of benefits what are the demographics of the people getting the job beyond the jobs comes performance data i think all of us would be greatly can interested in knowing precisely whether or not we are actually achieving the objectives of what the recovery act really really is this model this new model that we're talking about our recovery presents a whole new opportunity not just simply to find out who is getting how much money but we can now start talking about is it been is the money been used properly and we can talk about that in terms of performance the third kind of data that we need is going to be the request for proposals and the actual contracts that were used now o m b is put out guidance saying they're going to have summaries of contracts from the federal government but as we all know the bulk of the money right now is the formula money going out to the states there is nothing that's going to require clarity about insuring competitive award systems or that those contracts are going to be disclosed in any way for the public to see so who reports how some money allocated what's being reported the fourth one is where is it going to be reported we need to have a centralized system where all of the sub recipients and recipients report not only do we need a centralized system but we're going to have to have make sure it's an apples to apples in comparison that means we're going to have to have the right kind of language for standardizing the content as well as the mechanical the machine readable format of this we're going to have to have something that makes it accessible to everyone that there are many models for this there is something extensible markup language is one example there's a variant on x called x b r l we can coin dog kinds of technical language but the point is we need these standards if we're going to be able to compare from state to state or even within states or within program areas and that leads me to the final challenge in a question and that is how will the public get access to any of this and it seems to it is more than just an issue of what kind of web site recovery dot gov is going to be or what colors or what search or would zip code you can put in it seems to me that we have got to create the structure that has not only people access but machine to machine readable access if we do this right if we do it right the data that comes into the centralized reporting should be available not only to states to congress to agencies but to all of us on this panel and beyond this panel in terms of the public we can do the value added as well as the government can do so we have to create a new kind of democratic system with newer technologies to achieve meaningful public access let me just conclude by saying that the frame and recovery act right now is about waste fraud and abuse and we need to have that frame that is a central there's a lot of money going out the door the hope and the opportunity of all of this debate if we get this right if we get it right now and we build the longer term beyond recovery act to talk about all federal spending down the road is to create a new kind of dialogue a new kind of opportunity for sharing information to improve the quality of programs that the government is funding instead of always the gotcha politics we should be starting to talk about how we can make communities better and really do what the act called for which is reinvesting in our country thank you thank you the reason i've responded so quickly to the invitation to testify here is because for more than a decade i've been involved with colleagues at the market a center in various projects to try to encourage the development of the adoption and the use of performance measurement and performance information by the federal government our biggest project just today in fact we released the results of our tenth annual performance report scorecard which is which examines the quality of the performance reports that federal agencies produce under the government performance and results act we've been doing this for ten years i can tell you we've seen a lot of improvement in the quality of reports that are produced a lot of improvement in the quality of the performance information that agencies are producing we've seen some evidence in some other research that agencies that produce better rip performance reports under get for a are also more likely to have more managers say they actually have a new and used performance information in their programs our third goal though is to try to encourage folks in congress to make use of performance information for oversight and for appropriations and quite frankly we've seen less evidence of that in past congress congresses and for that reason we're delighted that this subcommittee is taking an interest in recovery act accountability because we think this is a great opportunity to match up performance information with spending information i'd like to make three points the same afternoon first off the obama administration in its guidance to agencies has said that agencies government performance and results act measures and goals should be used to account for the results of recovery act spending i think is a great idea and you're not to get the word but followed by a contradictory statement from me on that either i've sincerely believe it's a great idea if i had written guidance i would have said the same thing i have a couple of suggestions that would i think make this eve more effective one would be to agencies in some way either by o m b guidance or prodding from their oversight committees ought to be urged to report performance information along with the spending information so that the public the media other folks can juxtapose the two and find out what they're getting into in exchange for the spending the other point that i think would help improve the way this would work is if agencies were explicitly required to do some rigorous program evaluation in order to control for other factors that affect outcomes so that we know how much of the reported outcome really was caused by the program spending and how much of the outcome really was caused by the additional spending that occurred as a result of the recovery act sort of basic application of scientific method great thing for a subcommittee of the science and technology committee to be looking into again if the administration doesn't require agencies to do that it would be great to have congressional oversight committees asking for the same type of information from agencies and making a public second point although i think it's a great idea for agencies to use their gifts broad goals and measures to account for recovery act results  some of the goals and measures still need to be improved i mentioned earlier that we released our tenth annual performance report scorecard this morning we compared the results in that scorecard with recovery act appropriations and division a of the recovery act we found that only about fourteen percent of the appropriations are going to agencies that got very good scores on our performance report scorecard and about a third of the appropriations are going to agencies that got below satisfactory scores so this suggests that there's still a lot of room to improve the gipper measures and the gipper goals before we'll have we have the problem we fulfill the promise of full transparency and accountability for the recovery act spending finally just a word on measuring the other thing that people are interested in out of the recovery act in addition to the program outcomes which is creation of jobs in the employment effects just want to emphasize that in order to understand the recovery act effect on employment  what we need is macroeconomic analysis that takes into account the effect of the spending as well as the effect of the borrowing and that the numbers that are reported in a database as jobs created or preserved by t recovery act are only giving us part of the picture which is the number of people hired or that weren't fired because of the recovery act spending we need to know that against the employment effects of the borrowing in order to figure out the actual effect of the recovery act on employment so to figure that out keep your eye on the macro economic analysis rather than the numbers reported in the database and without also thank you dr ron was pogo the cartoon character who said we have met the enemy and  organization a member of the coalition for an accountable recovery as is o m b watch and so i'm describing to those recommendations that dr bass made in terms of the transparency for contract that's something terribly important to us as well and i'm going to be limiting  testimony to focusing on improving resources for auditors investigators and whistleblowers i view the level of protection against waste and fraud and abuse in the recovery act with mixed feelings on the one hand certain provisions provide a terrific opportunity to finally crack open the opaque world of government contracting so we can see this is a changed world for the future and not just limited to the recovery act on the other hand some of the essential protections are insufficient and others are simply nonexistent due to those weaknesses velocity and magnitude of the recovery act spending makes me very anxious one weakness that could be improved to stem losses is the significant lack as we heard mr daney speaking specifically to a funding for state and local auditors and investigators for every dollar i d s investigate for example an audit there's an average return of more than nine dollars according to recent g a o study chairman towns as introduced recently legislation that we believe is an essential step in trying to help provide adequate oversight of spending of these funds for those underfunded state and local auditors whistleblowers will also be essential to minimizing losses according to a study last year by the association of certified fraud examiners nearly half of the initial detection of occupational fraud forty six percent came from whistleblower to whistleblower tips rather than from internal auditors is an extraordinary study i thought for that reason i am distressed to testify that one of the most significant weaknesses of the recovery act is in section fifteen fifty three the section protecting whistleblowers while it provides meaningful protections for state local and contractor whistleblowers federal employees are yet again left out in the cold this is simply absurd without solid protection it is far less likely that a federal employee with knowledge of wrongdoing will come forward the good news is there's now a lot of activity to report on to to repair that damage and i can report that yesterday there was i was a member of a four hour meeting at the white house discussing the need for federal protective protections for federal whistleblowers and there's discussion in both the house and senate having hearings soon so maybe this fundamental deficiency in the recovery act could be resolved soon with standalone legislation and i certainly hope so for those whistleblowers who are already protected by the recovery act though i want to focus on what needs to happen for the process to work effectively first potential whistleblowers need to know what their protections are and where to go with their school an individual in their hometown who comes across misconduct is unlikely to know to which website to turn they may not even know which federal agency has awarded the original contract in light of this clear language should be on recovery dot gov on state and local websites and on the websites of each of the inspector general what whistleblower protections there are or are not and how to report waste fraud and abuse ids especially need to make a concerted effort to encourage people to come to them with their disclosures some i g offices are already doing a good job of this however pogo just released in march our analysis of the idea federalize the system and their accountability for for how they do their work and we found that many ideas are simply not effective at working with whistleblowers in fact i was just speaking with the council of i g s about two weeks ago where a few ideas argued quite forcefully that they do not see is appropriate for their offices to proactively reach out to whistleblowers to make fifteen fifty three work effectively it is imperative for ids to make a concerted effort in and sometimes change their culture to encourage people to come to them with their disclosures although the council of ideas has recently announced a cross cutting review of their hotline system the results from that review may come too late and so i believe it's essential that interim steps be taken closer to immediate than anything else to implement more effective systems than those that are in place now the next problem is also on the i g side handling the volume of intake responsibly currently recovery dot gov simply has a page that says tell us your story that's it there are no explanations for a whistleblower about what kinds of information to report how they are not protected or how the information will be used this is an ad in the invitation for problems we know from our own experience you need to have very clear directions a tracking system and a way to communicate further with the whistleblower for this to work at all given the volume of intake they will be receiving this is an enormous but essential task finally when there is a successful case of a whistleblower disclosure identifying a problem the idea needs to harold this is a case well done but even if the systems were to work perfectly serious and sustained oversight from both the board chaired by mr dean he and the congress are essential the discretion the discretion given id's in the recovery act regarding when they will or will not investigate disclosures is  so broad as to be very worrisome and this is where oversight will play an essential role another area that requires congressional oversight and when this kid a committee in particular has shown great strength is in overseeing the i g f themselves for example it is large part because of this committee's terrific work that the nasa i g was finally forced to resign after his poor performance and this committee deserves credit for sticking with that issue over the last two years at the moment the stars are not in complete alignment for taxpayers to benefit from whistle blower disclosures audits and investigations of misconduct in the recovery act spending but the weaknesses are fixable we just need to fix them now and i look forward to working with the committee to accomplish that goal thank you i did not get a christmas card from  year mr gillespie chairman miller mr bilbray and members of the committee thank you for inviting me to testify today with such a distinguished panel about oversight of the recovery act simply stated our business provides a comprehensive view of government to businesses that want to do business with the government we track all goods and services that are procured around the country across every industry infrastructure architecture engineering water energy information technology there are a variety of issues that create a transparency barrier which limits visibility into how funds are spent between the federal government and state local and education agencies around the country the situation that everyone wants to avoid is one in which recovery act money will have been spent and untold amounts will have been lost particularly at the state and local level before anyone is fully aware of the loss mr de veiny has previously testified that in his experience a seven percent  number is a good metric to use for fraud and spending that equates to fifty five billion dollars in the recovery act which makes the stimulus fraud the sixtieth largest economy in the world according to the i m f it's effectively the size of the g d p of ecuador as a challenge this market's highly fragmented there are more than eighty nine thousand state local and education agencies around the country and an estimated twenty thousand of those are going to receive some level of recovery act funding in addition at those agencies there are hundreds of thousands of people per curiam goods and services and there are more than three million companies that are qualified to bid on recovery act projects as you can see from these numbers the sheer magnitude quickly creates an intractable problem when it comes to tracking especially when you compress it into a very aggressive timeline one more example to highlight that transparency barrier several weeks ago the administration held a press conference touting the two thousand and transportation project that was undertaken as a result of the recovery act that same day we had actually tracked almost five thousand transportation projects that had been funded by the recovery act so there's a significant delta in the data as it exists today we set up our web site recovery dot org to primarily provide timely information to businesses in the marketplace the businesses that create jobs with the recovery funding but an interesting user group has emerged at recovery recovery dot org we're seeing the government come and use recovery dot org at the federal level federal agencies are registering to get a comprehensive view of how the states using the dollars states are registering to see how counties and cities are using the dollars and cities are registering to see how the other cities are using to the dollars to make sure they're getting their fair share it took us about two weeks to develop and launch the site and it has a fairly simplistic interface which allows a user to select a state a county or a city and see the projects in that geographic area search engines user interfaces infrastructure are all things that are key to a successful product like recovery but the primary reason why we were able to launch recovery dot org in such a short period of time in two weeks was the underlying standardized taxonomy and the data that we have without the data that sits underneath it none of the technology would have made it possible representatives from o m b have previously testified that recovery dot gov receives hundreds of millions of hits even reaching three thousand hits per second at one point and by any measure even those of online commercial enterprises it's been wildly successful the incredible use of traffic are i think emblematic of the intense public interest in engaging with their government via technology and in my opinion it's not unreasonable to think recovery dot could have life searchable data in thirty to forty five days so that those hundreds of millions of visitors and hits don't go to waste and they will if the date of it's not available soon i've made a series of recommendations in my written to money that i believe will help recovery and without getting into deep technical details dr bass touched on this suffice it to say that in order to maximize use in adoption the data has to be available in formats that have a low barrier to use there are many excellent free nonproprietary formats and standards that can be leveraged including the ones that dr best mentioned i'll conclude by saying that while this may presently feel like an impossible task there's an enormous opportunity to use recovery act tracking to usher in a new era of transparency accountability and performance and it will set the stage generations to come in terms of engaging in civic discourse with their government recovery dot gov can be the flagship for government transparency accountability we fully support the goals that congress and the administration have outlined and will continue to serve in any way we can do that and thank you for inviting me to testify here today and i look forward to answering any questions you might have thank you mr gillespie will now have questions from the members present  obligated contracted for three hundred forty two million in funds for the office of science it's set out in some detail in the appendix but when you go to the website for the dia for the dia we can't find anything below the three hundred forty two number and i ask how they got that number and apparently they just went in and looked at the wall written records and culled it by hand  is how difficult a task is it going to be you've touched on this in your testimony to get that level of detail who the contractors are how much they got in a way that can be on a website that anybody can see and understand  chairman first i want to clarify that there are in essence really two different reporting systems we're talking about one is the reporting system from the federal agencies that is currently happening and that's where the department of energy data is coming on weekly reports to recovery doco that's one reporting system the second which was mentioned in the last panel starts the october what is it seventh october tenth the first reporting from the recipients and that will tell us how the money is actually being spent and there are two very different systems they have to come together in terms of the first one which is the agency reporting and then mr gillespie point is completely on target that there already is data that can be made publicly available it is not rocket science and how to make that data available we have weekly reports as you saw from the screenshot you took that came out of excel spreadsheets recovery dot gov should be today today gathering  is the detailed information that g a o get in a way from in a consistent manner from each of the agencies so that we the public can get not only access to it through covered gov in a searchable format but access to the underlying data itself through various feeds so we can utilize that and do various kinds of manipulation but having said that i've got to be mindful that this is going to be an it or a process we're going to make mistakes i think the first thing i thought of was o put out guidance the agencies initially and told us to have a tag number that said recovery it had a number which is great because we could start to identify the dollars but they forgot to say put the name of the so we had all these account numbers and no name and none of us knew what the heck the programs were with the account numbers you're going to learn from mistakes like that and i think we're going to have to all of us pitch in and this is going to be a bipartisan it's going to be a non governmental it's going to be a governmental effort to get this right at our website to look at data and help track data it is a large problem and it gets larger as you get deeper into state and local and it is a very different animal at the state and local procurement levels than it is at the federal level and gets many orders of magnitude greater as you get down lower gillespie's business has created for a different reason for a different motive a technology that does much of what we want to try to do for purposes of accountability and oversight brined is how helpful to potential postal blowers would it be to have that kind of access to information so they could connect dots before blowing the whistle well it's fantastic  because sensually a whistleblower can be a person who walks down the street to see whether the bridge is being built and if it's nothing's going on that they need to be able to figure that out so information is the is the central  keystone to being a whistleblower and so they need to have access to that information as is brian one of the things that really is kind of showing up that one of the blatant problems we've run into afghanistan was not for profit contracts but for the nonprofit contracts and people claiming to have planted a an orchard and then showing the picture of somebody else's orchard and given the wrong g p s locations but i want to get back to the ability to count on some of this thing and i would this up to any of the panelists wants to talk about this but one of the things that's going to be asked a lot about the success of this program is to do is to calculate how many jobs were created program i think there are several steps the first is that we have to be have a better definition of what a job is so we're all talking apples to apples here that's one step i think the second is if we do have sub recipient reporting congressman we will have the real opportunity to get information from the horse's mouth if you will this is an opportunity in this model of recovery act to have the recipients who actually touch the dollars to report on literally what kind of jobs they have either saved or created and instead of it being filtered one level up and up and up and up we have a chance to have a reported directly so we all can see it if it is done in the right manner we can tie that data to the originating contract so we can see how that all fits with one another this isn't as i say it is in some respects this is a huge task so we can break it up into smaller parts and think about the dollars there that are really being dealt with here we heard from the first panel that the bulk of the dollars going out the door really the health care dollars the medicaid dollars so we could narrow this focus to some very specific areas like transportation and other areas to try and tackle this how do we do this so you know when a chance here where the house tried to at least have a minimum standard of disclosure and that was the for everybody participate in the program our colleagues on the other side the aisle not only did not accept that they had it stripped they did not want that level of investigation of just even checking that the social  of anybody getting the programs or getting the job the identify it with that attitude coming out of you know the house of lords on the other side how do we assure the american people that we are going to have the database we are going to ask the questions we are going to go to the individual who's getting the job to make sure that they actually had a job that they were working on how do we do that especially under this environment that we started off with this thing where you actually had sort of a basic program that was ninety nine point six percent successful taken out of of the the review process from the get go can we get that back in can we you know can we mistake go ahead congressman my response is going to be just perhaps a little off of your question so i'm going to pass on real quickly but i want you to know in the h b c world and colleges and universities like ours we i feel ourselves privileged to be in a position to be measured and to be if you could have to get it participate if we could have access there's another a that has to be added to this as a service accountability the first one is access we would institution you have catholic institutions that do huge outreach to disadvantaged new huge outreach into the communities and because they happen not to fall into the public guys they've been fenced out of the system but he let's get back to the status quo if i can even find out if i'm not even required to to check the so security number and name matches how can you require me to track this and document it down the line when in after the fact it's a very difficult data problem congressman it has taken us ten years to figure out how to do that we do it every day but it is an intractable problem there will be close to one hundred billion dollars spent by the october tenth date that mr deveny spoke of on the on the previous panel that will be out the door and unless that level of transparency or that level of tracking is put in place soon those funds will be gone and it will be a forensic audit that's required to understand it as opposed to being  preventative as as with other kinds of performance information you're going to have to have random audits and other types of procedures to make sure that it's actually to verify that the information that's being reported is actually accurate  the deterrent effect of congressional oversight and i think having hearings like this on a continuing basis of people be afraid not to be reporting would be a helpful way to keep people honest and reporting as much as possible well thank you mr chairman to be you know and not  that i'll be provocative but the fact is i think there was a strong consensus on both sides of the aisle here that the even raphael and starting off with who was being employed was an essential part of our credibility and it's too bad that there are powers that be and i have a feeling on both sides the aisle on the over in the senate that specifically did not want that kind of accountability and i think there's going to be a question asked again and again why in the world would you not want to check the minimum if you're going to promise to be to check everything else down the line i think that's a real challenge that we have and it didn't start in a house that you know we ended up having to settle for a deal that came from the senate but i still question why were they people over there so hell bent not to have that accountability thank you could i just chime in on the last point i think congressman i think given what we have today i think we have to assess the situation as it is and what i think is important to understand is that only m b has the authority to request certain types of information notwithstanding the specific statutory issue you are referring to o m b could be collecting information around what kinds of jobs are being created what are the wages being paid what are the benefits that people are getting where they were people who are getting employer were they coming from these are the kinds of equity equity questions that many of us want to have answered and i think when we can collect it but if you do not know who it is who got the job you can't audit it that's the key i'm just saying you can have the authority to get this far that i've just d recognize myself for another five minutes dr use and your testimony has hit upon one of the great frustration for me in the six years and four months that i've been in congress and representing the district that i represent that includes both a competitive disadvantage in that way from compared to say how can we get at that how can we provide more a more equitable way of providing quite right in suggesting that other minority is too shouldn't share the same kind of challenges show university that basically is a kind of economy of scale issue i would suggest that one way to begin is by having representatives from these institutions participate in some very strategic conversations and discussions with state personnel in particular because this is where we have in our log jams confusion bottlenecks and the like and web site and the web site is constantly being bought bought it with all kinds of requests in other words it's overused it's hard to get through it's hard to get responses we need to come together and have the people who want to benefit from these funds work hand in hand with those who are charged and we have a mandate to make those funds available to come up with a very satisfactory resolution and so lu develop the policies develop the procedures and then hold each of them mutually accountable because accountability comes to light at that point as well the states are charged to make funds available we want to make sure those funds get where they should go to the recipients or to participate in the development of process process these procedures and policies to ensure that that happens thank you thank you mr gillespie and so i'm recovery dot gov as an instrument of accountability and transparency that's a management tool for government but they help people who want to contract with the with the federal government but its effect is the same it's similar and you have already run the heart he means well it usually is not a compliment but the first out in providing accountability as i've said before in transparency is that you need to want to provide account account and accountability transparency and we do have now embarked upon that and we may have obstacles we may not successfully deliver as much accountability as we had hoped but this will not be the last time we spend government funds the obstacles that we encounter and overcome will be overcome for the future so this is a continuing effort both with respect to specifically the stimulus funding the the five hundred billion or so that we are spending and actually mr gillespie i think probably the correct figures more like thirty five days is only thirty five billion and waste i'm not sure how much how much  should take in that number being a little lower because almost forty percent of the recovery funds were actually tax cuts but this is something we need to continue we will continue to hold hearings and we hope we will not have to and i certainly am a proponent and a champion for accountability fair play but in the final analysis is results results and this is what this initiative is all about the h p see you community has a short term economic impact of ten billion dollars our contribution to the job market is around one hundred eighty thousand plus making us maybe the twenty third largest employer collectively in the nation our campuses are full of creative and innovative energy we take a little of nothing and turn it into something miraculous who would have thought that i show universities size would be helping to stimulate the economy and one of the poorest counties in the entire country not just north carolina through in s f grant paying farmers to grow a crop that grows during the winter so that we add to their growth cycle reducing their overhead by taking that crop providing them fuel reducing the overhead of the school system so that they can stretch their meager dollars to improve their  performance if we had the funds to augment what we do the results would be tremendous read down not just to  benefit of the h b c use and the contribution that they make within that world but to the health and well being fiscally and otherwise socially of the republic thank you very much thank you  record we grow our crops in the winter all the time in california but that's different i didn't know you had a winner  all right before we bring this hearing to a close i do want to thank all the witnesses for testifying and the rules committee the record will remain open for two weeks for additional statements from members as well as for any answers to any follow up questions the committee may have may have for the witnesses and the witnesses are now excused and the hearing is a