platts this hearing of the subcommittee on government organization efficiency and financial management will come to order before i make a brief opening statement i do want to thank both my colleagues for juggling schedules around the floor schedule as well as our witness for juggling her schedule to accommodate the change in our starting time in two thousand and three and two thousand and four i was honored to work with then also ranking member mr htowns  sponsor the department of homeland security financial accountability act that law placed the department under the cfo act requiring a senateconfirmed cfo and imposed the firstever statutory requirement for an audit of internal controls at a federal agency when dhs was created in two thousand and two it inherited substantial financial management challenges particularly from the legacy immigration and naturalization service which had been a component of the united states department of justice as well as the united states coast guard formerly under the department of transportation financial management at the coast guard presented a unique challenge in that its books had never been subject to a financial audit recognizing the many challenges facing the department ranking member towns i wanted to address the root causes of financial management problems before they became ingrained in this new department therefore the law that we passed focused on remediating internal control weaknesses by requiring a separate assertion and audit opinion of the department's internal controls over financial reporting while the department certainly has made progress we still have a long way to go dhs still does not have a clean audit opinion and we are particularly concerned that the department does not as intended and required by the law i am pleased by the progress that dhs has made to address specific weaknesses and i agree with the department's strategy of foregoing standalone audits at components in favor of directing staff resources to correcting pervasive material weaknesses the department made a decision this past thursday to cancel its most recent procurement efforts regarding a major financial management system and i am glad that we have this chance here today to have some discussion about that action mr htowns and i remember all too well the debate that surrounded emerge and the efforts in two thousand and three and thereafter  that was abandoned after a substantial amount of money had already been spent the successor to emerge tasc was able to leverage some of that money but there were certainly some sunk costs that were not benefited to the american people the department is taking a new approach and we look forward to hearing how that change will focus dhs and help it reach its goal of good financial management i will add that most of the material weaknesses still on the books are related to processes and not systems and regardless of what decisions dhs makes on how it will integrate its information systems the underlying processes must be fixed must be corrected for that system to function properly again we are delighted to have ms hsherry with us as a of the most important pieces of legislation that affects an issue that we are both committed to proper financial management within the united states government this hearing will provide us with upto date information on how dhs is managing its finances and i thank you for holding this hearing ms hsherry as the acting chief financial officer at d everyone in your agency reports to you how well financial accountability is proceeding i welcome you and i am anxious and eager to hear your testimony the department of homeland security has an extremely important mission to ensure a homeland that is safe secure and resilient against terrorism and other hazards that mission protects each and every one of us and we must provide the necessary support in order for it to be carried out the gao and dhs inspector general have been keeping your financial management system under constant scrutiny it is encouraging to see that the department has made some improvements in internal controls over the years material weaknesses are down from eighteen to six across the department improper payments have been decreased from nearly nine hundred and twenty nine thousand dollars down to thirty eight thousand dollars that is real improvement that is truly great work however there is still room for improvement gao's high risk list since its creation you have to work on not becoming a permanent resident of that list i see from the testimony that your office is working very closely with the coast guard to improve internal controls i would like to hear more about those efforts and the work being done with the other dhs components i want to thank you for being here today we look forward to hearing from you as to how we might be able to improve financial management but also to say to you that we are here to also help if there are some things that we need to but we are delighted to have you especially as a constituent of the gentleman from virginia and we will allow you to proceed ms sherry thank you sir i appreciate it very much and thank you chairman platts ranking member towns and members of the committee for the opportunity to provide an update on the department of homeland security's progress in implementing the financial accountability act of two thousand and four and the financial management improvements we have achieved since two thousand and nine the accountability act gave our department the foundation it needed to successfully structure and improve financial management and corrective action planning for dhs through internal controls over financial reporting accountability reports and audit opinions dhs began improvements to our financial management structure in fiscal year two thousand and five and since that time we have continued to show significant improvements in our annual financial report and audits  has only six material weaknesses and has isolated the issues on the balance sheet to one component i continue to work with secretary napolitano deputy secretary lute and our component cfos to build on our significant progress our approach to improving internal controls over financial reporting focuses on identifying root causes executing corrective actions setting achievable milestones and providing strong oversight to strengthen departmentwide internal controls and to significantly improve key financial areas i am pleased to report that by using this strategy in fiscal year two thousand and ten improvements made by the united states coast guard and other components increased the department's auditable balance sheet to approximately hpercent after achieving several successful standalone audit opinions the department is focused on receiving a fullscope audit opinion and my staff and i are working diligently toward this target in fiscal year two thousand and ten secretary napolitano committed to the goal of receiving a qualified audit opinion on the dhs consolidated balance sheet fiscal year once we achieve this audit result we are wellpositioned to expand the audit scope to include the other statements as is required by law in order to receive an opinion on our consolidated balance sheet in fiscal year two thousand and eleven specific improvements and corrective actions must be made at the united states coast guard admiral papp the commandant of the coast guard issued an allhands directive memo to his staff both civilian as well as military this past january that stressed the importance of corrections required to achieve success with the audit in fiscal year two thousand and eleven my staff meets regularly with the coast guard to monitor their financial strategy for audit readiness also known as their fstar plan i also meet frequently with the coast guard leadership staff and our auditors to discuss progress coast guard is demonstrating controls over current year activity they verifying the accuracy of accounting data and they are analyzing the financial impact of their legacy systems by executing corrective action plans and monitoring risk throughout the year the united states putting the department on a path to attaining a balance sheet opinion in fiscal year two thousand and eleven however because of the deficiencies in their current financial system the coast guard is still unable to fully remediate all of its financial management issues dhs systems are not modernized and have system functionality as well as security weaknesses in addition to functionality issues most legacy systems do not comply with the federal financial management system requirements accounting standards and the united states general ledger at the transaction level dhs is analyzing alternative strategies to meet the department's requirements based on recent federal information technology policy changes and various advances in it and security dhs only requires system modernizations where there are currently severe deficiencies in systems security and functionality we are focusing on our most critical  needs first and will approach correcting those needs in small manageable segments while the audit is a critical tool to measuring our progress as a department from year to year we are committed to expanding our success beyond the elements in the annual financial statement audit the accountability act rightly highlights the importance of internal controls over financial reporting and implementing planning programming and budgeting for the department we strongly agree with those tenets and have established processes and controls to comply with governmentwide initiatives like the improper payments reduction act and open government as well as audit recommendations from both the oig and the g pleased to report that dhs was found fully compliant with the improper payments information act since two thousand and nine we are committed to being strong stewards of the taxpayer dollars and we worked closely with omb to make sure dhs was prepared to implement new improper payment reporting requirements today all dhs components assess each of their programs for risk using standard guidance provided by my office and programs potentially at high risk for improper payments are tested based on these assessments since implementing these controls in fiscal year two thousand and eight dhs has significantly lowered estimated improper error rates at fema on average from about hpercent to hpercent improper payment amounts identified by recovery auditors have also dropped from about nine hundred and twenty nine thousand dollars in two thousand and eight to just thirty eight thousand dollars in fiscal year two thousand and ten even though the amount of data provided for recovery auditors to review has increased significantly from year to year the accountability act also focuses on the need to report internal controls over financial reporting this set the foundation for dhs to develop a financial management strategic plan each year my office just published the department's fifth annual internal controls playbook that establishes mission action plans and focuses on our most significant internal control findings the playbook also supports mo our focus beyond internal controls over financial reporting and expanding improvements to internal controls over operations by using government charge cards and riskmanagement initiatives to reduce the risk of waste fraud and abuse based on risk areas in the playbook my office has established a bank card assessment team that meets weekly to implement corrective actions to strengthen the department's internal controls in the bank card program the department also continues to refine and update the financial management policy manual this provides all dhs employees with standard processes to follow for budgetary policy financial reporting and bank card management a recent update to the financial management policy manual is the addition of our financial assistance awards and oversight section which contains eleven new policies to streamline and standardize grants management at dhs the policy manual puts management control systems in place to efficiently achieve the dhs mission in compliance with the accountability act our program analysis and evaluation division works with the formal planning programming budgeting and execution system to guide the development of a year budget and performance plan these efforts produce the annual budget request and the future years homeland security program report another tenet outlined in the faa clearly the accountability act has provide financial management professionals across the department in order to hire and retain the most qualified workforce i sponsor various departmental and training programs within my office i support a rotational fellows program provide newhire training for the departmentwide cfo employees i host an annual cfo conference attended by over three hundred dhs financial managers we offer resource training programs for all program analysis and evaluation also helps us to retain our staff using the objectives outlined in the accountability act we continue to make significant progress toward improving financial management at dhs and i am very fortunate to work with such a dedicated staff and have the support of our senior leadership as we continue these efforts i appreciate the support we have received from this committee and congress and i look forward to working with you in the future and i am happy to take any of the questions you may have thank you a challenging assignment i want to start first with kind of the premise when we did the accountability legislation several years back and the issue of the importance of the cfo position as i mentioned in my opening statement we are anxious for us to get back to a senateconfirmed appointee again not in any way a reflection on or lack of faith and trust in you but is sending that thank you congressman first i will say that i think in the position that i have been in and having had the opportunity to serve as acting as well as the deputy cfo i have enjoyed very strong support from dhs leadership both the secretary as white house at this particular point as they are really in charge of senateconfirmed political positions mister platts so there has been no discussions with you or the secretary from personnel at the white house about  i had the opportunity to talk directly with the secretary and to emphasize to her the supporth how important it was for us to be able to reach out to the coast guard and to you know kind of set that goal and  she went right out on record and said that even though it is a highrisk prospect still for us to be able to get a qualified opinion in two thousand and eleven just because as you all have indicated it is a complex agency and there was a lot of work that needed to get done and still needs to get done at the coast guard she absolutely went out and provided in writing as well as sent a memo at the beginning of this calendar year to remind everyone that no one is letting up it is not just the coast guard but all of the other improvements that we have done throughout the department all components were responsible for working towards this qualified opinion this year so absolutely the ability to be able to go and talk about basic financial management needs in addition to many many meetings with her on the overall budget itself you know very critically important to the secretary mister platts i am very pleased to hear that a testament to you and the secretary to have and maintain that relationship and that open communication in fact your being here to testify as the acting c it just wasn't going to work we got some benefit i think from those costs as we moved to the new effort with a decision to kind of start over can you give us a ballpark of what have taxpayers spent we received so far in totalh what we actually had was some carryover even from the emerge program where the department was not spending that but we were allowed to keep that as carryover so in addition to the funding that we have been fortunate to have received in fiscal y of gives you the magnitude of hdays worth of the contract but what we did get for that was an integrated master schedule a draft integrated master schedule because we had really just gotten out of the gate on this okay we got an integrated master schedule as well as an earned value management a draft plan for that as well as a draft training plan as well but what it doesn't speak to is the value that we have also gotten from this time around was really as it relates to the data cleanup efforts the things that the department has been doing preparing in order to be able to get to the contract and that would require working with the components that have the most critical business need really looking at the data cleanup initiative mister platts so if i understand in numbers system my question to you is now that you have scrapped it what happened to these staff people ms sherry they are still part of my base annual budget so i still have them and what we have been working on even before we went to award what we have been working on is working with the components that have that critical business need that still need to get their accounting systems replaced all right or modernized working with them to be able to get their data cleaned up because what you  do is have data that is not really ready to move to the new system if it is not cleaned up or if your balances aren't good then there is no sense moving garbage into the new system so we have worked with the components to be able to clean up their data we worked on developing change management plans because so much of one of these financial systems modernizations really centers around change management changing people the way people do their business also focused around the business just so important in terms ofh and that is the reason why i think that we really need to push for this confirmation because i think that that needs to be done but anyway let me just move along to another question in your opinion what is the worstcase scenario for dhs if they fail to integrate disciplined processes that gao recommends before a new financial management system contract is awarded ms sherry what an integrated financial system really brings the value that it really brings to the department is really sustainability it introduces effectiveness and efficiency and what we have a result what that means is i can't have strong internal controls it is not just up to the system to have good internal controls but the sustainability is really critical in order to be able to have these integrated systems in addition it allows you to be much more efficient in the work that you do i think that from a standpoint of where do you actually have your people working if they are doing manual processes where they are having to do manual reconciliations in order to be able to make sure the contracts that are recorded in your system actually marry up with what you are actually reporting in your core financial system having to do those manual reconciliation processes not only is not overly efficient or effective i could be using them maybe to do heavy analytics you know especially need in these current fiscal times but what it also does is introduce internal control risk the ability to be able to have something obligated in your contract system if for whatever reason it doesn't make its way into your general ledger system there is the potential to have some severe funds control internal control weaknesses mister towns right thank you very much let me just say to mister chairman before i yield back that maybe what we need to do is to send a letter indicating the fletc ice have only one remaining material weakness each while the coast guard still has six what are some of the factors in your view that explain the differences in internal controls among the different components that we have such variance ms sherry the remaining material weaknesses at the department level which is really the six which is really comprised of the various conditions throughout the various components really can only be corrected by having strongh the tenets basically that come from the accountability act what you need to be able to do is to identify what is the root cause of the material weakness or the significant deficiency you need to be able toh so rather than just responding to potentially an auditor's finding where they identify an issue if you just respond to that issue without really identifying what was the root cause what was the reason for actually having that material weakness what is going to end up happening is you will continue to do work but what you won't do is actually correct the internal control findings and so  using the internal controls playbook which is really our annual strategic plan for how to correct our internal control weaknesses we were able to work with components in particular my department through the a process to work with them to be able to look at how their internal controls were designed and whether or not they were designed effectively and to look at through the performance audits that we did also as a result of the accountability act to find out how well we were doing as far as developing corrective  the idea that you could develop a plan that may not be responsive to the problem is not going to ultimately end up reducing your material weaknesses what we have done with the coast guard and with the other components we were able to do before that is to kind of crack that code all right working with us they were able to identifyh and i think the magnitude of some of their issues were clearly a lot smaller than the coast guard as well but what we have done with the coast guard working with them over the last couple years and it is detailed in what they call their fstar that is their audit remediation planh or their audit readiness plan what we have been able to do is work with them to have them understand how to do that root cause analysis so rather than just responding to an audit finding they are now able to actually dig into what is the system issue what is the process issue what is the people issue you know how does it actually relate to the remediation on the financial statements as well as the internal controls mister connolly are there incentives within the department office of cfo what we do is we meet with each of the component cfos at least annually on an offsite retreat where what we do is we jointly establish what our goals and objectives are for the year as well as for the foreseeable future  and then what i am able to do is i take those goals that we all agree on and getting the clean opinion and correcting the material weaknesses as well as things that are at the less significant level of a material weakness we then place them in the cfo's plans performance plans annual performance plans as an objective that they must meet and then what we do is we meet with them periodically and then again at the year to just basically assess where they are at i then report that up to the secretary and to the connolly going back to the tasc order and i am going to be running out of time real fast here which breaks up the contract into smaller component parts is there an opportunity here though for dhs for especially acquisition personnel to gain better contract management skills and technical expertise as we do that so more people have a chance to participate and develop the requisite skills because  very concerned and i know mr htowns is as well about the whole issue of acquisition training in the federal government so in the loss here of the reversal of the contract is there also however perhaps an opportunity ms sherry there is great opportunity yes there is great opportunity to do that in fact the under secretary for management and the deputy secretary as well as the secretary are very interested in making sure that we start to get this right and i think that we have made some really good improvements as demonstrated by the integrated plan that we have for addressing the gao highrisk issue as it relates to transforming management not just financial management but as it relates to transforming management within the department the other thing that we have done really well as it relates to this particular acquisition is to start to have some of that not only horizontal integration but also the vertical integration one of the things that we are trying do in the department is to really invigorate the overall governance process so what we should be doing is we should be looking at these major acquisitions on a more realtime basis but we should also be bringing all the right stakeholders and decision makers to the table to really review these and what we had with tasc was what is called the executive steering committee which would have your cpo you would have your cfo various components that actually participate on this steering committee so that sir also i think is a really good way for us to be able to get our hands around that acquisition management throughout the department  s is no longer requiring that it be housed in an enterprise data center and that it not necessarily is going to be a single contract vehicle for the financial management system does this mean that we are going to have permanently some legacy systems that are kind of on their own or is it just in the immediate term but eventually the goal still is to have all systems kind of be united in one departmentwide system ms sherry i think we will have to look at that as we go forward you know as we analyze the various strategies but where our real requirement is at this particular point is to modernize those systems that are in critical need to be able to do that and  governance just the way that we look at financial these systems modernizations in addition to the grave fiscal environment that we are currently in as well it really makes sense for us to focus in on our critical business needs and those systems that need to be modernized so i think as we lay out our overall strategy we will consider how we will include those components that already have modernized systems but really it is focusing on those critical business needs now and being able to system that probably is the main component that really i will struggle with in order to be able to get a fullscope audit done so i am going to be able to get my qualified opinion on the balance sheet without the system without  and milestones areas of focus and you reference in there the department's most significant internal control challenges is that coming back to really what you just walked through with fema with coast guard ms sherry absolutely the  what this committee mr htowns and i working together in the past and again now is really getting the systems in place where it is dayin and dayout access to that information as opposed to that manual you know edits that are being done to rectify problems but that it is a you know tomorrow if you need information you know you can go to the system pull it up and then make informed decisions ms sherry absolutely mister platts that commitment that you have made to that effort is one that we chain of command or the line of authority from you to the component cfos do they answer directly to you or to their agency head and then to you ms sherry they answer directly to their agency head but there is the dotted line to the department cfo so as i said i have the ability to be able to reach into their performance plans in order to be able to hire into those positions the department will weigh in we also weigh in on very critical other hires such as your budget director is the entire world that we work with you know budget as well as program analysis as well as internal controls and what we also do is we meet with them much more regularly as it relates to the critical internal control issues so for instance i will meet with them as well as their senior staff on a monthly basis during the timeh once we come out with our icofr playbook once they have signed on to coming up with the corrective action plan and what the ultimate outcome that they are trying to achieve is they actually have to come in and work with me on a monthly basis and report to me on the progress that has gone very well and we have very little difficulty getting the component cfos and the senior management staff really wanting to be able to improve financial management internal controls audit performance audit is it a fair statement to say that based on your experience at dhs this approach that was legislated in the accountability act is one that we should at least be considering for other departments and agencies helping them to get to that bedrock of good financial management ms sherry it has worked very well in the department it really has and i think many of the other agencies are probably more fortunate than i am as far as the really identifying the root causes for making improper payments establishing strong corrective action plans monitoring them and then ultimately doing the right thing such as recovering the money that you may have improperly paid if you didn't actually improperly pay something but it was something else such as lack of supporting documentation or people didn't sign off that made it an improper payment you correct that you correct that issue and so for dhs the entire framework of the accountability act has really worked very well for us contribute to six of the department's overall material weaknesses the first talks about financial management and reporting they have a material weakness in internal controls and system functionality they have one actually the only one contributing to our fund balance with treasury material weakness they have weaknesses in property plant and equipment actuarial and other liabilities and then in budgetary accounting those are the six remaining material weaknesses at the competencies i do know that the commandant is very interested in doing that developing making sure that you have got those right core competencies and that the rotation the amount of time that you have with people rotating in the coast guard is the right amount of time so that you can identifying where their skill gaps are and then what you are doing is you are bringing in the right people at the right time and putting them in the right job so we saw that both at the coast guard just recently you know and then we also saw that at the t a just this past year what they did is they really looked at overall skill gaps and then they brought in the right people to be able to address the magnitude of the issues that we had mister towns i was thinking in terms of whether the department has recorded all of its property and plants and equipment how are you doing with that because that has been a problem ms sherry and clearly it is one of our largest assets and the remaining material weaknesses that we have outside of the coast guard on property plant and equipment is at the tsa and the tsa in two thousand and nine actually had what is called a disclaimer condition and really all the disclaimer condition means is when the auditors come in and take a look at the account balances they just simply don't have enough evidence there so what they end up saying basically is i can't tell if this balance is any good the work that the tsa did during two thousand and eight two thousand and nine allowed them to actually remove that disclaimer condition in two thousand and ten which basically meant that the auditors were able to satisfy them that the amount that we have recorded on the books for tsa property they were okay with it they said that it was what is called materially correct  having said that tsa still had some remaining internal control weaknesses and we do expect to remediate that material weakness this year at the tsa and it really starts to become very segmented because through that strong root cause analysis that they have done it starts to become segmented to just a couple issues that they are able such as they may do their inventories and they do their reconciliations and they make sure things are recorded correctly but in tsa's case there were things such as accounting property and what they are doing is building what they call assertion packages over property plant and equipment the reason why we don't have that on our fixthisyear list is because there is still real property which is part of that overall line item that they still working on so coast guard is developing the internal processes in order to be able to build those assurances so i will be able to get that ultimately i will be able to take that off as disclaimer condition as well mister to  typically access controlsh the three controls that we talk about when it comes to system would be access controls change management controls and then just in general security controls so what we do is as the auditors do an audit will look through whether or not they have got strong internal controls around those particular areas when it comes to functionality it is really how well is the system working so you go beyond just is it a secure system and the main reason the auditors will do that is it allows them to be able to rely on the transactions that are recorded in an accounting system without having to do so much detail work without having to pull really large samples and to test them and to do all that so it is an efficiency thing but it is also  clearly internal controls it security is clearly a very critical thing you need to be able to make sure that you don't have people that have improper access and stuff into your system mister lankford just clarifying that so is there a hardware issue based on old guidance that each of the components need to follow as it relates to systems security and what they need to do is we seth i don't do it the cio's office and the chief security officer does that they set those standards and then the components need to meet those right and what it does is it tells you kind of what the best practices are around access controls you know systems security and change management in some instances it is because of legacy systems and they are just old and it is hard to be able to do it so as a for instance  know the length of a password you know in order to be able to have a good password it should be x number of digits in length and you should be able to have special characters et cetera some of the legacy systemsh and so what the department will do is we will come out and we will say that is the standard you need to meet the standard in some instances if it is a legacy system you are not going to potentiallyh maybe you don't have enough digits in order to be able do that so there will be instances like that other times it is a people thing for instance in the security manual or internal controls best practices you should have background investigations for instance of the people that have access to a particular level of data or have the ability to be able to change code they ought to have a certain level of background investigation so it is the ability component that they have got the ability to be able to do that but typically there are some impediments there so what we do as part of the audit is we actually work with them on the it piece in particular where it is a joint meeting with my office action plans to be able to address them the functionality piece of it is just really outside of just the security even though typically impacted by security would be things such as does the system allow duplicate payments do you know what i mean so clearly it is a functional issue you should be able to build in controls into your system such that you can prevent a duplicate payment unless you have some sort of a person override which you know you can detect and correct but if the system is in  suchh has a functionality weakness it may make a double payment and you don't know about it until after the fact that is the distinction between the two mister lankford right so ultimately at this point we have hardware software and management issues we may or may not have inefficient you know what the accountability act allows you to be able do is to identify your root cause in addition to that the department has strong risk assessments so we try to be more forward leaning not waiting until a problem happens but  identify a particular weakness that you can't necessarily build into your system because maybe it ish and i will use the coast guard as a for instanceh because maybe the way that their system was modified due to change management weaknesses you are not actually which basically we have to do something other than the most effective and efficient thing we should do in order to be able to correct for that so we have compensating controls in the case of the duplicate payments we caught that do you know what i mean because we haveh ideally you want to prevent this type of a problem versus detecting the type of a problem and oftentimes that will be what your compensating controls end up being so no i think we just don't do business as efficiently as we could because of integration reliance on manual processes and reliance on compensating controls just the other thing i am sorry i get on a roll here is basically the internal controls the more of those that you have that are actually recent coverage of fema and the payment of relief to flood victims and other natural disasters and then the letter in the mail saying hey hyears ago we paid you twenty thousand inappropriately and according to some of the statements in the news coverage of this where fema personnel were kind of encouraging the individuals to apply saying hey this is something you are entitled to you need to go after they get it they spend it on home repairs whatever it may be and now hyears later or more can you give us an update because i know in the article it does reference fema you know in december the inspector general being critical of fema for not going rate and if so what were the main changes that resulted in that significant change from fourteen to hpercent error rate and then how are we dealing with the reallife impact on these individuals who went through pretty trying circumstances through no wrongfulness on their part got compensated have spent that money and now are being asked toh you know what are we doing to go out of our way to work with these individuals if we are mean the idea here is to preventh you should be preventing your improper payments even though we are in compliance with the improper payment act that is really not i mean that is exactly what we need to do but what we really want to do is to prevent the improper payments in the first place so what we have done is we have workedh we work with all the components but in particular fema worked on what we call the frontend processing errors that they would have so what they did is instead ofh what they did is they tightened up their controls around you know know checking for duplicate people who were applying you know for two benefits or whatever making sure that you had valid social security numbers you know things of that nature and for them to have been able to have gone from that test individual household payments in fact we actually do it quarterly now with them we make sure that we actually do the testing more realtime so that we can make sure that we stay really responsive and what they are finding is just even better results all right so this type of preventi etype controls you know rather than having to go after people to get money back you know really trying to prevent that up front so that is what we are doing working with them as well as working with them and their other highrisk programs working through f that they were having such a higher error rate or was it because of just the timing of a lot of disasters and so it wasn't a breakdown in training but a lot of new personnel you may not be able to address that today ms sherry i can't address that directly and i fact when we had the hurricanes for ike and gustav what we did is we actually tested those internal controls and i think it was the ig who tested behind them and came back with saying yeah what you are doing as far as tightening these preventivetype controls here are  very important assignment because the more efficient and well managed the department is the more effective it is going to be in serving our nation in a lot of critically important missions also thank your staff there with you as well who work day in and day out with you at the department we certainly want to be a partner for you and it kind of goes to mr htowns i think his last question if you do have something to put on our list that we can do to better assist because that is what we want to do we want to partner with you assist in any way we can if there is something legislatively that you need we stand ready to work with you and your colleagues to try to make that happen to allow you to be as effective as possible ms sherry thank you sir i appreciate the opportunity to be here today thank you