subcommittee on management investigations and oversight will come toward the subcommittee is meeting today to receive testimony on the f y twenty ten budget for the departmental management and operations of d h s i may seventh two thousand and nine president obama delivered his fiscal year two thousand and ten budget request to congress his vision for the department of homeland security was clear the safety and security of our nation is a top priority and we must  spending of scarce homeland security dollars in a fiscally responsible manner sense it's inception the department has struggled with management and operational challenges that include integrating twenty two separate and distinct aging he's into one managing  largest work forces in the federal government ensuring that the department's acquisition policies are sound economical and fair and creating one unified d h s s culture the committee has continually taken the position that the department's low morale lack of common culture and the lack of diversity stem from a series of flawed policy approaches to establish an internally consistent human resources architecture for the department as a whole why the department recently moved up one spot from the prior year in a recently released two thousand and nine best places to work rankings it was still ranked twenty eight out of thirty there's much work to be done to bring the department up to the same standards of morale expected of that's pairs the department continues to procurement challenges currently there are more than two hundred vacant positions in d h s s contracting and within the next five years more than twenty five percent of the d h s s contracting workforce will retire or will be eligible for retirement although the department has been disjointed and lacks a common culture we are now seeing efforts to consolidate its operations both physically to the st elizabeths project and systemically through its data centers and financial management integration efforts we recently saw with the release of the right wing extremism report mistakes are still being made by the department however we witnessed a swift response which indicates that the privacy civil rights and civil liberties of those it seeks to protect are important aspect of the department's work i would be interested today in hearing how the department's budget reflects the need to ensure that such an incident never happens again as we move forward with a new department of leadership new priorities and a new budget unfortunately some things remain the same our nation is still at risk from terrorist attacks both home grown and abroad and the department of homeland security must be ready to fulfill its mission protect the american people from threats both foreign and domestic both natural and manmade the president's f y twenty ten budget requests for the department in general and the management operations directorate simple to kill or recognize these realities and provide us with a financial framework for addressing them last month secretary napolitano testified before the full committee about how she plans to implement the president's proposed budget department wide today we will hear how the undersecretary for management intends to work with  secretary to incorporate the budget priorities into the department's operational and management functions including its human capital procurement security financial and information technology missions what i would like today is an honest assessment of the department's needs if more resources are needed i expect the undersecretary to tell us that i look forward to hearing today's testimony regarding the president's budget and how the department intends to use a proposed funds to build a stronger and more secure america that you are now recognizes the ranking member for the subcommittee the gentleman from florida mr bill rockets for an opening statement thank you mr chairman i appreciate it madam secretary i'm pleased you could appear before saturday to discuss the president's two thousand and ten budget requests for the department's management directorate and your plans for the coming fiscal year i look forward to your testimony i'm particularly interested in hearing about adverse at the departments to become more efficient effective in both achieving the department's vital mission and using taxpayer resources there are a number of very necessary but costly project underway at the department including st elizabeth's project and the s d i net and i look forward to working with you to highlight areas in which we can ensure the department is as nimble and efficient as possible voice costs in time all runs i'm also interested to hear your plans to address the concerns of the more than two hundred thousand employees the work at the department the two thousand and eight federal human capital survey showed improve results for d h s but i'm sure that you and i will agree that more work needs to be done to recruit qualified candidates and retain them once they are on board including better training programs and define career paths you indicate in your written testimony that you are striving to make d h s s a place where people want to work and i'm interested to hear how you plan to work with the department's new chief human capital officer to achieve this important goal as a new as federal department and one with a very challenging and critical mission there is much work to be done to ensure that one d h s culture advocated by both secretary chertoff and the politan is achieved i look forward to working with you in the members of this committee to ensure you have the resources and authorities you need to get the job done to that end i hope the committee will consider a comprehensive authorization bill for the department this year thank you again for being here secretary duke and i look forward to your testimony thank you mr chairman you're back down to my time thank you and other members of the subcommittee reminded that under committee rules opening statements may be submitted for the record i now welcome the undersecretary for management elaine to elaine c do currently serves at the department of homeland security's undersecretary for management in this role mistook as responsible for the management administration of the department of homeland security she oversees management of the departments forty seven billion dollars budget appropriations expenditures of funds accounting and finance quite a duke also administers control of that apartment seventeen billion dollars in acquisition and procurement she is responsible for directing human capital resources and personnel programs for the department's two hundred sixteen thousand employees she had ministers control of the department's enterprise architecture through strategic use of information technology and communication systems and she is responsible for oversight of the department's facilities property equipment and other material resources prior to her appointment as the undersecretary for management ms duke served as a deputy undersecretary for management she was the department's chief procurement officer from january two thousand and six until her appointment as deputy undersecretary for management in october of two thousand and seven department's deputy chief or chairman officer from october two thousand and four to december two thousand and five when she championed at the creation of the acquisition professional career program to rebuild the federal acquisition workforce for the twenty first ms duke assisted in the stand up of the department of homeland security while at the transportation security administration where she served as the deficit systems administrator beginning in august of two thousand and two ms duke spent a great deal of her career with the u s navy where she held various acquisition positions of progressive responsibility she began her career as a contracting officer for the u s air force ms ducal tabasco science degree in business management from new hampshire college and a master's degree in business administration from university in honolulu hawaii we welcome you lines of business produce integration and standardization and efficiencies throughout the department allow me to highlight just a few management director three since the recent accomplishments  in competition of federal acquisition contracts with india we were able to increase our percentage of competed contracts from sixty nine percent in two thousand and seven to seventy five percent in fiscal year two thousand and eight  our competition goal of sixty eight percent and we're on target in two thousand and nine to keep that level of competition we've exceeded all our small business contracting goals we began to  actively and aggressively manage the working capital fund within the photos office we've established a program review board to look at our major acquisition programs we were on target to review seventeen programs this year additionally with the start up of the acquisition program management division we've been able to increase the number of certified program managers running acquisition program level one from twenty percent a few years ago up to near ninety percent this year that is a significant step in getting a handle on our requirements of our acquisition programs which i've talked to this committee before about how important that is to successful per curiam and we also have while we still have vacancies within the contracting career field through our acquisition in term program and other africa have nearly nearly doubled the size of the eleven o two the contract specialist workforce from about seven hundred  in about four years ago to over eleven hundred now with about two hundred bacon's these remaining when we get those feel we will have doubled our workforce in four years which given the challenging recruiting market we were really proud of that and thank you for your support of the intern program that it's contributed significantly to that when our fiscal year ten budget really is focused on two areas one is integration and the second is oversight  control we are not building a management budget that seeks to build a big bureaucracy in fact my budget for my immediate office is staying flat at thirteen full time equivalent thirteen people what we're trying to do is use the office of management to build the building blocks that a new department has to have to successfully move forward in implementing its initiatives some of the initiatives we have in the president's ten budget on the integration front include the headquarters consolidation which includes and the other consolidation in the d c area a wide enterprise records management system which is critical to moving forward in terms of our appropriate records and retention  policy this is very important in light of the president's transparency initiative rightsizing human capital focused on getting better diversity better staffing processes within the department and within the chief information officer several initiatives including continuing the data center develop development migration using single sign on putting all our we have a huge emphasis on security of this  budget including moving a lot of our initiatives behind the trusted internet connections to really improve security and the oversight and control initiative we have talking about these initiatives and answer your questions and i truly appreciate the opportunity to thank you for your testimony and i remind each member that he or she will have five minutes to question and i will begin with myself for high rate of turnover obviously has hindered some of the human capital efforts and committee indeed the full committee a bit of concern here quite a bit of concern actually what's mr kneale going to do to fix this problem first of all in the turnover at the leadership but but you know i understand you continue to have recruiting problems even and economic environment like this one it seems to me that this is a perfect opportunity to get some of the best and brightest available i hope that's that's going to be the case i think it is  federal experience and has significant federal experience in human capital so what he's going to bring to the table is both being able to support the agenda the ministration which is very much focused on human capital but also he knows the federal system i think some of the challenges we have in human resources really are federal challenges and how do we work with office of personnel management and really look at how can we keep the base the tenants  fairness and transparency of federal hiring but make it more efficient i think he's going to be a great representative to that federal initiative i'm really looking at we talk a lot about acquisition reform and i'm looking forward to human resources reform personally i chair the diversity council in the recruiting council i think that one of the basic things we have to do is really fill our vacant positions because people love the work they do so we have the basic foundation we have to get where we have a better i think a better balance of quality of life family and work and so one of the things we'll be working on is recruiting that's one of my top two priorities for human capital the second thing is diversity i believe a more diverse workforce will bring a better representation for this country and that is we have targeted recruiting a band and directly involved in that and the third thing is a much more tactical but that's actually improving within  programs and given my personal interest and background in management operations and homeland security intelligence issues i was really happy to see the office created i believe it fills a significant gap the department needs to have  to federal spending especially when it comes to homeland security and want to know that their tax dollars are being spent wisely well the budget requests support efforts or initiatives to ensure that the programs we are finding with their money are operating as efficiently and effectively as possible and how if at all projects and or efficiency review initiative impacted by get requests and how well the findings of the initiative evaluation division of the post office there's about a three million dollars quest to actually do independent assessment through a federal research development center some one of our programs to make sure that before we even put them in the budget they have the right metrics and objective actually deserve to be in the budget and i think those are to specifically address that question thank you very much i was pleased to read in your intestine with the becoming a premier employer that your attraction retains high quality talent is a priority for the department of fortune your parm is falling short of that goal in the eyes of its employees especially comes to employee learning and development a critical goal the office of the chief human capital officer may twentieth article in the washington post even noted that in many cases federal workers value strong leadership and straight answers from their bosses even more than higher pay and improve benefits that's very admirable the article referenced a study from the partnership for public service employees rate the department very poorly in this regard how with the budget request improved training and learning opportunities for leadership managers and supervisors within the department to help improve job satisfaction in performance among all department employees i think within the human capital budget we do have a learning training budget and there are several potential as part of the national security professional program which trained employees that are in national security professional positions under the executive order and the second thing we learn from the employees survey is some of the dissatisfaction was actually based on a very more fundamental thing of supervisors not knowing how to be a supervisor when we saw that people were saying that supervisors aren't dealing with problem employees  deal with federal employees in rewarding and taking care of problems and this is becoming a mandatory course and i actually think knowing the bus fundamentals is really going to going to help and that's a lot of our initiatives you know they don't sound really tough enforcement of immigration laws and improving immigration services before coming here to congress i was an immigration lawyer and one of my worst experiences a lawyer to come to the new orleans district offices the people there are rude and they are downright efficient i have not seen a federal that's the first that's been brought to me but i will certainly take it back we've been focusing on us is is a business transformation program where we're in the process right now of actually transforming the processes with a contract with i b m that we're going to build an i t system that will actually manage the process and this is going to be good customer service from an efficiency standpoint because we'll be able to do case management meaning a individual be in the system once regardless of the number of benefits they're looking for will be able to do online payment online form processing that does not address the human side that you just brought up and i will i will bring that back and look into it thank you very much and  i've also noticed that the the fees for various applications in recent years have gone up dramatically and it reaches it reaches a point where when you factor in application costs when you factor in the fingerprinting fees on top of that you have attorneys fees that these people to pay for i want to know what is the had was basically to cover costs now that doesn't mean we get back with that with the current state and we can just keep increasing fees i think both the last administration and this is in this administration is fully committed to making sure c i s is running more efficiently in fact part of the commitment of getting the last was that we would move forward with the business transformation program to try to make things more efficient and bring down the actual cost  time thank you that you are if you're nice is the gentleman from texas mr green thank you mr chairman i thank you and the ranking member this is an important hearing today and i think the undersecretary for appearing  today i'm not sure whether this is your first time before the committee but i welcome you to the committee and i assure you that my desire is to be as helpful as i can to you to do all that i can to make your your tenure in office and your office and success to this end i would like to have somewhat of a dialogue but forgive me if it becomes more of a skill a quick  i would like to acknowledge that we should only employ capable competent and qualified people we should only hire for particular main purposes those who are capable competent and qualified i understand that big companies can do big things that big companies can provide great innovation but many times the innovation was originated with the small company small companies are known for being original originating new ideas i think that probably one of the supreme super and sterling examples of this would be a very popular phone that we many of us carry that really innovative technology that was originated by small company i mention these things because i think that we have to look beyond the horizon of the big into the area of the small so as to make sure we capture all of these innovations that are out there i was at a meeting not too long ago with the chairman chairman thompson and we had a a large company a big company representative the president c e o was in attendance and we had small companies there as well and this c e o had an opportunity to hear some of these prevail as these small companies talk about the innovations that they produced and you could see in his demeanor and his body language that he was pleasantly surprised with what he heard it is not unusual for the person at the top to have the vision but for some reason many times that vision is not given the opportunity to see the entire horizon because we have policies and procedures and an intellectual property that has to be protected so the person at the top is sometimes sheltered to the extent that he doesn't have the opportunity or she will not have the opportunity to see all of these innovations that exist these innovations qualified businesses don't want anybody to do business that's not prepared to do business who is not capable competent qualified but those that are ought to be given opportunities and my question in summary how do you propose to enhance the opportunities for capable competent and qualified small businesses to have a marriage perhaps with large businesses appreciate his support this is one of the areas where most continually exceeds the federal goals for all the small business contract goals but we're never done to some of the main areas for small businesses in the technology merging technology the best places are small business innovative research program where we actually can find businesses as they develop solutions this is in the earliest stages within our contracting what we're doing is undertaking quite an enormous task of consolidating twenty four data centers into two locations the budget request two hundred million dollars to suffer can you tell me the status of the project why it was necessary tax dollars that we receive for maintaining facilities and so this is just an official from a facility measure the second area that i think is even more important a security measure  like other federal agencies is under constant attack from cyber threat and it's not just that the high side the highly classified programs is just trying to gather information and so by focusing our security efforts onto that as a primary and a backup we are limited dollars to keep those at the highest level of security which is constantly evolving we all hear about the new threat and really make it a security initiative consolidation is going to be that we are going to start looking at where we keeping data let's keep that one and then give access to it from different programs to try to further make things more efficient and consider that in terms of the two hundred million that does the majority of the migration we believe the cost of maintaining janice's i think there's about fifty eight million in the budget that includes some upgrades but just the annual operational maintenance is about president's budget will really go a long way to make sure that we have a great primary on our back up redundancy is absolutely a part of our plan you may know physically located right next to one of the data centers you have this picture to imagine our fuel storage tanks which causes some concern obviously depends on what kind of fuel is in those things order such as gloves and respirators and mask things to do their job the guidance received was inconsistent in change actually several times during the course of the outbreak what is the department done to rectify the situation  it addresses the permissive use of personal protective equipment ok now given what you told us about the supervisors are you satisfied or comfortable with the supervisors will be giving this directive down to the  spoken to o p m director barry about how this would work and would you plan to use a chapter ninety seven flexibilities providing the homeland security act of two thousand and two  difference between pay for performance and step increases is just step increases if you're performing satisfactorily you get paid for longevity and someone performing just satisfactorily and someone performing exceptionally gets the same pay industry i think it would address a lot of it has the potential to both address or make worse a lot of the issues that were brought up in our employee survey it has the possibility to make better because employees not talked to mr berry personally we're going to have to make sure that it's not clear enough standards any paper performance so that it doesn't appear to employees whether it's reality or just perception that there's unfairness in the process and i think that's the biggest thing that has caused pay for performance to be kind of controversy as it appears to be subjective so i think the important thing a paper performance when instituted is that it has clear objectives so that both very much and i apologize madam secretary for keep beating the u s c i s but my experiences with the with the agency has not been very positive and another area of my concern is the length of time that it takes to process some of these applications let me give you some example an application for naturalization at least at the district office in new orleans i would say it takes about a year and a half an application for  i guess i adjust my status between marriages with an immigrant with a u s citizen spouse can't take it can take as long as four years especially in those  especially when the spouse comes from countries that might be suspects such as the middle east some of those other areas where we might have concerns in regards to terrorism i you know immigration cases but but to me it seems that the length of time to process and it uses kate some of these category of cases is you know it's somewhat extensive im one is lack of feedback so it's one thing to take six months is another thing to not know it's going to take six months or not know how much longer so there's two things that this transform c i s system is going to deliver one is more feedback so that the applicants actually know the status and they know if there's a problem or they know if there is you know it's just kind of in that infamous i guess federal black hole the second thing that is going to be huge because we find that a lot of people applying for benefits apply for more than one benefit and under the existing system every time you enter the immigration system your case a new person and under case management although it sounds simple  when you apply for a benefit you have you'll have a number and that number will stay with you when you apply for a second benefit they're not going to have to start over with verifying and doing all the security all that information will transfer to your benefit or related immigration benefit and that's going to be so that if you do need multiple benefits your information will be stored and they will only start and get the extra information they need for the different benefit and that's probably the single most thing that will help in terms of the time for and actually be an electronic money and heard but before i go on let me compliment you on your testimony you have thirteen pages and it's quite substantive and quite inclusive and you address our having to prepare for and respond to natural disasters i want to go a little bit beyond what you have here fema and heard fema has as its mission immediate short term assistance in as quickly as possible stay no longer than is necessary and then heard as it relates to housing but becomes the provider of choice there has been some question as to when themas aid in and herds begins there have been as i understand  conversations dialogue has taken place to try to come up with some means by which we can know when bhima will no longer provide temporary housing and heard will step in and start to provide the long term assistance that heard provides have you looked at this question and if you have how are we hopefully going to resolve the question of  competent not in the long term how did this is in the response recovery just as you say what happened is temporary housing is only temporary if it's returning to a permanent solution of so somebody is rebuilding their home then it's temporary housing but in the case of katrina and some other of the major disasters there the people in temporary housing were not returning or had nothing to return to either they weren't rebuilding or they didn't have something before the ourselves in members asking for extensions of time and to be candid the fema reps have been fairly responsive in granting extensions but it does create quite a bit of disruption and turmoil in the lives of the people who are trying to gain stability after having suffered a tragedy so i'm the appeal i suppose is that we do expeditions lead this work as we can so that we don't continue to have people who are uncertain as to what will happen next if we can just give people a degree of certainty they will have a degree of confidence and that degree of competence will allow them to start to rebuild their lives in the community that they happen to be and the school of choice may be the one that's right nearby but if you're not going to live in that community very long then you've got to look for another school so i thank you for the comments and my hope is that we can we can move expeditiously on this point i sit on by the way financial services so i happen to see it from both sides homeland dealing with the most financial services dealing with heard and and i agree because every family   that i think was a huge step on the department's part in terms of the human side the effect of a disaster on a family mr chairman thank you my time is  wanted to try to solve world hunger which would mean working out a lot of interagency type work in the department made the decision that we have we want to get our own house in order from a mission alignment standpoint first hundred percent on that i look forward to reading the report in any case finally i do want to turn back to the data centers and certainly the physical location of those tanks it's a huge concern of mine and almost