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TRANSPARENCY AND FEDERAL MANAGEMENT IT

SYSTEMS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY, INFORMATION

POLICY, INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS AND

PROCUREMENT REFORM

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT

AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

JULY 14, 2011

Serial No. 112–83

Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov

http://www.house.gov/reform
(II)

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

DARRELL E. ISSA, California, Chairman

DAN BURTON, Indiana

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah

CONNIE MACK, Florida

TIM WALBERG, Michigan

JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma

JUSTIN AMASH, Michigan

ANN MARIE BUERKLE, New York

PAUL A. GOSAR, Arizona

RAU ́ L R. LABRADOR, Idaho

PATRICK MEEHAN, Pennsylvania

SCOTT DESJARLAIS, Tennessee

JOE WALSH, Illinois

TREY GOWDY, South Carolina

DENNIS A. ROSS, Florida

FRANK C. GUINTA, New Hampshire

BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas

MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland, Ranking

Minority Member

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia

MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa

PETER WELCH, Vermont

JOHN A. YARMUTH, Kentucky

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut

JACKIE SPEIER, California

LAWRENCE J. BRADY, Staff Director

JOHN D. CUADERES, Deputy Staff Director

ROBERT BORDEN, General Counsel

LINDA A. GOOD, Chief Clerk

DAVID RAPALLO, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY, INFORMATION POLICY, INTERGOVERNMENTAL

RELATIONS AND PROCUREMENT REFORM

JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma, Chairman

MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania, Vice Chairman

JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah

TIM WALBERG, Michigan

RAU ́ L R. LABRADOR, Idaho

PATRICK MEEHAN, Pennsylvania

BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia, Ranking

Minority Member

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

JACKIE SPEIER, California
(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on July 14, 2011 ............................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Kundra, Vivek, Federal Chief Information Officer, Office of Management

and Budget; Roger Baker, Assistant Secretary for Information and

Technology, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs; Lawrence Gross,

Deputy Chief Information Officer, U.S. Department of the Interior;

Owen Barwell, Acting Chief Financial Officer, U.S. Department of Energy; and Joel Willemssen, Managing Director of Information Technology Issues, Government Accountability Office ...................................... 7

Baker, Roger .............................................................................................. 17

Barwell, Owen ........................................................................................... 27

Gross, Lawrence ........................................................................................ 22

Kundra, Vivek ........................................................................................... 7

Willemssen, Joel ........................................................................................ 36

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Baker, Roger, Assistant Secretary for Information and Technology, U.S.

Department of Veterans Affairs, prepared statement of ........................... 19

Barwell, Owen, Acting Chief Financial Officer, U.S. Department of Energy, prepared statement of ......................................................................... 29

Connolly, Hon. Gerald E., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Virginia, prepared statement of .............................................................. 5

Gross, Lawrence, Deputy Chief Information Officer, U.S. Department

of the Interior, prepared statement of ......................................................... 23

Kundra, Vivek, Federal Chief Information Officer, Office of Management

and Budget, prepared statement of ............................................................. 9

Lankford, Hon. James, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Oklahoma, prepared statement of ........................................................... 2

Willemssen, Joel, Managing Director of Information Technology Issues,

Government Accountability Office, prepared statement of ....................... 38

(1)

TRANSPARENCY AND FEDERAL

MANAGEMENT IT SYSTEMS

THURSDAY, JULY 14, 2011

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY, INFORMATION POLICY,

INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS AND PROCUREMENT

REFORM,

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:48 p.m. in room

2157, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. James Lankford (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Lankford, Farenthold and Connolly.

Also present: Representative Issa.

Staff present: Will L. Boyington, staff assistant; Hudson T. Hollister, counsel; Tegan Millspaw, research analyst; Peter Warren,

legislative policy director; Christine Martin, staff assistant; Jaron

Bourke, minority director of administration; Amy Miller, minority

professional staff member; and Cecelia Thomas, minority counsel/

deputy clerk.

Mr. LANKFORD. Committee will come to order.

This is a hearing on Transparency and Federal Management of

IT Systems of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

We exist to secure two fundamental principles. First, Americans

have a right to know that the money Washington takes from them

is well spent. And second, Americans deserve an efficient and effective government that works for them. Our duty on the Oversight

and Government Reform Committee is to protect these rights and

it is our solemn responsibility to hold government accountable to

taxpayers because taxpayers do have a right to know what they get

from their government.

We have worked and will work tirelessly in partnership with citizen watchdogs to deliver the facts to the American people and

bring genuine reform to Federal bureaucracy. This is the mission

of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

I am going to submit my opening statement for the record.

[The prepared statement of Hon. James Lankford follows:]
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Mr. LANKFORD. As the ranking member has also chosen to do, is

that correct?

Mr. CONNOLLY. That is correct, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Gerald E. Connolly follows:]
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Mr. CONNOLLY. I just want to join you in welcoming our panel

and also particularly, Mr. Vivek Kundra who is, unfortunately,

going to be leaving Federal service. I have known Vivek for a long

time and he has provided very visionary leadership in the Federal

Government. I certainly hope his good work will not be discarded

but in fact attended to because I think he set us on the right path

in terms of U.S. technology policy.

Thank you. And with that I’ll also submit my full statement for

the record.

Mr. ISSA. Mr. Chairman, could I have just a moment?

Mr. LANKFORD. You most certainly may. I recognize the chairman of the full committee.

Mr. ISSA. I only came up to make a quorum but if this is the last

time we get you on the cheap because somebody is going to scrape

you out and pay you what you are worth, then we will miss you.

Hopefully, you will still come back in some new role because you

have been a great bipartisan friend to the committee.

Mr. KUNDRA. Thank you for your kind words.

Mr. ISSA. You deserve that and more.

I will come back later on but thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you.

With that, all Members may have 7 days to submit opening

statements and extraneous material for the record.

I would like to now welcome our panel of witnesses. We have already spoken several times already about Mr. Vivek Kundra. He is

the Chief Information Officer at the Office of Management and

Budget, and the first time the Federal Government has had that,

so you get to be the pacesetter. As I mentioned to you earlier, that

is always the person who does the greatest amount of work. Everyone else builds on your work from here on out.

Mr. Roger Baker, Chief Information Officer of the Department of

Veterans Affairs. Thank you for being here. Mr. Lawrence Gross is

Deputy Chief Information Officer of the Department of the Interior.

Mr. Owen Barwell, Acting Chief Financial Officer of the Department of Energy. Mr. Joel Willemssen is Managing Director of Information Technology Issues at the Government Accountability Office

[GAO].

Pursuant to committee rules, all witnesses will be sworn in before they testify. If you would please rise and raise your right

hands. Thank you gentlemen.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. LANKFORD. Let the record reflect that all witnesses answered

in the affirmative. You may be seated.

In order to allow time for discussion, I will ask you to limit your

testimony to 5 minutes. There is a countdown clock in front of you

with which I am sure all of you are familiar with. It will count

down from five to zero. If you go a little bit over, we will be fine

with that.

As I mentioned to everyone before, we do have votes that will be

called sometime in the middle of this afternoon and we are going

to honor your time as much as we possibly can and to be able to

get straight to questions as quickly as we can and hopefully get a

chance to get this hearing finished.

With that, I would like to recognize Mr. Kundra for 5 minutes.
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STATEMENTS OF VIVEK KUNDRA, FEDERAL CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET;

ROGER BAKER, ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR INFORMATION

AND TECHNOLOGY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS; LAWRENCE GROSS, DEPUTY CHIEF INFORMATION

OFFICER, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR; OWEN

BARWELL, ACTING CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY; AND JOEL WILLEMSSEN, MANAGING DIRECTOR OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ISSUES,

GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE

STATEMENT OF VIVEK KUNDRA

Mr. KUNDRA. Good afternoon, Chairman Lankford, Ranking

Member Connolly and members of the subcommittee.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify on the administration’s

ongoing efforts to move the government to a more open, transparent and participatory entity.

Over the last 21⁄2 years, our efforts to shine light on government

operations have taught us 10 key principles that we must apply as

we scale transparency across all Federal spending. I would like to

talk about these key lessons that we’ve learned.

Number one, that we must build end-to-end digital systems to reduce errors and protect the integrity of the data across the Federal

enterprise.

Number two, build once, use often. Across the Federal Government, there are over 12,000 major IT systems with thousands and

thousands of data bases behind those systems. That leads to the

complexity of the enterprise which is the U.S. Government and

some of the issues around data quality.

Number three, tap into the golden sources of data. What I mean

by that is that we shouldn’t be relying on derivative data bases,

data derived from other data sources and massaged, but we should

go directly to the very transactional systems that are used to do

business on a day to day basis.

Number four, release data in machine readable formats and encourage third party applications. Washington doesn’t have a monopoly on the best ideas and we have seen what happens when you

democratize data. You have the ability to get innovation in ways

that were structurally impossible before.

Number five, employ common data standards. Think about what

would have happened if railroads across the country had different

standards in terms of railroad track gauges. We wouldn’t have had

the impact we had during the industrial revolution and the transcontinental railroad that created so many jobs and opportunities

and created innovation across the board. In the same way, data

and having common data standards is vital as we think about

transparency.

Number six, use simple, upfront data validations. If you go back

in time and think of recovery.gov in the early days, there were

phantom congressional districts because data wasn’t validated upfront. A simple data validation upfront would have prevented phantom congressional districts from being entered to begin with.

Number seven, release data as close to real time as possible. If

you think about some of the innovations and applications in the
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ecosystem that have been developed such as mobile apps that allow

you to see, on a real-time basis landing of flights across the country, allowing the American people to make decisions based on that

data, it is because that data is real time. In the same way, when

it comes to transparency, we should be able to get data on a realtime basis as someone is charging or conducting a transaction on

a credit card all the way to procurement.

Number eight, engineer systems to reduce burden. It is critical

to make sure that as we think about transparencies, we look at

this $3.7 trillion model in terms of how do we shine light on all of

that funding, that we make sure we are not creating more burdens.

A simple example, when it comes to student aid applications, is

that the IRS and Department of Education decided to share data,

therefore we were able to eliminate about 70 questions that students had to fill because that data was already prepopulated.

Number nine, protect privacy and security. This is critical especially in the age of Facebook and Twitter which is that you can create a mosaic effect without really thinking about it. It is one thing

to release data, for example, when it comes to health care at a

State level; it is another thing to release it at a zip code level. In

rural parts of the country, there may be one person who has that

condition and you could tie that to a Facebook account. So we have

to be vigilant when it comes to protecting the privacy of the American people and also national security.

Number 10, provide equal access to data and incorporate user

feedback on an ongoing basis.

These 10 principles are grounded in the work we have done and

the hard lessons we have learned. I would like to share three examples of what is possible by making government more open,

transparent and participatory.

Number one, when we looked at the $80 billion we spent on information technology, we launched an IT Dashboard and parked

online the picture of every CIR right next to the IT project they

were responsible for. The results were we were able to reduce the

budget of poorly performing IT projects by $3 billion.

Number two, by launching Recovery.gov, what we’ve seen is an

unprecedented low level of fraud, waste and abuse below 0.6 percent.

Number three, by launching Data.gov, we started with 47

datasets in May 2009. Today, we have over 390,000 datasets on

every aspect of government operations and 29 States have followed

this model, 11 cities, and 21 countries. But what we have seen is

applications being developed that somebody in Washington couldn’t

have even imagined.

This committee has long recognized the importance of an open,

transparent government and I appreciate its ongoing support for

these efforts. Going forward, it will take all of us, Congress, the executive branch agencies, and recipients of Federal funds working

together, to deliver on an open government that works for all

Americans.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify. I look forward to any questions you may have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kundra follows:]
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Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you.

Mr. Baker, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

STATEMENT OF ROGER BAKER

Mr. BAKER. Thank you, Chairman Lankford, Ranking Member

Connolly and members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting

me to testify alongside my colleagues today.

As the Assistant Secretary for Information and Technology, the

VACIO is uniquely positioned for a Federal CIO, controlling all IT

resources and staff at the Federal Government’s second largest department. In effect, the VACIO runs a $3 billion IT services company, with its primary customers being the Health and Benefits

Administrations at the VA.

In this role and as the former CEO of a private sector company,

I bring an operational perspective to today’s hearing. Since my confirmation in 2009, I have been a strong supporter of this administration’s efforts to eliminate wasteful spending and implement real

transparency in the way we do business.

Over the last 2 years, we have focused on running the VA IT organization like a company, driving the fiscal and IT process disciplines necessary to dramatically improve cost efficiency, reliability and customer satisfaction. In that effort, one of the key challenges has been the difference in financial management approaches

between the private and the public sectors.

As a private sector CEO, I became accustomed to a constant flow

of data regarding revenue, costs and cash-flow that provided an effective means for monitoring, measuring and forecasting the performance of projects, programs and business units within my organization. Effective cost accounting and strong financial management systems are the lifeblood of companies that must compete on

a daily basis just to stay in business.

While the private sector is concerned with revenue, expenditures

and cash-flow, the public sector focuses on appropriations and obligations. This results in core financial systems that, while performing exactly as intended, simply are not designed to provide the

type of detailed, real time cost data necessary to effectively manage

a business. To draw an analogy, managing IT projects using Federal financial systems is the equivalent of crossing Pennsylvania

Avenue using a photograph taken 30 days ago.

Transparency, and particularly the IT Dashboard, has provided

broad visibility to this problem. As the GAO aptly points out, the

information VA systems originally provided to the IT Dashboard

was frequently old or inaccurate. Of greater concern to me was that

that information was precisely what was being used by IT managers and department leadership to manage our IT projects.

With strong encouragement from OMB and from VA’s Deputy

Secretary, we have implemented both short term and longer term

projects to address these issues, including implementing several

new systems that will better track actual costs, including labor

hours at the project level.

The President’s call for more transparency in government and

this committee’s work are important to making our government

run better. Especially in these economic times, it is critical that our
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financial management systems provide clear and accurate data

that is as transparent as possible.

VA will continue to strive to excel at both management efficiency

and transparency and build on the successes of our existing strong

management and transparency efforts.

Again, thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member and committee members, once again, for the opportunity to be here today.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Baker follows:]
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Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you, Mr. Baker.

Mr. Gross, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

STATEMENT OF LAWRENCE GROSS

Mr. GROSS. Thank you, Chairman Lankford and members of the

subcommittee.

I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to

present the Department of Interior’s efforts to improve transparency through technology improvements and financial data

standardization.

I am Lawrence Gross, and I am Deputy Chief Information Officer

at the Department of the Interior. If I may, I would like to submit

our full statement for the record and summarize our testimony.

Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, the Department of Interior has a unique public facing mission, that of protecting America’s great outdoors and empowering our future. The Department

protects America’s natural resources and heritage, honors our cultures and tribal communities and supplies the energy to power our

future.

In order to meet this unique mission requirement and engender

the public trust now and into the future, cost effective, fully integrated, 21st Century technology must play a central role. The Department recognizes the critical role that technology and information quality plays in meeting our mission and as a result, have

taken aggressive steps to provide 21st Century technologies to the

Department employees and to improve the access and quality of

data to the public.

Specifically, the Department has three major initiatives that will,

over the next few years, retire duplicative financial management

and reporting systems by moving forward to continue to retire and

integrate enterprise-wide financial management systems. Specifically, we will be deploying the financial management business system; second, we will be modernizing our information technology infrastructure through our recently launched, self-funded IT modernization initiative, which we anticipate will result in savings to

the public of $500 million over a 4-year period; and third, an alignment with the Office of Management and Budget TechStat process,

we have implemented a vigorous governance process that we call

within DOI, IStat.

This process will improve the management and oversight of the

Department’s IT investment portfolio. Mr. Chairman, the Department fully understands the budget environment and we are confident that these initiatives will contain costs and significantly improve the Department’s ability to meet its mission and to fulfill the

demands of the public for transparent access into the operations of

the Department.

I welcome any questions you or members of the committee may

have. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Gross follows:]
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Chairman LANKFORD. Thank you, Mr. Gross.

Mr. Barwell, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

STATEMENT OF OWEN BARWELL

Mr. BARWELL. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member

Connolly, and members of the subcommittee.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak about the Department of

Energy’s business systems. I would like to start by providing a

brief overview of them.

In January 2003, the Department launched the Integrated Management Navigation System, now known as iManage, to consolidate, standardize and streamline the Department’s business and finance systems and processes. The functions and scope of this effort

include finance and cost accounting, travel, payroll, budget formulation and execution, procurement and contracts management, facilities management, human capital and information management.

Today, the strategic objectives for iManage are connecting our

people, simplifying our work and liberating our data, and we continue to work to improve financial and business systems and to use

these systems to provide greater transparency in support of Presidential priorities.

The full suite of systems was substantially deployed in 2008.

Since then, the iManage program has continued to invest in software upgrades and operational performance improvements pursuant to an integrated enterprise architecture. The core of our business systems is the iManage Data Warehouse, IDW, the central

data warehouse that links common data elements from each of the

Department’s corporate business systems.

IDW serves as a knowledge bank of information about programs

and projects including budget execution, accumulated costs, performance achieved and critical milestones met. As a key component

of the iManage program, the Department relies heavily on IDW for

executive management and operational reporting, as well as for external requests for data.

While our work is not done, I think it is important to recognize

our accomplishments in deploying and integrating these systems

and tools. For example, one of the key outcomes of implementing

the STARS Accounting System has been that the Department has

received a clean audit opinion since fiscal year 2007 based on the

consolidated financial statements generated by STARS.

Also, since 2008 when STRIPES, our procurement system, first

came online, the Department had made 29,000 separate grant

awards totaling $40 billion, including significant funding under the

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. During that same time,

the Department has also made 67,000 contract actions worth a

total of $47 billion.

The real test of these systems came in implementing the Recovery Act, providing transparency of our performance through recovery.gov. We helped over 4,500 Recovery Act recipients submit quality and accurate information into FederalReporting.gov for public

viewing. The information was also cross-checked internally using

our business intelligence tools to identify and address any data

quality issues.
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The advantage of having STRIPES fully deployed has been the

increased speed and accuracy of procurement as well as increased

vendor participation. By enhancing the integration and interoperability of our acquisition and financial systems, workload performed by the financial personnel was reduced and in some cases,

eliminated.

In addition to these accomplishments, I would like to highlight

our integration with governmentwide corporate systems. While an

ongoing effort, it is important to note that the Department’s deployment of iManage has taken the need for governmentwide systems’

interoperability into account.

STARS, our accounting system, is fully integrated with governmentwide financial reporting systems, FACTS I and FACTS II operated by the Department of the Treasury. Our Funds Distribution

System uploads information directly to the Office of Management

and Budget’s MAX system to expedite apportionments. STRIPES

interfaces with governmentwide procurement systems, including

Grants.gov, FedConnect, Federal Business Opportunities and

USASpending.gov.

As I have mentioned, the Department’s efforts to improve its financial systems is unfinished business and challenges associated

with implementing systems, business processes and organizational

changes remain. With each successive system upgrade or integration effort, we learn from our experience and apply the lessons we

have learned in a rigorous and systematic way to increase the likely success of what we do.

To address these challenges, the Department is working to continue to improve the capability, integration and transparency of our

systems within the constraints of the Department’s resources.

iManage 2.0, the second generation of the program now being deployed, is shifting much of its focus from collecting and storing data

to analytical and other value-added functionality to support the Department’s mission.

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Connolly and members of the

subcommittee, I am pleased to be here today representing the Department of Energy and I am pleased to answer any questions that

you may have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Barwell follows:]
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Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you, Mr. Barwell.

Mr. Willemssen, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.

STATEMENT OF JOEL WILLEMSSEN

Mr. WILLEMSSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member

Connolly and Congressmen. Thank you for inviting us to testify

today.

As requested, I will briefly summarize our statement on two

OMB Web sites, the IT Dashboard and USASpending.

OMB’s IT Dashboard displays detailed information on about 800

major Federal IT investments, including assessments of actual performance against cost and schedule targets. For example, as of

March 2011, the Dashboard had slightly over 300 major investments in need of attention. Specifically, 272 investments representing $17.7 billion in fiscal year 2011 spending were rated as

yellow and needing attention, and 39 at about 2 billion were rated

as red with significant concerns.

Looking at the site yesterday, we note that since March, the dollar figures for yellow ratings decreased by about $4 billion, but the

red ratings, meaning significant concerns, nearly doubled from 2

billion to 3.8 billion.

As noted by the Federal CIO, the Dashboard has greatly improved transparency of IT investment performance. However, our

reviews have also found that the data on the Dashboard are not

always accurate. Specifically, in reviews of selected investments

from 10 agencies, the Dashboard ratings were not always consistent with agency performance data.

To address these issues, we made recommendations to the agencies to comply with OMB’s guidance to standardize activity reporting, to provide complete and accurate data to the Dashboard on a

monthly basis, and to ensure that CIO ratings disclose issues that

could undermine the accuracy of investment data. We also made

several recommendations for improvements to OMB.

Drawing on the information provided by the Dashboard, OMB

has initiated efforts to improve the management of IT investments

needing attention. According to OMB, these efforts have enabled

the government to improve or terminate IT projects experiencing

problems and along with other OMB reviews, have resulted in a $3

billion reduction in life cycle costs.

Our recent and ongoing work has identified other opportunities

for using the Dashboard to increase efficiencies and savings. For

example, the Dashboard showed that as of yesterday, Federal agencies were investing in hundreds of systems with similar functions

such as over 600 human resource management systems costing an

estimated $2.45 billion for fiscal year 2011 and almost 100 public

affairs systems at about $226 million for FY–11.

While the Dashboard focuses on IT investments, OMB has another reporting mechanism, USASpending.gov, that provides detailed information on Federal awards such as contracts, loans and

grants. Last year, we reported on this Web site. Among our findings was that in a random sample of 100 awards, numerous inconsistencies existed between USASpending and the records provided

by the awarding agencies.
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Each of the 100 awards had at least one required data field that

was blank or inconsistent with agency records. These errors could

be attributed in part to a lack of specific OMB guidance on how

agencies should fill in certain fields and how they should validate

their data submissions. Accordingly, we recommended that OMB

include all required data on the site and share complete reporting

and clarify verification guidance.

OMB subsequently issued guidance to improve the quality of the

data, although we have not subsequently gone in and tested a sample of that data against underlying agency records.

That concludes the summary of my statement and I look forward

to your questions.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Willemssen follows:]
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Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you.

And with that, I recognize myself for 5 minutes to begin.

Let me talk through several issues here.

Mr. Kundra, let me start off and I am going to run through your

list of 10 is a great list and it is a good thing to be able to pass

on to the person that’s after you. Let me just mention a couple of

things on it.

Six and seven on that validating data upfront and releasing data

in real time seem to be conflicting at times. When you have to validate data, obviously that slows the process down and you’ve got to

get it out in real time, and so that seems a challenge.

You and I spoke before about my priorities on data from the Federal Government and that is that the American people get a chance

to see it as fast as possible and as accurate as possible. That puts

six and seven right there together on your list. Whether that be

USASpending, whether that be Grants.gov, whatever it may be,

Data.gov, they get a chance to see the information, see it as complete as they can, can research it, cross it, everything else they

need to be able to do.

The second aspect of our data, to me, that is very important is

for the decisionmakers, whether they be in the agency or legislators, whoever it may be, that’s going to make a decision, it has to

be accurate and complete. How do we accomplish six and seven? Do

you have ideas you can pass on and say where does the priority

land between validating data upfront and releasing data in real

time?

Mr. KUNDRA. Absolutely, when I talk about validating data upfront, what I mean by that is the example I used as far as congressional districts were concerned, which is that there is no need for

people to go in and enter that information if they can just do a drop

down. It is how you would actually architect and engineer systems.

But, the preferred path would be that people don’t actually have

to enter data if that data is available in another source. This is a

challenge that I faced when I used to work in the Commonwealth

of Virginia for the Governor and we were building a small Women

and Minority Dashboard. Part of it was that everybody was asking

agencies for the data, and I asked a very simple question, can’t we

just go to the credit card companies and actually get the data directly from them. We know that data is being generated and credit

card data is actually stored there, why do we have to actually ask

people to self report.

That not only reduced the burden but it actually also allowed us

to get real data. It wasn’t people saying this is what I did, but it’s

data that we were getting directly from the very data bases that

stored it. So, with six where we are talking about the validation

upfront, what that allows you to do is make sure that people don’t

even have an option. In life, a lot of it is about defaults, so if the

defaults are very complicated, you are actually going to end up

with a degree of error that’s going to be very high.

Second, in terms of real time, we should actually try to get machine-to-machine interactions where possible. So, in a credit card

case, imagine if we had to ask everybody for every credit card

transaction to go and to enter it on some centralized system. It
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would be burdensome, you would spend more money actually entering that data than you would generating value out of that data.

Mr. LANKFORD. We had the same issue and the agencies were

terrific to be able to respond to our requests for additional information on processes and systems and what’s in place and I do want

to thank all the agencies because I’m sure that was very time consuming.

One of the things that came out was that there was a lot of manual input still of data. How do we get through that because that’s

where we get a lot of inaccuracies, that’s where it takes a month

to be able to get information. In this current time, especially with

the budget issues, we’re dealing with accurate, immediate data is

very important that we can get and then generally reducing the

number of mistakes. How do we start working through that process

so there is fewer manual input and more automatic like what

you’re mentioning?

Mr. KUNDRA. So, I think part of what the President has done

with the Executive order that sets up the Government Accountability and Transparency Board is actually going to be to do a total

reset in terms of how the government is operating when it comes

to transparency. What I mean by that is there is a simple question

before us which is that if the Treasury Department is actually writing most of the checks and literally before a check is issued, the

Treasury Department can have an Internet payment portal that allows you to get that data right from where the checks are being

issued. On the manual side, that is a more complicated issue and

what I mean by that is if you look at contracts, for example, there

are certain agencies when you look at the pre-award phase, where

they are writing the RFP and then they put the RFP on the street,

then they make an award and then thy’ve got to manage that contract. Agencies at a different or a very different evolutionary cycle

when it comes to some of their processes are end-to-end paper, or

some of them actually go from paper they go to digital and others

are all end-to-end electronic.

So, the way we have to attack this problem is two pronged. One

is go to the golden source which would be creating some type of

Internet payment portal so the default is just digital. We know

somebody is writing the check, why aren’t we just going to them?

Why are we asking the recipient to fill in all this paperwork when

the government is the one that’s issuing the check? Second would

be to modernize on the back end some of these outdated systems

that are paper-based.

Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you.

And with that, I am going to pass on 5 minutes to Mr. Connolly.

Mr. CONNOLLY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And of course votes have now been called.

Mr. LANKFORD. I’m going to make a quick comment and not take

up your time. We will go through the votes being called. It should

take about 20 minutes for this first series of votes. I want to make

sure we get through all three of us that are here to be able to do

that and then we’ll probably buzz back off and we’ll try to evaluate

from there.

Mr. CONNOLLY. It was my understanding Mr. Chairman that

there will only be one series of votes.
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Mr. LANKFORD. Right, but the first one is a 15 minute vote, so

we will make sure all three of us get our questions in.

Mr. CONNOLLY. Well, I won’t be back, so perhaps you will indulge

me.

Mr. LANKFORD. Is that a promise?

Mr. CONNOLLY. I am going to leave you guessing, at any rate, but

thank you.

And, I am going to urge you to please to make concise answers

because there is an issue of time.

One of the things Mr. Willemssen, you focused on and so have

you about transparency and accountability and how the IT Dashboard has really helped. And I assume, from your point of view, all

of your point of view, it’s unprecedented in terms of transparency

and accountability in the Federal Government, would you agree?

[Chorus of agreement.]

Mr. CONNOLLY. I make that point because we sometimes on this

committee, not the subcommittee, but on the committee, the full

committee, we hear statements about how the lack of transparency

by the Obama administration but as a matter of fact, frankly, this

tool is unprecedented and there is lots of transparency and accountability.

Now, I headed up a very large government for 5 years and one

of the concerns I always had about IT investments was absolutely

transparency and accountability are very important from a public

policy point of view and how we serve the public, but we have to

have metrics to go beyond that. What about productivity improvement?

And so my question to especially Mr. Kundra and Mr.

Willemssen is how have we used these tools to improve the efficiency of delivery of services? Are we in fact achieving productivity

gains in the public sector with these massive investments in IT and

shouldn’t we, if we don’t?

Mr. WILLEMSSEN. I would say from an efficiency perspective, one

of the great benefits of the Dashboard is the fact that it can identify governmentwide investments in similar functions so that you

can potentially look for duplication that could potentially be eliminated and save money.

Mr. CONNOLLY. But are we doing it?

Mr. WILLEMSSEN. The administration is in the process of doing

that. It is a bit of a carryover from the prior administration’s line

of business effort to try to look at investments across agencies and

instead of agencies rebuilding and reinventing the wheel, trying to

reuse consistent with one of Vivek’s 10 points, trying to reuse

what’s already out there rather than rebuild and reinvest and a lot

more money being spent to do something that is already working

well.

I will let Vivek speak for himself. I think they are in the process

of doing that. We would like to see a litte bit more.

Mr. CONNOLLY. Vivek. I mean Mr. Kundra.

Mr. KUNDRA. We see major results. For example, through these

tools, we have been able to identify the fact that we went from 432

data centers to 2,000-plus data centers in a decade, and we’re

cracking down on those data centers, shutting down 800. We have
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already shut down 67 data centers and are on track to shut down

137.

But in terms of productivity, we have also seen as a result of

this, we were able to see where we had inefficient technology such

as collaboration. So GSA, for example, migrated 17,000 employees

to a system and so did USDA, saving not only $42 million but

using modern technologies to accelerate business processes. And

the VA has some really good examples when it comes to veterans

benefits and cutting down the time it takes, actually numbers of

days, and I’ll let Roger speak to that, through these investments

as far as when we are issuing those benefits.

Mr. CONNOLLY. Before Roger does, you mentioned the data centers and how they exploded sort of without rhyme or reason, and

you have called for a 40 percent reduction by 2015. I have introduced a bill, the Federal Cost Reduction Act, to make that statutory, just in case other people go away, and would double that goal

over the next 5 year period. Is that a piece of legislation you think

would be helpful in this regard?

Mr. KUNDRA. The data center provisions, absolutely, especially if

we look at the ultimate vision, from my perspective, is that we

would end up as a nation basically building three digital Ft.

Knox’s, three major data centers as we think about it. There is no

reason to have over 2,000 data centers across the Federal Government.

Mr. CONNOLLY. Mr. Chairman, I am going to ask if you would

be willing to indulge me by giving me one extra minute because I

am not coming back.

Mr. LANKFORD. Without objection.

Mr. CONNOLLY. I thank my colleagues.

Thank you and Mr. Chairman, I hope you will join us in that legislative effort because I think it is a good bipartisan piece of legislation that could actually save us some money and codify what Mr.

Kundra has so ably begun.

Mr. Baker, I didn’t want to cut you off, you wanted to talk about

the Veterans Administration experience?

Mr. BAKER. I would just point out one thing with the system we

built for the new GI bill, if you recall that’s putting now hundreds

of thousands of veterans into college, billions of dollars. The new

system that we introduced and that changed the processing time

for the main claim when veterans go into college from 42 minutes

to 7 minutes. That reduction was hundreds of head count in processing those claims, and clearly you can equate the reduction in the

head count needed to the number of people, I’m sorry the dollars

needed to process those claims.

Mr. CONNOLLY. Thank you. I think I have with your indulgence,

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Kundra, you talked about a new app economy.

What did you refer, what did you mean by that reference?

Mr. KUNDRA. What I mean by the new app economy is that the

390,000 plus datasets that are out there in the public domain now

will allow us to tap into the ingenuity of the American people in

ways that we haven’t before. We actually worked with Congress on

the America Competes Act which allows every agency now to issue

challenges up to $50 million. So the old path of acquiring tech-
59

nology was only going through a grants process or through a long,

drawn out procurement process.

Now an agency can go out there and say for 5 million or 10 million, here is a problem that we are trying to solve and we’re looking

for applications rather than RFPs. Already we have seen, for example, is that developers have taken data that comes out of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency and created apps that allow you

to track what is going on within your specific location.

And we have also seen in terms of apps apps that have been

built that allow you to see based on your iPhone, you can scan a

product and see whether it has been recalled or not to apps that

allow you see on a real time basis what the closest train station

is sent to you and when trains are coming in both directions to

stimulus funding and where it is being spent.

So huge, huge improvements in terms of innovative apps that are

being created. Hundreds of these have already been built.

Mr. CONNOLLY. Thank you and thank you, Mr. Chairman, for

your courtesy, and you, Mr. Farenthold, I appreciate it.

Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you.

Mr. Farenthold, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. FARENTHOLD. Thank you very much. I;m going to be quick.

We actually have nine votes it looks like here, so it may be a while

before we are able to get back.

Mr. Kundra, my question to you is, as we are starting to gather

all of this data and strive toward real time, what sort of effort is

being taken into data analysis to detect waste, fraud and abuse

and to find for instance on a list of payees, the outliers?

Mr. KUNDRA. So, one of the lessons learned through the Recovery

Act implementation was to actually use these forensic technologies

and business intelligence platforms. So there was an entity called

Pelletier that mined a lot of data and allowed us to see how we

could slice and dice and cube through terabytes and petabytes of

data. We are looking at the same technologies and applying them

now to health care and other domains across the Federal Government, and the Recovery Operations Center is actually the model

that is being scaled.

Mr. FARENTHOLD. Thank you very much and Mr. Baker, we do

a lot of case work with the Veterans Administration in the district

office and a constant complaint is the length of time some of this

stuff takes to process. I notice you had one example of how you are

getting some processes down to the minutes. That isn’t true

throughout the agency. I’m hearing reports of years from someone

coming out of DOD before they actually get into your data base

where you all aren’t getting the data or they are not being able to

get their exams quick enough. What is being done to address those

problems?

Mr. BAKER. Thank you Congressman, we have, and are working

a major investment in the IT side to turn that entire paper-bound

process for benefits administration at the VA into a paperless process that will then begin to allow us to really work on the business

processes there. We want to do the same thing with compensation

and pension benefits which is exactly what you are talking to, that

we did with education benefits which is fully automate them, and
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take those processes and get a sixfold improvement on the processing time for those.

Mr. FARENTHOLD. Do you have a timeframe on getting something

like that implemented?

Mr. BAKER. Yes, we will implement in 2012. We have been on the

path of that implementation for about 18 months at this point. Full

implementation of it will occur during 2012.

Mr. FARENTHOLD. Alright that’s basically all I’ve got. I will yield

back the remainder of my time.

Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you. Mr. Barwell, let me ask you a quick

question. Not to mention the great names for your system, the

STARS and the STRIPES system, but integrating that with Treasury and with OMB, is that a reproducible system that can be done

in other agencies? How long did it take to process that and how is

that working?

Mr. BARWELL. The FACTS I and FACTS II systems have been

in operation for some time now, I am not sure of the exact date

when this came in, but the procedures for uploading financial information into FACTS I and FACTS II are well established and the

process is pretty mature. I think it is applied consistently across

the government too.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Kundra, are all other agencies experiencing

that same type of system where it’s immediately put into their system and then it’s populated out as well and it’s that integrated and

seamless or are there other agencies that are not experiencing that

same kind of success?

Mr. KUNDRA. Now I wish that was the case across the entire

Federal Government but given that different agencies have either

successfully implemented whether it’s financial systems or contracting systems versus others who frankly, we’ve have had to terminate those systems because after years and years of attempting,

we continue to throw in millions of dollars and nothing was really

happening.

Part of what we are looking at is making sure that across the

entire Federal Government, that we demand that within a 6-month

period, there be meaningful functionality if an IT project is started.

The Department of Defense, for example, spent 12 years and $1 billion on an integrated human resource system that had to be terminated because it didn’t operate and we kept throwing good money

after bad money.

Some of these departments don’t have the capacity frankly to

execute or deliver, so the leapfrog for us is actually going to be literally moving to Cloud solutions. So the challenge before the private sector is to actually help us stand up Cloud-based systems so

that on day one, we can start using them rather than having to

wait 12 years before we can use them.

Mr. LANKFORD. Obviously that is unacceptable in a technology

environment to wait 12 years to be able to integrate that. That is

a lot of different versions and languages and everything else you

are going to work through in that process.

Data.gov and USASpending.gov are some great ideas. They have

good information that’s being loaded onto them. Obviously, we need

much faster information, we need to make sure that information is

accurate. Let me just ask a quick question about Data.gov. What
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is your goal for the actual data that’s on there? Because the variety

of data in the different agencies is plentiful. Some of them have

quality data, some of them have very old data, some of them have

data that no one’s going to look for but there is other data they

would love to see.

The basics for me is I think everyone should be able to go to not

only an agency Web site but also a central location and see how

many different departments, how many people work in that department, what is the budget of that department, what are they accomplishing, what are the documents that can come out of that to be

able to show just the basics. If they see a name that’s a bureau,

they should be able to search for that, find it, get the data, find

out more about it, rather than it is hidden out there somewhere

and you can’t even discover what it is. Your goal for Data.gov?

Mr. KUNDRA. Sure, so let me lift up in terms of a single entry

for all Americans is actually USA.gov. That platform should become the single platform across the entire U.S. Government.

Today, what we realized is a lot of thugs who come onto USA.gov

they are actually looking for driver’s licenses or passports. And so

these are State services or they are Federal services, and the idea

is that for an average American person they shouldn’t have to navigate the Federal bureaucracy to figure out what service they want.

They should be able to just go on USA.gov, search, which is what

they can do today and find that information.

The goal for Data.gov, the dream there is that we want to create

this platform which we have, with 390,000 data sets, but it should

be millions of data sets.

Mr. LANKFORD. Right, because much of that data is very old that

is on there.

Mr. KUNDRA. Some of it is real like the FAA data. In other cases,

it is old data from Medicare/Medicaid, but we believe there is a billion dollar opportunity for entrepreneurs to create applications and

build a data curation layer. I will give you one example.

There is a site called Hospitalcompare.gov. Most people don’t

even know what that site is and never really visited it. As soon as

we took that data and democratized it, Bing decided to take that

data and said, it is interesting, this is a very rich data set. It actually has the name of hospitals, how patients rate it, the outcome

based on the surgeries or operations.

So now what happens if you go to Bing.com and do a search for

Georgetown Hospital or George Washington Hospital, right on that

search box it will show you what do patients think of Georgetown

Hospital, what do they think in terms of outcomes and ratings.

That is the vision, which is to democratize that data, allow the private sector to build innovative applications and generate new jobs.

Mr. LANKFORD. Which, by the way, we would completely concur

with that. That is the twofold that I was talking about before, the

American people being able to see it, research it, pull it down and

democratize the data and then decisionmakers be able to get very

accurate, fast information and know it is reliable.

I do appreciate your time. I’m going to do this considering the

votes are going to take a little over an hour so it looks like I’m

going to go ahead and dismiss this hearing and let you all be able

to get back to your lives. Your written testimony will go in the per-
62

manent record. Obviouisly, there were multiple Members that

couldn’t make it based on a hearing that just came and just finished up but I don’t want to be able to keep you all waiting that

long period of time.

If we have additional questions, do you mind if we write you a

quick question and be able to follow up on that? Let the record

show everyone answered in the affirmative. I do appreciate that

and we will try to follow up quickly if we have additional questions.

With that, this meeting is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 2:33 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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