U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001

90–918 PDF 2015

S. Hrg. 113–534 

A MORE EFFICIENT AND EFFECTIVE GOVERNMENT: 

EXAMINING FEDERAL IT INITIATIVES AND THE 

IT WORKFORCE 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE EFFICIENCY AND 

EFFECTIVENESS OF FEDERAL PROGRAMS AND THE 

FEDERAL WORKFORCE 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOMELAND SECURITY AND 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

JUNE 10, 2014 

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

Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security 

and Governmental Affairs 

( 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware Chairman 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

JON TESTER, Montana 

MARK BEGICH, Alaska 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

HEIDI HEITKAMP, North Dakota 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona 

RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin 

ROB PORTMAN, Ohio 

RAND PAUL, Kentucky 

MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming 

KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire 

GABRIELLE A. BATKIN, Staff Director 

JOHN P. KILVINGTON, Deputy Staff Director 

KEITH B. ASHDOWN, Minority Staff Director 

LAURA W. KILBRIDE, Chief Clerk 

LAUREN M. CORCORAN, Hearing Clerk 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE EFFICIENCY AND EFFECTIVENESS OF 

FEDERAL PROGRAMS AND THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE 

JON TESTER, Montana, Chairman 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

MARK BEGICH, Alaska 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

HEIDI HEITKAMP, North Dakota 

ROB PORTMAN, Ohio 

RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin 

RAND PAUL, Kentucky 

MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming 

TONY MCCLAIN, Majority Staff Director 

BRENT BOMBACH, Minority Staff Director 

KELSEY STROUD, Chief Clerk 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Opening statement: Page 

Senator Tester .................................................................................................. 1 

Senator Portman .............................................................................................. 12 

WITNESSES 

TUESDAY, JUNE 10, 2014 

Luke J. McCormack, Chief Information Officer, U.S. Department of Homeland 

Security ................................................................................................................. 4 

Stephen W. Warren, Executive in Charge of Information and Technology, 

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs ................................................................. 6 

Donna K. Seymour, Chief Information Officer, U.S. Office of Personnel Management ................................................................................................................. 7 

David A. Powner, Director, Information Technology Management Issues, U.S. 

Government Accountability Office ...................................................................... 9 

Christopher Miller, Program Executive Officer, DOD Healthcare Management 

System, U.S. Department of Defense ................................................................. 10 

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

McCormack, Luke J.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 4 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 37 

Miller, Christopher: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 10 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 77 

Powner, David A.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 9 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 55 

Seymour, Donna K.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 7 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 50 

Warren, Stephen W.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 6 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 44 

APPENDIX 

Responses to post-hearing questions for the Record: 

Mr. McCormack ................................................................................................ 83 

Mr. Warren ....................................................................................................... 90 

Ms. Seymour ..................................................................................................... 104 

Mr. Miller .......................................................................................................... 111 

(1) 

A MORE EFFICIENT AND EFFECTIVE 

GOVERNMENT: EXAMINING FEDERAL IT 

INITIATIVES AND THE IT WORKFORCE 

TUESDAY, JUNE 10, 2014 

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE EFFICIENCY AND EFFECTIVENESS OF

FEDERAL PROGRAMS AND THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE, 

OF THE COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS,

Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 3:26 p.m., in room 

342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Jon Tester, Chairman of 

the Subcommittee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Tester, Baldwin and Portman. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR TESTER 

Senator TESTER. Good afternoon. I want to call to order this 

hearing of the Subcommittee on the Efficiency and Effectiveness of 

Federal Programs and the Federal Workforce. 

Today’s hearing is titled ‘‘A More Efficient and Effective Government: Examining Federal Information Technology Initiatives and 

the IT Workforce.’’ 

We have assembled a terrific panel of witnesses, and I want to 

thank you all for joining us here today and sharing your perspectives on these important issues. 

The Federal Government’s dependence on Information Technology (IT) infrastructure has been critical to its daily operation for 

over three decades and will only increase over time. While the Federal Government takes steps to modernize its computer system and 

the manner in which it collects, stores and disseminates data, it 

has certainly been a bumpy road. And, as we proceed further down 

that road, it is critical that we move forward in a responsible, costeffective manner. 

A number of recent events have given credence to those who suggest that the Federal IT system is broken, and given that the Federal IT portfolio is more than $80 billion, we have plenty of reasons 

to be concerned and plenty of reasons to pay close attention to 

what is going on. 

We are talking about the rollout of healthcare.gov and countless 

other IT projects that have been lucrative for contractors but not 

worth the taxpayers’ expense. 

We are talking about the deployment of a computer scheduling 

system incapable of adequately monitoring and coordinating the 
2 

process through which veterans are connected to timely care that 

they have earned and, seemingly, incapable of preventing the employees from gaming the system and producing artificially short 

wait times. 

And, in the wake of unprecedented data collection efforts, we are 

talking about inadequate safeguard and privacy protections for the 

responsible storage and usage of America’s personal information. 

And we are also talking about an area of government in which 

we are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit and hire the best 

candidates in the field of information technology. 

But the point of today is not to simply highlight the Federal IT 

shortcomings. It is to highlight the lessons learned, how they have 

translated into fundamental reforms and how they help provide the 

blueprint to move forward. 

At a May hearing held by this Committee, we learned about how 

the Office of Management and Budget (OMB’s) PortfolioStat Initiative, which requires agencies to conduct annual review of their IT 

investments, has helped agencies identify duplicative spending and, 

with improved implementation, could result in billions in savings. 

We are also talking about positive efforts by the Veterans Affairs 

(VA), who was the only agency in a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found to have defined functionality and 

required delivery of their projects’ functionality within 6 months. 

Today’s hearing seeks to examine the process through which 

major Federal IT projects are developed and coordinated governmentwide, to what extent is there agency collaboration and costsharing, and to what extent are there IT investments monitored or 

coordinated governmentwide. 

For instance, if the VA is looking to implement additional privacy 

protections into the management of its data base of veterans’ personal information, is there a process in place for the VA to coordinate or buildupon efforts by agencies like Social Security Administration (SSA) or Office of Personnel Management (OPM), who have 

addressed similar needs. 

And what are the fundamental obstacles that prevent agencies, 

like the Department of Defense (DOD) and the VA, from jointly developing and deploying an integrated electronic health record 

(EHR) system? 

Today, we hope to answer these questions and others, and to 

identify ways to improve the process, reduce waste and increase opportunities for collaboration and cost-sharing. 

The hearing also seeks to examine the state of the Federal IT 

workforce and the qualifications and capacity of our Federal IT 

workforce. 

To what extent are we contracting out for major IT initiatives, 

and is that driven by our decreasing capacity for carrying them out 

internally? 

Today, we will discuss these issues and many more, and I look 

forward to the discussion. 

I want to, once again, thank everybody for being here today. I appreciate your presence here today. 

Ranking Member Portman is not here as of yet. We just came off 

a series of votes on the floor. 

Senator Baldwin, do you have an opening statement? 
3 

Senator BALDWIN. Not at this time. I will wait until questions. 

Senator TESTER. And, now, we will begin the introductions? 

First, I will make the introductions, and then we will go to your 

testimony at which point your entire written testimony will be a 

part of the record. Try to keep your verbal comments to about 5 

minutes. That allows Senator Baldwin, Senator Portman when he 

gets here and I, to ask more questions. 

First, we have Luke McCormack. Luke is the Chief Information 

Officer (CIO) at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). He 

oversees DHS continuing efforts to implement IT enhancements 

and strengthen IT security. 

He previously served at the Department of Justice (DOJ), where 

he provided strategic direction, management services, oversight on 

cross-component information technology efforts and IT infrastructure services. 

He also served in a variety of positions at DHS, including CIO 

for U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and for 

Customs and Border Protection (CBP). 

It is good to see you again today, Luke. I know it is your first 

time testifying, but I think it will be so enjoyable you will be clamoring to come back again. [Laughter.] 

Stephen Warren is the Executive in Charge of Information and 

Technology at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Mr. Warren 

joined the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2007 and currently 

oversees the day-to-day activities of the VA’s $3.7 billion IT budget 

in addition to over 8,000 IT employees. 

Mr. Warren also served as CIO for the Federal Trade Commission and as CIO for the Office of Environmental Management at 

the Department of Energy. 

It is good to have you here today, Stephen. 

And then we have Donna Seymour. Donna is the new Chief Information Officer at the Office of Personnel Management. She is responsible for IT and technology solutions for OPM and previously 

served as the Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the 

Office of Warrior Care Policy. 

She also served as Principal Director for Civilian Personnel Policy and has more than 34 years of Federal service. 

Donna, thank you for coming here today, and it is good to have 

you, too. 

David Powner is the Director of IT Management Issues at the 

U.S. Government Accountability Office. He is responsible for a 

large portion of the GAO’s IT work that focuses on systems development and acquisition, IT governance and IT reform initiatives. 

Previously, in the private sector, David served in executive level 

positions in the telecommunications industry, including overseeing 

IT and financial internal audits and software development associated with digital subscriber lines. 

David has been a frequent witness before Congress, having testified more than 70 times in the last several years. 

Thank you for coming today. It is good to have you here, David. 

And, finally, Christopher Miller is the Program Executive Officer 

in charge of the DOD’s Healthcare Management System. He is responsible for the modernization of DOD’s clinical management sys-
4 

1The prepared statement of Mr. McCormack appears in the Appendix on page 37. 

tems, including the sharing of electronic health data between the 

Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs. 

Christopher previously served as Executive Director of the Navy 

Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Atlantic, managing engineering and business operations for a workforce of more than 4,000 

Federal, civilian and military employees, and over 10,000 industry 

partners. 

Thank you for being here, Christopher. 

And thank you all for taking the time to be here. 

It is a custom to swear in all the witnesses who appear before 

this Subcommittee. So, if you do not mind, I would ask you all to 

please stand, raise your right hand, and if you agree with what I 

am about to say, you can answer in the affirmative; if you do not, 

you can answer in the negative. 

Do you swear that the testimony you will give before this Subcommittee will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the 

truth; so help you, God? 

Mr. MCCORMACK. I do. 

Mr. WARREN. I do. 

Ms. SEYMOUR. I do. 

Mr. POWNER. I do. 

Mr. MILLER. I do. 

Senator TESTER. Let the record reflect that all the witnesses answered in the affirmative. 

So each of you will have, once again, 5 minutes for your oral 

statements. Please summarize your statements as much as possible. There will be a clock in front, and you can see that so we 

can have some time for questions. 

The record for this will be open until June 25, and your complete 

written testimony will be a part of that record. 

So, with that, Mr. McCormack, you can start. 

TESTIMONY OF LUKE J. MCCORMACK,1 CHIEF INFORMATION 

OFFICER, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY 

Mr. MCCORMACK. Chairman Tester, Senator Baldwin, good afternoon. 

Today is indeed my first appearance before this Committee, and 

I thank you for the opportunity to speak to you about information 

technology at DHS. 

I have more than 25 years of Federal IT experience, both within 

and outside of DHS, as well as private sector experience. 

I have oversight responsibility for more than 90 major IT programs across 7 large operational components and the headquarters. 

I have served as DHS’s CIO for less than 6 months. Yet, I can 

say with conviction that DHS has made great strides toward the 

management of IT. 

I will describe what DHS is doing as an enterprise to support delivery of mission capabilities in three areas: how we govern our infrastructure in DHS and across components, the efficiencies we can 

realize through appropriate and responsible enterprisewide efforts, 

and the importance of recruiting, training and retaining strong IT 

professionals. 
5 

To best govern our infrastructure, we have worked with CIOs 

across our components to establish a robust, tiered governance 

model that provides active oversight and ensures programs have 

the key executive stakeholders engaged to ensure success. At the 

top of this governance structure is the Department’s Acquisition 

Review Board. The board has ultimate oversight over all large programs—those with a life cycle cost of $300 million or more. 

As an interim measure, between board meetings, executive steering committees, comprised of key executives, meet to ensure programs stay on track or, in some cases, get back on track. 

There is also an IT acquisition review process which confirms 

that acquisitions comply with security, accessibility and enterprise 

architecture requirements. The review process also ensures that acquisitions align with DHS’s strategic direction on enterprise data 

centers, licenses and services. The DHS CIO approves every IT acquisition over $2.5 million. 

Since the implementation of the tiered governance model, approximately one-third of DHS’s acquisition programs have improved from moderate to low risk, and half have improved from 

high risk to moderate risk. 

To strengthen our stewardship, we are working to streamline 

processes, address duplication of effort and integrate systems 

through the use of DHS enterprise architecture. 

To augment this work, we are establishing portfolio governance 

boards in which DHS senior executives can drive decisions to effect 

better mission and business outcomes. 

We are achieving tremendous progress in integrating IT infrastructure, establishing enterprise services and leveraging our size 

for purchasing power. For example, we estimate our recently completed network consolidation will result in an average cost savings 

of 12 percent of the operations and maintenance. 

We negotiated more than a dozen enterprise license agreements 

with major software and hardware vendors, resulting in more than 

$125 million in cost avoidance. 

We have consolidated 18 legacy data centers into 2 state-of-theart enterprise data centers, and we migrated over 136,000 DHS 

employees to our e-mail service cloud offering and lowered our average mailbox cost from the industry benchmark average of $24 per 

month to a little over $8 per month. 

Managing our workforce is the final issue I will address. Attracting, training and retaining quality DHS IT professionals are critically important to our long-term success. Over the past few years, 

we have been developing and implementing a strategy that outlines 

IT career paths and enables us to formally address how new workers can progress along a technical or managerial track. The Department continues to explore opportunities and collaborate on ways to 

create a community of high-performing IT professionals. 

That concludes my remarks. I appreciate your time and attention. 

I look forward to addressing your questions and concerns as well 

as the opportunity to work with you to ensure that DHS IT remains strong, responsive and secure. 

Senator TESTER. Thank you, Luke. We also look forward to the 

opportunity to work with you. 
6 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Warren appears in the Appendix on page 44. 

Stephen, you are up. 

TESTIMONY OF STEPHEN W. WARREN,1 EXECUTIVE IN 

CHARGE OF INFORMATION AND TECHNOLOGY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS 

Mr. WARREN. Chairman Tester, Ranking Member Portman, Senator Baldwin, thank you for the opportunity to speak today about 

the effectiveness and efficiency of IT programs at the Department 

of Veterans Affairs. 

Before I begin, I would first like to recognize the Chairman for 

his strong and ongoing support for improving access to care 

through your support of multiple telehealth initiatives at the VA. 

In addition, your active involvement resulted in Ft. Harrison, Montana being the first VA medical center to convert to our phone services platform. 

Thank you again, sir. 

I presently serve as VA’s Chief Information Officer managing 

VA’s consolidated IT organization, one of the largest consolidated 

IT organizations in the world. As such, it is essential for VA to deliver IT solutions that work for our enterprise, which encompasses 

over 600,000 system users, over a million network devices in our 

150 hospitals, 820 community-based outpatient clinics (CBOCs), 

300 vet centers, 131 national cemeteries, 56 Benefits Administration Regional Offices and multiple administration centers. 

VA’s most significant success in creating efficiency is in the area 

of IT product delivery. For the fourth year in a row, our on-time 

delivery rate for IT projects tops 80 percent. We used to deliver at 

30 percent of the projects we started. The industry rate is approximately 56 percent. 

VA’s efforts to improve product delivery was primarily driven by 

our implementation of our Product Management Accountability 

System (PMAS). PMAS is the disciplined approach VA uses to ensure the customer, project team, vendors, leadership and all stakeholders focus on a single, compelling mission—on-time delivery of 

IT capability into production. 

PMAS mandates the agile best practice of delivering product capability in increments of 6 months or less. We have not only met 

but exceeded this goal. Our products now average 4.2 months from 

start to delivery. 

We also had to align our workforce to the agile policies we set 

in place, ensuring we had the right staff on the right projects at 

the right time, and then changing the way we manage our human 

resources. And we accomplished this by moving to a competencybased model in October 2010. Our competency model established 

teams of trained, ready resources organized around specific skill 

sets that can be allocated to prioritize projects when needed. 

The next important stage in our efforts is to move to DevOps. 

DevOps is an industry-leading best practice in which project development and IT operations organization barriers are removed to ensure more seamless delivery and support of products. This is already paying dividends as we have seen improvements in our re-
7 

1The prepared statement of Ms. Seymour appears in the Appendix on page 50. 

lease capabilities by adopting repeatable, reliable, automated processes. 

Our first major project utilizing these industry best practices was 

focused on automating the delivery of the post-9/11 education benefits to service members returning home from service. In 18 months, 

we delivered 12 releases and went from a paper process to an endto-end automated system that has delivered over $6 billion in education benefits. 

We also are applying the same concepts to the disability benefits 

processing. Disability claims processing has a long history of reviewing paper files with little or no investments in IT. In 2010, we 

began transforming this decades-old, manual, paper claims approach into a state-of-the-art electronic process with 6 major and 

19 minor releases in the past year. The result has been a reduction 

in the disability claims backlog by 44 percent in the last year. 

If we had waited for a complete processing system to be developed and deployed, our veterans would still be waiting. Delivering 

functionality to claims processors in manageable increments allowed us to build on solutions that worked and adjust the solutions 

that did not. 

In conclusion, our ultimate goal is to ensure IT investments result in successful delivery of capabilities that serve veterans. This 

transformation took dedication and commitment, and we continue 

to evolve and improve our methodologies as our environments continue to change. 

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the Committee 

with my esteemed colleagues, and I am happy to take any questions you may have. 

Senator TESTER. Thank you for your testimony, Stephen. 

We have the CIO of the Office of Personnel Management. Donna, 

you are up. 

TESTIMONY OF DONNA K. SEYMOUR,1 CHIEF INFORMATION 

OFFICER, U.S. OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT 

Ms. SEYMOUR. Good afternoon, Chairman Tester, Ranking Member Portman and Senator Baldwin. Thank you for inviting me to 

participate in today’s hearing to examine the state of the Federal 

IT workforce and projects. As CIO for OPM, Director Archuleta 

tasked me with conducting a thorough assessment of the state of 

IT at OPM. This process has led us to identify numerous opportunities for improvement. 

Director Archuleta’s goal is to put OPM at the forefront of IT innovation in the Federal Government. 

Director Archuleta was made aware of opportunities for improvement in IT administration at OPM and made IT among her top priorities. She stated her intent to develop a plan for modernizing the 

agency’s IT within 100 days of assuming office. 

OPM released this strategic IT plan in March. It provides a 

framework for the use of data throughout the human resources life 

cycle. 

Taking this approach, we will adopt an H.R. IT framework as a 

concept for sharing information among the various existing IT solu-
8 

tions and future capabilities. We will provide a set of standards 

that will span the H.R. life cycle and support information exchange. 

This framework will drive government and industry in creating 

solutions and supporting processes that provide high quality, modern IT services in a way that also ensures information-sharing. 

The flagship initiative of Director Archuleta’s Strategic IT Plan 

is enterprise information management. Providing technology at the 

enterprise level will allow us to reduce duplication. The enterprise 

initiatives will help us work better across programs and improve 

service to our stakeholders. 

Director Archuleta’s Strategic IT Plan encompasses IT systems 

across the H.R. life cycle from USAJOBS to retirement processing. 

USAJOBS is stable, running well and easily handling high volumes of job announcements. USAJOBS averages 22 million visits 

per month with an average of 24 million visits in March and April. 

On average, over 90 million searches are conducted per month. We 

will continue to monitor and analyze the system and incrementally 

refine features like its search and navigation functions. 

Director Archuleta is making modernizing the retirement system 

a top priority. OPM will move forward with progressive IT improvements for near-term results, including a case management 

system. While much of the retirement process remains paperbased, OPM has begun a gradual transition to a fully digital process. We believe that incremental progressive IT improvement will 

reduce the complexity of the challenge to a more manageable level. 

As an example of how we are looking to the future, we are working with a payroll shared service center to pilot receipt of data electronically. After the pilot, we will be in a position to work with the 

other payroll shared service providers to eliminate hard-copy individual retirement records completely. 

Additionally, we are building a means by which the electronic 

data can automatically be fed into our annuity calculator. This increases accuracy and allows our staff to provide better customer 

support. 

OPM is playing a leading role in an effort to formalize Federal 

IT program management. OPM worked with OMB to add the title 

IT Program Manager to the job family standard for IT and to develop the IT Program Manager competencies and the IT Program 

Management Career Path Guide. 

OPM also understands that agencies may need flexibilities to 

meet their hiring needs. OPM has partnered with the CIO Council 

to communicate the various hiring and pay authorities available to 

attract and hire the talent needed. 

Director Archuleta is committed to reforming IT within OPM and 

across the Federal sector. OPM continues to work with the CIO 

Council to provide guidance and training curriculum on Federal IT 

program management and to educate agencies on their hiring flexibilities for critical IT positions. 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today, and I am happy 

to address any questions you may have. 

Senator TESTER. Thank you, Donna Seymour. David Powner. 
9 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Powner appears in the Appendix on page 55. 

TESTIMONY OF DAVID A. POWNER,1 DIRECTOR, INFORMATION 

TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT ISSUES, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 

Mr. POWNER. Chairman Tester, Ranking Member Portman and 

Senator Baldwin, we appreciate the opportunity to testify on how 

the Federal Government can better manage its annual $80 billion 

investment in information technology. Of this $80 billion, about three-quarters is spent on operational 

or legacy systems, and the remaining goes toward new development. Therefore, it is vitally important that new systems acquisitions are managed effectively and that the government finds more 

efficient ways to deliver existing services. 

Starting with how we can manage large IT acquisitions, four 

areas need improvement across the Federal Government: one, 

transparency; two, executive governance; three, incremental development; and four, using best practices. 

The IT dashboard was put in place to improve the transparency 

by highlighting the status in CIO assessments of approximately 

750 major IT investments across 27 departments. The accuracy of 

the information on the dashboard has improved over time, with 

certain agencies reporting more accurately than others. 

Of the 750 major investments, about 575 are in green status, 150 

are in yellow, and 40 are in red. So there are currently about 200 

projects where the government will spend about $10 billion that 

are at risk and need attention. 

Mr. Chairman, the agencies on this panel acknowledge with their 

dashboard ratings that, collectively, they have about 50 investments that tally $4.5 billion that need management attention. DOD 

still reports no red investments, but they have recently committed 

to a new process to improve their dashboard ratings. 

OMB and agencies need to aggressively govern these at-risk investments, using TechStat sessions and other governance mechanisms. Our work has shown that both OMB and department and 

agency CIOs are not performing enough of these oversight meetings. 

In addition to better transparency and CIO oversight, agencies 

need to tackle acquisitions in more manageable segments. A major 

aspect of the 2010 IT reform plan called for agencies to deliver in 

smaller segments to be successful. Our 2011 report on successful 

IT acquisitions proved this out as all examples were increments of 

larger projects and each used proven best practices like having the 

right staff and program management disciplines. 

We recently reported that three-quarters of the IT acquisitions 

are not planning to deliver capabilities in 6 months and less than 

half plan to deliver within the year. Therefore, we still have too 

many big-bang projects that do not deliver anything for years and, 

therefore, run a high risk of failure. 

Now I would like to turn to how the Federal Government can be 

more efficient in managing existing or legacy applications. 

We have issued reports that highlight hundreds of investments 

providing similar functions across the Federal Government. The 

numbers here are staggering. For example, annually, the Federal 
10 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Miller appears in the Appendix on page 77. 

Government invested in 780 supply chain systems totaling $3.3 billion, 660 human resource systems totaling $2.5 billion and 580 financial management systems totaling $2.7 billion. 

OMB has an excellent initiative called PortfolioStat to eliminate 

this duplicative spending in administrative and business systems. 

OMB reports that agencies have achieved about $1.9 billion in savings through this initiative. 

And our work shows that there are over 200 PortfolioStat initiatives that agencies are working on to eliminate duplicative spending and that $5.5 billion can be saved by 2015. It is critical that 

the 200-plus initiatives are driven to closure so that the $5 billion 

in savings can be achieved. 

Several of these initiatives address software licensing, a topic 

that we recently reported on and made recommendations for improvement. That report highlights the fact that savings can be significant if the Federal Government better manages this area, but 

that is difficult to do when only 2 of the 24 major agencies report 

having a complete software license inventory. 

Another major area where savings can be significant is addressing unused data center capacity. OMB started a data center consolidation effort in 2010 to address the government’s low server utilization rates estimated, on average, at 10 to 15 percent, far from 

the industry standard of 60 percent. 

Our ongoing work shows that about 750 centers have been closed or consolidated to date, over $1.3 billion in savings has resulted, 

and agencies estimate another $3 billion in savings in fiscal years 

(FY) 2014 and 2015. Therefore, expected savings through 2015 

should be around $4.5 billion. Better transparency on this savings 

is needed, in our opinion. 

Mr. Chairman, better managing large-scale acquisitions in legacy 

operations does not happen without strong and empowered CIOs. 

It is well documented that many CIOs do not have the responsibilities and authorities in their respective agencies to be successful. 

The Federal Government will struggle, addressing the areas mentioned, if the CIO issue is not properly addressed. A good starting 

point is for agency leadership to support and hold CIOs accountable for the areas I just outlined. 

This concludes my statement. 

Chairman Tester, Ranking Member Portman, I look forward to 

your questions. 

Senator TESTER. Thank you for your testimony, David, and there 

will be questions. 

TESTIMONY OF CHRISTOPHER MILLER1 PROGRAM EXECUTIVE OFFICER, DOD HEALTHCARE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS, 

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE 

Mr. MILLER. Chairman Tester, Ranking Member Portman, Senator Baldwin, thank you for the opportunity to address the Subcommittee today. 

I am honored to represent the Department of Defense as a senior 

official responsible for the Department’s efforts to modernize our 

electronic health records and to make them more interoperable 
11 

with those of the Department of Veterans Affairs and our private 

sector providers. 

I also have the privilege of representing the DOD/VA Interagency 

Program Office (IPO), as the Acting Director. 

DOD and VA are industry leaders in sharing health data. The 

departments are aggressively working to do more. 

Together, we are moving from read-only data shared through 

current exchanges to enhanced interoperability that provides data 

that is more integrated into clinical work flows and usable. Today, 

more than 1.5 million data elements are shared, and as of April 

2014, there are more than 5.3 million patient records that are usable and correlated between the departments. 

DOD and VA have a longstanding collaborative interagency relationship. Joint activities are led by the Joint Executive Committee 

(JEC), which is co-chaired by the Under Secretary of Defense for 

Personnel and Readiness and the Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs. 

In December 2013, the JEC refocused the IPO to help achieve 

the departments’ shared vision and published in the Joint Strategic 

Plan for Fiscal Year 2013 to 2015, which is to provide a single system experience of lifetime service through the sharing of electronic 

health record information. 

Additionally, DOD and VA have established an IOP Executive 

Committee to support development of standards and the required 

architectural components for interoperability. This is chaired by 

the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, my boss, and the VA Executive in Charge of Information 

and Technology, Mr. Warren, who is beside me today on the panel. 

Providing seamless integrated sharing of standardized health 

data among DOD and VA and private sector providers is a critical 

component of delivering high quality health care for our service 

members, our veterans and their families. 

Last year, the DOD and VA completed a series of data interoperability initiatives on an accelerated timeline, and we will develop, 

jointly, follow-on initiatives this year. These enhancements include 

improving and expanding the Janus joint legacy viewer, which provides access to an integrated view of DOD and VA records; upgrading the Blue Button capability, which provides online access to 

DOD and VA personal health data; and improving data federation 

between the departments to facilitate semantic interoperability, 

which is the ability of systems to exchange data with shared meaning. 

The DOD/VA Interagency Program Office is working very closely 

with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information 

Technology to identify and adopt national standards for interoperability. In pursuit of its technical leadership role, the IPO recently 

developed a Health Interoperability Technical Package to drive 

both departments’ implementation and adoption of national health 

standards; these are required for seamless interoperability. This 

document will be updated on a quarterly basis as applicable standards evolve and mature over time. 

Over the past 10 years, DOD’s medical health IT system has fallen behind industry capabilities. DOD’s goal is a system for the future, which is open and flexible so it can easily adapt to meet 
12 

changing requirements. DOD Healthcare Management Systems 

Modernization Program will buildupon existing interoperability capabilities between both departments and our private care providers. 

In May 2013, Secretary Hagel announced the decision to pursue 

a full and open competition to modernize our EHR system based 

on an exhaustive analysis of alternatives. The Department has 

stood up a program office, established a comprehensive program 

plan; developed an initial program cost estimate, a business case 

and an acquisition strategy. 

As you know, the Department of Defense is focused on better 

buying power to improve the productivity of the Department of Defense. Our EHR modernization program is embracing these principles and applying them to ensure we deliver maximum value for 

our taxpayers. 

Last, we have hosted three industry days while issuing two draft 

request for proposals (RFPs) for feedback from industry and government agencies. The final RFP will be released later this summer, and contract award is anticipated for 2015. 

DOD has remained responsive to Congressional interests through 

its involvement with GAO. We have closely examined and addressed GAO’s recommendations regarding costs and schedule. 

We have developed an initial life cycle cost estimate and detailed 

program schedules for both the health data-sharing program and 

our DOD EHR Modernization Program. We have also aggressively 

worked to staff both programs with professionals with recent IT acquisition experience. 

DOD is committed to pursuing enhanced interoperability and 

modernization of our electronic health record in the most effective 

and efficient way possible. 

Again, thank you for this opportunity, and I look forward to your 

questions. 

Senator TESTER. Well, thank you, Christopher, for your testimony. 

And thank you all for your testimony. 

I will turn it over to Ranking Member Portman now for his opening statement and/or questions. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PORTMAN 

Senator PORTMAN. Great. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I appreciate you all being here, and sorry I was not here right 

at the beginning. We were in the middle of votes, and Chairman 

Tester is faster than I am. Apparently, so is Ms. Baldwin. 

But we are here on a very important mission, and that is to talk 

about the state of technology in the Federal Government. Some of 

these technology projects, IT projects, have been problematic, to say 

the least. We are here to look at some of those problems and see 

how we can fix them. 

It is not just some of the results that you all talked about today 

which we want to get into further detail on, but it is also, how are 

these projects solicited, how are they awarded, how are they monitored and how are they implemented? 

We also need to look at the workforce. The IT workforce, of 

course, is a big issue right now. 
13 

How do you attract the right people and retain them given the 

private sector competition? We have talked about that some in this 

Subcommittee. 

And we need to be sure we have some of the best technical folks 

possible to carry out some of these difficult projects that you have. 

We have seen this with VA recently. Mr. Warren, I am sure we are 

going to talk some about that in more detail. From what we hear 

from press accounts and other sources, it sounds like the expertise 

of the staff has been part of the problem with the scheduling and 

with the IT issues. 

This hearing is not the first hearing that Congress has had on 

this topic. There has been a long history of Congressional inquiries 

into how the Federal Government can better implement IT systems. 

Almost 10 years ago, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) spent about $3 billion on an IT system and found out at the end of the 

process it did not work. And the Appropriations Committee started 

a commission that I co-chaired with then-Senator Bob Kerrey, and 

we spent 2 years looking at it and came out with a bunch of recommendations that I think have helped with the IRS on their restructuring and reform. 

But, again, unfortunately, we have seen lots of instances where 

there have been high-profile IT acquisition failures. So we have lots 

of work to do. 

The Defense Department is here. We are going to talk some 

about your issues. 

We are told that getting this Defense Department audit done is 

partly an IT challenge, and you know, getting the DOD audit ready 

has been a priority of mine and, I am sure, the Senators who are 

with me here on the panel today. We can talk about whether that 

is true, whether the IT issue is really one of the problems that is 

holding that up. 

Obviously, with regard to the Affordable Care Act there are some 

ongoing concerns about the IT side. 

The bottom line is what we have to acknowledge is that although 

the private sector is not perfect at these big projects and there have 

been plenty of failures on the private sector side too, more on the 

public side, and a lot of it is the capability on the private sector 

side seems to be advanced in terms of fielding innovative and 

adaptive IT systems. 

The GAO has been helpful, and Mr. Powner, thank you for being 

here today. 

You testified today about some of these problems you have identified. But more important to me and, I think, to the Chairman is, 

what are the solutions? 

You have given us some ideas today that I just heard. You talked 

about implementing best practices, establishing and implementing 

incremental development policies, increasing attention on Federal 

data center consolidation. Those savings are pretty impressive. You 

said, basically, $4.5 billion over the next couple of years, it sounds 

like. 

Strengthening PortfolioStat, which is something that is very important. Having been over at OMB, I think that is part of the answer here. 
14 

Anyway, I hope today we can have an opportunity to get some 

clarification on some of these issues and, more importantly, again, 

some of the steps needed to impact substantive change as well as 

how each of your departments are faring in some of the initiatives 

you talked about today. 

And I look forward to asking some further questions, Mr. Chairman, when we are up to do that. I will do my questions later after 

you two have a chance to since I did my long opening statement 

here. 

But I do appreciate the witnesses taking the time to be here and 

to prepare testimony for us today. Thank you. 

Senator TESTER. Thank you, Senator Portman. 

I am going to allow Senator Baldwin to ask questions. 

Senator BALDWIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to 

thank you and the Ranking Member for holding this important 

hearing today. 

I do want to just speak briefly about the VA’s nationwide Access 

Audit before asking some questions on another topic. It makes this 

hearing particularly timely. 

The Nationwide Access Audit revealed troubling scheduling practices and wait times, including at VA facilities in my home State 

of Wisconsin. There, the average wait time for a new patient who 

is trying to set up a first appointment with a primary care doctor 

at the Madison VA medical facility was 51 days. That is simply not 

acceptable. 

In part, the scheduling and access problems are a result of legacy 

scheduling systems and inadequate training for VA employees on 

those systems. And I am certainly going to be interested to hear 

how current Federal IT initiatives could help address the VA’s 

shortcomings in providing access to every one of our veterans. 

But I wanted to focus in on another topic, and so on a positive 

note, Mr. Miller, I am interested in hearing about the DOD 

Healthcare Management Systems Modernization (DHMSM). 

I have heard some really positive feedback at this stage of the 

process. So I want to commend you for the work that DHMSM has 

done thus far. 

In particular, I was happy to see in your testimony that you have 

engaged with a number of private facilities, including Children’s 

Hospital in Wisconsin, as well as a number of other systems, to 

learn about their approach to, and their experience with, acquisition and development of their electronic health records and systems. 

That said, there are a few ways in which it seems like the DOD’s 

procurement process is different than what would be done in a 

commercial setting or in a private setting, and so I wanted to ask 

you a few questions about the decisions and if you will be looking 

at changing anything in the next drafts of the request for proposals. 

First, from my understanding of the proposal, there will not be 

the sort of traditional demonstrations of software for doctors and 

nurses to see how the system could meet their needs and directly 

participate in selecting the system. Instead, you are asking for sort 

of other things like screen shots to gauge usability. 
15 

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT recommends 

several demonstrations of at least 90 minutes in duration for the 

clinical stakeholders. 

And I think in this case it is the doctors, the nurses, the therapists who are the extension of the IT workforce, and there has to 

be trust in order to make these work well. 

So I am wondering if you are considering making any changes 

in the RFP relating to demonstrations and allowing providers and 

practitioners to have a voice in the selection process for DOD. 

Mr. MILLER. So, ma’am, let me first say that when I first came 

on the job back in September one of the first things we did is we 

undertook an engagement with industry experts and leaders in this 

area, in the commercial health care market. 

So, in addition to the places you have mentioned, I have met 

with Kaiser Permanente, Health Care Administration (HCA). I 

have met with a number of industries to learn the good and the 

bad. 

And so it is important to recognize that our private health care 

providers are undergoing a transformation. The adoption of electronic health records is ahead of where many of the forecasts were 

going, and so there is a high likelihood even today everybody here 

that gets health care provided is going to be using some kind of 

electronic health care system. 

And so we undertook to really go learn from those experiences 

and to really figure out how we should best develop our strategy, 

and the main thing that I will say we learned was it is more about 

the transformation of the business process and less about the IT. 

The reason why I say that is because in our market research and 

our analysis we feel very confident that there are a number of commercial products, including those based on Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA), that could 

meet our requirement. 

So, really, what we are looking to evaluate as part of our proposal is how well they do things like change management and 

training and help us standardize our business processes. 

To your point, ma’am, there is a factor in our evaluation that 

deals with the product capability. Where I am different than the 

commercial companies that oftentimes get to go do a lot of interesting things to go make decisions, I have this thing called the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR), that we have to abide by. 

So one of the things we are trying to do, ma’am, is make sure 

that we build an evaluation process that is as open and fair and 

transparent for all providers. 

And so when you come to things like demonstrations, they potentially open up things that are difficult, and so we are trying to 

work through how we can still gain the insight and get our people 

the access they need without making this thing, in any way, shape 

or form, compromised or compromise the integrity of our acquisition. 

So we are in the process of releasing an update to our RFP—a 

draft. Actually, if I get out of here early enough tonight, I am going 

to go sit through review. 
16 

But we are very close this week to issuing one. And it will have 

updates in those areas, ma’am, but we are trying to balance moving expeditiously with doing it right. 

And just so you are aware, we have had over 1,000 comments on 

our RFP to date, and we have addressed every single one of those. 

And we will continue to engage industry and learn and make sure 

we provide feedback in those areas, ma’am. 

Senator BALDWIN. I have a second question on this topic, but the 

comment I would have is just how valuable it is if your focus is 

really on transformation of the business process to be assured that 

the doctors, the nurses, the therapists are going to trust the instrument and use it—— 

Mr. MILLER. Yes, ma’am. 

Senator BALDWIN [continuing]. Because the last thing you want 

is something that fails. 

Mr. MILLER. Right. I should have addressed that, ma’am. My 

apologies. 

And so, besides me, I would say I have an acquisition organization, but I am staffed with a lot of clinical and people from the community that are directly involved. 

The selection, as it will go down, will be a combination of your 

traditional acquisition and legal, but we have a number of clinical 

experts from the services and from the leadership of the Department of Defense who will help make that decision. 

Additionally, what we have also learned from industry, besides 

someone like me who kind of performs the acquisition IT role, the 

Department of Defense is establishing a functional champion who 

will bring that community leadership. So today, Admiral Bono is 

sort of stepping into that while we formally put someone in that 

position. 

But the clinical relationship is a key piece of this. I am there to 

make them successful. This is not about what I am going out and 

trying to do in terms of making a selection. This is more about 

them being involved and really making that transformation for how 

they want to deliver care because I think there is a lot of opportunity here. I think when you see what industry does today and 

how they deliver care, the opportunities for patients to be more involved in their health care. Those are the kinds of opportunities we 

are aggressively going after, to really think how we position the 

Department of Defense moving forward with our health IT infrastructure. 

Senator BALDWIN. If I could raise just one quick issue or ask one 

quick additional question and ask it very open-ended rather than 

leading; how do you decide weight that is placed on sort of the 

technology, the infrastructure, the architecture of a system versus 

functionality and features of the system? 

How do you approach that in this process? 

It is such a huge undertaking. 

Mr. MILLER. Yes, ma’am. So the way we are approaching it is we 

basically have criteria, and those criteria have basically areas that 

we are going to evaluate. 

And so, initially, we are going to evaluate, does the product meet 

certain gating—basically, is the product mature enough for us to be 

able to consider it? 
17 

And so those factors include things like the Office of National Coordinator certification. Can it work in our information assurance 

environment? 

Basically, we are trying to make sure that the products we focus 

our evaluation on are really the ones we want. 

So the next piece deals with we look at the technical requirements. Then we look at the actual product capability, and that 

product capability piece, ma’am, is what you are driving it in terms 

of the ability to support our clinical operations and do things. And 

then we have a piece that is cost-driven. 

So our responsibility is going to be evaluate all of those factors 

and then work through the trades and what we value and what we 

want to incentivize so that we make the best decision for our taxpayer. 

Senator BALDWIN. Thank you. 

Mr. MILLER. Yes, ma’am. 

Senator TESTER. Senator Portman. 

Senator PORTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I would like to talk about the VA since it is a timely issue and 

because you all are here and you have had the opportunity to talk 

a little about some of your IT progress you have made at the VA. 

I would like to focus in on the scheduling system. We just heard 

about the wait lists, and in Ohio, unfortunately, the wait lists are 

also unacceptably long. 

We are waiting for the IG’s report to come out. He is looking at 

another 42 VA centers beyond Phoenix, we are told, but the preliminary information that we have is really troubling. 

The wait lists are unacceptably long, but hiding the length of 

those wait lists to meet Washington performance measures by kicking people off the wait list altogether is outrageous because you 

have veterans who, frankly, thought they were on a wait list and 

find out in Phoenix 1,700 of them were kicked off altogether. 

We have heard the horror stories of people who, while on that 

wait list, actually expired. They died while they were waiting to get 

the care. 

And part of the problem, as we understand it, is that the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture— 

which is your scheduling program and IT system on the health 

side, is not working well. 

We have heard that VA employees gamed the system, and we 

have heard that they have gone around the system. In the internal 

audit that the VA did that was released yesterday, it was reported 

that at 70 percent of VA facilities there was an instance of scheduling staff using some alternative to the electronic wait list in this 

VistA program. 

Seventy percent of the VA facilities’ scheduling staff were not 

even using the VistA program. So, clearly, this is indicative of a 

much deeper structural problem at the VA, not just an IT program, 

and we need to work to address those. 

But it is also important we have the right IT system in place to 

support our veterans and support the processes the Department 

has for wait lists and for health care generally. 

One of the things that we have learned is that these scheduling 

difficulties go back to at least 2005. So that is almost 10 years ago. 
18 

And, as you know, we are looking at legislation on the floor right 

now that would require the VA to enter into a contract with an 

independent third party for a 180-day assessment of the scheduling, staffing, finance, and other processes at each VA medical facility to review and assess employee training, technology, provider 

availability and other matters; also, establish a technology task 

force from the outside that would review the needs of the Department with respect to a scheduling system and scheduling software. 

So, first, I would like your thoughts on what happened. Why has 

this been such a failure, to the detriment of our veterans? 

And, two, what are your current plans to improve this scheduling 

function? 

And then, three, what do you think of the legislation? 

How do you weigh creating a new system versus leveraging some 

of the existing commercial software you have that is already in use 

in the private health care systems, and do you think the legislation 

is taking us down the right course to be able to correct these problems? 

Mr. WARREN. Thank you, Ranking Member Portman, for that 

question. 

As a veteran, I also find it unacceptable that those wait times 

were as long as they were and the activities that individuals took 

on the line. 

I think you rightly pointed out this is a challenge that falls in 

three categories. It is people, process and technology. Technology is 

a piece of it. 

And, if I could clarify one of your questions, when we talk about 

the VistA system, it is important to think about that system in two 

parts. 

There is a clinical component that is used as part of care, and 

I think we found—and I hear feedback from clinicians all the 

time—that portion, which focuses and enforces and supports how 

we provide care, is one of the best ones out there. 

But the administrative pieces, the ones that support the delivery 

of that care, in terms of scheduling, were not supported at the level 

they needed to have been. 

However, lots of activity had already started, dealing with the IT 

piece. As an example, I talked about PMAS and the transformation 

that took place at the VA. One of the things that was an impetus 

for that change was we canceled the scheduling project that had 

been running for 10 years. You referred to that in your opening remarks. 

It was part of the reviews that we undertook after IT got consolidated at the VA, and we identified how we did IT was not meeting 

the standard. We were meeting, or we were delivering, at a 30 percent rate. 

So we stepped back. We looked at that project. And it was one 

of the ones that was not delivering nor was going to deliver. 

At that point, we transformed how we did IT, and I talked about 

those statistics, about how we moved it. 

Big projects fail. Small projects, tight timelines, with a lot of 

focus on outcome, deliver, and we have been able to show that. 

Focus on starting the ones that will succeed. 
19 

While we were doing those, a lot of work took place on the scheduling area. What were the processes? What were the requirements? 

We went out—and there was an America COMPETES Act competition in 2012–2013, to look at and ask the question, could the 

marketplace provide a solution? And one of the things that came 

out from that competition was, yes, the marketplace could. 

And along the way of proving that, we also validated what were 

the data interfaces standards that we need to use as well as developed the sandboxes or the places where vendors could come and 

show. 

Senator PORTMAN. Let me interrupt you just for a second there 

so I make sure I understand this, Mr. Warren. 

Your internal review, even short of whatever the IG comes up 

with, says that at 70 percent of your centers that staff were going 

around the VistA program and not using the scheduling software. 

Are you suggesting that that was purposeful, in other words, 

that at the top you all were saying, the system is not working properly, so we need to try something else? 

And I do not know what the correlation is between that 70 percent and where the problems occurred, but the suggestion is that 

is one of the reasons we have had so many problems. 

So are you saying that the VA headquarters was partly responsible for not having in place a system that worked and was even 

maybe encouraging people not to use the system they had? 

Mr. WARREN. Sir, I would like to make sure that in no way do 

I imply that individuals were encouraging folks on the line to circumvent the processes or the tools that were in place to schedule 

appointments. 

Senator PORTMAN. OK. 

Mr. WARREN. Unacceptable behavior, and we have heard that 

from the top. And for myself, as a veteran, I find it unacceptable 

and abhorrent that folks would do something like that. 

Senator PORTMAN. But you were saying earlier that the scheduling software was not working properly. 

Mr. WARREN. We recognized we needed to improve, and improvements have been taking place over that period of time. 

We also recognized that we needed to replace it, and that is what 

the America COMPETES competition 2012–2013 was. 

And 18 months ago, when we put the 2014 budget together, 

funding was put in that budget, and those acquisitions are underway to replace the scheduling portion, that old module, with a commercial product. 

Senator PORTMAN. Do you think that is one reason 70 percent of 

the centers were not using the scheduling software? 

Mr. WARREN. Sir, I have not been involved in the review in terms 

of understanding how the people and process piece broke down. I 

am sure technology was a part of it. 

We have a parallel effort underway that our partners in the 

health—Veterans Health Administration have laid out for us to improve the interface so it was not so hard, so people did not have 

to dig through and find the list and manage it. 

So I am sure individuals were frustrated with it. 

But in terms of driving that as an outcome, it is a path we were 

on. The acquisitions are underway to actually get the commercial 
20 

product in and tie it to the health care portion, the clinical portion, 

which is really good, but deal with that administrative piece that 

really does not meet the standard. 

Senator PORTMAN. OK. My time is expired. I need to go back to 

the Chairman, but I would like to followup on this to be sure we 

can understand what happened. 

Senator TESTER. Thank you, Senator Portman. 

This next question is going to be for everybody but GAO, and we 

will get to you later, David. 

According to a poll released in February, approximately 50 percent of the Federal employees are either mulling a career switch 

or potentially moving out of the government because of their frustrations with pay freezes and political tacks and, quite frankly, an 

expectation that there may be better salaries out there for the 

same kind of work in the private sector. 

It is not unusual for somebody to leave work—and correct me if 

I am wrong with this statement—to leave work on a Friday as a 

Federal employee and come back on Monday as a contractor. That 

seems strange to me, if that actually is happening—doing the same 

work with more pay. 

We recently learned that a former contractor, a renowned fellow 

by the name of Edward Snowden, was being paid an annual salary 

of over $200,000. I do not know what you all are getting paid, but 

that is potentially more than what you are getting paid. 

So the question is, when you are either working with folks that 

are around you—I will not say under you, but working with the 

folks that you work with, or trying to hire new folks, what are you 

hearing from them as far as being able to get the best and the 

brightest, or being able to keep the best and the brightest? 

And we will start with you, Luke. 

Mr. MCCORMACK. Thank you for that question. 

Well, it is indeed true; there are situations where a Federal employee on a Friday becomes a contractor on Monday, and there are 

also experiences where a contractor on Friday becomes a Federal 

employee on Monday. So that goes both ways. 

There certainly is an opportunity to continue to build the workforce core, and we have done that through a variety of mechanisms. 

I mean, the reason why people join Federal service is not particularly for the pay. Most of us could go out in the private sector and 

pursue other, more lucrative opportunities. It is the mission that 

brings people forward, and it is the opportunity to make a difference that really draws people to the Federal workforce. 

We are doing a variety of things to retain and attract Federal 

workers, including putting core competencies together and career 

tracks so that, as I said in my opening statement, an individual 

can go on a management career track or a technical career track. 

They can also rotate through various career fields, which allows 

them to broaden their career experience. 

And we are also working on core competencies to make sure that 

we understand what those are and map those to the particular career tracks and make sure that we continue to train and develop 

the employees to support those core competencies. 

Senator TESTER. OK. And we will get to you in a second, Steph. 
21 

Just very quickly, in your department, is recruitment and retention a problem when it comes to IT folks? 

Mr. MCCORMACK. There is always opportunity to improve, but I 

would say that we are doing well—— 

Senator TESTER. OK. 

Mr. MCCORMACK [continuing]. On our recruitment; we are doing 

well on our retention. 

Senator TESTER. Steph. 

Mr. WARREN. I think, to echo some of Luke’s comments, it is 

part. I have—56 percent of my workforce are veterans in the IT organization. 

Senator TESTER. That is good. 

Mr. WARREN. And 68 percent of my contractors are service-disabled, veteran-owned small businesses. We focus on that, and we 

hire for that. 

But even with that, it is hard at times. I mean, there is a lot of 

message that they hear, but their heart and their commitment 

keeps them there. 

But we also look—and with your indulgence, I would like to recognize two individuals in the audience. 

We have a Warrior to Workforce Program, and I have two of the 

gentlemen with me. Purple Hearts, active duty, served their time 

in harm’s way, but we bring them in on a 3-year program. They 

are 18 months in. We train them to be acquisitions specialists, and 

they graduate as 2210 Project Managers. So we bring them in. We 

help them. 

We meet our mission on the VA side, but we also start building 

an IT workforce. So we do a lot of feeder work. 

But it is a lot of work that we do to inspire and motivate the 

team, to talk about the mission, but many of them come with that 

mission and commitment in terms of they want to make that difference. 

Senator TESTER. Good. Raise your hand, fellows. Which two are 

you? 

Mr. WARREN. Oh, we lost one. He stepped out. 

Timing is everything, sir. 

Senator TESTER. Thank you. 

Mr. WARREN. Thank you, sir. 

Senator TESTER. Donna, the same thing; how is recruiting and 

retention going? 

Ms. SEYMOUR. OPM is working with the agencies in a number 

of areas. 

This past couple of months we have had the first ever Chief 

Human Capital Officer (CHCO), and the CIO Council combined 

meeting, where we worked with the CIO Council to explain the pay 

and leave flexibilities and hiring flexibilities that are available to 

agencies—— 

Senator TESTER. OK. 

Ms. SEYMOUR [continuing]. In particular, some of the direct hiring authority for the information security specialists, pay and leave 

flexibilities and expert consultants, incentive pays, retention pay, 

those types of things. 

I think that when you look at the Federal workforce, you have 

to talk about total compensation. It is not just the pay. 
22 

Senator TESTER. OK. 

Ms. SEYMOUR. And you have to look at the types of work that 

you do in the Federal Government as opposed to private industry, 

with perhaps more responsibility earlier in your career. 

Senator TESTER. So the bottom line is you think we are competitive in our pay scale with the private sector even though we hear 

stories like Snowden making 200 grand. 

Ms. SEYMOUR. I will not say that we are competitive with the 

pay scales, and I will not say that we are not. 

What I think we have to do is look at the total compensation 

package. 

Senator TESTER. OK. 

Ms. SEYMOUR. So it is not just a salary piece. 

Senator TESTER. OK, Christopher. 

Mr. MILLER. Sir, I probably have the smallest workforce up here. 

I have a very small acquisition organization. I would tell you we 

have just recently hired, and the interest is overwhelming. 

And I think I would echo it is not about the money for people 

who come work for the Federal Government. These people want to 

make a difference. They want to get involved in our programs and 

make a difference, sir. 

Senator TESTER. OK. 

Mr. MILLER. On the retention side, I am not losing a lot of people 

right now. Again, it comes back to the mission. 

But I will echo we do watch those things, and we are very closely 

monitoring it. 

Senator TESTER. Overall, just very quickly because I want to get 

back to Senator Portman’s questions, some of you, if not all of you, 

do in-house work and contractor work. Which is the most cost-effective, in-house work or the contractor? 

Luke. 

Mr. MCCORMACK. A lot of that depends on the work. 

Where we try to focus our attention is on the oversight of the 

various initiatives as we look to pursue things like ‘‘cloud first’’ and 

buy-as-a-service type capabilities. We are not building that inhouse. We are becoming smart buyers, and so what we are looking 

for is our workforce that can be a smart buyer and then do proper 

oversight of those types of capabilities. 

Senator TESTER. So would the rest of you agree on that; it just 

depends on what—are we comparing apples and oranges here? 

Steph. 

Mr. WARREN. Sir, I think—and Luke is sort of touching on it— 

it depends the work that you want to have done. 

Senator TESTER. OK. 

Mr. WARREN. So, as an example, integrators. We have had a terrible history in the past of the integrator being a vendor. The goal 

and the outcome did not align. 

Senator TESTER. Right. 

Mr. WARREN. So we view SPAWAR as a government entity to do 

integration for us. They did for the new GI Bill. They have done 

for VBMS. 

Senator TESTER. OK. 

Mr. WARREN. We are now building an internal capability. 
23 

So, high on the value chain—Federal. But there is a lot of commodity items out there that you can draw upon and build with. 

Senator TESTER. Good enough. Go ahead, Donna. 

Ms. SEYMOUR. At OPM, I think we are looking at the type of 

work as well. I would agree with Luke and Steph. 

But I also think when you are dealing with policy, when you are 

dealing with roles that have decision capability, those are certainly 

government and should remain government. 

Where you have some work that is more—I do not want to say 

mundane but where there is not a decision and a policy to be 

made—— 

Senator TESTER. Right. You are looking for an end product. 

Ms. SEYMOUR [continuing]. Then those are certainly contractable. 

Mr. MILLER. Sir, you cannot outsource your brain. 

And so one of the things I have been very demanding of our people is every time we make a decision on whether or not we are 

going to go out to have industry do it or we are going to do it, I 

always force my people to explain to me why—first, why the government cannot do it and why we cannot bring in the labs and 

warfare centers and other opportunities to give our people expertise. 

But then, second, they have to make a strong argument that it 

is in the government’s and taxpayers’ best interest—— 

Senator TESTER. Yes. 

Mr. MILLER [continuing]. Because we have to have a longterm—— 

Senator TESTER. Well, I appreciate that, and I would hope that 

every agency would do exactly that, depending on the situation, to 

go with the best work at the best price. Senator Portman. 

Senator PORTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you all for your service and your willingness to, as 

Mr. McCormack said, probably earn a little less than you could in 

the private sector because you are trying to do public service and 

ensure that people are taken care of. 

On the VA front, let me just followup with our previous back and 

forth. 

It sounds like one thing that you have identified, Mr. Warren, is 

that you said there is an interface problem. 

What I read that to mean is it is too hard for some people to use 

the old system. As I have said, there have been 10 years of problems that have been reported, and GAO and your IG have demonstrated that there are scheduling difficulties with the system. 

And part of the problem with not being able to operate the system probably goes to the workforce not having the training that 

they would need to be able to do that well, because in 2009 your 

Inspector General reported that there was very little training or 

mentoring being conducted in veterans health facilities. 

Again, in 2013, just last year, an inspection concluded that staff 

members did not consistently and correctly use the consult, management, reporting and tracking systems. In clinics, more than half 

of the schedulers reported that they had not received any training. 

So I guess my question to you is, do we have improperly trained 

schedulers here, and if so, why and what are we going to do about 

it? 
24 

An IT system’s strengths, obviously, are irrelevant if the people 

charged with using the system cannot interface, as you say, with 

the system, cannot pull up the data, as you say, and are not getting 

the training to be able to use it. 

How would you respond to that? 

Mr. WARREN. Sir, I provide the tools that the individuals at the 

sites use. I will gladly bring back to you for the record the actions 

that are taking place—significant engagement by leadership to deal 

with the issues identified. 

We are also being respectful of the work that the IG team is 

doing with respect to their audit and investigation, but significant 

boots on the ground to deal with the issues that were identified as 

part of the assessment. 

We have efforts underway to simplify the interface, to deal with 

some of the things that were identified as part of the assessment, 

to get that in place while we acquire the replacement—the commercial product to replace that scheduling system. 

But, glad to get that back to you, sir, for the record in terms of 

the multiple things underway that are being applied to address the 

issues that were raised, sir. 

Senator PORTMAN. Let me just back up and be sure you understood my question. My question is about the training. 

Do you think that the training is adequate now? 

Do you think it is part of the reason we have had these, as you 

say, unacceptably long wait lists, and certainly in those cases there 

was fraud? 

We do not know where that happened, but we know it happened 

in Phoenix, and there are 42 other VA centers being investigated 

now by the IG. 

Do you think part of it is this issue that was identified by GAO 

and by the IG in the last couple of years- 09 IG, 2013 inspection, 

again, that said that more than half of the schedulers reported 

they had not received any training? Has that been part of the problem or not? 

Mr. WARREN. Sir, I do not have direct knowledge. So we will take 

the reports at face value in terms of those were issues identified 

that need to be worked with. 

And, as the acting secretary had laid out, there is a multitude 

of items that we are putting in place, actions taking place, to deal 

with that. Training is one of them. So the reports identified that. 

I have no basis to disagree. 

And, again, we will get you the response in terms of what we are 

doing about the training issue, as well as I believe the assessments 

are being rolled out in terms of what was identified, sir. 

Senator PORTMAN. You said a moment ago you are pursuing a 

commercially available software, it sounds like, for scheduling. Is 

that accurate? 

Mr. WARREN. Yes, sir, there is an acquisition. There is a meeting 

with industry taking place next week to walk through the requirements, and then there are individual vendor interviews to make 

sure we have the acquisition correct. 

Before the end of this fiscal year, that acquisition will be out to 

replace the commercial product, and we will be building on the 

interfaces that were developed as part of the America COMPETES 
25 

Act and using the sandboxes, or test areas, to have the vendors 

come in and demonstrate their solutions, to show that it meets the 

clinical needs. 

Senator PORTMAN. Yes. Again, I think there was plenty of evidence that we had a problem here, and it has now come to light 

with these extreme examples. 

But really, when you look back over the last 10 years, GAO and 

your own IG have identified some of the problems, and difficulty 

in using the system, perhaps. Certainly, at 70 percent of the VA 

centers, there was at least some instance of people going around 

the system, improper training, more than half the schedulers not 

receiving training. 

Why did we miss those flags? 

Mr. WARREN. Sir, it is difficult for me to opine on the direct operational in terms of how care is given by the schedulers. 

Again, a tool is neutral. Yes, you can do better work on the interfaces, on the usability design, but components of the issues that the 

VA is dealing with deal the people and the process component as 

well. 

Senator PORTMAN. Well, we would love for you to provide some 

more specific answers to some of our questions to the Subcommittee, if you would, please. It is just for us to be able to understand better what is going on. 

What are the next steps for improving the scheduling software 

system? You talked some about that today. 

What is your timeline on it? You mentioned by the end of the 

year to have some of this commercially available acquisition started. 

What are some of the key capabilities you are looking for? 

What are your risks? What do you see as the greatest risks in 

the plan, to be able to anticipate those this time better? 

And I think you have answered this, but are you leveraging commercially available software? 

Mr. WARREN. We are, sir. 

And we are glad to get back on the record the range of questions 

you had asked. 

Senator PORTMAN. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. 

Mr. Miller, I have some questions for you, and my time is expiring here. 

But one of the issues I think we would like to get in front of is 

this interoperability between the VA and DOD. You talked about 

it today, and the need to modernize the electronic health records. 

I think there are, unfortunately, a lot of cases of service members 

falling between the cracks somehow when they leave your side of 

the house and go over to the VA, and that transition is often tough, 

and some of it is record management systems, as I understand it. 

I understand that service members can receive an electronic copy 

of their health records only if they request it, but many either do 

not know that or fail to request it until it is too late. Is that accurate? 

Mr. MILLER. Sir, I will have to take it for the record to get the 

official policy, but as I mentioned earlier, one of the initiatives we 

have undertaken is to provide access through Blue Button so that 

our service members can get access to their record. 
26 

But I will come back for the record and answer that, sir. 

Senator PORTMAN. OK. I think that that would be interesting for 

the Committee to know. 

I do not know if you know this legislation called the Medical 

Evaluation Parity for Service Members Act (MEPS). And it says, 

‘‘let’s get an evaluation when people go into the military and when 

they exit and have some sort of a benchmark to know,’’ trying to 

avoid some of these tragic instances that we all know about—mental health concerns. 

That legislation would require DOD to report to Congress on its 

ability to provide service members an electronic copy of their 

health records upon separation from the military. 

If you would not mind looking at that legislation and giving us 

your opinion on it, that would be helpful. 

Mr. MILLER. Yes, will do, sir. 

Senator PORTMAN. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator TESTER. Thank you, Senator Portman. 

I am going to go with you, Steph. I have a couple questions for 

the VA. 

It has been well documented that some of the employees—and 

Senator Portman talked about this—manipulated the computer 

scheduling system. Can they do that today, or have you been able 

to fix that with the current system? 

Mr. WARREN. Sir, the challenge we have is the scheduling system—— 

Senator TESTER. Right. 

Mr. WARREN [continuing]. Is something that allows individuals to 

make appointments. 

Senator TESTER. OK. 

Mr. WARREN. And so, when you make an appointment, there are 

opportunities for the appointments to change—— 

Senator TESTER. OK. 

Mr. WARREN [continuing]. If the veteran would like to change. 

Senator TESTER. I understand. 

Mr. WARREN. And so it is, how do you understand whether it was 

a clinician needing to change or a veteran needing to change or 

somebody doing something wrong? That is what the audit or the 

IG is out looking at, to try and understand this. 

Senator TESTER. I understand. 

And so when the new system gets in, is that going to be one of 

the components you guys are paying particular attention to—how 

you can follow that audit trail, so to speak, to know who made the 

request? 

Mr. WARREN. I think you can be assured, sir, that the audit and 

audit features in terms of how do you differentiate is one of the 

areas of concern for us. 

Senator TESTER. OK. One of the things that I want to point out 

to you because we got a report yesterday on Montana’s VA, it is 

a 48-day wait list for the folks that are new. 

And there are multiple reasons for that. It is not all IT. It is 

staffing. It is getting time appointments because it takes three 

times as long to see those folks once they get in the hospital. 
27 

But I will say that the vets who are returning vets, their appointments were filled within 8 days. So I want to say that the VA, 

although it needs some upgrading, there are areas where they did 

perform to standard and, often times, above. 

I want to talk a little bit about the DOD/VA record-sharing, too. 

Are we there yet? 

Mr. MILLER. Sir, I do not think we are ever there. 

I would say a couple of highlights I would hit, sir. 

One is as of January all of our service treatment records now 

flow electronically into the VA system. So that is a positive thing. 

Now we do not have to worry about storing files. We do not have 

to worry about things getting lost. And so we have made that. 

Sir, I think we are always going to have work to improve the 

data-sharing because things are happening in the commercial 

world; things are happening in terms of our understanding. And so 

I think we are going to continually be looking at ways to improve 

the data-sharing between the two departments. 

Senator TESTER. I have that. 

The reason I bring that up is because some of the backlog that 

the VA has is because—and you correct me if I am wrong because 

I could be—they cannot get the information on what happened to 

that soldier when they were in the field. 

Mr. MILLER. So, sir, it is important to recognize that the backlog 

covers a wide breadth of time, right. 

Senator TESTER. Oh, I know. Yes. 

Mr. MILLER. So depending on when the service member left active duty, the problem can be different. Right, sir? 

Senator TESTER. Right. 

Mr. MILLER. And so we are doing everything possible to make 

sure that the information is flowing to the VA. 

Senator TESTER. And we had this conversation. I am on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee. So I have had the conversation with 

staff. 

As Chairman Mikulski brought together the appropriators we 

had the discussion with the DOD and the VA and everybody else. 

The point is this; you cannot do it for everybody because a lot 

of them retired during the Vietnam era, for example. 

But you have veterans coming back from Afghanistan right now, 

that the VA should have access to their information. Do they? 

Mr. MILLER. Sir, that is where we are working closely with the 

VA to start doing things prior to the separation to help coordinator. 

And so those are those areas of improvement where the information is in our system electronically today, sir, and so that is where 

we are working in a partnership with the VA to start helping that 

transition—— 

Senator TESTER. I understand. 

Mr. MILLER [continuing]. Because it is there, sir. It is a matter 

of the processes lining up. 

Senator TESTER. I am not being critical. I know your hearts are 

in the right condition, or rather in the right place. 

But I would say that from a farmer’s perspective, which is what 

I really am, it does not make any sense to me why you cannot 

make those things talk to one another to get that information. 

And, Steph, do you want to talk to that? 
28 

You can speak to it, Christopher, and then I am going to have 

Steph do it. 

Mr. MILLER. So, sir, they do talk, right. I think it is important 

that we recognize that there is a data-sharing in support of making 

clinical and medical decisions. That is what I referenced earlier, 

where we have over five million health records that are correlated 

on both sides. 

When we start talking claims disability evaluation, that is where 

there are more things that come into play, sir, and so that is where 

I think we can do a better job. 

Senator TESTER. OK. 

Mr. MILLER. We are going to continue to work together. 

Senator TESTER. Good. 

Mr. MILLER. But for medical decisions, when people move, that 

information is flowing, sir, but there are other things that come 

into play for a service treatment record that we have to bring in 

and have to be done and certified and support that. 

Senator TESTER. We are on the same page. I understand where 

you are, and it can be done if there is a commitment to do it. 

And, Steph, would you want to respond to that? 

Mr. WARREN. Sir—and I think to build on some of the points 

Chris Miller has made is you are talking about two different 

things. 

One deals with care. How do you make sure you have the information available to the clinician so they can make those care decisions? 

Chris talked about the Janus viewer, the thing we rolled out to 

the polytrauma units last year, and we are expanding up to over 

2,500 clinicians this year. 

The other one deals with the decision in terms of a benefit, and 

so the Health Artifact and Image Management Solution (HAIMS) 

and those Service Treatment Records (STRs) coming in. 

Senator TESTER. Yes. 

Mr. WARREN. It deals with the duty-to-assist clock, and so now 

getting those records. 

Senator TESTER. Yes. 

Mr. WARREN. You are right; we still need to deal with the ones 

who separated before. 

Senator TESTER. Yes. 

Mr. WARREN. How do we get that in? 

And we have our commitment from our partners at DOD to deal 

with those. 

But I know this is the dangerous part in a hearing—there is actually a third part that we need to make sure we talk about—is 

when we take the care out into the private sector. Yes. 

Mr. WARREN. We lose the goodness of the electronic systems—— 

Senator TESTER. I understand. 

Mr. WARREN [continuing]. If that information does not come in 

a form that we can use to do that quality care, sir. 

Senator TESTER. I understand. And you are right. 

The only thing that I would say is just that we live in a world 

that moves very fast, and I think we have been talking about this 

for at least 71⁄2 years. I think since I got on the VA Committee, we 
29 

have talked about those two systems being seamless and so that— 

well, you understand. 

I want to talk about something that is somewhat similar, and I 

will talk to you about it first, Luke. You are in Homeland Security. 

If CBP is looking for a major investment in IT that maybe the Air 

Force has done something similar, or DOD has done something 

similar to, No. 1, do you seek that information out, and No. 2, how 

do you seek that information out, and No. 3, how many times has 

that happened? 

Mr. MCCORMACK. There is an entire process that we would go 

through to evaluate any type of capability, what is called a market 

research, and a market research would look into the private sector 

and see what is available through commercialized products. 

And we would also look internally to see if there is a capability 

across the Federal landscape and see if there is a fit there, see if 

we can reuse that capability and leverage it as sort of what is commonly called a GOTS-type configuration, where somebody has already built some type of environment, some type of capability that 

we could just adopt and incorporate into our environment. 

I would have to get back to you for the record on how often that 

has happened. I do not have a number off the top of my head. 

Senator TESTER. Well, I just think—and we talked a little bit 

about this yesterday, Luke. 

I mean, I think the CIO Council is an opportunity, but the bottom line is there is no need to build the wheel if it has already 

been built. But you have to go look for that wheel. 

Mr. MCCORMACK. Sure. 

Senator TESTER. And, hopefully, that is happening. 

Steph, we are going to go back to VA telemed here for a little 

bit. Can you tell me what kind of telemedicine initiatives are out 

there and if you plan on expanding upon them? 

Mr. WARREN. Multiple. The way we structured it so far is that 

we have made sure that every location can run two concurrent televideo conferences. 

Senator TESTER. Now what are you talking about—every location? Are you talking about every CBOC, or are you talking about 

every hospital? 

Mr. WARREN. All the hospitals are done, and now we are moving 

into the CBOC in terms of giving them the capability, starting with 

the largest one. 

Senator TESTER. OK. 

Mr. WARREN. We also have the home telehealth program, where 

we have devices in the home. So veterans are able to take advantage of that. In fact, in 2013, we had 600,000 had 1.7 million telehealth base care health episodes. 

Senator TESTER. OK. 

Mr. WARREN. So that is a large number. 

And what we have seen is when you do that, that home telehealth, we reduce our bed days down by 59 percent. 

Senator TESTER. So long-term, are you looking to have telemed 

in every CBOC? 

Mr. WARREN. We are driving on that, and I will share with you 

I had the unique experience of sitting on a telemental interview. 

Senator TESTER. Yes. 
30 

Mr. WARREN. And the feedback from the veteran of—— 

Senator TESTER. It was very positive. 

Mr. WARREN [continuing]. When I have a bad day, I do not have 

to get in a car and fight my way there. 

Senator TESTER. Right. 

Mr. WARREN. And just the ability in the comfort of the home to 

have the engagement—just powerful in terms of being able to use 

that. 

And we see that as an opportunity in the rural areas of how we 

could expand that network. 

Senator TESTER. It is huge. And most of the telemed you are 

doing is mental health-related? 

Mr. WARREN. Mental health is a place we are driving on. 

But we actually met with the innovations center and they are 

looking at some of the devices in terms of how do you remotely do 

tuning of a hearing aid so the veteran does not have to actually 

come into a location to do that. 

Senator TESTER. Cool. 

Mr. WARREN. So, again, expanding the capabilities and using the 

technology, sir. 

Senator TESTER. OK. What is the biggest obstacle for the delivery of telemed right now? 

Mr. WARREN. I would share that the one place—and I think all 

of us, when we deal with work at home as well—is that last mile. 

We can drive it to. We can use the big providers. But once you get 

into the rural areas, how do you make the connection? 

Senator TESTER. Yes. 

Mr. WARREN. And we know there is a program, I think with the 

FCC, where dollars are collected as part of the fees. 

Senator TESTER. Yes. 

Mr. WARREN. How do we get them engaged with driving out into 

the communities and building the infrastructure that we can use, 

sir? 

Senator TESTER. David Powner, in your testimony, you talked 

about we need better transparency in savings. How do we achieve 

it? How do we achieve better transparency? 

Mr. POWNER. In terms of—the data center consolidation is one 

good example. I think there is data.gov. You can actually go into 

data.gov and look at closures to date, but you cannot see the savings to date. So I can tell you what centers have been closed at 

what agency. 

And there is a lot of success stories. DOD has a bunch of them. 

But all that savings is kind of behind the scenes, and we think 

there should be more because the key going forward—there is 

about $3 billion that the agencies are telling us, we can save in fiscal years 2014 and 2015 alone on data centers consolidation going 

forward. 

And having that transparency on that actually helps in terms of 

execution. 

Senator TESTER. OK. You also talked about the CIOs’ need to be 

empowered by agency leadership. The spending authority? What 

kind of empowerment are you talking about? 

Mr. POWNER. Spending authority is one way to go, but if you look 

historically at the CIO position and whether CIOs are consistently 
31 

supported by dep secretaries and the like, I think the short answer 

to that is they are not. And I think there are examples across the 

Federal Government where that has happened, and that is why we 

have this authority issue. 

Do CIOs have the authority to go in, whether they have budget 

authority or not, to stop a project that is not performing well? 

Senator TESTER. Right. 

Mr. POWNER. And the answer to that is not consistently across 

the Federal Government. 

Senator TESTER. So let me ask the other folks. 

In your position, do you have the ability to single-handedly stop 

a project, Luke? 

Mr. MCCORMACK. It is never a single-handed decision, but I 

would certainly say that through our governance process, by all 

means, we have the means to stop a project, and we have. 

Senator TESTER. But you are the leader of the pack, right? 

I mean, you are the leader of the information? 

Mr. MCCORMACK. Sure. 

Senator TESTER. And so if you have something that is going upside-down—— 

Mr. MCCORMACK. Right, I have the authority to throw a technical flag down on any given IT project and say that we need to 

pause and reassess what we are doing. 

Senator TESTER. Steph. 

Mr. WARREN. I do as a consolidated organization, but I always 

make sure my business customer is aware and they understand 

why. 

Senator TESTER. Then it is much bigger than just walking in and 

saying, yes. Donna. 

Ms. SEYMOUR. I would agree with my colleagues. It is a partnership with the business. 

Senator TESTER. OK. 

Ms. SEYMOUR. And I think that given the director’s authority 

over operating the entire agency, it is something that takes some 

engagement across leadership in a governance model. 

Senator TESTER. Christopher. 

Mr. MILLER. Sir, I am not a CIO. 

I am an acquisition professional, and so I would say that from— 

that within the Department of Defense, for major efforts like this, 

where the Department is going to acquire something, it is a partnership. So I regularly brief our CIO as my boss, Mr. Kendall. 

Senator TESTER. All right. 

Mr. MILLER. And I would offer that either one of them can have 

the ability to stop the program if they are not comfortable where 

it is going. 

Senator TESTER. OK. 

Spending authority. I think you said it in your testimony, that 

you have it, right, Steph? 

Mr. WARREN. Yes, I do, sir. I am responsible for the budget. I 

make sure that the prioritization is done—— 

Senator TESTER. Right. 

Mr. WARREN [continuing]. With the under secretaries. They own 

that. 

Senator TESTER. OK Luke. 
32 

Mr. MCCORMACK. I have the oversight for all the spend across 

the Department. We do that in sort of a federated mode, but I certainly have the oversight capability on all spend. 

As I said in my opening testimony, we are checking down to the spends that are $2.5 million or less. We check—or, $2.5 million or 

more. I review every one of those. 

Senator TESTER. David, of the agencies that are out there, how 

many CIOs have spending authority? Not just the ones here but 

you know. 

Mr. POWNER. Not very many. 

Senator TESTER. Very few. 

Senator TESTER. In terms of spending authority, not very many. 

Very few. 

I think you are right. 

Mr. POWNER. If you look at PortfolioStat, PortfolioStat was not 

focused on mission-critical acquisitions. It was focused on commodity, or business, and administrative systems. 

And I think we had seven or eight agency CIOs tell us that they 

did not have authority over the business and administrative systems. That is not a very good situation. 

Senator TESTER. I agree. 

So what is your biggest challenge right now, Luke? 

Mr. MCCORMACK. I would say it is the same challenge that I had 

at ICE. It is the same challenge I had at DOJ. It is the demand 

always outstrips the capacity. 

Senator TESTER. And is that because of money, or is that because 

of manpower? 

Mr. MCCORMACK. I think it is probably a little bit of all that, 

right? 

There is always a balance on resources, and it is just the capacity of the ecosystem. Whether it is the acquisition community, the 

PM, the project management community, the user community who 

has to partner with us on these various programs, I think that the 

demand always outstrips the capacity. 

Senator TESTER. Steph, if you were to take the VA situation right 

now and set it aside if you can, what is your biggest challenge besides that? 

Mr. WARREN. I would say, as a leader who has many years in 

the Federal sector, it is the sense of helplessness at times. I come 

across folks in the organization, the middle management—the 14s, 

the 15s, the 13s—in terms of them understanding they have responsibility and have obligations and, yes, they need to drive on it. 

Sometimes it is easy to focus on a process, and a lot of our work 

has been about individual responsibility for the outcome because 

that is what we are there for. We are not to write reports. We are 

there to deliver services and benefits to those who provide to our 

veterans, and so we drive on that. 

But it is a challenge because many folks come from outside and 

they have not had that discipline; they have not had that drive. 

We have been very successful. I have a high-driving team. But 

we also have areas we still need to work on, sir. 

Senator TESTER. David, one question for you, has the OMB and 

the CIO Council been effective in holding agencies accountable for 

CIO performance? 
33 

Mr. POWNER. At times, and I will give you a good example. 

Right after the dashboard was rolled out, there were these 

TechStat sessions, executive review sessions at OMB. There were 

about 58 projects and about 70 meetings held. So some of them 

were held multiple times. 

During that period of time, there were projects terminated and 

rescoped. OMB claims $3 billion in savings over about a year period. That is where they got really active in reviewing projects. 

And I will give you one example—the ECSS project that failed 

with the Air Force, that we spent a billion dollars with nothing to 

show for it. 

Senator TESTER. Yes. 

Mr. POWNER. That was the only project TechStatted three times. 

So that is very effective. 

So I think between what the agency CIO executive team does 

with their governance activities that were discussed here. 

But I also think there is another level, that when you look at 

OMB, I think they can do a more effective job. They are not doing 

a lot of those TechStat sessions now, and we have documented and 

testified to that point, but that has been very effective. 

So one key question would be—and we have raised this—from a 

Federal CIO perspective or the CIO Council, what are the top 15 

or 20 projects for the Nation? 

We have 750 major projects on the dashboard. Only 275 of those 

are new acquisitions. It is really not that many when you look governmentwide. 

Senator TESTER. Yes. 

Mr. POWNER. What are the top 15 or 20? 

I guarantee that electronic health records would make the cut. 

It would definitely make the cut. 

Senator TESTER. Yes. 

Mr. POWNER. And having some visibility there, with additional 

Congressional oversight. 

Senator TESTER. Yes. 

Mr. POWNER. Very helpful. 

Senator TESTER. This is for everybody but you, Mr. Powner. 

How often are your agencies using PortfolioStats or TechStats, 

and do you believe they are effective tools? 

Start with you, Luke. 

Mr. MCCORMACK. We have used the TechStats very often. We 

have done over 14 of those. I think they have been very effective, 

whether it is re-baselining the schedule, giving the program the 

type of help it needs to get it back on track. So that has been very 

effective over the course of the last couple years. 

I think the PortfolioStat is very powerful, and I think that is another way, by the way, that the council sort of holds the CIO accountable because you are in there evaluating your entire spend 

profile. 

And, while a lot of it is focused on commodity, a lot of money is 

spent on commodity. In an agency, typically, half the IT spend is 

commodity-based. 

And you are in there with your entire leadership team, explaining why you are spending the money you are and also comparing 
34 

you, which I think is one of the most powerful parts of 

PortfolioStat, to quintiles in your area. 

So you can see how much it is costing you to deliver a desktop 

per user and compare that to how much the State Department delivers a desktop or how much VA delivers a desktop. And you are 

being accountable to explain why you are in the upper part of that 

quintile as opposed to delivering that capability for much less. 

So I think that is a powerful tool, and I think it is—as GAO has 

testified here, has saved upwards up to $1.9 billion, and I think 

there is a whole lot more opportunity out there. 

Senator TESTER. Steph. 

Mr. WARREN. So I may get stoned by saying this, but the 

TechStats were actually taken from a program that the VA established in 2010. 

So I can tell you this year we have done 20 so far; last year, 37; 

the prior year, 68. 

Anytime a project does not appear to be making its date, we have 

a TechStat. Why are we going to miss the date? What do you need? 

One of the things that we have driven into the organization is 

not just the TechStat, which is if you are going to miss, once a 

week we have a red flag meeting because we look at projects as a 

contract. And any project leader, any person on a project—a contractor, a member of the team, a customer—if you believe your 

project is not going to deliver, you throw the flag. I have every one 

of my leaders on that call to solve the problems and get the solutions delivered. 

So we find them very useful, and we find them as a lessons 

learned. How do we learn from the things that got in the way that 

would preclude the delivery? 

Senator TESTER. Donna. 

Ms. SEYMOUR. Being new in OPM, I used TechStat and 

PortfolioStat to kind of get a handle on their programs as I came 

in because the prior CIO had already departed, and so I found both 

of those tools to be very valuable just to gain a sense of our major 

investments but also some of our less-than-major investments. 

And the TechStat has really given me the ability to deep-dive 

into a couple of areas. 

And then, of course, the Portfolio Stat, reviewing the 2013 and 

getting ready for 2014, I think, has really put me in a better place 

to be able to plan ahead. 

Senator TESTER. OK. Christopher. 

Mr. MILLER. So, sir, I am probably a little unique here. I do not 

think there is any other program like what I am running right now 

at the Department of Defense. The amount of engagement and 

oversight that I have right now, sir, is probably mind-boggling to 

some people. 

I would tell you, sir, that the Secretary gets briefed about once 

a week, and I brief OSD senior leadership at least once a month. 

And I will tell you we have done more things to analyze the investment, to analyze the schedule of performance. 

And so I would say we are doing some things right now that are 

innovative and different, and I think we are trying to learn some 

things here. 
35 

One of the things I would highlight is we have very much tried 

to learn from the commercial industry in terms of what the statistics and comparable points are in terms of how we think about both 

schedule as well as the investment for our program, to make sure 

we are really judging ourselves in the right way, sir. 

Senator TESTER. OK. Well, I will just tell you I appreciate all of 

you guys showing up today. I appreciate your testimony. I appreciate your straightforward answers to questions. 

There are a couple of things that I would say. 

If we are going to be effective and efficient in this area, we need 

the best possible people to be filling the positions, whether it is 

your position or the positions that you oversee. And I think that 

you have a commitment to do that, and I appreciate that. 

And we will work with you, all of you, to make sure that we have 

the best people to do it and empower you to be able to make those 

decisions. 

I will tell you that there is a lot of work that can be done here 

to save a lot of money and be more effective. 

I am the last person in the world that should be talking about 

technology, but the truth is that when I was in the State government we had fiascos with technology in Montana, where a lot of 

money was spent and we did not get one thing out of it. And that 

is not what we want to have here at the Federal level, and I know 

that you folks do not want that either because it makes your job 

much more difficult. 

So I look forward to working with you and colleagues on this 

Committee and in the Senate to find solutions and give you the 

power you need to be able to do your job in a way that meets the 

needs of the agencies. 

So, with that, the hearing record will be open until June 25 for 

any additional comments and questions that might be submitted 

for the record. 

Once again, I thank the panelists for being here today, and this 

hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 5:04 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

(37) 

A P P E N D I X 
38 
39 
40 
41 
42 
43 
44 
45 
46 
47 
48 
49 
50 
51 
52 
53 
54 
55 
56 
57 
58 
59 
60 
61 
62 
63 
64 
65 
66 
67 
68 
69 
70 
71 
72 
73 
74 
75 
76 
77 
78 
79 
80 
81 
82 
83 
84 
85 
86 
87 
88 
89 
90 
91 
92 
93 
94 
95 
96 
97 
98 
99 
100 
101 
102 
103 
104 
105 
106 
107 
108 
109 
110 
111 
112 
113 
114 
115 
116 
117 
118 
119 

Æ