Date: 2016-07-11
Speaker: EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Texas

Mr. Speaker. I yield myself such time as I may consume. There have been two highprofile security incidents at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. NIST. facilities in the past year: one on the Gaithersburg campus and the other in Boulder. Colorado. These incidents have raised legitimate oversight questions that the Science. Space. and Technology Committee has pursued through both hearings and a yearlong investigation. This bill. I take it. is meant to kick the investigation over to GAO since our own efforts. which were focused more on "gotcha" questions than substance. yielded little. Unfortunately. what this bill does not account for is that the security incidents also prompted the Director of NIST to take seriously the need to improve security policies. procedures. and management of the two NIST campuses. Last December. the Director. Dr. Willie May. convened an ad hoc panel of security experts to make recommendations accordingly. The experts made a number of significant recommendations on all aspects of NIST security. By mid April. the NIST Director had developed an action plan to immediately implement many of those recommendations while initiating more indepth studies of other recommendations. These are very positive steps on the part of the agency and should not be overlooked or. worse. undermined. Science Committee minority staff have received copies of both the recommendations and the action plan because they asked for it. I wonder if the majority also thought to ask for these documents before drafting this bill without any expert input. We certainly agree with the majority that the GAO may have an important role in the process of strengthening security at NIST. However. any such GAO review should take into account ongoing reform at NIST as well as the expert opinion of GAO itself. Majority and minority staff alike received an email from GAO experts the night before the committee markup expressing concern about the nature of some of the questions being asked of them in this legislation. Neither their feedback nor NISTs own feedback was incorporated during the committee markup. The bill was rushed through the committee and now is being rushed to the floor. I am also quite puzzled as to the need for this bill since the chairman already sent a joint request to GAO. along with the chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce. Science. and Transportation. for a similarly scoped review of NIST security. GAO confirmed that review is already in their work queue. At best. this is an exercise in duplication. and we always talk about saving money. At worst. it is the wasting of valuable expertise of the GAO on an illconceived and illtimed report. This bill may lead to an inefficient use of taxpayers dollars. but. at the end of the day. it will not do any other harm. I have faith in the GAO to make lemonade out of lemons. For that reason. I am not opposing moving forward today. However. I do call on my colleagues on the Science. Space. and Technology Committee to take more seriously our oversight responsibility and our responsibility to the taxpayer by taking into consideration expert input and relevant activities at the agency in question before rushing a sloppy bill to the floor just for a press release. Mr. Speaker. I reserve the balance of my time.