Examining the President's Plan for Eliminating
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Hrg. 112–259 EXAMINING THE PRESIDENT’S PLAN FOR ELIMINATING WASTEFUL SPENDING IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY HEARING BEFORE THE FEDERAL FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, GOVERNMENT INFORMATION, FEDERAL SERVICES, AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION APRIL 12, 2011 Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs ( U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 67–128 PDF WASHINGTON : 2012 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing 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 VerDate Nov 24 2008 11:00 Feb 17, 2012 Jkt 067128 PO 00000 Frm 00001 Fmt 5011 Sfmt 5011 P:\DOCS\67128.TXT JOYCE H605-41331-79W7 with DISTILLER COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman CARL LEVIN, Michigan SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii TOM COBURN, Oklahoma THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware SCOTT P. BROWN, Massachusetts MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada JON TESTER, Montana ROB PORTMAN, Ohio MARK BEGICH, Alaska RAND PAUL, Kentucky MICHAEL L. ALEXANDER, Staff Director NICHOLAS A. ROSSI, Minority Staff Director TRINA DRIESSNACK TYRER, Chief Clerk JOYCE WARD, Publications Clerk and GPO Detailee SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERAL FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, GOVERNMENT INFORMATION, FEDERAL SERVICES, AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware, Chairman CARL LEVIN, Michigan SCOTT P. BROWN, Massachusetts DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii TOM COBURN, Oklahoma MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin MARK BEGICH, Alaska ROB PORTMAN, Ohio JOHN KILVINGTON, Staff Director WILLIAM WRIGHT, Minority Staff Director DEIRDRE G. ARMSTRONG, Chief Clerk (II) VerDate Nov 24 2008 11:00 Feb 17, 2012 Jkt 067128 PO 00000 Frm 00002 Fmt 5904 Sfmt 5904 P:\DOCS\67128.TXT JOYCE H605-41331-79W7 with DISTILLER C O N T E N T S Opening statements: Page Senator Carper ................................................................................................. 1 Prepared statements: Senator Carper ................................................................................................. 41 Senator Brown .................................................................................................. 44 WITNESSES TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 2011 Hon. Vivek Kundra, Federal Chief Information Officer, Administrator for Electronic Government and Information Technology, Office of Management and Budget ........................................................................................................... 4 David McClure, Associate Administrator, Office of Citizens Services and Inno- vative Technologies, U.S. General Services Administration ............................. 6 David A. Powner, Director of Information Technology Management Issues, U.S. Government Accountability Office .............................................................. 8 Stephen W.T. O’Keeffe, Founder, MeriTalk .......................................................... 24 Rishi Sood, Vice President, Government Vertical Industries, Gartner, Inc. ...... 26 Alfred Grasso, President and Chief Executive Officer, The MITRE Corpora- tion ........................................................................................................................ 29 ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES Grasso, Alfred: Testimony .......................................................................................................... 29 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 98 Kundra, Hon. Vivek: Testimony .......................................................................................................... 4 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 47 McClure, David: Testimony .......................................................................................................... 6 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 53 O’Keeffe, Stephen W.T.: Testimony .......................................................................................................... 24 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 80 Powner, David A.: Testimony .......................................................................................................... 8 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 62 Sood, Rishi: Testimony .......................................................................................................... 26 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 93 APPENDIX Questions and responses for the Record from: Mr. Kundra ....................................................................................................... 107 Mr. Powner ........................................................................................................ 111 (III) VerDate Nov 24 2008 11:00 Feb 17, 2012 Jkt 067128 PO 00000 Frm 00003 Fmt 5904 Sfmt 5904 P:\DOCS\67128.TXT JOYCE H605-41331-79W7 with DISTILLER VerDate Nov 24 2008 11:00 Feb 17, 2012 Jkt 067128 PO 00000 Frm 00004 Fmt 5904 Sfmt 5904 P:\DOCS\67128.TXT JOYCE H605-41331-79W7 with DISTILLER EXAMINING THE PRESIDENT’S PLAN FOR ELIMINATING WASTEFUL SPENDING IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 2011 U.S. SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERAL FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, GOVERNMENT INFORMATION, FEDERAL SERVICES, AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY, OF THE COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, Washington, DC. The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:35 a.m., in room SD–342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Thomas R. Carper, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding. Present: Senators Carper and Brown. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER Senator CARPER. The hearing will come to order. Welcome one and all, especially to our witnesses today. Thank you for your prep- aration. Thank you for your presence. We look forward to your tes- timony and the opportunity to have a good conversation. We will be joined by some of our colleagues as we get into today’s hearing, but sort of as a precursor to today’s hearing, I was driving in to the train station this morning and flipping back and forth be- tween radio stations, and I happened to come across a song where the Rolling Stones were singing, ‘‘Hey, You, Get Off Of My Cloud.’’ [Laughter.] How appropriate. We usually do not have theme songs for our hearings, but if we did, that actually might work. We actually want to get people on the cloud, as I understand it, and hopefully when we leave here today I will understand better what all that is about. But our hearing today will examine the President’s plan to fun- damentally transform the management of our Federal information technology (IT) assets. The message of the plan is clear: We need to cut what we cannot afford and nurture an environment in which innovative and more cost effective technologies can be employed throughout our government. As I have said time and again in this room and other places, we need to look in every nook and cranny of our Federal Govern- ment—domestic, defense, entitlements, tax expenditures—and ask this question: Is it possible to get better results for less money? Or is it possible to get better results for the same amount of money? (1) VerDate Nov 24 2008 11:00 Feb 17, 2012 Jkt 067128 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\67128.TXT JOYCE H605-41331-79W7 with DISTILLER 2 The hard truth is that many programs’ funding levels will need to be reduced. Even some of the most popular and necessary pro- grams out there will likely be asked to do more with less or more for the same amount of many. Many Americans believe that those of us here in Washington are not capable of doing the hard work we were hired to do, and that is, to effectively manage the tax dollars they entrust us with. They look at the spending decisions that we have made in recent years and question whether the culture here is broken. They question whether we are capable of making the kind of tough decisions that they and their families make with their own budgets. And I do not blame them for being skeptical. I am afraid that their skepticism has proved well founded when you look at the kind of avoidable management failures that we have incurred in Federal information technology over the past dec- ade or so. The past mismanagement of our Nation’s $80 billion an- nual Federal information technology is not only intolerable, it is unsustainable. Late last year, then the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Peter Orszag said that fixing the broken manage- ment of our Federal Government’s information technology was— and this is a quote—‘‘the single most important step we can take in creating a more efficient and productive government.’’ I am going to say that again, ‘‘the single most important step we can take in creating a more efficient and productive government.’’ Based on the information that OMB has released as a part of its review, I believe he