Hearing Of Management, Investigations And Oversight Subcommittee Of The House Homeland Security Committee - The Fiscal Year 2010 Budget For Departmental Management And Operations At The Department Of Homeland Security

Statement

Hearing Of Management, Investigations And Oversight Subcommittee Of The House Homeland Security Committee

Subject: The Fiscal Year 2010 Budget For Departmental Management And Operations At The Department Of Homeland Security

Chaired By: Rep. Christopher P. Carney (D-Pa)

Witness: Elaine C. Duke, Undersecretary For Management, Department Of Homeland Security

Copyright ©2009 by Federal News Service, Inc., Ste. 500, 1000 Vermont Ave, Washington, DC 20005 USA. Federal News Service is a private firm not affiliated with the federal government. No portion of this transcript may be copied, sold or retransmitted without the written authority of Federal News Service, Inc. Copyright is not claimed as to any part of the original work prepared by a United States government officer or employee as a part of that person's official duties. For information on subscribing to the FNS Internet Service at www.fednews.com, please email Carina Nyberg at cnyberg@fednews.com or call 1-202-216-2706.

REP. CARNEY: The subcommittee is meeting today to receive testimony on the FY 2010 budget fort the departmental management and operations of DHS.

On May 7th, 2009, President Obama delivered his fiscal year 2010 budget request to Congress. His vision for the Department of Homeland Security was clear: the safety and security of our nation is a top priority, and we must achieve this goal through our spending of scarce homeland security dollars in a fiscally responsible manner.

Since its inception, the department has struggled with management and operational challenges that include integrating 22 separate and distinct agencies into one, managing one of the largest work forces in the federal government, ensuring that the department's acquisition policies are sound, economical and fair, and creating one unified DHS culture. The committee has continually taken the position that the department's low morale, lack of common culture, and the lack of diversity stem from a series of flawed policy approaches to establish an internally consistent human resources architecture for the department as a whole. While the department recently moved up one spot from the prior year in a recently released 2009 "best places to work" rankings, it was still ranked 28th out of 30. There's much work to be done to bring the department up to the same standards of morale expected of its federal peers.

The department continues to face acquisition and procurement challenges. Currently, there are more than 200 vacant positions in DHS contracting, and within the next five years, more than 25 percent of the DHS contracting work force will retire or will be eligible for retirement. Although the department has been disjointed and lacks a common culture, we are now seeing efforts to consolidate its operations, both physically, through the Saint Elizabeths Project, and systemically, through its data centers and financial management integration efforts.

As we recently saw with the release of the right-wing extremism report, mistakes are still being made by the department. However, we witnessed a swift response which indicates that the privacy, civil rights and civil liberties of those it seeks to protect are an important aspect of the department's work. I will be interested today in hearing how the department's budget reflects the need to ensure that such an incident never happens again. As we move forward with the new departmental leadership, new priorities and a new budget, unfortunately some things remain the same. Our nation is still at risk from terrorist attack both homegrown and abroad, and the Department of Homeland Security must be ready to fulfill its mission to protect the American people from threats both foreign and domestic, both natural and man-made.

The president's FY 2010 budget requests for the department in general and the management and operations directorates in particular recognize these realities and provide us with a financial framework for addressing them. Last month, Secretary Napolitano testified before the full committee about how she plans to implement the president's proposed budget departmentwide. Today we will hear how the undersecretary for management intends to work with the secretary to incorporate the budget's priorities into the department's operational and management functions, including its human capital, procurement, security, financial and information technology missions. What I would like today is an honest assessment of the department's needs. If more resources are needed, I expect the undersecretary to tell us that. I look forward to hearing today's testimony regarding the president's budget and how the department intends to use the proposed funds to build a stronger and more secure America.

The chair now recognizes the ranking member for the subcommittee, the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Bilirakis, for an opening statement.

REP. GUS M. BILIRAKIS (R-FL): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it.

Madame Secretary, I'm pleased that you could appear before us today to discuss the president's 2010 budget request for the department's management directorate and your plans for the coming fiscal year. I look forward to your testimony.

I am particularly interested in hearing about efforts that the department is to become more efficient, effective in both achieving the department's vital mission and using taxpayer resources. There are a number of very necessary but costly projects under way at the department, including Saint Elizabeths Project and the SBInet, and I look forward to working with you to highlight areas in which we can ensure the department is as nimble and efficient as possible and avoids costs and time overruns.

I'm also interested to hear your plans to address the concerns of the more than 200,000 employees who work at the department. The 2008 Federal Human Capital Survey showed improved results for DHS, but I'm sure that you and I will agree that more work needs to be done to recruit qualified candidates and retain them once they are onboard, including better training programs and defined career paths. You indicate in your written testimony that you are striving to make DHS a place where people want to work and I'm interested to hear how you plan to work with the department's new chief human capital officer to achieve this important goal.

As the newest federal department and one with a very challenging and critical mission, there's much work to be done to ensure that one DHS culture, advocated by both Secretaries Chertoff and Napolitano, is achieved. I look forward to working with you and the members of this committee to ensure that you have the resources and authorities you need to get the job done. To that end, I hope the committee will consider a comprehensive authorization bill for the department this year. Thank you again for being here, Secretary Duke, and I look forward to your testimony.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back the balance of my time.

REP. CARNEY: Thank you. And other members of the subcommittee are reminded that under committee rules opening statements may be submitted for the record.

I now welcome the undersecretary for management, Elaine Duke. Elaine C. Duke currently serves as the Department for Homeland Security's undersecretary for management. In this role Ms. Duke is responsible for the management and administration of the Department of Homeland Security. She oversees management of the department's $47 billion budget, appropriations, expenditures of funds, accounting and finance. That's quite a plateful. Ms. Duke also administers control over the department's $17 billion in acquisition and procurement. She is responsible for directing human capital resources and personnel programs for the department's 216,000 employees.

She administers control of the department's enterprise architecture through strategic use of information technology and communications systems, and she is responsible for oversight of the department's facilities, property, equipment and other material resources.

Prior to her appointment as the undersecretary for management, Ms. Duke served as a deputy undersecretary for management. She was the department's chief procurement officer for January 2006 until her appointment as deputy undersecretary for management in October of 2007. Ms. Duke was the department's deputy chief procurement officer from October 2004 to December of 2005 when she championed the creation of the acquisition and professional career program to rebuild the federal acquisition work force for the 21st century. Ms. Duke assisted in the standup of the department of Homeland Security while at the Transportation Security Administration, where she served as the deputy assistant administrator, beginning in August of 2002. Ms. Duke spent a great deal of her career with the U.S. Navy, where she held various acquisition positions of progressive responsibility. She began her career as a contracting officer for the U.S. Air Force. Ms. Duke holds a Bachelor of Science degree in business management from New Hampshire College, and a master's degree in business administration from Chaminade University in Honolulu, Hawaii.

We welcome you. We look forward to your testimony.

MS. DUKE: Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Bilirakis, and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to come and talk to you about the fiscal year 2010 management directive budget.

DHS and its many component agencies fulfill a broad mandate and conduct many different activities with a single unified security mission. In order to meet its priorities and support the department, the management directive has delineated six lines of business that are responsible for significant enterprisewide functions. These six lines of business produce integration and standardization and efficiencies throughout the department. Allow me to highlight just a few of management directorate's recent accomplishments.

In competition of federal acquisition contracts within DHS, we were able to increase our percentage of competed contracts from 69 percent in 2007 to 75 percent in fiscal year 2008. That surpassed our competition goal of 68 percent, and we're on target in 2009 to keep that level of competition up. We've exceeded all our small business contracting goals. We've begun to actively and aggressively manage the Working Capital Fund within the CFO's office. We've established a program review board to look at our major acquisition programs. We're on target to review 17 programs this year. Additionally, with the startup of the acquisition program management division, we've been able to increase the number of certified program managers running acquisition programs, level one -- from 20 percent a few years ago, up to near 90 percent this year. That is a significant step in getting a handle on our requirements of our acquisition programs, which -- I've talked to this committee before about how important that is for successful procurements.

We also have -- while we still have vacancies within the contracting career field, through our acquisition intern program and other efforts -- have nearly doubled the size of the 1102, the contract specialist, work force, from about 700 in -- about four years ago to over 1,100 now, with about 200 vacancies remaining. When we can get those filled, we will have doubled our work force in four years, which, given the challenging recruiting of that market, we're really proud of that. And thank you for your support of the intern program. That has contributed significantly to that.

Our fiscal year '10 budget really is focused on two areas. One is integration -- "one DHS" -- and the second is oversight and control. We are not building a management budget that seeks to build a big bureaucracy. In fact, my budget for my immediate office is staying flat at 13 full-time equivalents -- 13 people. What we're trying to do is use the Office of Management to build the building blocks that a new department like DHS has to have to successfully move forward in implementing its initiatives. Some of the initiatives we have in the president's '10 budget on the integration front include the DHS headquarters consolidation, which includes St. Es and the other consolidation in the D.C. area; a DHS-wide enterprise records management system, which is critical to moving forward in terms of our appropriate records and retention policy -- this is very important in light of the president's transparency initiatives; right-sizing human capital, focused on getting better diversity, better staffing processes within the department; and within the Chief Information Office several initiatives, including continuing the data center development and migration, using single sign-on, putting all our -- we have a huge emphasis on security in this budget, including moving a lot of our initiatives behind the trusted Internet connections, to really improve DHS's security.

On the oversight and control initiatives, we have the -- under Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12, which talks about "badging" of employees and contractors, we have centralized ($)25 million for that, to be able to issue cards to about half our employees in fiscal year '10. We continue our acquisition work force, and we have a new initiative on selective acquisitions, which is really our attempt to get a handle on our highly classified programs within DHS. This is a new initiative -- very much needed.

So I look forward to talking with you about the initiatives and answering your questions, and I do truly appreciate this opportunity.

REP. CARNEY: Well, I'd like to thank you for your testimony.

I remind each member that he or she will have five minutes to question Ms. Duke, and I will begin with myself, for five minutes.

Now last week, the secretary announced the appointment of Jeff Neal as the new human capital officer, and he'll be the department's seventh human capital officer in six years. This high rate of turnover obviously has hindered some of the human capital efforts and caused this subcommittee, and indeed the full committee, a bit of concern here -- quite a bit of concern, actually. What's Mr. Neal going to do to fix this problem? You know, first of all, the turnover of the leadership, but -- you know, I understand you continue to have recruiting problems even in an economic environment like this one. It seems to me that this is a perfect opportunity to get some of the best and brightest available. I hope that's going to be the case.

MS. DUKE: I think it is a perfect opportunity. As you know, with legislation last year, this administration had the choice of filling this position again with a "political" or a "career." Secretary Napolitano chose to fill it with a political appointment but with someone with federal experience. Mr. Neal has significant federal experience in human capital. So what he's going to bring to the table is both being able to support the agenda of this administration, which is very much focused on human capital, but also, he knows the federal system. I think some of the challenges we had in human resources really are federal challenges. And how do we work with Office of Personnel Management and really look at, how can we keep the basic tenets of the fairness and transparency of federal hiring but make it more efficient? So I think he's going to be a great representative to that federal initiative of really looking at -- we talk a lot about acquisition reform, and I'm looking forward to human resources reform.

REP. CARNEY: As you know, the department's been plagued for the last several years with dissatisfaction and low morale, some people say insufficient training, et cetera.

Can you say specifically how he's going to address those issues?

MS. DUKE: Well, I think I'm going to work with him personally. I chair the Diversity Council and the Recruiting Council.

I think that one of the basic things we have to do is really fill our vacant positions because people love the work they do, so we have the basic foundation. We have to get where we have a better -- I think a better balance of quality of life, family and work.

And so one of the things we'll be working on is recruiting. That's one of my top two priorities for Human Capital.

The second thing is diversity. I believe a more diverse work force will bring a better representation for this country. And that is -- we have targeted recruiting events and Mr. Neal will be directly involved in that.

And the third thing is much more tactical, but that's actually improving within DHS how we do hiring so that for the areas -- you know, we hire for 3,500 of the headquarters functions, doing that more effectively.

REP. CARNEY: Good.

The Human Capital Strategic Plan: We are -- it's supposed to be from FY '09 and we're all into -- moving into FY '10 and we haven't seen it implemented. Do you have the budget for it? Do you have the personnel in place to implement the plan? How's it stand?

MS. DUKE: We do have an increase -- it's called Right-sizing Human Capital -- that gives us an increase in personnel in human capital that I think can move forward.

One of the challenges we have in managing the budget is really the systems issues. So in human capital there's HRIT, which is looking at reducing the number of systems and that is funded through the Working Capital Fund and it's currently in there. But I think that we really have to have the discipline to put the up-front cost to migrate to systems -- for instance, we had eight personnel systems when we started as a department, now we're down to one  to have that discipline to put the money up front for -- you know, make sure the components are willing to put the money up front and get to efficient systems.

REP. CARNEY: Okay. I have just one more for this round. I was pleased to see that the president's FY '10 budget creates the new office within the Office of Procurement, the Office of Selective Acquisition -- that's really remarkable -- and requests 24 new positions to staff the office. This new office provides, you know, contracting support to the department's classified programs.

Given my personal interests and background in management operations in Homeland Security intelligence issues, I was really happy to see this office created. I believe it fills a significant gap the department needs to have filled. However, do we even have the proper facilities yet to do this? Do we have a SCIF even created for the procurement program? Do we have the necessary contracting officials the necessary clearances to do these programs?

MS. DUKE: The fiscal year '10 president's budget has money to get SCIF space that'll house about 17 people, so that is in the budget. It has the FTEs.

And the FTEs that you see in the CPO budget are contracting people. We were able to recruit a woman that is very qualified. She was doing this for the Navy and she's with us now and is the head of contracting for this new office. So I feel confident that with the president's budget we can stand up that office.

Now we also in future years will have to build the other business functions around the experienced contracting function.

REP. CARNEY: Does a SCIF exist? I mean, is there a physical SCIF yet for it?

MS. DUKE: We're hoping to be able to -- maybe where DOD has moved out; there's some areas in Crystal City and other places. But we have not secured the space yet.

REP. CARNEY: Okay. All right. Thank you.

I now recognize Mr. Bilirakis for five minutes.

REP. BILIRAKIS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Madame Secretary, my constituents are rightly concerned about getting the most bang for their buck when it comes to federal spending, especially when it comes to homeland security. They want to know that their tax dollars are being spent wisely.

Will the budget request support efforts or initiatives to ensure that the programs we are funding with their money are operating as efficiently and effectively as possible? And how, if at all, have projects under Efficiency Review Initiative impacted the FY '10 budget request and how will the findings of the initiative inform and guide future budget requests?

MS. DUKE: I think there's two initiatives in our president's budget that will specifically look at  they all contribute to it but specifically at spending taxpayer dollars well.

One is the increase of the Acquisition Program Management Directorate in the Chief Procurement Office. We want to double the number of acquisition program reviews we do from about 17 to about 40 in fiscal year '10. And that is important because we spend -- our top acquisitions, 50 acquisitions, total about $55 billion in costs, so that's a big high-risk chunk we want to manage.

A second area we're looking at is in the Program Analysis and Evaluation Division of the CFO's office. There's about a $3 million request to actually do independent assessments through a, like, federally funded research development center, someone -- of our programs to make sure that before we even put them in the budget they have the right metrics and objectives to actually deserve to be in the budget.

And I think those are two specifically addressed at your question.

REP. BILIRAKIS: Thank you very much.

I was pleased to read in your written testimony that becoming a premier employer that attracts and retains high-quality talent is a priority for the department. Unfortunately, the department is falling short of that goal in the eyes of its employees, especially when it comes to employee learning and development, a critical goal of the Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer.

A May 20th article in The Washington Post even noted that in many cases federal workers value strong leadership and straight answers from their bosses even more than higher pay and improved benefits. That's very admirable.

The article references a study from the Partnership for Public Service that found DHS employees rate the department very poorly in this regard.

How will the budget request improve training and learning opportunities for leadership, managers and supervisors within the department to help improve job satisfaction and performance among all department employees?

MS. DUKE: Well, I think there's two ways.

Within the human capital budget we do have a learning -- a training budget. And there are several centralized programs: the National Security Professional Program, which trains employees that are in national security; professional positions under the executive order, to look at national security from more of a holistic not just a DHS perspective. We have our fellows program, which is targeted at 13s and 15s. So we're trying to -- those are example of what we're trying to -- to make sure we have training opportunities for the employees themselves.

The second thing we learned from the employee survey is some of the dissatisfaction was actually based on a very more fundamental thing of supervisors not knowing how to be a supervisor. When we saw that people were saying that supervisors aren't dealing with problem employees or rewarding employees that do well, we went back to the supervisors and learned that there was a fundamental -- they didn't know how to do it. And so we've developed supervisory training, not the really glossy, you know, self-actualization but how do you deal with federal employees in rewarding and taking care of problems, and this is becoming a mandatory course.

And I actually think, knowing the fundamentals is really going to help. And that's a lot of our initiatives. You know, they don't sound really impressive, but if you skip over them it's kind of a Maslow's hierarchy thing. We've got to deal with the basics. And that's what you see in our president's budget.

REP. BILIRAKIS: All right.

Good. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, will there be a second round?

REP. CARNEY: Yes.

REP. BILIRAKIS: Okay, very good. Thank you.

I yield back the balance of my time.

REP. CARNEY: Okay, the chair now recognizes the gentleman from Louisiana, Mr. Cao, for five minutes.

REP. ANH "JOSEPH" CAO (R-LA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Madame Secretary, I'm looking through your testimony and there's a section that states, "smart and tough enforcement of immigration laws and improving immigration services."

Before coming here to Congress I was an immigration lawyer, and one of my worst experiences as an immigration lawyer was to come to the New Orleans district offices. The people there are rude and they are downright inefficient. I've not seen a federal office that shuts down at 2:00 p.m. and oftentimes leaving people hanging, waiting or what have you.

What plans do you have to improve efficiency and to improve, I guess, the quality of the personnel at the district offices, especially in USCIS districts?

MS. DUKE: Well, to be honest, that's the first that's been brought to me, but I will certainly take it back.

The main area we've been focusing on, USCIS, is a business transformation program where we're in the process right now of actually transforming the processes with a contract with IBM that we're going to build an IT system that will actually manage the processes. This is going to be good customer service from an efficiency standpoint because we'll be able to do case management, meaning an individual will be in the system once regardless of the number of benefits they're looking for, we'll be able to do online payment, online form processing.

That does not address the human side that you just brought up and I will bring that back and look into it.

REP. CAO: Thank you very much.

And I've also noticed that the fees for various applications in recent years have gone up dramatically and it reaches a point where it might be prohibitively expensive for many of the immigrants to apply. For instance, an application for a green card now runs close to $1,100 when you factor in application costs, when you factor in fingerprinting fees. On top of that you have attorney's fees that these people have to pay for.

I want to know what is the rationale behind the increase in the fees so dramatically in the last couple of years.

MS. DUKE: I believe the last -- CIS is fundamentally fee funded and so the increase in the fees that they had was basically to cover costs.

Now that doesn't mean we sit back with the current state and say we can just keep increasing fees. I think both the last administration and this is -- and this administration is fully committed to making sure CIS is running more efficiently. In fact, part of the commitment of getting the last fee increase was that we would move forward with the CIS business transformation program to try to make things more efficient and bring down actual costs.

I know it is a huge initiative of the secretary, and, you know, we're just going to continue to try to look through that. And we do realize -- we've seen immigration -- we're challenged right now in CIS because the number of immigration applications is going down, which decreases revenue. So we are faced with that fiscal reality and are really just trying to decide what to do with it.

REP. CAO: That's all the questions I have of the witness, Mr. Chairman.

I yield back my time.

REP. CARNEY: Thank you.

The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Green.

REP. AL GREEN (D-TX): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank you and the ranking member. This is an important hearing today.

And I thank the undersecretary for appearing today. I'm not sure whether this is your first time before the committee, but I welcome you to the committee and I assure you that my desire is to be as helpful as I can to you, to do all that I can to make your tenure in office and your office a success.

To this end I would like to have somewhat of a dialogue, but forgive me if it becomes more of a soliloquy.

I would like to acknowledge that we should only employ capable, competent and qualified people. We should only hire for procurement purposes those who are capable, competent and qualified.

I understand that big companies can do big things, that big companies can provide great innovation, but many times the innovation was originated with a small company. Small companies are known for being original, originating new ideas. I think that probably one of the supreme, superb and sterling examples of this would be a very popular phone that many of us carry, that really innovative technology that was originated by a small company.

I mention these things because I think that we have to look beyond the horizon of the big into the area of the small so as to make sure we capture all of these innovations that are out there.

I was at a meeting not too long ago with the chairman, Chairman Thompson, and we had a large company, a big company, represented -- the president and CEO was in attendance  and we had small companies there as well. And this CEO had an opportunity to hear some of these purveyors, these small companies, talk about the innovations that they produced, and you could see in his demeanor, in his body language that he was pleasantly surprised with what he heard.

It is not unusual for the person at the top to have the vision, but for some reason, many times that vision is not given the opportunity to see the entire horizon because we have policies and procedures and intellectual property that has to be protected so the person at the top is sometimes sheltered to the extent that he doesn't have the opportunity -- or she -- will not have the opportunity to see all of these innovations that exist.

These innovations are important to us. So my question and more of an encouragement is this: that we try to find new and creative ways to allow small, capable, competent and qualified business -- don't want anybody to do business that's not prepared to do business, who's not capable competent and qualified. But those that are ought to be given opportunities.

And my question in summary is how do you propose to enhance the opportunities for capable, competent and qualified small businesses to have a marriage, perhaps with large businesses such that they can produce offsprings of innovation that can make a significant difference for us?

MS. DUKE: Well, actually I'm glad you brought that up. And I've had many conversations with Chairman Thompson about small business and appreciate his support.

This is one of the areas we're most proud of. DHS continually exceeds the federal goals for all the small business contracting goals, but we're never done. So some of the main areas for small business is in the technology, kind of the emerging technology. The best place is our Small Business Innovative Research Program, where we actually can fund businesses as they develop solutions. This is in the earliest stages.

Within our contracting what we're doing is always looking. We have a robust small business office in headquarters that reports via me to the deputy secretary. We do outreach regularly.

We're also looking at setting aside programs.

We've often set aside specific contracts, but we're looking at setting aside programs where, for instance, professional services will award only to service-disabled veteran companies so that they can compete among themselves because it's sometimes hard for them to compete even against -- even within small business program you have many categories.

So we find, like small businesses, some of the service-disabled vets, which is the hardest goal to meet, they can't compete against some of the bigger small businesses. So we're looking for the niche opportunities where the competition would be restricted as we issue task orders among those.

So this is a huge area and we constantly look for outreach opportunities to help small businesses understand the complicated federal bureaucracy and we'll continue to do that.

REP. GREEN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My time has expired.

REP. CARNEY: I thank the gentleman from Texas.

I'll begin the second round of questions here.

Ms. Duke, the department currently is undertaking quite an enormous task, I think, of consolidating its 24 data centers into two locations. The budget request is $200 million for this effort. Can you tell me the status of the project, why it was necessary, and how much you anticipate it ultimately costing?

MS. DUKE: The project was necessary for two basic reasons. The first is efficiency. We have to get down to a -- we shouldn't be spending our tax dollars that we receive for maintaining facilities. And so this is just an efficiency from a facilities measure.

The second area that I think is even more important is a security measure. DHS, like other federal agencies, is under constant attack from cyberthreat and it's not just at the high side, the highly classified programs. It's just trying to gather information. And so by focusing our security efforts on two data centers, a primary and a backup, we can use our limited dollars to keep those at the highest level of security, which is constantly evolving -- we all hear about the new threats -- and really make it a security initiative.

It's actually also a building block to standardizing data and -- what we found is we're keeping the same data multiple times, each program because of our stovepiping. So the third piece of data center consolidation is going to be that we are going to start looking where are we keeping data and let's keep it once and then give access to it from different programs to try to further make things more efficient and consistent.

In terms of the ($)200 million, that does do the majority of the migration. We believe the cost of maintaining Stennis is -- I think there's about ($)58 million in the budget. That includes some upgrades. Just the annual operation and maintenance is about ($)35 million.

REP. CARNEY: I'm concerned about redundancies here and having backup. You know, does one center back up the other and vice versa? You know, going from 24 to two is quite a reduction and we have to be sure we protect that and can we be assured that we're going to have redundancy?

MS. DUKE: Yes, and I think that the about $30 million in power upgrades and facility upgrades that were planned in the '10s president's budget will really go a long way to make sure that we have a great primary center and backup redundancy is absolutely a part of our plan.

REP. CARNEY: You may know that physically located right next to one of the data centers -- you have this picture, too, I imagine -- are fuel storage tanks, which causes some concern, obviously. Depending on what kind of fuel is in those things it could be exceptionally explosive. How are we mitigating that? I mean, that's really a concern.

MS. DUKE: I would have to get back to you on that. I do not know specific plans for the fuel tanks. I will get back to the committee.

REP. CARNEY: Thank you very much.

During the H1N1 outbreak, there was significant controversy regarding whether the department's front-line employees at CBP and ICE and TSA could wear personal protective equipment in order -- such as gloves and respirators and masks and things -- to do their job. The guidance received was inconsistent and changed actually several times during the course of the outbreak. What has the department done to rectify this situation? Can you share with us most recent communications, et cetera?

MS. DUKE: We've continued -- the guidance has changed because the medical evidence has changed and we've continued to work with CDC and Department of Labor, OSHA. Our most recent guidance, I personally -- two pieces of guidance, one was one April 30th and it dealt with mandatory use for persons in high-risk situations.

The CDC guidance then was modified based on the change in H1N1 and I issued additional guidance or revised guidance to the component heads on May 29th, last Friday, that addresses both the fact that mandatory use is no longer required per CDC guidance and it addresses the permissive use of personal protective equipment.

REP. CARNEY: Okay. Now, given what you told us about the supervisors, are you satisfied or comfortable that the supervisors will be giving this directive down to the front-line workers?

MS. DUKE: I am satisfied with that. I had talked with each of the -- the major component heads, of course, are CBP, ICE and TSA, and I have talked with each of them. And I issued it only to the component heads so that they could deploy it within their components, but they have assured me they are doing that.

REP. CARNEY: Okay. Thank you.

The chair now recognizes Mr. Bilirakis again.

REP. BILIRAKIS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it.

Madame Secretary, on May 27th the director of the Office of Personnel Management announced that President Obama plans to institute a pay for performance throughout the federal government. Please discuss the benefits of pay for performance versus a direct -- (inaudible) -- grade and step system. Have you spoken to OPM Director Berry about how this would work at DHS and would you plan to use the Chapter 97 flexibilities provided in the Homeland Security Act of 2002?

MS. DUKE: The difference between pay for performance and step increases is just step increases, if you're performing satisfactorily you get paid for longevity, and someone performing just satisfactorily and someone performing exceptionally gets the same pay increase based on annual anniversaries.

Pay for performance tries to distinguish between just satisfactory performance and outstanding performance. So it's, obviously -- it is more kin to what's used in industry. I think it would address a lot of the -- it has the potential to both address or make worse a lot of the issues that were brought up in our employee survey. It has the possibility to make better because employees complain that they don't get adequate rewards for performing at an exceptional level.

The issue is fairness. And so as we do pay for performance, if we do, and I have not talked to Mr. Berry personally, we're going to have to make sure that it's on a clear enough standards -- any pay for performance -- so that it doesn't appear to employees, whether it's reality or just perception, that there's unfairness in the process. And I think that's the biggest thing that has caused pay for performance to be kind of controversial, is it appears to be subjective.

So I think the important thing of pay for performance, when instituted, is that it has clear objectives so that both the employee, the supervisor and other people can see that that employee did indeed exceed on objectives in a somewhat either qualitative or quantitative way, not just because the supervisor prefers them.

REP. BILIRAKIS: Thank you, Madame Secretary, and I'd like to keep in touch with you on this issue.

Thank you.

REP. CARNEY: Does the gentleman yield back?

REP. BILIRAKIS: Yes, I yield. I'm sorry.

REP. CARNEY: Okay. That's all right. (Laughs.)

The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Louisiana again, Mr. Cao.

REP. CAO: Thank you very much.

And I apologize, Madame Secretary, for keep beating the USCIS, but my experiences with the agency has not been very positive. And another area of my concern is the length of time that it takes to process some of these applications. Let me give you some example.

An application for naturalization, at least at the district office in New Orleans, I would say it takes about a year and a half. An application for, I guess, adjustment status between marriages -- with an immigrant with a U.S. citizen spouse can take as long as four years, especially in those -- especially when the spouse comes from countries that might be suspect, such as the Middle East, some of those other areas where we might have concerns in regards to terrorism.

You know, I appreciate the agency's concern for our security and possibly to root out fraud, which I know is a major problem when we are dealing with immigration cases, but to me it seems that the length of time to process and adjudicate some of these category of cases is, you know, somewhat extensive.

And I'm just wondering whether or not it is a particular problem at the district office in New Orleans or whether or not this is a national problem in connection with all district offices. Can you provide me with some insight in that regard?

MS. DUKE: Well, speed of benefits is always going to be a issue. It's like small business. You know, you're never satisfied. You always want to get better.

Two specific areas that as undersecretary for management I'm involved with working with CIS to improve -- one is lack of feedback. So it's one thing to take six months. It's another thing to not know it's going to take six months or not know how much longer.

So there's two things that this transformed CIS system is going to deliver. One is more feedback so that the applicants actually know the status and they know if there's a problem or they know if there is, you know, it's just kind of in the infamous, I guess, federal black hole.

The second thing that is going to be huge, because we find that a lot of people applying for benefits apply for more than one benefit, and under the existing CIS system, every time you enter the immigration system you're a new case, a new person, and under case management, although it sounds simple, when you apply for a benefit, you'll have a number and that number will stay with you.

So when you apply for a second benefit, you're not going to have to start over with, you know, verifying and doing all this security. All that information will transfer to your next benefit or related immigration benefit. And that's going to be huge, so that if you do need multiple benefits, your information will be stored and they will only start and get the extra information they need for the different benefit.

And that's probably the single most thing that'll help in terms of the time. And actually being an electronic system, the paper-based system, I think, is really going to help. It will also add some transparency to it and allow us to better track kind of the notional cases you're talking about or the examples you're talking about from New Orleans through better management (of ?) information.

REP. CAO: Thank you very much.

And I yield back my time, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

REP. CARNEY: Thank you, Mr. Cao.

We now recognize Mr. Green again from another five minutes.

REP. GREEN: Thank you.

One of the great challenges that we face has to do with FEMA and HUD. But before I go on, let me compliment you on your testimony. You have 13 pages and it's quite substantive and quite inclusive and you address our having to prepare for and respond to natural disasters. I want to go a little bit beyond what you have here.

FEMA and HUD -- FEMA has as its mission immediate short-term assistance in as quickly as possible, stay no longer than is necessary. And then HUD, as it relates to housing -- HUD becomes the provider of choice.

There has been some question as to when FEMA's aid ends and HUD's begins. There have been, as I understand it, conversations, dialogue has taken place to try to come up with some means by which we can know when FEMA will no longer provide temporary housing and HUD will step in and start to provide the long-term assistance that HUD provides.

Have you looked at this question, and if you have, how are we, hopefully, going to resolve the question of FEMA, temporary/HUD, long- term, and when they actually end and begin?

MS. DUKE: Yes, definitely, and Secretary Napolitano is very engaged in this. I mean the issue, and it was highlighted by Katrina, I mean FEMA -- you talked about having competent employees. FEMA is not in the long-term housing business. It's in the response and recovery, just as you said. What happened is, temporary housing is only temporary if it's returning to a permanent solution. So if somebody's rebuilding their home, then it's temporary housing.

But in the case of Katrina and some other of the major disasters, the people in temporary housing were not returning or had nothing to return to. Either they weren't rebuilding or they didn't have something before the disaster so there was nothing to return to.

So I think the main thing we're working on is -- really just both HUD and DHS agrees there should be a handoff in those cases and really just working out how that can happen seamlessly so that the person needing the housing, the victim of disaster isn't, you know, disadvantaged by the transition and how do we define at what point does temporary housing end and when HUD takes over? And it's not necessarily our time frame. It more has to do with --

REP. GREEN: Conditions?

MS. DUKE: -- the reasonable expectation of end to the temporary need versus a more permanent need and that's what we're working with HUD on now. And I think you'll see that continue to be a better relationship.

REP. GREEN: Well, I thank you for your efforts in this area because one of the most disenchanting aspects of this is when we find persons who are housed temporarily and they are begin told -- it always seems to happen this way right around some significant event or holiday, that they are going to have to move and we find ourselves, members, asking for extensions of time.

And to be candid, the FEMA reps have been fairly responsive in granting extensions, but it does create quite a bit of disruption and turmoil in the lives of the people who are trying to gain stability after having suffered a tragedy. So I'm -- the appeal, I suppose is that we do as expeditiously this work as we can so that we don't continue to have people who are uncertain as to what will happen next.

If we can just give people a degree of certainty, they will have a degree of confidence and that degree of confidence will allow them to start to rebuild their lives in the community that they happen to be in -- the school of choice may be the one that's right nearby, but if you're not going to live in that community very long, then you've got to look for another school.

So I thank you for the comments and my hope is that we can move expeditiously on this point. I sit on, by the way, Financial Services, so I happen to see it from both sides, Homeland dealing with FEMA, Financial Services dealing with HUD.

MS. DUKE: And I agree, and because every family's situation is unique, Mr. Green, we've added, a little while after Katrina, case services that are almost like social services so that we can actually counsel individual families based on their needs and their financial situation and their social situation. So that, I think, was a huge step on the department's part in terms of the human side of the effects of a disaster on a family.

REP. GREEN: Mr. Chairman, thank you. My time has expired.

REP. CARNEY: Thank you, Mr. Green.

Ms. Duke, I have a question on the QHSR. As you know, the review is due in December of this year, and in FY '09 President Bush's budget requested a total of ($)1.65 million for the completion of the QHSR. Is the department on target to meet the December completion deadline?

MS. DUKE: Yes, we are.

REP. CARNEY: Okay. That's heartening. Is it going to be, from your perspective, a thorough, complete review, or is it going to be more skeletal, as it was explained to us about a year ago?

MS. DUKE: I think it's going to be a complete review from purposes of baselining, mission alignment. What we did choose -- there was kind of two paths to go with variants of both. One is to try to solve world hunger, which would mean working out a lot of interagency type work, and, you know, the department made the decision that we want to get our own house in order from a mission alignment standpoint first.

So the QHSR is very comprehensive from a DHS perspective, but it does not go out because it would probably add two years to it to the really broader scope of federal alignment based on, you know, the interactions. So it does do the "touch points," but we're looking forward to doing this step of DHS mission alignment and then in the next one even broadening it more to the interagency, which I think is critical.

REP. CARNEY: Well, I agree 100 percent on that. I look forward to reading the report in any case.

Finally, I do want to return back to the data centers and certainly the physical location of those tanks. It's a huge concern of mine and for almost everybody who has seen it. Please, best (case ?) you can do, give us a plan on how we're going to mitigate that. We could have an enormous crisis on our hands if we don't get that taken care of soon, and if we caught you flat-footed on that one, I apologize. It's just something that it's been a concern and we really have to get that taken of, either moving the tanks or relocating the center, whatever we have to do to secure that building.

MS. DUKE: I will get back to that. And I apologize, I don 't have an answer for you right now.

REP. CARNEY: Okay, well, seeing as I'm the only one left -- (laughs) -- and I have no more questions, we will adjourn here in a moment. But if we do have more questions, and I imagine we will, we will give them to you and expect an expeditious return in writing.

Thanks for everything you've done and we look forward to working with you for years to come.

MS. DUKE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

REP. CARNEY: The committee stands adjourned. (Sounds gavel.)

Source