<DOC> [108th Congress House Hearings] [From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access] [DOCID: f:93035.wais] ACHIEVING E-GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCIES AT THE OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT ======================================================================= HEARING before the SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY, INFORMATION POLICY, INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS AND THE CENSUS of the COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION __________ SEPTEMBER 23, 2003 __________ Serial No. 108-134 __________ Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house http://www.house.gov/reform ______ 930359 U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON : 2003 ____________________________________________________________________________ For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512ÿ091800 Fax: (202) 512ÿ092250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402ÿ090001 COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut TOM LANTOS, California ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York JOHN L. MICA, Florida PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland DOUG OSE, California DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio RON LEWIS, Kentucky DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri CHRIS CANNON, Utah DIANE E. WATSON, California ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER, NATHAN DEAL, Georgia Maryland CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania Columbia MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio JIM COOPER, Tennessee JOHN R. CARTER, Texas CHRIS BELL, Texas WILLIAM J. JANKLOW, South Dakota ------ MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont (Independent) Peter Sirh, Staff Director Melissa Wojciak, Deputy Staff Director Rob Borden, Parliamentarian Teresa Austin, Chief Clerk Philip M. Schiliro, Minority Staff Director Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida, Chairman CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri DOUG OSE, California DIANE E. WATSON, California TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio Ex Officio TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California Bob Dix, Staff Director Scott Klein, Professional Staff Member Ursula Wojciechowski, Clerk David McMillen, Minority Professional Staff Member C O N T E N T S ---------- Page Hearing held on September 23, 2003............................... 1 Statement of: James, Kay Coles, Director, Office of Personnel Management... 5 Koontz, Linda D., Director, Information Management, U.S. General Accounting Office; Norman Enger, E-Government Project Director, Office of Personnel Management; plus additional witnesses for questions segment: Rhonda K. Diaz, Program Manager, Enterprise HR Integration; Janet M. Dubbert, Program Manager, E-Payroll; Mike A. Fitzgerald, Program Manager, E-Training; Claire M. Gibbons, Program Manager, Recruitment One-Stop; and Mark White, Acting Program Manager, E-Clearance............................... 22 Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by: Enger, Norman, E-Government Project Director, Office of Personnel Management, prepared statement of................ 57 James, Kay Coles, Director, Office of Personnel Management, prepared statement of...................................... 8 Koontz, Linda D., Director, Information Management, U.S. General Accounting Office, prepared statement of........... 24 Putnam, Hon. Adam H., a Representative in Congress from the State of Florida, prepared statement of.................... 3 ACHIEVING E-GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCIES AT THE OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT ---------- TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2003 House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census, Committee on Government Reform, Washington, DC. The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Adam Putnam (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Representative Putnam. Staff present: Bob Dix, staff director; John Hambel, senior counsel; Scott Klein, professional staff member; Ursula Wojciechowski, clerk; Suzanne Lightman, fellow; David McMillen, minority professional staff member; and Cecelia Morton, minority office manager. Mr. Putnam. A quorum being present this hearing of the Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census will come to order. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this important discussion of E-gov initiatives. I hope everyone had a safe and productive weekend, avoiding the impact of Hurricane Isabel. I never thought that I would say that I would have to go to Florida to flee a hurricane, but that's what I did over the weekend, and so hopefully you and your families and your homes were spared the damage from Isabel and from the rains last night. We will get right to the hearing. This hearing is a continuation of the aggressive oversight by the subcommittee seeking to keep Federal Government agencies and decisionmakers focused on meeting the goals of the E- government Act of 2002, which were: greater accessibility to government by citizens and businesses; improving government efficiency and productivity which enhanced customer service; facilitating coordination cross-agency; and realizing tangible cost savings to the taxpayers through the use of 21st century technology and best practices throughout the Federal Government. Despite its distinction as the largest information technology purchaser in the world, the Federal Government has a tradition of buying and maintaining thousands of stovepiped systems that operate separately from other agencies and are not interoperable. Great strides have been made to improve productivity and results from IT investments. But for too long individual agencies have pursued their own individual IT agendas that do not emanate from customer service or sound business processes. We recognize that simply getting a handle on what systems exist and agreeing to a unified plan to coordinate this disparate IT environment is a monumental task. But the task must be done and done soon. In March, this subcommittee held its first hearing on E- government, reviewing the 24 Quicksilver initiatives and initial progress resulting from the E-gov Act of 2002. At that hearing we discovered several examples of progress being made as well as challenges that continue to be more people- and management-based than technological or financial based. Today, the subcommittee will focus in much greater detail on 5 of the 24 major E-gov initiatives being implemented across the government consistent with the E-gov Act and the President's management agenda. Specifically, we will be examining the progress being made by the Federal Government to implement those key initiatives intended to improve Federal employee recruitment, employee training, management of payroll, management of employee data and employee security clearance processes. For those inclined to speak the language of E-gov, that would be the following five entitled initiatives: E- clearance, E-training, Recruitment One-Stop, Enterprise HR integration, and E-payroll. The E-government Act passed by Congress last year designates OMB as the lead organization for all Federal Government IT purchasing and planning, including implementation of governmentwide E-gov initiatives. OMB was invited to participate and provide testimony at this hearing, and until yesterday morning that participation was confirmed and anticipated. Yesterday, however, the subcommittee was advised by OMB that there was a conflict in the availability of Mr. Clay Johnson and that he would be unable to participate in this oversight hearing. While the subcommittee and I, as chairman, are very disappointed at this development, we are nonetheless very pleased to be joined by the distinguished director of the Office of Personnel Management and a number of her colleagues. The Office of Personnel Management has been designated by the Office of Management and Budget as the lead agency for the five personnel-related E-gov initiatives. We are pleased to have as witnesses today the leadership and management associated with those initiatives to provide us with the detailed update on the progress and the challenges that we face in making these internal efficiency and effectiveness initiatives a success both for the Federal Government and for the American taxpayer. As with all of our subcommittee hearings, we can be viewed live via Webcast by going to Reform.House.Gov and clicking on live committee broadcast. [The prepared statement of Hon. Adam H. Putnam follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3035.001 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3035.002 Mr. Putnam. With that, as is the custom with this committee, I would ask that Ms. James please rise for the oath. [Witness sworn.] Mr. Putnam. Note for the record that Ms. James responded in the affirmative. We again welcome you to the subcommittee, and let me just give a brief biography of our distinguished panelists. On July 11, 2001, Kay Coles James was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to be Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. In that role, Director James is the President's principal advisor in matters of personnel administration for more than 1.8 million Federal employees. Since arriving at OPM, Director James and her agency have taken on new responsibilities including HR integration at the Department of Homeland Defense, the human capital portion of the President's management agenda, the creation of employee flexible spending accounts, new Federal long-term care insurance and, of course, the five E-government initiatives before United States today. In some circles Director James is most recognized and popular for making the ultimate decision last week that resulted in a 4-day weekend for D.C. area residents. Director James, we appreciate your being with us this morning, and you're recognized for your statement. STATEMENT OF KAY COLES JAMES, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT Ms. James. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman; and I appreciate the opportunity to be here with you. I'm particularly excited about the opportunity to talk about something other than how the decision to close Federal Government was made last Wednesday. We have a battle cry at OPM. It's called ``beyond snow.'' It has been changed now to say ``beyond hurricanes'' to communicate to the public that there is some very important work going on at OPM other than just those kinds of things. So I appreciate your oversight and appreciate the opportunity to be here this morning to talk about something beyond snow. So thank you for the opportunity to talk about E-gov. I would ask at the outset that my full testimony be entered into the record, and I will do an abbreviated opening statement. It's great, as I said, to be here to report on our agencies' E-government initiatives which will eventually yield $2.7 billion in tax savings over the life of the initiatives and produce unprecedented increases in efficiency and effectiveness of the management of the government's human capital resources. I will be discussing today five of the E- government initiatives outlined in the President's management agenda, President Bush's strategy for making the Federal Government more focused on citizens and results. The Office of Personnel Management, as you have stated, is the managing partner for five of the Presidential E-gov initiatives: Recruitment One-Stop, E-clearance, E-training, E- payroll and Enterprise Human Resource Integration. The goal of the Recruitment One-Stop initiative is to improve the process of locating and applying for Federal jobs. When I originally testified and before the U.S. Senate in my confirmation hearings, applying and the recruitment process was identified as one of the major areas that needed to be fixed; and Recruitment One-Stop certainly is a step in that direction. As part of this initiative, our new USAJOBS Web site shakedown cruise, as we like to call it, was launched last month in a real-time trial run which allowed us to ask for and respond so customers' requests and comments. The site now has a new look and a clean feel, bright and easy to navigate. A new full text job search function was introduced as well as a streamlined resume builder. Since the launch there have been 4\1/2\ million unique visitors to the new site. That's an increase of more than 400 percent from the month before the new site was launched. We launched the site on August 4 and in the 7 weeks since then there have been over 101 million page views, more than 9 million visits and close to 8,000 unique visitors. There are approximately 15,000 new resumes created each week on the site. The numbers are staggering. Job seekers who put their resumes on our Web site are able to search for jobs automatically and receive notice of these postings on a daily basis. They're able to sign up for automatic e-mail notification when the type of job they're looking for opens up. Since launch we have received more than 15,000 E-mail communications from job seekers, and the revamped Web site features a quicker job search engine. E-clearance. The frustrations with delays in the national security application and update process since September 11 has been felt by the Department of Homeland Security, the administration and indeed the Congress. The OPM E-clearance initiative will improve and speed the processing of investigations for security clearances. There are several components of our E-clearance improvement process, but probably the most visible will be the Electronic Questionnaire for Investigations Processing. This is an automated on-line version of the SF-86 paper-based security clearance application that has been welcomed by current Federal employees as well as new employees. People are very excited about that. The vision for the E-training initiative is the creation of a premiere governmentwide environment that supports the career development of the Federal work force. I can tell you, Mr. Chairman, that being briefed on this is one thing, but actually seeing it in function and operating is truly exciting, and I believe that our Federal work force is going to be very, very excited about this as they become more aware about it. Since the launch on July 23 the government on-line learning center has had 1 million unique visits and has had over 50,000 courses completed by 86,000 registered users around the world. Incidentally, about 50 percent of those users are from the Department of Defense, so we actually have soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan using our E-training programs to continue their education as they defend our freedom abroad. On September 17, something I think this committee would be very interested in, we launched our E-training Module 3, which includes the IT work force development road map and allows Federal IT personnel to complete skill gap analysis, create individual development plans and access additional resources. The Enterprise Human Resources Integration is a term that you can expect to hear a lot more about in years to come. Once developed, EHRI will be a comprehensive electronic personnel recordkeeping and analysis system. We are very excited about it and the cost savings that will be realized as a result of it. And speaking of money, we are also consolidating and streamlining the Federal payroll process through our E-payroll initiative. The E-payroll initiative consolidates some 22 separate Federal payroll systems to two systems which will simplify and standardize the Federal payroll. The E-payroll will save taxpayers about $1.1 billion over the next 10 years. Those are large numbers indeed. Mr. Chairman, the President expects results. He expects that of his managers and he expects that of the programs that he oversees. E-gov is producing results, and they are producing results today. The results are tax dollars saved, government efficiency enhanced and the American citizen better served by their government. For those of us who started out as students of war in distant lands and could never have imagined a world where war could be brought right into our very cities, this is a time of vigilance and security. A government that embraces the technological advancements available today is a necessity; and with E-gov, we're doing precisely that. With that, Mr. Chairman, I am happy to answer any questions that you may have. Mr. Putnam. Thank you very much, Director James. [The prepared statement of Ms. James follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3035.003 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3035.004 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3035.005 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3035.006 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3035.007 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3035.008 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3035.009 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3035.010 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3035.011 Mr. Putnam. We have a lot of ground to cover today. We have five key initiatives that we discussed earlier, and I don't want to dwell on any one of them, but I do want you to comment, if you would, on the status of the Recruitment One-Stop procurement and any action that you may have taken to ensure fairness and openness and a deliberate process for the future. Ms. James. OPM is tasked with, as I said, five E-government initiatives. These are very huge processes. Underlying all of them is the desire to provide efficient services to the American people to make their government more accessible and to also provide efficiencies for our current work force. In doing that, it is absolutely imperative that the process that we have in place to get us where we need to be be processes that are trusted and are respected. We did several things within OPM to make sure that those processes are protected. I think the two most important are building the internal capacity by bringing on subject matter experts in procurement so that they can give us the best advice possible and to handle these procurement processes with professionalism and with expertise and with fairness. Also, I want to make sure that our processes are, in fact, as we hope they are, to be balanced and fair and open; and so, as a result of that, I asked for an independent audit by our Inspector General to look at them and make sure that those processes are handled that way and relying heavily upon his advice and expertise in doing that. So I think those two things will assure that. The other thing that I think is important is ensuring that we are getting the best use of our procurement dollars. We want to make sure that all of our contractors are benchmarked and are in fact results oriented in producing what they say they can and in a timely matter. So there's a great deal of oversight that's involved. Mr. Putnam. Thank you very much. On the payroll issue, the savings that you project that would be realized, are they civilian only or is that across the entire Federal Government? Ms. James. I think they're civilian only. I'm not sure. They are. The experts are on this row. I will turn to them frequently and look for the nod of the head. Mr. Putnam. So the payroll issue and the recruitment issue are civilian issues only, is that correct? Ms. James. That's correct. Mr. Putnam. OK. What types of discussions are taking place with the DOD to try to bring them along to try to consolidate their payroll systems as well? Ms. James. DOD is special. We have continuing ongoing dialog with the Department of Defense, and I know that they are as committed as we are at OPM to implementing the President's agenda. Some portions of DOD are a little slower to come along than others, but I'm sure we'll get where we need to be. We have a constant dialog. We are constantly involved in communications. We are constantly involved in collaboration, and I am confident that eventually we'll get to where we need to be. Mr. Putnam. Is the Enterprise HRI included in DOD also or is that civilian only also? Ms. James. That is civilian also. We don't do--are we going to do any military on the HRI? Civilian, yes. But military--I think that later we will have the subject matter experts in a panel who can ask--answer some of the specifics that you may have about some of the programs. Mr. Putnam. Will the payroll system be linked with OMB's financial management system so that they have a better track of cash-flow? Ms. James. You know, it is--yes, it will be. There will be a wealth of data that we are able to collect with our new systems, EHRI as well as payroll and others; and at OMB they will be able to access those data bases and do much better analysis. They will be able to do much better projections as a result of that. Mr. Putnam. On the E-clearance side, how successful do you project that it will be in reducing the backlog in time and in dollars in moving those processes along but maintaining their integrity? Ms. James. You know, I think prior to September 11 we at OPM did not fully comprehend sufficiently our mission; and as a result of September 11 we really have changed our mission statement to respond to the new realities. We didn't view ourselves as a national security agency, but in many senses we are with the responsibility that we have for E-clearances when--in fact, you know, when you look at the DOD piece and the OPM piece and the fact that they're now in communication about doing a joint effort that looks at about 98 percent of the E- clearances or the clearances that are done in government. When I talk to individuals outside of government, they find it absolutely incredible. One of the reasons we can't generate the excitement about the E-government initiatives that we have is because most people assume that we do them already. This is certainly one area in E-clearance where moving and taking advantage of the technology that exists in our world today will move us quantum leaps in terms of speed, in terms of efficiencies, in terms of eliminating redundancies so that I expect that as we go more on-line and as we, you know, we improve our process that you will see quantum leaps ahead in terms of our speed, accuracy and efficiency. Mr. Putnam. Do you still believe that the savings targets that you gave in your testimony are on target? Ms. James. I do. I do. And you know some people find the numbers absolutely staggering and don't believe they pass the straight face test. But all it takes is an understanding of how our government operates to understand how we could be in this situation. You have agencies that each have their own systems, their own legacy systems. You have redundancies that are out there; and, as a result of that, most of the efficiencies will be achieved by economies of scale and as we eliminate redundancies. It requires a great deal of commitment and leadership to get us where we need to be because everybody has their own, and everybody wants to keep it. And, quite frankly, that does not serve the citizen well and it does not serve the employee well, when we could be moving toward combining these systems, realizing the efficiencies and providing better services at the same time. But I have to tell you that's a tough one. People are very, very territorial. But I think we'll get there, and I think we'll get there because leadership comes from the top. The President has given his direction. The President's Management Council is committed to this, and we are working in a collaborative way, so I think you will see those kinds of savings. Mr. Putnam. It would be nice if OMB were here to hear your discussions about the cultural challenges and the turf battle, because, hopefully, they can carry a stick big enough to alter some of those attitudes. But do you have an estimate on what it will cost us to save that much money? Ms. James. I don't have a combined total for all of the E- gov initiatives. Maybe our technical matters experts do, and they can give that to you a little later. Mr. Putnam. OK. On the issue of turf and the cooperation, you said it better than anyone about the need for the cooperation and coordination amongst the agencies and the need to give up some. Do you sense that there's a climate out there of buying in to the management agenda or what level of resistance do you still face? Ms. James. I'll tell you, there was a great deal of resistance initially, and then I think they realized in several communities--and maybe I'll talk a little bit about each of those--that the President was quite serious and that this is what he expected from his team. When we're looking at fundamentally changing how we do government and getting results for the American people, we must move in this direction. It does not pass the straight face test that our government is still operating in outdated, antiquated, outmoded, redundant systems. But change does not come easily or quickly. As I said, there are those territorial issues where people feel comfortable. A lot of times people feel more comfortable with something that's broken and doesn't work, just because it's theirs, and so change is very difficult. In talking about this sometimes I use the analogy that if you can think about a family getting a new computer at Christmas, there are those who gravitate toward the new technology easily and quickly. There's always a couple of family members that think the old one works better and I want to keep it even though it's antiquated, outdated and outmoded. But with leadership and training and communication you can eventually change that culture. You also have an entire vendor community out there that, in fact, you know, is wed to the old system because they see that as more opportunity for them. I am trying to encourage them to look at the new vision for E-gov. There are many opportunities out there for them, but in the changing environment they must change their business plans. There are lots of opportunities, and we invite them to be our partners. Mr. Putnam. Very good. Do you see the human capital effort and the E-gov efforts on the personnel side as being complementary initiatives? Ms. James. You know, I do. That's a very good and very perceptive question for the reason that, you know, when you look at the President's management agenda, all of those initiatives sort of are like a glove and they fit together very well. One of the ways I like to talk about our E-gov initiatives is to look at it from the time someone is hired into the Federal Government until someone retires. When you look at the whole range of challenges that are before us on human capital right now, the E-gov initiatives fit very nicely with helping us to achieve our human capital goals. There's got to be a better way to hire people into the Federal Government. Our systems are broken, and Recruitment One-Stop will help us fix that. There's got to be a better way to get people cleared and into our government more quickly, when people are waiting months and in some cases years for a clearance; and you will see that our initiatives there will help that. When people are moving in between jobs in the Federal Government, it is--it does not pass the straight face test that there were still paper folders that had to follow our employees around; and so, of course, our HRM project will help that. When we are trying to do forecasting and succession planning, when we are looking ahead to see where the skill gaps are, you can see that having efficient E-gov projects that work to help us achieve those goals are absolutely essential. So our E-gov projects and E-gov initiatives actually fit quite well, like a hand in glove, with helping us to achieve our human capital strategies. As I said, sometimes it's a little difficult to get excited about what we're doing, because a lot of people assumed that we were there already and we are in fact not. Mr. Putnam. Can you use this E-gov initiative to identify and locate the types of skill sets that the government is lacking just by virtue of the medium that you're using to attract them? Ms. James. Absolutely. I think that's going to be very helpful to agencies as they are going about trying to fill very particular job openings and job categories. And with the--and, you know, I think that later today you will have the opportunity to hear from Norman, from some of the other folks who are working on this specifically. But when you see some of the tools that are on that Web site now, that helps both the applicant and helps the agency to identify talent. One of the things that's most exciting for us is that a job applicant coming to the Federal Government used to have to fill out not one resume but they would have to do multiple resumes and applications in order to apply for Federal jobs. Now they can do one and that will suffice for many different opportunities. So we'll see many efficiencies as a result of that. Mr. Putnam. Very good. What have we not discussed that you would really like to elaborate on for the subcommittee? Ms. James. Well, I think, Mr. Chairman, that you--there's a lot to be talked about, but, quite frankly, that is at the--you know, the more technical level in terms of what each of these initiatives do, so I think you have a very exciting panel in front of you for this afternoon. I would just say yet again that you cannot overemphasize the importance of this particular initiative for bringing value to the taxpayer as well as bringing efficiency to those individuals that want to come to work for the Federal Government and for those employees that are already there. You will hear from GAO in a few minutes; and, quite frankly, you know, we owe a debt of thanks to David Walker and to GAO for raising human capital as a high-risk factor. People who understand the current status of the Federal work force understand that for us to recruit and retain the work force that this country desires we must move our systems into, you know, the--where technology is today into the 21st century. Quite frankly, it does not pass the straight face test that this has not been done already. So there are a lot of exciting things that are going on, and I would encourage any members of your staff or other committee members if they would like to see hands-on demonstrations of these particular initiatives it would really enrich, I think, the dialog that's going on right now. I would also like to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing, because, quite frankly, it's difficult for us to get the word out about the initiatives and about the new tools that are available. We try in every way we know how in terms of press conferences and releases and going to conferences, but one of the best ways to get a message out is when you call us up here and have us testify. Mr. Putnam. Well, thank you very much, Director James. We certainly appreciate your enthusiasm and your leadership on this issue, and we look forward to hearing the testimony of the second panel. So, with that, the committee will stand in recess and dismiss the first panel and arrange the second. Ms. James. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [Recess.] Mr. Putnam. The subcommittee will reconvene. I would like to welcome all of our witnesses on the second panel. We will be handling our second panel a little bit differently than normal. Following comments, the formal testimony from GAO and additional remarks from the Office of Personnel Management, we have asked the program managers from each of the five initiatives that we're discussing today to join us for the question and answer period. So we have seated all seven of those participating in our second panel at the table to eliminate the disruption when we go to questions of the second panel. We want to welcome all of you here. As is always the case, we will place your entire statements in the record; and we ask that for those of you who are testifying to limit your remarks to 5 minutes. We may have to share some of the microphones. We'll be very flexible about that. Take your time. With that, I would ask all of you, even those who are only answering questions and not giving formal testimony, to please rise and accept the customary oath. Please rise and raise your right hands. [Witnesses sworn.] Mr. Putnam. Note for the record that half the room responded in the affirmative. I'd like to introduce our first witness for the second panel, Linda Koontz. Linda Koontz is Director for Information Management Issues at the U.S. General Accounting Office. Ms. Koontz is responsible for issues concerning the collection, use and dissemination of government information in an era of rapidly changing technology. Recently, she has been heavily involved in directing studies concerning E-government, privacy, electronic records management and government-wide information dissemination issues. Welcome to the subcommittee. You're a frequent flyer here at the subcommittee. We're always delighted to have you, and you're recognized for your opening statement. STATEMENTS OF LINDA D. KOONTZ, DIRECTOR, INFORMATION MANAGEMENT, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE; NORMAN ENGER, E- GOVERNMENT PROJECT DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT; PLUS ADDITIONAL WITNESSES FOR QUESTIONS SEGMENT: RHONDA K. DIAZ, PROGRAM MANAGER, ENTERPRISE HR INTEGRATION; JANET M. DUBBERT, PROGRAM MANAGER, E-PAYROLL; MIKE A. FITZGERALD, PROGRAM MANAGER, E-TRAINING; CLAIRE M. GIBBONS, PROGRAM MANAGER, RECRUITMENT ONE-STOP; AND MARK WHITE, ACTING PROGRAM MANAGER, E-CLEARANCE Ms. Koontz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to participate in the subcommittee hearing on OPM's E-government initiatives. As you know, these initiatives are intended to serve as a complete set of electronic support tools for the Federal Government's human capital functions including recruitment, security clearances, personnel records, training and payroll. OPM's vision is for these initiatives to streamline and improve the process for moving employees through the entire life cycle of their employment with the Federal Government. OPM has made progress in making this vision a reality. For example, it has implemented enhancements to its USAJOBS Web site under Recruitment One-Stop, automated the form supporting the clearance process under E-clearance and established the Gov On- line Learning Center under E-training. However, OPM faces a number of challenges as it continues to implement these initiatives. First, program managers for many of the OMB-sponsored initiatives have been under pressure both from OMB and within agencies to achieve results quickly. In order to meet the demand for quick results, significant alterations have been made to the acquisition plans for several initiatives. For example, in OPM's recent decision to continue with its awarded contract for Recruitment One-Stop despite a successful bid protest by Simplicity Corp., agency officials perceived the need to implement an E-government initiative as quickly as possible to be one factor outweighing the concerns raised by GAO. While it is clearly important to adhere to agreed-upon schedules and milestones, it is also important to follow established contracting procedures which are intended to ensure fair competition and result in the best technical solutions. Second, each of OPM's five initiatives aims to ultimately create a single system or Web-based service to support a specific human capital function. In each case, agency-unique systems and processes must either be replaced or integrated into the planned single system. Consequently, managing the migration from agency-specific systems to consolidated systems will be a challenge. It will be crucial for agencies to implement effective change management and communication strategies and reach agreement on key standards. Third, OPM will be challenged in estimating and measuring the $2.6 billion in cost savings that OPM believes will be derived from these initiatives. For example, for the Recruitment One-Stop, project officials estimate that implementation will reduce the average cost of hiring a new Federal employee in fiscal year 2005 by $112, or about 4 percent. With about 150,000 new hires each year, the total savings to 2012 would amount to about $168 million, significantly less than the total cost savings of $365 million that OPM estimates. According to OPM officials, the additional savings would be gained through other factors contributing to future efficiencies. However, these other factors have not yet been fully defined, and performance measures to capture these savings have not been established. Mr. Chairman, OPM has made progress in moving forward in implementing its five E-government initiatives which, if fully implemented, could have significant benefits by providing more streamlined and seamless Federal personnel processes and by saving taxpayers millions through eliminating redundant payroll and other systems. However, OPM continues to face challenges in implementing these initiatives. Unless these challenges are successfully addressed, OPM risks not fully realizing the potential of its comprehensive effort to improve human capital functions across government. That concludes my statement. I'd be happy to answer questions at the appropriate time. Mr. Putnam. Thank you very much. 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Our next witness is Norman Enger. Norm Enger is E-government Program Director for the Office of Personnel Management. Mr. Enger has extensive experience in the information systems industry. Most recently, Mr. Enger was vice president of Computer Associates, the world's fourth largest software firm, where he was responsible for business strategy and managing delivery of professional services to commercial and Federal E-business clients. Prior to this, he was president of Applied Management Systems, a professional services and systems integration firm. Mr. Enger, we welcome you to the subcommittee and look forward to your testimony. Mr. Enger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to request that my full testimony be entered into the record. It has been a privilege and a pleasure to work with OPM Director Kay Coles James. Her leadership has let the Office of Personnel Management become a leader in E-government. I would like to add more detail on what she discussed relative to the five OPM E-gov initiatives. The vision of OPM is for these initiatives, when combined with OPM's retirement systems modernization effort, to provide an interlocking, trusted enterprise system based on the employee life cycle. These interrelated initiatives streamline and improve processes for moving Federal employees through the employment life cycle. Collectively, these initiatives help make government more citizen centered and results oriented in line with the President's management agenda. The goal of the Recruitment One-Stop initiative is to improve the process of locating and applying for Federal jobs. Based upon current site use, 54 million Americans will visit this site each year. Over 700,000 new resumes will be created on this site each year. With the new USAJOBS Web site, job seekers enjoy a new user-friendly site with a look and feel that is clean, bright and easy to navigate. A new full-text job search is available as well as a new streamlined resume builder. Human resources specialists benefit from the addition of new tools for managing job postings, candidate communications and candidate sourcing. Newly formatted job announcements will be attractively displayed, easy to read and communicate to applicants the benefits and rewards offered by a career in public service. Job applicants are offered more intuitive and flexible job searching capabilities that allow them to more easily identify jobs that best match their interests and skills. They will also be able to check the status of their job applications. Recruitment One-Stop improves service delivery to job seekers and enhances the government's position as a competitor for talented personnel. Our new E-clearance initiative will not only save time and taxpayer money, it is a vital new necessity for a post- September 11 government committed to vigilance and security. Today backgrounds can be checked faster because the forms can be completed and submitted faster. There will be a reduced wait time for clearances and more reciprocity and sharing of clearance information among agencies. All authorized personnel will have quicker access to clearance information, and there will be a reduction in duplicative investigations. The initiative benefits all applicants, employees and contractors to the Federal Government. When a person completes a standard form 86, part one, data after the first time--addresses, employment, education and so forth--will all be automatically populated, thereby eliminating the need to enter the information, with a time savings of 1 hour per person. Investigations will be less expensive and can be scheduled faster because the SF-56 data will be transmitted and processed as an electronic record. The second component of the E-clearance initiative is the clearance verification system which provides access for all agency authorized users to the personal security investigation and clearance records of the Federal Government. The third component of the E-clearance is to image investigative records held by myriad investigative agencies and make them available electronically to all authorized Federal users. Our E-training initiative with its GoLearn.Gov Web site offers Web-based training to executives, managers and human resources personnel with the information and tools needed to more easily identify career paths and competencies, track performance in key areas and identify and assess learning needs. Over 1 million civilian and military personal use this site each year to receive on-line training. There are currently 100,000 registered users, and 50,000 courses have been completed. The E-training initiative and its on-line training will provide talented, instructional programs based on the needs of both the individual and the organization. There are cost savings from tuition, cost avoidance compressed learning time and travel cost avoidance. The Competency Management Center on the site allows human resource specialists and employees to more easily plan professional and individual development and map into courses and services. Current research in government and commercial sectors suggest that employees are more likely to stay with organizations that provide training opportunities that are aligned with career development. Our next initiative, Enterprise Human Resource Integration, is the beginning of the end of those tons of paper personnel folders. Conducting work force planning analysis on a large scale is difficult today because personnel data is stored on paper in personnel folders and the subset of that data is stored in a jumble of legacy systems of varying levels of functionality and integration. The goals of EHRI are clear: provide comprehensive knowledge, management and work force analysis to enhance strategic management of human capital across the executive branch. This includes a data repository for knowledge management and work force planning. This repository is becoming operational on September 30, 2003. Next is an able, enhanced and expanded electronic exchange of standardized human resources data within and across agencies producing tangible benefits and cost savings. The E-payroll initiative advances the E-government agenda by creating rare efficiencies in Federal payroll processing. We are reducing 22 Federal payroll systems to two partnerships that provide payroll processing services. The current 22 systems that pay 1.8 million civilian employees employ a variety of paper and electronic processing. Records are not easily shared between agencies. We want E-payroll to be a simple, easy-to-use, cost-effective, standardized, integrated human resource and payroll service to support the mission and employees of the Federal Government. The managing part of OPM established and led a working group to analyze Federal and civilian payroll service delivery from a governmentwide perspective in order to identify options for the modernization and improvement of payroll systems processes. Payroll consolidation will provide Federal employees more efficient and effective service. They will have better information, consistent net pay, on-line enrollment and electronic access to information. Service delivery will be improved through standardized systems. Mr. Chairman, OPM E-government is using digital technologies to transform government operations in order to improve effectiveness, efficiency and service delivery. The program management office for E-gov at OPM has the vision that seeks an order of magnitude improvement in the Federal Government's responsiveness and value to the citizen. Thank you. I will be happy to answer any questions. Mr. Putnam. Thank you very much Mr. Enger. We appreciate you being here. We appreciate your testimony. [The prepared statement of Mr. Enger follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3035.042 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3035.043 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3035.044 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3035.045 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3035.046 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3035.047 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3035.048 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3035.049 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3035.050 Mr. Putnam. We would also like to recognize our five other panelists on the second panel. Rhonda Diaz, Program Manager for Enterprise HR Integration. Janet Dubbert, Program Manager for E-payroll. Mike Fitzgerald, Program Manager for E-training. Claire Gibbons, Program Manager for Recruitment One-Stop. And Mark White, Acting Program Manager for E-clearance. We will now move into the questions; and, again, I want to thank all our panelists for being with us. The Director of OPM testified that the savings would be in the neighborhood of $2.7 billion. GAO refers to the fact that those savings may be overstated. Ms. Koontz, would you elaborate on that some? Ms. Koontz. Based on work that we've done to date, what we have seen raises a lot of questions about how the cost savings were calculated, and some of the assumptions that were made in coming up with those calculations. While I think we understand the sort of broad estimates that went into these cost savings, we haven't yet seen the details that really allow you to replicate the numbers that OPM is coming up with right now, so I don't think we have a conclusion yet. But we have a lot of questions about whether these are the right cost savings or not. We also have further questions about the extent to which OPM has measures in place in order to capture these savings as the projects are implemented. Mr. Putnam. What number do you estimate as being the bottom line savings from? Ms. Koontz. We haven't done the kind of work in order to be able to come up with an independent estimate. I think what we are more looking at, like the example I gave in my oral statement, OPM tells us that there is a certain dollar savings associated with E-recruitment. When we do the math we can't come up with the total dollar savings. And they tell us that there's other factors in there, but we don't know the details surrounding those other factors. So at this point we just question how definite those cost savings are and how reliable they are. Mr. Putnam. Mr. Enger. Mr. Enger. We certainly will make an effort to clarify how we made the calculation of the cost savings. But let me add, if I may, the largest cost savings is in E- payroll. That's $1.1 billion of the $2.7 billion that we have forecast. That $1.1 billion was based upon a much smaller number than 22 agencies processing payroll. I believe it was 14. So in effect, in that case, the $1.1 billion, the cost calculation was based upon closing down or consolidating 14 agencies processing civilian payroll. In reality, we found more and more stovepipe payroll system, so the real number is 22. So I have every expectation that the E-payroll number which is our biggest number, 1.1 billion, will go up and not go down. Much of that is simply--as you said earlier, Mr. Chairman, it's the stovepiped, separate operations, all the infrastructure, the technology, the hardware, the software, the licensing and such to process 22 different payroll systems for 1.8 million civilian employees. So, to answer your question, my one example there is I think that E-payroll is a low number; and, at the same time, we would be more than willing to sit down with GAO and provide more detail as to how we have made our cost calculations. Mr. Putnam. Any of the other panelists wish to add anything to that? Are the savings predominantly in the outyears, or can we expect to see some in the near term? Mr. Enger. Well, the savings, actually--and I'll let Janet talk in a moment here. We're already migrating agencies. We're consolidating agencies. For example, the Department of Energy, just this month, migrated into DFAS, Defense, the DOD operation. Right there, you'll see a reduction in DOE's energy costs to process payroll. Our target is to have the consolidation between now and September 30, 2004. So, in that sense, we're talking about seeing significant short-term dollar savings. And beyond that we have longer-term savings, you know, in terms of as we look at a more standardized payroll system for the additional savings there. Janet, do you want to elaborate upon this? Ms. Dubbert. Norm's absolutely right. The latest business case estimates 22 agencies in the executive branch doing payroll, in fact, that number has even increased. We started with identification of 12, went to 14, and then the original business case identified 16. We then raced to 22. My count today, including the four selected providers, we have 25 independent executive branch agencies that were performing payroll. The immediate savings by the migration activity that is to conclude September 30, 2004, which was the OMB target date, we were estimating approximately $1.6 billion for O&M, operations and maintenance, of the 14 agencies that gave us cost estimates. We don't fund costs associated with operations. So Norm is absolutely right in the fact that we don't have cost information from all the agencies. We are collecting that information at the point of migration planning which is well under way, and we will be able in a few short months to have information operation and maintenance expenses from the total of the agencies currently performing payroll. But our cost estimates for savings in fact included not just O&M, but the elimination of the redundant systems and savings for purchase of new technology, and is identified in our costing model. In addition to the $1.67 billion for operation and maintenance, the migration expenses are estimated at $46 million and $350 million for system replacement, and all of that has to be taken into consideration with the elimination--these are numbers from just 14 agencies, not the total of 25 or 21 agencies that ultimately will be affected. We believe that our cost savings could, in fact, be greater than $1.1 billion. So we have a number of agencies migrating by September 30, which is the bulk of the dollars associated with our cost savings model. So we should recognize the savings starting in fiscal year 2005 as a result of those migrations. Long-winded for your answer. Mr. Putnam. How many agencies are there governmentwide? Ms. Dubbert. Executive branch, approximately 116 branch agencies, and we are focused on the executive branch. So in the executive branch, there were approximately 25 agencies performing payroll independently; 4 have been selected to continue, we have 3 that have been deferred. Those are within the intelligence community. We have a task force that we have developed with them and have been collaborating with them on a study as to how they're going to do their business. We have one agency that has been considered exempt, that's the Federal Reserve Board; and we have one agency that's currently under consideration and we are reviewing their law, and that is the Tennessee Valley Authority. All others within the executive branch have been slated for migration. We only have four left that have not had their migration scheduled. They are the Department of Labor, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Veterans' Affairs and the Railroad Retirement Board. So we have 11 that are scheduled and well on their way for migration. Mr. Putnam. So the Department of Labor, for example, they only have one payroll system? Ms. Dubbert. Yes. For themselves. Mr. Putnam. For themselves? Ms. Dubbert. Yes. Mr. Putnam. Is that common, that the departments would have all of their agencies on the same payroll system? Ms. Dubbert. No. Mr. Putnam. We have had testimony that the Navy has dozens. Ms. Dubbert. Navy typically sources their military under the DIMHRS program. Within DOD, DOD has the the Defense Finance and Accounting Service. The DFAS entity is the entity that services the civilian population for DOD. The exception to that would be for NSA. The Department of Treasury until just a few years ago had multiple systems; they have since consolidated. And there's one left that we are currently migrating and that's part of our numbers, and that is the Office of Thrift Supervision. Department of Justice, there had been multiple entities within their department. The only one left not currently serviced by one of the selected four is the FBI, and they are well on their way to migration. We just have a snafu in their classification of the system. Mr. Putnam. What is the deadline by which time all civilian agencies will be on the same payroll system? Ms. Dubbert. The targeted deadline was September 30, 2004. Until we get signed agreements with all the agencies and set their schedules in place, we won't have a full answer, but I can tell you the 11 that are in fact scheduled and well on their way, we do anticipate being able to meet the September 30, 2004, date for them. The three agencies within the intel community that have been deferred, were deferred from the September 30 date as well. So the four agencies we're still working with, as I said, are DOL, EPA, VA and Railroad Retirement Board. If you're counting in the numbers, there's one more; and that is, believe it or not, the Panama Canal Commission. And we're still communicating with them, but they have negotiated with Panama for their payroll, so we're not quite sure how that might fit into the scheme. Mr. Putnam. If the Panama Canal Commission and the TVA are your biggest problems, you are doing a yeoman's task. You're doing quite good work if that's your biggest problem. Who is your biggest problem? Ms. Dubbert. I would say there are barriers because some agencies, in fact, have different pay title authorities independent of the Office of Personnel Management's authorities. Also, there are agencies who have in the last several years implemented or purchased, and have either implemented or are implementing, integrated human resource payroll systems. And having to turn off the back half of that integrated solution for the better of the whole is what is a challenge for two of the four that I previously mentioned. One of the other four that I mentioned not yet scheduled, certainly has some complexities because they have pay authority for medical field under Title 38, and we are still in discussions with them. And I want to say for the record that the Office of Management and Budget has been with us, working with each of these agencies, to get through any of the barriers that exist. So it's possible we may have four agencies, those that are currently not scheduled that we will miss the September 30, 2004, date on. Mr. Putnam. Ms. Koontz, the testimony we seem to always have is, it always come back to cultural challenges, management challenges. You've heard the status of the e-Payroll across these initiatives is adequate oversight and management taking place from OMB and OPM to ensure that the proper cooperation is taking place between all the agencies to implement these five initiatives. Ms. Koontz. At this point, we've identified that management challenge, particularly of moving from disparate agency-unique systems to consolidated systems as being a very big challenge for the agencies, OPM, and OMB. It's really important that OPM have a good change management strategy in place, and that they communicate very well. There is also a place for OMB to make sure that duplicate systems, if need be, are not funded as they try to move toward consolidation. Mr. Putnam. Mr. Enger, what's OPM's strategy for managing these initiatives as an integrated set? Mr. Enger. Let me say, No. 1, that we have to date every milestone that was established in conjunction with OMB. And I would say the reason we have been able to make such progress is because we have had very, very strong backing from the Director of OPM, Kay Coles James. I report to her directly, and we have had very strong backing from OMB; and I think with that seamless backing across the board we have been able to make progress. There is something called the Federal Enterprise Architecture, which is being developed by OMB, looking at the Federal Government as a business and what are the lines of business of the Federal Government and where are there stovepipe or redundant systems and where can you have a more efficient system and better service to the citizen with proper economy and metrics that measure your performance. We've worked very, very closely with OMB and we have actually placed all five of our initiatives, actually including the Retirement Systems Modernization effort, within this enterprise architecture. And this shows the civilian human capital operations, what is done in civilian and human capital operations. Where does e-Training fit in there? So within this architecture, we're getting the integration that you're asking about. It's showing us the data flows, the process flows between our initiatives and also beyond our five into the other lines of business in the Federal Government. So from our point of view, the Federal Enterprise Architecture being promoted by OMB has been a very, very beneficial tool in architecture for us to integrate our initiatives within the human capital structure, but also within the larger Federal Government. Mr. Putnam. Ms. Diaz, could you discuss the differences between the HR initiative and the lines of business consolidation announced by Mark Foreman that Mr. Enger referred to with respect to each agency's HR system? Ms. Diaz. Let me just clarify the question you're asking. You're asking to clarify the difference between the new EHRIS initiative, which was one of the line-of-business initiatives and the EHRI initiative, correct? Mr. Putnam. I think. Ms. Diaz. And there is a difference. A lot of people get confused, one, because of the names; one is EHRIS and one is EHRI. EHRI is the initiative that I am the project manager for, and EHRI is the key service data component for all the OPM e- Government initiatives. We are going to eliminate the need for the paper personnel folder and enable the electronic transfer of data across the government from the time the employee comes on board until the time they retire. Currently, today--I don't know if you've ever seen a personnel folder, but they follow people all over and some of them are about that thick. And if one gets lost, you have to manually recreate it. And the storage costs on those are just astronomical, and we're going to eliminate that need. What the EHRIS initiative is about is kind of going down and looking at the transactional HR systems whereas the EHRI system is a data repository. It isn't a transactional system that processes the various business rules when you need to hire someone. For example, if you are a GS-13, Step 5, your salary can only be in this range. Those transactional systems enable you to do those types of actions and then feed the data to the payroll system. What the EHRIS will do is look at the possibility of consolidation and elimination of redundant systems, similar to what the e-Payroll initiative will do, as well as look at standardization across the board of those systems, because as we know, we all are in the same business in the Federal Government, so there shouldn't be that many differences in systems. And that's kind of the difference between the two initiatives. Mr. Putnam. Comment a bit, though, on the standards issue. Have we completed the establishment of a set of data standards across all agencies? Ms. Diaz. For EHRIS we have developed a data model that will be the foundation for the electronic official employee record. With that, we've identified the data items that would need to be contained in a data--in an official employee record as well as associated standards with that. As we begin implementation of EHRI, we will also continuously update those data standards. Currently today, we already have about the first 89 data items that are standard across the government. The official employee record will have up to about 500 data items that will be standard across the government, which will enable us to transfer that electronic data from agency to agency as well as onto the retirement system. Mr. Putnam. So a graduate of one of our Nation's universities, with a general business degree, who wants to work for the Federal Government, there might be seven different agencies that they are qualified for an entry-level type position. To apply for each of those seven agencies, how many applications would they fill out? Ms. Diaz. That would be Claire's question. Ms. Gibbons. How many applications an individual might file, if they are aware of seven potential vacancies which they would meet the basic requirements, likely would be seven separate applications. Some of the applications may be filed on-line directly with the Federal agency posting the job. Some of the applications might be filed manually if the agency in question was using manual application processing procedures. Mr. Putnam. There are agencies who don't recognize on-line applications? Ms. Gibbons. That is correct. Mr. Putnam. Would they be limited to the intelligence community, or is there some other reason why they wouldn't recognize that type of an entree into the government? Ms. Gibbons. Generally it's a matter of the individual business processes within the agency and the decisions that they have made regarding how they will do their Federal staffing and evaluate candidates. So there are some agencies that are using totally manual processes and paper-based applications. There are many agencies that have moved to automated application procedures. But when automation is used for Federal application, the current scenario requires that a job seeker would complete a basic job application or submit the same kind of standard applicant data over and over and over again on multiple systems, so a job seeker who was applying to the Department of Commerce would supply his or her name, address, work history, education, skills, etc., and then also respond potentially to a set of questions specific to the vacancy being filled. That job seeker applying for a position with the U.S. Geological Survey would go through a very similar process of supplying the same biographic data to the USGS system, and they might do it each and every time they file an application. Some systems store basic information, others do not. Through the enhancements that we'll be making to USAJOBS and creating a single basic job application or basic initial resume, job seekers will be able to create their initial application once, store it to USAJOBS, and then have that information integrated with on-line application processing systems operating across government. At the same time, while we will allow agencies to continue to use manual evaluation procedures if that's what they choose to do and that's consistent with their business processes, we will establish on-line application for 100 percent of the vacancies posted through USAJOBS so agencies, when receiving an application transferred to them electronically, may choose to print it off and do a manual evaluation as opposed to integrating that application with an automated system. But we will achieve on-line application for all vacancies as well as allowing for alternate procedures if a job applicant shouldn't have access to the technology. Mr. Putnam. I could understand an alternate procedure for an applicant who may not have access to the technology. I'm having a hard time understanding why the government agency would opt not to accept electronically filed resumes. Ms. Gibbons. I believe currently the issue is simply that agencies have not made the decision or the investment in the automation for the application processing; for the systems that would provide for the sophisticated algorithms for determining employee qualifications, determining rankings of candidates, handling the application management and work flow within the organization. Many, many agencies are, I believe, and more will be moving toward automation in that process. They're just not all there yet. And when they have no automated system in place, the kind of fall-back position is to take an application that's received through the mail, or possibly fax as the extent of the electronics involved. Mr. Putnam. How many agencies are we talking about here who would not acknowledge or receive an on-line application? Ms. Gibbons. We don't have a hard number for the current number of agencies that are not using automation in their application processing. Most agencies, and most of the large agencies and departments, are certainly employing automation in their application processing. Yet many of the smaller agencies have not gone to automated systems, the volume of their work isn't necessarily supportive of the investment. Mr. Putnam. So the Panama Canal Commissions are the types of agencies we're talking about here? Or are we talking about the Farm Service Agency that's in every county in America? We spend all this money to build these Web sites, and then are begging people to use that because it's going to save us all this money; but then we have agencies who say, we won't accept it unless it's on blue paper in triplicate with a paper clip in the upper left-hand corner. Ms. Gibbons. Certainly, as we move forward with the recruitment one-stop initiative, we are going to establish procedures that will provide for on-line application for all job seekers. The job seeker will have the opportunity to create that initial application on USAJOBS and have that application filed electronically with an agency whether, ultimately, they integrate that data into an automated system or choose to do a manual review of the application received. So we will achieve the on-line application process or on-line application submission for the job seeker. Agencies in terms of the decision of how they then process the full application and manage the work flow within their department or agency, that's still mixed. More and more are moving toward automation, and that's certainly what we are encouraging. In terms of the agencies that we're talking about, oftentimes it is the very small agencies. It is the National Battle Monuments Commission or Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. that haven't gone on to a fully automated solution. In the larger departments and agencies, certainly most are using automated application processing. Those that haven't adopted it yet are in the process of making system evaluations and decisions. Mr. Putnam. The E-Clearance issue, Mr. White, there've been a number of congressional hearings and an awful lot of work done on the backup of clearances. Where are we now in the number of clearances that are pending and what types of improvements have been made in that? Mr. White. I don't have the number in terms of how many clearances are presently backlogged. I can tell you a little bit about how e-Clearance, as an initiative, expedites the processing in terms of shortening the latency of providing the information on the front end from the applicant via the e-QIP process and providing that information to the investigation teams that begin an investigation, as well as--another aspect of our initiative expedites the verification process of who's cleared and who isn't. In terms of how many applications or how many investigations are presently backlogged, I don't have that information. Mr. Putnam. Go into some detail of how your initiative is going to save us time and money. Mr. White. Well, specifically, the clearance verification system is a module of e-Clearance that allows for a guard at a gate to let someone into a building or to quickly arrange a meeting that before had to be stalled a number of hours to verify that the right people were in the room and everyone could partake in the information rather than having someone stand outside the door. That, of course, involves more people and provides a latent period for which individuals can be briefed at a later date and time, which slows up government processes. That, of course, is an intangible. In terms of the e-QIP process, the collection of information for all employees that undergo an investigation, this brings to life a whole functional process of gathering information from the applicant rapidly, immediately making that information available to those investigation teams, providing a portable medium where they can then forward that information to the individuals that might be responsible for the adjudication process. The portability of this information via this Web portal, if you will, negates couriers, courier charges and a number of tangible and intangible aspects involved in investigations, processing and adjudication. Mr. Putnam. As well as the repetitive application process when you change jobs. Mr. White. Clearly, individuals who have a clearance periodically are rereviewed and that information is collected again and again the old way. With the new system, that information can automatically be propagated in front of them and they can handle the changes to the information as they see fit. Mr. Putnam. Ms. Diaz, is that the type of information that would be integrated with your program, as well, so that it is portable, it is interoperable, it is compatible? Ms. Diaz. Yes. We will receive a limited subset of data from the e-Clearance system to allow an employee to be placed in a variety of positions. We do not anticipate getting all of the data that would be in the e-Clearance system because our intent is not to make our system a classified system. Generally, when someone transfers from one position to another you want to reassign them, you just need a limited set of data. So we are going to be receiving that data from the e- Clearance system, as well as when someone transfers or retires from other positions, we will send them a note or send them something in the system so that they know they can go back and check and make sure the security clearances are either terminated or they're transferred, as appropriate. Mr. Putnam. You'll send them an e-mail, not a note? Ms. Diaz. It's going to be an interface. Mr. Enger. Mr. Enger. Can I add something here? What we have done essentially with e-Clearance is taken a paper-based system and made it electronic. For example, one of our great achievements I think was the clearance verification system where, for the first time, we established at OPM the information about all civilian sector clearances in one place, and we linked that in January to the DOD system, Joint Personnel Adjudication System. So now an investigator can put a name in and for the first time ever in American history, it will go across the entire civil sector data base and DOD and give the background as to, was this person cleared before, who granted the clearance, where is the investigation information and so on. So for the first time we've established a system that gives the investigator or the proper official access to all of the active clearances in the Federal sector. That's one big step. The e-QIP that Mark White mentioned, we moved that cumbersome form that people hate from paper to electronics. When that form is filled out, it will go electronically to the agency and then it will go electronically to the investigative agency that does the background information. Right there you have saved at least 7 days per clearance process. You are speeding up the whole effort to do a background investigation and a clearance. Where there is still a difficulty, because you mentioned the backlog issue, we can be as electronic as we want, which is a great step forward, but one of the barriers to the clearance process right now is the agency adjudication. When the investigator does the investigation and returns that report to the agency, somebody in the agency has to adjudicate, has to decide whether or not to grant that person a clearance. At that point there is a place of bottleneck, because it requires an individual, a person, to sit down and look at that report and decide yes or no, this person will or will not get a clearance. And there's a shortage of adjudicators, and that becomes a choke point and that becomes a point whereby you buildup a backlog in terms of clearance processing. And I think that's something of note, that they are trying to improve the process. You have a manual step in there that really is beyond our control at this point in time. Mr. Putnam. Fair point. Ms. Gibbons, one of the criticisms we hear from people who apply for jobs in the Federal Government is a general lack of feedback. They're not told if the resume was considered, rejected, or even if the position was filled. Does the new initiative deal with that criticism? Ms. Gibbons. It certainly does. The new initiative does address that issue very, very specifically. The enhancements we're making to USAJOBS will provide for job seekers to receive real-time status feedback regarding where they stand in the employment consideration process. Again, through integration with automated application processing systems that are running in Federal agencies or key entry into the USAJOBS system, agencies will feed to a consolidated applicant profile segment on USAJOBS status tracking information that will provide job seekers with information on key milestones in the employment consideration process, such as initial receipt of their application, initial determination of qualifications, whether or not a candidate has been referred to a hiring official for interview and further consideration; and then the subsequent disposition of the hiring action, i.e., someone has been selected or the position has not been filled for whatever reason. Mr. Putnam. There has also been a criticism that the site is biased toward recent graduates, which is the example I used earlier, or outside hires, with not enough consideration given to current employees looking for internal promotional opportunities. Would you like to address that concern as well? Ms. Gibbons. The USA Jobs data base and the information disseminated by OPM governmentwide on vacancies very clearly covers external opportunities or those jobs that are open to new job seekers, persons not in the Federal Government. But also we have an equal responsibility for disseminating the internal vacancy information for transfer or promotional opportunities for Federal employees, and we've certainly tried to balance the needs of both the non-Federal job seeker as well as those within the work force. We have heard some of the feedback from those in the Federal work force on our redesign effort within USAJOBS, that they think that the system is not as user friendly to their interests. Specifically, we have feedback from current Federal employees who would like to be able to search more readily on grade or salary parameters of jobs, as well as groupings of jobs vice individual job series or keyword searching. We do have an enhancement plan that we have developed and will be implementing over the next several weeks that I think will address some of those concerns by providing more readily obvious salary searching to current Federal employees, as well as consolidation of jobs, some streamlining and geographic searching, etc. We have received a great deal of feedback since we launched on the new platform. We are always striving to make sure that the system equally meets the needs of the non-Federal job seeker, as well as those within the current work force, and seeking to implement changes based on the feedback received. Mr. Putnam. A number of these interfaces that almost all of you have referred to, I would assume, rely upon the interoperability of each agency's current system. And so my question would be, do they have the interoperable capacity right now in each of these agencies to do all of the things that OPM wants them to be able to do in each of these initiative areas, or are they going to have to upgrade their own legacy systems or stovepipes to be able to have this seamless interface? Ms. Gibbons. Within my particular initiative, within the USAJOBS system and the interfaces that we are establishing with Federal agencies, we are building on XML data exchange standards that will provide for the interoperability; and we are not aware of any significant barriers to agencies within the systems that they either run on their own or the vendor- supplied systems that they utilize, that they will not be able to successfully create the interchange. Ms. Diaz. We're also using XML, and for those agencies that may not be able to at this point handle the XML, we are working with them to accept basically a flat file exchange of data as an interim step. Mr. Putnam. Mr. Enger, when we created the Department of Homeland Security, there was a great deal of concern about the merging of different salary structures, different schedules, different payroll systems, different training systems, a lot of the same things we're here to talk about today. How far along are we in that effort, as it reflects a bit of a microcosm for what you're trying to do governmentwide? Mr. Enger. Well, there is a DHS, Homeland Security, HR committee which is approximately 7 or 8 months old, which is comprised of the major entities in DHS--INS, Customs, Coast Guard, etc.--and that committee meets on a weekly basis, typically. I also am on that committee to represent the OPM e- Gov initiatives. DHS is heavily engaged, for example, in e-Payroll. DHS has worked very closely with my project manager here and, in effect, they will be processing payroll for DHS in accordance with the goal and vision of e-Payroll. Separately--separately, I mentioned earlier in my testimony that we're going to be bringing up on September 30, this month, the EHRI repository. They have been heavily involved with us on that; and they're looking forward to having access to information about DHS personnel that will be available come October 1 of this year to help them do work force analysis, planning, looking at the skills they have and other types of demographic information. They're also dealing with the e-Training initiative. Mike Fitzgerald has been dealing with DHS on e-Training. To the best of my knowledge--and also going beyond that, I mentioned earlier the Federal Enterprise Architecture, they're heavily involved with OPM, dealing with and looking at what is the architecture that's being built and how it should be built relative to human capital. From my point of view, we have had an extremely close and very beneficial relationship with DHS that's ongoing. Of all the agencies, I would say that DHS has shown really strong commitment to e-Government and they want to use all the benefits that are possible relative to what is being done by e- Government. Mr. Putnam. In panel one's testimony, Director James referred to some outstanding numbers on Web site traffic and interest generated by these new sites, particularly on USAJOBS. Does that mean we're filling positions more quickly and finding qualified applicants in a shorter time than we have in the past? Ms. Gibbons. We certainly are providing improved tools that will help us to speed up the time to hire through increased awareness of Federal job opportunities and more diverse candidates coming to USAJOBS, including candidates with different skill sets, and then eventually improved application procedures. Certainly we do believe that we will decrease the time to hire. It's not something that we are achieving today through USAJOBS. Another new functionality that we have within USAJOBS that will also be a contributor to decreases in time to hire is the tool available on the system that will provide for candidate data mining for those job seekers that consent to make their application, their resume, available for Federal recruiters and managers to see. Agencies can take advantage of the resume data base as a sourcing tool to identify candidates that can then be invited to participate in the employment consideration process, potentially saving agencies weeks that they might have spent in placing advertisements or attending other kind of recruitment or outreach events. So, yes, we believe that time to hire will be decreased as a result of the services we are offering. Mr. Putnam. So someone who enters the site with the intent of applying for a job with the Department of Homeland Security, if they consent to have their information shared, they might receive notification at some period in the future later saying, your skill set makes uniquely qualified for a job with a totally different department, who had mined that person's information for a particular vacancy; is that what you're saying? Ms. Gibbons. That's correct. When job seekers come into USAJOBS, they have the opportunity to conduct job searches solely. They can come into the system and use the job search functionality to identify vacancies and choose to create a profile so they can be notified by e-mail of jobs that match their skills and interests. Job seekers can create and store a resume within a data base and in fact, they can store up to five versions of a resume so they can have resumes customized to particular job types that might match a particular skill set that the individual has. When a job seeker creates a resume and stores it within USAJOBS, the job seeker can have that resume remain in the system available only for his or her use to actively apply against a vacancy that they've located within the data base, or job seekers may also choose to make their resume searchable. When a resume is made searchable, a Federal agency can use mining tools and search on degrees, locations, particular skill sets via keyword searching, etc.; and then upon identifying candidates that appear to be solid matches for jobs to be filled, the agency would then invite the candidate to apply for an active vacancy. So a job seeker may very well receive an e-mail or a telephone call saying, We've got a particular job open; you appear to possess the requisite qualifications, and we would like you to consider going through the application process. Mr. Putnam. Will you be able to document whether you're improving the diversity of applicants through the Web site and whether you're reaching certain target groups, either by skill set or by education or other factors that previously had not been reached or had not been reached at the same levels that this new portal offers you that opportunity for? Ms. Gibbons. Within USAJOBS and the applications that we collect, we do not collect race and national origin data on candidates. Federal agencies are responsible for reporting out individually on their hires and on the diversity of the hires within the organization. So we would not be able to draw a direct correlation between a change in diversity of the Federal work force and necessarily what we're doing within the USAJOBS system. It is certainly something that, as a government, we have considered and we've looked at. Do we have opportunities to be able to potentially make the data collection for this kind of information easier so that we can, in fact, have then the reporting tools that will allow us to measure our success? Mr. Putnam. So you have considered that, but that is not part of the data collected from USAJOBS site? Ms. Gibbons. Currently it is not. Mr. Putnam. Mr. Fitzgerald, could you elaborate, please, on how the E-Training system effectively brings a common training approach to agencies that almost certainly need individual customized training needs. Explain, if you would, how it allows individual agencies to set their own training priorities versus the areas of training that your initiative offers. Mr. Fitzgerald. Agencies still--it really comes down to truly where they post the content they create. Agencies have all the discretion to create, using vendors of their choice, custom content that meets their mission-critical types of competency and skill development needs. All we're doing is simply hosting it. We do have a contract vehicle arrangement within OPM, our Training Management Assistance office. So if agencies come to us and say, you know, Mike, we want to use OPM's contractors to do custom courseware development, we simply direct them to TMA. Our initiative, the GoLearn initiative, is simply to host it. Really for agencies other than their commercially off-the- shelf courseware that's out there already. They have all the discretion to create custom content. Many of our back-end capabilities provide them, authoring tools so they can create on-the-fly custom content to meet their needs. So that's something that's been, I think--in the communication across agencies, it's been miscommunicated or just misunderstood that, yeah, they can really in the proverbial, ``have their cake and eat it too.'' It just comes down to hosting it. Mr. Putnam. What level of participation do you have in this program? How many agencies have utilized e-Training? Mr. Fitzgerald. We have 31 agencies that are hosted on a common platform. We also have 10 more entities of agencies, which may be subgroups of an entire agency, that are on the GoLearn platform. We have approximately 27 agencies scheduled for migration in fiscal year 2004, which is aggressive because many of them are enterprise, for example, the Department of Veterans' Affairs. So you're talking about many components migrating to a common solution. And then in fiscal year 2005 there are 13 additional agencies. If you use Ms. Dubbert's numbers, then we are approximately--over two-thirds of agencies beyond will be on a common e-Learning platform at that point. Mr. Putnam. In the past, a lot of this has been handled by the Department of Transportation; is that correct? Mr. Fitzgerald. We use their contracting vehicle, STATUS contracting vehicle. But they did have--one of the things that kind of goes under the radar screen in e-Government is, the economy is a know-how. They have staff that were technical folks that had a great deal of experience in the learning industry, understanding the technical side. We at OPM understood many of these strategic human capital development needs, and it was a relationship that really worked well because we took their technical expertise in e-Learning and-- using an existing contract vehicle that was created through a full and open competition, and we leveraged that to really move quickly to implement this initiative. Mr. Putnam. What are your anticipated savings from E- Training? Mr. Fitzgerald. $784 million over the 10-year life cycle. Mr. Putnam. It's real money, even in Washington. Ms. Gibbons, I've been thinking about your Web site, and when I go to Gov Benefits, I type in a range of information about myself and I get back everything in the country that I might conceivably qualify for. Is that how USAJOBS would work? Ms. Gibbons. USAJOBS allows job seekers to go in and to enter information regarding the job search parameters that he or she is interested in. So job seekers can go in and enter keywords. If a person is in the environmental area, they might enter ``groundwater conservation.'' A person can enter a geographic area where they're seeking employment or, a salary parameter that would match the kind of job they want, and then the individual would receive a listing of the active vacancies in the data base that match the search parameters. Mr. Putnam. How much of this is on-line now? I apologize, I probably should have gone on-line before we had this hearing. But how much of this is on-line now if I were to go fire it up after this hearing? Ms. Gibbons. What I just described to you, it is fully functional right now. The Web site is usajobs.opm.gov. We have an active jobs data base that ranges from a high of 15,800, -900 to slightly over 16,000 jobs on any given day. The jobs are updated throughout the day, so our data base numbers change continuously. Job seekers can go in, run job searching, create resumes, utilize the e-mail search agent notification process. Federal agencies can utilize the system for the posting of their vacancies and for the resume mining. Our future enhancements include the ``Create Once-Use Many'' initial application process that will be integrated with Federal agency applicant processing systems, as well as the complete movement of the status tracking information. And we will be phasing in agencies to utilize those sophisticated functionalities beginning this fall and going into mid-summer of next year. Mr. Putnam. Let me ask GAO, Ms. Koontz, did you analyze how effectively--on all of our e-Gov initiatives, how effectively is the Federal Government getting the word out about their existence? Ms. Koontz. That isn't something specifically we have looked at yet. You're talking about the existence of these particular e-Government initiatives? Mr. Putnam. Sure. Ms. Koontz. That's not something we've looked at yet. Mr. Putnam. Is there any marketing done, Mr. Enger? Mr. Enger. No. 1, whenever we have a milestone--for example, this month we have the repository--we have a media event. We invite the press; we send out letters to the agency heads to let them know about this. That's happened from the very beginning. We try to spread the word that something's happening with e-Government. Second, we make presentations to the Quad Council and other parts of the Federal Government to tell them what we are doing and how it is benefiting them. Each of the managers here has a working group of partner agencies that meets on a periodic basis, and they spread the word about what they're doing, what the plans are. They get feedback. I personally have gone out and met with the HR directors, explaining what we're doing, asking them to discuss this with me and asking for their feedback. So we at OPM have had very much of an outreach process whereby we have reached out and tried very hard to spread the word as to what e-Gov is all about and why it benefits all the agencies. The word that Mark Foreman used is ``transformational.'' What he perceived is, we are not doing a Band-Aid change to e- Government. We want to transform the way government operates in a positive, beneficial way. And that has been the motive and the driving force as far as I'm concerned. All of these initiatives have transformed the recruitment process, e- Training, the clearance process. They really are changing how the government operates to make it a better and more efficient and more responsive government. Mr. Putnam. Very exciting, and that's a perfect segue, and I would like to ask each of our five program managers to comment on whatever issue relative to your initiative that we have not asked you about that you think is important to go into the record. What have we not asked you that you think is important to share with the subcommittee? This is your last shot. Ms. Diaz. I just think it's important to know that the Enterprise HR integration project is the key data service component for all the e-Gov initiatives at OPM, as well as the interlocking enabler to be able to transfer data from agencies--from the HR systems to the payroll systems, from e- Training to retirement to e-Clearance. And it's really an integral part of all the initiatives. And I just think that--in the long term that it's going to enable human capital management. It's going to enable us to do things that we haven't been able to do in the past, even--for example, our oversight agencies are going to have data available to them for work force analysis, planning for their studies and reports that they currently don't have today. And it's going to be available on a more frequent basis than what they can get data available now today. We get data quarterly from agencies. Tomorrow with EHRI, we'll get data on a biweekly basis. So the data will be good data so we can make good business decisions. That's it. Mr. Putnam. Ms. Dubbert. Ms. Dubbert. Thank you for the opportunity. I think first and foremost, I just want to make a statement that this is not a department or an agency initiative. It is a governmentwide initiative, and the barriers that we have talked about, whether it be, I want to keep it myself, cultural or just because--it is all just resistance to change. We need to educate everyone within the Federal Government that it is a Federal Government activity, and the Federal Government is one. And that's what the taxpayers and the citizens look at us as, as one. They don't look at us as the Department of Transportation or the Department of Treasury; they simply say, the Federal Government. So what we're doing, in fact, is trying to not just change the way we do our business, but set data standards in an architecture that will be common for the Federal Government as a whole. That is a significant challenge in and of itself. So each of the initiatives, although it may sound as if we are stovepiped ourselves, we are not. We internally are working through the enterprise architecture activity that OMB has established for the government at large and looking at it internally how, in fact, the human resource or human capital enterprise architecture needs to be established, because we're connected from the applicant to the training to the repository to paying individuals. So our challenge, going forward, is reminding individuals within agencies, we are doing this on behalf of the Federal Government and we need to set the data standards so we have more common information and it's retained, stored and managed the same way. After September 11, I think it's evident that we need to readily access information, and that is the gist of what we're attempting to do: set the standards, set the architecture and the systems so we can readily access and provide information. Ms. Gibbons. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak. The Federal Government has enormous human capital challenges before us, and one of the areas where we face a significant challenge is certainly recruitment. I think we're all aware that the Federal Government could face unprecedented numbers of retirements over the next 5 to 10 years, with some estimates saying that nearly 50 percent of the work force will be retirement eligible during that period. Director James's commitments to meeting those human capital challenges and to fixing the Federal hiring process are clear, and we think Recruitment One-Stop and the enhancements we are making to USAJOBS are certainly key toward achieving those goals and truly making the Federal Government an employer of choice. I think that's really the key driving factor behind what we're doing, to be sure that the Federal Government can compete effectively for top talent in the marketplace. And by making significant improvements, by transforming USAJOBS, by transforming the way the Federal Government conducts its on- line recruitment and making those changes in a job seeker- focused manner, as a Federal Government we are also serving ourselves and providing ourselves with the services--laying the foundation for the government--to be able to meet those significant recruitment challenges going forward. Mr. Fitzgerald. I appreciate the opportunity to say a few words, if you give me the liberty to say two points. One of the things that I think is important about the e- Training initiative is that the old paradigm--there were actually a couple of paradigms, one relating to training in general and one relating to e-Learning; the old paradigm was, you're either working or learning in government. You weren't doing both. And what we are doing by expediting these tools to the desktop is providing an opportunity to have on-demand solutions to common problems, desktop problems, EXCEL spreadsheets, that people would leapfrog from cubicle to cubicle, asking people to get answers. What we're doing is actually blending your working and learning, which is really--I believe is--we are going to see much more of a magnitude of improvement and efficiency in training dollars being used that way. Second, the old paradigm of e-Learning is, if I just paid enough money and got enough content, everybody would flock to it. And the current state of affairs is typically, the industry reports about a 20 percent or less utilization rate. So the dollars aren't being used very effectively if your return on investment goes down significantly--if you only have 20 percent usage. One of the things that I think is really changing the face of what we're doing with the initiative and changing the face of the industry is the implementation of the IT Workforce Development Roadmap, which was a partnership with the Federal CIO Council, where we have actually taken the career paths of the 2210 series and the 10 parenthetical titles, mapped those out and aligned competencies and efficiency levels at each level. That's a good start. It's a marriage that we've done, where you actually do a skill assessment, and if you have skill gaps, you have online content available right at your fingerprints to address those skill gaps. That paradigm shift is going to change the way e- Learning is implemented in agencies and that you just hope people go to a more strategic look at where are your core critical competencies, where are your skill gaps, and how do you address those and resource those. I think it's going to provide a stronger tool for leadership to feel better about their investment in these activities, because they can start to see over a continuum a development of their human capital. The second thing I wanted to say, there has been a lot of industry buzz around the e-Training initiative and the use of the STATUS contract. We have recognized that contract was awarded several years ago, and we are in the throes, the process, of announcing a GoLearn-specific IDIQ here soon, which will give an opportunity for e-Learning vendors, whether it be courseware providers or learning management system providers, to compete again to get on the e-Training initiative contract vehicle. Mr. Putnam. Mr. White, you have been on the job a week and you have already been called to Congress to testify under oath. Been a tough week. Mr. White. It has, in addition to Isabel. The e-Clearance initiative has brought together a new dialog across the investigating agencies. And as a result of this dialog, the standards and specifications are occurring across these various agencies. And what is happening here is, they look and they recognize that they need to share information. Our new imaging module provides a vehicle for which all of these agencies have to develop a common taxonomy, a common standard of how the investigation process needs to be referenced, how documents are cataloged; and it has brought together a focus on tackling some of the tough issues that stand in the way of slower processing of clearances, for example. E-clearance has gained quite a bit of momentum in tackling the e-QIP form and establishing the repository of information to quickly verify clearance information. Bringing together and satisfying the Government Paperwork Elimination Act with the imaging module has brought about quite a bit of improvement and gained quite a bit of recognition. We only look for further enhancements in terms of establishing perhaps a communication network where these various agencies can collaborate even more effectively to reduce the backlog of investigations. Mr. Putnam. Well, thank you all very much. I appreciate your enthusiasm for what you do, and I can only say it's a poor frog that won't croak in his own pond, so I wanted to give you the opportunity to tell the world about what you're doing. It is transformation. It is a tremendous challenge. You are going to face a lot of resistance, but it's going to be worth the effort. And you need to have Mr. Enger here buy you lunch. So, with that, I want to thank all of our witnesses for your participation. In the event that we were unable to get to questions--I can't imagine that there's any questions that we didn't get to after this hearing--but in the event that there are questions that we were unable to get to, the record will remain open for 2 weeks, and we would ask that you submit those in writing. With that, the subcommittee is adjourned. 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