[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 111-144]
INTERAGENCY COORDINATION OF GRANTS AND CONTRACTS IN IRAQ AND
AFGHANISTAN: PROGRESS, OBSTACLES, AND PLANS
__________
HEARING
BEFORE THE
OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
MARCH 23, 2010
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TONGRESS.#13
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OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas, Chairman
JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina ROB WITTMAN, Virginia
SUSAN A. DAVIS, California WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina
JIM COOPER, Tennessee MIKE ROGERS, Alabama
JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania TRENT FRANKS, Arizona
GLENN NYE, Virginia CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, Washington
CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado
NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
SCOTT MURPHY, New York
Drew Walter, Professional Staff Member
Thomas Hawley, Professional Staff Member
Trey Howard, Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
----------
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2010
Page
Hearing:
Tuesday, March 23, 2010, Interagency Coordination of Grants and
Contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan: Progress, Obstacles, and
Plans.......................................................... 1
Appendix:
Tuesday, March 23, 2010.......................................... 31
----------
TUESDAY, MARCH 23, 2010
INTERAGENCY COORDINATION OF GRANTS AND CONTRACTS IN IRAQ AND
AFGHANISTAN: PROGRESS, OBSTACLES, AND PLANS
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Snyder, Hon. Vic, a Representative from Arkansas, Chairman,
Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee...................... 1
Wittman, Hon. Rob, a Representative from Virginia, Ranking
Member, Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.............. 2
WITNESSES
Hutton, John, Director, Acquisition and Sourcing Management, U.S.
Government Accountability Office............................... 8
Michel, Ambassador James, Counselor to the Agency, U.S. Agency
for International Development.................................. 6
Moser, William, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State (Logistics
Management), U.S. Department of State.......................... 5
Motsek, Gary, Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense
(Program Support), U.S. Department of Defense.................. 3
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Hutton, John................................................. 58
Michel, Ambassador James..................................... 54
Moser, William............................................... 50
Motsek, Gary................................................. 37
Wittman, Hon. Rob............................................ 35
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
Dr. Snyder................................................... 75
INTERAGENCY COORDINATION OF GRANTS AND CONTRACTS IN IRAQ AND
AFGHANISTAN: PROGRESS, OBSTACLES, AND PLANS
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee,
Washington, DC, Tuesday, March 23, 2010.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:05 p.m., in
room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Vic Snyder
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. VIC SNYDER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
ARKANSAS, CHAIRMAN, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE
Dr. Snyder. The hearing will come to order.
Good afternoon, and welcome to the House Armed Services
Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee hearing on Interagency
coordination on contracts and grants in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Contracts total tens of billions of dollars per year--over
50,000 individual contracts annually and well over 200,000 U.S.
funded contractor personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is
part of the committee's ongoing oversight in the area of
contracting in our war zones.
You may remember we had a very similar panel of witnesses
almost a year ago. The intention of today's hearing is to check
back on the progress of the Department of Defense [DOD], the
Department of State [DOS], and the U.S. Agency for
International Development [USAID] have made in strengthening
interagency contract coordination.
We also intend to discuss some new obstacles and challenges
that have arisen and discuss potential solutions. One such
challenge that has come to our attention is the application of
certain information requirements through the SPOT [Synchronized
Pre-Deployment and Operational Tracker] system to non-
governmental organizations [NGOs] operating in Iraq and
Afghanistan under U.S. grants and cooperative agreements.
Several major NGOs have said the information requirements
endanger the neutrality of their organizations; endanger the
safety and security of their Iraqi and Afghan local-national
employees, and, therefore, endanger their entire operations in
these countries.
This subcommittee considers the work of these NGOs, as you
do, critical to a successful outcome in Iraq and Afghanistan,
and would like to hear our witnesses' understanding of the
NGOs' concerns. We would also like to understand if and how the
agencies intend to address the NGOs' concerns and their
timetable for doing so.
This subcommittee recognizes that SPOT is just a tool that
has been selected to assist the agencies in coordinating and
collaborating on contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. We would
like to understand if and how this tool is helping or not
helping achieve the broader goal. We want to make sure the
agencies have the information they need to coordinate, manage,
and oversee contracts and grants.
We do not want the collection of this information to be a
burden to the agencies or their contractors and grantees. And,
as you all are aware, by statute, the SPOT system is not
required. In fact, the statute that was passed in the Defense
bills has been an aggregate requirement for information.
Ultimately, we would like to ensure our government is doing
everything it can to help our people and friends in Iraq and
Afghanistan succeed whether they are in uniform, government
civilians, supporting the efforts of contractors, or providing
relief and assistance through NGOs.
And we will now take Mr. Wittman's statement.
STATEMENT OF HON. ROB WITTMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM VIRGINIA,
RANKING MEMBER, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Chairman Snyder.
And, good afternoon, to our witnesses; I really appreciate
you taking the time to be here with us today and as a follow up
to our efforts last year.
I want to applaud the chairman's initiative in scheduling
this hearing. And one of the strengths of this subcommittee is
our persistence and ability to revisit issues after the passage
of time, to measure progress. And as the chairman noted, we
have had several hearings last spring on contractors in the
battlefield. And those hearings highlighted the relatively
disjointed state of coordination among the principle agencies
involved--Defense, State and USAID--at a time when a well
coordinated civilian-military effort is our only hope for
success.
Today's hearings will show that we have made progress on
one key aspect of the issue; namely, developing a database that
identifies the number of contractors each agency employs. At
the same time, the fact that we are still working to achieve
that small step, and are having difficulties including non-
governmental organizations, or NGOs, in that database, shows
how far away we are from a unified national effort to achieve
our objectives in Iraq and Afghanistan.
While much of today's testimony will focus on that SPOT
database, I am less concerned about the use of a particular
computer system than in achieving our national objectives in a
coordinated way. So I look forward to hearing a little more
about how we can achieve that.
And even though witnesses are here to discuss how their
agencies are meeting statutory reporting requirements on
contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, I would like for you to
touch on how well field operations and support are coordinated
amongst the various agencies, civilian personnel, military
personnel, and contract employees. And that is our real
concern--effective implementation of the SPOT or other
databases is merely a step along the way.
Ensuring our service men and women are fully supported in
every way is my chief concern. And I try to keep that into
perspective as I approach these types of issues.
So, gentlemen, we look forward to hearing from you today
and getting your perspective on how we can make sure we most
effectively meet the needs of our men and women in uniform, in
theater, and look forward to your testimony.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wittman can be found in the
Appendix on page 35.]
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Mr. Wittman.
Our witnesses today are Mr. Gary Motsek, Assistant Deputy
Under Secretary of Defense for Program Support; Mr. William
Moser, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Logistics
Management; Ambassador James Michel, Counselor to the Agency at
USAID; and Mr. John Hutton, Director of the Acquisition and
Sourcing Management team at the GAO [Government Accountability
Office].
Those bells that you are hearing are--as you may fear, we
are going to have some votes. But we will start opening
statements. We may get through one or two, or who knows?
But we will start with you, Mr. Motsek.
STATEMENT OF GARY MOTSEK, ASSISTANT DEPUTY UNDER SECRETARY OF
DEFENSE (PROGRAM SUPPORT), U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Mr. Motsek. Good afternoon, Chairman Snyder, Ranking Member
Wittman, and Congressman Jones.
Thank you for this opportunity to appear again before you
today to discuss the improvements and changes we have made with
respect to the accountability and visibility of contractors in
contingency operations, and our way ahead. I have submitted a
larger written statement for the record, which gives some
specifics.
Dr. Snyder. All of your written statements will be made
part of the record. We will have the clock on. But if you need
to go beyond that, go beyond that. It is a five-minute clock,
just to give you an idea where we are.
Mr. Motsek. I am doing my best to move out smartly.
As you know, the Department established my office in 2006
comply with the congressional direction of section 854 of the
National Defense Authorization Act [NDAA]. Our implementation
of the Synchronized Pre-deployment Operational Tracker is a key
aspect to our strategy to institutionalize the program
management of operational contracting support.
SPOT is a good example of a distributed enterprise system
that was developed initially for a single, focused requirement
which is now being used for much broader purposes than
originally anticipated. We have established an aggressive
timeline early to force the registration of SPOT.
For DOD, we have approximately three-quarters of our
deployed DOD-contractor population in the CENTCOM [U.S. Central
Command] area of responsibility [AOR] registered in SPOT. The
last time I appeared before you, I believe the number was 60
percent. And we were only talking about, at that time, Iraq and
Afghanistan. We are now including the entire area of operation
that CENTCOM has. And this is in keeping with their changing of
their Joint Contracting Command--the expansion of that mission,
which we can discuss if you would like. So we have, now,
contractor personnel located in Dubai, Qatar, and places like
that, included--plus a large population in Kuwait.
With the recent expansion of definitions provided by
Congress last year and the introduction of the classified
version of SPOT, we expect to see continued increase in the
State Department and USAID contractor populations, which they
can discuss.
DOD's primary challenge remains in the full participation
of all of our contractor personnel in SPOT. And our particular
challenge are those contractor personnel--always local-
nationals--that have no access or support to our installations
over there, but are operating off the installations, but are
nonetheless paid by U.S. appropriations and, therefore, they
have to be in the population.
Our intention is to transition from the resource-intensive
and dangerous CENTCOM manual census, which we still use as our
primary numbers-counting document, and to rely on SPOT as soon
as practical. We have a transition plan in place signed by the
Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and
Logistics. But it is conditions-based.
We will not fully migrate and rely solely on the automated
census until we are confident that SPOT reflects a true
representation of our contractor-employee population, and,
clearly, there are advantages to having real-time access to
that information.
Even as we adopt the SPOT database as the census, we will
still spot check, on a random basis with a manual census, to
prove that we have good numbers.
In spite of these challenges, SPOT is being utilized to
track the drawdown in Iraq, both in terms of DOD civilians and
contractor populations. The State Department is also using SPOT
to manage the Civilian Response Corps. Other nations are in the
final phases of evaluation and adoption of the program. I just
returned from the United Kingdom. They are already starting to
utilize the program.
The SPOT-generated letter of authorization has dramatically
improved the transportation, medical, and installation-support
services in their control. Congressionally mandated sub-element
populations are managed today in both contingency areas. Both
SOUTHCOM [U.S. Southern Command] and the U.S. mission to
Haiti's rapid request for the system during the initial stages
of the humanitarian efforts there attest to its growing
institutionalization within our government.
It is important to remember that all of our efforts--or,
indeed, our wider efforts--are not solely focused on the
current operations. Congress has made it clear that we are
institutionalizing these changes in management and oversight
for future operations as well. We are establishing those
policies in organizations to permit that to happen.
And I am ready to answer any further questions. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Mostek can be found in the
Appendix on page 37.]
Dr. Snyder. Thank you.
Mr. Moser.
STATEMENT OF WILLIAM MOSER, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE
(LOGISTICS MANAGEMENT), U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Mr. Moser. Mr. Chairman and Congressman Wittman and
Congressman Jones, I welcome the opportunity to provide you an
update on the implementation of the Synchronized Pre-deployment
Operational Tracker at the Department of State.
Please allow me to, first, express how much we, at the
State Department, appreciate the support of this subcommittee.
I had the pleasure of briefing this subcommittee in April 2009
on SPOT. And I thank you for the invitation to provide you this
update.
As the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Logistics Management,
I am responsible for ensuring that our global logistics
platform provides consistent, reliable support to the men and
women who directly implement our foreign policy around the
world.
I am pleased to be able to state before you today that the
implementation of SPOT is a good news story. Legislation
originated by this body is part of that story. The Department
of State, working with the Department of Defense and the United
States Agency for International Development, has made great
strides in implementing SPOT.
As of today, the Department of State has 6,381 personnel in
Iraq and 4,378 in Afghanistan registered in SPOT. These figures
include both contractors', as well as grantee, information, as
required by the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act.
Since the new legislation requires grantee information to
be put in SPOT, State has successfully worked with the non-
governmental organizations to meet these requirements. In
January 2009, the Department of State procurement executive
issued Grants Policy Directive 33, which requires the use of
SPOT for grantees performing work in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Department of State's SPOT program manager also reached
out to grants officers, grants-officer representatives, and
grants organizations to provide information, training, and
alternatives such as our blind-identity format to meet SPOT
compliance for grantees.
Due to outreach and education efforts, SPOT implementation
at State, including NGO input, has proceeded with minimal
problems. In addition to providing valuable information on
counts of contractors and grantees to Congress, the Department
of State is using SPOT to manage and coordinate contracts and
grants at both strategic and operational levels.
Using SPOT-generated letters of authorization, State is
able to grant privileges to contractors and grantees in Iraq
and Afghanistan, such as medical services, meals, and common-
access cards. To enhance the use of the letters of
authorization, last year, State purchased the Joint Asset
Movement Management System--known affectionately as JAMMS--
readers, and installed them in Iraq and Afghanistan.
State can now track contractor movements in theater, and
verify work status by scanning individual letters of
authorization with the JAMMS reader. This added functionality
has increased oversight of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the future, State and its interagency partners see this
as a tool to assist in logistical planning. As SPOT matures,
DOS--the Department of State--sees the level of utility from
SPOT growing. For example, State will be working with its
interagency partners to develop the Total Operational Presence
Support System, TOPSS, which is an enhanced reporting tool that
will allow State to run custom reports from the SPOT database.
Examples of these reports may include individual contract
reports to give names of individuals deployed against the
contract with duty location at any given time.
Much has been accomplished by the Department of State and
its partners in the use of SPOT. SPOT's system enhancements
will continue as the Department of State, the Department of
Defense, and the United States Agency for International
Development continue to work together to improve our
cooperative efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This concludes my testimony. And I am happy to answer any
questions this subcommittee may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Moser can be found in the
Appendix on page 50.]
Dr. Snyder. And we will be in recess. I would think we will
be in the 20-to-30-minute range.
Mr. Moser. Okay. Thank you.
[Recess.]
Dr. Snyder. We will resume. We think we are okay--at least
for a little while.
Ambassador Michel, your opening statement, please.
STATEMENT OF AMBASSADOR JAMES MICHEL, COUNSELOR TO THE AGENCY,
U.S. AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Ambassador Michel. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman and Mr. Wittman, I appreciate the opportunity
to join with colleagues from the Department of Defense,
Department of State, and the Government Accountability Office,
to discuss the implementation of SPOT. And, at the outset, I
want to join the other witnesses in expressing appreciation to
the subcommittee for your continuing interest and vigilance in
overseeing the legislation.
We have, I think, made some important steps forward to
collect the report information that is called for under the
legislation. And our progress, I think, has benefited
substantially from your continuing oversight.
USAID is committed to fulfilling its responsibilities under
the law to report on the number of contractor and grantee
personnel in a common database, as provided in the law. And I
have learned of difficulties that the Agency encountered when
it first entered into that MOU [memorandum of understanding]
with Defense and State in 2008.
While a substantial number of USAID contractor personnel in
Iraq were registered in SPOT in 2009, there is no question that
the agency struggled with the effort to apply this system more
broadly to its programs in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
And a particular concern, Mr. Chairman, as you noted, has
been the concern of the NGOs [non-governmental organizations],
but also the contractor community, about the implications for
the many thousands of individuals, most of them locally-engaged
nationals, who work with USAID in implementing local activities
such as in agriculture, community development, governance,
humanitarian relief. And we have about 100-130 employees in
Iraq, who manage the work of almost 1,500 implementing
personnel who work with contractors and grantees.
In Afghanistan, the workforce under the contracts and
grants is even much larger, with about 260 USAID employees
overseeing more than 20,000 implementing personnel on the
ground.
Very few of those people who work under the grants and
contracts of USAID in Iraq and in Afghanistan have interaction
with the Department of Defense that would require them to need
a letter of authorization or other individual identification.
And USAID has provided the required personal information about
those in Iraq who do require a letters of authorization.
And we have entered organizational-level information in
SPOT about concerned--the grants and the contracts in both Iraq
and in Afghanistan. And we have had discussions with Defense
and State colleagues, and with our implementing partners, about
how to make progress while accommodating the various interests
and concerns consistent with the law.
I am pleased to report that, last month, we met among the
three agencies and arrived at a solution to assure timely and
accurate reporting through SPOT on the numbers of USAID
contractor and grantee personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. This
reporting will avoid administrative burdens and financial
burdens of entering unneeded detailed personal information
about those people working locally throughout the communities
of Iraq and Afghanistan. But it will fulfill the needs
contemplated in the legislation.
The solution, we are confident, conforms with the
requirements of law and meets the concerns of the agencies and
also the implementing partners.
It is true that part of our concern has been the concerns
of our implementing partners--which we share--that registration
of individuals in SPOT could be misunderstood in the
communities where they work and that this could give rise to
concerns for personal safety. But as a result of the
interagency agreement that we have reached, three good things
have happened:
First, we expect that the administrator of USAID will sign,
today, the new MOU with State and Defense to provide a clear
and authoritative basis for our participation in SPOT. Second,
the technical staffs from Defense and USAID are meeting to
assure that the operation of the data-entry procedures will
facilitate the capture of the required information, so that we
will be able to enter the personal detailed information with
respect to those implementing partners--employees--who require
letters of authorization and the necessary information for
aggregate numbers of those personnel who do not require that.
The third good thing that has happened is that the
concerned management offices of the three agencies have agreed
to meet periodically with a view to coordinating on matters of
contract administration, and to identify and act on issues of
common concern.
So I think that we are making progress; that these
developments will contribute to better reporting, and to better
interagency coordination, without substantial additional cost
or a loss of efficiency. There is no doubt that the
subcommittee's oversight has been an important factor in the
progress we have made.
We welcome your continued interest and support.
Thank you, sir.
[The prepared statement of Ambassador Michel can be found
in the Appendix on page 54.]
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Mr. Ambassador.
Mr. Hutton.
STATEMENT OF JOHN HUTTON, DIRECTOR, ACQUISITION AND SOURCING
MANAGEMENT, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Mr. Hutton. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Wittman, and members of the
subcommittee, thank you, again, for inviting us here to testify
on ongoing efforts by DOD, State, and USAID to track
information on contracts, grants, cooperative agreements, and
the personnel working under them in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Given the agencies' extensive reliance on these personnel
and the services they provide, reliable and meaningful data are
critical to inform the agency decisions and to improve
management and oversight.
While our past work has focused on tracking contracts and
contractor personnel, our ongoing work now includes grants and
cooperative agreements in accordance with the Fiscal Year 2010
National Defense Authorization Act.
Joined from our prior work, I will first highlight how a
lack of reliable information has hindered agencies' ability to
effectively manage and oversee contracts, grants, and
associated personnel. I will then discuss ongoing agency
efforts to track such information.
The challenges of relying on contractors and grantees in
contingency operations are well established. Our prior reports
have shown how inadequate information may inhibit planning,
increase costs, and introduce unnecessary risk.
To illustrate: Our December 2006 review of DOD contractors
supporting deployed forces in Iraq showed how a battalion
commander could not determine the number of contractor-provided
interpreters supporting his unit, which created challenges in
planning and carrying out the missions.
In May 2009, we found that, in Afghanistan, the U.S.
Government risked duplicating efforts and missing opportunities
to leverage existing resources because DOD lacked visibility
into USAID's development projects.
DOD, State, and USAID agreed to use SPOT to respond to
congressional direction to track information on contractor
personnel and grants; and, now, grants, cooperative agreements,
and their personnel. Agencies have made some progress in
implementing SPOT, but their efforts still fall short in terms
of having complete and reliable data to fulfill statutory
requirements and improve management and oversight.
Specifically, criteria for which contractor personnel
should be entered into SPOT varied both across the agencies and
compared to their agreement. DOD officials in Iraq told us the
need for a letter of authorization primarily determined whether
contractor personnel were entered into SPOT. However, not all
personnel--particularly local-nationals--need letters of
authorization.
USAID has not been entering data on local-nationals into
SPOT, citing concerns for their safety, should the system be
compromised. To address this concern, DOD is testing a
classified version of SPOT. But USAID officials have told us
their limited access to classified computers would restrict the
utility of a classified system.
Varying practices on who to enter into SPOT stem, in part,
from differing views on the value of this personnel data. In
not requiring its contractors to use SPOT in Afghanistan, USAID
officials had questioned the need for detailed information on
these contractors, as they typically have limited interaction
with U.S. officials, or do not receive government-provided
support services.
Similarly, some DOD officials have questioned the value of
tracking personnel individually, rather than by total numbers,
given the cost of collecting such detailed information. While
the mandate calls for, at a minimum, aggregated personnel data,
SPOT currently requires users to manually enter detailed
information for each person.
Because of SPOT's limitations, we and the agencies have
relied on other sources such as periodic surveys, for
information on contractor personnel, including those that were
killed or wounded. However, our prior work has shown these data
are generally incomplete and unreliable, particularly for
identifying trends and drawing conclusions.
Turning to contract information--although some information
is entered into SPOT, the system cannot yet accurately import
contract-data elements, such as contract values and
descriptions of services provided, from FPDS-NG [Federal
Procurement Data System-Next Generation], the government's
system for tracking contract information.
Even when systems are eventually linked, challenges may
continue because data are not currently entered into SPOT in a
standardized manner to permit unique contracts in order to be
matched with information in FPDS.
Preliminary insights based on our ongoing work indicate
agencies may face similar challenges in tracking grants and
cooperative agreements and personnel working under them. For
example, USAID guidance for entering grantees into SPOT does
not cover local-nationals. Moreover, agency-grants data reside
in multiple databases that generally do not maintain
information in a standardized manner, making future links to
SPOT difficult.
To address shortcomings in agency implementation of SPOT,
last October, we recommended the agencies jointly develop and
execute a plan to better ensure contractor data are
consistently entered into SPOT. In response, the agencies did
not agree a plan was needed, citing ongoing coordination
efforts and anticipated system upgrades as sufficient.
We believe that, without a plan with specific timeframes to
address shortcomings, there are few assurances SPOT will
fulfill its potential, leaving the agency without reliable
information to address management and oversight challenges in
Iraq and Afghanistan.
This concludes my prepared statement. I would be happy to
respond to any questions you may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hutton can be found in the
Appendix on page 58.]
Dr. Snyder. Thank you all for your testimony.
We will put ourselves on the five-minute clock here and ask
some questions.
I am not sure where to begin, exactly. I think what I will
do is begin with, Mr. Ambassador, your statement that a--your
testimony is that a new memorandum of understanding between
USAID, the State Department, and the DOD is being signed today.
Is that correct? Is a new MOU----
Ambassador Michel. Yes, sir.
Dr. Snyder [continuing]. Between your three agencies--State
Department, USAID, and Department of Defense--being signed
today? Has it been signed?
Ambassador Michel. Yes, it has gone forward to our
administrator. And I am told that he is expected to sign it
today. He has been in and out, but I think he will sign it
today.
Dr. Snyder. So, when you say, ``He is going to sign it,''
that is the USAID administrator. Has DOD and State already
signed off on that?
Go ahead.
Mr. Motsek. Mr. Chairman, yes--February.
Mr. Moser. Yes, and the State Department--we expect the--
Deputy Secretary Lew to sign it either this afternoon or
tomorrow.
Dr. Snyder. Do you agree with Ambassador Michel's
description of what the MOU does? I mean, it changes the
requirement that you are imposing on contractors, does it not,
as you outlined in your testimony?
Mr. Moser. No. The MOU is actually a revision of the
previous MOU that we have had.
Dr. Snyder. Yes.
Mr. Moser. The agreement that we have tried to strike--the
balance that we tried to strike in the NGO community, and how
we approached the grantees--is actually an agreement among the
three agencies.
Wouldn't you agree with that, Gary?
Mr. Motsek. Yes, sir.
The challenge was, when we expanded the definitions last
year, to include cooperative agreements and grantees--in
general terms, we opened the bigger basket. And we hadn't
complied with the earlier basket. So we had to work through
that process.
If you recall, by law, the only people that we actually
have to have in there by name are those associated as private
security contractors, or interpreters-slash-translators. Well,
there were two sections of previous NDAAs that required those
two.
We, in DOD, have always pushed for ``by name'' across the
board. The State Department has generally done that. But this
recognition that aggregate numbers are sufficient to--to do the
management that we are talking about--if, for example--I don't
want to put words in Ambassador Michel's mouth--but if he has a
large grantee--if he can simply put the aggregate number in
there, and have it divided up by the broad categories of U.S.,
local-national, third-country nationals--we have that
management tool that we use in the larger aggregate. And we can
manage the population in that respect.
Is that about right?
Ambassador Michel. That is absolutely right. Now, we do
think that this agreement that we have reached among ourselves
about how we can move forward to give effect to the legislation
within the framework of the MOU--and I think the amendments to
the MOU really reflect the new legislation of the 2009 and
2010--they are not changing anything basic about the
relationships.
Dr. Snyder. Well, let me get this right.
So, Mr. Moser, in your written statement, you talk about
using a blind-identity to meet SPOT compliance for grantees.
Mr. Moser. Right.
You know, I think that this deserves a little context. I
know that the NGO community, or members of Congress and their
staff have heard a lot from the NGO community in the last
several months because of this question about grantees' inputs
because of the changes in the 2010 National Defense
Authorization Act. However, State had always thought that the
grantees were to be in SPOT--that that was our interpretation
of the original legislation in 2008.
When we started applying the legislation in 2008 and 2009,
we got concerns from our embassy in Baghdad that they were
concerned about the identity of local-nationals being in the
system in a country that, admittedly, has a high degree of
sectarian conflict. Therefore, we came up, in consultation with
our partners in DOD, with our blind-identity scheme in order to
protect the identity of those individuals that we felt that
were under threat, who were not private security contractors.
So we came up with a--you know, essentially, it is like
Iraqi-one, Iraqi-two, Iraqi-three--so that we actually input
them as individual fields in SPOT. And then, in order to comply
with the actual enumeration that we needed for these
individuals--but not in a fashion that would endanger their
identity.
So that is just a long way of saying--is that this issue
about the identification of individuals is not a new issue for
us. And it is something that we have recognized for some time.
Dr. Snyder. Well, okay.
Now, help me understand this. According to this, what you
are saying is that you all are in agreement with--you are going
to use the SPOT system for those people who need letters of
authorization to come onto a base----
Mr. Moser. Correct.
Dr. Snyder. And so the only people who will be in the SPOT
system will be security folks----
Mr. Moser. No, sir. No, sir.
The people that need letters of authorization have to be
named by name. But it is the other class of individuals who
were not--who were in--generally in the grantee community, who
did not receive any support services from the Department of
Defense in the field, whose--the need for that identity
information for the agencies was minimal. And, really, we don't
see a real tangible need for that.
Gary, wouldn't you agree with that?
And those are the ones that we said that could really be
subject to the blind-identity scheme.
Dr. Snyder. So you are not using the blind-identity scheme
anymore?
Mr. Moser. Yes, we still--State is still using it now. We
have not switched to an aggregate number; although, we are in
the process of discussing that with our agency counterparts.
Dr. Snyder. I hope my time has--oh, yes, it has run out--
because I have done nothing but confuse myself.
Mr. Moser. Okay.
Dr. Snyder. But, fortunately, I get to do this as many
times as I want.
I thought you said you were all on the same page now--all
three agencies.
Mr. Ambassador, do you all use blind-identity schemes?
Ambassador Michel. We do not, for a couple of----
Dr. Snyder. All right, then; I rest my case. You are not
all doing this the same way.
Ambassador Michel. There is not----
Dr. Snyder. Do you agree with that, Mr. Moser--you are not
all doing it the same way?
Mr. Moser. I would say that, in the past, we have not been
doing it the same way. But we think that, through the
consultations that we have had in the last--within the last
month--that we think, going forward, that we will actually have
a consistent input----
Dr. Snyder. All right. Well, do you all want to talk
amongst yourself and decide if you do have or do not have a
blind-identity scheme for SPOT?
Ambassador Michel. Now, Mr. Chairman, I----
Dr. Snyder. I mean, do you or do you not?
Ambassador Michel. Mr. Chair, we do not have a consistent
way of entering the data. We do not have what Mr. Hutton had
described as being a ``uniform'' way of entering the data.
Dr. Snyder. Well, my time is over----
Ambassador Michel. And there are differences in the way we
operate that we think provide a rational basis for some
distinctions. We are not talking about exactly the same kinds
of activities.
There are two points I would make here. One is that we are
all in agreement on meeting the requirement of the aggregate
numbers, which is the legislative standard. And we believe that
expanding the population of this database with those aggregate
numbers, which we had not figured out how to do earlier, will
provide us with useful information that will facilitate the
interagency coordination that is the ultimate objective here.
It is not to have--``How many names can you get into the
database?'' but, ``Does that information help you to coordinate
better?''
And I would say that, for USAID, where our work is not on
bases or in embassies, but in communities at a--you know, out
into the countryside--the cost of trying to record names of
these individuals would be substantial. And the value of it in
terms of what it would add to the information that we hope we
will be developing through the aggregate-number entries would
be a serious question.
We do believe that, in addition to this computer system--
that there are many things we need to do to assure that our
interagency coordination is contributing to the effectiveness
of our mission, and carrying out our national objectives in
these environments in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
There is a whole array of additional measures that are
taken through, for example, interagency committees; joint-
coordination committees in Iraq and in Afghanistan. We have
Ambassador Haslach in Iraq, who looks over the range of
assistance matters. We have Ambassador Wayne in Afghanistan. We
have Ambassador Holbrooke in Washington.
We have USAID participation in activities like the
committees that look at the Commanders' Emergency Response
Program funds, and compares what is going on with those DOD
funds, and what is going on with the USAID funding. We have
USAID people serving on the PRTs [provincial reconstruction
teams], who are engaging with Defense colleagues and State
colleagues.
So I think there is a whole array of things that we are
doing. And the increased interagency dialogue that is part of
what we have all agreed on here, I think, gives us an
opportunity to look at the contribution that SPOT has, but also
that these other mechanisms have for improving coordination and
advancing our missions in these difficult countries.
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Wittman.
We will come back to this, because I am more confused now
than when I started.
Ambassador Michel. Okay.
Dr. Snyder. I am more confused now than when I started. And
we are not leaving here today until I am not confused.
Ambassador Michel. Okay.
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Wittman.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to build on Chairman Snyder's question. It
seems that there has been an elongated period of time to have
all the agencies come together with this MOU. And my question
is--as we have heard pretty emphatically from the NGOs about
the onerous reporting requirements for SPOT that they have to
go through for local-national employees--let me ask this: How
did you, or did you, reach out to the NGOs in developing the
MOU to understand what their concerns are so that we are
actually trying to make this system more workable and actually
try to get information that doesn't require extraordinary
measures by NGOs there--sometimes, maybe, creating more
problems than what we are trying to solve.
So, did you all, collectively, reach out to the NGOs and
get their ideas on what needs to be in this MOU?
Mr. Motsek. The baseline for the MOU--the changes to the
MOU were statutory. They were not based on anything else.
If I could step back--because I know why we have confused
you, I think.
When we initially established the program back in 2006-
2007, the system was designed by a ``by name'' input. That was
the baseline for what we did. We couldn't do anything unless
you put names in there. And that is how we delineated everyone.
When we had the legislation last year that--and we
initiated it because we wanted the larger picture, to be blunt
about it--and we expanded that to include cooperative
agreements and grantees, which really opened up the aperture
that USAID has to participate in, it--it started causing
concerns by populating by name, inside the database.
The law requires us to do much more than that. Really, what
we are trying to do is link the population of contractors--and,
again, those three broad bins--because we treat them
differently--against the contractor, grant, or cooperative
agreement--a description of the item, the length of time that
contract is in effect. And, then, there are other things that
you have required us to do. I have to be able to account for
deaths against a particular contract, cooperative agreement, or
grant.
So there is a pull-down menu. Now, it is far easier if all
the names are in there, because, on that person's name, we can
pull it down and say, ``Deceased,'' and we can aggregate the
numbers. We didn't have that option, quite frankly. We went
back and made changes to the system to accommodate a count by a
contract number--for lack of a better term--``Give us number of
people associated with this contract.'' ``We have 200 local-
nationals; we have 43 third-country nationals; and two
Americans,'' for example. And we can aggregate them, then, that
way, from now on.
So we still have the management tool to work it. But we
don't necessarily have it in all three of our agencies, by
name, every time, with those two exceptions that are required
by law.
Mr. Moser. And, Congressman Wittman, if I can just take
your question--in my testimony, I referenced the grant-policy
directive that we issued in 2009.
At that time, as I said earlier, we had already made the
policy decision that we were going to put grantees in. Even
though the law at that time did not specifically require it, we
felt that that was Congress' intent. So it was a policy
decision within State in order to do that.
Our procurement executive regularly meets with all the
program offices that have grantees. And we had a great
discussion at that time about how the SPOT data entry would
proceed without the--with notification with them. And so there
was a discussion--we presumed that there was an active
discussion between the relevant program offices and their
grantee community. That is the reason we felt like we have
always had it. I have been pretty assured by that in my
discussions with those program offices.
However, at that time, we did have a lengthy discussion
about what to do about public international organizations. And
those, we purposefully exempted from SPOT, even though they
received U.S. Government funds from the State Department--that
we did not--that they were under the auspices of the U.N.
[United Nations] or other international organizations. And we
decided to not enter them.
So we had a rather extensive dialogue about what to do
about grantees at that time.
Ambassador Michel. I might just add, Mr. Wittman, that when
we entered into this--and I was not here in 2008, so I can't
speak to it--but my understanding is that when this original
MOU was entered into in 2008--that this was all new experience
for USAID, and there was a learning curve.
And the implications of this--and it is not only for the
NGOs. It is also for the contractors that are operating in
similar environments out in the countryside--that this was a
learning experience. And it is true that the NGOs have been the
most outspoken in their concerns. And we have had extensive
discussions with them in the course of developing this
interagency agreement that will allow us to proceed with the
entry of the aggregate data by contract.
And so there has been, certainly, extensive discussion with
the NGO community.
Mr. Motsek. Sir, if I might add--because, what do you do
with this information? That is really the question.
From a practical standpoint, just the brief descriptions of
what the grant, cooperative agreement, or contract it is
associated with, is de-conflicting issues right on the ground.
We are getting away from three agencies independently trying to
drill the same well in the same location, because we are
sharing, by geographical location, those contracts, grants, or
whatever, in the database. And we were able to size--just by
looking at the dollar value and looking at the numbers of
people associated with that contract, we can size what is going
on.
So, for example, I have a member of my staff that has been
in Afghanistan for over a year now. And this is one of her
areas of concern. And she is using the database to do this. And
as it becomes more populated by USAID--and, in fact, it is
being offered to other non-U.S. agencies on a voluntary basis,
to put data in as well, so that we can look across a broad
stripe of what is going on there.
So, from a practical standpoint, we don't need the names of
the people associated with what is going on. And that is kind
of a revolutionary change of thought in our process, here--to
be blunt about it. But we do know what is being performed in a
location. And we can start making those economic trades that we
need to make so we are not stepping over each other.
Mr. Wittman. I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I am sure I am as
confused as anyone else.
But I wanted to turn to Mr. Hutton, if I might, for a
moment, because, in your concluding remarks, you mentioned
that--and I know that you do this work--does what we are
talking about here satisfy your criteria that there is a plan,
with specific timeframes for executing it?
Mr. Hutton. That is a great question.
And I sat here listening to some of the discussions about
where SPOT is today. And what I would say, first of all,
though, is when the requirement came in that the three agencies
were to get together and sign an MOU and figure out how they
are going to track specific pieces of data, I look at it at two
levels.
First, at that point in time, an agency stepping back and
thinking about, ``Okay. I want to better manage my contractors
and provide better oversight. What do I need to do that?''--and
think through what the criteria are--I mean, we are talking
about weapons systems and everything else--the importance of
defining your requirements up front.
Now, the agencies may very well have different requirements
as to what they want to put into that database. And, from my
standpoint, you know, if people are meeting the minimum that
the law requires, okay. They satisfied that. But the bigger
test is, ``Are you satisfying your own information needs for
how you want to manage your contractors and, now, grants?''
So, now, we are two years down the road. And I think where
we find ourselves, quite frankly, is, maybe, a little bit more
reacting to what we are seeing as it relates to how we are
going to deal with grantees versus maybe being proactive up
front.
I think, as I said, at the start--thinking about how they
want to use the information. Mr. Motsek mentions that they
brought--they went with SPOT, I think, several months--maybe up
to a year--before they decided to use that for their reasons to
track contractors. And I think there are certain valid reasons
why one would want to have detailed information on contractors
in a system; particularly if they are supporting the deployed
troops, they are getting services, there are security
concerns--very real issues.
And, yes, I thought the LOA [letter of authorization] was a
good trigger, perhaps, for Iraq. The question, then, became,
``Well, every country is not the same. Does Afghanistan require
the same extent of an LOA as you do in Iraq?''
So I think you have to kind of look at it almost on a case-
by-case. But you have to stand back and really ask yourself,
``What do I really need to manage?'' Grantees--maybe aggregate
numbers at one level are fine. Maybe you don't need to name the
names. But I think it would depend on what you are asking these
groups to do for you, and think about the sensitivities of
that, and make real proactive judgments about it.
Mrs. Davis. Are you seeing instances where information is
collected that really isn't needed, but, perhaps, there is a
sense on the part of one agency that they should be collecting
it because somebody else is collecting it? I mean, how do you
get at that?
Mr. Hutton. Well, there is a lot of information in SPOT
right now. And, again, I think it takes it back to the
requirements. DOD may have very specific things they want to
have in SPOT. That may be fine for certain types of
contractors, and for what they are trying to get to in terms of
managing their contractors.
The question to me is, ``Well, there may be a lot of data
elements in SPOT. But, maybe for certain types of activities
you don't have to have all that information.''
Mrs. Davis. Yes.
Mr. Hutton. But it is hard for me to put myself in the
place of an administration--an agency--as to how they manage
their contractors--as to what they think they need to better
manage. I think that is for them to figure out, then work
together. And that is where we had our recommendation. I think
coordination is helpful. This hearing is helpful.
I think, last year, when we had the hearing, it helped
nudge things along. This hearing, I think, is helping to nudge
things along. But, quite frankly, our recommendation was aimed
at--yes, coordination is good. And we do believe--we see that
there is discussion going on. But we felt, with a very specific
plan with milestones--milestones will help you get to where you
need to be, hopefully quicker. And, you know, hearings like
this kind of help move it along.
Mrs. Davis. Anybody else want to comment on his comments?
Mr. Motsek. Ma'am, he is absolutely correct.
Our agencies have different requirements. In simplistic
terms, we need to know because the bulk of our folks do, in
fact, go on or off our installations. So there is a binding
requirement. That is clear. It is evident. But our military
leaders in the field need aggregate numbers of people that are
associated with the U.S. if, for no other reason, than to
enforce protection in that broad area that they have a general
responsibility for.
Because, you know, no matter what happens in the--when they
had the explosion of the U.N. compound in Kabul--the person you
are going to turn to, to sort it out, to provide the initial
protection, to do the initial extraction, are going to be the
U.S. military because they are the ones with the most toys in
the area, and the most capability.
And so that commander on the ground--while I agree--because
we do have different requirements, and we have--this has been a
learning process for us--does not necessarily need to know the
names, they do need to know that, in Helmand Province, ``There
are X-thousand USAID personnel that may require assistance when
these particular trigger points occur.''
So it is, in fact, in my mind, critical that we continue
this collective database to get the numbers in there so that we
can perform those tasks.
Mrs. Davis. Okay. Thank you.
Oh, go on----
Ambassador Michel. May I add a point to that? And I agree
with everything everyone has said here. But if USAID was going
to create a database for tracking contractor personnel and
grantee personnel--we would not, because of the nature of the
work we do, which is very dispersed out into the communities,
out into the fields--or agriculture projects and so on--we
would not create something that has the capabilities that the
Defense Department decided it wanted to have when it created
SPOT for a different kind of contractor workforce.
Now, I think the Congress, in establishing it for the
aggregate data to be required under the law--there should be a
common database--that was a great thing, because we are all now
going to be applying SPOT as the way to get the information
into the system in the same way. And when it says, ``This
contract has a value of X, or it has a purpose of Y,'' no
matter which of the agencies puts that in, they are using the
same definitions and the same standards.
I think that has a value that can be useful to us in
coordinating, and can be useful to Congress in overseeing what
we are doing. But for us to try to duplicate all of the
information that the Defense Department wants to have for its
contractors, when it is not value-added sufficient to incur the
costs--argues, in my mind, against identical implementation in
the--in the degree of detail that we each put in.
I think each of us is putting in a basic set of information
that will be useful.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
Mr. Moser. And Congresswoman Davis, if I could give you a
comment or a perspective from the Department of State--I am a
big believer in standardization--that you have to have some
standardized system. And this is the reason why--that we agreed
upon SPOT. Was it the ideal system if we began from scratch? It
is hard to say.
But one thing I have learned in system development that I
carry on in my other logistics activity--you choose the tool
that will meet most of your needs, or can share good use as a
common platform. So I think that we arrived--when Gary and I
first met, it was actually in our initial discussion about
SPOT--I only wish Ambassador Michel had been able to join us at
that time, but he was otherwise employed--but that you go on
from there.
Now, what has our recent experience been? And I think this
is one of the SPOT success stories. The management counselor at
our embassy in Kabul asked me, ``Will, how can I control my
contractors--the State Department contractors--that I have some
responsibility for supporting?'' Well, SPOT ended up to be the
ideal tool for that. And we have set up the hardware for them
to start to use that. And we had a similar situation with our
diplomatic security program, where they are using the features
of SPOT in order to track their contract personnel.
And the reason I mentioned this is that you decide on the--
you know, to get the jointness, we have to have that--but,
then, each agency can really adapt it to its own business
requirements, and get some of the good benefits that we can get
over the--out of this over time.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
Dr. Snyder. We will go another round here.
Mr. Ambassador, your--I am going to go with your summary of
what the MOU that you say is being signed today, or is about to
be signed today--you say, ``USAID will ensure that all required
personal information will be provided with respect to personnel
of USAID, implementing partners, both contractors and grantees
as follows.'' And the first section is, ``Personnel who require
letters of authorization due to logistical support, military
interface or other reasons.''
Now, what you are saying there is if somebody needs a
letter of authorization to go onto a base--this form or
something like it, with all the personal information, has to be
filled out. And, Mr. Motsek, is that--do you agree with that--
that if they are coming on to your bases or----
Mr. Motsek. Absolutely. He will have several tiers of data,
depending upon your personal----
Dr. Snyder. To get that letters of authorization, I don't
think we have any alternative but to enter exactly the
information that is required----
Ambassador Michel. That is not----
Dr. Snyder [continuing]. With a real name. You can't say,
``Iraqi number one?''
Ambassador Michel. No, no, no, no.
Dr. Snyder. Okay.
And, then, the second one says, ``Personnel other than
locally engaged nationals who perform security functions in
Iraq or Afghanistan.''
Ambassador Michel. I am sorry. We moved that out of the
testimony. And I am sorry I didn't get that corrected version
to you, because this raises another issue, which confuses me.
And I don't want to get into it much in depth.
Dr. Snyder. Oh.
Ambassador Michel. But there is another process----
Dr. Snyder. You----
Ambassador Michel [continuing]. By which a regulation under
a different section of the law will make provision for
registering the security personnel.
So we are not addressing that in this MOU--or, at least,
not in our discussion of how we will--it is covered. Yes.
Dr. Snyder. So the MOU, now, is going to discuss those who
would require a letters of authorization. We are all in
agreement--they will need to fill out the form completely.
And I am sorry I didn't--I guess you had just given us that
revised version an hour before the committee hearing.
Ambassador Michel. I am sorry, sir. We had some confusion
in, I think, our understanding of how these different pieces of
the law worked together.
Dr. Snyder. All right.
Ambassador Michel. And so we submitted the corrected
testimony. And I will admit that was very late.
Dr. Snyder. All right.
And, then, the second part of it is: Is number two still
the same--``USAID will assure that timely and complete
information will be provided, indicating aggregate numbers of
other personnel of USAID implementing partners, both
contractors and grantees in Iraq and Afghanistan, and aggregate
numbers of such personnel who are killed or wounded''?
Ambassador Michel. Yes, sir.
Dr. Snyder. So those are the aggregate numbers?
Ambassador Michel. Yes, sir.
Dr. Snyder. Those people, according to your memorandum of
understanding--they will not need to be entered in SPOT on this
form.
Ambassador Michel. Yes.
The memorandum of understanding does not go into specific
detail on this. This is what we have worked out among ourselves
to accommodate the different ways of doing business that we
have--the different missions that we have, and the different
partners that we have, and, at the same time, meeting the
requirements of the law, and providing this additional
information that Mr. Motsek described, that allow us to
coordinate among the contracts of the three different agencies.
Dr. Snyder. So I want to be sure here, all right?
Are you all in agreement that, with regard to personnel
other than those requiring LOAs, all you need is aggregate
information? They do not need to be submitted on the SPOT form?
Is that accurate or not?
Mr. Motsek. It is accurate for him. But we require ``by
name.''
We, DOD, require--what has happened, sir, is we have now
established a new baseline of minimal requirements which did
not exist before.
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Motsek, let me interrupt you. When you say
it is ``accurate for him,'' but not for you, do you mean it is
accurate for USAID personnel, but not for DOD personnel?
Mr. Motsek. Correct; correct.
For our particular needs, we still intend to put everyone
in there by name, by association, primarily because the bulk--
not everybody, but the bulk of our contract personnel do have a
relationship to and from an installation. Either they need a
full LOA, as you have seen there, or they are providing some
degree of support via satellite installation--via some sort of
transportation.
We have to do some sort of vetting on them so that we have
some degree of satisfaction that----
Dr. Snyder. Now, that was--and that was the original
purpose of SPOT, wasn't it--before we had the statutory stuff?
Mr. Motsek. Yes.
Dr. Snyder. I mean, Synchronized Pre-deployment and
Operational Tracker----
Mr. Motsek. Right.
Dr. Snyder. You are DOD. You want to be able to track some
people.
Mr. Motsek. Right, and----
Dr. Snyder. That is different than using it as a tool to
give the Congress aggregate information.
Okay, so----
Mr. Motsek. That is correct. Sir, it was initially the
point to take care of U.S. contractors leaving the U.S., going
over there. And we have since expanded it to come up----
Dr. Snyder. Right.
Mr. Motsek [continuing]. With a tool to count all U.S.
contractors in the AOR, to--in simplistic terms. All of them--
and in those broad bins--to be able to account for deaths,
killed in action--to be able to account for all those contracts
in a single database that says, ``Okay, we can see what
everyone is doing in one place, what the length of that
contract is so we don't inadvertently provide support to a
contractor who is been expired.''
Dr. Snyder. But these are decisions that your--would have
made regardless of the statute, but said, ``We wanted aggregate
information on people''?
Mr. Motsek. Without the statute, we would have still tried
to have----
Dr. Snyder. Right.
Mr. Motsek [continuing]. Still tried to have aggregate----
Dr. Snyder. Right.
Mr. Motsek [continuing]. Information.
Dr. Snyder. Right.
Mr. Motsek. But the statute did require such things as
recording deaths in the database.
Dr. Snyder. Right.
Mr. Motsek. We had always heretofore relied on the
Department of Labor. Well, we changed the process so we can
record the deaths now in this common database. It didn't have
to be SPOT, but the--the committee's knowledge and Congress'
intellectual honesty about saying, ``Don't reinvent the wheel
three, four, five different times,'' was probably the best
thing you could have done, because instead of having to sit
here and argue about nuances, we would be arguing about the
whole totality of what we wanted to do.
And, so, we actually are talking amongst each other. I can
read his data, if necessary. I can sequester his data, if
necessary. We have got the system intact. We just have to
continue the population of it.
Dr. Snyder. So, Mr. Moser--does the State Department now
work that this memorandum of understanding for State
Department--do you just do aggregate personnel--aggregate
numbers for folks other than those who require letters of
authorization?
Mr. Moser. As I have said--is that our criterion has really
been those who feel that they are endangered have reason--you
know, have a reasonable degree of fear--those local-nationals.
We have tended to put in more names rather than less names,
and that has been our criterion in the past, given our
agreement----
Dr. Snyder. All right, let me interrupt you here.
So we have already passed number one. If we require a
letter of authorization, you know, obviously, you have to fill
out the form.
Mr. Moser. It will be in there.
Dr. Snyder. And, then, what you said--you just said,
``Those who feel fear''----
Mr. Moser. Yes, that has been----
Dr. Snyder. Now you have employees of contractors, whether
an American or from another nationality, or a local----
Mr. Moser. No, sir. We never exempt Americans or third-
country nationals. We are talking about host-country nationals
only.
Dr. Snyder. So if an American employee of the----
Mr. Moser. Every American employee is going to be in SPOT
by name, and identified. And we have always done that.
Dr. Snyder. Even if they don't require a letter of
authorization?
Mr. Moser. That is correct.
We have always done that.
Dr. Snyder. Well, I mean, that may be a perfectly
reasonable thing----
Mr. Moser. Because----
Dr. Snyder. It is not what this MOU that I--all said we
agree on.
Mr. Moser. No, but, you know, it goes back to--we felt that
that was best for our own business process in order to control
our contractor and grantee community.
Dr. Snyder. Right. I understand.
All right, so with regard to third--to Iraq or Afghan
nationals----
Mr. Moser. Yes?
Dr. Snyder [continuing]. The only time--are you saying now
that for the--for State Department purposes, the only time they
end up in SPOT is if they require a letters of authorization
that--for whatever reason--to come onto the facility? Or if, in
their subjective opinion, they feel fear and request to be
included in SPOT--that is the only time a local Iraqi or Afghan
would be included?
Mr. Moser. Well, no, because we will put them in if they're
conducting private security functions.
Dr. Snyder. Okay.
Mr. Moser. Because that is actually required by law.
Dr. Snyder. Right.
Mr. Moser. And we will put them in for that.
Now, as I have said, we have been doing a blind-identity
scheme. But with the systems modifications that USAID has asked
for, and that Mr. Motsek has agreed to do--then we will
probably switch to bulk numbers when we have a group of
employees that this is subject to, because it will actually
reduce the amount of data entry that needs to be done, and the
cost. That is right.
Dr. Snyder. But the numbers----
Mr. Moser. But the numbers would be the same. It is just
that what they are talking about in aggregate data, we actually
achieve by doing individual entries under a blind-identity
scheme.
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Wittman, I am sorry. I have taken----
Mr. Moser. I hope that was clear.
Mr. Wittman. I want to go back to Mr. Hutton's comment in
his presentation. And when he talked about developing and
executing a plan--and there is some resistance among the
various agencies there--he states, ``By joining, developing,
and executing a plan with specific timeframes, the agencies can
identify the concrete steps needed to assess their progress,
ensuring that SPOT collects the data necessary to fulfill
statutory requirements.
``By working with potential users of SPOT data to better
understand their information needs, each agency can help ensure
the information entered into the system is sufficiently, but
not overly, detailed and will assist in managing and overseeing
contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements in Iraq and
Afghanistan.''
It sounds like, to me--that we still haven't gotten to the
point to really understand what is needed and what is not. How
do we make this system workable for everybody?
Do you all believe that the recommendation here to develop
a plan at this point, with where you are with the MOU, is
necessary; and if so, why; and if not, why not?
Ambassador Michel. Let me take a start at it.
I think what we have here is that we have an MOU that sets
the ground--the floor of this. And we have, among ourselves, at
this point, agreed that some will put more and some will put
less, but all meeting the legal requirement--depending on not
arbitrary considerations, but rather our perception of what our
respective missions are, and the information that will
contribute to shared information that will facilitate
coordination among us.
So it is not that the MOU is interpreted differently by us,
but rather, the MOU, which creates the base, is implemented in
a variable way among the three agencies to reflect the
different way that we do business, but with a consistency of
the basic information that we are all providing and--consistent
definitions.
Now, we are just beginning, now, to talk among ourselves,
as we begin to implement this understanding about--we can
coordinate. And it seems to me, Mr. Wittman, that that
discussion should include consideration of a concrete plan. But
I don't know that that will be the right outcome or not until
these discussions take place.
Mr. Wittman. Okay.
Ambassador Michel. I would think that the discussions among
the three agencies going forward, on implementation, should
include consideration of some milestones. I don't know, sitting
here, whether that is--where that should come out. They may,
after discussing it, decide, ``Well, no, that is not
necessary,'' or it is not appropriate. It seems to me it should
be considered.
Mr. Wittman. Sure.
Mr. Hutton, let me ask, based on what you know of the MOU--
do you believe that that negates the need for a specific
detailed plan with timeframes, as you suggest?
Ambassador Michel. I think that a detailed plan with
timeframes is something that should be discussed and considered
among the three agencies to see what that might entail and
whether it is a practical and useful thing to do. And I don't
think I can say that a priori as to whether those discussions
will reach that conclusion or not.
Mr. Wittman. Okay.
Mr. Hutton, your thoughts on that?
Mr. Hutton. Thank you, Mr. Wittman.
Mr. Wittman. Yes.
Mr. Hutton. I think that is a great question, because the
way I look at it, sir, is that you have a congressional
mandate--asked the three agencies to get together and agree on
an MOU.
What we found, and what you can see, is the MOU is high-
level. You have heard a lot of discussion here about what the
MOU contains. And just, maybe, to make sure there is some
clarity on--what the original mandate said that the agencies
needed to do was to agree on databases--not necessarily one,
but they agreed to the SPOT. I won't, you know, take issue with
that.
But there were specific things that it was to include. And
that was the brief description of the contract, its total
value, whether it was awarded competitively. On the personnel
side--total number employed, total number performing security
functions, and total number killed or wounded.
Now, the way I look at it--as I stated earlier, you have
the MOU here. You have the mandate and the MOU. My point is all
this is about better managing your contracts and having better
oversight. That may be over here. So how do you get from here,
at the MOU point, to an ultimate outcome of better management
of your contractors?
And so that is where we submit that each agency may have
different requirements. Take it in-house. Figure out what you
need to better manage your contractors. Put it down on a paper.
Give yourself some milestones. Because I will tell you what--
you go to Mr. Motsek, who has the system over there--there may
be some things that people are wanting to do that we want to
make sure we are not going to conflict with anybody else, we
are not asking for something that, you know, might be difficult
to do. I don't know--or maybe you have to have some kind of
phased planning.
But, ultimately, they all have to bring their requirements
together. We just submit that having clarity of what that is,
because I do believe there may be differences by agency. There
may be differences by service that the contractors or grantees
are providing. And, as you have heard today, there are other
issues that some--there are sensitivities involved in this
information.
So put that down. Figure out what you need. Then, get
together and de-conflict. Figure out where there are
similarities and differences, and then move ahead to what
ultimately is what you all are asking for.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Hutton. I think that is a great point. And I
am concerned about, operationally, where do we go from here? It
is great to have the MOU, but if you still don't have the type
of coordination there with resources, among the three different
agencies, then the MOU isn't necessarily going to get you where
you need to be.
So, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you. Mrs. Davis.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
I wanted to just be sure--Mr. Hutton, you looked like you
had something to say before. And I wanted to be sure you had a
chance to respond. Maybe you have just answered it.
Mr. Hutton. Well, thank you for the offer. I think I have
tried to work in several thoughts.
Mrs. Davis. Okay. Thank you.
One of the things that just--I would wonder about--and,
clearly, there is a reason for standardization and a kind of
quality control, if you will--and everyone is not created equal
here, in terms of skill level--but to what extent is that a
problem--are the folks who are engaged in these operations--is
everybody pretty much on the same page in terms of skill level,
or is there some disparity that really should be addressed
across the agencies and the kind of training--and this may be
totally irrelevant to this discussion.
But I remember another one when we were looking at
contracting, and we had not brought the number of auditors on
board with the kind of skill levels that were required to do
the work. I mean, you know, we were--they were swamped. And
they really weren't as skilled as they could have or should
have been.
To what extent is that an issue here?
Mr. Moser. Congresswoman Davis, I will--I volunteered to
answer this question because this is one hard spot that I feel
that our agency has actually done a pretty good job with.
The Department of Defense has developed some very good
training videos. They are Internet-based videos. And we have
embraced those. And we feel that those do a pretty good job of
training our contracting officers and the ones that have to
modify data and--and input.
But one of the things that--I should put this in context,
where people understand it--is that it is the contractors, or
the vendors, that have to do the initial data entry into SPOT.
And they are the ones that--and we feel that--and it is the job
of our contracting officers or grants officials that they
monitor their data input.
Now, one of the things I did not bring in--didn't grab it
off my desk before I came--is we have a training manual that we
distributed widely throughout the agency that my staff
developed. And I am actually very proud of the work that they
did in developing this so that they--we could have a shared
manual that really explained how to do SPOT. And this is
something that we have shared with our colleagues at USAID. And
I think they have found it helpful.
So I would say that all three agencies working together
have really found a way to try--you are not going to get
perfection and, particularly, not across a wide range of
individuals. But you do your best in trying to make a sincere--
a sincere effort to get the common training materials that
everyone uses, and then do quality control to check the
results.
Mrs. Davis. Yes, Mr. Motsek?
Mr. Motsek. Thank you, ma'am.
The--the whole concept of training and getting organized--I
mean, it is the one good news in the MOU, as we are
piecemealing it--there is a very significant change in us.
First of all, it is very difficult to get three agencies to
agree on anything when they have their own, you know--their own
cultures and the like. And, to be blunt about it, I think the
signing of this MOU is kind of woefully behind. It is just
tough stuff to get this to happen.
Two major changes occurred in this MOU. One is I have given
up some of my--what I perceived to be my authority and
responsibility, in that we have now, in the MOU, required us to
effectively establish a board of directors amongst the three of
us. And we must be appointed by our secretaries and meet
periodically to resolve those issues. That was not there
before. Up to that point, it was just dumped in my lap and I--
you know, we did the best we could, and we had informal
discussions.
It is now formalized. We have a body that is going to work
these issues. We have a process that says when we can't resolve
them--where it has to go. And the second thing that we did--I
think which was a very practical standpoint--is the initial MOU
was signed at the deputy-secretary level--a very high level;
very difficult to make any changes; very difficult to make any
nuances about it.
We have pushed that down to--basically, to the
undersecretary level. So we have a more practical level of
operation than we had before.
We shot, in my personal opinion, a little too high by going
to the deputy-secretary level, because nothing changes up there
easily. This has given us a bit more flexibility in management
and what we are doing.
The other piece is that all of our training information is
also co-located on the SPOT Web site. So even if you are a
contractor that has to go in cold, your training is there, to
go through the process.
Because we have this board of directors now that has been
established, what I see is our implementation plan is not
another plan. It is our business processes and our business
rules that we establish, which we will do collectively now. I
was essentially doing those unilaterally up to this point.
We are no longer doing it unilaterally. We are doing it
collectively. And a year from now, when you have another
hearing, you are going to ask us how well we have implemented
that. But I think we have, frankly, sufficiently good
oversight, potentially. We have got a board of directors. We
have got our business rules. I say we execute.
Mrs. Davis. What is the worst thing that can happen in this
transition period, and as you move forward and, hopefully,
before the next hearing that could happen? I mean, what is the
kind of glitch that, you know, would keep you up at night?
Mr. Motsek. The worst thing is we are--is practical. It is
monetary.
Up to this point, SPOT has been funded by supplemental--
cash in hand, every year. We are in the process, as the
executive agent, to institutionalize it as a system of record.
We presume we will be successful. Once we are successful, we
have a common baseline of funding, and we have reasonableness
in the program. If that was to fail, I will be knocking on your
door again to push me out another year.
I don't see that as a problem, in the sense that we are
working to institutionalize it. But that would be the deal-
breaker--if funding was cut off suddenly--to continue the
process.
Ambassador Michel. Mrs. Davis, I might interject another
point, which is a slightly different one.
And that is that USAID, as you may know, went through a
period of sharp decline in its operational funding, and in its
staffing, to where we had fewer than 1,000 Foreign Service
officers. And we are in a process of rebuilding.
SPOT is a tool. And it is an important one. But we really
have to have the capacity within the agency, through a general
training program and through restoring the levels of personnel,
which we are doing--rebuilding the Foreign Service--so that we
will be able to engage not only in the use of SPOT, but in all
the other ways of interagency coordination----
Mrs. Davis. On a scale of 1 to 10, where are you now?
Ambassador Michel. We are about a three, I believe, now, on
the rebuilding. We have brought in, I think, somewhere in
excess of 300 new Foreign Service officers under a program that
will double the USAID Foreign Service over 3 years.
Mrs. Davis. Does that say we were kind of at a half?
Ambassador Michel. We were not in good shape.
Mrs. Davis. ``Not in good shape''? Okay.
Any other comment, Mr. Hutton?
Mr. Hutton. One thing I might do to give you a little
context from my point of view as to where SPOT is today--when
you think about the fact that we have another report due
October 1st of this year--this will be the third report--the
scope of our work this time will be covering all of fiscal year
2009, and the first half of fiscal year 2010. So, basically,
this month is when we are going to do our cutoff for data.
We are pretty much--as we have done in the prior years--
going through and largely doing manual pulls with the agencies.
For example, for DOD, you know, we are still going to plan on
the census. One thing that we didn't get into that I think Mr.
Motsek might have had in his statement is talking about moving
from reconciling SPOT to census. And I think they call it SPOT
Plus. And that is another step towards looking to make sure
that there is more information in SPOT now than there might
have been a year ago. And I think, when you look back a year
ago to today, there are more names in there.
Just to use another example--we won't be pulling contract
information directly from FPDS. Now, last year, there was a
capability brought in to the SPOT system that is going to allow
marrying up FPDS to say, for example, ``Pull in contract
information.'' But as our report in last October mentioned,
when we talked about standardization, I wasn't talking about
standardization of what level of detail for each type of
contractors you need, necessarily. It was more of, ``How do you
standardize the data input so that when people are out there
putting in contract information, they are doing it in a format
that is going to be readily matched to how you can pull it from
FPDS.''
So those are just a couple illustrations. I don't mean to
just use DOD. But I recognize there is time. But I think DOD is
probably a little further along in some sense with their
census. But I think State is doing a census, as well as USAID.
So that gives you a snapshot of--if you were to ask, ``Where is
SPOT today? Are we relying on SPOT to fulfill our mandate
requirement?'' I would say we are still pretty much doing the
approach that we have used in the past.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Snyder. Good news for you, gentlemen. We have more
votes.
Mr. Motsek--I believe we will be able to finish up, I
think, here. Yes.
Mr. Motsek, I am going to try to describe where I think you
are at with all this, which is essentially--you have a system.
SPOT is your system. It is your requirement--this reporting to
Congress--because it was--through the Department of Defense--
because you all own the war zones--that any contractors
employee does get entered into the system, whether somebody
requires a letter of authorization to go onto a base; whether
they are a U.S. citizen or third-country national; or whether
they are an Iraqi or Afghan national. If they are an employee
of a contractor or a grantee, you require them to be entered
into the SPOT database. Is that accurate?
Mr. Motsek. That is exactly our intent. Now, our success
rate----
Dr. Snyder. I wanted to be sure----
Mr. Motsek. That is an issue, but----
Dr. Snyder. Now, do for me, with that same wonderful level
of clarity--describe for me policy and practice of the State
Department and USAID, on those groups.
Mr. Motsek. From my perception? From my----
Dr. Snyder. Well, yes. You own the system.
Mr. Motsek. Well, up to this point, by and large, the State
Department has mirrored our policy, up to this point in time,
with one exception--this was before the new MOU--in that they
had very discrete numbers of people that, for lack of a better
term, had a dummy name in the database--I think is the best way
of putting it.
But from a numbers standpoint--from assigning numbers to a
contract, and whether they were a local-national or a--well, in
fact, they were only local-nationals that we are talking
about--they were there. So in the past year, their numbers have
gone up demonstrably. So----
Dr. Snyder. No. I want to talk about their policy. What is
their policy, going forward from today?
Mr. Motsek. From this moment forward, all the agencies have
the same opportunity that, with the exception of those mandated
by law, we can put aggregate numbers into the database to
manage the numbers of contractors against those contract
vehicles that we are talking about. We need not put the data in
by name if it is not required by our agency to do so, with the
two exemptions by law.
Dr. Snyder. So, Mr. Moser, if somebody needs a letter of
authorization, they go into your system by name----
Mr. Moser. Absolutely.
Dr. Snyder. If they are a U.S. citizen or a third-country
national, they go into your system by name.
Mr. Moser. That is correct.
Dr. Snyder. If they are an Iraqi or Afghan national who are
not involved in any kind of security work, they do not go into
your system by name, or any personal information. Is that
accurate?
Mr. Moser. Not entirely, because, actually----
Dr. Snyder. Unless they want to be.
Mr. Moser. Unless they want to be, yes.
Dr. Snyder. So it is voluntary on the part of the Iraqi or
Afghan national----
Mr. Moser. Actually, not of the individual--of the
company----
Dr. Snyder. If the contractor required them by hiring for
your--``So we can follow you as you are caravanning around, we
want you to be in the system. If you can't live with that, we
won't hire you.''
But if the NGO doesn't want them to be in that system, they
don't have to have----
Mr. Moser. And we will be satisfied with an aggregate
number. And that really was what our blind-identity scheme was
in the past.
Dr. Snyder. But you are giving up on the blind-identity
scheme?
Mr. Moser. Well, it is just a matter of convenience--you
know, just the data entry, you know, because we were actually
filling out every, you know--fields in SPOT that, if we do go
to aggregate numbers, we don't need to do.
Dr. Snyder. Ambassador Michel, is that--are you on the same
exact page, identically, as Mr. Moser?
Ambassador Michel. I think we are----
Dr. Snyder. Microphone, please; microphone, please;
microphone, please.
Ambassador Michel. I am sorry, sir.
We are using SPOT for those individuals, with the full
detailed information, when a letter of authorization is
required.
Dr. Snyder. Right.
Ambassador Michel. And we are using the aggregate entry--we
are including the contract information, and we are including,
with respect to individuals, the aggregate numbers associated
with----
Dr. Snyder. All right. I want to run through the list.
Anyone requiring a letter of authorization, they are in the
SPOT system----
Ambassador Michel. Yes, sir.
Dr. Snyder [continuing]. Because Mr. Motsek says they have
to be.
Any U.S. national or third-country national--do they go
into the SPOT system?
Ambassador Michel. Not necessarily.
Dr. Snyder. Not your policy----
Ambassador Michel. They would be included in the aggregate
bit as a normal.
Dr. Snyder. All right. And if they are an Iraqi or Afghan
national----
Ambassador Michel. Aggregate data.
Dr. Snyder. Aggregate data per contract.
If, for whatever reasons, a contractor came to you and
said, ``My 20 employees--we would like to be in that system so
you could follow us better,'' would you put them in? Or is that
not happening?
Ambassador Michel. It is an unlikely contingency that has
never happened.
Dr. Snyder. I don't know if I understand this well. But I
don't feel confused.
And, on that note, we are adjourned. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 4:05 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
March 23, 2010
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING
March 23, 2010
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY DR. SNYDER
Dr. Snyder. When will the modification be made to the SPOT database
so that it can record aggregate numbers of personnel working under a
contract, grant, or cooperative agreement?
Mr. Motsek. We don't believe that there is a requirement to modify
the database.
SPOT will continue to collect contract information and individual
contractor information associated with contracts, grants, or
cooperative agreements. Currently, there are two other methods for
determining an aggregate number of contractor personnel.
First, USAID and other agencies can provide the aggregate number of
contractor personnel employed on a specific contract, grant or
cooperative agreement in a spreadsheet (Excel) form. Information
provided on the spreadsheet would be ``back loaded'' into SPOT on a
routine basis. The Total Operational Picture Support System (TOPSS) can
then be used to generate a report combining information contained in
SPOT with the aggregate information supplied in the spreadsheet. This
information would not be available through the automatically generated
SPOT reports, but rather, would be a manual ``off-line'' report.
Agencies also have the option to load a mock individual record
(using a unique identifier that is not traceable to an individual)
against a contract or grant in the current SPOT database. This unique
identifier could include minimal information on a contractor's
citizenship, for example. This process allows the number of contractors
employed on all contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements to be
automatically accessible in the SPOT database.
Dr. Snyder. When will the modification be made to the SPOT database
so that it can record aggregate numbers of personnel killed or wounded
while working under a contract, grant, or cooperative agreement?
Mr. Motsek. We can and do provide the ability to capture this
information on individual contractors in SPOT--no modification is
required. Compliance monitoring by contracting activities would help to
insure this information is captured as a part of the official
deployment close out.
Similar to providing aggregate information on numbers of contractor
personnel, there are two other methods for submitting information on
contractors killed or wounded while working on a contract, grant or
cooperative agreement. Agencies can provide the number of personnel
killed or wounded in a spreadsheet (Excel) form. Information provided
on the spreadsheet would be ``back loaded'' into SPOT on a routine
basis.
Agencies also have the option to load a mock individual record
(using a unique identifier that is not traceable to an individual)
against a contract or grant in the current SPOT database. A record
within SPOT could be updated to reflect an individual's change in
status (e.g. killed or wounded). Using this process, aggregate numbers
of personnel killed or wounded would be automatically accessible in the
SPOT database.
Dr. Snyder. Please provide a copy of the new Memorandum of
Understanding to committee staff
Mr. Motsek. Section 861 of the NDAA for FY 2008 requires the
identification of common databases among the DOD, DOS, and USAID to
serve as repositories of information on contracts and contractor
personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Memorandum of Understanding
(MOU) was signed on July 8, 2008. In it, the agencies agreed that SPOT
will serve as the interagency database for information on contractor
personnel. An updated MOU which incorporates legislative requirements
from sections 854 of the FY 2009 NDAA and 813 of the FY 2010 NDAA has
been signed by DOD and DOS and USAID.
We have provided this updated MOU to your staff.
Dr. Snyder. Does the Department of Defense desire any legislative
changes to the current information gathering requirements mandated by
statute for contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements in Iraq and
Afghanistan?
Mr. Motsek. No additional legislation is necessary at this time.
Dr. Snyder. What specific actions is Department of State taking to
address the information requirement concerns expressed by non-
governmental organizations working under grants and cooperative
agreements in Iraq and Afghanistan? What is your timeframe for
implementing these actions and publishing modified and consistent
policy, guidance, and business rules?
Mr. Moser. The Department of State (DOS) is beginning to use an
aggregate count spreadsheet in which non-governmental organizations can
enter a number count for local nationals who do not wish to have their
names entered into the Synchronized Pre-Deployment Operational Tracker
(SPOT) database. The spreadsheet will include a column where an
identifier, such as ``Iraqi 1,'' is put in place of an actual name.
Once this spreadsheet is filled out, the DOS will submit it to the
Department of Defense for uploading into the SPOT database. The DOS is
currently piloting this aggregate count spreadsheet process with one
bureau. If successful, the DOS will implement the process with all
bureaus that utilize grants and/or cooperative agreements in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Our policy and business rules will then be edited and
submitted to the Office of the Procurement Executive. We expect this
process to be completed by the end of May.
Dr. Snyder. What actions is your agency taking to ensure that once
the modifications enabling input of aggregate personnel information
into SPOT are complete, that such information will be fully entered
within 60 days?
Mr. Moser. The Department of State (DOS) is in the process of
updating its policies and procedures to ensure that aggregate personnel
information is entered into SPOT in a timely and accurate manner. This
process will be completed by the end of May, at which time our SPOT
Program Manager, Grants Officers, and Grants Officer's Representatives
will be reaching out to non-governmental organizations to ensure the
new policies are disseminated and information is collected for
submission to the SPOT database.
Dr. Snyder. What is your understanding of the requirements imposed
on the State Department by Section 1248 of the National Defense
Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008? Is the submission of detailed
personal information and biometrics by Iraqi nationals working under
U.S. contracts and grants required, or optional?
Mr. Moser. We share your concern about the issue of employment
verification of Iraqi nationals that Congress addressed with this bill.
The Department of State's (DOS) understanding of the requirements
imposed by Section 1248 of the National Defense Authorization Act is
that we must request and collect from each federal assistance award
recipient, information that can be used to verify the employment of
Iraqi citizens and nationals by such recipient. This includes work
performed in Iraq since March 20, 2003 under DOS federal assistance
awards valued in excess of $100,000. The submission of this information
by the award recipients is strongly encouraged but the current law does
not have any mechanism to compel individuals to submit their personal
information. However, DOS has taken a proactive approach to the
information request. The DOS issued Grants Policy Directive (GPD) 44 in
December 2009, which provides guidance to non-governmental
organizations on Section 1248 legislation. The directive includes four
attachments. The first attachment provides detailed information about
the requirements of the law and the applicable language which must be
included in new federal assistance awards. The second attachment
provides a letter for recipients describing the information collection
process. The third attachment is the Office of Management and Budget-
approved information collection form (Form DS-7655). This form is used
by DOS to collect the information required by 1248 legislation. The
fourth attachment provides instructions to recipients for completing
the collection form.
Dr. Snyder. Does the Department of State desire any legislative
changes to the current information requirements mandated by statute for
contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Mr. Moser. The Department of State does not desire any legislative
changes to the current information requirements mandated by statute.
Dr. Snyder. What specific actions is USAID taking to address the
information requirement concerns expressed by non-governmental
organizations working under grants and cooperative agreements in Iraq
and Afghanistan? What is your timeframe for implementing these actions
and publishing modified and consistent policy, guidance, and business
rules?
Ambassador Michel. USAID works closely with our implementing
partners in Iraq and Afghanistan to deliver sustainable results as we
improve the conditions and lives for the Iraq and Afghan people. In
order to address our partners' concerns while complying with the law,
USAID worked diligently with our Department of Defense (DOD) and
Department of State (DOS) colleagues to reach mutual agreements for
Agency implementation of the Synchronized Pre-deployment Operational
Tracker (SPOT). The solution agreed upon on February 26, 2010, after
numerous discussions, allowed for USAID compliance with the National
Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) while addressing the concerns of our
partners--without producing significant administrative and financial
burdens for our partner community and the Agency.
At the February 26 meeting and at the hearing on March 23, 2010,
DOD confirmed that USAID could move forward with providing aggregate
number information directly into SPOT. USAID plans to continue to
generate personal data on all implementing personnel who must hold a
Letter of Authorization (LOA), which is currently applicable in Iraq,
to conduct their USAID-funded activities. The Agency will also provide
information required by regulation for those personnel carrying out
security functions under USAID contracts or grants in Iraq or
Afghanistan. For all other partner personnel, the Agency will provide
the aggregate figures into SPOT to comply with the terms of the NDAA
and the revised interagency Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which
USAID signed on March 24, 2010.
Since agreement for USAID's implementation of SPOT was reached, we
have met with our implementing partner communities and have revised our
draft Business Rules for SPOT users. Concurrently, the Agency is
adapting its Acquisition & Assistance Policy Directive (AAPD) 09-01 for
Iraq to include Afghanistan. Once the draft is finalized, the review
and clearance process generally requires 90 days.
In follow-up discussions on providing the necessary aggregate
figures directly into SPOT, DOD, State, and USAID met on April 30,
2010. At that time, DOD informed us that the existing SPOT database
would not accept aggregate figures. Therefore, the Agency is seeking
explanation from DOD and is reviewing the costs and benefits associated
with potential options including: 1) creating a functionality in SPOT
to receive aggregate data; 2) tracking line by line pseudonym or
``dummy'' data for each of the more than 23,000 implementing personnel
we have in Iraq and Afghanistan and keeping this information up-to-date
in real-time fashion; or 3) providing modification to the reporting
requirements so that aggregate data responsive to the needs of Congress
can be provided without actually entering the data into SPOT.
Dr. Snyder. What action is your agency taking to ensure that once
the modifications enabling input of aggregate personnel information
into SPOT are complete, that such information will be fully entered
within 60 days?
Ambassador Michel. USAID has made strides to fully staff both the
Afghanistan and Iraq desks in Washington D.C. and our Missions overseas
appropriately to meet requirements and input, maintain, and
troubleshoot aggregate data information directly into SPOT. In
Washington D.C., the Agency has a dedicated full-time position for SPOT
implementation in Iraq. For Afghanistan, we are moving forward with
hiring the appropriate level of human resources to commit to full
support and implementation of SPOT by early 2011.
USAID has been working closely with our DOD counterparts since
agreement on providing aggregate figures was reached in February 2010.
We will now work to identify the best model possible to meet the NDAA
requirements without high costs or significant administrative burdens
on USAID or our implementing partners. We must also ensure that the
concerns of our development partners who are conducting on-the-ground
activities are addressed. Once a finalized and acceptable format is
available, USAID will begin all inputs.
To ensure a smooth roll-out of SPOT in Afghanistan as well as fully
inform USAID Contracting and Agreement Officers about the system, USAID
Contracting and Agreement officers from Iraq, Afghanistan, and those
who will be heading to these posts met with DOD and their SPOT prime
contractor during a May 2010 USAID conference for acquisition and
assistance officers.
Dr. Snyder. When will USAID fully implement SPOT requirements for
its contractors, grantees, and cooperative agreement partners in
Afghanistan?
Ambassador Michel. USAID seeks to implement SPOT requirements for
its contractors, grantees, and cooperative agreement partners working
in Afghanistan as soon as possible and no later than early 2011. In
order to stand the system up fully for more than 100 active awards,
USAID and its partners require clear details on how SPOT implementation
shall work at an aggregate numbers level or in another acceptable
format. We must receive confirmation from our DOD counterparts before
we can move forward with input of data, final release of the USAID SPOT
Business Rules, or the updated AAPD.
In the interim, USAID will be pleased to provide the committee with
aggregate figures upon request or in a periodic fashion.
Dr. Snyder. Does USAID desire any legislative changes to the
current information-gathering requirements mandated by statute for
contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Ambassador Michel. USAID seeks to comply with the law to provide
the necessary information to Congress concerning our programs and
activities in Iraq and Afghanistan. USAID can provide aggregate numbers
in any manner appropriate for the committee. The requirements of a
common database for USAID, DOD, and State have certainly motivated
agencies to collaboratively work together to find solutions. It also
has highlighted the necessary differences in business processes to meet
our distinct missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. USAID seeks a solution
that does not inhibit partner participation in our development efforts
or overburden Agency capabilities (via high administrative or cost
requirements) in favor of more detailed and more extensive reporting
requirements. We do hope the committee can accept our aggregate figures
as reported to the SPOT team as sufficient to meeting the needs of the
committee and the legislation requiring this common database. Should it
prove impossible to enable SPOT to accept aggregate data for the
majority of USAID contractor and grantee personnel in Afghanistan and
Iraq, and should alternatives prove to be impracticable, we would
explore the possibility of legislative relief to enable the desired
information to be provided in a manner compatible with SPOT, but at
less cost and without raising understandable concerns of USAID's
implementing partners.
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