[Senate Hearing 112-243]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
S. Hrg. 112-243
NOMINATION OF RAFAEL BORRAS
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HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
NOMINATION OF RAFAEL BORRAS TO BE UNDER SECRETARY FOR MANAGEMENT, U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
APRIL 6, 2011
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COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware SCOTT P. BROWN, Massachusetts
MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas JOHN McCAIN, Arizona
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada
JON TESTER, Montana ROB PORTMAN, Ohio
MARK BEGICH, Alaska RAND PAUL, Kentucky
Michael L. Alexander, Staff Director
Christian J. Beckner, Associate Staff Director for Homeland Security
Prevention and Protection
Kristine V. Lam, Professional Staff Member
Nicholas A. Rossi, Minority Staff Director
Robert L. Strayer, Minority Deputy Staff Director
Jennifer L. Tarr, Minority Counsel
Trina Driessnack Tyrer, Chief Clerk
Patricia R. Hogan, Publications Clerk and GPO Detailee
Laura W. Kilbride, Hearing Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statements:
Page
Senator Lieberman............................................ 1
Senator Collins.............................................. 3
Senator Akaka................................................ 4
Senator Johnson.............................................. 13
Senator Carper............................................... 23
Prepared statements:
Senator Lieberman............................................ 29
Senator Collins.............................................. 31
Senator Akaka................................................ 33
WITNESS
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Rafael Borras to be Under Secretary for Management, U.S.
Department of Homeland Security:
Testimony.................................................... 5
Prepared statement........................................... 34
Biographical and financial information....................... 37
Letter from the Office of Government Ethics with an
attachment................................................. 48
Responses to pre-hearing questions........................... 50
Letter from Mark Sullivan submitted by Senator Lieberman..... 105
Letter from Hon. Richard Skinner submitted by Senator
Lieberman.................................................. 106
Responses to post-hearing questions for the Record........... 107
NOMINATION OF RAFAEL BORRAS
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WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6, 2011
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:04 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph I.
Lieberman, presiding.
Present: Senators Lieberman, Akaka, Carper, Collins, and
Johnson.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN LIEBERMAN
Chairman Lieberman. Good morning. The hearing will come to
order.
Today, the Committee considers the nomination of Rafael
Borras to serve as Under Secretary for Management at the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Mr. Borras, I think, brings a lot of energy and experience
to what is an unglamorous but vitally important job. I say
``brings'' as opposed to ``would bring'' because, as I will
explain in a minute, he has been filling this position for a
period of time. Everything that the Department does that the
public sees depends in some critical way on what might be
called the back-room functions that are the purview of the
Under Secretary for Management: Acquisition of private sector
goods and services; hiring and encouraging the best in human
capital; developing and running information technology (IT)
systems; and responsible financial management of the public's
dollars. These are among the very important responsibilities of
this position.
In a Department that was created only 8 years ago, and a
very big Department at that, the Under Secretary for Management
serves as a linchpin to bring together the disparate processes
and procedures of what were once 22 separate agencies. I
believe that Mr. Borras' 27 years of experience in the public
and private sectors and, now I can say, excellent work during
the past year on the job qualify him for the position for which
he has been nominated.
In government, Mr. Borras has held several senior
management positions, including Assistant Secretary for
Administration at the Commerce Department and Regional
Administrator for the General Services Administration, with
responsibilities that were quite similar to those he has been
asked to undertake as Under Secretary for Management and, I
think, prepared him for the kinds of challenges he has faced at
DHS.
Earlier in his career, he held a position near and dear to
my heart. He was Deputy City Manager of Hartford, obviously,
the capital city of my home State of Connecticut, and in that
position, as a matter of record, he helped balance the city's
budget without raising taxes, which was no small feat during
the recession of the early 1990s and, I might say on a more
subjective basis, left a lot of people in Hartford with very
good feelings and memories of his service there.
Mr. Borras also spent 10 years as Vice President at URS
Corporation, a global engineering, construction, and technical
services firm, which provides services to both the public and
private sectors.
When Mr. Borras was first nominated to be Under Secretary
for Management at DHS in July 2009, I concluded that he was
qualified for the position and supported his nomination, which
was reported out of this Committee by a 7-to-3 vote.
Unfortunately, others had doubts, and following the Committee's
vote in October 2009, a hold was placed on this nomination so a
vote in the full Senate could not be scheduled.
President Obama felt it was important enough to fill this
position and was confident enough about Mr. Borras'
qualifications that he put him on the job through a recess
appointment on March 27, 2010.
Now, the nominee returns to the Committee with a year of
experience as the Under Secretary, and to make a long story
short, I believe that Rafael Borras has proven himself to be a
dedicated and very capable leader in a challenging position. In
other words, he has earned Senate confirmation.
It is worth noting that Mr. Borras has also received
support from senior leaders within the Department with whom he
has been working over the last year, and I want to cite as an
example a communication to the Committee sent by the Director
of the Secret Service, Mark Sullivan,\1\ who is, as I am sure
most people here know, a non-political appointee with 33 years
of law enforcement experience, who wrote a very strong letter
of endorsement and asked that ``this dedicated and talented
professional'' continue as Under Secretary for Management.
Director Sullivan added, Mr. Borras ``has taken a proactive
approach to enhance his understanding of the Secret Service,
our operational requirements, and our contributions to the DHS
mission. He effectively communicates with DHS leadership and
implements policies to allow components the opportunity to
leverage and maximize DHS assets and resources to improve
operational effectiveness and efficiency.'' That is, in my
opinion, a very important, influential comment.
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\1\ The letter submitted by Senator Lieberman from Mark Sullivan
appears in the Appendix on page 105.
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Mr. Borras' recess appointment expires at the end of this
year. If the Senate fails to confirm him, I believe it would be
a significant loss for the Department, and so I hope that not
only will our Committee confirm him again, but the full Senate
will, as well.
Senator Collins.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLLINS
Senator Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We convene today
to consider again the nomination of Rafael Borras to be Under
Secretary for Management at the Department of Homeland
Security.
Two years ago, after careful consideration, I decided to
oppose the nomination of Mr. Borras. This was extremely unusual
for me as I believe that the President should have a great deal
of latitude to nominate a person of his choosing to serve in
the cabinet or in a senior executive position, but I had
concerns at that time about Mr. Borras' lack of experience and
his spotty compliance with our tax laws. I would note, however,
that I was not the source of the hold that prevented Mr.
Borras' nomination from being considered by the full Senate.
The Under Secretary for Management oversees the management
of more than 200,000 employees, a $50 billion annual budget,
expensive procurement projects, and vital interagency
coordination. Over the past 8 years, the Department has
struggled to complete the enormous task of integrating
thousands of employees and more than two dozen Federal agencies
with different missions, traditions, and cultures. The
Government Accountability Office (GAO) placed DHS on its High-
Risk List once again this year and concluded that ``DHS has not
yet demonstrated sustainable progress in implementing
corrective actions and in addressing key challenges within its
management functions and in integrating those functions within
and across the Department.''
The Under Secretary for Management must ensure that there
is efficient and effective use of personnel and technology to
combat the very real threats that we face. To accomplish this
goal, the Under Secretary must possess exceptional leadership
abilities and a track record of management success. Indeed,
this is not only my view, it is the law. Four years ago, our
Committee enacted requirements that the Under Secretary must
possess significant leadership capability, extensive executive-
level management experience, a demonstrated ability to manage
large, complex organizations, and a proven record in achieving
positive operational results.
As the Chairman has indicated, due to a recess appointment,
which circumvented the Senate and should not have been made by
the President, Mr. Borras now has a year in a position that
requires experience managing large and complex organizations.
While Mr. Borras is admirably committed to public service, I
continue to have some, albeit fewer, questions about whether
his experience is sufficient to overcome the challenges that
DHS faces.
I sincerely hope that those remaining questions can be
resolved favorably today. I want to hear his own assessment of
what he has accomplished, and I will say for the record that in
talking to people, including Mr. Borras' predecessors and the
private sector, I am hearing generally favorable reviews of his
performance during the past year.
At the hearing in 2009, I also questioned Mr. Borras about
what appears to be a pattern of errors on his taxes. These
numerous tax errors still trouble me because they appear to
indicate a lack of attention to detail and a pattern of
carelessness.
DHS needs a strong hand at the management helm. I intend to
question Mr. Borras on his accomplishments to date and his
plans for addressing the serious challenges that remain at DHS.
Let me emphasize that I am certainly going to give this
nominee another look in light of his experience over the past
year, and I will certainly give him a fair opportunity to
present his case for confirmation. I approach this hearing with
an open mind and also in recognizing the year of on-the-job
experience.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you very much, Senator Collins. I
appreciate that statement.
Senator Akaka is Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight
of Government Management, the Federal Workforce, and the
District of Columbia, and in that capacity, he has been very
involved with the Management Directorate at DHS and has worked
closely with Under Secretary Borras.
Normally nominees have people introduce them and Senator
Akaka has actually asked for, I presume with your consent, the
honor of introducing the nominee this morning. Senator Akaka.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am
delighted to be here as we consider Rafael Borras to continue
as Under Secretary for Management at the Department of Homeland
Security, and I am also delighted to have the Ranking Member of
our Subcommittee, Senator Johnson, here.
Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Collins, I would like to
take this opportunity to introduce and welcome Mr. Borras to
the Committee once again and also to have the pleasure of
welcoming his lovely wife, Ivelisse, and also Jason, his son,
to this hearing, and also his supporters who are here with him
from the Department.
I first met Mr. Borras in 2009 before his confirmation
hearing. I told him then that Elaine Duke was leaving him big
shoes to fill at DHS. After over a year on the job, he has
demonstrated his ability to improve the focus of management as
a priority at the Department.
Before coming to DHS, Under Secretary Borras had over 20
years of Federal, local, and private sector management
experience. During his tenure as the Under Secretary, he has
made improving acquisitions and financial management, along
with the rightsizing the contractor workforce at DHS, top
priorities. I am pleased that he has also been focusing on
getting DHS off the Government Accountability Office's High-
Risk List, where it has been since the Department was created
in 2003. His office recently sent GAO and the Committee a
detailed strategic plan for better management integration at
the Department.
I want to emphasize how impressed I have been with Mr.
Borras' engagement with us. Last year, my friend and former
Ranking Member Senator Voinovich and I held a series of monthly
meetings with Under Secretary Borras to keep our Subcommittee
up to date on his progress. He has continued to keep the
Subcommittee apprised of management issues and has made himself
available to the Committee and our staff.
I will not go on about his qualifications except to say
that I believe Under Secretary Borras has demonstrated his
ability to lead the DHS Management Directorate, and I support
his confirmation.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much, Senator Akaka.
I will now proceed to the nominee. Mr. Borras has filed
responses to biographical and financial questionnaires,
answered prehearing questions submitted by the Committee, and
has had his financial statements reviewed by the Office of
Government Ethics. Without objection, this information will be
made part of the hearing record, with the exception of the
financial data, which are on file and available for public
inspection at the Committee's office.
Our Committee rules require, as I think you know, Mr.
Borras, that all witnesses at nomination hearings give their
testimony under oath, so I would ask you now to please stand
and raise your right hand.
Do you swear that the testimony you are about to give to
the Committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth, so help you, God?
Mr. Borras. I do.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you very much. Please be seated.
We would now welcome an opening statement if you would like to
give it and an introduction, if you would like, of any family
or friends who are with you today.
TESTIMONY OF RAFAEL BORRAS\1\ TO BE UNDER SECRETARY FOR
MANAGEMENT, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Borras. Thank you, Chairman Lieberman, Senator Collins,
Senator Akaka, and Senator Johnson. I thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you today as you consider my
confirmation.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Borras appears in the Appendix on
page 34.
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It was a great honor to have been nominated by President
Obama, and it has been my privilege to serve as the Under
Secretary for Management. I have worked to earn the trust and
the confidence of the Secretary, the Deputy Secretary,
Department leadership, and our employees. It is my sincere hope
that through my work this past year, I have earned your
confidence, as well.
I would like to thank Secretary Janet Napolitano and Deputy
Secretary Jane Holl Lute for their tremendous support of the
Management Directorate, as well as their personal support and
encouragement of me. Additionally, I would like to thank the
leadership and the employees of the Management Directorate.
Their fine work and dedication have enabled me to build on the
progress that has already been made by my predecessors.
Furthermore, it has been pleasure over the last year to
have had extensive interactions with many Members of this
Committee and their dedicated staff. This Department owes a
great debt of gratitude to you for your leadership and support
in meeting the management challenges associated with weaving
together the 22 agencies that came together in 2003 upon the
creation of the Department of Homeland Security.
The past year has been filled with many challenges. Since
my appointment, I have led the development and implementation
of a comprehensive strategic management approach focused on
maturing organizational effectiveness within DHS. Through this
effort, we are focused on enhancing the financial, acquisition,
and human capital structures and processes necessary to meet
DHS mission goals by integrating and aligning business
functional areas at both the Department and component levels.
I have submitted the Department's first comprehensive
Management Integration Plan to the Government Accountability
Office, and I have worked to prioritize sound financial
management. Under my leadership, we have reduced financial
material weaknesses from 12 to 9, audit qualifications from 10
to 1, and material weaknesses in internal controls from 10 to
6. I have also worked to provide executive oversight of the
Consolidated Headquarters Project, which includes the St.
Elizabeths campus, a project I know that is very close to your
hearts.
While the position of the Under Secretary for Management is
the Department's Chief Management Officer, I have also
addressed my role as the Chief Good Government Officer,
constantly asking if our actions represent good government
practices as well as making sure that we are responsible in our
expenditures of taxpayer monies. Whether through the budget
process or my regular interactions with the components, I am
mindful of our need to be good stewards of the investments that
the taxpayers are making to meet the critical mission needs of
the Department.
I am committed to continuing to work with this Committee in
ensuring that the Department meets our most pressing management
challenges. My predecessors, Elaine Duke, Paul Schneider, and
Janet Hale, have done an admirable job of building a foundation
for sound management practices at DHS. I take it as my
responsibility to build upon their efforts, adding value to the
Department's operators and helping to build a strong
departmental management portfolio in support of the Secretary
and the Deputy Secretary's leadership to unify DHS.
Once again, I thank you for the opportunity to appear
before you. I hope that I will be able to convey the passion
with which I approach the management of DHS and hope to be able
to continue to work with you for years to come.
Thank you for your consideration of my nomination. Thank
you to my family and to my friends and to my colleagues who
generously joined me here this morning in support of my
nomination.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you. Thanks for that opening
statement.
Let me begin by asking the standard three questions we ask
of all nominees. First, is there anything you are aware of in
your background that might present a conflict of interest with
the duties of the office to which you have been nominated?
Mr. Borras. No, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Second, do you know of anything,
personal or otherwise, that would in any way prevent you from
fully and honorably discharging the responsibilities of the
office to which you have been nominated?
Mr. Borras. No.
Chairman Lieberman. And finally, do you agree without
reservation to respond to any reasonable summons to appear and
testify before any duly constituted committee of Congress if
you are confirmed?
Mr. Borras. Yes, I do.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you. We will start with a round
of questions of 7 minutes for each Member.
Let me begin with a broader question and give you an
opportunity to give an overview. Obviously, you have been on
the job now for just over a year. What is the greatest surprise
that you have had about the Department of Homeland Security,
and what do you feel best about that you have done in the first
year?
Mr. Borras. I welcome the opportunity to answer that
question. I would say the biggest surprise I have had relative
to what I have heard people say about the Department and its
management has been that certainly it is not as horrible as it
is made out to be. The employees of the Department of Homeland
Security, particularly in the Management Directorate, are very
bright, very qualified, hard-working individuals who care
deeply about good management at DHS.
I would say my biggest contribution over the past year has
been to harness that dedication of the employees and to provide
leadership. I think the most important qualification and the
most important asset for the Under Secretary of Management is
to be able to demonstrate leadership qualities, to be able to
bring the Department together, to be able to add value, and to
be able to build the relationships with the components and with
the employees.
I have focused on that tremendously over my past year, and
I am very humbled by those members of the organization, like
Director Sullivan and others, who have expressed appreciation
for the work that I have done and the leadership that I have
shown, and I am tremendously appreciative of the support and
encouragement I have received from Secretary Napolitano as I
have exercised that leadership.
Chairman Lieberman. Good. This past year, along with Deputy
Secretary Lute, I know you conducted a series of budget reviews
with each of the components of the Department of Homeland
Security. In your answers to the Committee's prehearing
questions, you note that as part of this budget review process,
you focused on ``identifying areas of redundancy and overlap
between DHS components, looking for efficiencies and potential
savings.'' And, of course, I appreciate that, and I wonder if
you would discuss what you have done to find and eliminate
overlapping and duplicative activities among DHS components.
Mr. Borras. Mr. Chairman, I was very fortunate from the
standpoint of the budget to arrive 1 year ago upon my
appointment right in the beginning of the budget process. So I
had a tremendous opportunity to work closely with the Deputy
Secretary and all of the component leadership to begin to
examine, as we were building the 2012 through 2016 budget, very
carefully how we were proposing to make the investments in the
Department and to support the critical mission areas, and
through that process and chairing the program review budget
process for most of that time, it gave me an opportunity to
visit with the components.
The way that we structured that meeting is we would examine
the budget of one particular department--take Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE), for example--but we would have
representatives from Customs and Border Protection (CBP), from
the Coast Guard, and from other parts of the Department. And I
used that opportunity to not only examine ICE's budget, for
example, but to understand as ICE is building its budget, are
they looking at and taking into consideration how CBP is
building its budget, to look for opportunities to find
commonalities and to make sure that we are not duplicating, and
also to make sure that we are cognizant as we are building our
budgets that we are looking at other expenditures in different
components.
For example, the Congress was very generous in providing
$600 million to the Department to enhance our border
protection, mostly through Customs and Border Protection. So I
was very focused on how, for example, that major investment,
which went predominately to CBP, influenced the development of
ICE's budget, and how that influenced the development of the
Coast Guard's budget because we cannot build these budgets in
isolation of one another. So it was very important to focus on
what are the interrelationships between how we build our
budget, to look for areas of overlap or for duplication, and to
push that out of our budget request. Look for areas of
prioritization that support the Quadrennial Homeland Security
Review that the Department worked so hard to develop and make
sure that our investments were aligned with those mission sets.
So my focus was on looking for those efficiencies and
clearly coming to a point where we can recommend to the
Secretary a budget and in turn submit a budget to the
President, and of course, the President submits on behalf of
the entire government, the DHS budget.
Chairman Lieberman. Are you at a point in the process where
you can cite any actual efficiencies that you believe have
resulted from that process?
Mr. Borras. Well, we concentrated on eliminating a lot of
redundancies and looking for management efficiencies, and we
were looking specifically for repeatable, not one time but
repeatable, savings. So, for example, in our review of the IT
portfolio, we examined areas where we were having either
duplication or redundancies. A specific example, which resulted
in about $150 million in savings, was being able to look across
the enterprise at the number of Enterprise License Agreements
that we had, licenses for software that were duplicative around
the agency. So we very aggressively went after that and began
to consolidate those to actually bring together new Enterprise
License Agreements so that we can have standardized license
agreements for like software.
That is just one example of many instances where we
reviewed the IT portfolio, we looked at our acquisitions, and
we looked at expenditures related to people. We collapsed the
Candidate Development Program for the Senior Executive Service
(SES). The Department had four different SES Candidate
Development Programs. Through this process, we focused on that
as a priority, and we reduced it down to one Candidate
Development Program that does a number of things. It provides a
common training and leadership function throughout the
Department, so we are training executives for leadership in the
Department of Homeland Security, not necessarily in the
component. Clearly, it reduces overlap and redundancy by
eliminating duplicative training programs. There are just many
examples that we worked with closely.
Chairman Lieberman. That is great. Those are two very good
examples. I appreciate them. Thank you.
Senator Collins.
Senator Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Borras, Senator Lieberman and I have been concerned for
some time about the Department's over-reliance on contract
employees, so we asked the Department to give us a number. We
said, how many contract employees do you have? In February of
last year, the Department reported to this Committee that there
were 210,000 contract employees at DHS. This was an astonishing
number because it exceeded the number of Federal employees at
DHS.
Then about a year later, this year, the Department informed
us that the initial estimate was overstated by 100,000 contract
employees. It is extremely troubling to me that the Department
would have so little notion of how many contract employees that
are working at the Department that it could be off by a factor
of 100,000. It demonstrates a management weakness at DHS if
that error was not caught.
How is it that DHS could report to this Committee such a
wildly inaccurate number?
Mr. Borras. Well, I will say two things. I appreciate the
question, Senator Collins. When I arrived in the beginning of
April, approximately 1 year ago, certainly, I was made aware of
that estimate of 200,000 contract employees. I will say this is
a good example of how I used my experience from the private
sector specifically to question the validity of that number.
Upon my arrival, just doing the math behind what the cost
would be to support 200,000 contract employees did not make
sense. I met with our Chief Human Capital Officer (CHCO), Jeff
Neal, who actually had the same level of skepticism as I did.
So we were very concerned about the veracity of that 200,000
number. I directed the CHCO to work with the Chief Procurement
Officer to go back to the contractor. They used a contractor,
LMI, to develop an algorithm to be able to understand what the
number of contractors were.
So that is a specific example, Senator, of how I used my
private sector experience, understanding how contractors are.
We went in, we looked at that, and lo and behold, the
contractor found an arithmetic problem in their algorithm and
had to redo the assessment, which resulted in a new number of
under 100,000 contractors, which resulted in that contractor
returning their entire fee to the Department of Homeland
Security based on their inability to do a good job on that
assignment.
Senator Collins. Mr. Borras, I want to be very precise
here. Are you telling the Committee, then, that you were the
individual in the Department who first raised questions about
the 210,000 contractor employee figure?
Mr. Borras. Well, prior to my arrival, between February,
when the numbers were released, and March, I suppose there may
have been other people who questioned the fidelity of the
number. But I can absolutely tell you with certainty here, the
Members of this Committee, that based on my experience, I
determined very quickly that there was a big problem with that
number. Just understanding the way contractors develop their
rates, how they build their workforce, it did not add up. There
was no way that I could determine that it was a good number.
Senator Collins. I am very pleased to hear that. That is at
odds with my understanding, which was that the contractor who
was tasked with assessing how many contract employees DHS had,
in fact, was the entity that discovered the mistake. But you
are saying that is not correct.
Mr. Borras. That is not correct.
Senator Collins. I am very pleased to hear that.
Should the Department have had a better handle on how many
contract employees that it had?
Mr. Borras. I think that is a very good question, Senator.
There is an inherent difficulty in calculating the number of
contractors that are working on DHS or any Federal contract.
Many of our contracts are firm fixed-price contracts where,
based on the way the contract is written, we do not know the
actual work effort that the contractor is providing to DHS to
provide a service, which is why most entities use some form of
algorithm to be able to arrive at an estimate.
However, the good news is, as a result of our effort and
the effort of many others throughout government, the Office of
Management and Budget (OMB) and the Office of Federal
Procurement Policy (OFPP) have decided to take the lead in
providing a consistent methodology, not just at DHS but across
the government, so that we can use that to be able to better
determine the number of contractors.
Also, there is a tremendous need to have better reporting
by contractors on the number of work year equivalents, so they
can report that so we can better understand that.
I agree wholeheartedly with the concern of this Committee.
It is very difficult to invest that much money in contracts and
not have a good handle on the number of contractors, which is a
very important workforce issue for us. We need to make sure
that we are properly staffed, that we have the proper
management span of control, to oversee contractors. And until
we have a good number and we understand that span of control,
it is very difficult for this department or any department to
adequately resource its span of control to manage contractors.
Senator Collins. Mr. Chairman, in the 30 seconds that I
have left----
Chairman Lieberman. Go right ahead, Senator Collins. You
can go over.
Senator Collins [continuing]. I am just going to raise an
issue that I raised last year. Mr. Borras, you and I had an
extensive exchange last year on your 2005 and 2006 tax returns
and the errors on them, and I am not going to go through that
again because I think we had an extensive exchange.
I am sure you reviewed the record in preparation for this
hearing. Is there any new information that you would like the
Committee to be aware of related to the mistakes that were made
on those 2 years?
Mr. Borras. I appreciate the opportunity to respond to that
question. I would note for the record that I voluntarily
provided that information prior to my nomination by the
President. I provided all relevant facts and information
regarding two very regrettable tax years where I made very
simple mistakes, and that is a very humbling conversation to
have in a public forum. Clearly, I think it was important that
the Committee be aware of that information and that the
Committee completely understand that I deeply regretted those
errors. I had no record prior to or since that time of making
those kind of errors.
In the one year that I have been on the job--and I think it
is a very legitimate question to ask--does it reflect upon my
professional ability to do my job in a way that is not careless
or reckless? There is nothing in my professional record, either
before or since and clearly during my time at DHS, that would
have anybody indicate that I am either careless or reckless or
have no attention to detail.
Senator Collins. So just to get back to my question, you
stand by the answers in our exchange that we had on the taxes
and there is no new information that you want to add, is that
correct?
Mr. Borras. I was completely forthcoming----
Senator Collins. I am not challenging that. I am just
asking if there is any additional information, and I think you
are saying that you stand by the answers. Is that correct?
Mr. Borras. I stand by the answers I made to this Committee
and the more than 10 hours of discussion on the taxes I had
with the staff, where, again, I believe I was extremely
forthcoming on all of these issues.
Senator Collins. Thank you. Just one final comment on that
issue, and I will let it go. Every nominee is expected to be
forthcoming if there are errors on their tax returns. That is
not something that you get special credit for. That is required
as part of the vetting process. I appreciate that you were
forthcoming, but any nominee who was not forthcoming and tried
to conceal errors on his tax returns would be in deep trouble
with the Administration, I would hope, as well as with this
Committee. So having said that, I appreciate your answer. Thank
you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Collins. I mean, in
fact, we have had maybe one that comes to mind of somebody who
did conceal something in the vetting by the White House and
before the Committee, and ultimately when it came out, the
President withdrew his nomination, so thanks, Senator Collins.
Senator Akaka, you are next.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Borras, earlier this year, you submitted a strategic
management plan to address the Department's integration and
other challenges related to the Government Accountability
Office's high-risk designation. As I said in my introduction, I
appreciate your attention to this issue. To what extent did you
work with GAO in developing this plan and how has it been
received?
Mr. Borras. Thank you, Senator Akaka, for the question, and
I appreciate the opportunity to expand a little bit on how we
address the primary issues that GAO was focused on, which was
DHS's designation of a high-risk agency around management
transformation and building a better relationship with GAO.
I committed to this Committee and to the Secretary and the
Deputy Secretary that would be among my highest priorities, to
rebuild the relationship, to build a very good, strong
relationship with GAO as well as with the Inspector General
(IG), and to focus my efforts around getting the Department off
of the High-Risk List.
My assessment of the original plan that had been submitted,
although it was a good plan, was that it was primarily a
tactical plan to address specific tactical issues that were of
a high priority to the Department. My focus was to develop a
very comprehensive framework to address systematically a whole
series of management challenges in the Department, and I used
that opportunity, working in the Department, both within the
Management Directorate and with the components, to bring the
Department together in the development of this comprehensive
plan.
The comprehensive plan, which I have as a prop in front of
me, is a very substantial plan. It represents the first
attempt, acknowledged by GAO, to put together a comprehensive
framework on how we will address the High-Risk List, how we
will get off, with specific, comprehensive action plan items
that we have put in place with timelines and deadlines, and we
submitted this back in January to GAO. GAO has designated the
report as being an important step toward getting off of GAO's
High-Risk List.
I want to thank GAO for collaborating with us during the
development of this process. I had several meetings with GAO
staff to talk about and better understand the designation of
high risk, to better understand the kinds of areas they were
looking for to be able to focus on what is improvement and how
we will measure improvement and document improvement, and that
is what is represented in this plan. And we are holding
ourselves accountable. We are meeting with GAO on a quarterly
basis to review progress against the milestones and the
timelines we have set.
Senator Akaka. Can you further express how you felt it was
received?
Mr. Borras. I would say that the reception by GAO was very
significant for us at the Department of Homeland Security. It
represented the first time that we had a comprehensive approach
to address getting off the High-Risk List. In their
communication back to me, again, they represented this effort
as being important, significant progress.
We have changed the nature of the conversation with GAO. No
longer are we talking about what it will take to get off the
High-Risk List. Now, we are talking about measuring our
progress on getting off of the High-Risk List. That is a very
important change in the past year.
Senator Akaka. Mr. Borras, DHS continues to struggle with
employee morale and ratings in the Best Places to Work survey.
I believe improving employee satisfaction is critical to
recruiting and retaining an excellent workforce. What steps are
you taking to address this issue?
Mr. Borras. Senator Akaka, you have repeatedly raised this
issue as being important to you, important to your
Subcommittee, important to the full Committee, and this issue
is something that we have taken very seriously. We have taken a
look at the Federal employee surveys conducted over the last
several years. There are a couple of points I would make.
First of all, DHS continues to make improvement. I would
not refer to it as significant improvement, but demonstrable
improvement every year as it relates to the Federal survey. So
we are beginning to address the issues of employee morale, but
there is a long road to go.
We have convened several employee focus groups to follow up
on specific items raised and identified through the Human
Capital Survey. Additionally, we are having our own surveys
conducted in the Department, again, to better understand and to
involve employees in seeking specific remedies to be able to
address how we will improve morale.
One of the most important facts around improving the morale
is how we communicate to our employees. Speaking for myself, we
have done numerous town hall meetings. I personally go out and
meet with employees. We hold collaborative working sessions. We
have been very collaborative in working with the employees of
the Management Directorate, and I will note that the Management
Directorate--before my time there, but I should give credit to
this--has the highest employee satisfaction rating of any
entity within DHS.
So we have a well motivated, very experienced, and very
dedicated workforce. I am very proud of them and of being able
to represent them. And we are taking a look at those lessons we
have learned in the Management Directorate and applying them to
the components, working with their leadership.
Senator Akaka. As you know, in 2010, the Office of
Personnel Management scored DHS as being poor in morale, and
this is the reason I have been concerned about that and am glad
that you are working on this.
Mr. Chairman, I will take a second round.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Akaka.
Senator Johnson, thanks for being here. I must say, since
you have come to the Senate and joined the Committee, you have
really been very faithful in attending our hearings, and as
Chairman, I appreciate it.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOHNSON
Senator Johnson. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is
important work, so I am glad to do it.
Mr. Borras, it is a pleasure to see you again, and welcome
to your family. I would imagine you have a core team of
managers, subordinates who work for you. Can you describe to me
who those folks are and what their function is and how you work
with those people?
Mr. Borras. Yes. The core team of the Management
Directorate is comprised of the Chief Financial Officer (CFO),
the Chief Information Officer (CIO), the Chief Procurement
Officer, the Chief Human Capital Officer, the Chief Security
Officer--probably a couple of other chiefs there that----
[Laughter.]
Senator Johnson. Sure.
Mr. Borras. I am blanking at the moment. The Chief
Procurement Officer, the Chief Human Capital Officer, the Chief
Financial Officer, the Chief Security Officer----
Senator Johnson. That is OK. It is not a quiz. I just
wanted to find out how you deal with those folks, I mean, in
terms of their responsibilities. How far do you dig down into
their functions?
Mr. Borras. Well, that is a great question, and it was very
important upon my arrival to establish a collaborative working
environment with the chiefs of the lines of business. One of
the things that I have emphasized, particularly around
management integration, is if we are going to promote
management integration, we have to live an integrated
management style. So I work very closely with the chiefs. I am
not a micromanager, but it is very important to convey
priorities, to hold them accountable, to identify what are the
priorities, what are the action items we are going to take. We
meet weekly. We review progress. We have changed the way we
communicate among ourselves, and Senator, I will tell you why I
think that is important.
In the past, there was a tendency in these lines of
business to communicate vertically, that is, to communicate
from a line of business to the Under Secretary and to have a
series of one-on-one conversations. What we have done is we
communicate both vertically and horizontally. Any communication
that comes to me from a chief, for example, my weekly reports,
also goes to all the other lines of business chiefs so we have
complete transparency on the conversation that is taking place,
so we do not have siloed conversations. We are living the
experience of management integration. We address all management
areas, whether it be a financial matter, an acquisition area,
with all of the chiefs present.
So this is part of my collaborative management style. It is
the way that we demonstrate to the rest of the organization
that we are all in this together. It is reflected positively by
the components because they see that we address these issues
together. So I think that is a direct result of my management
style. The chiefs have responded very well to that style. They
communicate well with each other, and I am very proud of the
work that they do. We could not have had a management
integration plan without all of the chiefs being involved and
represented in this effort, and this plan is made up of every
one of those functional areas, the Chief Financial Officer,
Chief Human Capital Officer, Chief Information Officer, all of
the chiefs. We are a true team.
Senator Johnson. Are they members of the SES?
Mr. Borras. Yes, they are, Senator.
Senator Johnson. We just recently held a hearing on the SES
and the problems in recruiting top managers in the government.
Are you seeing similar types of problems, and what would those
be?
Mr. Borras. Well, I will tell you, Senator, right now, we
are seeing a tremendous amount of interest in the positions
that we advertise at DHS. We are probably getting in excess,
for some positions, of 1,000 resumes. People want to come to
DHS. Now, not all 1,000 applicants may be specifically
qualified for the positions they are applying for, but I take
that as a very good sign. People are interested in coming to
DHS. They recognize the good work that we are doing. And yes,
it is making our job harder to look through the applications of
very qualified individuals, but that is going to make us better
as a Department, and I think that is partly as a result of the
leadership at the Department, the very strong affinity for the
mission, and the work. The work is very challenging. We are not
having trouble attracting candidates.
Senator Johnson. Would that be across the board at DHS? I
am particularly interested in hearing the problems of having
career government employees make the leap up to the SES level.
Mr. Borras. Well, one of the reasons why we focus so
strongly on consolidating these leadership development programs
in the Department is to have a single way in which we train
leaders so that the SES corps has the mobility to be able to
move between the components and headquarters. We want to
facilitate that movement in the Department. We want the
leadership to be mobile and transparent.
In addition to the consolidation and development of one
single SES Candidate Development Program, we have just finished
a very extensive recruitment within the Department, and quite
frankly, it was a tremendous challenge to pick the first cohort
because there were so many applicants from within the
Department that want to be a part of the SES program. So we are
getting, again, Senator, great enthusiasm to come forward and
do that, and I think that is a real tribute to the work that is
being done at the Department and the leadership.
Senator Johnson. So you are not seeing, then, a reluctance
from members at the GS level to move into the SES?
Mr. Borras. No, we are not. I am not seeing that, Senator.
Senator Johnson. Well, good. That is good news.
What is the most important thing you have learned in your
year in the position?
Mr. Borras. Well, I think the most important thing that I
have learned, which is very much at the heart of my approach
and my style, is to engage with the workforce, to interact with
the employees, with the leadership. I am very active in getting
out and understanding. I have a strong need to understand. For
example, during the budget process, we spent a lot of time
looking at investments on the border. Prior to the budget
process, I went out and visited. I walked the border. I do not
come from a border State. I wanted to better understand the
issues at the border, but I wanted to talk to the men and women
who work on the border, the Border Patrol agents, the field
operation personnel, to understand their needs. What is it that
they need from the organization to better do their job?
It gave me some very important insight, doing these kinds
of things. I did the same thing with ICE, the Secret Service,
and the Coast Guard to better understand the operational side.
So when we are looking at, for example, how we plan to bring in
1,000 new Border Patrol agents as a result of, again, the fine
money that we got from the Congress to support our border
initiatives, I wanted to better understand from the men and
women on the border, what was that going to mean to them? How
were they going to be able to absorb 1,000 Border Patrol
agents, not just what do the supervisors in Washington think,
but what do the field superintendents think? What do the rank
and file think? What was going to be the back-room support?
What kind of support was going to be needed to be able to add
1,000 additional agents?
I learned a lot from that. First of all, they did not see
where we would have the space, the facilities to be able to put
1,000 new people. They did not feel that we had adequate
administrative support to support 1,000 new agents. These
concerns were very enlightening. These were very good,
verifiable, and quantifiable statements I learned from walking
the field, and I was able then during the budget process to be
able to quiz Customs and Border Protection, for example, on
what they were doing, how they were looking at their management
budget, how they were looking at their management
administration of Border Patrol and how that was going to
reinforce the operational side and whether or not they were
going to be able to have the resources to support those
additional agents.
I think it is important that the Under Secretary not just
be a member of leadership and sit in Washington and manage, but
understand the operational needs so that we can better support
them.
Senator Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Senator Johnson. We will do
a second round of 5 minutes each, if that works.
Senator Akaka earlier spoke briefly with you, Mr. Borras,
about acquisition and procurement, and as you know, the
Department has had some really significant cost overruns.
Acquisition management is a major challenge for the Department
because contracting, as you discussed with Senator Collins, is
a significant portion of the DHS annual budget, roughly one-
third of the budget. So I want to ask you, based on this year
of experience you have, what do you believe the key challenges
are that face DHS with respect to acquisition management and
what have been any initiatives that you have taken to improve
the Department's acquisition management?
Mr. Borras. Mr. Chairman, I will try to be brief on this
answer. This is probably one of the areas I spend the most of
my time on, which is better understanding and working on fixing
the acquisition process.
The first thing I should say is that my predecessors left
behind a very good foundation in the establishment of MD-102.1,
which was the acquisition framework that was put in place to be
able to govern the Department's acquisition investments. Keep
in mind, that was formally adopted by the Department in January
2010, so my immediate predecessor, Elaine Duke, who worked very
hard to put that in place, had very little time to actually
implement the process. So, again, by result of my showing up at
that time, I have had to implement the tenets of MD-102.1.
The important piece of that was establishing a governance
framework for the Department, which we call the Acquisition
Review Board, to be able to examine at very specific points in
the acquisition process the health of an acquisition program,
to be able to identify problems with acquisitions, and to be
able to, hopefully, correct these issues. I have personally
chaired over 35 acquisition review boards in my year on the
job.
I stated to this Committee when I was first nominated that
in the acquisition area, I had two fundamental concerns: How
well do we identify capabilities and build requirements to be
able to buy goods and services, and then how well do we execute
upon award of those contracts the management of those
acquisitions. I would say to you, and both the IG and GAO have
identified this, those were the two fundamental problems that
DHS faces, and that is what I have dedicated the bulk of my one
year on the job, to address that, and I would love the
opportunity to go on in detail, but it is a very comprehensive
approach, but that is what I have spent the bulk of my year,
that along with financial management, addressing the
acquisition liabilities.
Chairman Lieberman. Good. That is a good beginning.
A final question about agency Chief Information Officers.
As I am sure you know, a report by the IG at DHS found that the
Chief Information Officer of the Secret Service was ``not well
positioned as a member of the Director's management team'' and
``does not play a significant role in overseeing IT systems
development and acquisition efforts.'' So this is concerning,
that 15 years after the creation of the CIO in the Clinger-
Cohen Act, we are still seeing CIOs effectively buried in some
agencies' organizational systems. This is particularly true
because of the billions of dollars spent on IT investments at
the Department and throughout our government.
So I wanted to ask you what, if any, steps you have taken
to make certain that component CIOs have the necessary
authorities to ensure that IT projects and decisions support
individual agencies, but also department-wide objectives.
Mr. Borras. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Certainly, the Under
Secretary for Management has a strong role, but I should say
the management of IT within the Department of Homeland Security
begins first and foremost with the Department of Homeland
Security's Chief Information Officer, Richard Spires, who is
also, by the way, the Vice Chairman of the Federal CIO Council.
We have probably the finest CIO in the Federal Government who
is completely focused on better understanding how we manage our
IT assets, looking at the relationship between his office, the
Departmental CIO, and the component CIOs.
Specifically, with regard to the Secret Service, you raise
a very important question as to whether or not the CIO is
properly enfranchised to be able to manage the IT investments
in the Secret Service, and, I might add, the Secretary has
asked me, and as a result I have asked our CIO, to prioritize
what we are doing regarding Secret Service IT modernization.
That is very important to the Secretary. Therefore, it is very
important to me.
We have a brand new CIO at the Secret Service, who our CIO,
Mr. Spires, helped interview and helped select. And keep in
mind that the CIO evaluates and is responsible for performance
measures and indicators for every one of the IT professionals,
the CIOs in all of the component agencies.
But we are doing more than that. It is the way that we are
now governing the Department's IT investments, partly through
my Acquisition Investment Initiatives, that have expanded the
use of much more aggressive oversight through the use of
executive steering committees. So we are very much focused on
the issue you have raised.
Chairman Lieberman. Excellent. Thank you. Senator Collins.
Senator Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Borras, I want to follow up on the exchange you just
had with the Chairman about IT projects. According to OMB's IT
Dashboard, more than half--some 49 out of 90 investments--of
the major information technology investments at DHS are in
troubled status. That means they are either at risk for a
significant cost overrun, a schedule delay, or performance
problems. IT spending is a major cost driver at DHS. DHS is
slated to spend more than $6 billion on IT investments in
fiscal year 2011 alone. It is very troubling, therefore, that
more than half of those projects are in serious trouble.
One critical tool that can help to ensure proper oversight
and management of these investments is an effective acquisition
review process. I know for the last several years DHS has been
trying to strengthen that process. When do you expect that we
are going to start seeing significant improvements in the
performance of IT projects at the Department?
Mr. Borras. Senator, I appreciate the question. I
appreciate the leadership this Committee, particularly you and
the Chairman, have placed on the proper management of IT
investments. It is a $6 billion investment we are making on an
annual basis at the Department of Homeland Security.
I look at GAO's top 15 list of what they call poorly
running acquisition investments, and most of those are IT
investments. A few things I would say about that: First of all,
most of those IT investments that are poorly functioning or
have cost overruns, in many cases, they predate the
establishment of the Department of Homeland Security, like the
Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) program, for example,
which has been going on, I believe, since 1993.
So what have we done about ACE? I will give you a perfect
example. We are calling it a strategic time-out. We have
suspended ACE. What we need to do and why we need strong
governance is we need to be able to review these projects, and
then we need to be able to make corrective action. It is one
thing to identify poorly functioning IT programs. What are we
going to do to help it get better, or if it cannot get better,
what are we going to do to end it?
In the case of ACE, what we have done is establish a
strategic time-out. We are taking a look at instituting a
modular approach, which is consistent with Vivek Kundra's 25-
point plan for IT. So we have much more modular, agile
development. We have put them on a plan to be able to deliver
M1, a one module this calendar year. And we are working very
aggressively. The CIO and the IT community are working very
aggressively. We have stood up an executive steering committee
in many of these programs to expand our oversight.
My basic concern within the Department, and I have talked a
lot about this, relative to acquisition oversight is MD-102.1
put in place the Acquisition Review Board, which meets at pre-
determined acquisition gateposts--during the requirements
phase--and my problem is, these are so wide apart, sometimes a
year or more apart, how are we providing oversight to an
acquisition program, whether it be IT or otherwise, in between?
And that is what I have been focusing on. How do we develop
more aggressive oversight in between those milestones?
Senator Collins. Well, I would suggest that there is a more
fundamental problem, and that is a failure to define
requirements well up front, to define what is the need for the
procurement, how is it going to be used, could off-the-shelf
technology suffice. I am shocked that there is a 1993 IT
project that still has not been completed or abandoned. I
cannot imagine that the requirements have not changed during
that time or that the technology that they started with is not
obsolete. So I think it is not enough to monitor along the way,
though that is absolutely critical and I commend you for the
steps you are taking, but you have to better define what your
needs are and establish the requirements up front.
Let me just very quickly touch on one other issue. It is a
very quick question. The move to St. Elizabeths, that
consolidation of headquarters is the largest Federal
construction project since the Pentagon. Is this still a
priority for the Department, given your budget constraints?
Mr. Borras. Well, it is absolutely a priority, Senator.
Again, I know this Committee has supported the Department of
Homeland Security tremendously. The good news is that project
is meeting its major milestones. The Coast Guard facility that
we are building, it is on budget, it is actually slightly ahead
of schedule. It is one of the cleanest construction sites I
have ever seen, and I have spent 10 years in the construction
business. But that is an indication of good management, good
planning, good safety. It is a well-run site.
I have been a strong advocate for that. I have met with the
Appropriations Committee both in the Senate and the House to
strongly advocate for the continuation, the maintenance of our
funding stream. We need to meet those major milestones and
continue to fund these projects so that we do not have major
lapses. I am very concerned about costs increasing as a result
of delays.
Senator Collins. Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Collins. Senator Akaka.
Senator Akaka. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Borras, I want to commend the Balanced Workforce
Initiative to correct the Department's Federal employee
contractor mix. As you know, the Committee is vitally
interested in the contractors in DHS. Will you please discuss
the Department's efforts to ensure that inherently governmental
positions are brought in-house and make a comment on whether
this initiative is having a positive effect in your workforce.
I also gather that your Chief Human Capital Officer has a part
in heading the Balanced Workforce Initiative, and I am
interested in how it is working out.
Mr. Borras. Senator, the Balanced Workforce Strategy, which
we developed into an actual program that we manage, actually is
managed out of the Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer
because we want to maintain the focus on the employee part of
it. There are two pieces to that.
One part is we have looked at and we have received--we have
worked with OGC, we have worked with OMB, we have worked with
OFPP--good, consistent Federal guidance on the definition of
inherently governmental and non-inherently governmental. So we
have applied that standard.
The second part of it is, and when I joined the Department,
this was my concern relative to the Balanced Workforce
Strategy, that it not be viewed strictly as a contractor
conversion exercise but that we use this opportunity while we
were making these assessments on the use of contractors to also
look at whether a contract has met its useful life--so
evaluating the ongoing need for a contract.
I started my career in the State of Florida, which had
strong sunset legislation, and I bring that orientation with
me. You have to constantly ask, is this contract still viable?
Is it still necessary? Is the requirement from which we
initiated this contract, to get to the Senator's point, good
requirements, is it still valid? If not, kill it.
So we are doing two things. We have been having a very
aggressive approach to do this conversion where we eliminate
contractors and we hire Federal employees to be able to manage
functions, and we are looking at whether or not the contractor
is still viable. So it is a two-prong approach.
Senator Akaka. Mr. Borras, over the past several years, the
Department has worked to create an integrated financial
management tool known as Transformation and Systems
Consolidation (TASC), which has grown to include acquisition
and asset management. I understand that because of a
contractor's protest, the contract for this project is once
again halted. What are the Department's plans for moving
forward on integrated financial management, and should we
expect to see additional changes to the TASC contract?
Mr. Borras. Thank you for the question, Senator. The
Department is in great need, I would say almost dire need, to
have an integrated enterprise financial management system to be
able to better manage the Department. We are a Department, as
has been said before, of over 200,000 employees, a top line
budget of approaching $56 billion, and we do not have a
consolidated, integrated financial management system that
allows decisionmakers to be better informed on a timely basis
and the Department to be able to respond to Congress for
financial information on a timely basis. It is a severe
liability for the Department. So getting that initiative in
place is fundamental, both to our integrated strategy and to
the health of the Department.
Specifically with regard to TASC--the procurement for TASC
went out in 2009. This was not the first attempt at trying to
create a consolidated management function for the Department.
We have had several other failed attempts. This current one has
been riddled with protests. There were several protests before
we were able to finally award the contract this past November.
I think this speaks very well to the issue that Senator
Collins raised about the need to have good requirements and to
understand the marketplace and what does that marketplace
deliver, whether or not the marketplace can deliver an
integrated financial management system, whether one exists in
the Federal workplace currently.
GAO in their ruling found that there were missteps along
the way, both in terms of how the requirements were interpreted
and how it was evaluated, and GAO has sustained those protests.
We are currently taking a look. We are analyzing GAO's
statement on those protests, and we are looking at OMB's
guidelines--it is very important that we evaluate OMB's
guidelines for the implementation of financial management
systems. We are looking at both of those things to be able to
chart a new course.
So I am not in a position today to be able to specifically
identify what the Department's next course of action will be.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much for your responses, Mr.
Borras. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Akaka. Senator Johnson.
Senator Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Borras, in your first round of questioning, you talked
about what you learned down at the border, and I was just
recently at the border entry down at Nogales, and I have
learned a few things myself. I know we obviously are concerned
about border security, but one of my concerns is the staffing
levels of Customs and Border Protection in those ports. I mean,
we are expanding the size of the ports, but I am afraid we are
not staffing them to the extent that we need to. I want to get
your thoughts on that and to what extent are you involved in
that ratio between the Customs Service agents versus the Border
Patrol agents.
Mr. Borras. Senator, you raise a very important question,
and it leads me back to something that I talked about in my
policy questions, which is workforce planning. Workforce
planning is a major deficit in the Department. One of the
reasons why we often have delays in hiring--and I will
specifically address your question--is because of the inability
to do good workforce planning, to be able to project in the out
years, what are your specific workforce needs? How will you
staff that? How will you pay for that? How will you introduce
that? How will you train the employees? How will you equip
employees? Good workforce planning is so key to being able to
have a well-functioning, well-run department.
So specifically with regard to the border, the Border
Patrol since 2006 has nearly doubled in size. I would say to
you from a management standpoint that it is very difficult to
even assess whether Customs and Border Protection has been able
to sufficiently absorb that tremendous growth in that short
period of time. So we are working very closely with Customs and
Border Protection. And, in fact, they are adopting some of the
same things that I am doing at the departmental level relative
to much more in-depth budget reviews, base budget reviews and
analysis within Customs and Border Protection because they
recognize they have grown so fast, so quickly, and have had to
absorb so many people that they have not taken the time to
assess the current management health of their organization and
if they have adequate resources, as I stated earlier and as you
have found out in your work. Do they have the proper facilities
to be able to house the employees? Do they have the proper
administrative support to support the employees in the field?
Do they have the necessary equipment and the replacement
equipment to adequately equip our employees on the border? So
these are very fundamental questions. This is not something
that we currently do extremely well.
The Balanced Workforce Initiative, for example, will
migrate to a Workforce Planning Initiative at the conclusion of
this run. That is how important it is. We are going to maintain
this focus. We are going to develop at the headquarters level a
Department-wide Workforce Planning Initiative because we need
to do a better job of managing that.
Senator Johnson. But specifically, talk about the ratio of
new personnel going into the Customs Service versus the Border
Patrol because, again, it seems like we have poured additional
personnel into the Border Patrol, and I am afraid we are not
putting the resources into the ports of entry.
Mr. Borras. I do not specifically know what those numbers
are, Senator, but I will be glad to get the information back to
you on what those ratios are.
Senator Johnson. Thanks. Earlier, you talked about reducing
the number of audit qualifications. Can you tell me
specifically which ones were removed and how you managed to do
that?
Mr. Borras. Well, there is an effort that we run--most
Federal agencies run it--there are Internal Controls Over
Financial Reporting (ICOFR) and there are also Internal
Controls Over Operations (ICOOP). When I first joined the
Department, I personally chaired those sessions with our staff
from the financial audit. These are meetings that we hold with
all of the components so that I can begin to assess for myself
what were some of the vulnerabilities and liabilities.
For example, in ICOOP, one of the things that we look for
is how well are we staffed because if we are improperly
staffed, from a diagnostic standpoint, that tells me that we
might have a problem with segregation of duties, which is a
fundamental tenet of good financial controls.
We also look at the authority matrix. Again, when an
organization is understaffed, do they have the good segregation
of duties? Do they have the proper authority matrices in place
to be able to say who authorizes a certain activity, which can
lead to a material weakness.
So I personally chaired these meetings because I wanted to
do things. I wanted to better understand the health of the
financial operation myself, and I wanted to send a message that
this was such a priority to me, I was willing to spend
countless hours, Senator, chairing and facilitating these
meetings to send the message that we are going to be looking at
their financial operations, that it is important to me, and
that the staff has my support and backing to be able to address
this.
It begins with leadership, Senator, and making that
leadership statement and making that leadership commitment
allowed the staff, the Chief Financial Officer staff working
with the component staff, to begin to specifically drill down
on reducing these material weaknesses in our audit findings. I
also have new personnel in audit, as well. We are going to
continue to do this, and I have announced this publicly within
the Department, for our financial grants, as well, which is
another area that requires strong, aggressive oversight.
I can get back to you with the specific data on those
material weaknesses that have changed, and I can give you a
historical sense of how they have evolved over time, over the
life of the Department.
Senator Johnson. Well, maybe we can do those during those
monthly meetings, which I would like to reinitiate.
Mr. Borras. I would look forward to that.
Senator Johnson. Thank you very much.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Johnson. Senator
Carper, welcome.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER
Senator Carper. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome. We are happy to see you. Thank you for joining us
today. I understand your family is with you.
Mr. Borras. Yes, Senator.
Senator Carper. And you have already introduced them, have
you not?
Mr. Borras. Yes, I have.
Senator Carper. Are they right behind you there?
Mr. Borras. Well, yes, I have my wife, Ivelisse, and----
Senator Carper. Is that your daughter? [Laughter.]
Chairman Lieberman. You do not have to answer that
question. [Laughter.]
Mr. Borras. I am not going to answer that question.
Senator Carper. All right. Well, glad you are here. I am
happy that your family is willing to share you with all of us
and with our country.
A couple of questions, if I could. I am privileged to serve
on this Committee and privileged to serve as chairman of a
subcommittee that deals with, among other things, Federal
financial management. We held a hearing here about a week or
two ago, Senator Brown, Senator Coburn, and others, and we
focused on major weapons system cost overruns and how much we
are overspending for major weapons systems. The amount we were
spending in the year 2000 was $42 billion. Last year, it was
$402 billion.
Former President Bush signed into law a number of years ago
in his first term an improper payments law. It basically says
that Federal agencies have to start keeping track of their
improper payments, mostly overpayments, not so much fraud, just
accounting mistakes, and some agencies did. Some did not. The
Department of Homeland Security was new. They had a hard time
complying with the improper payments law.
Senator Coburn and I authored legislation with the support
of Members of this Committee, including Senator Akaka and
Senator Lieberman, that said that not only do we want agencies
to keep track of their improper payments, we want them to
report their improper payments. We want them to stop making
improper payments. We want them to go out and recover the
improper payments that they have made. We had in the law a
directive that says Federal managers are going to be evaluated,
at least in part, on whether or not they are complying with
that law to report improper payments, to stop making them, and
to recover them.
The Department of Homeland Security does not have a good
record in terms of collecting improper payments. It is not a
little bit of money. We had a hearing in the last month that
said the improper payments for the last fiscal year was $125
billion. That does not include the Department of Defense (DOD).
I am not sure if it includes the Department of Homeland
Security. I have asked my staff to check. Apparently, DHS is
not reporting improper payments. At least that is what I am
told as of now. And so the $125 billion in improper payments
from last year does not include DOD. It does not include DHS.
And I do not think it includes Medicare Part D. I am not sure
if it includes Medicare Part C, but a big piece of the Federal
Government is out there that is not actually reporting.
And here is my question of you, and it may not be a fair
question, but I will ask it anyway. When is DHS going to start
reporting and complying with the improper payments law?
Mr. Borras. Well, two things. First of all, Senator, thank
you so much for being here----
Senator Carper. And we are glad you are here.
Mr. Borras. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you for
recognizing my family.
Senator Carper. Sure.
Mr. Borras. That is very kind of you.
I recently addressed and have been very much focused on
this. The major liability the Department of Homeland Security
has with respect to financial reporting is the lack of
financial systems that allow us to be able to retrieve that
information in a timely manner and then report it with any
level of fidelity. We simply do not have it.
As you well know and this Committee well knows because you
have supported greatly the Department of Homeland Security in
their effort to build an integrated financial management
system, we do not have a system. Senator, the first memorandum
that I signed as Under Secretary a year ago when I joined this
Department was to do a data call. That is, to do a manual
retrieval of information to be able to report. I had to give
the components 60 days to collect the information, 30 days to
analyze it, and then we hoped in the next 30 days after that we
would know enough about what we could report on.
It is a major deficiency. It is a major liability that I am
personally committed to addressing. We do not have good
information, for example, as it relates to our grants. Our
ability to report on our grants, to look at obligated and
unobligated balances, is virtually nonexistent. Again, these
are manual retrievals of information that we have to conduct.
Within the Coast Guard, we have multiple financial systems.
Senator, I am sure you understand and probably are dismayed by
the fact that the Coast Guard runs two general ledger systems,
and they do not talk to each other.
This is very important to me. This is a major liability. We
have addressed this in our integrated comprehensive strategic
plan that we have submitted to GAO. It is going to take time to
build that capacity in the Department of Homeland Security. We
are investigating ways in which we can build some work-arounds
to be able to retrieve data. Of course, as you well know, one
of the major concerns we all would have is what is the
integrity of the data that is in the system right now.
Senator Carper. Let me just interrupt you. I do not mean to
be rude, but I only have so much time, and let me just come
back to the question I raised about improper payments. It is a
huge problem. Most agencies are now complying. DOD is not. We
are all over them. DHS is not. And we are just going to be, not
in an obnoxious way but in a persistent way, all over your
Department to make sure that you comply with the law. We need
you to help set an example for others, including the Department
of Defense. If you can stand up as a new department and comply
with the law in a reasonable amount of time, that is a good
example for a Department that has been around for 60 years and
still is not complying.
Could I ask one more question, Mr. Chairman?
Chairman Lieberman. Please go right ahead.
Senator Carper. Thanks so much. I will be brief. The
Department of Homeland Security has undergone a number of
reorganizations, even though it is not that old. Many of the
components, such as the Secret Service, the Federal Emergency
Management Agency, the Coast Guard, to name a few, are not, as
you said, yet fully integrated. Many of their employees do not
think of themselves as Department of Homeland Security
employees, which has contributed to an increased bureaucracy
and a tough way of getting things done.
Secretary Napolitano's new motto, ``One DHS,'' has been, I
think, a promising start. You have been in your role now for
about a year. I am glad you are there. I think most of us feel
that way. Could you discuss for us, just in a couple of
minutes, how you have been working to integrate these legacy
components into the Department architecture to be one team?
And second, would you talk about a couple of management
surprises that you were forced to tackle when starting the job?
Just mention one or two. Thank you.
Mr. Borras. The first thing I would like to do, Senator, in
response to your first question, because somebody did slip me a
little note, is say that we are complying with the Improper
Payments Information Act and we do report. So DHS does report
its improper payments.
Senator Carper. Since when? Go ahead, whoever is behind
you, because my staff just said that you were not. Can you give
me some idea--when do you think you started complying?
Mr. Borras. Last year.
Senator Carper. Last year? Good. So for fiscal year 2010?
Mr. Borras. Yes.
Senator Carper. Well, that is good. So part of that $125
billion was DHS. Well, that is a good start. Now we want to
ratchet it down, and the other thing we want to do is recover
as best we can some of those improper payments.
Mr. Borras. Yes.
Senator Carper. Thank you for that information. Go ahead
and answer my second question, please.
Mr. Borras. I do not know that I have necessarily found
anything in management that surprised me. Maybe what has
surprised me is the extent of some of the problems because I
certainly had a good orientation coming in. I read all the GAO
reports and the IG reports. I was very familiar with the
management deficiencies.
The Secretary prioritized for me getting off the High-Risk
List for management integration, focusing on building a common
architecture around the Department on how we manage this
Department, to start to build an enterprise management
function, and that is what we have done, Senator. Before your
arrival, I showcased our comprehensive strategic plan, which we
submitted to GAO back in January. GAO said it is the most
comprehensive document on management that the Department has
submitted. It is very specific with specific comprehensive
action plan items with timelines on which we will be judged on
our progress.
The Secretary constantly talks about the need for One DHS.
One DHS does not mean destroying the identity of the Customs
and Border Protection or the Secret Service, but how do we
unify the Department in ways that are meaningful and that
contribute to the Department's health. For me, it is focusing
on the acquisition process to make sure that we have standards
on how we acquire goods and services in the Department, the way
we manage our financial systems, the need for not only
financial systems, which I have talked about and which are
major deficiencies, but having common skill sets around the
Department, and that talks to how we train our financial
management community.
And it is focusing on the way we treat our people, our
human capital issues, and the way we are building new training
in the Department. I mentioned earlier, Senator, that we have
eliminated redundant Candidate Development Programs for SES,
and now we only have one. We went from four to one.
Again, these are very strategic, small but very important
steps toward unifying the Department around a common training
architecture, a common financial architecture, a common
acquisition architecture, and a common human capital
architecture.
Senator Carper. Well, I applaud those efforts, and I
applaud the Secretary, whom I am a big fan of, and I would just
urge you to continue to do those things. One of our jobs is to
do oversight and to make sure that the things that you all are
attempting to do, you actually complete and you tell us what we
can do to help.
So thank you. Thank you for your service this last year. My
hope is that you will be confirmed to serve not on an interim
basis, but on a more permanent basis.
Mr. Borras. Thank you, Senator.
Senator Carper. Very nice to see you. Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Well, thanks, Senator Carper.
Thanks, Mr. Borras. I appreciate your testimony today. I
think you have been really quite impressive. Your answers have
been informed. I suppose, obviously, you have the benefit of
having had a year on the job, but even allowing for that,
nonetheless, you show a detailed involvement in the management
of the Department, which I have found impressive, and I hope
anybody who has any lingering doubts about your nomination will
find reassuring.
We are going to leave the record of this hearing open until
noon tomorrow for any additional statements and questions. It
is my intention to bring your nomination before our Committee
at the markup scheduled for next week. I am hopeful, obviously,
and confident that at the Committee level, we will confirm your
nomination unanimously, and then we will go to the floor, and I
hope we are successful there, as well.
Thank you very much. I thank all the family and friends who
are with you.
With that, the hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:34 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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