intended purposes. chairman johnson, this completes my prepared statement. i along with my colleague, who does work on the death master file are happy to answer any questions. >> thank you, i was going to point out that mr. bertoni has joined the panel. he may assist in answering questions. i'll start with questions from before brune. did you take a look at the case to see what the current status is? >> the news media did not share the case with us beforehand. i did know that miss rivers was testifying today, i did not look at the specifics of her case, i think it would be unwise to discuss that in an open forum i would be happy to answer questions. >> how many people are you aware of in miss river's position? >> fewer than 9,000 a year have

that circumstance happen to them. usually we learn of the occurrence by the individual reporting it directly to us. we advise the individual that we can correct that if they visit our office. as miss rivers identified. we request that an individual bring several proofs of identity with them, including state issued form of idsty, birth certificate if they have one so that we can correct the record. and when the individual leaves our office, we issue them a letter indicating there was an error and that it's been corrected. >> the name may be removed from the death master file, but the effects continue to linger, correct? can you describe what happens there with credit agencies and banks and credit card companies? >> sure. well, the social security

administration shares the public death master file as miss davis indicated. that does not include state data still around 84 million reports with the department of commerce. commercial entities can procure that record, that database from the department of commerce. it is widely used across not only government, but the commercial sector as well. the department of commerce requires parties to receive that information. but sometimes i would suspect all entities who have had a death master file have not looked at the most current death master file. >> how long do you update your death master file with congress? >> weekly. >> and how often are the commercial entities required to update those files? >> depends on the contractual arrangement that an entity has with the department of commerce?

>> can you just kind of describe how identity thefts can create fraud with these names? i can understand the master file is published and people can quickly try to claim a tax refund with that social security number. which is why the law states that that's information to be held for three years. how else is that fraud committed? >> i think our inspector general might be in a better position. >> one of the ways that we're finding that the fraud sister's are doing it they'll go to one record that's out there, for example, a state record, listing all the deceased people in it and then they'll go and they'll take a look at one of the death master file on it, and see if a person's alive in one record and dead in the other. they'll claim to be that person and go after their benefits.

that's one method of it. as we know in other cases, they'll adopt the name and the information of the person and then file for credit on it and default. >> mr. brune, have we considered a law that prevents them from doing this? why don't we just perth the death master file for anybody over a certain age? >> let me first say, senator, that the records in the death master file we procure largely from the states, the primary reporters are state bureaus of vital statistics. the individual's family members doctors. and the database contains over 100 million records, it's been in existence since we began approximately 80 years ago. the record keeping processes as you might imagine have evolved over 80 years, our current program policy requires evidence

of death. the risk in just doing a blanket update or blanket change in data is that it's highly likely that we would create another scenario just like mrs. rivers. because in the i.g.'s report, they identified in that group, there were in fact living individuals. the reason that is is because often times individuals who are auxiliaries on the record spouses, children et cetera, are listed under a number, and they're connected in our databases. but the way we connected them in years past is not as accurate as it is right now it's possible that while the primary number holder may be deceased, there are records linked to that that are not records of individuals that are not deceased. the primary reason we don't do that we want to prevent any

inadvertent additions to the dmf of individuals who are still alive alive. >> we are talking about how many people over 112 that you identified? >> 6.5 million. >> this is where we need to put in a date of death basically, correct? >> correct. >> how many people actually are living today that are over 112? >> one of the records that we have is that one of ssa's databases, it will show them as deceased, and then another database it will show them alive. there's 1.4 million of them. on that we haven't set any number in terms of the actual living on it, question go on the fact that we use the estimate sort of similar to mr. brune of about 1,000 a month living people report that they're alive when they're on the death master file? >> those would be much younger people. i'm not getting a good answer to my question.

why don't we don't purge on the number identity people over 150. and next month we knock it down to 140 or 130. and have some protection for somebody that just might -- we're talking about 6.5 million records out there obviously there's about 6.4999 million people that really are dead. why don't we do that to prevent the type of fraud that -- this type of situation occurs. or allows. >> one of the thoughts on it, ssa could just make a notation of those people on their files over 112 years of age. you have to get a replacement social security card let's say you're a battered spouse, you

need to get a new social security number for security reasons. you get a new record that shows -- we're recommendation, why don't they put a record like that on all the people over 112 years of age, would reflect them as deceased but if accidentally someone who had a birthdate of 1957 and was keyed in as 1859 when they realize they are losing benefits it would be easy for them to repair. >> can the social security administration do that themselves administratively? do you need congress to pass a law to allow that to happen? >> we are currently in the analysis phase of doing just that, the audit was issued approximately 10 days ago. the good news is, mr. carroll and his team have looked at this topic previously. we had analysis prior to the audit's release, which was coming along.

so far we've been able to electronically verify data and update 200,000 records based on prior audits where currently we're initiating the review of those 6.5 million records, we're hopeful there's information in our data set that will allow us maybe not to confirm the date of death, but to confirm that an individual is deceased. and that individual's ssn can be marked as such. >> when you complete your analysis, and you need a legislative fix for this please come to us as quickly as possible. >> thank you. that was some good advice. i never thought much of improper payments until 2002. i think the house member that proposed we start requiringe inging

agencies to note what improper payments are, and secondly begin reporting them. and everyone year after that, 2003 2004 2005 i notice there's an increase in the number of improper payments. i didn't feel good about it, because the numbers just kept going up and somebody finally said, well the reason they're going up is more and more agencies are getting on board and beginning to report improper payment. i'm not convinced the department of defense reports their improper payments. maybe you're a better judge of that than i am. >> along 2010, we reached a point where we sensed that maybe most of the agencies are reporting improper payment ss. the report was in 2002 we want the agencies to stop making improper payments.

we also said we want them to to the extent they can recover to recover money. >> $20 billion? >> that's a pretty good amount of money. >> and our next step was to say we want to come up with the administration on do not pay. do not pay list which is part of our 2012 legislation. last congress we tried to go further beyond that. and we didn't get our legislation through the house. . we're going to take another run at it. i was stunned when i saw the number of the improper payments number for 2014. we had seen a number of years where the number is going down in 2010, 2011, 2012 2013. it pops up by $20 billion in 2014. our trend is giving us a very good to do list.

i mention this to the chairman. very good to do list on page two and three of his testimony. i won't go through it all. it involves work, actually spending money at the irs to give them the tools they need. and also i think we have a lot of people especially who do work on the earned income tax credit i think about 2/3 or 3/4 of the people that file for the itc are people that they're not cpa's, they may be very good people. but they're not really regulated by the treasury. we really have the kind of credentials we may hope for. >> i want you to drill down on that point. there's a lot of talk here a lot of discussion on the social security aspects of this people that are dead, and listed at 150 years old i want you to drill down on the itc, on the credentials of the folks that are literally helping people -- most people file for the itc and what the problem is here, and what we should do about it. >> thank you, senator.

i think it -- >> it's a lot of money as i recall. >> it's a lot of money and i think it's important to at least step back and remember that the earned income tax credit program was passed under president reagan years and years ago. >> i think he called it the best anti-poverty program in the country. and he's probably right. >> and in the last year, actually 26 million american families benefited from that program. i think it's a program that over the decades has proven its value, and i think senator, you touched on and actually the state has touched on it too, it's a program that has a high degree of complexity in that it's really based on claiming dependent children at a certain income level. and with separations, with divorces establishing the custodial parent making that determination, and also as miss davis testified, verifying the income, when you're making that

credit, adds to the complexity of that program. but i think you touched on an area that the administration has been asking for help over the last couple years. and that's the fact that over -- well over 50% of the 26 million eitc payments are actually done by third party providers who are not cpa's, they're not enrolled agents. they're not individuals who are authorized to actually represent you or i in front of the internal revenue service, they're just preparers, having dealt with this issue a number of years at the irs, i'm struck by the fact that as a society we seem to register regulate health care workers yet we don't want to regulate individuals who actually have a partnership with the irs in administering the tax administration and this important credit in a very

fairway. fair to the taxpayers and fair to the government. so i think in the president's budget he once again asked for, you know, a series of initiatives, whether it be resources or some assistance in regulating and licensing these preparers. >> did i just say my colleagues? i would invite their attention to your testimony. and i think it maybe starts on pages 2 and 3, honestly examples and proposals that are in the 2016 budget include and you gave us five or six really good ideas. i like to say that, we have a good to do list every other year. i hope we take it seriously. let me ask each of you, you heard the other testimony you heard the testimony of the opening witness, give us one thing, if you do nothing else committee, senate, do this.

>> the first step is to really look at cleaning up the data in the file. there's a lot of noise in that file. when i hear things like we received millions of reports annually, less than one half of one percent are corrected. that gives me a real concern this is being brushed off in some ways. we know there's issues, we know there's problems. and it's easy to say that when you're not looks at large blocks of cases. if you're not verifying reports from family members if you're not verifying reports from funeral directors, folks who are nonbeneficiaries and you're not verifying reports where some piece of the data doesn't match the record that's a significant potential amount of nonmatches that you might have to correct down the road had you done those verifications verifications. you can't fix 6.5 million reports if you don't know about it. we really have to look at the integrity of the data, clean it

up whether it's looking -- a look back or prospective, there's a lot of noise in this file that needs to be taken care of before it can be a much better program integrity tool. >> thank you very much. >> senator langford. >> thank you. >> let me make a quick comment. this committee has dealt with it, i've dealt with it for quite a while as well. dealing with the proposed rule making from february of last year dealing with just getting a full record medical record that has to be submitted. not going to bring that up today, it's a letter that's outstanding, we know it's coming. not going to try to ask you a question directly. i want to tell you we're still

waiting. let me ask you a question. is the social security administration the right place to be able to manage the death master file? it seems like that is kind of grown up organically, as the place that's going to be gathered, is that the right spot according to omb? or is there a place to better manage that file? >> we believe that social security is the organization that's best suited to kblekt the data. i think as my two colleagues from social security have testified, they are receiving the information both directly from families from funeral homes, from states, but i think what we have is a process that needs to be expanded. as both gentlemen testified. it clearly improves the quality of the data, there are a lot of the fixes that we talk about today that need to be put in place. >> fixable in that current

structure? >> yes, i believe so. >> the ssa, do they feel like this is part of their mission to be able to keep up this file. obviously local agencies are looking to the ssa to get that information? >> we do need the death information to administer our programs. the use of our death information because it's consolidated across multiple reporting sources and is very reliable has grown in value over time now those records are being used for purposes they weren't intended for when they were actually collected decades ago. date of birth and date of death from several decades ago, nobody envisioned today in this day and age it be available to multiple parties outside the agency. >> is that something the agency sells at this point?

is there a cost to that commerce, to other agencies that pay to be able to get that information? >> yes, it is. we are reimbursed for our cost to generate the file. >> what about private entities? do states charge us? >> it depends on their purpose they're entitled to the data. >> when you get the death information from states, do they charge social security for the information? >> we pay the states. >> how much are we paying the states for that? >> it depends how much they're providing for the death record. >> the reason we offer a premium, it comes to us now preverified, the state has run the name and number against our record and confirmed it's a

match. we get it more timely. >> give me an approximate cost there, $3 a person? >> $3 a record correct. >> for those that send the information via nonelectronic death registration means? it's under a dollar reimbursement. >> what does ssa do to verify that? >> we an notate our records it's an unverified report. and we would have to verify in order to process for our records. >> once it's processed it goes on to -- is there a public and internal on this death master file? i'm trying to figure out the way it occurs. once we go through the

verification -- how much does it cost to verify someone that is a nonverified name coming from a state? >> it's not a discrete unit cost? >> is there an average cost? >> usually what we do we have one of our technicians contact the family member and confirm the death. >> according to the omg report, they found 180,000 individuals who died while receiving disability payments but were not recorded in the master death file. more than 90 voter registrations in that group that were already dead. help me understand this process. as you see it, ssa is verifying the records the states verify the records yet we have 6.5 million over 112 years old, and

180,000 individuals you found that are already dead and on social security. >> that is our biggest concern on this thing when we take a look at anyone over 112 years of age, we did our audit on it there were 13 people in the united states, by the time we finish our audit there's 109. we figure there's 35 people over 112 in the whole world. all those numbers that are out there there. if someone takes those numbers, they start misusing them, they'll be -- someone can impersonate the right person, they can vote, they can get so far -- >> are these names that have never been submitted by the state? they've not been verified by ssa? >> most of the 112 are from years ago, back in the '70s, when people came in and reported themselves. >> what about these on

disability. you found these individuals that are already deceased that are on the disability roles? >> that issue -- we're finding people that are listed as deceased or -- and then getting benefits on it and what we're finding with that is the record that we're talking about today, which is the one that is used for the death master file, one file at ssa. the other file auditor will list it. someone calls in and says there's a deceased person to immediately stop the benefits from going out ssa puts it on the payment record and stops it. and then when it goes over it gets confusing, you're talking auxiliaries and different things like that, it goes over there, it doesn't list as being deceased. and that's where the big issue is. >> opening bank accounts voting, all these different things you found as you went through this process.

are people that have died or their number is still being used? >> correct. it gets more complicated on it in terms of that -- as i said before, somebody knows that ssa thinks that they're alive, they know they're dead, they may try to get social security benefits. >> okay. i yield back. >> thank you, mr. chairman thank you for your testimony, and after listening, we raised a lot of interesting issues here today, miss rivers after she testified, this is not an unusual situation i'm run up against. we had a marine veteran that was highlighted in the media for his trials and tribulations, related to the fact that he was improperly listed as being deceased a number of times. the treasury department shut down his bank account. his credit score was ruined as

well when he was trying to purchase a house. this is an anguishing issue for a number of folks about 9,000 individuals each year are in this situation? >> correct. >> how do they get on those -- of those 9,000, what is usually the event that's triggering them getting on that list? >> two primary events, one would be data entry error or erroneous information by the reporter. >> the reporter? >> the individual who reports death, we get reports from family members from doctors, as i mentioned from the postal service, we get reports from the treasury and cms as well. >> a report from the postal service, you're not getting a death certificate. you're having the postal service saying someone didn't get their mail? >> that's an unverified report we would need to verify that before we took any action. >> you wouldn't just say the

person is not collecting their mail let's put them on the death list? >> we would possibly suspend benefits, we would not terminate the benefit. >> how long does it take to fix these? >> the process is for an individual who's on the death master file correctly. to provide evidence of their identity. we can do that through a scheduled appointment, so the individual does not have to wait, and usually it take ss an hour to complete. >> the problem is, that even if that is done the information is not proactively communicated to the commercial vendors, other banks, others that may want this information. which i think miss rivers is in that trouble. is there a way to do that? otherwise, we're relying on the service to go back and check the list. an individual doesn't know

they're on this list as well. things are not going well, and there's seemingly no explanation for it, there's no proactive measures on the part of the social security administration to say we need a mistake we know this individual is going to go through a lot of heartache. >> correct, the measure we take senator, is to share the updated file the following week, with the department of commerce the mistake is corrected it would be identified as not being on the death master file. you asked specifically about the commercial entities, we believe there would be value in sharing the full death file as the ranking member and chairman have proposed in their legislation with the do not pay portal. >> going to the -- which i think is the other fascinating part of this hearing, the 6.5 million people that are 112 years old,

in your testimony, you said these folks are not receiving social security payments, they simply have a valid social security number out there and there's no data in terms of date of death. if they're not receiving -- at some point they probably received social security checks and then they stopped getting social security? why does that not trigger something if not picking up your mail is enough to get you on the list. once they stopped receiving social security checks, we can probably assume they're no longer alive? >> the interesting part is that many of these were back in the 1970s when people were coming into ssa offices and saying a person who wasn't getting benefits at the time, a family member or a widow or children or dependents like that that's where a lot of these records were created. the person didn't have a benefit from ssa wasn't of record with ssa, and that's pretty much the crux of a lot of these thing ss

there are old records with ssa having little ability to catch it. >> because they were not receiving a check to begin with? is that why it's the 112-year-old figure? what's the difference between 105, 110? is there something about 112? >> we had gotten word from a financial institution that the two accounts were set up which is in my testimony, but anyway, at that point we just started, we took a look at our auditors and we figured out what is the highest age of record that's where we came up with 112. as i said there were 35 people in the world that are 112. >> do you see these same kind of numbers of someone who's 105 years old? >> sort of interesting on that one, what ssa had been doing when the person reached 100 years of age, they reached out

to verify the person was there. that was called the centurnarian project. then we decided it would make more sense to start taking a look at someone who is not using medicare for long periods of time in that age group. then we had two things going. in that group there we're seeing about four or five times better results than we were getting by just using the age limit on it, yes, everybody is aware of that, and we keep taking a look. we've had different projects we've worked with ssa, as an example looking at # 0-year-olds. >> what is the cutoff from medicare medicare? how long -- >> we've been using three years on that one. that seems fairly good. in fact, what we're looking at right now, it's been so

successful looking at medicare, we're doing an audit now to look at med kads, and see if we can get more additional screening of people that way. >> thank you so much. >> senator mccaskill. >> last year during a hearing on this subject i learned that we were selling these lists to other government agencies, which is kind of hard for me to wrap my arms around that policy. i think we were told by miss la canfora that this was required by law, correct? >> that's correct. we're required to seek reimbursement for our costs. >> let's assume that we could do something legislatively, would you see anything reason why we couldn't put a secure website up with this information that was properly encrypted and pass coded that would share this information? >> we have hundreds of millions of dollars going out the door at other agencies. and they're trying to budget

paying you for information -- i mean, all of this is being gathered in the public domain. it seems bizarre can to me that we are not focusing on a priority of a policy that would make this information available to others easily and at little expense as possible. since the taxpayers are paying the bill, no matter where this is occurring? >> we would agree and in our testimony, we supported the goal of the ranking members bill, also in the president's fiscal year budget to make the full death file available to the do not pay portal which provides that complete set of records to all federal agencies for all federal payments. >> it would be great if we could get that done. if you get data in, you're putting it in the system and selling it without verifying it, if there is not an ssa

recipient, correct? >> that's correct. we do not verify records for nonbeneficiaries? >> you get a record, and you put it in the system for another agency to buy. but because it's not an ssa recipient, you're not going through the trouble of verifying? >> we have no program purpose to do so. >> so is it clearly dplin yated to them what records are verified and what aren't? >> it's marked as urn verified report. >> are they -- to your knowledge, maybe the ig would know or the gao would know. are these other agencies going and verifying? >> no, i don't think there's any additional verification. the agencies pay for a data set, it may be an annual set plus weekly or monthly updates. they are getting information they believe to be true and correct. and there's no additional verification. >> i would add that in our

distribution of the file and in my statement i clearly articulated the intent of the file is for social security purposes we know that because it's aggregated across jurisdictions, it's a value to others. we tell folks right up front. the voer assetty of the file. they should verify it if they're going to use it for business purposes. >> what if they wanted to pay you to verify it. >> you are already charging them for it? >> under current law, we believe we're verifying all the records we should be verifying. >> the law would have to be changed in order for you to verify everything? >> correct. >> no? >> daniel says no. >> i don't believe so. they are -- they have apecing order in terms of what the agency believes to be the most accurate reports. reports from states are deemed most accurate. they're preverified.

and those are deemed not to be -- to have to have a verification. there's also reports from family members and funeral directors that are believed to be highly accurate, that i believe the agency has decided for policy not to verify. i don't think that's in the law. >> that is agency policy, correct. >> one example. >> have you figured out what it would cost you to verify, and then recover those costs with when you sell them? >> i would have to get back to you for the record on that cost. >> wouldn't that make sense. >> if you're in the business of verifying. you are doing this verification, and you know what it costs you because you're charging people for it. but you're not doing it, if there's not an ssa recipient and that agency is getting it which heightens the likelihood of an improper payment? >> senator, this boils down to a fiscal question and essentially, the agency is not permitted to spend trust fund dollars or limited

administrative expense account on items that don't have a program purpose, and that's the basis on which we don't verify nonbeneficiary reports. >> i completely get that. you understand the common sense argument, tell me you do. >> we do. we'll get back to you on the cost. >> i got worried for a minute. ntis. we have a bill this is an agency we call it let me google that for you, because this is an agency that the vast majority of the information they're supposed to be distributing is easily available yorn line they are the distribution source for your public death master file. have you all given some thought if we get rid of ntis which we should because it's a waste of money, what your alternative distribution would be? >> we have not considered an alternative distribution method because at present ntis does serve as a data clearinghouse for the federal government. >> yeah and money goes into a

revolving fund which keeps them in existence, which we get back to the beginning, which is this is an agency which has outgrown its usefulness and purpose, and we have a really hard time shutting down agencies like that, i'm determined, and i think most of my colleagues on this committee share my determination about this agency. so i would think you should begin pricing out what ntis is making off selling your list, maybe you could use that money to verify for the other agency. >> understood. >> thank you. >> well be supportive of that effort. senator ayotte? >> yes, let me say that i completely wholeheartedly agree with my colleague, senator mccaskill on this. i wanted to ask to understand this information sharing piece in order for you to share information, it sounds to me because of the limitations that are put on what you can do with

regard to the trust fund that we're going to need some legislative action there. to have a broader information sharing. >> across agencies, correct? >> senator, the response i provided to senator mccaskill is relative to verifying records for which we did not have a program purpose, but we would need additional authority to do nonmission work, yes. >> but as i also understand it that we're also as we look at this challenge we're facing in terms of you know the dmf list, this issue we're not sharing among states right? >> so we don't -- do we share -- do states share with us, and we -- i know they're shares with us in terms of records but do we share with states what we know? >> we do. we share with those states that have a responsibility for administering federally funded

benefits. >> of any kind? >> yes. >> okay. >> and so one of the things that seems, as i look at this whole thing as we look -- we're not communicating amongst each other, and then there's also the amount of money that's at stake here, a lot of us talk about wanting to address sequester, we could do it, if we just got improper payments to a much more reduced level, these resources we're talking about whether it's to zee fend the nation or nih or all the things we'd like to do. this is very big money. and so i'm looking at this, thinking how do we not only share information with eacher, what steps do we need to take to verify it with others.

there's verifiable information we're leaving on the table to help verify for us. i'd love to get certainly mr. owe carroll and miss davis' impression. isn't there some publicly available information we aren't necessarily cross-checking with? >> that's correct senator. what we did was an audit a few years ago, we were looking at -- we went to ssa and saw how many payments were suspended. i guess it was 58, then we went through the 58. we found that 57 were deceased. the way we found is that one third had been able to find out about the information on the records, and it was a question of cleaning it up. one third of it we were able to get death certificates from the states and other things like that, the other third was using databases that were available to identify the person as deceased

and be able to get the information that way. >> i find third party databases are very useful. >> do we need legislative -- in order to incorporate information that's already available in third party information, and also when i hear mr. owe carroll's example, i think that apparently the state's what they're doing and submit ingting the statistics to the social security administration, it doesn't have the same level of accuracy accuracy. do you need legislative issues -- what do we need to do from the states perspective if we knew that you could get the death certificate for certain individuals, apparently the vital records office wouldn't have submitted that if it didn't get into your system properly. >> two points, the data set that

mr. o'carroll just mentioned, those recommendations were just sent to the agency last friday. we believe that there are policy adjustments we can make to look at third party data sets and we agreed with that recommendation we'll be pursuing it the best thing that we could do in my opinion, the agency's position is that full funds of electronic death registration would go a long way to ensuring the integrity of these files many of the files you mentioned are jurisdictions that are not using electronic death registration. their paper processes are out of date funding them to move to electronic would get the information more accurate because electronic death registration verifies against social security before the death certificates issued before the report of death is made and so that would be the approach i

think, the appropriation falls under the health and human services department. >> why is it that this hasn't been a bigger priority of the federal government. i mean, this is a lot of money that we're leaving on the table that's fraudulently going out the door that could be used for real things we need to do. as i look at the big picture why haven't we made it a bigger priority? and i guess i would direct it to the inspector general mr. o'carroll, and i would from your work that you've done would like to hear from you, miss davis, why isn't this a bigger priority? you've been working on these issues for years and coming to congress, and this is a huge issue. >> agreed senator. we're in a unique position as the ssa oig on this thing, we represent the council of inspector generals as liaison of

o omb on this thing, there has been a lot more emphasis on identifying improper payments curbing the improper payments. probably the biggest issue is the do not pay list making all the government agencies compare this information so that as an example, opm won't be sending out a salary check to somebody another agency thinks is deceased. i guess the only other one i kind of ask for some help on, and i mention this before on another hearing is that data matching between agencies is handicapped in so many different ways, one agency is not allowed to provide its data because the computer matching act cannot share its data that's probably the biggest issue now, where agencies are showing that one person is on benefit for one agency, and then shouldn't be on the benefits for another agency on -- we can't do that. like i can't match our data with department of labor to find the people that are on workers

compensation or also getting disability benefits from ssa. or when they're disqualified for that letting ssa know they've improved. that type of data matching will be extremely useful on trying to prevent improper payments. >> my time is up just so i understand, is that a law change or a system? like a computer system change, from the hardware, the fact that we've got agencies not communicating with each other? >> it's a law change, and it's a bill out there that it's included. >> senator ernst, if you're ready. >> yes, thank you. thank you senator johnson, i appreciate it. and thank you, everyone for your testimony today i do appreciate it. bottom line up front this is a situation we have to fix. i don't think anybody disagrees with that. what i would like to ask, inspector general o'carroll if you would please -- what i'll do, i'll read this quote that

came from the management at ssa and this was in response to the ig's findings and recommendations, the recommendations would create a significant manual and labor labor-intensive work load and provide no benefit to the administration of our programs. do you feel -- and i think we've talked about this i heard some mention of this but do you feel an accurate and reliable death master file is the responsibility of the ssa? >> the easy answer on that is yes. do i think that any data that ssa is providing to the government, to the public has to be accurate? that was pretty much the reason why we identified the 6.5 million, is that anybody knows when you're doing audits and things like that, you're looking for large outliers that's what this group was, a large outlier. yes on that, i understand if you ask sean what he's going to say is none of them are getting benefits from ssa.

ssa's primary responsibility is the benefit, but my point on it is that -- i think a good reason for this hearing, is that if there is the attention put on it by congress that ssa needs to -- needs resources or whatever it needs to fix it that's very important. as i said before, there's so many other different benefits in the states, in the government plus what we're looking at with voter registration, and we're looking at driver's licenses everything else, it's all based on this thing, and this is the only thing that's out there to refute it. >> yes, thank you, i would agree, and i think this is a good start, yes it is an easy answer to say yes, but we do know that now we need to move forward, and correct the deficiencies that are out there, there are so many improper payments that are going out, not to mention some of the issues that have been brought up with those not receiving payments we also have fraudulent voter registrations, we have illegal use of numbers for employment or

government assistance so many other issues that come with this and i do believe that you have delivered around 70 recommendations to the social security administration over the past number of years. and can you please tell us how many of those have been implemented over the years? >> yes, of the 70 that we've recommended, well, first there's two steps to that, the first step is an agreement, we're getting about a 93% agreement level out of ssa. out of that 70, probably about 50 have been enacted. in fairness on some of them as sean just mentioned, in the last six months, we've made maybe four or five audits with a lot of different recommendations on it, that they haven't had time enough to implement but as an example on it is that we watch them very closely, we go back every few years and take a look to see if they agreed with something, whether or not it was

implemented, and if it was not we bring it to their attention. >> with these recommendations and any others that are coming out, can any of you please statedoming out, can any of you give an overall cost estimate, man hours, additional time, any of those parameters that might, might be necessary to make sure that corrections were implemented. the recommendations we agreed with we're agreeing and we wanted to highlight that several of the recommendations have improved our process. we find high value in the advice he has given us. i want to under score the fact that as we stated earlier the

6.5 million old records that mr. o'carol looked at showed zero improper payments. for that social security purposes is very, very contract. less than 1% of our benefit overpayments are resulting in death. our processes have improved and our processes have grown substantially more robust. we're getting more accurate information, more timely, and we're able to intercept over $50 million of benefit dollars from over payments before they get issued. so $50 million a month does not go out the door because of the accuracy and timeliness of the test reports we receive.

>> but there is still 6.5 million that exist out there and even though they may not be drawing, it is still an issue whether it is photo registration or a fraudulent use of another number so that is a concern. >> that is correct. we have committed to look at those records before the end of the fiscal year to do a full analysis of what can be used from those records to add dates of death or a death indicator to our database. >> very good, mr. brune, if you were a lawmaker for a day what would your recommendation day. bottom line, for easy. >> fund all states to use electronic death reporting. the adoption rate has been steady since 2002 when we started. we need all states all jurisdictions in every date using electronic death

reporting. it is the most effective accurate report we receive. >> i appreciate that. thank you for your testimony today. thank you mr. chair. can you say that again? thank you mr. chair. i caught myself. i want to go back if i could, to a question i would like to ask you similar to what the senator just asked you, i started asking earlier if there was one thing you could do what would it be, you're the only one we got to pick on. and the senator said come back and follow up on that which is good, but i will ask you i want to come back to the portion of your testimony mr. mater that

you went through a series of ideas in the 2016 budget. and some of them involve integrity, some involve funding. would you just step through those for us again and i will ask our other panelists to respond briefly to those. which ones they think makes sense. >> i think senator, we touched on a series of program integrity initiatives across hhs, and the current budget in '15 we were fortunate to receive funding from one of those. i think they have demonstrated and recognized that unemployment is a lock in the state, but they demonstrated using new york state as a key to doing very creative analytics, and again in

'16 we asked for continued funding of those fish tiveinitiatives. i think there is about half a dozen and those are probably the top six. we could provide a few more for the record. those are, i think, going back to the senators comment. i think that if there was one thing i could ask for, maybe two, is get to treasury the full death matter file. that is where we're running all of the civilian payment bent benefits. that's one, and i leave that in order to save money we need to make an investment and the investment in those program integrities i believe and i

think the administration believes we will see improvements in the race and other proper -- >> okay thank you. >> mr. boone, mr. o'carroll, any comments? >> senator carper, i believe that funding the edr would be the first best step as all of that data goes into "do not pay." on the social security at min administration end, we will look at those records and make sure they're as accurate as possible. i seem to recall five months,

there is a delay, we need five months, can someone help me with this? >> the delay on the release? >> i think so. >> when the bills came out of committee, it would be three years before this goes public. so that is the biggest i did lay, and we applaud it because it was pretty much based on one of our audit findings if you give extra time that someone can come into ssa fix it get it fixed before it goes out into the public, and that has probably been the best thing that has come out of the death reporting. >> anyone else want to give us a killer idea? maybe something that wasn't already mentioned? >> i think the improper payments act, accomplishes metrics and it holds them accountable.

when it measuring that, it holds them account ableable and make it's a priority. i think the death reports are highly contract and i would agree with mr. brune that that is prudent. and they look at their other verification processes and perhaps move resources over to their air others. and i go again to verification of family members and funeral homes. we looked at corrections, and we pulled a small case sample, and in 35% -- >> what percent? >> 35% were erroneously placed in the file. and if when you look at the source of those reports, family members and funeral directors.

and those are typically regarded to be highly accurate. if you free up resources perhaps you can look at other policies and maybe to additional verifications. >> okay. how about sharing something with us. >> if i could look at a higher level of the overall improper payments estimate, there was three drivers of the increase of 19 billion. and it was medicaid, pay for service, medicaid and the earned income tax program. when you look at those individually medicare was only 3 billion. and earned nm was a little over 3 brl as well. you look at those and you have

65% of your improper payments. what is of concern is that the programs are growing. for example, hhs has estimated or predicted that over the next three years that on the medicare and medicaid programs will grow. so when you take that and compare and analyze that against the race increases, there are some concerns. to be more specific, it was 10.1% last year. it's now 12.7%. the medicaid also went up a whole percentage point. the earned income tax correct has been running about 25%. so if you look at these programs and facts that the rates, the error rates in these programs

are increasing, and compound that with a possibility of the outlays going to increase it will be difficult to get a handle on these. >> thank you for holding down the fort here. not only is our ranking member smart, but he is a great sprinter, i just saw him in the hallway. >> i want talk about the edr rates, i don't know who the best person is to talk to about that. is that you mr. o'car rollroll? >> yes, we do. there is two kmengss that i

think are both valuable. one is timely necessary of reporting. in the edr arena, we average a report within five days from date of death. that is very timely. >> those are in the exact form that you want them in correct? >> correct. >> it totally matches your database? >> correct. >> and i could provide what amount of those inquiries do not match. when they send us a name and what doesn't match before they report. i want to make sure i mention that process is the first step before anything is sent to us and name and ssn match. if that occurs we will get the rest of the finish. if it doesn't, it goes back to double-check and make sure they

come from the right direction. >> so are you also getting those from their offices of vital statistics, or is it all of the other -- >> all of the other. we could get multiple reports senator, even in an edr state, and it is important to recognize that in those states that have adopted electronic registration, every jurisdiction in the state does not use it equally. some may be at 100% others at a very low rate. there is more work to be done, and part of that i think is a reflection that at the local level, these records are in different foermats and the quality of the data variouses. >> so you would have a central

data world, you're getting these from multiple sources in the state? >> it's up to the state how they send us the information. how those entities are organize needs at the state level varies. >> they may be getting the information from multiple sources, but they accumulate it and there is one contact in those 37 states? >> that is generally true but it can vary depending on the state. >> what has been the hang up in the other states? the other 37 states, do they fund their regularistries themselves? >> i think funding is definite ri part of it and some recognize

they have more work to do. it would require a lot of effort to get their records to a point where they could send it to us reliably in a electronic mechanism that we request. >> i'm all for state's rights, but this may be something we need to work on. i did want to just kind of talk about exactly how we calculate the improper payments. and my staff is telling me that about 90% are overpayments, is that right? what is your information for overpayments versus under payments. what's the mix? >> we have not done recent work to determine the actual mix. i will say that the majority are overpayments and there are a number of items that are, of course classified as improper

payments because of insufficient documentation. >> the calculation of the money is through statistical sampling correct? >> yes, it is sampling, but the director can approve a alternate methodology. >> i would like to go other the panel is is there is a point you would like to make to close out the hearing, i'll start with you. >> to the extent that the emf and the do not pay initiative, i think you're running out of time. every day more states come out to the electronic system and there will be fewer and fewer records in there. if that is going to happen it should be occurring in tandem with increasing the accuracy of

that data in general. >> senator we're fully committed to reporting the death data as we can. we think that reporting it is the first step to that. we also support the ranking members bill. >> chairman once again, we ask for exemptions to the computer matching and privacy protection match. to the same token, it should go to the parent agency. so when we find an issue of one agency making payments where another isn't, we can then have the parent agencies make those. >> i think supporting the initiatives in the president's budget.

>> i appreciate these brief statements. mr. davis. >> the improper peoples requires annual come plienlt with the crypliancecompliance. and they have been recommending and going forward. sfwli want to thank all of the witnesses on your thoughtful testimony. thank you for sharing your story and this committee is dedicated to making sure that it is not just a hearing but that something comes out of this. we can prevent the types of problems that mrs. davis had to deal with. this meeting is adjourned.

if you missed any of this hearing on improper social security payments you can view the entire hearing online at c-span.org. and now we take you live to the council on foreign relations where anthony fox is speaking about infrastructure and future projects. >> they can provide even more. there will have to be more state cooperate, but what do you think the federal government the congress can or should be doing to facilitate that? that really changed the map? >> well, the study doesn't say this because it is intended to not be a presentative document. but what i believe is that if

federal government actually all of government will need to be a little more focused and attuned to the growth of these regions. and sometimes, frankly, they cross state borders. i come from a city that is right on the border of north and south carolina. and part of our influence was south carolina. the economy doesn't always stick to jurisdictions. it focuses more on workforce. a lot of our decision making is in police jurisdictions. so what we proposed last year was an either to encourage local communities to organize their transportation along a regional cluster as opposed to one county or one city and look at

themselves as clusters of regional activity and making transportation decisions to adjust to that. i think that is a trend that we need to bend towards as a country to be as successful as possible. >> i don't want to go off on a tan tangent here. on the one side we have the u.s. government ne fission, and the other side we have canada. and the press about about how they will assume most of the funding. would you say that is an example of the challenges we face from a governance perspective. is it tougher to get things done on our side? >> i think we will have many examples of challenge. there was a bridge project that was supposed to happen in the state of washington and the

state of oregon. and the politics aligned for a point in time, and then the state house, or state senate changed and the state of washington -- they didn't want to do the project. the project sort of fell apart. and we find these tops of challenges all of the time. so the windsor project is a little different because it has an international dimension to it. >> which is why i raced this. >> i understand. it's a little different because the canadians are really putting up a significant amount of the capital costs of doing that project, and not with standing a lot of efforts, we took to it to figure out a way to do more -- >> well if we could maybe for a moment focus on the biggest, the

mode of transportation our highway system. and move from the subscriptive to the prescriptive. and there is a big now, they surface in the transportation system, and they're still sitting in congress. and the current authorization runs out in two months right? could you maybe talk a little about the key features of that bill and what will happen if we don't get something done in two months. >> well did anyone find a pothole on the way here? potholes in this country are atrocious and they're getting worse. i think what the average american doesn't always realize is that the transportation infrastructure, the surface system they use, the road

systems they use, they are a model of federal state, and local governments working together for a quality transportation system. we had over the life 32 short-term measures passed by congress. as a mayor this means that if you have a $100 million or more project, you may sit on it for awhile because if you don't know the federal government share it makes it really hard to justify going through the expense of planning a project engineering a project, going through the headaches. so i think what washington told the rest of the country was just stop. and that is the opposite of what we need to be doing. within that context, the budget

reflections what we should be spending on our infrastructure which is basically a 50% increase over credit levels. we think that we should be doing a whole lot more highway work. maintenance and capacity. that we should have a national freight plan. so we can make sure we're the most safe and effective system. we think that we should have funding set aside for these local communities that figure out how to cluster themselves around areas of economic influence. and we think that we should have greater protections for safety for the traveling public that we don't currently have as a department. so it is a huge step forward but we do need congress to pass it, and if they're not going to pass that, pass something.

maybe we could talk for a minute about the federal highway trust fund. that ever since eisenhower it has been built out through this trust fund that has been funded by a gas tax right? if i recall correctly, from beyond traffic, there is like 30 million that is currently -- of revenues being generated by the gas tax. 40 million bes spent just to keep the current spending so we have a real problem with the trust fund. the gas tax is will not be able to fund it.

so what are some of your thoughts, the administration's thoughts on how to plug that gam? is it an increase in the gas tax? that seems to be bipartisan lack of support for that? is it hitting up the general fund continually. i suppose the president's one off for nm tax, but there are tolls, right? the possibility of revisiting the tolling system. >> well, this is a very important point. the highway trust fund has been running about $15 billion short on an annual basis. in recent years congress tried to patch it together using a variety of legislative duct tape

and chewing gum. i think it is misguided on our part as a country to think that plugging the highway trust fund is a substitute. somewhere we got the idea that it could solve our problems. the fending levels of the trust fund, even according to cbo, if you just got the trust fund levels off to last year's numbers. we would still be short in terms of the maintenance that needs to happen on an annual basis in this country. i think the prop that we have is everyone wants things to be like they were in 1956 and we're not in 1956 no more. we're in 2015. and i will say one other thing.

i had an opportunity to watch a little basketball only on the weekend and i watched duke play. and for the first 24 minutes coach k looked like he preferred to be some place else. at the end of the game, he said it was like an out of body experience. the team was not doing anything he told them to do. and as secretary of transportation i'm having an out of body experience every day. guy to places and i see bridges and roads and potholes and it's just not the country that i grew up in. sometimes i get criticized for being such a champion for congress doing something. but the reason has nothing to do with just being -- it's about

the fact that our country really needs it. and if our kids don't have it we're taking something away they need and i don't think that's right. >> you don't think that the lower price of gas right now will encourage congress to up the gas tax? >> i think the reality is that we're going to have a different system. we proposed a semithat for at least six years would give us, you know a substantial bump in the amount of money that goes into our system. but i think that it is like everyone wants the ribbon cutting, but no one wants to do what it takes to get there. i think we're at a point right

now where we're in a much deeper hole than most of the country realizes. much deeper. this is a serious problem. i would be committed malpractice if i didn't continue to try to save. >> i know you're a lawyer. >> maybe we could go back again to the question of the federal and state divide. some would argue that what is going on here one of the reasons that congress has resisted reauthorization, is to encourage the evolution of funding responsibility to a state level. and that seems to be happening. and i think senator, we recently referred to the fact that the states are a laboratory for fis

fiscal -- is that maybe what will happen? is it to some extent just a realignment of responsibility in a direction where it is okay. i wish we were having a conversation about what that means. what that means in my view is that we will do the same maintenance of effort that we have been doing. but i think the evolution means we will be doing less. less maintenance less capacity building. there are countries that are experiencing population declines. and maybe that is a decent strategy for a country experiencing declines or declines in the amount of

commercial goods moving, but we're expecting increases in both of those areas. it's like what don't we get about this? i promise you it will be more expensive for us to doddle around for years and years and years, it is better to stick to the strategy and pay now than trying to pay later. i have this conversation with secretary duncan a lot. i think education and transportation have a lot in common. they're both long term. if you don't invest today, you will see the outcome tomorrow. you will see it in increased costs. i think for a country to get those two issues right the country has a very bright future. if we keep doddling along it

will take a long time. >> now we get to my faye rite topic, public and private partnerships. this administration has been a big supporter of ppp's as a way of encouraging capital into the transportation sector. there has been a lot of high profile p 3s. there is the miami tunnel the solution in pennsylvania, i think some 34 states throughout the country now have ppp programs and a lot of other countries, the u.k., canada even a lot of countries in europe have relied heavily on this system. what does the administration think about this? are there other things in the

pipeline to encourage this technique or what? >> we think there is an increased role for the department of transportation to play in public and private partnerships. i will give you a couple of examples. first, while there are increasing numbers of states setting up public and private partnership offices, there is still a little residual fear out there in the public realm around public and private partnerships. so part of what we think but can do is help promote best practice practices practices. to put model legislation out there that states can then great gain. secondly we have a lot of

permitting work that duo at the department that we work with our interagency partners on. and when you talk about the cost of a project often times there is a lot of permitting costs associated with it. there is a reason why we have the regulatory requirements we have. we think you can get faster results without doing an injustice to the others. so the bridge project in new york is an example of this. it was four or fei years of permitting that would have happened under the normal course of things and we were able to get it permitted in like 18 months, and i think that gives the public sector more

confidence that the private sector can clever. and i think one of the roles of the department that i'm hopeful can play a better facilitation role is helping the private and public sector find each other. there are a lot of projects out there still looking for resources. a lot of sponsors would like to think about a public and private partnership and may not have the tools to figure that out. we want to try to help them while we're helping the private sector figure out where the flow may come from this is big because in a time of scarce resources. that is 5 or 10% that we don't have to go find some place else. and frankly if the deal works for everybody, all the better, i think this is a space where there is a lot of opportunity.

>> we know you're very supportive of that whole technique and we have been working to develop this model contract guide for highway p 3s. and i know you know because i just reminded you in the other room, so we're finding we work on road and transportation projects throughout the state and there is an increasing use, or federal support that comes in the form of credit assistance or, you know as opposed to grant funding in the past. and there has been to programs in particular that we see a lot subordinated loans and private bonds which is tax exempt financing. does a grow america act increase the use for that?

do you see that kind of a trend for grand funding? >> absolutely, big expansions in both programs. and the idea is to create more facilities to get more projects going. again, though i want to say one other caveat to my great believe that the public and private partnerships will be the wave of the future and that is they have to have a public sector commitment. if you just rely on the public and private partnerships you cannot wait for them to plan those partnerships.

>> well i gszuess i should warn you all that in several minutesly start turning it to the floor. i have one more question i watched your recent interview with eric schmidt and there is one question that i thought was hilarious, shifting to our rail. why is it it takes only three hours to get from 536 miles in france, and boston to dc is 470 miles and takes 7 hours? >> well this is a vision that the president and i both share. that we can speed up these times. and look, when the rail system

in the u.s. was built some of it predated the road systems. but at some point what folks decided was to put both of those things on the same grade. and so in some indications our speeds will be limited because you don't want to have rail traffic going at such a high speed at grade that is intersecting with vehicular forecast. having said that, the cost of getting there will be significant. as you point out, the rest of the world has figured out there are ways to get there. and i think the future for high speed rail in the u.s. is pretty bright. but it will take some funds. it will take some commitment, and it will take some time but we will get there, we always do. >> okay, so at this point i would like to turn it over.

i remind you that when you ask a question, please stand and give your name and affiliation. >> thank you, i'm from the naval post graduate school, i was lucky enough to work with graham. and he told all of us about the importance of may notness. he became so committed to that much. i sit here listening and i don't understand that. i'm into story telling and first of all i didn't know about this document you put out. but i want you to think about -- nobody has time to read 300 pages. so the question is what are the essential messages that you all

all of us to understand? you ought to think about writing stories for children, for middle school kids. if they can understand it the rest of the population can. and you need to get mike, getting your stories on to pbs. but again that is short. you have to figure out how to tell these in a short time and is your information department working on that? >> that is a great question. we are working on that. here is the thing about transportation. if i give you just -- i'm going to make one up that the average commute time, and i'm totally making this up. the average commute times have gone up 20% in the u.s. in the last ten years. that means something on one level, but it means nothing on another level.

a lot of our story telling has to be told at localized level. it has to be almost micro targeted in a sense. this road in your neighborhood, that the state has been talking about for ten years as not gotten done because the money doesn't exist. if the money was there you could get the road done you would have 15 minutes saved on your commute or whatever. i think one of the challenges we have is that the country is so vast, and there is so many different ways that transportation impacts people, we have to figure out a way to talk about this that reaches people where they are. but i think there is a way to do it and our team is working on that and i appreciate that, thank you. >> there is a ten page shorter version of this -- that even a simpleton like me was able to access and read.

>> dot.gov/traffic. >> it's short. >> how do i get the cliff notes. >> go to beyond traffic on our website, it has the short version and the long version. >> a short version? >> yes, absolutely. >> i am concerned and i think a lot of county till members are areare are -- council members are worried about cyber hacking. every corporation has been hacked apparently and a lot of times we don't even know. how as a rule herbal are we to cyber hacking and what are we doing about it? >> that is a great question and it is an area we're spending an

awful lot of time on. if we have, if i was looking at concentricishles the smallest one would be data systems that extend from faa doing flight management all day long to other parts of our work. and we are certainly not perfect. we have had some high profile vulnerabilities exposed to us recently and we always work to make sure to stay ahead of whoever is getting into our systems. longer term, as we become more technologically connected. we talk about connected vehicles. we are having conversations with vehicles that speak to the infrastructure. next gen that takes our aifuate

off of world war ii radar on to gps. everything will become more automated in some way. and as duo that we have to be focused on making sure their protections are built in there to prevent the type of hacking that you're talking about. as we're working to build through next gen a lot of that work is ongoing. when it comes to connected vehicles we will have to work with industry on that and we have encouraged the auto industry to share with us on issues, and it will take that partnership within industry to get there but we are working on this issue all of the time. >>

>> hi. i would like to ask where are we now with the north american transportation system. when nafta was passed, it also had a lot of policy cooperation and regulatory cooperation, and the area of transports was one of the intermodal transports was supposed to give the north american region competitiveness. i'm curious with where we are with that now and with the spending transatlantic trade agreement. i'm sure the europeans have a lot of things they want in place for portability, surface transport, aviation. that is what i want to ask.

>> you're right there is an awful lot of opportunity for cooperation. i want to talk about two areas where we're working with mexico, for instance. and how we're looking at our own national freight plan in the context of the continent not just the u.s. one of nafta's requirement social security that we create a cross border trucking program with the country of mexico. and just this year after many fits and starts we finally moved forward with creating that program and that work is ongoing. that essentially means that mexican trucking companies can come and go from the u.s. taking goods from one point to the

other. that is a big development by the way because that has been a longstanding issue. the other issue is that we're working with mexico to develop an aviation agreement that opens up more access for both mexican and u.s. carriers. we're very very encouraged by the work being done on that. i agree there are plenty of opportunities. as we have begun looking at our own national freight plan, one of the things we discovered is that we can't just look at u.s. borders. we have to look at canada. we have to look at mexico. we have to think about how these different connections intersect. for instance, if we build a road that is supposed to go into

mexico, but they're main route is coming some place else, that is something we have to pay attention to. >> secretary you mentioned highspeed rail. i frequently take the bus to new york. it's not much slower than amtrak and it is not very comfortable or fast. high speed rail has been in japan since the '60s. we ever going to get there? >> we have taken fretpretty forward

leanssteping steps and with have not always been patted on the back for it. for all of the dust up it created, that project broke ground in january of this year. we're now starting to see states like texas, and of all states florida, now coming with proposals to do it through public and private partnerships. so we're trying to work with those sponsors as well. in other words, i think the future of high speed rail in the u.s. for the foreseeable future will be connecting city pairs. i don't think you will see a wholesale system build out in one fell swoop. but i think you will see different city pairs get connected and after some period of time you will see more of the country connected by high speed

rail. but i am very bullish. i think it will happen. by the way our bill disease put rail passenger rail, into the trust fund. one of the challenges we had with passenger rail in the u.s. is it did not have a predictable funding stream. and we would change that by creating a single trust fund for rail transit included in it. >> thank you david short with fed ex. of course my company has a lot of issues within the jurisdiction of your department. first if i could your comment a moment ago prompted me to offer a shout out of congratulations on the mexico aviation agreement. i know they did an outstanding job. she spent so much time in

mexico, and brian headburg. i wanted to turn to next gen. fed ex has over 660 aircraft. not to mention with global reach. if we don't deliver packages on time we don't get paid. operating on time is critical to us. can i ask you to share with your thoughts for the reasons it has been so difficult to implement next jgen and the prospects for implementing it? thank you. >> thank you. well next gen has been on the horizon looking back depending on who you're talking to it's been 20 years. and it is a difficult think to think about how you piece

together our air space on a gps based system. in this administration, i would say we made more progress in the last few years getting next gen advance than we probably have made in so many years combined before. ly not put a number on it. some of the problems are the commitments made to fund the effort have not always come through. so there has been years where the funding has fallen short. some of it has been that it is just complicated. i was down in houston where we just, i think we opened up like 60 plus next gen capabilities in

houston. but when they started describes for me, it is the equivalent of i-495, 95 and completely restructuring those and having to go through all of the processes, the public input processes to do that. and that is what they're doing. so even when you get through the technical features and you start redesigning the airspace it creates a lot of push and pull. some of that is just endemic to any kind of transportation project. so i can say this is an area of focus for me and i know that we will not get next gen to the point of completion when i leave the department, but one of the things i made it my mission to do is make sure we have a clear mathway for next gen before we leave and that we're making as

much progress every day as we possibly can. and i think we're starting to see the product of it. we have optimized profiles around the country today. for those that don't know that is, the airplane idols as it comes in next gen came up with this and it saves fuel it makes them quieter and in memphis we can move the planes closer together and that also saves fuel costs. that is another progress from next gen. i won't be here when the bell rings and everything is done, but you will see them throughout the next couple years.

>> good evening. tom clark with parcels corporation. two things you said rezclicked with me. what do you see as the optimal legitimate of the bill and is there consideration for a mile age base user fee alternative to be considered, not passed as the source of funding, but to do additional study on it? where do you stand on that? >> thank you. i think we have to have at a minimum, a four of five year bill. we proposed a four year bill last year. we have a new and improved six

year bill this year. but you have to have multiple years of funding. these projects take awhile to move through the system. aside from that, i think that the country -- and look i think the problem that we have right now is not in washington. that will sound a little e radical, but i think that is part of it. but i think the bigger part is that the country is not on fire about this. one of the things that i tried to really instill beyond traffic, it helps to make a case even stronger is that this is a generational issue. a serious generational issue. and we are political rally. it is as if i took my kids out

to a restaurant and i asked them to get whatever they wanted and i ate more than theywine. i even had some port after it was all over. and then i said to my kids okay, you guys pay the bill. that's what we're doing. and it's absolutely ridiculous. but anyway. back to your point. i think a six-year bill. a four-year bill is a minimum. so we're starting to see states experimenting with this. oregon has a small pilot that they're undertaking now. we don't want to stand in the way of laboratories and democracy taking on those types of studies. they're always helpful for us to understand. but at this point we're really focused on just trying to get a

six-year bill that provides a basic level of funding and to try to move forward with something like that. we're not getting fancy. >> chris settle from booze allen hamilton. you mentioned the connected vehicle program, which is extremely exciting but you also mentioned the challenge of fixing our highways and bridges. how then do we find the investment to build out the infrastructure needed for that program? either from the state and local agencies or by incent sizing the private sector. >> on the connected vehicles? i want to make sure i understand the question. >> the connected vehicle program. >> in theory. in theory, the infrastructure

would be paid for the same way. so in theory, if we were talking about, for instance, connected -- vehicle to infrastructure connections, the infrastructure that we would have paid -- the conventional infrastructure we would have paid for using trust fund dollars, under our proposal would still be used but it might be a more technologically updated form of infrastructure. sitting right here right now i couldn't tell you whether there's going to be a higher cost factor for connected vehicle to infrastructure technology versus conventional. but what i can say is i do think technology's going to play a role here. a disruptive role. perhaps a productively disruptive role in helping us settle some of these questions. for instance, you know, i was talking about the airplanes and how closely they can fly together when you're using next

jen technology. well, the same principle is at play when it comes to connected vehicles on the surface system. so you could imagine that our trucks could be greater proximity to each other using technology partly to connect them. and that that would actually create fuel savings and create efficiencies on the system because the distances between cars and trucks wouldn't have to be as great. so you know there are some aspects of technology that may upend what i'm saying. but i think the fundamental point, though, that you're making and i would also make is that the infrastructure itself is still going to need to be maintained and it's still going to need to be invested in. and we may get more out of it using technology we're still going to need. the basic bones of it.

>> pbs online news hour. first of all, in response to mitzi's comment, when i was on the broadcast we did more stories and series on infrastructure than all the other networks combined. even though video of trains and cars moving ever more slowly doesn't necessarily make for riveting television. what are you -- i'm just back from six weeks in asia. what is the department doing now or contemplating doing tapping into the knowledge of friendly countries like singapore, south korea which not only seem to know how to build things but come up with pretty creative ways of financing them, perhaps more so even than the europeans who rely on a level of taxation that probably the united states would never tolerate no matter what kind of train you got on. >> it's a great question. to some extent it relates back

to this governance discussion we were having because in the u.s. the equivalent of the government of singapore is the government of north carolina or the government of virginia or some other states. a lot of our surface system is state-based. and because of that unlike some of our foreign countries, competitors or friends, which don't have one-stop shopping when it comes to these three piece. we actually have 52 different systems around the country when you count the territories. that really function more or less independently of each other. so the innovations that you're talking about right now, the default is for those innovations to happen at the state level. the question that we are trying to address as an agency is can we play a role in helping to

facilitate and encourage those kinds innovations to happen at the federal level given the history we have of a state-driven surface transportation system. i think we're going to get there. and again, i think the tappan zee bridge is a great example of a project we were able to get done. it had a lot of hair on it. it had a lot of dollars associated with it. a lot of challenges associated with it. but it's an example of the kind of financial creativity that may be needed to get big-scale projects done. there is actually the gateway project, the rail tunnels that lead between new jersey and new york. this is an area that i'm concerned about because those tunnels, as they sit there have a shelf life and it's not all that long. and it may take some ingenuity to figure out a way to get those

tunnels paid for maybe even designed in a different way than anybody's thought about before. but i agree with you. i think the reason why we can't tap into that as well today is because we basically have 52 different systems. and what we're trying to do is create a clearinghouse for best practices that help us get to the answers faster and hopefully the innovations faster. >> oscar. we have a firm and fast rule of ending on time here and i've just been given the five-minute warning. so we have time for a couple more questions. let's go to this gentleman way in the back. >> mr. secretary i'm bob perry with the corporate council on africa. i want to thank you for your remarks on beyond traffic. also we're looking forward to your trip to africa in a few months. my question has to do with the intersection between rail and energy. and the last thanks to fracturing we've got production in areas where we didn't have pipelines, and the rail system is moving it from the dakotas to east coast markets.

that's a win. the safety accidents that have occurred along that rail system are a problem. they were designed to move coal and grain the last 50 years and are now dealing with another problem. how do you see a solution in terms of consensus on new safety standards? >> well, it's a big deal. four days into my job at d.o.t. lk mcgoneticap ended up in canada. and it was a horrible day not only for our canadian friends but really for all of us. and from that point forward i'd been focused like a laser on trying to help our country get into a better safety posture when it comes to the movement of crude by rail. to the point that we've taken 24 short-term measures that were thought about as bridges to a

long-term answer, which is ultimately a rule on this. let me just say this just to cut to the chase. you have to have a comprehensive approach to this issue. there's a lot in the news about tank cars and tank car standards. but honestly the tank car is a mitigation device. it is not a device that's designed to prevent an accident. it simply is a device that contains an accident for some period of time. we have to have a prevention strategy. we have to have a mitigation strategy. we have to have an emergency response strategy. and one of the things we've really pushed on as a department is having a comprehensive approach that takes into account all of those areas. and i would say that i think there is a building consensus both outside of government and within government that a

comprehensive approach is the right way to go. so we're still working through what i hope are the later stages of rule making but i certainly have to respect that process but know that this is an area of great focus for me. >> we have time for one more question. this gentleman at the front table. >> thank you. sam visner with icf international. swinging back briefly to the question of cybersecurity. there is a very complex mixed ownership structure in this country depending on the mode. the president's executive order signed out last month brought forward the idea of stronger information sharing and advisory organizations, isaos, and i wonder what the department might be able to do to build a stronger information-sharing organization amongst all the various modes of transportation for which their responsibility. because i do think the industry is