remind us again how many jobs there are at stake here? >> we supported 165,000 jobs last year alone about 1.2, 1.3 billion in the six years i've been at the bank. >> thank you mr. chairman, good morning. thank you for being here this morning, such an important topic, i want to share with you two stories from two of our more important employers in south carolina and get your response to the comments that they've made to me. the first one is sage automotive interiors. because of the downturn of the economy, they decided to spin them off or get rid of them. >> unfortunately, senior management decided to get the capital together buy that company and now they are employing more than 600

employees throughout south carolina. >> they've been able to succeed because of their exporting opportunities. >> sage has used according to the company -- he's used the xm bank since its inception because it's necessary nor them to do so, and a very similar story in another player, grace management group. grace has been around since 1975, they have locations in spartan berg and locations in places where senator shelby has a residence in alabama. they have done very well,ny have showcases in atlanta, alabama and las vegas. >> it's a wonderful success story from spartanburg, south carolina. because commercial banks and the u.s. are prohibited from using

foreign receivables as collateral for loan ss, they have no alternative but to apply for national sales support. >> i had a chance to visit sage on a recent trip to south carolina companies come to us when they can find finance inging sage is an excellent example of that. 90% of our customers are small businesses. of the exports we financed last year of 27 $1/2 billion a full 10 billion came directly from small businesses. >> i'll ask you this question directly. according to sage, commercial banks in the u.s. are prohibit ed from using these foreign receivables as collateral? >> that's correct. commercial banks will not value

upon -- they valuated at zero, when we ensure those receivables through credit insurance. they will lend 75 80, 90% against the receivables, creating a real base so the banks can get the working capital, hire people, get the raw materials and ship the goods overseas. >> for a business having operations, making sales in 90 countries, not to be able to use a part of those receivables to determine their cashflow would be a crippling impact if they lost that opportunity? >> it totally disables them. it impedes seeking export sales and the jobs that come from them. >> i had a conversation last night. i was invited to dinner from some members of the house. which was a rare opportunity. >> they suggested there's major players in the aviation world that are very much in opposition

to the xm bank. i wonder if some of those player players access eded this. >> they're made in brazil and canada. i know for a fact that delta airlines is a major major user of jets and a major user of financing from the canadian government and brazilian government to finance those regional jets. if any of us fly to new york on the delta shuttle you're flying on a plane in all likelihood financed by the brazilian government. >> i hope i can get a seat on that plane the next time i go to new york after this question. >> on the reform package that's

been offered by senator kirk and finter, some of the questions we're pondsering is to reduce the borrowing authority your thoughts on that? >> i know there are a number of reforms. it concerns me we would reduce the amount of lending authority we have at xm bank when we have countries like china. 400 orders china's given no indication they're going to follow any rules. i would certainly have a concern obviously we'll work with congress on the solution. i'm concerned about restricting our efforts and sending that bad signal. even if we never get there the signal and message is very important important. >> would you provide me with an additional 30 seconds? football time, 30 seconds. thank you, sir. >> how about on increasing the

reserve requirements? >>. >> well, there are a snub of reforms that have been proposed, they're currently four different bills, two from your colleagues in the house, and two in the senate. >>. >> what we've done is provided technical assistance to any member who would like to review reform by reform i think that is probably a more thoughtful way of doing it than just by shooting from the hip here. i think that we're looking for a solution, we want to work up with this committee and the house to find what is the proper oversite so we can make sure we move forward and give some certainty. >> last question. on the pilot program for reassurance, thoughts? >> i think that's a good -- we'd be interested in pursuing that pilot, if it's in our reauthorization, it would be open to that. >> and how --

>> i will support the xm bank today or in the future. we need some reforms in the process, i think it's important for us to figure out the path going-forward and frankly if we were able to negotiate a unilateral disarming i want to get your thoughts and have a longer conversation with you about the necessity of reforms as we move forward. >> if i can add, we continually improve the bank. >> we're waiting for congress to come up with the bill. we're constantly finding better ways to improve risk the needs of workers and taxpayers. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman.

yesterday one of the witnesses talked about how the xm bank was creating $140 billion in taxpayer risk to the people of the united states. i think by that they were referring to the loan guarantees the xm bank has made for your customers, the other product portfolio portfolios. what has your loss ratio been? >>. >> we report to congress every 90 days every 90 days congress is updated. our current default rate is running less than 1/5 of 1%. >> how is that considered industry wide? >> most commercial banks are apples to apples, multiples of that. >> when they talk about that, they're talking about the loan

portfolio that any bank would have. at the end of the last three years, did you have a profit or loss at the end of the last three years? >> we have sent information to the treasury. $6.9 billion, that's actual cash that leaves the checking account and goes to the treasury for taxpayer deficit reduction. >> as you know i'm from the state of indiana. one of our mutual friends has been important in the operations has run a great company, has used the xm bank and helped in management of it and i think that's reflective of our state. it's small and mid sized businesses over 100 companies that have benefited from the bank in recent years and you know overall do you think that

those 100 companies would have found comparable financing? >> you mentioned peter as they've grown with us, they are now able to find on the private sector. they couldn't three four years ago. it's now bankable by the private sector. and if that changes, we -- >> which is pretty much almost a built-in formula for the success for you and businesses. which is, they work with you and it's also good for our banks in that now there's no need for the bank and we're sending exports overseas and jobs that stay right here in the united states of america. >> one other question i wanted to ask you. so if the financing if the xm

bank wasn't there where would companies, where would some of these small companies get financing if they're sending product overseas? what other opportunities do they have? >> frequently what they have to do is demand 100% payment in advance. the problem is that's not very competitive, so their competitors in germany, korea sell and open accounts. with xm bank we're able to provide the financing that they can meet the foreign competition. i should quickly add in the short term space, we've seen as many as 20 skbort credit agencies focused on short term and small businesses in the last couple years. i think there's even more competition for small business exporters than there has been in the past. >> i want to conclude by saying

that in indiana those over 100 businesses appreciate what the xm bank has done. the families who their mom or dad have a really good job, have a chance to buy a home and take them on a vacation. those families really appreciate it as well. and that's the real world. it isn't theory, it isn't some economic poss tu lace, it is the real world of someone who gets a job products are being shipped overseas. things were made in muncie, indiana, rather than beijing or somewhere else. >> thank you for being here this morning. on tuesday, we had a lively panel at one point we discussed was the analogy to arms control the united states shouldn't unilaterally disarm the export

credit financing world there's disagreement about how much of the bank's activities are done for that reason to meet foreign competition from foreign dca's. the mercada center is a proponent of the bank. linda dempsey disputed we didn't have our numbers at our fingertips. can you tell us how much is made to meet competition from foreign aca's? >> it's about 2/3 to meet foreign competition. and one third where there isn't availability. frequently, it's a lot of the small businesses, it's not the availability on any competitive terms. one exporter said, yes, i can get financing in qatar. but they want 22% interest.

why would we do a sale at 22% interest. i have a loss in that case. we verify that in the application. the applicant has to certify and i answered earlier under perjury, why they need the loan for us. the guarantee for us. why they need the financial assistance assistance. >> even miss dempsey has said in a world where we weren't unilaterally disarming that she would is not think the united states needs to have an export credit agency like the xm bank. do you agree with that? they would not need to exist here? >> the challenge with that is all of us, including the xm bank filled in a gap during the financial crisis. our learneding during the -- in 2012 was about double the level today. when banks constrict lending i

use this analogy, we're a little like the fire truck. we respond to an emergency. if even if everybody does -- if everybody got rid of their expert credit they would invent them when we have a financial vice is as they were a few years ago. >> i think we would need to maintain the xm bank even if we can negotiate a treaty with the other few dozen countries. >> there are 85 expert credit agencies in the world. some are a member of an international agreement that does provide some regulation guidelines. many, china, russia brazil, india are not a member, they are very opaque, they can offer any terms they want as long as they want subsidized rates and we

really are not able -- that's a real threat to the u.s. competitiveness. >> >>. >> one common point that's made, is the lack of private financing and how you can be a lender of last resort. if there is no market in the private financing markets for a particular project, the market is sending a signal that the prophet is not -- or the project is not going to be profitable or it's too risky what's your strongest response to that? >> first of all, when the banks pull back, i mean we have the best private sector in the world, the best private sector bank. when the banks pull back something they pull back for internal reasons we are counter cyclical as i mentioned, in 2012 we did over $36 billion in loans. last year we did 20. there's less of a need for us, there's not zero need there's less of a need.

projects like nuclear power plabts certain other technologies are just harder to finance they take -- nuclear power plant needs an 18 to 20 year loan. that's hard to secure in the private sector we do fill in counter cyclical and products and services that are particularly hard to finance. >> i would like to discuss one particular example to get a sense of your thinking on it. this is reports from space news as well as the sunday morning herald. the xm bank helped underwrite loan s loans. they set up a company in australia. the bankruptcy court in delaware said that nustat is in dwee fault. lockheed martin has received $193 million for the sale owns it, much of that money came from xm bank. lockheed martin is a top teered

defense contractor, they make some of the best products in the world. in australia couldn't get private market financing, does that not send a signal that now is bankrupt after widespread reports of mismanagement and travel and luxury lots shouldn't have gotten money in the first place. >> the two countries, united states and france and frankly, we go toe to toe with them all the time. the friends expert credit agency fully supports the satellite sales. >> competition has increased and we've had to do more. similar to nuclear satellites are competitive and harder to finance. >> france's agency was part of this project, they face loss as well, they have greater chance

of recovery than the american taxpayer? >> customers pay us a fee. we're far ahead of the game here. we're still under negotiation, the satellite is not completed. it's not due to launch, there's a lot of time between now and that point. we can't write this book from the last chapter forward. we still have a ways to go, in no way is this a done deal. secondly, these are jobs we supported 250 jobs. there are a lot of jobs at stake, and we finance a number of satellites, we do a good due diligence. from time to time a deal will experience difficulties. that's what capitalism is about

sometime deals do better than expected this is a project that's in labor it's difficult right now. we're working through it i still think we're going to find a better solution yes, the news sounds grim. >> i'll say in conclusion my time is well past expired. what capitalism is primarily about is putting private dollars in risk. when profits and losses are private, then you have the best incentive s incentives mr. chairman. >> i have a couple questions, mr. chairman. what percent of the 47 billion we've been told 47 billion that you have underwritten exports. what percent of that are airplanes, roughly. in other words, the portfolio.

>> you said 47 billion? >> last year we did 27 billion. >> we are talking overall. u.s. exports in 2014 was $2.35 trillion. and that you financed about 2% of 47. >> we did about $27 billion worth of exports. some of those exports remember tourism coming to america is also an export. >> what percentage of your portfolio doubled financing airplanes. >> last year in 2014. we financed in the range of 35% the smallest number of airplanes financed last june. we had the smallest footprint we ever had. >> this question's been asked many ways, let's say we have an

airline manage err and they're going to sell some planes to united arab emirates. very rich country could an airline here like -- we'll just use southwest u.s. air, delta you name it -- could they get the same kind of financing here that you give to their world competitor overseas? >>. >> we have the best capital markets in the worlds. any time a u.s. carrier financing a plane. we run the numbers, we say if they were a foreign carrier, what would we charge to make sure we're charging more.

we verify every time there's a financing. we compare that with the same credit history, same credit rating. >> you give them the same rate? >> no, the rates are determined internationally, we want to verify that the rates are proper and higher. >> we've doubled and triples our fees since 2011 to make sure we are competing fairly with u.s. carriers to make sure the rates are higher than domestic airlines pay. >> you're saying, what's the advantage and why would you have an export import bank if somebody could access a country blue chip, all the oil and money i guess they'd ever need. they could borrow on the open market. so they cut a deal with the export import bank, obviously, it's a lower interest rate. it's got to be something.

>> you saying it's not? >> the interest rate, they pay us a fee, and as a result, we can borrow at a lower rate than they may be able to borrow. i'm trying to say, it's lower than u.s. carriers pay, it's lower than they could access otherwise, the difficulty is that we are in head to head competition with airbus. we have a level playing field. they could buy an airbus plane or boeing plane. >> our airlines here are paying more for their money than competition in the world if you finance those. >> no our airlines still pay less. i thought the question was would emirates emirates. >> who pays less? >> the u.s. carriers pay less? >> than the others do. >> yes, based on our fees, yes.

>> why would an airline like the united arab emirates pay more when they could go to the market and get less? >> well u.s. carriers pay less, because they can borrow here and we had the most fluid and the deepest capital markets. foreign carriers have a much harder time accessing, they're not usually as deep. >> let me ask you a final question. if 98% of our exports, which was 2.3$2.3 trillion did not access any credit from the export import only 2% does that give you room to think if only 2% of our exports are going through the export/import thing, do we really need the export/import bank? i think we should be proud of the fact that 98% in our country

have private sector financing. the fact is we had the best sector, but it doesn't do everything everything. we talk about nuclear satellites, there are gaps in that field. we don't do very much in western europe, we don't need to but we do it in markets that are hard. >> third world markets. >> we're facing a lot of competition, such as we mentioned with airbus or mitsubishi or some other giant firms. >> on the next washington journal, a look at the legislation changing the nsa's data collection program with julian sanchez of the cato institute. and then undercover jihadi. and marra keithley, executive director on transgender rights. washington journal live every

morning at 7:00 a.m. eastern. >> finally somebody says. they're thug zs. >> he said it's made from the bark off the trees, that we take from the top down and that part made from the road up. >> and the only difference i've found between the democratic leadership and the republican leadership, was that one of them was stealing from the ankle up, and the other from the ear down. >> he was one of the great populous. that's an example of appealing to the masses with a good yarn.

i think like a lot of characters, he became demogoging and was consumed by that. he was a maverick, he gave just as much grief to his own party as the other side. >> they keep this institution bubbling. if they were all mavericks, nothing would get done. >> we were fortunate that the huey longs were a distinct figure. >> freedom of information act compliance officers testified at a house hearing wednesday looking into how federal agencies cooperate with requests

for information under foia. jason jason chafitz chairs the oversite committee. this is just over three hours. >> the committee on oversite and reform will come to order. >> we appreciate all of you being here for the third panel of this two-day hearing ensuring agency compliance with the freedom of information act. the president has committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness. that is not the case when it comes to filling foya requests. march 2014, the associated press reported the obama

administration more often than any other administration had sensors government files or outright denied access. the administration used exemption to withhold information more than 550,000 times. agencies must consult with the white house on all document requests that may involve documents with white house equities. just in the last year the government fully denied access or censored records in at least 250,000 cases or roughly 39% of all whys. this is the highest number of denials in the history of foya. we waited to hear from individuals to get public records they requested. this came from media and -- the foya system is broken and probably broken by design. in preparing for this hearing, the committee received numerous

examples of delays, unreasonable redactions and abuse of fees, all of which hindered transparency. the epa strategically avoided disclosure disclosure. documents obtained by the committee advocated a preemptive veto. the irs contacted one requester, colin hannah on four separate occasions to explain it needed more time to respond to his request. but after two year ss they closed his request. gsa identified 70000 records as responsive to a foya request. and used the number of records as a reason to close a request from the taxpayer protection

alliance. a requester waited ten months before the dea told them that his request for 13,000 documents related to the capture of mexican drug lord el choppo would cost 1.4 million$1.4 million. >> one freens journalist wrote, i often zrab the handling of my request as the single most disilusing experience of my life. the responses are enlightening and continue to come in they seem to be numerous bipartisan across the board insistent and just absolutely frustrating. we also saw unreasonable and inappropriate redactions. they show the fcc blacked out the chairman's initials on every e-mail he sent or received. blacked them out. in doing so, the fcc claimed a personal privacy exemption that

isn't permissible for use even with lower level staff. staff commentary like wow and interesting were deliberative and redacted them under b-5 exemption exemption. the time and expense it takes to go through such silly, silly things is so frustrating and ridiculous. it gets very frustrating here, anybody claims, we spend this exorbitant amount of money, when you're blacking out. interesting, the name one of my favorites, is blacking out the name of the department of defense person who sang the national anthem as if that's some state secret. in one instance, simply quoting an attached press release qualified for a redaction while the press release itself was released in full. it's amazing how many instances we have of publicly available

information that is on the department's websites, comes back via foia as redacted. and a press release? press release that it was publicly released, is something you have to hold back from the public makes no sense. how can we trust the government's examples. despite significant corruption within the agency in recent years, the irs is still on strakting taxpayer's efforts just getting the witness here today required a subpoena. the other four agencies we asked to invite their senior officers they all agreed they all showed up. not the irs, no, no not the irs, we can't have that. only one person can testify mr. coskin. how wrong he is. i appreciate you being here but i should not have to issue a

subpoena to get your presence here. you've dealt with this for year s s. we had to issue a subpoena. when we sent a letter asking for information, anywhere between 2 and 8 different examples we wanted information, department of justice at least they sent us a letter, at least they gave us something. it was terribly incomplete the irs no letter, nothing. we sent a request to you, i sent a subpoena to you. you give us nothing? these other four did. i'm telling you, we will drag the irs up here, every single week if we have to. you are going to respond to the united states congress. you are going to respond to the american people you work for the american people. you know what if it was the other way around if the irs went after an individual, you wouldn't put up with it.

there's no way you would put up with this. we expect you to respond to requests from the united states congress 37 we have a right to see it. we have a constitutional duty to perform our oversight responsibilities. for you to not respond to this committee by giving us an electronic copy which is what you were supposed to do which the other four figured out, is not appropriate. we don't have that material and we wanted it before the hearing i had to get a subpoena to drag you here, and it's wrong. i've heard personally from multiple foia requesters that they wait and wait and wait. when they finally get a response, the response is either flatly denied or the pages are blacked out. we saw examples of that yesterday. why is this necessary. are there some cases where you do have to redact material. i understand that. i understand that, i appreciate that. but the lack of consistency is

just stunning. the time that it takes is just unbelievable. justice is the foia litigator and the provider of agency wide guidance ought to be the model agency, but we know it is not. the department of justice denied 40% of its fiscal year 2014. 3% of foia requests were denied based on exemptions. 37% were denied for other reasons. 5% were denied on the basis that documents were not reasonably described. dhs is drowning in foia requests and needs to ensure the right resources are put toward properly clearing these backlogged cases. the department of homeland security receives about one third of all foia requests and is responsible for two thirds of the federal backlog. so it's particularly disappointing to see that dhs dhs foia program, and the gao's

duplication report. even the gao has come in and said, this is a terribly mismanaged, ill executed system. so much so that there's highlights in the the gao's 2015 duplication report. my disappointment grew yesterday when the foia research center revealed to us that dhs hired contractors for the primary purposes of closing rather than completing cases. individuals requesting records from homeland security might hear from contractors multiple times inquiring about whether or not they're still interested in their requests. that always cracks me up, right? citizen, person from the media goes out of their way to put in a foia request so much time goes by that government comes back to them and says are you still interested? that takes time and resources. the state department is as bad if not worse than dhs on foia

compliance. the agency has opened cases dating back for decades decades. last year the state department failed to fully respond to more than 65% of its requests. the center for efficiency government graded 15 of the top foia agencies and gave the state department an f on foia processing. the agencies before the committee today need to bring sunshine to their foia programs. the agency leadership has failed to make it a priority. and that makes the job of the witnesses before the committee much more difficult if not impossible. we know you have a tremendous amount of requests coming your direction. there are a lot of good people who work if your departments and agencyies and we thank them for their service. not everything is bad. but it is our role and responsibility to understand how it really works, what you're up against, what you're dealing with in a very candid way. so that we can help make it

better. and that we can understand it. and there undoubtedly have to be changes. my guess is you want to see some changes. we want to see some changes. we want to ferret that out. we've heard from the people who are critical but you're right there on the front lines and you represent hundreds and literally thousands 0 people who are trying to do their jobs and deal with the tensions that come from a political persuasions that have been in both the democrat and republican side of the aisle. you have career professionals that have been there through lots of different organizations. we want to hear candidly from you what is working, what is not working but give us candid information so we can help better understand it. we thank you again for your presence and at this time ail now recognize the ranking member, mr. cummings for his opening statement. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. i thank you for holding these very important hearings on the freedom of information act which

is the corner stone of our nation's open government laws. thank you also to our agency witnesses for being with us today. you do have a critical responsibility which is to make federal records available to the american public as effectively and efficiently as possible. you're also charged with implementing the directive president obama issued on his first day in office to implement a new presumption of openness that reverses the policy of with holding information embraced by the bush administration. your job is also extremely difficult and it's getting harder. you and by itchmplication, the president are being blamed for

the increase in foia backlogs. as we heard at our hearing yesterday, foia backlogs have increased in part as a result of cuts to sergeancy budgets and the dwindling number of foia personnel forced to process record numbers op incoming requests. but we did not just only hear that. mr. mcgraw of the "the new york times" talked about a culture of unresponsiveness. and i hope that we will get to that and talk about that. because i agree with the chairman. in order to get to the bottom of this we've got to have an honest assessment of what's going on. there were a number of witnesses that came before us yesterday to talk about a fear of people who are dealing with the foia requests honoring them the way

they should be because they're afraid to get in trouble. if that's the case, we need to hear about that. the number -- going back to personnel. the number of foia requests skyrocketed from 2009 to 2014. in 2009 when president obama took office, there were about 558,000 requests submitted to the federal agencies. by 2014 that number rose to more than 714,000, the surge of 28%. that's quite a surge. on the other hand, the total number of full-time agency foia personnel dropped to its lowest point since president obama took office. in 2009 the number of full-time foia staff at federal agencies was 4,000. in 2014 that number dropped to 3838. a decrease of about 4%. it seems obvious they congress cannot continue to starve

federal agencies for resources through budget cuts. staffing reductions sequestration and shutdowns and then blame those agencies for not being able to do their jobs effective effectively. but again i want to go back. i want to not only deal with the personnel issues, but this whole culture that mr. mcgraw talked about of unresponsiveness. i want to deal with that too because i want the total picture so we can be effective and efficient in trying to remedy this situation. if we want foia to work, we need to restore adequate funding staffing and training so agencies can handle the increasing workloads they will continue to face. that's another issue. is there an issue of training. it's one thing to have personnel. it's another thing to have personnel that are properly trained. now but this is not what house republicans are doing right now,

today. today, right now, down the hall in the appropriations committee, republicans are voting to withhold nearly $700 million, hello, $700 million from the state department's operational budget until it improves its document production processes. the operational budget includes the salaries for all, for all of the state department's foia employees. let me say that again. today with a record number of foia requests and a record low foia staffing the answer from the republicans is that we withhold two thirds of a billion dollars more than all state department foia staff salaries combined. how in the world is this supposed to help? it simply does not make sense.

we know that there are problems with foia. we know there with delays. we know that we must do better. but it is hard to imagine a more counter productive attack on a foia process. i also take issue with the claims that president obama has not been one of the most aggressive and forward thinking presidents in the history and pressing for more open government. i've often said that he would never get credit for anything. if things go wrong, they blame him. if things go right, he gets to credit. those who try to argue that president bush took the same kinds of transparency actions as president obama must have amnesia. there simply is no comparison. none. beyond ordering the presumption of openness for foia the obama administration issued a national action plan to establish a

consolidated foia portal and enhanced training for foia professionals. president obama did that. established a foia advisory committee to improve implementation, increase proactive disclosures of government information. president obama did that. the administration implemented a new policy of disclosing white house visitor records. president obama did that. established ethics data.gov which posts lobbying, disclosure reports, travel reports and federal elections commission filings all in one place and it has made enormous amounts of government information available through data.gov. that's right. president obama did that. finally i suspect some of my colleagues will continue their focus on former secretary of state hillary clinton and her e-mail. let's review the facts. on december 5th 2014, secretary clinton provided more than

30,000, 30,000 e-mail totaling about 55,000 pages to the state department. the department has those e-mail and is currently reviewing them to make them available to the public under foia. this is a sharp contrast to former secretary of state colin powell who admitted that he used a personal e-mail account for official business all the time unlike secretary clinton, secretary powell did not did not preserve any of his official e-mails from his personal account and he did not turn them over to the state department. i'm not naive. i understand the republican focuses on hillary clinton as she runs for president. but if we really want to review compliance with foia, if we really want to review it and straighten it out and make it right and have the law, foia law to do what they're supposed to do and if we really want to be

most effective and efficient we should not do so selectively by ignoring facts based on political expediency. as i've often said, we're better than that. to conclude, there's a may jr. bipartisan step we can take to improve foia now. in february i joined with represent iso that's what i said, i joined with former chairman, on a bipartisan basis to introduce the foia oversight and implementation act. we passed it out of our committee unanimously. out of this committee. unanimously. several months ago -- and i hope we can move forward in a bipartisan way to pass this bill. now the chairman said yesterday to me that we're going to see what we can do to work that out. and what we need from you is suggestions. sure maybe all of you are familiar with 653.

and if there are things that you think we can do to improve that bill to make it so that it can be more effective and efficient and that you can do your jobs better, then we want to know it. ladies and gentlemen we can go round and round and round and round in circles and we'll be talking about the same stuff ten years from now and the backlog will be even greater. so i look forward to hearing what you saul have to say. give us the good, the bad and the ugly so that we can now effectively address this issue. mr. chairman i thank you for your indulgence. with that i yield back. >> i'll hold the record open for five days for writ statements. let me introduce them. ms. joy ba with is chief foia officer with the defendant of state. ms. barr was confirmed as the assistant secretary for administration in december of 2011. as assistant secretary she's

responsible for the day-to-day administration of a variety of functions ranging from logistics, records management, privatety programs, the rk woing can tall fund and presidential travel. we appreciate you being here. ms. melanie ann pustay is the director of the office of information policy at the department of justice since 2007, has worked with foia for at least the last 12 years. the office of information policy sometimes we ferd to as oip is responsible for developing guidance for executive branch agencies on the freedom of information act. oip is charged with ensuring that the foia guidance a implemented across the government. before coming director she served eight years as the deputy director oip. ms. karen neuman serves as the chief foia officer within the

department of homeland security. in her hole was chief privacy officer, ms. neuman is responsible for evaluating department wide program systems technologies and rule making for potential privacy impact. she has extensive expertise in privacy policy law both within the department and in collaboration with the rest of federal government. she centralizes both foia and privacy acts to provide oversight and support implementation across the department. mr. bordi fontenot serves as the assistant secretary of management in the department of treasury. the chief foia officer for -- which year did you become that? just this year. i wanted to make sure i had that right, january of this year. mr. fontenot serves as the secretary of treasury on the dwoepment and execution of

treasury's budget and strategic plans and the internal management of the department and its bureaus. in january 2014 president obama nominated him as the treasury's chief financial officer. ms. mary howard is in charge of the disclosure division. she' served in this role since january of 2014. in this role she's responsible for managing a multifacetted privacy program and ensuring compliance with the privacy act, the freedom of information act and the internal revenue codes known as 6103. ms. howard represents the irs interest in identity theft information protection disclosure and data sharing. ms. howard began her career in 1988 and served in various yous roles throughout the agency and her career. if you would please rise and raise your right hand. the witnesses are to be sworn before they testify.

do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? thank you. let the record reflect that all witnesses answered in the affirmative. as you take your seat, we would ask that you would limit your testimony to five minutes. your full written statement will be made part of the record. and with that we will now start with ms. barr and you're now recognized for five minutes. >> thank you chairman ranking member cummings and members of the committee. good morning. thank you for the invitation to appear before you today. my name is joyce barr. and i serve as thecy sis tant secretary ff administration as well as chief foia officer for the state department. i am a career foreign service officer with over 35 years of experience serving around the world. thank you for your interest in

and advocacy for improving transparency to the public. we shared that goal at the department and work every day to achieve it. in addition to providing a range of support services around the world, the bureau of administration is also responsible for responding to requests under foia as well as managing and maintaining official department records. the state department is committed to openness. it is critical to ensuring the public trust and to promoting public collaboration with the u.s. government. however, meeting our commitment to openness is very challenging. we have a large backlog of over 16,000 foia requests. we know this backlog is unacceptable. and are working to reduce it. last year we achieved a nearly 23% reduction in our appeals backlog by streamlining case processing. we made progress. more is needed. the backlog is due to several factors. our caseload increase over 300%

since 2008. in fiscal year 2008 the department received fewer than 6,000 new foia requests. but in fiscal year 2014 we received nearly 20,000. since the beginning of this fiscal year, we have already received over 15,000 new requests. second, many of these cases are increasingly complex. other national security agencies are exempt from release of some information under the foia. as a result, requesters often come only to the department to request information on any and all national security issues. the department is often the public's first and only destination for documents on these issues. these complex requests require multiple searches throughout me of our 285 missions across the globe.

they involve the review of classified or highly sensitive materials and require coordination with other federal agencies. they can generate large amounts of material that must be reviewed by state and inner agency subject matter experts across the federal government. we receive many complaints about delays. but our goal is to do everything we can to complete each request as soon as possible. secretary kerry recently reinforced our commitment to transparency in his march 25th letter to our inspector general. in that letter he recognized the work that has already been done and noted the department is acting on a number of challenges to meet its preservation and transparency obligations. the secretary asked the inspector general to ensure we are doing everything we can to improve and to recommend concrete steps that we take to do so. i am here as a department's

senior foia official to assure you that we have committed to working cooperatively with the ig with his review and any recommendations that may follow. my testimony for the record includes information about related issues such as our foia website and the role we play in helping the public get access to information from presidential libraries libraries. again the department of state is committed to public access to information. mr. chairman, i thank the committee for the opportunity to testify today and would be pleased to address questions that you or any other member of the committee may have on foia within the state department. thank you. >> thank you. appreciate it. ms. buspustay you're recognized for five minutes. make sure the mike tonecrophone is pulled up straight. turn it on.

>> good morning. good morning chairman and ranking member cummings and members of the committee. pleased to be here today to discuss the foia and the department of justice's ongoing efforts to encourage agency compliance with the very important law. there are several areas of success that i'd like to highlight today. despite receiving continued record high numbers of foia requests and operating at the lowest staffing levels in the past six fiscal years, agencies have continued to find ways to improve their foia administration. 72 out of the 100 agencies subject to the foia ended the fiscal year with low backlogs of fewer than 100 requests. processing nearly 650,000 requests, the government also continued to maintain a high release rate of over 91%. agencies overall also continued to improve mayor processing times. for a number of years oip encouraged agencies to focus on

the simple track requests with a goal of processing the requests within an average of 20 works days. i'm pleased to report this past fiscal year the government's overall average was 20.5 days for those simple track requests. and there's also many other achievements that simply can't be captured by statistics. agencies continue to post a wide variety of information online in open formats they're making discretionary releases of otherwise exempt information, they're utilizing technology to help improve foia administration. the department of justice continued to work diligently throughout the year to both encourage and assist agencies in their compliance with the foia. i firmly believe it's vital that foia professionals have a complete understanding of the law's legal requirements and the many policy considerations that contribute to successful foia administration. as a result one of the primary ways my office encourages compliance is through the offering of a range of

government wide training programs and the issuance of policy guidance. if 2014 alone my office provided training to thousands of individuals on a range of topics including comprehensive guidance on the foia's proactive provisions. that included strategies for identifying frequently requested records and it also encourages agency to post records even before receipt of a single request. in accordance with the president's and attorney general's foia directives. first, in collaboration with the team at gsa we're working on a creation of a consolidated foia portal that will be added to the resources available on foia.gov. it will include additional tools to improve the customer

experience. second, oi px has been working on the po tem content of a core foia regulation. we formed an inner agency task force to tack tl project. we've met with civil society organizations to get their input and the team is hard at work drafting language for this important new initiative. we look forward to our engagement with both civil society and the agent colleagues as we work forward on that project. third in an effort to improve internal best practices we launched best practices work shops and we started there with the important topic of improving timeliness and reducing backlog. these work shops provide a unique opportunity for agencies to learn from one another. and then finally just this past march i'm very pleased that we pleated our commitment to enhance foia training by making standard e learning training resources available to all federal employees.

embracing attorney general holder's message that foia is everyone's responsibility, the new training resources target the entire spectrum of federal employees. these training resources are available to all agency personnel anywhere in the world and at no cost. they address the foia's many procedural and substantive requirements but they also emphasize the importance of good communication with requesters and good customer service. very important topics. given how important all of this is to the successful implementation of the foia, i'm very proud that oip can provide these resource to all government officials across the world. so in closing, in the face of many challenges this past fiscal year, agencies have achieved successes in many area. we certainly believe there's more work to be done and we're continually looking for way to continue the process we're proud of what we've done so far and we look forward to working with the committee as we jointly

pursue the goal of improving access to information. thank you. >> thank you. ms. neuman you're now recognized for five minutes. >> good morning chairman ranking member cummings and members of the committee. i'm very pleased to be here before you today to discuss how dhs implements the freedom of information act. dhs is composed of several distinct components each with unique authorities and categories of records. our components operate their own foia offices staffed by foia professionals who respond directly to requesters seeking requests. every foia request deserves careful corporation to promote transparency while protecting the privacy of individuals and operational sensitive information. we have some significant challenges and we also have some -- we've done some good

things. as you know, dhs gets the largest number of foia requests of any federal agency and produces the largest number of responses. in fact dhs received 40% of all foia requests submitted to the government in fiscal year 2014. in this 12-month period alone we received an unprecedented 291,242 requests. as a result, we also have the largest backlog. since january 2009, dhs experienced a 182% increase in its number of foia requests. at the same time our foia professionals have significantly increased their output to meet this increased demand. in fiscal year 2014 these professionals processed 238,031 requests. the department of homeland security takes our obligation to promote transparency and further

the values of open government embodied in the statute very seriously. nonetheless, we face serious challenges to connecting requestsers to the records they seek. i'd like to briefly highlight some of the measures we've implemented to address these challenges including to reduce or backlog. the government accountability office was asked by congress to review dhs's processing of foia requests. in november 2014 gao published its report with four recommendations. we concurred with all four recommendations and are taking steps to address each one. for example, as recommended, we're in the process of finalizing our foia regulation, including preparing to publish a federal register notice seeking comment. we sought assistance in developing an implementation of a policy to ensure that all dhs components are capturing foia

costs consistently. i've initiated several new measures that are designed to improve dhs foia operations in both the near term and the long term. first in january of this year i requested a top to bottom independent review of six dhs component foia offices. that review is currently under wap and is being conducted by the office of government information services. second my office is establishing a short term blanket purchase agreement for foia support services. this contract will be utilized as needed by our component offices that require additional help. my goal is here to empower the components to take quick action to manage the backlog surges before they get out of control. third, my foia leadership team has met with colleagues in other agencies to learn about the types of records that can be made available through

technology and other ru teen procedures that are currently sought through a foia request. fourth, my office continues to look for greater efficiencies from the use of technology. we offer each component foia office the ability to use a centralized foia tracking processing and reporting case management system with customizable features. we're also working with the dhs information officer to develop an e foia mobile application that will enable the public to submit foia requests and check the status of the requests from the smartphone or mobile device. as a result of these measures, we're starting to see a slow but steady reduction in our backlog. yesterday i learned that as of may 2015 the dha backlog was reduced by 10% to 92066 since the beginning of the fiscal

year. despite the challenges we face, i'm pleased with the administrative and technological infrastructure we put in place is resulting in a trend in the right direction. we're working hard every day to provide the access under the statute and there is room for considerable improvement. i look forward to working with you to improve foia at dhs and i welcome your recommendations and look forward to taking your questions. thank you. >> thank you. mr. fontenot. >> thank you for the opportunity to testify today on treasury's role on fostering transparency. i'm the assistant secretary of management at the department of treasury and the designated department's chief foia officer. i take compliance with foia seriously. although the nine treasury bureaus independently process the requests to each bureau, my team provides agency wide

guidance and training, as well as monitoring treasury foia performance and proposing agency wide improvements. when i joined treasury six months ago, i was pleased to learn that they were implements new measures to improve efficiency treasury wide. the department mental offices, my department doubled the number of full time foia employees. first we devoted time closing the oldest cases. we made significant changes to procedures and cases and timeliness. we have more work to do. but these initial measures are already producing results. for example, in fiscal year 2014 the treasury wide foia backlog decreased by 8%. we closed 13 of our oldest 20 cases, agency wide. we also processed more foia

requests in less time. treasury closed 73% of incoming cases requests within 20 days. that's a 3% increase over 2013. five of nine treasury bureaus closed more requests than they received during the fiscal year. four treasury bureaus ended the year with a zero backlog. and released more information overall. in response to 90% of cases in which responsive records were identified. in some today treasury is releasing more information processing more requests in less time and making tangible progress on reducing its pending foia inventory and closing its oldest cases compared to 18 months ago. but we also remain committed to making further strides. my team and i will continue to lean forward to drive improvements and provide as much information as we can as quickly as we can with the spirit and letter of foia. i welcome your questions today.

thank you. >> thank you. ms. howard, you're now recognized for five minutes. >> thank you for having me here today. i'm mary howard and i'm the director of irs's privacy governmental liaison and disclosure operations. i'm here today to testify on the irs's policies and procedures in regarding and complying with requests for information about the freedom of information act. each year the irs processes thousands of foia requests most of which require labor intensive searches of both paper and electronic records. despite this volume and complexity, the irs closes more than 80% of its cases in 30 business days or less. the average cycle time generally hovers right around 21 days. the irs follows a standard proceed for handling each foia request it receives. this involves analyzing the

request to determine whether it can be processed under foia determining the scope of the request and searching for responsive records, reviewing material to decide what should be released or withheld and sending a response to the requester. over the last several years our foia operation faced a number of challenges. for example, the size of an average foia request and the volume of potentially responsive documents have mushroomed as more and more requests require serging e-mail and other electronic documents. broad requests can easily result in the irs needing to collect and redact thousands of documents in response to a single requester. another challenge involves personnel. we've managed to protect the yor all staffing of the foia process in irs, experiencing only a slight decline over the last few fiscal years, despite financial constraints and related hiring

freezes. but a high turn overrate created some difficulties. replacing our foia specialists involves not only hiring new workers but also training them to bring them up to the level to handle the complex requests. the cuts to the budget had a negative impact on the replacement hiring and the delivery of the training. the net result has been a gradual loss in the expertise in the foia area at irs over the past several years. the problem is expected to get worse. we estimate that more than 60% of our foia professionals will be eligible to retire over the next five years. another critical aspect of the irs's ability to adequately respond to foia requests involves the management of official records. here too the irs faces significant challenges. this is largely because we don't have systems that allow us to search and retrieve electronic

cases and e-mails. we're also unable to categorize label and centrally store electronic records including e-mail. i hope you'll ask me some questions so i can give you more insight into that. without this capability we must conduct an account by account search for document to comply with the foia request. this is a tedious time-consuming process. additional funding would allow us to upgrade our infrastructure platforms. we could then respond to very large document requests far more quickly than we're able to now. let me turn now to the events of 2013, beginning that summer the irs was faced with an unprecedented number of foia requests related to the processing of applications for the 013 c 4.

at the same time, four congressional committees, the treasury inspector general and the department of justice were all requesting large amounts of documents from irs on the same issues. the irs created a special team to review and produce documents responsive to the six official investigations. the team redacted the comets required by 6103 of the internal revenue code to ensure that federal tax information was prosected appropriately. because of this experience on conducting reviews and producing documents for litigation, the irs office of chief counsel performed the 6103 reviews and the document production. that was required for all of the requested documents expect those going to the tax writing committees. while counsel was conducting this effort, disclosure staff was addressing and responding to their regular foia case work that flows in at a rate of 10 to 12,000 cases per year. the irs determined that

responding to the investigations would take precedent over responding to the request for information under foia. and the irs produced to congress more than 1 million pages of documents for those investigations. given that all of the foia documents need that 6103 review, we waited until we had fulfilled the request of the investigators until we went forward. of the 154 cases i mentioned, 34 remain pending with the dpis disclosure process. we regret that the process has taken this long but we felt there is no other way that we could respond appropriately to congress and the investigators. the irs remains committed to foia as we work through these challenges. this concludes my statement and i look forward to responding to your questions. >> thank you i'll now recognize the gentleman from michigan, mr. robert for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman and

thank you for the hearings of the past couple of days. as i've contemplated on what we've heard in the last two days, i'm just absolutely convinced that foia really isn't the problem. it's just an evidence within an outcome of the problem. increasing size of government and the criminal of government is the problem. i mean it's an absolute fact that we have amongst the highest paid bureaucratsed a smin tering these programs in government anywhere in world. we have the highest technology at least amongst the highest technology of any place in the world to administer our bureaucracy. we have the largest number of bureaucrats in the world to administer our bureaucracy.

and with the size of government like this, why would we expect anything other than a huge huge number of foia requests coming from increasing number of american citizens who feel under attack from their own government. they're regulated. they're taxed. they're supervised. they're overseen. almost more than any other free country in the world. so i look at our panel of witnesses and i say how in the world can you be expected to do your job in a way that satisfies not only congress but the people of the united states. they're going to ask more because they don't trust us. they're tired of being overrun. i'll get to my questions. also with all due respect if

dollars, more dollars were the answer, then the war on poverty, the war on hunger, the war on pollution, the war on crime, the war on many other things would be ended. by the way fast and furious benghazi, irs gate would be taken care of. we would know the answers. attorney general holder former attorney general holder wouldn't have been held in contempt of congress. lois lerner wouldn't have been held in contempt. foia isn't the main problem. liberty to mab's transparency from a limited government to succeed and we're not succeeding in addressing the concerns of our people. government has grown and thus it is increasingly mistrusted and it will be mistrusted in all sides of the aisles, politically speaking.

so mr. chairman i again thank you for these hearings. it just makes it clearer and clearer why we are in the bat wl the budget to reduce government to the size that liberty can expand and not-m2 ms. neuman, dhs has the largest backlog of any federal agency. how does the duplicative process of requests contribute to a processing of requests contribute to backlog? and i refer specifically to the relationship between uscis and i.c.e. >> thank you. i appreciate that question. let me just say that with respect to the backlog, any significant delays in processing requests don't meet my standards and i expect to see improvement. that goes for duplication as well. and as you may be aware, the gao studied that aspect of our foia

operations and made some recommendations that we are implementing in a number of ways. uscis and i.c.e. receive a significant number of our foia requests many of which are immigration related. there may be instances where one or more of those components holds files or holds records that are contained in the alien file. we do not we do not support unnecessary duplication and we have -- >> will the two agencies be put together in the arrangement that was in place before 2012 where they weren't duplicating? >> that's really not my decision to make. >> whose decision is it? >> it's up to the members of congress who write the statute. i will also tell you that we've implemented technology measures -- >> i don't understand that's our responsibility. it worked before 2012, at least they worked in that nonduplicative arrangement.

why can't it be put back in that? it's not congress. >> so my focus as the chief foia officer on connecting requesters with their records. and i have got to spend my time looking at the way the agency is constructing now, what infeshcys if any are preventing us from meeting our transparency mission. >> so the answer is you're not going to do anything to put the two component parts back together to stop duplication? >> i'm focusing on connecting requesters with their records. >> mr. chairman, my time expired and i didn't get the answer were on i guess i did. >> i now recognize the gentleman mr. lynch for five minutes. >> thank you chairman and ranking member for your courtesy this morning. i want to thank the witnesses if are your help in addressing this issue. ms. barr, there has been a lot of discussion up to now about secretary clinton and her use of

personal e-mail for official business. it's my understanding from the documents that we have here that secretary rice con da leeza rice did not use a personal e-mail account for -- a personal e-mail account for official business. is that right? >> yes that's what i understand. i understand that she used -- she has told us that she did not conduct a lot of official business overe-mail but when she did, she used the state department at. >> okay. how about secretary of state colin powell. in his auto biography he admits that he used his personal e-mail account for official business all of the time. i have a great quote here. he says, this is a quote from former secretary of state colin

powell, quote, to compliment the official state department computer in my office, i installed a laptop computer on a private lane. my personal e-mail account on the laptop allowed me direct access to anyone online. i started shooting e-mail to my principle assistants to individual ambassadors and increasingly to my foreign minister colleagues who were trying to bring their ministries into the world at the speed of light. so do we have any e-mails from secretary powell? >> no, we do not have any e-mails from secretary powell. we did ask him if he had any official records. he noted when he came back to us that, you know, he started at what was then the beginning of the state department e-mail age but he did not have any records to return to us. >> and you know, there was some critical decisions made, his

speech before the u.n. about the existence of weapons of mass destruction. we don't have any e-mails regarding that decision and how those statements were made? >> i have no personal knowledge about that, sir. >> yeah. you know this is troubling because it seems in the case of secretary clinton the way people handle their e-mails, at least it's been suggested that really determine her fitness of whether or not she can be president. that's basically the statement that is being made today. and i'm just i'm puzzled because secretary rice did not perform in this manner, secretary colin powell did not perform in that and i'm just wondering if we have a uniform standard here it doesn't seem from the federal

records act that it requires people to not use personal e-mail. >> when we are dealing with the federal records act, of course we have to work with employees to maintain records. but with regard to using nongovernment e-mail services, if people do that we ask that they capture those records by copying their official account. we are working very hard looking forward to make sure that people understand what their requirements are under the federal records act. if, for example, they are out and their blackberry stops working, to make sure that they copy their accounts. but overall i would say that what is most important to us is that we have that collection now and we are processing it

accordingly. >> appreciate it. i only have a little bit of time left here. it's my understanding that former secretary clinton delivered about 55000 pages in e-mail. >> that's correct. >> have any of the other secretaryies of state during your time you've been there a while secretary rice secretary colin powell? >> no, only from secretary clinton. >> all right. that's about my time, mr. chairman, i yield back. thank you. >> i'll now recognize myself for five minutes. ms. howard, the white house on april 15th 2009 sent a directive out, it says from gregory craig, counsel to the president, says, quote, this is a reminder that executive agencies shall consult the white house counsel's office on all document requests. this need to consult with the white house arises with respect to all types of document requests including

congressional committee results, judicial subpoenas and foia requests. so my question to you, ms. howard what percentage -- when congress sends you a request for information, what percentage of that do you share with the white house? >> to the extent that i've been involved in responses to congress or responses to foia, we have never shared information with the white house. i became aware of this memo when we were asked for some information to actually demonstrate how many times we had this interaction. it was a foia request. i was curious as to why that we were getting a foia request since we don't have interaction with the white house on foias. >> so you've never sent anything to the white house? >> i can't speak for the entire irs. i mean that would be a question for chief counsel or the

commissioner. >> so if you get a subpoena from the united states congress you get a subpoena from me you don't share that with the white house? >> the fact that it exists? yeah, we may share the information that we got the subpoena or we may share the fact that we're working on a subpoena. but the actual documents produced for the subpoena. >> yeah. >> we would produce those documents and redact them for 6103. again that might -- >> what percentage of those do you share with the white house? >> what percentage do i share with the white house? >> yes. >> would be zero. >> you do not shoir thoseare those to the best of your knowledge -- >> the disclosure office does not consult the white house. >> the white house told you're supposed to do it. the white house directed you to do that. are you telling us that you didn't comply with the white house request. >> kind of towards the end of my career i'll be real honest with you. i saw this memo.

pi was amazed to see the memo. it's written to agency counsel which is not me. i looked through the procedures that we have in our internal revenue manual which is basically how we run the operations and i never saw this. >> before -- >> i never saw any evidence that this was incorporated and i ignored it. >> when you respond to a letter from congress or there's a response to a subpoena from congress, who sees that before we get it? >> in most instances, counsel would look at something like that, the chief of staff or the commissioner. again, that's really a question for the commissioner in -- >> lois lerner request for documents from lois lerner, who saw those documents? who did you have to get clearance from before we get those documents? because we still don't have them all. >> the 6103 redactions, as i said in any testimony, were done

by chief counsel, the office of chief counsel. we may have redacted some of those documents -- well you don't get the foia redactions. >> what signatures do you need to see on there before you send it back to us. >> i'm not certain because i'm not the one doing the sending. >> but you're the direct of this and you've heard of lois lerner i would hope by now. >> i know lois lerner. >> who do you have to check off with before we get the documents? >> again sir with all due respect that was not a process that i was personally involved in. >> yo had to guess that e with would ask about lois lerner. >> which is why the commissioner thought that perhaps he might be the best to answer your questions. >> you're the director. it's your job and role and responsibility. >> no, sir. my job is the foia program. >> your title, correct director privacy governmental liaison and disclosure. >> right. >> that is your title. >> that is my title. >> you're telling my ear not responsible for the governmental liaison and disclosure part of that? >> not in the context that

you're asking me. >> why because it's lois lerner. >> no. because i think it was an unprecedented voluminous -- >> what was unprecedented about asking about information about lois lerner. >> i think lois lerner was the tip of the iceberg. >> really. so do we. what makes you think it's the tip of the iceberg. >> in terms the way the request wu structured. >> what was so striking about it? it's pretty simple. we're asking for all of her e-mails in a certain time frame. how hard is that. that should take about ten seconds, right? what's so hard about producing those documents? why does it take them so long. it's taken years. >> ki not talk to the specific documents about lois lerner. >> so when a request -- >> insight into -- >> when the request came in a letter and a subpoena who does that go to? >> the commissioner. >> it doesn't go to you? >> no.

not at first. >> but when we send these documents over, this doesn't land on your desk? >> it does not land on my desk. >> does it land op your staff's desk? >> no. it landed on the desk of the commissioner and the chief counsel. >> they're solely responsible for the fulfillment of that request and for the subpoenas correct? if it doesn't go to you, you're the director of privacy governmental liaison and disclosure and you're telling me that your department, your group doesn't get that because it came from congress, right? >> no. because we made a business decision that because of the scope of that request we would set up a special project team and that -- >> who decided that? i want some names here. >> i think it was before his time. i guess the acting commissioner. it was before my time too. it's whatever i tell you is just hearsay. but it was my understanding that the -- >> we expect a little bit more. >> again it was not, it was not

it was not directed -- >> it doesn't come through your office, your department your group, whatever you want to call it. >> we might be involved in it but so are the i.t. people. >> was the lois lerner case dealt with differently than anything else? you said it was unprecedented. i want to know why. >> i think because there was a lot of other 504 c 3 -- c 4 documents that were requested at the same time. >> so anything that had to deal with those documents, the c 4 documents, went a different direction than normally. >> it went into sort of a project team where we felt that we could handle -- >> there's a special project team that's set up. >> there was at the time. i don't believe it's still functioning. >> why was there a special team set up? >> because of the volume of -- >> it didn't have anything to do with volume. it had to do with the topic, didn't it? >> i don't believe so no. it was a business decision of how we would best use your resources. looking back on it, it was a

positive thing for the disclosure office because we could do all of our regular foia work kb except for those particular topics. >> so i mean what you're telling me is anything that came in on this topic, c 4, not just lois learn, c 4 went in a different rout, to commissioner and the general counsel. there's only two political appointees in all of the irs, the commissioner and the general counsel, only two out of 90,000. and you're telling me that those requests went a different route than normally anything else does and it went to them kreth? that's exactly what you told me. >> i don't want to go on record as saying that i know specifically where requests went to. my understanding is that requests from congress are given a certain level of respect and concern so that they go to the commissioner's office first and are parcelled out as to who is going to work them after that.

>> do you know who the lead of that special project team was? >> i do not. >> all right. my time has expired. we'll now recognize mr. cummings for five minutes. >> thank you very much. mr. neuman you've said there was room for i improvement. can you tell us what those improvements might be that you were talking about? you know, i want to get to the bottom line and be effective and efficient. so tell me -- >> as do i, congressman cummings. one of the things i did when i first came aboard was to try to understand what -- where some of the bottlenecks were in the department in terms of the component backlogs and understand what the reasons for those backlogs might be. in doing so i did identified some of the systemic challenges and decided that we really did

need to address in the long term an independent comprehensive review of what these systemic challenges are are what the reasons are and then get some best practices place for dealing with those, in the interim i decided that i could implement some more immediate measures to address some of these challenges. for example. >> i want to know what still needs to be done to improve i don't have a lot of time. >> sure, we, i personally believe the that we can leverage technology and deploy much more advanced technology throughout the department to that can be used to the address. >> what's it going to take to make that happen? >> we're not process of doing that already. we rolled out a successful pilot to reduce the backlog and duplication and it's been adopted by 11 components thus far and others are in line to adop it. >> how many components are there? >> there are 15, 11 of these

components have adopted this -- >> so you need four more is that right? >> yes, sir. >> four to go. when do you expect that to happen? >> i personally don't, i'm not aware of the time frame. i would be happy to confer with my staff. >> confer, i would appreciate it if you confer and get back to me and let me know when that will happen. i'd also like for you because i don't have a lot of time, i'll ask that you-all give us your recommendations, you know, as i listen you don't make everything sound so rosey and i want to try to get to the bottom line of what the problems are. we heard a lot of testimony yesterday and all fairness to you, i think all of you are probably doing a whole lo of good things, but the the same time we have to balance that against what we have heard over the last day or so. i want to ask you, will you do that for me ms. newman. >> yes, i will. >> i want to ask some key questions because i want to follow up on what mr. lynch was

talking about and thank you for being here there have been intense discussion about former secretary of state hillary clinton and her use of personal e-mail for official business. however, new documents, new documents, which we received late last night raised significant questions about the e-mail usage of former secretaries of state condoleezza rice and colin powell, the state department sending letters to the former secretaries of state last fall requesting information about the use of personal e-mail for official business. on december 5th 2014 secretary clinton and her attorneys responded by providing more than 30,000 e-mails totaling 55,000 pages. the state department now has those e-mails and is currently reviewing them to make them

available to the public. is that correct, everything i just said? >> yes, sir. >> all right. neither secretary rice nor secretary powell provided any e-mails to the department in response, is that correct? >> yes, sir. >> not one. we notice secretary powell used a personal e-mail account for work because he wrote about this in his buy ogdeniography and talked about that. unlike secretary clinton secretary powell did not preserve any of these e-mails, is that correct? >> yes he told us he did not have access to those anymore. >> so that means you didn't have access to them? >> no. >> last night the committee received new documents regarding former secretary of state condoleezza rice.

in 2007, the watchdog group citizens for responsibility and ethics in washington submitted a foyer request seeking state department policies governing the use of secretary rice's e-mail e counselaccounts and requested e-mails as well as quote e-mail messages that have been sent by the secretary of state from any private mail account and that pertained to official government business end of quote. we received the state department's response to this inquiry last night, i states that although department officials are still looking and i quote, no responsive material was found end of quote, so are you aware of any e-mails that have been identified from secretary rice's e-mail account?

any? >> no, i'm not aware, well i want to make sure they understand your question, are you asking me if i'm aware of any e-mails from her account that should be regarded as responsive material to this request? >> that's right. >> okay, no, i'm not aware of any that are responsive to this particular request. >> all right. we already know you don't have e-mails from secretary powell is that right? >> yes. >> do you have e-mails? >> i have -- you mean personal? >> no, no no no no response to your request. you sent the request. do you have any e-mails with regard to the request? >> no. >> so ms. bar, as you stated today, can you tell us with certainly whether secretary rice even had an official state department e-mail account?

>> yes it is my understanding that she had an official state department request. >> acounseldown. >> account sorry. i would also like to say that e maims are not the only way we capture records, we have cables, memos, agendas, we have lots of other ways that we capture official records so while in these two instances, we did not have e-mails to respond to requests. we have other types of records that rewe maintain that are looked at to see if we have responsive materials when people ask us through the process. >> i appreciate that. right now i'm talking about e-mails, you don't have e-mails from secretary powell. >> that are responsive to the

request. >> yes, ma'am. and you haven't gotten them from secretary clinton, i'm sorry, sec tarretary rice. >> that is correct. >> it's amazing, secretary powell and rice served during critical times in this nation's history during 9/11 attacks the war in afghanistan and the war in iraq yet, as far as we can tell, state department officials don't have their e-mails from this eight-year critical period. ms. barr secretary powell is straightforward about his failure to preserve e-mails but secretary rice has never spoken publicly about hers, in response to the state department's letter last fall, her representative responded by proclaiming and i quote, secretary rice did not use a personal e-mail account for official business end of quote. do you know if secretary rice's attorney conduct add thorough review of her personal e-mail a account like secretary clinton

did? >> i'm not personally familiar with what her attorney did to respond to that request. >> my time is running out. these new revelations are startleing so i hope we'll look at that era look we've been looking at the present here with regard to these e-mails, already. >> i think we recognize mr. meadows. >> thank you mr. chairman let me come to you, did you watch the testimony yesterday where we had 12 different witnesses across two panels talking able foyer requests? >> i didn't watch it but i was keeping up with it throughout the afternoon. >> so you are aware of their less than flattering testimony as it relates to your particular involvement with foyer requests, maybe not yours personally but the justice department, are you aware of that? there was less than flattering.

>> i don't know if i would agree with that, i don't agree with that characterization. i understand that requesters have examples of things that are frustrating experiences. >> so what you're saying is that the testimony that we heard yesterday was just a few examples of frustrating because that's not what i got from the that and i would characterize it as less than flattering. i'm having a hard time reconciling your opening testimony with the testimony of a number of witnesses yesterday with regards to the department of justice and your responsiveness because you're opening testimony provided very glowing terms so i guess my question for you is on scoring different agencies on how they respond, who gets the best marks and who gets the worst marks on

your scoring? because i understand you score. >> right, we do an assessment every year. let me -- >> just who gets the best ones? i don't need -- i've got five minutes, who gets the best scores and who gets the worst scores? >> well, we have, if you look at the assessment, we have a range of milestones, over 20 some milestones, we rank and score on a bunch of things. >> how does the justice department score on those milestones? >> justice department scores quite well. >> would you suggest if you're seeing the milestones and you're scoring the milestones the that the testimony from all these other folks who if they set milestones they wouldn't give you high marks, how do you give yourself high marks? >> i actually for the past two years, congressman, have been working collaboratively to set the milestones, it's actually been a joint effort.

>> ms. atkinson gave us an example of foyer requests and it taking ten years her daughter was eight. she was 18 by the time the foyer request. would you say the that that is a great response? >> no of course not. >> would you say that that response is unique, that the there are none others like that throughout the foyer requests? >> of course not as well. >> so what part of violating the law and it gives particularry responses, what point of violating that law does the department of justice condone? >> i think that it's important, it's important to look at areas that need improvement in i. >> what part of the law. >> improving -- >> does the justice department condone? >> we -- >> so you don't condone

violating the law? >> of course not, of course not. >> so i would think that would be your answer. do you violate the law? >> of course not. >> so you never violated that law? >> we work hard very we work very hard at my office. >> i believe the that. >> to promote transparency and compliance with the law. >> i believe that. so the question under sworn testimony today is the justice department does the not violate, has never violated the foya law, is that your testimony? >> i think what you're asking me is do we ever respond to requests beyond 20 working days. >> is that the law? >> the law allows for extensions of time. >> have you ever gone beyond the law? >> so i wouldn't characterize it as going beyond the law because the law actually recognizes in many different aspects the foya recognizes the reality, congressman the need

for agencies to take more time to respond to certain requests. >> all right. is there anything in the law, so let me ask you, is there anything in the law that would ever give you waivers to the allow ten years to respond to the a foya request because i can't find it, can you show, direct me to where it would be ten years? >> sure sure, the way the timing provision is set out in the foya is it's in section 6. there is a basic response time of 20 days and you can ask for ten additional days and steps agencies can take if they need beyond the additional ten days. there is a series. >> can you show me where it's okay for ten years? >> do you believe it's in there for ten years? >> what i know is in there is

working more than ten days. >> recognize the gentlemen from virginia. >> thank you mr. chairman. ms. barr i must say i am reeling from the stunning revolution that you have no e-mails from two former secretaries of state who covered the entirety of the bush administration, and i want to make sure i understood your answers to mr. comings very clearly. you are the top foia official at the department of state, is that correct? >> yes, sir. >> if i understand your sworn testimony, you're saying that as of right now, the state department has the not been able to identify any e-mails from secretary powell or secretary rice is the that correct? >> what i was saying is that the state department did not have any e-mails that were responsive to the request. >> do you have other e-mails?

>> i know that we have other e-mails for secretary rice. i'm not sure what we have in our collection for secretary powell my statements were based on what i understood to be a summery of how we had requested a number of former secretaries to come back -- >> ms. barr, my time is limited. my time is limited. i'm going to help you clarify your testimony. so are you saying you actually do have e-mails from secretary powell that -- >> i'm not sure if i have actual e-mails from secretary powell in general. is that what you're asking? >> i'm asking is there any evidence at all of any e-mails from secretary powell on his official or personal e-mail

accounts that you have access to as the head foia official as department of stay? >> i know that he did not provide any copies of e-mails of official records. >> really? for four long years -- >> please let me finish, okay? >> please do so in a concise fashion. i only have five minutes. >> yes, sir. >> go ahead. >> i don't have any e-mails that were responsive to the our request. >> you keep using that phrase. do you have e-mails from colin powell that you have access to. >> my personal knowledge of what we might have in general i'm not sure. >> you're not sure. do you arehave access -- >> the thought the question asked to me before was much more specific. >> do you have access -- since you're not sure about colin powell, which i still find stunning, there is no evidence of any but you're the not sure.

what about secretary condoleezza rice? >> i know she used a state.gov account and i'm sure we have access to them but i thought the question was in the context of responsive material or -- >> what do you mean? >> because we had a request. >> and your testimony was there is no evidence of e-mails from her responsive to the requests. >> yes. >> none? >> we didn't provide any. >> what happened to them? >> the it's not responsive, we don't supply it but that doesn't mean that the e-mails, that the there are no e-mails period from her. >> but there are some e-mails from her? you're not sure about colin powell but you're sure about secretary rice. >> i know secretary rice used the state.gov account. >> which means they are preserved somewhere. >> somewhere. >> have you ever seen one?

>> no, not personally. >> i find that amazing as well. do the federal records act apply to secretaries powell and secretary rice? >> yes, it applies to all but again, federal records can be more than e-mail. >> i understand that. but let's stick with e-mails for a minute. >> okay. >> so is it in compliance with the federal records act to in fact wipe out e-mails whether they are on your personal acounsel or your official account? >> it is not, people are, we ask each employee to preserve official records and that's the responsibility for every employee. >> right. >> and we have to depend on individual employees to carry out their responsibilities.

>> so just to summarize, if i get, and please correct me if i get i wrong your testimony is you're unaware of surviving e-mails from secretary powell response -- >> i you said personally. >> i understand, you have a title. presumably, you would know if anybody knew but we'll use your phrase responsive to the request. in that lane there are no surviving e-mails from secretary colin powell the that you're aware of. >> that are responsive. >> with respect to secretary rice similarly, you're unaware of surviving e-mails from secretary rice responsive to the request? >> that is creek. >> there may be or in fact your guess is there are surviveing e-mails from her but they are outside that lane of responsive to the request? >> yes, sir. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> we'll rick news mr. heist for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. yesterday, as you well know,

this committee heard testimony from several esteemed members of the press and outside groups who have experienced tremendous problems with foia requests and quite frankly, i was shocked and astonished by the testimony we heard yesterday. several comments stick to my mind, one in parparticular who used the phrase criminal obstruction to do with foia requests with the irss targeting of groups and an official told him if you scrutinize thegovernment will scrutinize you. moments ago ranking member cummings said all of you are making things sound rosey. we have a mess with potential criminal obstruction taking place. ms. howard, is that what tom

fitten described common practice with the irs? >> it's not my experience it's any practice thewithin the irs. i don't see an intent -- >> so you see no targeting take place. you would deny what came out nationally. >> out side my area of expertise. i can speak to the records production. >> if someone makes a foia request to the irs, is that personal potentially a tar he for retaliation? >> no, sir. >> okay. so you would deny that there has been any type of retaliation audits that type of thing from the irs because of people so-called skrud newsingiez scrutinizing. >> the way foia requests come in, logged into a system and the folks that work the foia

requests have access to the system and rest of the irs has no need for access -- >> that's not my question. my question is has the iirs participated? >> i have no direct knowledge of audit side of the house. that's not my area of expertise. >> but you have knowledge of foia side of things. >> and you're denying there would be any such retaliation. >> i have not shared any information with anybody that would be in a position to retaliate. >> okay. let me go further to a comment you said made a little bit earlier with the chairman regarding lois lerner are you saying and i just want to clarify your testimony here today, are you saying there was no special treatment that was given to her for