the administration's cross agency priority goal sharing quality services which i co-lead. the goal exists to address the fact that 40% of federal leaders report that they are not satisfied with administrative support in the government. as the first federal agency to have an agency-wide chief customer officer, gsa has a long-standing culture of being customer orinanted and understands how to bring modern solutions to government.

the existing capabilities within gsa provide a fertile environment to increase sufficiency, decrease cost and improve life cycle of administrative employee services. gsa already provides hr services to opm and other agencies including time and attendance and lead management services. gsa and opm also have an extensive partnership on the human capital training services program with gsa and opm each providing subject matter experts and contracting expertise. the administration's reform plan provides a path to remaking government to be more responsive, efficient and effective in service of the american people. i look forward to working in partnership with this committee, opm and the federal agencies we serve to bring about this needed change. thank you for the opportunity to be here today. i am happy to answer any questions you may have.

>> thank you. >> chairman lankford, chairman johnson, members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to be here today and to discuss the administration's commitment to aligning the agencies to better meet the needs of the american citizen. as director of opm i understand the importance of an effective, strategic workforce alignment and how the organizations can continue to re-organize the realization of positive results. there has not been comprehensive civil service reform for over 40 years now. and the way in which certain government functions and programs are organized does not enable our federal workers to excel at the delivery on mission. president trump's reorganization proposal is a comprehensive attempt to address these issues particularly by elevating opm's

strategy policy governance functions and aligning transactional based services to the new gsa. i wanted to be clear on this one point. this proposal is not a secretive plan to fire civil servants, rather it is an opportunity to elevate the federal civil service and workforce management functions to maximize operational efficiency for human capital services. the executive office of the president released the plan recommending the reorganization of opm and the processes by which the federal personnel management and operations functions are coordinated. the main objective of this proposal is to enable opm to focus on its core strategic mission which is to serve as the personnel policy manager for the federal government. this proposal recommends moving opm's policy function into the eop. the details of this piece of the transition will be further developed in a later stage of

our overall re-organization process. and i would follow additional discussions with all of the stakeholders. discussions are focussed on realignment of opm's hr solutions which primarily includes reimbursable hr services. by transferring the services, the human capital function can remain at opm and allow for a more comprehensive approach for tre strategic workforce initiatives. opm can better coordinate across the federal government which includes ploy compensation, workforce supply and demand, identification of workforce skills, leadership and talent management and other issues. opm could also modernize the approach of human resource policy with the core focus on strategy and innovation, workforce and mission achievement, senior talent and total compensation and ploy

performance. re-organization is just one tool among the administration committed to using to drive transformational change across the federal government. as with most agencies named in the overall re-organization plan we are currently developing a detailed implementation plan. in support of this proposal i have been participating in ongoing discussions with gsa and opm on the specifics of the implementation. i expect to have future conversations with employee groups, members of congress as we gain more detailed insight into what is necessary to move forward. i understand there are a lot of questions about this proposal and its impact on our federal workforce. i look forward to having this continued conversation about it. i thank you for the opportunity to testify and share the vision of this proposal. i welcome any questions that you may have. >> chairman, ranking member, we

are deferring our questions to the end. i want to recognize senator for questions. >> thank you to my chair and ranking member. thank you ms. murphy for being here and for your work on behalf of the american people. i wanted to start with the question to both of you. as i said last week, we all share the priority of working towards a more efficient and effective federal government. i know when we have met before we have talked about that. i think this plan can be a starting point for an important conversation about how to reorganize the federal government. as we all know the devil is in the details. as governor, i propose changes to the structure of our state's government so i appreciate the challenges that come along with this kind of proposal. on this opm and gsa recommendation specifically, i'm curious to hear where the idea came from. we spoke last week in our

hearing about how some of the ideas were top down and some were bottom up. was this an idea that came from the agency or the white house or somewhere else? >> thank you, senator for the question. it is an iterative process. the executive order happened 18 months ago. agencies submitted their ideas to opm through synthesis of this. opm prepared the overall proposal and released it to agencies in an iterative process. since then emily and i have set up task forces to understand each organization. there is a lot to learn. we are making sure that they are working together and making the tough decisions on who goes

where and how the synergies can happen. >> thank you. administrator murphy, the plan calls for moving some retirement, health care and processing services into gsa. i know that in your opening remarks you touched a little bit on gsa's experience in this regard. can you drill down a little bit more? what experience does your agency have with those kinds of policies that make this a good fit? >> thank you very much, senator. i want to start by saying that the transition of either retirement or health care to gsa has not been decided. that's a phase two issue. we will look at that as 2020 or 2021 budget. we are not really a policy organization. we are an administrative back office. we take the policy directives or mission requirements from our customer agencies whether it be

opm where we work with them on things like human capital and translations contract and we then put them into implementation. we process the transactions and make things happen. we try to find the efficiencies to make it happen so that it pleases the agency to our customers and makes it easierem jobs. >> i will look forward to a little more conversation with you on that offline. i also wanted to follow up on something that you and i have discussed and that i raised last week. you and i have spoken in the past about the federal cyber security workforce and about my frustration with the difficulty we have in getting clear information about how many federal workers we have doing cyber security. i know you are working on that and that you share my frustration, but the delay and lack of information has become a real issue.

as chairman lankford noted, the russian attacks on our election infrastructure were an attack on our democracy. if russia is willing and able to attack our russian infrastructure they and others will absolutely also attack our federal agencies. we need to ensure that we have a cyber security workforce in place to prevent and mitigate those attacks. the broader opm reorganization plan calls for creating a unified cyber workforce across the federal government. could you share your perspective on that proposal? and how would the proposed changes to opm and gsa impact opm's ability to support that kind of unified workforce? >> thank you, senator. i share your concern in making sure we have a robust cyber core in our nation so that we can defend against any foreign and/or domestic threat. the actors are getting worse. it is getting more complicated and i think that our workforce needs to be as agile and nimble

going from private sector and public sector experience in getting the necessary workforce that we have. it's not just the federal workforce that we have. we have contractor workforces. we need to make sure that there is a total counting of the whole entire workforce whether it is contractor and/or federal workforce. i intend to make sure there is data available so we understand how to track people on the cyber workforce. we also need to understand the cost and the total package, the type of training they have, the type of training we want them to have. we have initiated certain workforce plans for on boarding people, flexibilities in terms of hiring, training, performance management and making sure that the federal workforce is not just stagnant, they are getting the training available for the best in class.

cyber workforce, the technology and techniques change every three to six months. it's not a two-year cycle. we need to take a look at that occupation and adjust. these things are actually accelerating much faster. >> thank you for that answer. i also want to touch a little bit on this issue with administrator murphy because there is another cyber security workforce idea that my office has been working on. there are resources in the federal government to help address known vulnerabilities, but there are fewer people proactively test frg vulnerabilities within agency systems and highlighting them for the agencies. i have been looking into creating a roving cyber i.g. or so-called red team to do that proactive testing across agencies, building on the work that is happening on the individual agency level.

we have been trying to determine the best place to house a team of people doing that kind of cross agency work. given the digital service in gsa, we consider gsa as a potential home for the team. do you think such a team could fit within gsa in the current form or expanded form that would exist under this reorganization proposal? >> thank you, senator. i would love to explore this with you because gsa is taking a proactive role in trying to identify the risks. we run diagnostics. we are working with the centers of excellence on providing cyber security as a service. i think there would be a lot of alignment there. >> thank you. thank you for letting me go over. >> i recognize chairman of the full committee. >> in last week's hearing i would consider it kind of a misunderstanding of what she was

presenting. she was presenting more of a vision. i appreciate the fact that the administration is thinking outside of the box. putting forward a proposal because these things aren't fleshed out yet. they are ideas. they are concepts. so the only question i have for both of you -- thank you for your service and willingness to work on this -- where are you in this process of this integration of this reorganization? are we at the infancy? are you a quarter of the way through? what is your process moving forward? when do you think you could provide this committee and the administration the details of what you're actually going to do? >> senator, i think we are pretty far along with the hrs portion of the work. both jeff and i have created task forces that are working together. we understand the missions and there is a lot of synergy that

already exists between the work that is already existing. right now we are trying to dive into the work being done in the support offices to make sure we have a comprehensive solution. when it comes to transitions either retirement or health care, i think that we are much, much earlier in the process for those items. >> so there are different components. >> i would agree with administrator murphy. we are taking these things in phases. we can't do it all at once. the authorities that we have, we are taking a look at what authorities we have administratively and what we need to work with congress in order to approve. the hr solutions organization is our fee for service business. it is the transactional fee for service business that has training, usa learning, jobs, a

lot of agencies come to this part of opm for services. gsa has a lot of synergies in terms of delivering services for the organization and agency. i think of this as a really good step towards the right thing, being a human capital and i.t. professional we have a distributed system of hr as well as i.t. infrastructure. could you imagine an agency that has integrated fm, financial management with systems supported in one agency? that would actually increase our transparency and accountability across all of the things that we do. our systems don't talk to one another. they are distributed. i have always said in my career in the federal service that simplification is a good back office infrastructure and that is what we are trying to achieve together with gsa. >> senator lankford and i have sponsored a bill that would give the administration the authority

to make these changes. it's almost identical. it's been tweaked to the current circumstances. it's that authority -- just listening to you, would you anticipate if you are given that authority, are you going to wait until the end point where these things are decided? or would you prioritize the integration, the reorganization in the different component parts and maybe start implementing them one after the other? >> thank you, senator. thank you for your and senator lankford's bill. i think it's 3137. i have read a bit of it. i believe it was since the 1980s we have discontinued that. it is an authority that we can take as omnibus or separate parts. i think there is room for big things to happen all at once,

but a lot of things have to happen separately, too. it gives the administration potentially some flexibility in working with speed with congress in making some decisions that we would like to both move forward on. in any change effort, you need to judge whether the easy things and high value, what are the hard things and hard value and hard things that have very little value. that is what we are doing across our reorganization plans. administrator murphy and i are trying to prioritize the things that are essential to move over to gsa as we do it administratively that are important to us. we are looking at contracting vehicles that are, in my opinion, no brainers. opm doesn't have -- it has an acquisition organization, but gsa has a significant organization. >> so, again, you would need the authority from our legislation to do the low hanging fruit, the no brainers, correct?

>> some of the things i think we can do administratively, but many other things we have to take a look at. >> so, again, the question i'm asking -- would you do this step by step, bit by bit? this is a no brainer, low hanging fruit, whether you need the authority or not, would you do this in pieces based on priorities? or are you going to wait for the whole big reorganization plan? >> we are taking a phased approach. hrs is one consideration in future financial budgets. we'll take a look at the other transactional services that opm provides such as health care and retirement. >> i agree. we are looking at this as an iterative process. we are trying to be agile and hopefully make this a part of a conversation so we can be talking to you on a regular basis about what the next steps are going to be, asking for your input and having the dialogue.

some of the work is actually happening. gsa has contracts in place where we are studying 50,000 vehicles. we have done a demonstration with the navy. they have been so happy with the way gsa managed the fleet and have asked us to take on additional 6,000 vehicles for them. so that -- we are working through hrs and we are taking a much more phased approach when it looks at the additional services within opm. >> that is the exact right approach. it calms the concerns that it is one great big old package. it is going to be a step by step approach. hopefully some of the stuff will be so obvious that we need to start making the improvements. whether we get the whole reorganization plan or not at least we will be making continuous improvement. i appreciate that.

>> thank you. by statute, the opm is an independent entity in the executive branch and among other things that sets standards in accordance with merit systems and principles around making personnel decisions based on merit. so my question is that in the reorganization plan there is a proposal that essentially will eliminate opm. and then my concern is if opm is eliminated, who will take on this independent role in the executive branch to ensure that hr decisions will be in compliance with and adhere to merit-based principles as opposed to politics? >> thank you, senator harris. that is a very important question because opm needs to play the independent role for leading the civil service and defending the principles that we have. opm is going to be in the

proposed state elevated to the executive office of the president. and it's when you have an organization where the head of the organization wants hr at the table to make decisions to be anfluencer, i think that is a very good sign in any organization that independence whether in the eop or not, we need to make sure that the opm director has that directive and continues to have that directive and legislation that supports that role. >> so i agree that it is important that we ensure that. my question is, how are you going to do that under the description of this reorganization? frankly, my concern is that this reorganization would put and make hr policy for career staff be a function of politics and not merit. that is truly my concern. how would that be addressed. i think we agree on the goal. >> i think the current laws,

none of the responsibilities or roles right now are proposed to change. it's the service functions and transactional systems that is the focus of our current planning. all of the policies and the rights of the opm director, the role of the opm director still stays in this organization and entity. >> and how does the opm director retain independence in this new organizational structure? >> i think i'm still a direct report to our president whether i'm across the street or not. our merit system's accountability group reports in to me and that organization enforces the merit system's accountability approach. i think there is enough separation between the politics and that function that it will continue to do what it is supposed to do. >> how will you deal with any pressure that is placed on you to make hr decisions based on

politics and not based on merit? >> that is the role that opm has. i swore an oath to defend the constitution and to uphold the office to be the leader of the civil service and defender of the merit system's principles and making sure it is free from politics. >> are you aware of any concerns among career staff that hr decisions are being made based on politics? >> i have not had any conversations with any career staff about threats about the political people exerting any undue influence. >> and then as you know the administration released three executive orders on may 25 which appear to be aimed at weakening the unions that represent federal workers. one of these orders in particular restricts the use of

official time by federal employees who are part of a union to represent their co workers as provided by law. among other things official time is used in such a way that it can establish flexible work hours, enforce protections against unlawful discrimination, sexual harassment being an example, and provide employees a voice on their working conditions. due to the severe restrictions on the amount of official time that employee representatives can use, will agency officials be required to stay after work hours and on weekends to address these grievances sgrievances? >> this proposal limits the official taxpayer funded union time at 25%. we are not saying don't do it. we are saying only 25%. we do have cases such as in v.a. there are over 700 employees that are on 100% time.

some of these are nurses and doctors. what we are saying is we hired you to be doctors and nurses for our veterans, but you can still use 25% of your time to represent your union. we think that that was a reasonable amount of time for any organization. each employee at a 100 gets an hour of representation. so the entire v.a. has a whole bank of hours that they can spread across each individual 25% of the time. >> in the event that 25% of the time is insufficient to meet the concerns about working conditions, about allegations of discrimination or sexual harassment, in the event that 25% of the time is insufficient to address those grievances, what allocation are you making and what have you set up in the system to allow the grievances to be met if it exceeds the 25%? my question specifically is, are you requiring that folks will

stay on weekends and after work to address it if you are not allowing them to do it during work hours? >> it is 25% of the time and the bank. it's exhaustive in terms of if you exhaust the whole entire bank. but for an individual they can only represent the union 25% of the time. that does not preclude another union member 25% of the time to use that bank of hours. it's more making sure that we have allotted a certain amount of hours and also limited the amount of time to 25% of a person's work role. >> i just have a few seconds left. i appreciate your point in theory. have you ever had the responsibility of actually working with an employee on a grievance? because if you have, you would appreciate that it takes time to establish a relationship of trust, to then understand the experience they have had and be familiar with the facts in a way

that you can sufficiently represent them in their grievance. and the idea, then, that if you have hit the 25% mark so another person will represent that employee, you can imagine how things will fall through the cracks and that ploy will not be appropriately represented in the case of a sexual harassment grievance. how are you going to deal with that? >> i think that that is a very valid concern, making sure that there are people that understand the case on both sides, making sure that you can work with your union representative to fairly and adequately represent you. 25% of the time i think is ten hours of a work week. each union member has that. and the bank we think is sufficient enough to do that. usually within these things it is just not one person representing you. it is two or three people. in the case of real experience and working at agencies, there are usually teams of people that

are working with a person that is grieving. >> thank you. >> thank you. thank you. thank you. welcome, administrator murphy. as you think some of the folks sitting here today with you have worked on real property reform. a couple of years ago i had to work with a number of members of the committee. we worked then and we work now

on real property reforms trying to make sure that we spend a lot of money on where we put our employees to work. we want to make sure they are in places where they feel appreciated. i want to ask you given the work that has been done with rob portman, he has done a lot of work with this, as well. could you just take a minute or two to give us an update on the status of the real property reform? >> i am so excited about the work we are doing on real property reform. >> i'm really excited, too. people think i'm strange. >> it's exciting work. >> i'm real excited about post reform. my wife says "get a life." >> lots of people say that to me. so i want to thank you for the work that you did in perfecting

the legislation. gsa has reached out to them. we have been pulling data together to help them. we ha we put it into an interactive map. we have been reforming leasing and trying to focus on the leases where we get the best return on results. i think i mentioned that our average tendency is -- we are at a spot where 50% of the leases are not being renewed in a timely fashion. by focussing on the highest dollar value we have been able to save $400 million. just yesterday i announced that we are taking our national capital region.

we think we can accommodate without additional -- while still giving them a quality work space to work in. we are doing a lot to expedite. we were able to transfer the department of interior's south building to the federal reserve board. i want to thank senator lankford in his role of the chairman of my appropriations subcommittee for the mark to give us a lot of money to invest and doing repairs to the building to continue to protect the property. >> one of the appropriations includes money for gsa. i want to say about $100 million to do work at saint elizabeth's as we try to move our friends from department of homeland security into this campus.

>> with 100 million that you are referring to in this year's bill, it will take about $229 million to build the new fema building on campus. we anticipate that the center office building will be ready for the secretary of homeland security to occupy starting april 1 of next year. >> that is papril fool's day. >> that's when we do our best work here. >> that is the work they did with that building, it's amazing when you think that the original building was built by patients at saint elizabeth's.

they have done a beautiful job with the building. it will be easier for employees to get into and off of the campus while helping with congestion around the area. we have been putting a lot of work into the property and invite you to see it with me. >> probably not april fool's day. >> i seem to get out every month or so. >> do you ever use the postal service? >> sir, periodically. >> we want you to use it more.

the postal service makes money on packages and parcels. amazon is one of the best customers. ups is a big customer. it's a good partnership. i used to be state treasurer and oversee most of the educators in our state and have a great interest in pensions and health care. for the record on postal reform, when i was governor we got aaa credit ratings. the same way we got a aaa credit rating they said you saw the big

liability to address. you have not set aside money for health care costs. we started doing that. we looked around at other states to see what they were doing to address liability. even today if you look to see wh what -- you look at companies very little. we have to fully fund the liability within ten years of 2007. it's just not realistic and i think it is unfair. the other thing i would say, my wife -- when she turned 65 i

would say for the record she looks about half that age. >> happy wife, happy life. when she turns 65 she got a letter and said you are worth it. you have to sign up for medicare and we will provide wrap around coverage for you. most every major company does the same thing. with the postal service most retirees, most use part a and majority of them use part b. the postal service pays into the trust fund as if everybody was going to get covered. they don't. they actually overpay. the other companies can pay less.

>> i think you both know how much respect i have for both of you. i really want to say that i'm always excited when i see you on the agenda because i know we will have a substantive discussion and it will be very helpful to us. i just want to tell you how much i appreciate your government service and your enthusiasm for the task ahead of you. one of the critical questions in any kind of re-org plan is what is the problem you are sea breezing breezing -- seeking to solve and how will this reorganization solve that problem? >> we have had many oversight hearings on this committee regarding challenges of opm. there is no doubt about it whether we need to take a look at the overall system or jobs are not functioning the way it

needs to function, i get all that. somehow just rearranging the chairs or who sits where in my opinion doesn't solve some of the problems that i see that need to be solved within opm. so what is the problem that you think will be solved by the relocation of opm. so this is kind of an umbrella. so how is that going to solve the problems thereat s that we recognized that need to be solved over at opm? >> thank you, senator. throughout my career in the

federal government we wanted to make sure that transactional and administrative things were minimized and mission delivery and performance enhancements was maximized. this is an effort to continue that effort. i did mention the systems that we have. initially 15 years ago we consolidated 22 payroll systems into four and got a lot of efficiency. administrator murphy owns part of that program to consolidate those shared service plans. they are adding time and attendance as well as other functions with hr solutions potentially going over there to gsa and envelopes a lot of hr i.t. infrastructure, usa jobs, usa learning, usa staffing which 80% of the agencies use some form or fashion of those types of i.t. solutions. >> you are saying they are

already over at gsa. >> usa learning, usa jobs and staffing are in hr solutions at opm. those are potentially going over there to add synergy to the offering that gsa would have in a consolidated fashion. the data is everywhere and the information doesn't really interact at the systems level. there is no interoperability or standardization. i will give you a concrete example, performance management systems. we don't have one or two. we have hundreds and hundreds of them. >> why does it have to go over there in order for you to solve this problem? >> i think it is operational efficiency. one part of opm does the policy

end of things. the other part of the spectrum, we provide services to agencies. general services organization does services for i.t. acquisition. i think finance and hr are the next steps to consolidating the back office infrastructure. that to me -- staying out of the fee for service type of business that hr solutions is currently engaging in? >> so -- >> losing control over the implementation of your policies isn't something you worry about?

>> i think we have been actually -- >> i know you can get along. >> before i got here -- >> i'm thinking future administrative structures -- i think both of you can make this work. i have no doubt about that. you can make it work for the retirees and employees that you both represent. i am just looking into the future saying when you don't have this relationship and don't have this kind of collaboration, where is the tension points going to be as you are looking at creating policy for federal employees that then has to be implemented and embedded within general service? >> we have even before i got here, opm has been a customer of gsa and hr. i welcome emily's comments on that type of a relationship before i got here. >> if i may, senator, gsa actually already does the

performance management system for opm. so opm is the policy for it. we implement it and we -- >> explain to me why the two agencies need to be umbrellaed. why can't we make opm the policy-making branch for public employees and give you the implementation back behind the counter operation for management? >> i think that is the intention of the plan. it's a step in that direction. gsa was set up to be a mission support agency. if we can take on better -- if we can do a better job in serving opm and other customers as they already come to us with their mission requirements, it is our job to figure out how to implement those. >> i will turn this over to

senator lankford. so i'm trying to understand, i understand what you guys are saying. i'm trying to understand what you are saying in the context of what we are reading in terms of reorganization. i think some of the issues that senator harris raised could be if you said we will have a revised opm that looks at overall policy making, recruitment, does the studies, that it becomes the employment agency, and we will tell you, gsa, how we will manage this. i get that. why do you need to co-locate opm within gsa? >> this part of opm is the services part of it. it's only that part that we are talking about right now. in future budget years we are considering federal health benefits and retirement. other than that, the enforcement, policies still stay within this organization whether you call it opm or opm, inc.

it has all of the responsibilities that congress has given them. >> if i can give an example of how we can add efficiency, within opm and hrs which is where you are contemplating bringing it. there is a group that does telework policy. we provide the space and can help consolidate the space. so by having those groups work closely aligned we think we will deliver a better solution. >> do you think you can do this piece without congressional approval? >> it is my understanding that we can do the hrs transfer. i know our lawyers are looking at it and i don't want to speak definitively 100%. it's my understanding from our task force that we can make this happen. >> i think we can do this administratively. there are some things that our

lawyers are taking a look at. there are certain authorities such as usa jobs assessment authority. it's not a fee for service business. it is opm's responsibility to post all of the jobs across the federal government. before the jobs people came to the wbasement and went through reams of paper. >> this is what i don't want to have happen. i get mad at usa jobs. it's a short trip. so i call you and say this has to get fixed. we can't be waiting. you can't do it this way. you go it's jeff's fault. i call jeff and jeff goes emily is not doing her job. i will call you and blame you. so i just want to make sure that we don't eliminate accountability in this kind of biforicated responsibility. >> maybe a good example is gsa already runs the federal business opportunities website.

it is the contracting equivalent. >> i know you can do it. >> when there is a problem with it i get the calls even though it is a government-wide policy. >> you are going to regret saying that. >> usa jobs is a tool. hiring has to be taken a look at. whether or not it is usa jobs we are take ag look -- taking a look at the entire system. we have to make sure they are doing their jobs and not trading classifications back and forth. this is like basic hr. we need to get back to the basics and read resumes versus doing the key word searches and getting the things stacked. we need to go back to the basics of how we recruit people. that is important to our organization. i have heard the names.

>> this is a committee that couldn't agree more with you. >> it's jeff's fault and jeff can say it is others fault and we can keep going from there. we do appreciate this because the usa jobs has to get fixed. >> hiring has to get fixed. that is all of our jobs but it is my responsibility. >> we'll talk about that in just a moment. >> thank you very much. i wanted to follow up with you on the official time proposal that you were discussing with senator harris. this official time proposal would limit workers to spending 25% of time on official time. the same amount of official time needs to be regardless of how many people are doing it. that means you may have four people working 25% of their time instead of one person at 100%.

why is four people doing the work part time more efficient and effective than one person full time? >> i think there is a balance, senator, between what you do un your government, what we hire people to do. >> excuse me just a send. i would say that many of us believe that representing employees and making sure their voices are heard serves the people and the government of the united states of america so i wouldn't distinguish or divide service to make sure employees are being heard from service to government. does that make sense to you? >> i understand what you're saying, senator. i think our proposal is to make sure that we have representation 25% of the time and we have a bank of hours that helps the union manage their time allotted to them that the taxpayers pay, but we also want to make sure that they do the jobs that the american public has hired them. >> and let me just -- i will

make this observation. i practiced labor and employment law over two decades. i represented a hospital in the course of doing so. my son went through 20 hours of surgery about 15 years ago, two days of surgery, 20 hours. i would not want multiple surgeons coming in and doing that 20 hours of surgery. gee, my time's up, next person. i counted on the doctors and nurses coming together and deploying their time and all the other professionals who were there in a way that got the job done, and i think it is concerning that the administration is acting as if employee representation is somehow rote work that anybody does and comes in to their 25%. to senator harris' point, this takes professional effort, and nobody but doctors and nurses,

for instance, know how important nurse-patient ratio is on the floor of a va hospital. that's why we have nurses and doctors engaging in employee representation, because they know what it is to be a doctor or a nurse in the va system. and so i just am concerned that the way the administration is speaking about this proposal really reflects a lack of respect for the importance of representing employees, especially health care employees who take care of our veterans. and i think one might think that the administration is simply trying to dilute the effectiveness of employee representatives and that concerns me greatly. thank you, mr. chair. >> do you want to respond to that either way? >> i understand your concern. i do believe that the employee representatives need to adequately represent their organizations and employees. it is concerning to me that we

have had a tip through 100% of the time having representation. this is 25% of the time. i understand you're concerned about the limitation that that 25% of the time takes and may have potential impacts on a case-by-case basis. >> thank you. and i won't prolong it other than to say it could seem pretty arbitrary and that concerns me, but i would look forward to discussing this further and thank you for your indulgence, mr. chair. >> thank you, senator. >> so let me ask you a question, and coming back to what senator heitkamp was talking about as well on the purpose of what we're trying to accomplish. how does the moving hr services over improve customer service? >> may i? >> go ahead. >> i think that if you look at the alignment of hr services with the work gsa is already doing, for example, if you're coming to gsa or opm right now

and trying to use the human capital and training services contract, it's unclear where you're supposed to go. by bringing these two groups together, it's going to be much easier for customers to work on it. we can also use assisted acquisition officials to provide greater service across the government. likewise when we're doing consulting or customer service grou, bringing them together we'll leverage that and provide a better solution. by having the work on telework, the individuals who do the telework consulting aligned with the telework space management and those who do the telework i.t. management, you're going to get a better solution just by having everyone work together. at the end of the day, this should add -- my goal under the cap goals on share and quality services is that i'm supposed to deliver $2 billion in savings over the next ten years as well as improving customer satisfaction. so my goal is to thrill my

customers and save taxpayer dollars. >> good goals, by the way. you both call that the low-hanging fruit of the proposals. administrator murphy, you gave us a little news flash saying pa phase 2 is still in conversation. tell us about that. would we have the same type of gain in moving that over as you are examining it now, customer service to improve, because if there's any one area that i could casework on dealing with opm, it's the retirement system. that area, more calls than anything else when it takes six months to move into the retirement system and you have vulnerable retirees. does that improve customer service to combine that or is that still being studied. >> we're taking a look at it right now but moving hrs versus moving health benefits, its policies and administration is a much bigger project. i think there needs to be a lot of due diligence in talking

about what gets to move. but the nature of federal employee health benefits is still a very transactional thing. unfortunately, it's very much paper based and the retirement is paper based too. we have a whole cave full of paper in pennsylvania right now. i want to make sure we have digital records for both the employee digital record will help agencies move people from agency to agency and move them to retirement systems without the paper. i want to make sure that we deliver that in good order to gsa so that the digital infrastructure can be worked on together, but i'm not having r her --

>> each agency can be standard and not have forms that people have to type and put into the system so we're digitizing things going in and off of processing it. >> so you're establishing the structure and the agencies will be responsible for populating that with information? >> the agencies with their payroll providers, which emily has. >> this is -- while jeff is taking the lead on this, it's definitely something we do in partnership because gsa in our

work with shared services through the unified shared services management group and by putting out new solutions in that area may expedite and help with that problem. >> they're establishing the system and structure. is gsa inputting that data or does each agency have the responsibility to input their own data so we have a much larger group handling this? this will be an enormous task that if you have a small team that that's what they do? that's going to take forever versus it's distributed nationwide towards the different agencies. >> the current systems that we're talking about are primarily payroll time and attendance and hris. there are consolidated organizations that provide those and i'm working with emily's organization to make sure that they have standards so they're going towards common standards in feeding these data systems, wherever they may reside.

we're consolidating that activity and making sure that there's economies of scale and that's -- we're working together on the shared services side. >> as i try to work on getting us from over 100 time and attendance systems in the government hopefully down to a manageable number, that will make it easier for jeff's systems to capture that data and come up with a better solution. same thing with payroll. if we can get from five payroll providers to a software solution service, we'll better capture the data and make it easier, less data entry work and more system transformation work. so there is going to be more than enough work to go around, but it's going to be an opportunity for us to actually use it as a chance to modernize on both sides of the equation. >> the good news story about this is that we are moving away from forms. we are moving towards data. and the data can actually be sucked up into what they call

the cloud. and then it can be repurposed into the systems for transactional systems. we have outdated systems right now that are sometimes at end-of-life mainframes and we're moving away from that type of technology across government so that the data can actually be data and can be repurposed for many different reasons. that's why enterprise employee data record is so important to us. so we can pull the data from wherever it is and pull those 188 data elements for retirement systems, whether they're at the agency or the service provider, but we require each and every one of the entities to provide us that 188 standardized data elements. >> let's stay on i.t. here because obviously one of the concerns that we have, and you recognized in your reorganization plan, talked about the challenges that opm has experienced with data

breaches, background investigations, backlogs and really i.t. problems. so if we talk about this, number one, let's all agree it's not like in the cloud. it's in a serve bank somewhere, right? you can -- >> probably in ashburn, virginia. >> right, right. emily, do you have data storage? who does this for the federal government? >> gsa actually has a center of excellence on data storage. we've been working really hard to make sure that all of our servers are consolidated and that we're using cloud optimization. they can provide better expertise to farmers and we're heading to north dakota next month to meet with some farmers to make sure we're designing the right system for them. but gsa has a lot of expertise when it comes to data storage. >> and data retrieval.

>> and we run a lot of the contracts for data storage and data retrieval. if the way we're doing things isn't the right one, we find solutions for agencies and their requirements. we don't assume there's a one size fits all for every type of data. >> so there are some synergies and some economies of scale by migrating data storage and data analysis to that place. then you become more like usda as opposed to the person who's responsible for maintenance of all these records? >> we will still from a policy standpoint be responsible for maintaining the records, but gsa, the new gsa or the government services agency, not new, the government services agency will be our service provider for data i.t. systems. >> how do you see cyber security improved with this system? >> well -- >> obviously we're all concerned still about the hack of opm. i think we're going to be

suffering consequences from that hack in years to come. i'd sit on that data for a while assuming that only so many people are going to take steps to protect whatever number they have. and so this is a ticking time bomb. let's not assume that the sky didn't fall on some public employee's head right after it happened. let's just assume that people are sitting on some of this data ready to utilize it at their leisure. so how will this system improve cyber security? >> well, in particular to that data, the investigative data, that is planned to go to dod through nbid, national background investigations. we are working with disa to be the provider for the back office infrastructure for background investigations and working with

dod on the smooth transfer of nbid to dod. >> so how do we prevent a hack in the future? you're saying you're going to migrate background checks to dod, right? isn't that what you just told me? >> the infrastructure. >> right, the infrastructure. so assuming they're more secure than what you've had in the past? >> i wouldn't say that. we actually doubled down on much of our security since the hack. government reports have actually said that opm is on the top three of protecting their systems. despite that, i want to make sure that we have the best and brightest working on defending some of the sensitive systems. i come from a background of opm and doe, department of energy. that's one of the most intact agencies in the entire government. we need help in terms of making sure we have the right people to

defendcyber security infrastructure and i believe we placed a lot of our resources in that part of our organization to get the right people and the technology and the right contractors to help test, penetration test our systems. we do penetration tests with the security agencies as well as dhs and dod so they are active partners in making sure that our infrastructure is secure. >> you know, i'm trying to figure out -- now you're telling me you're sending a piece of this to dod. i'm trying to figure out why you aren't responsible for -- if you've got the center of excellence for data storage and you're responsible for contracting with many, many of these agencies, why aren't we looking to you to be the center of excellence for cyber security? for federal data? >> i want to distinguish between the national background investigation piece that jeff is talking about. >> why?

>> the national defense authorization act a few years ago actually directed the transfer of 70% of that to the department of defense. >> so it's a statutory -- >> yes. but gsa -- department of defense is gsa's largest customer. so we do help them and partner with them on i.t. and cyber security. we partner with almost every agency in providing them assistance. >> you know, i think this is fascinating. i think this will be one of the introductory meetings. i just, again, do not want to be in that spot where i have to -- it just gets passed -- the responsibility gets passed along. you know, where i would be completely comfortable that you two are collaborating and there isn't going to be finger pointing, i don't know what that's going to look like in five years or eight years, so we have to design these systems not based on the personalities of the people in front of us but

based on clear lines of delineation and responsibility so that we better understand. this is an area that i think needs reform. i think anyone who has expected this, and we've talked about this, jeff, in my office and in this hearing work. i look forward to continuing to work with you all to understand what it is you want to do and helping you advance some of these economies of scale so that we can in fact get a better backbone for our personnel system and for our hiring system. and so thank you so much for your appearance today and thank you for this great discussion. >> thank you, senator. >> i just have one final question. when do we get a timeline? i'm sure your task forces are working together and setting some targets and goals and say by this month we need to have this done, by this month we need to have this done and we need congress to pass legislation that we may need to have

enacted. when do we get that timeline that your tacsk forces are working together to create. >> for each phase we'll set out a timeline so at least notionally we have for each section a time frame in which to produce deliverables on project plans, business cases, cost benefit analysis. that's where our team, our task force is actually mapping out that project plan so that there will be smooth transition on it. what i think you'll see after the task force has tackled this part of the hrs, you'll notice a timeline of implementation that we'll be sharing with this body as well as other key stakeholders, but we need to make sure that our task force is giving us the information. we're learning about each other's organizations right now. we're doing our due diligence on what contracting vehicles would be more efficient and effective in running many of these things, what support organizations need

to support these different activities, but i think a reasonable time frame would be probably in three, four months to work with your staff in briefing you up on where our status would be on that whole entire plan. >> that's what i need to hear. >> our goal is the end of the summer, early this fall to make this happen. >> can we set a date on that now? can we set an october 1 date? do we need to set a november 1 date? what do we get a timeline -- >> i canhate making commitments that i can't guarantee. i don't want to come up and explain to you why it was october 2nd instead of october 1st. can we set up a set of regular briefings so you know where we are when we're there? >> that's fine. what i want to know is a couple of things. one is i don't have any doubt that you are planning and working together. this is a hard process that's a practice round for harder things coming in phase 2, we get that. we want to be able to be engaged so we can do oversight and ask

questions. have you thought about where does this go and what happens next. the second part of this is there will be some dates sitting out there that a piece of legislation might be needed. it is to your advantage not to ask us about that a week before. you might have noticed it takes longer than a week to move a piece of legislation. so if there's a discovery and the lawyers come back and say we need legislation about this issue at this point to be able to accomplish that, we need that as early as possible so we don't get to the last day and say we're ready to flip the switch except. so we need to know what our time is. >> we both appreciate senators working together making sure this is an issue that we address. it's refreshing to see the eyes of your committee are on us and making sure that we can actually do some things to effect the operations of the federal government in a much more deliberative fashion and move out with those things.

>> i want to say thank you. i'm really excited about this opportunity for us. by working together we can deliver a better service for federal employees. >> absolutely. i thank both of you for being here. the hearing record will remain open for 15 days for the submission of questions and statements for the record. thank you both again. this hearing is adjourned.

today nasa dm jim bridenstine will be on on c-span 3, c-respond.org and the radio app.

now lieutenant general robert ashley talks about the intelligence operations of his agency and a range of national security issues, including russian influence efforts. china's military actions, the syrian conflict and combatting terrorism. this is an hour and 25 minutes. [ applause ] so my aide told me that i should just get up here and say great power competition, a.i., drop the mic and drop off. so, robbie, i've done it. you're welcome. i'll put that on your support form. good counsel from my subordinates. thanks so much for allowing this opportunity to speak to you today. i look forward to the questions. i just had a couple of things that i wanted to share with you before we get started in the q & a to talk a little about my last year which is my experience with dia. it's not reallyhe