can go a little more with mine at the time, but as i became even older and more comfortable with managing my situation, i began to question more what everyone was insane. i believe the onset of the cable news and the internet where information was easily available from many viewpoints i became an independent because i cannot commit to anybody's agenda at this point. host: our last caller on today's show. that is go to do it. we will take our viewers live to the national trust club hous's newsmakers program. hillary clinton's e-mail records episode. they will raise implications raised by the media coverage of

the former secretary of state's choice to communicate by e-mail. >> to focus and talk about the hillary clinton e-mails that stirred up the media and is continuing to be a focus point. if you go to press.org, you can get all the details about our national press club. if you're not a member, consider becoming a member because we have more than 3000 members all over the world. with that, let me introduce our panel. mr. jason baron. he is a friend of our press club. we have missed patrice.

-- ms. patrice, miss liz and mr. tom. he has written the book and has brought it with him. let me start with mr. baron with his opening remarks. jason: privileged to be here. on march 3, the new york times published a story about ms. clinton and i was quoted as saying "it is difficult to perceive a scenario short of nuclear winter where agency would be justified to allow this officer to solely use private e-mail communications channels for the conduct of government business."

when i was first informed by mr. schmid of the new york times of the allegations regarding clinton's use of a private e-mail server, i was incredulous . whatever the original motive may have been that led former secretary of state clinton to adopt the use of a private server for government business, it was -- presumes that agencies set up record-keeping controls -- adequate record-keeping controls to ensure that will be documentation of the activity of the agency. the average employee and average high-level official implicitly understands that these rules exist and do not need too much in the way of instruction. their daily communications on matters of official business are

conducted using approved government networks. the 2009 narrow regulations that were in effect during worst of test during most of ms. clinton's 10 year allowed for cases. agencies that allow employees to send him receive official electronic mail messages using a system not operated by the agency must ensure that federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved in the appropriate agency record-keeping system. up until march 3 2015, i would've imagined that two aspects of this regulation were understood -- that few aspects of this regular sugar understood by officers and government. first -- that steps agencies must take to ensure that e-mail records sent or received on a private system are making sure

that all records are forwarded and preserved into an appropriate record-keeping system. no later than the date on which the employee or the official exits government. the fact that the 2014 amendment to the federal records act set an outside time of 20 days to forward e-mail help to clarify government policies and put an express date into fashion. it would be wrong to think that the policies in place during the first obama administration allow for any cabinet official to privately maintain tens of thousands of government records in his or her possession for months or years after exiting government. i am glad that a substantial number of e-mails, 30,000 or so, have now been returned into government custody.

i remain mystified by the fact that the use of a private e-mail account apparently went unnoticed or unremarked upon during a four-year tenure in office of the former secretary. where was everyone? is there any record indicating that any lawyer, any records person, any high-level official ever respectfully confronted the former secretary with reasonable questions about the practice of sending e-mails from a private account? it is unfathomable to me that this would not have been noticed and reported up the chain or reported to the state inspector general during all of this time. in my view, there has been an institutional failure to challenge what amounted to -- what became a strained and unreasonable reading of existing policies. we will get into the important directive and other measures that are outstanding to try to

improve government during the remainder of this hour but that is my opening statement. host: let's go to the ladies. patrice: i'm patrice mcdermott. tom is one of the founding directors of our coalition. it works to make government more open, get better access to government information and push back on secrecy. when i first came to washington, i worked at the national archive. when i left the archives to go to omb watch which has now changed names, one of the first people i got to know was tom blanton. you are at carnegie building at that point. this was right around the time of the armstrong case, which was about how electronic records

how e-mail records were supposed to be handled in the government. i think a lot of our problems date back to that case. we can go into that in more detail. i think the key, because the government was told how to handle e-mail but it was not told how to handle it same way as correspondence or memos or other files that were created by the government. not by the office of the person that created. them. i think this case has highlighted and really broken loose the problem that exists across big government. that problem is that very few agencies, if any, are managing their e-mail in any sort of record-keeping system. they are not managing it

systematically. this is been a problem for many years. i can talk about reports that were done and works that the archives did in the late to thousands -- the late 2000's. it is stunning but it is not isolated. it did not begin in this administration. it goes back through all of the administrations that have been on e-mail. it goes back to the managing of our electronic records, not just e-mail correspondence. we were all as shocked as jason and as disturbed but it has served as a salutary moment to force government to actually look at what they are doing. i think the pressure is going to be on all of us to keep that attention focused.

it is going to drift away all too soon. host: thank you. liz: i'm with arma international , a professional membership association that serves those in the records and information management and governments community. we are a membership of 27,000 individuals. a large portion of those are in the united states. i'm their director for government affairs insomuch that arma believes good information policy ought to be throughout all organizations. we also follow issues within the federal government. we believe the federal government has the ability to be a catalyst for good information governance practices throughout our nation. when we look at federal practices as they currently stand, we see there are holes.

as far as it relates to the issue of secretary clinton's e-mails, it is not that surprising. it is not surprising because the government has used insufficient approaches to information government. an example would be e-mail records are records. if they have the information that ought to be kept. until the government looks systematically at the way they preserve their information and look at information holistically, these issues will continue to pop up. it is our hope that this example -- secretary clinton is not the first secretary of state who has managed their e-mail in a way that we would look at as

insufficient, meaning that those should all be within an e-mail capture system and looked at holistically. what that tells us is, the government of to this point, has holes in how they manage information. it is our hope that we can help from the private sector help the government as they bring best practices up to speed. there is work on information governance initiatives. we have announced that we have come together as a coalition with six other -- five other organizations -- our hope in the

coalition is that we can support the government's efforts to bring their records management practices up to speed and bring our private sector know-how into the government and not just the government but for federal practitioners who are doing this work that are challenged every day with insufficient funding and support. it is our hope that we could make a small dent as our government looks at governance practices. host: thank you. tom: i'm tom blanton, the director of the national security archives and the author of that book. it is, i should remind you, 20 years old. it has a little floppy disk in the back of everything that was cut from my book by my editors

which i insisted had to be published so we put it on a disk . you now cannot buy a computer that can read that little disk which is a part of the challenge of preserving e-mail. i want to disagree with jason as i've been doing so for 25 years ever since we appeared in court against jason who was representing the government in our lawsuit to save white house e-mails. i would say that the scandal is not a private server. the scandal is the state of government e-mail record-keeping. the silver lining of the entire issue is missing. without mrs. clinton's private server state.gov likely not have saved any or a mere fraction of the 30,000 e-mails she has turned over. that is how bad the e-mail record-keeping system is. from my point of view, that is the headline of this issue.

when you ask, using a private server, that is terrible practice, i agree. the problem is, everybody does it. 88 staff members president george w. bush used private national committee servers to run their accounts. colin powell used aol.com for his e-mail, not state.gov. governor jeb bush of florida who has posted online over 100,000 of his e-mails as governor it turns out those were all hosted on a private server in the governor's office that mr. bush took with him when he left office. private servers are what everyone has done. it is actually against the law. you should not do it. it is bad practice, but everybody does it. my bet is that mrs. clinton asked, what did everybody do and said, we will do that.

why did she get away with that? that is the tougher question. where were the watchers? it is the lesson of our original lawsuit. our first director, scott armstrong, armstrong the clinton -- armstrong versus clinton, that is more we wanted in 1993. over 30 million e-mails. present george w. bush, -- we brought a new lawsuit. against another president, a guy named obama. the obama white house put in an archiving system so the white house is practically the only agency in the entire federal government that say's it e-mail it electronically even though the courts ruled against jason's

best efforts that e-mail not only were records but if you did not save it electronically, if you saved it printing and filing which is what the national archive's policy was for 25 years, it degraded the record. now, we're in a situation where all those printed and filed e-mails, of which no one knows how many exist. we have had some produced in free information requests and so forth. as files are now going to have to be -- the taxpayer is going to pay for them to be re-digitized and uploaded into electronic systems. what you had is a dereliction of duty by the national archives of the united states by every agency had including mrs. clinton when she was secretary of state.

it was her responsibility to see that records were saved. that is the scandal. host: thank you. we can see that we have some great journalists here. before i open the floor to q and a, i would like you to mention your name, your organization and be loud and clear. please no opinion pieces here. just stay with the questions. >> i'm charlie clark with government executives media group. could you talk about mrs. clinton's attorney. he has asserted that no laws were violated. could you analyze his arguments.

? jason: it is clear there has been inconsistent action with the underlying expectations of the federal records act and the narrow regulations in several respects. good lawyers can attempt to parse language well. the 2009 ragsegs say that e-mails have to be kept in an appropriate record-keeping system. everyone understood that to mean by the time that an individual -- either contemporaneously sends the messages or by the last day in office of that individual. there is an inconsistency with the regs. the fact that 30,000 or so e-mails have been sent back

cures the defect in substantial part but there are questions about whether we have gotten all of them and whether the actions were appropriate at the time. the larger point -- i agree with much of what time says -- i think all of us in government have treated the e-mail with -- effectively that it is like around holiday, the movie with -- groundhog day, the movie with bill murray. every day waking up, the government has adjusted. we hoped that individuals throughout government would comply with what are in the code offender regulations. what we all came to believe is

that we have a large compliance problem, much in agreement with tom. we needed to move forward. i'm happy that we have this forum here. what i did not get to but want to emphasize to everyone here is that the obama administration has done something significant. in 2011, president obama issued a managing government records memorandum to all executive agencies saying that we live in a technological era. we have to get smarter about federal record-keeping. he drowned the gauntlet -- he threw down the gauntlet and it issued the managing governor -- governments directive. by december 31, 2016, all federal agencies must manage their e-mail in an accessible electronic format. no more print to paper as the

default policy that tom and i patrice and liz, we all get it. it is difficult for people to comply with and do it on more than an occasional basis. the managing of electronic e-mail will be the first priority in that directive. the second by december 31st 2019, all federal agencies need to begin ensuring that permanent records of the u.s. government are in a digital or electronic format so they can be added to the national archives. no more paper on a day forward basis going into the national archives after 2019. on records created after the end of this decade, they are expected, if they are appraised as permanent under records schedules, they will be in digital or electronic format.

that is an inflection point in the history of archives. a very big deal for this administration to put forward. there are hundreds of thousands of people that will be affected by these policies who create permanent records in government. the last point i want to make is that the capstone policy at the national archives has put forth is a step forward beyond print to paper or the failed methods of the past. what the capstone policy, if implemented by agencies by december 31 2016 will say, the top level of e-mail communications from senior government officials will be presumptively decreed to be permanent with everyone else's e-mails saved or captured for some period of time. recently, a drafted general records schedule into terms. you will have a permanent set of

e-mails that would include mrs. clinton's e-mails if she had used inappropriate system and every cabinet official would be captured under a capstone policy. these are good developments. i would like to think that the obama administration should be applauded for their steps forward in recognizing something beyond the veil policies of the past. patrice: i think one of the major problems since 1995 has been the adoption of the trust but do not verify. the projection -- beep resumption has been that agencies will do what the r egs said and would do it appropriately. that has not happened. there were studies done that the

current archivist asked for from the agencies in the late to thousands -- in the late 2000 costs. 's. these agencies assessed that 90% of the records were at risk of loss. they stopped doing that after a few years. i absolutely agree that the steps that this white house took with the archives are significant. it took a lot of struggle to get them there. we have been told with regard to for you and other things by this administration that when we complain to them about what is happening with foya, they say these directives are not self implementing. that is the problem. the statute that was passed in

november, the directives, the capstone's are not going to be self implementing. it is going to take oversight to make sure that agencies actually address these problems. they are significant problems. jason is right that the capstone proposal, i urge all of you to take a look at it would allow agencies to designate top officials whose e-mail would be presented we saved. -- presumptively saved. in my community it was huge, the proposal that the cia put forward. out of 22,000 officials, they need 20 whose e-mail would be

saved permanently. that not only got our community up in arms, it got members of the intelligence committee up in arms because the senate torture report, the executive summary was heavily reliant on those e-mails. the ones they were able to get access to. the director of modern records went through the executive summary. he may have had access to the full report. line by line and made note of what was important. they asked cia to withdraw -- that is the risk. that somebody has to be paying attention. the openness community tries. it is something the white house nora, the ig's and the press

need to be paying attention to. this is in the weeds. it is generally not something that gets people's attention. this is history. at risk of going away. liz: from the perspective of those in the information governance community, what i think is important is to drill down into -- it is not just agencies that -- it is not an issue that nara ought to have done something differently. there continues to be a barrier to focusing on information governance holistically. what nara has been doing his groundbreaking for the government.

imagine a private organization saying everyone's e-mail has to be retained by printing it and then we're going to file it. anyone in the private sector would say that is not a good use of our resources. it technically eliminates a lot of the information through metadata in terms of best practices. it is hard to get the ship righted. we are getting there. i can speak for a number of records and information practitioners i have spoken with , it is hard for them to get attention. it is hard for them to talk to their superiors, let alone their ig's or the heads of those agencies and impress on them the importance of their work. it is largely gone unnoticed. it is a battle for people within the agencies to do the job they are hired to do because it is

not something that has been looked at as important until secretary clinton's e-mails come to issue or the issues we saw -- the interests with the irs or the epa. pemex a good news headline and that brings to light -- that makes a good headline and it brings to light issues we have faced for a long time. until we pay more attention to this issue, we will see secretary clinton's coming up again. we will see these headlines. why haven't things changed? the directive goes a long way in doing that. one of the items that jason had not mentioned was the office of personal management was asked to put out a job classification series for those doing federal work. this is way in the weeds but it represents an important mile marker in that the federal

government is recognizing that their federal employees are doing a specific job that requires specific skill sets and a specific knowledge base. can you imagine being qualified as administrative and other duties when you are actually trying to put together an e-mail retention schedule or policies? you're not even recognized in terms of an hr perspective as having specific skill sets. that is what up to this point has happened. they are small strides but good strides. representatives cummings' bill that changed fra took us leaps and bounds. they allowed us to look at -- electronic records as physical records. we were looking at definitions of records from the 1950's.

the way our industry has worked in the private sector has changed in the last month, the last year, the last five years. the federal government had not kept up as they were barriers because it is not something you look at. is not that sexy. it is in the weeds. everyone here is now wondering what other private practices for their organizations and that their inboxes probably too full. it is a challenge that will keep coming up until our government has the resources and empowers those who are doing it not only with changes to regulations but also funding. the state department does not have, to my knowledge, and electronic e-mail capture system. most agencies do not. it is very expensive to put that in. it takes a lot of work to do that. if you're going to implement

capstone, it is taking them seven to eight years to graduate into making sure that is an entire policy throughout their agency. it is a lot of work and it is a skill set. it is money. until we look at those and have our agency inspector generals and heads of agency focus on it, we will keep talking on it. i welcome the opportunity to keep talking about it, but i hope not. host: there was one interesting word that got mentioned. as a journalist, that is one thing we are looking forward to. foia. we need information. i would ask tom and jason what

do they think is the present condition about these requests at the state department and other government agencies? if there are some specific people whose e-mails are permanently kept and the rest destroyed, how do we get an honest answer to and foia request? tom: president nixon's secretary fell on her sword and took responsibility for an 18.5 minute gap in one of the key watergate tapes. she said she accidentally had her foot on the pedal of the transcription machine while she reached over her left shoulder to pick up the phone for a phone call and that produced the gap. for government e-mail, we will

have a 30 year gap in the historical record. the white house, national security council used e-mail six the medically starting in 1985 -- systematically starting in 19 85. the total numbers and volume are getting enormous. only a few hundred thousand individual messages saved from the reagan years. the white house has become the gold standard for saving because of a series of lawsuits. at every other agency, and let's just look at the state department. i have so much sympathy for the project director who tried to get it going. an e-mail archiving system.

the acronym is smart. the smart system. he probably worked years to get this thing into place and come up to a standard that instead by state department's regulations in 1995 in reaction to my book i'm sure. the reality when the state department went into look at that smart system to see how much is being saved, he concluded practically nothing. this contradicted mrs. clinton's statements that she sent most of her state.gov e-mails so they would be saved. the system was not working. the inspector general tried to figure out, why weren't people using the smart system. it might've been because mrs. clinton was not using the smart system. that comes back to charlie's first question, did mrs. clinton

break the law? the hard answer to the question is, yes and no. it is a hard answer. it is no because there was no prohibition on use of a private server. as jason recognizes, moving those 30,000 e-mail messages to state addresses -- begins to cure this deficit. the answer is, yes broke the law because the federal records act has been around for decades and it puts the responsibility on the head of every agency to have a record system that saves its historically valuable records. ms. clinton did not do that. there is going to be a 30 year gap in the record. jason: let me address the foia

aspect of this. the fact that e-mails were sent to a.gov address begs the question of, which.gov address. if there is a.gov address at state, we did talk about it before you officer would be asking enough questions to make sure state response by searching the e-mail addresses of users in state. if the.gov address that was used went to a different agency, a foia respect to the state department would not capture that.gov. it would be a.gov someplace else. one would need to file a foia request with that other e agency -- with that other agency. there is a four yeah -- a four ia dimension of this controversy which is important. beforethe foia offices are not

leaders in technology. what we need is to have a high-level conversation, what we in the private sector call information governance. to have a conversation with government senior executives officials, people who are like a cio, a cfo of agencies, to empower foia offices with the tools to do adequate searches across all of the e-mail that exists on networks. the capstone policy factors into a better foia world in the future. if agencies were capturing all of the high level e-mails of individual officers in government as permanent records that would be a repository that a foia requester would expect

the officer to go to. the officer would know, we have a capstone repository for e-mail. we should start there with respect to government records. if agencies are saving everyone's e-mail for some period of time, whatever the bottom line is, and then temporary e-mails are disposed of for all of the non-capstone accounts, at least one could file a request and have confidence that for some period of time, all e-mail could be searched. we need to have repositories in place. we need to have better search tools. i've been on the soapbox in the legal space for the last 15 years to make sure that lawyers understand that there are smarter tools to do searching across digital objects. we should have that conversation in government as it goes forward to improve foia. if you improve record-keeping

actresses, you get a leg up -- practices, you get a leg up to respond to legitimate foia requests. host: next question. >> mining is bill earle. a former federal cfo. the buzz it -- the budget is not there to do what you are talking about. when we would go to congress and asked for money to fund the four oia office, we were regularly shut down. the question for you and the panel is, we're talking about e-mails, which in some ways is an archaic form of communicating these days. people are communicating by text messages now. they're talking to syria and having that transcribed into messages of various types.

-- they are talking to siri and having that transcribed into messages of various types. i think the other parallel is the body cameras on police officers. now police officers respond -- a body camera on the police officer, will we have a microphone on people to record conversations as well? i think the body camera records conversations, not just video. does that get extended to every federal employee to capture that interaction? host: thank you for that question. i will let tom or jason say a few words. jason: you are right that we are

in a world of social media beyond e-mail. there are billions of e-mails sent in the government. it is still an important means of communication although there are others. the federal records act applies no matter what the application is, whether it is social media tweeting messages, video. if it is appropriate for preservation as government business, it is a temporary record or federal record. the government needs to figure out ways of preserving not e-mail digital communications. as for the cost point, this is a conversation we could have off-line. there is a tremendous push in this administration for cloud computing. my challenge to every federal agency is, if you are getting on the train to do cloud computing putting e-mail of the mccloud and lots of data in the cloud you could build in record management considerations on the front end of those procurements. it can be done at minimal cost

in the delta. the extra cost to a cloud computing environment is relatively modest. i agree that there are costs involved but it is not as much as you think. tom: to further that point, we give and award every year made after rosemary woods. we give it to agencies for the worst open government performance. this year, the repeat winners were the chief information councils of the government. $81 billion a year of our money on information services hardware systems and the like. if they do not bake in, as jason says, their legal requirements of preserving and accessing

freedom of information requests, we are wasting money. they are wasting our money. we have to do that. there is 20 of money to do this. you have to -- there is plenty of money to do this. if you do it on the front end, you can maintain for long-term. of the same thing will have to be done with social media and tweets. i would add one piece of the puzzle. it is a huge universe but the reality today with the cost of computer storage declining and the power of search engines increasing, we are in a place -- i used to make a joke, there was an old magazine called soldiers of fortune. it had a bumper sticker, kill them all let god sort them out.

fascinating idea for records management, save them all and let the algorithms figure it out. it is not hard to manage it electronically and use tools to separate it out by the kind of line that the capstone proposes. i think there are opportunities for partnerships. the reason we know that a separatist leader bragged about shooting down of lane in ukraine that turned up to be the malaysian jetliner is because the internet archive's in san francisco saved that social media tweet and it was taken down off the facebook or the equivalent of facebook page almost immediately but it has been saved and you can find it. i think that kind of approach to federal records management is the way out. it is not a cost matter.

host: thank you. liz wants to say something. liz: from an information management and governance perspective, a record is a record regardless of if it is a tweet, paper. we're glad the federal records act now shows you can capture anything electronically. we are not talking about just e-mail but electronic communications of any sort. this highlights the fact that, when you go to congress and you are an agency and they say there is not the funding for the technology to support you, it highlights what i was mentioning earlier. there has been a fundamental gap in the way that our government approaches information governance practices. if it is possible to bake in this technology upfront, why is it not happening?

the answer is, those at the top level are not paying attention. they are not incentivized to pay attention according to regulations. you have the national archives which is trying their darndest to bring to light that these issues need to be paid attention to. it is still not happening. i was listening to one federal practitioner from an agency that will go unnamed talk about their efforts to meet the 2016 deadline in managing e-mail electronically. to still think that blows my mind. she had to go to their technology office and say, we need some sort of system that will capture this. they had no money for her, even though they are trying to reach a deadline that is essentially put forth by the memorandum and the white house.

she got really creative and found a piece of technology that their office had acquired and was not using. the technology office did not know existed until they went through some version of the rolodex of what do we own. she said, that will work. they made it work. i do not know if those opportunities exist in every organization but you have good federal practitioners who are trying, in spite of challenges put forth, to bring their agency up to speed. we still have a lack of support or attention to -- may have a lot of their plate, to these issues -- may have a lot on their plate, to these issues. host: some journalists are e-mailing me as they could not make it here. they are watching it on c-span.

our panel suggested this happened over and over before clinton's case. why the flag was never raised? is it ben ghazi? is it that she might run for president? what can we do to keep it in focus so that we have these foia requests fulfilled? what do you look into your crystal ball to give it life? jason: i hope that the issue does not go away. the mandate of 2016 is not going

away, regardless of who our next president is. the important point is that this does give a tension -- give attention to what good government issues involving the history of this country. i think it is a moment where there are a lot of people in this room watching. we do not usually have a conversation about now regulations and capstone policies -- narrow regulations and capstone policies that gets the attention of the public at large and the press. i think there is a moment that this controversy has served well. we need to have that conversation. we need to talk about saving e-mail in an electronic form so you can have a more accessible government. i will do everything i can in the forums that i participate in

, and i read -- and i -- how to talk to the government about federal records act accountability and standards. we need the press to be pursuing the story of how the government is doing with respect to the archivist directive. there are a lot of directives issued. this is very important. it is important to journalists because getting the record-keeping issue right really assists getting government accountability right in terms of accessible records to foia requests. we live in a digital world. the power of the algorithms that tom is talking about are a great thing. we have tremendous opportunities to improve government over the next few years, not just with respect to e-mail but with respect to all forms of records that are in digital form.

i think we should seize this moment to move the conversation forward. i would also say that i would hope that the archivist of the united states, whether through testimony in front of congress or on his own initiative would lead that effort. there are many ways and good people in this town that want to assist the archivist in making sure that the 2016 and 2019 mandates are for filled. -- are fulfilled. tom: the e-mail issue is sort of like the return of the locusts. about every seven or eight years, it will pop up again. eight years ago, chairman -- chairman henry waxman was holding hearings about use of e-mail, hasn't it been saved, working out negotiations with lawyers to recover e-mails from rnc servers although the vast

majority turned out to be destroyed. 88 top officials of the bush white house have been using that as their main e-mail system. that was eight years ago. before that, the transition in the bush administration where you had whistleblower saying they have gotten rid of the archiving system clinton put in. you had us winning the lawsuit in 1993. you back to 1987 and you have the tower board report a stone e-mail from backup tapes. the locusts come back and e-mail is on the front page again. ms. clinton is now the poster child for the necessity to save the stuff. let's hope that gooses more change across this government. patrice: i agree with jason and tom. i would also note, i spent a lot of time in the last few months

explaining nara regulations explaining the basics of the government's record-keeping policy to journalists. i would hope that this does not die and that it does not die because of the press. i would also hope that the same amount of time that is put into training journalists on foia and the importance of it that at least an equivalent amount of time or some percentage of that amount of time would go into training journalists in what the statutes are, what the regulations are. we do not have many beat journalists anymore were looking at the agencies. that is a huge problem because nobody is paying attention outside of the government, to

whether things are being implemented properly in the government. i think it is incumbent upon all of us of how are you going to keep this an issue, not a scandal but an important issue in governance and accountability and history. it will disappear. it will fall below the radar at some point. unless there is a steady drumbeat -- unless there is constant attention to the issue and what is happening. whether we do get to where we are supposed to be in 2016 and 2019. we still have a long way to go. >> i am lauren.

i was wondering, if so many agencies are not keeping their records properly, what are the national security implications of that, beyond just keeping them for historical records? host: we have four minutes left. quick. patrice: we are a non--- tom: the problem with record-keeping systems means that real-time releases of documents just does not happen. it is a key piece of the delays we see across the freedom of information system. we have argued that there is really only one way out. the point that our former chief financial officer made about financial limitations goes in spades for the freedom of information system.

any new request you put in slows down your previous freedom of information request. it is a zero-sum system. the only way out is for agencies to proactively post everything they are releasing and everything they think might get released. for example, all of ms. clinton's calendars, you better believe there are dozens of requests right now for everybody she met with, when, for how long. it is of national interest if she is running for president or just policy interests. that stuff should just be before a request comes in, they should be looking to release that, post it online. we can see examples like the challenger shuttle disaster. nasa was getting hundreds of requests. they said, we will post it

online when we are done with our investigation. it is efficient, it is good for all of us. that should be the default setting. it is not today. host: the question was, the implications on national security. we have one minute left. who would like to answer? jason: the history of this country includes documents that are classified under the executive order laws. the important point is that those e-mails need to be preserved and even enjoy you need -- and eventually you need better preservation mechanisms. there will be one billion e-mails coming out of the obama white house alone in january 2017. the exponential curve is clear. we are living in an age of

communications. we need to have better preservation mechanisms, better search mechanisms, better information governance throughout the federal government in terms of who is paying attention to these issues. this is a start. i hope we can meet again soon and i hope that the panel will have conversations going forward, and i want everyone in the room watching and -- to challenge government agencies to ask what are they doing to meet the 2019 deadline. host: thank you very much. we have come to an end to a very interesting session. please become a member of the national press club, if you are not a member.

thank you very much for your time and effort. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> closing out this discussion from the national press club.

if you missed any of it, we will hear it later on our schedule, or you can watch it online shortly at www.c-span.org. "the washington post" is reporting more problems with the secret service. the d.c. police sex crimes unit and the government inspector general are investigating allegations that a person made unwanted sexual advances after a party at a downtown restaurant. secret service is an agency that demands employees conduct themselves with the highest level of integrity. the director said any threats or violence will not be tolerated.

the inquiry marks the second time in a month that this he could service has dealt with staff misconduct after a work-related social event. join us later today when vice president biden talks about u.s. policy in iraq. this will be live at 12:30 eastern on c-span. we have more funny 16 road to the white house coverage coming up today with remarks from brand paul. he is expected to talk about u.s. military and foreign policy. he will speak in south carolina today. you can watch that at noon eastern on c-span2. join american history today and sunday for live coverage of ceremonies marking the 150th anniversary of the surrender at appomattox. general robert e lee met ulysses grant at appomattox courthouse answer rendered his army

effectively ending the civil war. we will be live on but april 9 today, and april 12. we will bring you reenactment of some of the key moments from 100 50 years ago and we will open our phone lines and take your calls. the surrender at appomattox live today at 1:30 and sunday at 1:00 on american history tv on c-span3. >> each night this week at 9:00 p.m., conversations with a few members of congress. congressman zinke: i understand i represent everyone in montana

and i represent not only the republican side, i represent the democrat side, independent, tea party, union side. i represent everyone in montana and i think if we take that thou you set forward, congress represents america. the purpose is to make america better. >> five new as members of congress talk about their careers and personal lives and share insight about how things work on capitol hill. join us for all their conversations each night at 9:00 eastern on c-span. >> c-span's conversations with new members of congress with republican will hurd of texas. he served abroad for a number of years in the cia. he talked about his family background, education, and views

on national security. it is about a half an hour. mr. scully: congressman will hurd from the 23rd congressional district, a district that includes nearly 5000 square miles, a thousand miles of border along texas and mexico. how do you manage it? representative hurd: i put a lot of miles on the car. 800 miles of the border. it is gigantic. that is one of the reasons i love the district. we have beautiful parts of the state. this is why a pretty much a no-name fresh face was able to win the district, because of the amount of time we spent crisscrossing it. so i burn up my shoe leather. mr. scully: with the demographics of the district what struck you the most as you

traveled in your campaign? representative hurd: san antonio is the most populous city in the district. i was born and raised. my parents still live in house i was born in, on the eastern end of the district. the western end is el paso a large city, covered by two members of congress. in between, you have castroville and hondo, alpine, big bend national park, and it is a 67% hispanic district. one, you have such a rural part and urban centers of san antonio and el paso, at one end of the district, people have one opinion. in the middle it is a different opinion. the thing that struck me the most when i was crisscrossing counties is that people care about national security. they are worried about their future and the safety of their children and families. that was great because of my background.

i spent a decade as an undercover officer in the cia. mr. scully: if you were to travel from one end of the district to the other, how long would it take? representative hurd: about 11 hours going 80 miles per hour. speed limit in most places is 75. if you go a couple over, you are ok. mr. scully: have you ever been pulled over? representative hurd: i have. one of the things that is important for me is that my d.c. staff understands the district, to get out there and see it. the first time my chief of staff was driving, we got pulled over. mr. scully: what did you tell the officer? representative hurd: he said slow it down. it was late at night. they were just saying be careful. great folks throughout the district. i do not know if he recognized me or not, but they were making sure we were being safe. mr. scully: you are the first

african-american republican since reconstruction to be elected. how did that come about? representative hurd: it was funny getting up here to washington, d.c. the first question i was asked was, how did the black dude win in a hispanic district? my dad is originally from east texas. my mom grew up in indiana. they met in los angeles and moved to san antonio in 1971. my father is african-american, my mother is white. it was not in vogue that they were an interracial couple in south texas in the 1970's. now their youngest son is a member of congress. when they first went to san antonio, they had difficulty buying a home. now i am representing my hometown. part of that is because people are no longer voting on the color of your skin.

people knew that i was going to work hard and get things done, that i was going to work across the aisle, that i have the experience you need. no one here has that. for me, it is about working hard. whether you are black, brown, or anything, people care about a couple of things. they want food on the table, a roof over their head, and the people that they love to be healthy and happy. when you address those issues, it is going to resonate with people. mr. scully: you are different from the president in terms of parties. do you have a sense of his background and what it was like him to grow up in a similar situation? representative hurd: i am aware. there are a number of people who have had this experience. it is great using it. you learn to be empathetic, to excel in places where you are the only person that looks like you.

that was a skill that was helpful in the cia. it is an honor to represent my hometown. i think it is a great example of how texas has evolved and they are putting people in office because of who they are. mr. scully: as a graduate of texas a&m, what does that mean for you? representative hurd: we have this code of honor. we do not lie, cheat, or steal. if we had more of that in d.c. it would be a lot better place. i am proud to be an aggie. i learn about representing people. i was vice president of the student body during the bonfire collapse. it killed 12 kids. in 1999, it was the worst

accident on the college campus. to help lead the aggie family through what was the darkest time in our history was an honor. i would give that experience up if those kids were still alive. but to me, it solidified what it means to be part of the aggie family. i was able to leverage that in my run for congress. so it is a great school. it is awesome representing my alma mater. and the system has a school in san antonio in the district. it is cool to represent part of my alma mater. mr. scully: explain the circumstances that led to the collapse, where you were, and how you responded. representative hurd: this was what we did to show our desire to beat our rival university of texas.

it is a multi-tiered bonfire. it is gigantic. it is all student run and built. when it collapsed, there was a lot of rain. it caused the ground to shift. the center pole that held up the thing cracked. it caused spinning and hoop stress and the thing collapsed. when it collapsed, i was asleep. it happened about 2:00 in the morning. one of my dearest friends called me and said, you should probably get up here. about 11 minutes after the collapse, i was on campus and involved in all aspects of it, of helping to rescue the kids and dealing with press. also making sure loved ones knew where they could go to get more information about their sons and daughters, brothers. mr. scully: how did the tradition change after the incident? representative hurd: it does not happen anymore at a&m.

the year before that was the last time the bonfire burned. mr. scully: why student leadership? why did you decide to become student council president? representative hurd: i was not going to go to texas a&m. i wanted to go to stanford. i got accepted to stanford. i got a scholarship to go. i went to texas because i had a counselor at my high school, big aggie, he kept badgering me to go for a visit. i had some friends that lived there. i said if i go for a visit, will you leave me alone? he said yes. so i went to watch a football game and fell in love with the opportunities to get involved. there is something special at texas a&m. i was excited to run for

president because i had been in -- involved on campus. so i decided to run. my buddies decided to help me. mr. scully: how did that experience train you for running for congress? representative hurd: at the time, it was 45,000 students. that is undergraduate. when you add graduates and professors and administrators, you're talking 80,000 people. it taught me how to work with a diverse group of people ideologically. it taught me the importance of sticking to your principles and committed individuals can change the world. and so it was a good test run. i never would have thought i would run for congress after that. but it showed we know how to get a message out.

mr. scully: how do you approach the job of being a member of congress, and what is your routine in congress and at your district? representative hurd: i ran to be a thought leader on national security. the district is huge. 50% of the vote comes from san antonio. some of these other counties because they are so far away they do not get represented. my title is representative. the way we spend a good deal of my time, we are here monday through thursday, then i am back in the district every weekend. i try to fly in and out of san antonio two weekends a month. and deal with that part of the district there. we try to focus our legislative efforts on the things that resonate in the district. and are key in my background.

the fact that i am a chairman of a subcommittee on information technology is a great opportunity to leverage my experience and background. have a degree in computer science. i did offensive of cyber operations in the cia. when i left the cia and ran for congress, i was part of a consulting firm and started a cyber security company. so to be able to use that to focus on privacy, i.t. procurement, cyber security, and information sharing, and emerging technology. that is where we spend a good deal of time. mr. scully: why is will hurd a republican? representative hurd: i believe in freedom, small government having a strong national defense. i believe in equal opportunity.

these are things that have always resonated with me. my dad likes to say he was the first like republican in san antonio. -- first black republican in san antonio. i have not been able to fact check that. my dad was a salesman for 30 years. when he retired, he and my mother started a beauty supply school. and i saw what it meant to build something from scratch and be rewarded for your efforts. these were the experiences i had growing up. mr. scully: brothers, sisters? representative hurd: i am the baby of three. my sister is four years older, my brother is five years older. we are really close. mr. scully: when you took the oath of office, what were your mom and dad thinking? representative hurd: my mom was crying and my dad was proud. my dad was 82 years old. he showed up to the capitol.

he usually walks with a cane. he did not have his cane. i said, dad, do i need to get your cane? he straightens up real stiff and says, i am in the capitol. i do not need a cane today. he walked without his cane for the entire day. i know they were super proud. my parents have always believed in me and have always been my rock and biggest supporters. it really hit home when i stood up and raised my hand and was able to see them in the gallery. mr. scully: what was your biggest setback growing up or early in your career? representative hurd: i think the biggest setback was probably losing the run for congress in 2010. i left the cia to run. i was frustrated with the caliber of our elected leaders. my job was to collect intelligence and to brief members of congress. i briefed hundreds of members and was shocked by their lack of

understanding of some basic issues they were on committees for. so i decided to run for congress and did not have a plan b. we ran. we won the first round and everybody was excited. everybody thought we were shoo-ins to win the runoff. the other side was -- sending out resumes for further jobs. we lost by 700 votes. i felt like i let everyone down. i knew in my head that was not the case. but in my heart, i thought all these people who were never involved in the political process, i felt like i did not pull it out. i did not leave my house for a while. i had to figure out my plan b. i had coffee with about 75 people, all walks of life.

and i asked them, if you are 32, what would you do? and their responses were there was no great idea generated from that, but the father of one of my closest friends, a guy i have known since i was 13, said do something meaningful and hard. it's so simple, but that is kind of how i have lived my life. and i realized most of my life i was trying to do things meaningful and heart. so i am a better person. mr. scully: why did you decide to run again in 2014? representative hurd: the opportunity was there. coming that close, realizing that i had significant disagreements with the person in office and thought that person should be representing the district differently. i love my country.

i had the honor to serve my country for almost a decade in the cia. i look at this as serving my country in a different way. the opportunity was there. the folks who were part of the team said they were in for one more. so we decided to do it. mr. scully: let's talk about the cia. you graduate from texas a&m, get a job at the agency. what was your first position? what was the biggest challenge? what did you learn from your tenure there? representative hurd: my first job, i was 22, driving my toyota 4 runner. i stopped at a gas station. the uss cole had just blown up. by al qaeda. and i remember thinking, i wonder if i will know anything that is going on there. after we go through our initial orientation, i was the desk officer for yemen.

i was back at headquarters in langley, supporting our men and women in our station, the headquarters in sanaa, yemen. that was my first job. one of the biggest challenges was fighting bureaucracy. when i was in afghanistan, i managed undercover operations, and i felt there were rules and regulations that we were having to to do our jobs that were preventing us from protecting ourselves and doing the job we were trained to do. fighting bureaucracy in kabul, back in langley was an incredible challenge. in the end, we won, because i had the experience and background and enough support to get that done. it was a great experience. that is what i'm doing here.

i realize most of my responsibility as a representative is to fight bureaucracy for folks who need to fight the bureaucracy you fought. it was a great lesson and challenge. what i learned in the cia is it is filled with red-blooded patriotic men and women who are trying to do the right thing to make sure you and i can sleep well at night and our families are safe, and that commitment to saying, we have a tasking. we never said, we cannot do that. that can-do attitude is something that permeated everything we did. it was something that i learned at texas a&m, refined further in the cia, and something that i

always use now. mr. scully: if a future president says they want you to be the cia director, is it a job he would undertake? how would you approach the position? representative hurd: good question. it would be an honor to serve. and how i would approach the position is go back to the basics. the cia are the collectors of last resort. if you cannot get a piece of information, you call in the cia to do that. and you got to have very clear goals on what you are trying to collect and how you are trying to have a perspective. right now, as the number of threats to our country are increasing, we have to have more intelligence. one of the problems with the fight against isis now in syria and iraq is we do not have

enough on the ground with human intelligence. part of that is because we do not have enough people in the region. that is something where my good friend, ambassador ryan crocker i think he is one of the test things the foreign service has produced. now he is running the bush school. he says you need wingtips on the ground to prevent boots on the ground. i would be aggressive, in hard places. we would have clear collection priorities based on threats we are facing. mr. scully: having spent time in yemen, afghanistan, langley, what worries you the most as a member of congress? what should americans be most concerned about? representative hurd: the micro actors having macro impact. this is where one person can have a huge impact. who would have thought 11 people

would have had the impact they did on 9/11? those are the folks we have to worry about. if you look at isis right now, isis is -- the talent they are attracting from around the world is pretty significant. it is at higher levels in afghanistan than the original war in iraq. their ability to leverage social media to get their message out is unprecedented. when i was in afghanistan and pakistan chasing al qaeda and the taliban, they would do night letters. they would write a letter and leave it on doorsteps. you can only hit a couple hundred people in one night that way. what isis is doing is hitting tens of millions of people every single day and they are getting their message out in a way that so is unprecedented.

their ability to grow, that is pretty scary. and when you look at the cyber threats we are facing around the world, it is unbelievable. it is no longer about preventing someone from getting in. if you give me enough time, i am getting into your digital network. the question becomes, how can you detect it? how can you kick people out? the number of people able to get into our sophisticated digital infrastructure is increasing exponentially as well. the great thing is we have smart hard-working americans at our intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies, military and civilian agencies, keeping us from these threats. mr. scully: i have to ask you about the knife behind you. where did that come from? representative hurd: pakistan. it was kind of the award for good service. it is an adaptation of a gurka

knife. gurkas were fierce warriors. the saying goes, if you ever pulled your knife, you cannot pull it back in the sheath without drawing blood. this is a variant of that knife. mr. scully: has all your career and work made it difficult to have a relationship? representative hurd: it has. i was engaged once to a girl from north texas. when you come home and say guess what. i work for the cia and we are moving to pakistan, that has a chilling effect on the relationship. but it was the right choice for her. and i just have not found the right person just yet. i do travel a lot, move around a lot.

i am young enough. my parents have grandkids. mr. scully: those members of congress you used to brief, do they view you differently now as a colleague? representative hurd: some of the ones that caused me to run no longer exist. i will say that i have been shocked at how warm member to member relationships are. and the fact that people who have been here and have experience have sought me out for my perspective. mr. scully: what is the biggest learning curve for a freshman member of congress? representative hurd: the biggest learning curve is how do you manage your legislative team your district team, and your political team. those are three separate organizations that have to be

managed that way. for me, i realize a lot of my work up here is about responding to my constituents. so if one person is having a problem in the district, i guarantee you hundreds of people across the country are. and how do you take those onesies and twosies and fix the problem on a macro scale? that is how i think we can be more effective in representing our district and making sure we are fighting bureaucracy. mr. scully: finally, our you where you expected to be at your age of 37? representative hurd: i do not know. like i said before, i have learned through doing things that are meaningful and hard. it is about having a positive mental attitude,

be honest to people, and treat people with respect. i was taught that at a young age and continue to do that now. it is an exciting place to be in order to represent my country and fight for people that need to be fought for. mr. scully: anything else that would interest you politically? representative hurd: i am interested in running a business again. for me, the next objective is getting re-elected. there are a lot of folks that are doubting my ability to do that. they have doubted me plenty already. we know what we are doing. we will prove everyone wrong once again. mr. scully: congressman, thank you for your time. representative hurd: thank you. >> we will continue our series tonight with a congress --

conversation with democrat norma torres. representative torres: it was incredibly hard to get here. the money in politics makes it almost impossible for someone like me -- and i am an average mom from pomona -- it is incredible that i made it this far, but here i am. mr. scully: why did you decide to seek elected office? representative torres: i answered a 911 call as a dispatcher from a girl who died from the hands of her uncle. it pushed me into the political world that i did not know existed. >> each night this week, at 9:00 p.m. eastern, conversation with a few new members of congress. representative zinke: i tried to

stay within the #spirit i understand i represent everyone in montana and montana is one congressman. i represent not only the republican side, i represent the democrat side, the independent side, the tea party side, the union side, everyone in montana. if we take that value set forward, congress represents america to articulate the values and the needs and the desires of your district. but the purpose is to make america better. >> five new as members of congress talk about their personal lives and share insights about how things work on capitol hill. join us for all the conversations each night at 9:00 eastern on c-span. >> coming up shortly live come of vice president joe biden will talk about u.s. policy in iraq

at the national defense university. you can see that live at 12:30 eastern on c-span. the clinton foundation recently held its fourth annual health matters conference in california, the opening panel on health innovation. it featured a group of young entrepreneurs, including a venture capitalist who started his own health insurance company and a stanford university dropout who started a blood testing company, and who "forbes" called the youngest self-made billionaire. from january, this is about an hour. president clinton: we have a very fascinating opening panel. i want to bring them out and talk about not only the disruptions in a positive way that they have made in health care, why they do it and how they measure success in terms of

people. so let me first introduced our panelists. i would like to bring out elizabeth holmes, the founder of theranos. she dropped out of stanford to start this company, a blood analytics company that has more than 500 people and is valued at $9 billion. not bad work. and, as you will see, she is quite young. i first met her at henry kissinger's birthday party, with george schulz, who was 92 years old. i thought anyone with that agent span has a bright future. since i'm closer to 92 than her age, it looked like a wise move.

let's bring her out. give her a hand. [applause] president clinton: joshua kushner is the cofounder of oscar health. he wants to do something really interesting, which is reinvent health insurance and how people interact with other physical health systems. i cannot wait to hear about it. i had a highly unusual conversation with the chairman of a european health company who happened to be dutch. i asked him if they wrote health insurance, he said, yes, they do but they don't make any money on it. he said, we don't have health insurance here, we write it, and the government subsidizes based on need. but he said, we shouldn't make money on this, we should make money on traditional insurance

lines. i thought, i wonder if there is a single soul in america who would say that. interesting. this guy has some interesting ideas, so let's bring out josh kushner. [applause] same old are you here joe kaini is the founder of masimo corporation, that employs 3000 people worldwide. it is a startup. it is the production and distribution of symmetry technology, another noninvasive medical breakthroughs. but i most know joe kaini through his commitment to build a coalition to eliminate preventable patient deaths entirely by the year 2020. he just had his annual conference not far from here in

irvine. it is a fascinating struggle with so far very good results. an amazing thing, it will be interesting to know how we can do that. let's bring joe kaini out. [applause] and the last panelist is jeffrey selberg who is at the peterson center of health care. michael peterson, who is here, and his dad are great friends of mine and they have a worked for years to get americans to focus on the long-term consequences of unsustainable debt and how we can bring debt, especially debt that we run up every year

consuming, down. so that we can invest in our future and secure it. after years of beating their heads against the wall, they looked at the numbers of the federal budget and decided all structural problems are in health care, combined with the aging of the population, and they decided that they would try to be a part of the solution instead of just sitting on the sidelines complaining about it. so they are developing a growing program of initiatives aimed to improve the american health care system. let's bring jeffrey selberg out and thank the peterson foundation for what they are doing. let's begin with something

elemental. why did you decide to do what you are doing in health care? let's ask the three reformers in the middle here. whatever possessed you while you were a teenager to do this? ms. holmes: i had the opportunity to spend a lot of time thinking about what i can do in my life to make a difference. i thought the purpose of building a business is to make an impact on the world, we are here for that reason. to me, nothing matters more than the reality in our health care system today, which is that when someone you love gets really sick, by the time we find out about it, it is often too late to do something about it.

and in those moments, nothing matters more. and if i could spend my life trying to change that, we can make a difference in the world. and spending a lot of time thinking about that led to the realization that we live in a system in which people can only get a diagnostic test paid for by insurance once they are symptomatic for a condition. so the ability to create a preventative care infrastructure where people have access to the information that can change outcomes by making it incredibly inexpensive, by making it less invasive, could help realize this change, where people would

start getting access to actionable health information at the time that it matters, and that is what our life work is about. president clinton: what does it mean to reinvent health insurance? we thought we were doing good just to get 10 million more people health insurance last year. some people did. i think it is an interesting idea. explain what you mean when you say you are trying to reinvent health insurance. mr. kushner: the vision for oscar came about when i opened my health insurance bill about three years ago and realized i had no idea what it meant. overeducated, and at the time was starting a business, i didn't know what my benefits were, the doctors or hospitals i

had access to, and the list goes on. if you think about health insurance, in reality it is one of the most important relationships that we have, from both a human perspective and a cost perspective. the idea that we had when we set out was to use technology and data to make the experience more simple and transparent and understandable and relatable. but what we have been able to accomplish is we have been able to take data we have got and not only provide a better consumer experience, but also provide people better access to better care, primarily because we actually know a lot more about them. so there has not been a ton of innovation. we are the first new health insurance companies in new york and 15 years. we feel grateful that we are going after the consumer market, because to date health insurance has been primarily sold from

brokers to companies. nd for the first time ever, the consumer actually matters. so our ambition is to create the best consumer product possible and do whatever we can to enable people to make educated decisions about their health. president clinton: so you are marketing to the individual market, which is about 9% to 10% of the total number of people with -- you could buy health insurance in this country? most people are covered by bigger plans. mr. kushner: yes, today. but we didn't start the company because we got there was a void to be filled in the individual market. we started the company because we felt that people deserved a consumer experience in health care. and health care, as we say often, health care insurance companies do everything they can to acquire customers, but

shortly afterwards everything they can to avoid them. we want to be proactive, give people access to care, to give them things for free. we are paying people to go to the doctor, get shots, we are giving away free generic medicine, free physician visits, so we are being proactive about what we are hoping to accomplish. president clinton: what percentage of your potential market knows you exist? mr. kushner: right now we are only in new york. president clinton: even in new york, new york insurance is generally higher than the rest of the country and one thing that burns me up in the health care debate, everyone is saying that the government is lying about their policy, because it went away, is because the health care law when it was passed, 80%

of the policies in the individual market lasted two years or less. so i will be very interested to see how you modify the policies, how you continue to do outreach. talk about that, because there is almost no understanding of who these people are and how they struggle to become insured. mr. kushner: sure. so right now about 10% of all those who are eligible for insurance, that signed up, are insured by oscar, which is it decent market share for a new entrants, but the most interesting fact about us, which we have not disclose, which is that 40% of our members signed up for us because they heard about us through existing members. no pun intended, we claim to be the first ever viral health insurance company. [laughter]

mr. kushner: the best way to acquire customers is by having a really good product, and that is what we have been spending all of our time and attention to accomplish. president clinton: joe, talk a little bit about how you moved from your core business into this audacious effort to try and eliminate every preventable death in the health care system in america? why did you do it, how did you do it, what made you think you can do it? mr. kiani: first of all, since the topic is innovation for helping people, i want to congratulate you for your innovation. with this commitment based approach, your last count has

affected 340 million people around the globe. i learned from that. i think in life, it is interesting to know why you do what you do. it is more important what you do and how you do it, because how you do it teaches others what to do in their own world. so i have been around the medical space for about 20 years. i remember when the institute of medicine reported 100,000 people were dying from preventable causes in the u.s. every year. i was shocked. a lot of great, smart people jumped in and i thought, they will take care of it. i went on doing what i did. a few years ago, new data came out showing that over 200,000 people were getting killed in hospitals from preventable causes.

that is when i realized maybe it that is when i realized maybe it is time i step up and do something about it. i have been fortunate enough to get to know companies in the medical technology space, great hospitals, amazing people like you, president clinton, and i thought maybe if i brought everybody together, bring in the med tech companies, hospitals, government, patient advocates that provide this powerful voice, because if you think about 200,000 people dying every year, it is a number that runs through your head, unfortunately. stalin said that one death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic. if you think about how that impacts a family once left behind, impacts you. we borrowed shamelessly, from

the clinton global initiative, created this approach that if you will come to our meetings, you will make a commitment. from my background, we started unpeeling the problem, seeing what is causing these preventable deaths, from hospital-acquired infections to medication errors, from lack of monitoring, and we created solutions. these solutions, we asked the hospitals to go implement them we asked med tech companies to share data to anyone, anyone who could use it, to come up with algorithms to predict it, and fortunately it has worked. i think we reported last summit, the last two years we have gone from saving 600 lives a year to

to over 6000. maybe we can report next year, 60,000 lives saved. president clinton: i will ask all innovators, before i come to jeffrey, is technology -- what role does it play in creating the health care system we want? and what, if any, economic imperatives actually block it from creating the system that we want? you have all disrupted markets with noninvasive technology -- whoever heard of an insurance company giving you medicine -- all of this, how are we -- how will it all come out? how will you measure what you

are trying to do and how much of it does depend, your definition of success, depend on the whole system transforming itself? how much do you think about the health outcomes in america and how they are not as good as in other countries, but we spend more money? where is the end of this, and where is the role of technology going to be? how do you think other people in your line of work should behave? where is this going? ms. holmes: we have only seen technology as a tool, a tool for empowering the individual, because we believe strongly that the answer is to our health care, it lies in consumers and enabling people to take control over their own health and, therefore, their own outcomes. so what has been interesting to

us about our model is we decided that we would start billing, when we started our lab, 50% off of medicare reimbursement rates. increasingly, now at 90% off of the reimbursement rates. and that is lowering medicare and medicaid reimbursement rates over time, by definition, based on the way that we are billing. so technology can serve as a tool for facilitating change in policy and for empowering the individual to then get better access to, in our case, the diagnostic space -- 80% of decisions in health care are driven by laboratory data, so if you can facilitate that in a preventative context, you can change outcomes. we strongly believe that one of the things this country is great

at is innovation and creativity and applying it toward helping solve issues, in this case, with our work, without having to raise taxes or cut programs, to realize the same kind of savings. president clinton: i will come back to you. joe, you have made money and you have done a lot of good, would your medical device work. and one of the things he said -- you said that some people in your line of work think that if they share information and we have confidence in medical records, electronic medical records, which is necessary to do to save lives and lower cost. how do you get other people to join? how come you think you can do

this and still be successful if so many people don't? how do we break down the illusion that non-transparency is good economics, but disastrous over the long run? mr. kiani: with your help. with your help we started this movement. we have to think about that at the end, sooner rather than later, we will become either victims or recipients of a great health care system that not only has amazing technology, doctors, nurses, but it provides safety and quality care with dignity. i tried to reach out to the ceos of medical technology companies and say to them, 20 years from now after you retired, how much would you have liked to have left this industry?

because if we don't all share this data, we cannot get to the superhighway where we can create predictive algorithms that can tell us where we are going. for example, if we are in a hospital and we are looking at vital signs data, that is helpful to predict where we are going, and a doctor or nurse could see it, but not everyone will see it. if we get data from electronic medical records, from x-rays from imaging, from labs, smart algorithms in the computer can predict it, and we have got 50 companies who have made the pledge so far, like g.e., phillips, maximo, we need the rest. if we do not get everyone to agree to share data -- we are not asking for internal data but we won't be able to get the things we're looking for.

i made an analogy about 11 blind men helping an elephant, we will not know what we are touching. president clinton: josh, this insurance model you just described to us, just as a lay person listening, from a naked business model point of view, it sounds like you are saying if i do this well, i can ensure people for less money and still make plenty. that is what you are trying to do? so what we want to do is insure for wellness. since i'm a presumably -- since, presumably the problems for medicare and medicaid and the federal health insurance

federal health insurance program would follow your lead, if you can do this, that way you can be truly disruptive. what do you need to happen beyond your control for your business model to have a good chance to succeed? mr. kushner: i think it is about aligned incentives. i think there is a lot of things we are doing that are very differentiated. and just to go back to the question you asked before, how does technology impact our businesses, or the industry. i am of the belief that if you are not a technology company in the next decade, you will not be

a company. you will not be around in the next 10 years. everyone in the world needs to adapt or move on. there is so much that we can do, for example, amazon and google know when a woman is pregnant almost immediately, based on but a health insurance company does not know until the claim is paid three months after birth. so, you know, our ability -- [laughter] [applause] our ability to understand what is happening in the system in real-time and enables us to actually take something that is real, that we can't prevent, by giving away free medicine, if they are sick they are sick. if we understand what is happening, we can point them in the right direction. i think over time, our ambition is to work more intimately with systems and we are starting to have conversations around that. how can we work together?