mr. daniel tangherlini, you have canceled 47 conferences. can you tell me what the purposes of the conferences were and why there were scuttled in the first place? >> that was part of the reason why we cancelled them. every conference now has to come through with an explanation in detail what the benefits are to the taxpayer, and what the results will get out of it. in some cases there were some applause and the way it was constructive that we referred it to the inspector general for additional analysis and have the legal team look at it. while we thought there was value to the conference, we did not think we could explain or justify the mechanism to which the way was put together. other conferences frankly we did not feel there was sufficient justification for us to use taxpayer money. >> could you describe what some of those things were about? my guess is there would be going on for decades. -- there would of been going on for decades. i just want an explanation of the government conferences about. >> i think the primary focus is to bring

acting administrator daniel tangherlini is with us today to discuss what he has done since then and where the agency goes from here. i want to say that i have been impressed by your efforts mr tangherlini to curb irresponsible spending and to conduct a top to bottom review of gsa policies and operations to determine if there are other areas where the agency has been a careless stewards of taxpayer dollars. the committee's interest in this subject is based on our jurisdiction over government operations generally. sometimes people focus on the homeland security part of our jurisdiction but the traditional long-standing jurisdiction is governmental affairs and we have specific jurisdiction over the gsa. to most americans, the general services administration is probably unknown or is an obscure federal agency but its purpose could not be more important to the way our government spends their taxpayer dollars. i think gsa's history is relevant and interesting and i just want to touch on a briefly. in 1947 congress established the commission on organization of the executive branch of government to recommend ways to streamline the government while spending quote the lowest amount c