anderson and mr. wulf provided us, that we need to make sure that we have all of the people and items in place that will allow us to execute the program successfully in the final stages. so my first point is i think we've come a long way. we clearly still have challenges. the second point is that as long as the program continues to be operate on an annual authorization basis since the original authorization, it leaves a degree of uncertainty as to the long-term status and i believe that we in our industry partners will be on a much stronger footing if you all indicate to us that you of belief in the program as we do and want to see it go forward. having said that, we obviously you you a great deal of information about the progress we make with respect to the plan of action and would hope that in the oversight function, we would be able to provide that. thank you. >> thank you. my time has expired. mrs. clark is recognized for five minutes. >> under secretary beers, your office recently provided the subcomm

the chair now recognizes mr. wulf to testify. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i don't want to reiterate the remarks of the undersecretary and director anderson, but i very much appreciate the opportunity to be here today both director anderson and i arrived at iscd about eight months ago and i just cannot say enough about how excited i was to join the team at the department and nppd and specifically, within our division. it is a really filled with just a huge number of talented and committed individuals who are just completely dedicated to moving the cfats and program forward. as director anderson mentioned, our report did identify a number of significant challenges, in no way are those insurmountable. we're looking forward to continuing to work with our industry stakeholders as well as stakeholders within the union to move the program forward and looking forward to answering questions about the program today. thank you so much. >> all right. we'll have first round of questions, five minutes apiece. i'll recognize myself for the purpose of asking questions. if

anderson and mr. wulf. you get a pass today. we will hear from you a little bit. in the memorandum there is a section which talks about inadequate training capability and due to restrictions placed upon our hiring, the division has not been able to hire personnel with necessary skills and abilities to appropriately achieve our mission. one example is training. what restrictions placed upon hiring are you referring to? >> that passage of the report referred to a policy and the undersecretary may be in a better position to speak about it but a policy that is no longer in existence that i believe was in place to try to centralized training function within the directorate. that was a policy that at the time precluded our division from hiring into the division specifically, individuals with training expertise, curriculum development and that sort of expertise. that policy is no longer in existence moving forward to hire folks with appropriate expertise. >> you weren't able to hire people who knew how to train people? >> we did not have individuals who had experience in

anderson and mr. wulf. we've had a lot of discussion what went wrong. i want to focus in on the employees for a minute, because certainly with the investigations going on, with all that has been uncovered, there has to be some level of disruption, some level of not knowing where they stand. what is the relationship now with the employees? how were the employees getting through this? what types of things have been put in place to give some level of reassurance to people that first of all they're valued, but second of all that things will work out in the end. and have there been conversations with their union? if you would share that with us, thank you. >> thank you for the question. i actually am really happy you asked a question about the workforce because there seems to be a perception that there is some question about the capabilities of the iscd team. and while it's true that i have identified instances where we don't have a good person position fit, i can honestly say i've never worked with a more talented, hard-working group of folks. and i think t