To amend title 10, United States Code, to require the inclusion of a behavioral health professional on any physical evaluation board that considers issues of post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, or other mental health condition.

I thank my good friend and our distinguished ranking member of the committee, Mr. Cummings, for his graciousness and generosity. He has been a great leader and a great mentor in our committee. I also thank the distinguished chairman, Mr. Issa, for his leadership on this legislation. I have been proud to cosponsor and coauthor this bill with him.

In the 21st century, Mr. Speaker, effective governance is inextricably linked with how well government leverages technology to serve its citizens. Yet our current Federal laws governing IT management and procurement are antiquated and out of step with technological change and growth and yield poor results.

Far too often, cumbersome bureaucracy stifles innovation and prevents government from efficiently buying and deploying cutting-edge technology. Program failure and cost overruns plague the vast majority of major Federal IT investments.

As the distinguished chairman indicated, if only the rollout of the health care Web site were a unique incident. Unfortunately, it actually characterizes most major Federal IT procurement rollouts.

Some Federal managers report as much as 47 percent of their budgets are spent on maintaining inadequate or antiquated IT platforms. That is 47 percent.

In recent decades, taxpayers have been forced to foot the bill for massive IT program failures that ring up staggeringly high costs but exhibit astonishingly poor performance. For example, the Air Force invested 6 years in a modernization effort that cost more than $1 billion but failed to deliver a usable product, prompting the Assistant Secretary to state:

I am personally appalled at the limited capabilities that

program has produced relative to that amount of investment.

This status quo is neither acceptable nor sustainable.

Again, I want to thank Chairman Issa for working with me in a productive manner to develop the bipartisan Issa-Connolly Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act, or FITARA. This bipartisan legislation seeks to comprehensively streamline and strengthen the Federal IT acquisition process and promote the adoption of the best practices from the technology community.

The reform measure before us recognizes that effective Federal IT procurement reform must start with leadership and accountability. It is absolutely essential that a department's top leadership understands how critical effective IT investments are to an agency's operations and ability to carry out its future mission.

We must elevate and enhance the prestige and, more importantly, the authorities of CIOs across the Federal Government to hold them accountable and to give them the flexibility to effectively manage an agency's IT portfolio. Agency heads need talented leaders to serve as their primary advisers on IT management; to recruit and retain talented IT staff, as the distinguished chairman has indicated; and to oversee critical IT investments across the organization. Title I of our legislation would accomplish this while also avoiding one-size-fits-all solutions by allowing agencies significant discretion in implementing the various aspects of this new law.

Our bill would also accelerate data center optimization, as the distinguished ranking member indicated, and provide agencies with flexibility to leverage efficient cloud services and strengthen the accountability and transparency of Federal IT programs.

If enacted, 80 percent of the approximately $80 billion spent annually on Federal IT investment would be required to be posted on the public IT Dashboard, compared to the 50 percent or less that characterizes that activity today.

Strengthening the transparency requirements is an urgent and much- needed reform in light of the most recent January 2014 GAO report that revealed the IT Dashboard has not been updated for 15 of the last 24 months. This finding is as astonishing as it is unacceptable.

Fortunately, a bipartisan consensus is forming around the urgent need to further streamline and strengthen how the Federal Government acquires and deploys information technology. President Obama has embraced Federal IT procurement reform, and a number of agencies are already taking a lead in the area.

Now is the time, Mr. Speaker, to ensure reforms are adopted governmentwide and carry the force of reform law. I urge all of my colleagues to join us in this bipartisan effort in supporting this important and urgently needed reform.

In the 21st century, effective governance is inextricably linked with how well government leverages technology to serve its citizens.

Yet, our current Federal laws governing Federal IT management remain out of step with technological change and growth, with bureaucracy stifling innovation and preventing government from efficiently buying and deploying cutting edge technology.

Simply put, today Federal IT acquisition is often a cumbersome, bureaucratic, and wasteful exercise--characterized by a Federal Government that has no idea what technology it needs, struggles to manage what it has, and consequently wastes billions of taxpayer dollars on failed IT investments.

In recent decades, taxpayers have been forced to foot the bill for massive IT program failures that ring up staggeringly high costs, but exhibit astonishingly poor performance.

Program failure and cost overruns still plague the vast majority of major Federal IT investments, while Federal managers' report that 47 percent of their budget is spent on maintaining antiquated and inadequate IT platforms.

The annual price tag of this wasteful spending on Federal IT programs is estimated to add up to approximately $20 billion.

The Air Force invested six years in a modernization effort that cost more than $1 billion, but failed to deliver a usable product, prompting its Assistant Secretary to state, quote ``I am personally appalled at the limited capabilities that program has produced relative to that amount of investment.''

Of course, failing mission-critical IT investments do not only waste taxpayer dollars, but they jeopardize our Nation's safety, security, and economy.

From malfunctioning Census handheld computers that threatened to undermine a critical constitutional responsibility . . . to a promised electronic border fence that never materialized . . . time and time again, agency missions have been sabotaged by failed IT acquisitions and gross mismanagement.

This status quo is unacceptable and unsustainable.

The question facing us today is how can we modernize an IT procurement process designed for the 20th Century to meet the growing technology demands of the 21st?

There are no quick fixes or legislative silver bullets. However, I strongly believe that if Congress can limit partisan posturing, we may finally have an opportunity to address the core problem at the heart of the HealthCare.gov challenge--our Nation's broken Federal IT procurement system.

I want to thank Chairman Issa for working with me in a productive manner to develop the bipartisan Issa-Connolly Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act, also known as FITARA.

Our bipartisan legislation seeks to comprehensively streamline and strengthen the Federal IT acquisition process and promote the adoption of best practices from the technology community.

We have solicited extensive input from all stakeholders to refine and improve our bill in an open and transparent manner.

The resulting Issa-Connolly reform measure recognizes that effective Federal IT procurement reform must start with leadership and accountability.

It is absolutely vital that a Department's top leadership understands how critical effective IT investments are to an agency's operations and ability to carry out its mission.

After reviewing the findings of extensive oversight reviews, and feedback from those in the trenches, I believe we must elevate and enhance the prestige, and more importantly, the authorities, of CIOs across the Federal Government to hold them accountable for effectively managing an agency's IT portfolio.

Agency heads must have talented leaders to serve as primary advisors on IT management . . . recruit and retain talented IT staff . . . and oversee critical IT investments.

Title I of FITARA would accomplish this, while also avoiding ``one- size-fits-all'' solutions by allowing agencies significant discretion in implementing the law.

In many respects, FITARA simply provides the force of law behind the August 2011 memorandum authored by then-OMB Director Jacob Lew, which announced that the Administration was committed to, quote:

``changing the role of Agency Chief Information Officers

away from just policymaking and infrastructure maintenance,

to encompass true portfolio management for all IT.

This will enable CIOs to focus on delivering IT solutions

that support the mission and

business effectiveness of their agencies and overcome

bureaucratic impediments to deliver enterprise-wide

solutions.''

More than two years has passed since that policy memorandum was distributed to agencies, and it has become clear that efforts to reform IT through Administrative actions alone will not suffice.

In fact, if one takes the time to analyze FITARA vis-a-vis existing Administration IT initiatives, one will find that our bipartisan bill is consistent with, and seeks to build on, the nascent Federal IT initiatives that have emerged over the past five years, including those in the 25 Point Plan.

For example, the Issa-Connolly FITARA would enhance the CIO Council's role, tasking it with leading enterprise-wide portfolio management, and coordinating shared services and shared platforms across government.

This bipartisan bill would also empower agencies to eliminate duplicative and wasteful IT contracts that have proliferated for commonly-used, IT Commodity-like investments, such as e-mail.

In this era of austerity, agencies cannot afford to spend precious dollars and time creating duplicative, wasteful contracts for products and licenses they already own. In addition to improving how the government procures IT, this amendment would also enhance how the government deploys these tools.

Our bill would accelerate data center optimization, provide agencies with flexibility to leverage efficient cloud services, and strengthen the accountability and transparency of Federal IT programs.

If enacted, 80 percent of the approximately $80 billion annual Federal IT investment would be required to be posted on the public IT Dashboard, compared to the 50 percent coverage that exists today.

Strengthening the transparency requirements of the IT Dashboard is an urgent and much needed reform in light of the recent January 2014 GAO report that revealed the IT Dashboard has not been updated for 15 of the past 24 months! This finding was as astonishing as it was unacceptable.

The IT Dashboard was launched in 2009 with great fanfare, and to this day, OMB continues to claim that, quote ``The IT Dashboard gives the public access to the same tools and analysis that the government uses to oversee the performance of the Federal IT investments.''

Clearly providing the public with accurate and updated Federal IT investment performance data for only 9 months out of a 2-year period fails to give average citizens access to the same analysis used by agencies.

It certainly undermines OMB's claim that the IT Dashboard was launched to, quote shine ``light onto the performance and spending of IT investments,'' by ensuring that the public has access to data indicating not only whether a project is over budget or behind schedule, but providing specific dollars figures and dates.

Consistent with the principle that public contracts are public documents, our amendment also strengthens transparency in regard to the final negotiated price a company charges a Federal agency for a good or service.

Today, far too many agencies negotiate blanket purchase agreements in silos, without any knowledge that another agency has already negotiated a BPA with the same exact vendor, for the same exact product, but at a different price.

Nearly two decades has passed since the Information Technology Management Reform Act and the Federal Acquisition Reform Act were enacted through the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1996--reforms that are better known today as the foundational ``Clinger-Cohen Act.''

Fortunately, a bipartisan consensus is finally forming around the urgent need to further streamline and strengthen how the Federal Government acquires and deploys IT. President Obama has embraced Federal IT procurement reform and several agencies are already taking the lead in this area.

Now is the time to ensure reforms are adopted government-wide and carry the force of law.

The bipartisan Issa-Connolly Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act will enhance the statutory framework established by Clinger-Cohen to create an efficient and effective Federal IT procurement system that best serves agencies, industry, and most importantly, the American taxpayer.

I urge all my colleagues to join me in supporting this important and urgently needed bipartisan reform measure.

IT Alliance for Public Sector,

Washington, DC, February 25, 2014.

Re H.R. 1232, the Federal Information Technology Acquisition

Reform Act (FITARA)

Hon. Darrell Issa,

Chairman, House Oversight & Government Reform, Washington,

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1232) to amend titles 40, 41, and 44, United States Code, to eliminate duplication and waste in information technology acquisition and management, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

This bill, the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act, or FITARA, is a slightly modified version of the one that left committee. It was changed only with my cosponsor's concurrence in order to make it more likely to easily pass both bodies. This is, in fact, substantially the same bill, as amended, as the full House voted last year to incorporate in the House version of the defense authorization bill.

H.R. 1232 reforms governmentwide the process by which the government annually acquires and employs, roughly, $81 billion of Federal information technology. To quote President Obama on November 14, 2013: ``One of the things the Federal Government does not do well is information technology procurement.''

Now, that was profound because, in the fifth year of his Presidency, it is very clear that the President has realized that this is a monumental task, one inherited by him, not one created by him.

There are systematic problems in the way that we procure IT, including the nature of the history of individuals at all levels thinking they can buy something, and often they can, but too often our committee sees and reviews billion-dollar writeoffs of IT programs in which you cannot find out who was in charge, in which you cannot find out how they went on so long, and the hardest thing to find out is why they don't work at the end of $1 billion worth of ``in and out'' of House production. Indeed, industry experts estimate that as much as 25 percent of the over $80 billion annual expenditure is mismanaged or is attributable to duplicative investments or simply doesn't come to be used.

We need to enhance the best value to the taxpayer. More importantly, good software saves billions of dollars and countless lives and countless hours if it works. Bad or poorly done software can frustrate the American public and can often deprive them of the very product or service that they expect to receive.

When this bill was originally envisioned, written, and passed out of our committee, no one had heard of the healthcare.gov Web site. Our committee, in fact, had looked at countless other failures within the IT procurement community, including ones at the

Department of Defense and others, including ones that occurred under previous Presidents. We had determined, along with Mr. Connolly, that there were a number of areas in which we needed to make fundamental change. So, although the American people can certainly see the launch of healthcare.gov as a poster child for not done on time, not, perhaps, done on a budget that we would be proud of and certainly something for which you could not find the responsible parties, even when you called them before your committee, let us make this clear: this bill is not about one failure. It is about a governmentwide, longstanding failure that predates this administration.

Among the things that FITARA will do is to create a clear line of responsibility, authority, and accountability over IT investment and management decisions by empowering agency CIOs; creating an operational framework to dramatically enhance the government's ability to procure commonly used IT faster, cheaper, and smarter; and strengthening the IT acquisition workforce. I want to reiterate this, that this is the Federal IT acquisition force. There can be no better investment than to make sure the people whom you trust the most for procuring IT, both from a standpoint of functionality and security, be a well-trained workforce, which is part of what we want to make sure we have.

FITARA accelerates and consolidates and optimizes the organization of government's proliferating data centers, something that my colleague from Virginia has worked on tirelessly. It increases the transparency of IT investment scorecards by requiring 80 percent of governmentwide IT spending to be covered by public Web sites called ``IT dashboards,'' and it ensures procurement decisions give due consideration to all technologies, including open source. I might note that for the $677 million that initially was spent on healthcare.gov, some of the areas in which the code worked was proven open source technology that was made available.

The discussion draft of this bill was first posted by our committee on its Web site 18 months ago. We held two full committee hearings on the bill, and the language that has evolved through the course of several rewrites and extensive feedback by the contracting and technology communities and experts inside and outside of the government has given us the legislation you see before you today. This is a significant and timely reform that enhances both defense and nondefense procurement, and I urge all Members to support the bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I now yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Chaffetz), a man who has worked diligently on the subcommittee to ensure that national security includes Internet security.

Mr. Speaker, can I inquire as to how much time remains?

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes.

My partners in this are sitting on the other side of the aisle. But this committee has come together to look at a problem as simple as chief information officer doesn't mean ``chief.'' It is simply a hollow title.

This bill, more than anything else to the American people, means that for every piece of major IT procurement, there will be a chief information officer; and that CIO will have budget authority and be held accountable, but also be given the ability to make those decisions, including pulling the ``stop'' button on a bad piece of legislation.

So the title of CIO and CTO and some of the other titles need to mean something. Our committee unanimously believes that if you are to be a chief, you have to be able to tell the Indians what to do. You can't be a chief in name only, and when something doesn't work, find yourself without the ability to call ``halt,'' to go directly to the agency head or do the other things we would expect the title ``chief'' to mean.

So, for that reason, I believe it has united a committee behind something that must pass today, go to the Senate and be taken up and become law, if we are going to begin regaining the American people's confidence in our ability to procure large information systems.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

In closing, first, I urge all Members to vote on this important legislation to send a strong message that this is a do-something Congress when it comes to problems that have been around for a very long time.

Secondly, I would like to take a moment, in a bit of personal privilege, to say to the American workforce that work for the Federal Government that, in every investigation by our committee, we have found in every failed project there were legions of good Federal employees who recognized the problem, sent letters, and who tried to have a program that was not going right to go right or go better.

It is not for lack of many, many in the Federal workforce who are doing their job as best they can. It is for lack of a consolidated and predictable chain of command. It is for lack of the ability to have somebody know they are in charge, bear the full weight, and be qualified.

I have no doubt that, upon enactment of this law, the Federal workforce will begin to breathe a breath of fresh air to know that they are being empowered to do the work they so desperately want to do, and that the tools are going to be added for them and the titles will become a title earned and then used wisely.

Seldom do we spend a lot of time on the House floor talking about how great the Federal workforce is. We are talking about monumental failures. Let's understand that it is not for lack of good programmers, it is not for lack of good contractors, and it is not for lack of well- meaning and dedicated Federal workers that we come today. It is for the need to organize them in a way in which we believe they can be successful. And that is the other part of our committee. We are the Committee on Government and Oversight Reform, and today is a structural reform in how we purchase information technology.

For that, I want to thank my partners on the other side of the aisle because we have been right next to each other on this all the way. I particularly thank Mr. Connolly, who has put his staff and his own personal time into every aspect of this, and who also added his earlier legislation that allows us to bring about the necessary consolidation of duplicative centers spread around the country. They are simply a waste of energy and a waste of software power.

So I see this as a win-win, one in which Republicans and Democrats have come together in a Congress that does not have a great reputation but, on occasion, does great things.

I urge support for this, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act, FITARA, would make a number of improvements to the management and the acquisition of IT systems in the Federal Government. I think if we were to summarize what this bill does we would have to use the words ``effective'' and ``efficient.'' We would have to use them over and over again, and we would also say that we are going to do better.

It would enhance the authority of the Federal Chief Information Officers, require agencies to optimize the functioning of Federal data centers, eliminate duplicative IT acquisition practices, and strengthen the Federal IT acquisition workforce. These reforms are needed to ensure that the Federal Government makes effective and efficient investments in information technology.

I want to commend Representative Issa, the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, for the bipartisan approach to this legislation. We had two full committee hearings on the concepts of this bill. The draft of the bill was made available for comment prior to the committee's considering it, and we really do appreciate that.

I also want to recognize Representative Gerald Connolly, the ranking member of the Government Operations Subcommittee, for his critical work on drafting this legislation on technology issues generally. He has made himself an expert in this area, and we are the beneficiaries of that expertise. A significant portion of the legislation before us is based on Ranking Member Connolly's own bill to consolidate Federal data centers.

Last year, the GAO issued its most recent high-risk report, which lists several IT projects as being among the Federal Government's highest-risk investments. For instance, a contract to streamline the Army's inventory of weapons systems is more than 12 years behind schedule and is almost $4 billion over budget. Effective oversight is one of the best weapons against this kind of wasteful spending. Congress has a duty to conduct oversight as well as the obligation to give agencies the tools they need to conduct their own oversight and improve their processes.

Agencies need more well-trained acquisition management professionals to effectively oversee complex systems acquisitions and to ensure that the government is a smart and diligent consumer. If you do not have the people who have the expertise who are doing the acquisitions, you often run into major problems. As has often been said, there is nothing like not knowing what you don't know. The Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act addresses this need by requiring OMB to submit a 5-year plan to develop, strengthen, and solidify IT acquisition cadres.

I understand that the administration has some concerns with this legislation we are considering today, so it is my hope that we can address those concerns as the bill moves forward in the legislative process.

Again, I want to thank Chairman Issa for all of his hard work and Mr. Connolly for all of his. I urge all of my colleagues to support this legislation.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Connolly), a man who has

worked very hard on this legislation with Chairman Issa.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I agree with Chairman Issa. If we are going to have a chief information officer, they need to be what we say they are. They need to have the power to effect change when change is appropriate. They have to have the power to make sure decisions are made to carry out the issues that come up with IT in an effective and efficient manner. I think this legislation is a giant step in the right direction.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I would hope and ask all Members of Congress to vote in favor of this legislation. As I often say, we can always do better. I think that this is one of those times when, through a bipartisan effort, we are making a major statement that we are going to do better.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank the chairman for his good work on this. Without Chairman Issa's leadership on this issue, we would not have this bill here today. I appreciate his work and dedication and passion on this issue. I appreciate Mr. Cummings. I also appreciate Mr. Connolly and the good work he does on this topic.

Mr. Speaker, I hope what people see here is a bipartisan approach to something that is a very large problem. There is a great imperative that we deal with this and deal with it right away. The Federal Government spent more than $600 billion over the past decade on information technology, and we spend, roughly, $80 billion a year just on IT. It is a critical component to making sure that we do have an effective and responsive government.

Now, of the $80 billion or so that is spent each year, about one- third is spent on new procurement projects, and about two-thirds is spent on the operation and maintenance of existing or obsolete systems. It takes so much more energy and personnel to go through obsolete systems than it does to quickly replace with software and hardware and personnel new information technology systems that will make our government more responsive and more effective. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to work with an operating system that is no longer supported by the company that even makes the operating system. We have heard horror stories of people working on DOS operating systems. They are still looking at green screens, for goodness sakes. This is an imperative, and we have to make sure it is prioritized.

Some industry experts have estimated that as much as 70 percent of new IT acquisitions fail or require re-baselining. The Technology CEO Council, made up of top industry experts, estimates that $20 billion of the $80 billion we spend is wasted every year on mismanaged and duplicative IT programs.

The GAO has estimated that the Departments of Treasury, Agriculture, Energy, and State spend well over 80 percent of their IT budgets on operations and maintenance of potentially obsolete systems.

We can do better on this. We are united in a bipartisan way. I encourage my colleagues to pass this bill.

Again, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate Chairman Issa and his leadership on this issue, and I urge a ``yes'' vote on this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 1232 because it begins to fix a broken procurement system that has been on the GAO's ``high-risk'' list since the early 1990's.

Federal IT procurement has been a black hole of taxpayer dollars long before the deeply flawed rollout of Healthcare.gov. During my service on the House Intelligence Committee from 2003 to 2011, there were billions of dollars spent on IT projects that failed, without a shred of work product recoverable for the taxpayer.

H.R. 1232 will go a long way toward addressing these problems by empowering agency CIOs and developing new IT acquisition guidelines and best practices. This bill is a strong start but I think there's more that can be done.

Congressman Connolly and I have worked together to draft complementary legislation to FITARA, called the Reforming Federal Procurement of Information Technology Act. Our bill would create a new, high-level office of IT experts in the White House charged with reviewing major federal IT projects before they get off track.

Our bill would also make it easier for small, innovative businesses to compete for federal projects by simplifying the contracting process. The Federal Acquisition Regulation is 1,900 pages long, and some agencies have a supplement that's an additional 1,000 pages. This rewards incumbent companies familiar with the rules and prevents open competition and innovation among vendors.

I applaud Congressmen Issa and Connolly for working together on this important legislation, and I urge my colleagues to support it.