Existing Resources and Innovations Needed to Replace Legacy IT and Save Taxpayer Dollars (S. Hrg. 117-167)

Summary

This is a Senate hearing before the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Spending Oversight of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, titled Existing Resources and Innovations Needed to Replace Legacy IT and Save Taxpayer Dollars, on September 28, 2021. The witnesses listed are Clare Martorana, Federal Chief Information Officer, Office of Management and Budget; Mina Hsiang, Administrator, United States Digital Service; and V. David Zvenyach, Director Technology Transformation Services. Opening statements are listed for Senators Hassan, Rosen, Ossoff, and Hawley. The hearing record remains open for 15 days, until 5 p.m. on October 13th, for statements and questions for the record.

Summary drafted by a model from the document's text below and checked by script against that text before publication. It is a navigation aid, not a reading of what the document proves. Where AI is used

Issuer: Congressional materials
Document type: Congressional Hearing
Case: Chrg 117Shrg46705

Cite this document

“Existing Resources and Innovations Needed to Replace Legacy IT and Save Taxpayer Dollars (S. Hrg. 117-167).” Original at www.govinfo.gov. Archived at Pandemic Darlings, https://pandemicdarlings.com/source-documents/chrg-117shrg46705/, SHA-256 0bd55eb371dbffaab40447052fc698b22a40d08670fa3550678f1d4355a843f8.

Full text

S. Hrg. 117–167

EXISTING RESOURCES AND INNOVATIONS NEEDED
TO REPLACE LEGACY IT AND SAVE TAXPAYER
DOLLARS

HEARING
BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON
EMERGING THREATS AND SPENDING
OVERSIGHT
OF THE

COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

SEPTEMBER 28, 2021

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov

Printed for the use of the
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

(
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
46–705 PDF WASHINGTON : 2022
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
GARY C. PETERS, Michigan, Chairman
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware ROB PORTMAN, Ohio
MAGGIE HASSAN, New Hampshire RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
KYRSTEN SINEMA, Arizona RAND PAUL, Kentucky
JACKY ROSEN, Nevada JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma
ALEX PADILLA, California MITT ROMNEY, Utah
JON OSSOFF, Georgia RICK SCOTT, Florida
JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri

DAVID M. WEINBERG, Staff Director
ZACHARY I. SCHRAM, Chief Counsel
PAMELA THIESSEN, Minority Staff Director
ANDREW DOCKHAM, Minority Chief Counsel and Deputy Staff Director
LAURA W. KILBRIDE, Chief Clerk
THOMAS J. SPINO, Hearing Clerk

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGING THREATS AND SPENDING OVERSIGHT
MAGGIE HASSAN, New Hampshire, Chairman
KYRSTEN SINEMA, Arizona RAND PAUL, Kentucky
JACKY ROSEN, Nevada MITT ROMNEY, Utah
JON OSSOFF, Georgia RICK SCOTT, Florida
JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri

JASON YANUSSI, Staff Director
PETER SU, Fellow
GREG MCNEILL, Minority Staff Director
ADAM SALMON, Minority Research Assistant
KATE KIELCESKI, Chief Clerk

(II)
CONTENTS

Opening statements: Page
Senator Hassan ................................................................................................. 1
Senator Rosen ................................................................................................... 14
Senator Ossoff ................................................................................................... 17
Senator Hawley ................................................................................................ 20
Prepared statements:
Senator Hassan ................................................................................................. 25

WITNESSES

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2021
Clare Martorana, Federal Chief Information Officer, Office of Management
and Budget ........................................................................................................... 3
Mina Hsiang, Administrator, United States Digital Service, Office of Manage-
ment and Budget .................................................................................................. 4
V. David Zvenyach, Director Technology Transformation Services, U.S. Gen-
eral Services Administration ............................................................................... 6

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES
Hsiang, Mina:
Testimony .......................................................................................................... 4
Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 31
Martorana, Clare:
Testimony .......................................................................................................... 3
Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 27
Zvenyach, V. David:
Testimony .......................................................................................................... 6
Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 36

APPENDIX
Responses to post-hearing questions for the Record:
Ms. Martorana .................................................................................................. 42
Ms. Hsiang ........................................................................................................ 46
Mr. Zvenyach .................................................................................................... 51

(III)
EXISTING RESOURCES AND INNOVATIONS
NEEDED TO REPLACE LEGACY IT AND SAVE
TAXPAYER DOLLARS

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2021

U.S. SENATE,
SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGING THREATS AND
SPENDING OVERSIGHT,
OF THE COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:30 p.m., via
Webex and in room 342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Mar-
garet Wood Hassan, Chairwoman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senators Hassan, Rosen, Ossoff, Scott, and Hawley.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HASSAN1
Senator HASSAN. This hearing will come to order. Good afternoon
and welcome to our distinguished panel of witnesses. Thank you for
appearing today to discuss the resources and services available to
agencies seeking to modernize their outdated and obsolete legacy
information technology (IT) systems.
There is a lot to discuss today: how Congress can supplement
these resources in order to accelerate modernization, hold agencies
accountable to their modernization plans, and reduce the Federal
Government’s reliance on aging technology.
Also critical here is, of course, ensuring that in all of these efforts
we are staying focused on saving taxpayer dollars. This is critically
important because we know that outdated technology fails to serve
the American people and is insecure against sophisticated cyber at-
tacks. It also wastes billions in taxpayer dollars every year due to
poor procurement actions, improper payments, and expensive con-
tractors needed to operate and maintain aging systems.
I also want to thank Ranking Member Paul, who is unable to
join us today, and his staff for working with me on this hearing
and, more broadly, on our ongoing efforts to curb wasteful spend-
ing. Just last week, we introduced the 2021 edition of Acting on the
Annual Duplication Report Act, which would implement rec-
ommendations made to Congress by the Government Account-
ability Office (GAO) to eliminate wasteful duplication, fragmenta-
tion, and overlap across the Federal Government. I look forward to
working with Ranking Member Paul and all of my colleagues to
move that bill forward.
1 The prepared statement of Senator Hassan appears in the Appendix on page 25

(1)
2

Today’s hearing builds on a hearing this Subcommittee held in
April that focused on the issues that are holding agencies back
from realizing significant cost savings, increased security, and
greater service delivery by modernizing their systems. The question
we are asking today is: How are these agencies using existing tools
and resources to transform their aging technology, and what can
Congress do to fill the gaps that may remain?
At our previous hearing, former Federal agency chief information
officers (CIO) and a Government Accountability Office expert on
Federal IT management discussed the costs and challenges that
legacy IT systems present. We learned that detailed IT moderniza-
tion plans are critical to an agency’s long-term success in updating
IT and budget for capital projects. We learned that funding mecha-
nisms, such as the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) and
agency working capital funds, need to be improved to accommodate
multi-year modernization efforts. Most importantly, we learned
about the impact that the Federal Government’s aging IT infra-
structure has on the American people.
Despite some challenges, agencies have a tremendous oppor-
tunity to modernize these outdated systems and, in turn, make
government more effective and efficient. Over the course of the
pandemic, we saw chief information officers across the government
quickly equip their agencies to work remotely. Congress and the
Executive Branch have made more financial resources available to
agencies to upgrade their IT systems than ever before, and there
are programs and policies in place to assist agencies in taking their
aspirations and turning them into achievements.
Lending their expertise and insights on what more we can do to
address the challenges we face is our panel of very accomplished
witnesses, consisting of the Federal Chief Information Officer, the
Administrator of the U.S. Digital Service (USDS), and the Director
of Technology Transformation Services (TTS). I look forward to
hearing from all of you today about your work to assist agencies
in reducing their reliance on costly, outdated, and obsolete tech-
nology.
Now, it is the practice of the Homeland Security and Govern-
mental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) to swear in witnesses. If you
will please stand, and even stand in your virtual environment, that
would be great, and please raise your right hands. Do you swear
that the testimony you give before this Subcommittee will be the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you,
God?
Ms. MARTORANA. I do.
Ms. HSIANG. I do.
Mr. ZVENYACH. I do.
Senator HASSAN. All three witnesses have answered in the af-
firmative. Thank you all. Please be seated.
I will now introduce our witnesses. Our first witness today is
Clare Martorana. Ms. Martorana is the Federal Chief Information
Officer and leads the Office of Electronic Government and Informa-
tion Technology at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
Before joining the Biden Administration in her current role, she
served as Chief Information Officer for the Office of Personnel
Management (OPM), where she led the Agency’s efforts to improve
3

security and operations. Ms. Martorana joined the Federal Govern-
ment in 2016 but has spent over 2 decades working to make infor-
mation accessible to the public through digital innovation.
Welcome, Ms. Martorana. You are recognized for your opening
statement.
TESTIMONY OF CLARE MARTORANA,1 FEDERAL CHIEF INFOR-
MATION OFFICER, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET
Ms. MARTORANA. Chair Hassan, Ranking Member Paul, Mem-
bers of the Subcommittee, thank you for the invitation to testify
today on information technology. It is my pleasure to be here with
my colleagues, Mina Hsiang and Dave Zvenyach. On a daily basis,
the three of us work together and collaborate, and frankly, that is
what it is going to take to make the best use of taxpayer dollars
to deliver a seamless and secure customer experience for the Amer-
ican people.
It is important to note that not all old systems are legacy and
old does not always mean bad, antiquated, risky, or in need of re-
tirement. The legacy technology I am most concerned with are sys-
tems that are out of support, cannot be patched, have availability
issues, or cannot meet user needs or policy goals, systems whose
security cannot keep pace with our adversaries. With a secure sys-
tem, even when deemed legacy, we can still deliver modern cus-
tomer experiences to the public. Teddy Roosevelt said, ‘‘Do what
you can, with what you have, where you are.’’ I am happy to report
that we can do a great deal across government with what we have,
but what we need to do is work differently.
Securing and modernizing Federal IT is a team sport, and here
is what we can do now. Agency investments should be aligned to
an enterprise IT and cybersecurity modernization plan. Technology
and data enable each agency to execute on its mission for the
American people, and they must be secure. An enterprise operating
model requires all agency and program leadership to work together
to achieve successful investment, deployment, and sustainment of
modern, secure technology. We must put our customers at the cen-
ter of everything we do, simply put, designing with users, not for
them. We are establishing a culture in government that is mindful
of customer experience in delivering agency missions.
Using incremental software development, we can show our col-
leagues across government that service improvements are possible
even within a legacy IT environment, and we must show and not
tell. By delivering minimally viable products, we are able to get
working software into the hands of users early and give design and
development teams the opportunity to adjust based on user feed-
back about the services. By learning quickly what works and what
does not, we reduce the risk of failure and can deliver higher qual-
ity, secure services to the public.
It will take an enterprise mindset to get there. When I became
the CIO at the Office of Personnel Management, I was the seventh
CIO in 7 years. The Agency was facing an uncertain future and
had a number of critical IT challenges, including mainframe legacy
technology that held crucial data for our Nation. We knew we
1 The prepared statement of Ms. Martorana appears in the Appendix on page 27.
4

would not be able to solve the multitude of problems we were fac-
ing alone.
I reached out to a colleague and now friend, the CIO of the Gen-
eral Services Administration (GSA), who immediately provided top
technologists from his team to join mine, fill critical gaps, and help
assess the situation. We realized we needed the specialized skills
of another group of tech talent, the United States Digital Service,
who have within their capability set the ability to rapidly assess
critical infrastructure, identify insecure vulnerabilities, and rec-
ommend a path forward. From there, my colleagues at OMB pro-
vided historical context on previous investments and helped de-
velop a financial strategy and path forward. Our team also engaged
with GSA’s Centers of Excellence (CoEs) in conducting an options
analysis for the work ahead. This ultimately led to successful pro-
curement of new supportable mainframe technology and its reloca-
tion to modern state-of-the-art data centers.
These successes would not have been possible if I stayed in my
silo. It took the combination of internal and external forces, tech-
nical talent, budget management officials, legal, privacy, finance,
human resources (HR), acquisition, agency leadership, and legisla-
tive affairs colleagues, and many others to create the momentum
we needed to stabilize, secure, and modernize operations.
In conclusion, every single group I have met across government
wants to be part of the solution, and I am planning on taking them
up on their offer. I look forward to working with you and our key
stakeholders so we can be successful on this IT modernization jour-
ney.
Thanks for the opportunity to be here today, and I look forward
to your questions.
Senator HASSAN. Thank you so much for your testimony.
We are now going to turn to our witness who is appearing vir-
tually, Mina Hsiang. Ms. Hsiang was recently named Adminis-
trator of the U.S. Digital Service within the Office of Management
and Budget. She has worked as part of the U.S. Digital Service
team on several previous important projects, such as rolling out
‘‘www.vaccines.gov’’ in response to the Coronavirus Disease 2019
(COVID–19) pandemic. She brings with her many years of experi-
ence in the private sector, working on digital innovation and cus-
tomer service to her role as Administrator.
Welcome, Ms. Hsiang. You are now recognized for your opening
statement.

TESTIMONY OF MINA HSIANG,1 ADMINISTRATOR, UNITED
STATES DIGITAL SERVICE, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND
BUDGET
Ms. HSIANG. Chair Hassan, Ranking Member Paul, and Members
of the Subcommittee, thank you for the invitation to testify on leg-
acy information technology in government on behalf of the United
States Digital Service. I am honored to be here alongside my col-
leagues, Clare Martorana and Dave Zvenyach. I am grateful that
technology lets me participate remotely while sick.
1 The prepared statement of Ms. Hsiang appears in the Appendix on page 31.
5

The mission of USDS is to ensure that government services are
delivered well, using the best of technology and design. We do this
in partnership with government agencies, by recruiting and hiring
top technical talent into Federal service, to work on important
projects across the government, side by side with agency civil serv-
ants. We also collaborate closely with our technical partners across
the government, including agency CIOs, the Federal CIO, and
GSA. We are proud to have a track record of convening teams that
partner with agencies to define and deliver on programs, both ur-
gent and ongoing.
At USDS, we are focused on improving delivery in a few key
ways. First, we aim to make services more straightforward, reli-
able, and sustainable through stronger technical foundations. This
is about making services simpler and more consistent for the fami-
lies, small businesses, veterans, and others that we serve. This
means strategic technical planning for multi-year programs, de-
signing technology for performance and reliability, using integrated
or shared tools for services, and building for fast improvement, in-
cluding frequent deployment of code. It also means making it easier
for agencies to do these things simply and by default, which is far
from the status quo.
Software is never done since needs, both technical and human,
are always changing. We must make it easy and secure to iterate
quickly.
Second, we center our objectives around the people that we serv-
ice. We put our users first. For example, when we think about vet-
erans who need to know their benefits eligibility or school nurses
who must track and report COVID testing in their school, we de-
sign the process, implementation strategy, and technical build
around what will create the best possible outcomes for them. This
usually requires an explicitly iterative process that incorporates
users in every turn, evaluating how we are doing on the outcomes
that matter for them and revising based on what we find.
Finally, we find and empower great people. We strive to bring
the best practices and skills from across the country, and we do
this by recruiting team members with diverse and relevant back-
grounds, including government, to bring their expertise to our crit-
ical mission. We have also created training and upskilling pro-
grams to ensure that our colleagues who already sit in critical posi-
tions throughout government can continue to be aware of and use
current best practices. We are partnering with agencies and OPM
to develop new capabilities across the government, to develop hir-
ing practices for technical talent, to scale what we know works.
These strategies are based on our experience from many different
companies, agencies, and other organizations. We know that they
work to prevent and address legacy IT problems, but they need to
be scaled more universally across government in order to address
the overall challenge. Without the right people, process, and tech-
nical foundations for every program in service, they will default to
a slow pace of updates and change, becoming static and risk becom-
ing legacy.
We work to collaborate with programs early so that they do not
encounter crises as a result of these problems, but when it does
happen, we partner closely with our colleagues to fix it as in the
6

example of the OPM mission-critical system that Clare mentioned.
USDS joined the OPM CIO’s team to provide the technical exper-
tise to identify and debug OPM’s current challenges with the main-
frame and also to offer the best practice technical framework and
strategy for moving forward on the solution. We then partnered as
well with GSA when they arrived as they brought their expertise
and capacity to drive the operationalization of the solution.
The public, the families, small businesses, veterans, and others
who are counting on these services do not care how many agencies
exist, where the boundaries are, which legislation created which
system or eligibility, or what the color of money is for maintaining
a system. They want a simple and clear experience when they
interact with their government programs. They want systems and
programs that work together, address their needs, and deliver the
outcomes they expect, minimizing their stress and the burden on
their lives.
In collaboration with our agency partners, the three of us seated
in front of you are already working hard to coordinate and collabo-
rate on the appropriate capabilities necessary to enable such a
world, focusing on the experience of those we serve, empowering
talented public servants, and learning from users to drive iterative,
agile development and procurement. We have outlined some of the
challenges that make it more complex, and we look forward to
working with you to design solutions.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify, and I look forward to
your questions.
Senator HASSAN. Thank you very much, Ms. Hsiang.
Now we will turn to our third witness, who is Dave Zvenyach.
Mr. Zvenyach is the Director of Technology Transformation Serv-
ices and Deputy Commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service
within the General Services Administration. An attorney by train-
ing, Mr. Zvenyach’s previous experiences working for the Wash-
ington D.C. Council exposed him to the technology challenges that
governments face. From there, he joined the General Services Ad-
ministration and later independently consulted on Federal acquisi-
tion policy, and he rejoined the Technology Transformation Serv-
ices office earlier this year.
Welcome, Mr. Zvenyach. You are now recognized for your open-
ing statement.
TESTIMONY OF V. DAVID ZVENYACH,1 DIRECTOR, TECH-
NOLOGY TRANSFORMATION SERVICES, U.S. GENERAL SERV-
ICES ADMINISTRATION
Mr. ZVENYACH. Thank you, Chairwoman Hassan, Ranking Mem-
ber Paul, and Members of the Subcommittee. My name is Dave
Zvenyach, and I am the Director of Technology Transformation
Services at the General Services Administration.
It is an honor to be here today and a privilege to work alongside
my colleagues, Clare Martorana and Mina Hsiang, as we work to-
gether to provide trusted, accessible, and respectful government ex-
periences with and for all. They are accomplished technologists,
dedicated public servants with a deep passion for service delivery.
1 The prepared statement of Mr. Zvenyach appears in the Appendix on page 36.
7

It is important that we are here together because delivering quality
software at the scale of government requires a coordinated team ef-
fort.
As Mina said, our work requires a focus on the experience of
those we serve, empowering talented public servants, and learning
from users to drive iterative, agile development and procurement.
I am fortunate to work every day with incredibly talented individ-
uals and teams all across the country, who join the government for
one reason, to make sure that the technology for the government
of the people works for the people.
In government, we need to shift how we talk about and how we
deliver software. We need to understand that software delivery is
never really done. Technology is always evolving, and we need our
systems to keep up with changes in the law, to improve perform-
ance and reliability, to meet new users’ needs, and we need to focus
and prioritize improving service delivery. We need to shift the gov-
ernment toward an expectation that every system in production
should be continuously improved so that there is no such thing as
a legacy system and no such thing as ‘‘done.’’ By that measure, we
have a long way to go.
But we also know that, as Clare said, we can do a great deal
across government with what we have today. At GSA, we are proud
of the role we play in working with our partners in modernizing
government systems and improving procurement outcomes.
At the core of our mission at TTS, to design and deliver digital
government with and for the public, is the modernization and secu-
rity of government’s infrastructure and applications. Much of our
work at TTS, our superpower, if you will, is focused on reuse,
whether it is our FedRAMP program which helps agencies adopt
secure cloud technologies through a ‘‘do once, use many’’ security
approach, or the U.S. Web Design System which is an example of
a great collaboration with the U.S. Digital Service, which provides
a consistent and accessible experience across agency websites, or
‘‘www.digital.gov,’’ which enables practitioners to share best prac-
tices and learnings through communities of practice. These and
other shared services, our TTS solutions, are a core part of what
we do at TTS.
We also partner directly with agencies through our Presidential
Innovation Fellows (PIF) programs, 18F, and the TTS Centers of
Excellence.
The Office of Personnel Management journey described by my
colleagues is a fantastic example of the sort of collaboration needed
to fundamentally change the way services are delivered to employ-
ees, Federal agencies, and the public. A longtime partner of GSA,
OPM looked at their health and benefits, retirement, and HR sys-
tems challenges and realized that expertise in understanding the
entire landscape was needed. It would require technology and data
asset inventory improvements, true, but it would also require the
development of an acquisition strategy because of the impending
loss of contract support. As Clare and Mina mentioned, the TTS
Centers of Excellence played a critical role in developing and exe-
cuting that acquisition strategy, helped facilitate the migration and
modernization of OPM’s mainframe, and assisted OPM in the sus-
tained data governance and organization improvements along the
8

way. We are honored to continue to partner with OPM on their
modernization journey to this day.
The next few years will bring increasingly complex challenges.
With our ability to implement cross-government solutions, we are
uniquely positioned to help agencies address them. By shifting how
the government thinks about delivering technology, focusing on the
impact on mission and users, looking to expertise and innovation
in government, and collaborating with our industry partners out-
side of government, we can significantly improve Federal tech-
nology and ultimately how agencies serve the public.
As long as there is work to be done, software delivery will never
be done. If we work on these challenges together, though, we can
build the momentum we need to make sure that when Congress
enacts a law, when a user has a new need, and a system needs to
be available, our systems are ready for that change.
Thank you for the opportunity to be before you today. I look for-
ward to answering any questions you may have.
Senator HASSAN. Thank you very much for your testimony.
Thank you to all three of you for such clear and good testimony,
and I am going to begin with my round of questions. As I indicated
earlier, this is a complicated afternoon in the Senate. Senators are
going to be coming and going from votes and may be joining us re-
motely. The level of attendance is yet to be determined is what I
am trying to say.
Let me start with a question to Ms. Hsiang and Ms. Martorana.
The U.S. Digital Service is known for quickly responding to crises
when they arise. For example, in the early days of the COVID–19
pandemic, the U.S. Digital Service assisted agencies with increas-
ing their digital capacity to serve the American people.
But even in the absence of a crisis, the U.S. Digital Service is
also capable of taking a proactive approach to IT modernization
and digital transformation that can yield really impressive results.
For example, the U.S. Digital Service was able to collaborate with
the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on its pay-
ment processing system. The system was more than 50 years old
and relied on outdated code, which made it difficult to use, costly
to maintain, and vulnerable to improper payments. But with the
help of the U.S. Digital Service, CMS modernized its system and
migrated it to the cloud before it encountered a major system fail-
ure or similar crisis.
Ms. Hsiang, how can the U.S. Digital Service jumpstart agency
IT modernization and movement away from legacy IT as it did with
the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services?
Ms. HSIANG. Senator Hassan, thank you so much for that ques-
tion. It is a great one. It boils down to leadership. A crisis creates
a situation where doing something differently from how you have
done things in the past suddenly becomes absolutely necessary and
everyone can agree on that. It creates an opportunity for, as Clare
noted, show, do not tell, the opportunity to do things differently
and to see how that evolves.
That said, the same circumstances can be created without a cri-
sis through responsible leadership and the executive within an
agency. If executives truly understand the implications of their IT
systems through their cooperations, if the executives are deeply
9

committed and leaders are deeply committed to ensuring that tech-
nology systems and technical systems continue to support the mis-
sion, they, too, can create the circumstances where it does not feel
risky to do something different but instead feels like the appro-
priate thing to do.
Senator HASSAN. Thank you.
Ms. Martorana, on the topic of improper payments, how are other
agencies that manage Federal benefits taking advantage of IT mod-
ernization, such as cloud computing, to prevent waste, fraud, and
abuse of taxpayer dollars?
Ms. MARTORANA. Thank you for that question. There are signifi-
cant efforts underway across multiple agencies that are delivering
benefits to, and services to, the public that are focused on assuring
that the benefits make their way to the recipients. There are activi-
ties that are going on in partnership with Federal agencies and
reaching out to States where those payments are ultimately deliv-
ered in some cases.
IT modernization: we are doing several different things across
the Federal enterprise to focus on this. One is a concerted effort to
do user research, making sure that we understand what the prob-
lem is that we are trying to solve and understanding both the tech-
nical, cultural, and business process challenges that are often the
complex mix that causes challenges in operations. We are learning
across the Federal enterprise.
One of the unique groups that I have the great fortune to work
with is the CIO Council, and through that vehicle we share these
best practices and lessons learned. Recently, a CIO came and in
the open of a meeting talked about the fragility of a system and
was seeking the advice of other CIOs to remediate the issue. I
think we will continue to see both on the digital side the collabora-
tion that we all benefit from but also in the planning and execution
of these large policy efforts that are impacting service delivery to
the public.
Senator HASSAN. Thank you. I have a question for Mr. Zvenyach.
While GSA’s Technology Transformation Services provide a number
of innovative tech products and services to agencies, I want to spe-
cifically discuss the 10x and Presidential Innovation Fellows pro-
grams. Both of these programs are designed to bring in new ideas
to enhance government IT performance and promote better service
delivery. Can you explain how the 10x and Presidential Innovation
Fellows programs work, and what specific innovations have come
out of these programs that are making government IT work better
for the American people?
Mr. ZVENYACH. Thank you for the question. I will start with 10x.
10x is a program that is modeled after best practices around pri-
vate investment, so venture investment, and it uses a phased ap-
proach to invest in ideas that might scale in government tech-
nology. One of the lessons that we have learned is that not every
idea is of equal merit and, frankly, the most expensive ideas in gov-
ernment are the ones that think that they are great ideas but actu-
ally do not bear out.
Senator HASSAN. Right.
Mr. ZVENYACH. The benefit of 10x is that we have evaluated over
1,000 ideas, been able to graduate the ones that have the most
10

merit into production. Programs like the U.S. Web Design System
that I mentioned in my testimony serves almost 250 million ses-
sions per month. That was originally a proposal that came through
the 10x process, and it allows for almost, I think, 80-something
agency partners to use that consistent experience across the Fed-
eral Government. That is the sort of thing that comes out of 10x.
We are very proud of the work that we do largely because it does
use the best practices, that phased investment approach that you
see in private industry, and takes that into government.
In that same vein, the Presidential Innovation Fellows program
pairs private sector entrepreneurs and innovators with public sec-
tor leaders. The thesis behind the PIF program, as we call it, is to
pair PIFs with deputy secretaries, CIOs, CXOs across the govern-
ment and make sure that they are bringing that innovation into
the government. The interesting plot twist is that these PIFs often
end up staying in government, and it has been a really extraor-
dinary opportunity to bring that innovation into the public sector,
get them attached to the mission that we all know is important,
and have them stay and really contribute that service to the Amer-
ican people.
Senator HASSAN. Great. One of the projects funded by 10x fo-
cused on assisting agencies with IT management, budgeting, and
planning by producing a field guide to what is known as agile ac-
quisition, a term of art that I wanted to make sure I understood.
Agile acquisition allows agencies to test new products and work
with program developers to incorporate user feedback into product
design to ensure that the products work and meet the agency’s
needs before the agency makes that kind of major investment. I
think that is really what you were just getting at.
Talk a little bit more about how agile acquisition saves taxpayer
dollars and how we can ensure that agencies pursue agile acquisi-
tion processes as much as possible.
Mr. ZVENYACH. It is such a great question. I think one of the
things that we often see in procurement is that two things are true.
One is that there is the tendency to think about procurement sort
of in silos. In software, we talked about how software is a team
sport. You want to make sure that everybody is on the same team
in focus and service delivery on behalf of the user. The same needs
to be true in procurement. You cannot have a contracting officer
sitting on the other side of the CIO sitting on the other side of the
finance sitting on the other side of legal.
Senator HASSAN. Yes.
Mr. ZVENYACH. Everyone needs to be on the same team, focused
on procurement outcomes.
Agile acquisition is really trying to bring teams together so that
we are focusing on how do we actually do iterative development,
how do we actually make sure that we are focused on outcomes,
not just outputs.
Senator HASSAN. Right.
Mr. ZVENYACH. Outcomes on behalf of the program. Programs
like 10x create opportunities to both show how it works and then
also to teach so that we have ability to do once and reuse. We are
really proud of the work that comes out the guides, the derisking
guide and the like, and I thank you for that question.
11

Senator HASSAN. It is really important, and again, it gets at this
whole-of-government approach, sharing information, breaking down
silos.
A question for you, Ms. Martorana. The many policies, programs,
services, and financial resources available to agencies seeking to
modernize their IT systems can only be useful if the agencies are
taking advantage of them. Is there currently a way to track agency
use of the various tools, services, and resources that we have been
discussing today and measure whether they are helping agencies
effectively modernize?
Ms. MARTORANA. Thank you for that question. There are numer-
ous planning tools that are in place related to IT tracking, cost,
scheduling, performance, and IT system modernization projects in
total: the IT dashboard, the Capital Planning and Investment Con-
trol (CPIC) process, through FISMA. There are many mechanisms
that we are using.
One of the things that is a focus of my office is with so many
data inputs we want to make sure that we are making the best in-
formed decisions with the data. Just gathering data for compliance
reasons alone and not being able to tie the data to a very specific
outcome, making sure that we are having the greatest impact with
the investment dollars that we are given—and they are taxpayer
dollars—we all take that very seriously. We want to make sure
through those tools that we are looking at fraud, waste, and abuse
as kind of the cornerstones of good business. That is what any good
business person does.
But I do think that there are opportunities for us to get better
at this. I think that transparency and accountability for some of
these projects—we have over 700 high-value assets in the Federal
Government. That is a large data set. I think in total we have over
8,000 large IT projects that are active in the Federal Government.
We are trying to think of ways where we can use data and data
visualization to drive some informed decisionmaking and also help
us identify risk earlier in the process.
Senator HASSAN. Are there any other things you think you need
to implement? Essentially, you talked a little bit about data collec-
tion and possibly tracking how agencies are using. But to really im-
plement kind of the assessment function, do you feel like you have
the tools and it is just a matter of directing them correctly, or there
are other things you could develop or use?
Ms. MARTORANA. I think the complexity of this is really chal-
lenged by some of our funding mechanisms.
Senator HASSAN. OK.
Ms. MARTORANA. Single-year funding for projects that are com-
plex——
Senator HASSAN. Yes.
Ms. MARTORANA [continuing]. Adds quite a bit of burden to the
process and sometimes forces people to make decisions in advance
of having a fully validated plan.
Senator HASSAN. Got it.
Ms. MARTORANA. I think we also have opportunities and need for
business process improvement, making sure that to our team sport
theme today that both program officials, agency officials, CIO
12

teams, our procurement colleagues are all focused on accomplishing
the same end result.
I think, again, I would kind of go back to funding.
Senator HASSAN. Yes.
Ms. MARTORANA. Making sure that we have flexible funding ve-
hicles, like TMF——
Senator HASSAN. Yes.
Ms. MARTORANA [continuing]. Which is allowing us to move out
on multi-year modernization projects, but surrounded by a team of
people that are incented by our collaborative nature to hopefully
drive a better improvement of the service delivery that we are try-
ing to accomplish. I think those things in combination are keys,
and I think it requires partnership also with the Hill for us to be
successful.
Senator HASSAN. OK. Thank you.
I think we are expecting another Senator shortly, but I am going
to continue along with my questions until she gets here. This is a
question to all three of you. As part of the American Rescue Plan
(ARP), the Technology Modernization Fund, administered by the
Office of Management and Budget and the General Services Ad-
ministration, received $1 billion to increase the fund’s capacity to
assist agencies in achieving their IT modernization goals. We
touched on this a little bit, but in addition the American Rescue
Plan also provided funds to the IT modernization services and pro-
grams at the U.S. Digital Service and GSA.
To date, what projects have these funds supported, what benefits
are the American people receiving or will receive as a result of
these projects? Why don’t we start with you, Ms. Hsiang, and then
we will go to Mr. Zvenyach and Ms. Martorana.
Ms. HSIANG. Thanks for the great question. I would love for
Clare to speak to the details of the TMF money since she is respon-
sible there, but I would add that our funding to Information Tech-
nology Oversight and Reform fund (ITOR) or to USDS-specific pro-
gramming has enabled a number of programs to be staffed and for
us to work toward program outcomes.
In particular, this has enabled our work on ‘‘www.vaccines.gov’’
and the assistance hotline and textline associated with that. It has
allowed us to do work toward the child tax credit in collaboration
with Treasury and the Interal Revenue Service (IRS). It has en-
abled work on unemployment insurance and modernizing those
systems and programs. It has enabled our work on unemployment
insurance and modernizing those systems and programs. It has en-
abled our work on the emergency broadband benefit program at the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC), work in the social
safety net benefits programs that are administered by U.S. Depart-
ment of Agriculture (USDA) and FMS, emergency rental assistance
at Treasury, and then us to support programs at Small Business
Administration (SBA) around Shuttered Venue Operators Grants
and Restaurant Revitalization Fund.
I would note that in addition to helping us directly support those
specific programs and ensuring that service delivery against those
programs achieves the intended goals of the programs, it also al-
lows us to work in all of those agencies on a mission-critical pro-
gram that is of high priority, which allows us show that agency and
13

work closely with that agency on implementing new, more modern
capabilities, to help that agency have an example of what more
modern capabilities look like.
As Clare noted before and I also mentioned, a lot of times what
it takes to sort of—to your first question, what motivates change,
the mandate to do something new in addition to visibility and how
to do it differently often creates an opportunity for more wide-
spread change within an organization. In addition to the direct
benefits to these programs, it also has allowed us to work closely
with and help modernize some of the practices at each of those
agencies.
Senator HASSAN. Thank you.
Mr. Zvenyach.
Mr. ZVENYACH. Thank you. I, too, will defer to Clare on the TMF,
but for our purposes the American Rescue Plan has enabled a num-
ber of different investments. We also have supported a number of
specific agency initiatives under the American Rescue Plan.
But because of TTS’s unique role to focus on cross-agency initia-
tives and to think about how we might be able to provide sort of
the reusable aspects, a number of our investments have been sort
of building on the theme of 10x. We talked about the idea of those
investments in trying to find what in the venture world you would
call multiples. Things like the U.S. Digital Corps is an investment
that we made, and the U.S. Digital Corps is an investment in try-
ing to bring in the next generation of technology leaders and trying
to find early career technologists in government. That is the sort
of thing that we think can have not just immediate effect but
transformational effect on government.
Also, investments in the FedRAMP automation. FedRAMP is one
of the things that we think enabled us to respond to the pandemic,
frankly, is the ability to use virtual technologies and cloud service
technologies. Investments in automation in FedRAMP and sort of
improving the through-put in FedRAMP is important.
We have also made investments in more speculative things.
There is a project that I like called Pie Spots, and the idea with
Pie Spots is to say how might we use raspberry pies, which are
these like tiny little devices to maybe bridge the digital divide.
There is a number of investments that we are looking at that some
of which might work, some of which might not. But the idea with
some of these investments is that we want them to have again
these returns on investment, really, I think, focusing on value, and
using these funds in a way that has both transparency and ac-
countability but also has real multiples in value to the public.
Senator HASSAN. Thank you.
Ms. Martorana.
Ms. MARTORANA. Yes, I really appreciate the congressional com-
mitment to IT modernization through the resources made available
through the American Rescue Plan. The funding provided to USDS,
GSA, and through the TMF are an investment in both our informa-
tion security and the quality of government services. We have re-
ceived applications for TMF funding from 48 different agencies or
components of agencies, totaling about $2.3 billion. We have sent
up to Congress for review the first seven proposals that are going
to be awarded through TMF, and two-thirds of them represent cy-
14

bersecurity. The appropriation was for solar winds, mitigating the
impact of solar winds and the cybersecurity challenges that we are
facing, as well as challenges that came to light during COVID–19.
What you will see in the multitude of those project proposals is
a new way of us looking at how to disburse money. We really are
trying to be strategic investors, working with our agency partners,
making sure that we are evaluating these programs, obviously, for
the greatest risk that they potentially have to the Federal enter-
prise. But also, we are looking at the highest probability of success,
the highest value to the public for some of these, and the highest
impact to security outcomes.
The focus that we have been able to use, a tool that was in the
original appropriation but was not utilized previously, but we felt
the emergency need of solar winds and the COVID–19 pandemic
really warranted us focusing on payment flexibility. We issued
guidance on payment flexibility and have had a significant number
of proposals come in requesting that due to the urgent need of
those agencies asking for that.
The investment portfolio guidance that we gave out focused on
high-value assets——
Senator HASSAN. Right.
Ms. MARTORANA [continuing]. Again, really in the swim lane of
IT modernization. Public-facing digital services, shared services,
and cybersecurity. As I said, about 75 percent of the project pro-
posals that have come in have had a primary or secondary cyberse-
curity focus.
Senator HASSAN. Thank you. I appreciate that very much.
I am now going to turn to my colleague, Senator Rosen, for her
round of questions.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR ROSEN
Senator ROSEN. Thank you, Chair Hassan, and thank you for
holding your second hearing on the important issue of the Federal
Government’s IT modernization.
This may not seem like the most exciting topic to some people,
but as a former computer programmer, I know how important it is
to get this right. This is not just about IT. It is about making sure
that when not just Nevadans but all Americans, when they interact
with their government because they are waiting on a tax refund,
a Social Security payment, trying to renew a passport, applying for
a grant, they know it is the technology that makes it possible for
them to access and get what they need from the Federal Govern-
ment.
It is the responsiveness of the government, the security that
hopefully we can provide. Glad to hear about those cybersecurity
projects. It really allows us, if we modernize, to deliver those serv-
ices that people really need.
As Chair Hassan has pointed out, modernizing IT across the Fed-
eral Government also has the potential to save millions of dollars
in taxpayers’ funds. It is really the responsible thing to do. I want
to thank the Chair again. I want to thank all the witnesses for
your time today and, of course, for what you are doing every single
day.
15

I want to talk a little bit about IT Centers of Excellence. Mr.
Zvenyach, I am interested in the IT modernization Centers of Ex-
cellence that GSA established in 2017, that Senators Portman and
Hassan worked to codify in 2020. The goal of the centers is to con-
nect private industry with government agencies to achieve their IT
modernization goals. Can you give us an update on the progress
that GSA is making with these Centers of Excellence, and what re-
sources do you think you need to make them more effective or
tweak them? How do we build on the success?
Mr. ZVENYACH. Great. Thank you. Thank you for that question.
We are very proud of the work that we have done with the Centers
of Excellence. We heard one example earlier with the OPM.
Another example that I think is just a wonderful example is with
the work that we have done with the U.S. Department of Agri-
culture. We had just an extraordinary partnership there. We were
able to increase approvals by almost 3.5 percent, save tens of mil-
lions of dollars in annual cost avoidance by eliminating 31 out of
37 data centers, by providing better experience in terms of things
like AskUSDA, really working to improve both the data, the gov-
ernance, and just the overall user experience with the Department
of Agriculture. Our partnerships really with a number of agencies
with the Centers of Excellence have been something that we are
really proud of and something that we continue to invest in.
I think where we see opportunity for the Centers of Excellence—
and I think this is true across the board—is two things. One, we
know that we need partners on the other side, who understand
that these are complex challenges. As Mina said earlier, it really
does require leadership to create those conditions for change. Obvi-
ously, in an emergency, everyone is ready to jump to the fray and
to make those conditions, but unless there is another partner on
the other side who is willing to make the changes that they need
to make it does not really stick. The Centers of Excellence have
done extraordinary work with our partners, but we need to always
make sure that we have partners on the other side that have really
clear understanding of their challenges.
Maybe they do not have answers. In fact, usually it is better if
they do not have answers because sometimes they have pre-
conceived notions about what might work. But if we have a clear
understanding this is the problem that you are trying to solve, then
we can come to the table and help bring our expertise and pair
with their expertise to get it done.
The other thing that I will note is that one of the perpetual chal-
lenges with this is that we bring in extraordinary technologists.
The last thing that we need to be doing is to be worrying about
how we are going to deal with this interagency agreement and that
interagency agreement and funding things. As we said, nobody
really cares about the color of money. We just want to get to work
and help people get these problems solved.
I think that is the thing that we really need to figure out is how
do we make it easier for technologists to focus on the challenges,
to work across our agency boundaries because the public does not
care about these boundaries and neither do the technologists. They
just want to work together to solve these important problems.
16

I think that is incumbent on leadership. It is incumbent on our
partnership with Congress. It is obviously important for our rela-
tionship with OMB and beyond.
Senator ROSEN. I could not agree more. You set me up perfectly
for my next question because I was going to talk about the success
of the Department of Agriculture that you have really had there.
How can other agencies use this USDA model for IT moderniza-
tion? Because what you have been talking about is just phe-
nomenal.
Mr. ZVENYACH. It is a great example. What I should say is that
for every USDA there is another one. Right?
One of the great things about USDA is we had extraordinary
partnership and leadership over at the U.S. Department of Agri-
culture. Gary Washington, the CIO there, was an extraordinary
leader. We had folks sort of all the way up and down the chain who
were excited about the mission and who understood that this was
not going to be easy. It was going to require a commitment to
users. It was going to require some iterative development. Closing
down 31 data centers does not happen overnight.
Senator ROSEN. Right.
Mr. ZVENYACH. It takes sustained investment, and it requires
sustained attention and focus. I think that as we look to other
agency partners, what we need them to understand is that when
they show up we also expect this to be a long-term partnership and
something that they and we are not coming to the table for a quick
fix. This is not this thing that you say, ‘‘OK, I have solved it. We
have moved on.’’ This is a long-term investment because the work
is not done until software works for the public.
Senator ROSEN. Thank you. I would like to briefly touch on cy-
bersecurity. You said two-thirds of the requests so far, proposals
out there, were for cybersecurity projects because we absolutely
need to make sure that cybersecurity is part of it. There are mul-
tiple, always multiple, points of, I suppose, interception from hack-
ers that are out there. Maybe that is the best way to put that. As
we modernize these legacy IT systems, we have to really be sure
that we are protecting the taxpayers who rely on government serv-
ices.
Ms. Martorana, can you tell me what services your agencies pro-
vide related to cybersecurity, and how do you ensure that agency
modernization plans pay sufficient attention to sustaining cyberse-
curity? The sustainment. It is one thing to go in first, but it is, as
you said, iterative development. You have to continue to do it over
and over again.
Ms. MARTORANA. Yes, cybersecurity. There was a wonderful
hearing here last week with three Federal leaders: Mr. Inglis, Ms.
Easterly, and Mr. DeRusha. I do not think we could have a better
team of people focused on cybersecurity for the Federal enterprise.
We focus in IT modernization through the cybersecurity execu-
tive order that came out. We assigned 23 tasks to Federal agencies
related to cybersecurity.
One of the really collaborative ways that we are trying to focus
on this is through the guidance that we just issued on zero trust.
What we have recently undertaken is a public comment, a period
of public comment, on the zero trust strategy that we put out, and
17

we found we received over 100 comments in the 2 weeks that this
was available for the public, from industry, from private citizens,
and from Federal employees. We got a great, diverse set of com-
ments that are actually going to make our strategy more actionable
for Federal agencies. I think that type of collaborative and open
perspective on cybersecurity is what is needed for us to keep our
projects safe and secure.
In the Technology Modernization Fund, as I mentioned, the 75
percent, we are doing something that is a best practice in the Fed-
eral Government and in the private sector, which is we are picking
projects that not only have the greatest chance of success but that
we can also build playbooks off of, so that we can repeat—every
agency is trying to get to a basic level of zero trust, which basically
means not trusting any traffic inside your network, constantly vali-
dating to make sure that you are not just securing the perimeter,
but you are making sure that you are watching every transaction
that happens within the network.
By trying to get us to that base level of zero trust, we are apply-
ing that to every IT modernization project that we undertake.
Things have to be secure by design. Security is not an afterthought.
Senator ROSEN. Right.
Ms. MARTORANA. Security cannot be something you bolt on or it
is someone else’s responsibility. It is a core part of the way that
we do software development, that we build projects, and that we
will approve plans that come before the TMF board.
Senator ROSEN. Thank you for that. I agree. I am very happy to
hear about the public comment because if you do not ask people on
the ground what they need—the goal of writing good software is to
give people what they actually need, not what someone thinks they
need. I think that is a great way to go.
Madam Chair.
Senator HASSAN. Thank you very much, Senator Rosen.
I am going to turn now to Senator Ossoff, who is joining us vir-
tually.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR OSSOFF
Senator OSSOFF. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you to our
panel.
Reflecting on the performance of the rental assistance program
that Congress passed in the American Rescue Plan Act, to help
families stay in their homes during the pandemic, and how that
rental assistance then was meant to be distributed via a patchwork
of counties, municipalities, and State governments, the complexity
of execution left many local governments unable to rapidly scale
the technical infrastructure necessary to solicit and receive applica-
tions, to process them, and to deploy funds. It defies reason, in my
opinion, that we would ask thousands of jurisdictions around the
country to replicate the production of new technical infrastructure
where, clearly, they do not have the capacity, and the need was ur-
gent.
My question for you to begin with, Ms. Martorana, is: Could you
reflect on how we might be able to centralize much of that activity
so that we can scale an effort like that swiftly and improve ease
of use for the customer, in this case, a tenant or a landlord seeking
18

to access rental assistance and to make it easier for local govern-
ment partners to stand up new programs like this in emergencies?
Ms. MARTORANA. Thank you very much for that question. In my
opening testimony, I focused on designing with users, not for users.
One of the most critical parts of designing software products and
services is making sure you understand the problem you are trying
to solve. it is absolutely critical that we do this most foundational
step in every single leg of service delivery, whether it is starting
at the Federal level and then being dispensed to States and then
local—municipal and local governments. That is a key focus of all
of ours related to service delivery.
Senator OSSOFF. Thank you, Ms. Martorana, and that is an ad-
mirable principle, and I am sure that one, when applied, results in
better outcomes. But let us think a bit more here. What is your re-
action to the idea that when we, Congress creates such a program
and seeks to rapidly deploy, for example, rental assistance re-
sources across the country, we would make an API or a piece of
software or a ready-to-use commercial solution available to those
States or counties. Or, move in the opposite direction, from down-
stream to upstream, by allowing those counties to plug into a Fed-
eral system.
Designing with users, that is a great principle, but can you
please comment on this specific case and how the Congress could
have better designed this program and how we can work with exec-
utive agencies to make it easier to rapidly deploy resources, to inte-
grate with State and local governments, on a project such as the
rental assistance program.
Ms. MARTORANA. Yes. I do not have as much detailed information
on the rental assistance program specifically, but I think I can real-
ly touch on the point that you are trying to make about us using
modern technology solutions to deliver better services to the public.
Application programming interfaces, APIs are something that can
be developed from legacy systems. You do not need to have a to-
tally modern tech stack in order to use some of these more modern,
best practice, development capabilities. They would deliver better
services downstream to State and local governments.
But I think that you are onto something that is a very important
part of how we are thinking across the Federal Government, and
possibly my colleagues might be able to jump in on this as well be-
cause that is a method that is tried and true. We used APIs off of
legacy systems at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in order
to give veterans, caregivers, and their families the services that
they deserved. This is a process that is possible. It is utilized every
single day across government and in the private sector. I just can-
not speak specifically to the rental assistance use case.
Senator OSSOFF. Thank you, Ms. Martorana. I would welcome
and invite your colleagues to weigh in, maybe sequentially down
the table, on this point. What I am asking you to do is to help the
Committee envision the design of systems, technology, and imple-
mentation for a case such as the one that I raised and that we are
discussing.
Senator HASSAN. Why don’t we start with Mr. Zvenyach and then
go to Ms. Hsiang.
19

Mr. ZVENYACH. Great. Thank you. I think a couple of things to
note. The first is that sort of, as Mina said in her testimony and
it is similar to what Clare is describing, I think one of the chal-
lenges that we confront with something like the program you are
describing is that the public does not care about our organizational
boundaries. They do not care that I am part of GSA and Clare is
part of OMB and that the Department of Housing and Urban De-
velopment (HUD) is HUD. They just do not care. They do not care
that a county is part of a State or that the State is unrelated to
the Federal Government. They just want the program to work.
But our technology systems are built around the funding flows
that go from agency to agency, or agency to county, or agency to
State. What we need to do is we need to find a way to connect the
technologists to each other without having it be totally dependent
on saying, OK, I am optimizing for my agency, I am optimizing for
my thing, and instead, start to have better conversations about
how we can collaborate across those boundaries.
That is, frankly, the shift that we need to make as a government
is that we have to stop centering around our org chart, stop cen-
tering around how we organize ourselves, and start organizing
around how we can best deliver for the public because the public
does not care about our org chart. They care about their service de-
livery. What we have to be doing is to reorganize our work and re-
orienting our efforts in order to best service, to deliver.
To specifically answer the question, the thing that we would need
to do is to be able to work with Congress when you are enacting
legislation to understand the program design and make sure that
we are aligning the money flows and also aligning the technologists
that are going to be working on this at the same time that you are
putting the policy in place because the policy and technology can-
not be sequential. It cannot be that you pass a law and then the
technology comes in far afterward because if the technology cannot
implement the policy then it will not work. When Congress passes
a law, if the technology does not implement it, it is not a successful
program. We have to be able to work with Congress in order to
make sure that the systems do what Congress wants it to do.
Senator HASSAN. Thank you.
Senator OSSOFF. Thank you.
Ms. Hsiang.
Ms. HSIANG. Thank you, Senator Ossoff. I agree with the state-
ments of my colleagues here and would just add that developing
technology to support a specific outcome or to support a specific
program is an inherently iterative process. We need to identify
what the specific outcomes we are targeting are and then run sort
of an iterative process to identify the right approaches that take
into account the systems that are currently in place, that take into
account the capabilities of players at various levels, and that take
into account the realities of State and local government, inter-
mediaries, grantees, and the public who is looking to interact with
those systems and how they plan and want to engage and their ca-
pacity for doing so.
To sort of agree with what Clare said, I think it is very impor-
tant to focus on what the outcomes are for our specific users. In
20

this case, there are two different sets of users, State and local
grantees, and also the public.
Then I think as Dave notes, it is important for us to be part of
that iterative process. By ‘‘us,’’ I do not necessarily mean us USDS,
but I mean technologists.
If you are looking to design—if you, the Hill, if you, Congress,
are looking to develop legislation with a specific outcome objective
that can be enabled by technology, the best way to ensure that you
achieve the outcomes that you are looking for is to engage tech-
nologists in an iterative process and along the way, as you are de-
veloping that legislation, to ensure that the program design is pos-
sible to be executed with technology at the various levels.
Senator OSSOFF. Great insight. Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I yield back.
Senator HASSAN. Thank you.
Senator Hawley.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HAWLEY
Senator HAWLEY. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks to the wit-
nesses for being there.
Ms. Martorana, can I start with you. You write in your testimony
that no two agencies are the same and the different agencies are
in different points when it comes to IT modernization. I would be
curious that what in your view are the specific agencies that right
now have the greatest modernization needs?
Ms. MARTORANA. Sorry about that.
Senator HAWLEY. That is OK. It is hard to see the red light.
Ms. MARTORANA. Thank you for the question. I do not know that
I could answer that specifically. I work with CIOs every single day,
and we work on numerous projects related to their portfolios. Some
have some cybersecurity challenges that they are focused on, but
I do not think wholesale that it would be easy for me to point out
a specific agency.
Senator HAWLEY. Let me flag one for you. In a previous hearing
on this same topic, we learned that the Treasury Department’s
age—the system that the Treasury uses to hold taxpayer informa-
tion, is 51 years old, if I have my facts right. In addition to that,
we have asked a lot of this system over the past year to distribute
pandemic aid in an unprecedented manner. Let me ask you, to
what extent is Treasury’s IT modernization a priority for the ad-
ministration?
Ms. MARTORANA. It is a large priority. I was actually on the
phone with the CIO several days ago, working on this very matter.
One of the things that I said in my opening testimony is while it
is easy for us to think about technology, legacy technology, from an
age perspective, we try to focus on it from a risk perspective. Can
something meet the policy needs that are being written, and can
we actually deliver for users? Can we patch the system should
there be a security issue?
Not all legacy systems are—all of them, if we had a magic wand,
I would want us to have the most modern technology across gov-
ernment wholesale, full stop. But we have to prioritize with the
dollars that are allocated to each agency, to prioritize the systems
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that are at greatest risk, might not be able to be patched, have
availability issues where they might go down.
In working with the CIO of Treasury, those are the conversations
that we are trying to have to make sure their high-value assets are
prioritized the right way for the right investment and to accelerate
their IT modernization journey.
Senator HAWLEY. Very good. Just on this same point, do you
have a sense of what reasons Treasury and the IRS have given for
why modernization activities have been delayed in the past, in
other words, why we are where we are?
Ms. MARTORANA. I think some of the complexity is some of the
policy initiatives that we undertake as a Federal Government that
requires us to reprogram some of our systems. Some of those
foundational items at Treasury went through reprogramming for
the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Then they went through, just re-
cently, reprogramming for PPP or for COVID—other COVID relief,
ARP relief. Some of those systems we are prioritizing operational
need versus long-term modernization opportunities.
A lot of these are not only intricately designed within the agency
itself. Some of them deliver services to other agencies. Making sure
that you can sequence your modernization projects, do them in
bite-size chunks, so that you are not trying to boil the ocean at one
time, are all part of the complexities that CIOs deal with on a daily
basis and on an annual planning basis.
Senator HAWLEY. Very good. That is helpful. That is really help-
ful.
Let me ask you about a GAO report issued in June 2019 to 8 dif-
ferent Federal agencies with legacy systems. The report had rec-
ommendations that identified and documented modernization plans
for their systems, but as of earlier this year, if I am not mistaken,
seven of those eight had not yet implemented the GAO’s rec-
ommendations going on over 2 years now. I just want to ask if the
implementation of these findings is a priority for you and the ad-
ministration and what you are doing to ensure that those rec-
ommendations get implemented.
Ms. MARTORANA. Yes, IT modernization plans are our priority. I
have been working with GAO closely to understand the baselining
of their reporting and what we need to do to partner together to
support those agencies on their journey.
Senator HAWLEY. Very good. Thanks so much for being here.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Senator HASSAN. Thank you very much, Senator Hawley.
I appreciate the testimony of the witnesses so much. I appreciate
your work and your service.
We are in the middle of a vote. I do have a couple of more ques-
tions, and I will ask you to be relatively brief in your responses,
and then we will wrap up the hearing so I can go vote.
Ms. Martorana, I wanted to follow up with you. We talked about
how making sure there is flexibility for repayment for the Tech-
nology Modernization Fund is important, but in addition to expand-
ing access to the TMF it is important that Congress authorize
agencies to transfer money into working capital funds. The Mod-
ernizing Government Technology Act, which was passed in 2017,
authorized agencies to establish IT working capital funds to pro-
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vide a flexible source of funding for long-term IT projects from
within the agency.
However, the Modernizing Government Technology Act did not
include authority for agencies to move money into these accounts,
which leaves these critical funding mechanisms unavailable to
most agencies. In fact, only the Small Business Administration has
received authority to transfer money to its IT working capital fund
in order to pay for ongoing IT modernization projects.
How is the Office of Management and Budget working with agen-
cies that are seeking the transfer authority to ensure that congres-
sional authorizers and appropriators will support these requests?
Ms. MARTORANA. Thank you for that question. We are supportive
of legislative fixes that would help agencies use these innovative
funding models, including working capital funds. It is really essen-
tial. As we noted earlier, 1-year money or having real restrictions
on the funding that is being provided to agencies, to move out on
these multi-year projects, is really challenging.
Senator HASSAN. Yes.
Ms. MARTORANA. We are working closely with our CIO colleagues
and across OMB on utilizing it. But there might be the need for
some legislative fixes, and I really look forward to working with
you and the Committee on those.
Senator HASSAN. We would really look forward to all of you, as
you identify this type of issue, really letting us know about them
as soon as possible so we can work to make sure that the agencies
have the kind of authorities that they need.
Because we are running up on a vote, I am going to ask one
wrap-up question. I am going to ask each of you to respond to it,
and I am going to be a little unfair here and ask each of you to
try to keep your response to about a minute.
At our April hearing, I concluded by asking each witness what
in their opinion is the greatest challenge presented by the use of
legacy IT systems. Today, our conversation is focused on solutions
for modernizing legacy IT. As we conclude, I would like each of you
to describe what in your view is the most important thing agencies
should be doing to modernize their outdated and obsolete IT sys-
tems. We will start with Mr. Zvenyach. Then we will go to Ms.
Martorana, and then we will go to Ms. Hsiang.
Mr. ZVENYACH. I think the first thing that agencies should do is
not try to go it alone. If agencies try to do this by themselves, if
they try to focus on their particular solutions in their own way,
they are going to find themselves in a much harder place.
If we work as a team, if we work across our agency boundaries,
we reuse the things that are available, we use the playbooks that
are created, we use the shared services that we have and invest in
those shared services, we focus on our users, we work in iterative
ways, we do not let the things that have historically left us in a
position of saying ‘‘This is how we have always done it’’ and instead
say ‘‘This is what is actually important for the public,’’ then we are
going to be in a better position to actually modernize these sys-
tems.
Senator HASSAN. Thank you.
Ms. Martorana.
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Ms. MARTORANA. Yes, I would say continuing to move out on the
planning journey. I think, to Dave’s really good point, not going it
alone. While our agency missions are completely unique, we are
dealing with many of the same problems at every single agency.
What we try and do through the CIO Council is work on collabo-
ration, sharing information very openly, making sure that we un-
derstand what problem someone is trying to solve. We share every-
thing from wholesale planning and financial data to playbooks, as
Dave mentioned, and configuration settings for software, to be able
to move out faster. We are working on a project through the CIO
Council of connecting agencies, calendaring functionality so we can
schedule meetings more easily. While they seem like simple things,
spinning up those kinds of collaborative activities I think is going
to be absolutely key to us continuing this modernization journey.
Senator HASSAN. Thank you so much.
Ms. Hsiang.
Ms. HSIANG. Thank you. I would say that for agencies to make
the most progress on their modernization journey there are a few
key components. First, to recognize that it is a journey and the best
approach is to take it in chunks. Everything is lower risk. This is
what we have seen work across industry. Doing it piece by piece
is critical, and not trying to do any big bang or blanket moderniza-
tion, but instead to think about it as a stepwise process and jour-
ney that you are embarking on.
Second would be to think about the personnel and engage in
some new approaches for hiring to ensure that you have the right
personnel for the expertise that is required at every step of this
journey. There are many different competencies that are required.
Director Easterly said it well; we need to help agencies move to
competency-based hiring. I think that that will help support mod-
ernization—them on their modernization journeys as well. There
are some key things that they can do that we are happy to share.
Finally, I would encourage them to focus in thinking about the
right approaches for procurements to support that modernization.
The right approaches are some of the things that Dave has spoken
about, that Clare has spoken about. They need the types of flexible
and iterative procurements that support the modernization that
they are looking to accomplish and to support that stepwise and
iterative approach they are looking to take.
Senator HASSAN. Thank you so much. I want to thank all three
of your for your time, for your testimony this afternoon. Thank you
for really valuable insights on this topic and your contributions to
improving Federal IT systems in a fiscally responsible way.
I want to thank you for your service to our country. It is really
important, and you have really shone an important light this after-
noon on the progress we have made and the progress we can con-
tinue to make.
I look forward to continuing to work with this administration on
encouraging use of existing IT modernization tools and resources to
secure IT systems and deliver government services more effectively,
as well as to coordinate on ways that Congress can fill the gaps to
achieve the ultimate goal of saving taxpayer dollars and improving
service to our taxpayers, too.
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The hearing record will remain open for 15 days, until 5 p.m. on
October 13th, for submissions of statements and questions for the
record.
This hearing is now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:46 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
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