Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions
Floor Speech
STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS -- (Senate - July 31, 2008)
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Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I rise to join my friend Senator Wyden in introducing a bill that will ban the sale of certain novelty lighters that children can mistake for toys, often with tragic consequences for themselves and their families.
In Arkansas last year, two boys, ages 15 months and 2 years, died when the toddler accidentally started a fire with a lighter shaped like a motorcycle. In Oregon, a fire started with a dolphin-shaped lighter left one child dead and another brain-damaged. A North Carolina 6-year-old boy was badly burned by a lighter shaped like a cell phone.
Sadly, the U.S. Fire Administration has other stories of the hazards presented by novelty lighters. When you learn that one looks like a rubber duck toy--and quacks--you can imagine the potential for harm.
As a co-chair of the Congressional Fire Services Caucus, I am proud to note that this spring, my home State of Maine became the first State to outlaw the sale of novelty lighters.
My State's pioneering law stems from a tragic 2007 incident in a Livermore, Maine, grocery store. While his mother was buying sandwiches, six-year-old Shane St. Pierre picked up what appeared to be a toy flashlight in the form of a baseball bat. When he flicked the switch, a flame shot out and burned his face. Shane's dad, Norm St. Pierre, a fire chief in nearby West Paris, began advocating for the novelty-lighter ban that became Maine law in March 2008.
The Maine State Fire Marshal's office supported that legislation, and a national ban has the support of the Congressional Fire Services Institute's National Advisory Committee, the National State Fire Marshals Association, and the National Volunteer Fire Council.
The bill is straightforward. It treats novelty lighters manufactured after January 1, 1980, as banned hazardous substances unless the Consumer Product Safety Commission determines a particular lighter has antique or significant artistic value. Otherwise, sale of lighters with toy-like appearance, special audio or visual features, or other attributes that would appeal to children under 10 would be banned.
The novelty lighters targeted in this legislation serve no functional need. But they are liable to attract the notice and curiosity of children, whose play can too easily turn into a scene of horror and death. The sale of lighters that look like animals, cartoon characters, food, toys, or other objects is simply irresponsible and an invitation to tragedy.
I urge all of my colleagues to join me in supporting this simple measure that can save children from disfigurement and death.
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Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I am pleased to be an original cosponsor of the Small Marine Business and Fishing Guide Relief Act that Senator Coleman is introducing today. This legislation will provide much-needed relief to charter boat captains and other operators of small marine businesses in Maine by exempting them from having to obtain a Transportation Worker Identification Credential, or TWIC, which costs $132.50 for each employee.
Under current law, any individual who holds a Coast Guard license, as most charter boat captains do, must also obtain a TWIC. The purpose of the requirement was to ensure that port operators and the Coast Guard could inspect a tamper-resistant identification document to verify the identity of those who have access to secure areas of ports and large vessels.
Charter boat captains, however, do not have secure areas on their boats and usually do not need unescorted access to port facilities. Therefore, they have no need for a TWIC. For these small businesses, requiring them to obtain a TWIC essentially amounts to an unnecessary and costly government regulation.
Many small businesses are struggling in these lean economic times, particularly with high marine fuel prices and tourists who have less to spend their discretionary income on charter tours in the Gulf of Maine. With these businesses' declining profit margins, they cannot afford an additional $132 identification card for their employees.
Even with this exemption, charter captains with a Coast Guard license will have undergone an extensive background check for the same crimes that are reviewed when an individual applies for a TWIC. So waiving the TWIC requirement for them would not reduce the background information available for review before these individuals are licensed as charter captains.
To be sure, the Transportation Worker Identification Credential will play a critical role in our Nation's maritime security by limiting access to secure areas of ports and large vessels. It must ``be implemented, however, in a manner that does not unnecessarily and unproductively impede legitimate business operations.
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Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I am pleased to join Senator Carper in introducing a bill that will improve agency performance and Congressional oversight of major Federal information-technology, IT projects.
The well-publicized cost and performance problems with the Census Bureau's handheld computers for the 2010 Census--with its troubling implications for the next House reapportionment and for the allocation of Federal funds--represent only the most recent and conspicuous failure in a long trail of troubles that also includes critical IT projects like the FBI's virtual case file initiative. Former IBM executive and Carnegie-Mellon University technology expert Watts Humphrey makes the point succinctly: ``Software failures are common, and the biggest projects fail most often.''
During the 108th Congress, the Committee on Governmental Affairs investigated the botched automated recordkeeping project for the Federal employees' Thrift Savings Plan TSP. This project was terminated in 2001 after a 4-year contract produced $36 million in waste that was charged to the accounts of TSP participants and beneficiaries. A second vendor needed an additional $33 million to bring the system online, years overdue and costing more than double its original estimate.
In a 2004 letter from the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board to the Governmental Affairs Committee, the board characterized the project as "ill-fated" and acknowledged the importance of careful planning, task definition, communication, proper personnel, and risk management--all of which were lacking on that project.
Large IT project failures have cost U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars in wasted expenditures. The waste is troubling, but even more troubling is the fact that when Federal IT projects fail, they can undermine the Government's ability to defend the Nation, enforce its laws, or deliver critical services to citizens. Again and again, we have seen IT project failures grounded in poor planning, ill-defined and shifting requirements, undisclosed difficulties, poor risk management, and lax monitoring of performance.
Unfortunately, as the Government Accountability Office, GAO, tells us in a new report, Federal IT projects still fall short in their use of effective oversight techniques to monitor development and to spot signs of possible trouble.
The GAO reports that the Federal Government will spend over $70 billion in fiscal year 2008 on IT projects. Most of that spending is concentrated in two dozen agencies that have 778 major projects underway. These Federal entities range from Cabinet departments like Commerce, Defense, and Veterans Affairs, to agencies like NASA, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Agency for International Development.
The GAO observes that "Effectively managing projects involves pulling together essential cost, schedule, and performance goals in a meaningful, coherent fashion so that managers have an accurate view of the program's development status.'' This set of goals becomes the project "baseline.''
When the GAO conducted a study of a random sample of those major Federal IT projects, however, they found that 85--nearly half the sample--had been ``rebaselined.'' Eighteen of those projects have been rebaselined three or more times. For example, the Department of Defense Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System has been rebaselined four times; a Veterans Affairs Health Administration Center project has been rebaselined six times.
Rebaselining can reflect funding changes, revisions in project scope or goals, and other perfectly reasonable project modifications. But as the GAO notes, ``[rebaselining] can also be used to mask cost overruns and schedule delays.'' All major Federal agencies have rebaselining policies, but the GAO concludes that they are not comprehensive and that ``none of the policies are fully consistent with best practices.''
The bill that Senator Carper and I are introducing will go far toward addressing the weaknesses identified by the GAO and will reduce the risks that important Federal IT projects will drag on far beyond deadlines, fail to deliver intended capabilities, or waste taxpayers' money. We are pleased to have Senators Lieberman, Coleman, and McCaskill join us as cosponsors in this effort.
Our bill will improve both agency and Congressional oversight of large Federal IT projects. For all major investments, the bill requires agencies to track the earned value management index, a key cost and performance measure, and to alert Congress should that measure fall below a defined threshold.
The bill requires additional reports to Congress as well as specific corrective actions should those same indicators continue to worsen. Further, because the bill's performance thresholds are based on original cost baselines, rebaselining can no longer serve as a tactic to hide troubled projects. If severe shortfalls remain uncorrected, the bill can even suspend commitment of funds to a project until the agency takes the required corrective actions.
Our bill does not envision making Congress a micromanager of Federal projects--especially in so complex a field as information technology. But it will ensure that, for these important investments, agencies will be required to track key performance metrics, inform Congress of shortfalls in those metrics, and provide Congress with followup reports, independent cost estimates, and analyses of project alternatives when the original projects have run off course.
The bill also provides that each covered agency identify to Congress their top mission-critical projects. Those ``core investments'' would be subject to additional upfront planning, reporting, and performance monitoring requirements. This will help ensure that agencies apply extra vigilance to these projects at the planning stage and not just when execution begins.
In addition to tracking cost and schedule slippage, agencies making core IT investments must provide a complete ``business case'' that outlines the need for the project and its associated costs and schedules; produce a rigorous, independent, third-party estimate of the project's full, life-cycle costs; have the agency CIO certify the project's functional requirements; track these functional requirements; and report to Congress any changes in functional requirements, including whether those changes concealed a major cost increase.
To help agencies deliver IT projects on time and on budget, the bill also provides two new support mechanisms.
First, agency heads would be required to establish an internal IT-management program, subject to OMB guidelines, to improve project planning, requirements development, and management of earned value and risk.
Second, the Director of OMB and its E-Gov Administrator will be required to establish an IT strike force of experts and independent consultants who can be assigned to help agencies reform troubled projects. In addition, the E-Gov Administrator can recommend that agency heads mentor or replace an IT project manager, reinforce the management team, terminate the project, or hire an independent contractor to report on the project.
These and other provisions will help improve project planning, avoid problems in project execution, provide early alerts when problems arise, and promote prompt corrective action.
In projects where difficulties persist, our bill provides strong remedies. For projects that exhibit a performance shortfall of 20 percent or more, the agency head involved must not only alert Congress but also provide a summary of a concrete plan of action to correct the problem. If the shortfall exceeds 40 percent, agencies have 6 months to take required remedial steps or else suspend further project spending until those steps are completed.
If the provisions of this bill had been in force during the past decade, early indicators of trouble and prompt warnings to Congress might have helped prevent much of the added cost, decreased functionality, and increased anxiety we now see surrounding the handheld computers that were intended to streamline the 2010 Census. The additional scrutiny of plans and costs required by this bill might have saved some of the billions wasted on other IT projects that ultimately landed on high-risk lists.
Our bill creates a measured, methodical plan to ensure that Federal agencies apply best practices to IT projects, supply timely reports of problems, and devise corrective actions sooner rather than later. Our Government and our citizens will benefit from these improvements. I urge every Senator to support this constructive and bipartisan bill.
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