Field Trips/Speakers Field trips to the Newseum and Harpers Ferry are planned for the second semester. The focus is on historic and political significance. College visits are incorporated where possible as a critical component of the junior year curriculum. Other field trips will be added as time permits. Multi-Media/Textbooks Each year a review is conducted in all subjects to determine which, if any, textbooks need to be replaced. Software will be reviewed and new requests will be investigated. Bulletin boards and new sturdy computer workstations have been requested. Twelve new Compaq Deskpro 4000 computers and six HP printers will be installed in mid February. Testing/Courses/Instructors Staff development opportunities have been explored and Duncan Forbes will be attending an Advanced Placement Seminar on Chemistry next summer. Kathryn Weeden, the principal, is planning to attend a leadership academy presented by the National Association of Secondary School Principals in July. Foreign language tutors will accommodate the needs of the incoming pages. It is predicted that we will maintain the services of the French, Spanish, Russian, and German tutors and will add a Latin tutor as we become aware of foreign language needs in the next page class. Evaluation The Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools sent a team of evaluators to visit the Page School December 3-5, 1997. An extensive self study was conducted by the Page School staff prior to the visit. The report from the association will be received by the end of February. Upon receipt, the report will be read and assessed, and plans will be made to facilitate any recommendations deemed critical to the improvement of the school. INFORMATION SYSTEMS DEPARTMENT The Department of Information Systems provides technical and user support for the Office of the Secretary of the Senate. Information Systems staff also work closely with the Senate Sergeant at Arms and the Government Printing Office on technical issues and joint projects. In late 1997 the Information Systems Department was abolished and the computer support staff were transferred to the Assistant Secretary's office. Mission Evaluation and Staffing Changes The authorized staff level for computer support is four-one supervisor and 3 PC/ LAN specialists. The staff level dropped from five to four when the PC/LAN specialist assigned full-time to the Office of Public Records was assigned to that department permanently. In 1997 the Secretary's Office continued to replace nonstandard systems with Senate-standard technologies, the objective being to rely more on the technology support contracts of the Sergeant at Arms. Upgrades and Installations The Secretary's Office is moving from the unsupported Novell platform to Senatestandard Windows NT. In 1997 a new server was purchased for the Secretary's LAN and it was installed with the Windows NT Server 4.0 operating system. New Pentium computers and HP printers were purchased for staff in all departments. The new PC's with Windows 95 and the Corel WordPerfect 8 Office Suite were installed for all legislative and Floor staff and configured to connect to the NT server. New PC's have been installed in the Offices of the Secretary and Assistant Secretary, the Office of Human Resources, the Office of the Chief Counsel for Employment, the Page School, and the Office of Public Records. A schedule has been established to complete the PC installations and the migration of the rest of the departments on the Secretary's Novell LAN to the NT server by the end of June. The installation of the new PC's in the Disbursing Office and the upgrade of the Stationery Room and Gift Shop computer systems are proceeding in coordination with the FMIS office. In addition, several items were purchased to assist departments with their individual missions. Two scanners were purchased, one for the Historian, who needs to scan images, and one for the Executive Clerk, who needs to scan the text of nominations; two color laser printers, one for the LIS project and one for the Curator; and a variety of high-end graphics items were purchased for the Curator to produce kiosk exhibits, including a new Macintosh system. Office Automation Improvements The installation of new workstations for the legislative staff presented an opportunity to review and improve some of the existing workflow processes. This is particularly true of the Enrolling Clerk's office, where the Clerks previously had to log off the network to work on bills in XyWrite and where backups were stored on 90 megabyte Bernoulli disks. The new workstation configuration allows them to access XyWrite from Windows 95 and the Bernoulli drives were replaced by 1 gigabyte Jaz Drives. In addition, the Enrolling Clerk used to retrieve the electronic file of a Bill from GPO via a gateway PC running DOS scripts. An FTP solution was installed which is faster and more reliable. This FTP solution has proved to be very successful and will soon replace the GPO gateway used by other legislative staff to send Congressional Record material to GPO. The Journal Clerk's operation has been reviewed and will be reworked to provide more functionality while retaining control over the Journal document. Currently information is pulled from the Congressional Record and a series of WordPerfect 5.2 macros translate GPO's microcomp bell codes to WordPerfect formatting codes. The formatting process will be reworked to use the features of WordPerfect 8 to replace the outdated macros. Year 2000 Compliance A complete inventory of all software and hardware in use in the Secretary's Office is being compiled as new PC's are installed in each department. An initial assessment of the inventory as it relates to Year 2000 compliance has been completed. Most of the computer hardware in the Secretary's Office is Year 2000 compliant. The possible exceptions are some Compaq 386 machines which are being used as gateways. The low-end Pentiums being swapped-out during the migration this Spring will replace the 386's. The major projects underway in the Senate (LIS, FMIS, and HRIS) will replace many of the currently non-compliant software systems in the Secretary's Office. There remain some commercial off-the-shelf packages and internally-developed applications are being evaluated for Year 2000 compliance. In many cases vendors have verbally assured us that their software is compliant, but the Secretary's Office is obtaining written assurance from these companies. INTERPARLIAMENTARY SERVICES-TRIPS IN 1997 May 16-18-Mexico-U.S. Interparliamentary Group; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Chairman: Senator Hutchison; Vice Chairman: Senator Dodd. (Senators Hutchison, Hatch, Shelby, and McCain). May 27-June 1-North Atlantic Assembly Spring Meeting; Luxembourg, Luxembourg; Chairman: Senator Roth; Vice Chairman: Senator Biden. (Senators Roth and Hatch). June 27-July 2-Codel Murkowski; Hong Kong-Handover Ceremonies. (Senators Murkowski, Glenn, McConnell, Robb, Feinstein, and Thomas). June 28 July 5 Codel Lott; Scotland, England, Belgium, Hungary, BosniaHerzegovina. (Senators Lott, Hollings, Coats, Lieberman, DeWine, Frist, and Hagel). July 5-9 Senate NATO Observer Group; Czech Republic and Spain; Chairman: Senator Roth; Co-Chairman: Senator Biden. (Senators Roth, Biden, Mikulski, and Smith). August 24-31-British-American Parliamentary Group; London and York, United Kingdom; Chairman: Senator Stevens; Vice Chairman: Senator Byrd. (Senators Stevens, Byrd, Sarbanes, Cochran, Gorton, Bryan, Hutchison, and Roberts). September 11-15 Canada-U.S. Interparliamentary Group; Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, Canada; Chairman: Senator Murkowski; Vice Chairman: Senator Murray. (Senators Murkowski, Murray, Sarbanes, Grassley, Coats, Akaka, DeWine, and Enzi). October 9-17-North Atlantic Assembly-Fall Meeting; Bucharest, RomaniaStops also in Estonia and Germany; Chairman: Senator Roth; Vice Chairman: Senator Biden. (Senators Roth and Bennett). Nov. 30-Dec. 11-Global Climate Change Conference; Kyoto, Japan; Chairman: Senator Hagel. (Senators Hagel, Chafee, Baucus, Kerry, Lieberman, and Enzi). INTERPARLIAMENTARY SERVICES: OFFICIAL FOREIGN VISITORS IN 1997 January 14-Mr. Chee Heung Chor, Member of Parliament of Malaysia (1) February 4-Delegation of Russian Legislators (4) February 10-Mr. Vukasin Obradovic, Editor-in-Chief of newspaper in Serbia (1) 46-108 99-3 March 11-Secretary General of Mongolian Parliament and Delegation (6) March 11-His Excellency Mohammed Hosni Mubarak, President of the Arab Republic of Egypt (7) April 3-Members of Parliament of South Africa (8) April 3-Members of Parliament of Tajikistan (6) April 8-The Right Honorable Jean Chretien, Prime Minister of Canada (6) April 15-Mr. Jose Luis Torres-Ortega, Member of Parliament of Mexico (1) April 29-Delegation of Hong Kong Legislative Council Members (8) May 13-His Excellency Vaclav Havel, President of the Czech Republic (7) June 3-Members of Parliament, Near Eastern Arabic-Speaking Countries (5) June 24-Defense and security analysts from Former Soviet Union and China (19) June 26-His Excellency John Howard, MP, Prime Minister of Australia (7) July 14-Deputy Principal Clerk, Senate of Canada (1) July 16-Deputy Clerk of Legislative Assembly of Victoria, Australia (1) July 17-His Excellency Eduard Shevardnadze, President of Georgia (10) July 24 His Excellency Prof. Dr. Roman Herzog, Federal President of the Federal Republic of Germany (9) July 28 Delegation of National Assembly Members of the Republic of Korea (5) September 10-Delegation of Hong Kong Officials (6) September 18-His Excellency Yaakov Neeman, Minister of Finance of Israel (6) September 19-General Secretary of the Scottish Labor Party (1) September 23-Delegation of European Parliament Members (11) September 30-His Excellency Laszlo Kovacs, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Hungary; His Excellency Dariusz Rosati, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland; Mr. Karel Kovanda, Deputy Foreign Minister of the Czech Republic (14) October 6-Delegation of Japanese Diet Members (8) October 6-Chief of Staff of Parliament, Republic of Georgia (3) October 8-His Excellency Ezer Weizman, President of the State of Israel (9) October 9-Delegation from Santa Domingo (51) October 30-His Excellency Jiang Zemin, President of the People's Republic of China (23) November 10-Delegation of Japanese Diet Officials (21) PREPARED STATEMENT OF STUART F. BALDERSON Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to present to your Committee, the Budget of the United States Senate for fiscal year 1999. Mr. Chairman, the fiscal year 1999 budget estimates for the Senate have been included in the Budget of the United States Government for fiscal year 1999. This Budget has been developed in accordance with requests and proposals submitted by the various offices and functions of the Senate. The total budget estimates for the Senate are $527,292,000, which reflect an increase of $23,855,000, or 4.74 percent over the amount appropriated for fiscal year 1998 and does not reflect any adjustments to these estimates which may be presented to your Committee during these hearings. The total appropriations for the Senate for fiscal year 1998 are $503,437,000. An individual analysis of the budget estimates for all functions and offices has been included in the Senate Budget Book, previously provided to your Committee. The budget estimates for fiscal year 1999 are divided into three major categories as follows: Senate Items Contingent Expense Items $84,582,000 397,410,000 45,300,000 Specifically, Mr. Chairman, the increase for fiscal year 1999 over the fiscal year 1998 enacted levels is a result of: (1) $13,068,624 increase in the budget estimate for Senators' Official Personnel and Office Expense Account to fully fund the allowances which are under-funded as a result of the consolidation of population categories, increases in the populations of various states, and the increase in the Legislative Assistance Allowance authorized in the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 1993, and increases in the Official Office Expense Allowance to incorporate the allowance for franked mail expenses authorized by the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 1998; (2) $5,680,500 for the anticipated 3.1 percent cost of living increase for fiscal year 1999, and the annualization costs of the fiscal year 1998 cost of living adjustment; (3) $1,755,376 for personnel adjustments other than the cost of living, attributable primarily to the budget request of the Sergeant at Arms (which was offset by a reduction in administrative expenses), the budget request of the Capitol Police, including $1,270,000 for pay differentials and $104,000 for Capitol Police comparability increases, and the reduction in the budget request for Expenses of Inquiries and Investigations; (4) $3,697,500 increase in agency contributions applicable to the cost of living adjustments and other personnel increase requests; (5) $347,000 decrease in non-payroll expense requests, attributable primarily to a decrease in the budget request for the Sergeant at Arms. Mr. Chairman, I submit for the consideration of your Committee, the Budget of the United States Senate for fiscal year 1999. ADDITIONAL COMMITTEE QUESTIONS Question. When will the Senate be able to produce auditable financial statements? Answer. The first auditable financial statements will be for fiscal year 2000. During fiscal year 1999, the Disbursing Office will install the new Senate general ledger and procurement systems, convert to obligation- and accrual-basis accounting, and conform back office policies and procedures as the first phase of FMIS. The next phase will incorporate other modules of an integrated system necessary to produce financial statements, such as a fixed asset module which will enable determination of the cost basis and depreciation schedule of assets to be capitalized on the balance sheet of the Senate. Question. Please update the Committee on the status of the appointment of a new Comptroller General of the United States. Answer. The Comptroller General is appointed to a 15-year term by the President, with the advice and consent of the Senate. Because the General Accounting Office, which the Comptroller General heads, exists primarily to provide research, review, and analysis for Congress, the applicable statute, 31 U.S.C. 703, establishes a bicameral commission to recommend three or more individuals to the President for appointment. I am assisting the Majority Leader in his capacity as chairman of the commission. The commission has carefully reviewed the qualifications of a large field of candidates, and, on January 22, 1998, recommended three individuals to the President. All three are highly-qualified and are supported by a majority of the commission. To date, the President has not acted on the commission's recommendation. Question. The Secretary's testimony indicates that some statutory changes may be required to modify the way in which expense categories for Senators are prepared in order to convert to an OMB object classification. Are there any other changes of this type which may be required in order to implement FMIS? When do you expect to submit recommendations? Answer. At this point, the system design and requirements and the project plan for FMIS are not ready. When a draft project plan is ready, we will prepare a list of statutes and practices of the Senate that could be reviewed in connection with the FMIS implementation, whether to meet current federal financial accounting standards or to facilitate use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software. That list will be transmitted to your Committee and to the Committee on Rules and Administration. Close consultation with both Committees will lead to recommendations as to whether the Senate should consider changing existing statutes or practices, or should modify the project plan. Question. In your testimony you mention that succession planning will be important for your office to fulfill its constitutional responsibilities in the future. Do you have a plan? Does your fiscal year 1999 budget request include any funds for your succession planning? If so, how much? What will this cost in future years? Answer. The fiscal year 1999 budget request for the Office of the Secretary does not include any funds specifically for succession planning. We have, however, requested authorization for up to fifteen new positions, primarily in the Disbursing Office to implement FMIS, but partly to plan for succession in selected departments. To the extent possible, the costs of these new positions will be absorbed within the requested budget. The basic plan is to ensure that each department, and particularly the thirteen in which the department head is already eligible to retire, is staffed with one and preferably two individuals who have the institutional knowledge, skills, and abilities required to assume the responsibilities of the department head; in many cases, to acquire such knowledge, skills and abilities takes several years of on-the-job training and experience. To that end, we are promoting from within as much as possible, and we are selecting highly-qualified new hires who are committed to the Senate as a career. We are also studying other employee development and progression alternatives with a view toward developing generalists in the legislative departments who could be capable of succeeding more than one department head. Succession planning will impact future years' budgets in that staffing requirements in some departments will be determined by both the immediate workload and the need to ensure that one or two individuals are trained to assume the department head position. Question. What is the status of S. 1508, the Visitor Center legislation? What is the House's position? Answer. The Capitol Visitor Center Authorization Act has been introduced as H.R. 20 by Representative John Mica, and as S. 1508 by Majority Leader Trent Lott, Democratic Leader Thomas Daschle, and Chairman John Warner of the Committee on Rules and Administration. S. 1508 is now before the Rules Committee. H.R. 20 was the subject of a hearing before the_House_Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Economic Development on May 22, 1997, at which witnesses from inside and outside Congress all agreed on the need for the visitor center. While both the House and Senate bills contemplate that the capital construction costs (including the initial furnishing and equipping) will be provided by the existing Capitol Preservation Fund, and by additional private fund-raising overseen by the appropriate House and Senate committees, questions continue to be raised concerning the Capitol Visitor Center's follow-on costs, including care, maintenance, staffing, and educational programs. In the successful effort to eliminate the federal budget deficit, Congress has set the example by holding the line on Legislative Branch appropriations. Accordingly, there may be some reluctance to proceed with the project if to do so would incur substantial operating expenses with long-term impact on the Legislative Branch budget. Both H.R. 20 and S. 1508 take this concern into account by providing that the Capitol Visitor Center will not become a new item in the Legislative Branch appropriations. Rather, a new account for visitor center revenues and expenses is to be established, separate from the existing House, Senate, and joint item accounts. The visitor center will produce substantial revenue from retail operations serving the public, specifically restaurants and a sales shop, and a preliminary assessment by the Architect of the Capitol indicates that those revenues, estimated conservatively, will more than offset operating expenses. Moreover, the visitor center is a vital part of the Capitol Police Board's long-term plans for the security of the Capitol Building and Grounds. If it is not constructed, post2000 expenditures for security, which must be funded from Legislative Branch appropriations, will be significantly higher than amounts reflected in the fiscal year 1999 appropriations bills. To resolve these questions, last October, Chairman Walsh of the Legislative Branch subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations, recommended the hiring of an independent consultant to prepare a detailed evaluation of the full costs of the Capitol Visitor Center project, considering all relevant matters including the costs of operating the center as intended, the projected revenues from retail operations, and the costs and benefits of integrating the security plans. I am advised that the Senate Rules Committee, concurring with Chairman Walsh and in order to expedite the overall project, intends to contract for the study from the Senate contingent fund, possibly before the end of March 1998. Question. Congratulations on your progress with LIS. It is a system which will be very useful for the Senate far into the future. Given that it is relatively new and you are continually making significant improvements, what efforts are being taken to keep staff informed about developments with this new resource? Answer. Thank you for your complimentary remarks. LIS is one the very most important technological innovations in the history of the Senate. When the system is fully implemented and its capabilities are fully known on the part of Senate staff, LIS will be an extremely valuable tool to virtually every individual staff member |