Question. For each non-permanent employees, supply a list organized by assigned building or job, and shift, showing job title, shop or office location, wage, date hired, and expected termination date.

[CLERK'S NOTE.-The response to the two previous questions can be found in the appendix of the hearing record.]

LIMITATION ON TRAVEL EXPENSES

Mr. FAZIO. I have a question I will submit for the record concerning travel expenses.

[The question and response follow:]

Question. You are requesting the usual limitation of $20,000 on travel. Provide your actual travel expenditures for 1983.

Response. The following information was provided for the record.

OFFICE OF THE ARCHITECT OF THE CAPITOL, TRAVEL

[From Oct. 1, 1982 through Sept. 30, 1983]

Capitol buildings, 1983.

Capitol grounds, 1983..

House office buildings, no year

Capitol power plant, 1983.

Appropriation

Modifications and enlargement, Capitol power plant, no year.

Structural and mechanical care, library buildings and grounds, no year..

Library of Congress, James Madison Memorial Building, Library buildings and grounds, no year.

CONTINGENT EXPENSES

Mr. FAZIO. I also submit for the record a question concerning contingent expenses.

[The question and response follow:]

Question. The request for fiscal year 1985 is $235,000, a $25,000 increase. Why is the increase needed?

Response. The requested increased of $25,000 is to provide for additional warehouse space. The Architect of the Capitol has rented space from the General Services Administration in the past. Last year, 11,662 square feet were rented at a total annual cost of $57,495. A new rental agreement has been entered into for a facility with more available space at a lower per square foot cost. The Architect now leases 32,000 square feet at $2.66 per square foot. In addition, utility costs are estimated to run approximately $0.1553 per square foot. The estimated total annual cost for this new space is estimated at $90,652. The requested increase for the Contingent Expenses appropriation is to provide for this warehouse space and maintain the current level of funding available for unforeseen expenses, which is the other purpose for which this appropriation is made.

QUESTION FOR THE RECORD FROM MR. LEWIS

Mr. FAZIO. Mr. Lewis.

Mr. LEWIS. Thank you. I was going to ask some questions relating to asking the Architect to give me some outline that would illustrate the way, the specific ways we spent money in the contingency fund. If you will do that for the record, I would like to have a chance to review that.

Mr. WHITE. Yes, sir.

[The question and response follow:]

Question. Can you give us some examples of items which have been paid for from our Contingent Fund? I see from the justifications that this year's budget request is for $235,000 and the total appropriation for 1984 was $360,000.

Response. The following table indicates the projects for which obligations were made from the Contingent Expenses appropriations during fiscal year 1983, as of September 30, 1983.

12,796

17,660

19,559

1,094

1,900

3,000

57,495

Thus far, $210,000 has been appropriated for fiscal year 1984. An additional $150,000 is being requested in the fiscal year 1984 Supplemental which would bring the total appropriation to $360,000 for fiscal year 1984. The additional monies are requested to cover the cost of making repairs to the Capitol Building following the bomb explosion on November 7, 1983. As such, it is a one time increase to the appropriation base of $210,000. For fiscal year 1985, that appropriation base is requested to be increased to $235,000 to cover the additional cost of warehouse rental.

CAPITOL BUILDINGS REQUEST

Mr. FAZIO. The request for Capitol buildings totals $12,156,000, and 199 positions. No increase in positions are requested. We have a $260,000 request for recurring maintenance, and a $235,000 request for office and computer equipment. Would you comment on those items?

Mr. WHITE. Yes, sir. The annual recurring maintenance of $260,000 is for supplies and materials, the bulk of which, however, is in the $235,000 item that is contained in that $260,000. Mr. FAZIO. I see.

Mr. WHITE. That is an increase.

Mr. FAZIO. Extra office and computer equipment.

Mr. WHITE. Yes, there are two separate items. That relates to a larger computer. We need to upgrade the central processing unit, and we are asking for 21 additional terminals and four additional disc drives.

Mr. FAZIO. Do you work with HIS, or do you have your own? Mr. WHITE. We have our own. Now, we try to see where we stand with regard to other agencies in the government.

The government average for computer rentals of this kind is 1.4 percent of their budget. If you use our base budget only of $86 mil

lion, 1.4 percent would be $1,204,000. The actual that we are requesting for all computer activity for 1985 is $1,103,000. So we are below the average.

I point that out to indicate the relationship of the expenditures that we are requesting here.

Mr. FAZIO. You have been sensitive to all of our areas of concern. I see you have done your homework.

Mr. WHITE. That is why we are able to deliver.

COOPERATION IN STREAMLINING WITH HIS

Mr. LEWIS. George, we also have the responsibility of taking a look at budgets like House administration, including the House Information System, and they have over 200 programmers.

I realize that different agencies and different computer types like different systems, but did your people seriously consult with HIS regarding whether or not we could have had some cooperation in streamlining? Why is it necessary for each agency to have their own little system-not little I might add.

Mr. WHITE. We worked with HIS a number of years ago.

Mr. LEWIS. You probably had the same experience I had, I imagine.

Mr. WHITE. I am not sure what experience you had, but I must say that they made an effort to be helpful to us. They were helpful, but their mission is in another direction, and we were just kind of viewed as somebody they would help when they got around to it. Everybody's mission is important to them, and they are really in a different category of use. Our kinds of information are not the kinds of things they deal with.

Mr. LEWIS. I was thinking as you were talking about above or below averages, et cetera, that is, a mission that involves crucial projects, like painting and repairing, are considerably different in terms of demand than perhaps a high tech information system; you would expect it to be much lower.

Mr. WHITE. That is right, and yet we are doing that same thing. Payroll items and so forth, as I recited earlier, are areas of need also. We have all the same things everyone else does in addition to which we have some specialized areas.

This CPM, critical path method, for scheduling work and therefore maintaining control over expenditures as well as time, is all computerized, and it is a specialized area. Again, they probably have a hundred programmers over there. We have only four; we are asking for two more. We have nine people, but some of them are operators.

DATA PROCESSING STAFFING

Mr. LEWIS. How many operators?

Mr. WHITE. We have four operators.

Mr. LEWIS. Maybe we can overlap some of these questions as we talk to HIS.

Mr. WHITE. Let me mention an example in terms of payrolls; it is a very interesting observation.

Mr. FAZIO. We have a question we are going to put in the record which asks for a comprehensive discussion of where you have been on computers.

Mr. WHITE. We will be happy to supply that.

As an example, we have 300 different pay periods annually. We have nine different payrolls. Some are biweekly, some are weekly, some are for the Supreme Court, some for the Botanic Gardens, and so forth. So that our payroll function is separated into nine different areas; that is to say, when a change is made in one, they have to make different changes in the other ones because the people are paid on a different basis. It is a massive amount of work and effort.

Mr. LEWIS. Theoretically the computer makes all these things easier?

Mr. LEWIS. HIS does work for CBO and for the Library of Congress. They do seem to want to do work for other agencies, General Accounting Office, so the question is an obvious one. I am not sure that you have necessarily answered it in this discussion. Maybe you could add something to the record.

[CLERK'S NOTE.-The following was provided for the record.]

The following is in response to the request for information concerning the reasons behind the development of data processing facilities for the office of the Architect of the Capitol.

The decision to proceed with the development of an in-house computer capability was based on three underlying considerations: (1) the unique mission of this office in serving the needs of both Houses of Congress, in contrast to the many other support agencies which come under the jurisdiction of either the Senate or the House, but not both; (2) the specialized character of the maintenance, operation, and care of buildings under the jurisdiction of this office, and, in addition, the construction activities including new construction and renovations, in contrast to the legislative responsibilities of other Legislative Branch offices; and (3) a determination that management of data processing resources by this office is indispensable for accomplishing priority requirements at reasonable cost.

As explained more fully below, we believe that these considerations are no less critical today than they were at the time the decision was made to acquire data processing equipment. Accordingly, it is the Architect's position that the interests of the Congress can best be served when we are responsible for our data processing services.

A. Historical Background

By way of background, it is noteworthy that electronic data processing equipment was first acquired by this office in fiscal year 1967, some 17 years ago. Before making that initial acquisition, a thorough investigation was made of alternative ways of meeting office needs, including the possibility of sharing computer time with other agencies that had data processing facilities. During the course of this review, discussions were held with staff representatives of the House and Senate Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittees, the General Services Administration (GSA), and the General Accounting Office (GAO). We were advised by both GSA and GAO to acquire such equipment because it could be adapted to our particular requirements (then essentially for payroll operations) and because other considerations were deemed to favor the development of our own capability.

We contracted with the Burroughs Corporation for the initial equipment; subsequently, the equipment was upgraded to keep pace with our increasing requirements (e.g., accounting operations) and with technological advances in the data processing field. After soliciting proposals from the major computer vendors, we contracted in 1980 with the Sperry-Univac Corporation for our data processing requirements; Sperry continues to supply the software and hardware for the Architect's computer system under this contract.