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tenance, or improvement for H-208. What have these charges been by item from January 20, 2001 to present?

Response. The cost of furniture, equipment, telephone, and carpet is the responsibility of the Chief Administrative Officer. The Architect does have an annual appropriation for the operation, maintenance and repair of the U.S. Capitol to include H208. All other work not considered maintenance and repair is done with the approval of the Speaker of the House. Operating costs such as utilities and cleaning are not tracked or available by room. No other construction or renovation costs have been incurred by the AOC.

FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

Mr. SHERWOOD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And in light of the impassioned comments that we have just had on the urban forestry and the importance of art in the Capitol, mine are a little prosaic. But what I wanted to ask you with regards to your financial management system, would you bring us up to speed on your computer modernization program and how are we transitioning from the old legacy computer systems? What is our progress?

Mr. HANTMAN. Our computer system in the Architect of the Capitol is being transformed into a financial management system. We have as of October of this last year, we have put our first module up, which is a standard general ledger. 1.2 million funded for that. We are now working that. That was the first of many modules. We are recording general entries on it, producing financial statements that we were never able to do before.

We are asking for funds in this budget to continue with the next series of base building modules. Budget execution. Purchasing, accounts payable, disbursements, accounts receivable. This will basically eliminate the existing CAS system that we have now and make it compliant with Government standards. We have about 1.5 million and we are beginning that process. We are asking you to provide $1.356 million to complete that process which we expect to have up and running by March of next year.

Concurrent with that, we have our phase 3, which is for the Procurement Office a contracting module, and we are asking 720,000 for that, which we would have up and running by October of next year. And we are going through this entire thing. This inventory module we will be putting in next, a fixed assets module, and it will be an integrated system. You heard about the computer aided facilities management program that will be integral. Payrolls will be integral. All of these issues. We are moving ahead and have made a lot of progress.

We have a new staff. And each of our groups from the accounting group to procurement group and all is beginning to work with the information that they need so they can make these systems be maintained appropriately and move forward. So it is a good story. And the financial manager's counsel, which includes GÃO and Library of Congress, are all part and parcel of who we keep up to date on what we are doing. And they know what we are doing, and we are cross-servicing with the Department of Interior. It is an American management system's momentum program which is JFMIP compliant.

Mr. SHERWOOD. Will this tie in with your analysis of your historical assets and the scheduled maintenance for them?

Mr. HANTMAN. Absolutely. All of our work orders will be able to

Inventory systems of all kinds will ultimately be part of this system, sir.

Mr. SHERWOOD. Will that project meet our maintenance needs, then?

Mr. HANTMAN. Yes. Advanced maintenance when we have to maintain on a 6-month basis or 1-month basis, all of that proactive work would be factored in and we will have printouts that tell us to go check fan room number two. All of that will be fully integrated and we are working as an organization to do that. It is a 5-year plan to get the whole thing up and running. We have a good flying start. We are on schedule with the general ledger, and I think everybody recognizes that.

Mr. SHERWOOD. Thank you.

Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you.

[The following question from Chairman Taylor and response follows:]

FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

Question. You are requesting $2.1 million to continue implementing your new Financial Management System. What progress have you made and what will this request fund?

Response. The AOC has made significant progress towards the implementation of the new Financial Management System (FMS). On October 1, 2001, the AOC successfully implemented the general ledger module of the system on schedule and according to the U.S. Standard General Ledger guidelines. The AOC is now recording general entries at the transaction level and can produce financial statements based on balances in general ledger accounts. The new system also allows producing financial information by monthly accounting period, which was not possible in the old system. Now that Phase 1 is implemented, the FMS project team must maintain the system by processing the daily interfaces, performing reconciliations with the feeder systems, and issuing monthly reports.

In addition to maintaining Phase 1, the FMS project is currently working on the implementation of Phase 2 of the project. Phase 2 will implement the Budget Execution, Purchasing, Accounts Payable, and Disbursement modules of the new system. Phase 2 requires a significant effort since FMS will be implemented in all jurisdictions (200 users) and the old system will be completely phased out except for inventory tracking. Phase 2 is scheduled to "go live" on March 1, 2002 and requires the approval of FY2002 funding. Phase 2 requires performing the following tasks, most of which are currently in process:

Development and maintenance of a detailed project plan and schedule
Documentation and analysis of detailed user requirements

Configuration of FMS to meet user needs

System set-up and pilot testing of the set-up

End user acceptance testing

Automated conversions of data from the old system to FMS

Development of end user reports

Development of an interface with Inventory system

Development of an interface with Project Information System (PIC)

Training of new users

Development of procedure guides for end-users

Providing user support to new users

Quality Assurance of all Phase 2 tasks

The funding request for FY2002 follows:

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The FY2002 funding request of $1,356,000 for Phase 2 will cover contractor support from October 1, 2001 through April 1, 2002 and software license fees for up to 200 users. Phase 2 of the FMS project was partially funded with FY2001 funding and will require the FY2002 funding to be successfully implemented on March 1,

AOC, because it will replace most functions of the old system with the new federally compliant FMS system. It will also significantly increase AOC's changes of passing an audit since the new system will be implemented with proper audit trails and controls. A full audit is expected to be accomplished for the FY2003 financial state

ments.

The FY2002 funding request of $720,000 for Phase 3 will cover the implementation of a Contracting module for the procurement office. Phase 3 is scheduled to be implemented on November 1, 2002. The AOC's contractual workload has increased significantly over the last few years with the contracting out of more of the construction projects and the increase in the complexity of the contracts being issued. The Contracting module will provide the Procurement Office with automated support for the issuance and management of contract solicitations, contract awards, contract modifications, and contract administration. The funding request covers contractor implementation support for the period January 1, 2002 through November 1, 2002 and software license fees.

LEGISLATIVE SPACE

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to follow up on this room H-208, and I heard what the representatives of the Architect said about this being in the jurisdiction of the Speaker, but some of these funds for the purpose of the room coming from legislative branch appropriations. And it is my understanding, and I will check with the Speaker, that the staff in that room are executive branch personnel. If that is true, it is an anomaly, because that room was designed historically to serve as a committee room for this House, for the legislative branch, and it served that purpose in the 19th century for a military committee that sat there and throughout the 20th century for the Ways and Means Committee.

Now I am going to get clarification on this, and I reserve the right to bring this up on the floor. But if, in fact, we have executive branch personnel functioning out of legislative branch offices, with expenses for the upkeep, the telephones and so forth, paid for by the legislative branch, I think it is entirely inappropriate.

So I just wanted to bring that issue up in the subcommittee, and perhaps others have more they can enlighten me on. But this is an historically first if, in fact, it has occurred. And it is my understanding that the congressional staff of the White House is currently operating out of that legislative space. I find that very curious and historically inappropriate.

BOTANIC GARDEN LIVING EXHIBITS

Let me ask the Architect of the Capitol on the exhibits over at the Botanic Garden there are going to be some childhood learning exhibits, I don't know what those are, but let me mention a struggle that I am involved in and I haven't succeeded, and it relates to the Smithsonian. When you get up and running, is there any possibility of your sharing throughout Internet some of what you will have with the Smithsonian, particularly in the agricultural exhibit over in the American History Museum? Because no child in this country would go into the Living Sciences if they walked though the agricultural exhibit. It is old. It is awful. It looks like this is something that belongs to the past, not the future, and it is absolutely wrong.

One of my interests is in trying to get some of the private companies of our country involved in updating that agricultural exhibit so that when the millions of visitors come through here each year,

industry. And one of the things they do not do in that exhibit is they do not show life. They do not show what this business is all about. I am wondering if you have ever thought of sitting down with the head of the Smithsonian and looking at that particular section of that museum and considering how some of your life exhibits could be shared?

Mr. HANTMAN. We have a memorandum of understanding with the Smithsonian now, to work together on a variety of issues, and we welcome the opportunity to look into that issue.

Ms. KAPTUR. I will put some language in this bill for you to do that.

Mr. HANTMAN. And secondarily, we would welcome sharing with you the exhibit design that we are proposing for the north wing of the Botanic Garden, for which we will be looking for funding in another year, of learning what plants are all about, how they work, a very user-friendly type of learning experience so that they will understand the plant world. It is an exciting opportunity.

Ms. KAPTUR. Will it include medicinal plants? Plants that will produce the fuels of the future so that our kids think about the possibilities? I represent the largest greenhouse growing county in Ohio. This is big business for us. And particularly, plants that have curative possibilities, there are a lot of new markets out there.

Mr. HANTMAN. We could certainly set up a meeting with the head of our division over there and we would be happy to tell you what the exhibits are all about what we are working on. We would welcome that.

Ms. KAPTUR. Maybe we should invite who is in charge of that Smithsonian exhibit to sit in with us. Would you agree with that? Mr. HANTMAN. Certainly. Sharing information is very important.

RAYBURN GARAGE

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, did someone ask about the parking garage in Rayburn and the floor? How many Members have broken their ankles to get to their car?

Mr. TAYLOR. Would you like to bring that up? We covered everything else.

if

Ms. KAPTUR. I remember Mr. Dingell twice broke his ankle, once in the garage. One, those floors in the Rayburn parking garage are very dangerous at night. There should be some aggregate material, you can't fill them right away, couldn't you work with the construction industry to get a heavy sand, just so you wouldn't have the holes because the metal beams project up and women tend to wear heels more than not. You really have to be alert when you are walking through there. Some of the floors are very bad. They have done some filling, but I don't know how they do the upkeep and maintenance. There ought to be some aggregate that could be at a low cost, and until you go back and do it the right way.

Mr. HANTMAN. As you know, we are working on the Cannon garage. We will be coming back to this committee in 2003 for design funds to redo the Rayburn garage. Bob, in terms of repair?

Mr. MILEY. We do have an aggregate that we use that is a quick patch. It is very hard to keep up with. We are inspecting it on a weekly basis. Of course, when vehicles are in the garage, there are

until such time as the design is complete and renovations can begin. We do have requests in.

Ms. KAPTUR. That C street level, I can tell you, when you go out on to C street from the back-door of Rayburn, which would be the southern end, that that particular floor had a lot of areas needing patching.

Mr. MILEY. We will certainly reevaluate that.

Ms. KAPTUR. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

FUTURE HEARING ON VISITOR CENTER

Mr. TAYLOR. I expect that we will have a separate hearing some time in the future before any contract is let on the Visitor's Center. Our current 302(b) would not allow any kind of appropriation like what seems to be the shortfall for the project. We would like to have a hearing to see how we are progressing and see what is going forward.

BOTANIC GARDEN OPENING

Mr. TAYLOR. Is the September date for the Botanic Garden still valid?

Mr. HANTMAN. Absolutely. We started plantings in the west House and now in the north House as well. The majority of the construction work will be completed. They may be doing some punchlist work, but they will not be interfering with the replantings. We will be starting tours basically Tuesday and Thursday afternoons 2:00 to 3:00 for guided groups. An individual of our staff will take people through, Holly Shimizu or Christine Flanagan. We will not be opening doors to the general public other than on these tours until what is it, November? Until November.

But yes, we certainly can arrange a tour for you and any member of this committee, and we would be more than willing to show you and talk about the philosophy. In fact, Ms. Kaptur, if you would like to join us, too. Or a separate one.

Ms. KAPTUR. If you invite me,

look at that greenhouse.

Mr. HANTMAN. A joy.

I will be there. I want to come and

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, before you close the hearing. I have another

CAPITAL BUDGET

Mr. TAYLOR. I have another question and I will recognize you before I close. The capital budget is $94.6 million, and includes 96 projects and that is up 640 percent. Now, having heard your testimony and some of the problems that we have had in getting help— and of course that is the problem of the contractor and perhaps we should be more attentive to those people bidding and see that they have the capability.

Mr. HANTMAN. Past performance. Absolutely.

Mr. TAYLOR. Because certainly, all of us have been in tight labor markets, and it is getting more so around the country. But we cannot let that be an excuse for not completing projects.

But do you have adequate management inside the Architect's of

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