Department of Labor) as well as other agencies with a need to study the entire Federal workforce will be furnished statistics from the file, but they will not have access to individual records. Interface: There are no plans to allow other agencies to utilize the data in the Commission's computerized files by coding, interfacing, or other devices relating to their own computer. Security Devices and Procedures: A number of frequently used security devices and procedures will be utilized to prevent unauthorized access to the statistical file and improper use of the information. Among those under consideration are: 1. Reduction of the individual's name to a 5-character stub, associated with Social Security Account Number, in the file kept at the Commission; 2. Establishment of a single organizational element through which all requests for information and all resultant output must flow; 3. The use of software "locks" which will allow only authorized requesters to gain access to specific items of data or combinations thereof which might be misused; 4. The physical separation of statistical files from all other working files within the Commission; 5. The continued use of electronic locks on the entrance doors of the Computer Operations Room and the EAM Operations/Production Control area; 6. The establishment of an advisory group of qualified, disinterested individuals to serve as the "watch dogs" of the system. This group will be organized early enough in the development of the system to review and advise on all aspects of its development and operation with respect to the privacy and security of the data contained in and processed through the system. They will report directly to the Chairman of the Civil Service Commission. Contact With Employee Unions and Organizations: ' To date, the FPMIS systems concept has been discussed with the American Civil Liberties Union only. There are no current plans for further union or other organization contact unless requested. Contact With Congressional Committees: The first contact with Congressional Committees on the facets of a Federal Personnel Management Information System occurred during then Chairman John W. Macy, Jr.'s testimony before the Sub-Committee on Constitutional Rights, 89th Congress, on S. 3779, with regard to governmental invasions of privacy (October 3, 1966). At that time, reference was made to a staff report on "Modernizing the Management Information System for Federal Civilian Manpower" (page 170 of hearings report). Discussion dealt with the expansion and computerization of data on Federal employees, particularly racial data. While that staff study was never implemented, it did point up the fact that there existed a great need and many requirements for information on the makeup and characteristics of the Federal workforce. This realization triggered the events described in the introduction to FPMIS above under Background. Further Congressional Committee contact was made during Budget Hearings for FY '70 before both House and Senate Appropriations Committees (H.Ř. 12307, 91st Congress, pages 187-189 and House hearings report, Independent Offices and HUD, pages 1223–1225), and House hearings on the FY '71 budget (not yet published-copy of budget statement is attached). Finally, a presentation on the goals of the overall FPMIS was given on August 19, 1969 to a task force working under the leadership of Mr. Edward J. Mahoney of the General Accounting Office for the Committee on House Administration. This group is conducting a survey of existing and planned data banks in the Executive Branch with a view toward determining the needs of Congress for ADP support in providing information. A copy of the testimony given to the task force is appended. ENCLOSURE 3c-2 WORKING GROUP ON AUTOMATIC DATA PROCESSING FOR THE CONGRESS TUESDAY, AUGUST 19, 1969 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON ELECTRICAL AND MECHANICAL OFFICE EQUIPMENT OF THE COMMITTEE ON HOUSE ADMINISTRATION Washington, D.C. The Working Group of the Subcommittee on Electrical and Mechanical Office Equipment met, pursuant to adjournment, at 9:30 a.m. in Room H-326, The Capitol, Edward J. Mahoney (Chairman of the Working Group) presiding. Present: Edward J. Mahoney, Associate Director, Office of Policy and Special Studies, General Accounting Office (Chairman, Working Group). Kenneth W. Hunter, General Accounting Office. Leslie Adams, Auditor, General Accounting Office. Pasquale Esposito, Auditor, General Accounting Office. W. Raymond Colley, Administrative Assistant to the Clerk of the House of Representatives. Thomas E. Ladd, Methods and Systems Analyst, Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives. Louise Becker, Research Assistant to Robert L. Chartrand, Specialist, Information Science, Legislative Reference Service, Library of Congress. Charles J. Sparks, Director, Bureau of Manpower Information Systems, Civil Service Commission. Victor J. Cavagrotti, Director, Office of Information Systems Planning, Civil Service Commission. A. Ray Demarest, Project Manager, FPMIS, Civil Service Commission. The Working Group of the House Committee on Administration has been given three specific responsibilities. Basically these line up this way: What specific computer applications will be most useful and suitable to the Congress? How and by whom shall these be put into operation and maintained and in what order? And what arrangement should be made for the continuing general oversight of computer policy for the Congress and for the coordination of future planning and development? The Working Group has interpreted this to mean the whole range of use of automatic data processing equipment by the Congress, and of particular interest to us at this point is the interface with the Executive Branch and the kinds of systems that are being developed in the Executive Branch that will be useful to the Congress. I might say long-range, somewhere way down the road, probably the Congress would like to have some direct interplay with a certain level of detail of the Executive systems. However, initially we feel that certain summary data probably will serve to fill the immediate needs of the Congress. It is with this in mind that we have asked the Budget Bureau, the Civil Service Commission, and we will be asking other government agencies to come before the Working Group and present at least an outline of their plans and their thinking so that we can see how this interface will work out with the Congress. Actually, we are looking at this from three or four different angles. That is, we are studying the existing and proposed applications of data processing both in the Legislative Branch and in the Executive Branch, and we are studying the information retrieval techniques that are available, and we are studying the data bases that are being established both in the Legislative and the Executive Branches. So we are very happy this morning to have Mr. Charles Sparks from the Civil Service Commission who is planning to present to us an outline and some discussion of his plan for the computer personnel system for the Executive Branch for the 1970s. Mr. SPARKS. Civil Service Commission Chairman Hampton has expressed his delight to the Committee Chairman over the existence of this effort, because we have been trying to provide a basis for an effective interface of the system we are planning with any system that might be developed for the Congress. This effort, I believe, will make it possible for us to effect a more realistic interface than we would be able to create otherwise. Before getting into what we are planning, I might provide some background as to how we got into this project. Back in the Spring of 1967, the Commission had come to the conclusion that we could no longer live with the increasingly late and inaccurate personnel reports that we were receiving from the various agencies in Government. There were good reasons why the performance of the agency information system was deteriorating, and they are probably the same reasons that motivated this increased interest on the part of the Congress for a system to serve its own needs. We found over the last ten years the Civil Service merit system has become a much more complex system than we ever dreamed it would become. We have a wide array of totally new programs which to a great extent are an expression of social consciousness on the part of the Federal Government as an employer. We want to do something about the retarded, we want to do something about woman power, and so on. These new programs have emerged during a time when managers are becoming less and less inclined to live with a system where decisions. are based on a few facts and many guesstimates. Today's manager wants to know facts and more facts, and having gotten those facts, he makes a decision and then wants feedback to see if his decision was a good one and whether it is really being carried out. This evolutionary process has been going on in the Commission for some years and the two trends have coupled to create an increasing data load on the departments and agencies. From 1961 to 1967 that load, measured in terms of data cells in agency reports to the Commission, had increased 336 percent. In that period, we had only increased our regular reports from five to twelve, but when we look inside the reports we find they had all increased in scope and complexity. Unfortunately, the reports are still being generated by systems which were fundamentally based on a manual paperwork system that had been established back in the fifties, a system which is no longer adequate. Having generated a great deal of concern over this problem of deterioration, the Commission decided to mount a major effort. Because the problem cut across agency lines, we organized an Interagency Advisory Group committee to analyze the problem and develop an effective solution. In staffing this committee, we recruited some of the best brains in the personnel and ADP communities. The distinguished members were as follows: Everett Alldredge, Assistant Archivist for Records Management, General Services Administration. Carl B. Barnes, Director of Personnel, Department of Agriculture. Fred E. Cashman, Executive Assistant, Bureau of Personnel, Post Office Department. Victor J. Cavagrotti, Director, Office of Information Systems Planning, Civil Service Commission. Carl W. Clewlow, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Office of Assistant Secretary (Manpower), Department of Defense. Joseph F. Cunningham, Chief, ADP Management Branch, Bureau of the Budget. Dr. Herbert R. Grosch, Director, Center for Computer Sciences and Technology, National Bureau of Standards. Francis Hadro, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Personnel, Veterans Administration. Robert W. Hutchison, Director of Personnel, Library of Congress. Amos N. Latham, Jr., Director of Personnel, Department of the Treasury. George S. Maharay, Director of Personnel, Office of the Secretary, Department of Transportation. Edward J. Mahoney, Associate Director, Office of Policy and Special Studies, General Accounting Office. Donald A. Sikora, Chief, Data Systems and Reports Branch, Office of Personnel and Training, Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Newell B. Terry, Director of Personnel, Department of the Interior. Frank M. Witham, Manpower Policy Officer, Bureau of Policies and Standards, Civil Service Commission. The committee's first action was to identify seven tasks which required study before an improved system could be developed. These tasks were addressed by thirty agency and six Commission personnel organized into seven study groups. I would now like to briefly review the findings of these study groups with the hope that what we learned will be of value to the Congressional effort. Study Group 1 was given the assignment of going out and documenting requirements for data and the timeliness of that data. We have had a number of so-called comprehensive studies of our information requirements in the past, but those were aimed at what it was that the Civil Service Commission needed. This time, we took a different approach. We told this group to take a look at information requirements at all levels of government. What does the employee need to know, the first line supervisors, the commanders in the field, and so on. At the top, they were asked to go out and see what others in the central agencies needed, and finally we told them to find out as best they could what the Congress of the United States needed. Heretofore we had more or less restricted ourselves to a study of files and correspondence that indicated instances in which we were unable to service Congressional requests for information. This time, we came here and talked with people. We talked with the staffs of the House and Senate Committees on Post Office and Civil Service, the staff of the Joint Committee on Reduction of Nonessential Federal Expenditures, and touched base with the staffs of Appropriations Committees. We did receive requests for information that we were not taking care of and will not be able to take care of until a system such as we envisage is installed. Study Group 1 did a very conscientious job. They came up with a comprehensive list of requirements which demonstrated that virtually all of the data required by the Civil Service Commission is also required at other levels of the government as well. They demonstrated that much of the data used for recordkeeping was also required for personnel transaction processing, for job-man matching decisions, and personnel research as well as for the generation of aggregations of data. This has led us to believe that at some time in the future, we can support to the government's economic advantage a total conversion of the standard governmentwide manual system. They also demonstrated that a relatively modest number of data elements in a standard computer record for each Federal employee could be used to create a beneficial substitute for the current manual reporting system. Study Group 2, which I might note was headed by a General Accounting Office employee, was given the responsibility of documenting the current situation as concerns civilian personnel data processing. To no one's surprise, they found wide variations in departmental and agency systems. These systems varied in all respects except one-they all have to do with employees. Because of this variation, communication between these systems is virtually impossible. We do receive today some input from the Agriculture Department's system in magnetic tape form and we could do this with the Veterans Administration, but these are two small drops in a very large bucket. There simply is no capability for enjoying the benefits of electronically sharing information and duplication of this data is seriously widespread. One of the most serious problems documented stems from low processing priorities. For a long time, we have gone along with the proposition that an agency manager, faced with critical shortages of computer running time and computer analysts, should devote his limited resources to support of mission type functions. We have been satisfied with the idea that when an agency head's mission was rodent control he should use his computers for that first. The result however is that since the capabilities of agencies vary widely and since we are dependent upon the last and most inaccurate reporting agency, the President and his staff are poorly informed in terms of scope, accuracy, and timeliness concerning the dynamics of the workforce. In the course of its review, Study Group 2 found a tremendous duplication of computer systems and programming work. They found eighteen agencies of government involved in the major design or redesign of personnel management information systems. Six agencies had efforts under way that would cost in excess of half a million dollars apiece. Of special interest was their discovery that by contrast, one agency was buying a packaged system. This agency had asked General Electric Company for cost estimates for letting them share a GE computer in Valley Forge. We were most interested to learn that GE's price was a mere $15,000 for programming unique outputs required because the system would be dealing with Federal employees rather than the company's own employees. There is something radically wrong when one agency can get a packaged system for $15,000 and six agencies are spending over half a million each. Study Group 2 also documented the cost of civilian personnel information processing, an amount which totals $73 million a year. It is our intention to significantly reduce all of these costs in the future. At this time, we have plans for substantially reducing the cost of statistical processing by automating it and through the simplification of the present manual recordkeeping system. This brings me to the next study group. Since we do not want to computerise an inefficient system, Study Group 3 was given the task of determining what could be done to simplify the existing system before conversion. This group came in with a raft of recommendations and suggestions for improvement. As a result, we launched what we call “Phase II, Implementation" to develop a paper system which would give us short range improvements and also facilitate conversion to an EDP system in the future. We have conservatively estimated this system will produce annual savings of $12.5 million, and this is without any conversion to a computer at all. We are hoping that the market research and operational testing we are now giving the newly developed system will enable us to begin implementation next year. It is too early to know now. So far the testing and research are going on very well. Mr. MAHONEY. That $12.5 million annual savings you mention would be for total implementation of Phase II. Mr. SPARKS. Yes. This is our current estimate for annual savings after the entire Phase II system is installed. Study Group No. 4 took a look at the problem of relationship of personnel management information system to other systems like payroll, labor cost accounting, etc. There is some concern on the part of agencies having an integrated personnel and payroll system that the development of a standard governmentwide EDP personnel system will cause harm. Some people hold the view that an integrated payroll-personnel system gives a high measure of data discipline. In other words, an ageney with such a system has x number of employees who make a check of the system by looking at their check, and if there is one, at a gross to net statement as well. We feel this is not really a valid point because employees have been known to go so far as endorse a check incorrectly if the computer makes a mistake in name rather than suffer the delays involved in having a correction made. Most employees we think will call attention to a mistake very infrequently and then it will probably involve the net amount, expecially if it is under the proper amount. We feel it is far more important to make the EDP system serve the operating needs of the personnel office staff who then will have a vested interest in enforcing data discipline. Study Group 4 found that integrated systems in almost all cases actually mean an interface of various types of files within an integrated systems concept. As a result of Study Group 4's findings we believe the development of a standard governmentwide EDP system presents no problems on this score. Study Group No. 5 addressed an issue that has been of interest in Congress and throughout society as well. This is the issue of invasion of an individual's privacy. As you know, there have been a number of people who have been concerned-and I am sure we are all concerned-with the problem of what happens when more and more personal data finds its way into computer systems. Because of the extreme importance of this matter, we requested an Assistant Attorney General to head up the study group. The study group went very deeply into this matter consulting at length with people both in and outside the government. The group specifically consulted informally with representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union. The study group found that we can provide better protection of the individual's right to privacy in a properly controlled computer system than in manual ones. Rules and regulations governing control of the manual files must of necessity depend upon the understanding and good will of countless thousands in an enterprise the size of the Federal government. It is, of course, impossible to guarantee understanding and good will on the part of everyone all the time and problems can arise. In a properly designed computer system, however, we can reduce the number of people having access to file data to manageable proportions. We can also install a number of systems features to protect file integrity. However, Study Group 5 recognized that protection of the individual's rights frequently involves incurring costs whereas an effective computer systems administrator tries to achieve economy, so we have interests that might be considered diametrically opposed at times. Study Group 5 therefore recommended that an oversight committee be established to watch over the administrators of the system to see that they take proper measures to protect the privacy of individuals. We have not yet set up such a committee, but we will do so when the design of the governmentwide EDP system reaches a point where such a committee could be effective. Study Group No. 6 had to do with data elements and codes. The report of this study group resulted in the establishment of an Office of Personnel Data Standardization in the Civil Service Commission. Since the standardization of data elements and codes is basic to the establishment of any governmentwide EDP system, we called this effort "Phase I, Implementation." Excellent progress has been made |