Hearing of the Commerce, Justice, State, Judiciary and Related Agencies Subcommittee - Fiscal Year 2005 State Department Appropriations

HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE COMMERCE JUSTICE, STATE JUDICIARY AND RELATED AGENCIES SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE

SUBJECT: FISCAL YEAR 2005 STATE DEPARTMENT APPROPRIATIONS

CHAIRED BY: REPRESENTATIVE FRANK WOLF (R-VA)

LOCATION: 2359 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.

WITNESSES: SECRETARY OF STATE COLIN POWELL

BODY:

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REP. WOLF: Mr. Rogers.

REP. HAROLD ROGERS (R-KY): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Secretary, welcome back to the subcommittee.

SEC. POWELL: Thank you, Mr. Rogers.

REP. H. ROGERS: This being the subcommittee that actually oversees the budget of the operation of the State Department, I'm going to ask you a couple of quick questions about the operation of the State Department. Has nothing to do with foreign policy, it has to do with the operation of the department, which we're concerned with.

I think probably when the history books write your history at the department, I'm hoping it will say that you were the one that led this historic old department screaming into the 18th century with the IT programs.

The SMART program that you described, I want to ask you briefly about that, and perhaps the others. But to tie together all of the consulates and embassies around the world so that we can talk to each other instantaneously it seems to me is the basic premise of diplomacy. And in '04 you began the so-called SMART program to modernize the very antiquated messaging system with a modern web-based program to give everyone a powerful tool to create and share information. Where are you on it?

SEC. POWELL: Moving along very well. Undersecretary Green takes a personal interest in this, as well as supervising the people who are working on it. I can give you for the record the exact date of complete implementation.

But we're very excited about it because it means the old cable system that we knew so well will be going away. We'll be doing all of our communications through the Internet on computers that have broadband capability, that will be secure. We have gotten unclassified access to all of our people, and now classified access is catching up with that. When all that's in place, then we're going to go entirely to an Internet-based system.

REP. ROGERS: Is that in operation now?

SEC. POWELL: Good parts of it are coming up. I do a heck of a lot of my business now on the Internet.

REP. ROGERS: When will it be completed?

SEC. POWELL: Well, I think I better give that to you for the record as to whether it's implemented. I think it's within the next 18 months to two years.

(To staff.) Is that close enough?

STAFF: Two years.

SEC. POWELL: Two years.

REP. ROGERS: I'm sorry?

SEC. POWELL: Two years, my staff advises me.

REP. ROGERS: You're requesting $32.5 million for '05. And for one, I'll be supporting that fully because I think that could be the biggest thing to happen to us in a long time, in a nice way.

Now, one of the short failings I think perhaps, though, is the-this is just for State and does not apply to your sister agencies in the embassy there, if I'm not mistaken. And in the embassies, I'm told, somebody in Commerce Department upstairs can't talk to somebody at State downstairs. And I know that's perhaps outside of your realm, but it seems to me it would be extremely helpful if SMART, or whatever program it is, would connect all of the agencies.

Do you not agree with that?

SEC. POWELL: Yes, I would love to get to the point where I can go to, say, an embassy like in Manila where there are 30 different federal agencies represented at that mission. But I think that will be a longer-term effort for us.

REP. ROGERS: Do you know what-if there's any plans in that respect?

SEC. POWELL: No, and I'm not sure if it's all mine or I have to work it out with all of the different agencies involved. One thing we did do, Mr. Rogers, as you know, is we changed the manner in which the Diplomatic Telecommunications Service was providing broadband capability to embassies, so that as we now plan for the capacity going out to our embassies, we are putting in place enough capacity not only to handle State Department peripherals at the other end, but all of the other agencies of government that are there. And so we are putting in good capacity to all of the embassies and now we need to take it to the next step and see if we should connect. There will be some problems there, some aspects to our legal and law enforcement colleagues that would be restricted, I would suspect, from others, so there will have to be some compartmentation.

REP. ROGERS: Well, that very problem has held us back for decades and --

SEC. POWELL: Yeah. (There hasn't been ?) a need for it, though. I mean, there's some basis for it --

REP. ROGERS: I understand that, but you think you're over that hump now and --

SEC. POWELL: Well, no, I'm not sure that some of my intelligence or law enforcement colleagues want me to be roaming around too freely inside their databases.

REP. ROGERS: I can imagine that.

SEC. POWELL: (Laughs.)

REP. ROGERS: Right-sizing, a bugaboo for this subcommittee for decades-when I was chairman I spent all my time, it seemed like, on trying to force right-sizing. I think we gave you language and money for a right-sizing committee. Is that in operation now?

SEC. POWELL: Yes.

REP. ROGERS: How's it doing?

SEC. POWELL: I'd have to give you a more formal answer for the record, but it's a matter of continuing interest and concern to me to make sure we are not overstaffing these places, and the size of some of our embassies are quite enormous rather.

REP. ROGERS: Well, one of the recommendations of the Carlucci Report and others down through the years has been to establish the process of right-sizing, of cutting back some larger ones that we don't need anymore, increasing others and doing the right thing by the given country, given the mission at the time. And I suppose that will be a continuous operation and should be a continuous operation --

SEC. POWELL: It has to be continuous. But frankly, as you get further into the future, the demands on our embassies are going up, not down-especially in the age of terrorism, the age of WTO accession, the age of commerce and trade exploding; we're finding our commerce sections are getting busier, our legates are getting more involved in things.

So the pressure really is to do more work at our embassies rather than less.

REP. ROGERS: Well, it's listed as a major initiative in the '05 budget request --

SEC. POWELL: Yes, sir.

REP. ROGERS: -- and I'm glad to see that. It's a long-standing goal. I think progress is still slow-too slow for me, and I'm sure for you, too. But I hope that you do emphasize, continue to emphasize right-sizing.erican presence posts. I became an admirer of that sometime back and visited some in France. I really believe in those, because it gives us a flexible presence without a bull's-eye on the door and gets the American presence in many commercial cities that we otherwise perhaps would not be in at a fairly modest cost. What do you think about that?

SEC. POWELL: I like the American presence concept as it was introduced in Paris by Ambassador Rohatyn. And we've got a number of American presence posts in other countries now. There's the obvious trade-off with security, which goes back to what Chairman Wolf was saying. It is an American presence, and you have to make sure you can put it in a place where you can reasonably expect safety and security of the people working there. We're also looking at variations of that called American Corners, which I touched on, which would be just a corner in some facility somewhere, where people can get access to reading materials. In the old days, it would have been in the USIA library. Today it just might be two computers that will give you the same kind of access to information about the United States that you might have gotten from all the USIA library.

REP. ROGERS: Or a kiosk.

SEC. POWELL: Yes. A kiosk, same kind of thing. So we're looking for creative ways to extend ourselves out into the community, and not just among the elites, the intellectuals, or the businesses, but for people to get access to information about the United States through the presence, American presence posts and American Corners and the use of the Internet.

REP. ROGERS: Well, we worked with Ambassador Rohatyn when he established the five posts in France-visited with him, kept track of them, and I became so I love them. But I understand there's only-there's five in France. There's one in Canada, and there's one in Turkey, and that's the only ones I'm aware of.

SEC. POWELL: It's limited. It's limited.

REP. ROGERS: In Australia last year there-a very large geographical country, and friendly country, with many commercial spots, I asked them the last year when we were down there what they thought about it, and they were thrilled.

They would love to have some. I'm talking about our personnel, Australia.

And so I would encourage you on the American Presence Posts, you know, where we have maybe two, three, four people in an office in a city like Melbourne that tend to American business presence there as well as State Department matters at low cost. You don't have to have a Marine force there or a big huge embassy with all of the pertinent things with that, no bullseye on the door; in most cases most people don't even know where it is, and yet we're in the-working in the business community. So I would encourage the American Presence Posts.

SEC. POWELL: Thank you, Mr. Rogers.

REP. ROGERS: Mr. Secretary, I'm going to yield back the time because so many others are here. I'm going to file in the record a listing of the accomplishments of the reconstruction going on in Iraq. It's too long to read, but we're producing more power than before the war, we have repaired hospitals and water networks and sewer systems and schools an 10 million other things, too numerous to mention here, but that story just is not getting told. And I know you try, but sometimes our press tends to cover things that are negative and not positive. But there's a million positive things going on in Iraq, and I want to list those for the record just so that there is a record of what we have accomplished so far.

SEC. POWELL: Thank you, sir.

REP. ROGERS: Thank you, Mr. Secretary.

REP. WOLF: Thank you, Mr. Rogers.

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