Julia Frifield

STATEMENT BEFORE THE HOUSE OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM COMMITTEE BY Julia Frifield, Department of State, Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs, January 7, 2016

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Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Cummings, and members of the Committee, I appreciate this opportunity to testify on the State Department’s response to Congressional requests for documents.
The State Department is committed to working with Congresson Congressional investigations. Secretary Kerry spent nearly thirty yearsin Congress. He believes strongly in the importance of Congressional oversight and led investigations when he was in the Senate. Since he arrived at the State Department, his clear instruction has been forthe entire Department to be responsive to Congressional investigations and requests. I share his commitment. Before joining the Department, I spent my entire career as a Capitol Hill staffer, I have great respect for theCongressional role in conducting oversight.

Today’s hearing focuses on requests for documents, which I will address at length. However, it is important to underscore that our commitment to working with Congress is not limited to requests for documents. In 2015, the State Department’s Legislative Affairs office provided over 2,500 briefings for the Hill on foreign policy issues. We worked with Consular Affairs to respondtoover 5,000constituent cases for members of Congress–everything from lost passports to missing constituents overseasto helpingwith visas for constituents’ family members. We arranged 536Congressional Member and staff delegation trips abroad. Department officials appeared at168hearings, and we responded to over 1,700 Congressional letters. With crises occurring around the worldand Congress 2intently focused on foreign policy, we are working hard to meet all of our responsibilities –and we recognize that cooperatingwith Congressional investigations is one of them.Yet frankly, we at the State Department have struggled to keep pace with the increasing demands of Congressional document requests, which have expanded in number, scope, and complexity.

We are now responding to dozens of investigations by nine different committees, involving hundreds of specific requests for hundreds of thousands of pages of documents. This is approximately twice as many as we had in 2014. While some of these investigations are relatively focused, others are broad and complex, involving many different bureaus within the Department, as well as other agencies. But let me be clear:we know it is our responsibility to answerthese requests,and we are working to improve both the way we respond –to make it more useful for Congress –and the pace of our response.Historically, when responding to Congressional requests we have followed a process similar to responding to FOIA requests, relying primarily on the same Department infrastructure and technology.

Asboth FOIA and Congressional requests increased, we found that both types of requests were competing for the same resources.To compensate, at times we have pulled together ad hoc teams from functional and regional bureaus to respond to Congressional requests, i.e., pulling people from the work of diplomacy to respond to Congress.Clearly, this system was not sustainable. Werealized we needed to institutionalize the way we process documentsto speed up the pace of delivery. We knew we had to upgrade our technology.This past year, we have transformed the way we respond to Congressional requests. I worked with my colleagues at State to create a Congressional4been collecting documents for thefive requeststhat you have outlined in the December 18 letterand we arecommitted to producing thousands of pages of documentsto your committeealong with providing requested briefings on the mattersdescribed in that letter.

Specifically, OnAugust 13, 2015, we provided a briefing on the New Embassy Compound in Jakarta. We have produced three tranches of documents, starting in August. To date, we have provided nearly 6,000 pages on the Jakarta New Embassy Compound,and we continue to reviewdocuments for future productions to the Committee. •We have begun our document production on Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabiaand we continue to review documents for future productions to the Committee.•We have provided a briefing to your staff on the Art in Embassies Program on January 4 and began to produce documentsto the committee.

The Congressional Notifications, 2,137 pages,on overseas construction were sent to the Committee on December 30.•We testified to the changesin Danger Pay in Septemberandprovidedan in-depth briefing to yourstaff on September 30.In closing, while we have implemented significantimprovements to respond to Congressional investigations, we are striving to do better.The obstacle to responding is not one of commitment. Fundamentally, it is a question of balancing resources in responseto multiple large scale Congressional requestsfroma number ofdifferent committees. We are trying to find innovative ways to respond better and faster. I look forward to working with you and your staff to ensure that the State Department and the Congress work together to provide the transparency that should be a hallmark of our government.