Investigation of USDOE CIO Danny Harris: Video and Transcribed Excerpts | deutsch29

Investigation of USDOE CIO Danny Harris: Video and Transcribed Excerpts | deutsch29:

Investigation of USDOE CIO Danny Harris: Video and Transcribed Excerpts

Below are excerpts from the February 02, 2016, Congressional Oversight and Reform Committee’s hearing of the allegations of impropriety related to US Department of Education (USDOE) Chief Information Officer (CIO) Danny Harris.

  

Danny Harris

I begin transcribing at minute 3, with Chair Jason Chaffetz’ charge against Harris and the apparent ineptness of the USDOE in handling student information:

There are 139 million Americans that would be affected by a data breach at the Department of, of, uh, Education. We also need to remember the Department of Education also oversees a student loan portfolio of over 1.2 trillion dollars. This puts it on the proportion of Citibank and other major financial institutions. It is critical because Taxpayers deserve the best in our chief information officer (CIO), and they’re not getting the best at the Department of Education.

The Inspector General (IG) testified recently the Department continues to be vulnerable to security threats and has repeatedly failed to implement the recommendations and failed to detect friendly hacks into their system. The Department scored a negative– was one of just a handful of agencies– but a negative 14 percent on the Office of Management and Budget’s Cyber Sprint. Cyber Sprint was intended to get–government-wide– get ’em up to speed, more security in place– and yet the Department of, of, Education was one of a handful of agencies that actually scored negative on that. And, they received an F in the fitara scorecard.

This is a self-reported score, and they scored an F.

Mr. Harris has served as the chief information officer since 2008, and by virtually every metric, he’s failing to adequately secure the Department’s systems. The Committee’s concerns were further amplified after learning Mr. Harris was investigated for possible criminal and administrative misconduct. The IG closed its investigation months ago, finding that the CIO potentially broke 12 federal laws/regulations and/or agency directives. But the Department of Justice refused to prosecute.

That is a mystery to us; we don’t understand why they would not prosecute such wide use and abuse of the system. Mr. Harris was running two side 

Investigation of USDOE CIO Danny Harris: Video and Transcribed Excerpts | deutsch29: