Chuck Edwards Questions Witness On Allocation Of Federal Judiciary Technology Funding

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During a House Appropriations Committee hearing last week, Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC) questioned Amy St. Eve, the Chair of Budget Committee at the Judicial Conference, about funding towards technology at the Federal Judiciary.

Transcript

00:00Thank you for that observation, and the chair totally agrees with you.

00:04The chair now recognizes the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Edwards.

00:09More questions?

00:10Thank you, Mr. Chair.

00:11Let's turn the conversation to technology,

00:14something I think we don't spend nearly enough time talking about.

00:19And when I look at your budget request and the historical spending,

00:24I see that the federal judiciary spends, let's call it about a million dollars a year,

00:29which doesn't seem like a whole lot of money,

00:31but I know that often money towards technology goes into a big old black hole.

00:40Can you tell me a little bit about how that million dollars or so is being spent,

00:48how much of that is on maintenance, how much is on new software development,

00:53the portion on new software development,

00:57how do you know we're getting our money's worth out of it?

00:59I was an appropriator for technology back in North Carolina when I served in the Senate,

01:05and I know we invested tens of millions of dollars in new development.

01:10Years later, we'd run into a roadblock and realize we've wasted all the new development money that we had,

01:18and we had to start over again.

01:19I'm just curious, are you finding those types of issues?

01:23So when it comes to the JITF funding, how is that being spent?

01:31What are your concerns?

01:32Okay.

01:32Thank you for clarifying that, Congressman Edwards.

01:35If I understand you're asking in particular about our money into JITF.

01:40Let's start with that.

01:41Okay.

01:41And then tell me if there's something else that I'm not looking at.

01:44As opposed to some of our cybersecurity efforts and the FIDA plan.

01:48Separate from cybersecurity.

01:48Okay.

01:49Thank you for that clarification.

01:51So our systems are becoming obsolete, and for years we did not put money into IT.

01:59A common story.

02:01Yes.

02:02Yeah.

02:02For a long time people thought IT was the, you know, oh, I need my printer fixed.

02:07And it's changed dramatically.

02:10But for years, and because we try to be good stewards of the money, we put our priority elsewhere.

02:18And as a result of that, we lost people in IT, and our systems have become obsolete.

02:25So the money that goes to our IT account is going really to rebuild those systems and to modernize them.

02:33And along with that modernization comes security.

02:37Part of that money goes to bringing on and keeping IT personnel, which is, as you probably know, very hard to do.

02:46Because a lot of IT personnel can earn a lot of money if they go outside of the government.

02:53And so trying to keep those people is very important to us.

02:57But we really depleted our IT to a large extent in terms of personnel.

03:04And we've been trying to increase that because it's essential to keeping our systems secure and modern.

03:12I will, Mr. Chair, I'm going to submit some written questions.

03:17I'd like to understand more about the investment in IT and where you see the future.

03:22But let's shift to AI now.

03:26Where does artificial intelligence fall into the overall platform or plans for the federal judiciary?

03:35So the director, and maybe I'll let you answer this, has put together an AI task force.

03:41Recently, and it's directed both at the ways in which AI can be a benefit to the justice system

03:52and in ways to prevent it from being destructive.

03:56And so the task force consists of gifted people across the country identifying the AI issues that we deal with now

04:11and hopefully anticipating them in the future.

04:15That task force has been recently comprised, and we look forward to learning a lot through it.

04:24Will you be sharing the results of that task force with this committee?

04:29Be glad to.

04:30Yes, sir.

04:30That'll be one of my requests and my written follow-up.

04:35Thank you, Mr. Chair.

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