FY 2027 Department of Defense Budget Request

I call the subcommittee to order. Good morning, everyone. I'd like to welcome everyone to the third and final fiscal year, twenty twenty seven budget hearing for the agencies under the jurisdiction of the legislative branch subcommittee. Today we have with us Mister Thomas Austin, the architect of the capital, and Mister Robert Nulin. the Acting Librarian of Congress. Thank you for joining us this morning. The architect of the capital is responsible for the care and operations of more than eighteen point five million square feet of facilities and five hundred seventy acres of grounds that make up the capital campus. The dedication and diligence of the AOC employees is felt by the thirty thousand daily occupants of this campus. as well as the millions of annual visitors. I would like to extend the subcommittee's appreciation to the men and women of the AOC who ensure that the day-to-day operations of Congress can continue in a safe work environment and who preserve these historic buildings for future generations. This fiscal year, the architect of the capital's request totals over one point six seven billion dollars an increase of eight hundred million dollars or one hundred five percent above the level provided in fiscal year twenty twenty six this significant increase is primarily for project and construction related requests which reflects the fact that important infrastructure projects have been delayed or phase funded the request also includes an increase of sixty point six million dollars for the agency's operating budget to support fte and program increases necessary to execute the scale and scope of projects that have been proposed across this campus. While I realize the level of difficulty and therefore expense in managing the maintenance of the campus's aging infrastructure and addressing security, life safety, and historic preservation requirements, it is highly unlikely that this subcommittee will have the ability to meet the agency's request level. Therefore, AOC will have to further delay some of the proposed work due to budget constraints. Mister Austin, I would like to hear about the impact of delaying projects in terms of the increasing deterioration of these historic buildings, and the growing costs and the risks that we have to operate them. The Library of Congress does important work, not only in support of Congress, but on behalf of the American people. I want to commend the library on recent initiatives to expand access and increase engagement so that more people can benefit from the library's treasured collections. For fiscal year twenty twenty-seven, the total budget request for the Library of Congress is nine hundred thirty-one point four million dollars. which includes offsetting collections and an appropriation of eight hundred eighty-three point four million dollars. This represents an increase of thirty-four point four million, or three point eight percent above the enacted level. I understand this funding would support continued investment in IT modernization, including improvements to congress dot gov and other library web sites and applications, and additional investments in the library's digital capacity and accessibility. Mister Nuland, in your testimony I hope to hear how that increase will enable the library to continue to expand access modernize offerings and provide additional research support for congressional staff. Thank you again to our witnesses for being here today and I look forward to our discussion this morning and learning more about your agency's

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am pleased to be here for our third and final hearing for fiscal year twenty seven. Uh, this bill is important to making sure that Congress and the agencies that support it can continue to function effectively and serve the American people well. I appreciate your partnership as we worked to put together a bill that responds to the needs of the Senate and the broader legislative branch. And I look forward to hearing from today's witnesses, whose agencies play an important role in supporting the Senate as we carry out our constitutional responsibilities. Mister Austin, thank you for your time and for the work that the men and women of the architect of the Capitol do every day to keep the Capitol complex running. Over the last year, you have worked to develop a long-term Capitol complex master plan, intended to improve safety, stewardship, and resilience across that campus. The work of the architect of the Capitol helps ensure that Congress can do its work, and that the American people can visit the Capitol complex to witness their government in action. The architect of the Capitol's FY twenty-seven budget request was one point six billion, an increase of nearly eight hundred and fifty million over the last fiscal year. I appreciate the opportunity to hear more about your budget request, and the needs of your agency. Mister Nuland, I uh first wanna thank you for stepping into the role of acting librarian after President Trump forced out Doctor Hayden. I know her presence is missed at the library. The Library of Congress plays a unique and vital role, not only as steward of our nation's knowledge and history, but also as a direct source of support and information for members of Congress, our staffs, educators, researchers, and the public. I also want to thank the women and men of the Congressional Research Service, whose work supports many of us here every day, as we carry out our responsibilities. In fiscal year twenty-seven, the library is requesting eight hundred and eighty-three million to carry out its mission, which is an increase of thirty-one million over last year's enacted level. I welcome the opportunity to hear more about your fiscal year twenty-seven budget request, how you plan to use these funds to strengthen the library services, and how the library is approaching new tools, including artificial intelligence, in a responsible and effective way. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Senator Heinrich. Now I would like to ask our witnesses to give a brief opening statement of approximately five minutes to allow adequate time for questions. The written testimony of each witness will be printed in full in the hearing record. Mister Austin, welcome. You may begin.

Good morning, Chairman Fischer, Ranking Member Heinrich, and distinguished members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today, on behalf of the dedicated workforce of the Architect of the Capital, to present our fiscal year twenty twenty-seven budget request and strategic priorities. I would like to begin by expressing my sincere appreciation for the subcommittee's continued support, as well as the professionalism and expertise of your staff. Particularly, Molly McCarty-Frickel and Richard Braddock, whose engagement is critical to our mission's success. I look forward to sharing the hard work of the agency in serving the needs of Congress. The architect of the capital workforce, comprised of more than twenty-six hundred professionals, remains steadfast in their commitment to preserving and maintaining over eighteen point five million square feet of facilities, five hundred and seventy acres of grounds, and thousands of irreplaceable works of art. Their efforts directly support the operations of Congress and serve the thirty thousand daily occupants and four million annual visitors to the Capitol campus. I continue to be amazed by their work and remain grateful for the unwavering commitment of this team of professionals. Since assuming the role as the thirteenth architect of the Capitol in June, twenty twenty four. I have prioritized strengthening transparency, accountability, and communication across the agency and with our stakeholders. These principles are foundational to maintaining trust and ensuring disciplined stewardship of the resources entrusted to us. For fiscal year twenty twenty-seven, we are requesting one point six billion dollars to address critical infrastructure requirements mitigate life safety and physical security risks, preserve historic assets, and advance modernization initiatives across the capital campus. While this budget request includes a nine point five percent increase in our yearly operating budget, It also includes a significant increase in multi-year and no-year project funds, driven primarily by two factors. First, the accumulation of deferred maintenance resulting from previous year's unfunded projects, which has elevated the risk of system degradation and failure. And second, the inclusion of major capital investments, most notably the long-overdue renovation of the Rembrandt House office building. A central focus of my tenure has been gaining a comprehensive understanding of the conditional of the condition of congressional facilities and infrastructure. To that end, we are finalizing the Capital Complex Master Plan, a long-term, data-driven framework designed to inform congressional decision-making and guide strategic investment over the coming decades. Maintaining and preserving the Capital Campus remains both our core mission and our most complex challenge. It requires a proactive, enterprise-level approach to to facilities management, one that balances immediate operational demands with long-term capital planning. This budget request addresses major Senate facility initiatives, from elevator refurbishment to significant building exterior restoration to security projects across the campus. While the Rayburn building is the most pressing major project on the capital campus, the Senate facilities are also aging and closely monitored by the AOC. We look forward to continuing the ongoing dialogue regarding the facility and operational needs of the Senate community over the coming years. Safety and security will always remain key priorities. With the support of this committee, and in coordination with the Senate Sergeant at Arms and the United States Capitol Police, we have made significant progress over the past few years, and will continue to improve the security posture across the Capitol campus, to safeguard members, staff, and visitors. We are committed to working closely with you and your staff, as well as the US Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, to ensure the architectural capital meets the needs and expectations of the United States Senate and the American people. Chairman Fischer, Ranking Member Heinrich, and members of the subcommittee, thank you for your continued partnership and consideration of our fiscal year twenty twenty-seven budget request. I'm honored to be here and look forward to your questions.

Thank you, Mr. Austin. Mr. Nuland. welcome you are recognized to give your opening comments

thank you thank you chairman fisher ranking member heinrich and members of the subcommittee it's an honor to testify in support of the library's fiscal twenty seven budget request i'm deeply grateful for the consistent support congress has shown the library throughout the last year i'm profoundly appreciative of the library's talented and resilient staff This includes the strongest management team I have ever had the pleasure of working with. I'm also pleased to be testifying with a much valued colleague, Tom Austen, the architect of the Capitol. To start, I want to say that we are the Library of Congress. We exist to support you in the performance of your constitutional duties. Every single Library of Congress staff member contributes to serving Congress and in turn the American people. Being an enduring source of knowledge for you and your constituents requires ongoing investment in expert staff, cutting edge technology, and comprehensive collections. You will see these three areas in our budget request. Our FIS uh our fiscal uh twenty-seven request uh totals nine hundred and thirty-four million. It is designed to maintain the library's core operations, cover unavoidable cost increases, and make targeted investments that strengthen service, efficiency, and public value. The request includes a net increase of thirty-four million, or three point eight percent, over fiscal twenty-six. If approved, this would be the first increase in three years. It falls into two categories. First, approximately twenty-four million to cover mandatory pay and price level increases. Second, approximately eleven million, for critical program increases. In the nineteen nineties, the Library of Congress employed five thousand staff to deliver our services. Today, we deliver on our mission with thirty-one hundred employees. Steady investments in modernization over the last ten years have allowed us to be more efficient and accomplish more with this reduced staffing level. It is critical that this relatively low staffing level be adequately supported. Our fiscal twenty-seven program request is chiefly for a centralized AI enterprise platform. I am very proud of our team who have made significant strides in harnessing AI to improve work processes and deliver services to Congress. But in order to use confidential data, to ensure data integrity and privacy, and to train AI on our unique data types, We need to be able to develop and manage AI models in a controlled and secure environment. Without an AI platform of our own, we will be left behind. As will Congress. So far, we have used existing resources to underwrite AI experimentation. To move forward, we need a relatively modest increase of five point four million, which is an investment in serving you. And as we move forward, we must also remember the past. The celebration of America's two hundred and fiftieth anniversary gives us all an opportunity to appreciate the treasure that is the library of Congress. We invite everyone to join us this summer for our newest exhibit, the Declaration's Promise. It will feature our copy of the Declaration of Independence with Jefferson's handwritten notes and Lincoln's reading copy of the Gettysburg Address. In this year of celebration, we focus on the sublime natural beauty of america i also want to show you what we do best and that is acquire preserve and make accessible rare items of americana so i have some things to show you our curator sarah duke is first going to show you an early two thousands illustration by renowned artist wendell minor depicting a wagon train passing scots Bluff National Monument in Nebraska. Second, a nineteen thirty-nine See America First poster encouraging tourism in New Mexico's Carlebad Carlsbad Caverns.

Hmm.

And now, lastly, I have a rare eyewitness drawing of magnificent Yosemite Falls. From eighteen fifty-five, it is among the first known images of this natural wonder. We were able to buy this thanks to a generous donation from the library's James Madison council, and you are among the first to see it. It literally just arrived. Thank you, Sarah. Even though I have worked at the library for five decades, I remain in awe of precious new treasures like these. Every day I am energized by the possibilities of the emerging tools that hold so much promise for how we can deliver on the library's central commitment providing you with authoritative, unbiased support grounded in a comprehensive collection of knowledge. To close, I want to reiterate my gratitude for Congress's continued support for the Library of Congress. We take the fact that the word Congress is in our name very seriously. When making financial decisions, we always remember that these are hard-earned taxpayer dollars.

Mm.

And we remain committed to delivering exceptional service and the best possible value in return. Thank you for the opportunity to testify and I look forward to your questions.

Thank you, Mister Nuland. Mister Austin, I appreciated meeting with you recently to discuss your efforts to develop a comprehensive capital complex master plan. As I mentioned in my opening statement, I understand the level of difficulty in managing the aging infrastructure across the campus. and therefore the significant expense. However, I believe many senators would be surprised to learn the level of significant and sustained investment that may be required over the next fifteen to twenty years. As I also mentioned in my remarks, it's highly unlikely that the subcommittee will be able to fund all of the line item construction projects and renovation plans submitted in the agency's budget request That level of funding, almost one billion dollars for projects and minor construction, will require much more member outreach and education for members to justify it. So what are your plans to increase member awareness and understanding of the state of the campus's facilities, and to encourage significant investment in the maintenance and the renewal?

Thank you, Sandra, for the question. Uh, the development of the Capital Campus Master Plan, as I spoke about earlier, has been a central part of my tenure. The last one that was done by the AOC was completed in two thousand eleven. Those are usually done every five years, so we are significantly behind on that effort. We're finishing the last phase of it this summer, and we'll be able to have a published product out by the end of this summer. Now, the engagement with the committees is certainly something we do both here and the Senate, as well as with the House, with the House, with the Committee of the House Administration on the Senate Senate rules. as well as the house and senate appropriations committees. We're certainly willing to work with leadership as well as the committees to do outreach to individual members. Uh, we've done many briefings individually and collectively to members on the house side, and I would look forward to doing that on the senate as well. Uh, we look forward to supporting this. Fortunately, these buildings often make our case for us when we have uh facility failures and issues in the buildings. Uh, certainly that's been the case more so on the house recently than on the senate side, but certainly we've had challenges here on the senate as well. And you're correct, this would to address these facility uh issues is going to take a significant amount of investment over a period of time fifteen to twenty years

how how can we ensure the proper balance uh between the number of projects that you that you need to do and that we can take on um without putting too much strain on the agency and the personnel uh that you have cause there is as you were showing me in my office there is a lot to be done

Yes. Yes, Andrew, there is a lot. This year our budget request includes over six hundred million dollars of line item construction projects which are are major facility projects things like air handler units and roofs and uh electrical switch gear things like that. Um, and how do we balance that requirement? It's a very difficult situation because we have to balance not only budget priorities, which is what we're talking about today, but also the impact to the congressional community. How much work can we do while not sacrificing or making uh making the primary mission of the agency, which is to enable congressional operations, having that suffer. In addition to that, we also have considerations with the agency, how much work can we manage, how much staff do we have to bring in, whether it be temporary staff or contracted support. And so it's a balancing act of many factors that we work through, and certainly engaging with our oversight committee and engaging with appropriations and having an ongoing discussion with leadership to make sure, what is acceptable and what is possible matches. And certainly the funding priorities are what we're trying to highlight by the deferred maintenance backlog that we're dealing with.

You know, I know you're still working to complete the uh Cannon building project. That's a fourteen year phased renovation at close to a billion dollars.

Yeah.

You've testified at length about the need for a potential Rayburn renovation and the amount of time, effort, funding that that would entail. So how's the agency preparing to balance

sure so speak about the canyon yes uh we we just had a big milestone last week we were able to open a canyon courtyard for first time that had been renovated since the nineteen eighties when they made it into a parking garage and so now it's a nice open uh space for our our our visitors and staff and so certainly it's a beautiful sight to see but talking about the canyon and what we learn from the canyon we want to those lessons that we learned from cannon over that twelve and fourteen years as this process has gone on to the future renovations whether they be the Rayburn or the Russell and one of those lessons that we learned is having congressional operations being tied so closely to construction is detrimental to both you know it's more disruptive congressional operations and it's more disruptive to the construction and so the lesson we wanna learn from cannon is to take into account things like swing space and mitigation factors that we reduce the impact to members as well as reduce the impact of the construction so we wanna learn those lessons from canon in order to apply them so i was bouncing them across the agency that's kind of the heart of what the ccmp the capital campus master plan is trying to do is lay it out holistically so we can see a picture across the campus time phase and balance by cost and access requirements

thank you mister austin sunder heinrich

mister austin um as you're aware i'm not a uh, particularly big fan of the heart area renewal project, at least as it's currently envisioned. Um, I've been concerned that it doesn't make adequate fiscal or practical sense. And you mentioned member engagement. So I wanted to ask whether you have communicated directly with each of the Senate offices that are going to be impacted by HAARP, not just in the first phase, but across all its phases.

Thank you for the question, Senator. The the HAARP project as go the heart program I should say goes back all the way to late twenty thou- you know, two thousands, you know, two thousand eight, so it's been more than fifteen years that we've had some engagement with this. We have been supporting Senate leadership and Senate rules administration on their outreach efforts to member offices. We look forward to continuing that. I don't have a specific breakdown as far as all the members and all the phases, but we have been doing that over the past month, so we look forward to continuing that engagement. We understand that the construction impacts and the way we phase these and the impact to members is is front and center to the senate operations we wanna make sure that we are being as transparent as possible

having spoken to a number of folks in uh beyond the first phase i i don't think there's an adequate understanding of what's being proposed so uh i would i would urge you to double down on that do you think that adequate swing space has been um identified to be able to manage the work flow across those phases

well swing space is always an issue with any major project especially one that impacts congressional operations and so we want to insure that that is front and center to the project we have worked very closely with senate oversight specifically the consent rules and uh uh have had to identify that swing space and my understanding is that all of the swing space for phase one of the project has been identified and as they were working through the rest of the phases of the project we're identifying adequate swing space to insure that no Senator or San- staff is left without an office.

Um, without going into, eh, what they are in this setting, have you considered alternative means to address the underlying issues that precipitated HARP in the first place?

Sure.

So the HARP, as you know, Senator, is a program. It's not just one specific project. There are several projects that are associated with that, and again, being sensitive to the classification levels on these. But I will say that we have looked at alternate, uh, items we've been working with certainly. uh, the Senate sergeant at arms, as well as US Capitol Police with some other mitigating measures. You've seen some of that work out on second street over the last couple of months. Um, as far as the program itself, we originally envisioned it as a two phase program, which was gonna be more disruptive but would have been shorter. Uh, we've looked at doing an eight phase, uh, program to minimize impact to members, and that's currently sitting with Senate leadership for a decision, but the project is, uh, has has not been given a formal approval as of yet. Um.

Miss, Mister Nuland, I um, I understand the library is exploring how artificial intelligence can support its work really across the institution. And you've proposed an AI enterprise platform to create a dedicated, secure cloud environment where the library can test and develop and deploy new applications uh in a secure and controlled setting why is this the right time to invest in an AI enterprise platform?

thank you senator um since i have become acting librarian i have made ai one of our top priorities um i'm a librarian by training so i have spent literally five decades at the library helping to implement new technologies that would deliver better services to congress and to the american people we have reached the point where um our very talented staff who have explored many options for work processes that we can improve and service to congress but we've hit a roadblock because we don't have a secure platform to do this and i'll give you one example the congressional research service there's enormous opportunity in manipulating big data across all policy areas of crs with an ai platform this would give us the ability to do it more efficiently more securely and to deliver the data uh more quickly so that's one of that's one of the reasons but it's not just crn

can you can you can you drill down a little bit more and sort of give a more specific example of

sure

you know how we might be able to benefit from manipulating large data sets

yes um uh particularly in um the area of domestic social policy um, social security data that we use to, uh, prepare reports for Congress. Um, that's one example. Um, if I may, I could, would like to give you another example of a way that we, uh, CRS would really like to harness AI. And that's with the bill summary back backlog that we have for Congress dot gov. Um, thanks to the, um, initiative of Doctor Karen Johnfried, our, our CRS director, uh we have a plan in place to to address this this congress over fourteen thousand bills have been introduced and this really exceeds the capacity that our twelve staff can manage in terms of researching analyzing summarizing and publishing uh bill summaries uh the ai platform excuse me would give us the ability to address a substantial backlog And, um, we would really like the opportunity to implement this because we think it would really speed up the process. We could get summaries online as quickly as possible. Um, and I think it's really an exciting application of AI, and we're very eager to move forward.

Thank you, Sunder Heinrich. Sender Rounds, you are recognized.

Thank you, Madam Chair. First of all, I think your correct in moving forward with regard to advancements using artificial intelligence. Uh the ranking members, Senator Heinrich and I are co-chairs of the Senate uh AI caucus and we've been working on a number of different initiatives over the last three years regarding the the path forward. I am curious as to the path that you've chosen with regard to a specific AI platform. Can you maybe flesh that out a little bit for us. I'm what I'm curious about is we currently have multiple commercial AI platforms available, starting out with the well-known chat GPT and moving from there into and to others. You've heard the Department of Defense and their challenges with Genesis and so forth, and I'm just curious, can you differentiate what you're talking about from perhaps simply applying or what current members of congress might have access to themselves

so senator thank you for asking that question you mentioned chatgpt um i just had a conversation with sam altman the ceo of chatgpt about this exact about this exact issue and um for us obviously um we are approaching ai very cautiously because we have to guarantee that everything that we give you is accurate um authoritative excuse me and non-partisan so this platform um one of the most important aspects of it would be the the confidentiality the way that we could design it to ensure that all of the data all of the legislative data since we are the biggest repository of legislative data that this data would be secure and that we would be able to to process it in the way that we need to deliver to congress

so may i just so you would be perhaps contracting with one of the hyper scalers to actually develop a product that would be would be available for our members use

it certainly could be um if that if that is the wish of congress i we would certainly be willing to to take the lead in terms of designing a platform that could serve um, that could serve the entire congress.

Do you, do you, I mean I, and I apologize, I'm, I'm, I am curious though. There is a, matter of fact, Senator Heinrich and I have both been working on uh ways in which we can set up literally sandboxes where different uh executive branch agencies could test

Mm-hmm.

uh their their versions of an AI product in conjunction with perhaps in some cases regulated industries so that both the industry and the regulator would both have an understanding of how an ai system would work do you have appropriate authority to be able to establish something along that line or do you need authorities uh created by congress for you to do that at this time

um my understanding is that we do have the authority i i would need to um explore that a little further to really give you an authoritative answer but it's certainly something that we would um be willing to to pursue if that if if that is the desire one of the things that i think makes the library um uh qualified to do this is is we manage so many shared services for the legislative branch the financial management uh data system uh the gis system and we'd like to take that knowledge and apply it um to this um this idea for the platform

i i i don't think there is any question but that the use of ai to agentize the the the searching of different databases is very appropriate and congress should not be left behind in that respect so i i appreciate what you're trying to do and look forward to working with you on that particular subject um mister austin i i'm just curious second street is in an area where there's been construction and some repairs and clearly there's been a disruption in traffic in there Can you share a little bit about what the, what the purpose on that was, I'm simply not familiar with what the purpose of it was other than perhaps stop some truck traffic in that area but could you talk about what that is and what your involvement is with regard to that construction project?

Sure. So, Sandra, you're correct, it's the the the overall rationale that the specific threat case is is not for public consumption, but happy to read with you off-line and share the specific threat. But it is controlled traffic, specifically large vehicle traffic like trucks. And so we're putting in um, we we put in what we call mobile vehicle barriers, this is talking about what the AOC does. We put in mobile vehicle barriers to establish uh, the checkpoints along with US Capitol Police immediately. We're putting in more permanent but still temporary, no digging into the ground uh, vehicle barriers that are going in right now, both on second and constitution, as well as second uh, further down second street. And in the future we'll be working with Senate, Sergeant Arms, Capitol Police, and of course Senate leadership as far as putting in some more permanent control measures for that stretch of street, but it is controlled traffic on there.

It is the intent to basically shut that portion of second street down?

It's to control it and to shut it down when needed. Uh, but it's mostly to control access to it, so we don't have unrestricted vehicles or un- vetted vehicles going down that street.

Very good. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Senator Rounds. Senator Hustad, you are recognized.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, Senator Heinrich and Senator Rounds, uh, Uh, Mister Nuland talked to you about lot about AI already and, and I intended to do that as well. So, hopefully I'll take, uh, take this conversation a little further. Uh, you mentioned that you had, um, a conversation with Sam Altman about the, the way that the Library of Congress could integrate AI into your work. Could you enlighten us a little bit more about what you might have talked about and what those recommendations were?

well i that's just how you would have done it um yes we actually had a very high level conversation about it um it was um a great opportunity to talk to him about how what he sees the for the future of ai and i talked with him about um you know our initial efforts to um to to use ai for applications that would provide better service to the congress and to the american people we really didn't drill down into the details but i said we were very you know very excited and it was a great opportunity to to talk to somebody that's on the well bleeding edge of this technology

well i can tell you what his um ai told me uh just a few seconds ago when i asked what it would recommend to the library of congress it said make the library AI layer for American history and knowledge. Use AI to unlock inaccessible archives. Build AI guided research assistants for Congress and the public, which you've talked about, is important part of what you're recommending. Become a national leader on AI pr- for preservation. And then uh finally create a s- create standards for authenticity and provenance. those were the five recommendations do you have your

may may i add one

yes

i'd like to add to our national service for the blind and print disabled um we've had a lot of conversations about ways in which ai can support our talking book and braille production particularly the um uh interpreting text for for the talking books um so i i i i like that um uh your description that's very um very helpful and i think um it's something that we can accomplish

yeah i mean what you're what you're talking about is essentially creating a closed system for the library of congress correct on on what you do like the whole eh eh the whole operation would be within a closed system which would make it a much more trusted system is that correct interpretation.

Well, clearly the the security is very is, you know, one of our number one number one concerns. Um, but in terms of of of closed, I mean, we would look forward to opportunities to share data. Um.

Closed meaning that it's you're gonna eliminate the hallucinations and the things that can come from untrusted sources,

Yes.

you're gonna create a trusted source.

Yes. Yes, and that that, I'm glad you mentioned that, because that is a big concern of of of ours. one of the things that we do um is look at commercial products and um uh i'll just give you one example of one that we looked at that was a big failure um it was a commercial product for um legal assistance um from a major um uh provider information provider so crs um took questions used the system we had a trial we had a trial period and the system repeatedly failed and it did exactly what you said it produced hallucinations it produced uh wrong wrong case sites things that would be totally unacceptable for us to provide to you mmm um so we you know obviously wanna continue to look at commercial products that that you know might save us time in terms of development but at the same time we are very very cautious um to insure that we are always providing you with authoritative uh information because that's what we hang our hat on

yeah i i will i would just conclude by using the word trust i think the word trust is the most uh scarce element of all the information that we have out there right now in the world is can we trust it is it reliable is it something that we can base our credibility on as a as a resource and so i would um i would just encourage you to to lean in to that as a goal the as a trusted resource and and um in the world where trust is scarce that you can be a trusted resource that people could rely upon so thank you madam chair

thank you senator houston Mr. Austin, I understand that the campus-wide deferred maintenance backlog is already well over two point six billion dollars um if we continue to delay on this uh it's critical infrastructure work that's out there what what does that mean in terms of risk and also what about the future costs what would we be looking at can you give us an estimate please.

Sure.

Thank you, Sandra, for the question. It is certainly a concern that we have been wrestling with as we talk about scarce funding. So, real quickly, I think it's probably useful to break this down into the three lanes of funding that we look at. We have our annual appropriation, which is usually things like, um, uh, our operating costs, like our pay for our p- employees, our utility costs, as well as consumables used throughout the campus. Then we have our multi-year funding, which is talking about facility projects, like I spoke about earlier, uh roof repairs and uh switchgear and air handling units and then we have our capital renewal things like we did no-year funding what we used with canon what we're trying to work with with the Rayburn program and also in the future looking at Russell so those three things break down if we're held uh to flat levels or or only slightly rising levels where that hits us hardest um for the annual was with inflation uh just as one example over the past four years the price for utilities has gone up about thirty percent. Now fortunately we've we've been able to offset some of that with reduced consumption, so it's only been about sixteen percent increase in cost, but that has been a sixteen percent increase over the last four years. When it comes to projects, which I think is the heart of the question, what does that mean as far as deferred maintenance? It really comes down to risk. Um, our staff has done a phenomenal job keeping these uh facilities operating well below well beyond the service life of the components that rest within them. uh example in the cannon office building we ha or correction i'm sorry the rayburn office building we have air handling units that have thirty year design life that just turned sixty and they're continuing we have issues like that all across the campus

mmm

so even though our team does a great job of doing the the day-to-day maintenance on it it's a risk of having one of these major components fail and as we spoke about earlier there's not sufficient swing space to move members of congress whether it be senators representatives into a different office quickly easily or without disruption so that's a risk In terms of cost, uh, projects kind of varies because they're all different. Uh, but a good rule of thumb is they will increase basically about five to ten percent per year for every year that they're delayed so it is increased cost year over year. And if we have a project that's gone through the design phase and it's just waiting for construction dollars we may have to redo the design or call it design refresh and that's sunk cost money and it doesn't really go towards the deferred

Right.

maintenance so there's risk and there's also increased cost,

Okay.

Sandra.

Okay. Thank you. Uh, Mister Nuland. Over the past decade and with significant support from the subcommittee, the library has embarked on modernization initiatives in almost every area to achieve the strategic goals of greater access and customer service for all Americans can you explain how those goals um serve the library's mission and how does the FY twenty seven request further the library's mission and those

so um yes

yes indeed um i'd like to give you one example in our budget of something that will um improve access where we have um have a big problem now and that is with all of our our websites a web application that would um a cloud web application that would help us during during the day often all of our our websites copyright, congress dot gov, loc dot gov, get huge surges of um, ac- of people accessing.

About how many people a day access your web sites, do you know off-hand?

You I don't, I would, I would make up a number, but I don't think I should do that. Um,

Maybe not.

I will, I will um, I will happily find that out for you.

Thanks.

I do know that it is enough that it, it creates um, there are times where people get you're going to have to wait in queue to get in. That's happened to me a number of times, because I like to test it periodically. And this this cloud-based web application, it's a just a little over two million, I believe, um, would help us, um, eliminate those surges and ensure and again, that's that's one example, it's a small example, but it's the kind of things that we're thinking about in terms of access. Something else that we've just done, in fact just opened this week to great success, is our new facility called The Source. And it's specifically designed for children and teens. This was initially part of Doctor Hayden's um vision and um it's been a pleasure to finish this up. It teaches children and teens all about the Library of Congress, all about how to do research, in a large research organization

hmm

and i uh it's so much fun um the first first day we had eleven hundred um uh children cycle through and school groups are signing up it's it's really really very exciting and i um really would look forward to to showing it to you and it's something that i hope that you will tell your uh your constituents about when they um uh come to washington we also have you know just having our digital um all of the items the rare and unique items that we have that are digitized that are available on loc dot gov we continue to pursue that and this provides more access to things that people would not normally have have have access to um we also have teaching for primary resources a wonderful program that um trains teachers to use a lot of our primary sources in their curriculum. And I could go on and on.

Thank you. I'm I would um like my last question to be to you, Mister Nuland, and give you the opportunity so you can highlight um any specific programs or exhibits that you have planned and ready for America's two hundred and fiftieth anniversary.

well thank you for asking that question because this is our our daily agenda because it's so exciting to um to celebrate america in what we consider america's greatest cultural institution so i did mention our um our declaration's promise the major exhibit that we're opening in our um in our uh david rubinstein treasures gallery again i can provide a whole list of unique things that we're pulling out of the vault that we usually don't display and uh we're just so

where where can americans go to access that on your website

the

and be able to see uh everything that you have planned

yes there is um in fact uh there is already a site where people uh can go go to our homepage and you're directed to a um to a page that gives you on two fifty

ok

um so that exhibit is exciting um we have another exhibit coming up we're celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the american folk life center so we will be um doing an exhibit based on that and have material again a congressally mandated directive uh created the american folk life center and we have amazing collections from every state and we're looking forward to um displaying those