The acting head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency faced pointed questions from lawmakers Wednesday over CISA personnel decisions and staffing levels.
Members of the House Homeland Security Committee asked Madhu Gottumukkala about a reported attempt to fire the agency’s chief information officer, efforts to push out a large number of staff and whether CISA had enough people to do the job.
Gottumukkala at times sidestepped the questions, with the probing coming from both sides of the aisle. However, Democrats exhibited deeper worries about the agency’s workforce and its ability to do its job.
Cutbacks at CISA after employees were “bullied into quitting” — among other methods of reducing CISA’s size — have “weakened our defenses and left our critical systems and infrastructure more exposed, and the American people more vulnerable,” said Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va.
Said Chairman Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y.: “This committee supports the administration’s goal of aligning department [of Homeland Security] resources towards urgent homeland security priorities. At the same time, workforce continuity, clear leadership and mission readiness are essential to effective cyber defenses.”
The extent of those CISA personnel reductions was something lawmakers wanted Gottumukkala to be exact about in his answers.
The top Democrat on the panel, Mississippi’s Bennie Thompson, entered a chart into the hearing record that showed the number of personnel had fallen from 3,387 before President Donald Trump’s inauguration to 2,389 by the middle of December, or a loss of 998 people. Those figures aligned closely with the numbers Gottumukkala gave in testimony.
Under questioning from Thompson, Gottumukkala said CISA’s attrition rate was 7.5% last year, a figure he said was lower than most agencies. Gottumukkala said the agency has “the required staff” to do its work, but Thompson said he was still awaiting an expected letter from Gottumukkala on workforce needs and wanted a more precise number on current vacancies.
Gottumukkala also wouldn’t say whether the agency had carried out a study to determine whether its staffing was sufficient. In response to questions from Garbarino, Gottumukkala said there were no further planned organizational changes at CISA.
“We recognize that a disciplined mission requires the right workforce — not a larger one, but a more capable and skilled one,” Gottumukkala said in his opening remarks.
Democrats pressed Gottumukkala repeatedly on whether any CISA personnel had been reassigned to working on immigration enforcement, something he said hadn’t happened during his time at the agency, contradicting published reports to the country and a claim from Gottumukkala that Democrats said was false. The chart Thompson referenced showed 65 employees being reassigned out of CISA.
At times, GOP lawmakers gave Gottumukkala backing on CISA personnel numbers. Rep. Andy Ogles, who chairs the panel’s cybersecurity subcommittee, said, “You’re doing more with less, and you’re doing it more efficiently.” Republican appropriators recently released a homeland security funding bill that would cut CISA’s budget from nearly $3 billion to $2.6 billion.
Responding to a report that Gottumukkala had tried to force out Robert Costello, the agency’s CIO, Gottumukkala said individual agency personnel “decisions are not made in vacuum. It is a leadership-level [decision] at the highest levels, and we work according to how we see the roles fit.”
Garbarino told reporters after the hearing that “ I don’t know whose decision it is making that personnel [move], but it was stopped, which is probably a good thing.”
Asked about a news story that he failed a counterintelligence polygraph test, Gottumukkala said that “I do not accept the premise of that characterization,” and any answer would have to be discussed in a closed hearing. Garbarino said he hoped an investigation into the polygraph incident would be settled soon.
Democrats repeatedly expressed frustration about Gottumukkala’s testimony. “You’ve managed to answer none of my questions,” Walkinshaw said.
Gottumukkala wouldn’t take questions from reporters after the hearing.