Kelly Ayotte

Made in USA is prestigious worldwide, and Made in New Hampshire is particularly prestigious.

Thank you very much, and I know that both of us stand ready to work with you to make the regulations easier for our businesses, and hopefully we can speed that time up and really create more jobs here.

We want to ensure that we are looking constantly for ways to not burden--to ensure that small businesses are not burdened by undue regulations.

Should we do the one-stop shop? Should we eliminate some of the agencies' involvement to make it easier for small businesses to navigate

I actually wanted to follow up on Senator Shaheen's question, because as I understand it, in 2009, the GAO issued a report that expressed concern over export promotion targeting services.

The Obama Administration has made passage of the pending agreements with Korea, Colombia, and Panama a priority

Senator Ayotte, it has been a pleasure to meet you and to learn of your important work and your leadership roles on the Small Business Committee.

We are trying to streamline more.

I think that goes to the overall question of what can we do to speed this up?

Well, I appreciate that.

I am the mother of a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old. This discussion goes beyond those of us who are serving right here; it is about what kind of country are we going to leave for the next generation. And I know I will not look my children in…

At this point, what's the most significant impediment to the Air Force's ability to get its SBR audit ready?

What has the Air Force learned from the Marine Corps' success and how have those lessons been incorporated?

What more, if anything, can be done to ensure that DOD hires and retains the skilled workforce needed

My sense is that DOD has, instead, been using that unique authority to hire the same types of civilians

There can be no doubt that effective financial management in the Federal Government today requires a knowledgeable and skilled workforce

Can any type of budgetary consequence, for example, be useful?

Is it the Navy's plan to employ a time-consuming, expensive manual effort each year to maintain a clean audit opinion with the legacy financial systems?

I understand that when the Navy's primary ERP system is fully deployed it will only cover just over half of all obligation authority in the Navy.

Please provide a list of those systems, especially the ones that are required to be used by OSD across DOD, that represent the most significant stumbling blocks to audit readiness and explain exactly what the plan is to overcome this…

What, if anything, is your office doing to either make these other systems compliant to support an audit or to replace them?

Effectively using a well-defined enterprise architecture is vital to organizational transformation and systems modernization.

Ms. McGrath, one of the Business Transformation Agency's (BTA) largest initiatives is the DAI, an ERP system for defense agencies.

Ms. McGrath, what examples can you offer where you have actually validated this compliance, as opposed to, say, just taking someone's word for it through unchecked self-assertions?

Where those reviews have actually been conducted, what did they find?