The agency maintains about 37,200 total web pages — of which 26,600 are web pages written in English. The rest are translations in other languages.

IRS.gov chief Angela Render said about 85% of visitors go to the agency’s top 100 English-language pages, and another 12% of traffic goes to the 900 next-most popular pages.

“The first thing you might start to think is, ‘Well, if [1,000] pages satisfy 97% of the people coming to the site, why do we have the rest? Can’t we get rid of those?’ And the answer is that we have to serve everyone. We can’t pick our verticals like a business would,” Render said Tuesday during a virtual event hosted by ACT-IAC.

About 51% of the IRS’ web traffic comes from mobile devices, and 59% of users access IRS web pages through online searches.

Among its current priorities, the IRS is tapping into billions of dollars in multi-year modernization funds to provide a higher level of customer service to taxpayers — including making its website easier to navigate.

“One thing we do know about our visitors is that they are there to complete a task. People do not come to IRS.gov for entertainment or to socialize. They are focused and if they’re not tax professionals, attorneys or the media, they may be scared and frustrated also,” Render said.

More than half of the IRS’ online audience reads at a sixth-grade level or lower. About 88% consider IRS.gov a top source for tax advice, and about 47% of taxpayers report feeling anxious when they receive any notice from the IRS.

“IRS.gov is one of those rare digital experiences that must serve all American taxpayers, whether individual business or tax professional, across all demographics and business types,” Render said.

To make the IRS website easier to use, the is holding focus groups with certain demographics, such a first-time filers, to understand their challenges navigating the website.

Based on this group’s feedback, Render said the IRS recently rewrote content on some of its top 11 webpages — which draw about 712 million pageviews each year — to appear at the top search engine results, and added nine new pages to “to fill significant content gaps, as illustrated by high search volume with poor results in external search engines.”

Within a month, the 20 rewritten or new pages drew more than 103 million views — nearly 28% of all traffic coming to irs.gov. Six of the new pages at the top 500 most viewed on IRS.gov and five more were in the top 1,000.

Karen Howard, director of the IRS Office of Online Services, said the agency is expanding its recruiting efforts across the country.

“The website is 24/4. We don’t want to overwork our existing talent, but we also want to expand and recruit from areas that have really good talent, that can help address the dynamic nature of the digital needs of the organization,” Howard said.

Howard said the IRS is also taking steps to address is tech “talent gap.”

“As the technology evolves, as tech players evolve, we have to make sure the understanding of evolution and that we have the talent and the skills — whether it’s upskilling, whether reskilling —to be able to address the needs of the taxpayer evolving and transforming in a in a more real- time manner,” she said.

As the IRS rolls out new technology to benefit taxpayers, Howard said the agency is also taking steps to ensure IRS employees also have the tools they need to do their jobs.

“There’s a saying — if the employees isn’t having a good experience, you can’t expect that to happen at the customer experience level,” Howard said. “The user experience team spends a lot of time working with our internal call center teams and recently did a huge study trying to understand some of the journeys that employees go through, so that we can better design and improve design on some of our existing applications.”

Among those tools, the IRS is using artificial intelligence to improve its digital experience.

Render said the IRS can use AI to reduce time spent on certain tasks, such as qualitative data analysis. AI can also assess content on the IRS website against governmentwide standards, or review conversations between a taxpayer and a chatbot that require an IRS employee to intervene.

“We understand that AI is not a magic wand that will relieve us of the responsibility of monitoring and improving our content, Render said. “I don’t see AI and technology as a replacement for a human, but rather as a toll that will allow us to address content more efficiently.”

Render said the IRS is already fielding AI technology, in the form of chatbots and voice bots.

“While AI happens to be on everybody’s minds right now, it’s not new technology,” Render said.

Render said the IRS, “for a number of years,” has used AI to look through call center logs and identify patterns.

“We reviewed call center logs to understand what people call about and then use this information to see if the information available on the website is findable and useful. This uncovered many pain points. That’s not to say we don’t want people to call, there are many instances where the call is important. What we don’t want is a situation where people must call when they don’t have to. A lot of people would like to just take care of things on their own time. And we should support this,” she said.

The post IRS has 37,000 webpages. About 2% get nearly all of its traffic first appeared on Federal News Network.

The VA is looking at how smart home technologies and wearables like smartwatches could flag when aging and disabled veterans are having a medical emergency.

Joseph Ronzio, VA’s deputy chief health technology officer, said the department is also taking steps to ensure veterans have a stay in who gets this data, and how it may be used.

“Everyone nowadays has some smartness in their home, whether it’s a speaker, whether it’s light switches, whether it’s different types of lights or other physical devices — cameras, motion detectors that leave a digital service,” Ronzio said during a Federal News Network-moderated panel discussion at ATARC’s DevSecOps Summit.

“Most of the time we’re not able to access that digital footprint because it’s kept in a cloud service or a cloud system, and that’s masking to us what’s going on,” he added. “We’ve been able to implement some technologies that have actually been able to unmask it, and then evaluate what is the best kind of healthy and then start detecting where there’s problems.”

This use case hits close to home for VA’s tech leadership. VA’s Chief Health Technology Officer Craig Luigart is a disabled veteran.

Ronzio said Luigart’s Apple Watch has saved his life “multiple times already,” by alerting family members when he’s experienced a medical emergency — and that the same technology can help veterans continue to live in their own homes.

“As we look more and more towards our veteran population who are aging in place and look at the need for skilled nursing beds and skilled nursing facilities over the long haul, or nursing homes, there’s definitely a need for this capability to be refined and developed,” Ronzio said.

The VA pays for disability modifications to veterans’ houses and provides veterans with accessible equipment.

“We are providing those sensors and those technologies. Now we just have to peel the onion on this and start building better algorithms to detect and share that data with caregivers – whether that’s a spouse, whether that’s a child, whether it’s a loved one, whether it’s a friend of the family,” Ronzio said.

As VA continues to develop this project, Ronzio said veterans get to decide who they wish to share data and alerts with, so that that person can support them.

“Everyone always talks about sending data to VA, but we are not ambulance crews, we’re not 9-1-1,” he said. “We need to interact with family members. Having this data available to the family, so that they can understand if that patient’s at a dehydration risk, [or] a fall risk, having mobility challenges, needs to go through advanced rehab — that they can live a happier and healthier life within their home, instead of being put off into a skilled nursing facility or even hospice at a time.”

Ronzio said veterans will always have a say in how their personal data is used.

“Having those data controls in place is tremendously important. From my perspective, I wouldn’t want all of my home data, all of my sleep data, all of my stuff, getting out there to anyone,” he said.

“As we talked about smart homes, my goal has always been to keep the data local to the person’s house. I don’t even want people sharing their data 100% with their medical staff. If you have a problem, we would be pushing out analytics that your devices can analyze your data with. And once you hit a tripwire or you hit a concern, you can select that you just want to share it with your loved ones,” he explained.

Meanwhile, the VA is setting up a Digital Health Office.

“This realignment is going to align a lot of virtual, a lot of AI, and a lot of technologies that typically had responsibilities in other places, into one area,” Ronzio said.

The creation of the Digital Health Office, he added, will impact the reporting structure of several hundred officials within the VA’s Central Office.

“It’s a major change to the organization. They’re moving a lot of different arms of VA under a Digital Health Officer. We have actings and interims in these positions right now for all the senior executives, so we’re still trying to figure out what this is really going to mean for the workforce,” Ronzio said.

VA’s Office of Information and Technology will remain its own separate entity, but Ronzio said the Digital Health Office will allow for greater collaboration with OIT.

“I’m hoping that we can actually improve the speed and efficiency of OIT’s processes to have secure systems rolled out. I’d anticipate that we can save some time just by having our internal communication. But if we can actually develop better relationships with OIT, this will have the potential to have dramatic results,” he said.

“Some of my projects in the past have taken two or three years to manifest. Now that we have access to people in our own organization and have more communication at the undersecretary level and above for digital health, this should actually speed up our iteration and speed up our ability to produce something,” he added.

The post VA looking at ‘smart home’ tech to keep aging, disabled vets living independently first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Treasury Department announced Tuesday that Oregon will opt into Direct File next year, and expects other states will also do so ahead of the next filing season.

The IRS announced last week it will make its Direct File platform a permanent option for taxpayers to file their federal tax returns, after piloting the system this year with 12 states.

More than 140,000 taxpayers used the platform to file federal tax returns this year — exceeding the IRS’ goal of 100,000 users. About 19 million taxpayers living in those 12 states were eligible to use Direct File this year.

The Treasury Department expects at least 580,000 Oregon residents will be eligible to use the free online filing tool next filing season.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) told reporters that Direct File will give taxpayers more options to file their taxes.

“Direct File is long overdue. It’s the kind of public service the government ought to be providing to Americans and Oregonians whenever they can,” Wyden said in a call Tuesday.

At a committee hearing at the end of this year’s filing season, Wyden praised the IRS for creating a free website that allows taxpayers to file their federal tax returns.

“The website was user-friendly, quick and easy to use. I went out and talked to some of those people who used it, and that was the answer that I got,” he said. “It didn’t hassle users with up charges for add-on services they didn’t need. It got overwhelmingly positive reviews. With Direct File, I believe the IRS has built a good tool that people are going to like, because it saves time, headaches and money.”

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement that expanding Direct File will help taxpayers save time and money, “and ensure they receive the tax benefits they are owed.

“After a successful pilot this Filing Season, we are pleased to expand the program as a permanent offering and welcome Oregon as the first new state to offer this free new option to taxpayers,” Yellen said.

The IRS is adding more states to Direct File as House Republicans propose defunding the program.

The House Appropriations Committee released a fiscal 2025 spending bill earlier this month week that would cut IRS funding by nearly 18% and zero out funding for Direct File.

The full committee advanced the bill last week, and awaits a House floor vote.

Wyden told reporters he’ll “fight with everything I’ve got to protect Direct File.”

“If Republicans in the Congress have the opportunity, they are going to put an end to it,” he said.

Congressional Republicans have called Direct File wasteful and duplicative, since some tax software companies already allow taxpayers below a certain income threshold to file online for free through the Free File Alliance program. 

The IRS and U.S. Digital Service spent a combined $31.8 million to launch the Direct File pilot.

However, Wyden said taxpayers deserve more options in how they choose to file.

Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, no longer participates in the IRS Free File program. But Intuit notified some taxpayers in Oregon that its TurboTax software might not have selected the best deduction option, resulting in a possible overpayment to the state.

The state of Oregon says this issue affects about 12,000 of its residents.

“It was another example of how the big software companies have been upcharging for products that aren’t that great to begin with,” Wyden said.

States that opt into Direct File have options in how they participate.

During the Direct File pilot, taxpayers in Arizona, Massachusetts, New York, and California were directed to a state-run tool to complete their state tax returns, after they filed their federal tax returns.

Taxpayers in Arizona, Massachusetts, and New York were also able to import their information from Direct File directly into the state-run platform, making it faster to file their state tax returns.

“Moving from Direct File to the state tool went very smoothly. Taxpayers were able to bring their information with them. It was able to prepopulate a lot of the information needed for a state tax return. And then taxpayers had to answer just a couple of additional state-specific questions to complete the filing of their state return,” an administration official told reporters.

The IRS limited participation in this year’s  Direct File pilot to taxpayers only reporting certain income types, such as wages on a Form W-2, and tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit.

“Over the next few years, the goal is that direct files eligibility is expanded to cover the most common tax situations, especially those that affect working families,” another administration official told reporters.

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The agency’s Document Upload Tool is giving taxpayers an online option to submit required documents to the IRS when they get a notice from the tax agency in the mail.

Taxpayers no longer have to snail-mail their documents, and they can expect a faster response from the agency. The IRS launched the Document Upload Tool in 2021, and recently received its millionth submission from the tool.

IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said in a statement that the Document Upload Tool “is a key part of our ambitious initiative to transform the IRS into a virtually paperless agency, and we continue to see increased use of this by taxpayers.”

Wanda Brown, project director of Inflation Reduction Act Implementation within the IRS’ Wage and Investment division, called the 1 million submissions a “big milestone” for the Document Upload Tool.

“Consider the fact that we get a lot of paper in from the mail, this is making a dent in that,” Brown said on June 5 in a panel discussion on IRS IT modernization hosted by the National Taxpayers Union Foundation.

The IRS estimates more than 94% of individual taxpayers no longer need to send mail to the agency, and that 125 million pieces of correspondence can be submitted digitally each year.

“People say, ‘Oh, you’re just digitizing paper. Yes, but we’re providing access to it,” said Darnita Trower, the director of emerging programs and initiatives at the IRS. “Think about all the times a taxpayer has called and you need something. Someone somewhere has to make a request to files, to go pull the file and get that piece of paper. We are now providing data at your fingertips. You can just go to the screen search for it and render it as long as you have the security rights to do so.”

Brown and Trower are both finalists for this year’s Service to America Medals program — in addition to Gerald Johnson, an IRS IT specialist.

A backlog of paper-based tax returns and correspondence hobbled the IRS at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The National Taxpayer Advocate went so far as to call paper the agency’s “kryptonite.”

For taxpayers who still prefer filing paper tax returns, Trower said the IRS is working on being able to digitize that paper return.

“If you choose to send us the paper, we will process it. But we are ushering in some nice tools with the modernization. We don’t intend to have people continue keying in tax returns manually. We want to scan and extract that data,” she said.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found the IRS received about 1.2 million paper tax returns during this year’s filing season. That’s about an 8.5% reduction from the more than 1.3 million paper tax returns it handled the previous year.

“We are actively working on one of our initiatives, so that for taxpayers that choose to send in their tax return to us via paper, that we’re able to take that and really put it into a digital format and process it through our downstream systems,” Trower said.

The IRS is also scanning and digitizing some of the paper documents at its service centers.

“It’s a two-pronged approach – reducing the amount of paper that we have coming into the organization and files that we’re storing. Being able to scan some of that paper, that helps us to make data available, information and images available for our employees, so they can assist the taxpayers,” Brown said.

The IRS sends out about 3,600 notices and letters to taxpayers. But as of April this year, the agency now has 20 of its most commonly used forms available to fill out and submit on mobile devices.

“Taxpayers can go to IRS.gov, pull down their form, enter it on any device. It’s adaptive – and be able to just hit submit,” Brown said.

Trower said the IRS plans to make an additional 150 forms mobile-adaptive over the next calendar year.

“The majority of those that require a response, you can just go to any device and upload and provide your response to the IRS,” she said.

The IRS is also taking steps to modernize and improve its internal systems, in an effort to provide better customer service to taxpayers.

The agency is looking to consolidate its 63 legacy case management systems into one enterprise case management system.

The IRS has been working on moving to a single enterprise case management for years. Trower said the next step is to roll out a digital inventory management system.

“That will allow us to have enhanced workflows, get things where they need to be, if it landed in the wrong bucket, we can redirect it. But more importantly, when it comes to case management, we’re building it on the same platform as enterprise case management,” she said.

The IRS next year will also test out a long-awaited update to the Individual Master File, its authoritative data source for individual tax account data.

The IRS expects to turn on a modernized version of the IMF for the first time in April 2024 – after the tax filing season — and run it in parallel with its legacy system. Werfel said the IRS hopes to have the updated IMF up and running by the following filing season.

Trower said the IMF serves as the backbone of the filing season, and modernizing the legacy system will give IRS employees “real-time access to all the data that they need to be able to do their job.”

She added that the updated IMF will also give taxpayers better access to their own history of interactions with the IRS — and the status of receiving those.

“You should be able to upload something from your phone and log into your account and see, ‘Here’s my upload that’s tied to this notice that I received,’ and maybe get some of your own questions answered — like, ‘Did you get it?’ That’s probably a common question — ‘I sent something in the mail. Did you get it?’” Trower said.

Jessica Lucas-Judy, director of strategic issues at the Government Accountability Office, said the IRS, as it modernizes its legacy IT infrastructure, should also address the fact that it doesn’t have a comprehensive inventory of systems that contain taxpayer information.

“It’s very difficult to know if you are being successful in protecting that information if you don’t know where it is,” Lucas-Judy said.

GAO recommends the IRS complete a comprehensive inventory of where it stores taxpayer information.

Much of the IRS’ ongoing IT modernization efforts are supported by the Inflation Reduction Act, which gives the agency about $60 billion in multi-year modernization funds.

The legislation provided $4.8 billion in business systems modernization at the IRS.

“Consistent funding for the IRS is key. Right now, with the IRA, we’re able to make leaps and strides in that space. With the funding, we can do the right planning, we can incorporate new technology,” Trower said.

The post IRS hit a ‘big milestone’ to wean itself off paper. What comes next? first appeared on Federal News Network.

The agency is tapping into its multi-year modernization funds to hire tax experts from the private sector and staff up its enforcement operations.

It also released a proposed rule Monday that seeks to close tax loopholes used by large, complex partnerships to limit their tax obligations.

The IRS expects this rule, once finalized, would bring in more than $50 billion over the next decade.

IRS Commissioner Werfel said audits of complex partnerships have been “overlooked for more than a decade with our declining resources.”

“We’re concerned tax abuse is growing in this space, and it’s time to address that. So we’re building teams and adding expertise inside the agency so we can reverse these long-term compliance declines,” Werfel told reporters on Friday.

The IRS is trying to reverse more than a decade of declining audits among the highest-income taxpayers, as well as complex partnerships and corporations.

“Our lack of staffing and resources has allowed a growing number of high-income individuals, partnerships and corporations to hide behind complexity and avoid paying taxes. There is a large amount of tax revenue at stake here,” Werfel said.

The proposed rule issued Monday would modify guidance on partnership basis shifting transactions — which the Treasury Department described as “opaque business structures to inflate tax deductions and avoid taxes.”

Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo called the related party partnership a “shell game played by complex partnerships.”

“While depreciation is a legitimate tool used by businesses, these transactions are not tied to any economic activity or create any real economic value for the United States. Their sole purpose is to avoid tax bills by moving assets from one pocket to another and generate deductions,” Adeyemo said.

The IRS already has tens of billions of dollars in basis shifting transactions under audit.

“We need to ensure fairness in the tax system, so that hard-working taxpayers and businesses who play by the rules and pay their fair share, know that others are doing the same,” Werfel said.

The IRS Office of Chief Counsel is also creating a new associate office that will focus entirely on partnerships, S corporations, trusts and estates.

“This new office will allow the chief counsel organization to focus more directly on this complex area and provide additional attention to legal guidance and other priorities involving partnerships,” Werfel said.

This fall, Werfel said, the agency’s Large Business and International (LIB) division will establish a special working group focused on complex partnerships.

Werfel said this working group with bring in outside experts with private sector experience to work alongside current IRS employees.

“The outside experience will be critical, helping give the IRS an inside look at some of the maneuvers taking place with partnerships,” Werfel said. “Hiring this kind of expertise is an area where the IRS has not had the resources to keep pace with the rapid growth taking place with partnerships.”

Werfel said billions of dollars from the Inflation Reduction Act funding are helping the IRS recruit the experts it needs to shrink a growing tax gap.

“We are bringing new Inflation Reduction Act resources to play to beef up our compliance work and overlooked areas of concern involving high-income earners, complex partnerships and large corporations. We are continuing to accelerate our work in this area,” he said.

The IRS has launched audits on 76 of the largest partnerships with average assets over $10 billion. These include hedge funds, real estate investment partnerships, publicly traded partnerships and large law firms.

“With increased resources, the IRS can finally shift its attention to the far complex corners of the tax administration world that have been ignored for far too long. IRS work in this space is critical, with tens of billions of dollars at stake, as well as helping bringing more fairness into enforcing tax laws already on the books,” Werfel said.

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The White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), at an “AI aspirations” summit Thursday,  demonstrated how a dozen federal agencies are up to the task of using AI to deliver more services to more people.

OSTP Director Arati Prabhakar said accelerating the use of AI in government will require expertise,  resources, and data sets from the private sector and academia.

“To build this future, we will need to do together what we can’t do separately,” she said.

Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said AI “shows so much potential” for agencies to provide better customer service to the public — as long as agencies deploy these tools effectively.

“This is actually an opportunity for us to embrace exciting changes, and show that this power can be used for good, especially for services. But it also reminds me if we get it wrong, and we don’t marry the need to improve government service and use AI to do that in a way that is beneficial for people … If we don’t use AI to actually equitably deliver, we will lose people and their trust,” Young said.

Mo Earley, portfolio lead for federal high-impact service providers at OMB,  said that with the advent of AI, “there are new opportunities to reshape government services for the better, to give everyone the opportunity to feel relief, rather than frustration, to have the relevant context understood, and to feel confident that their data and privacy are being rigorously protected.”

“If done right, AI could help bring new opportunities that can more effectively connect each individual with the right support in a seamless and secure way,” Earley said.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said NOAA is leveraging AI to create faster, more accurate weather models.

“NOAA’s vast data archives will help train the data sets needed to create AI predictive weather models,” Raimondo said.

National Science Foundation Director Sethuraman Panchanathan said the past 50 or 60 years of sustained federal research in AI are driving the breakthroughs we’re seeing today.

“NSF, of course, has been investing continuously in AI, even in AI winters. And here we are, all of us seeing the outcome of that. Yes, there’s a lot more work to be done, and NSF is truly excited to be able to continue to work with all of you and achieve those innovations,” Panchanathan said.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said AI could cause “enormous disruption” in schools and universities across the country, on par with the rise of the internet age.

“The AI train has left the station, and it’s moving full-steam ahead. It may be in its early stages, but we can be sure that it’s going to be present in the homes and in the classrooms of our country. And we can be sure that young people are going to use it in their lives and in their education — perhaps in ways we haven’t even dreamed of yet. So we have to meet them where they are.”

Prabhakar told reporters in a call ahead of the event that the Biden administration is showcasing work that’s already underway at a dozen federal research and development agencies.

“These are specific advances that are paving the way for even bigger things that are ahead,” Prabhakar said in a call Wednesday.

The administration is highlighting the potential of AI to accelerate drug research and approve new medications in “months rather than decades,” support individualized for K-12 students and enable neighborhood-level weather forecasts.

The White House also sees the potential of AI to accelerate progress in setting a higher standard for customer services across the government.

“Accessing the government services that are intended to help people in their most difficult moments is often a vexing experience with forms and processes from so many different agencies. Building on a strong foundation of privacy protection, AI can help us deliver critical services to any American, right when they need them most,” Prabhakar said.

The White House is outlining what agencies can do with AI technologies, but is calling on private-sector experts, academics, and researchers to partner with the government on these efforts.

“Usually, when we are talking about projects, we are talking about very concrete things that are happening today, that are already locked into budget. This is actually a bit different. This is a vision conference, because we want to show people how big the possibilities are ahead. In every one of these cases, there is work going on in government that starts us on this path.”

Prabhakar said agencies are also looking at how to field AI tools ethically and responsibly, as well as ensure algorithms are free of bias.

“This is exactly the right time to ask what could go wrong. Because the answers to this question point the way to building the protections and mitigations before a new technology is deployed,” she said.

The post White House showcases what’s possible with AI across 12 agencies first appeared on Federal News Network.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation leaders say employees are suffering from low morale, and that the agency is facing long-term recruitment challenges, as it deals with reports of a toxic workplace environment.

Officials overseeing reforms at FDIC told members of the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday that the agency needs a “fresh start,” after an independent investigation substantiated claims of a toxic workplace.

Jonathan McKernan, co-chair of a special committee FDIC created to oversee an independent review of the agency’s workplace culture, said FDIC employees are “exhausted and distracted,” and face a “significant headwind” to do their jobs.

“We need a fresh start sooner rather than later. That’s important to establish credibility. It’s important to bring in someone that has a moral authority to really push change. And it’s important that we have clean hands to deal with our legacy issues,” McKernan said.

Lawmakers, however, are casting doubts on FDIC’s ability to implement workplace reforms with FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg remaining on the job.

Gruenberg said last month he’ll stay at FDIC until the Senate confirms his successor. But Committee Chairman Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) is calling on President Joe Biden to fire him immediately, and allow an acting chairperson to take over.

“There’s a clear succession plan in place. The agency’s operations would continue unabated if you rightfully stepped down today,” McHenry said.

Gruenberg has held leadership positions at FDIC for nearly 20 years.

An independent report into FDIC’s workplace culture said Gruenberg’s longstanding tenure at the agency “may hinder his ability to establish trust and confidence in leading meaningful culture change.”

“For these challenges to be overcome, there must at least be a genuine and sustained commitment to lead a culture change, accompanied by a recognition and acknowledgement that such change is necessary because of failings of the past, including his own,” the report states.

FDIC created a special committee to oversee an independent review of FDIC’s workplace culture, following several reports in the Wall Street Journal in November 2023.

Last month, FDIC publicly released a report led by the law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton.

The report includes cases of stalking, harassment, homophobia and other violations of employment regulations, based on more than 500 complaints from employees.

According to the Associated Press, an FDIC employee told investigators she was stalked by a coworker and faced harassment, even after complaining about his behavior.

The report also mentions a supervisor in a field office referring to gay men as “little girls,” and a female field examiner who said she received pictures of a senior examiner’s private parts.

Michael Hsu, co-chair of FDIC’s special committee, said the report found Gruenberg was “not cited as a root cause” of the FDIC’s problems.

Joon Kim, a partner at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, said women and minorities working at FDIC were more often the targets of misconduct in a workplace that he described as “patriarchal or insular.”

McKernan said the report demonstrated biases “in favor of the male workforce.”

The White House says Gruenberg will step down once a successor is appointed and that President Joe Biden will name a replacement soon.

Biden has yet to submit a new nominee to lead FDIC, but several lawmakers said Wednesday that Biden intends to nominate Christy Goldsmith Romero, commissioner of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, to serve as FDIC chairwoman.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Wednesday that she had no update on Biden’s nominee.

“We understand how important it is to have an FDIC chair in place. So we’re going to certainly stay laser-focused on getting that done,” Jean-Pierre said.

With an unclear timeline of when FDIC would get a new permanent leader,
McKernan told lawmakers he’s “not particularly optimistic we’ll see accountability soon.”

“I think there’s a real question here, that we at the board need to consider, during this interim when we’re waiting for a new chair or we’re waiting for the current chair to resign, and have the acting chair. I think the board needs to take a more active role here and I have been pushing for that,” he said.

‘Morale is bad’

FDIC currently ranks 25 out of 26 midsize agencies on the Best Places to Work in the Federal Government scorecard tracked by the Partnership for Public Service.

“Morale is bad,” McKernan said. “We were near the top for quite some time. I think it’s fair to say that staff have seen no real accountability, so it’s hard to see much commitment to change, absent that accountability. I think it’s fair to say that there’s a lot of skepticism, even cynicism about prospects at the FDIC.”

McKernan described flagging morale within FDIC’s workforce, and that the agency faces recruitment and retention challenges.

“I think also going forward longer term, the state of affairs at the FDIC, if not fixed are going to be a real problem for retention and recruitment of new staff and that will be fatal to our ability to achieve our mission if we can’t fix that,” he said.

FDIC is dealing with these persistent workforce issues amid a growing workload. The agency reported last month that 63 banks are on the brink of insolvency.

“Distraction certainly does not help,” McKernan said.

Kim said a hotline that third-party investigators received over 500 calls from individuals, “emotionally recounting experiences of sexual harassment, discrimination, and other interpersonal misconduct that they had suffered at the FCIC.”

“Those who reported incidents to us expressed fear, sadness and anger at what they had to endure. Many had never reported their experiences to anyone before, while others had reported internally and had been left disappointed by the FDIC’s response,” Kim said. “Virtually all of them expressed hope that reporting what they had gone through to us might help change and make better the agency that they cared about deeply.”

Kim told lawmakers that FDIC’s workplace culture issues were longstanding and “have spanned for many years across different chairs.”

Abena Mainoo, a partner at the law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, said that FDIC received 92 harassment complaints between 2015 and 2023, but that those complaints only led to suspensions in two cases.

“We found that far too many employees, and for too long, the FDIC has failed to provide a workplace safe from sexual harassment, discrimination and other interpersonal misconduct,” Mainoo said. “We also found that a patriarchal, hierarchic and insular culture helped create the conditions that allowed such misconduct to occur and persist.”

‘Broken’ internal reporting

Among FDIC’s plans for reform, Hsu said the agency is addressing employees’ fear of retaliation, implementing structural changes, and ensuring the board and senior management are held accountable “for doing what’s necessary to make the FDIC a safe and inclusive workplace.”

“The employees of the FDIC need and deserve a safe and inclusive workplace and they need it now,” Hsu said.

Hsu said the FDIC is in the process of replacing a “broken” internal processing for responding to reports of harassment. The new structure will bypass management hierarchies and instead redirect complaints to third-party investigators.

Hsu said FDIC is also hiring an independent “transformation monitor” to hold the agency accountable for following through on its plans to reform the agency.

An inspector general survey of FDIC employees in 2019 found that 8% of respondents said they experienced sexual harassment at the agency between January 2015 and April 2018.

However, FDIC’s Corporate Human Resources Information System (CHRIS) documented only two cases of sexual harassment and only seven cases of sexual harassment between 2008 and 2021.

Mainoo said the investigation found “no reason to believe the CHRIS database was complete.”

Since the report’s release, FDIC’s human resources office has launched a system that tracks different types of interpersonal misconduct.

“It allows the FDIC to identify sexual harassment, for example, compared to a hostile work environment, and also identifies whether misconduct falls under FDIC’s anti-harassment program, which the records before did not do,” Mainoo said.

The post ‘Morale is bad’ across FDIC workforce after reports of toxic workplace culture first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is giving veterans more options to get health care and benefits from the department — in some cases, through just a few taps on their smartphones.

VA’s nearly three-year-old health and benefits app recently saw more than 2 million total downloads. The app also surpassed more than a million monthly users.

Among its features, the app allows veterans to message their doctors, view upcoming health care appointments and check the status of benefits claims.

VA’s app has a 4.8-star rating on Apple’s App Store, with over 138,000 ratings, and is at 4.6 stars on Google Play, based on nearly 40,000 reviews. Those positive ratings are on par with apps such as Uber or Amazon.

Charles Worthington, VA’s chief technology officer and chief AI officer, said the app’s launch stemmed from the department’s 2018 relaunch of VA.gov and the “culmination of VA’s digital modernization effort.”

Worthington said the idea of a VA app started when VA’s Office of Information and Technology noticed a greater percentage of VA.gov traffic came from smartphones each year.

More than half of all federal website users use mobile devices.

“We saw this trend, and it led us to ask ourselves, and ultimately to ask veterans,” Worthington said. “Even though we had invested a lot of energy in making VA.gov an easy-to-use website on mobile phones, we wanted to ask ourselves the question: Is this the best experience we can provide to smartphone users?”

Christopher Johnston, VA’s deputy chief technology officer for digital experience, said younger generations of veterans are driving demand for mobile-first digital services at the VA.

“Today’s veterans are very tech savvy, and they want to be able to access these things …  in the grocery store, or at the beach with their family, or when it occurs to them, in a very, very quick and easy way,” Johnston said.

Among its features, veterans can use the app to view upcoming appointments, message their doctors and manage their prescriptions.

Veterans can also upload photos of documents and submit them as part of the disability benefits claim process. In some circumstances, the VA requests more information from veterans to complete their claims.

“The old way that would have worked is the VA sends a letter, saying, ‘Hey, we’ve got your claim. But there’s this missing piece of evidence’ — maybe a marriage certificate, or could be anything. And when the veteran receives that letter, they read it, and then they can mail it back. And you can obviously imagine how much faster that is, if suddenly now you can see in your claim status, ‘Oh, there’s this piece of evidence missing.’ And right there in the app, you can upload a document, you can take out your camera, you can take a picture of the document, hit send, and suddenly a transaction that previously would have taken days can be done in seconds,” Worthington said.

The VA OIT team said providing a higher level of customer service to veterans is part of what’s leading to higher trust scores across the department.

The VA announced last month that veteran trust scores in the department reached an all-time high of more than 80%. That’s up from 55%, when the VA first conducted this survey in 2016.

The VA is basing its scores on survey responses from more than 38,000 veterans who obtained VA services between January and March this year.

“The VA is a big place, but efforts like this are a small reason for those improvements in trust. It’s meeting veterans where they are and trying to make it easier for them to access the benefits of certain services that they’ve earned,” Worthington said.

In user feedback sessions, veterans told the VA they valued the simplicity and ease of quickly accessing some of the most common services on VA.gov — and the ability to access those services from their phones.  VA soft-launched the app in August 2021.

“We put it in the app store, but didn’t make a lot of noise about it, because obviously, we try to pilot things early in their development. And over time, we have added features and become much more public about the app,” Worthington said.

Johnston said some veterans also prefer the app because they can get push notifications.

“You can imagine that I get a push notification that says your doctor has responded to your message. I look at my phone, I’m logged in instantly. I see that response to my doctor while I’m standing in line at the grocery store. It’s all very quick and happens instantly, and reduces a lot of anxiety for veterans who are frequently waiting for responses from VA.,” Johnston said.

After logging in with a username and password or another credential, veterans can log into the app quickly using Face ID or using their fingerprint for the next 45 days.

“It’s a faster login process, once you’ve done it that first time with whichever credential you use, the same that you would use on VA.gov,” Worthington said.

Johnston said the VA OIT is making sure veterans experience a seamless transition between VA.gov and the smartphone app.

“We’re not rewriting the same things over and over again. The secure messaging system is the same secure messaging system that’s on VA.gov. It’s the same database, it’s the same business logic. It’s the same delivery groups that you can choose, and what we’re doing is creating a native mobile layer on top that reaches that same database,” Johnston said.

“It’s a lot easier for them to just open the app and get right into messaging their doctor or checking their appointments, maybe a claim status. That was one feature that people were really excited about.”

Rachel Han, a product lead with the U.S. Digital Service working with VA OIT, said the team focused on reducing the amount of time it takes for veterans to access some of the VA’s most commonly sought services.

“We really want to make sure, for example, with push notifications, or the human-centered design process, that we reduce the number of clicks and reduce the amount of time work overall,” Han said.

Han said the app also supports assistive technology, such as text-to-voice tools.

“We want to make sure that this experience is really simple for everyone. We want to make sure that the letters that veterans get from the VA can be read by mobile phone to these veterans, and that they wouldn’t have to wait in the mail for a physical letter, or ask someone who can see to read that letter to them,” she said.

Worthington said VA OIT always ensures veterans who need assistance technologies are part of the user-testing phase of the app’s features.

“That’s a real way to know for sure how well the tools are working,” he said.

The VA is looking to roll more to the mobile app later this year. They include improvements to how veterans submit travel claim submissions, in order to be reimbursed for traveling to appointments, as well as improvements to the process of submitting a disability claim.

“Those are some of the highlights that we’re looking forward to this coming year,” Worthington said.

The post How VA’s flagship app got to 2M downloads in less than 3 years first appeared on Federal News Network.

DeJoy, speaking Monday at the National Postal Forum in Indianapolis, said he inherited a “broken business model” when he took office in June 2020 — and that the agency was months away from running out of cash at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Failure to adequately adapt to social, economic, technological, and industrial changes have destroyed giants in their industry – Kodak, Motorola, Blockbuster – in just a few short years,” DeJoy said in his keynote address. “The demands of the changes experienced by the Postal Service were magnitudes greater. In addition, these organizations did not have a Congress or a regulator to contend with.”

Four years into his tenure as postmaster general, DeJoy is defending USPS changes under this 10-year reform plan — some elements of which USPS is temporarily pausing, after bipartisan scrutiny from Congress.

“The future we seek has simple goals: Evolve, serve, and create long-term viability. However, this undertaking is of historic proportion.,” he said.

Among the changes, USPS next month is increasing the price of first-class mail for the sixth time since 2020, when its regulator allowed the agency to set prices higher than the inflation rate.

USPS is also embarking on a historic reshaping of its nationwide footprint of delivery facilities — consolidating mail processing operations into large, regional hubs.

Among its goals, USPS is trying to run fewer, but fuller, trucks between facilities, and reducing its costs to deliver 123 billion pieces of mail and packages every year.

USPS is pausing some of its network modernization plans until at least January 2025, after more than a quarter of the Senate recently demanded the agency slow implementation to address persistent regional mail delays.

But DeJoy says his 10-year plan is also about making $40 billion in long-deferred upgrades to USPS infrastructure. That includes plans to roll out the country’s largest electric vehicle fleet.

“Our efforts do not come without uncomfortable consequences, to our customers, to the American people, and to our employees. But they must be made,” DeJoy said. “We are doing the necessary and important work for the nation, to develop a new path forward.”

Mail no longer a ‘sustainable monopoly’

DeJoy, in his 80-minute keynote address, outlined a widening gap between the level of service Americans expect from USPS and the agency’s ability to afford it.

USPS remains the world’s largest delivery operation, and delivers about 44% of the world’s mail. About 95% of the U.S. population lives within five miles of their nearest post office.

USPS letter carriers deliver to 167 million addresses at least six days a week, but DeJoy said more than half of those routes are losing money.

DeJoy said interventions from Congress and its regulator have made it even harder for USPS to adapt to changing times — such as a precipitous drop in mail volume in 2008 and a shipping and package boom that came with the rise of e-commerce.

In 1971, Congress spun the U.S. Post Office out from the president’s cabinet and rebranded as the Postal Service, an independent agency.

For the next 35 years, DeJoy said USPS functioned well as a “productive bureaucracy,” that primarily ran on revenue from market-dominant products, such as first-class mail.

“This at a time when the American people had plentiful demand for our services and market dominant mail volume continually grew,” DeJoy said. “Prior to 2006, our pricing was easy – just add up our cost to serve and divide it by the number of pieces – and boom – the price of a stamp — more or less”.

That all changed, when Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA). Among its features, it capped USPS price increases on mail products to the rate of inflation and required the agency to refund retiree health benefits well into the future.

Congress eliminated the retirement pre-requirement in postal reform legislation that passed in 2022. But DeJoy says the intervening 15 years set USPS on a course for ruin.

“Such began the 15-year aftershock, and the fallout, which brought the Postal Service to near catastrophic failure, DeJoy said.

Under the 2006 PAEA, DeJoy said Congress limited price increases “to a fraction of what would soon be required.”

“I wonder who came up with that idea, because it had terrible consequences,” DeJoy said.

Soon thereafter, the 2008 Great Recession resulted in a 40% reduction in mail volume that never returned, hobbling the Postal Service’s main source of revenue.

“We are an organization that no longer has a sustainable monopoly,” DeJoy said. “We are an organization that now has a costly public service obligation and lacks a funding source adequate to cover the cost, in the manner that we serve. We are an organization that now must compete in the marketplace, for its customers, its revenue, and its employees. We are an organization that must accomplish our transformation, while continuing to serve the nation daily in its expansive requirements.”

Over the next 14 years following the passage of PAEA, USPS saw nearly $90 billion in losses, deferred $20 billion in maintenance costs and passed on modernization projects.

“And the losses mounted. The employees’ retirement fund got raided, the infrastructure deteriorated, the vehicles aged, the service degraded, and the bones got picked, as the organization still pursued the mission of universal service at ever-increasing costs,” DeJoy said. “The Postal Service could not possibly timely address the broad and sweeping changes required for long-term viability.”

DeJoy said these losses put USPS in survival mode and starved for cash that could have gone into pivoting in capturing more revenue from a growing package business.

“We avoided making big decisions, and we developed a strategy of simply getting through the day,” he said.

“As we were deconstructing and losing money, mail volume was rapidly declining, American homes were spreading throughout the nation, and concurrently package shipping became the new frontier.”

‘Could you do all things, at all costs, and survive?’

DeJoy said ongoing declines in mail volume require USPS to compete for a bigger share of the shipping and package business.

Even as USPS dealt with dried-up sources of revenue and billion-dollar annual net losses, DeJoy said Congress “did not change their expectations of the service obligations even a little.”

“They remained in love with the universal service mission,” DeJoy said.

DeJoy has repeatedly defended USPS’ universal service obligation to deliver mail and packages to every household in the country at least six days a week.

DeJoy told Federal News Network in April 2022 that he opposed scaling back the number of days a week USPS delivers — something the cash-strapped agency tried in 2013 — when drafting his 10-year Delivering for America plan.

“That was extremely, extremely important … you would never touch that,” DeJoy said during the interview.

DeJoy, however, has repeatedly challenged the Postal Regulatory Commission for keeping mail prices lower than it costs USPS to meet the “ever-elusive goal of the universal service obligation.”

“Universal service sounds like a requirement to do all things at all costs. Could you do it? Could you do all things, at all costs, and survive? Well, you could if enough paying customers wanted a service like that. You could, if you didn’t have any competition, and you could if the prices you charged covered all your costs, whatever they might be.”

USPS is raising mail prices for the sixth time since 2020, when the Postal Regulatory Commission gave USPS freedom to set prices higher than the rate of inflation. On July 14, USPS will raise the price of a first-class “forever” stamp from 68 to 73 cents.

DeJoy has repeatedly defended the rate hikes. He told the USPS Board of Governors in May 2022 that mail prices will need to keep going up at “uncomfortable rates,” for the agency to cover its costs and reverse the damage caused by its regulator keeping prices too low for too long.

“If I gave you a letter and 8 cents in 1971, could you get it from Bangor, Maine to Los Angeles, California in three days and cover your cost to do so?” DeJoy said.

DeJoy has butted heads with the Postal Regulatory Commission for not allowing USPS to set prices higher than the rate of inflation sooner than December 2022. That inaction, he says, cost USPS $50 billion in lost revenue over the last 15 years.

“Congress and the regulator maintained their romance of the good old days, of monopoly and bureaucracy and universal service, and resisted change despite the reducing mail volumes — despite the great recession, despite the data and reporting, despite the transparency of the crisis manifesting before them,” he said.

The Postal Regulatory Commission was widely expected to approve this summer’s price hike. But in a twist, it did tell USPS to make judicious use of its newfound flexibility to set higher prices.

“The commission strongly encourages the [USPS Board of] Governors to consider exercising their business judgment, consistent with statutory and regulatory requirements, not to increase rates by the full amount permitted by law,” the PRC wrote in its decision earlier this month.

The post DeJoy: USPS setting higher prices part of changes needed to fix ‘broken business model’ first appeared on Federal News Network.

Nurses at the Department of Veterans Affairs are calling on leadership to hire more frontline health care workers, and protesting nationwide staffing shortages that they say make it harder to treat veterans.

VA nurses represented by National Nurses Organizing Committee (NNOC) and National Nurses United (NNU) rallied outside the VA’s headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C. on Thursday.

NNOC/NNU are calling on the VA to lift “what is, in effect, a hiring freeze,” that has led to 66,000 vacancies across the VA health care system. More than 13,000 of those vacancies are nursing positions.

The Veterans Health Administration hired 61,000 employees last year, its fastest rate of growth in 15 years, and saw its total workforce peak at more than 400,000 employees — its highest-ever headcount.

But the VA has scaled back its health care hiring goals this year, and is planning to cut its workforce by 10,000 positions, under its fiscal 2025 budget proposal. Most of the job cuts would come from VHA.

VA Secretary Denis McDonough told reporters the department expects to manage this reduction through attrition.

VA leaders have repeatedly said VHA isn’t going through a hiring freeze, and that it continues to hire for frontline medical positions — just at a less aggressive pace than it did last year. because of higher employee retention rates.

NNU Vice President and Veterans Affairs Chairwoman Irma Westmoreland, a registered nurse at the Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center in Augusta, Georgia, said VA nurses are spread thin by unfilled positions, leading to burnout and “moral distress.”

“We feel the lack of these nurses in our faculties every day — every single day,” Westmoreland said in an interview. “We feel that we are chronically understaffed in nursing, and that is erodes the patient care that we’re able to provide for our veterans. And this hiring freeze cuts services to veterans.”

VA Press Secretary Terrence Hayes said in a statement that “there is no nationwide hiring freeze on VA nurses,” and that over the past three years, the VA increased its nursing workforce by 14,000 positions.

Hayes said the VA currently employs 122,000 total nurses — the largest nursing workforce in the country and in the history of VA. VA’s nursing workforce, he added, has a turnover rate of 3.4%, and is “far outperforming” the private sector.

The VA, he said, has increased staffing by more than 3% so far in fiscal 2024.

“There is no shortage of VA staff. After a record year of hiring in 2023, VA currently has the largest health care workforce in our history — and we are retaining those great employees at all-time record rates,” Hayes said.

Jordan Le Blanc, an ICU nurse at the Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center in Aurora, Colorado, said VA’s “gold standard” for care is to have an ICU nurse assigned to care for one or two critically ill patients.

Since December 2020, however, Le Blanc said ICU nurses in his facility have been following a “crisis nursing” staffing model, and are assigned three patients.

“It has already diminished the quantity of the services that we can provide, and it really at the individual level of each interaction that I have with veterans,” LeBlanc said, speaking in his capacity as an NNU member. “It poses a risk that diminishes the VA mission and the way that we should be honoring these individuals for the service that they provided to our country.”

Le Blanc said his VA medical center will, at times, assign nurses to cover the ICU, but who don’t have ICU specialty training.

“They do not know how to manage mechanical ventilators or medications that augment blood pressure that are infused continuously. And so, that ultimately means that the quality of care — really the dignity of care, at the simplest level — is impacted in a negative way,” he said.

A VA inspector general report in August 2023 found 93% of VA medical facilities reported a severe staffing shortage of practical nurses.

McDonough told reporters in April that VA’s nurse-to-patient ratios are not “perfect in every facility,” but said nurses are generally spread thinner in private health care facilities.

“The stress that comes with an individual nurse covering multiple beds in an ICU, for example, in a community, is not matched to the VA system, where our patient ratios suggest that it’s a much different experience,” McDonough said.

Chief Financial Officer Jon Rychalski told reporters in March that the MISSION Act, COVID-19 pandemic and the toxic-exposure PACT Act have all led to record growth in community care year-over-year.

“They’ve put us on a path where we cannot sustain the rapid growth and community care in addition to the fixed costs that support our massive direct care system,” Rychalski said.

Westmoreland said that if VA continues to see rising community care costs, “it threatens to erode the VA’s direct care system, which could lead to elimination of services and leave veterans without the option of care.”

“The VA is a place where veterans heal together in their community, they find camaraderie with others and in specialized experience and, and they miss that when they’re not in the VA,” she said.

“We’re now looking at what is it that we need to do, what services can we cut? Where can we look to see what we need to do, to make to make sure we have enough money to pay that bill, instead of going back and saying we need money to care for our patients,” she added.

Le Blanc said the Rocky Mountain Regional VAMC recently decreased the capacity of its ICU from 18 beds to 12 beds, and that its spinal cord unit shrank from 28-bed unit down to 15 beds.

“They definitely have been open with us that there are budgetary deficits, both within our facility and within VA nationally. A large component of that is in relation to community care,” he said.

Following interdisciplinary meetings between frontline staff and facility leaders, the chief nurse and facility director for the Rocky Mountain Regional VAMC  determined last December that the facility needed 57 additional nurses this year. However, Le Blanc says the VAMC never filled those positions.

“They approved those positions in December, and then no positions were ever posted or have been hired for,” he said.

Le Blanc said current funding levels at the Rocky Mountain Regional VAMC only supports about 85% of filled ICU beds, and that current staffing levels can’t accommodate that level of care.

“We have not enough employees to meet 85% of filled ICU beds at the medical standard of patient ratios, in terms of nurses,” he said.

Le Blanc said the VAMC’s interim director, in an April meeting, likened the VA’s budget problems to balancing a checkbook.

“When you’ve got to balance a personal checkbook, you don’t always bet what you want, ” he said in summary of the discussion. “But the reality is,  the care of our veterans and safe staffing, and this right to excellent health care, it isn’t a joking matter … We trust these leaders to make responsible decisions, and to set up sustainable practices. And that’s really what we need here.”

VHA in recent memos, put a temporary pause on medical facilities retracting tentative and final job offers to candidates, then told leadership and HR officials to only rescind job offers as an “action of last resort.”

VA says they’re not in a hiring freeze, but we see the job offers being rescinded, and vacancies that were scheduled to be filled are not even being filled,” Westmoreland said.

LeBlanc said the Rocky Mountain VAMC gave tentative job offers to two candidates, but “it’s basically stopped there.”

“They’re awaiting what we would call their formal job offer, with their entry on duty,” he said.

Westmoreland said VA health care job applicants are frustrated by delays and rescinded job offers.

“If somebody waited to get into the VA, did all the things they had to do and waited, and had a tentative job offer, and then all those job offers were rescinded, because we’re freezing. Do you know what those people did? They said, ‘Forget the VA, I’m going to go work somewhere else.‘ And now we got to start over if you want to hire, recruit them. And so now our time to hire is going to be even longer,” she said.

Westmoreland said VHA’s average time to fill in some facilities is as high at 168 days. VHA, she added, is trying to get that down to 120 days, but warned that’s still to long for qualified candidates to wait.

“That’s still three months …. in the private sector, people can go to a private sector hospital interview for a job and be working in two weeks,” she said.

The post VA touts its largest nursing workforce, but union says they’re ‘chronically understaffed’ first appeared on Federal News Network.

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The post Protected: Government CX means anticipating, not just reacting, to customer expectations first appeared on Federal News Network.

Leaders across the federal government are seeing generative artificial intelligence and large language models (LLMs) as promising tools that will reshape how agencies deliver on their mission.

The Biden administration is calling on agencies to experiment with GenAI, and is touting the transformative role this emerging technology will have on government work.

“As generative AI products become widely available and common in online platforms, agencies are discouraged from imposing broad general bans or blocks on agency use of generative AI,” President Joe Biden wrote in a sweeping executive order issue in October 2023.

The executive order underscores agencies’ caution over GenAI, but also signals the importance of experimenting with this emerging technology.

Amanda Warfield, the vice president of program integrity at Optum Serve, said agencies see GenAI as a tool that will enable federal employees to become more productive.

“In the last year or so, we’ve really seen an explosion in generative AI,” said Amanda Warfield, the vice president of program integrity at Optum Serve. “And the federal government has really been trying to apply the right set of guidelines around it, and figure out where it is the most valuable, where it can create the most efficiencies.”

Warfield said agencies see generative AI a promising tool to eliminate or reduce manual tasks, while empowering the federal workforce to focus on higher-impact tasks.

“Generative AI is just there to supplement and make those tasks that most people probably don’t like doing — busy work — whether it’s either data entry, or manual review of large documents. [It’s] things that take you a lot of time. What if you had a way to streamline that, to automatically have a tool that’s going to identify the right section of a 1,000-page document for you?” Warfield said. “For employees, they can then spend their time doing more of what their specialized skill is.”

GenAI as ‘policy assistant’

Agencies are identifying GenAI use cases across a wide array for mission areas. Warfield said many agencies see opportunities to use it to provide a better customer experience to the public.

“For a given agency, how can that be applied to help streamline things, make their lives easier when they’re applying for program benefits, or things like that, that really add value and are meaningful to agencies’ missions?” she said. “It’s about being efficient, saving time and money, and then being able to really prioritize the workload that gives you the most value and the most [return-on-investment].”

Warfield said agency watchdogs, including inspector general offices, are also turning to GenAI as a “policy assistant” to tackle a growing workload of fraud cases.

“They have more cases than they can work. They have finite resources. They don’t have agents to work and prosecute every case that comes their way. So imagine being able to apply generative AI to streamline what today is very manual,” she said.

As IG offices evolve their toolkits to stay ahead of fraudsters, Warfield said GenAI helps investigators comb through hundreds — if not thousands — of documents, and to flag anomalies and build evidence in a case of potential fraud case.

“If we’re talking about a provider in health care, it’s looking at eons of claims data and comparing that to policy documentation,  federal regulations and guidelines to essentially prove what the provider did, or what they billed, violated policy — and how can they prove that’s intentional,” Warfield said. “It involves a lot of manual research, combing through data, combing through these large documents, and to empower agents with a tool that that can easily condense down massive amounts of PDF files and documents and all sorts of data into a human-like Q&A format … [on] whatever case they’re prosecuting … it can provide an easy way for anybody who has health care experience or doesn’t to be able to interpret those big documents.”

GenAI can also supplement the skillsets of employees — allowing them, for example, to write code or parse large volumes of data, even if they don’t have a technical background.

“A lot of folks who support fraud, waste and abuse on the downstream side, in looking at cases for potential prosecution or other action, not all of them are technical individuals who know how to query data or write SQL queries or program. But they still have a need to access data, to aggregate data, to look at trends over time. And using generative AI in a way that allows a regular person to just go in and say, ‘Hey, can you tell me how many claims over the last year have been paid using this type of a procedure code?’ And then have that data automatically aggregated for you, or have the query written for you so that you can just go drop it in somewhere, or even produce charts and visualizations for you, that show you that data in a meaningful way that really gives you the insights right off the bat. Those are huge time savers, for individuals who typically would have to refer that to someone else, wait days or weeks to get the data back, it can really speed up that process.”

Warfield said IG shops can also use GenAI to ingest agency-specific user guides and standard operating procedures, so that newer employees can pull up reference materials faster then ever.

“Instead of you having to sit in a six-hour-long training and try to remember where the section was that was relevant to you, you can then use your Generative AI assistant to say ‘Remind me what our SOP is for whatever the process is,’ and be able to pull up that section really quickly — or just have it summarized for you in a nice, easy-to-read response,” she said.

Getting started with GenAI

Agencies see limitless potential — but also plenty of new risks — when it comes to incorporating GenAI into their day-to-day work.

Among the challenges, agencies need to understand the scope of what the algorithms they’re using have been trained to do, and ensure they don’t produce biased results.

“You can’t just go out and take ChatGPT and apply it to magically work for the HHS mission or in Medicare processes. You have to really take an approach that factors in agency-specific data, agency-specific expertise and context,” Warfield said.

Another challenge agencies face is understanding what datasets to train a GenAI algorithm on, and how to set clear boundaries on which data the algorithm can use.

“There has to be a way to ensure that data is always accurate, it’s always current. It’s the latest version that you’re accessing, so that when you actually apply it into your business processes, you’re getting the right answers and the right accuracy,” Warfield said.

Agencies are also thinking about the impact GenAI plays in cybersecurity. Warfield said agencies need to adopt a zero-trust mindset when it comes to fielding AI tools.

“You’re thinking about how the data is going to come in to your federal enclave. How are you going to ensure that the data never leaves your security boundary? What checks and balances do you have, that you can apply upfront, and make sure those are part of your selection criteria, that decisions are being made to factor those in? Those types of things are really important from a security perspective.

GenAI best practices

While agencies have much to consider for adopting GenAI tools, Warfield outlined a few best practices to keep in mind.

Agencies, she said, should consult with experts before deploying any generative AI tools.

“Having a way to select the right large language model for the right use case is really important. It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach. It’s really important to make sure agencies are consulting with the right experts upfront to have that selection criteria defined to make sure those decisions are made in a way that’s really effective,” she said.

Agencies also need to ensure that human employees still maintain decision-making authority, while using GenAI as means of making data-driven decisions faster than ever.

“You still need to make sure there’s a human in the loop, and you’re not just taking whatever the response is by itself,” Warfield said. “That human in the loop oversight is really important to monitoring the results of your generative AI’s answers: making sure they’re continuing to stay accurate, the training or retraining of the models that needs to happen to stay current and refreshed. All those processes have to be built into your overall framework.”

Listen to the full show:

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The IRS announced last week it will make its Direct File platform a permanent option for taxpayers to file their federal tax returns, after piloting the system this year with 12 states. The agency will invite all 50 states and the District of Columbia to participate in Direct File during next year’s filing season.

But the House Appropriations Committee released a fiscal 2025 spending bill this week that would cut IRS funding by nearly 18% and zero out funding for Direct File.

The FY 2025 fiscal services and general government appropriations bill would give the IRS a $10.11 billion budget — a $2.2 billion cut from current spending levels. The cuts would be felt mostly by IRS enforcement, which would see a $2 billion cut in funding.

The spending bill also “prohibits funds to be used for the IRS to create a government-run tax preparation software that Congress has not authorized.”

The bill cleared the financial services and general government subcommittee on Wednesday, but Congress is still in the early stages of crafting a spending deal for next year.

Lawmakers cut $20 billion in multi-year modernization funding the IRS got in the Inflation Reduction Act, as part of a comprehensive spending deal for the rest of this year.

Treasury Department spokesperson Haris Talwar said in a statement that the House Republican proposal “would increase the deficit by allowing wealthy and corporate tax evaders to avoid paying taxes owed, while increasing costs for many American families by blocking a free IRS tax filing option funded by President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.”

“This proposal sides with high-end tax evaders at the expense of the American people,” Talwar said.

Republican lawmakers have criticized the IRS for piloting the Direct File platform this year without seeking authorization from Congress.

IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel told the Senate Finance Committee in April that the IRS has the authority under the Internal Revenue Code “to provide taxpayer service to taxpayers and update the tools and the solutions that taxpayers use to file.”

“We lived in a world where we had only paper forms and we moved to a world where, for example, we can put a PDF form on the web, and people can fill out that PDF form on the web. We didn’t need congressional authority to do that,” Werfel said. “We worked to develop … a partnership with the Free File Alliance, with commercial software providers, to add and work with them and support their efforts to support free electronic solutions. We didn’t need congressional authority to do that.”

Congressional Republicans are also challenging the IRS for calling Direct File a “free” way to file, since the project is funded by taxpayer dollars.

Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) called Direct File “wasteful and duplicative,” at the April hearing, since some tax software companies already allow taxpayers below a certain income threshold to file online for free through the Free File Alliance program. 

“Were the IRS to use this year’s Direct File spending to pay third-party providers to prepare and file returns instead, literally hundreds of times the number of taxpayers could file for free,” Crapo said. “The IRS spending hundreds of millions of its finite funding to simply test the utility of doing something that can already be done more efficiently, with better outcomes, and without the very real conflicts, while simultaneously pleading for more funding, calls for more oversight.”

Werfel told reporters last week that launching Direct File cost about $31.8 million. The IRS spent about $24 million on the project while the U.S. Digital Service spent more than $7 million of its own funds.

The IRS is asking Congress for up to $75 million in its fiscal 2025 budget request to support its expansion of Direct File, depending on how many additional states opt into the program.

Subcommittee Chairman David Joyce (R-Ohio) said at a markup hearing Wednesday that the spending bill “reins in wasteful spending and take steps to prevent agencies like the IRS from unfairly targeting hardworking Americans.”

Joyce added that the IRS still has about $40 billion in multi-year funds remaining from the Inflation Reduction Act.

A Treasury official said in a statement that the IRS in FY 2023 collected $86 billion through enforcement programs, a return on investment of about $7 for every dollar in its budget.

Subcommittee Ranking Member Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said cuts to IRS enforcement would hamper the agency’s ability to collect taxes owed.

“Make no mistake, the IRS cuts in this bill will cost taxpayers billions of dollars,” Hoyer said.

Hoyer said the IRS, “at a minimum,” needs 2025 funding next year that matches its current $12.3 billion annual budget.

“If the government requires Americans to pay their taxes, we ought to also give them a free and easy way to do so,” he said.

The overall 2025 fiscal services and general government appropriations bill proposes a nearly 10% cut to covered agencies.

Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said those proposed cuts go further than the 1% cut to nondefense discretionary spending agreed to, as part of a bipartisan debt ceiling deal last year.

DeLauro also challenged the proposal to defund the IRS Direct File platform.

“There is no logical reason why private industry must be the middleman between Americans and their government, period. Americans of all income levels should be able to cop confidently file their taxes directly with the IRS without corporations skimming profits off the top,” DeLauro said.

Werfel said last week that taxpayers who used Direct File generally spent less than an hour to file their tax returns, and that many completed their returns in as little as 30 minutes.

The IRS estimates the average American spends $270 and 13 hours filing their taxes each year.

In a survey of 11,000 Direct File users, nearly half said they paid to file their taxes last year — while 16% said they didn’t file last year at all. About 90% of respondents rated their experience with Direct File as “excellent” or “above average.”

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VA Secretary Denis McDonough says a “series of massive mistakes” led to his department approving nearly $11 million in bonuses to career executives who weren’t eligible to receive them.

“You cannot read the statute and say that this was an acceptable use of that statute,” McDonough told members of the House VA Committee at a hearing Tuesday.

VA’s inspector general office, in a report released last month, found the department improperly awarded $10.8 million in critical skills incentives (CSIs) to more than 180 executives last fall.

Congress authorized these incentives under the toxic-exposure PACT Act to help the VA retain employees with in-demand skills, or skills that are in short supply, and serve a mission-critical need.

“It’s hard for me to read the statute and conclude that there’s no executives in headquarters that could qualify for a CSI. And consistent with that, we will look at that if there are places we need a CSI,” McDonough said. “Similarly, there is no way to read the statute to conclude that every senior executive in headquarters absolutely deserved one.”

McDonough said the VA has recouped about 92% of the bonuses paid to executives, and that the department has new procedures in place to ensure it awards incentives in a way that’s “very specific, individual and skill-driven.”

“This is why we are reviewing the entire process on these,” he said.

The VA, however, is not canceling critical skills incentives that went to 197 career executives in the field, outside VA’s central office in Washington, D.C.

“I’m not ready to opine on this completely, because the review is ongoing. But the evidence to date suggests that they were handled in a process much more consistent with the policy that we laid out in 2023 — meaning with individual justifications, based on those individuals with specific market analyses to make the case that this is a particular skill in those markets to keep those personnel,” McDonough said.

McDonough said the VA can justify these awards as retention incentives, given “churn” among VA network and medical center directors.

“I have believed and continue to believe that those investments are important to keep that critical leadership cadre,” he said.

‘They blew the whistle’

McDonough said he found out about the bonuses to VA executives on Sept. 13 last year, after getting a call from VA’s chief financial officer.

“They blew the whistle, because they saw these large payments going out of the Finance Service Center. That was speaking truth to power. That was calling out a challenge. That was an important internal check — one we rely on, on a regular basis,” McDonough said.

After learning about the bonuses, McDonough notified VA Committee Chairman Mike Bost (R-Ill.) in a phone call, and asked the VA’s inspector general office to investigate.

“In fact, it was me who called you to tell you about it. It was me who asked the inspector general to investigate, and it was me who stopped and recouped,” McDonough told Bost at the hearing.

In addition to canceling and recouping the bonuses, McDonough rescinded his delegation of authority, which allowed VA under secretaries to approve their own senior executives’ awards.

Under the current process, McDonough must approve any decision for a senior executive to receive a critical skills incentive.

In addition to implementing the VA OIG’s recommendations, McDonough said he’d be open to Congress advancing legislation that would allow lawmakers to have a more active role in overseeing these critical skill incentives.

“If you all think that it’s appropriate to take a hard look at how we administer these, we’d like to work with you on that,” he said.

‘The blame rests with me’

McDonough, however, rejected calls from Republicans to fire Under Secretary for Health Shereef Elnahal, Under Secretary for Benefits, VA Deputy Secretary Tanya Bradsher or top human resources officials.

“I continue to have confidence in our under secretaries because of their strong performance and the performance of their team on the implementation of the many authorities that we have — and because of the forthright way we’ve handled this scandal — naming it, owning it, learning from it, including appearing before you today,” he said.

The committee called on Elnahal and Jacobs to testify at Tuesday’s hearing. However, McDonough said he chose to testify before lawmakers because the decision to award these bonuses happened under his leadership.

“At the end of the day, there’s blame to go around here. but the blame rests with me. I should have put this into it the governance structure that I’ve built,” McDonough said.

Among its recommendations, VA OIG says McDonough “should take whatever administrative actions, if any, he deems appropriate related to the personnel involved in the process for granting CSIs for VA central office executives.”

“It is not a recommendation that we do lightly,” VA Inspector IG Michael Missal said, adding that agency IGs don’t have any authority to take disciplinary action, or even recommend disciplinary action.

Bost (R-Ill.) said “VA employees feel betrayed and let down” by VA’s handling of these bonuses.

“I know that some of the bonuses have been clawed back, but as far as I see, the same leaders who allowed, planned, and made these poor decisions remain in power,” Bost said.

Ranking Member Mark Takano (D-Calif.) said the VA “missed opportunities” to stop the improper bonuses, but said the bonuses account for 0.3% of the total critical skills incentives awarded under PACT Act authorities.

“I’m grateful to those VA leaders and employees who voiced their concerns. And I am grateful to Secretary McDonough for heeding those warnings, course correcting and self-reporting to the inspector general and promptly informing Congress once he became aware of the issues,” Takano said.

As of this April, the VA has awarded more than 41,000 CSIs worth $340 million. The average award is about $8,319. More than 90% of CSIs went to housekeepers, food service workers, police and HR specialists eligible to receive them.

McDonough said pay incentives under the PACT Act remain crucial to retain employees with “very critically important skills to veterans.”

“Retention rates are the highest they’ve been in years. Quit rates are at the lowest they’ve been in years. So we have demonstrated our ability to find that balance,” he said.

‘There were large failures’

VA senior executives received the maximum 25% of base pay allowed under the PACT Act. The awards ranged from $39,000 to $100,000.

VA OIG found the Veterans Health Administration and Veterans Benefits Administration authorized the maximum incentive to these executives without data or market analysis supporting those decisions.

VA HR officials had to review the awards before they went out, but Missal said they “gave undue deference to VHA and VBA leaders and signed off on the awards without elevating or resolving staff concern.”

“Staff within human resources had real concerns, identified the problems here, elevated it to then the head of the office, who then essentially ignored the concerns and just moved forward,” Missal said. “So the controls that were in place just didn’t work here. There were large failures.”

Senior executives in VA’s central office received bonuses meant for employees with high-demand skills. But Missal said VHA provided a short, identical paragraph on a single form to justify the bonuses to 148 of its senior executives. VBA, he added, provided more detail, but not enough to justify the bonuses.

“They had one explanation for all the VBA executives, one explanation for all the VHA. That’s taking all those people who have different roles and responsibilities, grouping them all together and saying, ‘We think they should because of this reason.’ Neither one of the explanations for why was adequate,” he said.

Missal said the PACT Act “gives a lot of authority and discretion to VA” to define a critical or high-demand skill.

VA required its leaders to provide market analysis to justify CSIs based on high-demand skills — but VHA and VBA didn’t provide that data.

Missal said VA policy did not require the Office of General Counsel to review the approval of the critical skills incentives, and likely would not have gotten a review for its attorneys, had the acting deputy secretary not requested such a review.

“This was a new authority. And you would think you would want to look at it very carefully as you’re implementing it, including having people with legal expertise to review it,” Missal said.

Among his recommendations, Missal urged the VA’s Office of General Counsel to have greater oversight of these payments.

“You had more junior lawyers reviewing it who just missed the issues. Our recommendation is to make sure for things that have reputational financial risks, to make sure you have a senior lawyer looking at this to make sure things are done properly,” he said.

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is reining in full-time remote work for many of its employees.

With the Biden administration setting higher return-to-office targets, the CDC is now telling most teleworking employees to come into the office at least twice each two-week pay period.

The CDC is still carving out exceptions and allowing employees in IT and data science positions to work remotely.

Until recently, the CDC relied on remote work as a free, but effective, way to keep public health workers from looking for other jobs.

Sylana Tramble, director of CDC’s Human Resources Office, said the CDC, in 2023, tripled the number of applicants it saw for job postings, when the agency announced most openings as remote positions.

“When you’re limited to one geographic location, you’re limited to the talent in that location, the demographics of that location,” Tramble said on May 30 at the Professional Services Council’s annual FedHealth conference. “Remote [work] and telework really opened that up. Now we’re, I think, shifting a little bit back to center court on that. We’re looking to see how that will impact.”

The CDC previously supported full-time remote work for large swaths of its workforce.

“Before, you could be 100% remote, even if you lived in the Atlanta area, which is our primary location. Now, if you’re remote in Atlanta, and you’re not in one of these mission-critical occupations, or have some reasonable accommodation, then you’re going to switch from being able to work at home all the time to having to come into the office at least twice a pay period,” Tramble said.

The CDC is carving out some exceptions for in-demand tech positions. Tramble says IT and cybersecurity personnel in 2210 positions, as well as data scientists, are still eligible to work remotely.

“Those are going to be exceptions, for remote purposes. But everyone else will have to shift from remote to a telework status,” she said.

Tramble says that when it comes to workforce flexibility, the CDC is offering a better deal than other federal health agencies.

“There’s other agencies that have a much more, what I consider, rigid approach to that. We’re starting to see where we’re getting applicants from other agencies that are taking a little bit of a harder stance,” she said.

‘A pain point before the pandemic, and it’s gotten worse’

Recruitment and retention remain pain points across the entire health care sector.

“It was a pain point before the pandemic, and it’s gotten worse,” said Elizabeth Kittrie, a senior advisor for the Bureau of Health Workforce at the Health Resources and Services Administration.

Kittrie says 75 million people, or one in four Americans right now, are living in an area with a shortage of primary care providers.

About 122 million, or one out of three Americans, are living somewhere with a shortage of mental health professionals. And one in five Americans are living in an area with a shortage of dentists and dental health professionals.

A study from the de Beaumont Foundation found more than half of state and local public health workers have experienced symptoms of PTSD, and one in three are considering leaving the field.

“This is a problem across government staff,” Kittrie said.

‘I got the same sense there was burnout and PTSD’

Tramble sees those same symptoms of burnout and fatigue in the CDC workforce.

Before joining the CDC, she spent most of her career in the Defense Department, where she’s used to seeing symptoms of PTSD.

“When soldiers and airman and Marines, sailors would come back from deployment — you can just tell. There’s this reintegration. You get to go back to normal, whatever that is,” she said. “This was the first I worked at a non-DoD federal agency where I got the same sense there was burnout and PTSD.”

Tramble said the CDC has seen a “significant increase” in staff using the employee assistance program, as well as a significant increase in reasonable accommodation requests — “which can be either physical or mental accommodations.”

Tramble says this sector-wide issue of burnout also requires agencies to get smarter about workforce engagement.

“This is not just throwing pizza parties and having socials. This is really about connecting to the mission. Feeling like you belong, that you have a support system at work, that can help you navigate some of those things,” Tramble said. “I have been very impressed with the level of effort that the CDC has put into taking care of the workforce after a pretty traumatic two to three years,” she said. “If you have the right support system, you can definitely reach out and touch most folks.”

Tramble says these challenges forced the CDC to take a data-driven look at its workforce needs —now, and in the future.

“We didn’t really have a recruitment strategy, we didn’t have an engagement and retention strategy. We didn’t have this futuristic workforce planning so and we didn’t have the systematic IT infrastructure in place for our workforce to do what I would consider meaningful data analysis,” she said.

“We have spent the last couple of years changing all that. So now we have what I would consider very meaningful data.  We’re almost a tip-of-the-spear thing about how we can look at our current workforce, do competency gap analysis across the CDC — just figure out and then really hone it and specialize, where we need to do remote,” Tramble said.

CDC is on the hunt for certain skill sets. Tramble said the agency so far this year has hired 70-80 additional contract specialists.

“It’s very competitive out there, and the federal hiring process is a little dated and kind of cumbersome and painful. And then, once you get the staff on board, it’s really figuring out the best to take care of that stuff — whether that’s through engagement or career development and talent management,” she said.

The CDC is also looking to acquire more experts in data.

“We have to shift with our current workforce and create this agile workforce. Maybe the skills that you came in with were great, but then tomorrow, we’re probably going to need something a little bit different,” Tramble said.

More data expertise will also help the CDC with workforce planning and projecting what the workforce needs to look like in the future

“When you’re in a crisis is not the time to do that — it’s too late. So [it’s] getting ahead of that and having that plan and strategy in place,” Tramble said.

SAMHSA surges in Best Places to Work scores

Morale is improving elsewhere in the federal health care workforce.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) addresses behavioral health in the U.S. But it ranked second to last out of all agencies in the 2021 Best Places to Work in the Federal Government scorecard, as tracked by the Partnership for Public Service.

Out of 411 agencies, it ranked at 410.

But things are looking up. This year, SAMHSA scored 77 out of 459 agencies.

“It was a hockey stick-up kind of growth, and our employee strength more than doubled in that same period,” said Chandra Mohan, SAMHSA’s acting chief technology officer. “There’s more people to join in, and more people are satisfied, so to speak, in the job.”

Mohan attributes the higher scores in part to SAMHSA STRONG — which stands for “Supportive, Transparency, Respect, Opportunity, Necessary and Growth.”

“It’s beyond a cute acronym with a lot of platitudes,” he said. “It empowered the employees to have a say in the way many management decisions were taken, and the way some of them felt heard, in how the business was conducted.”

On the tech side of hiring, Mohan says SAMHSA can’t compete with private sector tech salaries.

“From the recruitment side, it’s the same challenge as everyone. We’re not competing with the big tech, we’re not going to offer a quarter-million dollars to college grads by any means, but I think we do offer a good benefits package,” he said.

But tech workers are looking for more than just competitive salaries. Mohan says new research shows Gen Z workers are placing a premium on jobs with purpose and impact, and work-life balance.

“If someone is looking for job fulfillment and mission, I don’t think there is a role that’s better than what we offer here,” Mohan said. “Not everybody wants to put in 70-hour weeks, an up-or-out philosophy that’s there in all consulting firms. SAMHSA offers a great opportunity for new people, and younger people to come in. We are attractive, from that perspective.”

Nearly Useless Factoid

By Michele Sandiford

The original incarnation of the CDC was formed in 1943 in response to malaria outbreaks, though it wasn’t called the Center of Disease Control.

Source: cdc.gov

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