The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has changed a big part of the American landscape over the years. Established during the Franklin Roosevelt administration, TVA has a large cache of what are known as cultural heritage documents. With the deadline looming to present digitized records to the National Archives and Records Administration, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin checked in with TVA’s senior manager for enterprise records, Rebecca Coffey.

Interview Transcript: 

Tom Temin  And for this agency, which started you know, in that depression era, as part of that new deal, and so forth, tons of maps, photographs, tell us what you do have that are considered cultural heritage for permanent forever preservation?

Rebecca Coffey  Well, TVA definitely has a rich heritage that we like to celebrate and make part of the American story. So when you think about our charge and our mission, we were really about bringing progress to the Tennessee Valley. It’s a seven state region. And we were charged with controlling flooding, which was a problem back then, or erosion. We did a lot of things with economic development, as well as some unexpected things like progress with malaria treatment. So as we came to the valley, one of the biggest programs we had was to build a dam system to control those rivers. Well, to do that, we had to flood a lot of properties that were belonging to long term farmers here in the Valley. And we had to move cemeteries. So our cemetery collection is probably one of the biggest, most requested books of records that we get people in the public wanting to track down. Hey, where did my ancestors get moved to, not just people who lived on the farms, but we also flooded areas in tribal grounds. And so we have a lot of relations with our Indian reservations and our partners there, where we track and make sure that we know not only where the cemeteries, the burial grounds are, but also some of their ceremonial grounds that were very sacred to them. So that is a big part of the records that we continue to create today. As we go through and make transmission lines as we build plants. We’re always looking to see what is underground, and what might be there that needs preservation. Now, you touched a little bit on our records with mapping. It is such a great story, TVA had just phenomenal people on staff to do some of that work. And we were commissioned a lot of times by other agencies to do mapping, even with World War II, we were sent to map areas overseas for the war effort. And so TVA had a huge collection of those records that we’ve turned over already to the National Archives to make them available to the public. And then in house right now, we have a big digitization project underway under the FADGI standards, to be able to make all of our mapping across the seven state region, not just the maps, but also aerial photography available to the public.

Tom Temin  Sure. I want to get back to those cemetery records, though, for a minute, that type of thing, because what are the forms of the records? I’m thinking construction crews encountered a cemetery? Did they take photographs of the headstones? Do they enter that information into a log book, their coordinates where this stuff was? What forms do they take?

Rebecca Coffey  Absolutely all of the above. And so we have a huge photography collection of the areas that they went into, not just the cemeteries but just life in the valley during that time. But they would go in and try to map talk to the people on the ground about who were in the cemeteries. Back in those days, not every cemetery had headstones. And so it required a lot of research by our TVA teams to figure out whose families are buried here to create the most accurate log. So you’ll have a lot of field books, to smaller books, where they’re out in the field talking to people with their handwritten cursive notes. And then we will have actual reports where we’ve sent back then it was more in letter format, I will say, we’ve sent letters to the President saying, you know, here’s what we’re doing. We’ve also got internal memos that we’ll talk about what we found how many people are there and negotiations for another place to move them to certainly a place that we wouldn’t expect to flood again, so that they are set up and ready to go. We also have some things that we’ve done back around then not teen 80s, where we shared a lot of this information with other agencies as well as schools. And so as we went through a huge digitization project back in the 80s, for some of these records, we digitize things based on of course, the standards in place at the time with a focus on making them sustainable, searchable, and all of that. Technology’s changed. And so we’re looking to sort of bring those up to speed with the FADGI standards of today as well.

Tom Temin  We’re speaking with Rebecca Coffey. She is Senior Manager of enterprise records at the Tennessee Valley Authority. So therefore, that’s involving imaging of these logbooks and photographs and so forth. Those were, of course, film photography, so you can image and scan those. That’s the basic process here.

Rebecca Coffey  Yes, and we’re working to make sure that we’ve got them in the best quality that we can. And so as you know, already, FADGI has been a great partner, lots of agencies involved, but they have released the technical guidelines for digitizing cultural heritage materials. I think at this point, we’re probably on version three of that. And so we always look to those guidelines to make sure that we’re capturing the best images, obviously, for these records, most are permanent. And so we want to make sure that they’re going to be usable for the future. Not only do we have the NARA guidelines that come out about these federal records, but because of the work that we do at TVA, we also have to meet some record standards under the National Environmental Policy Act, NEPA, the National Historic Preservation Act, NHPA. And the archaeological resources Protection Act, ARPA, specific to the cemetery, ones that we talked about, there’s also a Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. And that is one that really has been a focus the past few years. We are a partner in those tribal relations organizations. And so we have completely open the doors to the records that we have, so that they can get a better perspective on their people, and making sure that they feel confident that we are protecting them. As we’re making raster images of some of these, we’re making sure that we’re not just capturing the information in it. Because there’s intrinsic value, sometimes in the paper records, when you think about that TVA person out there in the field, talking to people and making their notes. And there’s always going to be some of those little stories that are captured in slides, you know about people that in and of itself is part of that cultural record.

Tom Temin  Right the picture of the page and not simply the information on the page. And by the way, we’ve been mentioning FADGI over and over. That’s federal agencies digital guidelines initiative for people that may not be familiar. Now, some of these things like maps that we talked about, also. They might be large, and consequently delicate, maybe faded, probably hand drawn, how do you digitize an image, something that’s large like that.

Rebecca Coffey  So we do use some of our partners across the industry, when we have things that we’re concerned about, like is our equipment good enough. And that helps us to be able to ensure that we’ve got the best views. NARA we recently opened up a new digitization center, it’s state of the art. And so as we’re thinking about some of these that they have an interest in as permanent records, it may be that they also get digitized over there, where they do have the best equipment. But in regard to ones that you just, you know, there’s just no way to capture it, it’s handwritten in pencil, it’s faded. Sometimes they will take smaller views, of course of the corners of the map if there’s things in the margins, so that we do have that big picture of exactly what’s there. But then we can focus in on particular areas. And while we’re still able to read it here at TVA, we can make annotations to the record in the metadata of what something says, just in case it’s not clear to everyone. And those are mostly the records that you’ll see NARA reach out to and say, you know what, not only do we want the electronic copy, but we want that paper copy too because of the intrinsic value that it has in their facilities, the federal record centers will have the archives, of course, they have very controlled cold storage, certain humidities that even exceeds the standards required by the federal agencies.

Tom Temin  It seems like in the case of TVA, this is almost a kind of sacred mission to preserve this because it did change the landscape. And if you look at the Tennessee Valley of 2024, nearly a century, since the agency and the corporation were established, it’s probably mostly unrecognizable, from a topographic standpoint, from the towns and roads and so on.

Rebecca Coffey  It is but having these records allows us to also tell that story of progression. We had a meeting on about some of our tree canopies that we’ve mentioned before, and not just tree canopies. But when you think about towns building up, our aerial collection allows you to sort of piece those things together to tell that story. And as we start introducing some AI to write those stories for us. It really allows us to target a particular coordinate on some of our maps that we have geo past, to pull it up and say, Okay, for this little square mile of a town, show us that progress, and it can go out there with those coordinates and know every place that we have a photograph, an aerial map some overlay to pull that story together very quickly, which obviously saves a lot of time.

Tom Temin  And just to put the period on it. You do get queries from descendants of people that were directly affected. Whether their burial grounds were moved or their town was changed, or maybe they worked on one of the big projects.

Rebecca Coffey  Oh, absolutely. One of the most important positions we have here at TVA in our communications department is our TVA historian. She is amazing. Her name is Patty Ezzell, and she will be able to help you in terms of the history of TVA. So if you’re a person and you send an inquiry to TVA saying, Hey, I know that, you know, we used to have a family cemetery. I’ve got records of it, can you help us figure out where it moved, she can point you to resources that are publicly available to track that down. We also interact a lot with universities. So TVA has such a great story that we get so many students who want to do their thesis papers, their research papers on the Tennessee Valley. And so we have a wealth of information, most of it already available publicly, but certainly ones where they can connect with us to find more information.

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National Guard Bureau Chief Gen. Daniel Hokanson, who is retiring in September, said sending Guardsmen to the U.S.-Mexico border does little to contribute to their military training, adds stress to their families and impacts the Defense Department’s long-term goals of building the “combat capable National Guard.”

“As I’ve expressed within the building as well, there is no military training value for what we do. This is a law enforcement mission under the Department of Homeland Security,” Hokanson said during the Senate Appropriations Committee budget hearing.

“I know that we’re providing additional support along there. But for our Guardsmen there, they might as well be deployed to Kuwait or somewhere overseas, because they’re away from their families. They’re doing mission sets that are not directly applicable to their military skill set and so it increases their personal operational tempo. And that time, I think, would be better utilized building readiness to deter our adversaries.” he said.

The National Guard  has been providing logistical support to DHS for the last seven years. Hokanson said there are currently 2,500 troops deployed at the Southwest border under Title 10, but the number of Guardsmen stationed there has gone up and down during the last seven years.

Lawmakers and some DoD officials have long expressed concerns over the Department of Homeland Security’s continuing reliance on the Defense Department to support its border-related operations, which is not part of the DoD’s mission set.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who approved the DHS’s request to extend the Pentagon’s border mission through September 2024 last year, said the Defense Department uses its operating budget to fund the deployment of National Guard troops to the border to support DHS’s operations.

“Of course that means that there’s something else that we’re not doing because of that support,” Austin said during a Senate Defense Appropriations budget hearing in May.

“The price tag spent is about $4 billion. But we are supporting the agency, and DHS is a lead agency — it’s important to our country and we’re going to do that.”

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who has criticized the White House’s border policies, pressed Defense Secretary Austin about DoD’s ongoing support of border operations and whether the administration should at all rely on the military to secure the border.

“I agree, [we should not]. But if we’re required to assist, certainly we will continue to do so,” Austin told lawmakers.

Despite the challenges the National Guard faces, including potential budget cuts in 2025, Hokanson said the Guard is still focused on operational readiness and building a force that is “manned, trained and equipped.”

“These are not insurmountable challenges, but they represent risks and vulnerabilities,” said Hokanson. “If we fail to modernize our equipment and force design adequately, we increase the risk of sending America’s sons and daughters into large-scale combat operations with equipment and formations that may not be fully interoperable with the active duty forces we serve alongside.”

The post Guard’s support of DHS adds no military value first appeared on Federal News Network.

• When it comes to speeding up the Defense Department’s acquisition processes for big weapons systems, things are headed in the wrong direction. That is one of the findings of the Government Accountability Office’s annual assessment of the Pentagon’s major procurements. GAO said on average, DoD’s major acquisition programs are taking 11 years to deliver their first capabilities — about three years longer than planned. The report also found slowdowns in DoD’s so-called “middle tier” of acquisition — a pathway that’s explicitly designed for speed.
  (Weapon Systems Annual Assessment - Government Accountability Office)
• The IRS is taking major strides to wean itself off paper. 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. For taxpayers who still prefer filing paper tax returns, 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," said Darnita Trower, the director of emerging programs and initiatives at the IRS. "We don't intend to have people continue keying in tax returns manually. We want to scan and extract that data,” Trower said.
  (IRS hit a ‘big milestone’ to wean itself off paper. What comes next? - Federal News Network)
• A National Science Foundation initiative aims to bring better data to the cyber workforce challenge. The Cybersecurity Workforce Data Initiative is out with a new report explaining how many official labor data sources do not fully account for cybersecurity work. That includes classifications used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Education Department. The initiative’s report recommends marrying up cyber workforce definitions with federal labor databases. And the initiative, led out of the NSF, is now preparing to potentially conduct a survey of the U.S. cyber workforce.
  (NSF initiative aims to bring better data to the cyber workforce challenge - Federal News Network)
• The Senate Armed Services Committee has greenlit a number of AI-related provisions in its version of the 2025 defense policy bill. The committee's version of the bill requires the Defense Department to initiate a pilot program that will assess the use of AI to improve DoD shipyards and manufacturing facilities operations. Lawmakers also want the Defense Department to develop a plan to ensure that the budgeting process for AI programs includes cost estimates for the full lifecycle of data management. The bill would also expand the duties of the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer Governing Council.
  (Senate lawmakers pushing a number of AI-related provisions - Senate Armed Services Committee)
• Victims of identity theft are waiting nearly two years, on average, for the IRS to give them their tax refunds. In cases where a scammer stole someone’s identify to get that person's refund check, the IRS took about 22 months to complete those cases. The National Taxpayer Advocate said the COVID-19 pandemic drove up wait times when the IRS shut down processing centers. But, so far this year, wait times are not going back down to pre-pandemic levels.
  (Identity theft victims are waiting nearly two years to receive their tax refunds - National Taxpayer Advocate)
• The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency just ran the federal government’s first artificial intelligence tabletop exercises. It involved more than 50 AI experts from government and industry, who convened last week at a Microsoft facility in Reston, Virginia. The exercise simulated a cybersecurity incident on an AI-enabled system. The event will help shape an AI Security Incident Collaboration Playbook being developed by CISA’s Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative.
  (CISA, JCDC, government and industry partners conduct AI tabletop exercise - CISA)
• Senate lawmakers are seeking to limit funding available for the Defense Department's initiative designed to support cyber operations across the military services. It is known as the Joint Warfighting Cyber Architecture (JCWA). The Senate version of the defense policy bill is looking to restrict funding available for the effort until the commander of U.S. Cyber Command (CYBERCOM) provides a comprehensive plan to minimize work on the current JCWA. The Senate Armed Services committee also wants CYBERCOM to create a baseline plan for a more advanced version of JCWA. House and Senate leaders will begin negotiating the defense bill once the Senate clears its final version of the measure.
  (Senate seeks to limit funding for JCWA - Senate Armed Services Committee)
• The Biden Administration is contemplating a new acquisition policy that would clear up some confusion on when contractors have to follow the government’s rigorous cost-accounting standards. The Cost Accounting Standards Board is asking for public feedback on potential rules that would lay out exactly how those standards apply to indefinite delivery contracts. According to the Government Accountability Office, those types of agreements make up about half of federal contract spending, but there are not clear standards on when the cost accounting standards apply to them.
  (Whether and How to Amend CAS Rule - Office of Federal Procurement Policy, Cost Accounting Standards Board)

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Beginning in 2025, OPM is adding stricter eligibility requirements to try to root out ineligible enrollees in the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) program — something that’s been high on GAO’s radar for at least the last few years. A 2022 GAO report showed that OPM spends up to $1 billion each year on ineligible participants erroneously enrolled in FEHB.

“One of the biggest benefit systems in the country, and for decades, nobody checked these things,” Comptroller General Gene Dodaro told lawmakers on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee during a June 13 hearing.

Each year, GAO releases a report of the programs and spending areas across the federal government that could lead to significant cost savings for agencies. The changes that GAO recommends aren’t always complex, but to be able to implement the measures, agencies need resources, Dodaro said.

“This isn’t rocket science — I mean, it’s basically looking at those things and doing some good auditing,” Dodaro said. “It could be tackled as soon as the resources could be marshaled to do it.”

Agencies often ‘slow to act’

By putting more controls in place and creating stricter measures on who can actually enroll — and stay enrolled — in FEHB, OPM should be able to more effectively address the cost issues, GAO said. Identifying ineligible dependents has remained a top challenge for FEHB since 2018, according to OPM’s inspector general office.

“[OPM] recognized the significance of the issue, but like in a lot of cases, people are slow to act on a recommendation,” Dodaro told committee lawmakers. “That’s why we keep following up.”

Addressing the FEHB spending challenges will involve a multi-pronged approach from OPM. It’s a matter of finding and removing currently enrolled ineligible FEHB members and preventing new members from enrolling in error, while also making long-term data updates to more easily root out ineligible enrollees in the future.

OPM is already gearing up to take some of these steps beginning in 2025. Starting next year, federal employees will be required to provide eligibility documentation for any family members they want to add to their insurance coverage during Open Season. But on top of that, Dodaro said an audit of current FEHB enrollees is necessary.

“[OPM] has not yet gone back and looked at all the people that are already in the system as to whether they have legitimate numbers of … people who are eligible for services,” Dodaro said. “They could sample across federal agencies, they could get some participation. But there has to be a thorough audit done of existing people that are on the federal employee’s health benefit systems.”

OPM is planning to start on this path as well. During this year’s Open Season, agencies will be required to validate the eligibility of a random sample of FEHB participants. That sample must comprise at least 10% of elections for both Self-Plus-One and Self-and-Family enrollments. Where possible, OPM is also encouraging agencies to validate larger portions of enrollees. If agencies find ineligible members through that data collection, they’ll have to follow OPM’s instructions for removing them.

A centralized FEHB database

But another major barrier for OPM to make improvements, Dodaro said, is the agency’s lack of a central database of FEHB enrollees. Without a centralized system, it’s much more difficult to identify and remove erroneously enrolled FEHB participants.

“Current FEHB eligibility determination and enrollment is highly decentralized and requires cooperation between nearly 100 employing offices responsible for determining eligibility and enrolling more than 8 million members,” OPM said in April. “If funded, OPM could extend this same central enrollment system to all FEHB enrollments, which would allow OPM to manage and make consistent all FEHB enrollments and remove individuals who cease to be eligible for the program.”

OPM, as part of its fiscal 2025 budget request, is proposing legislation to build a centralized enrollment system for FEHB. With a central database, OPM would be able to more quickly address the problem and avoid the spending errors. That system, if it’s implemented, would be modeled after the centralized system OPM just recently built for the upcoming Postal Service Health Benefits program.

During the oversight committee hearing, Dodaro said OPM Acting Director Rob Shriver’s background in insurance should help OPM make headway and get the changes underway — as would asking the Office of Management and Budget for additional support.

“He knows what the shortcomings are,” Dodaro, speaking about Shriver, told House committee members last week. “The question he’s wrestling with is how can he implement all these things that need to be implemented as soon as possible, like getting a central repository in place.”

The post Centralized FEHB database key to OPM cost savings, GAO says 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 announcement from the White House on Thursday came after Gruenberg’s tenure became marred by allegations of workplace abuse that led to him to resign.

A longtime financial regulator, Goldsmith Romero is currently a commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the nation’s financial derivatives regulator. She previously worked with the Department of Treasury and was part of the team that handled the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which lent $700 billion to troubled banks during the 2008 financial crisis. She also is a law professor at Georgetown University.

Her previous nominations to the nation’s financial regulators were unanimously confirmed by the Senate.

“She has proven herself to be a strong, independent, and fair regulator who is not afraid to do what’s right,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio and chair of the Senate Banking Committee, in a statement.

Gruenberg last month said he would resign from the FDIC, after an independent report by law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton found incidents of stalking, harassment, homophobia and other violations of employment regulations, based on more than 500 complaints from employees.

Complaints included a woman who said she was stalked by a coworker and continually harassed even after complaining about his behavior; a field office supervisor referring to gay men as “little girls;” and a female field examiner who described receiving a picture of an FDIC senior examiner’s private parts.

Republicans have been calling for Gruenberg to step down since the allegations emerged late last year. The White House and Gruenberg resisted those calls partly because the FDIC is led by a five member board, and his resignation would pass control of the agency to the FDIC’s vice chair, who is a Republican. Gruenberg’s resignation would not be official until Goldsmith Romero nomination is finalized.

“FDIC employees deserve a safe workplace that allows them to focus on their important mission to safeguard our country’s financial security. Unfortunately, under the leadership of Chairman Gruenberg, that hasn’t been the case,” said Sen. Tim Scott, the ranking Republican on the Banking Committee, in a statement.

The FDIC is one of several U.S. banking system regulators. The Great Depression-era agency is best known for running the nation’s deposit insurance program, which insures Americans’ deposits up to $250,000 in case their bank fails.

The post Biden to nominate Christy Goldsmith Romero as FDIC chair after abrupt departure of predecessor first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Social Security Administration is undergoing a rebuild with former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley as its commissioner. The agency has a decent list of ongoing issues, as identified by the Government Accountability Office. For an assessment,  the Federal Drive with Tom Temin talked with GAO’s education, workforce and income security team director, Elizabeth Curda.

Interview Transcript: 

Eric White  The Social Security Administration is undergoing a rebuild with former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley as commissioner. The agency has a decent list of ongoing issues as identified by the Government Accountability Office. Joining Federal Drive host Tom Temin with an assessment, the GAO’s education, workforce and income security team director, Elizabeth Curda.

Tom Temin  Social Security, you know, is a troubled agency in many ways, although, it’s probably fair to say they never miss getting the funds deposited in people’s accounts week after week, do they?

Elizabeth Curda  I don’t think so.

Tom Temin  Alright, one of the top issues, ensuring program integrity is part of your restatement of their ongoing issues in your latest kind of round up. And what does that mean, exactly? Ensuring program integrity? And what do they need to do? Why is that risky?

Elizabeth Curda  Well, program integrity is really about whether the agency is essentially following its own rules, and that people who are qualified for benefits are getting the correct amount of benefits. It’s when, you know, either people who are qualified are getting an incorrect amount of benefits, or people who are applying for benefits aren’t qualified and are getting benefits inappropriately.

Tom Temin  Right. And that’s been an ongoing issue, because sometimes they miss people, small number, that are deceased, or because they’re simply ineligible, but it’s easy to get that check going.

Elizabeth Curda  Correct.

Tom Temin  All right. And you’ve also listed serving vulnerable populations. And what is the issue there?

Elizabeth Curda  Well, during the pandemic, Social Security closed many of its offices. And so for people who were receiving benefits, or who were claiming benefits who were very vulnerable, very poor, we saw a big drop in those applications. So they didn’t have alternative ways of applying for benefits during the pandemic because of those office closures. So these are people who are poor, aged, blind, who are looking for benefits for their disabilities.

Tom Temin  And people that may be out of the reach of high bandwidth and smartphones and laptop PCs, too. There are some Americans or some citizens deserving Social Security that don’t. And by the way, what’s the status now that you’re aware of with respect to the offices? Are they pretty much fully back?

Elizabeth Curda  They’re fully back and open to the public.

Tom Temin  Okay. And then I wanted to ask you about assessing software licenses, because essentially, the program is delivered by software, Social Security’s giant IT organization. What do you find there with respect to software licenses?

Elizabeth Curda  Well, software licenses are essentially the backbone of the agency’s operations. So in sort of common terms, it’s the Microsofts, it’s the Oracle, Adobe, the kind of things we use to do our work every day. And so, the federal agencies, we’ve done assessments across the government and found that agencies didn’t have a good handle on how many of those licenses they had and what they were paying for them.

Tom Temin  And it’s social security that is a particularly pronounced issue. Do you have any quantities or any estimates of what they might be overspending on licenses?

Elizabeth Curda  No, I think the issue with SSA is they didn’t know. They didn’t know how many licenses they had outstanding that they were actually using, compared to what they had paid for. So they didn’t have a way of knowing if all those licenses that are out there were really needed. And if they were overpaying for licenses that weren’t being used.

Tom Temin  Or I guess it’s potentially you could discover you’re using more licenses than you’re paying for.

Elizabeth Curda  That’s right.

Tom Temin  And then the vendors really come in with guns blazing on true ups for those.

Elizabeth Curda  That’s right.

Tom Temin  We’re speaking with Elizabeth Curda. She is the director of education, workforce and income security at the GAO. When you hear social security people talk and hear Martin O’Malley discuss this, their top concern is customer experience, customer service, improving the speed and accuracy of answers. For example, when people call in to their call centers, this kind of thing. That’s not on your list of top issues. But what’s GAO’s sense of how important this is and where the shortfall might be?

Elizabeth Curda  Yes, it’s very important. And that’s something we looked at during the pandemic. We looked at service delivery by the Social Security and did see issues with their ability to answer the phones during the pandemic. But you know, they do have plans in place to modernize their telephone systems. And so we didn’t find that they were not trying to address this issue. And so, that has not sort of risen to the top on our list, but it is an ongoing issue and one that they are working very hard to address.

Tom Temin  And related to assessing software licenses is the much bigger fundamental issue of technology modernization, and this is a mainframe COBOL computing shop. And I guess the common wisdom is you’ve got to get away from that and modernize and cloud, etc. What’s your sense of their pathway toward modernizing their infrastructure that consists of all these licenses?

Elizabeth Curda  Well, that’s been a longstanding issue as well and they are, you know, working away at modernizing their systems. Getting away from those COBOL systems and you know, like a lot of federal agencies seeking to take advantage of, you know, cloud based computing. They’re on the path. I know that is a continuing issue and one that GAO looks at.

Tom Temin  All right. So let’s add this all up, then what are your top recommendations at this point that are still open? Some of these dates back 10 years.

Elizabeth Curda  Yes. Well, the the recommendations that the Comptroller General has deemed ones that are most in need of the top leadership’s attention, or by highlighting them to the top leadership, they hope to move the needle on these high priority recommendations. And so, the first one has to do as we mentioned, we were discussing program integrity. SSA has a problem with overpaying people benefits. And in the case of this recommendation, what happens is federal employees who have been injured on the job and are receiving Federal Employees Compensation Act or FECA benefits, they may also apply for disability benefits, because they may be perhaps are having difficulty working. And SSA has no way of knowing if they’re already receiving these FECA benefits. And so the recommendation has to do with setting up a way of doing computer matching between the Department of Labor, which manages the FECA benefits, and SSA, which manages the disability benefits. And with this matching, they can then find out, oh, someone’s already getting benefits from a federal agency, I need to offset the benefits that would get from SSA. So they’re not getting, kind of, double dipping.

Tom Temin  Sure. Okay. That’s one recommendation. There’s one from 2022 with respect to protecting sensitive information, you know, security of information.

Elizabeth Curda  Yes. And as you can imagine, the Social Security has a lot of sensitive information at their disposal. They’re the ones who generate the social security numbers, they know your birthdate. They know a lot about all of us. So it’s incredibly important to protect that sensitive information. This was part of a government wide review, which GAO looked at all the major federal agencies and compared their privacy practices to key practices for having a good privacy program, and did find a few issues with SSA. But the one that we really wanted to highlight was making sure that they have fully defined the role of the senior official who’s responsible for the privacy program, the idea being that that person that would then provide leadership on all the, you know, other privacy issues as being kind of like the critical, most critical thing to kind of really focus on from a leadership perspective.

Tom Temin  And as someone who has looked at agencies from an auditing standpoint for a long time, do you get the sense now that with Martin O’Malley, a confirmed Commissioner, that was several years without a confirmed Commissioner, there was a short period of time during the Trump administration when there was one confirmed, and before that a long period of acting. Maybe that’s an issue that seems to be settled down now, do you think?

Elizabeth Curda  Well, it could be. Time will tell. He’s got his position through next, I believe, December, and then  we’ll be up for renomination. But I think having a fully nominated confirmed Commissioner does make a difference in terms of an agency’s ability to move forward on sort of policy changes and big program implementation issues.

Tom Temin  Because that’s really the one of the ironies of the Social Security commissioner is Social Security Policy is almost like tax policy to make a parallel with the IRS. The IRS doesn’t set the tax rates and the general tax policy of the nation any more than SSA sets the rates. They have to be true to them, but they don’t decide them. And so what you really need is more managerial competence, perhaps, then. What should the government pay people that retire type of expertise?

Elizabeth Curda  Yeah, well, it’s a little bit of both but he has many experts on the policy side of things.

Eric White  That’s Elizabeth Curda, director of education, workforce and income security at the Government Accountability Office. Speaking with Federal Drive host Tom Temin. We’ll post this interview along with the link to the Social Security report at federalnewsnetwork.com/federaldrive. You can subscribe to The Federal Drive wherever you get your podcasts.

The post Where Social Security could start, as it tries to improve itself first appeared on Federal News Network.

Measuring things is so basic to every advancement, most people sometimes take it for granted. The Federal Drive with Tom Temin talks with someone who does not take such things for granted: the new director of the Material Measurement Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Kate Beers.

Interview Transcript: 

Tom Temin  And this is measurement and not in the sense of a tape measure or a yardstick material Measurement Laboratory. Let’s begin with what goes on there.   

Kate Beers  Sure, so it is all in the name. It is a measurement of material; the question is what constitutes a material. And that’s really any chemical or material we manufacture and used that can include anything from a protein used in drug therapy to steel for pipes, and everything in between plastics, commodity products, we measure them, we try to provide the best quality measurements we can. And we supply that information, the methods, the data reference materials to industry and to a lot of other people for whom those measurements matter. So, it can be sub national governments, it can be communities, all sorts of people that benefit from better measurements.  

Tom Temin  And if you look at so many domains of life relative to 30, or 50 years ago, food, transportation, clothing, building materials, material science has been advancing at least as much as information technology and electronic science. And so, it sounds like there’s a constant need to be able to evaluate new materials, such as coverings on airplanes used to be aluminum. Now they’re composites, car frames used to be forged steel. Now there are these high strength tensile types of things. Correct?  

Kate Beers  Absolutely. And every field is evolving, and its technology and its innovation. But at the heart of it, everything is built with stuff, right? There’s something that has to be supplied to create the technology, even our semiconductors and computers, or phones, everything is advancing at a very fast rate. And they all require these kinds of references and methods to support the industries and supply chains that are making these products.   

Tom Temin  And what does NIST try to promote eight then the methodologies for testing or the metrics that testing should produce?  

Kate Beers  So yes, it’s important to point out that we are a non-regulatory agency that we really do focus objectively on the most knowable information, right. So, the most accurate measurement and its data or the reference, you might need to calibrate your measurement, and we are small. So, we try to be very strategic about providing very specific pieces of information that we think will enable the most advancement, the most innovation, the most robust decision making, we look for those sweet spots in all of the sectors that we interact with.  

Tom Temin  And with those sectors, say transportation is a common need for them to understand how a material will perform under stress, and over time. And so, measurement methodologies are needed to simulate that wear and tear.  

Kate Beers  Absolutely, we do some of that work. We also work very collaboratively with other parts of NIST that simulate the effects of aging and weathering. And we’re a very collaborative agency. So, we’d like to bring together these multidisciplinary, the word we use, right, but people that look at these kinds of problems, from very different points of view, to ask the hard questions of, are we really measuring the right thing? Can we do better? How can we help other people do better?  

Tom Temin  And new and improved? You know, those words are used all over the economy? There’s always new emerging materials in so many different domains. How do you prioritize where the work is that you concentrate?   

Kate Beers  That’s a great question. And one of my primary responsibilities is to help us plan strategically where we’re going to invest our resources, we do look for the things that seem to be the highest priority to the US economy. And to US manufacturers, we’ve gotten a lot of attention around the semiconductor manufacturing space, the biotechnology space, two of our newest reference materials are a protein, one of the most heavily characterized proteins ever known to man. And the first living reference material, which is a cell we have a reference cell now available, because those are emerging technologies, where measurements are a barrier to commerce, and people need a way to validate their processes and their manufacturing.   

Tom Temin  Yeah, so even medical advances then are often material advances as much as chemical or technique advances.  

Kate Beers  Yes, and we’re seeing a bleeding over between those sectors. So, we’re seeing people from the materials and chemicals manufacturing space want to borrow from nature, borrow from the bio space to make things hopefully more efficiently, hopefully with more sustainable practices. So, we need people and measurements ways to measure the performance and the demands of those processes so we can scale them and make them efficient, profitable and safe.  

Tom Temin  We’re speaking with Dr. Kate Beers. She’s the new director of the Materials and Measurement Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. And what kinds of facilities are there at NIST? Do you have big machines that pound on stuff and so on?  

Kate Beers  We do. Most of our machines are not that big scale anymore. So we have a lot of fancy machines that do things like apply torque and temperature and a lot of hybrid equipment where you can do very specialized measurements and environments where you apply those deformations, we call them right stresses, but do some of the most sophisticated measurements at the same time to understand what’s happening to the material. So yeah, it’s a very diverse laboratory, huge numbers of different types of measurements going on and locations, multiple locations across the country, doing those measurements.  

Tom Temin  And some of those measurements gets settled because the molecules get rearranged under torque or pressure, not just the shape, but it could weaken or get stronger, this kind of thing that must be tough to really understand.   

Kate Beers It’s endlessly fascinating what is happening, we call it we call it field dynamics, right? What is happening to the material over time as its deformed, as it’s maybe inadvertently residing in the ocean for years, what is happening under those forces and exposures, it is a very important problem to understand. And the measurements that we think we do every day, sometimes we’re not getting as much information from them as we might like, yes, bonds can break, new molecules can form and sometimes they can escape and do things you don’t want them to do. And we’re constantly adding more dimensions to our measurement infrastructure to understand that as much as we can.  

Tom Temin  And of course, industry has its own capabilities for test and measurement, large and small businesses, how do you collaborate and maybe avoid duplication of work, and yet, verify that everyone’s on the same page with respect to the standards.  

Kate Beers  There are instances where things are very, very expensive and hard to do, and you don’t want to duplicate. So, we have certain very specialized facilities like that, like our metals, deforming facilities. But there’s other things we’re actually some redundancy is really valuable, because we need people doing the same measurement in lots of places to have competence that we’re all getting the same number. There are many methods like that, where you need a very objective unconflicted place like NIST doing what may seem like a fairly ubiquitous measurement, and asking everybody else in the field to do that measurement so that we have high confidence that we’re all doing it the same way, which is not always something you can take for granted. And we do a lot of that work collaboratively. There’s a balance you have to seek between unique capabilities and duplicative capabilities so that you can have trust and effective relationships.   

Tom Temin  Well, it must be fun to get up in the morning and decide what can I break or wear out today? And how did you come to this work, give us a little bit of a bio of yourself.  

Kate Beers  It is so fun. Oh, my goodness, we have like the best job, people come here. And they just have the most amazing, fun careers here. I actually have to say I kind of stumbled across this, I did seek my PhD in polymer chemistry. So, I was already interested in soft squishy, you know, amorphous, we call them materials. But I came to NIST as a postdoc. And I was just amazed at how much fun it was to come every day to a place where everyone was just interested in trying to do the best measurement they possibly could on this stuff. And for such good reasons in which such with such immediate value and impact to the US economy in a place that took so much pride in being responsible with its resources and really getting a lot of bang for its buck. You know, sometimes I’m not entirely sure. I feel like I just lucked out coming here. But I’ve had so much support to do so many interesting things and to work with an incredible array of people. I think being a chemist, interested in materials made this a very nice interface for me for my career. 

The post Taking the measure of new NIST director first appeared on Federal News Network.

It may be employees at the LaClare Family Creamery, a goat cheese manufacturer in Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin, that Republican Congressman Glenn Grothman passes by on his way home.

Or it may be the folks at the Old World Creamery, a family-owned food manufacturer located in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, which has been around since 1912.

No matter which of the many cheese factories in his home district of which Rep. Grothman was referring to, he seems to believe federal employees and employees who manufacture cheese have a lot in common.

“When I go home at night, [and this] is kind of a stereotype, but I got Wisconsin, I got all these cheese factories [that] I drive by depending upon which way I go home. They were all packed, even at one o’clock in the morning. So I just want to emphasize that I think, in many private sector jobs, they were showing up at work in the teeth of the [pandemic]. It’s time that we should be back to where we want to be,” Grothman said at the April 30 Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing.

Not sure if you knew this, but the cheese industry has been very important to Sheboygan County since the 1870s.

The same can’t be said for federal agencies. In fact, the Office of Personnel Management doesn’t list cheese or any specific food manufacturer in their list of job series. There is 7401 – General Food Preparation and Serving that includes cooking, bartending and even meat cutting, but sadly nothing about cheese.

Grothman was trying to make a point about federal employees needing to return to the office, but his analogy, like most from lawmakers, fell flat.

Just like Sen. Joni Ernst’s (R-Iowa) jab at federal employees back in April.

“Every day is ‘Wear Your Pajamas to Work Day’ when tens of thousands of bureaucrats are working from home,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), posted on X on April 16, which happened to be National Wear Your Pajamas to Work Day.

Did Ernst know about some sort of “off the books” celebration at the Neal Smith Federal Building in Des Moines, Iowa, which includes 800 federal employees from more than 40 agencies, who were all wearing their pajamas to work?

By the way, did you know National Wear Your Pajamas to Work Day started in 2004, by Pajamagram as a reward for the late nights working on taxes. If you are keeping score, the 2025 National Wear Your Pajamas to Work Day is April 6.

But I digress, the return-to-office debate continues to boil over. Republicans continue to criticize federal employees and the Biden administration for what they see as waste and abuse.

No one size fits all for return to office policy

Democrats and the Office of Management and Budget are defending agency leadership to make decisions for how often federal employees need to come into the office based on what’s best for their agency’s mission.

Brian Elliott, executive advisor around the future of work and an expert on workplace culture, said both sides are missing the point and talking past each other.

“I think a big part of this is what you’re getting, is there’s no one size fits all for this because different jobs and different roles have different requirements. They always have and they always will,” Elliott said in an interview with Federal News Network. “The private sector has been grappling with this for a while too, and I work with companies that have a wide range of practices. But they figured out the moments that matter for a sales team are different than those for an engineering team or a finance team. But you would never apply one uniform set of rules to everybody and expect it’s actually going to work the same.”

Exactly why Grothman’s cheese manufacturer analogy or Ernst’s comments on what federal employees are wearing are the type of comments that rankle so many people and stops the real discussion from happening.

First off, as Jason Miller, the deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, told lawmakers at the April 30 hearing four different times, over half of the federal workforce can’t telework because of their job responsibilities. That means more than a million federal employees — those who protect the border, secure the airports, inspect food and provide medical care to veterans at hospitals — are commuting, most likely are wearing business clothes — though hospital scrubs could be considered pajama-like — and working outside of their homes.

Miller said of the remaining 40% to 49% of employees working in everything from technology to human resources to processing tax returns or disability forms, about 80% of them are in the office at least half the time, which equates roughly to two-to-three times a week.

But just like before the pandemic, just being in the office doesn’t necessarily mean work is getting done.

Gauging productivity remains difficult

Elliott said it’s this reason and the concept of work being what you do, not where you do it, is why public and private sector employers have to change how they gauge productivity. He said this new view is a struggle no matter what sector you are in.

“We have to stop trying to measure activity, stop trying to measure the number of days a week somebody shows up, or the number of keystrokes they hit, and start figuring out what outcomes you’re trying to drive,” he said. “With most organizations, when we get deeper into this, you realize that you might be able to define productivity for a subset of the jobs, like customer service, which is one that you can usually put a yardstick against. You can measure quantity of output and quality of output. But you can do that regardless of where the human being is doing that customer support. It literally does not matter. But other work is much more complex. The important stuff is interdisciplinary, cross functional in nature, complicated problem solving and really hard to put a yardstick on.”

Elliott pointed to a story from an executive at the National Science Foundation who said the number of grant applications that came in peaked during the pandemic, but they were able to serve them just as well during that time period.

The focus, he said, is what is driving mission outcomes, not “sweating telework classifications” or other meaningless proof points.

“We’re very used to communicating, collaborating, doing work and even building relationships online. I have talked with senior agency leaders who will talk about the fact that the people above them, in the appointment suites as well, aren’t in the tools that their teams are using on a day in, day out basis. If your only familiarity with the digital tools your teams use is the occasional Teams call or Zoom call, and you’re not in Teams or Slack itself, watching the work happen, then it’s not surprising that when you come back into an office space and you don’t see a lot of activity, you’re then worried, are they really working?” Elliott said. “The same thing has happened in the private sector. The thing that I’ve done with a number of executives is literally show them how these tools work. We get into it enough so that they feel comfortable, so they can actually see the work that’s happening, that otherwise they’re missing out on. There’s definitely a transition here that has to do with generational differences in how we communicate.”

Elliott said it’s more than just using communication and collaboration tools. It’s the transformation across many sectors and in many offices that occurred over the last four years.

Fairness doctrine, not really fair

He said this entire discussion comes back to this core issue of how do agencies or companies know if their employees are really working if they’re not physically in an environment where they can monitor them and put my eyeballs on them?

“That is the least effective way of measuring productivity and outcome that exists. It’s an input-driven mechanism. The equivalent would be if I’m going to put keystroke monitors on people’s laptops because the way that they actually produce something is through typing. So once you measure the number of keystrokes, you can go on Amazon.com and buy a mouse jiggler for $25, stick it into the side of your laptop and it will keep your mouse active for eight hours a day or however many hours you want to. And you can actually program in the number of pauses you want it to have. These systems can easily be gamed. You’re much better off instrumenting outcome driven metrics on top of this,” Elliott said.

Elliott added the other side of the argument is often referred to as the “fairness doctrine.” He said what’s fair to office workers should be what’s fair to frontline employees. But Elliott said that so-called doctrine is faulty.

“Frontline workers have to show up on the front line, and office workers don’t have to, and some will say that is unfair. There is an equality versus equity set of things that’s happening within this though. We already pay office workers more than we do frontline workers. That’s been true for eons,” he said. “What it’s really about is how do I attract workers for what is often the hardest jobs to fill these days? It’s those call center jobs. It is the fact that you’re investing a different type of flexibility for those workers, not just work location, which you can’t always give them, but flexible schedules. Giving people the ability to swap shifts, giving people flexibility when it comes to how many shifts they take per week, helps you attract more people into those jobs and retain them. What you’re after is, can I measure how good a job they’re doing at delivering for my customers? Not that they show up.”

That gets us back to the land of cheese and whining. If Grothman, and other lawmakers, want to make sure federal employees are using taxpayers’ money appropriately, serving citizens effectively and not abusing their privilege of working from home, they should demand to see the data and hold agency leaders accountable for meeting mission-focused goals. The workplace has changed, the remote work cork isn’t going back in the bottle, so both supporters and detractors should stop arguing over what was or used to be, and focus on measuring agency mission success in serving citizens.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By Michele Sandiford

The term “telecommuting” was first coined in 1972 by Jack Nilles. At that time, Nilles was working remotely on a complex NASA communication system.

Source: Allied Telcom

The post Whine, cheese make the return-to-office debate pungent first appeared on Federal News Network.

Offices of inspectors general add up to 14,000 employees. If they were an agency, they would be a mid-sized one. IG people are scattered, but they do have the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency. CIGIE figures that in fiscal 2023, its recommendations saved the government $100 billion. For an update on all of that, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin talked, in studio, with CIGIE Chairman and Interior Department Inspector General, Mark Lee Greenblatt.

Interview Transcript:  

Mark Lee Greenblatt  Thank you so much for having me, Tom, we have a great story to tell. And I’m excited to share it with you.

Tom Temin  And you’ve worked your way up to Chairman of CIGIE that came in as just a member and then you were vice chairman has fun at the top

Mark Lee Greenblatt  It is and even before being a member I was the executive director, the lead staffer at the council. So yes, I’ve worked my way up, as you say, and it is a nice organization, nice community be a part of.

Tom Temin  And is CIGIE demanding such that you can get some sort of dispensation from IG of interior, or do you have to be at full time to Hatter.

Mark Lee Greenblatt  I am a full time to Hatter. And let’s just say it is a full slate of activities, a lot of good stuff going on both of the Department of the Interior in our Office of Inspector General but also in the OIG community writ large. As you said, we have 14,000 folks strewn across the entire world, frankly, and they’re doing incredible work. And that’s one nice thing as the chair of CIGIE is to be able to discuss the work of all these great professionals out there around the world.

Tom Temin  And just give us the quick summary of 2023, the latest fiscal year for which you have full savings induced by Segi recommendations. Yeah,

Mark Lee Greenblatt  It’s fantastic report that we just issued. This is their annual report to the President and to Congress, identifying in broad strokes with the OIG community has been doing. And this is a reflection not just of CIGIE, the agency, the federal, you know, organization in and of itself, but also the OIG community writ large. And as you mentioned, we have over $93 billion in potential savings. This is savings from the audit inspections and evaluation side, but also from investigative recoveries as well. And you know, when you compare that, with all of the federal IG budgets, which are about $3.5 billion dollars, you compare that with the, you know, over $93 billion in potential savings, you’re talking about a return on investment of $26 for every dollar invested into an OIG. So I think that’s a remarkable return on investment for the American taxpayer, for the stakeholders on the hill. And I hope they appreciate that we’re going to bat for them every single day.

Tom Temin  And there is now some growing confluence between the Pandemic Recovery Accountability Committee, PRAC, because of the desire of CIGIE, and the CIGIE members to preserve the analytical platform that PRAC had created a little too late actually to prevent all of the fraud. But the sense is that this tool could prevent future fraud. What’s the progress on that?

Mark Lee Greenblatt  This is a potential game changer, Tom, this is going to redefine how oversight works in the federal government, if we can get a data analytics center, like what we’ve done in the PRAC scenario, in the PRAC setting, in the pandemic relief legislation, if we can get that with respect to much broader scope throughout the federal government, it’s like putting in hyperdrive, I don’t know if you remember in Star Wars, when the Millennium Falcon hits hyperdrive, and it just shoots through the stars, that would be the equivalent of what we could do with our data analytics capability. All of a sudden, you’re talking about harvesting these data sets and doing these analyses that are far more complicated than I can understand. But they are hyper technical. And what we could do is ferret out real time information for agencies for OIG is to pursue leads. And there’s that preventative side, which goes to the agency. So we say we found these abnormalities, these are things you should be looking for agency before you spend this money, that is a huge piece that we can do. But also, once the money has gone out, we can give additional data sets to individual IGs and say, hey, look, this is abnormal, you should be pursuing this. This may be, you know, indications of fraud. And like I said, this would be a game changer for us. And it’s not that expensive. That’s the key we were talking about return on investment is technical, the return on investment would make that look like you know, nothing, frankly, it’s really, really important for us. And I think that’s the wave of the future.

Tom Temin  But you need Congress to agree to this, because the PRAC will sunset. That platform is a real system. I think it’s a system of record at this point for the federal government. So it’s adaptable. But you have to make sure that they give you the means and the agreement that yes, we’ll pull this thing away from PRAC when PRAC goes away, and that will exist as something operated by CIGIE that’s the general model.

Mark Lee Greenblatt  That’s exactly right. That’s the proposal that we’ve been working on with the hill with a number of stakeholders. There are some very interested parties we have great support for this concept. But you know it’s in the in the in the proverbial sausage making right and that’s where we are right now. There are some proposals out there we are working with them to fine tune those. We are generating support, but it’s tough. Anytime you’re are talking about mixing data. There are some folks that, you know, have concerns. And those are valid concerns. And we’re just addressing those trying to build support and get something through because you’re right, we need the authority. And we need the funding, frankly, because it’s not very expensive. But it’s beyond our capability.

Tom Temin  We’re speaking with Mark Lee Greenblatt, Chairman of the Council of inspectors general on Integrity and Efficiency. CIGIE. And you had expressed in your latest annual report to Congress, the CIGIE report to Congress about plans for updates of oversight.gov, which is for a lot of people in and out of government, it’s kind of a go to site to see what’s going on with respect to waste, fraud and abuse. What are the plans for oversight.gov?

Mark Lee Greenblatt That is a great success story. I mean, just right out of the gate, that’s a great indication of what Siggy can do for the American taxpayers. This is a website that has all federal IG reports in one place, so they don’t have to go to 73 different offices and search their files to find a report. Now you can search by a number of different ways to find what you’re looking for. And its hyper sophisticated search terms. And so this can really drill down for members of Congress of the American public, we have now more than 29,000 reports on there. And it’s not just federal IGs, we have started including state and local IGs. Because if folks are looking for oversight, it doesn’t matter what level that’s occurring. They want all of it. And so we have 29,000 reports on there, we have updates on IG vacancies, that has been an issue over the years. And now we have a page specifically devoted to IG vacancies, we also are hosting websites. So now my own office, the Department of the Interior of IG, our website is now hosted on oversight.gov, which gives us some independence. So it doesn’t have to go through the department. Again, that facilitates the American taxpayer and stakeholders in Congress getting access and getting direct reports from us. They don’t have to go through the mechanism of the departments over which we are overseeing their projects. And that gives a significant amount of independence for us. Look, this is, as I said, a huge success for the American public and for the stakeholders on the hill. And we’re hoping to expand it. I think we’re going to hit 30,000 reports in the not too distant future. If so we’re going to have a massive celebration. And Tom, I think will ask you to be the emcee.

Tom Temin  All right, you’re on Yeah, I’ll even give a little speech because I love following this stuff for so long. I love it. And then the pandemic spending is actually still going on. Unbelievably, inexplicably, that never dies. But then we’ve got the so called infrastructure bill and the inflation Reduction Act, these are still potential spending streams. At this point, a lot of money has been spent a lot to go is CIGIE as a group, our inspectors general looking at what did we learn from the fraud disaster, really, of PRAC that can maybe still prevent some of that from happening under inflation reduction and infrastructure? Absolutely,

Mark Lee Greenblatt  We’re doing a deep dive on both of those Congress set up the PRAC, as part of the pandemic legislation, they did not do so under the other two, the Inflation Reduction Act and the infrastructure bill they didn’t set up. But we have set that up informally in our community, specifically for the reasons that you said, to learn lessons to collaborate to share notes, and focus on what are some of the key issues that you’re experiencing, we didn’t want to do this in a vacuum. And those have been very effective. It’s very different from the PRAC. With the pandemic scenario, that was a lot of money going out the door in a very fast fashion directly to users, directly to beneficiaries. Under the other two scenarios, the infrastructure bill and the inflation Reduction Act, both of those are long term contracts and grants, they have a much longer tail. And those are going to have a lot more government engagement with the money going out the door. And so the oversight efforts are going to be very different with respect to those latter two programs than the pandemic. And I think those fraud safeguards will therefore be heightened. We are also learning the lessons that you were just talking about to say, okay, what can we do better? And those are the things that we’re sharing with the agency, for example, the White House convened, what were then called the gold standard meetings. This is where they would bring the White House, OMB, the OIG and the agencies involved, as they’re designing and implementing a program and say, Okay, let’s talk about accountability measures, anti fraud measures that you’re going to put in at the outset. And they would have the OIGs ask questions. Again, this isn’t impacting our independence, because we’re not participating in the development of these programs. But we’re asking questions we’re giving best practices that we’ve seen elsewhere in the community. We’re using lessons learned that we’ve seen in our work before, to heighten their awareness of these things as they’re designing and implementing their programs. So we’ve taken that from the pandemic setting, which were called the gold standard meetings, and now we’re applying them with OMB in the White House to the infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act setting and those have been very, very successful from our perspective and having the buy in from the White House and OMB everyone in the same room all at the same time. It Just shortens the discussion. So it’s not a game of telephone.

Tom Temin  And I should have thrown in the CHIPs, act two, which is maybe a little bit of a country cousin in terms of scale, to inflation reduction and infrastructure. But here again, you’ve got money going to what some say, would be subsidizing a profitable industry in the United States. And why they don’t make the same chips as China is kind of their problem. But are you again, the group CIGIE, looking in the effected members looking at ways to make sure we don’t have the next cylinder of chips, so to speak?

Mark Lee Greenblatt  Yeah, that’s always a big topic for us is learning those lessons and applying those best practices going forward. This is one role that I’m very proud that the council plays in establishing and facilitating those very types of collaboration moments. That’s something that I’m very proud of. And yes, so I think those lessons are being learned and folks are communicating at a robust level, which is exactly what I think the American taxpayers would want.

Tom Temin  And a final question, we’ve been talking somewhat about budgets for IG operations themselves outside of the prac. And all of that our IG offices adequately funded, do you feel?

Mark Lee Greenblatt  Well, I think the answer to that question is always no, there’s always more that we can do. Right? There’s so much it’s fertile ground out there that we could do. The one thing that we’ve been focusing on with respect to the budget question at the council level, is looking at our smaller IGs. Many of them, their budgets are actually subsumed within their agency budget, and they don’t have a separate line, right. And what happens is, when you have these rainy days where you have these tough budget days, the agencies can read the OIG s budget. And so Congress is thinking they’re giving the OIG X amount, say, but the agency can dip into it, or the agency can give the OIG a tough time if they want to hire another auditor or another investigator. And that flies directly in the face of the Inspector General Act. And so that’s something that we’ve been working on with the White House with OMB and with our stakeholders on the Hill to say, hey, let’s try to separate those folks out. It’s a requirement in the IG Act, that it’s separated in the President’s budget. And we’ve had great success over the last year in separating them out. And that gives them that big measure of independence. So the agency can’t read their budgets. And that’s what all of us want is to have that independence inside all of our OIGs. And that’s a big step. I’m very, very proud of that, that we’ve been moving forward in preserving those smaller OIG budgets and keeping their independence robust.

The post These inspectors general are on the job year ’round 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.

With a big and contentious election coming on, there’s a new Hatch Act sheriff in town. Attorney Hampton Dellinger was recently confirmed as Special Counsel, leading the Office of Special Counsel. For some current topics, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin was joined in studio by Hampton Dellinger.

Interview Transcript: 

Tom Temin  And you are replacing the redoubtable Henry Kerner who has moved on to the Merit Systems Protection Board. But having chatted with you before the interview, you’re no slouch either. Tell us about yourself, where the heck do come from?

Hampton Dellinger Well, mainly from North Carolina. I was born in Mississippi, raised in Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina went to University of Michigan for undergrad Yale Law School served as the Deputy Attorney General in North Carolina. I was head of the Office of Legal Policy in the US Justice Department from 21 to 23. And was planning to return to private practice but was asked if I’d be willing to be nominated to head up the Office of Special Counsel. And I’m glad I said yes.

Tom Temin And what have you found there? So far,

Hampton Dellinger I have found an amazingly small agency of incredibly dedicated, talented colleagues, it’s daunting to think about it. And even to say it, we’ve got 2.2 million federal employees. And there are approximately 130, members of the Office of Special Counsel with this incredibly broad mandate, we do enforce the Hatch Act. And we take that very seriously. It’s something that I’ve thought about a lot and have made an announcement about, but we also look to deter government misconduct, and maybe at the core of our mission, protect whistleblowers within the federal workforce, to make sure that they are respected and protected.

Tom Temin And what are your observations, I guess, about the comprehensiveness of whistleblower protection, at least legally in the federal government? Because, you know, every five or six, seven years, there’s a gambit, legislatively to extend protections. And that includes the federal contractor side of it, what’s your sense of how much the blanket covers that bed at this point?

Hampton Dellinger I know there’s more to be done on the legislative side. And that’s something I will think about and talk about in the future. But the law on the books is robust. And obviously, Senator Grassley, the Whistleblower Protection caucus in the Senate have been at the forefront of this effort. But if you look at the protections as written, I think they’re very meaningful, and they ought to give a level of comfort that federal workers who see wrongdoing can speak up and should not and will not be retaliated against. Obviously, it’s up to our office to be vigorous. And we are in making the protections on paper reality. In practice, the Merit Systems Protection Board, obviously, as the Adjudicator plays a key role. And it is wonderful that they now have all three members of the board, we went five years without a quorum. And so those protections, I think, as a practical matter, dipped because the backstop of the MSPB was not functioning as intended. But the MSPB is back. My predecessor Henry Kerner was just sworn in. And he has got incredible experience having been at the Office of Special Counsel and knowing what the law is and how to protect whistleblowers. So, I think there is a lot of protections that are available right now.

Tom Temin All right, and what about on the contractor side in the sense of that?

Hampton Dellinger I have not been able to delve into that or get in the way that I wanted. The first thing I did, Tom, when I got to the agency just a couple months ago, is have one on one individual meetings with every one of my coworkers. So that was wonderful, meaningful, took some time. It also brought home though how small we are the fact that I could do that and have a meaningful meeting with every colleague. So certainly, there is the opportunity for federal government employees to call out misconduct by contractors. But that’s an area I want to spend more time looking into in the near future.

Tom Temin We’re speaking with Hampton Dellinger. He’s special counsel in the Office of Special Counsel. And you mentioned Senator Grassley, this is one area in generally Hatch Act Two, for that matter, that both sides of the aisle so to speak, pretty much come together when it comes to whistleblowers.

Hampton Dellinger You’re exactly right. And that’s part of the attraction for me, you know, at the Justice Department is a nonpartisan agency, the rule of law is what governs when you’re a federal prosecutor, not partisanship. So, I was very comfortable with that. I worked in the state attorney general’s office, we were focused on the rule of law, and not politics. And so, the fact that it’s really a cornerstone of the Office of Special Counsel, that it is above politics, apart from politics, it’s even handed. That’s something that attracted me to the agency and I’ve tried to continue that tradition.

Tom Temin And let’s talk about your recent Hatch Act guidance because everyone is kind of bracing themselves for this election? I don’t even want to say upcoming, because we’re already into the campaign, because the two candidates were decided by the party so early. And because it is, I think it’s fair to say unusually contentious. And there is such a vast contrast between the positions and the candidates. Is there in your sense, maybe a little bit more? I don’t know magnetic attraction to things that would violate the Hatch Act this time around.

Hampton Dellinger Well, I’m sure election years always lead to an uptick in Hatch Act related questions for one. But I do want to make clear, Tom, that my announcement about the Hatch Act was not related to this election was not related to a past president, current president or future president or White House. For me, it was based on coming into the office looking at the law and trying to make sure I was in the agency was following the requirements of the law as closely as possible. So, the major point of the announcement, I think, which is received the most attention is the belief that as it’s written in the law, White House personnel should be subject to the same enforcement scheme as the 2 million other federal workers. And that’s in the statute. So, I’m happy to talk more about it. But I want to make sure there’s no misunderstanding with your audience. This wasn’t about this election, or any politician. This was about me doing my best to try to follow the law.

Tom Temin And when you refer, again, in the announcement to White House personnel, that’s really several types of employees there is the politically appointed Senate confirmed level, then there is a level below that that may not be Senate confirmed. You have the Schedule C; I believe it is people and so on. So, there’s not one type of White House employee.

Hampton Dellinger That’s right. But I want to be clear that the law is written has one carve out, and that is for Senate confirmed right personnel. And actually, as I understand it, I don’t think there’s many if any Senate confirmed personnel who would work in a typical White House, they are in the rest of the throughout the agency. So, for Senate confirmed personnel, Congress has said if my office sees the Hatch Act violation, we should report that to the President. And in that narrow category of presidentially appointed Senate confirmed personnel, the President will decide should there be some type of sanction or punishment for a Hatch Act violation. But for everyone else, the law says my office should take those matters, it has to take those matters that says my office shall take those matters to the Merit Systems Protection Board. So, I understand my office had a different view before I got there. But a lot of that was driven by the lack of a functioning Merit Systems Protection Board. So, for five years, as we said, there wasn’t a quorum, so there wasn’t any place to go. But now the board is back. The law is clear. And I think a level playing field for all federal workers, whether you’re in the west wing or western Kansas, or on the West Coast, is the right thing, and it’s what Congress has said.

Tom Temin Right, so that means functionally, then it’s the same for everybody except that carve out group a complaint is lodged, and then you pursue it through the MSPB. Because there is one.

Hampton Dellinger Exactly, exactly a Congress was very clear. On this point. Again, the case is we’re going to bring, and the office has traditionally actually brought in front of the Merit Systems Protection Board, or the most serious cases, egregious conduct, recidivists conduct, you know, Hatch Act violations over and over again, our office focuses a lot on education and training. We’re trying to prevent Hatch Act violations before they happen. And we’re very focused on that we can issue warning letters, we can ask someone we believe who has violated the Hatch Act to immediately rectify to delete the tweet that may have sought campaign contributions, for example, for a particular candidate. So, we’re looking to do lots of things in addition to taking the most serious cases all the way.

Tom Temin We’re speaking with Hampton del injure, he’s special counsel in the Office of Special Counsel. Well, let’s talk about what constitutes you know, Hatch Act violations. I mean, it gets trivial a button on someone’s lapel, or even I’ve heard over the years, a bumper sticker, you know, that you drive into the federal garage, and then they’re saying people, hey, we’re gonna at lunchtime have a fundraising for candidate XYZ, clearly egregious. And so, tell us about the balance of free speech for government people and this Hatch Act situation.

Hampton Dellinger That’s exactly right. Tom, Congress has said two things and the courts as well have backed up Congress on these points that one, we need to have an apolitical Federal workforce, nonpartisan, and so doing politics on the job at the office is not allowed. And that’s really the core of the Hatch Act. It’s to protect, merit based a political, non-political, Federal workforce. At the same time, federal employees have free speech rights, they have essentially unfettered rights off the job, most of them details@osc.gov, for a couple of caveats, but on the job when it comes to policy matters, who knows better than a government employee about government policy matters. And so Congress and the courts have traded protection so that if you see misconduct if you see law breaking abuse of taxpayer funds, and you’re a government employee, you have those whistleblower protections that we talked about, you always have a right to go to Congress to go to an inspector general to come to my office, the Office of Special Counsel, and even to go to the media to report misconduct. And so, what I tried to make clear in my Hatch Act enforcement update the offices update is that we recognize there’s a balance there. And you don’t want to just pick out a single word that may have had a connection at some point to politics, but now is understood as much if not more in the policy realm and say that words prohibited so we’re looking to create.

Tom Temin Give us an example like Maga.

Hampton Dellinger Maga is one that’s gotten a lot of attention,

Tom Temin or COME ON button or something.

Hampton Dellinger Right? I mean,

Tom Temin come on man, right?

Hampton Dellinger The possibilities are endless. So, the clear, no goes are known as Express advocacy. If you’re on the job, don’t talk about vote for vote against support give to that is clear political advocacy focus on helping to dictate the outcome of an election. And that violates the Hatch Act. But if you’re talking about some policy that you agree or disagree with, that’s not a Hatch Act violation. And I just am trying to say I know the devil can be in the details. And these can be hard closed decisions. But I want federal workers in the public to know that we care about both we care about enforcing the Hatch Act and protecting government employees’ meaningful speech rights.

Tom Temin And it might be a good time to discuss that in the context of when you are not at work. And you may want to help a fundraising drive or a telephone campaign type of thing that is allowable as long as you don’t identify yourself as a federal employee with this or that agency.

Hampton Dellinger Again, in general, I think that’s correct. We have a lot of information@osc.gov. And we are also available, the Hatch Act unit fields, hundreds, if not 1000s of questions, particularly in an election year. So, if anyone has a question about the do’s and don’ts, I would say first start with our website. If in doubt, don’t do it at work, no question. But go to our website, give us a call, send us an email, and we’ll get you a detailed answer. And we’ll try and do it very quickly.

 Tom Temin Right. So, someone could be canvassing say, you know, I guess people still do that door to door, probably not a good idea to say, guess what, I work in the civil appellate division of the Justice Department? Would you vote for candidate XYZ? Yet? Or to say I’m Joe Schmo your neighbor? Would you vote for candidate XYZ?

Hampton Dellinger Yeah, Example A sounds like a particularly bad idea. Right.

Tom Temin  And we should also review the prohibition against running for office that’s only for partisan office and a lot of local offices. And this has been I think, in the cases over the years, there is no such thing as an actual dog catcher. But that’s the example that’s used elected dog catcher, something that is totally nonpartisan, like the sewer board, you know, or the water Board versus, you know, city council member where it does get partisan.

Hampton Dellinger That’s right. And I know this comes up with some frequency in the DMV. And again, I would ask encourage folks to start with our website. We’ve got folks who’ve been doing this, not just for years, but for decades. I think we’ve essentially seen it all. But I’ve only seen it for a couple months. All right.

Tom Temin Well, I’ll put your I’ll put you on the spot one more time. Sure. What about union officials? That is to say, not employees of the Union, but employees of the agency who are on full time official time. This came up I think the last time around there was a federal employee union official was running for city council in Chicago, highly partisan, but I think he was a person who was full time, official time. So therefore, actually not working at the agency in an agency work, maybe a little bit of a limbo type of person.

Hampton Dellinger Could be and I think there’s an additional layer complexity for union members, which are the collective bargaining agreements, the agreements that some unions have with some agencies. So again, I would say the prudent thing to do is to think about it to check with us before you leap,

Tom Temin and maybe just decide what your priorities in life at some point if you Want to jump into partisan politics? Which is everyone’s right? Well, you gotta give up something perhaps to do that, right.

Hampton Dellinger In particular, if you want to do it during the workday, that’s or if you want to do it during your career. Right, right. But there’s a lot of opportunity. And again, this has been directed by Congress, people have very meaningful partisan political speech and activity rights off the clock, on the clock, they are limited, but at the same time, we want to make sure that government workers understand they do have meaningful, nonpartisan speech rights during the work day, and in particularly for whistleblowers. And that’s the core of our mission, which is making sure that whistleblowers are heard, sure, respected and protected. And if they’re retaliated against, we’re gonna do everything we can to make them whole.

Tom Temin And just before we close, I wanted to get your sense of if you have them yet plans for the agency, there’s 100 people, it’s not going to be 5000 people in the next Congress or anything,

Hampton Dellinger right. 130, though, don’t cut the agency even more.

Tom Temin All right, 130. What do you see as plans for just operational and management priorities for the agency as an agency as an agency head? Sure.

Hampton Dellinger Well, I want us to continue what Henry Kerner really instilled, which is this customer focus. And so, we get, you know, four or 5000 complaints a year. That’s a large number, we want to have meaningful interaction with every complainant with every potential whistleblower, to give them information in a timely fashion and do the best we can with every case. And the cases where we see egregious conduct misconduct, retaliation, I want to use all of our authorities. And now with a fully functioning Merit Systems Protection Board, we’ve got the opportunity to be appropriately aggressive, to be zealous, because that’s our obligation as attorneys, and to really fulfill the mandate from Congress, which is to protect whistleblowers in a meaningful way to enforce the Hatch Act, to make sure government employees have free speech rights. I’m very focused on our obligations to make sure returning members of the military get their federal civilian positions back the law known as USERRA. Sure. And we’re very focused on the Veterans Administration. That’s where we get the greatest number of complaints grew up in North Carolina, we think ourselves as America’s most military friendly state. So, I want to do everything we can for the members of the military and those who serve them at DoD and the VA. And

Tom Temin a final question, are you contemplating some process and technology improvements, just to get things faster? You know, at the MSPB, you find out the occasional case, where there’s 10 years of back pay do, which means the case took 10 years to adjudicate. And of course, they’re working through their backlog amazingly, diligently over and MSPB for that period when there was not a quorum. But for OSC, you know, there’s always processes and backlogs and federal agencies, something like kudzu, you always have to be hacking away at it.

Hampton Dellinger Well, I’d say two things, Tom, I want our website, our public facing information or complaint, portal to be as understandable and accessible and user friendly as possible. And the second thing I’m very focused on is to be as transparent as possible about our work in real time. So we have to do right by the whistleblower, and we have legal obligations to protect whistleblower confidentiality and privacy to the fullest extent possible, and at the direction the whistleblower, but working with the whistleblowers who come to our office, I’m looking for ways and there may be announcements and I’d be delighted to come back when we’re ready to do something publicly about how we can be more transparent in real time about what we’re working on about the concerns had been raised with agencies. So more to come.

Tom Temin Hampton Dellinger is Special Counsel in the Office of Special Counsel; we’d be glad to have you back. But thanks for coming in this time.

The post There’s a new Hatch Act and whistleblower retaliation sheriff in town first appeared on Federal News Network.

The GOP-led House Appropriations Committee’s homeland security subcommittee approved its fiscal 2025 DHS funding bill on Tuesday. And the legislation does not include DHS’s request for $5.5 million to support the establishment of a “chief employee experience officer.”

The House bill is now slated for consideration before the full committee. Senate appropriators have yet to release their corresponding spending bills.

DHS’s budget request outlined the department’s vision for the “chief employee experience officer.” It would also be located within the management directorate and staffed by 12 full-time-equivalent employees.

In budget justification documents, DHS states that the new “CEXO” is “crucial to enhancing coordination efforts to promote and elevate the recruitment and retention of top talent within DHS.”

The CEXO would also serve as the senior DHS official in charge of coordinating the department’s activities under President Joe Biden’s executive order on diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in the federal workforce. “At DHS, this function has a broader meaning and purpose to include all facets of the employee experience,” the budget documents add.

While the House subcommittee did not provide a specific explanation for declining to fund the new office, Republicans have broadly sought to stymie the Biden administration’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

The subcommittee’s summary of the funding legislation states the bill “focuses DHS on its core responsibilities,” including by “preventing the department from carrying out its equity action plan or advancing critical race theory.”

But DHS budget documents state “the primary focus” of the new CEXO office “will revolve around our continued pursuit of outreach, recruitment, and the retention of top-tier talent.”

The CEXO would be a member of the senior executive service. The office would also include a deputy CEXO, four program managers, two program analysts, two HR specialists, a budget analyst, and an acquisitions support professional.

DHS officials have celebrated the department’s recent improvements in Federal Employee Viewpoint Surveys (FEVS). But “momentum going forward will be difficult without a dedicated office to ensure that appropriate resources are focused on understanding and improving the employee experience,” budget documents argue.

DHS AI office not supported

The House subcommittee’s bill also didn’t include a requested $5 million to establish a new artificial intelligence office.

DHS has already named Chief Information Officer Eric Hysen in the dual-hat role of “Chief AI Officer.” But DHS’s budget request is also seeking the funding for the new AI office, also in the management directorate, to help support Hysen and the department’s AI task force.

The new AI office would “support implementing infrastructure, technologies, and processes to advance the responsible and ethical use and adoption of AI and the charter of the AI Task Force,” budget documents state. “This includes planning the infrastructure needed for AI and establishing data management and engineering practices to prepare data for use in AI models.”

DHS has staked out ambitious plans for AI, including a goal to lead the government in the responsible use of AI. An AI roadmap, released by DHS this spring, details several specific uses cases, as well as broader policy initiatives focused on AI.

The post House appropriators pan DHS plans for ‘chief employee experience officer’ first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Supreme Court will soon decide whether to overturn a 40-year-old decision that has come to be known as the Chevron Deference. Chevron basically supported administrative latitude of agencies in carrying out laws passed by Congress. The latest case is called Loper Bright Enterprises versus Raimondo. Yes, that is, Commerce Secretary Raimondo. For more, the Federal Drive Host Tom Temin talks with Texas A & M associate law professor Daniel Walters.

Interview Transcript: 

Tom Temin Just give us a brief legal but layman’s understanding of what the Chevron deference was all about and a brief summary of what this latest case against the Commerce Department is all about.

Daniel Walters Sure. So, Chevron is a case decided in 1984 that effectively set up the framework that courts use when reviewing how agencies have interpreted statutes. There’s obviously a lot of case law that goes back before Chevron before 1984. But in Chevron, the court made it very clear how lower courts and the Supreme Court are supposed to review agency interpretations. And essentially, there’s two steps to the analysis. At a first step, the court determines whether the statute is ambiguous. If it’s not, then the courts are supposed to require the agencies to follow the unambiguous language of statutes. If the language is ambiguous, though, the court proceeds to the second step, at which it simply asks whether the agency’s interpretation of ambiguous statutory language is reasonable or not. If it’s reasonable, then the court is supposed to defer to the agency, even if the court might say I prefer a different, reasonable reading of this ambiguous statute. So that’s where deference really kicks in. And that’s why we call it Chevron deference. The courts are supposed to essentially allow agencies to be in the driver’s seat when it comes to interpreting ambiguous statutory language.

Tom Temin So in this latest case, then a company feels that they went beyond reasonable. And that’s the crux.

Daniel Walters That’s correct. Yeah. So, in many, many cases over the years, challenging parties have argued that agencies have misinterpreted statutes. They haven’t earned Chevron deference, whether because they didn’t offer a reasonable interpretation of the statute or at step one, that the statute really isn’t ambiguous. And the courts have sort of dealt with all of these cases, applying Chevron’s framework and determining whether the agency erred. What’s different about this case is the challengers argue that we should toss Chevron out entirely and do something very different, have a different framework for court review of agency interpretation. So, this specific regulation in question had to do with it’s very complicated, but had to do with the Department of Commerce, its ability to require fishermen to pay for the costs of monitors on their fishermen boats, federal monitors, federal monitors. Yeah. So, the Department of Commerce cited some statutory language that it argued supported the action that the department took. But obviously the challengers disagree with that. Now, what’s interesting about the case is it could have been litigated, like all of these other cases over the years within the Chevron framework. But there’s been a lot of momentum building over the years to do something different from Chevron. There’s been a lot of criticisms of Chevron. And so, the challengers in this case really elected to lean into some of those arguments and to say this is the right vehicle to discard Chevron entirely.

Tom Temin It sounds like the growing controversy over the years with Chevron has to do, in some sense, with people’s basic philosophical or political views of how widely government regulation should go. Fair to say?

Daniel Walters Well, I think it’s very interesting, actually. You know, initially Chevron was thought to be sort of a way for more conservative judges to sort of realize their policy preferences. There was a concern that liberal judges, like largely on the D.C. circuit, were using their interpretive authority to constrain the Reagan era agencies that were trying to deregulate. And, of course, Chevron says defer to agency. So, if an agency wants to engage in deregulation, interpreted statutes in very narrow ways, then Chevron allows them to do that just as it allows them to regulate. Right. So initially it kind of had a different political valence that it has now. It’s really only in the last couple of administrations that we’ve really seen a pronounced shift to thinking about Chevron as largely a pro regulatory doctrine. And that is kind of an odd thing when you look at the entire history of the doctrine. But I think it’s fair to say now that it has become coated as sort of a pro regulatory decision and framework because it allows agencies to make a lot of moves in their staff authorizations.

Tom Temin I guess all of these saws have blades on. Both sides. We’re speaking with Daniel Walters, an associate law professor at Texas A&M University. And should the court overturned Chevron. Let’s start with federal agencies that regulate. And that’s most of them. What would the practical effect be, do you think?

Daniel Walters Well, I think in many cases the agencies that won cases under Chevron in prior years are going to have to revisit a lot of those decisions. So, at a minimum, agencies are going to have to go back and say, are all of our rules that we promulgated over the years still on good footing? Do we need to revisit them? Are they likely to survive judicial challenge? So, there will be a lot of searching through the Code of Federal Regulations to see what still stands. I think in addition to that, there will be a lot of adjustment that happens in the lower courts, and that’s probably the biggest implication of changing Chevron. The way I have always understood, Chevron is largely a sort of direction to the lower courts to exercise sort of constrained review. And the Supreme Court, again, going back to the history, early history of Chevron, was worried that lower courts were kind of flexing their muscles too much. So, Chevron was about constraining lower courts. And now what’s going to happen is if we get rid of Chevron, the lower courts are going to be liberated to engage in all kinds of de novo statutory interpretations. That could lead to a lot of circuit splits. So, I think the practical implications of discarding Chevron, if it in fact happens, is the lower courts are going to have to figure out some kind of coordinated approach that doesn’t lead to chaos. That really is a very likely outcome.

Tom Temin It sounds like it could also mean that you would have different states with different flavors of that level of court, having different interpretations of what comes before them.

Daniel Walters That’s quite possible. Whether it’s federal district courts or circuit courts, expect all kinds of inter-regional, interstate disputes about what statutes mean, and even just what rules are in effect at any given time. Because some states may say an agency regulation is invalid and there might be conflicting decisions in other states, other district courts. So, I think it’ll be a while until we figure out what the full implications of overturning Chevron are. But that’s very likely one that we’ll have to sort through.

Tom Temin And you have written to that proponents who say that overturning Chevron would force Congress to write more specific laws so these questions wouldn’t come up like, yes, you can specifically regulate CO2 or no, you can’t if you’re the EPA and so on. Or, you know, is that puddle really a U.S. waterway, this kind of thing? But you’re arguing that it actually may not be the case that Congress would be forced to write more and more specific laws.

Daniel Walters Yeah. So, a sort of common theme across many administrative law domains right now is this kind of theory that if you change administrative law doctrine, you might change Congress’s incentives to promulgate statutes. So, we see this with Chevron. We have also seen it with the non-delegation doctrine. The argument is essentially that we’ve sort of created perverse incentives for Congress with all of these very deferential doctrines and kind of hands-off approach that the courts have adopted. So, in theory, it might make some sense that if you change those doctrines, you might change congressional behavior. And that certainly was you know, what Paul Clement argued in Loper Brite, the case involving overturning Chevron. And it came up in a lot of the briefing as well. Now, there are a lot of reasons to be skeptical of that hypothesis as well. Congress is a very complicated institution. It has a lot of different incentives. Crosscutting incentives and administrative law doctrine is just one of those things that might plausibly affect Congress. So how big of an impact would it be? Could we measure it? Those are the kinds of questions that I wanted to ask as a law professor and a social scientist. So, what I did was I looked at what has happened in the states. State court systems have their own deference doctrines, and they vary quite a bit compared to the federal case. So, we actually have kind of a living laboratory to see what happens when different states adopt different approaches. And it turns out that there’s not a lot of evidence that overturning Chevron and going to what we call de novo review, kind of an independent judicial judgment of what the statute means, that that has any effect on subsequent legislative behavior. So that’s the basic finding of the of the study.

Tom Temin And this case could be decided. The decision could come out as early as today.

Daniel Walters That’s right. Any time between today and sort of the end of June is a possible outcome.

The post Supreme Court case that could change 40 years of how government operates first appeared on Federal News Network.

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.”

The post House GOP propose defunding IRS Direct File, further budget cuts to enforcement first appeared on Federal News Network.