Federal managers realized that offering transactions online would, to some extent, let citizens do things when they wanted or could, and not accorfding to government field office schedules.

Now people can access countless government services digitally. Just as you can buy a China-made garden hose from Amazon at 3 a.m., citizens can renew their passports, say, on Juneteenth or Sunday afternoon. You don’t print out the passport; it still requires approval, manufacting and mailing.

Like it or not, though, in-person appointments remain a part of what the government must offer citizens. The IRS, Postal Service, Agriculture Department, Veterans Affairs, Social Security and parts of Homeland Security come to mind. Collectively they operate thousands of field locations of widely varying size.  Dramatically as digital services have grown, demand for the in-person experience won’t go away.

In fact, the two work together, if by “digital experience” you include telephone call center operators whose ability to help people is aided by access to comprehensive data about the caller. At the IRS, according to recent analysis by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), agency experts resolve some 30% of questions over the phone — so people avoid the need to make an appointment to come in.

In doing its analysis, TIGTA auditors visited a sample of what the IRS calls special Face-to-Face Saturday Help, posing as taxpayers. The monthly events took place at some 90 locations during the 2023 filing season. (IRS repeated them during the most recent tax season.) At some of the first come, first served events, TIGTA’s Carl Aley said, people waited as long as seven hours. In a few cases, the doors shut before the auditors could get service.

Answers they did get were generally accurate according to tax law. But point is that the IRS has real demand for in-person during times when the average single or family taxpayer has time. Weekdays 9-5, the IRS lets people schedule appointments. In fiscal 2023, TIGTA said, the 363 Taxpayer Assistance Centers (TACs) conducted 781,748 appointments. That may not match the billions and billions served by McDonald’s, but it keeps rising as the country grows and Congress convolutes the tax code.

As agencies work to modernize their online services and improve customer experience, why not rethink the in-person experience? Why not have regular evening and weekend hours for tax and Social Security questions? Why continue like the restaurant that closes when more people can get there?

You might ask, what about the workforce? Lots of people across the industries like night work, or are fine with weekends that might be a Tuesday and Wednesday or a Monday and Tuesday. 24/7 work occurs in some places throughout government already. Air traffic controllers or border patrol agents work ’round the clock, so why not those knowledge workers who deal with the public? Maybe not 24/7, but at least some time beyond 9-5.

Some states offer off-hours functions. Last year I needed a certain permit from a neighboring state. I made a 6:30 p.m. appointment. I’d applied and received affirmation online, but the permit required obtaining in-person.

It was a longer drive than I expected. Turned out the office was open to something like 7:30. When I arrived after dusk the building was locked. But the guard sensed why I was there, let me in, and directed me to a brightly-lit, first-floor office. A super friendly clerk took care of the matter literally in a matter of minutes. So that’s what’s possible.

Good for the IRS for trying Saturday drop-in tax help. The agency has also offered extended Tuesday and Thursday hours during tax season. It knows its demand signals.  This should become part of every in-person agency’s thinking.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By Michele Sandiford

Tax form mistakes are 41 times more common on paper forms than through e-filing.

Source: The Motley Fool

The post How about night and weekend customer service — in person? first appeared on Federal News Network.

Google, for example, urges people to try its Gemini. They’ve built the program into the company’s mail and word processing applications, but you have to opt in. I finally dismissed the notice after it popped up every time I open one of my accounts. Microsoft is no better. It pushes its Co-pilot function everywhere you look. What I’d like from Microsoft: Update the scroll function to work on scheduling appointments or meetings. The functionality there feels like it dates to Windows 286.

Technical people at all of the IT conferences dutifully reassure audiences that artificial intelligence won’t replace people. They say, rather, it will “augment” people by doing routine or low-value tasks. Or it will help prioritize or stage work according to some factor. They keep saying this because enough people must worry about replacement by software.

And let’s acknowledge the fact that AI has already infiltrated daily life. The best commercial digital services and most software applications contain AI augmentation.

I believe that. AI can certainly augment a million tasks and take away cut-and-paste drudgery. AI, though, consists of software. The only people it will likely replace are programmers, those who code. Robots, on the other hand, have replaced people on assembly lines and in certain dangerous exploratory situations. They’ll eventually replace the proverbial hamburger flippers. AI will improve physical, mechanical robots, but it won’t directly replace people.

You don’t have to look far to see the kinds of work AI can maybe help but never replace. I talked the other day with Chris Mark. He works from Pittsburgh for the Mine Safety and Health Administration, part of Labor. Mark earned a Service to America Medal nomination. To greatly simplify it, he discovered how lateral, or tectonic, land movement contributes to mine roof collapses. Roof collapses, a vertical phenomenon, constitute the principal danger to miners’ lives. Because of Mark’s work, mine layout and design techniques have led to more stable mines and steadily fewer annual deaths. He developed software to help mine builders make better calculations.

What a story. At 19 years old, Mark didn’t feel college seemed all that enticing. Born in Greenwich Village, growing up in Manhattan, at 20 he became a coal miner in West Virginia. That’s tough work. Eventually he earned a doctorate in mining engineering before embarking on his long federal career as a  mine researcher and, later, regulator.

We were chatting about Pittsburgh and my visual memories from childhood of flame-belching steel mills and glowing slag heaps. A sudden thought popped into my head. How could AI replace someone like Chris Mark?

So many federal jobs require experience and intuition. Janet Woodcock retired as principal deputy commissioner at the Food and Drug Administration. She’s legendary for reforming drug approval processes and for hectoring Congress to let FDA collect user fees from the generic drug makers. She also pushed for automation and electronic forms to help evaluators deal with what had been trailers full of paper submissions.

No doubt future FDA improvements will come from AI to speed up document discovery, risk analysis and clinical test interpretation. People will think up the use cases and make the decisions.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By Michele Sandiford

The first coal mine in America was established in 1701 in Midlothian, Virginia.

Source: Geogrit.com

The post Why artificial intelligence will never replace your job first appeared on Federal News Network.

The company he co-founded, Sun Microsystems, did just that. It concentrated on a single class of product. The market for dedicated engineering workstations using specialized reduced-instruction-set processors eventually gave way to PCs as microprocessors and software grew more capable. But the seven-word strategy remains a useful way to think about life.

I call May through September the “Sammies Season” on The Federal Drive with Tom Temin show. Each week we air an interview with one of the finalists in the Service To America Medals program put on by the Partnership for Public Service. Many of the finalists really have changed the world through strong focus on something specific.

Bob McGaughey chuckled over having attended the initial reception for the Sammies finalists. The research forester with the U.S. Forest Service exhibited a reaction many Sammies finalists have expressed to me over the years. In effect: “What am I doing here?” They’re often modest about accomplishments manifestly impressive to others.

McCaughey early on learned programming. For many years, his enduring opus has concerned something that sounds arcane. He developed a program that takes data generated by light detection and ranging data, LiDAR. LiDAR, from airborne instruments, by itself produces lots of data but not much wisdom. McCaughey’s FUSION program makes LiDAR data useful in assessing large areas of forest or any other type of terrain.  He’s always improving and adding to the program, which is freely distributed for use by anyone needing to interpret LiDAR data.

If you think the Forest Service has an important mission, then you can see how a single forester tapping away in C++ has helped enable that mission.

For some, the arrowhead is aimed at a theme. For the Government Accountability Office’s Biza Repko, its delving into narrow corners of the transportation system and pulling out ways to improve safety. She nudged the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration to diversity the anatomies of crash test dummies so they’re no longer all average-sized males. She prodded more than the tiny sliver of the railroad industry participating in a safety reporting program.

I once interviewed a man who’d been a NASA project scientist for decades. He oversaw a pair of satellites starting through their conception in 1972, their launch in 1977, and then for decades after. If I recall correctly, it was the Voyager I and II devices, which zoomed around several planets and eventually left the solar system.

Talk about dedication. I remember asking offhandedly if the satellites were like members of his own family, he’d been doting over them for so long. He enthusiastically said yes, they were an abiding presence at the dinner table discussions as his own human children were growing up.

You see this focus in companies too. A small Virginia company called Electra.aero concentrates on an extreme niche: very short takeoff and landing, hybrid powered airplanes with a technique known as blown lift. How’s that for specialized? It has development contracts with the Navy and Air Force. Like a hybrid car, the company’s planes have both batteries and an engine to charge the batteries. I asked founder John Langford if fuel capacity was therefore the flight distance limiter. He said, no, it’s people’s bladders. Because the planes at this point have limited payload capacity, they aren’t capable of carrying amenities like lavatories and associated plumbing aloft.

Such people don’t fit the cliched descriptions like “single minded.” Neither fanatics nor zealots, they simply have marshaled abiding enthusiasm for something important and for which they have talent. One presumes they have hobbies or other interests, but professionally they don’t dissipate their energies.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By Michele Sandiford

Approximately 25% of all Western medicines on the market today come from plants found only in tropical rain forests.

Source: Arbor Day Foundation

The post Success comes from ‘all the wood behind one arrowhead’ first appeared on Federal News Network.

The low coefficient of engagement employees have with their agencies stems from many possible factors. Top among them: leadership, functional performance, work environment. The low scores don’t necessarily mean employees hate the agency or working there.

As aside, it could. Ranked just above the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency lies the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Lurid stories of an environment of sexual harassment and a hot-tempered yet oblivious chairman have engulfed the agency. Even when an apparently toxic leader agrees to quit, it’s not until the Senate confirms a successor, which means employees could be stuck with him for another year. Hardly a recipe for improving an employee engagement index of 62 — down four points from last year.

At the Social Security Administration, a combination of workload, dated business processes and technical debt lead to overworked people and bad customer service. That’s according to Dustin Brown, who just joined SSA as chief operating officer. He left the Office of Management and Budget, where he’d spent 23 years.

In a forthcoming interview, Brown said the 2025 appropriation request will be crucial to improving staffing levels and technology support. The agency has requested an 8% boost. Officials want to improve basics like telephone query wait times and resolution rates. He said that two mornings a week, Commissioner Martin O’Malley holds “security stat” meetings to review performance metrics. O’Malley used that technique as governor of Maryland and mayor of Baltimore. Brown said detailed data and line employee input both inform decisions.

The ‘Commish’ named three priorities, Brown said: Reducing phone call wait times, speeding up disability claim and appeal processing, and fixing chronic problems with over- or underpaying benefits.

Brown called O’Malley a hero in the performance management community. By coincidence, that phrase came up in my interview with Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service.  Stier said this of the places-to-work scores:  “This is about better performing organizations and better mission achievement.”

Becoming a good place to work, then, requires a combination of leadership commitment to it. That and finding the technology and money resources to carry out performance goals. There’s no time to lose when, in some offices, attrition amounts to more than 20% a year.

As someone about to become a Social Security retirement benefits recipient myself, I’ll be watching to see how much the O’Malley-Brown leadership combo raises those scores.

As I covered extensively last year, the Bureau of Prisons had the lowest place-to-work index last year, 35.5. This year it’s a little better, but only to 38.1, putting the bureau again in the unfortunate spot as worst place to work in the federal government. It needs higher pay, more people who stay longer, and a vast improvement program for its crumbling facilities.

One federal observer who is intimately knowledgeable about BOP wondered why Director Colette Peters didn’t insist that the Biden Administration ask for the billions in overdue renovation with a threat to resign otherwise. It’s difficult enough to come to work and mingle closely with dangerous people. It’s another to do so in a leaky, moldy workplace.

In the past year, BOP has closed a couple of prisons, reassigned a couple to different security levels. It hasn’t solved its fundamental staffing and facilities problems.

The great NASA administrator Charles Bolden was determined to put NASA on the path to number one in the Best Places rankings. He still lives in the local area. I’ll bet if Peters rang him up, he’d share his strategy over a cup of coffee.

Nearly Useless Factoid 

By: Michele Sandiford 

In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed George N. Peek to head the first and second Export-Import Banks.

Source: EXIM: Export-Import Bank of the United States

The post Having best places to work means the government has worst places first appeared on Federal News Network.

This in spite of the fact that the same few agencies generally occupy the top slots — NASA, Government Accountability Office, Veterans Affairs, and the intelligence community. Not many shocks here.

The low-ranking agencies will be known next week. We in the press get an embargoed preview of the full top-to-bottom lists, so all I can say now is, you won’t find too many surprises there either. One phenomenon: Often individual component agencies or bureaus do much better or much worse than the average for the department. Another phenomenon: The range of indices on that 0-100 scale widens as unit sizes get smaller.

Here’s what I mean:

• Large agencies range from 82.5 for NASA to 52.1 for XXX.
• Mid-sized agencies, 87.2 for top-ranked GAO to 57.7 for bottom ranked XXX.
• Small agencies, 93.6 for the National Indian Gaming Commission to 40.6 for XXX.
• Agency subcomponents,  96.7 for the office of Negotiations and Restructuring at the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation to  38.1 for XXX.

In other words, employee engagement operates in a highly localized fashion.

That means, in turn, that the quality of local or unit management seems to be the determinant of employee engagement.

I don’t think it’s mission. Yes, NASA has the most exciting mission. GAO too has a highly important mission, just not one that makes for great garden party talk. But other agencies with exciting or crucial missions fall flat.

Neither does top leadership seem to be a determinant of engagement. Continuity of leadership has only a mild correlation with scores. The cabinet departments more or less retained their relative rankings during more than three years of the Biden administration and its stable secretary roster.

Performance isn’t necessarily a determinant. The Federal Trade Commission has lost case after case in court, yet it ended up in the top ten of mid-sized agencies.

If size of the measured agency or bureau has the most leverage on engagement scores, that means it’s not the secretary or administrator or director that matters the most, but rather the head of that bureau or division. The secretary might be a hack or a genius, but it’s managers people interact with daily that have the most effect on how people feel about their employer. What’s the old saying: People don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses.

Two additional notes

Did you notice that yesterday the Dow Jones Industrial Average briefly reached 40,000? It hit 10,000 in 1999, in Bill Clinton’s second term as President. It hit 1,000 in 1972, during Richard Nixon’s first term. Goes to show, shovel as much as you can into your Thrift Saving Plan. To the extent you can, leave it there. The Dow is neither The Market nor your account, but it shows how the markets do over the long term.

I would like to note the untimely passing of Peg Hosky, an enduring and well-known presence in the federal information technology market. Peg had a knack for drawing industry and high level federal managers together in various forums to talk about how to improve government. She brought energy and enthusiasm to this work and to the various IT-related associations in which she was involved. Having known her for more than 30 years, I can say, Peg will be missed. To her husband Tom, daughter Claudia and son John — who formed her immediate family and the cohorts in her principal enterprise, FedInsider —  Federal News Network and I send our condolences.

Nearly Useless Factoid 

By: Derace Lauderdale

For the fifth consecutive year, Olivia and Liam are America’s most popular baby names.

Source: Social Security Administration 

The post Best Places to Work: How to read the results first appeared on Federal News Network.

The long running meme about how you’ll be utterly unremembered in 100 years seems to have picked up steam lately. Maybe the Tik Tok generation has discovered it. I won’t repeat it here; it seems profound but only in the way of greeting card copy.

Yeah, we’re all dead and forgotten in the long run. All the more reason to make the best of the time we do have. That includes the retirement phase, the phase that in some quarters is called a crisis. Results of one recent survey has it that one in five adults over the age of 50 has exactly zero in retirement savings. That study, by the AARP, also found that 61% of such folks “are worried they will not have enough money to support them in retirement.”

The AARP study, though, doesn’t quite square with the 2024 Retirement Confidence Survey from the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI). It found 74% of retirees “are confident they will have enough money to live comfortably throughout retirement.” The survey also found 72% of retirees, and 78% of people still working, worry about inflation.

The intangible, the level of worry exists in people’s heads. Retirement cash you can measure and count. The EBRI survey also examined how many people have actually calculated what they’ll need in retirement. Only half of working people and retirees have actually run their own numbers.

That’s understandable. From personal experience, I can tell you calculating your retirement income needs entails a lot of searching — of both your receipts and your soul. You’ve got to fill out worksheets, keep from kidding yourself, and nudging your financial advisor, if you have one. It requires honesty about what you blow money on now, and what expenses you could jettison if need be.

Some people might fear what the calculations will show. What if, for instance, it says you need $500,000  or $1 million in savings to go along with Social Security, but you’re 62 and only have $250,000 saved up? You might get a cold water shock, but at least you can proceed with your life in knowledge.

Luckily federal employees have one of the lowest-load, easy-to-use retirement accumulation mechanisms in the form of the Thrift Savings Plan. One of my regular show guests, Abe Grungold, lists five simple things to do or not do, to ensure you put away the maximum in your TSP account. Contribute the maximum matching about of 5% of your salary. Don’t listen to social media dopes talking about investment strategies; the fund managers have already abstracted that task for you. Avoid constantly changing your fund mix in an attempt to time the market. Don’t use your TSP funds to buy annuity instruments. Make sure you repay loans you make to yourself against your TSP balance.

Social Security, an important part of FERS annuitants’ incomes, made news with the latest report placing insolvency of the trust funds in 2033 or 2035. That supposedly means beneficiaries would start seeing their benefits cut. Politicians who let that happen would see Claude Pepper rise out of the grave and come at them with a scythe. Social Security has IOUs it can call on the Treasury to continue regular payouts. If they had guts, Congress could do a reengineering of the payroll tax and benefits- vs. -age schedules like it did in 1980, but don’t hold your breath.

It all ends up on the debt anyhow. Not to debate Social Security policy, just to say options exist to keep it going.

You and I won’t be remembered 100 years after we’re gone. Johnny Carson is largely unknown already to Generation X. Shakespeare died in 1616, yet every year you can attend dozens of Shakespeare festivals. They might even still mention him occasionally at Harvard.

Nearly Useless Factoid 

By: Michele Sandiford 

According to the USDA, California produced 92% of the citrus grown in the U.S. for fresh consumption in 2023.

Source: Citrus Industry Magazine

The post Worried about retirement prospects? Run the numbers! first appeared on Federal News Network.

According to Federal News Network’s recent survey, conducted by reporter Drew Friedman, a substantial number of respondents cited a lack of local lunch options as a reason they prefer maximum telework. They said lunch availability coupled with poor office design combine for a less-than-optimal office situation.

In the world of work, lunch looms as a big deal. In my own career, I’ve been lucky, having worked in small town and urban locations surrounded by great options. The Peterborough Diner, Nonie’s, Hunan Pagoda, Flash’s Cafeteria and Italia Deli live on in my fond memories. Although the days of a juicy hamburger and cup of coffee for $1.50 are likely over.

The presence of food options varies hugely by location, though. From published reports, major urban centers like Washington, D.C., San Francisco or St. Louis have lost many establishments. Even in these places, restaurant population varies by neighborhood, even by block. Worse are suburban office parks and isolated places like the Department of Homeland Security headquarters, where people deal with the one or two on-site delis or convenience stores, shlep in their cars or brown bag it.

Yet in the D.C. area, for instance, check out places like Hyattsville, Maryland or the DelRay section of Alexandria, Virginia that are out-of-the-way in a corporate office sense. They’re brimming with restaurants and sidewalk traffic.

One time many years ago, I visited Hewlett-Packard headquarters in Palo Alto, California. They showed me Bill Hewlett’s open-style cubicle/office. My eyes bugged out, though, at the cafeteria, a vast, multi-option food court essentially, where you could eat something different every day of the week. I’m guessing that’s long gone, as the legacy company has undergone round after round of breakups and mergers during the intervening years.

I suspect the lunch issue is proxy for the more generalized resistance to return-to-the-office among the cubicle class. No one has cracked the hard stone at the very center of the debate  — namely, how people conduct the interaction necessary for a well-functioning organization.

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the Oversight and Accountability Committee, said in a recent hearing that some agencies’ customer service has suffered. He said congressional staff can’t get people on the phone at IRS or the Department of Veterans Affairs because they’re teleworking. If that’s the case, agencies can solve that easily. Desk phones can ring through to cells. They can —and many have — provision public-facing staff with the screens they need to work effectively. This is common in industry. In-person meetings with citizens must, of course, take place in federal offices.

Relationships and collaboration among people in your own agency presents the tougher challenge. A few points:

• People collaborate when they have to regardless of location. Forty-five years ago I worked on a magazine in Boston with editors in New York, Washington, Chicago and Anaheim, California. The sales staff lived in their territories, and would come in for sales meetings from about eight distant locations. Need I say this was before PCs, email and cell phones? We collaborated, and so did the rest of the world. The main staff, though, came to a downtown office five days a week. Chatter among staff members on a million daily details never ceased. I once got youthfully wrathful about something a corporate flack did or said, and slammed down the five-button, dial telephone receiver. Someone in the next office yelled, “Temin’s bangin’ the Bakelite!” Unfortunately, you can’t terminate a call on an iPhone with extreme prejudice.
• Forcing so-called core work days or collaboration days would be just that — forced. People collaborate on the spot for a specific reason, or they come together formally when the organization has a need to get people together. It must set a specific agenda and expected outcomes for gatherings to do anything worthwhile.
• Government is at a disadvantage relative to industry when it comes to meetings. On the private side, bosses can expense sandwich and brownie platters with Dr. Brown’s diet soda. That brings the added bonus of hefty leftovers, which attract a streaming inflow of scavengers. No waste. Government meetings seem more spartan, bring-your-own affairs.
• An old saw among speech givers is that, at a given moment, a third of the audience listens, a third sleeps, and a third thinks of sexual fantasies. Then came BlackBerries and smart phones. On Zoom or Teams, everybody is doing Lord-knows-what. Online or in person, establish a darn good reason for any meeting, keep it short, end it ruthlessly.

And leave time for a long lunch break.

Nearly Useless Factoid 

By: Michele Sandiford 

The state where workers earn the highest median annual wage is Massachusetts, where the median income as of 2023 is about $60,690.

Source: CNBC.com

The post 80%, maybe 100%, of life is showing up…for lunch. first appeared on Federal News Network.

That’s what the government — which still operates a modified version of the Rural Electrification Administration — might do.

The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, by statute, sunsets a year from September 2025, more than five years after onset of the pandemic itself. This seems logical on first glance. What will be left to oversee years after the trillions have drained away? The sunset model has precedent in the special inspector general operations for Iraq and Afghanistan.

The PRAC, though, received specific funding to construct a data analytics application that uses modern techniques to turn up fraud and abuse.  Congress passed the $2.1 trillion Cares Act in 2020 and the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in 2021. Sadly, Congress funded the $40 million PRAC analytic platform in 2021. To borrow from Mark Twain, hundreds of billions of dollars in fraudulent claims ran away before oversight got its boots on. If the PRAC goes, what happens to the tool?

The potential loss of this tool means a monumental amount of work done by employees of the PRAC. I write about it here because somehow, it feels like a colossal waste of effort. On the practical side, agencies lose the future utility of a way of cutting improper payments. On the human side, it somehow disrespects earnest work to stem a terrible waste of money.

As we’ve reported, the PRAC staff itself early on wished it had an earlier analytic tool. The capability built by the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board disappeared when the sun set on that storied agency in 2015. Note that Horowitz and others at the time urged Congress to preserve it. The request fell on deaf ears. The ill-named RAT oversaw spending under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. It was as if the Navy tossed its guns overboard after a battle.

For more than a year, federal oversight officials have urged Congress to preserve the capabilities of the PRAC . Champions include, not surprisingly, PRAC Chairman Michael Horowitz and Comptroller General Gene Dodaro. Now a Senate bill to do just that, from the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, has bipartisan backing. Horowitz, who is also inspector general of the Justice Department, has publicly vocalized support for the bill. He argues that the program-agnostic application would help IGs with whatever channel of spending they wish to investigate.

Horowitz envisions the PRAC converting into a sort of service bureau for the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency. Its capabilities and analytics staff would remain available for the inspectors general. It would even abet future prosecutions of pandemic fraud.

More than a tool, the PRAC built what it calls the PACE, its analytic center of excellence. To some degree it may look like bureaucratic self-preservation in wanting the software and the people together. That, too, has precedent. But Congress should look at it on a cost-benefit basis. If each million dollars to operate the PACE results in $10 million in fraud recovery, or $100 million in fraud prevention, then why close it?

Prevention most matters to overseers. It should also matter the most to program managers. Good gosh, they must have sensed how many Payroll Protection Plan, low interest loan, or emergency assistance funds dollars would go into the ether, given the overriding imperative to push the money out as fast as possible. That’s pretty much a guaranteed recipe for waste, fraud and abuse. It’s like building a car to go somewhere fast and hoping to add the brakes later.

The heartbreaking extent of pandemic relief fraud will probably never be known. In round figures the Congress appropriated $5 trillion. Charitably, $1 trillion went to false and fraudulent claims. That’s my estimate. Horowitz laments that detect-prosecute-claw back activities can at best recover 10% of the fraud, however much did occur. If a trillion, well then a hundred billion dollars isn’t nothing, but it’s not like preventing a $1 trillion loss in the first place, or maybe $900 billion of it. Or Congress appropriating only $4 trillion in the first place. Imagine that.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By: Michele Sandiford

People reported losing $10 billion to scams in 2023. That’s $1 billion more than 2022 and the highest ever in losses reported to the FTC.

Source: Federal Trade Commission

The post Eternal question: What to keep, what to toss out first appeared on Federal News Network.

We pilot our lives through many stages. I say this as prelude to telling you that I’ve started the glide path to my own retirement after what will have been 17 years at FNN, 32 years covering federal matters in one medium or another, and 47 years of professional work. Readers, listeners and FNN colleagues will be stuck with me for one more year, though, because I don’t like to leave things to the last minute.

Between now and then, columns on retirement and financial matters will continue to focus on federal employees. No weekly diary about me, but maybe an occasional anecdote and the understanding that in certain respects, I’m sort of psychologically aligned with those who are also headed towards retirement.

I’ll say this: The retirement decision brings decidedly mixed emotions.

You feel positive anticipation about a change of pace even, as in my case, you don’t plan to check completely out of your field but just want to dial back the day-to-day grind. Few, even in our building, quite know the energy and persistence it takes me and my producers to get the Federal Drive show finished and ready five days a week, year after year. I’m lucky in that I love the work and operate in a highly supportive organization. I love that moment when, arriving in the FNN garage, I pull off my motorcycle helmet and march upstairs to my studio and dig in to the day’s tasks — multiple and varied.

But your body and psyche somehow get together to tell you when it’s time; that perhaps your capacity for replenishing your daily energy expenditure isn’t quite as resilient as it was a year or five years ago. You want to leave the parade while you’re still hitting your stride.

You feel worry about money. Will Social Security, my union pension, and what my wife and I have accumulated after decades together carry us through? If I had a Thrift Saving Plan account, I’d be one of those TSP Millionaires we write about from time to time. Our financial planner keeps admonishing us not to worry. But I worry.

You feel satisfaction in what you’ve accomplished, tinctured with regret at opportunities not taken or pursued.

You feel uncertainty about your identity. This may be the most potent producer of trepidation about retiring. For so many of us, work is nearly indistinguishable from identity, sense of self and self-worth. I plan to do things in the federal market and stay involved in a limited way. The key to happiness in this mode is maintaining realism and a healthy perspective.

The happy retirees I know find fulfillment in things they now have the time to pursue. My friend and regular Federal Drive guest Bob Tobias gave me a great example just the other day. Bob had a significant career — first president of the National Treasury Employees Union, founder of the Federal Employee Education and Assistance Fund, long-time professor in the Key Executive Leadership Program at American University, among other things.

Every morning, in his home in a rural area of Maryland, Bob spends three hours reading and working at a fairly recent passion: writing poetry and trying to get it published. He also spends time with a group working to enact a legislative ban on Schedule F — the civil service reform tried by the Trump administration, not the IRS tax form.

I know retired feds who chair boards of local charities, who pursue art, and who teach underprivileged kids. They’re not melting into anonymity, but rather acquiring a new identity.

This isn’t good bye. Like I said, I’ll be around for another year. I hope you’ll feel free to send me a note with your thoughts on retirement planning and dealing with the money, healthcare and life issues you’re dealing with.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By: Derace Lauderdale

Among the top 1% of individuals, those between 65 and 69 years saved, on average, nearly $2.7 million for retirement.

Source: RetireGuide

The post Another column on retirement. This time, I’m joining you first appeared on Federal News Network.

That, as you might have guessed, constitues the status of work life for staff members of the Congress of the United States. This finding comes from the Congressional Management Foundation, which surveyed 138 senior staff members. Only 5 percent of the people surveyed answered, but the foundation’s president, Brad Fitch, said the results show clear trends; principally, that the staff of the Congress labors under a peculiar group of people.

I”ll spare you yet another take on the principal issues impeding the car wreck that is Congress. Congressional staff occupy a galaxy less visible to the public, and even to much of the executive branch bureaucracy. Even in my own 32 years of covering government, I’ve spoken to only a handful congressional staff members, fewer even than members themselves. Staff learn early the value of self-attenuation in the shadows of their often egotistical bosses.

But don’t think they’re diffident. In fact, traipsing through the brick tunnels of the Capitol complex are some of the most informed and practically-minded people you’ll find anywere. Name the issue, and you can find members of the congressional staff that possess expert knowledge. And since politics often has the surface grace of ballet but the tactics of a prison yard, staff of one party sometimes know better than their members how to devise compromises with those of the opposite party.

When first-elected members come to town with perhaps green personal staffs, you can bet they learn lot from the committee staffs.

I say this only because the staffs of members of Congress constitute a sometimes underappreciated contributor to the nation’s well-being. If the Congress itself is semi-functional, the blame goes to many factors. Staff isn’t one of them. So it’s good to see at least a sampling survey of the health of this workforce. By contrast, the executive branch workforce is the object of intense, detailed and never-ending study. The annual Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey provides rich data and insight.

Here is a bit of what the Foundation survey found:

• Only 19% of the staff members thinks Congress “correctly functions as a democratic legislature should.” That breaks down to 31% of Republican respondents, 12% of Democratic.
• Only 20% agree that Congress provides “an effective forum” for debating the important questions.
• 81% of Republicans and long serving staff members tend to disagree that “current procedures” give members of Congress the information they need from the executive branch to do their congressional duties. Sure, there’s a Democratic administration. But 46% of Democrats also find information from the executive branch wanting.
• Two thirds of Democratic and Republican staff members would like elected leadership to “enforce the rules and norms of civility and decorum in Congress.” At least they don’t march into the chambers and whack one another with canes.

I spoke with Brad Fitch, the president of the foundation that surveyed congressional staff. A longtime watcher of Congress, Fitch said he doesn’t think the acrimony among members seeps down into staff relations. Otherwise, literally no bill might get written, much less ones the members reject anyway.

Fitch said — and the survey shows this — that the congressional staff sees positive movement in the technology, the workplace tools that have arrived in recent years. The Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress helped here. It sunsetted last year, but now there’s a follow-on caucus. Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-Washington) ably chaired the remarkably bipartisan committee. It came up with a couple of hundred recommendations, a couple of dozen of which Congress implemented. Senior staff are better paid now, and they have somewhat better IT systems.

It seems bizarre that an institution as important as the United States Congress engenders agreement about its own brokenness among its own members, the citizenry, historians and just about everyone else. Just don’t blame the staff.

The post Understatement: Congress doesn’t function properly first appeared on Federal News Network.

Nobody has a guaranteed tomorrow. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t plan for a good retirement. Presuming you don’t climb 1,000-foot rock cliffs without ropes or scuba dive to pet tiger sharks, you can expect some good years after work. The Social Security figures show a man at 65 — the classic retirement date — will live on average another 17 years. A woman at 65 has another 20 years on average. In reality more and more are making it to 90 and beyond.

Why a retirement column today? With two weeks until the tax incoming filing deadline, people are thinking about their finances. Baseball opened yesterday, and wouldn’t it be great to get to those precious few day games without a lot of schedule rigmarole? Plus, given that most federal employees pick December 31st to retire, April 1 still gives you some time to get retirement affairs lined up.

I credit Thiago Glieger of RMG Advisors in Rockville, Maryland, and a regular Federal Drive guest, for the idea. He said his federal clients often knuckle down to retirement planning now, with the holidays, winter and tax filing behind them. My own two cents: Solid retirement planning is also good financial planning generally, no matter how far away your retirement.

Glieger says to think of retirement in three phases — go-go, slow-go, and no-go. Go-go, you’re still relatively young and active. This is when you pack in the more active or strenuous things you want to do while you can. Slow-go, you’re still okay, but maybe slowing down to enjoy more chilling, say with younger family members. No-go is later old age, which might entail assisted living or other forms of help.

You can’t control anything fully. Inflation, though, lies in the zone of totally uncontrollable. Glieger calls inflation the silent retirement killer. You can control how your react in terms of Thrift Savings Plan or 401K strategy. He cautions against substituting  the volatility of higher growth funds like the C  Fund or S Fund for the steadiness of, say, the G Fund, on which inflation will have the most corrosive effects.

In that sense, your TSP is the one element in the TSP-FERS annuity-Social Security trio that is not fixed, or at least not tied to nominal inflation adjustments. Certified financial planner Art Stein, also an alarm-ringer on inflation, points out that FERS and your annuity won’t run out, either, whereas you can wipe out your investments fairly easily. You might be tempted to take more from your savings if inflation reduces the buying power of your FERS annuity, Stein adds.

Like a noxious vapor, inflation seeps into everything.

So, don’t shy away from keeping relative to wide swings, “if you think about not growing your money fast enough, that’s also a pretty big risk. Over time, you may not be able to keep up with your spending,” Glieger said.

Any retirement plan must include a spending plan. Glieger cautions against underestimating what you’ll spend. Some people spend more when they retire; say, because of more travel. Plus, cars, roofs, furnaces and washing machines don’t last forever.

Or at least initially, you buy that bass boat or sewing machine or Beretta shotgun you now feel you’ll have the time to use. Therefore, you’ll want a TSP investment strategy that grows your nest egg at no less than the rate at which you take withdrawals. Or at least ensure the principal lasts until you’re 95 or 100. You don’t want to undershoot the runway.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By: Michele Sandiford

The ratio of women to men over 65 years old is 100 to 76. The ratio of women to men over 85 years old is 100 to 49.

Source: DoSomething.org

The post Planning on retirement? Beware of killer inflation first appeared on Federal News Network.

Two things to know: Presidential transition has already started. And you can participate!

Panelists on an online webinar put on by the AFFIRM group the other day talked all about transition. The speakers, all current or former federal executives, said that helping a transition can be professionally rewarding and even fun, although it requires setting aside your personal politics. Which, when you think about it, you pledged to do when signing up for a federal job in the first place.

Beth Killoran, the chief information officer of the Government Accountability Office, pointed out, “Transition started a year ago, because of what is statutorily required and what the General Services Administration has to do.” She’s former deputy CIO at GSA. She was CIO at Health and Human Services. “I actually had to do the onboarding of the new politicals as part of the transition team,” she said. Before all that happens, so-called beachhead teams, often heavy with campaign-connected people, will come in to start gathering information for the subsequent transition teams.

Jim Williams was, among other things, acting GSA administrator at the end of the Bush administration and oversaw the transition to the Obama administration. GSA ascertains the winner of the election, but long before that it establishes office space and generally makes sure the operation runs smoothly. He said that the Bush administration gave him instructions to make a “seamless and gracious” transition.

So far, it’s always been seamless, although not always gracious. Still, Williams said, “One thing I would say for anybody in the federal government: volunteer. It’s incredibly exciting. It’s always the opportunity to put your best foot forward and get to know the incoming team.” Even when the incumbent president is reelected, “there will be a changeover of people,” Williams said.

Obvious though they may seem to career employees, the specific duties and operational constructs of an agency or a department often mystify and incoming politicals. A lot of information comes in briefing books. Those can lay open everything an incoming will need to know, or not.

As former Office of Management and Budget official Mark Forman put it, “What do people want to know what did people in the agency want to put in the books are not the same.” Briefings can grow complicated, he said, because people at different levels and on different programs or bureaus will each need different sets of information.

That information transfer is therefore a chance to enhance your career and reputation. Roger Baker, who worked on the Veterans Affairs transition team for the incoming Obama crew in 2009, said, “The problem with the briefing books is that’s what they’d like you to know. And, you know, largely, as far as the transition team is concerned, that’s not what they’re worried about. What they’re really worried about is what is it you’re not telling them.”

If you tell them in a non-political way, you can enable a good relationship with the new political team and maybe enhance your own happiness on the job. Williams urged an evenhanded approach to the incoming and outgoing.

“Your job is to support the elected officials,” he said. He added, “Remember how you’re treating the people going out.” In the complex of government, think tanks, non-profits, contractors and law firms, people go and come ’round again.

Forman said to look at transition as a time to shine, but also as a chance to change things for the better.

“I think you need to come in and say, here’s what I think needs to be changed, or here’s what’s broken, what are the options,” Forman said. And let them know your recommendations. “And,” he added, “you also have to provide some credibility that that you can actually succeed in implementing that recommendation. If you answer those three questions, I think you’re gonna be pretty well situated.”

Yes, in many ways the upcoming election looks grim. But don’t let it make you unhappy as a government employee. Transition is a legal and political process, but it’s also an exercise in human relations.

By the way, the World Happiness Report is put together by Gallup, something called the Wellbeing Research Centre and hoity-toities from the University of Oxford. At 23rd happiest, the U.S. is way below Finland, Denmark and Iceland, which rank 1, 2 and 3.  But we’re way ahead of the three most unhappy nations: Lesotho (maybe it’s the elevation), Lebanon and Afghanistan. And we’re happier than  #30 China and #72 Russia.

Nearly Useless Factoid 

By: Michele Sandiford

Per TSA regulations, you can bring a bowling ball into the cabin in carry-on luggage, but not a bowling pin.

Source: TSA

The post With the election coming up, no wonder we’re miserable first appeared on Federal News Network.

One important reason: Mandatory spending is driving the increase, and that’s not precisely connected to staffing requirements.

In all, CBO says, the government will take in just shy of $5 trillion and spend just shy of $6.8 trillion next year. With the debt growing relentlessly, in 10 years so-called discretionary spending — operating civilian and defense agencies — will roughly equal interest payments.

Non-discretionary spending next year, at $4 trillion, stands at more than double the spending Congress is still futzing over, about $1.76 trillion.

Net net? A bag of potato chips now costs $5. And federal employees will get a 2% raise next year.

Members of the Armed Service will get 4.5% pay raise, but their ranks will shrink. Defense spending would only rise 1% under the 2025 proposal. No inflation offset there. The Defense Department is crimping on planned acquisitions, and will cut forces. For instance, the Army’s end strength will fall.  Congress wants an end strength of 442,300 troops. The Army says its force structure is now designed for 494,000. So it’s “restructuring” in part by eliminating what it calls “hollow” elements in the structure. The explanation for all of this sounds counterintuitive, though: It plans to move from counterinsurgency and counterterrorism to “large scale combat operations” by essentially dropping the equivalent of two divisions.

The Navy is requesting an end strength of 332,300 sailors, down by 14,700 authorized for 2023, and down from the request of 346,000 for the current fiscal year. The Air Force asks for 8,000 fewer airmen next year, cutting both active duty and reserves.

I guess this is the way the nation will push back against China, Russia, North Korea, Houthis and the rest. We’ll have to take the administration’s, the military’s and Congress’ word for it.

Projected end strength will vary in both directions for the civilian 2% crowd. VA, which has been on a hiring blitz for a few years, may shed 10,000 people. The IRS, Social Security and Energy will add staff. CISA wants to add 122 people to deal with the expected results of an industry incident reporting rule just out for comment. Maybe they’ll settle for 120.

Regular readers know I follow the Bureau of Prisons closely. The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents many of the correctional officers and other prison staff, has expressed disappointment in the 2025 request. From what I can tell, the administration has asked for $8.6 billion for 2025, down from the $8.8 billion it requested for 2024.  The president of Council of Prisons Local 33, Brandy White, testified last month that authorized prison staffing has fallen by 8,900 to 34,470.

White told the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Criminal Justice and Counterterrorism that of the authorized subset of correctional officers, 20,446, only 12,300 positions are filled. A shortfall of 8,000 officers. And don’t forget, the U.S. has 157,000 individuals in federal custody, some of whom are not nice.

In its budget request for BOP, the Justice Department  states, “The FY 2025 current services level funds critical base operations, such as increases in employee salaries and benefits, as well as increases in medical, utility, and food expenses.” Crucially, the budget request includes “funding dedicated to continuing to increase hiring and retention incentives at its most affected institutions.” The officers say the retention pay boosts — withdrawn from the Thomson, Illinois facility — must remain lest the staffing shortfall expand even further.

It’s up to others to figure out what functions the government should do or not do. I contend, though, that if it does something, it should have enough people to do it right.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By: Michele Sandiford

In 1802, a little over a decade after its creation, the federal government employed 3,905 people. By 1826, that number had more than doubled to 10,415.

Source: The Brookings Institution

The post Welcome to the 2% year: Not as much for fewer people first appeared on Federal News Network.

Until his nomination to OSC, Dellinger was assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Policy. He’s no non-partisan, but presumably he knows the four specific laws — including the Hatch Act —that concern the OSC. Dellinger is no non-partisan, though, as evidenced by some tweets unearthed by Republican Senator Chuck Grassley (Iowa). His answers to Grassley’s questions are worth reading.

Dellinger succeeds Henry Kerner, who has been a sort of jolly warrior on behalf of retaliated-against whistleblowers and other federal employees harmed by prohibited personnel practices.  OCS under Kerner, and his predecessor Carolyn Lerner (now a federal judge), maintained a tough stance on Hatch Act violations. That is, federal employees politicking at work. Dellinger and OSC staff will have to remain both tough and non-partisan in the presidential election now drearily unfolding.

I know we’re not choosing between Adlai Stevenson II and Dwight Eisenhower, but still, election passions never improved any workplace other than campaign headquarters.

The Biden administration nominated Kerner to a seat on the Merit Systems Protection Board. I feel the Senate should confirm him. After a debate cloture vote, the Senate voted in favor of Cathy Harris continuing as MSPB chair, without “acting” on her title. That will maintain the quorum, two of three members. The two members can keep chipping away at a backlog of appeals cases that built up during the MSPB’s five years without a quorum.

When a quorum came back in 2022, it faced, or “inherited” in the board’s words, a backlog of 3,793 cases, some of them going back years. The latest report on case processing shows they’ve cleared 2,560 of them, or 61%. One of my regular correspondents who follows this process in detail, estimated that at the February pace of 264 cases, the board would wipe out the backlog in October of this year.

The average citizen has likely never heard of the Office of Special Counsel or the Merit Systems Protection Board. The gigantic machinery of the federal bureaucracy is difficult enough for people in it, or who follow it closely, to keep up with. Obscure as these two offices might seem, to federal employees they form a sort of supreme court against capricious or worse supervisors. Like all courts, they require effort, time and often expense to access and gain from. Still, the federal workplace and federal employees would be worse off without them.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By: Derace Lauderdale

The Hatch Act was named after Senator Carl A. Hatch of New Mexico, who introduced the bill in 1939.

Source: interestingfacts.org

The post For federal employee justice, some continuity in leadership first appeared on Federal News Network.

The show in fact appeared on other stations before the formation of what was then called Federal News Radio. Bob, in my interview, couldn’t quite remember how many years back it went.

Bob is alive and well, but he’s no spring chicken. He retires from the air having built a large and loyal following of people, mostly federal employees. Bob and his guests served regular plates of advice on financial and estate planning, wealth accumulation, taxes, Social Security and a myriad of related topics.

Low key and self effacing, Bob glided into our studios faithfully every Monday until the pandemic, so I’ve only seen him sporadically in the last few years. For his last show he was here, so we could give him a proper sendoff, complete with cake. He was joined in studio by regulars Marc Levine, an estate and wills lawyer, and Tom O’Rourke, a retired tax attorney. On the phone were benefits consultant Tammy Flanagan, who may know more about Social Security than anyone at the agency itself; and Karen Schaeffer, a certified financial planner.

Couple of things you may not know about Bob. For one, he’s got a dry but sharp sense of humor. A Christian Scientist who eschews most conventional medical practice, he recalled the time, as a child, he was playing football in the street. A Jewish kid, taller and heavier, demanded to know, if Bob were to fall, break an arm and have a bone protrude through the skin, whether he’d go to the hospital.

“I answered,” Bob said, “well, if you were starving, would you eat pork?” That ended the confrontation.

For another: Although soft spoken, Bob has real skill in speaking and guiding a conversation, which explains the steady success of For Your Benefit. Bob explains how an early boss, the late Mr. McCarthy, would give traveling seminars to promote his tax return preparation business. One day McCarthy, without warning, handed full responsibility for the presentation to Bob and left the room.

“I’ll see you at lunch,” the boss said. Bob handled the presentation just fine, and realized, he said, that Mr. McCarthy in some sense knew Bob better than the young Bob knew himself.

More than a guy who knows taxes, Bob is a creator with good business acumen. Early on he co-founded a CPA firm, Turner, Leins & Gold, which operates to this day. He founded the National Institute of Transition Planning, a leading training outfit for federal retirement.

Bob has helped others realize their potential, having learned a lesson from Mr. McCarthy. He sort of pushed Tammy Flanagan to the front of an NITP stage, telling her, “I’m going to be walking backwards,” leaving her to lead the presentation. Now, she’s one of the best.

A couple of columns ago I commented on how, if I do eventually retire, I have so many things I’ll want to do beyond work. Whatever one’s retirement plans, it takes planning for what will give your life meaning. It takes takes planning, and in some ways decades of discipline, to make sure you can pay for it all.

That’s been the appeal of For Your Benefit. Bob and his guests have provided not only information, but some assurance that you can in fact build a secure retirement. The singular voice may be gone, but our coverage of these issues will continue.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By: Derace Lauderdale

Social Security recipients get a 3.2% raise in 2024, compared with the 8.7% increase that beneficiaries received in 2023.

Source: AARP.org

The post We salute a long running voice for federal employees first appeared on Federal News Network.