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China can’t do anything to prevent Congress from passing a budget on time for 2023. But the China competitiveness bill could do just that. With the year-end just three months away now, legislative arguments over the bill threaten budget talks. For how, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin turns to WTOP Capitol Hill correspondent Mitchell Miller.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: Mitchell, what is going on with the China bill and the federal budget?

Mitchell Miller: Right, you would think well, what’s this have to do with the final federal budget, but this is a big thunderbolt here that’s entering the budget talks. Late last week. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he does not like the rumblings that Democrats may still come up with a watered down version of Build Back Better. And he’s threatening to hold up the more than $50 billion China Competitiveness Bill, which has been the focus of months of talks in house and senate conference committee. That’s the legislation designed to improve us production of semiconductors streamline production, known as USICA, the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act. And now this warning came afterward that Democrats had actually made some critical progress on the legislation that would cap the price of prescription drugs separately and deal with energy and climate provisions. This is the legislation that West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin has held up with a variety of reservations and warnings that caused McConnell’s ears to pick up and say, wait a second, if you’re going to move ahead with this. I’m going to hold back on the China Competitiveness Bill. Now Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) wants to get a reconciliation bill for a vote later this month. But with this major reservation issued by McConnell, it now really puts a lot of this in doubt for July.

Tom Temin: And the schedule is kind of iffy, because they’re just running out of time.

Mitchell Miller: Yeah, exactly. I mean, we only have a few more weeks, obviously, in July after this recent break for lawmakers, and then we’ll go on recess in August, when they come back from that, of course, we’ll be right in the middle of the midterm election ramp up. So all of this, again, is pointing to another continuing resolution, even though as is often the case, everyone says they don’t want a CR. But that does seem the way we’re heading right now.

Tom Temin: All right. And well, we’ll have to see how it all plays out. Because sometimes these things have a way of having sudden breakthroughs too, because of those warnings issued.

Mitchell Miller: Right. And I should add that there has been actual progress on the House side. Late last week, they approved in the House Appropriations Committee, all 12 spending bills, so they are basically ready to go. Obviously, there’s some differences here and there. But there is something positive to report on that front

Tom Temin: And closer to home, Congress is starting to get annoyed with the Thrift Savings Plan of all things, because of a botched rollout of their updated system by which TSP account holders can access it.

Mitchell Miller: Right. This was the one that everybody thought was going to be new and improved, right when it came out about at the start of June, they had a variety of technical improvements, or at least they were supposed to be improvements, including a mobile app. But almost immediately, as you know, after this was rolled out, members started to say we’re having problems logging into the system. And then when they had more problems with the technical side of things, they would try to make a call and try to get somebody to talk to them and get them through. Well, that of course put more pressure on the system. So the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board has said there has been some improvement in connection with that, they’ve actually staffed up the call centers, they’ve added more than 300 people to help take these calls. They just had a public meeting with an update on all of these issues last week. And while they said there’s been some improvements, and they’ve had a decline in wait times for customers, this still is a huge issue for a lot of lawmakers who are really getting a lot of ear fulls of complaints from their constituents who say, you know, I actually didn’t have problems logging in. And I was actually working pretty good before all of this happened. So I think we’re going to see a lot more heat on this in the weeks and months ahead unless they get things resolved.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Mitchell Miller, Capitol Hill correspondent for WTOP. And the IRS is starting to re-interest Congress in the age of inching up that agency’s budget. But then that report came out a couple of weeks ago showing how little progress they’ve made on customer service.

Mitchell Miller:
Right. And this is really frustrating to members of both parties here in Congress. They keep trying to get answers and trying to figure out exactly what can be done to fix this agency. Now, the agency, the IRS, for its part says lawmakers are part of the problem. And going back to the continuing resolution, this report that came out recently from the Electronic Tax Administration Advisory Committee. They basically said to lawmakers look, every time you guys approve a CR, it only creates more problems for the IRS because they can’t continually do long term buyouts for example, for the technical issues that they know that they have to address and this report found that the IRS has actually undergone basically more than 100 CRs over the last two decades. So, but basically what they’re saying is, it’s just too hard to do all this long term planning to get this equipment that they know that they need. So they keep doing these patchwork improvements, trying to get through, you know, around the next corner, but they keep building up. And as we’ve talked about in the past, the IRS still has a long backlog of paperwork that they needed to deal with, it goes all the way back through the pandemic and problems beyond that period. So again, another area where lawmakers are really going to be focusing and trying to find some solutions to this.

Tom Temin: And finally, I wanted to ask you about the Jan. 6 hearings. They went on for quite some time, then there was a surprise extension of them all before the cable television cameras. And they have, at least in sudden, some segments of society been quite gripping. And people are watching. Being up on Capitol Hill, what’s the effect been from what you can see?

Mitchell Miller: Politics aside, and everybody has their own view of these hearings, Republicans obviously, don’t agree with them. Many of them say they’re a sham, Democrats say they’re just trying to get this record put out. But I think what’s most interesting, just in terms of how hearings are held here on Capitol Hill, is this may signal a new type of hearing, at least when we have really, really big issues come along, because instead of doing the typical thing, which would be hold a hearing during the day, and then it goes well into the night. And even if you get the attention of the American people during the day, it tends to wander a lot. All of these hearings have been very tightly produced, they actually brought in network television producers to help to get these hearings to be produced so that they’re easily digestible for the American people. And whatever you think of them, they all are very well produced. They last each about two hours or so. And then they move from one topic to another. And I think what you may find, maybe on a more minor level, again, depending on the issue is this may be something of a template for congressional hearings, at least on as I said, major issues moving forward, because they really do concentrate all the information, they integrate both live testimony with earlier depositions. And I think that, again, whatever you think about these hearings, that has been effective, at least in terms of getting what has happened out from the panel.

Tom Temin: So Marshall McLuhan lives on on Capitol Hill.

Mitchell Miller: That’s right, absolutely.

Tom Temin: Look it up kids. Mitchell Miller is Capitol Hill correspondent for WTOP. Hey, thanks so much.

Mitchell Miller: You bet.

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In an agency as large as Veterans Affairs, with a third of a million employees, there is no shortage of things to go wrong. Often it’s whistleblowers that point them out, often to the Office of Inspector General. Now a bipartisan bill that passed the House would ensure continuance of a policy that every VA employee received training by the OIG to learn how to report alleged wrongdoing. For more on the VA Office of Inspector General Training Act, one of its original sponsors, Illinois Democrat Lauren Underwood spoke to the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: Rep. Underwood, good to have you with us.

Lauren Underwood: Thank you so much for having me here today.

Tom Temin: And looking at this bill with respect to Veterans Affairs and the Office of Inspector General, it seems to have provisions for both employees and for the OIG. Let’s talk about Veterans Affairs employees for a moment, what would it do with them?

Lauren Underwood: So I introduced this bipartisan bill. It’s called the VA OIG Training Act, with Congressman McKinley last year, to codify the OIG training requirements to protect the VA employees who report wrongdoing and obviously honor our veterans. So for the VA employees, there’s currently a requirement that they complete OIG training, but it hasn’t been codified into law. So that means that the next administration could reverse the policy. And we want to make sure that staff are equipped with the knowledge and skills that they need to spot and report fraud and abuse happening within VA program.

Tom Temin: And does it say anything about the nature and content of the training itself?

Lauren Underwood: So the training is already being deployed, and we are not changing that training requirement. So what we’re doing is just ensuring that the training includes information about, again, the mechanisms for reporting fraud, waste, abuse, and other wrongdoing at the VA. It offers protections for the VA employees who report the wrongdoing to the Office of the Inspector General. And then the training includes information on how to strengthen the Office of the Inspector General programs, Operations and Services, to ensure that the OIG provides effective oversight. It reduces fraud and protects taxpayer dollars.

Tom Temin: And just a question on the protection for VA employees. There are statutory protections for all federal employees at this point. What would it add here for Veterans Affairs employees, if anything?

Lauren Underwood: Oh, it doesn’t. So this is just a training so that every VA employee understands the current law and the protections that are in place. What we don’t want to have happen is that this training requirement be removed by a different administration who has a different posture towards federal employees. And then those individuals who are interested in reporting fraud, waste and abuse, no longer have the knowledge on how to properly do so, right, and then that opens them up to retaliation, and, other kinds of harmful actions in response.

Tom Temin: Right. So it would reinforce their knowledge of the protections they do have.

Lauren Underwood: That’s right.

Tom Temin: And is there any evidence that say, during the Trump administration, which was a little different, maybe than the current administration, there was any reduction or suppression of that training? Do we know that?

Lauren Underwood: I don’t know that. But I believe that federal employees offer a great service to the American people and certainly to our veterans. And as we do the work to make sure that the federal employees have an excellent workplace, we want to make sure that they are trained and skilled and empowered to be able to fully do their work and offering the federal services and benefits to our veterans. And I think that this kind of knowledge is really important, particularly in an environment that can become very politically charged.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Illinois Congresswoman Lauren Underwood. And you mentioned that the bill also has provisions to strengthen the Office of Inspector General itself. And my experience with VA OIG is they’re not bad right now.

Lauren Underwood: That’s right. And so the requirement is that the VA provides the training to their employees. And obviously, then there’s a benefit for the patients that are receiving care from the VA. Because we know that accurate reporting, and certainly early reporting of issues can save patients lives. It protects their colleagues, and ensures this Veterans actually get their needed benefits and services. We also know that it helps the VA because we’re saving taxpayer dollars. Every dollar that is spent on oversight initiatives, through the Office of Inspector General at the VA yields approximately $21 in return. And so, with those extra resources, if you will, the oversight initiatives ensure that every veteran gets this world class care that they’ve earned.

Tom Temin: And the status of this bill then is passed in the House and introduced a version of the Senate?

Lauren Underwood: That’s right.

Tom Temin: So you do have that senatorial kind of side and any chance in your sense of the situation of that being enacted in this current session?

Lauren Underwood: So Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) and John Boozman (R) from Arkansas introduced the Senate companion bill last summer. And so because we were able to get such a strong bipartisan vote in the House, we are really optimistic that there is a path forward for prompt Senate consideration before the end of this calendar year.

Tom Temin: And while we have you if you’ve got a moment, there are a couple of other bills that have your fingerprints on them.

Lauren Underwood: Well the Veterans Rapid Retraining [Assistance Program] was signed into law in June, which we’re very excited about. I was at the signing ceremony. I introduced that legislation with Congressman Danny Davis (D-Ill.) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). And so that one has been signed into law. And then we’re obviously working hard on the honoring our pact Act, which has passed the Senate and we look forward to coming back to the house this summer, or passage, so then we can get that signed into law as well. That’s to help veterans living with the effects of toxic exposures.

Tom Temin: Right, yes. And getting back to the one on education, so if people got an unsuccessful education under VA benefits from a for-profit, or unaccredited institution, they can still have that benefit for a proper institution.

Lauren Underwood: That’s right. We know that there has been a lot of students who have been defrauded by institutions that have lost their accreditation or had improperly presented their credentials. And so there’s, throughout my time in Congress, we have been working to help people be able to move forward with their careers and the credentials. And so we are very excited about this Rapid Retraining Assistance [Program] Restoration and Recovery Act, so that these education benefits can be restored. If a veteran has been ripped off by an unaccredited institution. This mirrors some of the activity that you’ve been seeing from the Department of Education, where they announced a big student debt relief for those individuals who had received degrees from unaccredited institutions like we’re talking about really the same general population, but this specific bill apply for veterans whereas that executive action was for the entire universe of affected individuals across the country.

Tom Temin: And given your interest in Veterans Affairs affairs in general, are you watching what’s going on with respect to the electronic health record, and what’s your assessment so far of Secretary McDonough this far in?

Lauren Underwood: Well, I’ve been really pleased to work with Secretary McDonough. We’ve had an opportunity to have several conversations, I’ve been over to the VA for meetings. I’m a nurse. And so I focus a lot of my work on the Veterans Affairs committee on health care issues and making sure that we have high quality gender-specific care on the health care issues in particular, we have been strongly supportive of ensuring that we have full ability for advanced practice nurses to practice to the full extent of their education and training. And making sure that the certified registered nurse and ethicist can be able to practice to the full extent of their education and training. As you may know, Tom, that the VA at the end of the Obama administration allowed nurse practitioners and nurse midwives and clinical nurse specialists to practice without that kind of physician oversight. But the nurse and ethicist were left out. And so we have really been pushing VA to take action. They have all the authorities that they need to expand access to care and make sure that veterans are not having to wait for procedures. And that’s what this is about. And so we’re making progress on that front. And then also, I was very proud that my VA physician assistant and nurse RAISE Act was signed into law as part of the fiscal year 22 budget deal. So the federal funding law that was signed in March, which allows physician assistants and advanced practice nurses to get a raise. So we’re firing on all cylinders here.

Tom Temin: Illinois Congresswoman Lauren Underwood is co-sponsor of the VA Office of Inspector General Training Act. Thanks so much for joining me.

Lauren Underwood: Thank you so much.

The Electronic Tax Administration Advisory Committee (ETAAC), in its annual report to Congress, urges lawmakers to provide the agency with “flexible, sustainable, predictable, multi-year funding.”

The report found the IRS experienced over 100 continuing resolutions since 2001, and that funding uncertainty forces the agency to opt for “more expensive, less effective, short-term solutions.”

“They spend resources to keep outdated legacy systems running. They use temporary staff over permanent staff and typically suspend hiring during times of budget uncertainty,” the report states.

Congress gave the IRS a $12.6 billion budget as part of the fiscal 2022 omnibus spending deal that passed this March, the agency’s largest budget increase in decades.

But lawmakers have yet to act on the IRS’ request for multi-year funds that would allow it to make meaningful progress on a long-term IT modernization effort

Congress does, however, appear willing to incrementally increase the agency’s annual budget after decades of staff attrition and diminished spending power.

The House Appropriations Committee also advanced a fiscal 2023 spending bill last week that would give the IRS a $1 billion increase to its topline budget.

The committee, citing the IRS’ challenges with paper tax returns and historic backlogs since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, also urges the IRS to modernize the electronic filing process for taxpayers.

IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig, whose five-year term ends in November, told the committee the IRS workforce went to extraordinary lengths over the past two years to deliver $1.5 trillion in financial relief to the public through Economic Impact Payments (EIPs) and tax refunds.

“I think that history will be very polite to the Internal Revenue Service, and to everybody who’s helped the Internal Revenue Service during this period of time,” Rettig said Wednesday.

Rettig said the IRS’ shift into new lines of work, which made the agency more of a public benefits provider and not just a tax enforcement agency, went a long way to helping individuals who became unemployed, lost businesses or experienced food insecurity for the first time during the pandemic.

“It’s not like the EIPs got them out of the food bank line,” Rettig said, “But what pit] did is it showed these people that this country cared.”

While Rettig praised the agency’s work throughout the pandemic, he acknowledged some taxpayers are still waiting for their tax refunds.

The agency announced last week it finished processing the backlog of individual paper tax returns it received in 2021.

“When you’re in the middle of it, somebody who hasn’t yet got their refund, it’s hard for them to accept things went well,” Rettig said.

Response metrics ‘don’t translate’ to workforce’s dedication

The IRS has faced scrutiny over the past few years for a low response rate to taxpayer phone calls and a backlog of unprocessed tax returns, but Rettig said those metrics don’t reflect the hard work of IRS employees.

“I want you to know that the people at the IRS gave so much, so often, and I don’t want that lost in translation. Inventory amounts don’t translate into a lack of desire, dedication and the workarounds that had to occur with your help,” he said.

Rettig said the IRS workforce has been his “highest priority” as commissioner, and applauded employees for responding to a range of pandemic-era challenges.

“It’s no secret we’ve got some people that are doing 10 different jobs. We should have 12 people doing those 10 jobs, as in the private sector,” Rettig said.

The IRS plans to hire 10,000 additional employees and expects to make half of those hires this year.

ETAAC Chairwoman Courtney Kay-Decker, a former director of the Iowa Department of Revenue, said this year’s 31-page report takes a streamlined approach compared to previous years.

“We took a step back and said, in light of everything that’s happening in the world around us, let’s look at tax administration from a holistic sort of 30,000-foot approach, and figure out what it is that would mean most to the taxpayer experience,” Kay-Decker said.

The report, recognizing a historic mismatch between the budgets the IRS requests and what Congress approves, found that appropriate funding for IRS initiatives often comes down to four factors — collaboration, modern technology, prioritization of projects and a balance between machines and people.

ETAAC member Kimberly Pederzani, the compliance manager for the employee cloud business unit at Toast, said the IRS is focused on taxpayer service that tools with increased functionality over time, based on taxpayer needs.

“There has never been such a need for governmental turn-on-a-dime innovation as there has been during and following the facilitation of varying forms of relief stemming from the COVID 19 pandemic,” Pederzani said.

The IRS, in recent years, received more than 90% of all tax returns electronically, but the volume of paper tax returns received has led to complications and processing backlogs.

The report finds that at least half of paper tax returns were prepared using commercial software, and that challenges prevented taxpayers from filing their returns electronically.

Prior to the pandemic, about 5% of total returns filed went into error resolution. During the 2021 filing season, the rate of returns sent to the IRS Error Resolution System (ERS) was about 20% of returns filed.

That uptick in tax returns that needed to go through a manual review process created substantial delays in processing tax returns.

Tax returns filed during the tax season 2021 that required manual review often led to tax refund delays of 90 to 120 days, or even longer.

The committee found that congressional changes to the tax code in the middle of filing seasons contributed to an uptick in tax returns flagged as having errors. Pandemic aid programs also required some individuals to file a tax return who might not otherwise need to.

The IRS however, after the filing season of 2021, put together a program called “Fix ERS” to troubleshoot the volume of errors sent to error resolution.

The team developed an automation solution in April 2022 that significantly shortens the time needed to process tax returns that have errors in them.

The tool resolved about two-thirds of the returns coming through the ERS system, minimizing human intervention for those returns and bringing returns to the ERS queue back to the pre-pandemic levels of around 5%

Prior to the pandemic, an IRS agent could process about 100 returns per employee per day. With the new automation tool in place, an employee can process about 5,000 returns per day.

“A true strength of the IRS is making sure that the highest volume workflows are successful. This means prioritizing resources to ensure that forms with high volume can be filed,” said ETAAC member Jihan Jude, an attorney and counselor at law with the Davey Law Group.

Committee member Latryna Carlton, president of Committed Citizens of Waverly, Florida, said that while call volumes increased astronomically during the pandemic, the IRS has not been able to hire enough staff to keep up.

“The IRS folks who answer the phones are typically often the same people who open the mail and the other processing tests as well,” Carlton said, adding that in a typical year, 55% of a customer service representative’s time is spent on the phone.

Carlton said the IRS has deployed some tools, including chatbots, a callback service and secure document upload capabilities, that have improved the level of phone service for taxpayers.

ETAAC member Terri Steenblock, compliance director at the Federation of Tax Administrators, said the committee recommends restructuring the IRS’s funding to eliminate appropriation categories.

The report also recommends the IRS implement a pilot that allows the agency to retain a portion of defined amounts it collects for technology or staffing-related projects.

“We believe investing now in the future of the IRS is an important key to their long-term sustainability and success,” Steenblock said.

The report states that the IRS workforce and hiring challenges are significant, but warns that simply adding new hires “is an expensive, unsustainable, and largely ineffective way to solve what ails the IRS.”

“The IRS cannot meet taxpayers’ service expectations without a healthy balance between technology and human capital investments. By optimizing technology in the right places, the IRS can provide high-quality customer service through a leaner, more agile workforce,” the report states.

The center will focus on tactical autonomy, meaning systems that act independently under the bounded authority of human support. The systems support missions like situational awareness, force protection, cyber defense and logistics. The center will also focus on system collaboration and man-machine learning.

The collaboration will be the first academic research center affiliated with the Air Force and the 15th connected to the Defense Department.

“It’s a gap in our suite of research institutes right now that we don’t have one focused on this area of autonomy,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said at the Pentagon Monday. “I’m very focused on the threat of Chinese military modernization and what that means in terms of our viability of our forces for the future. Part of the future of the military is going to be autonomy, there’s no doubt in my mind to that. We’re seeing increasing evidence, evidence for almost in every conflict that occurs.”

The Air Force is committing $12 million per year for the next five years to the collaboration. DoD will be adding an extra $2 million per year.

The Air Force and DoD are currently working with the 11 HCBUs that qualify as high-research activity schools as designated by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education to decide which school will lead the center. That school will be responsible for building a consortium of educational institutions to conduct research.

The collaboration is also working a secondary goal of increasing diversity and inclusion, a mission DoD has been working on since the national response to the murder of George Floyd.

“This is an opportunity to tap into universities that have enormous amount of capability in science and technology,” Kendall said. “The HBCUs put out about 30% of the scientists and engineers that are that are produced by that community.”

DoD will also work on growing the STEM community within HBCUs. The center will not work like other academic research consortia. The Pentagon wants the consortium to build capabilities, but also build its research abilities.

“We understand that there are historical inequities, and we want help them build capacity, as well as deliver results to us,” said Victoria Coleman, DoD’s chief scientist. “We want to advance their efforts to move at least one, hopefully more than one, institution from the Carnegie Foundation Research Classification from ‘R2,’ which means a high research institution, to an ‘R1,’ which is very high research.”

The fiscal 2023 financial services and general government bill, which the House Appropriations Committee advanced on June 24 in a vote of 31 to 22, makes no mention of the pay raise proposal for federal employees.

Similar to their silence last year, House appropriators’ lack of comment on the federal pay raise essentially endorses the White House’s 4.6% proposal from March’s budget request. In 2022, federal employees received a pay raise of 2.7% on average.

Military service members would also receive a 4.6% pay increase under the legislation. The White House did not specify locality pay in the across-the-board increase for 2023.

Democratic House lawmakers, though, are pushing for an even higher 5.1% pay increase for federal employees.

A lot can still change, though, between now and the start of the next fiscal year. For instance, the Senate would still need to approve the spending bill for the pay raise to become official.

The House Appropriations Committee also looked at funding requests for agencies including the Office of Personnel Management, Office of Management and Budget, General Services Administration and more.

In particular, spending for OPM includes a requested increase of about $70.9 million over the enacted level for 2022. That funding would in part go to heightened oversight and transparency for the agency’s retirement services, a program that faces ongoing processing delays and call center challenges.

Federal organizations like the National Active and Retired Federal Employees (NARFE) Association support the language about retirement services that the bill highlights.

“We hope this increased attention will elevate the urgency of the administration’s efforts to solve these problems,” NARFE National President Ken Thomas said in a June 24 statement. “We understand OPM may be struggling with pandemic-related disruptions and that there are dedicated public servants at OPM retirement services who recognize the problems. But they must prevent the situation from deteriorating further and start making real progress to improve and modernize their processes to better serve those who spent careers serving their nation.”

OPM Director Kiran Ahuja said at a June 23 press conference that she’s focused on improving retirement services. For example, the agency is currently piloting an online application for feds looking to retire.

The committee members also pointed to the President’s Management Agenda goal of strengthening the federal workforce, saying the funding request would support many of the White House’s workforce initiatives.

“This multi-year strategy includes dedicated investments to attract and hire the most qualified employees, including developing a diverse and competent workforce, improving federal hiring processing and identifying human capital needs of the federal workforce,” the committee wrote.

The funding would reduce barriers to federal employment and delays in the hiring process, through information technology modernization, more telework guidance and programs to support reentry to the civil service for those who previously left a federal position, the committee said.

The bill would also remove a ban on abortion services under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, a point over which several House Republicans voiced concerns.

Additionally, the Executive Office of the President would receive $4.5 million to pay White House interns. That comes after the Biden administration announced earlier this month that it will start paying its interns this fall.

The bill gives OMB $12 million above its enacted level for 2022, while the Office of the National Cyber Director would receive $22 million in funding to continue standing up an office for coordinating federal cybersecurity policy.

GSA would also get $100 million to fund electric vehicles in an effort to reduce the impacts of climate change, which is an ongoing priority from the Biden administration. The agency would get another $100 million for the Technology Modernization Fund.

Similar to last year, the bill funds GSA with $10.5 billion for the Federal Buildings Fund, which includes $380 million for the Department of Homeland Security headquarters consolidation at St. Elizabeths and $500 million for a new Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters.

To support increased access to records documenting underserved and underrepresented communities, the National Archives and Records Administration would receive $2 million above the President’s request for a total of $452 million.

Notably, the bill would also make permanent a provision from last year that requires more transparency on apportionment of appropriations. The provision would mandate OMB to make its appropriations publicly available in a timely manner.

Another section of the bill aims to improve budget execution, which would “require budget authority be made available prudently for obligation, executive agencies to provide budget and appropriations information to the Government Accountability Office promptly and agencies to notify Congress of certain delays or restrictions in apportionment of appropriations,” the committee stated.

One other new provision tries to create a commission to recommend name changes or removal of federal property that’s “inconsistent with the values of diversity, equity and inclusion,” the committee wrote.

A bipartisan group of dozen senators is rejecting the Department of Veterans Affairs’ plan to close or overhaul hospitals and medical facilities that no longer meet the health care needs of veterans.

The senators, half of which serve on the Senate VA Committee, said in a statement Monday that they would not proceed with nominees to serve on the Asset and Infrastructure Review (AIR) Commission.

The commission, under the 2018 MISSION Act, is supposed to review the VA’s recommendations released in March on how it expects to right-size its real-estate portfolio of medical facilities across the country.

“As senators, we share a commitment to expanding and strengthening modern VA infrastructure in a way that upholds our obligations to America’s veterans. We believe the recommendations put forth to the AIR Commission are not reflective of that goal, and would put veterans in both rural and urban areas at a disadvantage, which is why we are announcing that this process does not have our support and will not move forward,” the senators said.

President Joe Biden submitted nine nominees to serve on the AIR Commission, but the Senate has yet to act on any of those nominees. If confirmed, commissioners would review VA’s plans and issue their own recommendations to the White House.

President Joe Biden, under this timeline, has until Feb. 15, 2023, to approve the AIR Commission’s final recommendations.

If he doesn’t submit his approval to Congress before March 30, 2023, the process for modernizing and realigning VA’s facilities under the MISSION Act ends.

Without the Senate’s confirmation of the nominees, the commission will not be established, and the process to right-size VA real estate under the VA MISSION Act will not move forward.

Melissa Bryant, VA’s acting assistant secretary for public and intergovernmental affairs, said that whatever Congress decides to do with the AIR Commission, “we will continue to fight for the funding and modernization that our veterans deserve.”

“President Biden has insisted that our Veterans in the 21st century should not be forced to receive care in early 20th century buildings.  The median age of VA’s hospitals is nearly 60 years old, and that’s why the President requested nearly $20 billion in new VA infrastructure spending last year and it is why he has requested the largest ever investment in VA infrastructure in his FY23  budget,” Bryant said.

The VA’s recommendations to the AIR Commission are based on market research that started in 2019, and doesn’t account for shifts in the demand for health care since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The AIR Commission process received criticism before the VA even issued its recommendations.

The American Federation of Government Employees has held several rallies protesting the planned closure of VA medical facilities across the country.

AFGE National President Everett Kelley, an Army veteran, said senators’ rejection of the AIR Commission plan “is a major victory for veterans, military families, the American health care system, VA employees, and all those who rely on the VA,”

“This closure commission was a bad idea from the start. Automatic, mass closures of VA facilities would deny veterans the comprehensive, quality care that our nation owes to those who have defended our country – an obligation first recognized by President Abraham Lincoln,” Kelley said in a statement.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) opposes the closure of two VA medical centers in Manhattan and Brooklyn. House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) also opposes plans to close the VAMC in Manhattan.

The 12 senators, in their statement, said the AIR Commission “is not necessary for our continued push to invest in VA health infrastructure.”

“Together we remain dedicated to providing the Department with the resources and tools it needs to continue delivering quality care and earned services to veterans in 21st-century facilities — now and into the future,” they added.

The VA, under its plan, is looking to close approximately three dozen VA medical centers (VAMCs) but would replace about half of them with new construction. The VA would permanently close the other half, and would shift veteran care to local VA inpatient and outpatient facilities.

Meanwhile, the VA proposes building VAMCs in new areas. The plan calls for a net reduction of three VAMCs, bringing the total from 171 to 168.

While the total number of outpatient points of care would also decrease under this plan, the VA states the relocation and expansion of facilities and services will increase veterans’ overall access to VA care.

VA Secretary Denis McDonough told reporters last week that its recommendations are focused on providing veterans with modern facilities that would improve the quality of care they receive.

“I define the entire project that the commission is designed around to be modernization. We are bound and determined to do right by our veterans, and that means upgrading our physical infrastructure. And so we will not be deterred from that,” McDonough said.

But if the AIR Commission process doesn’t move forward, the MISSION Act still requires the VA to conduct four-year reviews of its real-estate needs in each of its regional health care markets.

McDonough said the VA would be on the verge of starting the next quadrennial review soon.

The following senators joined the statement  rejecting the AIR Commission process:

1.  Jon Tester (D-Mont.),
2. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.),
3. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.),
4. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.),
5. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.V.),
6. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.),
7. John Thune (R-S.D.),
8. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio),
9. Patty Murray (D-Wash.),
10. Steve Daines (R-Mont.),
11. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.),
12. Rob Portman (R-Ohio)

The top Republicans on the House and Senate VA committees, however, expressed continued support for the AIR Commission process.

Senate VA Committee Ranking Member Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) said many VA’s are “empty, underutilized and severely outdated,” and said the AIR Commission process would have addressed this issue.

“We passed the VA MISSION Act to address these issues but by refusing to confirm commissioners, we are essentially shutting down the work of the AIR Commission and possibly our only opportunity to fix this long-standing issue,” Moran said.

House VA Committee Ranking Member Mike Bost (R-Ill.) said the AIR Commission remains critical to updating “VA’s failing medical care infrastructure.”

“This process is vital for the future of modern, state-of-the-art VA care. It is wrong for these senators to outright refuse to even consider the nominees put forth by the Biden Administration. This decision does an immense disservice to veterans and VA staff who will feel its repercussions for years to come,” Bost said.

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Reeling from two highly controversial Supreme Court decisions and some revelatory hearings concerning the Capitol break-in, Congress is in recess this week. But not everything has stopped on the Hill. The Federal Drive with Tom Temin got more from Bloomberg Government deputy news director Loren Duggan.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: Loren, what a week it’s been it’s there used to be that old TV comedy show That Was the Week That Was but two landmark and controversial, world shaking Supreme Court decisions, plus those hearings on the Trump administration and Jan. 6, 2021. Quite a week, what’s your take? And what do they be doing while on recess?

Loren Duggan: Well, I’m sure they’ll go home and react to these decisions for Democrats, in particular Friday’s ruling on Roe v. Wade and scrapping that and also the Casey decision from the 90s. That’s going to resonate hugely for them, they’re gonna go home and probably try to reassure voters in their states what they’re going to do to fight against it. On the other hand, you have Republicans and conservatives who have wanted this outcome for a long time, who were happy with it, thrilled with it, and going to, you know, go home and take that to their voters as well. So I think that this decision is going to be down not just this week, but in the weeks and months to come, including in the November elections.

In terms of how they respond legislatively on the Hill. Obviously, we won’t see much this coming week. But I think this will come up in the appropriations process. And then discussions about other votes that they might be able to take. The House passed a bill many months ago to try to codify provisions of Roe v. Wade and Casey into law, the Senate didn’t take that up because of the 60 vote requirement for most things, which will probably stop them from doing very much about it for the rest of the year. But we may see some more votes and some more discussion, at least. And on the gun issue. You did have this juxtaposition of a Supreme Court ruling that makes it easier potentially to carry guns in New York State and elsewhere, with this bipartisan deal to put some gun regulations in place trying to protect Second Amendment rights for Republicans as they would describe it, but at the same time, make a dent in changing some background check rules, providing funding. So again, those two issues, those court rulings are, are big.

Tom Temin: Well, I guess I’m hoping that members of both parties, regardless of what side you’re on, and the gun question, or the abortion question will maybe tone down the rhetoric, we’re not seeing that too much, so far. Neither gloating, nor threatening the Supreme Court or wanting to burn the whole place down over that decision. Neither side should be really fanning the flames. But I’m not sure we can count on that.

Loren Duggan: I think we’ll see some rhetoric that’s perhaps heated at times. But you know, this is a deeply felt position on both sides, people who were worried about this ruling after the leak, or the draft ruling was leaked to Politico and was out there and people who have wanted this outcome for a long time. And you know, what happens next? And what direction two things go, both federally, and at the state level? I think a lot of this discussion, obviously, is going to shift to states that have either trigger laws or maybe considering new legislation on either side of this question.

Tom Temin: All right. And getting back to Congress itself. You mentioned some committee work, maybe on the appropriations bills, they’ll try to grind out something during the recess. Is that possible?

Loren Duggan: That is possible. This is, it’s a two week floor recess, at least. And in the House they call it a committee work week. And the main action will come in the Appropriations Committee, which has been very busy the last three weeks. As of last Friday, they approved 12 bills through subcommittee and then another six of those made it through full committee, they’re going to try to do the other six this week, if they can get all that done. It was a pretty ambitious schedule to do get all of them done in three weeks and out and available for floor votes. Potentially, when they come back in July, they’d like to get that through. It’s important to remember these are written using a top line number that only House Democrats have agreed to, it doesn’t reflect a bicameral, bipartisan top line number which will be necessary for any sort of final version of these. But this is very much the House Democrats sticking out their position, both in terms of funding levels and policy and riders at this point. Earmarks are back in the mix again this year as they were last year. That’s a little bit more bipartisan, where you do have Republican members seeking earmarks and many of these bills. So we’ll see how that plays out this week. Again, it’s been a pretty ambitious timetable to get all these through. But it’s, it’s just the first chapter in the story because the Senate has to weigh in and then we’ll see if they can get a final deal or if we’re going to be talking about a continuing resolution around Oct. 1, because we may not be able to get a bicameral deal in place by then.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Loren Dugan, deputy news director at Bloomberg Government and getting back for a second to the earmark question. I’m wondering if earmarks will maybe in some way blunt the desire of the Republicans to slow things down and want a continuing resolution because they feel that they might be in the majority when it comes to the next session?

Loren Duggan: We’d have to see how that plays out. I mean, obviously if you lock in a continuing resolution into next year, it’s the amounts that were agreed to last year but that could lock in both sides of the equation defense and non-defense There is a general upward pressure right now on defense spending going much higher than President Biden wanted. We saw that with the defense authorization markups in both chambers where they came in with increases in both the House and the Senate on that. So there may be real interest in getting something locked in before the end of the calendar year, if not the fiscal year to try and lock higher amounts in place, and also clear the decks for the next group of leaders, Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who is the Appropriations chairman, Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), who’s the vice chairman in the Senate, I think they’d both like to in their last time doing this, as the top leaders in the appropriations process, get it done, clear the decks and leave it to the next chamber’s leadership to figure out what to do for fiscal 2024 when they get to that, but I think we’re gonna see some interesting discussions around that. Earmarks are accepted by some Republicans, but by not all means not all. But some of the ones who are invested in are the appropriators themselves, we saw Richard Shelby get a number of earmarks in last year’s bills, and I assume he’ll be aiming for the same this year.

Tom Temin: And also, before the break, there was action on the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act in the committee’s. Can that continue in this committee work so called period?

Loren Duggan: Well, they because the House in the Senate have both approved those committees, at least they’re going to be ready for floor action at some point. So I don’t think we’ll see much more on those until maybe July or maybe even September, if they need to wait to do that. Again, one of the big questions there is just what are you going to set the defense top line at? And what does that mean for the systems that funds and the personnel expenses that are out there. That bill is an important one, it’s been enacted for what, six decades now. No chairman wants to be the one that doesn’t finish that on their watch. So I assume they’ll be working to finish that bill by the end of the year, again, maybe not fiscal year, but probably by the end of the calendar year, trying to wrap that one up as well.

Tom Temin: And once upon a time before Ukraine before the gun ruling before the abortion debate. Before all of these things, there was worry about competition with China. And a big bill on that one, what’s going on with that one that was kind of active for a few weeks?

Loren Duggan: It was that has been sent to a House Senate Conference Committee, which includes I think, all told about a fifth of the membership of Congress or something like that. Because of all the committee’s involved in the sweeping packages that came out of the house in the Senate. There was work before this two week break to try to narrow the list of issues and maybe even jettison some topics that they couldn’t come to an agreement on to try and get a deal on that. July 4 had been a target for finishing that, obviously they haven’t done that. But they are going to try to use this next work period to come to an agreement. At the core of it is money for semiconductor manufacturing in this country. But then there’s all sorts of other provisions dealing with trade and tax and natural resources and things that would improve even science funding in the country authorizing money for National Science Foundation, NIST, groups like that. So we’ll have to see if they can narrow and come to an agreement on a bill that can get through both chambers. But that will be one of their priorities when they come back.

Tom Temin: And it seems strange to discuss nominees. Here we are almost to the midterm elections. But the administration not quite as new as it was a year ago. But there’s still lots of nominees out there pending out there?

Loren Duggan: There are both administration positions, and then still the courts because the vacancies come up. And Democrats are definitely trying to use this window where they know they have control of the Senate to push through as many nominees as they can for President Biden, there’s some key administration jobs, they’re still trying to fill and we’ll see some votes. And one of the big ones is the vice chair for supervision at the Fed the nominee there, Barr will get a vote at some point it seems like when they come back, but you know, they’ve they’ve really tried to be efficient here and schedule a lot of nominations every week, even as they work on legislation, get some nominees in there as well. So there’s no slowdown in that activity.

Tom Temin: Loren Duggan is Deputy news director at Bloomberg Government. As always, thanks so much.

Loren Duggan: Thank you.

Current and former Hill staffers say technology can and has solved many common problems for members of Congress, but they want to see members tap into more commercial-friendly platforms and give centralized authority to bodies like the Bulk Data Task Force, or the House Digital Service.

Stephen Dwyer, senior adviser to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), pointed to solutions such as the Dome Watch and Dome Directory mobile apps, created by the office to help members of Congress, their staff and the public better track movements on the House floor. The 13-year-old private intranet DemCom for House Democratic staff was also redesigned last year with expanded access for Senate staff, mobile functionality and a bigger database of information.

But custom-built systems for “uniquely Congressional purposes,” as Dwyer said, are not all that’s recommended. He told the House Select Committee on Modernization last week, the programs are representative of what is possible when the legislative body coordinates its technology efforts, but that requires in-house digital staff for each office. He recommended hiring digital aides with programming and development skills for every member, in addition to more traditional political science and communications staffers.

“There’s just so much more that they need to do, even versus five, 10 years ago when I was in a congressional office,” Dwyer said. “A lot of that is in digital communications. Every office needs to not just take a bunch of pictures and post them on Twitter and Facebook but they have to do more technical Facebook Lives, they’ve got to take their boss live, there’s a lot of technical tasks that didn’t exist many years ago.”

But Dwyer said Congress needs to recognize the demand for these workers and compensate them appropriately. The House is raising its staff salary floor to $45,000, after essentially a decade-long pay freeze and record inflation made it difficult to attract and retain employees.

One of the Modernization committee’s recommendations last Congress was to create a common committee calendar portal to reduce scheduling conflicts. Vice Chairman William Timmons (R-S.C.) asked witnesses for suggestions to get the ball rolling on what he said could have a big impact on members and staff. Reynold Schweickhardt, Lincoln Network senior adviser, said an issue is that between the House clerk, the chief information officer and the committees themselves there is no clear button to push for technology needs. As such, another recommendation was to clearly focus the responsibility for legislative product.

“I think the other challenge that I alluded to is there’s no gatekeeper for scheduling projects. The CIO, they may be working on five to 10 projects, so they tell you they’re working on your project and they are, but they’re sort of shuffling things back and forth,” said Schweickhardt, who served at the Committee on House Administration for 13 years and the Government Publishing Office for eight years Versus a program-management kind of functionality that says, ‘What are the three things we want to accomplish in the next couple of months? Let’s knock ‘em out. Let’s figure out what the next set of important things are.’”

Dwyer said the foundation is laid. For several years, House rules have required all committees to post hearings and testimony in a central place, putting the body ahead of the Senate, but amplifying that with a more consumer-friendly version would help, he said.

Melissa Dargan, co-founder of AppMy LLC and a former Hill staffer, seconded the use of funds for a centralized scheduling platform. It’s a problem she tried to tackle when she launched the TourTrackr app to better manage constituent tour requests.

“From constituent tour requests to flown flag purchases, these important responsibilities were tracked using printouts, binders and excel spreadsheets. It was a fragmented, inefficient process. At the time, there were no digital alternatives that House offices were approved to use. So while these tasks seemed easy, they were tedious, repetitive and time consuming,” she said, adding that technological innovation does not need to come at the expense of security.

“I respect and understand that the House has high standards for new tech approval. Protecting security and personal identifiable information are critical to ensure the integrity of the institution. That said, upholding those priorities and creating a welcoming environment for new tech products can be done simultaneously,” Dargan said.

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At least some members of Congress are pushing for telework to become a big and permanent feature of federal employment. The latest gambit is a bill that requires agencies to gather statistics about telework and prevent them from restricting it. It’s called the Telework Metrics and Cost Savings Act. Federal Drive with Tom Temin  has more from one of its sponsors, Maryland Democratic Congressman John Sarbanes.

 Interview transcript: 

Tom Temin: Well, let’s start with what the bill requires in terms of data collection metrics collection, what do you want to know, from agencies through this bill?

John Sarbanes: We’ve had really robust telework over the last 10 years. And I was very pleased back in 2010, to help author the Telework Enhancement Act with Congressman Connolly from Virginia and so forth. We got that in place really, to encourage federal agencies to increase their uptake, their deployment of telework across the federal government, and that worked pretty well. But we understand we have got to come back and do real evaluation, you want to make sure that data is being collected well. You want to make sure that, you know, any sort of bumps in the road that these agencies have encountered over the last few years, or lessons that have been learned as we’ve been in the middle of pandemic, the things that really put pressure on the federal workforce and make telework a real important option. That we’re learning those lessons, that we’re gathering the data. So what this new bill does, which is called as you indicated, it’s not a sexy title, but it’s Telework Metrics and Cost Savings Act, is to is to gather up that data. So it would make sure there are standards in place for how we collect and use federal agency data that’s related to telework. It would make sure that the training that’s happening is being done in an effective way. So supervisors really know how to push this out and make it available to the workforce. It would guide the agencies good management practices with respect to telework. So all the things you’d like to see, to make sure that that remains a robust option going forward. But it also would require some real accountability and transparency. So the federal telework option sort of how agencies are using it, they’re going to be required to report on that annually to OPM, on sort of the goals, priorities, how they’re expanding access to telework, reporting to Congress, if there’s any proposed reductions in telework. And that’s important, because I for one, and I know many of my colleagues, think this is a really important tool. And we don’t want agencies sort of arbitrarily cutting back on it without providing a good explanation of that. So this bill would put that requirement in place. And then a real important thing, just to close here is there’s been some fuzziness about the how remote work is considered or defined within the category of telework. And this bill would help clarify the definition make it clear that remote work counts as telework. And when you’re doing data collection, that’s really important to make sure you’ve sorted that out. So  that’s the idea. But bottom line, there’s a lot of technical dimensions to this bottom line. It’s about keeping telework strong, making sure that’s a good option for the federal workforce.

Tom Temin: And do you envision the level of telework that has been occurring as a result of the pandemic, especially in 2021, and maybe early ’22, but mostly ’20 and ’21? Could that be in your view, the norm for the federal government?

John Sarbanes: I don’t know that we’ll see the same levels of telework that, frankly, we had to engage in with the pandemic. I mean, that was a very extraordinary circumstance. I do think that the pandemic pushed a lot of agencies and workers and supervisors to a new appreciation of how you incorporate telework into the productivity of an agency. So I think you’re going to continue to see a real premium on this that has been kind of enhanced and introduced to a lot of the workforce because of the pandemic. And I’m looking forward to what that represents, again, for the productivity of these agencies. Across the board.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Congressman John Sarbanes of Maryland. He’s co-sponsor of the Telework Metrics and Cost Savings Act. And what have you heard from constituents and not necessarily just constituents in Maryland, but the federal workforce, the federal employee unions, perhaps, and how does it contrast with what you’re hearing from supervisors and maybe even political appointees, some of which have come in and have never seen the bulk of their workforce?

 John Sarbanes: Well, first of all, you should know that the bill that we’re discussing right now has been strongly endorsed by the National Federation of Federal Employees, the Federal Managers Association, the American Federation of Government Employees. So the people who know this workforce best and understand how it can be most productive, they have leaned in hard behind this this bill, this strengthening of telework options. From my constituents who obviously depend significantly on what the federal agencies can offer to them across the board, the more sort of comprehensive the toolbox is for serving the needs of your constituents, the better for those constituents. So I think they liked the idea and benefited from the fact of more telework opportunity for the federal workforce. Look, there’s still things that your constituents need to do in person, there’s still certain kinds of meetings and interactions that have to happen face to face, and telework can’t replace that. But if telework allows the workforce to be more nimble in its response to the concerns of constituents. That helps not just boost the morale of the workforce,  it boosts the morale of the public that’s being served. So I think there’s definitely an appreciation among the public that this is an important tool to have in the toolkit of service to the broad public. In terms of the workers themselves. I mean, we have seen surveys over the last few years that demonstrate really strong support among the federal workforce for this option. They’re expressing that in the sense that they’re using this opportunity. But they also, in the surveys that are taken, kind of recommit to this as an important option. You can see among supervisors, some are more hesitant than others in terms of how they deploy this. But I think the general experience is, once you kind of push forward and embrace this as a tool, you get more comfortable with it. And you also can see how it increases the productivity of the people that are working with you. Frankly, not just those who are teleworking, but those who aren’t teleworking, the productivity across these agencies goes up when they treat telework is an important component of how to deploy their services.

Tom Temin: And one of the agencies where this all seems to be clashing somewhat in this being resolved or not resolved, I believe is in your own district, and that is the Social Security Administration. And they’ve had labor relations issues, let’s say going back to the Trump administration that haven’t really been resolved in the Biden era, and there’s still an acting director that maybe hasn’t been all that effective in settling all of those issues. What’s your sense of that as kind of a crucible for all of this social security?

John Sarbanes: Well, I mean, there have been some challenges and some of the agencies including that one, I think that just puts a fine point on why this, this new piece of legislation that we’ve introduced is so important. Because it will help to encourage –  pressure, in some instances, the agencies, all agencies, to look at how they can embrace telework, achieve that right balance for how telework is integrated into their agencies workforce and productivity. And by collecting data that reflects that, you create the right kind of positive peer pressure across agencies. So for example, I would expect to see, based on the data collection, and the reporting that we are asking for in this bill, that some agencies will be able to highlight best practices, and really convincing data about how it’s contributing to their productivity. And then agencies maybe next door who haven’t been implementing it, or embracing it at the level they could, will feel the pressure and expectation to do the same. And that’s exactly what we’re going for here. I mean, every agency is different to some extent, but there are best practices that can be uniform. And if we collect data that reflects that and then get it broadly distributed across these agencies and across the workforce and across the various supervisors and leadership, you get to a better place in terms of achieving that proper balance.

Tom Temin: Just a final question on telework. That’s a related issue that Congress and the and the bureaucracy have been laboring over for many, many years. And that’s the federal real estate, bulk footprint, whatever you want to call it. It seems like if there is a permanent increase, to the degree we’re talking about, of telework, it’s really past do reevaluating what federal space looks like.

John Sarbanes: I think that’s fair. And again, I think the information data we’ll be pulling in as a result of this legislation, if we get it passed, and it’s implemented, will help with that kind of analysis, and evaluation. I mean, the world is changing every day, we all have to keep up with that. The private sector’s keeping up with that, and we’re very conscious of that. I mean, a lot of these opportunities around telework that we’re trying to make available in the federal work space, are ones that the private sector has been embracing for years. And, frankly, if we have good telework policies and opportunities in government, we can compete better for really high quality employees that the private sector may be recruiting now, because they’ve got a lot of flexibility. But getting to the question of what’s that physical footprint of the federal government look like? Are there opportunities to downsize or resize that, for example, based on the uptake around telework? That’s definitely going to be part of the equation as we move forward. And again, I think this legislation will benefit from that analysis.

Tom Temin: And if you’ve got a couple of minutes longer, I’d like to ask you about a totally unrelated issue, and that is your bill, public service loan forgiveness program, the introduction of which was followed by a Biden administration move to overhaul that whole public service loan forgiveness program.  What’s the latest what’s going on here? What are you trying to accomplish?

John Sarbanes: What we’re trying to accomplish is to make it easier for people to choose a path of public service, in spite of having maybe significant loan debt that they’ve accrued, for purposes of their education. So over 10 years ago, I introduced the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Act, which would allow people who are pursuing public service to have reduced monthly payments on whatever their their student debt was, if it was federal consolidated student debt. And then at the end of 10 years have that forgiven completely. There have been some bumps in the road along the way. The Biden administration has taken some pretty dramatic steps recently to make sure that those student borrowers out there who qualify for this opportunity are getting the benefits of what we intended from that legislation. So there’s a lot of workers in the federal space, who are carrying student loans, and can benefit from this opportunity for loan forgiveness, after 10 years of serving in government, and are seeking to take advantage of that. The Biden administration, we’re certainly watching them carefully, I think is implemented some steps to make sure that opportunity is there and people can take full advantage of it. So it’s just another way to support those people who make the decision to go into public service, which may not be as lucrative as some other opportunities that they could have. But it represents a kind of mission-orientedness on their part, we want to support them, helping them with their student loans is one way to do that.

Tom Temin: But just to play devil’s advocate, it’s not as if public federal servants are not paid. They’re not volunteers, they do have a really good defined benefit pension plan. They have a salary and promotion schedule, they’ve got a lot of things that actually many people in the private sector don’t have. Do you expect this perhaps maybe to spark, I don’t know, a forgiveness program paid for by private sector employers? And maybe the government can get off the hook that way, instead of just by fiat for the trillion dollar overhang we’ve all got.

John Sarbanes: The federal federal workers do have a certain amount of benefits. When you add them all up, it typically does not, it still doesn’t exceed or necessarily remain competitive against what the private sector can offer somebody with the same credentials. So I think we got to be looking at different ways to incentivize people to make that choice, particularly on the front end of their career. And if they know that a significant loan burden could be alleviated by choosing to take the path of public service, in this case, working for the federal government. And those are talented, skilled people that we want to have serving the public from their position in the federal workforce, then I think we ought to offer that opportunity to them. I’ve seen it make a difference in the calculation of young people who are entering the workforce and are trying to decide “do I take this path? Or do I take a different path?” And if they’re taking the path of public service, we want to make sure that we’re supporting that, because we all will benefit from it in the long run.

Tom Temin: And of course, you mentioned 10 years ago, the original overhaul bill, now you have the what you can do for your country act. That’s just an update to the original loan forgiveness program plan?

John Sarbanes: Correct. That’s a way to go in and address some of the bottlenecks. We’ve seen some of the kinds of glitches and how the program is administered and make sure that anybody who entered public service with the expectation based on the public service loan forgiveness program, that their student debt would be forgiven after 10 years of commitment, aught to be able to benefit from that and have that expectation realized. And so this new bill is designed to make sure that that all of those pieces are in place. And that really thousands, tens of thousands of people across the country, who every year will be rolling into this opportunity can rely on it being there for them.

Tom Temin: Democratic Congressman John Sarbanes of Maryland. Thanks so much for joining me.

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• New legislation would make it easier for security clearance applicants to overcome a history of using marijuana. A provision in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 2023 intel authorization bill would prohibit agencies from denying a clearance solely based on the applicant’s previous pot use. The provision was championed by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). He’s also pushing to make it so ongoing marijuana use is not the basis for denying or losing a clearance. Today, cleared individuals can still expect to forfeit their clearance due to ongoing pot use, even if it’s legal in the state in which they reside.

• Kiran Ahuja reaches one year as director for the Office of Personnel Management. Ahuja is the first confirmed OPM director to reach one year in office since 2015. After implementing changes like adding time off to vote and updating telework policies, Ahuja said she’s pushing for more reforms to federal recruitment, “We’re going to stand up a chief diversity officer council, which is something that will be coming this summer, paid internship guidance that will be coming out later this summer. We want to ensure that federal jobs and opportunities are accessible to all, as well as doing some reforms to the Pathways Program.” (Federal News Network)

• Agencies have some new guidance for securely using cloud services. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency updated its Cloud Security Technical Reference Architecture this week. The agency received more than 300 comments on the original TRA released last September. The new document reflects requests to bring the guidance in line with the federal zero trust strategy, clarify its connections to the FedRAMP program, and create more consistency with Identity and Access Management capabilities.

• Health and Human Services welcomes its inaugural class of digital fellows. The fellows are part of an early career program to get technology career workers into government. At HHS, the fellows will use data, analytics and innovation to help with pubic health outreach. The program is designed to recruit new tech employees into federal government. Fellows come from a variety of backgrounds ranging from recent college grads, to software engineers and product managers. The Office of Management and Budget last week announced the 41 fellows who will spend the next two years working at 13 different agencies to solve technology challenges.

• Frontline employees at the Federal Emergency Management Agency may see more resources from federal leadership. FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell requests funding in the fiscal 2023 budget to expand mental health programs for agency workers. That’s as FEMA faces staffing shortages and a now year-round pace of disaster response in the U.S. Criswell said the agency is analyzing its future staffing model to determine how to increase services, without placing more strain on employees. FEMA’s budget request also includes $6.4 million for the incident management workforce.

• A bill to make federal buildings more resilient against natural disasters makes it through the Senate. The Disaster Resiliency Planning Act would require the Office of Management and Budget to issue guidance to agencies on how to make natural disaster resilience part of their asset management decision-making. OMB would also work with the Government Accountability Office and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help agencies identify potential gaps in their disaster resilience prevention efforts. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.) introduced the bill.

• The upside to Congress’ decentralized nature is that innovation can come from anywhere. The downside is that coordinating those innovations is hard. Current and former staffers say technology can and has solved many common problems for members of Congress, but they want to see members tap into more commercial-friendly platforms and give centralized authority to bodies like the Bulk Data Task Force, or the House Digital Service. The House Modernization Committee said they agree Congress needs better collaboration on tech solutions but it may take dedicated staff from each member office. (Federal News Network)

• Federal contractors and subcontractors have less than a week to certify their compliance with their affirmative action requirements. The Labor Department’s Office of Contractor Compliance set a June 30 deadline for vendors to submit their plans to the OFCCP Contractor Portal. Labor found most contractors and subcontractors were not meeting federal affirmative action requirements forcing them to create this new rule. It mandates companies, on an annual basis, to develop and maintain annual affirmative action plans and upload them to the portal. Contractors and subcontractors who fail to register or certify their compliance will face an audit from Labor.

• The IRS is looking to diversify its contractor base. A new request for information published on SAM.gov says the agency is doing market research. It wants to determine if there is a sufficient population of contractors capable of providing goods and services the IRS needs. The RFI specifically asks for responses from businesses that qualify for socio-economic set-asides. IRS is looking for responses by July 12.

• The Department of Veterans Affairs is now better at negotiating prices of pharmaceuticals. The VA’s National Acquisition Center heeded the advice of its inspector general and renegotiated prices with 10 pharmaceutical suppliers and achieved almost $43 million in immediate savings. The acquisition center went back to the contractors after the IG found all 10 did not have valid reasons for not offering the agency most-favored-customer pricing. The IG also found the acquisition center didn’t reliably track all the items contractors offered through the Price Reduction Clause, causing the higher prices. VA expects to save more than $328 million over the life of the contracts.

• The Department of Veterans Affairs encourages veterans to self-check for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder on PTSD Screening Day, June 27. The agency shared a 50-second self-evaluation to help determine if the subject may have symptoms of PTSD by answering six questions. Paula Schnurr, the executive director of the National Center for PTSD said that the message they want to send is one of hope and she said that PTSD is treatable and a normal response to trauma.

• The concept of a government scorecard for customer experience is coming into focus. Former federal officials suggest a customer experience category could be added to the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act scorecard, or could exist as a standalone scorecard. Matt Lira, former special assistant to the president for Innovation Policy and Initiatives tell the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee a FITRA-like scorecard for CX would get results. “It’s tangible, it’s binary, it’s quantitative. And I will say firsthand, being on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue, it was an incredibly useful tool, the FITARA scorecard, in driving agency deliverables,” Lira said. (Federal News Network)

• Two observers of federal management have a list of nine tenets for more agile government. The National Academy of Public Administration and the Project Management Institute’s latest report, “Agile Regulation: Gateway to the Future,” outlines an agile regulatory framework with tenets like collaborating early and often on regulatory development, using small inclusive teams to manage the regulatory development process, and automation tools. NAPA President Terry Gerton saidthat after the pandemic, the public sector must begin to operate differently and make public satisfaction the top priority.

The committee will markup the bill on Wednesday in its usual marathon fashion, bringing the full panel together for hours of debate and dozens of amendments.

Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said Monday that he has faith in the bipartisan nature of the bill, which has eventually make it into law every year for the last six decades.

“This year’s NDAA brings together ideas from across the Armed Services Committee to strengthen U.S. national security by investing in the rich diversity of people who work to defend our country: service members and their families, civil servants across the Department of Defense, scientists and researchers, and the workers who power our defense industrial base,” Smith said. “I am particularly proud that this year’s mark supports the highest pay raise for service members in decades, improves oversight for military family housing projects, and requires a report on a more fair and transparent way for the department to calculate the basic allowance for housing.”

Federal News Network put together a list of interesting provisions in this year’s bill and ones that are likely to draw the most debate this week.

Military end strength

The Defense Department wants to temporarily decrease its end strength, only by a marginal amount, for now the committee is going along with the plan.

However, even with the small drop in service members, lawmakers concerned about pacing with China and Russia are likely to object. Expect an amendment to show up that increases military end strength.

The Pentagon’s plan reduces the number of people in the military by about 4,600 people, that’s out of a total of 2.1 million.

The Pentagon says the goal is to make the military more capable, not bigger.

The Army is taking the biggest cut by shedding 3,000 soldiers. The service says it’s temporary considering the current job market and amount of resources the Army would need to put into recruitment for little gain.

“We want to make sure that we are maintaining our emphasis on high quality talent, and we are looking at making sure that we fill the needs of a cutting edge Army through things like our Multi-Domain Task Force, and we’re enabling them to use the equipment that we’re developing into the future,” Army Undersecretary Gabriel Camarillo said in March. “This is not a budget driven decision. It is entirely about quality, and we will look to build back up are entering over the future years defense plan.”

Red Hill Facility

The Pentagon decided to close the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Facility in Hawaii after a spill sickened people in the area.

The committee is putting multiple provisions in its version of the 2023 Defense authorization bill dealing with the facility. The bill requires the Navy secretary to defuel the facility by the end of 2023. The Defense secretary must also certify to the committee that the defueling will not impact the ability of DoD to provide fuel for operations in the Indo-Pacific region.

The committee is also hedging its bets, even though it’s requiring the facility to defuel, it is not positive about totally closing it. The bill bars any funds from being used to close Red Hill until one year after the Defense Secretary shows that operations will not be affected by its closure. The committee also wants a study for alternate uses for Red Hill.

Finally, the committee is focusing on the people sickened by the facility. The bill requires a study on the future water needs on the island of Oahu, including new wells, privatization of DoD utilities and construction of water treatment plants.

Women in the draft

This idea isn’t in the committee’s bill, but it’s likely to come up. In the past, amendments requiring women to sign up for Selective Service have passed in the House NDAA markup. Those provisions didn’t make it into the final bill, but this could be the year.

There will still be plenty of fireworks over the issue, however. The Senate’s version of the 2023 NDAA requires women to sign up for the draft.

Multiple Republicans like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) have already come out against the provision.

“Women have served in and alongside the Armed Forces since our nation’s founding. Time and again, they have answered the call of duty and served honorably — often heroically — when our nation needed them,” a handful of senators wrote to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed (D-R.I.) last week. “But they have done so of their own will. While American men are required to register for the military draft and fight if needed, these requirements have never been applied to American women. Where they have fought, they have done so freely.”

A commission looking at public service found in 2020 that women should be eligible for the draft.

“Ultimately, the commission determined the time is right to require women to register with Selective Service,” the authors wrote. “This policy change represents a necessary — and overdue — step that is in the best interests of the United States. Requiring all Americans to register with the Selective Service System is needed to ensure that during a national emergency, the government would be able to call on the talents of all Americans and demonstrate the resolve of a united country.”

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Appropriators on Capitol Hill have a busy week this week. The first official week of summer. For one thing, House members are marking up the 2023 defense budget. And taking up the defense authorization bill.  Federal Drive with Tom Temin  gets the latest from WTOP Capitol Hill correspondent, Mitchell Miller.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: And so does this mean no CR? They’re going to be all done, Mitchell?

Mitchell Miller: That’s some very wishful thinking Tom. No, that does not mean that. But, we’ll walk through it a little bit. Wednesday is going to be a really big day for the Pentagon budget. Lawmakers with the House Appropriations Committee are going to take it up. The House Armed Services Committee is going to be taking it up as well. That’s that marathon session that happens every year. Democratic leaders basically looking to try to support the President’s 4% increase in the military spending, with a bill of around $770 billion. With the total bill, everything included, of more than $800 billion with defense authorization. Now, that would be an increase of 10s of billions of dollars. And it would also increase the military pay raise by 4.6%. But some Republicans and centrist Democrats say that because of inflation soaring, that’s just not going to be enough. Among those pushing for an increase is Virginia Congresswoman Elaine Luria, who just says that amount of money in this budget isn’t enough to cover inflation.

Tom Temin: Got it. And then of course, there’s the civilian side, and are the appropriators back to work on that one at all yet?

Mitchell Miller: They are there, there has been some work on that the appropriations committee last week, moved through a lot of different pieces of legislation. So there has been progress on that front, which we haven’t been able to report until recently. Among the many things that are included in that is funding for the capitol police budget, they’re going to  at least propose to get about $700 million, that would be an increase of $100 million. So there has been some movement on that front. It does look like they have made probably the most progress that they’ve made all year, just in the last few weeks. But again, as we go back to that continuing resolution, it really looks like there’s a lot of optimism on the Democratic side, but less so among centrist Democrats and Republicans. Democrats, Democratic leaders would like this all to be wrapped up in a bow and in a budget by August, but I just don’t see that’s going to happen, even though we’ve had some significant progress related to this.

Tom Temin: Could part of the issue be that the Republicans, smelling the fact that they might be able to take over the House and Senate after midterms, would prefer a CR so that they could do the budget work next year, and get more of their priorities in line?

 Mitchell Miller: You have thrown the dart right into the bullseye Tom, for sure. That is exactly what they’re looking at. House Republicans really know that they are going to overtake the house. It’s just a matter of how many votes there how many lawmakers are going to be included in that. Right now the margin is 12 for the Democrats, there are estimates that it could flip anywhere from 30 to even 50 seats on to the Republican side. So they say well, why should we rush this, if we know that we’re more than likely going to have power in the House, have a new Republican House Speaker. So they are putting the brakes on some of these proposals to get it through. And then meanwhile, on the Senate side, you have an even bigger increase proposal for defense. So that’s another complicating factor. James Inhofe, the outgoing ranking Republican, really wanted a big beefy defense proposal there. So a lot of moving parts as always, and as always, politics playing a role here.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with WTOP Capitol Hill correspondent, Mitchell Miller. And getting close to the parochial federal agency issues, telework is back in discussion now and looks like some of the members want to kind of get clarification and maybe some progress on what the final telework policy might be for federal employees.

Mitchell Miller: That’s right. As you know, Virginia Congressman Gerry Connolly has been a big booster on this. But he really wants to get the metrics related to telework so that it’s not just an anecdotal type of thing where they say, well, it really helps all these agencies. So he’s joined with Maryland Congressman John Sarbanes to propose legislation that would effectively get metrics exactly on how these telework policies are working or not working, and to show that they are working in his view. This is legislation called the Telework Metrics and Cost Savings Act. Basically, they argue that this legislation would make a case for telework and it actually moved through the House Oversight and Reform Committee last week. It does have strong support from Democrats. On the Republican side, some people say, “Well wait a second, what about these agencies that have had to move back and forth during the pandemic?”. They feel that some of these rules, at least proposed, are a little too stringent. For example, if an agency were to go to a lot of telework and then need to get back to getting more people into the office, they worry that this could hamstring some of these agencies. Among the examples they point to is the IRS, which, as we both know, has a huge backlog of all kinds of paperwork that needs to be done. And a lot of it has to be done in person or somehow to get people in the office to do that. So a little bit back and forth here. But another interesting development related to telework.

Tom Temin: Well, I know in the private sector, they’re still kind of wrestling with the whole issue. I know of one good size DC employer, actually Northern Virginia, that went from three mandatory days in the office to two, just because people, employees are leaving and demanding it.

Mitchell Miller: Right. Yeah. And that’s what a lot of these agencies are wrestling with. They have actually, many of them have made improvements with telework and have gotten more people to work from home. But now, the pendulum is shifting back, as you know, in connection with the pandemic. So a lot of these agencies are trying to figure out exactly how they can kind of move one way and be flexible in certain respects, just like parts of the private sector.

Tom Temin: And you’re also reporting some progress on the GSA and its search for here we go again, FBI headquarters location. I thought that was decided back when Barbara Mikulski was still a senator.

Mitchell Miller: That’s right, deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra would say. But we are back kind of to square one with the FBI headquarters. The FBI headquarters, of course, under the Trump administration, they wanted to keep the headquarters, rebuild it, but due to headquarters in DC on Pennsylvania Avenue. Now, Virginia and Maryland lawmakers are saying, well, let’s get this thing going again. So they had a call last week with the General Services Administration, GSA assuring them that several sites in our area still remain on the board as possibilities. Springfield, Virginia, Landover in Greenbelt, Maryland. Not surprisingly, lawmakers from both states are praising this saying that maybe this could show that a decision could come soon, and that they could actually start getting a lot of the economic development and a lot of the economic progress that they think that a new FBI headquarters in the suburbs could make. The Maryland delegation specifically led by Steny Hoyer, the House Majority Leader, is calling on the GSA to make a final decision on this in the fall, just like the optimism about the continuing resolution. I think that is also a rather optimistic call since we are talking about something that as you just pointed out, goes back years and years.

Tom Temin: And no truth to the rumors that the FBI headquarters could be tied to the location of the Washington Commanders.

Mitchell Miller: No, that’s absolutely right.

Tom Temin: All right. And, by the way, how were things back on Capitol Hill itself? Summer is officially underway now, today. And you know, the whole idea of tourists and touring the Capitol, what’s going on there?

Mitchell Miller: Well, it’s really interesting. You do definitely see a lot more groups here on Capitol Hill, which was nice to see because it’s always been that way. Big school groups. The other day, I saw hundreds of Future Farmers of America from all across the country, all these young people coming in to DC. The thing is, people don’t really realize and you still see tourists coming up to the Capitol saying can I just kind of walk in. That it is still restricted, and that was pointed out last week. On a day that after there was a January 6 hearing many hours later into the evening, there was actually a crew from CBS’ Late Show with Stephen Colbert, they had been given permission to do some interviews and do some shooting with video in the Longworth Building, but they were there so long that when Capitol Police encountered him, they actually charged them. And so we’ll see how that gets sorted out. But it just shows that there are still restrictions in all of the Capitol complex and actually, a lot of people don’t realize that the Capitol Visitor Center remains technically closed and the capitol police, as well as the Senate Sergeant at Arms have indicated that that may not fully reopen, believe it or not, until 2023.

Tom Temin: Well, all right. So don’t make any big plans that involve being in the interior of the Capitol. In the meantime, Mitchell Miller is Capitol Hill correspondent for WTOP.

Two House Appropriations Subcommittees are proposing a $777 billion budget for the Pentagon next year; the budget is the culmination of the Defense appropriations bill and a separate bill that handles military construction. Those bills are the only ones that have true financial repercussions and are largely in line with what the Biden administration requested for Defense back in April.

The House Armed Services Committee is sticking closely to the Biden budget and to appropriators. The 2023 House Defense authorization bill suggests $772 billion for the Pentagon next year.

The Senate Armed Services Committee, however, is feeling bolder in what it is approving in its legislation. That panel is authorizing $817 billion for DoD, an increase of $45 billion from the Biden administration’s request.

Committee staffers said about half of the increase will go to hedging inflation and the other half will go to priorities that were unfunded by the president’s request. The bill halts the proposed decommissioning of 12 Navy ships

The authorization bills, do not appropriate actual funds, but they do dictate policy and are taken into consideration by other lawmakers.

The missing piece of the puzzle is the Senate Appropriations Defense bill, which has not scheduled a release of its legislation yet.

The shifting numbers come from concerns that the Biden administration’s budget only planned for a 2% inflation rate before prices began to rise. Lawmakers fear that the president’s budget will not give the Pentagon the buying power it needs next year to meet its strategy.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith said last week that he expects to see the topline of the House Defense authorization bill higher than what is currently proposed. Smith said the committee is going to try to pass the bill and then offer an amendment that will authorize a bigger budget.

“We’ll see by how much but it’s not going to be an insignificant amount,” Smith said.

The full committee will markup the bill on Wednesday.

Where the funding goes

Despite differing toplines, the three bills share plenty of similarities. All three bills fund the largest Defense research and development budget ever, with at least $130 billion. Those funds will go toward basic research, artificial intelligence, microelectronics and other technologies.

The bills also fund a 4.6% pay increase for service members and for DoD civilians.

The legislation adds extra funds to aid Ukraine in 2023 and adds money to stockpile rare earth minerals that the military needs for critical technologies.

Area of conflict

After years of debate, the Senate’s Defense authorization bill requires women to sign up for the Selective Service System and allows them to be drafted.

Multiple Republicans like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) have already come out against the provision.

“Women have served in and alongside the Armed Forces since our nation’s founding. Time and again, they have answered the call of duty and served honorably – often heroically – when our nation needed them,” a handful of senators wrote to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed (D-R.I.) last week. “But they have done so of their own will. While American men are required to register for the military draft and fight if needed, these requirements have never been applied to American women. Where they have fought, they have done so freely.”

A commission looking at public service found in 2020 that women should be eligible for the draft.

“Ultimately, the commission determined the time is right to require women to register with Selective Service,” the authors wrote. “This policy change represents a necessary — and overdue — step that is in the best interests of the United States. Requiring all Americans to register with the Selective Service System is needed to ensure that during a national emergency, the Government would be able to call on the talents of all Americans and demonstrate the resolve of a united country.”

The House of Representatives Chief Administrative Office is close to adding another shared service to the 100 or so it already provides.

These range from acquisition support to human resources to finance and logistics. But the one area where those services were missing and sorely needed was around digital transformation.

So in the coming months, the CAO will launch its new digital services office.

Alan Thompson, the House’s chief information officer, said over the last decade, and specifically over the last two-plus years, a lot of member offices, committees and caucuses have been trying to take advantage of technology in new ways. But many times their staff had limited knowledge or brought in consultants that cost a lot of money.

“We’d like to fill that gap for them,” Thompson said on Ask the CIO. “We’re going to have several different roles in this team. We’ll have a product manager role. We’ll have a user experience designer as well as software engineers. We really hope to bring in the capability to rapidly develop or maybe just consult on how an organization within the House member, committee or leadership office or a conference or caucus wants to achieve something. Really the hope is to be that resource there that can help them do that.”

The CAO, which first announced its plan to create a digital services office in March at a hearing of the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, is hiring both new employees but also bringing in experts from the U.S. Digital Service as well as TechCongress, an innovation fellowship that places technologists with Congress for a year.

Catherine Szpindor, the House of Representatives chief administrative officer, said members or committees are trying to solve a specific problem, but don’t know exactly how to do that.

The CAO offers almost 100 cloud approved services, for example, and the new digital services team will be able to do more than just point them in the right direction, but help get offices from idea to implementation.

“We have traditionally been a typical IT support group. We support major applications like PeopleSoft in our HR and payroll applications, these large Oracle and other products that have been traditional, and that’s served us well,” Szpindor said. “But I think just since we really started integrating Office 365 and going to the cloud with so many other things, we started realizing that there was a real need for us to be able to provide consultative services and help with the development of some of these newer products that are automated in a way in which you don’t have to know a lot about the standard way to program. They’re low code, no code type applications. Allen’s bringing in Appian as one of those that we could possibly use. We are looking at robotics process automation. This was just a good time to do that. The time was right, the enthusiasm is there, and I think industry experts are backing us with ideas and how it’s being used in other places.”

The House started implementing Microsoft O365 in 2019 and brought in other cloud products like WebEx from Cisco and Zoom to address the fast growing need for remote work during the pandemic.

These tools have made hearings more accessible, but they have also help improve the connection between Washington, D.C. office and members’ district offices.

“I will point out that these the members have gotten very good at using these tools, which I’ve been very happy to see,” Thompson said. “I attended an event the other night hosted by Rep. [Eric] Swalwell (D-Calif.) when he was at home with his new baby in his arms while he was doing this meeting. The members have really taken to and, I think, have gotten used to this and have a lot more flexibility now. We required a lot of hands on from my team to support these meetings, and now we’re finding that, they’re like, ‘Oh, we got this, we can make this work.’”

That feeling of “we got this,” is part of the reason why the CAO is taking the next step with digital services.

Thompson said the digital services office will work directly with digital directors, who work for committee and member offices. While the CAO continues to set the office up, Thompson and his team are meeting with the digital directors to better understand what the trends, challenges and broad needs are across the House.

“There’s a lot of outreach going on reaching out to even chiefs of staff in member offices, trying to understand what problems are they having, where’s the gaps so you can consider it a listening tour, if you will, doing a lot of research about what kinds of tools or things or initiatives that they’re trying to perform,” he said.

Thompson said as a pre-cursor of sorts to the digital services office, the CAO has been improving the technology infrastructure for the House over the last few years.

He said from improving Wi-Fi access in the office buildings to a new pilot in the district offices to improve their wireless connectivity, the goal is to make it easier to connect offices and people.

“We’ve also put a virtual private network (VPN) concentrator out on the West Coast, this is all about are trying to improve service for the district offices. They’re those satellite offices that two or three people are sometimes one person in them, but still having them be connected and being able to collaborate use all the same tools that we do here on the Hill,” Thompson said. “We opened up two new pops, or point of presence, if you think for a national backbone in the Southwest and the Midwest. We have about 900 plus district offices out there in the members’ home districts that need to be connected, just like they would be here. Now, these offices can jump on our network faster and have less latency getting to our infrastructure services.”

Szpindor added since the CAO put the network and infrastructure upgrades in place, the number of calls they receive from member offices about dropped network connections or latency issues has dropped significantly.

“The thing that we have to do better with is when the offices have issues, whether it’s with their technology or their network, they have to know who to call to get help,” she said. “It breaks my heart when one of the district office directors or someone talks about all the network issues that they have in our office, and we were never contacted. I don’t know who she was talking to, but it never got down to our network staff. We are willing to do whatever it needs to improve, including getting on a plane and flying to the office to check things out or doing monitoring by checking the bandwidth or whatever to make it better. The communication on what we can do and how we can help is something we’re working on.”

Szpindor said the digital services office also will help current staff upskill through short or medium term assignments on projects.

“I try to look at the employee side of things, there will be a shift, and some of the work that’s been done to where maybe there’s a certain percentage of the work that we have been doing on our back end systems, that will shift here. So we want to keep in mind, the needs of our dedicated employees to try to help them to get to where they can be part of this as well,” she said.

The General Services Administration told lawmakers in a phone briefing Friday that sites in Greenbelt and Landover, Maryland, and Springfield, Virginia continue to meet the agency’s mission needs.

The FBI has been working with GSA, as the federal government’s landlord, on plans for a new consolidated headquarters for nearly two decades.

House lawmakers, meanwhile, have recently proposed the first new tranche of money for a suburban FBI headquarters in the early stages of planning for fiscal 2023 appropriations.

The Biden administration, in its FY 2023 budget request, revisited plans under previous administrations to relocate the FBI headquarters to the D.C. suburbs.

Congress repeatedly stonewalled funding requests from the Trump administration to build a new FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., on the site of the current J. Edgar Hoover building.

The Maryland and Virginia congressional delegations are both vying for the new FBI headquarters to be built in their state.

Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) Ben Cardin (D-Md.), House Majority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), and Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Md.) urged GSA in a statement Friday to select a final headquarters location this fall.

“Today’s GSA finding that the two Maryland FBI campus sites remain viable options to meet the needs of the Bureau is another positive step towards our goal of securing a new, consolidated headquarters,” the lawmakers wrote.

“For far too long, the FBI workforce has remained in a building that does not meet their security or operational needs. That’s why we will keep pushing for the new headquarters, and we are confident that the Maryland sites in Greenbelt and Landover are the best locations,” they added.

Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Reps. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), Don Beyer (D-Va.) and Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.) praised GSA’s determination that the Springfield site remains “a viable and competitive location for the new FBI headquarters.”

“This is an important milestone in the site selection process, and we look forward to continuing to work with the Administration to bring an FBI headquarters that best supports the mission of the FBI, to Northern Virginia,” the lawmakers wrote.

The House Appropriations Committee, in its draft financial services and general government spending bill for FY 2023, released Wednesday, would give GSA $500 million to build a new FBI headquarters.

Congress, as part of the fiscal 2022 omnibus spending bill, requested a briefing from the FBI and GSA on the viability of relocating the headquarters to one of the three potential sites. 

The FY 2023 spending bill also includes language that authorizes the administration to use previously appropriated funds to construct a consolidated FBI headquarters at one of the suburban sites.

Hoyer and Brown joined Reps. Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.) Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), John Sarbanes (D-Md.), Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and David Trone (D-Md.) saying in a statement that the funding contained in the spending bill would “ensure that the Biden Administration has the resources it needs once it selects a site to move forward with construction of the new headquarters this fall.”

“The FBI will soon have a headquarters that meets its security requirements and allows it to carry out its vital national security mission,” the lawmakers said in a statement.