Customers who need to deal face-to-face with somebody, from the IRS to Veterans Affairs or Social Security need a real face (with brain and body attached) before them. But…

There are also lots of good reasons why many people say the 9-to-5 office of the 20th century is gone. For good. Working from home does wonders for rush hour traffic and air pollution, from the freeways of San Diego to the infamous beltway around Washington, D.C.

Many employees swear they are also more productive and likely to put in more hours if they can work remotely. So to test the waters we asked a random group from around the nation. Most answered quickly. With makes-you-think comments. Here are some of the first replies we got. All, every single one, is interesting. Some surprising. This is the first batch with more from-the-trenches feedback from readers.

A 30-year worker at NAVSEA in Dahlgren, Virginia:

I came to work every day throughout the pandemic. Went into the office; it was actually pretty nice since I was only one of very few that came in. Still coming in to the office every day.

I wouldn’t mind a couple of days a week teleworking, but I’ve got to get away from home (but I don’t have a horrible commute).

If I could work remotely from another area, I would agree that pay/raises should be based on location since a portion of pay is for locality.

Of note I have worked for Dept. of Navy for over 35 years.

A West Virginia based fed:

If you don’t want to return would you change jobs or agency if your new employer would let you work from home? So my answer to this question is “it depends.” I am not opposed to going into an office to work; I miss seeing people and working together. I feel that team building is more organic and natural if you are in one location vs. on a video conference. That being said, I would probably not change jobs into an agency or job that would require on-site presence 100% of the time. I think a hybrid situation suits me best. I should mention that I live in the eastern panhandle of WV so a commute to DC is 2+ hours each way.

If you could work remotely from a different city would you agree that future raises would be based where you were actually working, not where your official office is located? I fully understand that and would not expect to make D.C. locality pay if I was living somewhere with a much lower cost of living. That being said, I’m still thankful for Senator Robert Byrd who worked to ensure that my county is included in the D.C. locality pay area.

An about to retire employee:

I enjoyed teleworking for the last two years, until now. I am almost ready to retire with 32 yrs. of service. I am planning to work until Dec. 31, 2023.

A worker in suburban D.C.:

I am most likely not going to return to work. I got two times COVID positive: One in 2020 and the second one in 2022 and my immune system is weak.

Another is obviously making the best of what, for many, could be a tough situation:

Well, for me, I am perfectly well teleworking from home. It is a privilege that some people take for granted. I work for the Food and Drug Administration headquarters in Rockville; I have no plans to move away from Maryland, even if taxes are killing me, because I collect my SSI pension (yes, I am 71 yrs. old) and SSI is taxable in Maryland, but I enjoy this city. My office is only six miles away from home.

During the pandemic and we continue doing it now, the meetings are by Zoom. We even have a Christmas Party by Zoom. All the conferences, seminars, trainings are by Zoom or webinar. It is an amazing time! Even if I am suffering from an aggressive invasive breast cancer, I am enjoying telework. Blessed the Lord!!! That we have this incredible opportunity on these days of inflation, we get to save the gas money.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By Daisy Thornton

Source: NPR

The new policy states that service members who commit sexual assault will be subject to immediate initiation of discharge procedures. Only in very few circumstances can an airman or guardian be considered for an exception.

Those exceptions are what DAF is updating; under previous policy there were more situations where assaulters would have an opportunity to stay in the service.

Exceptions are now strengthened for and bar exceptions when an airman or guardian assaults a child or if that person has a prior assault or harassment charge.

“Sexual assault is incompatible with our core values, the Guardian Ideal, and military service. These revisions will significantly improve our ability to discharge those unworthy of calling themselves airmen and guardians,” said Air Force Undersecretary Gina Ortiz Jones. “Our policies must set clear expectations and consequences for the force. Everything we do, and everything we say communicates the value that we place, or do not place, on one’s service.”

There are also factors that DAF will no longer consider when making an exception. Those include personal, family or financial circumstances, good military character and medical or mental health condition.

What DAF will still consider, according to the new separation guidance, is if the member’s continued presence is consistence with “the interest of DAF in maintaining proper disciple, good order, leadership, morale and a culture of respect for the safety, dignity and personal boundaries of all service members.”

The change adds mission-focused criteria to the exception consideration.

“These new objective criteria reflect our commitment to justice for sexual assault survivors and accountability of offenders,” added Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. “We are determined to maintain a culture of respect for the safety, dignity and personal boundaries of every airman, guardian and civil servant.”

DAF and the Defense Department are putting a large emphasis on combating sexual assault. DAF is asking Congress for increased funds in 2023 to strengthen sexual assault and integrated violence prevention programs.

Nearly a year ago, DoD announced it was changing policy to address issues with its sexual assault and prosecution process.

DoD is in the process of removing sex crimes and related crimes like domestic and child abuse from the military’s oversight and giving them to independent civilian agencies. DoD added sexual harassment as an offense in the Uniform Code of Military Justice and is creating offices in each military department to handle the prosecution of special crimes with appropriate legal oversight and guidance from the Pentagon.

However, the Postal Regulatory Commission, in its analysis of USPS’ fiscal 2021 annual performance report, found USPS fell short on most of its delivery performance and customer service targets.

The report finds USPS fell short on seven delivery targets, meeting only its targets for marketing mail and periodicals, even after lowering the targets in light of the pandemic’s expected impact on service.

USPS fell short of most of its FY 2021 performance targets, despite lowering those scores anywhere from 2.81% to more than 26%.

“While it is important that targets not be so aspirational as to be unachievable, it is equally important that they serve to inspire improvement, and that they are not set so low as to be unreasonable for purposes of evaluating whether the high-quality service performance goal was achieved,” the commission wrote.

The commission’s public representative noted this marks the fourth year in a row that USPS has declined across every category.

USPS said its performance in fiscal 2021 came down to poor peak season performance, employee absenteeism, reduced supplier capacity, and weather and natural disaster disruptions.

Other reports show USPS has shown improvement since FY 2021. The agency’s inspector general’s office recently found that earlier than usual preparations for the FY 2022 holiday season improved overall performance.

USPS said its level of service in FY 2021 “was undeniably impacted by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic,” and service performance improved over the course of the fiscal year.

USPS noted that across its 50 districts, 13 processing divisions, 13 logistics divisions and headquarters, 22 units had a least one month in FY 2021 where employee availability fell below 70%.

USPS said employee availability was greater for mail processing personnel than for delivery services or customer service employees.

The agency said its 10-Year strategic plan has put the agency on a path to overcoming its long-standing financial, service and operational challenges.

Despite failing to achieve most of its targets, the Postal Service highlighted its prioritization of election and mail-in ballots in FY 2021.

The commission praised USPS for taking what the agency has referred to as “extraordinary measures,” such as allowing extra transportation and overtime, to ensure the on-time delivery of mail-in ballots.

“These efforts were undertaken notwithstanding the adverse effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, in furtherance of the vital role the Postal Service plays in the American democratic process,” the commission wrote.

The commission notes performance indicators began to show improvement in the second quarter of fiscal 2021, but said it remains to be seen “whether this represents real year-over-year improvement or simply a return to the pattern of seasonal variation that was typical prior to the outreach of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The commission urges USPS to implement the inspector general office’s recommendations to better recruit truck drivers and increase the efficiency of truck trips.

It also recommends that USPS reduces critically late trips in districts with the highest concentrations of them, and to develop more effective, quantifiable ways to measure improvements to service.

USPS missed six of eight customer experience performance targets, and only met targets for its business service network and its customer care center.

“The commission commends the Postal Service for its efforts to keep up with private sector and other federal agencies by engaging with customers on social media and using social media to evaluate CX and obtain other insights,” the commission wrote.

“The Postal Service’s efforts to respond to customer inquiries on social media in FY 2021 are commendable given the small number of staff available to address customer questions and issues.”

The commission recommends USPS hire more customer experience employees and deploy automation tools to address challenges.

The commission said USPS customer experience targets are reasonable for fiscal 2022.

USPS met its total accident rate target for the third year in a row, but missed survey response rate targets.

If the survey response rate continues to decline in FY 2022, the commission recommends USPS investigate and address the root cause of the declining rate of employees filling out its Postal Pulse survey.

Happy Fourth of July! Please enjoy this Federal Report from the archives.

Long time feds — and the millions of merchants who depend on their business — have seen teleworking in government explode almost overnight because of the pandemic, after decades of being a minor project in most offices. Working from home has gone from a complicated/emotional exercise, limited to a handful of select workers in smaller agencies to what is likely to be its peak participation this year. In some agencies, six to eight of every ten employees has been working from home for two years or more now.

Teleworking for a long time was a minimal show-and-tell exercise. Purpose: To please Congress. Now it has become a super big deal. And a way of life — many hope — in many agencies around the nation. Agencies once supported telework centers — often leased office space between your home and your office — to show they were all in. Or they would troop out the ‘success’ of the Patent and Trademark Office’s Virginia headquarters where a relatively large number of people worked from home. Sometimes. Along came COVID-19 and almost overnight agencies that had ignored or actively fought teleworking embraced it. Now it appears that the telework program, while here to stay, is in for some shrinkage. Big time.

Eliminating teleworking, which the Trump administration tried, is a little like squeezing toothpaste back into the tube. Doable, but not easy. Now the Biden administration is trying to get more/most workers back in the office but for different reasons. During the BRAC era (the Defense Department’s base realignment and closure efforts) when feds were being moved from city to city, some estimates said that each federal job (or family) contributed significant dollars to six different merchants. So having feds in the neighborhood was a plus. But neighborhood meant near the office, where people could shop, eat and park. While teleworking did wonders shrinking traffic jams and eliminating air pollution, it also resulted in many businesses failing over time, despite huge government subsidies. That’s the primary reason the Biden administration has told federal agencies to get every available home-worker back to the office ASAP.

The impact of the federal paychecks is obvious in the D.C. metro area, which has about 20% of all white collar federal jobs. But the steady, recession-proof payroll is also a major economic driver in metro New York City and Jersey City (56,400); Virginia Beach, Norfolk and Newport News (47,000); Baltimore, Columbia and Towson (41,000); and other places you’d expect. Like San Diego (35,500); Los Angeles and Long Beach (31,000); and Dallas-Ft. Worth (27,000). But the government is also a (or the) primary employer in Ogden, Utah and Huntsville, Alabama (both nearly 20,000 feds); and Bremterton, Washington; Tampa and St. Pete in Florida; Kansas City, Missouri; Richmond, Virginia; Jacksonville, Florida; San Antonio, Texas; Fayetteville, North Carolina; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Alberquerque, New Mexico.

Back in the 90s, some agencies would allow some employees to work from home one day per month so they they could check the box which said they were onboard with teleworking. But just barely…

In the beginning, there were many real and invented obstacles to working from home. Equipment and computers were different. There was the problem of having a dedicated telephone land line (ask your grandfather what that is) among many others. Some officials worried about what would happen if an employee was injured while on the job, but at home. Whose jurisdiction was it? Who paid? Often times the objections were personal. Some bosses then — maybe still — were not comfortable with employees who were not at the office. Were they working, or taking care of kids, watching TV, writing a novel or simply goofing off? In some instances, agency heads worked from home one day a month. That was supposed to satisfy House members (mostly Democrats from the D.C., Maryland and Virginia region) who knew and understood their federal constituents.

Now folks who have been forced or allowed to work from home are being asked to go back to the office. Maybe downtown, maybe in the burbs. But back to the old ways. Many say they’ve never been happier (or more productive) than the past two years. Others say going remote has been a mistake in a variety of ways. Whatever you think, wherever you work (now and in the future), it is a tough call. Some who have been doing it for a long time now think a compromise — work from both home and the office — is the answer. Others say they’ll quit if called back, even as some can’t wait for the return to the “real” office. We’ve been hearing from lots of people who have been-there-done-that. And that’s helpful. Check in if you can and we’ll tell the powers-that-be what “real” people think about this — maybe historic — overhaul. Email me at mcausey@federalnewsnetwork.com

Nearly Useless Factoid

By Robert O’Shaughnessy

Fireworks’ colors are made in the air when metal elements are heated. This excites electrons and releases excess energy in the form of light

Source: Department of Energy

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The United States is helping Ukraine militarily, but only indirectly. When it comes to health care for the besieged Ukrainians, the aid and cooperation are more direct. Much of the work falls to the Health and Human Services Department. Joining the Federal Drive with Tom Temin with an update, the HHS assistant secretary for global affairs, Loyce Pace.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: Ms. Pace, good to have you with us.

Loyce Pace: It’s great being here. Tom, thanks very much for having me.

Tom Temin: And what is going on with respect to Health and Human Services in Ukraine? And who are some of the partners that you’re working with? And what are some of the components of HHS that are doing the work?

Loyce Pace: Well, first off the war in Ukraine and Russia’s aggression there is really unconscionable. One of the things that we noticed really early on was that our friends and partners in Ukraine would really have to keep track of who required and health services not only sort of acute needs, such as trauma care, and the life resulting from the war and conflict, but even tracking diseases, particularly infectious diseases, like Polio, like COVID, like tuberculosis and HIV.

Tom Temin: So you’re dealing with a country where people are being injured in great numbers because of the war. But also, it sounds like a country that is in the first place not quite up to world class standards, in terms of health care tracking, and systems delivery.

Loyce Pace: Well, they’ve been able to do a lot on their own, and with the support of our Centers for Disease Control with the support of European partners, so we have to, obviously give the government in Ukraine a lot of credit, especially for continuing that work during the war. But yes, Ukraine, for example, has some of the higher rates of HIV in Europe. And unfortunately, that means that people living with HIV might not have access to those treatments and other services that they require in the midst of a conflict.

Tom Temin: Sure. And so the conflict, I guess it might be obvious, but it has done a lot to interrupt what they had in place as a health care delivery system.

Loyce Pace: That’s right. That’s right.

Tom Temin: And what are some of the specific activities HHS has going on in Ukraine?

Loyce Pace: Well, one of the things our Centers for Disease Control is doing is they are working with staff that continue to be on the ground, at least remaining in the region on shoring up the public health network. So CDC has been active in Ukraine, for a number of years, we have a director who was posted in Ukraine is from the region. And we also have other locally employed staff. And so they remain active, even if they’re, unfortunately displaced themselves because of what’s happening there. They continue to work with the Ministry of Health in Ukraine, and other national public health institutes or partners to ensure those disease surveillance activities are ongoing, and also assist Ukraine in preparing for the worst, whether that, again, is around traumatic injuries in care, or more broadly, around other potential events that could affect the health care of their people.

Tom Temin: And what is the staff there reporting back? I didn’t realize we had actual U.S. federal employees in harm’s way in Ukraine, on the civilian side, and what are they telling you the conditions are like?

Loyce Pace: I think it’s been tough. I mean, these people, these are people who have really, we’ve lived through a lot. And I have to give credit to particularly our government employees who serve all over the world, including at the Department of Health, they work in many different settings, whether that’s in the midst of a disease outbreak in the midst of an environmental disaster, or in this case, in conflict and war. And I think they’ve reported that while their partners and collaborative agencies and individuals are resilient, it’s still quite tough to manage it all, obviously. And I think they are, you know, keeping up their spirits and momentum as much as possible. And certainly they appreciate the relationship that they have with agencies across the U.S. government, but also with other partners like WHO (World Health Organization), UNICEF and nonprofit organizations.

Tom Temin: And is CDC, the only agency of HHS, are there other parts working there?

Loyce Pace: That’s our main boots on the ground. But our Office of Global Affairs is playing a pretty significant role as well, particularly with regards to understanding not only from the ministry, but from the WHO regional office in Europe, again, what the needs are today and what they could be tomorrow. And naturally, there are other parts of the U.S. government who are definitely playing a lead role in Ukraine, including our Department of State and our U.S. Agency for International Development. So it’s an all of government effort along with and guided by the leadership within the White House.

Tom Temin: We are speaking with Loyce Pace. She’s the assistant secretary for Global Affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services. And while we have you there has been an ongoing effort of HHS to ensure pandemic relief around the world through the distribution of vaccines and so forth. Maybe update us on what is going on there. I understand that some of the antiviral medicines are starting to run out, you know, supplies in the United States?

Loyce Pace: Well, certainly HHS continues to be focused on the domestic COVID response. Internationally, we are doing so as well. And alongside some of those U.S. government partners that I mentioned already, the reality is, we still need everyone to be vaccinated and boosted against this disease, we know that the vaccines work and they’re helpful, especially at this phase of the virus, which is still ongoing as a pandemic. And as a global crisis, particularly in other parts of the world. We are hovering under 70% here in the U.S., and in some cases, those percentages are low. But when you look around the world, particularly on the African continent, they still have vaccination rates in the teens and 20s. And so it’s much lower than what we see here, significantly lower than what’s been achieved in parts of Europe, and even in parts of Asia and Latin America. And the reality is, unless and until we can get the world vaccinated, the more we’ll be sort of flying back from or fighting against the virus as it stands today.

Tom Temin: All right. And while we have you also, then we should maybe just talk about the Secretariat for Global Affairs within HHS, give us a sense of the scope, is it a discrete office, or that function really does overall?

Loyce Pace: Well, we sit within the Office of the Secretary, it’s an office that has existed in some form for several decades, actually. But it’s taken a few different iterations. And it’s evolved over time. It’s current structure has been in place, maybe for the past 20 years. And essentially, we have two functions. We are representing the secretary and HHS divisions and offices globally, and we’re ensuring that our interests and those of the American people are reflected in those programs and services worldwide. We’re even bringing back from those international engagements, ideas or interest in how we work together with countries around the world on really important public health problems, whether that’s around cancer research, or other outbreak surveillance and prevention, or plenty of other issues in the public health space. But another important role that we play is we also try and drive the agenda globally. And so our secretary of Health is an important representative when it comes to sitting with other health ministers who are members of the G7, or the G20. He also sits around the table with health ministers or secretaries at the World Health Organization and their annual convenings. And so we at our Office of Global Affairs also work with other divisions across the department to really inform those discussions and global priorities.

Tom Temin: And you mentioned HIV, which is still maybe more prevalent in places like Ukraine. And you mentioned also USAID in the State Department. And they have programs because I think it’s understood that we have mostly licked HIV AIDS with respect to growth, Ebola, Polio, and a host of other viral types of things in the United States. And I think we sometimes forget, these are still prevalent and growing in some cases, and dangerous in other parts of the world. So sounds like you’re kind of in arms with USAID and state on a number of issues.

Loyce Pace: Yeah, to some degree. I mean, it’s really important to keep in mind how many fights are happening at once and credit to our various divisions for keeping that in mind themselves. And, frankly, you know, not always getting credit for the disasters, they prevent, in the fact that we haven’t seen it. A major resurgence of Polio is credited to our CDC. The fact that we’ve been able to stamp out Ebola outbreaks in the African region and other potential outbreaks is again credit to our colleagues here at HHS. And so oftentimes, we don’t know or don’t have the best sense of our success, but it’s certainly a matter of juggling a number of balls, knowing how important it is to focus on public health. And I’m really grateful to work in a department that understands that and is really leading the way around the world.

Tom Temin: Sometimes it’s hard to prove a negative. Loyce Pace is the assistant secretary for Global Affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services. Thanks so much for joining me.

Loyce Pace: Thanks very much, Tom. I appreciate it.

The biggest monthly drop was in the International Stock Index I fund, which fell from 1.19% in May to -8.21% in June. Although the I fund also dropped in June 2021, year over year it was down by 6.77 percentage points.

The second-biggest monthly drop was in the common stock index C fund, which ended June at -6.55% compared to -1.65% in May. The small cap stock index S fund had a return of -7.95% in June compared to -3.53% in May, and the fixed income index F fund posted returns of -1.94% last month compared to 1.13% in May.

Overall, the TSP was down from a year ago and this year, record inflation has affected many sectors of the economy especially energy and food. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that from May 2021 to May 2022, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers increased 8.6%, which is the largest 12-month increase since the period ending December 1981.

Things are not looking much better in the Lifecycle funds, all of which had declining monthly returns in June. The biggest monthly decrease was in the L 2055, 2060 and 2065 funds which ended at -7.25% in June compared to -0.89% in May. The smallest decline was in the L Income fund, which dropped from 0.04% in May to -1.60% last month.

Aside from the L Income fund, Lifecycle funds have remained in the red since April.

To listen to the Federal Newscast on your phone or mobile device, subscribe in PodcastOne or Apple Podcasts. The best listening experience on desktop can be found using Chrome, Firefox or Safari.

• The Justice Department is blocking the merger of two federal contractors because it threatens imminent competition for a government contract to provide operational modeling and simulation services to the National Security Agency. Justice says Booz Allen Hamilton’s move to buy Everwatch, an IT services company, would violate federal anti-trust law. U.S. Attorneys claim Booz Allen and EverWatch competed head-to-head to provide these operational modeling and simulation services. But just before NSA issued the solicitation, Booz Allen decided to buy its only rival, potentially creating a monopoly.

• Delta Air Lines agreed to a more than $10 million settlement over claims it falsified international mail delivery times in a contract with the Postal Service. The Justice Department says the USPS contract to Delta included delivering U.S. mail to soldiers overseas, as well as delivering mail to and from Defense and State Department posts. The settlement resolves claims that Delta falsely reported the times it delivered this mail. The USPS contract specifies penalties for mail that was delivered late or to the wrong location.

• GSA removed the “stop sign” in front of the POLARIS small business contract vehicle. Small businesses sharpen your pencils, the POLARIS GWAC is back in play. After pausing the solicitation for this mega small business IT services contract in April, the General Services Administration released the updated contract terms and conditions yesterday. One of the major changes is requiring the small business of a mentor protégé team to provide at least one example of relevant experience. GSA also limits the mentor to three examples of relevant experience. The previous solicitation placed no limits on what the mentor could provide. GSA says bids now are due Aug. 10.

• The General Services Administration is looking to reach 100 million users on Login.gov by the end of the year. GSA would more than double the number of Login.gov users if it meets its year-end goal. GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan says in a recent interview that Login.gov has about 40 million users right now across 27 agencies. “This digital identity area is one that is in in serious need of attention by the government.” Carnahan said about 60,000 veterans currently use Login.gov for VA services online. GSA is also in talks with the IRS as it plans its own rollout of Login.gov. (Federal News Network)

• The Coast Guard is taking steps to increase access to on-base child care for families. A new report from the Government Accountability Office finds the service will build four new child development centers and increase funding for off-base childcare subsidies. Compared to the rest of the DoD, the Coast Guard operates proportionally fewer on-base childcare centers. The Coast Guard serves 82% of children through community-based providers while the DoD serves 77% of children in on-base development centers. Therefore, most eligible Coast Guard families rely on subsidies to pay for childcare in the community. As of March, Coast Guard child development centers had 361 children on waitlists.

• The Defense Department says it is working to ensure abortion care for service members, but it is hamstrung in some situations. Federal law only allows abortions at military treatment facilities in instances of medical harm, rape or incest. That care won’t change for service members even if they live in states where abortion is banned. However, troops seeking an abortion that doesn’t fit into those categories may not get much support from the Pentagon. Per federal law, Defense Department is unable to reimburse service members who may have to travel hundreds of miles for care. Pregnant service members must also request leave from their commanding officers to take time off and travel to get a procedure. (Federal News Network)

• The Navy is taking measures to keep more sailors in uniform as it continues to have issues with recruitment. The service is changing its policy to allow sailors to serve longer by delaying separation or retirement. The Navy says the goal of the policy is to keep the service fully manned and operationally ready. The Navy recently announced it would increase recruitment bonuses to lure in more sailors.

• Lawmakers continue pushing the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board for answers to some major technical issues in the Thrift Savings Plan. D.C. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton spoke with the board’s executive director, who agreed to give her weekly updates on FRTIB’s progress. That comes after the board rolled out a new TSP platform, causing many frustrations for participants, and difficulties reaching TSP’s customer service line. Norton says she may hold a hearing if the board doesn’t make improvements more quickly.

• The agency in charge of the Thrift Savings Plan has a new leader. President Joe Biden appointed Mike Gerber as chairman of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board. The Senate confirmed Gerber as a member of FRTIB in early June, for two terms lasting through September 2026. He will take over for Acting Chairman David Jones, who has held the position since July 2020. Gerber will work with the other recently Senate-confirmed board members, including Dana Bilyeu, Leona Bridges and Stacie Olivares, to manage the Thrift Savings Plan.

• The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s mobile app just got its biggest update in a decade. The application now allows people to customize what they see in the app based on their preferences and location. A new section gives users information about federal disaster declarations in their area, and provides answers to common questions about the assistance application process. FEMA says the update is important as the country enters peak hurricane and wildfire season.

• U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services may be turning a corner on the technology front. USCIS is nearing an “inflection point” when it comes to its digital strategy. That’s the verdict from the USCIS’s ombudsman’s annual report. The agency has digitized more high-volume immigration forms, and it now has a plan for all forms to be submitted and processed digitally by the end of fiscal 2026. The Homeland Security Inspector General has found USCIS’s current backlog can be traced back, in part, to the agency’s failure to fully digitize before the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Ahead of the Freedom of Information Act’s 56th anniversary on Monday, public access to legislative documents could expand, if Congress agreed with the FOIA advisory committee’s new recommendation. The suggestion, in the Office of Government Information Services annual report, asks Congress to expand certain aspects of FOIA to include the legislative branch. Possible information includes procedures governing public requests for records. This is the only recommendation made by the advisory committee halfway through their two-year term. The committee sent the recommendation to the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

Military personnel analysts told Federal News Network the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case could make it harder for service members and civilians in states banning abortion to seek reproductive health care and could jeopardize their privacy.

The repercussions of the case make it especially trying for people who want an abortion and work in a career field where their bodily fitness is paramount and where stigmas against pregnancies are still prevalent. Despite efforts from DoD to give service members an opportunity to start a family, take parental leave and allow troops to recover fully from childbirth, pregnancy can still be disruptive to careers. That compounds with the same stressors those in the civilian world face around pregnancy and abortion.

In the wake of the Dobbs decision, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on June 24 that DoD will continue to provide seamless access to reproductive healthcare as permitted by federal law.

The Pentagon released its first guidance on the issue four days later.

“Federal law restricts the department from performing abortions or paying to have them performed unless the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term or unless the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest,” Gilbert Cisneros, Defense undersecretary for personnel and readiness.

The Supreme Court decision does not prevent DoD from performing those “covered abortions” in its medical facilities, even in states where abortion in any form is banned.

Things become more complex for service members who are not in those situations, but decide an abortion is right for them.

As of June 30, seven states have banned abortions. A total of 17 states are expected to ban most abortions if legal challenges in those states do not hold up. An additional six states would restrict abortions, such as Florida which bans abortion after 15 weeks.

Some pregnant service members seeking uncovered abortions would have to travel hundreds of miles to find care.

However, the Pentagon’s hands are largely tied from doing more to aid service members in those cases due to federal law, Katherine Kuzminski, senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security told Federal News Network.

Cisneros’s memo states service members can still take leave to find abortion care.

“Access to emergency convalescent leave remains unchanged for all service members,” he wrote. DoD civilian employees may continue to request sick leave and other forms of leave as necessary to meet the health care needs of the employee and his or her family members.”

Cisneros added that the implications of the decision are complicated and “must be evaluated against various state laws, together with the views of the Department of Justice.”

Taking that leave can be a complex and time sensitive issue for service members, however.

“If a person needs to leave the area for this type of medical care, then there has to be a conversation with the chain of command because you can’t just leave,” Tammy Smith, former Army personnel chief, told Federal News Network. “There’s a leave form where there’s a process, there’s accountability, there’s all these things unique to our military community.”

The bottom line is that service members must get permission from their commanding officer before taking time off to go get an abortion in another state. Otherwise, they risk criminal punishment.

“The leadership answer to that is that there needs to be some signaling and some conversation,” Smith said. “Commanders need to be speaking up and saying that there is a place where you can have these conversations. These are difficult conversations to talk about human sexuality. That’s one of the most awkward conversations that you can maybe have with somebody who is a coworker or somebody is a member of your squad or platoon.”

Kuzminski said leave requests can lead to uncomfortable situations. If someone needs to take leave quickly to get an abortion, they may need to disclose that they are pregnant to their superior officer to explain the reasoning for the leave.

“The decision rests with the unit level commander,” she said. “There could be challenges there as well depending on the needs of the military and the needs of the unit. It could also bring into question the individual commanders flexibility for such a decision.”

Another issue for pregnant service members taking leave to travel to another state for an abortion is the incurred costs. DoD is prohibited from reimbursing service members for getting that care. Travel plus the procedure and prescription drugs can easily get into the thousands of dollars.

“I don’t necessarily know that DoD has much in the way of options,” Kuzminski said in terms of financially aiding service members.

The costs could be unsustainable for many service members. In 2021, Feeding America estimated that 160,000 active duty service members were food insecure due to poverty.

The organization estimated that nearly 30% of junior ranks were food insecure, the same service members who are in their childbearing years. E-1s to E-4s make between $19,000 and $41,000 a year.

Smith said there may be some relief for service members. Organizations like Army Emergency Relief (AER), a nonprofit that offers grants and loans to soldiers for emergencies, could provide funds. Federal News Network reached out to AER, but they did not respond by the time of publication.

The Dobbs ruling is just one of the handful of recent battles between conservative state laws and the military this year.

In March, the Air Force offered medical and legal help to military families living in states clamping down on LGBTQ+ and transgender children.

“The health, care and resilience of our Department of the Air Force personnel and their families is not just our top priority — it’s essential to our ability to accomplish the mission,” said Air Force Undersecretary Gina Ortiz Jones. “We are closely tracking state laws and legislation to ensure we prepare for and mitigate effects to our airmen, guardians and their families. Medical, legal resources, and various assistance are available for those who need them.”

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade on June 24 holds potential ramifications for agency employees across the country, such as the need for some feds to travel across state lines to obtain an abortion.

There are approximately 770,000 federal employees in states that already have abortion bans or are expected to move quickly to enact abortion bans following the decision, according to estimates from the Department of Justice Gender Equality Network (DOJ GEN).

The Office of Personnel Management issued a June 27 fact sheet reminding federal employees that they can use sick leave to get medical care, including time spent traveling to obtain that care.

Additionally, agencies can grant advanced sick leave to employees who haven’t accrued enough — and that applies to travel time associated with sick leave. The policy also covers federal employees taking family members to medical appointments.

“This may include, for example, providing transportation and/or accompanying a family member to a health care provider’s office or to a hospital or other health care facility,” OPM stated.

Although OPM’s reminder did not specifically mention abortion, the federal sick leave policy includes reproductive health services.

But some groups, like the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), are calling on the federal government to go beyond sick leave to provide paid administrative leave to cover health care services.

“The federal government, as a model employer, must immediately agree to provide paid leave and cover the travel costs of any federal or D.C. government employee who must leave their state of residence in order to obtain an abortion,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in a June 25 statement.

Relying on the existing sick leave policy will “disproportionately harm women and other employees who need to travel for abortion care,” Stacey Young, the president of DOJ GEN, told Federal News Network.

The group describes itself as an “employee-run organization” with 1,150 members that has advocated for gender equity and equality at the Justice Department since 2016.

“You shouldn’t have to use more sick leave now that states are banning abortion,” Young said. “The federal government can mitigate the harm by allowing employees to use administrative leave for travel, which will not require employees to dig into their limited sick or annual leave more than they already need to. The government can also pay for public servants’ travel, in same way that private employers across the country are already doing.”

Young also pointed to how agencies provided employees with additional paid time off so they could get vaccinated against COVID-19.

“We think that the administration would need to figure out how employees could request administrative leave without having to disclose their need to an immediate supervisor or someone else in their office,” Young added. “Privacy measures are paramount when it comes to reproductive health care.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on whether it was planning to provide federal employees with additional paid leave and covered travel expenses.

There’s another caveat that affects federal workers seeking to obtain abortions: Currently, the Federal Employee Health Benefits (FEHB) Program does not cover the cost of abortion services.

But that’s something House Democrats are trying to change. The House Appropriations Committee’s fiscal 2023 financial services and general government bill includes a provision that would remove the FEHB ban on abortion coverage.

Although House appropriators included the provision in the draft spending bill last year, too, it didn’t make it into the final version. The committee approved the 2023 spending bill on June 24, but it still has to make it through both the full House and the Senate, which could mean more revisions to the legislation.

Lawmakers will likely need to overcome the Hyde amendment to remove the FEHB ban on abortion coverage. The Hyde amendment is a standing legislative provision that bars the use of federal funds to pay for abortions, except in cases that endanger the life of the patient, or if the pregnancy arises from incest or rape.

Meanwhile, Young from DOJ GEN said the Hyde amendment should not be a factor in providing paid leave and covering travel expenses for federal employees seeking abortion services.

“For decades, the Hyde amendment has placed undue obstacles to federal employees’ access to reproductive healthcare,” she said. “But under its plain language, ancillary expenses that don’t actually pay for an abortion itself aren’t covered. So providing money to fund administrative leave, or even directly paying for employees’ interstate travel, I don’t think that would in any way run afoul of the amendment.”

Federal health care workers

Along with federal employees who may decide to obtain an abortion, agency leaders are also offering some guidance for federal healthcare workers. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department is working to protect federal employees who provide reproductive services that are allowed under federal law.

“Federal employees who carry out their duties by providing such services must be allowed to do so free from the threat of liability. It is the department’s longstanding position that states generally may not impose criminal or civil liability on federal employees who perform their duties in a manner authorized by federal law,” Garland said in a June 24 statement. “The Justice Department is prepared to assist agencies in resolving any questions about the scope of their authority to provide reproductive care.”

The Department of Veterans Affairs, which employs some of the government’s reproductive health care workers, said it is continuing healthcare operations consistent with legal authority.

“Access to gender-specific reproductive health services, including contraception and fertility services, is and will remain a critical component of veteran health care,” VA Secretary Denis McDonough said in a press statement. “VA will work with DOJ to ensure the full strength of the federal government is available to defend eligible VA employees if necessary. Our commitment to providing reproductive health care to the veterans we serve is unwavering. We recognize this is a rapidly evolving landscape, we are monitoring the situation closely and will remain in close contact with you.”

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Just because you apply doesn’t guarantee you’ll get federal security clearance. Lots of people make basic errors in their clearance and suitability forms and that can make things take longer than they should or maybe deny altogether. Here with some tried and true advice on the mistakes to avoid, Shaw Bransford & Roth attorney James Heelan spoke to the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Interview transcript: 

Tom Temin: Mr. Heelan, good to have you on.

James Heelan: Hi, morning Tom, thanks for having me.

Tom Temin: Let’s begin with the process itself. This is that one where I think I read that form once, it’s something like 52 pages, or is it Form 52? Or tell us about some of the details.

James Heelan: I think you’re talking about the SF 86. It’s the standard application that all civilians and military personnel, contractors fill out, anyone who wants to get access to classified information. They fill out the SF 86. It’s about 125-some pages, and it is a thorough examination of a person’s life, history, really their whole adult experience. And it asks all sorts of questions that the government thinks are relevant to whether that person is trustworthy. To protect national secrets.

Tom Temin: How long does it typically take someone, say the first time around, to get through all of this form filling?

James Heelan: I have to give you that standard lawyer answer: It depends. If I’m a 22-year-old intern, and I’m on a congressional committee, and I’m applying for my first clearance, I don’t have a whole lot of life experience to report. Maybe I have some juvenile arrests that I would be compelled to disclose on the SF 86. Potentially, I’ve moved around a bit. But it’s a pretty simple application if you’re a young person applying for the first time, and you might go through the investigation within six to eight months, or could be even quicker. But let’s say you’re a full grown adult, and it’s your first time filling out that Sf 86. You have a lot of things to report. You may have many foreign contacts, perhaps you’ve lived abroad, perhaps you’ve been married before, and the government may be interested to understand the circumstances of the divorce and separation. So it all depends on how much life experience you have behind you, and how much the government has to examine.

Tom Temin: Well, at 125 pages, I guess it’s easy to have typos and so forth, of things you left out. So what mistakes do people make, do you find, that they should avoid and kind of have top of mind before they start?

James Heelan: At our firm we see five top mistakes, things that come across our desks most often. Most often we see people miss reporting or failing to report drug use and involvement. The SF 86 asks about seven years of drug use and involvement. Nowadays, involvement is so broad to mean things including investment in marijuana activities. So several years ago, when pot stocks hit the market, I got several calls from potential new clients asking me about their investments, whether they had to divest before filling out the SF 86. And the answer is that they do, they should be aware of their investments and divest of them before they try to obtain a national security clearance.

Tom Temin: And that even includes, say mutual funds or managed funds where there could be scores, dozens, hundreds of individual stocks within that fund.

James Heelan: Actually, it doesn’t. That’s a really excellent point. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence recently, a couple years ago, released a memorandum specifically on marijuana. And it specifically addressed investments and said that indirect investments where a person isn’t reasonably expected to know every single stock that their money is invested in are acceptable. But you can’t just go out and invest in a pot stock directly out in the marketplace.

Tom Temin: And by the way, just as an ancillary, what about cryptocurrency, which is slightly shady to begin with?

James Heelan: I haven’t had any cryptocurrency issues come across my desk.

Tom Temin: All right. So that’s number one drug use and involvement. What’s the second big mistake?

James Heelan: The other is arrests. People think that just because there was an arrest that didn’t result in a charge, or that their record was expunged, they think that they don’t need to report these arrests. But the SF 86 is explicit. Even if an arrest is expunged, or if it was done away with through some sort of settlement agreement or alternative resolution program, you still need to disclose it on the SF 86 report in your investigation. People try to rationalize their way out of reporting things. They say, well, the Court told me that I wouldn’t have a record and the officer told me there wouldn’t be a report written up. Well, it’s still responsive to the question on the 86. And if you don’t report it, the background investigator, I assure people out there, will find out.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with James Heelan. He’s an attorney with Shaw Bransford & Roth. And what’s the third biggest mistake?

James Heelan: Foreign contacts. This has been a real developing issue over the last 15 years especially with social media. People go on vacation, they befriend some people, they become Facebook friends, they follow them on Instagram. It took a long time for security clearance adjudicators to really decide what a friend meant, for example, on Facebook. So people get into trouble because they forget the foreign contacts they have in their lives. And it’s awful difficult, especially if you live in an area like D.C. where you have foreign nationalities next door at the bars and restaurants you usually go to, you may have friends with spouses or in-laws who come from different countries. Those are all reportable foreign contacts. The big concern is that a country may use a foreign national to surreptitiously persuade you into divulging or otherwise compromising national security interests.

Tom Temin: Right. So if you went to France, it’s not every waiter that you met in the cafes and Saint-Germain-des-Prés, but just maybe someone you might have retained friendship with and have regular correspondence with, say, as you mentioned, on social media?

James Heelan: Exactly. It’s the kind of person let’s say, you made real fast friends on your cruise ship and said, “If you’re ever in town, you can stay on my couch, you can stay at my place.” That’s the kind of person you need to report.

Tom Temin: And just to be clear, if say, a nextdoor neighbor, or someone that you are friends with day to day, you may not even know if they’re a foreign national. An accent is not necessarily an indicator one way or the other.

James Heelan: Right. But your obligation is just to report what you know. Right? Not just what you remember, you have a duty to do due diligence and dig in and really assess your own life and then report out.

Tom Temin: And if it isn’t neighbor, it’s likely they could be visited by that investigator anyway, because I, myself have been visited about my nextdoor neighbor a couple of times over the years.

James Heelan: Exactly. And that just goes to show even if you don’t disclose it, the government will likely find out and they’ll likely ask you about it. And you don’t want the first time you know about something to be in your investigatory interview.

Tom Temin: All right, and number four?

James Heelan: Prior job issues. People are required to disclose whether they left a former position and the circumstances under which they left the position. And people think oftentimes, again, with settlements, they say, Well, there’s a confidentiality clause. There’s nothing in my [Official Peronnel Folders], there’s no record of a proposed removal or a difficult circumstance that compelled me to leave the job. People, like I said, try to rationalize why they don’t need to disclose but the form is explicit. If you left your job after learning that you’re going to be forced to leave your job. Or if you’ve left your job under any kind of agreement or specific circumstances, you need to disclose. And so people get in trouble because, like I said, they rationalize and they decide the rules somehow don’t apply to them.

Tom Temin: The theme I’m hearing here is that even though things might be confidential from a legal standpoint, and whatever agreements you might have had established by a court, or some kind of a judging randomization, that doesn’t matter for purposes of reporting on your SF 86.

James Heelan: Exactly, exactly. The SF 86 doesn’t care about whatever legal fiction exists out there, and agreements and settlements and confidentiality clauses that might apply. The SF 86 is interested in the reality. They want to know what you have done in your life and want to be able to investigate it. They want you to be upfront and disclose it.

Tom Temin: And then that leads us to the fifth biggest mistake.

James Heelan: The fifth biggest mistake encapsulates everything I’ve just said it’s lacking care and thoroughness on the SF 86. Not thoroughly reviewing your personal records not going through your credit report to report any sort of what’s called derogatory information on the SF 86. People, it’s not a quick form. It’s lengthy for a reason. It deserves lots of time and attention. You want access to national security information, you should do your own due diligence before you apply.

Tom Temin: And should you have someone review it, even though there is a lot of confidential stuff in there that is the government’s right to know but perhaps nobody else’s? But I mean, I guess –

James Heelan: As an attorney in this area of law, I would say absolutely. I would say absolutely have an attorney review it. People can review it for thoroughness, they may want to go through all of your documentation with you. There’s different levels of service out there that attorneys will provide.

Tom Temin: And it strikes me that if someone is in this general field of perhaps working for or with the government, even if you don’t anticipate anything in the near future, requiring clearance, is it a good idea just to download the SF 86 and go ahead and fill it out, so you’ll be ready should the time come? If you like self torture?

James Heelan: You really want to be prepared? Sure. It could be like updating a resume. You keep it up to date. And as you go along, you continue adding the addenda. I haven’t done that myself but I could see some people out there wanting to be awful prudent. Follow that kind of advice, yes.

Tom Temin: All right. 125 pages. So if you do a page and light, it’ll only take you four months.

James Heelan: Or a very long weekend.

Tom Temin: Yeah, or a very long weekend. James Heelan is an attorney with Shaw Bransford & Roth. Thanks so much.

James Heelan: Thanks a lot, Tom.

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Federal employee whistleblower complaints are often investigated by the agency itself, rather than by the Office of Special Counsel. This can speed up resolutions or end up with complaints going nowhere or even suppressed. Bob Tobias, a professor in the Key Executive Leadership Program at American University, has looked into this question. He joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin with some perspective.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: And, Bob, it seems that there is no one perfect way to deal with whistleblowers but having the agency do it internally doesn’t always work out, does it?

Bob Tobias: It does not. Former President Trump in 2017 argued in an executive order that the Department of Veteran Affairs should be allowed to investigate the whistleblower complaints internally, in the interest of resolving them faster and more efficiently. And then the executive order was later turned into a statute. But that approach, I think, runs into the real challenge of what it means to investigate internally. Because what it requires is a focused attention and support a political appointees who are willing to hear bad news, see bad news published in newspapers and on social media, accept responsibility for the bad news, and then take action to turn the bad news to good news.

Tom Temin: But let me just ask this: In some agencies, it is the inspector general’s office that looks at whistleblower complaints. And we’ve seen that even at VA, and so therefore, you do have some independence there. And the inspector general doesn’t care if the news is bad.

Bob Tobias: Well, yes, theoretically, Tom, but when we do have a recent evidence of the [Department of Homeland Security] inspector general, who suppressed over 10,000 DHS employee sexual assault complaints, and when it was discovered, Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas created a new, centralized process for processing employee complaints. But I ask in the long term, will that work because maybe the next secretary of DHS will use the idea of centralized decision-making to suppress those complaints in the future?

Tom Temin: Right, so then having an external body like the Office of Special Counsel, you run into the issue of just sheer workload, sheer time it takes and as we’ve seen so many adjudicative types, or investigative types of processes by federal agencies internally or externally just take so long.

Bob Tobias: Well, I think the answer to that, Tom, is to beef up the Office of Special Counsel, rather than to depend on the long term, on political appointees meeting that high bar of allowing themselves to look bad. While there may be individual political appointees who accept responsibility for the failure of those they lead, and more importantly, for their own failures, we can’t depend on every political appointee over the long term, to meet that bar.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Bob Tobias, professor in the Key Executive Leadership Program at American University. And I guess it’s understandable why some politicals would want to avoid this. There was a administrator of the GSA a number of years ago, I think, early in the Obama administration, and I remember the scandal of the expensive Las Vegas conferences that GSA was doing. And it was a scandal. And you had a crooked bunch running this thing, and taking junkets paid for out to Las Vegas to check the venue, three or four times. And there was the famous picture of the guy with the wine glass in the bathtub and all of this. But it was the administrator that took the fall, even though this all occurred entirely before she even arrived at the agency. And so her career was sullied and her reputation to some degree, even though she had literally nothing to do with it.

Bob Tobias: Well, that’s true. Because what can happen in that kind of a situation is a culture of noncompliance can develop. And in a culture of noncompliance, the people in charge suppress any complaints and continue to behave as you just described. So in my view, the only way of managing and as in the case, you pointed out, someone who was innocent, but took the hit is to encourage an outside investigative authority like the Office of Special Counsel to do its work, but do it faster.

Tom Temin: Right, because really, it was not fair for this person to take the hit for that and she exposed it and said, we really made a big mistake here. Which was gracious of her but it really wasn’t that person’s mistake. And so that, again, you’re saying mitigates in favor of external look at these events entirely.

Bob Tobias: I think so, Tom, I think so. There isn’t any evidence anywhere over the long term of successful looking internally at oneself by political appointees, finding fault and fixing that fault.

Tom Temin: But I want to get back to the inspector general question because, yes, IG’s are also politically appointed. But their purpose in life is to have this external, or at least objective, outside-of-the-agency chain of command view of things, no matter how bad they might be. So why can’t IG’s step up more here?

Bob Tobias: They can, and they should. But it only provides for me proof of the fact that no, we can’t depend on every political appointee to be fault free. And the only way we can make sure that it doesn’t occur is to have, not only is to have the Office of Special Counsel be able to investigate problems in IG offices as well.

Tom Temin: Well, that question I think is probably going to be resolved not for quite a while because the whistleblower complaints come in. And I think this is going to be something we were going to deal with for a while.

Bob Tobias: Well, I think it is. But I think it’s also true that when you have a over-2-million-person workforce, there are going to be people who fail to follow the laws, rules and regulations, to make sure that these complaints get surfaced and an employee’s career is not damaged for surfacing these problems.

Tom Temin: All right, Bob Tobias is a professor in the Key Executive Leadership Program at American University. Thanks so much.

Bob Tobias: Thank you, Tom.

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.

If the governmentwide “Trusted Workforce 2.0” initiative is a once-in-a-generation chance to modernize and streamline the personnel vetting process, then the Intelligence and National Security Alliance isn’t sitting on the sidelines.

Personnel vetting reform is one of the White House’s top performance initiatives, with published strategies and action plans. And agencies have already made strides in adopting continuous vetting and speeding up the background investigations process in recent years.

But INSA is continuing to offer new ideas and poke holes in current policies and processes, most recently with new white papers on security clearance mobility and clearing personnel with foreign ties, respectively.

Larry Hanauer, vice president for policy at INSA, said the group is staying engaged with Congress and the intelligence community on major clearance initiatives, like continuous vetting and the development of the National Background Investigative Services.

“We also look at ways just to make the clearance and adjudication process more efficient for both government staff and contractors,” Hanauer said in an interview for Inside the IC.

The mobility paper, for instance, dives into inconsistent policies and processes that make it challenging to move personnel who need Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) clearance from one agency to another.

The issue is most acute for contractors who often move personnel across multiple contracts and agencies. But it can affect recruiting for both agencies and industry.

For instance, some intelligence agencies allow personnel who already have TS/SCI clearance to begin work while they wait for their polygraph test, while others make those employees wait until the polygraph is complete. Depending on the type of polygraph needed, that can mean a delay of anywhere from 30 days to 18 months.

Greg Torres, the director of personnel security at Booz Allen Hamilton, said the net result is a small pool of personnel who are qualified to start work under contracts immediately.

“This means we’re just shuffling the deck chairs, moving someone from one government mission to another, making a hole somewhere else,” Torres said. “And we usually need to pay a premium for that employee to leave their current job.”

INSA’s white paper recommends intelligence agencies consider the counter-intelligence polygraph sufficient for personnel to begin work until a full-scope polygraph can be scheduled.

“We think this is a risk management approach, which we think is the right approach given the myriad tools that these agencies now have to mitigate any perceived risk,” Torres said. “If you think about it years ago, they didn’t have tools like continuous evaluation or user activity monitoring and a host of other tools. But they do now.”

The white paper also recommends the Defense Department eliminate component-specific requirements for granting SCI access and name a senior official in charge of developing department-wide policies for such access.

INSA estimates additional and disparate processes across the 43 DoD components can result in delays of two to five weeks beyond the few days it takes for a component to initially accept an individual’s clearance. And it recommends clearing Top Secret applicants at the SCI level, as well, so additional processes don’t delay that individual if they require SCI access in the future.

DoD and the IC should also put an official or team in charge of uniting policies that affect personnel mobility, from clearance reciprocity to polygraphs to contract language and industry coordination, according to INSA’s paper.

“Since the 9/11 attacks, the government has made really a concerted effort to make sure that intelligence is shared, so you can work at agency X, and you’re accessing intelligence information that comes from agencies Y and Z,” Hanauer said. “Why, if you’re going to go support agency Y or Z, should those agencies have to re-adjudicate your clearance or ask the different investigative steps be done all over again? … It’s these really duplicative processes that don’t add anything to security.”

Re-examining foreign ties

Clearance and mobility processes can also present barriers to the intelligence community’s goal of increasing diversity in the national security workforce. Contractors often compete for the same people who are already cleared at the highest levels, and new applicants can be dissuaded from going through a lengthy, often confusing process.

“If you keep moving the same people around from place to place, you’re not going to be as successful as you as you could be,” Torres said on diversity.

INSA’s new white paper on “recruiting and clearing personnel with foreign ties” also dives headlong into diversity issues, positing that the security clearance process “does not lend itself” to hiring individuals with different backgrounds and experiences who may have key language and cultural skills.

The paper said the intelligence community needs to “re-examine historical assumptions about the risks posed to national security by foreign-born persons or those with close foreign ties.”

Adjudicative guidelines for granting or revoking a clearance requires agencies to examine factors like allegiance to the United States, foreign influence, and foreign preference.

But INSA suggests investigators could look at those aspects from a risk mitigation approach, as opposed to eliminating all risk.

“Investigators are never going to be able to learn everything they want to know about a candidate’s uncle in rural China somewhere, but they can assess whether such a family tie really affects a candidate’s loyalties or creates security risks that can’t be mitigated,” Hanauer said.

The paper also recommends mission-focused teams, such as analysts, work more closely with their counterparts in security and human resources, respectively, to ensure candidates with critical skills don’t get easily dropped from the clearance process because of foreign ties.

“We just feel like better communication between the human resources people, the mission-focused teams that want to hire a candidate, and the security folks will help ensure that people with those critical skills don’t just hit that brick wall,” Hanauer said. “The mission-focused teams might be able to provide the the security team, with additional insights into the reasons why this candidate is facing obstacles.”

The white paper also recommends bias awareness training for all officials responsible for recruitment, hiring, investigations and adjudications. Meanwhile, new policies and procedures could consider a more granular consideration of foreign ties, INSA’s paper suggests, such as reasons behind why a candidate wants to hang onto a dual citizenship.

Hanauer said that INSA is now working on a white paper comparing how commercial companies screen their job candidates and contrasting it with the government’s clearance approach.

“Commercial companies … manage to protect their sensitive information pretty well without subjecting their job candidates to a months-long vetting process,” he said. “We’re in the process of doing a comparison of public sector and private sector personnel screening to see if maybe the government can adopt some more efficient best practices from industry.”

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A clever idea to use magnetic nanoparticles to capture valuable materials from brine. Sounds arcane, but it’s blossomed into new projects that could help make the U.S. a producer, and not just a consumer, of critical minerals used in electronics and energy production. One planned pilot project, co-funded with industry by the Energy Department’s Office of Fossil Energy, is in the works right now at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. For more, Federal News Network’s Eric White spoke with lab fellow Pete McGrail on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Interview transcript:

Pete McGrail: Well, actually most of it comes from water, brine solutions from South America, so Chile, Argentina. So that’s primarily where it comes although there are some solid mineral extraction projects in Australia, China, etc.

Eric White: And so what is the idea behind this magnetic nanoparticles approach, and the idea of pulling, the materials out of the water through a more confined process, it seems?

Pete McGrail: Yeah, because conventional technology, you flow these brine solutions or evaporate them. That’s the main way it’s done today, you evaporate the water in these very massive evaporation ponds, and then precipitate the salts. So that water is lost. And that’s having impacts in South America, for example. So what we do is float this water through a extraction system, which uses nanoparticles. And it makes it much more efficient, cost effective to do the extraction, and we don’t lose any of the water, the water just gets recycled back underground. So we don’t have the the environmental impacts that current practices do.

Can you tell me a little bit about the core particle technology and what that entails and also, who contributed to creating it and whatnot?

Pete McGrail: Yeah, I can tell you some things about it. Of course, some of the nonproprietary information.

Eric White: Absolutely.

Pete McGrail: But basically, the idea here was really quite simple in the sense that what we’re doing is taking these nanoparticles, we put some chemical compounds, they’re called ligands, on the surface, and what we’re doing is introducing those particles into the brine solution, as it’s coming up from underground, from whatever source that may be. And then we let those particles interact at the molecular level with the lithium that’s present in small concentrations in the solution. So the special chemistry here is that we engineer the particles so that they’re very selective to pull the lithium out of these brine solutions, which have much, much higher. I mean, many orders of magnitude, higher concentrations of other elements in solution that we’re not interested in. So things like sodium and potassium. In some cases, it’s other elements like manganese, which are real problems in conventional technologies. So what the overall process concept is, is so taking these particles now that are very tiny, let them interact with the brine, pull the lithium out. And then once that’s happened, we pass them through a magnet so they’re magnetically susceptible, so they’re magnetic and we can pull them out of the solution with a magnetic extraction system, and then do the regeneration process. So now we’ve concentrated the lithium in these particles, and we can extract that and do the rest of the process steps which is purification mainly to provide battery grade lithium, and then that brine solution, which is now it has the lithium has been depleted, but is otherwise unaffected, can get reinjected back underground. And then our particles which didn’t have the lithium removed and then are regenerated, go right back to the top of the process and get recycled and reused over and over and over again.

Eric White: So yeah, so it seems as if there’s no wastewater process whatsoever like you see in other mining processes. Is that true you can just, put it right back in the ocean or hole or wherever you’re getting the water from?

Pete McGrail: Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly right. So we just want to make sure we can take that water solution, brine solution typically, and have that get reinjected back into ground so that we don’t have these regional impacts on groundwater systems that are occurring in areas like, Chile is a good example. So the major lithium producing region is called the Atacama. It’s actually one of the driest areas on the planet. And yet, what companies are doing today is extracting very large volumes of water underground, from this region, and putting it in these these massive evaporation ponds. And letting that, all that water get evaporated off into the atmosphere and lost. So the Chilean government is trying to limit any further applications of that kind of nascent technology. And so we think our system, much more economical, much faster, and certainly much more environmentally benign, can have great applications for future production in countries like Chile, but also here in the US, where we have similar kinds of issues. Where these brine solutions are being produced.

Eric White: And is the technology in the utilization stage yet? Or is it still experimental on a small scale? What’s the status of it?

Pete McGrail: Right, so we’re still at small scale in laboratories where we’re testing different formulations for these ligands, these chemical compounds that we’re using to extract the lithium, so we’re still at that stage. But we do a pretty good job in the lab in terms of taking these materials, we put them through the whole process through a magnetic separator, pull the lithium out, recycled and regenerate them, have a look at the, basically the entire process from start to finish. So we’re pretty confident. I mean, there’s always issues and taking technology from one lab scale up to a commercial scale. But, we’re doing the best we can right now at the lab scale to make sure we understand, all the aspects of the process, and then can move it to a pilot scale. When we were convinced, and our industry partners are convinced they’re ready, we’re ready to do that.

Eric White: So is it like in science class, when you’re making your own slime? And they have you drag a magnet into a pile of dirt and you pull out a bunch of little iron bits? Is that sort of what it looks like if we had a chance to zoom in on the process itself?

Pete McGrail: Well, thank you very much for bringing slime into the picture. But we’re not particularly interested in doing slime. But it is like a laboratory experiment here. Maybe a bit more sophisticated in net worth, we’re trying to monitor all the processes involved to make sure we can be confident in talking to various companies and investors about scaling up a process which is much more costly capital intensive to do compared to what we’re doing in the laboratory.

Eric White: Understood. And that’s a great segue for me to ask you to put your visionary hat on. If and when it gets large scale, what do you see? I mean, lithium is just being used more and more and everything. What could this change as far as where we actually get our lithium from for making all those important things that we’ve all become accustomed to?

Pete McGrail: Yeah, that’s a great question. So maybe most people don’t understand right now. But in terms of US supply, the vast majority of the lithium that is used for electric vehicles and battery storage, your cell phone, all of it, that is coming from overseas locations. So it’s coming from the major producing regions we talked about. So in South America, but producing the batteries is mainly being done in China right now. So the whole idea here is to say, well, you know, we have some very important U.S. domestic resources for lithium that aren’t being exploited at the moment. So these come from different places. So we have some geothermal areas, for example, in Southern California. So these are geothermal power plants normally, and what happens in those power plants is that the brine solution comes up, it’s hot, of course, to run a power plant, but it comes up from the surface, goes through the power plant, the heat is extracted and then the solution goes back underground. Well think about this, there’s thousands of gallons a minute of brine solution, that’s coming up from those locations, often it will have several 100 parts per million of lithium and solution, which can amount to actually a very large quantity of lithium, if we can extract it in that situation, economically, and not affect the power plant, etc. So we think our, our technology can apply in that circumstance. The one other situation domestically that looks important to us, is oil and gas production. So again, a lot of people may not realize this fact. But in terms of oil production, it’s actually a water producing operation. There’s normally on the order of even a 10 to even 100 barrels of water that are produced when we’re producing a barrel of oil. And it turns out that in a lot of situations, in producing oil and gas here in the U.S., we have lithium that is present in those solutions. So our calculations show that if we could get just a quarter of the lithium that’s in the water that’s produced as a consequence, it’s called produced water in the oil and gas industry, if we could get just a quarter of that, we could actually match the current world market for lithium production in the US. So these are very important, currently unexploited resources for lithium and we think new technologies like the one we’re talking about that we’re working on here at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is a way to economically now provide those lithium resources that we really need for the renewable energy economy here in the U.S.

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.