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If copyrights are a measure of women’s long-term rise in economic participation, trends show progress but still a ways to go. A recent study by the U.S. Copyright Office shows that over a 40-year period, women’s share of registrations rose from 28%, to 38% in 2020. Joining the Federal Drive with Tom Temin with analysis, University of Minnesota business school professor Joel Waldfogel, and Copyright Office chief economist Brent Lutes.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: Professor Waldfogel, good to have you on.

Joel Waldfogel: Nice to be here.

Tom Temin: And the Copyright Office Chief Economist Brent Lutes. Brent, good to have you back.

Brent Lutes: Hi Tom, great to be back.

Tom Temin: And let’s start with the genesis of this study. What was the purpose of it? And how did it come to be? I guess there was a collaboration here between academia and government, Joel?

Joel Waldfogel: Yes, so I spent the last year at the Copyright Office, but it was virtual because of COVID. But as the Kaminstein Scholar, what that means is that I was working on copyright issues, you know, taking time away from my academic appointment, although I was still in my academic appointment. But most of my research is on copyright. So it fit pretty well with what I do. In any event, the question before me was to update some earlier work examining what share of copyrights have been granted to women authors. Last time this was looked at was around 2012. And there had been progress between 1978, 2012. But what had happened in the ensuing eight years, that was my sort of first task. And the answer is that it continues to rise, it had gone from about 28% in 1978, up to over 38% by 2020. And it varies a lot across categories, but that just general growth reflects an increase in women’s activity in this area.

Tom Temin: And Brent, the summary of the study references a change in copyright law that happened in the late 1970s. And how does that figure into this?

Brent Lutes: So in a practical sense, the change of copyright law is the point at which we started collecting and retaining data in a digital form that allows us to do this sort of research.

Tom Temin: Got it. So you had the database available, therefore, that might not have existed before that, rather, you would have had to go through millions and millions of pieces of paper?

Brent Lutes: That’s exactly right.

Tom Temin: All right. And what can we make of this result, there is a substantial 10% statistically significant rise in the number of copyrights granted to women. But if you look at popular culture, and you look at entertainment, and book writing, and songwriting and all of this, it seems like women and men participate equally. So why the disparity do we think in the rate of issuance of copyrights?

Joel Waldfogel: Well, copyright covers a variety of different kinds of media. And it is different across different groups. So take the one called nondramatic literary works, but we know it as books. That one of the female share has surpassed 50% in the last few years. In other categories, for example, machine readable computer programs, it’s substantially less, although it has risen substantially, it’s risen, like by a factor of three over this period. In the copyright topics related to movies and music. It’s risen more slowly, and it’s on the order of a quarter to a third. But books, I think a big headline result here is that we’ve surpassed 50%, more than half the authors nondramatic literary works are women.

Tom Temin: All right, interesting. And Brent, what does the say then about the copyright process, if anything?

Brent Lutes: So I think it tells us that I think as you mentioned at the beginning, there’s still gender disparities that exist, they’re increasing. But I think it also gives us a good framework to understand why those disparities exist, and what are the factors that may propagate them or mitigate them, which I think is an important second step that we intend to look into in the future that will help us develop some very targeted and evidence-based policy.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Brent Lutes, He’s chief economist of the U.S. Copyright Office, and with Professor Joel Waldfogel, at the University of Minnesota, and the ability to create and get items that are available for copyright, of course, begins downstream of the copyright office itself, or maybe it’s upstream, but it’s not directly in the copyright office. Let’s put it that way. So that’s not anything the federal government can really control. What might some of the policy options be then to make sure that women do get their fair share?

Brent Lutes: Just to clarify one thing, that we may not directly control the creation of works, the underlying reason why copyrights exist is to incentivize the creation of works in the first place, Joel?

Joel Waldfogel: Oh, sure. So let me talk about another kind of headline results of a study. On the one hand, we show that the share of copyright registrations that are to female authors, and that’s growing and so forth. But it’s not absolutely necessary to register your copyright, it would be desirable in some sense to do so. So there’s a different question we asked in this study, which is how does the female share for example of registrations in books relate to the female share of activity in writing books? And same for other these categories? And one of the things that we find it’s a little bit I think, thought provoking for us is that basically the registration share lags the activity share based on occupation data by an average about 20%. So women seem to be very possibly less likely to register conditional on creating stuff. Now we say we have to patch that a little bit because the data on activity aren’t you know, airtight, but still there’s at least a suggestion that there may be some room to go to get more registration, even conditional on having done the work. I should finally mention, though, that that gap, that sort of shortfall has declined over time, it was like 25, 30%, 20 some years ago. Now it’s more like 10, 15%. So it’s shrinking. But there still is a gap that’s worthy of sort of exploration and policy could perhaps encourage registration conditional on having done the creation.

Tom Temin: Right, a parallel comes to mind with the Census Bureau, which has to make sure that every population group is counted. And so they have this elaborate and expensive and well developed program of outreach to very small relative communities, but many, many, many of them to make sure that everyone in those communities is counted. So it sounds like the Copyright Office then could develop outreach programs, maybe look at the application process itself in such a way as to garner more so that the activity share gets closer to the registration share, or vice versa. Brent?

Brent Lutes: I think you’re right there. And we do have substantial outreach, we’re always looking for ways to better target those efforts. And I think this gives us a good source of information and a good way to target those efforts. And to the extent that we can figure out exactly why those registrations are lagging, potentially come up with more targeted policy beyond outreach.

Tom Temin: Sure. And any particular forms that might take in mind yet, or you’re still evaluating?

Brent Lutes: Like I said, depends on figuring out why they lag, you know, if it’s a matter of not understanding the benefits of registering one’s copyright, for example, then I think outreach and education would be an appropriate policy for that. But again, I think, you know, as I previously mentioned, the second step of this research is figuring out the why I think Joel did a really good job of figuring out the what once we figure out the why that we can develop the appropriate policy solutions.

Tom Temin: And relative to say, a patent application where there’s this very elaborate process of verifying that it actually is patentable, you’ve got examiners looking for all the prior art, et cetera, et cetera, with a copyright, if you write a novel or you create a computer program, is there any adjudicative of process to ensure that it deserves a copyright? Or is it you apply, and you get it?

Brent Lutes: So it’s not quite an apply and receive setup, there are examiners who look through it and make sure that it meets the appropriate criteria. And you know, I’m not an examiner, and I don’t know the particulars of what they’re looking at, though my understanding is that it is perhaps less intensive than the patent examination process.

Tom Temin: But if I tried to copyright Moon River, it probably wouldn’t go through?

Brent Lutes: I doubt it would, because I assumed that the examiners would understand.

Tom Temin: Let me ask you this, we have now a good picture and a moving picture over time of women versus men applicants. And I imagine you don’t ask racial or other demographic makeup of those that are applying for copyrights. But is it possible to understand some of the other axes of ratios here, say racial or ethnic and so on, that are not asked?

Joel Waldfogel: I mean, we can study gender relatively easily because the names are on copyright. And names are very highly correlated with gender. So it’s really easy aggregate to say stuff about gender. Race is not there. And there are sort of fancy statistical ways to try to do it. But it’s I think it’s dicey and unclear. Geography is something that I think will be very study-able.

Tom Temin:
Therefore, there’s maybe the opportunity to match geographic against census data. And then perhaps you could have at least a way of extrapolating some potential racial disparities.

Brent Lutes: You’re right. We don’t have that data, currently. You know, we’re exploring ways to potentially get around that fact. But I think as Joel mentioned, some of those ways are a little bit dicey and not credible.

Tom Temin: Right. So you couldn’t get a statistically supportable picture. But you could get a picture that gives you an idea of where you might need to direct policy or outreach?

Brent Lutes: Yeah, and I think, you know, in some respects, we can get a statistically credible picture. But that picture would be limited, in many ways. So we kind of get perhaps a detailed, significant picture.

Tom Temin: Is it possible legally or under regulation to have a voluntary question for copyright applicants?

Brent Lutes: Let me be careful with that, because I’m not a lawyer. I don’t want to dispense any sort of legal advice. I’ll say that, you know, on the patent side, there’s actually a bill in front of Congress, right now trying to understand whether it’s appropriate and useful to have such a voluntary survey go with a patent application. And, you know, I think it’s worthwhile for the copyright system to also at least start thinking about that. And, you know, at the moment, we don’t have plans to ask that of Congress.

Tom Temin: OK. So in the meantime, then this study on female participation in copyrights will be something that the Copyright Office is looking at, and perhaps developing ways to get at and make more equality there?

Brent Lutes: Yeah. And I think we should think of this as not necessarily all of the answers but a very significant first step towards those answers.

Tom Temin: Brent Lutes is chief economist of the U.S. Copyright Office. Thanks so much for joining me.

Brent Lutes: Great to be here, Tom.

Tom Temin: And Joel Waldfogel is a business professor at the University of Minnesota behind that study. Thank you very much.

Joel Waldfogel: My pleasure. May I add one other thing that I think is also important to mention here?

Tom Temin: Sure.

Joel Waldfogel: In addition to doing this study, I think the Copyright Office has also made public for researchers all of these data from 1978 to 2020. This is a huge step forward in transparency and modernization, and it will allow outside researchers, inside researchers to potentially answer questions we haven’t figured out yet. So I’m pretty excited about that. I think it’s a great accomplishment for the office.

Brent Lutes: It’s the largest it’s most complete data set of copyright ever released anywhere.

First off, the National Parks Service posted this on their Twitter account reminding everyone of all the monuments and parks that they manage. This evening, the National Mall, managed by NPS, will be host to fireworks in Washington, DC.

National parks are home to many of the nation’s most beloved monuments, historic sites, & landscapes. They tell stories from the road to revolution & creation of a new nation, to the journey of people continuing the fight for the freedom & liberty that our nation was founded on. pic.twitter.com/AG6T7Kf7ga

— National Park Service (@NatlParkService) July 4, 2022

The armed forces also wished everyone a great holiday:

Celebrating independence on watch around the globe, and at home. 🇺🇲⚓️ #HappyIndependenceDay #4thofJuly pic.twitter.com/dW3R9ljqwh

— U.S. Navy (@USNavy) July 4, 2022

Happy 4th of July from the world’s greatest Air Force 💥 pic.twitter.com/Mw6qxkidx2

— U.S. Air Force (@usairforce) July 4, 2022

We wish you all a very happy, but most importantly safe, 4th of July! 🇺🇸 🎆#coastguard #4thofJuly #semperparatus pic.twitter.com/vX0JowIACf

— U.S. Coast Guard (@USCG) July 4, 2022

#DYK
John Adams believed July 2nd was the correct date to celebrate and would reportedly turn down invitations to appear at July 4th events in protest.

Adams & Thomas Jefferson both died July 4, 1826 – the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. pic.twitter.com/MnVkqUnQdB

— U.S. Army (@USArmy) July 4, 2022

Elsewhere in the government, the National Archives and Records Administration celebrated in style. Pictured below is the Acting Archivist of the United States, Debra Steidel Wall standing with a few costumed colonists.

In Boston, the USS Constitution set sail in celebration of Independence Day.

In Poznan, Poland, U.S. soldiers celebrated with lunch and a cake.

In Asunción, Paraguay, Marines prepared for an Independence Day celebration at the U.S. Embassy.

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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.

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Sometimes nations declare war on themselves. When a civil war broke out in Ethiopia back in 2020,  USAID worked overtime to ensure humanitarian aid got to those who were desperate for it, and to try and mitigate some of the human rights abuses. Now, a USAID Africa veteran Jonathan Dworken is a finalist in this year’s Service to America Medals Program. He’s the director of the office of East African affairs at USAID, and he joined  Federal Drive with Tom Temin to talk about it.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: And tell us first of all about what the situation is you’re dealing with, because unfortunately, it kind of got lost in the news cycle because of occurring during the pandemic.

Jonathan Dworken: Well, first, let me say although I’m the one nominated for this Sammie award, it’s a true team effort. International development, as I like to say, is a team sport and our team that works on Ethiopia, across USAID, but especially in Addis Ababa, an American staff and local staff, really a tremendous team. So even before the war, USAID had been working in Ethiopia for decades. We’ve been helping by providing humanitarian assistance and education and health care. But what happened is that in late 2020, following weeks of escalating tensions between Tygrayan leaders in the north of Ethiopia and federal authorities in the capital, fighting broke out. Two million people were forced to flee their homes. And after a short period of time, almost a million people were facing the threat of famine. About a year later, in late 2021, because the fighting had spread towards the capitol, all USAID American staff and their families had to leave out of concern for their safety, which complicated things a bit further. So it was a challenging environment.

Tom Temin: But the work had actually started when the civil war broke out in 2020.

Jonathan Dworken: That’s right, we immediately had to shift our focus to humanitarian assistance, getting food, medicine and shelter to those who needed it in the North. But we also had to start new programs. So we started work countering disinformation and hate speech, which was fanning the flames of conflict, and supporting human rights investigators because of the massive human rights abuses that we saw with the conflict. At the same time, though, we needed to continue our longer term work that had been helping Ethiopia for decades, such as in health care, giving families malaria nets, textbooks for kids in schools, and all those things. What we had to be clear about though,  is we were giving assistance to all Ethiopians, regardless of the region, regardless of their ethnic group, we were impartial to the conflict. And of course, as with any crisis in Washington, we had to coordinate within and outside the agency and work with others. Especially to make sure we were doing everything we could in Washington to start programs and keep our programs going, working collaboratively with Congress and other donors and U.N. officials. So to do this, USAID leadership really looked to the experts, people on my team and elsewhere to lead and bring all of this together with daily calls from people throughout USAID and throughout the world to make it happen.

Tom Temin: Let me ask you this, how many people were on the ground in Ethiopia from USAID and other agencies, versus how many people you had as the local agents and contractors and NGOs that work under USAID in foreign countries?

Jonathan Dworken: So on the ground at the USAID mission in Addis we have about 40 Americans, but well over 100 local staff. These are local hired experts that work full time for USAID. They may be doctors and accountants, experts in health and sanitation that help manage the programs on a day-to-day basis. At the same time, we probably had over 1000 people that were what we call our implementing partners; U.N. agencies such as the World Food Program, non governmental organizations such as Catholic Relief Services, that are providing the actual assistance on the ground, as well as a number of contractors.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Jonathan Dworken, he’s director of the office of East African Affairs at the U.S. Agency for International Development. And in a civil war situation, it must be particularly dangerous, because it’s not another country attacking a country where there is at least a modicum of international understanding that there are neutrals there. But civil wars in some ways are harsher. And you must have the problem of each side suspecting you’re really on the side of the other. And how do you manage that one?

Jonathan Dworken: That’s exactly right. I think it was a really dangerous environment, especially for our implementing partners in the North. And there were actually a number of aid workers that worked for them that were killed. And we were also worried really about our local staff, some of whom were under suspicion, and we’re detained and harassed. I think the critical thing that we did here, which is what we do everywhere is to make sure that we’re just crystal clear that our assistance is to all Ethiopians, we highlight that it’s going everywhere in this country, and to everyone to get the message out that our focus is just on the Ethiopian people.

Tom Temin: And when you said that one of the tasks was to help combat disinformation, that gets you in probably deeper looking like, “Oh, they’re on their side,” and side B saying, “Oh, they’re on their side”.

Jonathan Dworken: What we do in situations like that is support locals, often civil society organizations, that set up organizations to call out disinformation and hate speech. And we found that it can be very effective, but in a lot of situations, it’s really an uphill battle.

Tom Temin: So basically, then it’s fair to say you were not a referee, but simply trying to be a neutral, doing a third thing, which is non-combat related.

Jonathan Dworken: Just trying to make sure that Ethiopians knew the truth about what was happening in their country. And we were supporting journalists and others to get that out.

Tom Temin: And with respect to the real issue of the famine and the humanitarian aid that you were tasked to do, what are some of the numbers? What were you able to get into people’s hands and I guess mouths?

Jonathan Dworken: Well, for the longest time, a lot of the assistance in northern Ethiopia was blocked, and there was very little going through. Now the situation has changed, both sides have declared a humanitarian truce, and assistance is starting to go in terms of actually hundreds of trucks every day that are going into the Tygray region. Much more needs to be done. But we’re well over 100 a day. So we’re making progress. And we’re cautiously optimistic.

Tom Temin: And has the level of harassment from one side or the other dropped a little bit now that they hopefully understand that you’re not taking sides?

Jonathan Dworken: It has indeed, I think the situation really is much better. But sometimes there are misunderstandings in local areas. And so it’s still a dicey environment. But as I said, we’re cautiously optimistic and things are going in the right track.

Tom Temin: And the war itself, is there an end in sight or a truce in sight? And maybe you could still continue the mission, but without as much fear and danger?

Jonathan Dworken: Well, both sides have undertaken a humanitarian truce and committed to allowing assistance in. So we think that’s a first step. There’s still a lot more that needs to be done before we’re at a sustainable piece. But we’re in a much better place than we were several months ago.

Tom Temin: And because you are a Sammies nominee, I’d like to hear a little bit about your own background, how you got to this particular job and what motivated you to join public service in the first place.

Jonathan Dworken: Sure. So early in the 1990s, before I had ever even heard of USAID, I was in Somalia, and a colleague took me to a meeting held between humanitarian relief organizations such as the U.N. and NGOs, and military officers who were deployed to Somalia to help relief efforts. And someone from USAID which I had never heard of, was running this meeting. And what I saw there were smart professionals trying to get aid to hungry Somalis. They were living in someplace dangerous, but dedicated to really something bigger. And I watched in that meeting almost 30 years ago, and said, I want to be part of that. So to be here almost 30 years later and a finalist for helping people in Africa. It’s really come full circle and is just so overwhelming for me.

Tom Temin: Jonathan Dworkin is director of the office of East African affairs at the U.S. Agency for International Development, and a finalist in this year’s Service to America Medals Program.

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AmeriCorps is the government’s premier agency for engaging volunteers of all ages to help with the nation’s pressing problems. At the end of last year, it got an energetic new CEO when the Senate confirmed Michael Smith, who joined  Federal Drive with Tom Temin to talk about it.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: And before we get into your background, which is pretty interesting. I wanted to talk about AmeriCorps itself. Give us a sense of the numbers of volunteers, the age distribution, what does it look like these days? The core of the AmeriCorps volunteers?

Michael Smith: Absolutely. AmeriCorps, the federal agency for volunteering and service, we were founded in 1993. So we’re about to turn 30 years old. But many of our programs like VISTA, Volunteers in Service to America,  go all the way back to the 1960s. Today, we have more than 250,000 AmeriCorps members and senior volunteers serving in 40,000 locations all across the country. So chances are if there’s a challenge, and there are people working to do something about it, AmeriCorps members are at the heart of that.

Tom Temin: And what are some of the major challenges? I imagine housing, environmental issues, and so on. I mean, these are both urban and suburban and rural, correct?

Michael Smith: Absolutely. The wonderful thing about AmeriCorps is we have the ability to pivot on a dime. So we’re deep in 40,000 communities, we’re working on issues like education and housing and hunger and climate. But you know, when the going got tough in these past couple of years with the pandemic, America and AmeriCorps got tougher. So we have AmeriCorps members that have been working alongside doctors and hospitals helping with testing and vaccination. We have AmeriCorps members that have been working in food banks and food pantries helping with food distribution. We have almost 70,000 AmeriCorps members that are working in the schools. So when teachers had to figure out what to do with virtual, AmeriCorps members were right there alongside them and still are helping to keep kids in school and on track.

Tom Temin: Got it. And what does it take to be a volunteer? Do you get a lot of applications every year?

Michael Smith: Well, Martin Luther King said it best, anybody can be great because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a special degree, you don’t have to go through a long course, you just have to have a desire to want to give back to your community. And we have AmeriCorps members that are 18 to 80. I actually met with an AmeriCorps senior member who was in their 90s a couple of weeks ago. So if you care about public education, you can work in the schools, if you don’t want to be around other people, and you just want to work in our parks, and help with trails, you can do that, too. You know, right here in Washington, we’ve got folks at Washington Parks and People, we’ve got folks that are working with the Washington AIDS partnership. So chances are if you have a passion, there’s an opportunity to use the power of service to do something about it.

Tom Temin: And what does it take to become a volunteer? There’s a process here.

Michael Smith: There’s all sorts of different ways to volunteer. If you want to become an AmeriCorps member, all you have to do is go to americorps.gov. And we have something called a fit finder. So you have to decide, do you want to be a full time volunteer? So we have AmeriCorps members that are volunteering for 1700 hours a year in school. We also have some AmeriCorps members that are just doing that part-time. So we will help you find your fit both on the hours that you want to give, the compensation that you may or may not need, and the issue area that you care about.

Tom Temin: So volunteers do get some remuneration, not really a salary, but get some costs covered, say for commuting or travel to a national park, that kind of thing?

Michael Smith: Yeah, we consider AmeriCorps members to be a force multipliers. So after a disaster, for instance, you might have an AmeriCorps member that’s managing hundreds of day by day volunteers. So AmeriCorps members that are full-time or sometimes part-time, get a very small stipend. We also get an Eli Segal Education Award to help you pay your school debt down if you’re an AmeriCorps member.

Tom Temin: And given the range of programs you mentioned, there’s 40,000 communities, you’re working with a quarter of a million people. What’s the process by which the core leadership decides this is something we can send volunteers to support? And how do you work with the external groups that you are supporting?

Michael Smith: You know, the wonderful thing about AmeriCorps, we are deeply local, we actually work through a network of state commissions. So most governors appoint a head of service for their state, and our state commissions help to decide what the local issues are. And we think about some of the things that are the most pressing issues in Washington. So for instance, we were really proud just a couple months back to launch Public Health AmeriCorps, a $400 million partnership with the Centers for Disease Control, where we are helping use AmeriCorps members to meet immediate public health needs, but also building the next generation of public health workers. So you know, you might have AmeriCorps members that are working on an issue that only matters in this specific issue in West Virginia. But we also might decide we’ve heard bubbling up, there’s this great need around climate or there’s this great need around public health. And so we’ll direct dollars that way on a national level.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Michael Smith, he is the CEO of AmeriCorps. And let’s talk about you for a minute. You have come from service in the Obama administration. But I think equally significantly, you were the head of a group called My Brother’s Keeper. I guess that was also backed by the Obamas. Tell us about that experience, and how it helps you in this job.

Michael Smith: You know, I think the most important thing to know about me is I am a kid from the communities that we are trying to serve. I grew up with teen parents and a single mother household in Western Massachusetts without a whole lot of money.  And the reason that I am here is because of a network of volunteers and community changemakers, who believed that their neighbor’s children were their children. And so I just was lucky to be able to create a career that was about giving back to the kind of communities that I came from. Yep, so most recently, I worked for President Obama for about eight years both in the White House and his foundation, leading his My Brother’s Keeper initiative, and his opportunity youth programs. But I actually also worked at this agency. I ran something called the Social Innovation Fund, which was about building up evidence-based approaches that are working in low income communities.

Tom Temin: Got it. And the My Brother’s Keeper initiative, I want to return to that in a minute, is concerned with black youth and their development. It sounds like a model that can be replicated across many different communities where people need help.

Michael Smith: Yes, President Obama launched My Brother’s Keeper after the tragic killing of Trayvon Martin. And the idea was, how do we make sure that there are pathways to opportunity for boys and young men of color, and that they know when they realize that they matter? So all across the country, there are hundreds of My Brother’s Keeper communities that are working on making sure that young people can achieve their dreams and removing those barriers and providing mentors and changing policy, so that those barriers are reduced for boys and young men of color all across the country.

Tom Temin: And let me ask you this, and of course, like all federal programs, they are blind to people’s color, their background, whatever they might bring to it. In this type of situation, mentoring, helping repair communities, helping with education. Can black people  mentor white children, or white adults mentor black children? I mean, can this cross boundaries that we commonly tend to draw amongst ourselves, such that integration in the best sense of the word can occur?

Michael Smith: You know, AmeriCorps is a beautiful melting pot of community members helping each other. So you have many AmeriCorps programs that are specific focused on one community, and you have people from that community that are helping people from that community. But you also have programs some of which you might have heard of: Teach for America and City Year in Public Allies, where people decide, “I want to move to another part of the country”.  And you have a rural farmer that’s working side-by-side with an inner city single mom. And I really think that’s where you see the power of national service, helping people to see their humanity and bringing people together. It is a beautiful, beautiful privilege to watch that all over the country.

Tom Temin: And what do you plan for AmeriCorps, you’ve been CEO now about six months. And who knows, maybe there could be another seven and a half years or six and a half years?

Michael Smith: Well, onmy watch  at AmeriCorps, I want to do a few things. One, I want to make sure that we’re leading with impact. So we’re not just 1000 flowers blooming. But we look back 20 years from now and say this is how we made an impact on our most pressing issues. Not only on the challenges that our communities are facing, but the AmeriCorps members themselves. I think about we just celebrated our 10 year anniversary with FEMA Corps, where they get to decide where AmeriCorps teams go to meet the disaster of the moment, FEMA Corps just offered our last graduating class 70% of them got job offers. So I want to make sure more of AmeriCorps is not only a one time service experience, but helping to change your pathway. I also want to make sure that AmeriCorps reflects the diversity of our country, The rich diversity and our AmeriCorps members and also our AmeriCorps grantees. And lastly, I want to make sure that AmeriCorps is doing more to bring people together. As I mentioned, we see it, but I think there’s even more that we can do to ramp it up so that people are working side by side together with people that they might not be seeing online because they’re living in these crazy echo chambers nowadays. And I think service, rolling up your sleeves with your neighbors, and with people from across the country, can do just that.

 Tom Temin: Yeah, there is that reality aspect to it. If you’re helping someone learn to read, or if you’re fixing a trail, as you mentioned, or working to make sure people get lined up properly to get the vaccine into their arms. There is a physical reality to that, that transcends what you can do online pretty much.

Michael Smith: Absolutely. You know, all this gossip that we care about online, goes away when you are facing a disaster, when you are facing a challenge. When you just realize you have to get the work done. We still have people that are working in response to Hurricane Ida. We still have people that are making sure those that still haven’t got vaccines got vaccines. And when you are doing that work, you just want to make sure that you’re working with your neighbor to get the job done.

Tom Temin: Michael Smith is the CEO of AmeriCorps. Thanks so much for joining me.

 

Carolyn Parent, president and CEO of Conveyer, joins Aileen Black on this week’s Leaders and Legends to discuss leadership in the technology sector.

Conveyor is a provider of an AI-driven document virtualization platform that transforms instructions into friendly, easy-to-follow, mobile-first applications that customers can retrieve with QR codes and view on any device.

Prior to joining Conveyor, Parent led companies at the forefront of SaaS technology innovation in real-time digital communications, mobile, AI, data and security analytics. She founded companies, managed new growth-oriented software technology business units, and helped navigate organizations through six profitable evolutions or exits (IPO, M&A, privatization and large-scale divisional spin-offs).

Throughout  her career, Parent has built high performance teams and led organizations to their highest levels of success. She did that by leading with “optimism and enthusiasm,” and keeping the lines of communication open so that all stakeholders from the individual contributors to the board of directors have the information they need meet their objectives.

According to Parent, she tries to ensure that there are “no surprises” during the decision making process. That way everyone knows where they stand and what to do.

She says “The more informed people are the better they can do their job.”

Parent believes that leaders of any organization must empower and support their teams then stand aside to let them find their own paths to success. She tries to lead by being what she calls a “velvet hammer” — strong but not abrasive. It’s a lesson she learned from a former mentor.

Parent said strong effective leaders must be able to “work with people and get to know them so they can see your point of view. Coming on too strong without understanding where or how that person may perceive it could cause issues. ”

She said leaders must always be able to adapt to change because “nothing lasts forever,” and she recommends networking with other leaders and executives as you make your way up the corporate ladder.

Networking comes naturally to Parent because she loves people and learns from everyone she meets. She added that networking has paid off over the years and has fueled her success. In fact, she said networking is the key to having a successful career.

Parent is passionate about helping the next generation of women leaders and she has some advice for them.

“Don’t let someone else pick your path,” she said. “Every company is a tech company these days. You don’t need to code to be in tech. You don’t need to be an engineer to work at STEM companies. They need sales, marketing and customer service people too. Remember if you can see it, you can be it. With hard work you can make anything possible.”

Robert Gibbs, associate administrator for the Mission Support Directorate at NASA, joins Aileen Black on this week’s Leaders and Legends to discuss his career and his approach to leadership.

Gibbs joined NASA as the assistant administrator for the Office of Human Capital Management and NASA’s chief human capital officer in 2017. In this role, Gibbs had stewardship responsibility for  NASA’s workforce, carrying out responsibilities in accordance with the Chief Human Capital Officers Act of 2002. His responsibilities included setting the agency’s workforce development strategy, assessing workforce characteristics and future needs based on the agency’s mission and strategic plan, and aligning the agency’s human resources policies and programs with organizational mission.

Gibbs describes his leadership style as one that has “to be adaptable to every circumstance and every situation.”

“I focus on what  we are going to do as leaders,” he said. “How are we going to solve problems? How are we going to accomplish the mission and take care of our folks? I think we should focus on leadership principles.”

According to Gibbs, the most effective leaders make decisions after listening to employees throughout their organizations. That’s because, he said, the best ideas don’t always come from your executive teams.

“When you’re looking for opportunities to try and find a way to leverage a certain circumstance or respond to a threat, you have to be willing to say, okay, folks, what is the best idea, and I will tell you my experience at NASA, sometimes that doesn’t come from executive suite,” he said. “It comes from the deck plates on a lot of the things that we’ve done. We have to be willing to put our egos aside and listen for the best idea.”

Gibbs said communication is the key and good leaders need to find ways to motivate and support their employees so they can go out and solve the most pressing problems in their organizations.

“I think some of the most critical parts of leadership, and this may sound kind of silly, but I think it’s listening,” he said. “Really understanding the problems that you’re facing, really understanding what you’re trying to accomplish.”

Gibbs said authenticity is another important leadership quality. It’s important to “be yourself,” because employees will know when you aren’t being straight with them.

“You really have to be who you are. Your folks will know,” Gibbs said. “They’re going to see someone who lacks authenticity from a mile away. You have to be willing to accept and understand you don’t have the answers. But you’re putting service first, and you’re willing to listen, and understand and pursue the bigger goal.”

Gibbs also offered some advice to the next generation of leaders saying they need to work hard and be willing to take on the hardest jobs to help their organizations meet their missions.

He added that he has been inspired by some of the younger workers that he has met in recent years.

“They think differently,” he said. “And I think they look at problems differently, and they assimilate information differently. And honestly, I think all of those are good things. I’m super excited for what the future holds.”

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The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, known as BARDA, isn’t a household name. But it was at the center of federal efforts to get COVID vaccines developed and into the market. A team of researchers are now finalists in this year’s Service to America Medals program. They are Dr. Rodney Wallace, director of diagnostics and devices, Dr. Kimberly Armstrong, therapeutics branch chief, Dr. Robert Johnson, director of medical countermeasures, and the director of BARDA, Dr. Gary Disbrow, who spoke with the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: And let’s begin with BARDA itself. Are you part of HHS (Department of Health and Human Services)? Is it an independent agency? I thought I knew everything about HHS and the government but I forget that one.

Gary Disbrow: Yeah, Tom, not a lot of people as you said know BARDA is a household name. So we’re located in the Department of Health and Human Services under the Office of the Secretary in the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response.

Tom Temin: All right, getting down to the vaccine development, I guess it goes back to the earliest days of the pandemic. Tell us exactly what BARDA’s role here is, because in the description of the award, it refers to the development of the vaccine on one hand and also the manufacturing and distribution of it on the other hand.

Gary Disbrow: So if I had to use one word to explain BARDA, I would say that that word is vital. BARDA is a vital organization supporting public health preparedness and response. BARDA is always called upon to respond to public health emergencies and quickly develop vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics. And we’ve done this for H1N1, Zika, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and subsequent outbreaks in the DRC, and now the COVID-19 pandemic. And this is in addition to our normal mission of developing medical countermeasures for pandemic influenza, and chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats. We’re always watching for potential threats. We work with public health agencies for surveillance and worldwide with our other colleagues. And as soon as we see something of concern, we start taking steps to address those concerns. And in this case, before the SARS-CoV-2 virus even had an official name, we realize this showed potentials of being serious. We collaborated with our colleagues at NIH (National Institutes of Health), the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and DoD (Department of Defense) to look at what technologies were available that might be useful if the virus spread and was as serious as it appeared to be. And so we reached out to our existing partners to see whether the technologies and products that we’re working on might be useful for a virus like this, we started reaching out to diagnostic developers, even at the end of 2020. At the same time, we opened our Corona watch portal to serve as a single point of entry for all product developers to learn more from anyone, anywhere who had products or technologies that might be useful in interacting with industry is just one of our strong points at BARDA.

Tom Temin: Sure, and the idea that there is a large federal apparatus that responds here, there’s elements in DoD, they’ve got their own labs even and then the CDC, and then there’s the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and it goes on and on. So how do you know who’s in charge and who does what when these things arise?

Gary Disbrow: So we work collaboratively across HHS in the instance of SARS-CoV-2 response, the previous administration stood up what was called Operation Warp Speed, and Operation Warp Speed brought in Gen. Perna for the DoD to support the logistics that would be necessary to support such a large response and Moncef Slaoui, you know, as our scientific adviser, and that organization really led the collaboration across HHS and DoD, we relied heavily on DoD for contract support, because we knew that this was going to be an incredible effort. We have an incredible team within the BARDA organization for contracting, but we knew that we were going to need additional support.

Tom Temin: And when you knew that there was a vaccine, probably on the way, then it was necessary to make sure that it was manufacturable. And that the needles and the vials and all of these things, people kind of take for granted had to also be in place, otherwise, you couldn’t get it into the arms of America.

Gary Disbrow: Correct. And so very early in 2022, BARDA made initial investments in the procurement of needles and syringes and vials and also expanded domestic capacity for those. Some of these were contracts that we had in place from our H1N1 response in 2009. BARDA to also quickly made investments again, you know, leveraging partnerships that we already had for vaccines and therapeutics to pivot them quickly. They had been previously working on vaccines for Ebola or Zika, diagnostics as well for those threats. And we looked across our portfolio and quickly made those investments and the investments that we made served as the portfolio of vaccine and therapeutic candidates that eventually became supported by Operation Warp Speed. And as you mentioned, manufacturing was key. And so the federal government assumed the financial burden of scaling up manufacturing while the clinical trials were still ongoing in the anticipation that if a positive result came from the phase three efficacy trials, that we would be able to roll out vaccine quickly and that’s exactly what happened. In December of 2020, we were able to roll out two vaccines.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Dr. Gary Disbrow. He’s director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, and a finalist in this year’s Service to America Medals Program. And you mentioned the work in Zika and Ebola and some other programs earlier, this is almost like a prize fight card in which the small matches take place before the big one comes along. So is it fair to say or accurate to say that there was actually some practice for this before the main Coronavirus really hit even though people thought that nation was unprepared but it sounds like there was some pretty good experience of recent years.

Gary Disbrow: BARDA is always called upon to respond to public health emergencies. And so we have experience developing what people refer to as platform technology. So these are technologies that are being developed to address one pathogen, but can quickly be pivoted to address other pathogens as well. And don’t forget that the NIH it also supported research into SARS-CoV-1 as well as MERS to develop a stabilized spike protein. And that was started back in, you know, early 2000s. And so that foundational work was necessary and critical to make sure that we have a stabilized spike protein for SARS-CoV-2 that can be used as a vaccine antigen.

Tom Temin: And when this started to develop early in 2020, what was it like inside BARDA? Almost, I’ll use another analogy. Did you feel like a surfer suddenly looking out at the sea and realizing a really big one is coming?

Gary Disbrow: We immediately moved to start work on countermeasures for SARS-CoV-2, you know, we also stood up our incident management team within the BARDA organization, which is similar to what we did for the 2014 Ebola crisis in West Africa. We quickly modified our broad agency announcement, which is our main funding mechanism solicitation as well as what we have. It’s called an Easy Broad Agency Announcement so that we could support development of diagnostics. And so we quickly you know, again, looked across our portfolio and started making investments even before we received supplemental funding from Congress, which we’re very grateful for, we used our annual appropriations to start companies such as Sanofi, Regeneron for therapeutics, Merck and Moderna, as well for companies that we’d previously supported for other pathogens.

Tom Temin: And you strike me as someone who is pretty calm and dispassionate about what is required in a case like this, tell me was that something that you needed to call upon when, frankly, all hell was breaking loose?

Gary Disbrow: So I try to remain calm. Because, again, we just have an incredible organization, some of the leading experts and minds in the fields of product development, science, manufacturing, regulatory, clinical, non-clinical, as well as our contracting shop. And, you know, I felt that it was important for them to all understand the severity of what was going on, but to also stay focused on the mission, which is really to develop these medical countermeasures as quickly as possible, while still, you know, making sure that we’re supporting all of the FDA regulatory requirements so that the American people would have confidence that these are safe and effective products that are being developed.

Tom Temin: And the government loves the word playbook for this or that that’s kind of come into the vernacular in the last few years, is something being done now to capture all of the learnings from the last couple of years so that the playbook can be passed on for the next time? If there is a next time?

Gary Disbrow: Yes, well, let’s hope there is not a next time but yes, the federal government has multiple efforts, you know, what we call lessons learned documents that are being established, it’s hard to do it when we’re still, you know, in the middle of the pandemic, but we are looking at lessons learned. And we do that for every large event, as we did for H1N1 as well as Ebola. There was a tabletop exercise called Crimson Contagion, which was run a couple of years ago, which is a major pandemic in the United States. And, you know, so that everybody from the federal government would be able to coordinate and share information. And you know, those were lessons learned that we applied for this response.

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More than two decades after the 9/11 attacks, some victims have not been compensated. This guest took over the Victim Compensation Fund when it was foundering a few years back. Now tens of thousands of people have received payments from the fund. Rupa Bhattacharyya is special master for the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund at the Justice Department and a finalist in this year’s Service to America Medals program. She spoke to the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: Ms. Bhattacharyya, good to have you on.

Rupa Bhattacharyya: Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Tom Temin: And you are something of a specialist in being a special master of compensation funds. That is a narrow specialist. I guess that’s not all you’ve done. But tell us how you got to that point and what that job actually is?

Rupa Bhattacharyya: Sure, it certainly didn’t start out that way. I entered the Justice Department as a regular trial attorney, litigated for years defending the government and government employees in federal district courts all over the country, but made my last job prior to the 9/11 fund job. I oversaw two other compensation funds, the Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund, which was set up to pay that very small number of people who do have side effects from the administration of childhood vaccines, as well as the flu vaccine and the RECA funds, which is the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act program, which was set up to pay compensation to people who were injured from U.S. government nuclear testing that was done out west in the 50s and 60s.

Tom Temin: So these are funds that are established by Congress, correct? And the Justice Department administers them. What does the job take? I mean, how does the process work?

Rupa Bhattacharyya: So they’re all set up a little bit differently. The RECA fund is an administrative fund. And so the applications come in to the Justice Department, we make the decisions with respect to the applications according to a number of statutory criteria, we pay the claimants and if people are unhappy with what happens in the RECA fund, they can go to court and sue the department. The vaccine fund is set up a little bit differently. The cases there are actually adjudicated by the special master in the federal court. They’re in a court of claims. And so they make decisions on those cases, but they’re subject to much less rigorous evidentiary requirements. And then again, the Justice Department represents the Secretary of Health and Human Services with defendants in those cases.

Tom Temin: And is there a set of administrative judges or people that do this? Because when people have claimed, say, at the Veterans Affairs Department or whatever, there are administrative judges or sometimes administrative law judges, different function but decide these things at that level. Do you have a staff like that of people that do this?

Rupa Bhattacharyya: I do. So at the Sept. 11, Victims Compensation Fund, we have a staff of claim reviewers who review the claims. And we also have a number of hearing officers who hear our administrative appeals and actually get to listen to the claimants and hear their stories.

Tom Temin: And so tell us more about the 9/11 Victims Fund. You were appointed to it a number of years ago, but it had kind of stopped paying out people?

Rupa Bhattacharyya: Yes. So the fund is sort of an interesting story. You know, it was originally created in October of 2001. So immediately following the attacks, that was the fund that was run by Special Master Feinberg, Ken Feinberg, and it paid out over $7 billion to over 5,000 people. And then it closed in 2004. In 2011, it became clear that people were still getting sick from exposure to the toxins at all three sites: at the Pentagon, at Shanksville, and of course, in New York City at the World Trade Center site. And so Congress reopened the VCF to try to compensate those people who were now getting sick. But it was in a very odd position. No one knew in 2011, how many people had been exposed, how many people might get sick, what conditions they might actually come down with, in the end, it was a very sort of open ended proposition. And when it was created in 2011, it was set up for five years. So it was a temporary program with a very limited mandate, I had no idea what its claimant population was going to look like. And so when I came in, in 2016, it had stalled a little bit because it was going to expire. And Congress was in the process of trying to renew it. And we were still attempting to figure out how many claimants might actually ultimately be eligible. And that’s really sort of the challenge that I faced when I got there and no one knew at the time that we’d have over 7,000 claimants.

Tom Temin: Well, we’re speaking with Rupa Bhattacharyya. She’s a special master for the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund at Justice and a finalist in this year’s service to America Medals Program. So what did you do to revitalize it, and now you’ve paid out 35,000 people who have received compensation?

Rupa Bhattacharyya: Yes, in total, we’ve paid out almost $45,000, $35,000 just in my tenure. We did a number of things, actually we staffed up we brought in a lot more claim reviewers, we streamlined our processes. We created a new claim form so that we could get better information. We went out and did a tremendous amount of outreach and education both to the affected communities and to the attorneys who bring the claim so that they knew what they needed to do and what documents they needed to file and how to make the claims move faster. We sort of went in a concerted effort, I would say we took the program apart and put it back together again, to try to make it work faster and better for the claimants who were coming into the program.

Tom Temin: And I’m a little puzzled by the number of 45,000. I mean, we know there were police and firefighters right on the scene, rescue workers. And of course, the people lost in the buildings had families and so forth. Then there were people kind of in the neighborhood, then there were people watching from across the river from apartments. How do you get to 45,000 people eligible for cash compensation?

Rupa Bhattacharyya: Sure. So our program compensates at all three sites, Shanksville, Pentagon and the World Trade Center in New York, our sort of geographic zone is all of lower Manhattan south of Canal Street. In addition to the usual first responders, right, the fire, the police, the EMS who showed up to work on the site. There were also all the construction workers and the debris removal experts and the asbestos abatement people and the cleaning people who went into the building to remove all of that dust, many of them are now facing toxic conditions, including many cancers as a result of their exposure to the dust. And it’s not just them. It also includes people who lived, worked, went to school in that area of lower Manhattan, who are now similarly breathed in that dust and are facing serious conditions as a result of that exposure.

Tom Temin: And are there special characteristics of these diseases that are markers for that dust as opposed to someone who’s been smoking two packs of Camels a day ever since then?

Rupa Bhattacharyya: So that’s a good question. And we at the victim’s compensation fund, we’re the lawyers, not the doctors. So we try to stay away from the medical determinations. We have a sister program at the Department of Health and Human Services, it operates out of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, NIOSH, called the World Trade Center Health Program. And the World Trade Center Health Program actually makes the medical determinations about which conditions are related to 9/11 exposure.

Tom Temin: Got it and listening to you, I get the sense that you’re someone that really understands the inner workings of complicated machinery, in this case, the federal bureaucracy and all its glory, is that how you describe yourself because you said you’ve took the program apart and put it back together. It’s a simple thing to say, but that’s a heavy lift.

Rupa Bhattacharyya: I had a tremendously flexible and supportive team, they were willing to weather a lot of really major changes, not least of which because in 2018, we made the determination that we were not going to have sufficient funding to pay all of the claims that were coming into the program. And so another series of changes was made then, but you know, when you have a team that is willing to sort of roll with you and give you great ideas and make great suggestions, and do what needs to be done, because they know how important it is to see our claimants get paid. That’s what gets it done. And all credit goes to them.

Tom Temin: And after you left the fund, you said you were there for a period of time and now you are retired or what do you doing these days?

Rupa Bhattacharyya: I lost the fund just a few weeks ago actually to take a position at Georgetown Law Center in their Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection. So I’ll be doing some litigation on constitutional issues, which is getting a little bit back to my roots, as well as hopefully down the road a little bit of teaching.

Tom Temin: All right. Well, if I was in law school, I’d hope to get you as a professor. Rupa Bhattacharyya is a special master or was until she just retired for the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund at the Justice Department and a finalist in this year’s Service to America Medals Program. Thanks so much for joining me.

Rupa Bhattacharyya: I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me.

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She’s young, she majored in a science and technology field at a good university, and she chose to work for the federal government. Exception to the rule? Maybe. But let’s find out. Patent examiner Brooke LaBranche spoke to the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: Ms. LaBranche, good to have you in.

Brooke LaBranche: Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Tom Temin: In studio here. And first of all, if you don’t mind my asking you are a federal employee, you work for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. How old are you?

Brooke LaBranche: I’m 28 years old.

Tom Temin: So that qualifies you as somewhere between Z and Millennial?

Brooke LaBranche: Yeah, right in the middle.

Tom Temin: All right. So let’s talk about your background education. I mean, what took you to the point at which you were qualified and then decided to work for the federal government? Where do you go to school? What’d you major in?

Brooke LaBranche: Sure. Yeah, I went to the University of Virginia, and majored in biomedical engineering, which qualified me to be a patent examiner, because they do require a STEM background, either engineering or a hard science degree to be qualified for that.

Tom Temin: And growing up STEM areas, the technical areas you liked, and were your forte.

Brooke LaBranche: Yeah, it was always something I was most interested in. My mom had a nursing background. My dad was an engineering background. So I kind of grew up around that kind of atmosphere.

Tom Temin: Yeah. So in the table in the kitchen table with a drawer, there were slide rules in your family.

Brooke LaBranche: Right, right.

Tom Temin: And did you find going back, I guess it begins in elementary school. But did you find support in the area that you grew up in and went to school in for women in, and young girls, I guess, elementary school for STEM?

Brooke LaBranche: Yeah, we actually, the high school I went to, I was in a program that specialized in science and engineering and technology, it was called a math and science program. And so that was a kind of like a high school magnet school that we were able to apply to and go to so you could you know, specialize in different areas, if that’s what you’re interested in.

Tom Temin: So you’ve been basically immersed in this your whole life?

Brooke LaBranche: Right. Yep.

Tom Temin: All right. Do you find math especially to be something more of a language than something to be struggled over as people often do?

Brooke LaBranche: Oh, absolutely. It’s definitely a language and requires, you know, more of a problem solving mind than anything else to kind of navigate your way through.

Tom Temin: And for biomedical engineering. What are the other elements? Besides I guess math is foundational to all of the sciences and engineering arts, but in biomedical what are some of the other things you need to know?

Brooke LaBranche: Yes, so it’s a lot of science and physics combined, really. So biomechanics, biomaterials are really important. Nanotechnology, a lot of programming as well is involved in biomedical engineering. So kind of computer science it gets into.

Tom Temin: Yeah, when you get really deep into biology, I guess it’s hard to know, is it chemical? Or is it mechanical? Because chemistry is how things behave mechanically at the atomic level, I guess, right?

Brooke LaBranche: Right. Yeah, it’s definitely at the intersection of both of those.

Tom Temin: And we’ve run out about what I know about it. And then you graduated college, and what attracted you to federal service of all things?

Brooke LaBranche: Well, so initially, I was really interested in federal service, because the application process was very straightforward. They provided a lot of information on the requirements, the background you needed to have to be qualified for the job. The compensation and salary was very visible and readily available. So you know what you’re getting into before you apply, not, you know, halfway through the application process, or even once the point where you get an offer, then you’re, you know, kind of wrapping your head around what you’re going to be offered. And also the promotion potential was made available to you right from the start. So you kind of have an idea of how far you have to go once you’re in that position.

Tom Temin: Sure. But with respect to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, I mean, as a biomedical engineer, probably the Agriculture Department has opportunities for that type of work. I imagine somewhere in Interior, maybe NIH, Health and Human Services. And so did you look at those places also, what was it about patent examining that attracted you?

Brooke LaBranche: Yeah, patent examining was very interesting to me, because there was such a broad spectrum of technologies that you could be exposed to. And when you first you know, apply and get into it, you don’t know exactly what area you’re going to be dealing with. So it’s kind of exciting in that sense that there’s going to be something new basically every day that you show up to work or get on your computer, the different applications that you’re looking at all involve something different.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Brooke LaBranche, she’s an examiner with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. And just a final question on the federal hiring process. It has a reputation for being horrible and taking months and months and months. What was your experience?

Brooke LaBranche: The hiring process at the patent office was pretty simplified compared to that. It was a 10 week process, there was a table like a timeline that was provided along with the job openings, so you know exactly once you post your application, and the on USA Jobs once the vacancy closes, there’s a pretty strict timeline that they follow. And so my experience was right along with the timeline that they proposed.

Tom Temin: And did you also look at industry jobs or commercial jobs?

Brooke LaBranche: I did, I looked at different pharmaceutical companies, some medical device sales companies. And the work here was just a little bit more interesting and, you know, fell into what my strengths already were.

Tom Temin: And what was the onboarding process, like, I mean, you have been there a few years now. So it was not pandemic. But PTO has always been a big telework agency, even before the pandemic.

Brooke LaBranche: Right onboarding was all in-person. And we were in there called labs, there were groups of around 10 of us. And we had, you know, a few teachers per lab group. And we spent four months there, basically just learning how to do the job, learning everything from the MPP, to looking at our first cases, and getting the ball rolling with, you know, starting to understand the examination process.

Tom Temin: So you had four months to get to know colleagues and supervisors in an in-person setting, right. And then pretty much telework beyond that?

Brooke LaBranche: So back before the pandemic, they did have us stay at the office for a little bit longer. I believe it was around two years, and then you had the option to start teleworking as was seen fit. So that time was really good to be in the office to kind of get to know people and be able to ask questions, little easier to be across the hallway from your supervisor and go get help if you needed that.

Tom Temin: And what is the day to day or hour to hour type of work like for a patent examiner? You get I guess they assign the cases to you. And then what do you do somebody invented a new earbud or something? I don’t know. And then what do you have to do?

Brooke LaBranche: Right. So we have we have a docket full of cases that have been assigned to us, like you said, so on the day to day, I will, you know, open up new cases that have been assigned and kind of familiarize myself with those technologies. And you know, what the inventive feature is of that particular application. And then I’ll begin a process of searching through a database of patents that have already been issued or disclosures of patent applications. And I’ll be looking for something that is similar and maybe is overlapping in scope, and seeing how the claims of the new application compared to what’s already been out there and has been disclosed. So after I do that, I’ll spend some time writing office actions which are the official correspondences between the office and the applicant. And those will include any minor informalities that need to be fixed, rejections in view of the prior art and any allowable subject matter that I see.

Tom Temin: And just in general, what is the rate of rejection versus granting in the field?

Brooke LaBranche: That’s a hard question to answer, because it varies a lot based on different technologies. And that is all information that’s made publicly available. So there’s a lot of transparency about what those allowance rates are.

Tom Temin: But you have turned down people?

Brooke LaBranche
Yes. So there is a process of rejection, and then applicant will come back with making amendments to their claims. And there’s, there’s interactions between the office and the applicant to try to get claims to an allowable state. But if there is the case where there’s an application that just doesn’t have any, you know, novel material in it, then eventually that case would likely go abandoned.

Tom Temin: And have you ever had someone maybe object in a way that’s not just through the formalities, but say, who are you to tell me I can’t patent this?

Brooke LaBranche: No, you know, usually it doesn’t get to a personal level like that. It’s very, either the art is out there, or it’s not. And there’s kind of a very formal correspondence between the examiner and the applicant. So it doesn’t it doesn’t kind of get to the wondering if someone has the authority to say this or that it’s kind of very black and white.

Tom Temin: All right. And do you like your work?

Brooke LaBranche: Yeah, absolutely. I do love working there. It’s, it’s great to have the work life balance that we do, like you mentioned, the telework policies, the Patent Office has always been, you know, leaders in allowing for telework. And so it gives me the opportunity to really focus and enjoy the work that I do and put out high quality work but also not sacrifice in other areas of my of my life.

Tom Temin: And say the friends that you went to school with you might still be in touch with any of them, feds?

Brooke LaBranche: Not a lot. Actually. I might be one of the only ones that I know from college. Yeah.

Tom Temin: But you would do it again?

Brooke LaBranche: Yeah, definitely.

Tom Temin: Brooke LaBranche is an examiner with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Thanks so much for joining us.

Brooke LaBranche: Thank you for having me.

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Young, top-notch scientists have a shot at recognition from the National Science Foundation. Each year the NSF names an early-career scientist to its Alan T. Waterman award. This year it named three. For what the award is all about and why the foundation has it, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke to program manager Gayle Pugh Lev.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: Let’s begin with Alan T. Waterman, a famous figure in the annals of NSF. Tell us who he was and why the contest is named after him.

Gayle Pugh Lev: Alan Tower Waterman was the first director of NSF. And he served as the director for two terms from 1951 to 1963. And he really established the core mission of NSF to support researchers across the country who are forging new paths on the frontiers of science, and enabling groundbreaking discoveries.

Tom Temin: The award then honors pretty much young scientists. That’s the aim of it here?

Gayle Pugh Lev: Yes, Dr. Waterman was widely known for advancing students and encouraging the development of young scientists as leaders in their fields. So he was a strong supporter of early career researchers.

Tom Temin: And people that think they might have a shot at this award, what do they need to do not just so much in filling out an entry form, but what should they expect to have had in their background that would make them eligible?

Gayle Pugh Lev: So that is up to the nominator. Nominations are received from people who would nominate someone for the Waterman Award. And as they see someone as an outstanding leader among their peers, who in their early career made groundbreaking discoveries, and just really standout scientist and engineers.

Tom Temin: Right. So the nominations tend to come from older professors, mentors, or perhaps employers, can they be in industry to be eligible?

Gayle Pugh Lev: Yes, they can be in industry and be eligible, yes.

Tom Temin: All right. Let’s talk a minute about this year’s winners. There were three of them just briefly tell us who they were and why they got the award.

Gayle Pugh Lev: Well, this is the first year that we’ve had three awardees. I mean, the 46 year history that we’ve had the Waterman Award, there have been 54 awardees, and it wasn’t until 2012 that we started recognizing more than one awardee. And we only did that a few times. So there have been 54 awardees since 1976. This year, we nominated three and part of that is because of the increasing scale of the nation’s science and engineering community. And also we want to recognize a broader diversity of researchers. You know, when you only recognize one person a year, you have a narrow pool.

Tom Temin: Who were this year’s awardees and tell us a little bit about them.

Gayle Pugh Lev: So this year, we have three awardees, Daniel B. Larremore, a computational epidemiologist from the University of Colorado in Boulder, Lara A. Thompson, a biomedical engineer from the University of the District of Columbia and Jessica E. Tierney a geoscientist from the University of Arizona.

Tom Temin: So you cover not just a diversity of people, but a diversity of fields it sounds like.

Gayle Pugh Lev: Right.

Tom Temin: These are mostly people that are say under 35. Is that a fair way to characterize them?

Gayle Pugh Lev: The eligibility requirements are that the people are 40 years of age or younger, or not more than 10 years beyond their Ph.D. in the year in which the nomination is submitted. So like if you were to submit a nomination for someone this year, in 2022, they would need to be born in 1982 or later, or received their Ph.D. in 2012 or later.

Tom Temin: Sure, and I guess it’s fair to say too, and correct me if I’m wrong, they should have demonstrated some original piece of work almost like a Ph.D. they’ve advanced say computational science or geology, whatever the case might be, in some manner.

Gayle Pugh Lev: Oh, absolutely. And yeah, if I can, I would like to say a little bit about their research that they’ve done. I mean, they’ve all done such exciting things, and like you pointed out, have very different expertise.

Tom Temin: Sure, tell us.

Gayle Pugh Lev: So Dr. Larremore is recognized for his work using computational epidemiology to address the questions regarding countermeasures used during the COVID-19 pandemic. So in his research, he created models that provided answers to questions about how to administer the vaccine, and what role rapid testing could play in mitigating viral transmission. His work has had enormous impacts on how we understand pandemics now and in the future.

Tom Temin: All right, and next?

Gayle Pugh Lev: Dr. Lara Thompson, the biomedical engineer, she combines medicine and engineering to develop solutions to improve the lives of individuals with balance, gait and postural impairments. She uses assistive technologies and robotics towards improving balance in elderly individuals and survivors of strokes as well as developing technologies that can increase balance, confidence and reduce the risk of falling for these groups of individuals as well.

Tom Temin: All right, sounds like someone that stands on the back of a BOSU ball.

Gayle Pugh Lev: And then Dr. Jessica Tierney, so she has done groundbreaking research in the field of climate modeling and approaches to understanding past climate conditions. So she uses modeling techniques with paleo climate data assimilation to generate maps of past climate conditions and the system dynamics that produce those conditions. And her research has redefined our understanding of global temperatures in the geologic past and helped to develop a new quantitative understanding of temperature and climate sensitivity to past levels of carbon dioxide. And her findings are important for understanding the climate of our future.

Tom Temin: All right, we’re speaking with Gayle Pugh Lev, she’s program manager for the Office of Integrative Activities at the National Science Foundation. And who judges, who decides who gets the awards each year?

Gayle Pugh Lev: NSF is very fortunate to have a distinguished group of individuals volunteer to be evaluators for the Waterman nominations. So these are individuals that are at the forefront of their fields of research. They are appointed by the director of NSF in the different fields that are represented by the NSF to evaluate these.

Tom Temin: Got it. So this year was Dr. Panchanathan, then that appointed them?

Gayle Pugh Lev: That’s correct.

Tom Temin: Do the winners get a prize other than a nice plaque? I mean, this is the government or maybe there’s some industrial partners that can give them a little green?

Gayle Pugh Lev: The size the Alan T. Waterman Medal, and the recognition that goes along with winning the Waterman Award, the awardees, since 2012, receive a million dollars to use over five years.

Tom Temin: For research.

Gayle Pugh Lev: For research, yes, to advance their research and that grant goes to the institution of the recipients choice.

Tom Temin: So nobody can buy a new Corvette if they win this award. This is to their science.

Gayle Pugh Lev: Yes, that’s correct. It’s it’s basically a prize, but it’s administered as a grant.

Tom Temin: And how many people get nominated each year?

Gayle Pugh Lev: This past year, we had 110 nominations.

Tom Temin: Wow. So it kind of makes you feel confident in the future of STEM in the future of science and technology and innovation in the United States.

Gayle Pugh Lev: Yeah, the nominations that we received are phenomenal. So it is really a difficult task to narrow it down to even three awardees.

Tom Temin: And are any of the past awardees have they gone on to famous scientific work? Have we heard of any of them?

Gayle Pugh Lev: Yes, there are many, many notable winners from past awards, and most of the Waterman Award recipients have continued to flourish in their respective fields and made significant scientific and engineering advancements that impact our health and welfare of our daily lives. Well, they’ve continued to go on to be recognized with national and international awards, including two that have received the National Medal of Science and three that have received the Nobel Prize. Eric Cornell, Richard Axel and Jennifer Doudna she won it in 2020. So the awardees they’ve you know, helped to improve our understanding of DNA, further biomedical and cancer research, decoded our sense of smell, create a new forms of matter. And they’re working on devices for energy storage and energy conversion that you know, help with clean energy. They’ve also made numerous groundbreaking discoveries in quantum computing, material science, genome editing, mathematical analysis and string theory to name a few.

Tom Temin: We’ve heard about them first, then at the NSF Waterman awards.

Gayle Pugh Lev: Right. Yes, the National Medal of Science winners include Edward Witten, and Jacqueline Barton.

For the last few years, the IRS has been changing its external reputation and internal culture of an agency that doesn’t take technology risks.

The Pilot IRS program may be one of the most well-known examples of this external evolution, reaching out to vendors to bring in innovation and new approaches to contracting.

Internally, the use of robotics process automation in the procurement and financial offices has been a strong influence on the workforce’s culture.

Shanna Webbers, the assistant deputy commissioner for operations support at the IRS, said a combination of short-term wins and agencywide collaboration helped drive two major changes.

“The technology enables our staff do other things or things that they may find more interesting, instead of just mundane, repetitive tasks. That’s really what we want to do. We want to create an environment where our staff want to come to work, where they’re excited to come to work, where they feel like they are making a tremendous amount of value to executing our mission at the IRS,” Webbers said on Ask the CIO. “How do we create that and beyond just upskilling and rescaling in areas with human resources-related to technology or robotic process automation? We really are looking at the whole person. How do we ensure that every individual in the organization has the right skill set, the right experience and the right knowledge to take on positions of greater responsibility?”

Webbers said that meant changing how they trained the workforce. Instead of focusing 80% of the training on the technical aspects of procurement, the use of RPA and automation has let the IRS refocus the training to 50% on technical and 50% on other skills like critical thinking, writing, leadership and collaboration.

Agency collaboration

The second initiative to drive the culture change is to create a partnership with the agency’s chief information officer’s office.

Webbers said the CIO’s office must give its final “blessing” before the bot can launch, the office has provided acquisition and financial with liaisons to help work through the documentation and security processes.

“We have a process in place where when we have ideas, we, through an intake form, submit them to the CIO and they get reviewed. There’s an IT advisory board that makes recommendations for how to move forward,” she said. “If we don’t have the capacity or the funding to move forward, the CIO’s office helps to prioritize the RPA investments.”

Across procurement and financial, the IRS has implemented a small amount of RPA bots so far, but expect to increase the number over the next year.

“We have other ones that are in the queue right now. In the next six to 12 months we are  focusing on RPA implementation that’s working around data reconciliation and management for our manual adjustments for refunds and deposits, that could save up to 35,000 hours per year,” said Teresa Hunter, the IRS’s CFO. “There’s a significant opportunity. We are a very paper-based organization. It’s just a matter of our IT organization having the capacity and the funding to keep up with the demand that is going to be coming their way. The CIO has a big job of making sure that we are secure and safe. It’s a balance between having a good relationship with your CIO office and understanding their perspective as well as the needs of the businesses.”

Hunter, like many CFOs, are seeing the value of bots for financial operations.

She said she is encouraging the staff to take a new way of looking at how they could do their work, which areas are repetitive and require mundane tasks that somebody had to do that.

“We know it does save time and effort on our staffs’ part,” Hunter said. “As we’re working on the automation, the innovation, the efficiency effort within CFO, we’re also looking at skill sets of our staff and how can we upskill or reskill them? What are the core areas that we want to focus on of making sure our staff are being trained to develop and grow in their role as we move forward with some of these shifts and changes? We aren’t looking to reduce full-time equivalents (FTE), but we’re looking at being able to be more analytical in our decision making and how we are approaching the work that we have to do so that we can be more successful and how we’re making decisions, how we’re coming to conclusions, and really getting ahead of any type of like audit issues or anything like that, where we’re really understanding our data and our workforce is really growing and developing along that path that would get us to the future of finance and the skill sets that are going to be required for people in a CFO organization.”

Relying on the innovation team

For both Hunter and Webbers, the continued move toward automation and using bots will be a balance of enthusiasm from the early adopters and managing those who remain cautious about it.

“One of the things that I believe helped us in that was just being open to hearing what they have to say about using bots. Every viewpoint was critically important to understanding the risk that may be associated with using a robotic process automation on a process that we had not proven out. So trying to take all of that input, letting them know that their input was important and mitigating the particular risks or accepting those risks, or coming up with a different approach to eliminate the risk, was our approach,” Webbers said. “At the end of the day, because I was in charge, I said, ‘Okay, let’s do it, we’re going to try and see.’ Fortunately, it worked out really well, and I think that those instances where we got those quick wins was important for people to gain confidence.”

She said the IRS looks back at every RPA implementation to create lessons learned and figure out where they can improve upon the process for next time.

Hunter added the CFO’s office created an innovation team to which employees can submit ideas for how to automate or improve a process.

“What I wanted to do was make folks a part of the process, where, I’ll steal a quote from procurement, can you tell me what you hate so that I can make you love it?” she said. “What are those opportunities that you just dislike doing every day? Let’s take a look at it because maybe there’s opportunity to do the work in a different way or automated it or whatever the solution may be, but there’s got to be an answer. We’ve focused on that as well as the change management portion of it as we’re thinking about how we’re looking at our work products. It’s really the mindset of how can a bot help me in my day-to-day life?”

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When the government spent billions on health measures in response to the pandemic, officials worried whether enough would flow to the poor and vulnerable. Such people live in both urban and rural areas. This guest on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin coordinated the work to get millions of vaccines and other medications to community health centers. She’s the director of the Office of Quality Improvement at the Health Resources and Services Administration, and a finalist in this year’s Service to America Medals program, Dr. Suma Nair.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: Dr. Nair Good to have you on

Suma Nair: Good morning.

Tom Temin: Let’s talk about that idea of community-based health centers. Because in the larger sense of the words, every health care center is in a community of some type. What were you actually targeting here?

Suma Nair: This program was run through the Health Resources and Services Administration. And we provide grants to community health centers, 1,400 organizations all across the country, and the territories, they have over 13,000 service delivery sites as well. Basically, they’re community-based patient directed organizations that provide access to affordable, accessible primary health care services to folks all across the country. They serve over 29 million patients living in the United States. 90% of our patients are at or below 200% of the federal poverty level, over 60% are racial ethnic minorities, and almost a quarter are best served in a language other than English.

Tom Temin: Wow. So the grants then are to actually keep the places open and operating? That’s the main source of revenue?

Suma Nair: The grants are, on average, about 20% of a health center’s operating budget. They also get reimbursement through public insurance, other grants, we provide grants exactly, as you said, for primary care services. A lot of our grant funding goes to support the workforce of the health center who provide those health care services.

Tom Temin: Got it. So it didn’t go to places like Brigham and Women’s and rich, well funded, that are attended by people of means pretty much.

Suma Nair: Right. Nope. These are community-based organizations that are there to serve individuals who are medically underserved in communities across the country.

Tom Temin: All right, and tell us more about the program to make sure that all of these vaccines when they did become available, but before that there were other measures and supplies and so forth that needed to get out. What was your indication of the fact that they didn’t have them? And how did you go about making sure they did have them?

Suma Nair: Yeah, early on in the response, as vaccines became more broadly available beyond the initial indications for health care workers, we started to get a sense very early on that health center workforce weren’t being vaccinated, and they didn’t have access to the vaccine. And then furthermore, plans were to scale large community vaccination events, really to get through, you know, high volumes of folks, which was critically important at the time, it became clear to us that what about the individuals who would never show up for those who could never go through a mass vaccination drive-thru clinic show up at a local pharmacy? What were we going to do to support them and get to them, educate them about the availability of the vaccine, educate them on any questions or concerns they had about the vaccine, and then support them in getting their first dose and their second dose in those primary series. And so that really was, I think, the impetus for the administration to set up this program to have a direct supply of vaccines to health centers who have long standing relationships with their communities and the patients that they serve. And so they knew where these individuals were and how to access them, because of that trusting long term health care relationship that they had built up. So when health centers had access to the vaccine, they could bring in their patients. Remember, early in our vaccination efforts, you’d go on a website, you’d need to schedule your appointment, you’d go stand in line, those are all things when you hear about our patient population, those may not work for them. And so health centers proactively reached out to their patients scheduled them. After the initial efforts to stand up really quick mass vaccination within the health center context, which is accessible, it’s in their own community, there are sites everywhere. They then, they, health centers, then took the opportunity to go out into the community. So when they got through the initial group of who wanted vaccines, they partnered with community-based organizations, faith-based organizations, when it was time schools to go out and vaccinate individuals.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Dr. Suma Nair. She is director of the Office of Quality Improvement at the Health Resources and Services Administration, HRSA and a finalist in this year’s Service to America Medals program. And was it important to get the employees and health care workers at these community centers vaccinated first, to increase their ability to receive more people and deal with them and therefore maybe have greater throughput in the center’s?

Suma Nair: Absolutely, I think, you know, it’s essential that we vaccinated all of our health care workers and health centers equally important. They’re the first line of defense in many cases for their patients. When their patients don’t feel well or have questions, they come to a health center. You know, health centers across the country played an important role early in the pandemic of trying to help people understand the mitigation efforts, what precautions they needed to take, so that they didn’t get very sick. And they didn’t have to go to the hospital. So especially at a time where ERs were starting to overflow, it was important for health center providers to help patients who maybe weren’t feeling well. But were not bad enough to go to a hospital yet, stay at home, isolate and take care of themselves so that they didn’t have to appear at the hospital.

Tom Temin: And in the pre-vaccine part of the pandemic, which was, I guess, most of 2020. Now, if I can recall the calendar here, were you also involved in getting other types of supplies or whatever treatments were thought to be useful to the same centers?

Suma Nair: Yeah, absolutely. I think early in the pandemic, as we were noticing the lack of access to personal protective equipment, some of the challenges folks were facing across the country, we jumped into action to get a better sense of what was happening in our communities across the country. So we developed a survey to get a sense of what was the implication of the pandemic, closures access to PPE, etc. on our health centers, as organizations in certain places, were they not, you know, some had school-based health center sites, they obviously weren’t seeing any patients there. What were the impact on the health center staff, they also were getting infected, they had to take care of their patients, they had to take care of their families, right as children were out of school. So the impact on health center staff, also challenges they had with obtaining PPE, there were still patients who still needed access to primary care, right, managing chronic diseases and other things. And so what health centers then did to flip the way they delivered care from in person to virtual. There’s a 6,000% increase in their ability to provide virtual visits in 2020. So continuing to provide critical access to care, just in a different modality.

Tom Temin: Spoken truly like a HRSA person, they’re on that last percentage. And we’re there’s some logistics issues, because in the rural areas, it might have been difficult to get these things physically shipped, whereas you could put them in a taxi cab for a poor neighborhood in New York City, for example.

Suma Nair: Yeah, exactly. So the vaccines, you know, they were fragile, right? They had very specific requirements around how to handle the vaccines. And I think early on, there were some questions, hey, these community-based organizations, do they have the large scale freezer capacity and all the things that were necessary to handle vaccines and health centers to their credit, and using some of the COVID response dollars, they did have access, they did partner with organizations so they could get these vaccines, keep them at the right temperature and share them. You know, it’s an interesting point about the smaller, maybe more rural organizations who needed access. As we work through our program, one of the concerns that they faced, you know, we regularly checked in with our health centers, and they said, we really want to vaccinate, I can’t take 1,000 doses, they were coming in trays of 1,100. I don’t have as many individuals who will come for care. But I still am a critical point of care for these individuals. So we set up a program within health centers where one hub health center would receive them, they break down the doses, and then they’d partner and get them out to the other ones, so that we could expand access into our smaller and more rural communities.

Tom Temin: And because you are a Sammies finalist, I just wanted to ask you about your own career briefly and how you came to this particular type of work.

Suma Nair: Yeah, it was happenstance I have to say after graduate school, I have a background in public health, nutrition. And so always worked in a team of individuals focused on health care. I had the opportunity to join HRSA as a HRSA scholar, something like a President Management Fellowship, and got an opportunity to learn about the HRSA’s different programs, and eventually, over time, focused on performance improvement, quality improvement, that kind of work. And then I landed up in the health center program, in HRSA, working in the quality and data shop. So I think the experiences in data using systems and technology, we also do partnerships. So partnering with our state-based organizations, our national organizations, and building a relationship with health centers focused on quality improvement over the last 15 years, made it one, a no brainer, we saw that health centers weren’t getting access. And so when we were presented with an opportunity, we were going to figure out a way no matter what, as quickly as possible. And then I think that trusted relationship with the health centers on the other side, because as they say, right, you can build it, but if they don’t come and utilize it, it’s kind of a waste. And so it was a fair amount of work on the health centers for sure. But because of our trust relationship, they came along, they were working nights and weekends to make sure they could access the vaccine, get it out, share the data back. And that really, I think that relationship from start to finish is what had us be very successful in this endeavor.

Tom Temin: You like your work, don’t you?

Suma Nair: Clearly.

Tom Temin: Dr. Suma Nair director of the Office of Quality Improvement at the Health Resources and Services Administration and a finalist in this year’s Service to America Medals program. Thanks so much for joining me.

Suma Nair: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

To do this, the PMA calls for first improving customer experience (CX) offered by 35 High Impact Service Providers (HISPs), which are large-scale, high-impact public-facing services with the potential to raise the bar for CX across government.

Five Agriculture Department entities are considered HISPs: the Farm Services Agency, the Forest Service, the Food and Nutrition Service, the Natural Resource Conservation Service and Rural Development.

Speaking to ACT-IAC’s virtual Federal Insights Exchange on today, USDA Chief Information Officer Gary Washington said the department’s CX officer is working with the deputy secretary to lead the way and carry out the directives of President Joe Biden’s executive order on federal customer experience from December. Washington said he was “excited” about HISP-related work ongoing in the Food and Nutrition Service, and farm loans under the FSA in particular, although he did not give specifics.

Washington said that his office wants to hire people with strong data skills, cybersecurity skillsets and the ability to “talk” to non-IT people.

“Rather than have somebody hide in a closet somewhere, they’re going to have to be able to actually speak to people about their needs. Maybe from a business standpoint and data perspective, and be able to make sure that that becomes real, in terms of somebody’s IT journey,” he said.

During the virtual chat, Nicole Blake Johnson, director of Employee Communications & Engagement at Granicus, said that emotional intelligence is an area with major skills deficits for program managers. She asked Washington if the IT community has underestimated the power of communication and listening, to which he said it is important that people feel like someone cares about their needs.

“You need to be able to listen, speak and have a conversation. You’d be surprised how many people — I’m not going to say they can’t do it but they could be a little stronger in communication, in those areas,” he said.

It can be surprisingly difficult to communicate what one truly needs, he said. Conversations about what innovations or new technologies to implement must involve stakeholders, “and find out what they’re actually trying to achieve, what their requirements are, and as an IT professional provide them with the best advice possible on a way forward.”

Prior to the pandemic, USDA had regular vendor engagement sessions. Washington said he hoped those could return but he tries to work with the Office of Small and Disadvantaged Businesses and the procurement office.

“I have a lot of vendors, some of them email me on a daily basis and responding to that is not realistic and it’s not sustainable,” he said. “So we have to think about some method or structure to engage vendors in the appropriate fashion to give them some time and make sure that they’re aware of opportunities available to everybody. But hopefully we can get our arms around that soon.”

For those wishing to engage with USDA, Washington advised they focus on the department’s future rather than its past. They are interested in partnering with vendors who can help USDA move forward and change, rather than remain entrenched in outdated methods, he said.

“Sometimes I have people come to me and they ask me questions about USDA, and you can look that up on the website. But I’d rather have a conversation about what value do you bring to USDA, what can you help us do?” he said.