The Transportation Security Administration is hiring a chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer to spearhead the work of an inclusion action committee, as some lawmakers express frustration with lack of diversity among the agency’s senior ranks.

TSA Administrator David Pekoske says the chief DEI officer will be a member of the senior executive service and join the agency within the next month. The agency’s Inclusion Action Committee recommended TSA create the new position.

Pekoske said the official will be charged with acting on other recommendations in the committee’s December 2021 report. TSA created the action committee in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020.

“They put forth some excellent recommendations as to how we can address this from a very strategic level within the agency,” Pekoske said during a May 26 House Homeland Security transportation and maritime subcommittee hearing.

While the majority, about 55%, of TSA’s approximately 60,000 employees are persons of color, 53 out of 66 Federal Security Directors are white and 54 are men, according to Subcommittee Chairwoman Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.).

“I’m frustrated by the lack of TSA’s progress in diversifying its senior ranks,” she said.

Pekoske acknowledged that TSA’s senior management should reflect the diversity of TSA’s entry-level workforce. He committed to staying on top of diversity metrics, in particular at the supervisory and management levels.

“When you look at just the senior level, you really have to look down a couple to see how much diversity do you have in the in the middle management that will become your senior leaders in a few years,” Pekoske said. “And so I think it needs to be a very holistic approach across the agency.”

D&I ‘understaffed and under resourced’

Beyond the establishment of the chief DEI officer, the action committee’s 2021 report lays out multiple recommendations aimed at strengthening and sustaining TSA’s “inclusive culture,” and removing barriers to a diverse leadership.

The report urges adequate funding for TSA’s new Diversity and Inclusion Division, noting that the agency’s existing D&I program is “severely understaffed and under resourced.” That has led to “critical issues” in managing, measuring, supporting and sustaining diversity and inclusion initiatives, according to the report.

The report also identifies inconsistent disciplinary and attendance policies, respectively, as barriers to diverse leadership.

It additionally urges TSA to overhaul its promotion policies, including the adoption of a blind review process combined with the requirement to use a diverse interview panel.

“The IAC received consistent sentiment from colleagues at all levels within the agency that highlights the inconsistencies with the promotion system that has led many to believe, ‘it’s not what you know, but who you know,’” the report states. “This recommendation focuses on the application of several new requirements to reinforce a more transparent process.”

The report also recommends requiring “inclusive diversity leadership training” for all supervisory K band positions up through transportation security executive service roles. Additionally, it recommends diversity training for selecting officials “to mitigate biases and develop a tool/checklist guiding selecting officials through the selection process.”

During last week’s hearing, Pekoske said the December report is not the last word from the Inclusion Action Committee.

“That Inclusion Action Committee is not just a one-shot committee,” he said. “This is going to be a continuing committee within the agency, we just solicited for a new slate of members to come in. So we’ll change out the members on a rotating basis over the course of the years.”

TSA pay equity push

During the hearing, Pekoske also reiterated that achieving pay equity for TSA employees is his top priority.

The House passed the Rights for the TSA Workforce Act earlier this month. The legislation would bring TSA employees under the same personnel system as other federal employees under Title 5 of U.S. Code, including the General Schedule pay grade.

But the bill passed with virtually no Republican support, and it faces an uncertain future in the Senate. Lawmakers also have to separately approve the funding to grant TSA employees pay raises in fiscal 2023.

Pekoske said 81% of transportation security officers make less than equivalent employees at other agencies who are paid under the General Schedule. Meanwhile, 51% of the agency’s non-TSO workforce is paid less than their counterparts at other agencies.

The Biden administration is proposing to fund the pay increase by ending the diversion of passenger security fees to pay off the federal deficit. Instead, TSA would be able to keep an additional $1.5 billion in fees in FY-23

Pekoske said TSA delivered the legislative proposal for ending the diversion of the fees to Congress on May 2.

He noted the imperative to ensure TSA’s workforce stays stable and grows as travel is projected to return to pre-pandemic levels starting this summer.

“If these long standing pay challenges are not fully addressed in fiscal year ’23, I am concerned that it would lead to even higher rates of attrition and significantly undercut our recruitment efforts,” he said. “We can’t let this happen because this is a time where we need to grow.”

Data from the latest round of the governmentwide pulse survey, which the Office of Management and Budget released on April 28, gives managers an efficient way to listen to their employees on things like return-to-office plans, equity and engagement.

“These pulse surveys really provide a new tool that management hasn’t had before to find out how things are going for their workforce at scale on important issues, particularly in the pandemic as we’re returning to the physical office space. Being able to get a snapshot of what that’s looking like every month or two is really valuable to position leadership to nip issues in the bud before they become much bigger problems,” Jason Briefel, director of policy and outreach at the Senior Executives Association, said in an interview with Federal News Network.

These surveys give agency leaders a quick “pulse” of employees’ feelings about their environment, looking at factors such as workload, exhaustion, diversity and resources for remote work.

Some agencies, like General Services Administration and NASA, had positive results across the board. For example, 92.6% of GSA respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that return to work timelines are being clearly communicated by agency leadership.

Additionally, 83.1% of NASA respondents and 79.8% of Education Department respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they trust agency leadership to do what’s right to protect employees’ health, safety and wellbeing when it comes to re-entry plans. The National Science Foundation also trended positively for this question.

But other agencies fared poorly, such as Social Security Administration, as well as the departments of Homeland Security, and Housing and Urban Development. When asked if they would take a job elsewhere if it offered more workplace flexibilities and remote options, 62.6% of HUD respondents said yes — the highest of any agency.

DHS employees gave the lowest scores when asked if they agree that “time flies when they’re working,” with 20% of the agency’s respondents either disagreeing or strongly disagreeing with that statement. SSA also scored near the bottom for this category.

Regardless of the scores, the pulse surveys give all agencies the same message, Briefel said.

“We need to be listening to our employees much more,” he said. “This is a leading practice that employers have to constantly be getting — feedback from their employees, but doing it in a way that they don’t feel bombarded by those requests for information.”

If agencies are seeing negative results from the pulse surveys, there are many actions senior leaders can take to target issues like exhaustion, former NASA Chief Human Capital Officer Jeri Buchholz said in an interview with Federal News Network.

That includes options from “providing more resources to providing more flexibility for people to balance their work life, to hiring more employees or even to really embrace your employee assistance program resources, to reach out to those people who are about to burn out,” she said.

Many senior leaders who are taking steps to help with issues like work-life balance can do a better job communicating their efforts to employees, Buchholz said.

“Agency management takes a lot of actions that are positive and productive for the workforce and then often neglects to let the workforce know that they have done these things,” Buchholz said.

Pulse surveys show employees’ feelings over the course of about a month, but looking at the trends over the past three iterations combined will yield more comprehensive results, Buchholz said.

“That will let you know whether or not the actions that you’re taking are actually being communicated to the workforce,” she said.

Buchholz said that people who take the time to complete pulse surveys have a message they are trying to communicate to agency leadership.

“If people are attempting to communicate with you, you have a responsibility to let them know that they have been heard,” she said. “At the end of the day, that is the most important thing. It is not what you say, but rather, an acknowledgment that you are listening and what you are hearing is influencing the decisions that you make.”

Senior leaders can also communicate across agencies to learn from others’ successes and make adjustments when necessary. The bottom line is, Briefel said, communication is key.

“Does your workforce know what’s going on? Do they feel like they can believe and trust what you’re telling them? Do they feel like they’re getting the information when they need it? That helps them meet basic needs and not have anxiety take over and make things more stressful than they already are,” Briefel said.

The pulse survey results, along with data from OPM’s 2021 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, provide opportunities to understand and then make changes to work environments. That can be based on both individual agency feedback, as well as governmentwide results.

Office of Personnel Management Director Kiran Ahuja said in an interview with Federal News Network that OPM wants to be a resource to help agencies address problem areas based on the data.

“We’re always telling our agency partners spend time with the data, really dive into it and see where there are opportunities to address issues component by component,” Ahuja said.

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Some big changes are underway at the nonprofit group that represents the federal government’s career executives. The Senior Executives Association has hired Gregory Brooks to fill a new executive director role. Brooks and a new team of contractors will manage SEA’s day-to-day operations. Meanwhile, Bob Corsi, who served as the association’s president for the past two years is stepping down. Corsi joined Jared Serbu on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin to talk about some of those changes.

Interview transcript:

Jared Serbu: And Bob, I guess the right place to start here is talk to us first a little bit about why you decided it was time to hang up your hat as president of SEA. I know it was only supposed to be an interim role to begin with and two years later, here we are. But talk about the timing a little.

Bob Corsi: So I think I was asked about two years ago by the chairman of the board. The last president left and so there was a gap, the organization was having some significant challenges. And the chairman asked if I would be willing to come on board for three months to help navigate the association. So I said sure. Again, I really cared about the association. I’ve been part of it for over 20 years. And I said, I’m glad to do what I can to help. So that three months got extended four times, so I was the interim president for a year. And then I got with the board, and I said, Look, if you want me to be the president, I would gladly do that for another year, and see the organization stabilized and allow the organization to decide how it wanted to move forward, organization-wise. So that’s how I put in the two years. I have been a volunteer for the last two years, helping to get the organization on a better financial footing. I did that on a strictly volunteer basis. And I had an incredible staff to help me work through this. We have no employees, we all have contractor help. For SEA, we are a virtual organization. But we have incredible people that were very passionate about SEA. And it was it was great having them, working with them to stabilize the association to get us in a reasonable position.

Jared Serbu: Yeah, you want to say another word or two about what that actually means to be in a more stable place, what changes as the organization really made?

Bob Corsi: Well, what happened was back in 2016, the organization made a decision that we needed to digitize how we were doing business, and to get out of the paper side of the house. So they brought a contractor on board to digitize everything, and recreated the membership database, a lot of that did not go well and we lost some members, records were not complete. So there was a lot of turmoil at the time. So we were still trying to figure out what we didn’t know, what was supposed to happen in that transition. So getting membership records as current as possible. And it’s still a challenge. Okay, we had some financial issues, and we’re able to work through all of our financial issues, which are not uncommon if you are a member association. Most members associations are dealing with financial challenges. So that’s what I spent the majority of my two years on in terms of stabilizing the foundation of the association, and giving us a good launching pad, where bring in new management can hopefully take us to that next level.

And the decision was made that we would look for an executive director who was part of a management association. Somebody with significant experience in running associations. While we had great leaders in the past, none of us had association leadership experience. We all came from the executive side of the house where we didn’t run nonprofit associations. So not having that financial background hurt the association over time. So now with the new management model, with an executive director with over 40 years experience running in associations, and now a board of directors strapping on a larger role to fill some of those roles we had the president because of his SES background, was able to address, which the executive director is not able to address. So it’s now a shared leadership responsibility between the board and the executive director who will oversee the day-in and day-out operation.

Jared Serbu: Yeah and meanwhile, as I understand it, your current role of the president is going away essentially, and being spread out across those board members. What are some of the discrete functions that you think still need to be handled by those folks that have the SES background on the board?

Bob Corsi: They’re always going to be involved on the policy side, you’re always going to be involved on working with the Hill on certain issues where the Hill wants to talk to somebody with that SES foundation, the credibility in terms of what they bring from their background. And that’s difficult for an executive director to do that didn’t grow up in that SES system. But again, it’s going to be constant. There’s going to be mentoring that’s going to be involved that individuals are going to look to form SES’s. Okay, so it’s mentoring the next generation. It’s kind of the leadership side on the policy side. That’s where I see the board and the members and the Board of Directors playing a huge role in moving forward.

Jared Serbu: And I think your time leading SEA also coincided with the presidential administration transition, which is always an interesting time for all federal employees. But for an organization like yours, what does it mean to move from, I don’t want to get political here because we’re not a political organization and neither are you, but to transition from a government being led by an administration that’s less publicly supportive of federal employees than the one that is in office right now, how big of a difference does it make between those two sort of attitudes?

Bob Corsi: There are significant challenges. And it’s mainly in the career workforce that works through those challenges, because they’re there day in and day out. Political leadership changes over every 18 to 24 months on average. So it’s that career leader that’s out there pretty much is working all of those transitions. So if you go from an administration that doesn’t necessarily embrace public service to one that does, you have to make sure that both sides of the house are ready in transition. We spend a lot of time developing transition documents, not only to help career members as to what they can do to help them to transition, but we also provide that information to new incoming politicals to try to educate them on what the career civil servant, especially the executive brings to the table, and to make sure that they try to listen to those individuals. Okay, but again, we emphasize on the career side, we are there strictly to follow the policy of the new administration. So again, they’re torn many times, but we’ve tried to prepare both sides to have a successful transition.

Jared Serbu: One of the changes that matters to your organization, obviously, is the Presidential Rank Awards are back. You and I are recording on a day when the president himself has just presided over the recognition ceremony. Talk a bit about what that means to have the president personally involved in something like that.

Bob Corsi: I think it was incredible to have the president do that, because it’s been almost 20 years, since we’ve had a president publicly recognize the accomplishments of the senior executives with the Presidential Rank Award. It’s the president’s award, it’s the highest award possible to a career SES in recognizing both distinguished side and the meritorious side. With the distinguished side recognizes the top 1% of the SES’s, and the meritorious recognizes the top 5%. It’s an incredible honor to receive one of those awards. And I have been honored to sit on the panel that looks at all of these write ups from the organizations on the accomplishments of these individuals. And it’s a very humbling experience, to be able to look at what these individuals are doing day in and day out, and the billions that they are saving the government. And it was a shame that you couldn’t publicly recognize these individuals before. And now the president has done it, virtually, understanding the COVID dynamics, and my hope is in the future, that we can do this in person where the president can shake their hands and recognize them and bring them to Washington.

Jared Serbu: Last thing before we let you go, Bob, you talked earlier about how you feel like SEA is in a better place now. Talk about what you think the challenge is, the biggest challenge is this new executive director and the board is going to have going forward whether that applies to the organization itself or the Senior Executive Service more broadly.

Bob Corsi: I think it’s more, public service has some challenges moving forward. We are clearly losing the talent battle, in terms of being able to attract the younger generation and we’re able to attract them, we’re not able to keep them. A lot has to do with dealing with a 100-year old-pay system that was started in the early 20s. We’re still using that today, in terms of pay compensation to individuals. Totally inadequate, we can’t compete with the private sector. But yet you have these young, talented individual individuals that want to be a part of the public service. And they feel it’s important to be able to give up their time. But at the same time, they’re expecting to be challenged, they’re expecting to be offered opportunities for growth. And that’s very difficult in an environment that you have right now when you don’t have budget predictability.

You also have, at the same time you’ve got Schedule F. But that came out in the last administration, where essentially you would take career servants that were leaders on the policy side of the house and make them at-will employees. They basically take away their career status. So a political individual coming in, that’s only in a very short period of time, can give an individual two weeks notice and you’re gone, when that cadre of individuals are the core to keep things going during transition. So while we continue to have things like Schedule F, which will still percolate, over time, you still see a rising, raising its head again, even though this administration killed it. There’s still interest in in bringing it back, because there’s not a trust in the federal civilian workforce. They’re looking for more accountability. And in my, I had 46 years in federal service, 28 years in the military, 18 years I was honored to be in the Senior Executive Service. Even on my military side, my civilians that I dependent on day in and day out, where the military transitioned every two or three years, they were incredibly important for the foundation and keep an organization going.

So my fear, looking out to the future, that the association is going to have to get the membership energized and get the Hill energized, that they’re going to embrace the things that are needed, where we can not only recruit but retain those talented individuals, young individuals that are out there, because we’re going to be losing a lot of that aging workforce. And on the younger side of the house, we are significantly short in that foundation to build on the leadership side. And we have challenges building our middle leaders, our mid-level leaders, because they don’t have the training dollars. Anytime you have a budget reduction, travel and training are the first things that get reduced. And mostly everything that’s happened, COVID, you name it, all the pressure is on middle managers to execute the policies. They are the face of the organization. So they’re under tremendous pressure, day in and day out. And my fear is that we’re not going to be able to retain him, they’re going to say enough is enough. And we’re going to have some major challenges. But we’ve got to get the Hill energized, and stop bad mouthing the public servants. We have 2.1, 2.2 million career civil servants, and we need to embrace them as very, very important to keep this country going. Look what happened when we furloughed them for weeks at a time and basically shut the doors and then the public realized what those folks did day in and day out to support them? So as we move forward, that’s my biggest concern.

On the association side, sure, we’re going to have challenges just like other member associations, but at least where we’ve got a stable platform, we got a great contract on board, we’ve got a great board of directors that’s heavily engaged. So I am very, I am cautiously optimistic as we move forward, that we’re going to be in a better place. But again, there are a lot of dynamics right now out there that are going to put pressure on the system.

Biden’s acknowledgement of the 2021 recipients is the first public PRA recognition by a president in nearly two decades.

Biden has prioritized federal workers since his first day in office, said Office of Personnel Management Director Kiran Ahuja at a May 2 virtual ceremony for the 2021 PRA recipients. His recognition aligns with his actions in both the executive order on protecting the federal workforce, as well as in the first priority of the President’s Management Agenda, Ahuja said.

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“It is why I chose to serve under President Biden, because of this commitment,” Ahuja said at the ceremony. “In executive order 14003, which the President signed during his very first week in office, he stated quite succinctly career civil servants are the backbone of the federal workforce, providing the expertise and experience necessary for the critical functioning of the federal government.”

Supporting all Americans is the bottom line of federal service, Biden said at the ceremony. He used the word “exemplary” to describe the work of the PRA recipients.

“They may not know your name, but you have their gratitude and that’s what public service is all about. That’s what the Presidential Rank Awards are all about. They’re about the families in every corner of this country whose lives all of you have touched,” Biden said.

Senior Executives Association President Bob Corsi, who has served on the panel reviewing PRA nominees, told Federal News Network he hopes that this trend will continue and that it can eventually move to an in-person ceremony when COVID-19 restrictions ease.

“It’s been almost 20 years since we’ve had a president publicly recognize the accomplishments of the senior executives with the Presidential Rank Awards,” Senior Executives Association President Bob Corsi told Federal News Network. “It’s a very humbling experience to be able to look at what these individuals are doing day in and day out and the billions that they are saving the government. It was a shame that you couldn’t publicly recognize these individuals before. And now, the president has done it.”

Recipients of the 2021 PRA include Stacey Fitzmaurice at the Department of Homeland Security, who created TSA PreCheck, as well as Gary Cantrell at the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, who developed a new way of detecting waste, fraud and abuse and uncovered $19 billion in fines and penalties over five years.

In addition to recognizing the employees themselves, highlighting the accomplishments of federal workers can help strengthen trust in government, the Partnership for Public Service reported in a survey on public trust.

“When we asked participants to focus on the non-elected employees in career service, their responses were much more positive. We believe this is a key to change,” Partnership for Public Trust CEO Max Stier said at an event on May 2.

Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young said at the Partnership event that even among negative views of the government, there are still ways to change the narrative around the federal workforce.

“As someone who has worked on Capitol Hill, I’m all too familiar with some of the harmful rhetoric about federal employees. That noise may be out of our control, but we can counter it with amazing stories of public servants getting the job done,” Young said about the Partnership’s Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals, another award highlighting federal employees’ work.

Along with awards, the President’s Management Agenda also helps to highlight federal employees’ dedication to serving the American public, Young said.

“Our team cares deeply about implementing the President’s vision, about supporting federal agencies and about serving the American people. And their commitment to public service is reflected throughout the federal government,” Young said.

The Presidential Rank Awards recognize the work of employees in the Senior Executive Service, nominated by their agency heads or cabinet secretaries. The Office of Personnel Management facilitates the review and selection process and the president decides the winners. Only about 1% of SES employees receive the rank, while about 5% of executives can receive a Meritorious Rank Award.

After a year’s hiatus and on the first day of Public Service Recognition Week, 230 winners across 37 agencies received the award for 2021. In comparison, there were 141 recipients in 2019 and 131 in 2018.

Ahuja said the timing of the ceremony further exemplifies the Biden administration’s prioritization of the federal workforce.

“Public Service Recognition Week is the time to acknowledge the federal workforce and the Presidential Rank Awards are a perfect way to celebrate outstanding federal leadership,” Ahuja said.

OPM reestablished the Presidential Rank Awards after the Trump administration canceled the awards in 2020, citing economic uncertainty amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It was my honor to reestablish these awards last year after the previous administration made a decision to cancel them,” Biden said. “These awards are about more than individual recognition. They remind all of us of the extraordinary capacity, creativity, diversity and dedication of our federal workforce and a reminder of why all the work you do matters so much.”

The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 established the Presidential Rank Awards, which later expanded to add eligibility for senior career employees with a longstanding record of “exceptional professional, technical and/or scientific achievement recognized on a national or international level,” OPM wrote on its website.

The Distinguished Rank Award winners receive a cash bonus of 35% of their base salaries, while Meritorious Rank Award recipients receive a bonus of 20% of their base salaries.

OPM closed nominations for the 2022 Presidential Rank Awards on March 25. The winners of those awards will be announced by Sept. 30.

In a memo obtained by Federal News Network, FAS Commissioner Sonny Hashmi outlined five personnel moves as part of his approach to improving customer experience.

“At FAS, we are fortunate to have the most talented and effective leadership team. These changes will align our leaders’ strengths with key priorities,” the memo to staff said. “These adjustments will allow FAS to take procurement innovation to the next level and improve the customer and supplier experience.”

Hashmi said the changes will be effective as of April 24.

Sources familiar with GSA say while senior executive service members are supposed to move and support any mission, so many changes at one time does create some nervousness.

“It impacts so many employees and their work and mission; as well as all the customers and industry partners,” the source, who requested anonymity because they didn’t get permission to speak to the press. “It is a signal that Sonny doesn’t feel his vision and priorities have been met over the last year — Is that a weakness of the SES leadership or of the political leadership, or both?”

Moving SESers not unusual

Moving SESers isn’t unusual for new leaders. Past GSA and other agency leaders have routinely moved SESers after 120 days.

Former FAS Commissioner Alan Thomas named a new deputy commissioner and moved around other senior leaders shortly after he hit his 120 day mark too.

“Every commissioner puts a stamp on the organization, and leadership moves like this are one of the most important ways to do it,” Thomas said in an email to Federal News Network.

Sources say what may be more surprising with these moves by Hashmi has been in his role since January 2021 and is making changes as FAS moves into the busy season, the third quarter of fiscal year.

“FAS is fortunate to have a talented and diverse leadership team. I am incredibly proud of what this organization has achieved since I returned to GSA nearly 15 months ago,” Hashmi said in an email to Federal News Network. “As you saw in our strategic plan released this week, we have some ambitious plans to serve the public, our partners and taxpayers even better. These leadership moves are an opportunity to align the best leadership talent to the key areas of innovation needed and ultimately drive better outcomes for the public.”

The leadership moves made by Hashmi include:

Erv Koehler now leads the Office of General Supplies and Services moving over from the office of customer and stakeholder engagement. “With his vast experience in a variety of FAS roles, Erv will bring great energy and a fresh perspective to GSS where he’ll be responsible for providing acquisition, logistics, supply, and personal property disposition support to the federal government: Acquisition Management, Retail Operations, Supply Chain Management, and Personal Property Management, along with modernization of legacy systems managed by the portfolio,” Hashmi wrote.

Bill Toth, the director of the Office of Fleet Management, will succeed Koehler as the new assistant commissioner of the office of customer and stakeholder engagement. “Bill has great experience building teams and unique insight into private sector practices from his time leading Fleet. I’m excited for him to bring his talents to this new role, where he will be responsible for customer outreach, research and analysis, stakeholder relationship management, and national account strategy and management that deliver mission value to FAS portfolios, federal, state and local agency clients,” Hashmi wrote.

Charlotte Phelan and Crystal Philcox switch roles. Phelan will lead the Office of Enterprise Strategy Management, while Philcox moves over to head up the Office of Travel, Transportation and Logistics.

Hashmi said in her new role, Phelan will serve as the executive in charge of all FAS modernization efforts.

“Charlotte’s experience solving complex problems and deep background in systems innovation at DoD benefit FAS enterprise initiatives including the federal marketplace initiative, with its multitude of systems innovations projects, FAS strategic business planning and improving customer experience, data analytics and governance,” he said.

Philcox, meanwhile, will oversee the strategic direction and oversight of TTL, which also is the governmentwide category manager for the non-tactical motor vehicle and travel categories.

“Crystal’s talents for innovative thinking and consensus building will be a great addition to TTL,” Hashmi said.

And Bob Noonan will move from leading the Office of General Supplies and Services to be the senior advisor for workplace programs and  will report to FAS Deputy Commissioner Tom Howder.

“In this role, Bob will lead and coordinate FAS’s efforts in support of the future of the workplace, an area of critical importance for GSA, in partnership with the applicable FAS category leaders and business lines,” Hashmi said. “This role will enable FAS to be at the forefront of developing solutions that are essential to federal agencies as they shift to a more remote/telework posture. This is an exciting new opportunity for FAS to collaborate more actively with Public Building Service on the workspace of the future.”

Fleet management to be big focus area

Generally speaking, experts said the moves were good ones.

Larry Allen, a long-time GSA observer and president of Allen Federal Business Partners, said Koehler is a great asset to FAS and has been successful everywhere he’s been. Allen said Toth also is strong leader with good experience, and has a good rapport with the industry people he’s worked with.

Thomas also highlighted specific moves by Hashmi.

“First, the General Supplies and Services portfolio is not well understood by those outside GSA but it drives significant value for customers,” he said. “With Erv Koehler heading up this team, I expect even greater collaboration with the acquisition center chiefs in key GSA regions and a more holistic approach that helps agency customers understand how and when to use the fledgling e-commerce portal, the well-established requisition channel, and GSA Advantage!”

Thomas added Philcox’s move to lead the travel, transportation and logistics portfolio, and specifically the fleet program, will be worth watching because of the administration’s sustainability goals.

“Fleet also happens to be a big contributor to FAS’s overall cost recovery, so changes in this program can cause financial ripples across the organization,” he said. “At a time of volatile fuel prices, constraints in the supply of vehicles, and an internal technology modernization effort to replace the mainframe system used to manage GSA’s fleet, Crystal Philcox and the new fleet director have a full plate of challenges.”

Sources say more changes could be on the way, including giving the Technology Transformation Service a larger role in managing the FAS modernization effort.

Hashmi said in the memo he will hold a FASwide town hall on April 6 where he will share more about the FAS vision and priorities.

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Federal employees, and federal employees only, have a new place to go for information on leadership development and career advancement. A whole series of seminars now lives on a special section of MAX.gov. Joining the Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke with details, from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Kim Wittenberg.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: Kim, good to have you back.

Kim Wittenberg: Hi, Tom, it’s great to see you again.

Tom Temin: And besides your job as a health scientist administrator, you have also put together this kind of library of resources for federal employees. Tell us more about it.

Kim Wittenberg: Thanks so much. Yes, so much has happened since I talked with you back in 2018. I was thinking about at that time, the federal leadership and professional development seminar series, LISTSERV or email list had about 3,000 members, and now we’re up to almost 6,000. So it has been a lot of continued interest and growth.

Tom Temin: Sure, I had more hair on the top of my head back then, too.

Kim Wittenberg: Well, in 2021, you did mention the MAX.gov website, and we do now have a live website on MAX.gov that’s a fed only section and the community portion of MAX.gov that allows for a repository of the seminars. So we have a video recordings, the slides, the rosters of folks who have attended so they can connect with each other, and various other resources connected to past seminars.

Tom Temin: And tell us more about MAX.gov for the uninitiated, this is a site that has a lot of different things there. But almost all of them, you need to be a fed and have an account as an official federal employee to access them, correct?

Kim Wittenberg: That’s correct. MAX.gov is mostly open only to federal employees. Although there are sections that are open to the public as well, depending on the page, the different pages have different privacy. My page in particular is open to the entire federal government, but not public. So that website allows you to get in to see the seminars, they’re divided up into three main buckets. There’s the bucket for general leadership topics, such as last year, we did one on accessibility and how you design something from the very beginning to make sure it’s an accessible product, and another bucket of topics design, developmental opportunities, and the myriad of opportunities that exists for federal employees. And then there’s another one on career advancement resources, such as the seminar we did on getting to SES.

Tom Temin: All right, and by the way, it’s available only to federal employees, as you say, and do you have a way of keeping the Russian hackers out, too?

Kim Wittenberg: I’m not sure about that. I do want to say there is a public facing site, as well. So YouTube, we still have a YouTube channel. So for the seminars that are not sensitive in nature, the recordings are posted on the YouTube channel. So there’s the YouTube channel link, there’s the MAX.gov link and there’s also the LISTSERV, the email list that folks can sign up for to receive resources and announcements for seminars, and I can share all those links with you as well.

Tom Temin: OK, yeah, we’ll put those at the bottom of the posting of this interview when we put it at our website. And what’s the origination of these video seminars? Can any agency do this, say accessibility or whatever the case might be? You’re a new SESer, here’s what you need to know, that kind of thing. Can any agency contribute to this?

Kim Wittenberg: Yes, we’ve had many different presenters now across the government. So back when I spoke at the 2018, we were offering single presenter seminars. And in 2019, we started to also offer multi-presenter workshops that are multiple hours in length up to half day or full day. So we have a cross-government perspective of different types of successful strategies, depending on the topic. And those have been of great interest and one that we did last year, in 2021 was actually on telework and hybrid work environments and successful strategies for those environments.

Tom Temin: Definitely timely there. We’re speaking with Kim Wittenberg. She’s a health scientist administrator at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. And in her spare time, if she has any, puts together this whole MAX.gov site. And what’s the take up in? Do you have a way of monitoring how many people and what types of people and what agencies are using it?

Kim Wittenberg: I don’t have a way of knowing who has actually gone on the MAX.gov website. But we do have two tabs in addition to the repository sections, we do have two tabs that I’m hopeful we’ll get some visitors. One of them is on connection. And that tab has resources in it that provide all sorts of other LISTSERVs and federal communities of practice and how to join and find those federal communities, for example, there are communities for federal evaluators, communities for strategic planners, but sometimes it’s hard to find your counterparts in other agencies. So that tab has information on what communities exist and how to connect with them. And then there’s another tab called Get Involved. And that tab is something that I just started a month ago and launched two knowledge sharing initiatives, one of which is on lessons learned and successful strategy initiative where feds can submit their lessons learned and successful strategies, and another is on submitting hurdles. So feds that are facing a hurdle that’s widespread, they’ve been dealing with it for a while, they can submit it and then present it and I’ll go out to the listserv of almost 6,000 feds who can respond and potentially provide a solution.

Tom Temin: And could someone create some sort of an interest group or a community of interest on there and establish one and exchange ideas?

Kim Wittenberg: That’s what I’m hoping in the future. I’m hoping to have a more of a capability of discussion threads and submitting wikis and things like that.

Tom Temin: What kind of support if any of you get from OPM on this?

Kim Wittenberg: Well, OPM has actually been great at providing speaker support. So we’ve had several speakers from OPM, we did a workshop last year on developmental opportunities, hosting them, and receiving them and OPM was fantastic. We had 20 speakers that day from across the government. So that was a very large workshop. And they were very supportive in that.

Tom Temin: It strikes me that given the virtual way people have been working, and now they’re used to it, it seems like the in-person idea might even give way as the main format, and people doing it virtually because it’s no travel involved. No travel time involved. And it gives you much greater capacity, I guess, to create content.

Kim Wittenberg: Yes, that’s an interesting question, Tom, because when we last spoke, of course, it was in person and virtual. And now it’s been just virtual. And I think that the seminar series has really been successful in maintaining an engaging environment during the seminars. So even if there are 60 agencies and 1,500 in the audience, they’re all able to still interact with the presenters. They’re able to chat and type in their comments and their questions, talk with each other. And in the survey, I asked folks, how many new people that you connect with, and it’s just amazing that even in this all virtual environment, there are many new connections that are still happening.

Tom Temin: And how do you have time to do this, given that you have a responsible job at the agency?

Kim Wittenberg: Well, I have tried to make it as efficient as possible. So over time, it’s kind of been something that that happens more quickly at the workshop that I did in November on telework, and hybrid work strategies. That one actually came together in two weeks with nine speakers. So I’ve gotten more efficient at pulling the events together. But it is a labor of love. So I can’t say that I don’t work some late nights on those sometimes.

Tom Temin: Well, I know what you’re talking about. What’s the old saying if you want something done, give it to a busy person?

Kim Wittenberg: That’s correct.

Tom Temin: Kim Wittenberg is the health scientist administrator at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, but we’ll have a link to her great site. Check it out.

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After spending 30 years in a Coast Guard uniform, this guest has donned a business suit and joined the senior executive service. But he’s still with the Coast Guard, as the new deputy assistant commandant for intelligence. Jeffrey Radgowski joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin to discuss his new role.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: Let’s begin with the intelligence service, the intelligence function at the Coast Guard itself. What is it you cover as the deputy assistant commandant there?

Jeffrey Radgowski: You may know the Coast Guard has 11 statutory missions, I won’t list them all. But people are often familiar with our protection of safety of life at sea, which typically involves search and rescue. A lot of migration cases are involved in that protection of safety of life at sea. Counternarcotics, particularly in the Caribbean or Eastern Pacific, there’s a big push, particularly now for countering illegal, unreported, unregulated fishing and fisheries laws writ large. So those are just a few examples. But Coast Guard intelligence is the driver to execute those missions, as well as providing decision makers in the Coast Guard, and beyond at every level, how we want to go about doing that mission and sort of what our risk calculus is to do a mission.

Tom Temin: And I’m guessing one of the challenges in a job like that is dealing with all of the other federal components in the Defense Department elsewhere in your own Homeland Security Department that also impinge on this whole topic, and deciding who does what and making sure you’re all on the same sheet of music.

Jeffrey Radgowski: Interesting point, I would actually offer that it’s been a big benefit for us to have all of those partners and I found it through working with a lot of them really powerful to be able to partner with those organizations, our lanes in the road through those statutory missions are pretty clear. And then those partners, whether it’s Customs and Border Protection, Department of Defense, FBI, we usually find a natural space where we can work together. So I’ve been, like I said, pleasantly surprised and actually feel very empowered when I work with those other organizations.

Tom Temin: And for the Coast Guard is the issue of intelligence gathering, like it is elsewhere a combination of human intelligence, and also signals intelligence and observation. What are the components that go into the activity?

Jeffrey Radgowski: So we have sort of a pretty broad expanse of intelligence capabilities. We have some from law enforcement, as a regulatory agency. And we’re a member of the national intelligence community as well. So we use our authorities, if you will, from each of those. And that could be something from Coast Guard sector, one of our smaller units could be anywhere along the west coast to our largest units, such as our Intelligence Coordination Center, which is here in the D.C. area that provides that strategic communication.

Tom Temin: And I wanted to mention something or have you talk about something I noticed in your background, as listed by the Coast Guard, pretty interesting thing that you did was “instrumental in establishing a holistic organic intelligence specialist rating for the Coast Guard.” So in effect, you invented a position that seems crucial to the Coast Guard.

Jeffrey Radgowski: Right? I wouldn’t take credit for inventing it, but I was in the Coast Guard when we were just standing it up. And I was part of a much bigger team. But a lot of what we were trying to figure out is, what does that need to look like? How do we recruit people that we want to come in? How do we train them? How do we get them up to speed to do those things I talked about earlier in terms of executing our mission? How do we get that decision advantage? So that was a big part of the intelligence specialist workforce of the Coast Guard, and how do we partner going back to your previous question, how do we partner with some of those other organizations to make them the best that they can be in terms of getting the training that they need? It was pretty exciting. It’s still evolving today, and I would say probably one of the most gratifying parts of my work is seeing somebody that’s now a chief, a senior enlisted member that I knew when they were very junior, and just watching all the really powerful things that they’ve done for the service and how they’ve developed. I think all of us in the service when we see the progression of the intelligence specialist rating is something we’re proud of.

Tom Temin: And that rating is for people in uniform or there also civilians in the Coast Guard with a rating like that?

Jeffrey Radgowski: The rating itself is just for the enlisted workforce in uniform. But there is a significant component of the Coast Guard intelligence enterprise that is civilian, and we get a lot of continuity. We get a lot of really specific expertise from the folks that are in the civilian status in the Coast Guard.

Tom Temin: All right, we’re speaking with Jeffrey Radgowski. He is the Coast Guard’s deputy assistant commandant for intelligence. And your work in uniform took you quite far afield. Give us some of the highlights of around the world where you served. I think Russia is part of it.

Jeffrey Radgowski: Yes, I was in Russia. That was my last assignment. Before that, I had served in the Dominican Republic and did some work in Haiti. From there, I was also assigned to Venezuela. And when I was assigned there as I was accredited to all of the Eastern Caribbean countries, so for the Eastern Caribbean chain countries, such as St. Kitts and Nevis, Dominique, Grenada, all the way down to Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana. And then I also did some time in Afghanistan, and additionally, I was assigned to European Command based out of Stuttgart, Germany, but got to work with a lot of the coast guards from there. So I felt very blessed to be able to get that type of international experience. And also going back to see how we can work with the other coast guards of the world because we realize that the ocean is just too big for one of us to cover any of those mission issues that I mentioned before.

Tom Temin: It’s interesting when you talk about Russia, because you know, some interviews I’ve had over the years with people in law enforcement and intelligence and cybersecurity, it may not seem obvious, but there’s a lot of cooperation between the United States and Russia, if you get below that top political level. There are common worldwide problems that we cooperate with them on. I think that even happens now. And would you say that’s something people should know about?

Jeffrey Radgowski: Yeah, this is obviously a tough time right now, relationship wise. But I think particularly if you look at the North Pacific, and just how vast a space that is, if you look at the area between sort of the U.S. and Canada and the Russian coastline, you can fit the area, the landmass of the United States in that space. And that space is very fertile for fishing. So some of the most fertile fishing areas of the world are there. And going back to that countering IUU, illegal unregulated unreported fishing. That’s something that Russia and the U.S. is both very concerned about. And so something that we need to work together and as well as you look at potential pollution response in that area, or if you look at search and rescue in that area, there’s no way that any one country can cover something that vast

Tom Temin: Sure, I guess bitcoin is about the only thing that can be illegally transported, but not by a ship.

Jeffrey Radgowski: That’s a good point, right.

Tom Temin: All right, and now that you are running the intelligence operation for the Coast Guard, what are your priorities for the coming year?

Jeffrey Radgowski: I actually work for Admiral Sugimoto, he’s running the Coast Guard intelligence enterprise, but I try to shape and execute those priorities that we have. They’re pretty simple, building a workforce that’s ready to do the mission. And that sounds simple. But again, getting the right people and training them, getting them to understand our mission and be experts at our mission, so that they can support the larger Coast Guard is number one, it really dovetails into number two of how do we go about supporting that mission. Giving our decision makers, particularly operators, timely information that they can get the way they need it getting ahead of the problem sets to warn them and inform the decision makers to execute the mission. That’s two. Three is sharpening the capabilities we have, everything is evolving so fast, globally, that we need to evolve our service as well, the problems that we had three, five, 10 years ago, we can’t solve them the way we were then. So that’s the sharpening of those capabilities. And those capabilities run on IT, information technology systems, that we’ve got to modernize. It’s the backbone for all of the intelligence that we’re working with. And so we’ve got to make sure ours is resilient, and it’s reliable, and it’s secure. So that’s our fourth priority. And then the fifth one is looking at the Coast Guard as an organization, the intelligence organization, how do we optimize it? Do we have legacy structures in place that we need to transform or move in a way that they can be more successful to supporting the service as a whole? Those are the five top priorities right now.

Tom Temin: All right. And I wanted to ask one question about that workforce, you have to recruit the people to get that status and that training in intelligence. Can someone in uniform be told that even though you will be in intelligence with the Coast Guard, if that’s your choice, you still get to go to sea and work from floating vessels? It’s not just desk work.

Jeffrey Radgowski: Yeah, we have a significant portion of our intelligence workforce that is working at sea. And I would say that those that do, they can be at sea for quite a long time. So it’s challenging, but at the same time, I think they see firsthand those real issues that we have as a service, they’re doing and supporting the mission there. So yes, the intelligence specialist rating is a very seaborne rating, if you will.

Tom Temin: All right. And again, you are 30 years in uniform. And one morning it came in not in uniform. Did people throw things at you and make fun of you or was that a pretty easy transition?

Jeffrey Radgowski: It’s been pretty easy. I think the toughest one is people ask do they need to call me Captain Radgowski or Mr. Radgowski. But one of the real benefits of the Coast Guard intelligence organization is a lot of the folks have grown up together, if you will, through different assignments. And that was one of the big attractions coming back is to be able to work for folks I had worked with before. So they have made it an easier transition. But it is a little bit strange having to pick out your suit from the closet. It was pretty easy knowing that you just put on that blue uniform every day and off you went. But I’ve enjoyed it so far. And it’s a great team we have here.

Tom Temin: Well, nobody ever went wrong with a white shirt, and then you can wear any color you want.

Jeffrey Radgowski: Right.

Tom Temin: Jeffrey Radgowski is the Coast Guard’s deputy assistant commandant for intelligence. Thanks so much for joining me.

Jeffrey Radgowski: Thank you. I appreciate it.

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When it comes to acquisition, Kimberly Patrick has done it all. She used lean management to reduce backlogs and speed up procurements, brought senior agency management into acquisition planning, found innovative ways to meet small business goals. She’s the director of Office of Acquisition Solutions, Office of Mission Support at the EPA, and the recent recipient of a Presidential Rank Award. She joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin for more information.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: One of the things I wanted to discuss is mentioned in your citation is that the idea of tying acquisition directly to the mission owners and mission leaders at EPA, so often you hear, acquisition is siloed, and not really connected in that way. Tell us more about that.

Kimberly Patrick: Actually, it’s essential. I don’t know how sound acquisition is even placed if your mission partners are not integrally involved in the acquisition itself. Acquisitions doesn’t really exist in the federal space, unless there’s a mission, really to be accomplished. I think our biggest mission partners that we work with at EPA is our Office of Land and Emergency Management, which houses the agency’s Superfund program, and I think that the partnership that we have with them is incredibly strong. And that even at their senior management levels, they’re very much involved in shaping and driving the acquisitions. And even with our regional Superfund directors, they’re also very much involved with the regional contracting offices, and shaping acquisitions to support the program.

Tom Temin: And give us a sense of the types of acquisitions, the types of products and services needed for Superfund. Is it like professional services is a big diggers and dump trucks or what?

Kimberly Patrick: It’s all of that, you name it. We look at the remedial program itself. You have design and engineering, you have architectural services, you have construction work, and that includes, you know, moving earth, dumping earth, finding places to put hazardous materials, all of those things, it’s a huge landscape of need that is out there. And the businesses that we partner with and work with to make the program successful run the gamut. You have very small businesses who may just take dump trucks of dirt from here to there. And then you have incredibly large architectural engineering firms that also work on these projects, which sometimes can span 20 years.

Tom Temin: And your 1102s that do the actual contracting and have to have some knowledge about this industry. What about the contracting officer representatives, the core, they must be pretty specialized in the EPA.

Kimberly Patrick: They are essential. I will say that while the CEO has the warrant, and combined the government, it’s the core that really does the management the contract once it’s paced. And it’s essential to have a cadre of strong cores. And one of the things that I’ve been pretty insistent about since I’ve been the director of the contract shop, is that the agency needs to do more to strengthen the core capability. And to actually invest more in the core function. Sometimes you’ll find cores where that core work is only 25% of their job. But when you actually talk to them and ask how much does this take up to manage, especially a large contract effectively, sometimes it’s up to 75 to 80%, if not all of their job, there should be moves not just at EPA, I think across the government, to do more to really almost professionalized what cores do. Because if they’re dealing with large contracts, or really active contracts, it’s incredibly time consuming.

Tom Temin: And also EPA has been on a mission, you might say, to upgrade its information technology systems, use more cloud computing, because, you know, a few years ago, they were found to be fairly dated in the way the IT works. So I imagine you’ve got to have expertise in that industry, which is miles from the remediation and cleanup and environmental direct work types of companies.

Kimberly Patrick: You know, one of the things we did when we had our reorganization in 2017, which I was only a year in and we did a major reorg of the contract shop. But we moved to organize the office by commodity. And so we developed a unit in my organization that does nothing but IT contracting. And that was to help develop their expertise to do exactly what you said, they need to have a knowledge of what’s available, they need to know the market to be able to service the customer. And so we did that, so that they could develop that because it wasn’t innately there. It’s something that had to be learned. And so it’s a process and we’re still working hard to get to the point where we know the market almost better than our IT shop does. But we have a good partnership with our IT shop. We’re developing the relationship and we try to work together to make sure everyone stays on the cutting edge. I think EPA has come a long way in the IT area and I have to give some credit to my colleague and OMS, Vaughn Noga who’s also a fellow Presidential Rank Award winner and that he’s brought so much innovation and change to that space. And EPA has grown light years because of his leadership, as well.

Tom Temin: And Vaughn has been on this show, as well too, talking about some of those things over the years. We’re speaking with Kimberly Patrick. She’s director of the office of acquisition solutions at the EPA, and also a Presidential Rank Award recipient this year. And I wanted to ask you about your work in bringing in small business and small disadvantaged business kind of a subset. And you’ve met the goals. And those goals are rising government-wide because of orders from the Biden administration. So what are some of your strategies been to really foster that because you’ve had some creative work there.

Kimberly Patrick: At EPA, our history in performing incredibly well, with small businesses and with small disadvantaged businesses is well documented. I would say for maybe the last 10 years, we’ve received an A on the SBA scorecard for our performance. And the small disadvantaged business goal is one that we’ve always met. While historically, that goal has been 5% for the federal government. And now I believe it’s 11%. That’s not something that shakes us, for example, last year for FY 21, we performed at 18%, for small disadvantaged businesses. And the individual goal of the agency received for 2022, from SBA for small disadvantaged businesses is at 17. And so for us, it’s about continuing to do what works. But in addition to that, given the executive order on equity, there’s a piece in there for procurement that’s very strong. And so we’ve been working to come up with some innovative techniques to reach out to those underserved and underrepresented businesses, regardless of category. And so we’re not just looking at strategies for small disadvantaged businesses, it’s all of the socioeconomic categories, where they have lacked a lot of attention and need more, even though we’re doing well.

Kimberly Patrick: Some of the things that we’re looking at doing, it’s instituting a process for anonymous technical evaluation panels. EPA loves its contractors, and we love them. But sometimes when we have a contractor who’s been in business with us for 40 years working the same work, you’re not expanding your market. And so we want to make sure that a lot of times our newer businesses, which are our smaller businesses, have the opportunity to compete technical capability to technical capability, and not always relying on name brand, or what’s familiar. And so we’re working on putting that policy in place. And we recently had a listening session with industry about shaping that policy. So we’re excited about that.

Another thing we want to do when we listened to the underserved community, we asked them, what are some of their barriers that they saw. And one of the biggest ones that we heard was they don’t have access to EPA decision makers so that they can know what their capabilities are. And in my mind, I said that’s something easy to fix. And so we’re doing efforts to actually establish targets for senior leadership to actually participate in engagement with the businesses because I do believe once they know what the capabilities are, that’s going to move the needle. And so we’re excited about where we’re going with that. Another thing we’re doing as we are shaping our outreach events, we’re trying to make them targeted to our forecasts. So when we talk about doing business with EPA, we can talk about actual procurements that we see on the horizon, making the conversation more meaningful for the businesses when they know that there’s an actual opportunity that can come out of the conversation.

Tom Temin: And let me just ask a question, based on something I’ve seen over the decades following this. Very often, there are companies that will have a principle that is of color, or of one of the SBD categories. But in reality, there’s a lot of just regular folks backing it. And kind of it’s a way to get in, is there a way to get at those numbers and actually develop? I mean, there’s a bigger purpose here than just a type of company, but is making sure that all Americans have the technical and business skills needed to participate just equally across the board. How do you get past that kind of front end appearance of SBD that might meet a legal requirement, but doesn’t meet what you’re really trying to do there?

Kimberly Patrick: You know, that’s been a criticism of the SBD program for a very long time, because it is a self-certification program. It is not something where you go through the rigor that you know, the 8A program or the HUBZone program does at SBA. And so it’s one of those things quite honestly, you take the risk. Frankly, there’s not a whole lot you can do about people who choose to be dishonest. But one thing I found in working with industry, it never fails that your competition will tell on you, and they will very much, I guess, challenge some of the assertions if that’s the case. But one of the things that we’re doing instead of focusing on the potential for people to be dishonest, we’re broadening the conversation. So we’re not just focusing on SDBs. As I mentioned before, because we do so well in that category, we’re really honing in on HUBZones. We’re really honing in on 8A, we’re honing in on some of the other categories as well, which are also SDBs. But these are categories that have a certification, and my particular love for the HUBZone program is that not only is it a certified program, but it also impacts communities and that the people who work at the businesses 35% have to live in a HUBZone. And so it’s a program that really targets and hits on so many other things beyond just, here’s the contract. It’s about jobs as well. And so that’s one of the things we’re doing to sort of broaden the conversation to make sure we’re capturing not just those who check that box sometimes and are SDBs. But we’ve also found honestly, we’ve found more companies that are legitimately SDBs, that we have those that have been dishonest. The instances where we found that are so rare. And I hope that’s reflective of people’s honesty, even though there is the potential for people to take advantage sometimes because it’s a self-certification.

Tom Temin: And finally, your thoughts on Senior Executive Service, federal career and being a woman of color who has come up through the ranks to reach Presidential Rank Award status.

Kimberly Patrick: Wow, that’s a loaded question, Tom. Well, one thing I can say, and this is gonna sound incredibly corny, but I’m gonna say it anyway, true leadership is a calling. And what I found is, it’s something you can’t escape or ignore. It’s funny, I never necessarily set out, I didn’t say I’m going to be an SES when I started my federal career. I took pride and joy in each and every job I had, even when there were rough days. And so my focus has always been and I remember listening to my mom, that everything you do should do with excellence, and you do it well. And if you’re not going to do it well, don’t do it. And that is something that no matter what assignment I’ve been given, is something that I’ve done throughout my career. When I talk to others who aspire to the SES, I tell them, the focus isn’t on being SES, the focus is on being willing to do some things and take those those projects nobody else wants to do Don’t run from what’s difficult one to it, and have a solution for it. Don’t stand on the sidelines complaining; get involved and be a part of change. And so that’s sort of been my mantra. And when I started every time I’ve been selected to move to the next level, I rest well in knowing it’s been because of my work, and not necessarily because of who I knew and all those other things people want to tell you it’s really about, it’s not, not always. And when you get there, what I call the right way, people can’t take it from you because you’ve built it on your work. And that’s the focus.

USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack and Deputy Secretary Jewel Bronaugh sent an email to employees yesterday outlining dates and plans between now and May.

“While we continue to monitor the status of the pandemic, it is our intent to also continue our phased return to the physical workspace,” the email, which Federal News Network obtained, told employees.

The current plan would stagger how employees return to the office.

By Feb. 28, USDA expects senior leadership, including political appointees, Senior Executive Service members, senior level, scientific and professional, senior scientific and technological service and senior foreign service officers to return to the office.

Then by March 28, “Agencies and staff offices will begin their phased return to the physical workplace plans to welcome back employees who do not have remote work agreements, subject to completion of labor negotiations.”

Prior to that deadline, employees, by Feb. 11, will receive notice from the agency about their remote work or telework status, and their 45-day notification to return to the office. This is, of course, dependent on negotiations with the unions that represent USDA employees, the email stated.

Vilsack and Bronaugh’s email said by May 27, agencies and staff offices will fully implement these return to the office plans.

“At USDA, we are in close coordination with the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force to ensure that safety protocols are regularly updated and followed,” the email stated. “We are also exceedingly grateful to the thousands of you who have continued to work on the front lines and in-person since the start of this pandemic. Your service to this department and the American people is considerable.”

‘Appears reasonable right now’

Emails to USDA seeking additional comments or information about the return to work planning weren’t returned.

The National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE-IAM), which represents employees in the Forest Service and other USDA agencies, supported the department’s planning timeline.

“NFFE-IAM supports USDA employees who do not want to return to the workplace in person until it is safe to do so. While the projection of March 28 appears reasonable right now, we have learned that the COVID pandemic is unpredictable in its development of variants and breakthrough cases,” said Randy Erwin, NFFE-IAM national president in an email to Federal News Network. “As a result, we have had return to work dates in place that have been pushed back. NFFE-IAM will be working with our members and providing input to USDA as we monitor the situation moving forward.”

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents about 100,000 USDA employees, said only the Social Security Administration has completed negotiations about returning employees to the office.

AFGE and SSA reached an agreement on Jan. 19 that detailed the agency’s plans for employee reentry and implementation of new telework schedules for most employees on March 30.

It’s unclear how the omicron variant of COVID-19 has impacted agencies return to the office plans. In December, several agencies were moving forward with their plans.

Tracking reentry into March

Shalanda Young, the nominee to be the director of the Office of Management and Budget, told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee today that the omicron variant definitely forced agencies to go back to the drawing board for how to bring employees back to the office safely.

“We do have agencies, and I’m one of them, trying to bring people back into the office. We have people who work in SCIFs so we have to make sure they are safe when they come into the office. The Homeland Security Department has border patrol agents who’ve never not been on the job. So each agency has to do what’s right for their particular employees,” Young said. “My takeaway is this is difficult. This is a one in a generation event and there is no playbook. But I think we have been able to keep up variant specific situations and what we are seeing is agencies are on track, if they haven’t already, bring people in over the next months into March.”

In June, OMB required agencies by the following month to develop plans to have employees return to the office. Agencies began setting tentative reentry dates until omicron threw a wrench into those plans.

Over the past two years, USDA has been trying to bring employees back to the office. In June 2020, USDA moved into phase one of reentry plans around the National Capital Region with about 400 employees returning to the office. It had planned to bring back an additional 700 employees later during summer of 2020 and had a phase 3 planned for later in the year.

By March 2021 with the emergence of the delta variant and the transition to the Biden administration, USDA began to rethink its expectations of the workforce. Vilsack launched a new initiative to determine how best to implement broader telework and permanent virtual options.

Lawmakers continue to press OMB on when employees will return to the office.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy wrote to OMB, the Office of Personnel Management and the General Services Administration in December expressing concerns about the continued maximum telework of agencies.

In November, a group of Senate Republicans joined in the calls for federal employees to return to their offices. Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) is the lead sponsor of the Having Employees Return to Duty (HERD) Act. The bill requires federal employees resume their pre-pandemic telework and working schedules. It applies to all federal employees except those at the Defense Department. Employees would have to return to the office within 60 days of the bill’s passage. Lummis says she hears complaints from constituents struggling to access in-person service from the Social Security Administration and other agencies.

The HERD Act hasn’t advanced since it was introduced.

More than 200 members of the Senior Executive Service will receive Presidential Rank Awards from the Biden administration, the highest honor for career civil servants.

The Office of Personnel Management on Tuesday announced 230 winners from 37 different agencies as recipients of the prestigious awards. Because the Presidential Rank Awards were canceled last year, this year’s honors recognize the work of senior executives over “an extended period of time,” OPM said.

The Presidential Rank Awards are considered the highest honor for career civil servants. Just 1%  of  Senior Executive Service members earn a Distinguished Rank Award in any given year, while 5% of executives are eligible for a Meritorious Rank Award. The awards typically come with a cash bonus worth 20-to-35% of executives’ salaries.

“The resumption of the Presidential Rank Awards reflects the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to support the federal workforce and recognize federal employees who serve with distinction,” OPM Director Kiran Ahuja said Tuesday in a statement. “The federal workforce is in the business of achieving the unachievable — from curing disease, to combatting climate change, to landing rovers on the surface of Mars. I am pleased to be lifting up hard-working individuals who consistently demonstrate strength, integrity, industry and a relentless commitment to public service.”

Like previous years, the winners hail from a wide variety of agencies and mission areas. They include a Department of Homeland Security official who created TSA PreCheck, as well as an executive from the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, who developed a new way of detecting waste, fraud and abuse and uncovered $19 billion in fines and penalties over five years.

In a blog post, Ahuja recognized Dianna Saxman, the deputy associate director of OPM’s federal staffing center, as a Meritorious Rank Award winner. Saxman rebuilt the federal talent acquisition system known as USA Staffing.

That system used to produce 50,000 hiring selections annually for a few small agencies, OPM said. Today, USA Staffing facilitates almost 85% of the federal government’s hiring activities, and it made 355,000 hiring selections for 105 agencies in fiscal 2020, Ahuja said.

Saxman’s team is adapting USA Staffing, USAJobs.gov and other OPM services to help agencies surge hiring for the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Find the full list of 2021 Presidential Rank Award winners here.

OPM oversees the rank award program by developing criteria for agencies to guide their selections, determining candidate eligibility and convening a PRA board to review the nominees. The review board usually consists of individuals who live inside the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. But because the process was entirely virtual this year, the review board included more than 100 participants from across the world, OPM said.

After the board reviews the PRA nominees, OPM recommends finalists to the president, who then makes the final selections.

The Trump administration canceled last year’s Presidential Rank Awards, citing the ongoing pandemic and economic uncertainty as the reasons for its decision. It was met with criticism, but it wasn’t without precedent.

The Obama administration canceled the awards back in 2013. Bonuses were suspended due to budget constraints, though OPM continued to accept nominations. The awards returned in 2015, along with the bonuses, after a year’s hiatus.

OPM earlier this year said it would revive the Presidential Rank Awards this year as a way to recognize career executives for their work during the pandemic.

The Senior Executives Association applauded the return of the rank awards. SEA President Bob Corsi said he hoped Biden would find a way to personally meet with and recognize this year’s winners.

“Recognizing such a significant class of senior executives for their sustained excellence and demonstrated outcomes sends a powerful, encouraging signal to career leaders across government. Shining the spotlight of the presidency on the most accomplished and impactful Senior Executives and senior professionals is one of the best ways the government has to convey the impact of federal agencies and programs every day.”

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The Biden administration’s management agenda, which it called a “vision,” laid out three basic principles: Boosting the federal workforce, improving citizen service and using the bureaucracy to achieve the administration’s agenda. New stuff, or old wine in a new bottle? The Federal Drive with Tom Temin got one view from the President and CEO of the National Academy of Public Administration Terry Gerton.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: Terry, good to have you on.

Terry Gerton: Hi, Tom. Happy to be here. Thanks so much.

Tom Temin: So what is your reaction? This was called a vision for the president’s management agenda. Is it a vision for an agenda? Or is it a vision for management, do you think?

Terry Gerton: Well, that’s a great question. I will say,when I read it through the first time, it felt like I was walking into a concert where everybody was playing my favorite tunes in a key I could sing. There’s a lot of words in here that so closely aligned for how they want government to operate – the proof, as always, will be in the pudding.

Tom Temin: Well, this was simpler than some of the earlier management agendas. And it didn’t go into a lot of detail. It had strategies, a couple of strategies under each of the main points. But those were not really detailed things for the bureaucracy to get going and do now. Does that seem to be in keeping with most past presidential management agendas are those came out later in administrations with more detail?

Terry Gerton: Right, I think, as I understand it, their plan is to share more of the specific performance management goals when they roll out the 2023 budget, and along with those the performance metrics that they’re going to track. So that’s pretty consistent. About the first year in with the first submission of the budget, you get that much more detail. This is a little bit unusual in terms of sort of laying out the roadmap up front, saying this is how we’re going to go forward. And we’re following up with the particulars later. But I think this does a nice job of, as we talked before, being consistent with many of the things that previous administrations have done, so that there’s continuity, because trying to turn the federal government ship, is not a one-term project. You need to be continuing to work over years and sometimes decades to make sure that you make those changes. So I think that there is some good there around continuity, especially in some of the basic management processes.

Tom Temin: For those in federal management, managers and senior executives, there is a repeated and strong emphasis on the right to join a union, almost as if they’re encouraging anyone who’s already not in a union in the federal government – well go ahead and join one. Should managers feel that that’s speaking to them? Or what’s your sense of how that’s gonna go?

Terry Gerton: Well, I think the Biden administration has been really clear that they support every individual’s right to participate in the union. But from a federal managers perspective, I think what’s far more important is the broader context that they set for that, which is that they want the federal workplace to be a model employer. And that means that people have good jobs, meaningful jobs, that they’re treated with respect that they have the technology that they need to get their work done. And then along with that, they suggest the opportunity to participate in union activity. So I think of it as a much broader agenda for the federal workforce. We start to see them moving out in that direction already, modifying telework policies and those kinds of things. So if I was a federal manager today, I would take the broader look at what this conveys about their goals for the federal workforce.

Tom Temin: Because with respect to the union movement in general, I mean, the statutory role of the federal government has been to be a referee between either federal agencies and unions or companies and unions and not to take sides. And so they shouldn’t be anti-union, but they shouldn’t be pro union, they should be pro – “it’s up to you guys.” So do you think this mitigates a little bit too far to one way?

Terry Gerton: Well, again, this is clearly trying to address the swing in the pendulum of the previous administration that went all the way to the other side. So I suspect that it will settle kind of in the middle and managers should be permissive. They need to provide the support that’s required in law. But again, the whole goal of this and I think it really gets to the values that are communicated in the vision here treating people with dignity, looking for equity in outcomes. Those are really key principles that should allow managers to better construct their workplace.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Terry Gerton, president and CEO of the National Academy of Public Administration. There’s also emphasis on the Office of Personnel Management, which for better or for worse, was kind of battered up during the Trump administration and is trying to regain footing as what should its role be permanently here in the federal workforce. So would you say that’s an encouraging sign to see OPM the subject of a rebuild?

Terry Gerton: Well, absolutely, of course, Tom. You and I have talked in the past about the Academy’s recent report on how to rebuild OPM. So this idea that their very first priority is on rebuilding the federal workforce, what that means in terms of modernized recruiting and retention and training and talent development. Those are all exactly the things that we’ve been hoping to see his actions that would come out of our recommendations. And as we’ve said all along, this is an ambitious agenda. You can’t accomplish it if you don’t have the right people in the right seats. And so OPM has to be a central player in anything this administration is going to do because if they can’t get the right people on board, then the rest of the agenda, as ambitious as it is, is sort of just pie in the sky.

Tom Temin: And one other thing I wanted to ask you about in there is the emphasis on training and development of people at all levels of the government. And as you know, the training is often a budget item that’s the first to go when times get tight. So I guess it’s encouraging. And you can tell me if you agree that there is that emphasis on development of people, because none of this can happen without making sure people know how to be good at what they do and how to manage.

Terry Gerton: That will be a key test of how this goes forward is to see in the FY 2023 budget when they submit it, what resources are allocated to that kind of training and development, how they make the case for continued leadership development – for example, training of new managers, and whether then the request stays in the budget all the way through appropriation. And that will be true for many of the other recommendations or directions, I guess, would be appropriate in this document is we see what the words say and are encouraged by them. Now, we want to make sure that there are actually resources available to accomplish them. Because many of these are, if not substantial changes, at least extensions and expansions of projects that are sort of already underway. And so making sure that there are the resources shows the commitment to make sure that they actually make progress on this vision.

Tom Temin: And of course, every administration wants to improve service to the “citizen” I think was the term used originally, that was a movement that started I think, in the late ’80s at this point. And now we have customer experience and all of those things. And there’s a lot of emphasis on that point, too, the central pillar of the whole thing is serving citizens better. Your reaction there?

Terry Gerton: Well, I think it’s absolutely key. I mean, one of the things that we have seen in spades throughout the pandemic is that people need to be able to interact with their government in a much more efficient and effective way. And one of the things that the academy is learning through our work on agile government is that the effectiveness of that citizen experience has a lot to do with how much those people then trust their government and deliver results. So I think there’s some really interesting points in here about imagining lifecycle points and how you don’t just deal with a single federal agency, but how is your experience across all of those and an example is turning 65 and having to file for Social Security. You have to deal with several federal agencies. And yet each one of them is a different and unique set of contact points, a set of data that you have to provide. So this idea that you could think about lifecycle points where people have to interact with the government, and what that looks like and feels like and do it from the citizen’s perspective has the potential to really dramatically change how government approaches certainly at the federal level – data sharing security, privacy and integration of systems. So really excited to see this focus. And it’s very much in line with things that the Academy has been talking about for quite a while.

Tom Temin: And one final question on the issue of accountability: It does mention accountability in that pillar. Yet, if you look at the Trump administration’s management agenda, it was all about, without stating it directly, in these words, getting rid of the poor performers as fast as possible. This takes the opposite approach to elevating civil servants and civil service. Do you think that maybe there should be a balance there between, “Yes, we want to make your job great. But yes, you got to perform or you won’t be here?”

Terry Gerton: I take a slightly different perspective on the accountability question here, which is I think they want the administration to be held accountable for the changes that it’s promising. And that can only happen in a world where they really make progress on data sharing, performance measurement, integration of systems, performance reporting. And so I think they are very intentional about being held accountable by citizens for this agenda. And to do that, they’re going to have to put all of the pieces and processes in place that allow people to see the data to believe that data and then to take appropriate action to make sure that the administration is delivering on what it’s promised.

Tom Temin: I guess then the next thing to look at was a lot of interest will be the new Federal Employee Viewpoint scores.

Terry Gerton: Well, that will be key. And it will be interesting to see how they follow from last year’s when they kind of went up as people were enjoying and appreciating the opportunity to work remotely. But I think there’s also another piece that’s really important in this vision, and that is the “how we’ll get there” section – where it talks about some of the things we were just mentioning, right? A focus on data management and data integration, a focus on systems that better serve the citizens. So it actually lays out some things that hint at next steps and the engagement of the President’s Management Council. All of the major agency, deputy secretaries have signed on to this. And that’s something we haven’t seen before. So they are laying out a plan. They’re showing a little bit of their cards about how they plan to go forward. And so now I think, it’s up to all of us to watch that to make sure that we see evidence of real progress, and then that we track the metrics and make sure that improve performance is the result.

Tom Temin: Terry Gerton is president and CEO of the National Academy of Public Administration. As always great to have you on.

Terry Gerton: Tom, always a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

The State Department’s Enterprise Data Strategy (EDS), released in September, outlines the central role data plays in emerging technology, and how it’s needed to remain competitive against global threats.

The strategy calls for greater access to data across the department, increased data fluency across the workforce and better governance to ensure data security.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken highlighted the data strategy last month while announcing the launch of a new bureau for cyberspace and digital policy and a new special envoy for critical and emerging technology.

Blinken said the data strategy and the agency-wide modernization plan will help the agency go further in using “data to solve foreign policy challenges.”

“The department has vast and diverse datasets. But we haven’t done a good enough job making data available to you in a timely and useful way to help you make missions or management decisions more effectively. We’re changing that,” Blinken said last month.

State Department Chief Data Officer Matthew Graviss, along with an Enterprise Data Council, will oversee the implementation of the data strategy and look for opportunities to adapt or scale what’s working.

Graviss said in written statements to questions that the enterprise data strategy “marks a commitment to culture change, which is the first goal of the EDS.”

“Data is a critical tool of diplomacy.  Our world-class workforce combines its mission expertise with data acumen to make evidence-based decisions that support the department’s mission of advancing the interests, safety, and prosperity of the American people,” Graviss said.

The data strategy focuses on upskilling employees and improving the overall data literacy of the agency’s workforce.  Graviss said more than 2,200 employees have already taken classes at the agency’s Foreign Service Institute as part of its data fluency program.

“The great thing about this strategy is that we’re not starting from square one. A lot of bureaus and offices in the department have been doing great work for years — on public diplomacy, sanctions, foreign assistance, climate, security, conflict — and we are lucky to have a terrific collection of these bureaus represented on our Enterprise Data Council,” Graviss said.

Graviss said the Enterprise Data Council and the agency’s Center for Analytics spent a year on a “current state assessment” measuring the agency’s level of data maturity.

As part of this foundational work, the team interviewed officials from several agency bureaus and hundreds of employees. Graviss said his team also interviewed 25 external data experts, including CDOs from the Defense Department and USAID.

From those interviews, Graviss said his team highlighted recurring themes and challenges, and identified the following as areas in most need of improvement:

• Cultivating a data culture
• Accelerating decisions through analytics,
• Establishing mission-driven data management
• Enhancing enterprise data governance

Graviss said he and the Enterprise Data Council will propose themed campaigns to Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources Brian McKeon every six months, and will cover as many as a dozen agency priorities.

“These segments are manageable time periods where we can achieve measurable progress without getting stale,” Graviss said.

The rollout of the strategy, he said, began with a management theme of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, as well as a mission theme of strategic competition, “which highlights the importance of using data as an instrument of diplomacy to engage competitor countries.”

Graviss said the Enterprise Data Council is working with Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Amb. Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley to make workforce demographic data more widely available, while upholding the privacy and security of individual employees.

“Specifically, we are building out data visualization tools that give decision-makers a snapshot of their workforce.  Based on this data, we are also asking them to think about topics that merit further analysis. And the end goal here is to make sure the department is really a diverse, equitable, inclusive and accessible place where people want to come work—and where people want to stay,” Graviss said.

Abercrombie-Winstanley and her team will soon release their preliminary strategic plan, and will finalize the plan early next year.

Graviss said making workforce diversity data available will help managers and supervisors better understand DEIA roadblocks, especially when it comes to deciding who to promote to the Senior Executive and Senior Foreign Services.

“For those who manage actions in their bureaus and offices — like hiring, retention, training, awards — this data will help them identify and overcome any potential biases in those processes,” Graviss said.

But as nearly a quarter of American workers contemplate leaving their jobs this year and pandemic-induced remote work is expected to stick around even after the virus, work-life balance is growing in importance for federal employees. That, paired with a long-standing challenge to recruit younger workers and a renewed emphasis on creating more diverse and inclusive workspaces, means agencies may want to take some clichéd yet time-tested data findings to heart.

In an analysis of 15 years of Best Places to Work agency scores, researchers from the Partnership for Public Service and Boston Consulting Group made what they called a business case for strong employee engagement. Researchers used a machine learning model to predict workforce attrition rate, based on employee engagement scores and found a decrease in agency attrition as engagement scores rose.

“It’s fairly intuitive. However, backing that up with a quantitative model really gives leaders the ammunition they need to dedicate resources to employee engagement,” Michelle Amante, vice president of federal workforce programs at the Partnership, said in a webcast Tuesday.

Best Places to Work scores come from the Office of Personnel Management’s Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey data, along with responses from agencies that do not participate in the FEVS but conduct similar surveys with comparable methodologies — such as the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Agency highlights

Amante said that for new hires, onboarding is crucial and extends beyond the first-day-of-work paperwork from human resources.

“I’m not talking about orientation, I’m not talking about giving them their badge and their computer, I’m talking about a process where you’re integrating them into the culture, you’re helping them build a professional network, you’re giving them a mentor, younger people really want to see their career path, they want to, they want to be able to envision that and when you give them a network and help them connect them with others in the agency, that really helps them envision that path forward,” she said.

She cited the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — which in 2020 ranked 111 out of 411 agency subcomponents and had an engagement score of 76.8 out of 100 — as having a robust internship program which left nearly 90% of interns interested in working for the agency by the end of it.

NOAA also targets external professional networks affinity groups to reach underserved communities, such as the Black Engineers of the Year conference. Historically Black colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions and community colleges are also established routes for crafting a diverse applicant pool, Amante said.

Brooke Bollyky, BCG managing director and partner, said although the status quo of everyone working remotely is not sustainable, neither is keeping employees in the office full-time. Flexibility in the work schedule helped boost engagement last year, and as agencies release their return-to-work plans, it will be interesting to see the balance, she said.

She clarified that “engagement” is not the same as “happiness,” which is harder to quantify and allocate resources. Instead, engagement is to do with employee performance and quality toward an agency’s mission.

To see if a relationship existed between engagement and performance, researchers used VA as an example. Analyzing three years of data from 150 VA medical centers revealed that increases in engagement scores mirrored increases in patient satisfaction and faster call center times.

Other standout agencies from the report included the Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation, which has a direct hire program available for recent graduates after completing an 11-week project, thus bypassing the competitive process, as well as monthly “Technical Tuesdays” events for in-house experts to showcase their work. The Government Accountability Office also has a “culture of collaboration” between senior executives and supervisors, the report said.

Senior leaders need engagement, too

But while most of the attention around employee engagement and retention gets paid to newer hires, Amante and Bollyky pointed out that senior leadership needs cultivation as well.

Two-way communication, early investment in their development and holding leaders accountable for engagement were top recommendations from the report. Jamey McNamara, chief human capital officer and director of the Office of Human Resources at the Securities and Exchange Commission, was quoted espousing the value of supervisory training as people move up the ladder, since many of the SEC’s supervisors were hired for their technical background rather than their abilities as a supervisor or manager.

To guide them, the Office of Personnel Management is developing a new assessment tool, which will help agencies evaluate the current state of their diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility efforts, a key requirement of the executive order.

“This is really critical, because while we know many of the top agencies are already doing this, there isn’t necessarily a uniform strategy or standard for how we evaluate DEIA and how we benchmark it,” Mini Timmaraju, a senior adviser to the OPM director on diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, said Tuesday at a virtual event hosted by GovExec. “Therefore, we have challenges really showing successes and reevaluating where we have missteps.”

Under the new executive order, agencies are supposed to measure demographic representation inside their organizations and track trends on employment applications, hiring decisions, attrition, professional development and the composition of senior leader workforces.

OPM, along with the Office of Management and Budget and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, will explore how government can collect more demographic data on the federal workforce, particularly information that it’s never been gathered before.

“We know, for example, the data governmentwide shows that the biggest challenge we have is with the Senior Executive Service,” Timmaraju said. “We know that it is 70% white, 66% male. But there’s a lot we don’t know yet, because we don’t collect comprehensive data across the government. So for example, we don’t collect sexual orientation and identity data. We do not have the data to show how LGBTQ+ workers are doing in the workforce. We don’t have enough metrics on what inclusion factors are being affected here.”

Some agencies are craving for that data, and their chief diversity officers believe it’ll be crucial in order to get a better picture of how the federal workforce is feeling — and what drives them to leave public service.

“To be perfectly frank, the law is not helpful at putting in place remedies for what we know are underrepresented populations, except for those with disabilities where you are indeed allowed to set targets, some might say quotas, or set goals in a more defined way,” said Ambassador Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, chief diversity and inclusion officer for the State Department.

Agencies, for example, can ask their employees individually to update their personnel profiles with more detailed information about their sexual orientation or national origin, but the government as a whole generally hasn’t collected that information.

“Are there unique challenges for inclusion for women of color? All of us who are women of color would say absolutely,” Timmaraju said. “But I need the data to quantify exactly what that is, and I need it to correspond to the survey analysis we get through the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey and other instruments to really show and persuade our leadership that there are culture changes we need to make happen together.”

A systematic, governmentwide effort to gather such data in a uniform way would be helpful, said Rita Sampson, chief of equal employment opportunity and diversity at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

At the same time, agencies can’t ignore qualitative data, either, she added.

ODNI conducted a workforce needs survey a few years ago, Sampson said. The feedback showed intelligence community leaders they needed to focus on micro-aggressions and stereotypes within the workforce, and it inspired the IC’s “small steps to inclusion” initiative.

The program encourages employees to focus on efforts they can take individually, and it’s part of the intelligence community’s three-year diversity and inclusion strategic plan, which it launched back in 2020.

“This whole notion of diversity, equity and inclusion does not happen simply because there is a policy in place, but it happens because individuals take it upon themselves to lead change both internally within themselves and in relation to one another in organizations,” Sampson said of the small steps campaign.

Individually, other agencies are knee-deep in their own diversity and inclusion efforts.

The State Department intends to finalize its diversity and inclusion strategic plan this summer, an effort that started under the previous administration.

“We would like to make it more concrete. It has a lot of really good stuff in there, but not a lot of things in there, from our perspective now, that will bring about measurable change,” Abercrombie-Winstanley said. “This office is about measurable change. We are looking at how to hold ourselves accountable. I’ve had the lawyers caution me about even using the word ‘accountable.’ But we must be in order to see progress. There are no quotas, no quotas, no quotas, not even goals. [There are] results [and] progress.”

State, which installed Abercrombie-Winstanley as its chief diversity and inclusion officer earlier this year, is exploring how it can better hold senior leaders accountable.

“When we have senior leaders who do things that make the feeling of being inclusive, valued and respected fleeting for employees, how do we hold them to account, in a positive way, as well as a negative way? ‘Negative’ meaning, you’re not going to get another senior position if you are not a good manager of all of your staff, but also in a positive way,” Abercrombie-Winstanley said. “If we see that you are an advocate for [and] an activist for inclusion, in supporting, in mentoring, etc., then you’re going to get bigger and more responsibilities.”

The department is embedding those ideas in the performance standards for its Foreign Service officers.

It’s for those reasons that the Biden administration sees the Senior Executive Service as prime ground for its diversity and inclusion efforts. Creating change within the SES should drive further cultural shifts within the agencies, Timmaraju said.

OPM itself recently elevated its own diversity and inclusion organization, and is searching for a new senior executive to lead the office and report directly to the agency’s director.

“We reinvigorated our internal D&I council,” Timmaraju said. “We started doing regular listening sessions with our ERGs, our affinity organizations, making sure they’re on various panels and parts of policy committees. We started reevaluating and inserting DEI efforts into our performance evaluation work, our strategic planning and now our budget. These are all really core things that every agency can do in anticipation of getting ready for the EO.”

Federal employee groups and others see the new order as comprehensive and broad, one where everyone from the White House Domestic Policy Council to the National Institute of Standards and Technology has a role in advancing diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in government.

The order calls for both a governmentwide diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility strategic plan with quarterly goals and individual agency plans. It directs agencies to ramp up demographic data collection, expand diversity and inclusion training and hire or elevate chief diversity officers to promote and advance their organizations’ strategies.

The Partnership for Public Service called the order “an important advancement in the federal government’s growing focus” on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Accessibility (DEIA) initiatives.

“The whole of government approach is really striking to me, in terms of how the administration is really calling upon various agencies to collaborate to fulfill this necessity,” said Marcus Hill, a 14-year member of the Senior Executive Service and vice chairman on the Senior Executives Association’s board.

But importantly for some former federal executives and advocates, the order also addresses a portion of the federal hiring system that’s especially ripe for improvements.

The diversity and inclusion EO calls on agencies to reduce their reliance on unpaid internships, with the Office of Personnel Management and Office of Management and Budget preparing guidance directing agencies to increase the availability of paid internships, fellowships and apprenticeships.

The agencies will “ensure that internships, fellowships and apprenticeships serve as a supplement to, and not a substitute for, the competitive hiring process — and that they develop individuals’ talent, knowledge and skills for careers in government service,” the EO reads.

It’s here where former executives and advocates say the government has an especially long way to go, particularly in creating a federal internship program that truly serves as a pipeline for diverse talent into the executive branch.

Data shows the government as a whole is offering far fewer paid internships through the Pathways Program today than it was a decade ago. Agencies offered 60,000 paid internships in 2010, compared to just 4,000 in 2020, according to the Biden administration’s most recent budget request.

Naturally, the federal government is hiring fewer interns into full-time positions. Agencies hired 35,000 interns back in 2010, compared with just 4,000 in 2018, an 89% drop, according to the Trump administration’s 2020 budget request.

Every agency has fewer employees under the age of 30 today than they did 10 years ago, the Biden administration has said.

“There has not been a serious promotion of these programs that were just indigenous in the [19]80s, that attracted young talent into the government and retained that talent because those programs got them engaged in the workforce,” said Hill, who started his government career at age 17 as a paid intern for Navy Submarine Base Kings Bay in Georgia.

Hill spent his holiday and summer breaks working as a GS-2 for the Navy, who also paid for part of his tuition and textbook expenses.

“It was through a cooperative education intern-type program that quite frankly targeted people like me, people of color, people [who were] impoverished, who would not necessarily have had the opportunity or the skills sets to be able to apply for some of those positions,” he said.

Those kind of internship and apprenticeship programs were “in vogue” in 1980s, Hill said, but are less prevalent today, particularly for young students just graduating from high school.

“There are not a lot of organizations paying for those types of internships and those cooperative education tours,” said Hill, who retired in January from the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center after 37 years in public service. He was a 14-year member of the Senior Executive Service. “We took a lot of volunteers into our law enforcement training internship program. We put them up and housed them on center, but we didn’t necessarily pay them a salary.”

It’s unclear how many unpaid interns the federal government employs. The Office of Personnel Management doesn’t collect that information from agencies, OPM confirmed to Federal News Network.

A search on Tuesday for internship positions on USAJobs.gov shows unpaid opportunities at a few agencies. Of the 9,903 jobs open to the public, a total of 370 were open to students and recent graduates, according to USAJobs.

The total could be misleading for undergraduates, however, since at least 60 of the jobs apparently open to students and recent graduates are medical positions at the Department of Veterans Affairs or Health and Human Services.

Of those, a few agencies, including the Education, Justice and Treasury Departments, as well as the Development Finance Corporation, have positions open for fall “student volunteers,” which are unpaid.

The State Department’s Virtual Student Federal Service Internship also advertises unpaid opportunities, though the program is less traditional than others. Students submit an application on USAJobs and receive offers to work on specific projects; they’re generally not taking on a full or part-time schedule.

Another search for the word “internship” returns 889 job listings, with 475 of them open to the public. Again, many of the posts might mislead undergraduate or graduate students searching for an internship. Dozens of posts simply mention prior internship experience as a prerequisite for applying to the position; the job itself isn’t an internship.

The search also brings up several paid opportunities under the Pathways Program, an internship authority that has confused some agencies over the years. OPM is working on regulatory fixes for the program, the administration said in its most recent budget request.

While Biden’s diversity and inclusion executive order calls on agencies to reduce the practice of hiring unpaid interns, it doesn’t eliminate them altogether.

“It would be nice to get to the point where agencies can no longer have unpaid interns,” said Carlos Vera, executive director of Pay Our Interns, a non-profit organization that advocates for paid internships in the United States. “But it’s a big step, especially coming from the nation’s largest employer.”

Vera, who turned down an internship with the Education Department a few years ago because it was unpaid, said he wished the executive order would have put a definitive end to unpaid opportunities in the federal government.

Doing so, he acknowledged, requires appropriated funding from Congress. Vera’s organization wrote to Biden back in March, urging the administration to include funds for paid internships at the White House and every executive branch agency in the 2022 budget request.

There are a few signs, however, that Congress is paying attention.

House appropriators have asked OPM to conduct a feasibility study to increase the number of interns working in the federal government, according to the 2022 report from the financial services and general government subcommittee. Subcommittee members will also ask OPM to offer up public data on participation in the Pathways Program for the last seven years.

“The Pathways programs has the potential to be a main pipeline for people to enter government,” a recent report from the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government reads. “To begin revitalizing the Pathways programs, OPM needs to better measure and determine the effectiveness of each program as a pipeline of new and diverse talent.”

In addition, House appropriators included $4.5 million in its 2022 budget proposal to pay interns at the White House and other Executive Offices of the President.

The same committee proposed $10 million for paid internships at the State Department next year. House appropriators also directed State to convert all internships into paid opportunities within the next three years.

For Vera, the inclusion of dedicated funding for a paid internship program at the State Department is encouraging. As long as Congress finalizes dedicated funding for paid federal internship programs, the diversity and inclusion order, in a sense, has some staying power, no matter the administration in charge.

“This EO changes the course,” he said. “Now it’s up to us and others to see it through.”