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

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

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

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

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

Here is a bit of what the Foundation survey found:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Like a noxious vapor, inflation seeps into everything.

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

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

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

Nearly Useless Factoid

By: Michele Sandiford

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

Source: DoSomething.org

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nearly Useless Factoid 

By: Michele Sandiford

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

Source: TSA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nearly Useless Factoid

By: Michele Sandiford

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

Source: The Brookings Institution

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nearly Useless Factoid

By: Derace Lauderdale

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

Source: interestingfacts.org

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nearly Useless Factoid

By: Derace Lauderdale

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

Source: AARP.org

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

One BOP envisions an enthusiastic, properly-paid workforce applying the most contemporary and humane practices to the AICs, adults in custody. The other BOP has such shoddy procedures it sparks a management alert from the DOJ inspector general. The IG report says correctional officers failed to make mandatory inspection rounds of a special housing unit. Badly-behaving, sometimes dangerous inmates get moved to the blandly-named SHUs. They dwell separated from the rest of the prison population. Corrections officers say that leads to inmate suicides.

According to the IG report: One SHU inmate killed another. Then the correctional officers falsified the paper logs to make it look as if they’d made the required rounds. They photocopied the logs, put the copies in the logbooks, then shredded the originals. That “complicated potential criminal prosecution of the COs.” The report didn’t name the prison where this occurred.

The IG further charges BOP itself with not having procedures for records retention that reflect federal law.  Procedures vary widely from prison to prison. The report goes on and on, but the theme is clear. BOP has an important operational short-fill it’s got to fix.

The Bureau agreed, but the response letter of BOP Director Collette Peters seemed a tad churlish. It leads with this:

“At the outset, FBOP notes that the root cause of issues addressed in this MAM relate primarily to employee misconduct… This fact pattern reflects a failure to follow FBOP’s longstanding policies, regulations, and/or laws. While the misconduct described in this MAM is troubling, the appropriate redress is to hold such persons accountable so as to alert and deter others.”

She’s correct, but why lead with that? She concurred with the recommendations the IG made. In fact has started to make changes.

But, beyond this specific incident, Peters risks losing the faith of the very workforce she needs to rebuild. Corrections officers continue to work double shifts, abetted by what BOP calls “augmentation.” To augment a shortage of officers, facility managers assign medical staff members, cooks, and librarians into shifts overseeing inmates.

A recent removal of a 25 percent retention at one facility pay boost didn’t help matters. That occurred at the Thomson, Illinois prison that went from maximum security to minimum. Aaron McGlothin, the president of the local representing employees at the Mendota, California medium security facility, worries where else it might go away.

McGlothin said his own facility is 40 to 50 COs short. He said he and others regularly do 16-hour shifts. Augmentation staff regularly cover shifts in a place where violence occurs daily, he said. He added that he and colleagues across the country just want what he described as an 8,000 officer shortfall eliminated. BOP has only 13,000 billets out of 21,000 authorized, actually filled, McGLothin said.

At Thomson, according to its local union president, Jon Zumkehr, 111 positions are unfilled, with 18 about to leave and two resigning this week. He said that since changing designations, Thomson has received 1,000 more inmates than when it was maximum security.

In a video released last week about her “transformational framework” for BOP, Peters said outright to the line staff: “We know you are exhausted and riveted with overtime and augmentation.” She promised a “laser focus” on what she called a staffing crisis. She said salaries are up by $2,000, and that the BOP will try to “meet market salaries” for health services.” Peters added, “Recruitment, relocation and retention incentives are in place across this nation.”

The officers might say, except where they have been curtailed.

Peters also acknowledged “that our buildings are in disrepair,” noting that Congress has upped the level of maintenance and repair funding from $100 million to $180 million. But the backlog, Peters said, amounts to $3 billion.

The strategic framework calls for many steps, including

• Improved mental health services
• “Optimized” use of restrictive housing.
• An external review by the National Institute of Justice (which is part of the Justice Department).
• Better recruitment training.
• More reliance on data and research in policy making.

Peters says near the end, “But building the framework is not nearly enough. We need action.”

McGlothin said the correctional officers are doubting whether Peters can improve things. Yet they agree on one thing, namely that the bureau must find a way to get to full staffing and stay there.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By: Michele Sandiford

The first federal women’s reformatory (prison) opened in 1927 in Alderson, West Virginia.

Source:  BOP.gov

The post BOP staffing problems roll on and on first appeared on Federal News Network.

Retirement itself has an uncertain meaning, since people do things after they leave government that seem like work. Sometimes they actually do launch new careers. Others feel fine with traditional retirement.

I’m still dazzled by the fact that Abe himself managed to accumulate $3 million in his Thrift Savings Plan before retiring. As far as I know, he and his family ate normally, not Purina Cat Chow. So it shows what’s possible if you maybe skip the Lexus and the G-Fund. Yet, Abe said, his wife still regularly asks if they have enough money.

Specifically, Abe advised planning on a requirement of 80% of your pre-retirement gross income. For many retirees, that would come from a combination of FERS annuity, Social Security and TSP monthly withdrawals. I say “many” deliberately because “average” people don’t exist. Variables like health, spousal career, inheritances and lottery winnings mean everyone has a unique situation.

About that 80% rule of thumb, one reader asked whether that level “would allow for additional travel, fun etc. or just status quo.” Also, whether the 80% level included TSP contributions, which stop upon retirement.

The answer: Yes, the 80% takes into account that you won’t be adding to the TSP. But it doesn’t allow for a lifestyle expansion. “It’s a good starting point to continue your pre-retirement lifestyle,” Abe wrote. Abe himself is living on 110% of his pre-retirement gross, he said. He’s got his FERS annuity, withdrawals and part time work (advising people on finances).

In other words, if you weren’t buying expensive cars and luxury cruises before retirement, you probably won’t be able to start doing so after you retire.

Retirement planning often takes taxes into account. One reader wrote, “Living in New Hampshire – no income or sales tax.” He added, “And very skimpy services.” My recollection of New Hampshire is that state and local officials were superb at snow removal. I don’t know enough about the other services in the “Live Free or Die” state. New Hampshire, decades later, still holds a place in my heart, though.

This reader also paid off his mortgage, which has tax implications. His car is paid off, but he still makes payments to a savings account so he can pay cash for the next car. And this: “I will not leave that much to my children, but I do give them money from time to time and also help them when needed.” Sounds like a good balance.

Some people opt to work after retirement. My headline for the interview, “How to avoid wearing a Walmart greeter’s vest after you retire,” was perhaps too dismissive of those who must work after retirement, as a couple of readers pointed out.

I’ve known scores of senior and sort of senior federal managers who put in substantial careers after government. Dozens have hung out consulting shingles. They like their fields and they want to stay relevant. Others say sayonara and pursue passions they haven’t had sufficient time for.

One regular pointed out, “You (Temin) are up there in age and still working. Maybe YOU need to listen closely to your guest.” Actually I do. I’m working well past the standard retirement date of 65 by choice. I still like it. This reader said of himself, “I retired at 56 and still have a nice portfolio. I started saving from day one of my federal service and I maxed out on my TSP.” Which, in 17 words, forms a great summary of the universal strategy.

A friend and neighbor worked for 36 years in the civil appellant division of the Justice Department. Ed was not just a good lawyer, he was a respected mentor to many a young colleague. He also lived a full and exemplary private life. He died months before retiring from an emergent health issue you could describe as a bolt of lightning. Sometimes the fates laugh without humor at our plans.

At his shiva I asked a mutual friend, still working at 72, if he had any plans to retire. He answered, “No, because I don’t know what I would do when I get up in the morning.” I thought, if I, Tom, ever do retire from the vocational scene, on that first morning after I won’t know what to do first. But it will likely involve a motorcycle.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By: Michele Sandiford

Based on a March 2022 survey, without Social Security, about 4 in 10 adults aged 65 and older would have incomes below the poverty line.

Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 

The post Maybe you want that Walmart greeter’s vest after retirement first appeared on Federal News Network.

It turned out to be an insightful view of how one agency is dealing with the post pandemic telework period. I spoke with Margie Rowe, the chief administrative officer of the directorate. Here’s how she described her job: “I take care of the facilities, the fleet, the mail, the personal property; part of keeping S&T running.”

S&T operates five labs throughout the Northeast U.S. Headquarters relocated to the DHS main campus in July. It occupies part of a new building attached to the original Saint E.’s structure, but with its own entrance. S&T had occupied space on Vermont Avenue in Northwest D.C., then briefly at 7th and D Streets NW. Rowe warned me all I would see is what she termed a cubicle farm, and that’s what I saw. She said about 10% to 15% of the headquarters staff comes in on a given day. Most of the cubes were empty.

More striking, none of them contained a single one of the personal items you normally see when touring cubicle farms — family photos, candy dishes, little potted plants, sports knickknacks, ratty sweater draped on the chair. Why? No one has an assigned cubicle. Everybody “hotels,” to use the vernacular. People reserve a spot to work for the days they come in.

In moving, the Science and Technology Directorate reduced its square footage, Rowe said, because it anticipated people would no longer work in the office en masse. At the labs, people mostly come in because they can’t do lab work from home. Last year I visited the Directorate’s Transportation Security Lab on the outskirts of the Atlantic City airport. One large room where researchers examine explosive materials looked like a cartoon version of a laboratory — boiling flasks, all sorts of piping, test tubes, Bunsen burners. Another room contained several experimental baggage screening machines. Clearly not telework situations.

In the old headquarters offices, Rowe said, “Everybody had their own office, everybody had all cabinets of paper.” While there, the COVID also moved in. “So we got people to go virtual. We worked with the CIO [office], installed Teams. So that allows us to do collaboration. And we reduced our footprint, so that we do a reservation system.”

DHS Under Secretary for Science and Technology Dimitri Kusnezov and his immediate staff have a permanent space. Security, facilities, personal property and computer help desk people also have space of their own. Different people perform receptionist duties throughout the week. But even Rowe teleworks and, despite her seniority, reserves a cube.

The archetype of an entry level job might be the mail clerk, the young person pushing a wheeled bin of paper through the halls. I asked Rowe if physical mail even comes in to virtual offices any more.

“You would be surprised,” she said. “Yes. We have mail that comes in every day.” She said S&T doesn’t have its own mail delivery people, though. That’s handled by DHS centrally since the office of the secretary lies upstairs and to the northwest of the S&T location.

Telework means people must come in if they want a printout. DHS disallows official documents flowing to personal printers in people’s homes, Rowe said.

I’ve always wondered about phones. Boomers like me who haven’t yet taken the cue to retire remember when phones all had a strictly physical location, and people mostly answered them. Rowe said her DHS corporate number rings through to Microsoft Teams on her cell phone.

Add it all up, and somehow at least this crucial federal component does fine, the incomprehensible April 2023 White House memo on telework notwithstanding.

In general, and perhaps not surprisingly, Rowe said the “lonely” days occur on Mondays and Fridays, although Director Kusnezov sometimes holds all-hands days. Science and Technology policy calls for staff to work in the office two days per pay period, or an average of one day a week. Contractor employees make up 60% of the 1,000 headquarters people who, in theory, could show up on the same day.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By: Michele Sandiford

St. Elizabeths is divided into two campuses. St. Elizabeths East campus was established by Congress in 1855 as the Government Hospital for the Insane.

Source: Government Accountability Office

The post Telework redux: A day in the life of one D.C. office first appeared on Federal News Network.

Basically, NARA did this through brute force. In its words, it “added staff, expanded work hours and contract labor,” and also made technology and physical building improvements.

Backlogs remain a challenge elsewhere in government, especially ones that require adjudication or judgement couple with detailed documentation. That’s a different animal than locating a file, copying it and mailing it.

The Merit Systems Protection Board has chipped away at a backlog of appeals cases. The board itself decides these after one of the parties in a dispute disagrees with the administrative judge. Its backlog resulted not of the pandemic but rather because the board lacked a quorum of Senate-confirmed members from January of 2017 to March of 2022. Its most recent report showed the board cut its backlog of 3,793 cases at the start of the current quorum to 1,701. It decided a total of 2,296 cases in the last 21 months.

Cases like these may have their genesis years earlier. In one case the board recently decided, it upheld the firing of a U. S. Naval Academy English professor for  unprofessional conduct. His supervisor moved to dismiss him in June 2018. An Army firefighting supervisor received reinstatement after dismissal, and the board ordered the Army to pay him back pay plus interest — to April 8, 2016. Imagine having to shell out 94 months of back pay!

At the Veterans Benefits Administration, a claims backlog grows. The nearly 400,000 cases encompass those who have applied for disability compensation and pension claims. VBA deems a case backlogged when it’s been pending for 125 days or longer.

The Office of Personnel Management remains a perennial backlogger. It saw a 46% jump in retirement claims processing backlogs at the start if the year. In January, it took in almost 13,000 retirement claims. It got through about half of them, which means the backlog jumped to nearly 21,000 cases of people waiting for their final pension check amounts. OPM does see to it that retirees get estimated annuity checks until claims processors can figure out the final monthly amount.

But if your wrongful dismissal takes years to process, that’s years you and the agency are stuck in limbo. No veteran gets disability assistance until those claims and subsequent appeals are settled.

Then there’s the immigration courts backlog. The Government Accountability Office reported last October that the backlog for this Justice Department-operated system has tripled since 2017 to 2 million cases. How can 650 immigration judges ever get through that stack? Each has literally a career’s worth of backlogged cases, presuming the noncitizens actually show up at some years-in-the-future date.

The IRS, according to Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins, had a backlog of some 2 million amended returns at the end of 2023. She pointed out that paperwork associated with amended returns gets handled by some of the same people who answer phone calls from taxpayers. She said that for the IRS to reach the widely reported phone service improvements last year, “they did not process paper.” Ergo the backlog. Note: Employees have no problem doing online or telephone work from home. But paperwork must stay in the office.

Backlogs, therefore, erode not just fairness and customer service, but also national security.

Each administration I’ve covered since that of George H. W. Bush, including that of President Joe Biden, has emphasized this. The original term, service to the citizen, has become customer experience, or CX. CX acknowledges all of the entities, including businesses and immigrants lacking permanent legal status, should get timely and fair service.

Maybe artificial intelligence can help with backlogs. But in some instances, agencies need to put more people on the job.

The post Government sometimes looks like a backlog backwater first appeared on Federal News Network.

Social Security Administration chief Martin O’Malley is the latest federal executive to poke the telework wasp nest.  His Wednesday email to staff, and shared with media including us, lays out a range of new telework policies that take effect April 7th. He prefaced his message with this: “Every morning for the last 32 days, I’ve been going to work at headquarters or catching pre-dawn flights to Social Security Regions across our country. I do this to hear from — and learn from — as many of you as possible, as soon as possible, about what’s really going on.”

After a long preamble, O’Malley tells SSA employees that he’ll be in the Baltimore headquarters office or some other office Monday through Friday. The commissioner’s staff will be required to be on-site four days a week. Deputy commissioners and their staffs, and area director office staffs must “increase” reporting onsite to three days a week.

Those working in the Office of the Chief Information Officer will have to report onside two days a week, which O’Malley also describes as an increase. He’s calling for “greater presence for top level executives at the discretion of the CIO.”

Field offices, hearings offices and centers, case assistance centers, administrative law judge offices, appellate operations and the Office of Quality Review will all continue with whatever telework levels they now have, but they’ll operate five days a week.

If anything, the seemingly tough Social Security policy in reality shows how entrenched telework has become.

For reaction I checked the reliable Social Security News site. It’s operated by a law firm, Hall & Rouse, in Raleigh, North Carolina. Posting the entire O’Malley email drew comments from “Bravo. It’s about time” and “sounds reasonable” to “Took him 32 days to lose his credibility” and “This policy makes no sense for [Office of General Counsel].”

That last one caught my eye. The commenter said attorneys “who have been able to work uninterrupted for long hours are now going to have to commute, some more than an hour and a half each way to work, and lose out on valuable productive time.”

Commuting in and around the Washington, D.C. area has returned to its pre-covid insanity, and I’m sure it’s that way in the other big city areas. D.C. and the surrounding counties have intersections that disgrace humanity (I’m lookin’ at you, Military Road/Missouri Avenue/Georgia Avenue NW), a bad daily commute.

Commuting impinges on all of the other broken-record debates over telework. Does it make people more productive or less? Does it improve collaboration or kill it? Does it boost morale or crush it?

The answer to all of the above: It depends, and on a million variables. Therefore, agency heads need to make decisions, as O’Malley has. “While the best ideas for improving our operations always come from those on the frontlines, some decisions must ultimately fall to the Commissioner,” he stated in his email.

His decision is cut-and-dried in some features, looser and subject to local interpretation in others. Which is how it has to be in an organization with 60,000 people and more than 1,400 offices.

By the way, the government is not the only entity still trying to figure this all out. A Wall Street Journal story the other day detailed how some large companies — United Parcel Service, JPMorgan Chase and Boeing — are trying to get office staffs back five days a week. At UPS, management faces resentment from the warehouse and on-road staff who, of course, cannot telework. Ditto for Boeing, dealing with quality issues at its factories. Its engineers’ union tartly asked why they can’t work at home if Boeing is willing to outsource the very fuselages of the planes it sells.

The corporate mode, though, has settled on less telework than in the height of the pandemic, but less than five days in the office. Several surveys have also indicated the persistence of telework.

Will remote work reform come next? By remote I mean people who are geographically distant from where they work, beyond commuting distance. Bloomberg reported that IBM, which helped pioneer telework 20 years ago, has told managers they have to report to a customer location or an IBM office three days a week, or leave the company. Remote managers have until August to relocate.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By: Michele Sandiford

The first operational Social Security Administration headquarters was the Candler Building on Baltimore Harbor.

Source: Social Security Administration

The post New Social Security telework policy just might be the blueprint for everybody first appeared on Federal News Network.

Don’t spit out your coffee. I’m kidding. But the proposition might be tempting to some employers, judging from a recent survey of nearly 17,000 adults worldwide. Ford Motor Company, whose top-end electric F-150 costs more than my first house (and weighs more), commissioned the study. It found that 52% of adults agreed they would take a 20% pay cut “to achieve a lifestyle that prioritizes quality of life.” U.S. respondents about matched that average, with 51% agreeing to the statement. Only 40% of Mexicans agreed, but 68% of Indians and 69% of Thais.

The survey revealed an age-related dynamic, though. U.S. adults agreeing with the quality-of-life proposition fell along these lines:

• 33% of baby boomers
• 43% of Generation X
• 60% of Millennials
• 56% of Generation Z

Why do I tie this to telework? Because another survey question asked people whether they agreed with this other statement, “I feel more in control of my life than I did 5 years ago.” In the U.S., 64% agreed. The worldwide average: 66%. What happened five years ago? Mass telework.

A logical question becomes: If people would forego 20% of their pay for quality of life, and quality of life is connected to teleworking, stop pestering people to return to the office. Just say, okay, telework all you want, but it’ll cost you 20%.

Of course that’s an absurd conclusion. But the survey raises some real questions. For example:

• What do people mean by “quality of life” anyway, and is it not different for each individual?
• Might quality of life include being at the physical location of work for any of a thousand possible reasons?
• Does the job entail such demands that it intrudes on quality of life regardless of where work occurs?

Productivity comes up in telework discussions, and whether people produce more or less depending on where they are. In truth, the question defies answering because it depends on the type of work and the individual.

The Office of Personnel Management, in its latest report to Congress, which covered 2022, reported 87% of telework-eligible employees teleworked at least some of the time. That’s down 7% from the year before. Most of the numbers show reduction in telework  relative to the height of the pandemic. Telework is settling down to earth but at a higher plane than before the pandemic.

To my regular guest, Bob Tobias, former NTEU president and American University professor, people have tasted the control that work flexibility seems to give them. During an interview airing this morning, he noted that OPM also reported that more agencies than a year earlier met their performance goals. And that the engagement scores rose from the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey.

“I believe the reason telework is directly linked to these positive results is very basic,” Tobias said. “Every teleworking employee from a GS-2 to a member of the SES has more control over their work day and work life. Being controlled is fundamentally different from being in control.”

Control over one’s time is certainly a component in quality of life. Telework lets people interweave personal and professional tasks over time. The agency may get eight hours work in a day, but maybe it’s over 10 or 12 clock hours.

So what about that idea of working for 20% less for a better quality of life? I doubt people mean that literally. It’s more an expression of the idea that people work only partly for money, and also for meaning, a sense of accomplishment and an infinite number of other factors. Something good for telework-averse managers to keep in mind.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By: Michele Sandiford

In 2019, 39% of U.S. federal employees were eligible for telework.

Source: OPM

The post Would you take a pay cut for more telework? first appeared on Federal News Network.

But, we — and the deceased employee’s loved ones — will know. The National Transportation Safety Board will send someone, maybe a couple of people, out to investigate. They’ll interview officials and co-workers, and probably traipse through frigid air to look at a rail yard and its rolling and fixed stock.

Another day in the life of infamous, unelected bureaucrats.

UBs, let’s call them, are back in the news. Earlier this week, as you no doubt read, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a challenge to so-called Chevron deference. Under this doctrine, established by the Court back in 1984, courts generally defer to how federal agency staff interpret how laws should be carried out. Opponents of Chevron say Congress is too vague and ambiguous in how it writes laws, giving UBs too much power to regulate, or over-regulate, industry and other activities.

That’s a simplification, because administration functionaries in appointed positions — let’s call them elected bureaucrats, or EBs — tend to find ways to overindulge in regulation policies the UBs are obliged to carry out. Such is the particular case leading to the Supreme Court case. The Trump administration imposed a Commerce Department regulation on which fishing law is silent. The rule forces herring boat owners to pay the salaries of on-board federal fishing monitors.

That frankly does seem like an unfair imposition on the fishing industry. In one TV interview, a fishing boat owner said she has to pay the federal monitor more than she pays the captain. I’d take ’em to court too.

Neither a cheerleader nor an implacable critic of the bureaucracy and the civil servants who inhabit it, I operate from the assumption that most people pursue their work with honest intent and within respected limits. This after 32 years and thousands and thousands of interviews and  in-person encounters with “unelected bureaucrats.” The complex of public interest, private interest, what the government gives and takes, and how it communicates and interacts with the public all defies glib labeling.

So far in history, the good outweighs the bad, but let’s not take it for granted. To make an analogy, the NTSB publicly states that U.S. aviation is the safest transportation mode anywhere. And it is. But they also know that outcome traces back down to someone with a wrench on an aircraft assembly line, tightening the bolts on a “door plug” on the hundredth copy of the same fuselage. The average passenger may not know that Boeing doesn’t even make its own fuselage, but rather outsources it. But the Federal Aviation Administration knows,  and the NTSB knows the FAA knows. The Government Accountability Office knows that the FAA knows. And so on, in crucial checks and balances.

UBs do a lot of good. Two examples just this week really piqued my interest.

Darshak Sanghavi is a UB. He’s also a prominent pediatric cardiologist. At this point in his professional life, he’s a program manager at the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. That’s his third stint in the government. Sanghavi’s program sounds ambitious to me, but when you hear the interview airing next week, I trust you, too, will be taken with his enthusiasm.

Rather than imposing something expensive on a slice of industry, ARPA-H’s Heroes program (Health Care Rewards to Achieve Improved Outcomes) will pay non-profit organizations or consortia able to measurably improve health outcomes in rural or impoverished areas where incidents of certain maladies exceed the national norms. The program is predicated on the notion that preventive measures are more effective and less expensive than treatment of, in this program, obstetric complications, heart attack and stroke, opioid overdose and alcohol-related problems.

Rather than extracting cost from a sector, ARPA-H will furnish incentives.

I spoke to another UB doing work on the industrial side of things. The U.S. Geological Survey established a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement, or CRADA, with Q-CTRL. Not a keyboard shortcut but rather a quantum technology startup, the company has a device that potentially can measure gravity at a particular spot using the movement of atoms observed in a laser — as best I understand it.

Jonathan Stock, the director of the USGS National Innovation Center, says the goal of the CRADA is to develop lightweight, accurate gravitometers that can fly on drones. Current technology uses springs and occupies heavy machines that require expensive airplane flights. The quantum approach would vastly increase the mapping of U.S. land density.

Why does that matter? Stock says such measurements give clues to the existence of rare earth elements so badly needed, if the U.S. electric future won’t mean mortgaging everything to China. Someday, tools emanating from the USGS CRADA could help the mining and processing industries release the U.S. from dependence on uncertain foreign sources of important minerals of the future.

Sometimes those UBs at the federal level become the accountability providers of last resort. Just yesterday, the Justice Department released 600 pages of findings in the breathtaking law enforcement failures at the Uvalde, Texas mass shooting. The Texas Department of Public Safety, which had scores of its own officers on the scene, wouldn’t release its report.

Civil servants should never ignore the statutory and regulatory frameworks in which they operate, or try to stretch the law. What they need is good discretion together with the subject matter expertise required, plus a healthy respect for the limitations on government. Most in fact meet these criteria. Should the Supreme Court reverse Chevron in some way, then in the never-ending tag game, Congress would be “it.”

Nearly Useless Factoid

By: Derace Lauderdale

Clark Gable was born in Cadiz, Ohio.

Source: Britannica 

The post Unelected bureaucrats do the darndest things first appeared on Federal News Network.

Before the ubiquitous PC days, if snow kept you from getting to the office, there wasn’t much you could do. In declaring Tuesday a maximum telework day, though, the Office of Personnel Management signaled this is decidedly not an unscheduled leave opportunity for routine teleworkers.

For readers outside the D.C. area, we had, I don’t know, about 4 or 5 inches of snow on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. The snow kept up through the night to Tuesday morning. It was fluffy stuff, but the roads were pretty bad Tuesday morning.

“Telework employees are expected to work,” OPM said. “Non-telework employees generally will be granted weather and safety leave for the number of hours they were scheduled to work.”

In reality, snow and other emergencies are never simple affairs. In this case, the OPM declaration plopped into a stew of child care issues and work attitudes bubbling in a soup of uncertainty over permanent telework policy.

“FOUR DAY WEEKEND BABY!!!” yelled one online forum commenter. Said another, “Pretty much the only downside of being 100% remote though.” That second person was correct, technically. Universal remote access and the advent of Zoom have rendered obsolete the idea that office = work. If you telework, what difference does the weather make?

Yes, but schools in the area also closed. Kiddos in the house can wreck the most elaborate teleworking routine.

“Most of the parents in our office will take some unscheduled leave (which leadership is liberal with),” said one federal mom, whose husband is also teleworking. She said they’ll take turns supervising a six-year-old, whom she said is happily occupied with Legos for an hour at a time — and she has new Lego sets tucked away just for occasions like this.

“Yeah, I still have to like, feed him, but I have to feed myself too on a normal telework day, so it’s not that much different,” she said. I can just about smell the macaroni and cheese. An apparent COVID-forced teleworker, she added, “Teleworking with a six-year-old for a day or two is much easier than teleworking with a 2-year-old for 5 months.”

Several comments analogized management reaction to unscheduled leave or low output to various parts of the body I can’t really mention here. One boss was a blankety-blank about it; another wouldn’t break people’s blankety-blanks (a good thing).

OPM’s statement that non-telework employees would get a bit of leave drew some contrasting comments.

“One of the few times it stinks to always telework as there’s no free day off,” said one teleworker. Another said, “I’ve never been happier not to be a teleworker!”

Agencies seem to follow their own lights when it comes to elaborating their specific implementations of OPM’s office closures. On the question of unscheduled leave, one commenter asked, “I’m a little miffed the official OPM guidance didn’t mention it.” Another rejoined with a list of directives his agency had issued days earlier. It included this: “Employees have the option (with supervisory approval) to telework the entire workday (without delayed arrival), use unscheduled leave, or use a combination of unscheduled telework and unscheduled leave.”

Some feds tried to parse out the OPM directive in nearly Talmudic detail: “To those who are teleworking today when you would normally be in, does this count as an in-office day or do you have to come in another day?” one person asked.

Someone answered, “Depends if supervisor is a jerk or not.”

The post Snow brings telework snowball fight first appeared on Federal News Network.

One thing about coaches: They’re always present at the sidelines, supervising the play callers and managing the player rotations.

Can you imagine a coach disappearing in the midst of a crucial game, and neither the athletic director nor the players know who’s in charge? Imagine if you or I took days or a week of sick leave and didn’t tell anyone? We’d have hell to pay.

It’s right there in black-and-white from OPM: “An employee must request sick leave within such time limits as the agency may require.”

Thus the inexplicable chain of events at the Defense Department puzzle the national security establishment and set the political media aflame. It’s ballooned into a huge hairball, which the DoD Office of Inspector General says it will investigate.

Let’s say, because of the sudden discovery of prostate cancer, Austin had to be rushed to the hospital and put under anesthesia then and there. That doesn’t explain the cone of silence that descended.

In his public appearances, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin doesn’t come across as a football coach type. Not qualified in remote psychoanalysis, I presume he is a strong leader if only because wallflowers don’t become Army Rangers, make it to Command and General Staff College and later run CENTCOM. And you don’t get there by being careless about details, especially really big details.

But, holy cow, what could possibly explain why so many team members, to say nothing of President Biden, knew nothing about the SecDef having major surgery then returning to the hospital after complications?

We now know that Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks was away at the beach in Puerto Rico. His chief of staff was sick with flu. Politico reported the White House was “dismayed,” apparently as much from the President’s not knowing as from the hit to the administration’s self-perception as “drama-free.” What followed is actually typical of Washington drama, the sort of non-entertainment that entertains those in the political stratosphere, or who wish they were. Every administration is full of drama, so what’s the use of trying to pretend otherwise?

Austin came up through the ranks after graduating from West Point. In that sense, he, more than any of the primarily political types that populate administrations, knows the criticality of observing the protocols in crucial situations. In Pentagon leadership, down to the level of under secretary for this-and-that, people must file a letter to designate authority for even a single day off.

Ezra Cohen of the Hudson Institute, a former Pentagon official who was twice an acting undersecretary, said in an interview, “This is something that is quite routine, something I personally had to do when I just had to take a day off for personal reasons.”

Since the letter would presumably come from the secretary to the deputy secretary, how is it that Hicks was reportedly unaware? Someone had to draft the letter, type it, sign it and email or deliver it. The secretary’s office has lots of minions, so you wonder if half the Pentagon actually knew what was going on, even if the senior White House staff didn’t. For that matter, you can imagine Chinese moles monitoring the comings and goings at the gates of Walter Reed in Bethesda.

Another former under secretary, Tara Sonenshine, writing in The Hill, said the incident calls into question the system consisting of  “the notification process surrounding Austin’s hospitalization, which relates to defense orders, chain of command, and military authority.”

But the incident goes beyond just confusion and carelessness about protocols. It potentially endangers national security. As Cohen noted, foreign adversaries watch these things. If they sense no one’s in charge, or no one knows who’s in charge, one of them could decide to pounce.

“That ability for the President to convey clear orders and instructions via the secretary of Defense, through military forces is really at the core of our deterrence ability and our ability to deter our adversaries,” Cohen said. “So when that chain is muddled, or even if there’s a perception that it’s undermined, it could be very inviting to our adversaries.”

Finally, the secretiveness, to be uncharitable, or inattentiveness, to be charitable, sets a bad example. The power of senior leadership comes with crucial limits. You can’t indulge in throwaway lines or careless behaviors. Hardly a new lesson, yet it never quite sinks in.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By:  Michele Sandiford

The longest tenured NFL head coaches were Curly Lambeau of the Green Bay Packers and Tom Landry of the Dallas Cowboys, each coached 29 seasons.

Source: ESPN

The post To career feds, the disappearing SecDef is just plain weird first appeared on Federal News Network.