Nextgov/FCW - Authors - Charles S. Clark

Everyone Dreads Shutdowns, So Why Do They Keep Happening?

Charles S. Clark — Sun, 21 Jul 2019 12:00:00 -0400

In April, with painful memories of last winter’s 35-day partial government shutdown still raw, Rep. Louis Gohmert, R-Texas, delivered a favorite shutdown anecdote: During the 16-day governmentwide shutdown in 2013 under President Obama, Gohmert joined some World War II veterans in a visit to the Iwo Jima Marine Corps Memorial in Arlington, Va. The National Park Service had barricaded the site, Gohmert recalled at a 2019 hearing of the House Natural Resources Committee on the Interior Department’s reorganization.

“I was absolutely appalled” that the nation’s veterans were “being harassed,” he said, describing a busload of veterans of the Iwo Jima battle who had arrived at the site and “busted up” the barricades. “We didn’t let the enemy keep us from getting to the top of Mount Suribachi,” the veterans reportedly said. “So we won’t let a little wooden barricade keep us from the memorial.”

A National Park Service spokesman told Government Executive in May that the agency had no information on such an incident. But similar Republican attacks on the Park Service for closing war monuments to tourists during the 2013 appropriations lapse threw into relief a key difference between the two political parties.

Under the Obama administration, during an angry hearing in October 2013, National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis resisted Republican attacks and defended the closing of war monuments as required by appropriations law. Consistent with the requirements of the amended 1884 Antideficiency Act, the service “was forced to close all 401 national parks across the country and furlough more than 20,000 National Park Service employees,” Jarvis told a joint hearing of the House Interior and Oversight panels. “Approximately 3,000 employees were exempted from the furlough to respond to threats to the safety of human life and the protection of property. Absent appropriations, the National Park Service will continue to implement the contingency plan that was approved by the [Interior Department],” he said at the time.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., accused Jarvis of wanting to "inflict pain" to make a point about government funding. “Whose land are the parks?” Issa asked. “The people’s or the government’s?”

Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon countered to the Republicans: “When you decided to shut down government two weeks ago, did you forget that the NPS is part of the federal government?”

Flash forward to January 2018, when, with a shutdown threatened under President Trump, Budget Director Mick Mulvaney promised the damage would be less than under Obama because the Democratic administration had “weaponized the shutdown in 2013.” By contrast, “we’re not going to try and hurt people, especially people who work for the federal government,” Mulvaney said.

Hence during the 35-day shutdown that ended Jan. 25, the Trump administration took unusual steps to get around the Antideficiency Act. They called back furloughed Internal Revenue Service staff to prepare for tax filing season and implement the new tax law. They summoned Agriculture Department employees to keep the food stamps program going. The State Department pressed ahead with a conference for ambassadors and chiefs of mission with many State staff furloughed, and the Transportation Department recalled idled Federal Aviation Administration engineers and inspectors.

Is that allowed? Not according to the lawsuit filed by the National Treasury Employees Union, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (which later dropped out) and a group of five federal workers. Also dubious of the legality of the administration’s actions is Sen. Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat who wrote to the administration challenging such legal authority.

Chris Edwards, the longtime director of tax policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, said he believes political calculations account for the differing approaches: “During the Obama administration, there was a shutdown or two when the administration did seem to go out of its way to make it more painful,” he said. “Under Trump, the administration went out of their way to make it as least painful for voters as possible.” The reason, Edwards suspects, is that “there is a common perception going back to the two shutdowns in the mid-1990s that Republicans got mainly blamed, and that may be correct.”

Inside the Republican conference on Capitol Hill, “there has long been a perception that they need to fear shutdowns at all costs and always get blamed,” he added. “I think Democrats know that, so they have the upper political hand on shutdowns.”

Both parties seek to pin the blame on opponents—using labels such as the “Trump shutdown” or “the Schumer shutdown” (for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.). But opinion polls suggest the public does blame Republicans more, depending on who’s in the White House.

During the twin shutdowns in 1995-1996—a two-part, 26-day clash between the Clinton administration and Congressional Republicans over their proposals for deep cuts in Medicare and other domestic spending—a Washington Post-ABC News poll showed 50% of respondents blamed Republicans, versus only 27% who blamed Clinton.

In the 2013 shutdown—triggered by a GOP effort to defund the Affordable Care Act—53% in a similar poll said Republicans were mainly responsible, versus 29% who blamed Obama.

Three weeks into the 2018-2019 partial government shutdown—set in motion after Trump abandoned a budget agreement with Congress and demanded greater spending on a southwest border wall—an NPR poll showed that 54% of U.S. adults believed Trump was most responsible, and another 31% said congressional Democrats were at fault. Only 5% said Republicans on Capitol Hill were to blame.

‘A More Regular Occurrence’

The polls showed that shutdowns are “overwhelmingly negative, embarrassing, and hurtful to the economy and international relations,” said Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University. Nonetheless, in the coming budget drama, President Trump is capable of “blowing things up,” Light said. “Democrats may be able to maneuver to push him into pulling the trigger, but he will not be able to blame it on the Democrats. People are clear he’s the chief executive.”

Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, laments the fact that shutdowns have “become a more regular occurrence—we’re writing not about historical anomalies, but about facts of life in governance now,” he said. “A lot of Republicans relish a shutdown, because they don’t want government, don’t want it working.” That was apparent, he said, in 1995 and 1996 when then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., drove “a shutdown during the holidays to discredit Clinton and make an ideological point.”

But Clinton recognized that some people think government does work and want more of it. His approach assumed that “the best way to end the shutdown was to gain, no doubt, some political advantage” by bringing to public attention the cost of shuttering government operations, especially things the public cares about, Ornstein said.

Today’s situation is even more radical, Ornstein added, citing Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s “willingness to give a middle finger to Congress, or act as if Congress is immaterial.” At the same time, the “Republicans’ end run around the Antideficiency Act,” Ornstein cautioned, does not mean they aren’t “pragmatic in making sure their political needs are met.”

Though Republicans get blamed in the short term as the party that’s anti-government, I don’t think shutdowns are bad for Republicans over the medium or longer term. People forget it.

- Chris Edwards, The Cato Institute

But Edwards takes a longer view. “Though Republicans get blamed in the short term as the party that’s anti-government, I don’t think shutdowns are bad for Republicans over the medium or longer term. People forget it,” he said. “Go back to 1996. Republicans got blamed, but only a few months later, the vast majority of the budget-cutters and shutdowners got reelected.”

Economic Damage

Members of both parties, of course, agree that the costs of shutdowns to government and the economy are formidable. The 2018-2019 shutdown delayed $18 billion in federal spending and cost the economy some $11 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The estimate from the private S&P Global Ratings was $6 billion—or about what Trump had demanded for the border wall in triggering the breakdown in bipartisan budget talks. That record-breaker compares with a cost of $2.6 billion for the 2013 shutdown and $2.3 billion for the twin shutdowns in 1995-96 (in inflation-adjusted dollars).

The Congressional Research Service last December released a mid-shutdown comprehensive lookback at shutdowns, beginning with short ones during the Carter administration. It was Carter Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti who issued opinions setting in motion a much stricter interpretation of agency’s freedom to spend during an appropriations lapse. “For years leading up to 1980,” CRS said, “many federal agencies continued to operate during a funding gap, minimizing all nonessential operations and obligations, believing that Congress did not intend that agencies close down,” while waiting for the enactment of annual appropriations acts or continuing resolutions.

CRS’s history of how agencies have executed their contingency plans during shutdowns also notes the difficulties in calculating the costs. “Costs to whom?” it asked. “For something to count as a shutdown-related cost, must it be a cost for the federal government or a distinct part of the federal government? How should costs be handled that accrue to a state or local government (e.g., delayed grant funding), a citizen or client (e.g., lost services), a business (e.g., less tourism revenue), or society at large (e.g., reduced economic output)? What if one stakeholder’s cost (e.g., a contractor’s lost work and compensation) may be viewed as savings or a benefit for another stakeholder (e.g., cost savings for an agency, albeit with less work effort toward the agency mission)?”

The anecdotal costs to employees at specific agencies are more vivid. At the Internal Revenue Service’s Exempt Organizations division, for example, the processing of nonprofit applications for tax-exempt status was severely curtailed during last winter’s shutdown, with only 24 employees deemed essential. According to an American Bar Association roundtable talk on Jan. 18 by tax attorney Meghan Bliss of Caplin & Drysdale, “There’s a person in the mail room, though, who will accept your Form 1023. They’re essential. They stamp it as received and cash your check,” she said, as reported by Paul Streckfus’s Exempt Organizations newsletter. But “there is no one else in EO to take your calls or work your applications or do your examinations.”

The financial hardships to employees at the State Department were detailed in a roundup from an officer of the American Foreign Service Association. “Some members had already tapped into their ‘rainy day fund’ after being forced to leave Mission Russia last year. Others had to juggle funds to pay tuition expenses or mortgages due in January,” the group noted.

“Unemployment benefits were not available to many members serving overseas. Single parents and tandem couples were hit particularly hard with the delay of first one paycheck, and then two.”

And there’s the Volvo Cross-Country car seen last January in front of the Arlington, Va., house of an unnamed federal employee bearing a for-sale sign reading: “Fuloughed and working: $4,000 OBO.”

Charles S. Clark/GovExec.com

An Obvious Solution

What emerges as the proper interpretation of agency obligations under the Anti-Deficiency Act will depend on the courts, and on the Government Accountability Office, which referees such decisions. Julia Matta, GAO’s managing associate general counsel, testified on Feb. 6 before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on the Interior: “The Antideficiency Act is the only fiscal statute that includes both civil and criminal penalties for a violation,” she said. Those who violate it “are subject to administrative discipline, such as suspension or removal from office, as well as criminal penalties in the case of a knowing and willful violation.”

But she also split hairs on what happens during a shutdown. “As an initial matter, certain agencies and programs may continue to operate without implicating the Antideficiency Act if the agency or program has available budget authority. Such authority may derive from multiple year or no-year appropriation carryover balances, or otherwise available balances from other authorities, such as from fee income that Congress made available for obligation,” Matta said.

Transferring funds under the law in most cases requires notification of Congress. And “an agency must still ensure that it adheres to all other applicable laws,” she said. “Sometimes an agency may have two appropriations that may arguably be available for the same purpose. In those cases, an agency must elect to use a single appropriation. The agency may not switch to a different appropriation merely because the one it chose first is now depleted.”

Current lawmakers have drafted bills designed to force reforms in the budget process that would require their colleagues to keep the government open automatically, by continuing funding, for example, at the previous year’s levels. The Prevent Government Shutdowns Act (S. 589), introduced in February by Sens. James Lankford, R-Okla., and Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., for example, would require that, if appropriations bills are not passed by both chambers of Congress and signed by the president by Oct. 1, “no official travel will be allowed for Office of Management and Budget leadership or staff, Cabinet members, or senators and representatives along with their committee and personal staffs (except for official travel within the D.C. metro area).”

Other solutions have included switching from annual to biennial budgeting. That would be “a nightmare,” said Paul Light: “I don’t see Congress losing its control over the budget—it’s too important to the electoral cycle, and Congress is nothing if not diligent in claiming credit for all spending,” he said. Plus, the currently Democratic House, in negotiating with a Republican-controlled Senate, “is not going to go along with any kind of weakening of oversight on the budget.” Such propositions are “politically naïve,” he said.

I don’t see Congress losing its control over the budget—it’s too important to the electoral cycle, and Congress is nothing if not diligent in claiming credit for all spending.

- Paul Light

What complicates the challenge, added Ornstein, “is not just the tribal environment and maneuvering to gain advantage, but also the breakdown of regular order, which goes back even further. The inability to finish appropriations bills on time, much less reach agreement, creates a greater likelihood of shutdowns.”

In moving forward, Edwards said, “both parties know there’s a problem with shutdowns. The solution is pretty straightforward—an automatic continuing resolution at the same spending levels if the parties don’t agree on discretionary levels. It’s a fair and neutral approach.” Unlike the messy issues of immigration and healthcare, Edwards said, “both parties know the solution. So why not get together and make the trains run on time?”

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National Archives Needs Better Handle on Agency Electronic Records, Says Watchdog

Charles S. Clark — Mon, 01 Jul 2019 14:38:45 -0400

The government’s full-time archivists need to up their game in performing the 21st-century task of preserving the increasing portion of federal agency records that exist only in electronic form, a watchdog found.

Though the National Archives and Records Administration has made progress in strengthening and modernizing its handling of important agency documents, “permanent electronic records are still at a significant risk of loss and destruction,” according to a June report from the agency’s inspector general.

Noting that “reskilling” and attracting current-day technological talent is high on the Trump administration’s President’s Management Agenda, the IG diagnosed a failure of NARA to identify all the federal agencies subject to the Federal Records Act, adding that “the universe of scheduled electronic records accessioned into NARA holdings has not been adequately identified.”

The archivists’ inability to identify “possible gaps in permanent electronic records schedule accessions,” the report said, can be attributed to “NARA not effectively exercising its oversight authority.” Specifically, the agency authorities responsible for determining what is a permanent record were not promptly entered into the tracking database, offices didn’t communicate with each other, and too many data systems remain “antiquated,” the auditors found.

The agency is “not exercising established controls,” the report added, best practices are “not being codified, and there is inadequate strategic planning for NARA’s inspections of other agencies’ records management systems.

“These deficiencies combined represent a material weakness in electronic records management and will continue to have a negative impact unless improvements are made,” the watchdog warned.

The challenge of knowing precisely how many agencies come under NARA’s purview for fulfilling the statutory mission while executing White House guidance is more complex than meets the eye, the auditors acknowledged.

“It has been widely reported that no federal entity knows how many federal agencies exist,” the report noted. “For example, Forbes reported in July 2017 that FOIA.gov lists 78 independent executive agencies and 174 components of the executive department while the United States Government Manual lists 96 independent executive units and 220 components. USA.gov lists 137 independent executive agencies and 268 units in the Cabinet. In fiscal 2018, The Best Places to Work in the Federal Government ranks a total of 488 agencies and subcomponents and the Federal Register reports there are at least 441 federal agencies.”

Even so, the audit said, NARA should have performed an analysis of the issues involved in creating an authoritative list of agencies subject to the Federal Records Act.

The IG made 10 recommendations, among them creating a complete authoritative list of all active federal agencies (including but not limited to departments, agencies, sub-agencies, and/or components subject to the Federal Records Act); making data entry more timely; and considering reporting the Electronic Records Management deficiencies identified in the audit report as a material weakness under Federal Managers’ Financial Integrity Act.

David Ferriero, archivist of the United States, in a June 11 letter agreed with all 10, and the auditors said they consider the recommendations resolved, with execution underway.

On June 28, Ferriero joined with acting Budget Director Russell Vought in publishing new guidance for agencies for modernizing electronic records retention.

This story has been updated.

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Agencies Meet Small Business Contract Goals

Charles S. Clark — Thu, 27 Jun 2019 18:00:00 -0400

Agencies fulfilling their obligations for awarding contracts to small businesses broke a record with $120 billion in awards in fiscal 2018, the Small Business Administration announced on Tuesday.

Governmentwide for the sixth straight year, agencies met their goal of 25% for qualified small-business procurements, though fell short in the subgroups of women-owned businesses and Historically Underutilized Business Zones, or HUBZones.

The overall government rating was an A, and eight agencies received an A+ on the annual scorecard, SBA said. The $120 billion total marked an increase of $15 billion over last year.

“Through these businesses, we strengthen the economy, and support the American workforce in the process,” said Acting Administrator Chris Pilkerton. “The federal prime and subcontract awarded to small businesses in fiscal 2018 equate to more than one million jobs created. Every contract that gets in the hands of a small business is a win-win for our nation, the entrepreneurs, their employees and the communities they support all across the country.”

In prime contracting among subgroup designated for set-asides, agencies exceeded goals for service-disabled veteran-owned small business and small disadvantaged business, while contract dollar awards rose in all categories, SBA said. But the effort fell short of goals in the categories of women-owned businesses and HUBZones.

In subcontracting, the federal government also exceeded its subcontract goals for awards to small businesses and women-owned small businesses, and awarded more than $79 billion in subcontracts.

As for methodology, SBA explained that while each federal agency is responsible for ensuring the quality of its own contracting data, SBA conducts additional analyses to help agencies identify potential data anomalies.

As a sign that agencies value the scorecard, the Homeland Security Department on Wednesday put out a statement noting that for the 10th year in a row, it earned an A grade: “DHS has been the largest agency to consistently earn a grade of an ‘A’ or higher on SBA’s scorecard,” it said. “This achievement confirms the department’s commitment to working with small businesses to help keep our nation safe.”

Gloria Larkin, president of the contractor TargetGov who is also procurement advisor to American Express on educating women contractors, told Government Executive: “While I celebrate the fact that women-owned businesses received $22.9 billion in prime contract awards, it is still under the five percent goal, at 4.75%. The Women Owned Small Business Program has multiple challenges in reaching that goal,” she added, citing the spotty awareness of the program among some acquisition personnel and contract offerings do not appear in agency solicitations for all industry classification codes.

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NASA Managers and Contractors Significantly Lowballed Space Mission Costs, Watchdog Found

Charles S. Clark — Thu, 20 Jun 2019 13:00:00 -0400

As NASA prepares to celebrate next month’s 50th anniversary of putting the first man on the moon, a watchdog has thrown some cold water on the space agency’s ambitious plans for future human exploration beyond the Earth’s orbit.

The Government Accountability Office, in a congressionally mandated report released on Wednesday, found significant cost underestimates and schedule delays in three related programs: the Space Launch System vehicle to send people and cargo beyond low-Earth orbit; the Orion spacecraft; and the Exploration Ground Systems that supports those two programs with the necessary systems and infrastructure.

The report to leaders of the House and Senate appropriations panels said continued production and testing challenges put NASA’s Exploration Systems Development organization at risk of missing the launch readiness date of June 2020 for the first of the related missions targeting the moon and, eventually, Mars.

Previous GAO audits had found that “NASA has made programmatic decisions—including establishing low cost and schedule reserves, managing to aggressive schedules, and not following best practices for earned value management—that have compounded technical challenges that are expected for inherently complex and difficult large-scale acquisitions,” the new report said. The agency also had not been following “best practices for establishing cost and schedule baselines for these programs nor update cost and schedule analyses to reflect new risks.”

The result: “NASA overpromised what it could deliver from a cost and schedule perspective,” the auditors wrote, assigning responsibility to both the agency and contractors Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Back in November 2018, within one year of announcing a delay of up to 19 months for the three programs, “NASA senior leaders acknowledged the revised date of June 2020 is unlikely,” GAO said. “Any issues uncovered during planned integration and testing may push the launch date as late as June 2021. Moreover, while NASA acknowledges about $1 billion in cost growth for the Space Launch System program, GAO estimated the cost growth in excess of $1.8 billion.

NASA “understated” the growth because it shifted some of that project’s “scope to future missions, but did not accordingly reduce the program’s cost baseline,” GAO found.

What’s more, NASA's updated cost estimate for the Orion program reflecting 5.6 percent cost growth “is not complete, however, as it assumes a launch date that is 7 months earlier than Orion's baseline launch date.” If the launch is delayed, costs will rise, GAO said. “Updating baselines to reflect current mission scope and providing complete cost estimates would provide NASA management and Congress with a more transparent assessment of where NASA is having difficulty controlling costs.”

Contractually, from 2014 through 2018, NASA awarded the large companies some $200 million in performance fees on both the tardy and over-budget Space Launch System and Orion projects. “Ongoing contract renegotiations with Boeing for the SLS and Lockheed Martin for the Orion program provide NASA an opportunity to reevaluate its strategy to incentivize contractors to obtain better outcomes,” auditors said after interviews and reviews of program costs, scheduling and contractor data, from March 2018 to this June.

The Federal Acquisition Regulation and NASA contracting guidance indicate that “award fee is appropriate when the work to be performed is such that it is neither feasible nor effective to devise predetermined objective incentive targets applicable to cost, schedule, and technical performance,” GAO noted. However, now that the Space Launch System and Orion programs “are further into the acquisition life cycle, the programs are at the point in development wherein it may be possible to determine more objective targets for cost, schedule, and technical performance, especially for the first mission.”

Because of the cost hikes and delays, GAO noted, NASA is already planning to renegotiate the Boeing contract for the Space Launch System and is revamping the contract with Lockheed for the Orion project.

GAO made four recommendations for updating cost estimates to reflect schedule slippage, and for reevaluating “their strategy for incentivizing contractors.”

NASA agreed with three, but William Gerstenmaier, assistant administrator for human exploration and operations, denied any lack of transparency. Commenting on a draft, he said GAO hadn’t adequately acknowledged that NASA operates in a “dynamic environment, building a multi-decadal program with multiple spacecraft and launch vehicle configurations.”

The space agency is aware, Gerstenmaier stressed, that short-term investments pay off in the long term, stating that the team is still within the timeframe for completion of the projects by April 2023. “NASA’s goal for returning humans to cislunar space remains on track,” he said.

The current fear of delays and cost overrun echoes much of the drama that unfolded during the 1960s as NASA prepared that multi-year program for the historic first moon landing.

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House Passes Revamped Bipartisan IRS Reform Bill

Charles S. Clark — Tue, 11 Jun 2019 08:00:00 -0400

In a rare show of bipartisanship, the House on Monday passed a bill to restructure the Internal Revenue Service to enhance taxpayer appeal rights, modernize technology and encourage whistleblowers. The “Taxpayer First Act” cleared the House by voice vote.

Originally introduced in March but revised last week, the bill (H.R. H3151) was drafted by Ways and Means Committee members John Lewis, D-Ga., and Mike Kelly, R-Pa., with a Senate counterpart.

“This bill is a ray of hope,” said Lewis in a statement on Friday before the vote. “It is a significant win for the American people because it demonstrates that even in the most difficult times, we can come together as a nation, as a people, and as a Congress to accomplish important things for the American people. We developed this bill the way legislation should be created. We listened to the voices of taxpayers, advocates and experts. We asked questions for many months. The Oversight Subcommittee hosted hearings and roundtables. Democratic and Republican members shared their concerns and ideas. We negotiated. We took our time, and believe that we did it right.”

Lewis stressed that the bill creates a new independent taxpayer appeals progress and also helps low-income, disabled people and senior citizens by imposing new requirements on private debt collectors.

The bill also would add new cybersecurity protections and improve interactions with the IRS for victims of identity theft. And it would codify the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program, allowing the IRS up to $30 million for matching grants to qualifying tax preparation sites.

In working out potential problems with the Senate, House members agreed to drop provisions that would codify the controversial Free File program, under which the IRS partners with private tax-preparation companies in offering free online tax services to needier taxpayers.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Finance Committee, praised the House for passing the bill, stressing the importance of the whistleblower protections in allowing more communication from IRS staff. “Not many people look forward to interacting with the IRS,” said Grassley, who introduced the Senate version with Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. “The process can be long, confusing and tedious. That’s particularly true for taxpayers who encounter frustrating situations that may seem unfair. It’s true for whistleblowers who aren’t treated respectfully and it’s true for ordinary taxpayers who want to make sure their privacy and security are protected.”

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Senior Executives Association Teams Up with Freelance Gig Exchange

Charles S. Clark — Mon, 03 Jun 2019 14:35:46 -0400

The Senior Executives Association and the private talent exchange GovFlex.com announced a new collaboration on Friday, offering a digital marketplace that could give 12,000 top federal executives career advice and new opportunities to bring their subject-matter expertise to other agencies.

The McLean-Va.-based GovFlex, which bills itself as “the Government Freelance Exchange” and the first public-sector “gig economy” job platform, plans to assist members of the senior executives group to “create an agile and highly effective 21^st-century workforce, acquisition system and e-Commerce initiatives,” it said in a Friday joint announcement.

Together, the two groups will offer one-stop networking for high-level agency executives, including the sought-after chief financial officers and chief information officers.

The idea is to provide readily accessed professional advisory services to help current career executives transition to private-sector jobs as well as ease the entry of subject matter experts into federal programs in a variety of agencies.

“We see this as a way for agencies to tap into senior-level talent in ways they haven’t been able to before,” SEA President Bill Valdez told Government Executive. “We know government officials looking for talent can go to GovFlex, and for those folks who’re considering transitioning from the federal government to a career in the private sector, we’re going to develop a number of transition assistance programs to help them navigate the choices as they exit into a new life.”

Valdez said the new collaboration is not a reaction to the recent exodus of executives at some agencies, nor to the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to reorganize the Office of Personnel Management and streamline hiring. GovFlex has its origins in the Defense Department’s authority for agile hiring of subject-matter experts created in the so-called 809 Advisory Panel set up in the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, he noted.

“As part of the SEA’s civil service modernization agenda, we believe flexible hiring authority, tapping into what we call ‘the liquid workforce’ is the way of the future,” Valdez said. “The way to modernize the government is to open up access to experts on a real-time basis, which requires new hiring authorities and new platforms.”

Bob Dickson, the former State Department senior executive who is president of GovFlex, said, “We’re delighted to collaborate with SEA at a time when new business methods, commercial information technology marketplace solutions and fundamental changes in the workforce are taking place.”

The company’s practices, the announcement added, are aligned with Federal Acquisition Regulation and human capital practices, and GovFlex commits to “strict adherence to all applicable ethics laws and requirements, including a prohibition involving any activity related to lobbying.”

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Homeland Security Watchdog Issues Unusual Retraction of 13 FEMA Reports

Charles S. Clark — Thu, 30 May 2019 11:35:44 -0400

In a highly unusual move, the Homeland Security Department inspector general’s office issued a self-criticism of previous “feel-good” evaluations of incident responses by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The “special report” dated May 23 blames a previous IG for failing to communicate auditing standards, and it also “retracts” 13 previously published reports on the agency’s Emergency Management Oversight Teams.

Changes made in 2011 by John Kelly and then-Assistant Inspector General D. Michael Beard, the report said, were not well communicated and “set the work off course and resulted in a flawed product line.” The new approach, the auditors said, caused personnel to “think of Emergency Management Oversight Team reports as 'feel good' reports — i.e., generally positive reports that typically concluded that FEMA’s initial response to a disaster was effective.”

More recent audits of FEMA’s responses to the 2017 hurricanes have been largely critical.

The retractions of reports from 2015-2017 were set in motion in July 2017, when members of the then-Republican-controlled House Oversight and Reform Committee complained about what they saw as inaccuracies. A review finalized in March 2018 resulted in the retractions, prompting the lawmakers to ask Kelly whether the disclaimers were the result of a “people problem,” a “process problem,” or a combination.

Kelly—who became acting IG after John Roth retired in November 2017—recused himself from a broader special review led by Diana Shaw, assistant inspector general for special reviews and evaluations, and delivered this spring to Deputy Inspector General Jennifer Costello.

The changes in practices introduced in 2011 affected the areas of audit planning, supervision and independent referencing, the report explained. Unlike past practices, every disaster deployment, rather than selected ones, would be reviewed. The new approach would be a formal audit in compliance with the Government Accountability Office’s “Yellow Book” standards—though that wasn’t made clear to all staff.

Thirdly, the objective of Emergency Management Oversight Teams “shifted from promoting effectiveness and efficiency to evaluating whether FEMA’s initial disaster response was effective and efficient,” the new report said, noting that no criteria for such conclusions were created. And fourth, “several factors led to a formulaic approach to the drafting of [oversight team] reports that resulted in reports with a generally positive focus,” the report said.

The IG made five recommendations for improving internal controls to its own staff, among them removing the 13 overly “feel-good” reports and ensuring that “all future early deployment work conducted by DHS OIG, if any, is performed in accordance with applicable standards.” The IG was also asked to refer the new report to Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency “for whatever action it deems appropriate.”

The IG agreed with all recommendations.

The retractions and mea culpa seemed unprecedented to Paul C. Light, a professor of public service at New York University who has long studied IGs. “I can’t think of a single instance," he told Government Executive. “On one hand, they took action to remove the reports, but on the other hand, Congress still needs to look again at whether IGs are properly insulated from White House and agency pressure to say nice things. There isn’t an IG in Washington who doesn’t understand the potential of an after-action report to be very significant.”

Scott Amey, general counsel at the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight, said FEMA might have learned more from its mistakes if not for the overly positive reports: "Painting such a rosy picture was misguided and likely prevented a lessons-learned approach that could have improved federal response to emergencies, and saved money," he said.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story said John Kelly had retired. He is acting IG.

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Agencies Agree to Do More to Identify Contractors With Tax Debts

Charles S. Clark — Mon, 20 May 2019 12:20:32 -0400

A sizable portion of the “tax gap” of revenues that go uncollected by the Internal Revenue Service is attributable to current and would-be federal contractors.

Though the IRS is prohibited from sharing such information with agency procurement staff, contracting officers are supposed to examine the self-reporting of tax debts from the companies to which they give awards. That is not always occurring, according to a Government Accountability Office report released on Wednesday addressed to leaders of the House Oversight and Reform and the Ways and Means committees.

“Considering prospective contractors’ reported qualifying federal tax debt—in accordance with federal regulations—helps ensure federal agencies comply with federal appropriations law, supports the integrity of the contracting process, and protects the interests of the government,” GAO noted in its summary of a two-year review of five agencies’ handling of selected contracts in fiscal 2015-2016.

The Energy, Health and Human Services, and Veterans Affairs departments, along with procurement staff with the Army and Navy, awarded 1,849 agreements to contractors that reported qualifying federal tax debts (delinquent debts over $3,500), GAO found.

And though all the agencies had policies, procedures and training designed to identify firms that owe money, “these controls were not always effective in ensuring that potentially required actions were taken,” auditors found. Contracting officers are supposed to take actions including notifying the agency’s suspension and debarment official of problems, but the suspension officials “at all five agencies told GAO they did not receive any notifications of contractors reporting tax debt in this period,” the report said. “As a result, these contracts may have been awarded without potential required actions, indicating potential violations of federal regulations and, in some cases, appropriations law.”

GAO analyzed Federal Procurement Data System-NG entries from companies in the governmentwide System for Award Management (administered by the General Services Administration) and stressed the importance of the companies keeping their 54-item annual registration entries accurate and up-to-date, including whether they have unpaid taxes.

“Improving accessibility of SAM representation and certification data to allow contracting officers to more easily identify and consider reported qualifying federal tax debt before contract award can help contracting officers meet required steps,” the report said.

“Agencies cannot independently verify the accuracy of contractors’ reported qualifying federal tax debts when awarding contracts,” GAO acknowledged. “This limitation heightens the importance of the IRS’s levy process for recouping revenue from businesses that have failed to pay their taxes in a timely way but are receiving federal contract dollars.”

Auditors made 12 recommendations customized to each of the five agencies, and to both the IRS and GSA, for enhancing controls to ease consideration of contractor tax debts.

All the agencies agreed with the recommendations, with the Defense Department, HHS, Veterans Affairs and Energy are all planning a second look at the contracts GAO identified as problematic. “GSA noted that it will work with the procurement community through established governance channels to identify potential approaches for drawing contracting officers’ attention to qualifying federal tax-debt information reported in SAM,” the report noted.

The IRS, while welcoming more tools for reducing the tax gap, said it would review the specific recommendations for technical changes and weigh benefits versus added record-keeping burden.

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HHS Accused of 'Censorship' of Obamacare Website Materials

Charles S. Clark — Wed, 15 May 2019 17:00:00 -0400

The Affordable Care Act remains on the books, but its opponents, guided by Trump administration policy at the Health and Human Services Department, are “censoring” practical website information on how to use the law, according to a new study by a nonprofit monitoring group.

In the largest report yet by researchers at the Web Integrity Project at the Sunlight Foundation, screen shot look-backs and tallies document removal of at least 85 pages of fact sheets, news releases and answers to frequently asked questions that HHS under the Obama administration posted to help users—particularly minorities—navigate the available health insurance benefits. The website monitors also documented 26 cases of what they deem censorship.

“The administration has censored a wide array of content aimed at a variety of audiences, including the general public, beneficiaries and those who serve beneficiaries,” the report said. “HHS has surgically removed the term 'Affordable Care Act' from many webpages; taken down information on rights guaranteed under the ACA; eliminated statistics and data on the ACA’s impact; and removed links to the federal government’s main platform for enrolling in ACA coverage, HealthCare.gov.”

The now-missing materials “read like a highlight reel of the law’s benefits, both actual and projected,” the report said.

In perhaps their most pointed policy criticism yet, the Web Integrity Project researchers warned that “if repeated on a wide scale, censorship of ACA information on federal websites has the potential to affect public support and awareness of the law. Ultimately, censorship that affects public opinion and awareness of the ACA may jeopardize Americans’ access to coverage and health services, and down the line, the ACA’s long-term viability.”

The main report, “Erasing the Affordable Care Act,” noted that “the federal government considers public federal agency websites to be the primary way the public learns about government functions, benefits and rules. Agencies are thus expected to maintain their websites to provide the public with accurate, objective, and nonpartisan information about their programs…But when the administration that leads those agencies vocally opposes the existence of a program, agency websites can be used as a tool to undermine that program.”

The 26 instances include “excised words, removed links, altered paragraphs, and removed pages” on HHS websites—tracked using the Internet’s way-back machine—since Trump took office. “They may represent only a small sample of the censorship that has occurred,” the analysts wrote, and “have also amplified and foreshadowed other executive actions taken by the administration to undermine enrollment and specific provisions of the law.”

Those include reduced funding for the ACA’s “navigators” program that helps people enroll and “limiting access” to Healthcare.gov and enrollment.

In a Monday conference call with reporters, the researchers said the Web changes—arrayed visually using an inventory and screen shots—foreshadow more formal tools for altering policy and are greater in scope than they expected. “Unlike rulemaking, non-enforcement, and fund reallocation, minimal guidance governs the use of information on government websites,” noted project Director Rachel Bergman and Research Director Sarah John. The changes targeted information and resources for underserved populations like women, the LGBTQ community, minority groups, and people with a mental health condition, they said. “These communities are already more likely to be uninsured or have less access to ACA health services than the rest of the population.”

The changes are often executed with little public notice or explanation, the group has long said. “Given the campaign about fake news and what is reliable,” John said, “a government source is considered a most reliable source.”

When the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services “added information about the law’s individual mandate, “there was no mention of the law,” Bergman said. “Policy and censorship are working in concert.”

HHS did not respond to requests for comment by publication time. In the past its spokesmen have stressed that the materials were “not removed, but rather reorganized” in keeping with federal records practices to “keep content relevant.”

The department is “always looking at ways to provide users content in a way they can find it and many changes that we make are based on usability testing and analytics,” a past statement said.

The Web Integrity Project, which has been monitoring 30,000 webpages at two-dozen agencies, recommended as a solution “a formal process of writing memos that review whether content should be moved to archives” as well as “notice when revising or publishing new information on the HealthCare.gov website during Open Enrollment.”

More ambitiously, the researchers called on Congress to subject agencies to rules on website changes using guidance crafted by the Government Accountability Office or Office of Management and Budget (already the source of guidance on agency website protocols). “With the presumption of quality and respectability afforded to content located on a .gov page, agencies should be required to follow formal processes to change their websites and adhere to standards of Web content that ensure its quality,” the researchers said.

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FEMA Used Google Rather Than Verified Registry to Fill Hurricane Relief Contracts

Charles S. Clark — Mon, 13 May 2019 13:00:00 -0400

More indicators of shaky contracting practices at the Federal Emergency Management Agency became public this week when an inspector faulted the agency's handling of two contracts for procuring tarpaulins and plastic sheeting to aid victims of Hurricane Maria’s 2017 devastation of Puerto Rico.

In hurrying to award the supply work to the Bronze Star LLC company, procurement staff used Google rather than the verified firms on FEMA's Disaster Response Registry, said the May 7 report from the Homeland Security Department inspector general, which the agency challenged.

“FEMA did not fully determine Bronze Star’s or its supplier’s compliance with the contracts’ terms because it did not verify that Bronze Star could meet either contract’s delivery schedule,” said the report signed by acting IG John Kelly. The agency “also did not perform steps necessary to determine whether Bronze Star’s supplier could provide the necessary roof coverings within contractually specified timelines; performed inaccurate technical reviews of the Bronze Star proposals; used incorrect Federal Acquisition Regulation clauses; and did not reissue the original solicitations because FEMA personnel believed that a five-hour response window for the tarp modification was sufficient, and the plastic sheeting solicitation had already closed.”

Finally, FEMA “did not consult the Disaster Response Registry, as required, because it lacked guidance and procedures.” As a result, “FEMA potentially wasted invaluable time and resources because they overlooked the registry’s readily available information on contractors.”

Bronze Star could not meet the requirements of either contract, auditors concluded. “This delayed delivery of crucial supplies, and impeded Puerto Rican residents’ efforts to protect their homes and prevent further damage. FEMA’s errors within both solicitations may have prevented other potential qualified contractors from submitting bid proposals.”

The report comes just the House and Senate are wrestling to agree on a $14-$19 billion supplemental aid package for hurricane-damaged areas including Puerto Rico. And it also comes soon after the Government Accountability Office criticized FEMA’s contracting practices.

Contracting officer consultation with the Disaster Response Registry is required under the FAR, the IG noted. “Procurement personnel said they did not know the registry or the requirement to use the registry existed.” The agency also wasted personnel resources by issuing, canceling, and reissuing contracts to deal with the unprecedented damage. The contracting team mistakenly allowed the winning bidder to comply only loosely with Buy America requirements, and—with time constraints a factor following the huge storm—allowed Bronze Star and a company called Oil Housing Management Services too much leeway in the delivery schedule, said the report addressed to acting FEMA Administrator Peter Gaynor.

"FEMA must be meticulous in its approach when developing solicitations, conducting technical reviews, and determining the award of contracts to qualified and responsive contractors and suppliers,” the IG concluded.

The report recommended that FEMA require contractors to supply verifiable information on their capability claims in their proposals and that the agency broaden lessons learned from the Bronze Star experience to improve general compliance with the FAR.

FEMA sharply disagreed. Joel Doolin, associate administrator in FEMA’s Office of Policy and Program Analysis, wrote that requiring contractors to supply verifiable information is not practicable and is not required by the FAR. He added that broader reforms, such as requiring after-action reports, are already being addressed under the agency’s continuous improvement program.

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'You’ve Had a Rough Year,' Senator Tells Feds at SAMMIE Awards Event

Charles S. Clark — Fri, 10 May 2019 12:00:00 -0400

The ability of the federal workforce to press on in spite of “the shutdown and all that noise” was “a remarkable gift to the country,” said Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., on Thursday at a breakfast honoring finalists for the Service to America (SAMMIE) Medals staged by the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service.

“You’ve had a rough year,” said Lankford, the co-sponsor with Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., of a bill to end shutdowns and hold federal workers “harmless.” He is also the lead author of this week’s Senate resolution honoring federal workers during Public Service Recognition Week. He said senators regularly get complaints about federal workers, often followed by a comment that is complimentary to the employee who solved a problem. “But we remember the first one,” he said.

He reminded the audience of finalists for the awards to be given in October that the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing of a federal office building was committed by a “mad man who hated the government.” Lawmakers “can disagree with colleagues on policy,” Lankford said. “But the last people we’re angry at is you.”

Also there to thank federal employees was Margaret Weichert, doubling as deputy director of management at the Office of Management and Budget and as acting director of the Office of Personnel Management.

Having recently seen the hit movie “Avengers: Endgame,” Weichert said, “I feel our workforce is actually like those heroes, using technology and their brains for solving problems. Most importantly, they have the drive do it,” she said. “And not just the guys in capes but the people behind the scenes, keeping things running for safety, and who with technology and intellectual property aligned, can drive economic growth in this country.”

Despite some negativity she noted in the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, Weichert praised federal employees for a trait rare in the private sector—“why they work.” Fully 90%, she noted, say the work they do is important, and 96% say they would do extra work if needed. “They don’t do it for the fanfare and they don’t do it for the money,” she added.

She singled out members of the U.S. Digital Service, leaders of which are her office neighbors, for being finalists for creating software that simplifies and assembles the health care data of Medicare patients in much faster time.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie quoted Alexander Hamilton’s adage that “much of good government is good administration. That’s what these awards are all about,” he said. Many people don’t know that the VA, which has won 20 public service awards in 18 years, “is on the cutting edge of medical research,” he added. Citing a finalist at the VA’s Boston Healthcare System for her neuropathology work on the effects of concussions on veterans and athletes, Wilkie said, “I was happy to tell my counterpart in Canada that I have a closer relationship with the National Hockey League than he does.”

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross drew laughs when he joked that “there are three Commerce finalists, but I’m not allowed to lobby for them.” But he grew serious in both thanking and challenging federal workers, whom he praised for their importance to the efficient functioning of society. “Without good government, society suffers morally, financially, emotionally, intellectually and psychologically,” Ross said. But public servants “must perform at the highest level, embrace the digital revolution, and stay attuned to the demands of the electorate,” he said. That includes “the ability to learn new skills, say ahead of innovation and stay relevant.”

Ross said his entire department was “grief stricken” at the recent death, following the April 21 terrorist attack in Sri Lanka, of Chelsea Decaminada, an international program specialist at Commerce, who died Monday of her injuries. “It’s a stark reminder of the sacrifices that public servants make every day,” he said.

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What Federal Employees Might Want to Know Before Blowing the Whistle to Congress

Charles S. Clark — Thu, 09 May 2019 13:00:00 -0400

Agency employees who spot wrongdoing confront a bewildering array of options on where to turn should they choose to brave the role of whistleblower.

The Government Accountability Office on Tuesday released a primer on what outlets Congress has created to receive complaints. The guide lays out the four phases of the process: intake (tracking reports and assuring secure communications), prioritization (reviewing rankings regularly and keeping whistleblowers informed); referrals for discipline (negotiating on release of personal information); and follow-up (evaluating lessons learned and setting whistleblower expectations).

Some whistleblowers have run into a buzzsaw pitting their agency managers who need to protect classified information against lawmakers who practice oversight of agencies to uncover waste, fraud and abuse.

“While data are not available on the number of whistleblower disclosures across Congress, a staff member at one congressional office said the office can receive hundreds of whistleblower disclosures each year,” GAO wrote. “Oversight committee staff told us that the volume of whistleblowers their offices receive tends to increase when congressional oversight issues are prominent in the news media. They said that congressional oversight actions—such as letters to agency officials—can signal congressional interest to agency employees and influence whistleblower disclosures to Congress.”

The primer, required in a report that accompanied the fiscal 2019 legislative appropriations bill, was addressed to Reps. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, chairman of the subcommittee overseeing legislative branch spending, and ranking member Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Wash. GAO’s research from July 2018 to May 2019 included “a Web-scraping program to identify congressional websites with terms related to whistleblowing (e.g., ‘whistleblower,’ ‘whistle blow,’ ‘blow the whistle,’ ‘whistleblower hotline,’ and ‘whistleblower tipline’).”

Interviews about training on handling whistleblowers included staff on the House Rules Committee, the House Administration Committee, the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, the House Committee on Ethics and Senate Select Committee on Ethics, and the House and Senate Counsel. Also consulted were the Congressional Research Service, the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight and the nonprofit Government Accountability Project, the report said.

GAO also interviewed staff from the office of a member of the House Whistleblower Protection Caucus, the Office of Special Counsel, and the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency.

The potential pool of whistleblowers was defined as civilian federal employees (current employees, former employees, and applicants for federal employment), contractors, subcontractors and grantees. (Not included are service members or employees who are part of the intelligence community “as their options for disclosing, available protections, and recourse options differ,” GAO noted.)

Charts lay out the kinds of practices that are disclosable to Congress at different types of agencies.

Congressional staff are trained to work with whistleblowers “making any type of protected disclosure, whether or not they have made this disclosure elsewhere or if any related actions, including reprisals, have occurred,” the report said. Staff said direct experience is important for building skills to effectively work with whistleblowers, stressing that the best way to gauge a whistleblower’s reliability is through contact in person or by phone.

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Contractors Advise Lawmakers on How to Reduce Pain During the Next Shutdown

Charles S. Clark — Tue, 07 May 2019 10:23:07 -0400

The familiar miseries of last winter’s 35-day partial government shutdown were catalogued from the point of view of contractors on Monday as Democrats on the House Oversight and Reform Committee convened a field hearing to send a message to fellow lawmakers.

Contractors ranging from a Fortune 500 firm to unionized custodians plus the owner of a private coffee shop catering to federal workers assembled at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, to detail both the impact and their proposed solutions to the threat of shutdowns—three of which have occurred during the current Congress.

Though no one wants another shutdown, “We do not know what the future holds,” said subcommittee Chairman Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., noting that the shutdown forced 1.5 million contractors to deal with a drop of 75 percent in contract obligations because of $9 billion that would have been spent by agencies on goods and services being frozen. “Congress must take action,” Connolly said, citing his support from 48 House members to include a provision in the next continuing resolution to pay contractors back pay after a shutdown. “The disparity is wrong, especially since many contractors work embedded with agency people side by side doing the same work,” and because a shutdown is “something they did nothing to cause,” he said.

“We have an opportunity to be fairly comprehensive and systematic in what has to be addressed,” Connolly added. “With thousands of contracts, we don’t have a standard process.”

The solutions Connolly and four other Democrats elicited included the familiar demand for the same guaranteed back pay (H.R. 824) that federal employees in most cases enjoy, making agency contracting officers and supervisors essential employees during shutdowns, requiring automatic payment of invoices, raising federal spending caps, tax changes to allow employees to donate paid leave and clarifying the process for applying for unemployment insurance with states.

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., pressed her long-standing bill (H.R. 339) to include low-wage contractors such as custodians, food service workers and security guards in the back-pay provision, to make “all contractors as whole as possible,” she said. Norton acknowledged, however, that passage “in this Congress” is not likely.

The difference between federal employees and contractors during shutdowns is that “contractors are required to continue on the contract—that’s what a contract is,” said David Berteau, president and CEO of the Professional Services Council. Not being able to reach an agency contracting or program officer “leads to confusion, conflicting guidance and missed opportunities,” he said. There is lost productivity and there are financial challenges as companies exhaust their lines of credit, which forces executives into a long-term strategic dilemma of whether or not to lay people off. Having contractors work for no pay “also impacts recruitment,” Berteau said. “Our members have had recruits cancel interviews during the shutdown—why bother?”

Roger Krone, chairman and CEO of the Fortune 500 company Leidos, said the last shutdown cost his firm $14 million or $400,000 per day, because delays caused 22 programs to come to a halt. About 893 colleagues “had no work to perform,” he said, detailing how many were “redeployed” to 1,200 open positions on contracts that were funded, or allowed to use advance paid time-off. “And we offered hardship assistance through a relief foundation we have set up to assist employees in time of crisis,” which was used by 50 employees, he said. “That’s a lot of vacations cancelled, birthday parties missed, and use of holidays to get one more paid day,” Krone said. Among the solutions, he added, should be a provision not to hold contractors or agency employees liable for “poor performance ratings” during a shutdown.

That was echoed by Michael Niggel, CEO of Advanced Concepts and Technologies International, who reported $500,000 in lost sales during the recent shutdown, delayed cash flow of $1 million and two requests for equitable adjustments stuck in legal limbo. “The good news,” he said, is that “our No. 1 goal is employee satisfaction, so we made a strategic decision” to bring all the idled employees to headquarters for “training and team building, which built employees' satisfaction and corporate loyalty.”

Other contractors warned that security clearances are jeopardized by shutdowns. “The No. 1 security clearance problem is financial hardship,” said Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va. But security clearance issues are one reason contractors are limited in their flexibility in moving employees from idled contracts to fully funded ones—especially if the agency employee needed to approve the move is furloughed, witnesses noted.

Members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers lost 8 percent of their annual income, and did not get paid until March after the shutdown ended Jan. 25, said Edward Grabowski, president of the union’s District 166 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. “Government may shut down, but life’s challenges go on,” he said, citing the need to pay health insurance co-pays, deductibles and prescription drug fees. Applying for unemployment insurance, he said, became very confusing.

Alba Aleman, CEO of Citizant Inc., said her firm ended up with extended debt of $4 million, but offered to work for free at the Internal Revenue Service as it struggled to “validate the integrity” of new systems to implement the new tax law with massive numbers of staff on furlough. Shutdowns have “become weapons of negotiations,” she said. “Please put an end to this abuse of power and trust.”

Jaime Contreras, vice president of 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, detailed how his low-wage members “already struggling to make ends meet” dealt with hardships such as care for a handicapped child and a dangerous case of asthma. One member getting no paycheck had her car repossessed, he said, and then couldn’t return to work.

Expressing puzzlement at being included as a witness was Wesley Ford, president of the TKI Coffee Inc.‘s coffee café one block from the White House. “90% of our customers are federal employees or tourists,” he said, citing his proximity to the Office of Personnel Management and the State and Interior departments.

Ford’s employees, who make $16 an hour, include three ex-offenders, but the shutdown forced him to lay off 40 percent of his staff. “There’s tremendous downward pressure because of the instability of government,” Ford said, calling the past 18 months “the most challenging business environment" he ever encountered.

Ford mused about whether the government during a shutdown should help him pay his $6,800 monthly rent. “I don’t want customers to break the habit of coming” to his shop, he told the lawmakers. “Will you commit to finding a middle ground so the government won’t close again in September?”

Editor's note: A previous version of this story misstated the cost of the shutdown to Leidos. It was $14 million, or $400,000 per day.

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DATA Act Collection Effort Worked Better for Grants Than Contracts

Charles S. Clark — Mon, 06 May 2019 10:00:00 -0400

Continuing efforts by the Office of Management and Budget to streamline mandatory agency data collection show progress, but still fall short on evidence that they will ease reporting burdens on grantees and contractors.

So said the Government Accountability Office in its latest review of White House compliance with agency data standardization requirements under the 2014 Digital Accountability and Transparency Act.

OMB’s hopes for creating a centralized agency spending data portal that simplifies data submission appear more promising for grants than for contracts, the report found.

To fulfill the law’s requirement to produce recommendations for easing the reporting regime, OMB conducted a “Section 5 pilot” with the Health and Human Services Department for data on grants and with the General Services Administration for data on contracts.

At HHS, GAO auditors “examined six approaches for reducing grantee reporting burden and found positive results related to reductions in reporting time as well as reduced duplication,” said the report released on April 30. “HHS incorporated ongoing stakeholder input during the pilot, and its findings contributed to government-wide initiatives related to federal reporting and reducing grantee-reporting burden.”

At GSA, however, the pilot “did not collect sufficient evidence to determine whether centralizing procurement reporting through a single Web-based portal would reduce contractor reporting burden—a key objective of the pilot,” GAO determined. As a test, this portion of the pilot collected weekly Davis-Bacon local prevailing wage data from 180 contractors, “potentially resulting in thousands of submissions over a year,” the report said. “However, in the end, the pilot did not result in any Davis-Bacon data due to lack of contractor participation and the absence of iterative and ongoing stakeholder engagement.”

A later expansion of the test to rope in collection of data on potentially dangerous hydrofluorocarbons in the atmosphere received only 11 submissions. The air quality “reporting was not suited for assessing changes in reporting burden because it was a new requirement and thus no comparative data existed,” GAO said. “OMB plans to expand its use of the portal for additional procurement reporting requirements but still does not have information from stakeholders that could help inform the expansion.”

Overall, GAO determined, OMB met statutory requirements, but “evidence from the procurement portion of the pilot did not support OMB’s government-wide recommendations for reducing reporting burden,” as laid out to Congress in August 2017 as a way to reduce duplication and simplify administration of data collection.

Talks with OMB’s Office of Federal Procurement Policy indicated its managers hope to build on plans announced in August 2018 to use to the pilot to obtain feedback before expanding the use a central portal for reporting under the Federal Acquisition Regulation. But “the pilot did not collect any such feedback to inform its determination to expand the Central Reporting Portal in the future,” the report said.

GAO recommended that the director of OMB (Russell Vought is currently acting in the job while Mick Mulvaney serves President Trump as chief of staff) better ensure that the information on procurement is collected, in part by conducting an “iterative and ongoing” process with contractors and other stakeholders.

OMB neither agreed nor disagreed.

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CIA Veteran Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy to Help China

Charles S. Clark — Fri, 03 May 2019 11:15:33 -0400

A former CIA case officer with 13 years at the agency pleaded guilty this week to conspiracy to commit espionage, admitting that he delivered, from his base in Hong Kong, internal intelligence documents to Chinese agents in exchange for long-term cash.

Jerry Chun Shing Lee, 54, the Justice Department announced on Wednesday, admitted in U.S. District Court in Eastern Virginia that he had communicated, delivered and transmitted “national defense information to the People’s Republic of China.”

Lee, who worked at CIA from 1994-2007, had met, beginning in April 2010, two Chinese intelligence officers who offered to pay him for defense information acquired on his old job and were prepared to give him $100,000 and to take care of him “for life.” From May 2010 into 2011, the Chinese agents sent him “taskings,” or requests for secret defense information. Lee received a first installment of some $17,468 placed directly into his personal bank account in Hong Kong. By December 2013, he had received hundreds of thousands more, Justice said.

Lee was arrested by the FBI in Virginia in January 2018.

“This is the third case in less than a year in which a former U.S. intelligence officer has pled or been found guilty of conspiring with Chinese intelligence services to pass them national defense information,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers said. “Every one of these cases is a tragic betrayal of country and colleagues.”

U.S. Attorney G. Zachary Terwilliger added, “Instead of embracing that responsibility and honoring his commitment to not disclose national defense information, Lee sold out his country, conspired to become a spy for a foreign government, and then repeatedly lied to investigators about his conduct. This prosecution should serve as a warning to others who would compromise our nation’s secrets and betray our country’s trust.”

To commit his espionage, the announcement said, Lee created a document on his laptop that contained locations on which the CIA would assign officers “with certain identified experience, as well as the particular location and timeframe of a sensitive CIA operation.” The information–classified at the secret level—was then transferred to a thumb drive for delivery.

The FBI conducted its first court-ordered search of Lee’s hotel room in Honolulu, where agents found the thumb drive containing digital clues to his hidden notes and information such as the locations of cover facilities and CIA employee phone numbers.

In interviews with Lee by the CIA and FBI beginning in 2012, it was later shown, he failed to disclose the Chinese taskings. Then in May 2013, he acknowledged them but claimed he had kept no written records. He falsely denied, the announcement said, that he had created the incriminating document and transferred it to a thumb drive.

The interviewers also confronted Lee with the sensitive document discovered on the thumb drive. Lee falsely denied that he possessed it and claimed not to know who created it. He continued to deny wrongdoing when shown a photocopy of the front covers of his day planner and address book in his own handwriting. He finally admitted to accepting the taskings from the Chinese, but as late as January 2018 was still denying that he kept any work-related notes at home.

Having pleaded guilty this week, he will be sentenced on Aug. 23, and faces a maximum penalty of life in prison.

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Pentagon Delivers Installment on Plan to Streamline Business Operations

Charles S. Clark — Tue, 30 Apr 2019 10:38:31 -0400

Operating without a chief management officer, the Defense Department on April 26 released its “Initial Plan” for creating new efficiencies and boosting performance in its hiring, contracting and supply chain operations as required under the fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act.

Though actually due on Feb. 1, the preliminary plan containing goals and timetables is a run-up to the full plan—with mandated cost estimates—that is due on Jan. 1, 2020. The unsigned document was prepared by the Office of the Chief Management Officer, currently headed on an acting basis by Deputy Chief Management Officer Lisa Hershman, who took over after John Gibson’s abrupt departure last November.

“Reforming our business processes to include simplifying hiring; improving employee performance management and engagement; and creating an agile workforce, will enable the department to allocate resources to increase effectiveness and improve military readiness,” said the progress report on the strategic vision for the future of the department’s 700,000 civilian federal employees. “Business reform goes beyond efficiencies and reductions; it includes improving business processes, systems or policies, to improve innovation or processes for weapon system acquisition; and better alignment of resources to support the National Defense Strategy.”

The chief management office has created “reform teams” focused on the NDAA-specified areas of civilian resources management, logistics management, services contracting and real estate management. Under the timetables charted in the report, the Pentagon’s shared services offices—the so-called “Fourth Estate”—are expected to be reduced by some 25 percent as savings are identified and solutions put in place in the areas of hiring, regulation and human resources delivery.

The expected financial savings will be monitored by a “validation process supported by the Undersecretary of Defense (comptroller) and the Office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation. The comptroller job is held by David Norquist, who is currently acting as deputy secretary to acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan.

The plan sets out to reduce average hiring time from 100 days to 85, and reduce the delays in recruitment that cause managers to substitute “more expensive military or contractor personnel in place of less costly federal employees.” The objectives—to be measured by performance metrics—are to improve customer satisfaction and improve the match of “enterprise needs to employee competencies in support of mission readiness.”

So far, the hiring reforms have been researched using existing internal resources, the report said, but fiscal 2019-2020 plans may require as much as $500,000 for studies, as well as new legislation.

To improve buying by the world’s largest purchasing entity, the plan would “capture enterprise data and develop business intelligence/analytics that will drive consolidation decisions across services and agencies” to reduce overhead. That will require collaboration between the Defense Logistics Agency and the military services while benchmarking prices against industry. A sample goal: “use economies of scale to save the services upwards of 10% in [the] next two years.”

If cost savings fall short, or cause disruption, the Pentagon will alert Congress by Oct. 1, 2019, the report said.

In concert with the Office of Management and Budget’s ongoing pursuit of new opportunities for interagency sharing of services through “category management,” the chief management office’s team for supply chain and logistics reform “is developing a cross-agency contract and category management procurement methodology aimed at driving efficiencies and savings throughout the DoD,” the report said. “These efforts grew out of the successful Services Requirements Review Board reviews conducted by the Office of the Secretary of Defense and [the Defense Finance and Accounting Services] that resulted in millions of dollars in programmed savings.”

Reforms of contracting and use of category management “will also help the department achieve enterprise business operations consistent with guidance for budget review as it moves from a budget-spend centric acquisition process to a strategic-spend centric acquisition process,” the report added. A key example: application of category management to improve management of the Pentagon’s massive inventory of real property, through “lease process standardization, footprint consolidation, space utilization [and] contract optimization.”

Having kicked off in August 2018, the category management initiative will review the annual $200 billion spend for goods and services, at a pace of “sprints” of $20 billion per quarter for 33 months.

Alan Chvotkin, executive vice president and counsel of the 400-company contractor group the Professional Services Council, characterized the plan as a good start. “Hiring has been a long-standing challenge, and the department has any number of special authorities to hire contracting folks, acquisition folks and cybersecurity folks,” he told Government Executive. “So it’s right to take a look holistically across the department’s needs and try to develop a plan for how to address the workforce needs.”

The new document is a reflection of the early phases, he said, and addresses what is being done at the Office of the Chief Management Officer. “But a lot comes under the responsibility of the military services departments, the defense agencies, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. So they have some real work ahead.”

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Acting Defense Chief Cleared of Accusations of Ethics Abuse

Charles S. Clark — Fri, 26 Apr 2019 12:00:00 -0400

Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan got a boost in his bid to get the permanent Cabinet job on Thursday when the Pentagon’s inspector general decisively cleared him on charges that he had used his federal office to go to bat for his former employer, the major contractor Boeing Co.

A 44-page report from the watchdog team led by acting IG Glenn Fine concluded that “the allegations were not substantiated, and that Mr. Shanahan fully complied with his ethics agreements and ethical obligations regarding Boeing and its competitors.”

The probe had been demanded by Senate Democrats, including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, as well as the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Shanahan had denied any improprieties at a March 14 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, and expressed support for a full probe.

Charges included the notions that Shanahan inappropriately discussed a classified matter, steered a Defense official to visiting a Boeing flight simulation facility, and met inappropriately with inventor and space travel entrepreneur Elon Musk, a Boeing competitor.

In a sample allegation, Shanahan—who worked at Boeing for 31 years—tried to force the commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Robert Neller, to buy Boeing F/A-18s Super Hornets, and threatened to cut other Air Force programs unless the Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen. David Goldfein, supported buying Boeing F-15Xs Eagle fighters, the IG noted.

But the IG “found no evidence that Mr. Shanahan pressured Gen. Neller or the Marine Corps to buy Boeing F/A-18s. We likewise found no evidence that Mr. Shanahan threatened to cut Air Force programs unless Gen. Goldfein supported purchasing Boeing F-15Xs. We concluded that Secretary [Jim] Mattis made the fighter mix decision, and that Navy, Air Force, and [Office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation] officials made the decisions on which specific types and numbers of aircraft to purchase,” the report said.

Nor did Shanahan make comments, as press reports suggested, promoting Boeing and maligning competitors such as Lockheed Martin Corp. or its CEO, the report said. “While Mr. Shanahan did routinely refer to his prior industry experience in meetings, witnesses interpreted it, and told us, that he was doing it to describe his experience and to improve government management of DoD programs, rather than to promote Boeing or its products,” the IG found. “Shanahan shared his aircraft industry experience as an industrial engineer and supply chain manager to highlight best practices, decrease costs, and increase performance for the DoD’s benefit, not to promote Boeing or any specific aircraft.”

The comments addressing Lockheed Martin, the investigation found, “were directed at holding contractors accountable and saving the government money, consistent with his duties as deputy secretary of Defense.”

The comment from one witness about the troubled F-35 aircraft, in which Shanahan reportedly called the plane “f—ed up,” were actually about the massive and controversial program, the report said. “We determined that Mr. Shanahan’s comments about the F-35 program were substantive, related to the program’s performance, and were consistent with comments about the F-35 program made by other senior government officials,” the IG said. “We determined that Mr. Shanahan only participated in broad policy discussions and not in specific discussions about quantities and types of aircraft to purchase.”

Former Defense Secretary Mattis was interviewed for the report, and he described Shanahan’s role in F-35 policy as:

He was trying to get the program to a point that we can have confidence in the numbers we said we were going to buy. If you say you’re going to buy them and the cost is supposed to go down and each block comes off, and the plant gets more efficient, the supply chain is more efficient is not happening that we say that the cost per flight hour is going to be lower and the cost per flight hour is not going lower then you’ve got a problem. The program is unsustainable.

As for a report that Shanahan’s critique of the F-35 program “angered” lawmakers at a 2018 retreat at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia, the acting secretary told investigators he had never even visited the Greenbrier.

The report reprinted Shanahan’s ethics agreement and detailed letter to Defense Department alternate designated ethics official Ruth Vetter about his divestment of defense-industry-related financial assets. The IG noted that other officials were aware of the situations in which Shanahan was working under an ethics disqualification.

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Watchdog: OMB and GSA Need a Better Plan For Shared Payroll Services

Charles S. Clark — Thu, 11 Apr 2019 13:53:37 -0400

A White House-initiated plan to bring more of a shared services approach to payroll faces risks because agencies haven’t mapped out an implementation plan or communicated potential cost savings to stakeholders, the Government Accountability Office found.

The Office of Management and Budget, as part of its ongoing embrace of shared services as a cross-agency policy goal, has been teaming with the General Services Administration on, among other projects, a new payroll software called NewPay, which would modernize agency technology and economize services to multiple agencies.

In September 2018, “GSA awarded a 10-year, $2.5 billion NewPay agreement to two commercial teams to provide payroll, and work schedule and leave management services using Software-as-a -Service,” GAO noted. That cloud-based computing model “delivers one or more applications and all the resources—operating system, programming tools, and underlying infrastructure to run them—for use on demand.”

The problem, GAO auditors said in the report dated March 7 but released on April 8, is that OMB and GSA “have not documented key decision-making roles and responsibilities related to the implementation of NewPay. Until they develop a monitoring plan which includes performance goals and milestones, transparent reporting tools, and a process for capturing lessons learned, and documenting key roles, they risk implementation challenges that could cause gaps in service or costly delays.”

In addition, there is no process for giving customer agencies information on provider services, pricing and performance, which would ease their transition to the new system, GAO added. And the potential costs savings are not being sufficiently tracked, GAO warned, in a way that would document progress toward OMB’s goal of saving $2 billion over 10 years.

The shared services effort comes at a time when OMB is moving to relieve the Office of Personnel Management of many traditional duties and move them to GSA or the White House.

GAO noted that efficiencies from greater agency sharing of services have been pursued for decades under multiple administrations, including efforts by OPM that began in 2001. The Trump team’s “proposed marketplace model has the potential to make the marketplace more effective by reducing demand uncertainty among shared services providers and providing more choices for customers,” auditors wrote after reviewing data from June 2017 to March 2019. GAO credited the administration with plans to create Service Management Offices and Task Order Review Boards to work with agencies to adopt standards for common management activities” for sharing payroll services, but noted that OMB and GSA’s plans are still being finalized.

GAO made four recommendations for enhancing chances for producing actual cost savings. They include having OMB’s shared services policy officer work with GSA to finalize a detailed monitoring plan for implementing NewPay, with performance measures and a timeline. Officials should also clarify the roles and responsibilities of agency players in cooperating to interpret payroll rule and regulations. Provider information on available services and prices should be updated and circulated, GAO said, and future cost savings should be better tracked to reassure congressional overseers that the effort is paying off.

OMB read the recommendations but neither accepted nor rejected them, GAO noted, saying only that it may update its shared services policy in the future.

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IRS and Private Partners Tout Success in Combating Identity Theft

Charles S. Clark — Wed, 10 Apr 2019 15:00:00 -0400

The Internal Revenue Service, which has struggled for years to get a handle on the criminal theft of taxpayer identity information, on Monday released encouraging numbers on results of its Security Summit partnership with states and industry.

“At a time when many in the private sector continue to struggle with these issues, the tax community has made major progress working together to stop identity theft and refund fraud,” Internal Revenue Commissioner Chuck Rettig said. “In 2018, our partnership protected more taxpayers and more tax dollars from tax-related identity theft.”

The partnership with state tax agencies and private-sector cyber-specialists, launched in 2015, created a Theft Tax Refund Fraud Information Sharing and Analysis Center that now consists of 65 groups, the IRS noted. It has been tackling a problem that threatens individuals, companies and tax preparers, at a time when the agency’s programs to thwart identity theft have appeared on the high-risk list of the Government Accountability Office.

The new results include that from 2015-2018:

The number of taxpayers reporting they were identity theft victims fell 71 percent;
The number of confirmed identity theft returns stopped by the IRS declined by 54 percent (though there was a slight uptick in confirmed faulty returns last year);
The IRS protected a combined $24 billion in fraudulent refunds by stopping the confirmed identity theft returns; and,
Financial industry partners recovered an additional $1.4 billion in fraudulent refunds.

The progress was linked to specific procedural and software adjustments in combating tax refund fraud based on identity theft.

In 2016, Security Summit participants shared dozens of elements from tax returns that could be indicators of fraud, among them the length of time to prepare a tax return, the agency explained. The IRS then “enhanced and expanded its fraud filters and added protections to business as well as individual tax returns,” it said. “States requested more information such as driver’s license numbers,” and software providers strengthened password requirements to protect accounts and added multi-factor identity authentication. “Debit card companies tightened their practices, and more financial institutions helped recover fraudulent refunds.”

Those tools are designed to thwart ever-changing tactics used by thieves, which range from using stolen Employer Identification Numbers to create fraudulent W-2 Forms to impersonating business executives to convince payroll or finance employees to disclose employee information for making fraudulent wire transfers.

The tax agency credited industry for some of the progress. “In 2018, financial institutions recovered 84,000 federal refunds totaling $112 million for the IRS,” the agency stated. “Institutions recovered 144,000 refunds worth $204 million in 2017, 124,000 refunds worth $281 million in 2016 and 249,000 refunds totaling $852 million in 2015.”

Despite these major successes, more work remains, Rettig said. The number of businesses reporting they are victims of tax-related identity theft, the announcement noted, increased by 10 percent for 2018, with 2,450 reports, compared against 2,233 reports in 2017.

“Identity thieves are often members of sophisticated criminal syndicates, based here and abroad,” Rettig added. “They have the resources, the technology and the skills to carry on this fight. The IRS and the summit partners must continue to work together to protect taxpayers as cyberthieves continue to evolve and adjust their tactics.”

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Watchdog Questions NSA’s $636 Million in Award Fee Incentive Contracts

Charles S. Clark — Wed, 10 Apr 2019 11:09:33 -0400

The highly secretive National Security Agency may have relied too heavily on the contractor incentives provided in cost-plus award fee contracts, according to a new inspector general report calling into question some $630 million in awards.

A review of 54 contracts awarded using that method in fiscal years 2016 and 2017 showed that more than half “did not have a valid Determination and Finding justifying use of this contract method,” the NSA inspector general said in an April 3 report. Fifty-one of the 54 “lacked the required cost-benefit analysis of the expected benefits versus the additional administrative costs of monitoring and evaluating the contractor’s performance.”

The review was launched “because of the magnitude of the agency award fee contract pools and the significant potential financial risk to the agency and administrative burden associated with effectively managing award fee contracts,” the IG said.

So-called award fee contracts have long been permitted under the Federal Acquisition Regulation for work of a nature that makes it neither feasible nor effective to devise predetermined objective targets applicable to cost, schedule and technical performance, the report noted. Such awards are also appropriate if the likelihood of a company meeting the agency’s acquisition objectives will be enhanced by using a contract that “effectively motivates the contractor toward exceptional performance and provides the government with the flexibility to evaluate both actual performance and the condition under which it was achieved.”

That assumes that any additional administrative costs and risks for monitoring that performance are justified in a documented cost-benefit analysis.

The award fee arrangement does not include predetermined targets or automatic fee adjustment formulas; instead, the award fee becomes a subjective decision made unilaterally by the government.

NSA, a component of the Defense Department, in recent years has been increasing its obligations for award fee contracts, which rose by 139 percent from fiscal 2010 to fiscal 2017, the report noted. This is all at a time when the Defense Department is moving away from award fee contracts toward “objective incentive arrangements,” with the Pentagon’s reliance on award fee arrangements falling from $34 billion to $10 billion from fiscal 2010 to fiscal 2015.

The IG faulted NSA for failing to “evaluate the effectiveness of award fees. The agency does not comprehensively collect and analyze relevant data pertaining to award and incentive fees paid. Therefore, it cannot determine” whether they have led to improved contractor performance or achieved desired program outcomes.

Because the auditors found “insufficient evidence to support the determination” that the use of award fee contracts was appropriate, the auditors said, “we question $636 million in award fees earned over multiple years associated with 54 contracts.”

One possible reason NSA’s handling of the contracts may not have served the government’s interest, the report suggested, is a “supposition expressed to the OIG by some participants in the contracting process that award fee administrative procedures discourage individuals from rating contractor performance as less than optimal. For example, one individual stated that they were not permitted to assign a 70 percent award fee earned because the contractor had not been given formal notice.”

The IG made three recommendations to assist NSA and its Central Security Service in “addressing the record-keeping deficiencies and data analysis requirements identified in this audit.”

Following publication of the IG report, an NSA spokesman told Government Executive, "When preparing the 54 contracts reviewed by the OIG, NSA contracting officers used sound business decisions and their professional judgment to determine the appropriate contract type in accordance with federal regulations. In response to the OIG's findings, NSA agreed to the recommendations and is making changes to improve the documentation associated with providing the rationale for the use of award fee contracts and percentages. The award fees earned were properly calculated in accordance with the award fee plans under each individual contract."

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Census Officials Say They’re Ready, With or Without Citizenship Question

Charles S. Clark — Tue, 02 Apr 2019 12:00:00 -0400

Regardless of whether the Supreme Court this spring allows the Trump administration to add its controversial citizenship question, planners of the 2020 decennial count expect to keep to their schedule, Census Bureau officials said on Monday.

“July 1 is the printing date, and the court is aware of our need to have a response by that date,” Albert Fontenot Jr., associate director for decennial census programs, told reporters covering the bureau’s “one-year-out kickoff event” at the National Press Club.

“Final preparations are made for either decision—run Form A or run Form B. It won’t delay our plan at all,” Fontenot said. The electronic option available to census respondents, he added, will be adjusted for including or omitting the question critics fear will depress the response rate among noncitizens.

A test run is already underway with questionnaires being sent to 480,000 people, half with and half without the citizenship question. “If we see a strong variation, we will use that to plan our staffing requirements,” Fontenot said.

Top bureau officials spoke after a spirited rollout of information about the year of activity leading up to Census Day 2020. Using the slogan “Shape Your Future: Start Here,” the coming count will be the first to allow respondents a choice of participating online, by phone or on paper.

The bureau is “on mission, on schedule, on budget, on message, and on course to complete the biggest and best census ever,” said Steven Dillingham, the bureau’s 25th director. He pointed to better technology, more language assistance and more customer assistance phone centers for targeting hard-to-reach populations, along with new technology to safeguard data.

The results of the census will help decide how $675 billion in annual federal dollars is spent on schools, social services, infrastructure, public safety and business competitiveness, he said.

Set to testify to Congress on Tuesday, officials were firm under questioning that their current budget is sufficient. “We have strong bipartisan support at all levels of government,” Dillingham said.

The latest testing milestone—a 50-state data prototype exercise based in Providence, R.I., last August—showed that “all of our systems deployed effectively, in real-world conditions,” Fontenot said. The productivity rate of the most-desired self-responses (without follow-up prodding) was 52.3 percent, up 3 percent over the 2010 exercise “without a motivational advertising campaign,” he added. “2020 will have the strongest advertising campaign in census history,” heavily reliant on social media.

“Internet responses are quicker and easier for us, but we recognize that not everyone has access to the Internet,” Fontenot said. Special efforts are being made to target people living in university dorms, prisons, and out on the street, as well as “highly mobile” people living in “RVs, hotels, racetracks, circuses and carnivals,” he said.

The bureau, as of Monday, has 37 of 39 hiring offices ready for taking on and training what will be 500,000 temporary employees. Last fall, the bureau received 200,000 applications for 50,000 jobs, said Timothy Olson, director of field operations—more than two months ahead of schedule.

For the first time, the bureau is recruiting the temporary census workers online, Olson said. He is “cautiously optimistic” that, with help from 1,500 partner groups and 300,000 organizations, they can attract 2.3 million applicants by this fall for enumerators, some of whom will be bilingual. Hourly wages will be $13.50 to $30, depending on region, with a mileage reimbursement.

The bureau has opened six regional centers, staffed separately with 600 employees, in the same cities as their ongoing regional offices. Mailout of questionnaire kits is being done by the Census center in Jeffersonville, Ind., also the location of the bureau’s eastern return processing center, with the western processing center located in Phoenix.

Also speaking at the rollout event were representatives from key census partner organizations. Bill Anoatubby, governor of the Chickasaw Nation, noted that American Indians are the most undercounted population, with an undercount of 4.9 percent estimated, due to “logistical obstacles such as no street names” in hard-to-reach census tracts, he said. He expects social media to improve things, and Census official Olson said consultation with tribes for the 2020 round began two years early.

Loida Garcia-Febo, president of the American Library Association, said the 6,000 libraries that host sites are crucial to people who want to respond online but lack an Internet connection. “Ninety-nine percent of the hard-to-count people are located within five miles of a public library,” she said.

Another undercounted group is children, noted Lisa Hamilton, president and CEO of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. “The 2010 Census missed 2 million children under five, particularly children of color,” she said. “We need a child-centered individual on every complete count committee.”

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FEMA Defends Actions Following Data Release Affecting 2.3 Million Disaster Victims

Charles S. Clark — Tue, 26 Mar 2019 12:00:00 -0400

The Federal Emergency Management Agency on Friday said it had taken “aggressive” corrective measures after mistakenly releasing detailed personal data of some 2.3 million disaster victims to a contractor.

A "management alert" dated March 15 from the Homeland Security Department’s acting Inspector General John Kelly hit news outlets on Friday showing that FEMA in 2017 “did not ensure it shared with the contractor only the data elements the contractor requires to perform its official duties administering” the program that helps people displaced by disasters find shelter in hotels.

Among the data released inappropriately, the IG found, were applicants' addresses, financial institution names, electronic funds transfer numbers and bank transit numbers.

The data release violated the 1974 Privacy Act and FEMA's own internal guidelines, putting at risk victims of hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria and the California wildfires who applied for federal aid, the alert noted.

The name of the contractor was redacted from the alert, which was prompted by a routine audit of FEMA’s Transitional Sheltering Assistance program. “A privacy incident occurred because FEMA did not ensure it shared with the contractor only the data elements the contractor requires,” according to the alert sent to acting FEMA Administrator Peter Gaynor. “FEMA provided and continues to provide [the contractor] with more than 20 unnecessary data fields for survivors participating in the TSA program,” thus exposing their personally identifying information, some of it classified as “sensitive.”

According to FEMA’s August 2015 performance work statement for the program, the agency should give the contractor only the applicants’ full name, birth date, last four digits of their Social Security number, the disaster number, program authorization, number of occupants in the household, eligibility dates, and other agency registration numbers.

On Friday night, FEMA Press Secretary Lizzie Litzow released a statement saying that the agency had identified the data breach “in coordination” with the IG. “Since discovery of this issue, FEMA has taken aggressive measures to correct this error. FEMA is no longer sharing unnecessary data with the contractor and has conducted a detailed review of the contractor’s information system,” she said:

“To date, FEMA has found no indicators to suggest survivor data has been compromised. FEMA has also worked with the contractor to remove the unnecessary data from the system and updated its contract to ensure compliance with [DHS] cybersecurity and information-sharing standards. As an added measure, FEMA instructed contracted staff to complete additional DHS privacy training.”

The IG faulted FEMA for insufficiently tracking which data were released, and for recording only the fact that the data were delivered. “Prior iterations of the TSA program required additional information such as bank names and account numbers; however, the current TSA program does not require the additional personal information,” the alert said. FEMA headquarters speculated that they might be able to remove the unauthorized data from the script used to transfer it, but cautioned that it would require time-consuming coordination with field offices.

The contractor, the IG noted, was not required to notify the agency that it received the data.

The IG recommended that FEMA implement new controls on data, and that the assistant administrator for the Recovery Directorate assess the damage and destroy the sensitive information.

FEMA said remedies were already in progress and will be complete by June 2020.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, tweeted that he had told the Washington Post that “This is unacceptable and FEMA must demonstrate it will do better in the future.” He said 1.8 million disaster survivors had their banking information revealed.

FEMA said it has no plans to notify the victims of the data exposure.

Carlos Perez, research chief the security consulting firm TrustedSec, told Government Executive that “processes in systems could have been implemented and auditing set in place to alert [FEMA] to the mishandling of the information by automating the export of information.”

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Pentagon Watchdog Launches Probe of Acting Defense Chief's Boeing Ties

Charles S. Clark — Sat, 23 Mar 2019 11:00:00 -0400

The Defense Department’s inspector general confirmed on Wednesday that it has launched an investigation of acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan on whether he has made decisions overly favorable to his former employer, airline industry giant Boeing.

A spokeswoman for acting IG Glenn Fine released a statement saying the watchdog “has decided to investigate complaints that we recently received that Acting Secretary Shanahan allegedly took actions to promote his former employer, Boeing, and disparage its competitors, allegedly in violation of ethics rules. In his recent Senate Armed Services Committee testimony, Acting Secretary Shanahan stated that he supported an investigation into these allegations. We have informed him that we have opened this investigation.”

Joe Buccino, a spokesman for Shanahan—who is among several candidates to be permanent Defense chief—promised full cooperation. “Acting Secretary Shanahan has at all times remained committed to upholding his ethics agreement filed with the [Defense Department],” Buccino said in a Wednesday statement. “This agreement ensures any matters pertaining to Boeing are handled by appropriate officials within the Pentagon to eliminate any perceived or actual conflict of interest issue with Boeing.”

A Boeing spokesman referred Government Executive queries to the Pentagon’s statements.

The allegations of a conflict of interest—which surfaced at a March 14 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing—were detailed in recent news reports and a March 13 letter to the IG by the transparency nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Noting Shanahan’s 30 years at the airplane maker and short government experience, the critics cited Shanahan’s alleged assertions during Pentagon meetings that “Boeing would have performed better than its competitor Lockheed Martin had it been awarded a DoD fighter jet contract,” the CREW letter said. “It was also reported that Shanahan prodded DoD to increase funding for Boeing-produced fighter jets in next year’s budget despite the Air Force’s preference for an aircraft produced by Lockheed Martin.”

CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said, “Ethics rules make clear that government employees cannot abuse their offices to promote a private company, much less work on official matters involving their former employer.” He added, “We don’t know whether Shanahan had direct involvement in decisions affecting Boeing, but even the appearance of bias raises serious concerns and potential ethics violations.”

Two prominent Democrats on the Armed Services panel weighed in to welcome the probe. “Scrutiny of Acting DoD Secretary Shanahan’s Boeing ties is necessary—as he agreed with me in a recent hearing. In fact, it’s overdue,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., in a tweet. “Boeing is a behemoth 800-pound gorilla—raising possible questions of undue influence at DOD, FAA, & elsewhere.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., added her own tweet: “When I heard reports that @ActingSecDef Patrick Shanahan may have worked to promote his former employer @Boeing, I took action and investigated. Government officials should work for the people – not big defense contractors.”

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White House Issues New Guidance on Category Management

Charles S. Clark — Fri, 22 Mar 2019 17:00:00 -0400

Eight years after the Obama administration began importing the private-sector procurement tool known as “category management,” the Trump administration on Thursday rescinded old directives and delivered new agency guidance.

In a March 21 memo to all agency heads, Office of Management and Budget Deputy Director Margaret Weichert—who is doing double duty running the Office of Personnel Management—tasked agencies with a new reporting regime for shared services that “supersedes and rescinds” OMB directives from 2011 and 2012.

Category management involves agency teams coordinating bulk purchasing in areas such as information technology, security and protection, and transportation. Weichert’s memo reported that as much as 56 percent of the government’s $325 billion in purchases of software, mobile services, technology services and travel remained “unaligned” or decentralized, as of December 2018.

“This statistic confirms that substantial cost-avoidances and performance benefits are going unrealized and underscores the need for greater management attention on collaborative buying at both the federal and agency levels by increasing the portion of an agency’s spend” using category management, the memo said.

As part of the administration’s push to move federal workers from low-value to high-value work, the memo said, “The government must take action now to buy more like an enterprise, and less like hundreds of individual entities, for common requirements needed to meet core mission.”

By setting goals and reporting them regularly to OMB, the memo said, “Conservative estimates suggest that, regardless of the category, taxpayers are consistently realizing average cost avoidance of at least 10-15 percent. And, when “agencies make purchases informed by market intelligence consistently across the federal enterprise, they increase cost avoidances and save time.”

Thursday’s directive builds on contracting efficiency initiatives of the General Services Administration and the Small Business Administration to improve communication with industry.

It “will require agencies to carry out a set of tailored management actions and provide updates on these management actions to evaluate their progress in bringing common spending under management,” the memo said. The vehicle will be a “spend under management” dashboard that measures unaligned spending, which designated agency officials must report to OMB.

OMB senior leadership in the Office of Federal Procurement Policy will review the SUM dashboard monthly and will require annual updates from senior acquisition officials on actions taken to meet the goals.

The White House prescribes five actions: Agencies must annually establish plans to reduce unaligned spending and increase shared spending on common goods; develop vendor-management strategies for good communication; implement demand management strategies to eliminate inefficient purchasing and consumption behaviors; share data across the federal government to differentiate quality and value of products and services; and train the workforce in category management principles and practices.

The memo also stressed the importance of meeting contracting goals with small business and continuing to award work to Federal Prison Industries and AbilityOne manufacturing by people with disabilities.

OMB will recognize category management achievements, the memo said, at meetings of the President’s Management Council.

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Transparency Groups Sue Health and Human Services Over Website Changes

Charles S. Clark — Wed, 13 Mar 2019 12:00:00 -0400

Advocacy groups’ efforts to monitor the Trump administration’s subtle changes to agency websites expanded this week with a lawsuit demanding Health and Human Services Department documents on the decision to remove online materials on women’s health issues and with the unveiling of a new central portal for tracking website changes governmentwide.

On March 8, the nonprofit Sunlight Foundation and American Oversight jointly filed suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to compel HHS to release records on how its Office of Women’s Health quietly removed or obscured fact sheets on such issues as lesbian and bisexual health and low-cost screenings for breast cancer.

“The public has a right to know the motive behind the puzzling, and perhaps troubling, decision to delete public health information,” American Oversight Executive Director Austin Evers said.

“Both removals of public information happened without advanced notice or explanation from the office, which makes it unclear whether the information was removed by mistake; the removed information was actually inaccurate or outdated; or there was a quiet change in underlying policy, unrelated to the accuracy of the information, that motivated the removal but which was not communicated transparently to the public,” said Rachel Bergman, director of the Sunlight Foundation’s Web Integrity Project.

HHS has also been accused of removing or downplaying materials on Affordable Care Act minority outreach efforts. It has responded to the Web Integrity Project’s criticisms by saying that it conducts “standard website management practice” by reviewing, updating and reorganizing content. The agency does not acknowledge policy changes as a motivator.

The lawsuit follows up on unsuccessful Freedom of Information Act requests the groups filed in early 2018. It seeks injunctive relief to require delivery of documents related to HHS’s communications with the public affairs firm Hager Sharp, which runs the website for the Office of Women’s Health, as well as other communications involving website user messages to the women’s health website and the agency’s handling of the site.

In a related development, the Web Integrity Project on Tuesday unveiled a new “Censorship Tracker.” Called Gov404—a reference to the webpage error message a user encounters after typing in an Internet address for a page no longer available—the online portal assembles in one place the significant website changes made in a variety of agencies. Since last year, the project has monitored agency websites and used the Internet Archive’s “Wayback Machine” to research materials that are no longer posted.

The 50 entries (so far) include health, environmental protection, science (particularly climate change) and civil rights information posted by agencies as varied as the State, Energy, Interior and Transportation departments, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Small Business Administration. (The list, analysts caution, is not complete and hence may be skewed toward certain agencies.)

In only one out of 50 cases documented in the tracker did the agency alert the public of coming website changes more than a day in advance. That case was HHS’s removal of its National Guideline Clearinghouse from its Healthcare Research and Quality website, researchers found.

In three other cases involving the EPA’s climate change, Clean Water Plan and Clean Water rule, a notice was posted the same day the materials were removed, which, the analysts said, does not fulfill the spirit of the Paperwork Reduction Act.

The Office of Management and Budget, the tracker’s text notes, has website guidance that calls for “high standards of effectiveness and usability.” To the monitors, that “means that agencies build trust with the public by proactively communicating about significant changes, justifying extensive removals, and establishing robust public archives,” the analysts wrote in a blog post. “Unfortunately, the Trump administration has failed on many of these counts, undermining public information and the institutions that have been in place to make information publicly available. It’s now more important than ever to understand how censorship of website content has brought us so far from OMB's stated framework.”

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