Quick Hits

*** The Government Accountability Office is advising that the Office of Special Counsel require whistleblowers to disclosure whether they are probationary or permanent employees when filing complaints. According to a May 28 report, GAO said existing data was insufficient to determine whether whistleblowers with probationary status were fired at lower, comparable or higher rates than permanent employees. GAO indicated that data suggested that overall whistleblowers were fired at higher than typical rates.

In his reply, Special Counsel Henry J. Kerner said that the data GAO is seeking won't yield the direct comparison the oversight agency is seeking because probationers are typically terminated at higher rates as a feature of the civil service system, and that more inputs would be needed to develop a meaningful comparison between the terminations of whistleblowers on probationary status and those with permanent status.

*** A pandemic response report from a leading trade group urges the government to designate IT workers as essential components of the public and private sector workforce during stay-at-home orders and to focus on cloud, affordable bandwidth and support for remote work. BSA/The Software Alliance released its Response and Recovery Agenda on May 27. The recommendations, the group said, will help maintain the essential IT services that are relied upon by hospitals, governments and first responders as well as the businesses and public sector organizations that have been able to extend remote work to their employees to help support the management of the pandemic.