After making some governmentwide changes, OPM is now calling on agencies that manage their own independent pay systems to review their policies, and make adjustments where they find pay inequities. The goal, OPM said, is to help address the current 5.6% pay gap between men and women in the federal workforce.

In a memo last week, OPM Acting Director Rob Shriver tasked agencies with other, smaller pay systems to conduct a review process similar to OPM’s recent reviews of the General Schedule, Federal Wage System and Senior Executive Service pay systems.

“Our work is not finished, and we need to do more,” Shriver wrote in a July 18 memo to agency leaders.

Specifically, Shriver told agencies to identify any areas where pay gaps exist in their policies, figure out the reasons behind the disparities, create a plan for reducing those gaps and then keep track of how the disparities change over time.

To try to help agencies through the required pay review process, OPM also published further guidance on how agencies should conduct their data analyses over the next couple months.

“In some cases, agency data analysis may need to probe deeper than the analysis conducted by OPM to fully understand the factors behind a gender or racial/ethnic pay disparity,” OPM wrote in the guidance. “For example, an agency may generate data for major occupations that show gender pay gaps by age groupings within each occupation.”

The new instructions from OPM stem from a 2021 executive order on advancing diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) in the federal workforce. Part of the sweeping DEIA initiative tasked agencies with identifying strategies and eliminating barriers to equity in federal pay and compensation policies.

Agencies have until mid-October to complete their reviews and report back to OPM.

Federal workforce pay gap over time

The federal government is already a step ahead of the private sector when it comes to pay equity. The national gender pay gap is 16%, while the federal pay gap is 5.6%, according to 2022 workforce data. In other words, in the federal workforce, women make about 94 cents for every dollar men make.

The federal gender pay gap has also improved over time. The current 5.6% disparity is much smaller than the 24.5% pay gap that existed back in 1992.

But at the same time, pay inequity in the federal workforce continues to disproportionately affect women of color. Minority women in the federal workforce, on average, earn less in overall salary.

In numbers, some minority groups of women have better representation in the federal sector than in the private sector. But many minority demographic groups are still behind in pay and representation in leadership, according to several 2023 reports from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Currently, white federal employees make up a larger portion of the workforce from the GS-7 level, up through the Senior Executive Service. By contrast, people of color hold a higher portion entry-level positions between GS-2 and GS-6, according to a July 2024 workforce report from the Partnership for Public Service.

In its memo last week, OPM asked agencies to focus particularly where there are wider gaps in pay among federal employees.

“When we compare average salary of women and men in various racial-ethnic groups to the average salary of white males in the government, we find larger pay gaps that need to be addressed,” OPM wrote in a July 18 press release.

OPM’s ban on salary history in hiring

The new review requirements for agencies also come after OPM finalized regulations in January 2024, prohibiting agencies from using a federal job candidate’s previous salary history when setting pay in a job offer.

OPM has said its goal with the salary history ban is to address the federal pay gap by removing potential biases that can stem from a federal job candidate’s previous pay rates. In practice, considering past pay rates has often led to higher salaries for men than for women.

OPM’s regulation changes on salary history are expected to take effect for agencies by this October.

“The regulation further positions the federal government as a model employer that prioritizes fairness and opportunity. By helping to close gender and racial pay gaps, the rule is one more step to attract and retain a qualified, effective workforce drawn from the full diversity of America,” the Biden administration wrote in a February 2024 President’s Management Agenda update.

The Department of Justice Gender Equality Network (DOJ GEN), a federal employee organization, has been a long-time advocate of fully banning agencies’ use of salary history in the federal hiring process.

“DOJ GEN applauds OPM for delivering on its commitment to pay equity in the federal sector — first by issuing a robust regulation that bans the consideration of salary history in federal hiring, and now by pushing agencies to go even further,” DOJ GEN President Stacey Young wrote in an email to Federal News Network. “We urge agencies not only to conduct pay audits, but also to meaningfully address any inequities they reveal.”

The post ‘We need to do more’ to close gender-based pay gap, OPM says first appeared on Federal News Network.

A proposal to reform the Federal Wage System (FWS) has moved into the early stages of the government’s rulemaking process, the Federal Prevailing Rate Advisory Committee (FPRAC) announced during a public meeting Thursday morning.

The proposal, if finalized, would amend the federal pay system for blue-collar government workers, more closely aligning it with the locality pay areas for the General Schedule (GS). An estimated 15,000 blue-collar feds would see their pay rates increase.

After FPRAC, a council that advises on pay for blue-collar feds, approved the proposal last December, the changes were sent to the Office of Personnel Management for review. OPM then handed off the proposal to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, an arm of the Office of Management and Budget, to begin the rulemaking process.

Edward George, an American Federation of Government Employees official working at Tobyhanna Army Depot, expressed both gratitude and residual frustration around the proposal’s advancement.

“We are having a hiring problem, we do have skills gaps because of what’s going on with the way that our wages are calculated,” George said during Thursday’s FPRAC meeting. “I appreciate you taking this up once again. It’s very frustrating for our employees … It just seems like it’s [a never-ending] process. We would really like to see this fairly and equitably adjusted across the country as soon as possible.”

The proposed regulations are expected to be published to the Federal Register this October. Once published, OPM will accept comments on the regulations before making any potential revisions and finalizing the rule on FWS.

In total, FWS covers about 192,000 federal blue-collar employees working in trade, craft and laborer jobs. The federal pay system was established decades ago to try to keep federal wages aligned with “prevailing,” or market rates in localized areas.

But since fiscal 1979, many blue-collar feds have seen limits on their annual federal pay raises. And as a result, wages in 75% of FWS localities no longer align with local pay rates for similar jobs.

The idea to align the pay maps for the FWS and GS systems first came up more than 15 years ago, to try to reverse the growing disparity. FPRAC’s current proposal, though, comes from more recent calls from Congress in 2022, asking OPM to consider ways to reform the FWS locality pay map.

If implemented in its current form, FPRAC’s proposal would move about 10% of FWS employees from one wage area to another. Rearranging the FWS locality mapping would, in many cases, impact local pay rates for blue-collar feds working across the country. While about 15,000 employees would get pay increases, another 2,000 or so employees would be covered by “pay retention,” which would maintain pay rates of employees who would otherwise see a decrease to their pay.

But there is still opportunity to make adjustments to the current proposal. Once the proposed regulations are available in the Federal Register, likely later this year, stakeholders will be able to share any feedback they might have about the planned changes to FWS.

And already, there has been plenty of discussion on how to work out the details of the coming changes. When advancing the draft proposal in December 2023, most FPRAC members agreed that some type of FWS reform was necessary, but a couple members expressed disagreements over what those reforms should actually look like.

For instance, some FPRAC members raised concerns about costs and potential complications of implementing FWS map changes. Some members also said they were worried about agencies having to work within their current budgets to implement the pay adjustments, rather than receiving additional funding for them. One suggested alternative was to consider pay changes on a regional basis, rather than amending the entire pay system.

During Thursday’s FPRAC meeting, many attendees also indicated plans to write public comments on the proposed regulations coming this fall.

The public comments, AFGE’s George said, will be “more than they’ve ever seen.”

The post Blue-collar federal pay reform heading toward rulemaking process first appeared on Federal News Network.

The National Association of Postal Supervisors, in a recent post on its website, raised the alarm about a “crisis in leadership retention.”

NAPS National President Ivan Butts wrote earlier this month that a “significant number of EAS employees are leaving the USPS for other federal agencies, enticed by better pay and less-demanding working conditions.”

“That’s work objectives they’re trying to achieve,” Butts said in a recent interview. “And then they’re being viewed by the leadership in these other agencies as superstars, just because of how they were so overburdened. Working at this agency, I guess, made them tend to go at it harder at what they do.”

Butts, speaking last year at a summit on labor issues hosted by the USPS Office of Inspector General, said USPS is losing candidates to private-sector businesses that can offer better starting pay and better hours, at a time when unemployment rates are historically low.

The Postal Service disputes NAPS’ claims. USPS spokesman David Walton told Federal News Network that the agency has a retention rate of more than 96% for management employees.

“Historically, we develop and promote from within the organization and have an excellent retention rate when it comes to our management employees, particularly our front-line supervisors and managers,” Walton said.

Edmund Carley, national president of United Postmasters and Managers of America (UPMA), said he’s seen some colleagues leave USPS to take jobs at other agencies, such as the Social Security Administration. However, he said USPS isn’t seeing problems retaining management-level employees.

“They take a little bit less money, but it’s steady hours, no weekend work, a lot less stress,” he said about managers at other federal agencies. “It’s not easy being an entry-level manager in the [Postal] Service. It never has been. The difference now, especially if you’re in D.C., there’s other opportunities to go into federal employment.”

Among its concerns, NAPS said USPS is promoting newly hired employees to EAS roles with little to no knowledge of USPS operations, and that supervisors are rapidly promoted into mid-level and senior leadership positions with little-to-no knowledge of agency operations.

Butts said new supervisors may get an initial two or three weeks of training before running operations.

“After that, they’re on their own. They need them on the floor to run their operations. They’re short-handed already,” Butts said. “As some of these people are coming in, they’re getting no training at all, and the first time they make a mistake, they’re being fired with no recourse.”

Carley, however, said nearly all USPS managers started off as craft employees — letter carriers, mail handlers and postal clerks — and understand the agency’s frontline work.

“Nobody walked in off the street,” Carley said, adding that supervisor skills are “something you have to learn on the job.”

“You can’t teach somebody. I don’t know how long a training course would have to be to qualify somebody to be a delivery supervisor. You’ve got to learn on the job. You’ve got to have some rudimentary knowledge of how carriers operate and how the routes are set up. And then you’ve just got to do it, and you have to learn by doing,” he added.

USPS supervisor vacancies shrinking

The USPS inspector general’s office, in a report released Friday, said the Postal Service saw a 7% vacancy rate nationwide in fiscal 2023, its lowest point in recent years.

The watchdog report states USPS is close to meeting its goal of hitting a 5% nationwide vacancy rate for frontline supervisors, but said vacancies can vary widely by region.

“Although the nationwide vacancy rate is relatively low, some locations are experiencing vacancy rates three times as high as the goal,” the report states.

USPS, for example, is seeing a 17 to 18% vacancy rate for supervisors who oversee processing operations in the Great Lakes, and a 15% vacancy for retail and delivery supervisors in northern Illinois.

USPS ended fiscal 2023 with more than 22,000 supervisors. About 88% of them oversaw customer services, distribution operations, maintenance operations and logistics.

The agency also hosted four virtual frontline supervisor job fairs and 55 career conferences for current employees to learn about frontline supervisor positions last year.

USPS added about 2,300 new relief supervisor positions in June 2023. Eligible facilities can receive a relief supervisor for every full-time supervisor authorized.

Relief supervisors are meant to cover for regular supervisors during their scheduled days off and annual leave and are meant to reduce USPS reliance on acting supervisors.

“Relief supervisors work a non-standard, flexible schedule to cover tours and facilities within a designated commuting distance, all with potential minimal advance notice,” USPS OIG wrote.

Carley said new supervisors often feel pressure to perform early in their positions, and that higher-ups now have more real-time data on how any USPS facility is performing.

“What technology has wrought is the ability for my boss, my boss’s boss, my boss’s boss’s boss and his boss too up in headquarters to get on a spreadsheet, click twice, and now they’re looking to my office and want to know why that carrier was sitting at that gas station for 22 minutes, when they should only have been 20 — and I need to know an answer right now, he said.

“The pressure is heightened. Now that’s a good thing, too, because now you can create efficiencies with your workforce, because they know they’re being supervised at all times,” he added. “The art is, how do you disseminate that information, without threatening people’s jobs — which they do way more often than they should, or making somebody feel less than.”

NAPS is requesting access to “exit forms” EAS employees are required to submit before they leave USPS — to see how many supervisors the agency is losing to retirement, terminations or leaving for another federal agency — but Butts wrote that the group has been “thwarted in our attempts to validate this trend.”

“Those two kinds of narratives really point to a bigger problem,” Butts said. “One that leadership has the staff to do the job, and one that EAS leaders have in being felt like they’re valued in all aspects of their job.”

USPS management faces Reduction in Force

Butts said postal supervisors are also dealing with a Reduction in Force (RIF) that’s eliminating some positions.

Federal News Network first reported in May 2021 that USPS started sending layoff notices to non-bargaining unit employees after sending voluntary early retirement offers to its eligible management employees.

Management-level employees who receive a RIF notice, however, are able to apply for similar positions to avoid leaving the agency altogether.

“There are so many vacancies in the ranks of EAS and managers that there should be landing spots as we move forward,” Butts said.

The RIFs, he added, may affect about 70 to 80 supervisor positions. However, Butts said the association isn’t clear on the full extent of the RIFs, especially after USPS announced it would pause some network modernization changes until at least January 2025.

“They issued these RIF letters to these employees and disrupted their whole life. Then a week later, they issued rescinding letters to some of them, because their methodology was wrong. Now they say their methodology was right,” Butts said.

Walton said USPS “has a strong track record of finding job opportunities for RIF-impacted employees through RIF avoidance processes and we believe that will be the case with the current RIF process.

“As infrastructure and operating plans are made there is a need for staffing changes. We implement the changes in accordance with the federal Reduction-in-Force (RIF) regulations,” he added. “With the latest operational changes, there have been adjustments to the allocation of management employees in certain designated postal operations.”

Butts linked supervisor retention challenges to recent problems with on-time mail delivery in areas where USPS is modernizing its network modernization plans.

However, lawmakers representing regions that saw the worst of these delays — such as Atlanta and Richmond, Virginia — say on-time performance is improving.

“We’re not hearing much of anything like we were in the past, because we’re at the lowest volume period of the year,” Butts said.  “But my prediction is that when the fall mailing season comes in, all those issues that we had will rear their heads again, because the leadership of this agency has still continuously failed to address its staffing problem.”

The post USPS supervisors fear ‘exodus’ among their ranks, but data shows high retention first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service recently had its first in-person national conference since before the pandemic. Which got us thinking … what is it like on the ground in the world of labor relations in the United States. For an update, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke to the FMCS deputy director Javier Ramirez.

Interview Transcript: 

Tom Temin  And just briefly, so in case there’s a few people out there that may not know exactly what the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service does.

Javier Ramirez  So, we were created in 1947, primarily to help with the large number of strikes that were happening after World War II. So, we were created primarily for the private sector. But as the Congress saw the work that we do in dispute resolution, they gradually started to expand our authority. And so, in 76, under the Civil Service Reform Act, is when we started to federal sector collective bargaining, then we then in the 90s, under the Administrative Dispute Resolution Act, we started to do additional work for other federal agencies through interagency agreements. So basically, dispute resolution, give us a call, if we can help you out, we’ll point you in the right direction.

Tom Temin  And so how do you interact visa vie with the FLRA, the Federal Labor Relations authority.

Javier Ramirez  So, the NLRA, you know, they’re separate. And so, what happens is they have a number of arms, they’re the in the FRA but we work really nicely with them, if we specifically work with Khandro,

Tom Temin  The Collaboration and Alternative Dispute Resolution Office.

Javier Ramirez  That they handle negotiability claims, so when folks are negotiating their collective bargaining agreement, and they’re not sure if this is a permissive subject of bargaining, they usually go before CADRO. And then they will help them either mediate that and or resolve that issue. And so, we work really closely with them. They’ll do training programs to help with federal sector folks. And we sometimes partner with them to do to do those. And interestingly enough, before cases go to the federal services impasse panel, which is part of the Federal Labor Relations authority, they have to go through mediation, so although they’re not required to use our services, they could use a private mediator, our price is kind of hard to beat right. So, we don’t charge federal agencies. So, the majority do come through us.

Tom Temin  But you still do commercial industrial private sector mediation, also?

Javier Ramirez  that is the bulk of our work. And if I’m being candid with this federal crowd, we could have done better in servicing the federal sector workforce. And we learn that when we send somebody over to that federal services didn’t Impasse panel to work with them for six months, they came back and gave us a report out on stuff that they saw that we could be doing better. And we implemented those changes, and so on, when we implemented those changes in matter of three months, we went from resolving disputes about half of them, these cases that came to us from 50% to 80%. Resolution rates, and the number of issues that move forward to the federal services impasse panel went from dozens to two or three. So dramatic changes, in the federal sector there.

Tom Temin  and what does the workload of the Conciliation Service look like? Do you do 1000s of cases a year hundreds, dozens? What’s the order of magnitude?

Javier Ramirez  Yeah, so 10s of 1000s. And I say that as a whole, right, because there’s a number of type of cases that we handle, but federal sector collective bargaining, we’re in the range of about 200, plus or minus 50, that we handle in a given year before they go to the panel. But we get in the private sector, we get about 15,000 notices a year of contracts that are expiring, and that that including grievance mediations, public sector, when we do teachers, police fire, we just help out on those as well. So, our volume is pretty high.

Tom Temin  Yeah. And so mainly, then the work is when a contract is expiring, or has expired, negotiations aren’t finished, and they seem to be going nowhere. And people are on the verge of possibly a strike. That’s when you tend to come in.

Javier Ramirez  Yeah, you know what, the Labor Management Cooperation Act was an amendment to the National Labor relations act. And that act asks us to start trying to do stuff before that situation occurs. Right. So we will go in there and during midterm bargaining, we will or the middle the negotiations, rather, we will come in and do training programs to help them communicate more effectively resolve disputes more effectively, and to establish their management committees and just good communication processes so they could avoid the battle when it comes to negotiations.

Tom Temin  Right. Trust is kind of a big factor in having these things go well, isn’t it?

Javier Ramirez  You know, I tell people, you don’t necessarily have to trust each other, but trust the process. And sometimes we help them honor the process. So, they can trust the process and use that to reach agreement even though there may be some trust issues within the relationship.

Tom Temin  We’re speaking with Javier Ramirez, Deputy Director for field operations at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service and in the federal disputes that you take care of. Are there any themes and trends? I mean, what happens to cause an impasse the most often have you seen?

Javier Ramirez  Yeah, you know, as far as in the federal space, the number one issue that we’re seeing right now is returned to office and I’m very careful with that term, right? It’s not returned to work. The federal sector has proven that we can be very effective working from home. But we understand that depending on the type of role that they’re doing, that there is a need for a return to Office situations. So, it’s that battle back and forth of what’s the appropriate amount of office time versus working from home time. And that seems to be the number one issue that we’re seeing in the federal space at the moment.

Tom Temin  Well, does it have to have been something in a contract or a labor agreement clause in order to come before the Commission? Because otherwise, it’s simply agency management discretion, correct?

Javier Ramirez  Sure. Yeah. Unless there is a collective bargaining agreement. Right? And if like the barring agreement, then then yeah, that would be something that they have to negotiate with their union.

Tom Temin  And what do you find that the somewhere is cutting the baby in the middle? That is to say, some people might want to telework all the time, the agency just to make an extreme, the agency may want people to come in five days a week plus Saturday morning. So, you have to find some way in the middle of that.

Javier Ramirez  Yeah, each case is very unique. Because in some cases, we’ve found that a lot of federal agencies have actually given back-office space because of budget restraints. And so sometimes there’s just isn’t a sufficient infrastructure to support everybody coming back, then it also you have to look at the work that they’re doing security levels, you know, some folks during pandemic had to either come in or not do any work, because there’s security issues. So, it really depends on the work that you’re doing and the resources available, but they’re all over the place. We don’t we’re not seeing a standard resolution for this issue.

Tom Temin  Sure. And let’s talk about the FMCS itself for a minute. How many people do you have that are actually in the mediation business, and what kinds of skills to those people need to have?

Javier Ramirez  On the whole the number of mediators that we have, we have about 120 – 130, mediators. They all do work within the federal sector. In regard to training, implement mediation cases, some of that work like that. When it comes to the collective bargaining mediation, that was one of the changes that we made after we had our detailed with the federal services impasse panel, where we’ve reduced the number of mediators that handle collective bargaining in the federal space and gave him specialized training so that we they could better service the federal space when it comes to collective bargaining. So, we have about 120 130 mediators in total that handle it. However, the skills and one of the things that we did, and it was primarily because of the work in the federal sector was we realized that we had to move from an instinctual practice to an intentional practice, right move, our mediators come in, and they help resolve a dispute. And you’ll ask them, so what did you do? What techniques did you use to help the parties reach that resolution, and we refined them, many of them were like, you know, I’m not sure I just, I just did it right. And so we want to, we want to move from that instinctual practice to intentional where they may be able to see the dynamic, put a name to it, and understand that when we see this behavior, these are some skills or techniques that we could apply when we see that we’re calling that our conflict management professionals program. And we implemented that a couple of years ago, and we’re training up all our mediators on these conflict management professional skills, you see that going into the private sector, also.

Tom Temin  Because often they don’t have a legal reference. That is to say, the cases aren’t the same as in nature as what might become, you know, before the Merit Systems Protection Board, for example, where there’s a legal kind of true north that they’re measuring against statutory language. In this case, it’s what’s really the right here for the situation.

Javier Ramirez  Yeah, exactly what’s right, and what the party is willing to accept. And unless we see something that we know, is glaringly, you know, illegal, where we would say, Hey, you may want to check with your counsel, before you sign off on this thing, right? Because we don’t get legal advice. We’re not an enforcement. We’re non regulatory, we’re there truly, to just help the parties resolve disputes. It’s a matter of fact, one of the things I tell our folks is that your job is to try to put us out of business, right? Unfortunately, we’re in a growth industry, there’s no shortage of conflict. Wouldn’t it be nice if we have never putting ourselves out of business, right? It’s not going to happen. But that’s the mindset put us out of business.

Tom Temin  And if people don’t accept the mediation, then they can always go to court. How often does that happen?

Javier Ramirez  So with collective bargaining, you know, it’s a little different, because you have the federal services impasse panel that they would go to in the private sector, you go, you have strikes, there are occasions where they can do arbitration, but in other disputes, like employment mediation cases, then yeah, they could go to the next steps, whether it be with the EEOC or some other agency, depending on what the issue is where they would do that. But our resolution rates and I would need to check on this to be sure, but it’s in that 80% ballpark range.

Tom Temin  All right. And just briefly, how did you come to this work? Tell us a little bit about yourself?

Javier Ramirez  Yeah. you know what, our mediators in general, we get them from one to four sources. We get some that come from other federal agencies like the national relations board, or maybe they’re doing Some ADR work in their in their agency, we get a few that come from there. We get another small percentage that come directly out of school. We’ll bring them in as developmental mediators, and they have a longer runway to develop as well just generically called journeyman mediators. But the bulk of our mediators come out of either having management or labor backgrounds where they spent years negotiating contracts. They’ve been at the bargaining table for years. And so, my background is on the labor side. I come out of a labor union. I spent 14 years negotiating contracts there before I came to the agency, and now I’ve been with the agency for 19 years.

The post What’s new from the agency in the middle of labor-management disputes first appeared on Federal News Network.

In an alert posted to its website, SSA notified the public about the closures. On late Friday afternoon, an SSA spokeswoman told Federal News Network that the agency plans to re-open its field offices for public service on Monday, July 22.

“Staff impacted by the widespread Microsoft and CrowdStrike issues are being brought back online,” the spokeswoman said. “Our phone lines remain operational and many online services at ssa.gov remain available.”

The IT outage is linked to a flawed software update released by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. The defect affects computers running Microsoft Windows, effectively shutting them down with what’s referred to as the “blue screen of death.” Crowdstrike says the incident is “not a security incident or cyberattack.” The company also reports that a fix has been deployed.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services also appears to be affected by the outage. A notice on USCIS’s E-Verify website states that “customers calling E-Verify are experiencing long wait times” because “the worldwide Microsoft outage is impacting phone support.” USCIS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A senior Biden administration official told reporters on Friday afternoon that the White House is in “regular contact” with Crowdstrike’s leadership to get updates on the outage and remediation efforts.

“The White House has been convening agencies to assess impacts to the US government’s operations and entities around the country,” the official said. “At this time, our understanding is that flight operations have resumed across the country, although some congestion remains, and 911 centers are able to receive and process calls. We are assessing impact to local hospitals, surface transportation systems, and law enforcement closely and will provide further updates as we learn more. We stand ready to provide assistance as needed.”

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is responsible for overseeing the security of systems across the federal civilian executive branch, said it is working with Crowdstrike, as well as federal, state, local and critical infrastructure partners, “to fully assess and address these issues.”

“Of note, CISA has observed threat actors taking advantage of this incident for phishing and other malicious activity,” the cyber agency wrote in an alert Friday. “CISA urges organizations and individuals to remain vigilant and only follow instructions from legitimate sources. CISA recommends organizations to remind their employees to avoid clicking on phishing emails or suspicious links.”

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), chairwoman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee’s cybersecurity, IT and government innovation subcommittee, said the panel has requested briefings on the outage from Crowdstrike, Microsoft and CISA .

“We’re also trying to determine the breadth of impact, especially across the federal government at this time,” Mace posted to X on Friday afternoon.

While the outage forced airlines to cancel and delay thousands of flights Friday morning, a Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman said TSA has not been directly affected by the IT incident.

“TSA is monitoring the IT system issues throughout the transportation system in partnership with stakeholders and other agencies,” the spokeswoman told FNN. “There has not been any impact to TSA operations.”

In posts on X, the Federal Aviation Administration said it was working with U.S. airlines as they resume operations.

“Currently FAA operations are not impacted by the global IT issue,” the FAA posted. “We continue to monitor the situation closely.”

Meanwhile, a Department of Veterans Affairs spokesman said the VA is “not aware of any impact on health care operations or any adverse impact on veterans who get their care from VA.”

“We will continue to monitor this situation, and we encourage any Veterans who need support – including those who may be impacted by challenges at non-VA health care facilities – to call 1-800-MYVA411 or visit their local VA medical center for assistance,” VA Press Secretary Terrence Hayes said in a statement. “We are standing by and ready to help.”

The U.S. Postal Service on Friday also said it has not experienced any immediate impacts from the IT outage.

“The Postal Service was not directly impacted by the global IT outage,” USPS spokesman David Walton said. “We are aware of impacts to some of our third-party vendors, however, this has not impacted our ability to move mail and packages for the American people.”

Officials highlight IT consolidation risks

Anne Neuberger, deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology, said the Crowdstrike outage showcased the “risks of consolidation.”

“The irony of this morning is that a major international cybersecurity company was impacted,” Neuberger said during an event hosted by the Aspen Institute on Friday. “So, we need to really think about our digital resilience – not just in the systems we run, but in the globally connected security systems, the risks of consolidation, how we deal with that consolidation, and how we ensure that if an incident does occur, it can be contained and we can recover quickly.”

In a letter to acting Defense Department Chief Information Officer Leslie Beavers, Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) requested a briefing on any potential impacts to DoD networks by July 26.

“This outage is a warning that consolidation and dependence on one provider can be catastrophic, which is why business and government IT systems should have requisite redundancies in place that promote resiliency, as well as competition and innovation,” Schmitt wrote.

This is an evolving story, and we will continue to update it.

(With additional reporting from Jory Heckman)

The post Crowdstrike outage: SSA shutters offices, other agency impacts first appeared on Federal News Network.

Michele Sandiford |

As technology continues to evolve and reshape entire industries and work environments, the federal workforce is no exception — they must adopt innovative technologies in their focus on global talent management in order to enhance productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness of both the individual employees and the overall agencies.

Don Bauer, chief technology officer for global talent management at the Department of State, said that, in today’s times, “every single thing we do has a nexus with technology.”

“That’s part of my job — not only to make sure that we have technology, but to make sure that the actual technology interacts well with the rest of the technology that we have,” Bauer said.

The Department of State, according to Bauer, supports a global workforce of 278 locations across the world — and, “when it comes to technology and having systems talk to each other, it’s always a challenge when you have to integrate platforms.”

“The biggest challenge in the federal government has been, ‘I don’t want my data going outside into other people’s systems,’” Bauer said on Federal Monthly Insight — Trustworthy AI in the Workforce.

Challenges to modernization

For Bauer, keeping as much corporate IP within the department’s own control, as opposed to putting it into a third-party platform, is ideal “because [platforms] go away, they change. And then you eventually have to take that logic and put it somewhere else.”

Much of modernization efforts happen because they have to, Bauer said. He points to the cyclic nature of his organization — recurring seasonal bidding seasons and performance management cycles, to name a few — as another challenge to accomplishing that.

“HR modernization is somewhat unique in the fact that we don’t get to stop doing our jobs while we’re modernizing,” Bauer said. “We have to continue to fly the plane while we’re working on it, because pay doesn’t stop, promotion doesn’t stop. These cycles continue, and the systems have to support it.”

Leveraging the power of trustworthy AI

Some technologies, like the transformative technology of artificial intelligence (AI), showcase a great deal of promise when it comes to implementing new, effective and efficient solutions for the federal workforce.

AI is already making significant strides in the federal sector. Bauer said the Department of State has already started to implement generative AI internally, with what they currently call “state chat,” where users can upload documents and ask questions related to those documents.

“If I can upload 100 policy documents, and then interactively ask a question about it, that’s powerful,” Bauer told the Federal Drive with Tom Temin. “It brings it to the masses, like you say, I don’t have to be a guru in order to get it. And the beauty of what they’re building right now internally is, every single answer comes a little icon with an eye. You click that eye and it shows you where it got that data.”

The quick and easy ability to identify the source of AI’s answer is key to its trustworthiness and use in the federal workforce, according to Bauer.

“Not only do I want the answer, but I want to know where it came from so that I can make sure that it isn’t a hallucination,” he said.

Embracing modernization in global talent management

To support global talent management, federal agencies are implementing comprehensive talent acquisition and retention strategies. Perhaps just as important, the use of technology to modernize these strategies and processes is helping to streamline recruitment and onboarding efforts.

The integration of advanced technologies and strategic global talent management is transforming the federal workforce. Modernization plays a crucial role in this transformation, keeping federal agencies and their workers poised and ready with the best tools to succeed.

Bauer says connectivity and integration are paramount to building the optimal modern user experience.

“I’m still kind of weaving my way through my legacy platforms,” Bauer said. “So, I call it ‘subsumption’. I’m subsuming a lot of these tools into my current platform, which is ServiceNow as my front end. … I’ve already built all this connectivity, I have integration with my personnel system with my electronic personnel records, all those integrations are built on one platform.”

He explains that he then doesn’t have “all the extra integrations to manage.”

“I don’t have all this extra overhead because every single integration point now is a vulnerability, potentially, and it has to be remediated if there’s security,” Bauer said. “So, this is reducing my footprint while consolidating and giving the modern user experience. So, it’s kind of like, it’s a win-win, but it’s a slow process.”

The post How the State Department is leaning into AI, modernization efforts to support federal workers first appeared on Federal News Network.

Modernizing how the government conducts human resources, that’s the subject of a lot of modernization effort. A case in point: The Human Resources Quality Services Management Office recently launched at the Office of Personnel Management. My next guest says OPM and the QSMO have become an information hub for the several agencies trying to modernize their HR processes. Steve Krauss is senior Advisor to OPM’s HR Quality Services Management Office, and he joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin earlier to discuss.

Interview Transcript: 

Tom Temin  And what are you seeing I mean, a lot of agencies, a lot of them are talking about HR Modernization. And they mean, from what I’ve understood the basic processes of how you just do all the millions of myriad steps for getting people what they need in HR.

Steve Krauss  there are a significant number of large-scale HR IT modern modernization efforts underway across most of the federal shared service providers, and a number of large agencies as well. And for the most part, these projects entail consolidating a set of fragmented or disparate systems into a more cohesive end to end HR system that can meet the needs of federal agencies and employees across the entire hire to retire lifecycle. So, what these agencies tend to be doing is moving to modern commercial cloud-based software as a service platforms. And there’s a significant degree of business process reengineering and change management that goes along with that.

Tom Temin  Yes, they typically have older systems that were hand coded or custom coded for each agency. And it sounds like they’re finding that just the commercial cloud-based providers software as a service providers can provide that functionality with a little tweaking maybe for government, but checking on vacation time, checking on your raises or retirement levels, whatever that might be. That’s kind of universal.

Steve Krauss  It’s a real mix, and kind of a menagerie in terms of what’s out there today. As an example, about 75% of civilian federal agencies use Oracle’s PeopleSoft as a core HR platform today. But in the older paradigm of IT system deployment, what that meant was buying the software and then customizing it in house. And that leads to all kinds of issues in terms of technical debt, and not being able to keep pace with changes in technology, in addition to which agencies have a whole slew of systems, some of which are custom built, some of which are commercial to handle various aspects of the human capital management lifecycle, and will be called the Human Capital Business Reference Model, which is all the human capital management functions that agencies perform. But the bottom line is yes, the set of commercial platforms that exist today and that agencies are looking to move to can handle more of those things in an integrated fashion. And that’s what agencies are trying to get to.

Tom Temin  And what effect does that have on their infrastructure, because a lot of them are trying to modernize that in the way they handle data. At the same time, they’re trying to modernize the applications themselves.

Steve Krauss  It has a whole slew of implications for infrastructure for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that most of these systems operate in the cloud. So, they are consistent with what agencies are trying to do more broadly in terms of moving to cloud based infrastructure. But also, because these systems tend to be more integrated in nature, there’s less room for error. And for data integrity issues that crop up in interfaces between systems and data quality and the use of data to improve strategic human capital decision making is a core issue that OMB and the White House and agencies are very interested in. And so, moving to these new platforms, has significant positive implications to making that happen as well.

Tom Temin  We’re speaking with Steve Krauss, senior adviser to the HR quality services management office at the Office of Personnel Management, and let’s talk about what OPM is doing in the QSMO trying to guide agencies in all of this. Tell us more.

Steve Krauss  From an HR  QSMO perspective, we do a couple of really significant things when it comes to helping agencies modernize. One thing is we serve as an advisor and a coordinator. So, you’ve got a number of agencies that are all sort of moving in the same direction. They’re all looking essentially at the same commercial platforms. So, they’re all kind of heading to relatively similar destinations. And we work among all of those agencies and with our counterparts at OMB to help coordinate this effort on a government wide basis. So, there are opportunities to either consolidate, collaborate or share solutions over the next several years that really have never existed in the federal government. And it’s a big task, but our primary objective is to help agencies do that and get to it to a better state along with that, the other thing that we’ve done is we’ve recently stood up the HR QSMO marketplace. Mind you, this is one of the fundamental aspects of what quality services management offices are supposed to do. The founding document for the QSMOs is an OMB memo M 1916 that launched these efforts. And the fundamental job of the QSMOs is to stand up these marketplaces. And so, we have just within the last couple of months, stood up version 1.0 of our HR QSMO marketplace, it’s publicly available on GSAs Acquisition Gateway, and it serves as a market research hub. It provides information about the various solutions that are available to agencies as they’re looking to modernize and upgrade their services. Today it includes the federal service providers, the shared service providers, and OPM. But we are also working to figure out how to onboard and incorporate commercial solutions into that marketplace.

Tom Temin  Yes, there are alternatives to PeopleSoft now, and some of them are coming in. But you touched on something I wanted to follow up with. And that’s the idea of shared services. And for decades, there has been the interior Business Center and the National Finance Center that have had some HR services and payroll services. Where does the Shared Services ideal? If you will play into all of this? And is it possible for a single solution to serve many agencies?

Steve Krauss  Well, it absolutely is. And the HR shared services marketplace is actually probably in some respects, the most mature shared services marketplace that we have with OPM and OMB is help and assistance. We consolidated the payroll provider marketplace some 20 years ago from 26, payroll providers down to four, one of the great success stories in terms of federal shared services. And today, just as you pointed out, the National Finance Center, interior Business Center, Treasury’s administrative resource center and a couple of others provide HR and payroll services to a variety of agencies across the government. And I would say that while there have been some ups and downs with regards to agencies’ desire to move to shared services, to shared service centers, per se, the role of shared services, I think is not going to shrink in the future, it’s going to grow. And it’s not just based on the economies of scale that shared services can provide. But increasingly, we’re seeing this in terms of economies of skill, there’s a real shortage of talent in terms of federal HR, federal HR talent, right HR specialists, and the HR departments that are out there to serve agencies and help them achieve their missions. And so, the more that we think about these shared service centers is like centers of excellence, that the more obvious it is how important this is going to be for agencies to achieve their missions in the future.

Tom Temin  And you see the shared services providers themselves changing, for example, Interior has got these big cloud contracts, that they are almost cloud brokers. And that becomes the shared service rather than Interior mainframes so to speak.

Steve Krauss  Yeah, that’s true. I mean, there’s opportunities to turn all kinds of things into shared services, right, the fact that agencies have similar needs, and once you have an entity, like the Interior Business Center, or the National Finance Center, you have the business model, quite frankly, and the infrastructure to be able to transact with various agencies and to get them the services that they need. Frankly, it doesn’t have to be limited to HR shared services.

Tom Temin  Two questions in one. Who initiates an agency’s journey toward a modernized HR and where should they go first? Should they go to the GSA marketplace, or should they go to OPM.

Steve Krauss  It kind of depends on where they are in the ecosystem. For a lot of agencies who are already currently customers of some of these shared service centers, their journey towards modernization has a lot to do with partnering closely, probably with their existing shared service center. But they can also go to the HR QSMO small marketplace now to see what options are available. Different shared service centers provide different services, and some agencies buy different services from different service centers. And so that is a viable option. We tend to be focusing a lot of our attention on some of the largest agencies and the shared service providers themselves because that accounts for probably 80 to 90% of the HR IT ecosystem that exists across the federal government. And at this point, for the most part, those agencies know that they should be coming to us for market intelligence, but also to ensure that they’re aligned with the standards and the strategies that OMB and OPM are deploying and we’re working hand in hand with most of those agencies today on their modernization projects.

The post A lot is changing in the way the government does human resources first appeared on Federal News Network.

Interstate 95 is a lifeline along the eastern end of the United States. When a bad truck accident knocked out a bridge near Philadelphia in 2023, a team from the Transportation Department orchestrated an effort that got it replaced in a week and a half. For their work, Tony Mento, Hari Kalla and Camille Otto of the Federal Highway Administration are finalists in this year’s Service to America Medals program. Ms. Otto is deputy administrator of the Pennsylvania division and she joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin to talk about their achievement.

Interview transcript: 

Tom Temin
And just recreate what happened in the aftermath, as everyone remembers, this tanker truck of gasoline exploded underneath the bridge. And the heat caused the bridge to collapse. What’s the process by which the Federal Highway Administration finds out about a thing like this? Or do you just watch TV.

Camille Otto
So fortunately for us, we have wonderful relationships with our State Department of Transportation, people know them as PennDOT, as well as the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency. And so we have an electronic system actually, that when these incidents happen, that we get alerted through email almost immediately. So we were made aware of through email, and honestly, through phone calls from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. We have long standing relationships and cell phones. So immediately calls were being made to all three of us at federal highway.

Tom Temin
And so state officials, I guess some extent maybe even city officials and federal officials are standing and looking at a hole in the road with a kind of a embankment on either side. Who’s in charge at this point?

Camille Otto
To start off, it was actually the National Transportation Safety Board and the Pennsylvania State Police, as well as emergency management agencies were out, because the fire was still ongoing. And as folks may know, there was a gasoline tank or so. That gasoline was still on fire and leaking into the drainage systems. So they were on the scene to get everything stabilized. Really before anyone else could access it to take a look at the damage and assess things.

Tom Temin
Right. Tell us about the immediate aftermath. Eventually the flames are out. It’s probably hot for a long time. When did the Federal Highway Administration kick in? And what did you perceive your role to be once the flames cooled off?

Camille Otto
So even more, while the fires were still burning, we were communicating with the state DOT, and getting things lined up and working on traffic control. But once the fires were out, we had already assembled a team. So we were down in Philadelphia, and we’re on site actually the next day on Monday to start assessing and working on a plan to get the bridge reopened.

Tom Temin
And did you see the site yourself?

Camille Otto
I did not on the first day. When we were able to access it, I stayed back to manage some of the traffic control and all of the coordination efforts. And I sent my senior bridge engineer Jonathan Buck, as well as my lead for engineering so that they could be down on site to really look at the technical aspects of it and provide PennDOT with the best advice tactically that we could add as quickly as possible.

Tom Temin
So the issue then is how far the damage goes beyond what you can see, such that you know that whatever you attach back is going to stay up. Just to put it in simple terms.

Camille Otto
That’s exactly correct. So we knew immediately that the northbound lane had actually collapsed, but we were not sure about the condition of the southbound lane, as well as some of the abutments. So immediately, everyone was looking at those to determine what was their status and it was identified that the southbound lanes would also have to be replaced. So from that point, then we could look at what else needed to be done to get that removal going and move forward with a plan.

Tom Temin
Yes, sort of was standing by habit, the one way, and the other one had collapsed completely. It was gone. We’re speaking with Camille Otto. She’s Deputy Administrator of the Pennsylvania division of the Federal Highway Administration, also a Service to America Medals finalists this year. What happens then once the damage is finished happening, and the traffic is rerouted, you’ve got this hole. And how do you get going next? You need contracts, you need contractors, you need assessments. Tell us about the process.

Camille Otto
So the first thing to look at was what type of alternatives do we have? Fortunately, we had done work on this bridge not too long ago. PennDOT sprang into action and we looked at design plans, what type of materials we can get, and how quickly you can get them. We were very fortunate that a contractor was nearby. So he sprang into action and their group was able to do the removal within a few days. While PennDOT and Federal Highway we’re actively working on what can we do to get a temporary repair up and running. And fortunately we had some very innovative solutions for as you know, the lightweight glass aggregate fill, which is local to a Delaware County group. So we were able to gather all that information very quickly, even while the contractor was doing removal and come up with a design plan. So it really took a large effort on behalf of multiple agencies, both local, state and federal, and the private sector to kind of come up with some innovative solutions quickly.

Tom Temin
How was it bridged in 12 days? Even though that wasn’t the permanent bridge, but enough that it can handle. And let’s face it, a lot of trucks go over 95 on 95 every day, so it had to bear some real weight and wear and tear.

Camille Otto
Absolutely. So we were fortunate in the fact that we were not overwater, which allowed us some extra leeway in innovative solutions. So what they ended up doing was placing this fill within sort of cages from a layman’s term, and compacting it layer by layer with this glass aggregate that PennDOT has done lab testing on in the past and federal highway has done testing as well. So we knew what this product was based on some of those innovative technology testing that had previously been done. And they just layered and compacted, and you can watch on the video as they continue to build it up and up and up until they could put the page surface on the top.

Tom Temin
In other words, they had to spam something. And what they had to span it with was this material compress, that could stand up for that distance across the lanes of the road below.

Camille Otto
Exactly. So they we’re spanning over a ramp and off ramp to the interstate. So they were able to fill that space, with this aggregate. Had that been water, it would have required a different solution. So like I said, this was very innovative to use this to span that to get a temporary solution to open that back up to traffic, including trucks. And so the lab testing was key to know that this would be able to carry that kind of weight.

Tom Temin
So in some ways, the technology and the mechanisms administratively to have this were already in place, you might say.

Camille Otto
Correct. So we have our innovative councils and our Everyday Counts initiative. And this was included in some of those things. So that advanced innovation testing was very key to making this successful.

Tom Temin
And what is happening next? Because that fill materials in there, but that’s not intended to be the permanent solution. And you watch roads get built and you wonder why it takes them six months to pave a mile or something somewhere, and the one that drives a long road construction. So what’s next to make it permanent?

Camille Otto
So the fix is actually permanent now. So we have done the temporary fill. And while they had that done, they were actually able to get the steel beams and build the outside portions of the bridge, while people ran on the inside in the fill. Once that was done, which was late last fall, they began pulling out the fill. And once the fill was out, they could build the inside of the bridge while the traffic was running on the outside. So as of May 23, last month, they were able to complete all of that and one lane of the Cottman ramp is back and restored. So everyone is back and running on a fully restored version of i95. And the only remaining work is really to do one more lane of Cottman Avenue on the off ramp, and put a few more safety features. So we’re going to have some high friction surface to help vehicles navigate the curve and some additional signing as well just to warm.

Tom Temin
As someone who spends a lot of time on two wheels, I like the idea of a high friction surface for the curves. And couple of questions then. After removing the film material, are you evaluating it to see how it was stood for approximately a year of temporary use, just to see what happens.

Camille Otto
So they were able to look at it before they even removed it. So it performed adequately. And additionally, I would assume some of that testing data will obviously go back to federal highway for future uses as well.

Tom Temin
Yeah, cause glass fill sounds like something that could be an abundant commodity to make stuff out of that could be put in maybe permanently in some places.

Camille Otto
So we do have some of this permanently in place on some projects. Typically, I believe in some interchange slopes and things. So this is actually being used already in other areas.

Tom Temin
Are there any lessons learned from bridges where in this case it wasn’t 95 where a crash occurred, but underneath 95 and the flames went up to 95? If I’m describing it right, is there any alterations to bridges that could be promulgated, so that if another tanker blows up the bridge won’t melt?

Camille Otto
We have looked at some of that information. Of course the the amount of heat coming from a gasoline fire is a very very, very intense. And so there’s limited in what you can do. But we have looked at how can we make a stronger steel? And what kind of information? And a lot of these things will feed back into some of our everyday counts initiatives. Is there some innovation there, and other materials or strengthening that can be done. And so those are things that our bridge engineers do take back and look at, and we try to provide information and always looking to build a better safer product anytime we can.

Tom Temin
And by the way, do you come to your job from the engineering side? Because you know a lot about this. Or do you come to it from the program administrator side.

Camille Otto
So for me, originally, I’m actually a biologist and not an engineer. So it’s one of the few maybe that comes from this angle. But I’ve worked with a lot of engineers. So I’ve been in Transportation for 27 years. Starting out in the consulting arena working for state DOT’s. And now I’ve been with federal highway 14 years now. So my job now comes from the program administration side of things, but I think it really takes a team, so we pull everyone together to have all aspects covered when we’re working on things. So I think it’s helpful to have all of those different diversities to bring to the table and really come up with a solution that covers all all aspects.

The post An award-winning federal response to a sudden transportation disaster first appeared on Federal News Network.

• It’s the season when feds tend to get reminders about the do's and don’ts of political activity. For Department of the Navy employees, that means mandatory training. In a message yesterday, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro ordered commanders to finish training all of their personnel on the Hatch Act and DoD’s official instruction on political activity no later than Sept. 15. The rules are different for various categories of employees — like active duty members, reservists, “less restricted” and “greater restricted” civilians. But there are some universal prohibitions — like using government resources for politicking, or doing anything that might imply government endorsement of a candidate.
  (Guidance on Political Activities of Department of the Navy Personnel - U.S. Navy )
• A new bill is trying to ease restrictions for federal applicants who have used marijuana in the past. If it’s enacted, a bill nicknamed the “DOOBIE” Act would mean agencies can’t deny a job or security clearance application only because of a candidate’s past marijuana use. There’s already guidance for agencies pushing similar policies, but Senator Gary Peters (D-Mich.), who introduced the bill, says there’s still confusion on the topic. Some candidates are still hesitant to apply for a federal job or security clearance because they’re worried about past marijuana use. The Senate Homeland Security Committee is expected to consider the new legislation next week.
  (‘DOOBIE’ Act looks to ease security clearance restrictions on past marijuana use - Federal News Network)
• The Defense Department is still finalizing new plans for its delayed background investigation system. The Pentagon expects to finalize a new schedule and cost estimate for the National Background Investigation Services system, or NBIS, within one month. The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency oversees the new IT system. It was originally scheduled to be completed by 2019. But officials say the project has been beset by cost overruns, an unreliable schedule and an inadequate technical approach. Now, DCSA is just working to get the next-generation background investigation system on track over the next 18 months.
  (Troubled background investigation system still under review at Pentagon - Federal News Network)
• Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira is now expected to face a military court-martial, months after he pleaded guilty to federal charges for leaking highly classified military documents. Teixeira has admitted to illegally collecting some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets and sharing them on the social media platform Discord. Military prosecutors say he will now face charges of disobeying orders and obstructing justice. The Air Force said he'll be tried at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts, though no trial date has been set. Teixeira’s lawyers have argued that a court-martial would amount to prosecuting him twice for the same offense.
  (Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira to face a military court-martial, Air Force says - Associated Press)
• The Department of Veterans Affairs is weaning veterans off a traditional username and password to access their health and benefits records online. The VA said it will transition all veterans to use the government’s own identity verification service, Login.gov, or a commercial provider, ID.me, over the next year. VA said the transition will improve security, and impact about 3 million veterans and other beneficiaries. The VA said veterans will no longer be able to sign into its health portal with a username and password after Jan. 31 next year. Veterans will be able to access their data and manage their benefits once they create a new account.
  (VA begins transition to simpler online sign-in experience for veterans’ account access - Department of Veterans Affairs)
• The Department of Veterans Affairs is telling lawmakers it’s looking at a nearly $15 billion shortfall. VA officials are projecting a $3 billion shortfall this year, and a nearly $12 billion shortfall in fiscal 2025. The department gets funding for its mandatory health and benefits programs a year in advance to avoid any disruption from a government shutdown. VA financial experts briefed the House VA Committee earlier this week. Chairman Mike Bost (R-Ill.) said hiring accounts for some of the cost overruns. The VA planned to shed 10,000 positions next year. But Bost said the VA is now on track to add 22,000 full-time employees.
  (VA warns of historic $15B budget shortfall. House committee says more hiring ‘above all’ is driving up costs - Federal News Network )
• The Defense Department’s mental health program is often too slow to get in touch with service members transitioning to civilian life. Military members who may need mental health support typically don’t hear from DoD’s “inTransition” program until two or three months after they’ve separated from their service. A new report from the Government Accountability Office said those first few months are a particularly vulnerable time for transitioning members. GAO said the program should change its outreach methods, and create auto-contact options to reach at-risk members more quickly.
  (DoD and VA Health Care - Government Accountability Office)
• Kristyn Jones, who performed the duties of the Air Force under secretary for over a year, has officially retired from federal service. Jones has served as the assistant secretary for financial management and comptroller since 2022. During her time as under secretary, Jones helped launch a sweeping review of the service’s processes and organizational structures. Melissa Dalton stepped into her role as under secretary in May following her Senate confirmation.
  (Air Force Kristyn Jones officially retires from federal service - Linkedin)
• The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has made some key leadership changes official. Jeff Greene is now CISA’s executive assistant director for cybersecurity. And Trent Frazier has been appointed assistant director for stakeholder engagement. Both had been serving in those roles in an acting capacity. Greene previously was at the Aspen Institute. He replaced Eric Goldstein, who left CISA’s top cyber job to join Capital One last month. Frazier joined CISA after serving in a variety of leadership roles throughout the Department of Homeland Security.
  (CISA announces key leadership appointments - Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency)
• DISA’s program executive office for transport wants a more graceful transition plan from the industry. The Defense Information Systems Agency’s PEO for transport is essentially the internet for the Defense Department. As the office is working to adopt next-generation networking gear, it is seeking standards-based solutions from multiple vendors. Chris Paczkowski, the PEO transport director, said he wants to see more roadmaps from the industry.
  (DISA’s PEO transport wants ‘graceful transition plan’ from industry - Federal News Network)

The post Navy members get a reminder to watch how they participate in the upcoming election season first appeared on Federal News Network.

And even before the first hearing Republican calls for Director Kimberly Cheatle to resign intensified Wednesday with top Republican leaders from both the House and the Senate saying she should step down. The director has said she has no intention of resigning.

Rep. James Comer said initially that the Secret Service committed to her attendance but that Homeland Security officials appeared to intervene and there has been no “meaningful updates or information” shared with the committee.

Comer said the “lack of transparency and failure to cooperate” with the committee called into question Cheatle’s ability to lead the Secret Service and necessitated the subpoena.

Cheatle has said the agency understands the importance of a review ordered by Democratic President Joe Biden and would fully participate in it as well as with congressional committees looking into the shooting.

In response to the subpoena and an earlier letter from Comer, Zephranie Buetow, an assistant secretary at Homeland Security, said that while the department was “disappointed that the Committee rushed to issue a subpoena,” Cheatle welcomes the chance to testify. The official said that given Cheatle’s focus on securing the ongoing Republican National Convention, the department would appreciate if she could appear on July 25 or July 26, or the following week, instead of Monday.

The Oversight panel rejected that request for a change of date and committee spokesperson Jessica Collins said, “Director Cheatle has agreed to comply with Chairman Comer’s subpoena and the hearing will take place as scheduled.”

“Americans demand and deserve answers from the director about the attempted assassination of President Trump and the Secret Service’s egregious failures,” Collins said.

The subpoena was just one of a series of developments that occurred Wednesday in the wake of the Saturday assassination attempt.

The fact that a shooter was able to get so close to the former president while he’s supposed to be closely guarded has raised questions about what security plans the agency tasked with taking a bullet for its protectees put in place and who is ultimately responsible for allowing the 20-year-old gunman to climb a roof where he had a clear line of sight to a former president.

House Speaker Mike Johnson announced he would be setting up a task force to investigate security failures that occurred during the assassination attempt. He also said he would be calling on Cheatle to resign from her post as director of the Secret Service, saying on Fox News Channel without elaborating, “I think she’s shown what her priorities are.”

He said the task force would be made up of Republicans and Democrats and its formation would speed up the investigative process.

“We must have accountability for this. It was inexcusable,” Johnson said. “Obviously, there were security lapses. You don’t have to be a special ops expert to understand that. And we’re going to get down to the bottom of it quickly.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, added his name to the list of lawmakers calling for Cheatle to step down. He said on the social media platform X that the near assassination was a “grave attack on American democracy.”

“The nation deserves answers and accountability,” McConnell tweeted. New leadership at the Secret Service would be an important step in that direction.”

The House Homeland Security Committee also invited several state and local law enforcement officials from Pennsylvania to testify at a hearing in the coming days with Rep. Mark Green, the committee’s chairman, saying their accounts of events were critical to the investigation.

A key issue in the unfolding aftermath of the shooting is how security responsibilities were divided between Secret Service and local law enforcement at the rally and what breakdowns occurred that eventually allowed the gunman onto the roof.

Cheatle said during an interview Monday with ABC News that the shooting should never have happened, but also said she has no plans to resign.

When asked who bears the most responsibility for the shooting happening, she said: “What I would say is the Secret Service is responsible for the protection of the former president.”

“The buck stops with me. I am the director of the Secret Service,” she said.

Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the U.S. Secret Service, on Wednesday said: “Director Kimberly Cheatle is proud to work alongside the dedicated men and women of the U.S. Secret Service and has no intention to resign.”

So far, she has the support of the administration.

“I have 100% confidence in the director of the United States Secret Service. I have 100% confidence in the United States Secret Service,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Monday.

But in addition to the Congressional inquiries, Cheatle and the Secret Service are also facing an inquiry by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general.

In a brief notice posted to the inspector general’s website Tuesday, the agency said the objective of the probe is to “Evaluate the United States Secret Service’s (Secret Service) process for securing former President Trump’s July 13, 2024 campaign event.”

The agency also said Wednesday it is launching a review of the agency’s Counter Sniper Team’s “preparedness and operations.”

“Our objective is to determine the extent to which the Secret Service Counter Sniper Team is prepared for, and responds to, threats at events attended by designated protectees,” the inspector general’s office said.

Biden on Sunday said he was ordering an independent review of the security at the rally. No one has yet been named to lead that inquiry.

Since the shooting, Cheatle and the Security Service have come under intense scrutiny over how a gunman could get in position to fire at a former president.

The shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was able to get within 135 meters (157 yards) of the stage where the Republican former president was speaking when he opened fire. That’s despite a threat on Trump’s life from Iran leading to additional security for the former president in the days before the Saturday rally.

A bloodied Trump was quickly escorted off the stage by Secret Service agents, and agency snipers killed the shooter. Trump said the upper part of his right ear was pierced in the shooting. One rallygoer was killed, and two others critically wounded.

Cheatle said her agency was working to understand how Saturday’s shooting happened and to make sure something like it never does again.

Cheatle and FBI Director Christopher Wray participated in a telephone briefing Wednesday afternoon with senators. Republicans came away critical.

Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., tweeted on X that it was a “100% cover-your-ass briefing.” Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., called for administration officials to hold a daily press conference to share updates with the public, and Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said “they are so disjointed that they don’t have their own facts together yet.”

The Secret Service has roughly 7,800 staff members and is responsible for protecting presidents, vice presidents, their families, former presidents, their spouses and their minor children under the age of 16 and a few other high-level Cabinet officials such as the Homeland Security secretary.

___

AP writer Stephen Groves contributed to this report.

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Congress members are continuing a push to change how agencies view individuals’ past marijuana use in the security clearance and federal hiring processes.

A new bill that Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, introduced last week aims to limit how much weight agencies can place on past marijuana use when considering applications for federal jobs or security clearances.

“Current federal law allows highly qualified individuals to be denied federal employment or security clearances based on past use of marijuana or cannabis products, despite legalization at state levels,” Peters wrote in a press release Wednesday. “This misalignment between evolving state laws, federal guidance and actual hiring practices has created a barrier for talented individuals seeking federal employment, which could limit the government’s ability to compete for top talent.”

The new bill, nicknamed the “DOOBIE” Act, focuses on easing restrictions for those who have used marijuana in the past, either recreationally or for medical reasons. Under the legislation, agencies wouldn’t be able to deny a federal job application, security clearance application or other federal credentials based solely on an individual’s prior use of marijuana.

HSGAC is expected to take up the bill for consideration and possible advancement during an upcoming hearing on July 24.

The proposed changes outlined in Peters’ bill, however, are already largely in place at agencies. Both the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Office of Personnel Management published updated guidance on the topic back in 2021.

ODNI’s guidance, while saying that the illegal use of controlled substances can raise security concerns, also says an individual’s prior use of recreational marijuana shouldn’t be the determining factor in granting a clearance. Similarly, OPM’s guidance directed agencies not to automatically preclude federal applicants from job opportunities solely based on past, discontinued use of marijuana.

“While federal agencies, including OPM and ODNI, have issued guidance stating that past marijuana use alone should not disqualify candidates, many potential applicants remain hesitant to pursue federal positions due to a fear of automatic disqualification,” Peters wrote. “The DOOBIE Act would align federal hiring practices with current guidance on past marijuana use, broaden the applicant pool by providing clarity for prospective federal employees and help the government compete with the private sector for talent.”

The DOOBIE Act aims to take the practices outlined by ODNI and OPM a small step further by codifying them, Ryan Nerney, managing partner of the Ladera Ranch, California, office at law firm Tully Rinckey, told Federal News Network.

“This bill would just solidify that, because [right now] that’s just guidance within various different agencies,” Nerney said in an interview. “Especially intelligence agencies, even though this guidance came out, they still have stricter views on marijuana use when it comes to that. So, potentially codifying this in an actual bill from Congress, might make this guidance that has been in place since 2021 a little bit more expansive.”

House efforts to lift restrictions in clearance process

Peters’ bill is the latest effort in Congress, but it dovetails with several other members who have been pushing to ease restrictions on marijuana use by federal employees and government job applicants.

Last fall, the House Oversight and Accountability Committee took up a companion bill to the DOOBIE Act. The House legislation, nicknamed the “CURE” Act, similarly aims to prohibit agencies from considering past marijuana use while hiring for federal jobs, or during the security clearance process.

But the House bill, if enacted, would take things a further step by requiring agencies to create a review process to look back at past security clearance and job applications. Agencies could reconsider previously denied applications based solely on an individual’s marijuana use, according to the bill.

The bipartisan CURE Act, first introduced by Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) last July, advanced out of the Oversight committee in a vote of 30-14 last fall. But the legislation so far has not been slated for a House floor vote.

“The CURE Act will ensure that talented individuals seeking to honorably serve our country are not precluded from doing so simply because they admit to having once used marijuana,” Raskin said in a 2023 press statement following the Oversight committee’s advancement of the legislation.

Confusion continues around federal weed policies

The question of whether marijuana use prevents eligibility for a federal job or a clearance has become a prevalent topic in recent years, as more states continue to legalize or decriminalize marijuana, and recreational marijuana use grows. One recent study found that daily marijuana use has surpassed daily alcohol use in the United States, according to an Associated Press article from May.

At the federal level, marijuana is considered illegal and currently classified as a Schedule I drug, alongside substances like heroin and LSD. But given changing state laws on marijuana use, Nerney said there’s still a lot of confusion — even today — around how that impacts the federal security clearance process.

For instance, a 2023 survey of young professionals found that about a quarter of respondents didn’t understand the government’s policy on marijuana use. Out of about 900 respondents in the survey, conducted by ClearanceJobs and the Intelligence and National Security Foundation, 40% said they had used marijuana within the past year. Additionally, 21% said that their use of marijuana, alcohol or other drugs, would prevent them from applying for a clearance.

Right now, agencies generally follow guidance that says past marijuana use is “relevant,” but not “determinative.” Using marijuana won’t automatically lead to a security clearance denial, and agencies are still expected to consider the individual’s specific circumstances.

“Agencies take this into account, and they follow this, but there’s still gray area that they can use,” Nerney said. “You can’t be disqualified just because you use marijuana. It has to take into account a whole bunch of different things.”

For instance, in the security clearance process, agencies may consider how recently individuals have used marijuana, how often they’ve used it and whether they plan to continue using marijuana in the future. ODNI’s guidance, however, still directs personnel to refrain from using marijuana once they’re granted a clearance.

How much leeway should agencies have?

The question of how specific the guidance should be on marijuana use in determining clearance remains up in the air as well. Having some gray area may be beneficial, Nerney said, by giving agencies flexibility to decide clearance process applications on a case-by-case basis. But at the same time, he said a more specific approach would make the policy easier to interpret.

“It goes both ways, but I think overall, it probably would be better if everything was a little bit more specific. But not everybody is the same. There’s not going to be a one-size-fits-all,” Nerney said. “[Some gray area] gives us a little bit more leeway. If [agencies] feel that there’s a threat, they can make that determination to deny or revoke clearance.”

There may be more changes on the horizon at the federal level as well. The Drug Enforcement Administration recently said it’s looking to take steps to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug.

Even if DEA reclassifies cannabis, though, legal experts have said it wouldn’t have much effect on marijuana’s role in federal hiring or the security clearance process, since the drug would still be considered a controlled substance and illegal at the federal level.

Regardless of the current legislative and administrative efforts to make changes, Nerney said there likely won’t be a comprehensive update to the security clearance process until marijuana is decriminalized or made legal at the federal level.

“It’s kind of slow steps, little steps, things that are helpful I think, but ultimately, major changes aren’t going to happen until it’s legalized,” Nerney said. “Once that happens, then there’s going to be a snowball effect. They’ll have to update the security executive agent directive and the security clearance guidelines.”

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House VA Committee Chairman Mike Bost (R-Ill.) says chief financial officers from the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) and the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) told the committee Monday that they face a $2.88 billion shortfall for the rest of this fiscal year, and a nearly $12 billion shortfall for fiscal 2025.

The VA gets funding for its mandatory health and benefits programs a year before the current fiscal year to avoid any disruption from a government shutdown.

The CFOs, Bost added, attributed the funding discrepancy to increased hiring and pharmaceutical costs.

In a letter to VA Secretary Denis McDonough, Bost said the $15 billion funding gap is the VA’s largest budget shortfall, “and a repudiation of the FY 2025 budget request that the Biden-Harris administration presented just four months ago.”

“Not only have your chief financial officers thrown out the dollar amounts requested for many key accounts, they have abandoned many of the estimates and projections that underpinned their budget. This is not just fiscal mismanagement; it is strategic whiplash,” he wrote.

VA Press Secretary Terrence Hayes confirmed the department’s projected budget deficits in a statement to reporters Thursday morning.

“VA is working closely with Congress and the Office of Management and Budget to resolve these potential shortfalls in a way that prevents any adverse impacts on veterans — and allows us to continue to deliver care and benefits to veterans at record rates,” Hayes said.

The VA, he added, is delivering record levels of health care and benefits to veterans under the 2022 PACT Act, which expanded veterans’ eligibility for VA health care and benefits if they were exposed to toxic substances during their military service.

Since President Joe Biden signed the PACT Act, more than 710,000 veterans have enrolled in VA health care, a more than 34% increase compared to the same period before the legislation.

VBA also expects to break new records this year for the volume of disability benefits claims it’ll pay out to veterans.

“These important results for veterans and survivors exceeded initial expectations,” Hayes said.

The VA, in its FY 2025 budget request, planned to reduce its workforce headcount by 10,000 employees — with most of those jobs coming from VHA.

However, Bost said VHA is now looking at a staffing increase of 22,000 full-time employees over the same period. About 17,000 employees, he added, have already been hired, and VHA is looking to hire another 5,000 employees.

“Hiring quality health care workers is difficult enough without a constantly moving target,” he wrote.

VHA hired more than 61,000 employees last year — its fastest rate of growth in 15 years. The agency grew its total workforce by more than 7% and now has more than 400,000 employees for the first time in its history.

In addition, efforts to boost retention also led to a 20% decrease in turnover between 2022 and 2023.

McDonough told reporters in February that VHA is managing its workforce with a “tighter fiscal picture,” but added that the department is taking a more targeted approach to hiring, after the agency exceeded its hiring targets last year.

“Where we’re not hiring, it’s not because we haven’t been able to hire. It’s because we don’t have a need. Why would we not have a need? Because we just had a great year of hiring,” McDonough said Feb. 26 at a monthly press conference at VA headquarters.

VHA, in some cases, has rescinded tentative and final job offers it made to prospective hires. But the agency ordered a “strategic pause” on rescinding job offers in January, and later issued a memo directing VA health care facilities to only rescind job offers “as an action of last resort.”

VA officials have repeatedly stated the department isn’t under a hiring freeze. However, a lengthy hiring process — even by the federal government’s standards — is frustrating job applicants, especially those who have accepted tentative job offers, but have yet to receive a final job offer.

Under Secretary for Health Shereef Elnahal told VHA employees, in a Feb. 5 email obtained by Federal News Network, that following last year’s record hiring, “we have the nationwide staffing level we need to accomplish this important mission — and we have the funding we need to care for veterans through 2024 and into 2025.”

“As responsible stewards of these funds, we must make thoughtful decisions about resource use at every level of the enterprise,” Elnahal wrote. “This means that we will not be hiring at the same rate we did last year but let me be clear: there is no hiring freeze, we will continue to hire in key areas, and we will do everything in our power to continue supporting our current workforce.”

Bost is asking McDonough if the VA is seeing “significant, unexpected changes in demand for in-house care” since Elnahal’s email to employees. If the agency isn’t seeing a sudden change in demand, he’s asking the department to explain the need for increased staffing.

“Given Under Secretary for Health Elnahal’s announced policy of nationwide hiring restrictions and managing by attrition, I think veterans and employees deserve a much better explanation of where these 22,304 FTE are being hired,” Bost wrote.

Bost said the VA has repeatedly shifted regular expenses out of its base budget and into the Toxic Exposures Fund, which was created under the PACT Act.

“VA’s budget has become increasingly complicated and reliant on gimmicks, apparently to compensate for the expiration of one-time, pandemic-related supplemental funding,” Bost wrote. “This has created a situation where one bad estimate or unanticipated event can create a shortfall in multiple accounts.”

The VA, for example, is seeing an increase in community care costs for veterans to receive health care outside the VA medical system.  But Bost said the department isn’t covering those increased costs in its base budget — “seemingly straining, if not breaking, the limits of what the Toxic Exposures Fund can pay for.”

Bost said VA’s compensation and pension costs are running below its budget projects, so far this fiscal year. But VBA typically sees those costs surge at the end of the fiscal year — especially with an increase in claims submitted under the PACT Act.

VBA processed 1.98 million disability benefits claims and issued $163 billion in total benefits in FY 2023. Under Secretary for Benefits Joshua Jacobs recently told reporters that VBA is on pace to process 30% more claims in fiscal 2024 compared to last year.

The agency, so far this year, has awarded $112 billion to veterans and their survivors in compensation and benefits. VBA also recently granted its millionth benefits claim under the PACT Act.

VA told the committee it anticipates a more than $3.8 billion increase in pharmaceutical and prosthetics spending across FY 2024 and 2025.

Bost said VHA’s chief financial officer also suggested that the Change Healthcare ransomware attack may be to blame for some of VA’s budget shortfalls. The ransomware affected many public and private health care systems across the country.

The VA is shifting $700 million in medical collections from this fiscal year to FY 2025 because of the ransomware attack.

The post VA warns of historic $15B budget shortfall. House committee says more hiring ‘above all’ is driving up costs first appeared on Federal News Network.

• Social Security online users will soon have to create Login.gov accounts, if they don't already have them. The website is a one-stop-shop for Americans to access government benefits and services online. The Social Security Administration is transitioning all users who made their accounts before 2021, to the Login.gov platform. Any beneficiary who already has a Login.gov account doesn't need to take any action. More than five million customers have already made the switch. SSA says the change aims to simplify the sign-in process, while providing more secure access to online services.
  (Upcoming changes to accessing online services - Social Security Administration)
• The cloud security program, known as FedRAMP, is now taking on another long-held frustration by its industry and agency customers: the need to automate system security plans. A new technical document hub, released last Friday, aims to give users technical documentation, best practices and guidance for creating and managing digital authorization packages using the OSCAL framework. By using this open source language, FedRAMP hopes vendor plans move from 600 page Word or PDF files to files that are machine readable and promote automation.
  (FedRAMP’s Automation Website: A new hub for technical documentation and guidance on digital authorization packages - FedRAMP)
• The Department of Homeland Security wants to reduce duplicative cyber incident reporting requirements. DHS is working on interagency agreements so organizations don’t have to report cyber incidents to multiple agencies. Those agreements fall under DHS’ implementation of the Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act. DHS assistant secretary for cyber Iranga Kahangama. “We are going to be viewing and administering CIRCIA with an eye towards harmonization.” The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency published the draft CIRCIA rule in April. CISA expects to finalize the rule next spring.
  (DHS official details efforts to harmonize cyber reporting rules - Federal News Network )
• A new Senate bill would target counterfeit electronics in the federal government’s supply chain. Senators John Cornyn and Gary Peters introduced the Securing America’s Federal Equipment in Supply Chains Act or the SAFE Act last week. The legislation would require agencies to only buy electronics from original manufacturers or authorized re-sellers. The lawmakers say gray-market sellers can circumvent trusted supply chains and introduce risks into federal networks. Their bill does include an option to waive the requirements if it’s in the interest of national security.
  (Cornyn, Peters introduce bill to safeguard U.S. supply chains, cybersecurity - Office of Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tx.))
• At the Department of Health and Human Services, using shared certificates has cut the agency’s time-to-hire by as much as 50 percent. Along with reducing time-to-hire, HHS human capital leaders say shared certificates create a better experience for candidates. They also help HR staff work more strategically. Sharing certificates is a relatively new recruitment practice in government. It lets federal recruiters expedite some of the early steps of the hiring process by sharing applications across different offices that are hiring for the same position. Over time, HHS has increasingly relied on shared certificates. In the last four years, HHS hired nearly 12,000 employees using that strategy.
  (‘An extraordinary opportunity’: How HHS uses shared certificates in hiring - Federal News Network)
• A new study finds significant increases in the diagnosis of chronic pain among female service members exposed to combat. Military wives also show higher odds of developing chronic pain when their spouses are deployed. Researchers looked into military health records of female patients suffering from chronic pain from 2006 to 2020. Researchers intended for the military wives to serve as a control group. But the research showed that military wives are at a much higher risk of developing chronic pain as well.
  (During combat, female service members show higher odds of chronic pain and so do military wives - JAMA Network Open)
• The Department of the Navy reported the greatest increase in suicide deaths in the first quarter of 2024. The news comes after the Navy’s internal survey revealed that the percentage of Sailors reporting “severe or extreme” levels of stress has increased significantly since 2019. The Air Force reported 17 deaths by suicide — up from 13 in the first quarter of 2023. Meanwhile, the Army saw a significant decrease in suicide deaths this year.
  (Military suicide rates continue to rise - Defense Department )

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The FBI on Sunday identified the shooter as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania.

The gunman, who officials said was killed by Secret Service personnel, fired multiple shots at the stage from an “elevated position outside of the rally venue,” the agency said.

An Associated Press analysis of more than a dozen videos and photos taken at the Trump rally, as well as satellite imagery of the site, shows the shooter was able to get astonishingly close to the stage where the former president was speaking. A video posted to social media and geolocated by the AP shows Crooks’ body lying motionless on the roof of a manufacturing plant just north of the Butler Farm Show grounds, where Trump’s rally was held. A different image shows Crooks wearing a gray T-shirt with a black American flag on the right arm, with a bloody wound to his head.

The roof was fewer than 150 meters (164 yards) from where Trump was speaking, a distance from which a decent marksman could reasonably hit a human-sized target. For reference, 150 meters is a distance at which U.S. Army recruits must hit a human-sized silhouette to qualify with the M16 assault rifle in basic training. The AR-style rifle, like that of the gunman at the Trump rally, is the semiautomatic civilian version of the military M16.

President Joe Biden said Sunday he has directed an independent review of the security at the rally.

Biden said he also directed the U.S. Secret Service to review all security measures for the Republican National Convention, which begins Monday in Milwaukee. Audrey Gibson-Cicchino, the Secret Service’s coordinator for the convention, told reporters later the agency was satisfied with what she called its comprehensive planning for the Republican convention.

Biden urged Americans not to make assumptions about the motive of the shooter. He said investigators are working swiftly to investigate the attack.

“Unity is the most elusive goal of all,” he said, but “nothing is more important than that right now.”

Calls for an investigation came from all sides.

Rep. Mark Green, a Tennessee Republican who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security, sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday raising questions about the shooting and demanding information about the former president’s Secret Service protection.

“The seriousness of this security failure and chilling moment in our nation’s history cannot be understated,” Green wrote.

The Secret Service did not have a speaker at a news conference Saturday night where FBI and Pennsylvania State Police officials briefed reporters on the shooting investigation. FBI Special Agent in Charge Kevin Rojek said it was “surprising” that the gunman was able to fire at the stage before he was killed.

Members of the Secret Service’s counter-sniper team and counterassault team were at the rally, according to two law enforcement officials. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss details of the investigation.

The heavily armed counterassault team, whose Secret Service code name is “Hawkeye,” is responsible for eliminating threats so that other agents can shield and take away the person they are protecting. The counter-sniper team, known by the code name “Hercules,” uses long-range binoculars and is equipped with sniper rifles to deal with long-range threats.

Mayorkas said his department and the Secret Service are working with law enforcement to investigate the shooting. Maintaining the security of presidential candidates and their campaign events is one of the department’s “most vital priorities,” he said.

“We condemn this violence in the strongest possible terms and commend the Secret Service for their swift action today,” Mayorkas said. “We are engaged with President Biden, former President Trump and their campaigns, and are taking every possible measure to ensure their safety and security.“

Green also noted reports that the Secret Service had rebuffed requests from the Trump campaign for additional security. A spokesman for the Secret Service, Anthony Guglielmi, said on X Sunday that those allegations were “absolutely false” and that they had added resources and technology as the campaign’s travel increased.

Green said he would be talking with Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle on Sunday.

Former top Secret Service agents told The AP that Crooks should never have been allowed to gain access to the roof, and the agency will have to figure out how that happened. They said such a lapse could have been caused by officers neglecting their posts or a flaw in the event’s security plan.

The agency is “going to have to go through the security plan and interview a number of people from the director on down” to figure out what went wrong, said Stephen Colo, who retired in 2003 as an assistant director after a 27-year career in the service.

Colo said presidential candidates and former presidents don’t typically get the same level of protection as the sitting president. In fact, Colo said he was surprised that the agency had staffed the event with a counter-sniper team. Such a valuable resource — there are not many of those highly trained agents — is usually reserved for the president. Candidates don’t usually get such teams.

Timothy McCarthy, a former agent who retired from the agency in 1994, said the Secret Service “better be doing a deep dive into what happened there and doing whatever it takes to figure it out” because the gunman should not have been able to occupy such a vantage point.

“How did that person get up on that building?” said McCarthy, 75, who in 1981 took a bullet when President Ronald Reagan was shot outside the Washington Hilton Hotel. “How did that happen? I mean, that’s the key to the entire thing. And what measures were put in place to prevent it?”

James Comer, a Kentucky Republican who is the House Oversight Committee chairman, said he contacted the Secret Service for a briefing and called on Cheatle to appear for a hearing. Comer said his committee will send a formal invitation soon.

“Political violence in all forms is un-American and unacceptable. There are many questions and Americans demand answers,” Comer said in a statement.

U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat, called for investigating “security failures” at the rally.

“The federal government must constantly learn from security failures in order to avoid repeating them, especially when those failures have implications for the nation,” Torres said.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, posted on X that he and his staff are in contact with security planning coordinators ahead of the Republican National Convention set to begin Monday in Milwaukee. “We cannot be a country that accepts political violence of any kind — that is not who we are as Americans,” Evers said.

The FBI said it will lead the investigation into the shooting, working with the Secret Service and local and state law enforcement.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department “will bring every available resource to bear to this investigation.”

“My heart is with the former President, those injured, and the family of the spectator killed in this horrific attack,” Garland said in a statement. “We will not tolerate violence of any kind, and violence like this is an attack on our democracy.”

___

Associated Press writers Del Quentin Wilber, Colleen Long and Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.

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Dave Spero, president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, which represents some FAA employees, said the agency is also short on technicians, which can result in longer equipment outages and more flight delays.

“Having fewer technicians than needed can result in inadequate shift coverage. This means we do not have the right person available to resolve a crisis when it occurs,” Spero told members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s aviation subcommittee at a hearing Wednesday.

Spero said it can take a newly hired FAA technician years to fully complete their training.

The FAA is also dealing with a shortage of 3,000 air traffic controllers. Subcommittee Chairman Sam Graves (R-Mo.) said the FAA’s staffing issues are becoming more apparent with attrition outpacing hiring.

“You’re seeing great disparity with retirements in air traffic controllers and the hiring — meaning that they’re not keeping pace with the hiring pipeline with those that are retiring,” Graves said.

The Transportation Security Administration says a record 3 million people flew the Sunday after the Fourth of July, and that eight of the 10 busiest days for air travel took place after May 24.

“You look at the stresses today, you look at the industry today. In the future, this is just going to grow greater and greater,” Graves said.

Spero said the FAA analysis shows lower staffing of FAA technicians translates into more longer and more frequent maintenance issues.

A radar system problem in Chicago earlier this summer temporarily led to a ground stop of flights.

Spero said there was no technician on site with the skills needed fix the issue quickly, and that an off-duty technician had to be called in to fix the issue.

“Air traffic controllers were seeing multiple targets on their displays. The only solution at that particular point was to put a ground stop in place because they did not know where the aircraft were,” Spero said.  “That problem would have been resolved if they had the right number of people with the right amount of training. And that was a conscious decision made by the agency there in Chicago to say, we don’t need anyone on staff that has that training right now.”

Spero said the FAA is also using an “insufficient” staffing model for its aviation safety inspector workforce.

FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker recently told the Senate Commerce Committee that more inspectors are being sent to oversee Boeing and its suppliers, following the fatal crashes of two 737 MAX jets in 2018 and 2019 that killed more than 340 people.

Spero said PASS recognized the need for greater oversight of Boeing, but said this oversight work is spreading the rest of the FAA inspection workforce thin.

“We do not know where the agency is transferring these inspectors from and if the oversight of other manufacturers or airlines will be impacted,” Spero said. Simply moving inspectors from other manufacturing environments is not a solution.”

The FAA has been developing a technical operations staffing model for over a decade. Spero is urging the agency to focus on the retention of current employees and to provide them with opportunities for career growth.

“We lose people and we’re not able to replace them. And we don’t have that pipeline coming in. We’re not prepared to replace someone when they leave,” Spero said.

Ranking Member Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) said the number of certified professional controllers has declined for more than a decade, and that most facilities across the country have a shortage of air traffic controllers.

The FAA, he added, is “slowly recovering” from a temporary suspension of training at its academy at the height of the pandemic.

“Historical staffing challenges facing air traffic organization technicians, such as increased workload without additional resources and training, exacerbate these ongoing workforce bottlenecks,” Cohen said.

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