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.

The federal government is among the biggest spenders on advertising. At about $1.3 billion a year, it’s in the top 25 U.S. spenders. The Government Accountability Office has new analysis of which agencies spend the most on advertising, and the companies they spend it with. GAO’s Director of Strategic Issues Jessica Lucas-Judy joins the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin
The federal government is among the biggest spenders on advertising at about $1.3 billion a year. It’s in the top 25. US spenders, the Government Accountability Office has new analysis of which agencies spend the most. And the companies they spend it with. We get more now from the GAOs director of strategic issues. Jessica Lucas-Judy. Ms. Lucas-Judy, what prompted GAO to look at something that in the grand scheme of things is not that big of a deal? Spending wise.

Jessica Lucas-Judy
This is something that we have done a series of reports on over the last several years. Last one was in 2018. And there are members of Congress who are interested in this and involved in in small businesses, and primarily wanting to know, what kinds of businesses are getting these contracts? And what sort of opportunities are available? And are the people who are being communicated with, the ones who would be the recipients of the messages from federal agencies? Are they represented in the companies that are getting those contracts?

Tom Temin
All right. And I imagine it’s the Department of Defense that spends the most, I’m guessing, because of recruitment efforts by the armed services?

Jessica Lucas-Judy
That is definitely a big part of their advertising. So when you think about federal government, you don’t necessarily think about advertising. But just like you said, being a recruitment is a big category, public awareness about health issues or what to do in the case of a disaster, what advertising about the kinds of services that agencies provide and how to access them, those are all very important messages that come from government agencies. So just like you said, the Department of Defense is the biggest spender overall. And that’s consistent with our last report from 2018, that DoD was one of the biggest Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security, likewise, have large contract obligations overall. And then, for advertising in particular.

Tom Temin
And over the past 10 years, you have a bar chart that shows fairly steady growth with a big spike in 2020. And that would have been because of programs related to COVID relief.

Jessica Lucas-Judy
That was definitely one of them. I think the census was probably another spike as well, one of the things to keep in mind when looking at the data is that these are small, relatively small dollar amounts overall, and relatively small number of companies that are involved. And so any fluctuation if a big contract is awarded in one year, that might be a multi year contract, that’ll cause a spike in the data. What we found was that overall, the the spending generally increased in the 10 year period that we were looking at. And the percentage of dollars that went to what we’re calling specified businesses. So these are small businesses for those owned by primarily by women or by minorities, that the percentage of dollars that went to those specified businesses stayed roughly the same as 14-15%, for the most part.

Tom Temin
And is there any evidence or any way to determine really whether if, say, spending went to hidden Hispanic owned ad agency. That was for the purposes of reaching the Hispanic audience? And so on and so on? Or do we know that at all.

Jessica Lucas-Judy
That’s something that would be really interesting. But unfortunately, with the data that we had available, that’s not something that we could determine, like, what specifically the contracts were for, you’d have to do contract by contract review.

Tom Temin
And what about where the spending ends up, because you pay an agency at least traditionally, 15% of the media cost, or the agency gets the discount and keeps the 15% or whatever. And at one time you used to see army ads on television, national TV, that’s expensive. And if you’re at the 1.3 billion level a year, you’re not buying much national television.

Jessica Lucas-Judy
Again, that’s something that’d be really interesting to see, but not with the data that we have. We weren’t able to do that.

Tom Temin
I guess I’m showing my media background here.

Jessica Lucas-Judy
All we have a really is a very general information about the company and the category of company, and then the category of of advertising. It was the same thing with the COVID related contracts. It’s just a checkbox in the national contracting data. So not something unless we were going to do a deep dive, which would have taken much more time than we were going to be able to put into this.

Tom Temin
We’re speaking with Jessica Lucas-Judy, director of strategic issues at the Government Accountability Office. And of the 14%, I guess it was of that spending that went to minority and designated businesses. How does that break down? Hispanic owned is the largest share?

Jessica Lucas-Judy
So when you’re looking at the dollars, which is one of the ways that we got the data. About 47%, went to Hispanic owned Hispanic American owned businesses. And about 21% went to black American owned businesses. But then when you look at it by number of businesses, number of contracts that were awarded, and it worked out a little bit differently. It was, I believe is about 36%, went to Black American owned businesses, and 24% to Hispanic American owned businesses.

Tom Temin
So that’s just a fact. But there’s really not too much we can deduce of motivation or effect from any of that analysis.

Jessica Lucas-Judy
Correct. Mainly, what we were looking at were any significant changes over time. And again, with some slight fluctuations here and there, it was pretty consistent. It’s consistent with what we’d found before in our last report and this report. So, again, looking at just the number of businesses overall, there 2200 businesses in the 10-year-period. So again, not that many. In federal advertising overall, 39% businesses were the specified businesses that we were looking at.

Tom Temin
Did you talk to any agencies individually about what their strategies were for spending this money and what they had in mind?

Jessica Lucas-Judy
Just briefly, but not in any depth for this one?

Tom Temin
Got it. So we don’t really know whether the advertising spend is effective in terms of what their objectives were necessarily.

Jessica Lucas-Judy
Correct. That would have been a different kind of study.

Tom Temin
Let me ask you this. You said Congress, certain members are interested in this. This is why they call up GAO since you worked for Congress. What was their objective in having to do this study, do you think?

Jessica Lucas-Judy
Maybe they were just interested in the makeup of the companies that were getting these contracts, and wanting to make sure that they’re having an opportunity to get into these contracts and be able to communicate with the populations that they come from. We would be interested in doing additional work in this area? If that’s something that the members would like us to do? There’s certainly a lot more that one could do, if some of the topics that we’ve talked about in terms of getting down into some of the contracts maybe, or talking to individual agencies, maybe doing some case studies. That was something we’d done in prior years of talking with agencies about what their strategies were, how they have identified contracts, how they select contracts, and what the purposes of the specific contracts are.

Tom Temin
And interestingly, Homeland Security, which is one of those smaller spenders, had the highest percentage of dollars going to specified businesses. Whereas DoD, the biggest spender, had the among the smallest, only 6% going to designated.

Jessica Lucas-Judy
That was just one more way that you could slice and dice the data. And so when you looked at it by dollars, DoD, like you said was the biggest. When you look at it by percentage, NASA turned out to be the biggest, they had 99% of the contracts meant to specify businesses. But it’s a very small dollar amount overall. So again, one or two contracts, one way or the other, can really sway the difference.

Tom Temin
Sure, yeah. I’m trying to think why would NASA advertise at all. I guess, well, maybe jobs.

Jessica Lucas-Judy
Public awareness, recruitment, all those things.

Tom Temin
All right. Well, it looks like you didn’t have any recommendations with respect to ad spending.

Jessica Lucas-Judy
Yeah, this one, our purpose was just to look at the data to inform, answer questions, things like that. But we were not looking at any sort of compliance issues or things like that. There is some guidance out there for some of this, certainly the OMB and SBA, and other agencies are interested in, looking at where contracts go, and there’s some efforts to reach out specifically to make sure that small businesses, in particular, certain percentage of contracts, federal contracts overall. They’re awarded, but not specifically in advertising.

The post How the government spends a billion dollars a year on advertising first appeared on Federal News Network.

With the Fourth of July behind them, and the Republic convention ahead of some of them, Congress spends this week in session. Now the Senate will join the House to splash around in the budget pond. But that’s not all, as we hear from Bloomberg Government Deputy News Director Loren Duggan on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Interview Transcript: 

Loren Duggan
The Senate is holding its first markup on Thursday with three of the 12 appropriations bills, plus setting the top lines that they want to spend on all 12, which will be a really useful indicator of where some of the flashpoints will be between the two chambers. And the House side, the committee has already wrapped up work on six, and they’re aiming to get the other six done this week before they head out to the GOP convention. So a lot to watch in two different places, plus one House floor vote later in the week, too. So a lot happening on the spending front.

Tom Temin
Right. So does that mean that they’ll come to reconciliation at some point before Sept. 30?

Loren Duggan
No. There’s already talk about a stopgap and when it would run through. That’s not the focus right now, they’ll probably do that when they get back from the August recess, which they’ll still be taking. But that certainly the post election period is when this will get resolved. After everyone understands who the President will be, if there’ll be the partisan makeup there. And then who’s going to control both chambers of Congress. You kind of want to get that picture in mind before you figure out if you’re going to try and wrap it up this year, or let it extend into next year, maybe when there’s new people in charge.

Tom Temin
Yeah, the whole presidential picture is such a murky thing right now, we won’t even get into that one. But I wanted to ask you about also the Chevron ruling from the Supreme Court, which seems to change the dynamic among the branches of government to some earlier period when laws were more specific, agency rulemaking was maybe less broad than it is now. What does it look like the Hill will be doing next? Do you think.

Loren Duggan
I’m not sure that they’ll do anything this week about it. But it does change the dynamic longer term and a lot of ways. As you noted before this ruling, agencies were given deference when the law wasn’t clear about what powers they had. Now, the courts are going to have more deference. So Congress, if they want to achieve a policy goal, are going to have to be more specific in the legislating. And that could come in two different ways. We may see more staff or different types of staff brought into Capitol Hill who have deeper experience, or perhaps more time in the regulatory space or whatever. So that could be a big hiring boost, or at least hiring change going into the future. And then lobbyists may also have a bigger role to play here too. Because if they know the rules, and they know the details, they might have more things to write. But as one lobbyists said, if the 1,000 page on the business you see now give you pause, think about the 5,000 page ones you may need in the future to make sure that all your policy goals are spelled out. So this really is a big change. It’s something our newsroom, which covers the law of tax government, across the board is very focused on and thinking about all the ways it could affect lawmaking and regulating going into the future.

Tom Temin
Do you think it could affect this year’s appropriations for the congressional branch that they might even vote on ahead of everything else?

Loren Duggan
That bill is scheduled to go on the House this week. And it’s one of the three that the Senate committee is looking at. Not clear, if they’ll attack that yet. That could be one of the things that when it gets to a final version later this year, they put more funding in there. But certainly those questions are going to be going around. And it could also be to create more offices in the capitol to help. There’s this office of technology assessment that existed before 1995. And there’s been pushes a time to bring that back. Could that be something that comes in now, because if you think about it technology and regulating it is really hard, because what you write into law today may be surpassed by developments, 10, five, three years into the future, as we’ve seen with AI and other things.

Tom Temin
Right. So the big question, then long term is Congress’ capacity to deal with Chevron, if it does have to be more specific in legislating this chemical, or that social media thing. They have to actually know the details.

Loren Duggan
They may, and that’s something I think we’ll see play out over time and how the courts also absorb this, because it could change their workload if they’re reviewing more decisions like this. So all three branches are affected by this and all the things that go around it like K Street in the lobbying world too.

Tom Temin
We’re speaking with Loren Duggan, deputy news director at Bloomberg Government. And a couple of topical issues, the Senate, one of the committees is going to be looking at the Francis Scott Key missing bridge. What’s going on there? Could there be some federal money sooner rather than later for it?

Loren Duggan
Well, Congress has to digest the requests that the administration sent up during their little break here where they asked for, I think it was about $4 billion, primarily through the transportation department to help with the actual rebuilding, but then also some other agencies to help with the cleanup and some of the shipping things that the Army Corps of Engineers has helped with. But this hearing is about looking at what the federal and state government have already done to date. I think there’s a Federal Highway Administration official coming in, and then somebody from Maryland at least. And they’re just going to review where things stand and what they need to do. The timing of when they act on this request could come down to what FEMA needs as well, because some of the disaster relief funds are going to be tapped. This latest hurricane is just hitting the US. And if another hurricane does in August, that could expedite things are. So we’ll be watching that. But it could be a stopgap spending or CR writer as well in September, if they need to move this money faster.

Tom Temin
All right. And then a couple of, again, specific things, and this maybe relates to that bigger question of Chevron, but the EPA will be before House Oversight.

Loren Duggan
Michael Regan will be before that committee. Again, the House Oversight Committee can oversee anything at once, and this time they’re bringing him in, and we’ll probably have a lot of questions about Chevron and some of the other court rulings, perhaps that affected what the EPA can do. And then just what his general plans are, I think it’s a chance to try and draw contrast between what Republicans won and what a democratic EPA has been doing.

Tom Temin
Right. Because the EPA has been the focus, not in this particular Chevron case, that was actually the Commerce Department. But the EPA has been the subject of a lot of court battles over specific regulations. And they’ve won some, they’ve lost some. So I think Chevron has more for them than maybe the Commerce Department, even though that was the sparking case here. And at the same time, the refrigerators and dishwashers standards, here we go coming up for a vote, what’s going on there?

Loren Duggan
These bills were talked about a few months ago, they did a broader, making it harder to change efficiency standards, unless there were real reasons. But these are going out to the specific ones. You mentioned refrigerators and dishwashers. And just making it a little harder to change the standards to try and keep appliances where they are. Democrats will push back on these. These are being driven by Republicans. But, yet again, it’s part of this regulatory push and I think trying to have maybe some division going into that convention week that’s coming up.

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Between 2019 and 2023, more than 140,000 employees joined the civil service, an increase of about 7%, according to data that the non-partisan, non-profit Partnership for Public Service compiled and released this week.

The majority of the growth in the past couple of years occurred in 2023 alone — the federal workforce grew by 4% in just that one year, the Partnership said. The latest increase brings the grand total of full-time federal employees to just over 2 million.

“These professionals play a crucial role in protecting our national security, promoting public health, driving economic development and more,” the Partnership wrote in its data report, published Monday. “They are a fundamental part of a well-functioning government.”

But despite the federal workforce growth on the whole, current budget deliberations in Congress could cause the pendulum to eventually swing back in the other direction.

As House appropriators work through a stack of 2025 spending bills, it’s clear the GOP-led committee is eyeing significant spending cuts for many agencies. The committee’s financial services and general government bill, for instance, would put agencies covered by the legislation 20% below the Biden administration’s budget request and 10% below the 2024 allocation.

Some Democratic committee members have warned that limiting agencies’ budgets could lead to hiring freezes and staff layoffs, coupled with worsening federal services as a result.

If appropriations are reduced for 2025, “our agencies have to lay off staff, severely undermining their ability to function at the most basic levels,” Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said in June. “That has direct consequences on the American people.”

Workforce growth, attrition rates and more

The Partnership’s new report on the federal workforce uses data from FedScope, the Office of Personnel Management’s online data source on federal employees.

Discounting the Postal Service, 71% of the entire civilian federal workforce is housed in defense and national security-related agencies, the Partnership said.

A large portion of government positions are in public health, as well as general administration and office roles.

In total, agencies hired more than 200,000 employees last fiscal year — an increase of more than 45,000 hires over the previous year, the Partnership said. That doesn’t account for attrition due to retirements and others leaving the government. Encompassing all the changes brings the net gain to about 80,000 employees.

During 2023, 52% of those leaving government quit their positions, while 48% retired. Overall, the attrition rate last fiscal year was 5.9%. That’s lower than the 7.6% attrition rate in 2022, but close to the 6.1% attrition rate the government saw in 2021 , the Partnership said.

Notably, though, the attrition rate of federal employees under 30 years old was 9% in 2023, significantly higher than the overall figure.

“Federal agencies must recruit young talent and employees with the necessary skills for both current and future needs,” the Partnership said. “Ensuring a diverse workforce is essential, as is developing leadership capabilities within the organization, improving hiring processes and implementing policies to retain high-performing workers. These measures collectively enable the federal government to effectively address both present and emerging challenges effectively while fostering an environment that attracts and retains top talent.”

Agencies dealing with fluctuating budgets

But due to budget changes and limitations that came out of the 2024 government spending package, the picture is in flux for many agencies. The Environmental Protection Agency, National Science Foundation and NASA, for instance, all saw large cuts in their 2024 appropriations.

Many agencies are constantly grappling with trying to right-size their staffing. The Department of Veterans Affairs is scaling back hiring for its health care workforce. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is trying to manage under a current hiring freeze.

The Social Security Administration is struggling to rebuild staffing after a hiring freeze that just ended. The Forest Service has just lifted a hiring pause, but for now it’s only planning to fill its most critical vacancies.

Other agencies have big hiring goals for the rest of 2024. The IRS is planning to make 20,000 new hires by this September. But for 2025, IRS is facing a possible budget cut of more than 18%, according to the proposal last month from House appropriators.

Another 2025 spending bill from House appropriators aims to cut the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s budget by 22%, or $1.7 billion, while also looking to eliminate 23 of the CDC’s programs.

House appropriators have so far passed three of their 12 spending bills, largely along party lines. With most Democrats opposed to the proposed appropriations levels in the House, agency budgets for 2025 likely won’t be determined for months to come.

The Senate has yet to release or take up its versions of 2025 government spending bills. Various statements of administrative policy from the White House have also threatened to veto several of the House’s spending bills in their current form.

The post The federal workforce is growing, as House appropriators consider agency spending cuts first appeared on Federal News Network.

New tools and better data are putting the CFO community in a stronger position to do more to reduce improper payments and fraud in federal programs.

The Joint Financial Management Improvement Program (JFMIP) recognized this opportunity in its new three-year plan that it hopes can spur even more progress to ensure agencies are paying the right amount to the right people in a timely manner.

David Lebryk, the fiscal assistant secretary at the Treasury Department, said the JFMIP three-year strategy outlines three pillars of effort that will give agencies tools, best practices and guidance to do more to prevent fraud and improper payments.

“It’s focusing on prevention. It’s promoting best practices, and it’s strengthening the partnerships. The Treasury piece that I think is very much important here is focusing on that prevention. What tools can Treasury bring to the payment process that can actually really help reduce and prevent process fraud from happening?” Lebryk said on Ask the CIO. “The second pillar, which is promoting best practices, was about working with agencies. The Office of Management and Budget has done some good work with this, as well as when a new program has stood up. Do you put controls in place up front that help reduce the potential for improper payments? There are really a number of things you can do like doing risk assessment in your program and you can talk about different data that you need from recipients that you can get from them.”

As part of the focus on prevention, Lebryk said his office has launched several programs where Treasury followed many of the steps outlined in the JFMIP strategy to prevent and reduce fraud in large programs.

In helping local communities recover from the Deep Horizon oil spill back in 2010, Lebryk said ahead of implementing the Resources and Ecosystems Sustainability, Tourist Opportunities, and Revived Economies of the Gulf Coast States Act (RESTORE Act), Treasury designed the program to make sure recipients understood the requirements to apply for funding as well as controls to make sure the money went to the right people.

“We’ve had no fraud in that program that we’re aware of because we’ve really focused on those controls in the design of the program up front. We haven’t had an issue about slowing payment down. It does prove there’s opportunity, both to be quick, but also careful in the issuance of money,” he said. “In the third pillar, which was strengthening partnerships, it comes down to doing more with the states, the inspector general community and other government agencies to really strengthen those partnerships. I think we’re very confident that it’s going to have a real major impact and there’s a real commitment across the different entities to make sure it works.”

Increased focus on improper payments

The JFMIP strategy outlines strategies and objectives for each pillar based on the work by Treasury, OMB, the Government Accountability Office and others.

Both Congress and the Biden administration have increased focus on preventing fraud and improper payments as well as recovering lost money due to bad actors. The Government Accountability Office estimated that agencies spent $236 billion improperly in fiscal 2023, which was down about $11 billion, as compared to 2022.

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers have introduced at least eight bills since February 2023 focused on improper payments and fraud. A recent one from Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, called the Fraud Prevention and Recovery Act, would, among other things, give resources to agency IGs to investigate people who committed pandemic fraud and recover the taxpayer dollars and create a new fund to help agencies prevent fraud and identity theft through a new early warning system for detecting fraud.

The Justice Department’s COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force (CFETF), for example, reported in April that it “charged more than 3,500 defendants, seized or forfeited over $1.4 billion in stolen COVID-19 relief funds, and filed more than 400 civil lawsuits resulting in court judgements and settlements” since it launched in 2021.

Another administration priority is the rewrite of Circular A-123 internal controls for overseeing and administering programs. OMB’s last major rewrite was in 2016 when it added risk management to its updated internal control processes.

Making A-123 less compliance-based

Lebryk said one of the goals of the A-123 rewrite is to reduce the compliance requirements and make the circular more usable.

“We want to make it less of a compliance exercise and more of a real actual set of practices that will help agencies. Some agencies have been further along in terms of setting up internal programs to actually adhere to the spirit of A-123 and here to the spirit of really trying to reduce the improper payments,” he said. “But again, it’s less so about paperwork and reporting, and more so about how do you make sure you actually make an impact in this area. I think the CFO community can be very helpful in this regard. The CFO community plays a very unique role in that we’re supposed to speak the truth. We have an obligation to raise our hand and say, ‘hey, something isn’t necessarily looking right on the financials.’ We want to make sure that we have integrity and stewardship of government resources, so I think that we can do a better job in a financial community of saying to program agencies, ‘hey, the one way to create problems for you not to be able to meet your program’s mission, is if you do have things like fraud because it means that the right people aren’t getting the money.’”

Treasury already has several tools on new and existing platforms and databases to help agencies move from being reactive to proactive in stopping fraudulent payments. One tool uses machine learning to look for anomalies on paper checks. So far, Treasury has run about 40 million checks through the ML application.

Lebryk said Treasury is the co-chairman of a CFO Council working group, which is determining the impediments for agencies to use these and other fraud prevention tools.

“They’re also doing some important work about creating a fraud catalog that collects trends and fraud, which I think is also very important. But one of these really important workstreams is for us to say, ‘hey, is there something that Treasury can do to make it easier for you to access these tools?’” he said. “Having looked at the government environment over a number of years, one of the real challenges that you have is asking someone to make a systems change. It is a very lengthy, long process because, quite frankly, oftentimes system changes aren’t funded. They can be difficult. So what we’re really looking at is whether there is opportunity for technology to help in this, in terms of things like interfaces with existing systems, which can make it easier to interact. Are there just organizational issues within the agencies that would be helpful if the agency was organized slightly differently or had the information going in one place versus another place, that would mean that you could take action?”

Lebryk added the committee will make a series of recommendations that would lead to improvements with a goal by the end of the year identifying a set of tools that agencies can take more advantage of to prevent fraud and improper payments.

The post New strategy, A-123 update to help reduce improper payments first appeared on Federal News Network.

Agencies need multiyear funding to get big modernization projects done. Otherwise it is piecemeal, depending on the year-to-year whims of Congress. The Federal Drive with Tom Temin next guest says late appropriations every year cause agencies to resort to the fix-what-we-can-now approach. He’s former management professor and union president Bob Tobias.

Interview Transcript: 

Tom Temin
Otherwise, it’s piecemeal, depending on year to year whims of Congress. My next guest says late appropriations every year causes agencies to resort to the fixed what we can now approach, former management professor and union president Bob Tobias joins me now with his take. And you have an example of an agency with multi year funding that you believe shows what can and should happen.

Bob Tobias
I do, Tom. The Internal Revenue Service, I think is really validating the necessity for multi year funding to develop and maximize new technology. So Congress allocated the IRS $60 billion to be spent over a 10-year-period. It’s unprecedent, just unprecedented. It was part of the Inflation Reduction Act. So the IRS is using this money to link together significant technology, significant organizational change efforts and significant increase in employees as an integrated whole, rather than a patchwork piecemeal approach.

Tom Temin
So the patch approach seems to be the one that’s sort of more comfortable for agencies, because if that’s what they’re used to.

Bob Tobias
Actually, it’s wise. Because, for example, Congress might fully fund an effort in year one. So the agency goes forward defines its needs and offers a procurement. But before the procurement is completed, the Congress does an arbitrary across the year funding cut, so the agency has to go back to the drawing board, there’s a new procurement, there’s a delay in the costs increase. So I think it’s wise that they do the patch approach, and particularly when you think, Tom, that Congress has not timely done an appropriations process since 1996.

Tom Temin
Yes. And that is just a problem that contractors and agencies alike sort of shrug their shoulders at at this point. But when you think about it, it’s really entrenching a terrible system, because you need 12 months to do things. And you spend two years planning for a particular fiscal year. The budget planning cycle is already on the part of agencies. A 24 month or 30 month process. And so when appropriations are late, it kind of all goes out the window.

Bob Tobias
That’s exactly right. And so, if an agency really wants to change its business processes, it needs to jump through a whole lot of hoops. It needs to define new business process needs, it needs to develop the software to implement the new business process needs. Needs to purchase hardware, and then it needs to test for an extended period of time to make sure that it all is coming together, and at the same time identify the new employee skills needed to implement this new technology. And if any one of those steps are delayed, the integration is thrown off kilter, and it costs more. And I think the IRS is proving that it can, with long term funding, solve that problem. So one really great example, is the way it has used technology and 5,000 additional taxpayer representatives to improve its telephone answering results. So last year 2024, it achieved an 88% answer rate level of service. In contrast, get this, to 18% during the COVID years. So it can work. And that’s an example. And another example, on the planning board’s was to have a direct Free File program. So there are about 87 million low income taxpayers who pay about $13 billion to tax preparers who are now eligible to file for free with something called IRS direct file. So rather than trying to do it all in one year, the IRS started small and 2024 with 140,000 taxpayers, analyze the result made the pilot permanent, and then said we’re going to gradually increase over time to avoid catastrophic failures. As opposed to, I’ve got all this money now I got to spend it, I’m going to turn this switch on and hope Congress funds it in the next year. They have the opportunity and the ability to delay those implementation.

Tom Temin
We’re talking with Bob Tobias, a former professor in the Key Executive Leadership Program at American University. And you were also president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which got its start at the IRS. And so maybe comment on the need for people and talent continuity through all of these vicissitudes that go along with money continuity?

Bob Tobias
Well Tom, the problem with, I think large technology efforts, is to integrate the new technology with trained people, trained qualified people to actually do the work when the technology is ready to be implemented. And so I just gave you an example about IRS direct file, which goes to taxpayer assistance. But the same is true on the compliance side. So IRS is developing some new technology to handle the more complex corporate and partnership returns. And that takes new skills. So on the one hand, they’re developing this technology, and on the other, hiring now, and training now, the employees who will be needed to implement that technology. And the IRS expects that it’ll get somewhere around $50 billion of owed money over the next 10 years, with the combination of technology and employees. And you might quibble it’s 52, or 48, or 40. But whatever it is, it’s going to be a lot of money that’s owed to the US government. And it could not be implemented without long term funding.

Tom Temin
And I think also that gets overlooked, with respect to the IRS, even though people like to hate it because that’s how you have to deal with taxes, is the IRS inherits the tax code, as you say, express it in software that people can understand and instructions that people can understand. But really, the vicissitudes of Congress with respect to the tax code and tax policy. That’s where all this complication originates. And nobody can do anything about that.

Bob Tobias
That’s a fact. So Congress complicates the life of the IRS quite considerably, because it doesn’t get its work done usually until the fall of the year. And so the IRS has to revise all of its tax processing material, and all of its tax processing technology, and get it ready to go by Jan. 1. So Congress not only passes complicated laws, but implements them in a way that is a terrible challenge to the IRS to get it done and get it done right.

Tom Temin
So what we need then is a single flat tax, one for corporations, one for individuals, and everyone could e-file in 20 seconds.

Bob Tobias
Well, yeah, flat tax would make the technology easy, but all of the research shows it wouldn’t generate enough money. So yes, it could be done on the postcard, but no, it wouldn’t collect enough money.

The post Why long-term funding is what agencies need, yet what they worry about first appeared on Federal News Network.

In the House, it’s one down and 11 to go for the appropriations bills that make up the federal budget for 2025. And lawmakers are set to make a lot of progress over the next several weeks, with an aggressive schedule of votes coming up. Loren Duggan is Deputy News Director at Bloomberg Government spoke with Federal News Network’s Jared Serbu on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Interview Transcript: 

Loren Duggan
This is the latest week that’s very spending focused in the House. As you mentioned, three of the bills on the floor, one has already gotten across the finish line on the House floor. And by the end of this week, the goal is to have everything through subcommittee as well. So the five markups this week will add to the seven that have already been approved at the subcommittee level. So this is part of their goal, get them all done out of committee, at least, by July 10. And then see where it goes from there.

Jared Serbu
I think we’ve seen at least some examples of policy writers that have made these into fairly one sided endeavors that are probably not too likely to make it cleanly through the Senate side. How unclean are things at this point?

Loren Duggan
These are very much GOP bills, and they’re coming out of committee with GOP votes, and they’re gonna get across the floor with GOP votes. Very few Democrats, I think none may end up supporting these. We saw that right before the recess with the defense authorization bill, which sets policy but also has spending levels in it where it came out of committee, that one came out of committee very bipartisan vote by the end was pretty much a GOP focused affair. So these are also laying down markers for the debates we’ll have later this year between the Republican House, Democratic Senate, Democratic Administration about potentially final version. So it’s no surprise that Republicans want in their eyes, the most conservative, the most cutting and the most far reaching in terms of their policy goals in the bills that they’re getting through their chamber at least.

Jared Serbu
And the Senate, of course, as we said, is out this week, but where are they in terms of teeing up their appropriations bills. Anywhere close to where the house is?

Loren Duggan
No, nowhere close. They haven’t started, they’ve been working on reaching top line numbers, which is a really helpful thing. Because when you know what you’re going to spend a total you can figure out what you’re going to spend on each bill. They’re working hard to get to that, maybe when they get back in July they’ll get those numbers nailed down and then start getting them through committee. It’s usually a more bipartisan affair even at the committee level in the Senate, we’ll see if that holds true again, this year. There’s a debate over there about whether to add more money for defense spending that probably isn’t going to fly, given the larger picture that’s going on. So a lot still to come in the Senate side, but no votes yet, even at the committee level.

Jared Serbu
In your experience, how do election years tend to affect these appropriations cycles? Is it more likely that folks try to get all the way done before before the election, or they set things up so that they don’t have to worry about it until after the election?

Loren Duggan
Most of the time, it takes till after the election? And the question at some point it gets to how long is the continuing resolution going to run after Sept. 30, and beyond the election. It seems to me like no resolution is going to come of this until after the election, in part because the members of Congress will want to see what next year’s administration and Congress are going to look like if there’s a flip in one or both chambers and a change in the administration. You could see people holding on to finalize it in the new year. If things are pretty status quo, maybe they’ll try to wrap it up and get it off their plate before meeting as a new Congress and dealing with all that next year. So it’s probably something that’s going to go late into the year, given how narrow majorities are in the chambers anyhow.

Jared Serbu
And one of the few non spending focused highlights this week is Pete Buttigieg, the Transportation Secretary on Capitol Hill this week to testify. What are we expecting there?

Loren Duggan
He’s going to the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. He’s up there a fair amount, obviously talking about what his committee wants. But this is the committee that writes things like highway bills and FAA bills. They’re not up immediately, they just did the FAA bill, but it’s a chance for him to talk to members and share his priorities for the administration, and probably for Republican members on that panel to push back on some of the priorities they don’t agree with. So might be fairly standard fare, but a lot going on, obviously, in the transportation space, rails under that. And you could maybe see some discussion about rail safety. And also, I saw the Boeing chief executive was on Capitol Hill on the Senate side last week. I’m sure there might be questions about what they intend to do there. So always an interesting hearing when he comes to talk about all that department has to do.

Jared Serbu
One policy issue making its way through that’s not quite tucked into floor territory yet, but I guess we’re starting to see glimmers of a data privacy bill coming out of the Energy and Commerce Committee. What do we know about that?

Loren Duggan
This is a project of Cathy McMorris Rogers (R-Wash.) who’s the chairwoman of that committee stepping down after this year. So this is kind of her last burst of activity. She’s working closely with Frank Pallone, the ranking member on data privacy legislation to set a national standard. We have both federal reporters, but also state reporters. And I can tell you that as you look across the country, states are doing a lot in data privacy, and not always going the same way in ways that make tech companies uneasy because they have one set of rules in one state and one in another. So one of the ideas here is come up with a national data privacy standard that would apply everywhere. There’s a bill that will likely be marked up this week that reflects the discussion that the two of them have had. But the Leadership isn’t 100% comfortable with that we’re hearing, and might not let it come to the floor in its current form. But getting that through committee with that kind of backing, probably on a bipartisan basis, would help build a case for it. And we’ll see if that’s something that can get done this year, because it is bipartisan, which in this environment, those are the only types of things that really stand a chance of getting done outside of the kind of routine business.

Jared Serbu
The state by state piece is interesting. It’s one of those areas where it’s just sort of a de facto California standard on a lot of things. Do we know if they’re gonna go so far as to try to preempt some of those state level data privacy rules.

Loren Duggan
That’s really the idea is try and come up with a national standard, which might be tough, and some people might fight against given all that’s gone on in California, where they have very tough laws and agencies focused on that. But some companies and some consumers would like to see the the national basis. So no matter where you live, you have the same protection. It might make it easier for businesses, some would argue, but we’ll see how far this particular piece of legislation can go.

Jared Serbu
Last thing before we go. We had the congressional baseball game a couple of weeks ago. This week is the congressional softball game, which folks are probably a little bit less familiar with. Tell us about that.

Loren Duggan
This is the congressional women’s softball game. And unlike the baseball game, which is Rs and Ds on different sides of the baseball field, this is the members of Congress playing together as one team and taking on members of the media. And it’s to raise money for awareness around breast cancer in particular. So another one of those kind of fun perennial congressional events with a little twist from what we saw at the baseball game. But that’s Wednesday night. If folks are interested they can look online, find out how to buy tickets to that.

The post Flurry of House activity on 2025 federal spending, but not much bipartisanship first appeared on Federal News Network.

• The spending bill to support the funding for the rest of the government is facing a 25% cut. House appropriators passed the Financial Services and General Government 2025 spending bill yesterday and it is 20% below the administration's request and 10% below this year's enacted levels. But Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said the reductions, especially those to the IRS of some $2 billion, will have a much bigger effect than any one agency's budget. "This bill funds every other bill you are going to consider or it funds paying the almost $900 billion to the debt." Hoyer said the cuts also mean federal workers could face hiring freezes, furloughs or layoffs, which will impact the services to citizens.
  (Markup Fiscal Year 2025 - House Appropriations Committee)
• A new report by the research organization RAND found that the majority of federal funding to assist military-to-civilian employment transitions goes toward educational benefits rather than helping service members and veterans find work. In 2019, four programs, including the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill and DoD's Tuition Assistance Program, accounted for $13.5 billion out of $14.3 billion in total. Meanwhile, the DoD's Transition Assistance Program received $140 million in funding. But there is not enough evidence to support that federally funded employment transition programs are effective. The study also found that military-to-civilian transition programs have limited oversight.
  (Military-to-civilian transition programs focus on education rather than employment - RAND)
• The Department of Veterans Affairs is staying the course on plans to roll out a new Electronic Health Record. The VA extended its contract with Oracle-Cerner for another 11 months. Both parties agree to come back to the negotiating table each year to renew the multi-billion-dollar contract. The VA and Oracle-Cerner approved a one-month extension in May to continue contract talks. The Defense Department is done with its deployment of the same EHR. But only six VA sites are using it and further rollouts are on hold, as the VA addresses problems at those sites. The VA said it plans to resume go-lives in fiscal 2025.
  (VA awards second option period to Oracle Health in support of Federal Electronic Health Record modernization contract - Department of Veterans Affairs )
• A bill looking to expand fertility treatment coverage in the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program has failed to advance to a floor vote. Senate Republicans effectively blocked the Right to IVF Act Thursday afternoon. The legislation, which Democrats introduced last week, did not reach the 60-vote threshold to advance to a floor vote. If passed, the bill would in part increase requirements for carriers in the FEHB program to provide more fertility treatment coverage to enrollees. Even after the bill failed, advocacy groups are calling on the Office of Personnel Management to take it upon itself to make the changes. They want OPM to heighten requirements for FEHB carriers to further cover in-vitro fertilization (IVF) — both medications and treatments.
  (Senate GOP blocks bill to expand IVF access as advocates call for better FEHB coverage - Federal News Network)
• The White House joins a chorus of opposition, including that of Army leadership, to the idea of creating a separate Army drone branch. The White House Office of Management and Budget said creating a separate drone corps will limit the service’s flexibility to deploy drone technology at scale. OMB also said the Army secretary already has the power to create new branches within the service and that creating a separate drone branch through legislation will hinder the Army’s ability to address current and future requirements.
  (White House joins chorus of opposition to Army drone branch idea - White House)
• Oversight processes at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission need some work, according to the Government Accountability Office. Agencies are responsible for managing their own EEO programs for federal workers. But GAO said the commission’s system for tracking those programs does not have guardrails for clearly identifying issues, or making sure decisions are timely. A lack of oversight can lead to challenges in figuring out whether agencies are EEO-compliant. GAO’s new report shows, for instance, that 16 agencies did not have anti-harassment policies in place. The EEOC said its working on enhancing and modernizing its oversight processes.
  (EEOC: Improved oversight processes needed to help agencies address deficiencies - Government Accountability Office)
• A major change to the General Services Administration's schedules program will make it easier for agencies to buy software more like the private sector. GSA will now let agencies pay upfront for software licenses through the schedules program. This change is specifically aimed at making it easier for agencies to buy cloud services, which has been hampered by the Advance Payment Statute, which originated in 1823. The interpretation of the statue required agencies to pay for services in the arrears. The update comes after GSA conducted research and gathered input from agency buyers and vendors last summer.
  (GSA updates rules for buying SaaS off the schedule program - GSA)
• The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is one step closer to getting new leadership. President Joe Biden nominated Christy Goldsmith Romero, a commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, to lead the FDIC. The current FDIC Chairman says he will step down as soon as a successor is confirmed. An independent report commissioned by the FDIC recently substantiated claims of a toxic workplace culture.
  (Nominations sent to the Senate - White House)

The post Rep. Hoyer warns of ‘freezes, furloughs, layoffs’ first appeared on Federal News Network.

But beyond hammering out agency budgets for next year, the GOP-led House Appropriations Committee has tacked on several policy riders that could impact federal employees and retirees in other ways as well.

One policy rider included in the committee’s report language, for instance, would bar any investments through the Thrift Savings Plan that are based on environmental, social or governance (ESG) criteria.

House Republicans also tried last budget cycle to include the “No ESG in the TSP” policy rider in the spending legislation, but it ultimately did not end up in the final appropriations package.

The launch of the voluntary TSP mutual fund window in June 2022 brought more than 5,000 new mutual fund options to TSP participants who choose to enroll in the window and pay a fee for the service. But the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board has said if an anti-ESG policy is enacted, it would bring the TSP’s new mutual fund window to an early demise.

Keeping track of 5,000 mutual funds would become too burdensome and open FRTIB to potential legal exposure, the board has said.

“There is no practical, cost-efficient way to monitor each of the roughly 5,000 individual mutual funds’ holdings,” FRTIB Director of External Affairs Kim Weaver said in 2023.

FRTIB has publicly opposed the provisions that aim to bar ESG investments. Weaver has also said there would be ripple effects from the provision, if it’s enacted. It would cost the TSP additional money to wind down the mutual fund window, and TSP participants may be exposed to potential financial losses if they had to transfer their investments back to the main TSP funds.

Appropriations committee members plan to mark up the financial services and general government 2025 spending bill, as well as several others, on Thursday afternoon. Here are some of the other policy riders federal employees should pay attention to:

Telework, office space in 2025 spending bill

In the report language, committee members also noted previous and upcoming requirements for the Office of Management and Budget and the General Services Administration to report to Congress on federal telework and office space.

In the 2024 enacted appropriations package, lawmakers included a now-approaching deadline for OMB to share all agencies’ work environment plans with Congress. Those plans, which stem from the initial return-to-office memo in April 2023, detail agencies’ recent telework policy changes.

OMB’s deadline to submit all agencies’ return-to-office plans to Congress is coming up in late June.

“The committee looks forward to receiving the report from OMB on governmentwide telework,” House appropriators wrote in the committee’s report. “The committee [also] expects agencies under the jurisdiction of the subcommittee to reduce their office footprint if their average office space utilization rate is less than 60%, based on a benchmark of 150 usable square feet per person.”

At the same time, the committee said GSA has not yet provided its required report on how agencies can reduce office space requirements based on lessons learned from using telework during the COVID–19 pandemic.

The federal footprint has been steadily declining, but agencies still holding onto excess and underutilized office space is a main reason the Government Accountability Office has kept federal real property management on its High-Risk List for over 20 years.

In the 2024 spending package, Congress called on all agencies with an office space utilization rate of less than 60% to submit a description of their current efforts to reduce their physical footprint, the total office space costs, the average utilization rate and the estimated cost of underutilized space.

If enacted, the 2025 spending bill from House appropriators would also give GSA and OMB a new 180-day deadline to offer further data and recommendations on how to best consolidate federal office space, while disposing of unneeded federal real estate.

Continuing a few longstanding provisions

In addition to the slate of new policy riders, House appropriators are also looking to maintain numerous provisions that have been around for years, and in some cases decades. Many of those provisions have become practically standard in spending bills each fiscal year.

For example, one continued provision requires agencies to pay OPM a fee for processing retirement claims for employees who separate early from federal service.

Another would continue to direct agency employees to use official time — or time spent working on union-related activities while on the job — in “an honest effort to perform official duties,” the committee report language said.

Additionally, a provision often referred to as the Hyde amendment would maintain the current ban on any government funding from going toward abortions through the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) program.

IRS pilot, FBI headquarters and more

The full appropriations committee also maintained several provisions from the subcommittee’s initial 2025 spending and policy proposals earlier this month.

Notably, the committee plans to implement steep spending cuts for the IRS, and aims to completely defund IRS’ free Direct File platform.

The lawmakers are also looking to decline a $3.5 billion request for construction on the new FBI headquarters building during 2025. The appropriations bill would also withhold all current funds allocated for the GSA construction project.

Democratic committee members, unsurprisingly, have come out in strong opposition to the spending cuts and many of the policy riders. Some lawmakers said they’re concerned about the ability of several relatively small agencies to handle large budget cuts. Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) warned last week that the House GOP bill would force agencies to implement staff reductions to make ends meet.

The post Policy riders to watch as House appropriators mark up 2025 spending bills first appeared on Federal News Network.

Tasked by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate has formulated a plan for the agency’s investment goals in specific research areas. This Innovation, Research and Development (IRD) Strategic Plan is DHS’ first ever. To learn about what it calls for and how it came together, Federal News Network’s Eric White talked with Jon McEntee, who is operations and requirements director with DHS S&T.

Interview Transcript:

Eric White  Tasked by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate has formulated a plan for the agency’s investment goals in specific research areas. This innovation research and development strategic plan is DHS’s first ever. To learn more about what it calls for and how it came together, we welcome Jon McEntee, who is operations and requirements director with DHS S&T. Mr. McEntee, thank you so much for taking the time.

Jon McEntee  Oh, thank you for having me.

Eric White  Of course, of course. So why don’t we just start with getting an overview of what exactly is this document? As I mentioned, it’s the first ever from DHS. Is it just calling for where you want to put specific research dollars, or what’s the deal here?

Jon McEntee  So we refer to it as IRD. So it’s innovation, research and development. So, the IRD strategic plan is the department’s blueprint of priorities and associated resourcing decisions. It’s put together to prepare DHS and the homeland security enterprise to address future threats and hazards. And the homeland security enterprise includes federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, as well as private entity partnerships, those that want to protect the homeland. So it was put together to not only internally coordinate and collaborate investments across the department, but also as a demand signal to our external partners within industry, international, interagency, and academia, to showcase the IRD needs through FY 30. It really looks to collaborate, again, not only internally, but externally. And we also performed internal analysis to help with that demand signal. It’s going to show the major muscle movements where the department wants to be, and these cross cutting IRD things make up what we call the strategic priority research areas. And those are optimal mission impacts the department’s going to be facing over the future years to come. We identified eight of them, and we call them, we refer to them as SPRAs. They include advanced sensing, artificial intelligence and autonomous systems, biotechnology, climate change, communications and networking, cybersecurity, data integration, analytics, modeling and simulation. And finally, digital identity and trust.

Eric White  Yeah, we’ll get into a couple of those in a little bit. I just wanted to take a step back. And, you know, you mentioned how you looked at the internal priorities of where the department wants to be, how did that decision process go? Because it’s so hard to see what the next threat is going to be, especially when your area of coverage is as large as the DHS’s is. You know, how did you come up with those strategic priority research areas, or SPRAs as you mentioned?

Jon McEntee  It was absolutely a collaboration across the department. We spent about eight months working with all the DHS components. And you know, we had to first inventory all of the IRD activities. We conducted a SWOT analysis, which is strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. We held a futures workshop. We collected component future trends assessments that included risks, threats, challenges. And we also reviewed all the existing national DHS and component IRD strategies and guidance. So what we ended up putting together as a culmination of of information that identifies where improvements are needed to stay ahead of the threats. It speaks to the “what,” not necessarily the “how,” meaning technology evolves rapidly. And we want to perform a technology solution analysis as close to the implementation here as possible. And we have to continue to monitor the evolution of technology throughout the lifecycle with any effort that we do. For example, if we do a technology solution too soon, in looking at FY 30, we run the risk of obsolescence. So it’s a delicate balance between out year planning, as well as current year execution.

Eric White  I want to zero in on just one other part of your first answer, which you’d mentioned your partners in industry. So this is kind of you putting up the flag as well, saying, hey, this is what we’re going to be interested in in the future if you want to work with us. Right?

Jon McEntee  Exactly. And it’s that demand signal. When I say the homeland security enterprise, and it’s every entity that wants to protect the homeland. And we know that there’s a lot of innovation and investment that has gone into that, and we want to be able to tackle it and to partner with those external entities. We actually held a technology innovation network event back in October, to present some of our initial findings of our analysis and to gain additional feedback. At the event, we also had our Office of Procurement operations there. And S&T’s office of industry partnerships, to help answer the question how to do business with DHS, because you know that linkage is very important. And once we gain that level of networking that enables us to work with them in the future as well. And so we did a showcase also at the Consumer Electronics Show. We’re doing another event in Monterey, California at the Naval Postgraduate School later this month. It’s with the Military Operations Research Society. And we have a number of other, you know, engagements planned the balance of the year. But again, the important piece is, hey, let’s leverage a lot of that great innovation the industry is already working and tailor it to Homeland Security enterprise needs.

Eric White  We’re speaking with Jon McEntee. He is operations and requirements director with DHS S&T. So this is the first one you all have ever done. How will this document change the way that S&T does invest its dollars, and what was the difference before this document was formulated? Were you just kind of playing whack-a-mole and saying, well, we definitely are going to need to do this, let’s put money there? Or was it, you know, a little bit more structured than that? I’m sure it was.

Jon McEntee  Right. Traditionally, a lot of what we did in the past was individual component IRD analysis. And what this does, it looks across the department. And it takes a different tack. It’s a collaborative approach. And identifying and leveraging leveraging each other’s investments internally, but then it helps us to plan across the department together, and to focus our limited resources on the department’s highest priorities. And again, this allows us to complement one another, and also to avoid duplication and effort. And this is why we develop those themes, the SPRAs, so that we can identify those major muscle movements that impact multiple components, not just singular components.

Eric White  Yeah, let’s get into those SPRAs. It just speaks to, once again, the vast amount of coverage that DHS is responsible for. The ones that stick out the most to me probably are cybersecurity and AI, just because those are definitely the talk of the town. But you know, bringing back in biotechnology, which, that used to be one of the number one threats everybody was afraid of, but it’s coming back into the realm it seems, and as well as advanced sensing. I mean, it is all here, you know, how are you going to dictate which ones require more attention, I guess?

Jon McEntee  And that’s one thing we’ve developed internally within the department. We actually stood up what’s called the IRD Coordination Council. It’s co-chaired by the undersecretary for science and technology, as well as the undersecretary of management. And the council’s goal is to ensure that the most pressing challenges the department faces, have appropriate and effective investments to support those mission areas. And you know, and through that, that helps us with prioritization as well. And the IRD helps us to filter into those common themes, SPRAs, and also identify those areas that we need to tackle first. And so during the first year of investment, what we plan to do is look at all the SPRAs across the board, and develop roadmaps and determine where the department currently is, and also where we want to be through FY 30. And so that’s kind of the goal the first year, because this enables us to better complement each other’s investments. And so in looking at this helps us to identify those areas that have no investments. And we call those IRD deltas. And again, now that the plan is released, we also want to enhance our external partnership and leverage those existing and future IRD investments. Because in those areas where we have IRD deltas, industry or some of our external partners, interagency, academia, or even international may have solution sets or capability enhancements that we can look at, and to look at these common denominators that we’ve identified. And so this is that demand signal. We see this as a target market opportunity for those external investors to make their own business decisions.

Eric White  Jon McEntee is operations and requirements director with the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate. Thank you so much for chatting with me.

Jon McEntee  Of course.

Eric White  And we’ll post this interview along with the link to the document on our website at federalnewsnetwork.com. You can also subscribe to the Federal Drive wherever you get your podcasts.

The post How DHS plans on spending its federal research dollars first appeared on Federal News Network.

As House appropriators outline plans to make steep government spending cuts for fiscal 2025, Democrats are warning that reduced agency budgets would lead to federal employee layoffs, and by extension, worsening federal services.

The fiscal 2025 financial services and general government appropriations bill is now heading to the full appropriations committee for consideration. Members of the GOP-led House Appropriations Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee advanced the legislation — along party lines and without amendments — during a markup Wednesday morning.

But Democratic subcommittee members opposed to the spending cuts said they’re concerned about the ability of the relatively small agencies included in that specific appropriations bill to handle large budget cuts.

“Our agencies often have smaller budgets, and thus less flexibility to deal with the cuts,” Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Wednesday during the subcommittee’s markup of the legislation. “Larger agencies under the jurisdiction of other subcommittees can scale back grant programs and shift funding around to make ends meet. It’s tough, and perhaps may not be appropriate, but it is easier than this bill.”

Hoyer warned that the House GOP bill, as is, would leave many agencies with no choice but to implement staff reductions to make ends meet.

“Our agencies have to lay off staff, severely undermining their ability to function at the most basic levels,” Hoyer said. “That has direct consequences on the American people.”

Under the 2024 enacted budget, which included significant spending cuts, some agencies are already limiting new hires and in some cases considering plans to reduce their workforces. The State Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs, for example, are looking to make staffing cuts in the Foreign Service and the VA health care workforce.

The House appropriations legislation comes in stark contrast to the White House budget request proposed in March. House Republicans proposed a discretionary spending allocation totaling $23.6 billion, which is close to 20% below the Biden administration’s request. The bill would cut spending to 10% below the enacted level for 2024.

Subcommittee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) called the spending levels and several GOP policy riders “unacceptable.”

That steep of a budget cut, Hoyer added, “belies the importance of the agencies for which we appropriate money.”

For the government’s lead agency on all things workforce, House Republicans’ spending plans would give the Office of Personnel Management a budget of $477 million for 2025. It’s an increase of $29.1 million over the enacted 2024 level — but the number still falls $31.4 million short of the White House’s request for the coming fiscal year.

At the same time, House Republicans, in the bill are calling for OPM to specifically aim to modernize IT and strengthen the government’s acquisition workforce.

The bill doesn’t include any language related to the federal pay raise for 2025, appearing to align with Biden’s 2% raise proposal for most General Schedule employees next year.

The draft bill also includes IRS spending cuts and proposes completely defunding IRS’ free Direct File platform. The legislation would cut the budget for IRS for 2025 to $10.1 billion, which is $2.2 billion below the enacted level for fiscal 2024.

The cuts would be most severe for IRS enforcement, which would see a $2 billion reduction in funding, House appropriators explained in a summary of the draft 2025 spending bill. Hoyer took particular issue with that component of House Republicans’ plans for IRS.

“The authority to transfer funds are not provided for in this bill,” Hoyer said. “In other words, we’re cutting our collection department by $2 billion. That’s the very essence of trying to be able to afford that which we’re buying and not paying for.”

The General Services Administration would see spending cuts for its use of the Federal Buildings Fund in 2025, according to the draft legislation. Lawmakers are calling for a cap of $8.9 billion to come out of that fund, which is nearly $1.8 billion below the 2025 budget request.

In one policy rider on the appropriations bill, House Republicans rejected the Biden administration’s request of $3.5 billion to build a new FBI headquarters in Greenbelt, Maryland. The draft bill would also withhold current funds allocated for the massive construction project.

Already, GSA has said construction on the new building will take more than a decade. Construction on the new FBI headquarters is not expected to begin until 2029, and FBI employees would not be working out of the new space until 2036. But in the spending bill, House Republicans said GSA should either continue operating out of the current building, or choose an existing, federally owned building in Washington, D.C., as a new headquarters.

The Executive Office of the President would receive $815.5 million for 2025, according to the spending bill. That’s $105.6 million below the budget request. As part of that appropriation, the Office of Management and Budget would get $126 million.

Several of the bill’s other policy riders specifically target Biden administration policies that Republicans have opposed for years. The legislation in its current form would ban the implementation of President Joe Biden’s executive orders on climate change, as well as diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA).

Additionally, the Small Business Administration would not be able to fund any climate change initiatives under the bill. In total, the House subcommittee proposed about $854.1 million for SBA, a cut of $117.1 million from the White House’s request, and $187.6 million below the enacted level for 2024.

Once the Senate subcommittee releases and votes on its version of the draft appropriations bill, House and Senate lawmakers will have to reconcile any differences between the two versions of the bill before voting on it, or sending it to the president’s desk for a signature.

The post Democrats warn layoffs ahead as House GOP proposes agency spending cuts first appeared on Federal News Network.

The GOP-led House Appropriations Committee’s fiscal 2025 general government spending bill rejects a $3.5 billion proposal from the General Services Administration to finance a new FBI headquarters building in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The spending bill passed out of the general government and financial services subcommittee along party lines on Wednesday morning. It’s now slated to be considered by the full committee. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) reportedly urged House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) to prohibit taxpayer funding for any new FBI headquarters facility.

The Biden administration nominally ended a decade-long disagreement over the future of the FBI headquarters when GSA announced the new Greenbelt site last November. GSA selected a Maryland site over competing sites in Virginia.

But ever since, lawmakers have been scrutinizing GSA’s site selection and the broader plan for replacing the crumbling J. Edgar Hoover Building in downtown DC.

GSA’s budget proposal

GSA’s fiscal 2025 budget request proposed the $3.5 billion as an upfront investment in the new FBI headquarters building.

Agency officials want to allocate the investment through a new Federal Capital Revolving Fund that would “fully fund the costs of very large civilian real property capital projects that are difficult to accommodate in the annual appropriations process,” GSA’s budget request states.

Under the proposal, GSA would then pay back into the revolving fund in annual payments of $233 million over the next 15 years.

GSA would also draw on funding that Congress has already appropriated for acquisition and construction of a new FBI headquarters in Greenbelt. Lawmakers have approved about $845 million for the project so far, including $200 million in the fiscal 2024 spending deal reached in late March.

But in addition to rejecting the $3.5 billion funding request, the House Appropriations Committee bill would also prohibit previous funding from being spent on the FBI headquarters project until GSA sends the committee a “spend plan to continue operation of the current headquarters or to identify another existing, federally-owned DC building to serve as the headquarters.”

While House appropriators have started to move their spending bills, appropriators in the Democrat-led Senate have yet to start marking up their corresponding 2025 spending legislation.

Wray talks FBI headquarters

Meanwhile, FBI Director Chris Wray told lawmakers this week that his agency is supporting GSA’s work to establish the new Greenbelt site.

“We are working closely with GSA,” Wray said during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing. He noted GSA submitted a report to Congress in March detailing its plans for site acquisition and design of the new facility.

Wray had called GSA’s decision-making into question shortly after last November’s announcement. He told FBI employees in an email that he had “concerns about fairness and transparency in the process and GSA’s failure to adhere to its own site selection plan.”

Wray’s email cited concerns about then-Public Buildings Service Commissioner Nina Albert’s decision to override the recommendations of a selection panel that had recommended Springfield, Va., for the new FBI headquarters.

In a statement at the time, GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan pushed back on Wray’s claims. She said his “suggestion that there was inappropriate interference is unfounded.”

Carnahan also said GSA stands behind “the process, the decision, and all of the public servants who carefully followed the process and made a good decision on behalf of the FBI and the public.”

During this week’s hearing in the Senate, Wray did not raise any further public concerns about the decision to locate the new FBI headquarters in Greenbelt.

“We are working closely with GSA, in cooperation with them, in full compliance with the law,” Wray said. “The specifics of exactly what conversations, what meetings – that part I couldn’t tell you right here right now. But my understanding is that we continue to work closely with GSA on the project.”

The post House appropriators reject GSA’s $3.5B plan for new FBI headquarters first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO), one of the longest-running external good-government groups, has a list of items its watching for in the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act. A House committee has already passed one version. For details, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin talks with POGO Public Policy Director Liz Hempowicz.

Interview Transcript: 

Tom Temin So this markup, everybody in town is kind of looking at it. It hasn’t gone to the full house yet. And then there’s the Senate and blah, blah, blah. Long way to go. But what did you notice from the POGO standpoint that should be watched in? What is the first glimpse we’re getting of a possible NDAA?

Liz Hempowicz Sure. We’ve got a couple of things that we’re keeping an eye on. The first is what Congress is doing with a couple wasteful weapons systems. You know, the bread and butter for Pogo. And so, what they’re doing with regards to the F-35 program and the constellation for both emblematic of some of the systemic issues that we care most about at the Pentagon. And we’re also looking at if policymakers can make good on efforts to make it harder for defense contractors to fleece taxpayers in contracting negotiations, and whether a small group of dedicated, bipartisan members can lead Congress into a more responsible way of dealing with budget needs from services and combatant commands by getting rid of the unfunded priorities list. And then last but not least, we’re looking at the impact of recent investigations by Pogo and others and what they’re going to have on policymakers and how they address critical housing quality issues that so many military families are facing right now without sufficient recourse.

Tom Temin All right. And, you know, the United States, as a country faces a rising threat militarily from several places around the world. And does the NDAA seem to address the issue of the fact that some rearmament is really necessary if it can be done in some reasonable fashion?

Liz Hempowicz Yeah. You know, I think that’s exactly the reason why we’re so focused on two of these issues. One, the wasteful weapon systems that we do find ourselves in, you know, decades long contracting issues with. And then also some of those root systemic issues with contracting and procurement that allow us to get into these longstanding, challenging issues with weapons programs that end up, you know, we’re sold a bill of goods that they don’t end up being, and then they can’t meet our readiness needs. And so, then we’re out trillions of billions of dollars. We you know, there’s not a lot of accountability. And we’re not even meeting our readiness needs. And so, there’s no accountability, there’s no readiness. And so that’s really why we care about issues like the F-35, which Congress is now finally cutting back some of the buy on and is delaying delivery on a couple of them, about ten, I think, this year. And basically, they’re doing that because they’re having so many issues with this program that we have now been underway for almost three decades, definitely over 20 years. And performance. We’ve got a fleet wide mission capable rate of only 30%. When we’re talking about the full mission capable rate of F-35s, they’re assigned to combat squadrons. We’re talking only 48%. That’s less than half of them are able to meet our mission needs. And we are 20 years into the program. And so, I’m glad we’re finally cutting back. But we just approved these F-35s for this full rate production. Even though we don’t have the accountability we need, we have all of these issues still, the top testing official at the Pentagon has still not. We don’t want the classified version, of course, of their testing report, but the unclassified version leaves so much to the imagination when there’s all these testing issues. And so, we’ve got both ends of the spectrum here. But yes, we are talking about incredible readiness needs. We have threats coming out of nowhere and ones that we can see. But until we get a handle on procurement as well as who is making decisions and what information they’re making those decisions based off of, which is some of the issue that we’re seeing with all of these things, from housing to these weapons acquisition, is who’s making decisions at the Pentagon, what policymakers are overseeing those decisions, and what is the case, sure, that they’re making those decisions on.

Tom Temin And you mentioned housing, which is a troop issue, a troop quality of life and a troop readiness issue. What does the NDAA that you’ve seen gleaning through this thousands of pages? And what are they saying about it?

Liz Hempowicz Not enough, not enough, especially if you’re going to build this. You know, I think the official title of the bill is The Quality-of-Life Bill instead of the NDAA this year. And I think you let’s take a step back. You know, one of the issues that POGO has uncovered here is that so many of the issues with military housing have come up because the system was privatized. And so, there’s this accountability vacuum, and it leaves service members and their families to suffer from long term exposure to things like toxic mold. That’s what Pogo just uncovered in our latest reporting. And so, because it’s been privatized, it’s hard. But they don’t have recourse. They don’t also have information to who can make this better for them. And often, you know, they’re stuck in this bureaucratic system of back and forth and back and forth. And we profiled some service members who ended up leaving the services because it was too difficult to try to deal with these issues that were affecting them in their families. And so, when we look at this issue of toxic more than the privatized military housing, we’ve got some efforts in the House. NDAA, led by Representative Jacobs, to limit funds for the Secretary to use for travel. And. Till the department has implemented this complaint database that they are supposed to have implemented years ago. That’s supposed to help families kind of understand what they are walking into and just arm them with a little bit of information. The bill also requires a couple studies to better understand the problem, and there are a couple other initiatives here and there to deal with it. But again, it’s not widespread. The problem will not be fixed, but there are members certainly also trying to address kind of the specific issue here that would at least allow service members to fight back on some of these issues with the quality of the housing standards not meeting just basic standards. They would have to meet anywhere else just because we’re talking about military housing.

Tom Temin We’re speaking with Liz Hempowicz, its director of public policy at the Project on Government Oversight. You mentioned a, you know, specific program which has been, as you pointed out, troublesome, the F-35 program. But in the 800 series of clauses in the NDAA, that’s where they talk about procurement reform. Anything stand out to you that they’re actually reforming?

Liz Hempowicz Well, let’s say reforming in a bad way. There are some provisions in the House NDAA that would make it a little bit harder for the Pentagon to, again, would not give them the information they need to make smart spending decisions and smart contracting decisions. And so instead of focusing on those bad provisions, though, let’s focus on the amendments that the House Rules Committee will hear to strip those provisions out. And so Representative Schakowsky has an amendment to remove both section 811 and the House bill. And 812 in the House bill. Those are the two ones we’re talking about, and they talk about the definitions of commercial items and what information needs to be provided, essentially to contracting officials at the Pentagon so that they’re dealing with, you know, certified information, data that they can use that is reasonable and comes in before they make contracting decisions, which, you know, common sense would lead people to assume is what’s happening now. Unfortunately, it is not often folks at the Pentagon receive this information after they’ve made contracting decisions, after they’ve awarded contracts. And all of a sudden it turns out that we are now contracting for much different items than we had initially anticipated, and we’re paying a lot more.

Tom Temin Right. So really, it’s a cost. Affordability is still the fundamental issue, even as we need to recapitalize the military because their air force, for example, is talking about retiring hundreds of aircraft. And, you know, how do you lessen the threat of China with 500 or 1000 fewer aircraft?

Liz Hempowicz Well, you certainly don’t do it by making it harder to kind of track accountability. And when it comes to different items in the supply chain for all of our different weapons systems, let’s take the F-35 program, for example. There’s thousands of suppliers from around the world involved in that F-35 supply chain. And when we’re talking about these contracting issues and procurement issues, to oversimplify it, these weak standards for those technical terms like commercial items and certified cost pricing data, means that every one of those contractors along the way has an opportunity to price gouge the military. And lawmakers keep making it easier and easier for them to do so. So, like these provisions that are in the House bill that would require less information to go to the Pentagon before they make these contracting decisions. We need those provisions taken out. And that’s why we are very much in favor of Representative Schakowsky. Amendments to remove those sections 811 and 812 in the House bill. I believe those are also in the Senate and their efforts in the Senate to get those taken out. But as you know, the Senate is a little bit less transparent with their bill language and what they’re doing before they mark it up in the Senate Armed Services Committee. And so, a lot of that is going on behind the scenes over there.

Tom Temin So a long way to go. Yet before there’s anything finalized to vote on even.

Liz Hempowicz Yes, the NDAA is taken, you know, takes longer and longer every year. And so hopefully who knows who knows how long it will go this year? Hopefully not as long as last year.

The post Focus of one watchdog group regarding upcoming defense authorization bill first appeared on Federal News Network.

After a governmentwide update to the Pathways Program, the Department of Health and Human Services is already looking at how to start implementing the new flexibilities into its program.

But many of those flexibilities, which the Office of Personnel Management finalized in April, are optional, rather than required. That means it depends on an agency’s resources to make them a reality, and in many cases, requires agencies to think creatively.

“It really is being strategic in how we do outreach for recruitment to make sure that we are maximizing our resources,” Kimberly Steide, associate deputy assistant secretary for human capital at HHS, said in an interview with Federal News Network. “The interest is there, the passion is there, it’s really just finding the time and the resources to do as much as we want to do … and thinking about where we can get the most impact for the resources that we have available.”

Higher starting salaries, for instance, are now a possibility for employees that agencies hire through Pathways. Under OPM’s new regulations, agencies can offer a starting salary up to a GS-11 rate, rather than being capped at GS-9 rates as they were previously. Though offering a higher starting salary isn’t a requirement, Steide said she expects HHS will use the flexibility as much as possible.

“Salary is a big draw for many people early in their career,” Steide said. “A lot of that will be driven by budget, of course, but at the end of the day, we have a huge interest in ensuring that we have a solid pipeline of talent. And we have to start that with early-career talent.”

Governmentwide, the Pathways Program lets early-career employees take a temporary position at an agency, with the potential to later convert into a full-time position in the career civil service. OPM’s final regulations changed many different aspects of Pathways, intending to open the doors to more diverse applicants and alleviate the challenges agencies have historically had with the program.

For HHS, like many agencies, the program is central to early-career recruitment overall.

“Early-career talent is really important, and we’ve been strategically trying to do much more to engage and advance recruitment using many of these flexibilities,” HHS Chief Human Capital Officer Bob Leavitt said in an interview. “We have to be extraordinarily creative and innovative in how we share practices across the department to help us all move forward collectively. There’s so much that the human capital side is responsible for across the board. And one way of being efficient with those resources is really building up those communities of stakeholders, communities of practice.”

OPM’s recent updates to Pathways also reduced the requirements to complete the program, offered part-time options, and made candidates who have completed career or technical education programs, in place of a college degree, eligible for the program.

“I think that flexibility will be attractive for a lot of people,” Steide said.

HHS has used Pathways for over a decade, which is as long as the program has been around. Departmentwide, HHS hires roughly 600 employees annually through Pathways in a combination of the three programs: recent graduates, interns and Presidential Management Fellows. HHS’ main human capital office works with each agency subcomponent to determine their staffing projections and help them monitor the program.

“Many of our subcomponents are very well-branded and known. Some are not as well-known,” Steide said. “So it’s just ensuring that when people interact with HHS, they understand everything that we have to offer in terms of all of the different missions, and how they can build a really successful career with HHS.”

Leavitt and Steide said it’s also important to make sure Pathways is a good experience for anyone involved — starting from the recruitment aspect, but also extending to the entire time employees are involved in the program at HHS.

“We really try to bring them in in a cohort style, where we provide programming for them,” Steide said. “We try to have activities where we bring them together, so that they have a sense of community.”

But keeping Pathways participants within the agency full time isn’t always the end goal. In some cases, OPM’s final regulations now let Pathways employees, when converting to a full-time position, move to a different agency than the one with which they completed the program.

OPM added that flexibility, in part, because Pathways participants nearing the end of the program may not always find a full-time opening at their agency that’s a good fit. In those cases, the agency can then place that employee on OPM’s applicant talent portal. The online platform lets other agencies review available candidates and, if they’re a good fit and the employee is interested, hire them.

“That gives them some sense of security, in the sense of being able to be converted anywhere across government, as opposed to the agency that picked them up,” Steide said. “I think one of the best things that OPM did was to develop this portal because it demonstrates for the government that while we might not be able to place you where you were originally picked up, we do want to retain you.”

In general, Leavitt and Steide said OPM’s support of early-career hiring is “palpable.” OPM also has a governmentwide community of practice specifically focused on early-career talent recruitment.

“We have significant support through those communities of practice, through the technical tools that OPM helps provide us all,” Leavitt said. “There are a lot of opportunities to collaborate — collaborate with OPM, across government and within the departments to advance these areas.”

“I personally have seen a lot of synergy with OPM in the sense of trying to help governmentwide, bring resources together and strategically look at ways to approach recruitment and how best to reach early-career talent,” Steide added. “And it goes further than just recruiting them. It is really about [what] you provide them once they come on board.”

The post HHS thinking creatively to implement new Pathways flexibilities first appeared on Federal News Network.

It is budget season on Capitol Hill and agency leaders are busy defending their 2025 spending plans in front of the appropriations committees. And it’s possible the House could finish its appropriations bills this summer. But it’s still very unlikely we’ll have a full budget passed before the end of the fiscal year. For more on where things stand, Federal News Network’s Deputy Editor Jared Serbu spoke with longtime budget watcher Larry Allen on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin . He’s president of Allen Federal Business Partners.

Interview Transcript: 

Larry Allen Jared I think what we’ve seen is a significant delay in allocating money, and even in some cases, agencies not going right up and doing all the things that they potentially could have done before getting that final piece of the puzzle, which is their appropriated dollars. They were things that people anticipated were going to happen. And now we’re kind of really trying to play catch up. And I think we’re going to be playing catch up between now and the end of the fiscal year. And, simply put, I’m not sure that everybody’s going to be able to catch up. Some of the things that are critical spending, of course, those are going to get done. But, if there are some use it or lose it money, that’s going to things that would be nice to do, but you don’t have to have them. They may not get done this year.

Jared Serbu Meaning that we may actually run into some under execution issues in 2024 just because of time.

Larry Allen Oh, I think definitely, if you listen to what the three acquisition heads of the different DoD service branches said just last week on Capitol Hill, all three of them are looking for more acquisition professionals. And then if you look over at GSA, you look at their assisted acquisition portfolio. That’s done nothing but grow. All of that tells you that there are not enough acquisition professionals to go around in government. And if you don’t have enough of those, then you’re not going to be able to get everything out the other end of the business line in a very truncated fiscal year.

Jared Serbu It’s almost like you need a seasonal workforce at this point, since there’s so much work in the back half of the year.

Larry Allen That’s right. Nobody needs to wrap presents at Macy’s, but they need to award contracts.

Jared Serbu Let’s talk about 25 as well. From what you can tell, do we stand a better chance of getting something closer to on time appropriations for next fiscal year?

Larry Allen Well, I think it’s very difficult to tell at this point, Jared. I think the signs so far, though, are encouraging. Congressman [Tom] Cole (R-Okla.), he is one of the top appropriators in the House. He has said publicly that he’d like to get everything done by December. He’s hopeful that the House will be able to get its appropriations work done prior to the end of the current fiscal year, and that it’ll just take the next 2 or 3 months after that to square everything up with the Senate. I think that’s the best that people can hope for. December appropriations. Of course, I think the election in November will have a lot to say about that. If you see party control changing in one or more chambers, that could increase pressure to kick the can down the road into the next Congress in calendar year 2025. But I think that, look, if we can get December, if Chairman Cole is accurate, then everybody should be happy with that.

Jared Serbu Yeah. I was going to ask you if the election could play an impact in the other direction, in the sense that we’ll folks want to get things done before they have to focus on the last stretch of the campaign. But it sounds like you’re saying it’s more likely that they’ll say, let’s see how things go.

Larry Allen If you look at the what the Senate’s been doing, they have they’re not nearly as far along as the House. And usually it’s the other way around. So it’s kind of interesting to people who follow appropriations like me. But you also look at the fact that the summer brings both the Democratic and Republican conventions, which means that we’re going to lose a lot of time in session to those two events. And that plus the early leaving time for people to go back and get reelected, leaves a very short amount of time to get everything done before October. So I think November, December. That’s realistic.

Jared Serbu And speaking of calendar issues, as you point out in the newsletter this week, GSA was supposed to release the RFP, for Alliant 3 sometime in the third quarter, which, their end of the third quarter is coming up here. Do we know what’s holding things up and what are the implications if they don’t make that deadline?

Larry Allen I’m not really sure exactly what is holding the release of the RFP, Jared. What I would say, some speculation is that if you look at other large scale IDIQ contracts that have been put up, not just by GSA, but other agencies. There’s been a lot of discussion, a lot of protest activity over joint ventures, over, who gets credit for past performance in a joint venture or teaming situation. I suspect these are some of the same issues that the Alliant 3 team is trying to grapple with before the RFP comes out with the hope that they would reduce the protest activity after the solicitation hits the streets. The consequences here are that we actually have a pretty short runway in order to get Alliant 3 done. It’s technically possible that the Alliant 2 team could go back internally and seek a justification to extend those contracts, and I think they’ll have to do that. But I think it’s important that industry and government know, first, that’s not automatic. And second, you rarely get everything that you want out of that if you have to go through that process on the contract side. So if you’re looking for, let’s say, five months, you might end up with three months. That’s still not going to buy a lot of time to get Alliant 3 contracts negotiated and up and running. So I think it’s pretty short runway.

Jared Serbu All right. Last thing I want to talk about is, bid protests. And you have a good perennial reminder in the newsletter this week, which is if you are the winner of a contract and it is protested, the government is not your lawyer. I guess the Court of Federal Claims weighed in on this recently.

Larry Allen Jared, they did. And that’s really kind of what caught my attention. It was nice of the Court of Federal Claims to chime in and say what I think a lot of us have been thinking all along, and that is if you’re the winning contractor on a project that gets protested, it’s an established best practice for you to have your own legal counsel in there as an intervenor, to make sure that your interests of the original awardee are protected. I think that’s established, but not everybody does it and not everybody does it. Because, look, it does cost money to hire legal counsel and defend yourself. However, the Court of Federal Claims pointed out, quite rightly, that the government’s charge in a protest is proving the validation of its own acquisition process. And they may have different priorities from the initial winner. And they certainly have different priorities from the protester. So if the protester and the government both have their interests represented, so too should the original awardee.

Jared Serbu And I think we do see those interventions happening pretty regularly at the Court of federal Claims, especially with big companies involved. Is it less common at GAO and with smaller procurements?

Larry Allen I think it really depends Jared. A lot of times if you see a GAO decision, down at the bottom, you’ll see three sets of attorneys, usually one for the government, one for the protester or one for the intervenor who’s the original awardee. And certainly it’s easier to justify getting legal counsel at a jail protest, because it’s going to be, on average, less expensive than a protest at the claims court. So, if you’re a very small company you might not want to do that, or you might want to just rely on the government to get everything straightened out. But you kind of do that with a big risk. And the risk is that the government may decide that it needs to re complete the contract, and then you’re going to be back to spending more proposal dollars to get something that already won and thought was yours. And in that case, if you look at it that way, hiring outside legal help to represent your interests is a good idea.

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