Interview transcript:
Terry Gerton You have had such a remarkable career. You led workforce and transformation efforts across nine agencies, if I counted that right. What first drew you into public service?
Elizabeth Kolmstetter Yes, I’ve really enjoyed my career and the ability to move around in different agencies. I think what drew me first was my first job, which was at the FBI. And being part of, probably because of the law enforcement-public safety angle, I really appreciated and learned how hard people work, but particularly the men and women who put their lives on the line every day for the American people. They’re unsung heroes; you don’t see that, you don’t understand that unless you are in the organization. And that, I think, was really what bit me into the whole public service and really thinking about, as an organizational psychologist, thinking about what motivates people and really trying to understand how to bring out their best every day. When you work with extraordinary people who are giving everything they have to the American people through the agency, that really struck me as incredibly interesting, but also important. So I really started at the FBI 32 years ago, and I never looked back.
Terry Gerton Well, across three decades, I can imagine you’ve seen a lot of change in how the federal government manages, recruits, retains its people. Your last job, though, I think is fascinating. You were the first and the only chief people officer in CISA. How did that mark sort of a culmination of all the transition that you’d seen in workforce management space?
Elizabeth Kolmstetter We traditionally think of human resources or human capital as the life cycle of hire to retire. And I have been in that my entire career, in that field. But this new model, the thinking was that if you separate and have a chief people officer who could dedicate the time and effort and initiatives to the engagement, the recruitment, retention and what keeps people here, what skills we need to develop, our leadership which is so important to culture. And instead of fighting the HR operations because, you know, if someone’s not getting paid or somebody, you’re trying to hire that person, that’s always going to take priority over what we say is more strategic, more culture, longer-term engagement efforts. So being able to separate that and have both a chief people officer and a CHCO allowed us to really focus on the entire human experience at work. Really for cybersecurity, having to recruit and retain and motivate and develop that workforce was a priority for national security. So, very exciting.
Terry Gerton Well, following up on the government shutdown, organizational culture’s really taken a hit. I think it would be fair to say that. What advice would you have for folks who will be coming back into the HR space and trying to bring people back to work, trying to rebuild that culture? What lessons have you learned that you’d want to share with them?
Elizabeth Kolmstetter I certainly cannot underscore enough the importance of culture and engagement. You have got to keep people motivated in order to achieve these just enormous and daunting missions. And so I hope that the pedal will go back down on the initiatives and the importance on engagement and starting with leadership. But really my advice to all leaders and especially those who are in human resources is just keep focusing on the people. Let them know and appreciate them for their work, their effort, their skills, their dedication. I think that you just have to remind people why they’re here. I would say, look at the people that are working without getting paid. I mean, who else would do that but public servants who are so committed to why they work and what they do for this country? Remind people that’s why we’re here. Our goal and our mission is more important than ourselves. So being part of that is so important. I do believe that the public is even more recognizing that now, probably because the shutdown has gone on so long that the appreciation is there and the importance is there. It’s never gone away. And don’t get caught up in the rhetoric, because what the American people need is really dedicated, smart, innovative public servants. And they have them, they’re there, and they’re going to continue to do the best that they possibly can.
Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Elizabeth Kolmstetter. She’s the retired Chief People Officer for CISA and a newly elected fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. So Elizabeth, let’s pick up there. You’ve received lots of awards in your professional government career, but being elected a fellow of the National Academy is kind of a big deal. What does it mean to you personally?
Elizabeth Kolmstetter It is a very big deal, and I am incredibly humbled by this honor. I never thought that I would be named a fellow of NAPA. I have known NAPA, I’ve worked with NAPA, I have used NAPA to do studies at many of the agencies where I worked because they are so respected for their credibility, their research, their evidence base. It’s something I’ve always believed in because, of course I’m a psychologist, so I think science and data is really important. But being named a fellow, I think, is probably going to be one of the biggest hallmarks of my professional career, because it recognizes not just my background, but my contributions to public service. And my desire to keep giving now that I’m retired gives me a really important way to keep giving and keep seeking to improve public service, public institutions.
Terry Gerton The Academy really is a cross-sector community and your career has been sort of multisector. How do you plan to work with the Academy to advance good public administration?
Elizabeth Kolmstetter I am really going to be focused, I think, on the workforce part of things. Some of the grand challenges that NAPA has posted are about, obviously, reinvigorating public service but continuing to recruit and retain and motivate people into public service. Getting the story out — what is it like? What does it mean? Why is it important? And I also really believe in permeability. I don’t think you have to come and stay in one area anymore. There’s so much more mobility and opportunity. Come and be a public servant for a while, learn, understand, be part of that fabric, and then go do academia or private sector or nonprofit. But I think coming and going and crossing the different sectors is actually going to create more integration, more partnership across the sectors, which we need to advance our society, really. It’s not so much a great divide anymore like it used to be; it’s really an integrated partnership. So I would like to be part of that aspect and of course improving the public sector talent management program since that’s what I do. I think that we could modernize more and NAPA has had a long history of doing studies on modernizing talent programs again to bring out the best in the people that work in public sectors.
Terry Gerton Well, both of those recommendations, certainly the permeability and talent management, are aligned with exactly what the new OPM director says he wants to do. If you were advising him, where would you suggest that he watch out for landmines and maybe take advantage of opportunities?
Elizabeth Kolmstetter Well, I was very pleased to be able to hear the new director, Scott Kupor, speak at the NAPA conference last week and hear directly some of his ideas. I would say that he does need to keep listening, first of all learning where those landmines are, but also I love his bold move to do some more things that perhaps people say are more private sector, but they’re really cutting edge talent programs. Especially recognizing and rewarding top talent, which he is talking about, looking at how we compensate and reward excellence. I think he’s right on. We need to do that. I also think that we should look at more hybrid with employment at will. I don’t think that just coming in and staying and rewarding mediocrity is what the government needs anymore. Certainly I believe in job security — if you’re doing a great job and you’re continuing to develop your skills, we should recognize that. But I have seen over my career a number of people who kind of coast. I don’t think that’s a service to the American people. I do think we need to, again, reward and recognize continued growth and skills, especially in technology and AI and these new forms of getting work done, and I do not see that as much in the federal recognition program. So I’m on board with him trying to find a way forward that actually modernizes some of these traditional methods that we’ve used in the federal government.
Terry Gerton Elizabeth, what advice would you have for someone, a young person who’s thinking about joining public service, but maybe is disturbed at what they’ve seen in some of the later trends — what would you tell them?
Elizabeth Kolmstetter First of all, always keep an open mind when it comes to your career and opportunity, because you never know where that amazing opportunity is going to open. And I, myself, said I would never work for the federal government because I believed it was bureaucratic and slow. So I always tell people when I give career talks, I am an example of what not to do. First of all, never say never. But you asked if somebody was already open to it, and I would say, walk through that door, get some experience in the public sector. Because until you experience it, it’s hard to appreciate what it is and how it actually works. So I think rotations in the public sector — think AmeriCorps, which is the domestic Peace Corps — there are so many ways to do service to the society, whether it’s local, state or federal, and get that experience. Because being part of a team that is working for a mission that is bigger than profit or any of the different sectors: It’s a different feeling to be with men and women and people of all genders. What is that spark that makes us so dedicated every day to come and make a difference? And that is what you become, a fabric, part of the DNA. You become part of that. That becomes your value set, that we have to do better. We have to keep driving our society forward. And this is a great country with great people who deserve the best. So being part of that I think is very worthy, but don’t think of it as you have to go in and stay for your whole career — back to that permeability. Come in and have that experience and then go to the private sector, or go into nonprofit. But come and have experience, because then you know what it takes and you will always have those partnerships and network as you go forward.
The post From NASA to CISA, she’s shaped the federal workforce for three decades first appeared on Federal News Network.
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Interview transcript:
Terry Gerton I want to start with a topic that some of our listeners are writing in about. September 30 was the end of the DRP and the day before the shutdown. Folks who retired effective that day maybe are in a bit of a limbo about what the status is on their retirement packages. What are you hearing from OPM around the processing backlog?
John Hatton So OPM seems to be trying to tackle this issue. And we’ve seen some reporting on statistics from OPM, but that may not show the full picture. They have recently started reporting at least interim pay status. So once a claim gets to them, they have to initiate an interim pay, which is going to be some lower percentage than your full annuity typically. And they’re reporting it’s six days until interim pay. That doesn’t necessarily show how long it’s taking to get from when you submit in your retirement date application and when that claim gets over to OPM. We’re concerned that there is maybe some delays on the agency side, particularly impacted by the shutdown. I don’t think we have good data yet on that to say exactly where it is, but here are some numbers. Kapoor in September said there was about 60,000 retirements in the online retirement system. So not yet at OPM, but they had visibility into them. And about 35,000 in September. In October, OPM received 20,000 claims. So if there’s 35,00 in the system and only 20,00 got to OPM, that tells me there may be delay of at least 15,000 getting over to OBM. Now that also started the shutdown. I can only imagine that caused some delays getting over through the process at the agency level. OPM itself was not impacted by the shutdown in terms of retirement services. They are exempt. They are funded through trust fund dollars, so it wasn’t like they were shut down in terms of processing. But at the agency level, many people may not have been there. The other thing is they’re reporting retirement claims processing, and we don’t have the November figures in yet from OPM, so that’ll tell us a little bit more about how they’re doing. Their current stat on time to process the full claim is 66 days. That’s down from 79, so that sounds like a good thing. But again, we don’t have necessarily all the numbers visible. I think they’re doing a little bit better showing some of those different stats on interim pay and even survivor benefit processing, but there’s still a lot we don’t really know.
Terry Gerton So folks who are in this limbo status, who may not know where their file is right now, what’s your advice for them?
John Hatton Well, one, if you’ve done it through the online retirement application, you may be able to see if there’s an issue where it’s stuck at payroll, stuck at agency level and not over at OPM. And so maybe there’s somebody you can talk to at agencies. Now we’ve heard from some members that there’s nobody to talk to at their own agency. And maybe that’s because there’s been these large-scale reductions in force. It could have been a shutdown-related issue as well. So that’s not great advice. You can always try to call OPM, we always try to help our members, try to elevate claims when it’s taken a longer time. I think for a September retirement date with the amount of retirement claims coming in and with some potential delays at the agency level, we may not expect this to be kind of a super long time at this point. Now it gets into January, February, you don’t have a full retirement processing claim and I think that’s a much longer delay. There’s also often cases that just take a lot longer. So there’s simple cases where you’ve worked for one agency your whole life, and it’s pretty easy for OPM to do. But there’s other cases where you bounce around different agencies, maybe you left service, you came back; maybe you’ve worked under the normal retirement system, but separately under a special category where you have a higher multiplier; maybe some of your files are over at the National Archives, you have to get them there — so those types of things really delay the process and how long you get through the system. You see a degree of variability between different types of cases in terms of getting through OPM.
Terry Gerton That’s great advice. I’m speaking with John Hatton, the Staff Vice President for Policy and Programs at the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association. All right, John, let’s move into some other things that may be affecting federal civilians or the retired population. One of the things in the continuing resolution back in November included language blocking reductions in force. What are you seeing there in terms of compliance, notifications, people being brought back?
John Hatton Well, in terms of compliance, with those who were the shutdown RIFs, those for whom the administration took the opportunity to say, we are not required to do this function by Congress right now because we’re in a shutdown, there’s no appropriations law. They started the process of reductions in force for some people because of the shutdown. Those have been reversed; those people have been reinstated. Then there are other reductions in force that started before the shutdown. But the language in the continuing resolution was very clear. There’s no funds to be used to implement, initiate or even follow through on these RIFs. So the administration tried to go through with continuing to fire a group of State Department and Foreign Service employees. That was blocked by a court issuing a temporary restraining order against that, based on that continuing resolution language. So the good news is that language passed as part of the CR that was negotiated in by Sen. Kaine has been effective at stopping these reductions in force. Not just ones that were started in the shutdown, some of them were started before, and preventing any new ones from going on until at least January 30.
Terry Gerton With all of these changes in the delayed retirements and the high-rank freezes, what are you sensing is the mood among federal employees right now as we get to the end of this year and the start of a new one?
John Hatton Well, I don’t know that it’s good. I don’t think we’re at a point where it’s recovered from what has been a very tumultuous year, particularly coming off a shutdown where you had to work for a record amount of what I think was 43 days without pay. And other people were not working and coming back to large backlogs of work. Do you think, you know, there are some signs of hope for a return to a little bit more normalcy? And I think this blocking the administration’s reduction-in-force language, if we get full year appropriations bills done, I think that puts a little bit of a bit of a check on some of these executive actions. I think probably too late for many, but it may give a little bit more security for those currently in the federal workforce that have made it this far that maybe it won’t go further. So I think we’ll see. The Congress is still working through the appropriations process. They’ve only passed three full-year bills; I don’t expect they’ll pass all the bills, full-year, but in the Senate they’re trying to five bills passed, which would be the bulk of spending for the federal government.
Terry Gerton What are you tracking there in terms of federal pay raises for 2026?
John Hatton Well, the president in August issued an alternative pay plan that would provide a 1% across-the-board pay increase. I don’t expect that to change through the appropriations process. It doesn’t look like anything’s going to be passed this month. I mean, the Senate is trying to pass a five-bill package, but it looks like they’re having problems getting it through. So as long as Congress doesn’t say anything, I would expect that alternative pay plan to be implemented via an executive order. So at least a 1% pay increase next year for federal employees.
Terry Gerton That doesn’t seem like it’s keeping up with the cost of living adjustments.
John Hatton No, it is not. Certainly, the cost of living for everybody in America has continued to go up, as reflected by the consumer price index. Inflation is still at elevated levels, and this is coming on the heels of several years of very high inflation. So it’s not just the current increases in prices, but it’s catching up to the past increases. So that continues to be an issue, I think, for federal employees is that these pay raises, while it’s good to have something, it’s really not keeping up with these costs. I mean, just look at health premiums, which is not the entire basket of goods that you’re looking at, but health premiums went up 12.3% on average this year for enrollees. Clearly, 1% pay increase is not going to keep up with that. So more of your income is being pulled away into health care increases and all the other goods are going up at a higher rate as well. It makes federal jobs less competitive. And that comes on top of a year where the jobs just became a whole lot less secure than they used to be, when certainly the work that people have been putting in through their public service has been devalued, whether it be shutdowns or just rhetoric or the way people have been treated. So certainly been a tough year. I don’t think that 1% does nearly enough, but it is something. I think that’s likely what’s going to happen, even if it’s too little.
The post Some hopeful signs of stability for the federal workforce first appeared on Federal News Network.
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The future of the Federal Emergency Management Agency remains up for debate after the Trump administration recently delayed a long-anticipated report from the FEMA Review Council.
Former leaders at FEMA say they expected the council’s report to bring much-needed clarity to the administration’s plan for an agency that has already undergone dramatic changes over the last 11 months.
“I was really eager to see what they were going to put forward, because I think that they were really trying to make a difference,” Deanne Criswell, who served as FEMA administrator during the Biden administration, said during a Monday webinar hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“I think where it leaves us now, at the end of the year, is still just wondering what is going to be next. What is going to be the future of FEMA as we go forward?” Criswell said. “It just leaves so much uncertainty, as states and locals are trying to plan for their next year, as well as the federal government trying to plan for their budget.”
Pete Gaynor, who served as FEMA administrator during the first Trump administration, said he expected the council’s report to serve as a “north star” for the agency.
“It was going to offer clarity,” Gaynor said. “It was going to offer predictability to FEMA and to the entire emergency management enterprise that we were going to go somewhere transformative. And it hasn’t happened, at least not yet. And I guess the biggest takeaway is, without the report, what happens next?”
The council was set to unveil the report and vote on it at a meeting Friday afternoon. But the meeting was abruptly cancelled late that morning, reportedly over White House concerns about a leaked draft of the report.
The document was first obtained by CNN. The news outlet reported that the draft recommendations include sweeping reforms to FEMA, including cutting the agency’s workforce by 50% and shifting some non-disaster management responsibilities to other entities.
The last-minute delay comes after a year of change for FEMA.
President Donald Trump established the council earlier this year to recommend FEMA reforms. He has repeatedly alluded to eliminating the agency outright. As recently as June, he said the administration wanted to “wean off of FEMA, and we want to bring it back to the state level.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who serves as co-chairwoman of the council, has echoed Trump’s calls about eliminating FEMA. But in more recent appearances and council meetings, Noem has turned to calling for the agency to be “eliminated as it exists today.”
FEMA has also had three separate acting leaders over the last 11 months. Thousands of FEMA staff have departed the agency since the spring, driven by changes under Noem that have drawn criticism from some remaining employees.
Gaynor said FEMA also needs “a professional, well-respected, well-experienced emergency manager” leading the agency.
“The FEMA administrator job is incredibly hard, incredibly satisfying, but if you don’t have the right person in there, I’m not sure how you actually achieve reform, and I’m not really sure how you get your employees to follow you in that reform,” he said. “Because you’re going to need every single person that’s works for that agency, and every single person that is connected to the emergency management enterprise, to follow along.”
Meanwhile, some House lawmakers are advancing the bipartisan Fixing Emergency Management for Americans Act. The bill would make FEMA an independent agency, moving it out from under the Department of Homeland Security. It also aims to streamline and overhaul FEMA’s disaster management programs and processes to more quickly deliver aid to communities and individuals.
The draft FEMA Review Council report obtained by CNN, meanwhile, would keep the agency under the umbrella of DHS.
Criswell endorsed the idea of making FEMA an independent agency.
“If the FEMA administrator was elevated to a cabinet level, pulled out of DHS, they would have greater ability to coordinate those other secretaries, those other cabinet-level entities to accomplish their mission and long-term recovery,” she said.
Gaynor opposes it, calling such a move a “gigantic distraction.”
“There’s many more things that are important to reforming FEMA, and where FEMA sits exactly, I’m not sure that really counts as true reform,” Gaynor said.
Danielle Aymond, a disaster recovery and FEMA funding specialist at the law firm Baker Donelson, pointed out that the Trump administration likely has a desire to “move fast” with FEMA reform. She said it will be crucial for the White House and Congress work together to iron out any differences with their proposals.
“The most critical point is, in the next few weeks, aligning this FEMA Review Council draft with the current pending legislation in Congress, and I think we can hit the accelerator and before [next] hurricane season, have a totally reformed system through that vehicle,” Aymond said.
The post Former FEMA leaders call for ‘clarity’ amid delayed council report first appeared on Federal News Network.
© AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
Interview transcript:
Terry Gerton I thought we would just take advantage of the end of December, the end 2025 and ask you to take a look. There’s certainly been no shortage of acquisition news and reforms, but as you think about the whole of the last 12 months, what really sticks out for you is the most significant changes that the Trump administration has made in acquisition?
Emily Murphy So I think there’s three things, or three groups of things I’ll say, that I think are very significant. The first one is just how involved the administration’s been in acquisition. They came in and the leadership on day one got very involved in government contracting. To this day we’re seeing reviews at the secretary level, administrator level, of procurement. But from day one you saw the leadership coming in at GSA and at other agencies making procurement and acquisition really a focus. They did those “defend the spend” reviews. So it’s been a much more intense focus on government contracting than we’ve seen in a long time. And then that was followed up with the three executive orders that I think of as going together that came out. Where the president looked at first — wanting the government to buy commercial when possible, saying that we are going to consolidate how procurement operated, we’re going to buy as one government, and that we were really empowering GSA on that level. And then announcing that we were going to rewrite the FAR. Then the third one has to be the actual FAR rewrite, which was an amazing amount of work that the OFPP, GSA, NASA, Department of War did in a matter of months. And we’ve got several agencies having adopted that deviation. So I think those would be the three things I’d point to as the biggest. There was so much that happened in 2025.
Terry Gerton When you think about those three together, what would you say the biggest impact has been, especially on the contracting community?
Emily Murphy The contracting community is still trying to figure out what the new normal is. Reviews, repricing OneGov initiative, the change in the workforce with the deferred resignation program and that fork in the road, there just aren’t as many people engaged in contracting anymore. And so everyone’s trying to figure out still how to execute. How do we get stuff done? And that’s probably the biggest thing I’ve seen affecting both industry and government alike on the government contracting side.
Terry Gerton Well, you mentioned the fewer number of contracting officials in the government. There’s been so many disruptions, the DRP, the shutdown, the continuing resolution. What is life like for the contracting workforce these days?
Emily Murphy Hectic. Again, contracting officers are very mission-oriented and rule-oriented people. So, they’ve got a conflict right now in that the rules are changing, which makes it hard for them to be as strict in adherence. And they’re trying to deliver on a mission that’s also really rapidly evolving with a lot less resources, but a lot of new tools also, like AI-empowered tools — GSA AI comes to mind. A very new approach to acquisition, in that they’re being told, “go out and look for commercial.” We’re going to get rid of a lot of the clauses that they’ve been trained to use from day one. Speed is important, but at the same time, knowing that there is a lot of oversight waiting for them. And when I say oversight, I don’t just mean the traditional oversight community, but you’ve also got a situation where the heads of agencies are reviewing individual procurements themselves, which is a very unusual situation to find ourselves in. So their bosses are looking very closely at the work they’re doing.
Terry Gerton Are you seeing any evidence of training or common guidance that’s going to help them pull all of those diverse stimuli together?
Emily Murphy I’ve got the say, the work when they did the FAR rewrite, the practitioner album, the companion guide, there are great resources there. It’s on-demand training, so you can go and look at it again and again and it’s short, to the point, you can get there. But there’s not the time for the traditional training that we’re used to, where someone would be going to DAU or FAI and taking a class. Very much it’s people need to be trained right instantly and be able to go in and put those in place, and a rewrite of the entire FAR is a pretty extensive thing to be training someone on. So, got to give credit to the folks who put that together. They put together as many resources as they could. But it’s going to take some time for that all to sink in and for us to see how it works. And remembering that most of it’s still being done via deviation and very few agencies have the same deviations right now. So the uniformity that we’ve come to expect with government contracting isn’t there right now. It’ll come back, but it’s not there right now.
Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Emily Murphy. She’s a senior fellow at the George Mason University Baroni Center for Government Contracting and former administrator of General Services Administration. All right, Emily, let’s turn to our crystal ball to looking ahead to 2026. With all of those changes that you just really quickly summarized for us, what trends do you expect to dominate acquisition in 2026?
Emily Murphy I think we’re going to have another year of reviews. I think that we’re going to continue to have scrutiny. I think there’s going to be a push to get the FAR rulemaking process done. I think that there’s going to be an increased push towards using CSOs, OTAs. Hopefully we’ll get SBIR reauthorized soon, because I think the nontraditional contracting is going to continue to be a key area of focus. And I think when you look at the PMA, we’re getting a very clear signal that there’s going to be more consolidation happening as well.
Terry Gerton Well, speaking of the PMA, there’s some things in it that you might expect to see, but some things that you might expect to see that aren’t in it. For example, customer experience and shared services that have been tent poles for several administrations.
Emily Murphy That’s true. I was surprised that shared services in particular isn’t called out explicitly. I think you can read it into a fair number of places, but it’s not called out as its own goal or as its own objective. When you think of the buying as one entity, smarter faster and cheaper, that seems to be pushing towards the idea of procurement as a shared service. The customer experience isn’t itself called out directly, but we do talk about leveraging technology to deliver faster and more secure services. We’re looking at trying to optimize the real estate portfolio so that people can have cost-effective locations for agency buildings. I don’t think that the customer’s written out, but they’re not called out explicitly in the same way they have been in the past.
Terry Gerton The language on “demand partners who deliver” seems to be sending a message to contractors and grantees.
Emily Murphy It is. They’re saying they want to contract with the best businesses. And that’s not surprising given that there’s been a lot of conversation about trying to redo past performance. And we’ve heard it both from Congress and from the administration that we need to be putting more focus on making sure we really are getting results out of our contracts. Holding contractors and grant recipients accountable is very much in keeping with the rhetoric we’ve heard over the last year, and those “defend the spend” conversations that have taken place between GSA and contractors and other agencies and their contractors since they’ve done those reviews. The OneGov deals very much are about demanding better pricing, demanding results. I was surprised to see that they were saying put political appointees in control of the grant process. GSA is not a grant agency; it wasn’t an area we spent a lot of time on. But I always thought that political appointees did best when we set the objectives, and then we let the career employees go in and implement them and hold them accountable for meeting those objectives, rather than actually running the process itself. But it will be interesting to see how that is implemented and what results are being prioritized.
Terry Gerton Exactly. And there’s one other piece here. The deliver results, but particularly by American. Do you feel like that’s getting more emphasis than it has in the past in this PMA?
Emily Murphy Absolutely. I think it’s, rebuild American industry through prioritizing and enhancing made-in-America execution. I’ll be curious to see what we actually mean by “made in America” versus — you’ve got buy America, you’ve gotten buy American, you’ve been made in America — and how they play out in the contracting process. There has been a lot more emphasis. When I was GSA Administrator, we launched the “Made in America bot” so that we could go through the schedules and quickly figure out where we had problems with incorrect labeling of Made in America. I want to make clear, it’s something that GSA and other agencies have always focused on in complying with the law, but to call that directly in the PMA suggests that there’s going to be an even greater focus on this.
The post Emily Murphy is here with her insights on how federal acquisition changed in 2025 and what’s coming in 2026 first appeared on Federal News Network.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is exploring workarounds to a new Department of Health and Human Services policy, which sets stricter rules on telework as a reasonable accommodation for employees with disabilities.
The HHS policy states all requests for telework, remote work, or reassignment must be reviewed and approved by an assistant secretary or a higher-level official — a decision that is likely to slow the approval process.
The new policy, as Federal News Network reported last week, generally restricts employees from using telework as an “interim accommodation,” while the agency processes their reasonable accommodation request. But faced with a backlog of more than 3,000 reasonable accommodation cases, the CDC is taking an ad-hoc approach to granting temporary medical telework.
According to four CDC employees, supervisors have instructed staff to email their medical documentation directly to Lynda Chapman, the agency’s chief operating officer, to “bypass” the traditional reasonable accommodation system, and receive up to 30 days of telework as an interim accommodation.
“The instructions are for you to email her a letter from your doctor, and she will be the judge of if you can telework for up to 30 days,” a CDC employee told Federal News Network.
A second CDC employee shared a photo with Federal News Network showing that Chapman was recently added as an authorized official to review the employee’s reasonable accommodation materials.
“I think this is very problematic, because she really should not be evaluating people’s health needs,” the employee said. “It should be an RA specialist.”
Two CDC employees told Federal News Network that Chapman is only approving interim telework in a few circumstances — including recovery from surgery, pregnancy or chemotherapy.
This week, the CDC hosted a series of “office hours” sessions with supervisors. During these question-and-answer sessions, the agency’s Office of Human Resources gave supervisors more information about the new reasonable accommodation process.
“I was requested to share my medical information via personal email to Lynda Chapman,” a CDC employee wrote in a screengrab of one of these Q&A sessions. “When I questioned her role prior to sending my file, she denied my request.”
Linnet Griffiths, a former senior advisor to CDC’s chief operating officer who left the agency in April, told Federal News Network that the agency had a “robust system” for processing reasonable accommodations, but said many employees who carried out this work were targeted by reductions in force.
“They have gotten rid of all the RA staff and EEO offices, which is extremely disturbing, because the department already had a lot of RA cases, a backlog that was unbelievable. They were understaffed,” Griffiths said.
Griffiths said human resources employees who left CDC and HHS received specialized training to ensure the agency was following “due diligence” when processing reasonable accommodations. That included making sure the agency complied with requirements under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act.
“We had in-house doctors that were specifically trained to review that information and approve whether someone should be eligible for full-time telework,” Griffiths said. “The [CDC] chief operating officer or someone that does not have medical expertise reviewing that information was something we would never do.”
Griffiths said that reasonable accommodation requests often took months to get approved during her tenure at CDC, but said the agency granted full-time telework as an interim accommodation, when deemed necessary by an employee’s doctor.
In a readout from one of these “office hours” meetings, obtained by Federal News Network, agency leadership told supervisors that, under the new HHS policy, they cannot approve interim telework requests, even in cases where telework has already been identified “as the only effective accommodation.”
According to the readout, supervisors were told that expiring telework agreements, granted as an interim accommodation, will not be renewed, and that employees will have to either return to the office or use leave. Supervisors were told that these outcomes were “not denials.” Instead, supervisors were instructed to tell employees that telework could not be granted.
“Several supervisors noted this functions like a denial in practice,” the readout states. “Leadership acknowledged legal risks associated with forcing or effectively compelling leave.”
During one of the sessions, multiple supervisors raised concerns that agency guidance conflicts with federal disability law.
“Leadership directed supervisors to stop discussing legal issues during the session, stating it was not the forum for legal discussion, and advised that such concerns should be raised offline through supervisory channels,” the readout states.
According to the readout, when supervisors raised concern about personal legal exposure, leadership advised supervisors to “consider obtaining professional liability insurance.”
“Overall, the call left many supervisors concerned about how to lawfully provide interim accommodations, the lack of written guidance, and how to avoid harm to employees while complying with the direction given,” the readout states.
A CDC spokesperson said in a statement that interim accommodations, including telework, “may be provided while cases move through the reasonable-accommodation process toward a final determination.”
“This has always been the case,” the CDC spokesperson said.
Several Senate Democrats, in a letter led by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), said the new HHS policy “will inflict outsized harm on workers with disabilities,” including employees with chronic diseases and compromised immune systems.
“The federal government is a major employer of people with disabilities. It is bound by law not to discriminate against those workers and to take steps to increase employment of workers with disabilities,” the senators wrote.
The senators said department employees “have been harmed” by its new reasonable accommodation policy.
The senators wrote that an HHS employee’s telework accommodation because of a high-risk pregnancy was rescinded. On the day she was supposed to report back to the office, she was rushed to the emergency room by ambulance.
Kaine and Warnock said a disabled veteran’s post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was exacerbated by a shooting at the CDC’s headquarters this summer, but their telework accommodation was denied, approved, then denied again, “leaving them without direction or guidance.”
HHS Press Secretary Emily Hilliard said in a statement that the department “will respond directly to the senators.”
“Interim accommodations, like telework, may be provided while cases move through the reasonable-accommodation process toward a final determination. The Department remains committed to processing these requests as quickly as possible,” Hilliard said.
The post As HHS restricts telework, CDC asks employees to ‘bypass’ reasonable accommodation process first appeared on Federal News Network.
© AP Photo/David Goldman
Lawmakers dropped several incentive pay and quality-of-life reforms for service members and their families from compromise defense policy legislation, including a proposal to expand eligibility for the basic needs allowance by removing basic allowance for housing from income calculations.
Congress first authorized the basic needs allowance in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Bill to address food insecurity among military families. But almost immediately, advocates and lawmakers flagged the program’s major flaw – many lower-income service members didn’t qualify for the stipend due to the inclusion of the basic allowance for housing in income calculations, pushing many families above the program’s eligibility threshold.
The program had a low participation rate from the start — DoD estimated that there would be about 2,500 people eligible to receive the stipend at a cost of roughly $10 million. Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s own 2023 survey estimated that about one in four service members — or approximately 286,000 troops — struggled with food insecurity.
The fiscal 2025 defense policy bill proposed expanding eligibility for the basic needs allowance by raising the eligibility threshold from 150% of the poverty line to 200% and excluding basic housing allowance from the calculation of gross household income. While Congress adopted the higher poverty threshold provision, lawmakers dropped the basic housing allowance proposal from the final bill.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the two proposals combined would have expanded BNA eligibility to 61,000 service members and cost the department $260 million in 2025 and $1.4 billion over the 2025-2029 period.
The Biden administration said at the time that excluding basic housing allowance would “result in a much less targeted expansion of payments and come at a cost of $2.8 billion in FY 2025 that is not provided.”
The House tried to reform the basic needs allowance once again in the 2026 defense policy bill, but the proposal was ultimately stripped from the measure.
In the joint explanatory statement, lawmakers said that “quality of life measures, including increases in allowances, are addressed elsewhere in this Act.”
Lawmakers also rejected a Senate-backed pilot program proposal to provide coupons to junior enlisted service members to purchase food at commissaries. Members of Congress said the Defense Department already maintains “multiple, comprehensive food-security initiatives across the enterprise,” including a department-wide working group and congressionally mandated data collection and reporting requirements.
“These efforts collectively provide a robust framework for assessing and addressing food insecurity among servicemembers and their families, as well as existing annual reporting to Congress,” the lawmakers said.
Also omitted is a House proposal to permanently expand the Pentagon’s authority to temporarily adjust housing allowance rates in high-cost areas. While Congress has given the department temporary authority to raise basic allowance for housing in places where costs jump by more than 20% in a single year, the authority is too limited to allow DoD to respond to rapid and frequent housing cost increases in many military communities.
The bill would have lowered the threshold for mid-year temporary BHA increases from 20% to 15% of the overall increase in cost of living from the previous year.
The House version of the defense policy bill sought to establish a five-year pilot program to assess whether offering incentive pay to enlisted service members with college degrees related to their military specialties would improve retention. Under the program, the department would have paid monthly incentives to enlisted service members with less than four years of service who hold a degree in their military specialty and are committed to reenlisting.
While the Senate version of the bill contained a similar provision, both proposals were dropped from the final measure.
“We note that the military departments possess broad authorities…to provide special and incentive pays to meet service-specific personnel needs. These authorities enable the military departments to recognize critical skills or qualifications, including academic expertise where appropriate,” the lawmakers said in the joint explanatory statement.
The House also tried to overhaul cyber assignment incentive pay by requiring a standardized, department-wide framework. The proposal would have defined uniform eligibility criteria, established a tiered pay structure based on proficiency levels, ensured pay parity across services and protected incentive pay during permanent change of station moves. The provision was ultimately dropped from the bill.
A House-backed proposal sought to increase access to specialty care by lowering the threshold for travel reimbursement for medical appointments from 100 miles to 50 miles. The final version of the bill, however, adopted a 75-mile threshold.
The Senate cleared a key procedural hurdle on Monday, moving the must-pass bill closer to final passage.
The post Lawmakers drop several quality-of-life reforms from final defense policy bill first appeared on Federal News Network.
© AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson
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