South Korea has finalized its national defense budget for 2026 at KRW 65.8642 trillion (approximately $44.7 billion), representing a 7.5% increase over the 2025 allocation, the Ministry of National Defense said on December 3. Although the original budget proposal submitted to the National Assembly anticipated an 8.2% increase, lawmakers reduced the final figure by KRW […]
The federal offices are back open and hundreds of thousands of federal workers have returned to work after the longest shutdown in history. But nothing is back to normal — federal workers say morale and trust in leadership are at an all-time low, tensions are high between furloughed staff and those who worked through the shutdown, schedules are slipping and projects are being pushed back, and more people are accelerating their retirement plans or leaving federal service altogether.
The recent shutdown, however, has just exacerbated the existing problems and added to what federal workers described as an already extremely trying year for the federal workforce.
“As if morale wasn’t already non-existent, it sure is now. I expect a surge of people to (quiet) quit and I expect the remaining players to be bombarded with work with no support or guidance from leadership,” one employee told Federal News Network.
“The mission is dead. Operations are barely running. Morale is toast,” another federal worker said.
“Everything about being a federal employee in 2025 has destroyed workforce morale — from constant [reduction-in-force] threats, to losing colleagues to early/forced retirements and firings, to the loss of any telework to facilitate work/life balance for working parents or senior caregivers, this is the worst professional year I have experienced in nearly 20 years of service to my country. Nothing about the current [Office of Management and Budget] approach to leadership has moved our country forward,” another employee said.
A Federal News Network survey, conducted online between Nov. 17-30, asked federal workers what it has been like going back to work after the 43-day government shutdown. Survey respondents were self-selected, and they self-reported information to verify their status as current federal employees.
Federal workers described the experience as disorienting — returning to thousands of unanswered emails and scrambling to catch up with partners who kept work moving during the shutdown. There was little to no guidance from top management; they reported overwhelming backlogs and project schedules going completely awry.
Many said overloaded or outdated IT systems, lapsed system access and computer issues made even basic tasks difficult.
“IT issues as devices are set to expire and become inactive after 30 days of non-use, supervisory chain is still not back to work and others are catching up on leave. There are large gaps within the higher chain of command, tremendous amount of confusion, no clear description of how to verify back pay and related deductions are accurate, statutory deadlines did not stop during the shutdown, so crushing workload to return to,” one employee said on Nov. 24.
“It is not so simple as flipping a switch. We are still waiting on funds to arrive and are unable to work on things until those funds arrive,” another federal worker said on Nov. 18.
“I engage in very technical work. A 1.5-month shutdown has thoroughly derailed my train of thought. It will take a long time to refamiliarize myself with what issues were being sorted out, what solutions I had been pursuing, even how any of my own code works,” another employee said.
Several federal workers said their agencies could face budget cuts due to not hitting mandatory spending benchmarks — goals that are “impossible to achieve” after a 40-plus day lapse in appropriations.
In addition, many employees now have to use their “use-or-lose” annual leave before the end of the year, which will further delay progress and extend timelines.
Nearly 1,500 people responded to the survey. Out of 739 federal workers who responded to this question, nearly 47% of respondents said it would take them more than two weeks to catch up on all the work missed during the shutdown.
“My program was halted immediately, but will take two months to ramp back up,” one worker said.
“Can you really ever catch up? Some work will just be lost — deprioritized in the chaos,” another federal employee said.
And the threat of another shutdown is looming — the bill President Donald Trump signed into law keeps the government open only through Jan. 30. The uncertainty, workers say, is making people reluctant to fully dive back into work.
“With holidays coming, this will set projects back months,” one employee said.
Federal employees who worked during the shutdown also expressed “apathy and annoyance” toward furloughed employees who did not work during the shutdown, saying the resentment has led to conflicts and made collaboration difficult.
“Expect operations to be negatively affected as the furlough has driven a wedge between those furloughed employees and those who remained on the job,” one federal employee said.
Most of the federal workers worked without pay during the shutdown, missing more than four weeks of pay.
When the government reopened on Nov. 13, the Office of Personnel Management said it would take several business days for workers to get their back pay.
Out of 728 individuals, 200 federal workers — about 27.5% — said they received their back pay within one-to-three days after returning to work. Another 200 said they were paid within four-to-seven days. For the remaining 323 individuals, it took more than a week to receive their back pay.
Many employees told Federal News Network that there was a lot of confusion about how to process timesheets and guidance changed a few times the first two days, which had contributed to the delay in issuing our pay.
“Smithsonian still has not managed to get us paid. They are wasting time making sure everyone has the correct time codes rather than getting people paid. It’s more important to them that they take a couple weeks to record we were furloughed. Can’t pay the mortgage, but at least they’ll have the correct time code,” one employee said on Nov. 22.
One Interior Department employee told Federal News Network on Dec. 1 the agency had only paid them for 72 hours worked during the shutdown and had promised the remainder by Nov. 25 — they are still waiting on that payment. They added that none of the 69 civilian employees at the U.S. Park Police have been fully paid. Sworn officers, however, received a flat 80 hours per pay period, and while overtime and night-differential corrections were made, it’s not clear if that pay had been issued.
“We have not heard anything about when we will be paid beyond the deadline that passed a week ago, no reason has been provided to explain the delay,” the employee said. “I will be retiring early. While not the only reason, the recent hijinks played a role in my decision.”
One employee at INTERPOL Washington told Federal News Network on Dec. 1 that personnel there have received only partial back pay and some employees have only received pay for one pay period. The issue stems from the Justice Department’s decision to dismantle INTERPOL Washington and fold its remaining functions into the U.S. Marshals Service during the shutdown — while making changes in the pay system while payroll processing was underway.
The workers were initially told they would receive all of their back pay on Nov. 21, but instead received partial pay on Nov. 24. DOJ then promised the rest by Nov. 28, but only a handful of people were paid over that weekend. The agency now says it has finally identified the problem and that employees should be paid by Dec. 3.
“Every time that the DOJ claims to find a solution and puts another date out for when we should get paid, there is just another disappointment,” the INTERPOL Washington employee said.
Another Air Force civilian at Lackland Air Force Base, who was told they would be paid last week, is still waiting for their back pay now nearly three weeks after the shutdown ended. On Monday, they were told that “the comptroller squadron is working diligently to manually process over 3,000 timecards with an estimated completion date of Nov. 29.”
For many of those who received back pay, determining whether the amount was correct was nearly impossible.
Dozens of respondents said they were unsure if their payments were accurate because agencies did not issue accompanying paystubs for the affected pay periods. Several employees said since payroll providers such as the Defense Finance and Accounting Service do not provide leave and earnings statements for retroactive pay, meaning they will have to wait for the next pay period to verify whether the amount is correct.
“It seems to be off by a few hundred dollars, but I can’t determine where the discrepancy is,” one federal worker said on Nov. 26.
“We don’t know since it was a partial payment with no documentation,” another respondent said on Nov. 24.
“Many people at work say that their paychecks were less due to taxes on lump sum payouts,” another respondent said on Nov. 25.
Federal workers were already overwhelmed, stretched thin and struggling with high levels of anxiety following the Trump administration’s push to reduce the size of the federal workforce. Now, the shutdown is pushing even more people out the door.
Out of 758 federal workers, 329 respondents — about 43.4% — said that the shutdown made them reconsider staying in federal service.
Many said they are actively looking for an out, while for others the shutdown reinforced their decision to retire
“It is so untenable that I plan to quit in the next month or so. The situation has gotten even worse since returning,” one employee said.
“The shutdown did solidify that I will retire the first date I can,” a federal worker said.
“I have dedicated 20 years to serving my country, including service in the U.S. Army. It’s pretty thankless to be a federal civilian employee now. I used to encourage my children to pursue a similar career but now I am encouraging them to stay away from federal service,” another employee said.
More than half of federal employees — 58% of respondents — reported experiencing financial challenges during the shutdown, and nearly a third said they struggled to pay bills. Over 51% of federal workers said they had to rely on credit cards, loans or emergency savings to pay their bills, while 14% reported missing rent, mortgage or other payments. About 10% of federal workers said they needed outside assistance, such as food banks and relief programs. But notably, nearly 62% said the shutdown impacted their mental health.
Several respondents said they dipped into retirement accounts or cleared out emergency savings to stay afloat, while others reported delaying Christmas shopping, postponing home repairs or borrowing from family members to cover basic needs. Younger workers and those in single-income households were hit especially hard.
And while some said they were fortunate enough to have savings or a second household income, many still described the experience as deeply destabilizing.
“Fortunately, we are a two-income, no-child household and good savers. But I did give a monetary gift to a colleague who is in a much more tenuous situation,” a federal worker said.
“I requested a skip loan payment on my car since I could without fees. I have paid for things out of savings and since I’m a bit older I can do that, but I’m depleting savings still as I continue to not be paid,” one employee said.
“Outsiders calling it a ‘free vacation’ don’t understand the effects the shutdown has on furloughed staff,” another employee said.
Workers described experiencing “constant dread and worry,” “incredible stress and anxiety” and “the feeling of absolutely no protections.”
“It was very stressful. I had to take a part-time job,” one employee said.
Ultimately, one worker said, the impacts were “cruel and petty and proved to be irrelevant to either side achieving their stated goals.”
If you would like to contact this reporter about recent changes in the federal government, please email anastasia.obis@federalnewsnetwork.com or reach out on Signal at (301) 830-2747.
The post ‘The mission is dead’: Federal workers say the shutdown made an ‘extremely trying year’ worse first appeared on Federal News Network.
© The Associated Press
Interview transcript:
Terry Gerton As we look back, the shutdown’s over now, but it lasted over a month and it really froze critical functions across every federal agency. From your vantage point, what were the most immediate and severe impacts on lenders and small businesses?
Dave Bohrman Well, Terry, I think that’s obviously a big question because there’s some latency in what those impacts will be. So some of that will come out in the days and weeks and months ahead. But looking at it very specifically, you also have to kind of consider what was the situation going into the government shutdown, and that kind of governs what actually those impacts will were or are going to be. So you have a highly volatile economy from a lot of uncertainty, whether that be from the tariffs or whether that be from tax policy, or whether that be from any of the agencies’ policies internally with respect to workforce. All of that kind of created a perfect storm with the political situation of the landscape in Washington; really made a real recipe for the government shutdown to happen. My question always was, once a government shutdown happens, how do we get out of it? And that what we witnessed. So as far as the impact, any small businesses that were looking to do any government-guaranteed lending, 7(a), 504 program within the SBA, that was frozen if their loan wasn’t already into some kind of post approval process. IRS, if you work for the IRS, you obviously know the story. The IRS is a completely different scenario. They went from 100,000 employees to 25% haircut to 75,000 employees and to about half of that were still in operation during the government shutdown this time. I’ve been around long enough, the first shutdown I was part of was 2013. That was pretty small, 13 days. But the last one was the historic one, 35 days. And at that point in time, the IRS was completely shut down. If you were doing anything with any kind of, you know, and “tax” is very broad … so whether you were a tax preparer or you were trying to get tax data or you were dealing with information reporting, there was zero access. This time you had a hybrid of access. So I would say the impact of anybody trying to get information or deal with the IRS, it was marginalized and confusing at best, but there was something happening. If you were looking for anything with the SBA, you were pretty much put on standstill, whether you were a lender or a small business trying to get a loan.
Terry Gerton Well let’s go back to the IRS for a minute, because you say there were folks working and there was some access but it was confusing and perhaps fragmented. Why is IRS data so critical to the lending process, and what impact did it have with a reduction in access to that data?
Dave Bohrman Well, that’s somewhat part of what we do as a business, is get taxpayer data over to commercial lenders or financial institutions that are using it to make a business decision. When it comes to the SBA, because it’s government-guaranteed and there is a taxpayer component to it, the government has very strict guidelines on how to underwrite a 7(a) or 504 loan, it’s governed by their SOP, their standard operating procedures. In that it actually requires tax data, one from the borrower, the borrower has to provide a tax return, and two — directly from, at an arm’s length — from the IRS in a tax return transcript to reconcile that information. And the reason that has to be reconciled is because it can sniff out fraud. If somebody misreports their income, we go to the IRS and we say, your income doesn’t match. Or it can shine a very big light on cash flow. A small business that’s making payroll tax deposits on average twice a week — that payment behavior is very indicative of their financial help. So being able to sniff out whether a business is paying their taxes on time or not is really a key data point for lenders to make a credit decision, whether it be yes or no. The SBA requires it, commercial lenders, some have it part of their credit policy, some do not. But it’s a real problem that we’re trying to solve or at least help lenders make better credit decisions.
Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Dave Bohrman. He’s the co-founder and vice president of marketing at Tax Guard. Let’s follow the thread then. The SBA was basically closed. So for 40-plus days, no one was getting an application submitted, no one was getting a loan approved. And you also mentioned the latency impact of that. Talk us through that. What’s going to happen now that SBA’s doors are back open?
Dave Bohrman Well, there’s the business side. Because it is a public-private partnership, the private end of it is basically most banks in America have an SBA lending program. That is the upstream pipeline of applications. So when we talk to commercial lenders, they were continuing to accept applications, process them internally and get them ready and packaged for SBA delivery. So what you expect to happen, what we’re seeing happen, is the SBA just said, “we’re open.” So now they have this backlog that they’re processing. So in the next couple of days to weeks, it’ll be interesting to see how that goes through the system so that the small businesses that are looking to be funded get funded as soon as they can.
Terry Gerton As you think about this funding lapse, would you say that it exposed any sort of systematic weaknesses both, for banks and borrowers? Was there anything because of the duration here that maybe needs to be specifically addressed?
Dave Bohrman Well, that’s an interesting question because you because history will tell you something. In the past 25 years, since 2000, there’s really been three meaningful government shutdowns. So from a systemic planning process on the agency side and the federal government side, it’s probably a little bit out of bounds to kind of truly build anything into the system to account for a government shutdown. Similarly, on a business side, it’s hard to build a business process around something that happens so infrequently. So if you kind of look at the X and Y axes, it’s very damaging when it happens, but it happens very infrequently. So to answer the question, what systemic things will be changed, I can’t imagine much.
Terry Gerton As you look forward as the government gets back up to speed in these areas, are there ripple effects that you think lenders and small businesses should be looking out for? Do you expect any change in credit standards or compliance risks?
Dave Bohrman Absolutely. Kind of going back to the point of the hyper-dynamic nature and the hyper-volatile nature of the economy as it stands today, everything in the simplest form would be there’s the demand side, so small businesses that are looking for loans, and the supply side, which is the lenders that are giving the loans. So what we’ve seen since the beginning of this current administration, especially, because of the uncertainty and planning, the desire to take capital has been diminished. So the demand side has come down. And some of that — what are the interest rates going to be? Should I wait for a better interest rate? Some of that is, there’s tariffs that are impacting my business, I don’t know where that’s going to land. There are supply chain issues, I’m not sure what to do with those. So we’ve seen the demand side go down. And I think that … if you take the theme of certainty versus uncertainty and certainty driving small-business decisions, we’re still in an uncertain environment. The ripple effects of a government shutdown on top of all of those things add more uncertainty to the equation. I think we have some more, should we say, pain to work through before we get to a place of stability where we would see the credit markets kind of operate in some kind of normal fashion. But it is kind of hard to say what is normal. And on the credit side, creditors — their credit boxes have been getting tighter. The SBA underwriting requirements have increased since the Biden administration. So on the supply side, lenders are getting a little bit more frugal by which who they give money to. And on the demand side, small businesses are looking for credit less, which is impacting the overall economy.
Terry Gerton With the uncertain availability of government data, whether it’s tax data or economic data, do you see a trend for lenders especially to be looking for alternative sources of data as they consider what they’re going to do?
Dave Bohrman Absolutely. And we’ve been doing this since 2007, 2008. The general premise of tax data really isn’t about taxes. It’s really just about a database of small business or business or taxpayer information that is very rich. So when you think about the consumer, you or I, Terry, when we go get a car or we get a credit card, there’s a rich database, whether that’s the credit bureaus or all these kinds of reporting structures, that tells a lot of information about you or I as individuals. Businesses are under a completely different data regime and reporting regime, and they are governed by more usury laws, and that’s kind of based on the premise that small businesses or business in general — they should be left alone. So what that means is there are very little data requirements in the credit-data world for small businesses. So tax data, as we call it, or what we’re talking about payroll data or income data, all the things that live in an IRS database are very rich. It’s a very rich data pool by which lenders can look through. So we’re not the only ones doing this, there are people doing this. So to the point of tax data on any small business or even an individual can be very helpful in understanding who to give money to or who the good bets are, or maybe somebody that didn’t have enough data on them. Tax data tells the story that this is a compliant business and you should be able to give them funding. On the economic data, that that’s a little bit more broad. I know that during the shutdown, there was not a lot of data released. So that will be interesting to see how that plays out. And let’s just say we have a bad job report or gross domestic product, all the economic indicator reports that are going to come out over the coming weeks, that will be interesting to see how that rattles or ripples the credit markets.
The post The shutdown may be over, but its ripple effects on lending and tax compliance are just beginning first appeared on Federal News Network.
© Getty Images/iStockphoto/Urupong
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is convening Tuesday morning to mark up a slew of bills, many of which would impact the federal workforce in one way or another.
Tuesday’s meeting will be the first legislative markup session the committee has held in nearly two months, with the last being prior to the 43-day government shutdown. Any bills that the committee approves during the markup will advance to the full House for further consideration.
Lawmakers are expected to consider bills covering everything from whistleblower protections and skills-based hiring for federal contractors, to relocation incentives for federal employees.
Several other legislative changes may be on the horizon as well. Here are three key bills up for the committee’s consideration that may bring significant changes for the federal workforce:
One Republican-led bill, introduced by Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) in October, aims to cement many of the changes the Trump administration has made to the government’s rules for the probationary period in the federal workforce.
If enacted, the so-called EQUALS Act would require most new federal employees to serve a two-year probationary period — a time in which employees have limited appeal rights and are easier to remove, before their employment in the federal workforce can be solidified.
Part of the bill would compel agencies to evaluate their employees regularly throughout the federal probationary period. And in the last 30 days of that two-year period, agencies would have to certify — and get the Office of Personnel Management to approve — that the probationary employee “advances the public interest,” before the employee can become tenured.
Any probationary employees who are not actively certified by their agency would be terminated, according to the GOP-led legislation.
The bill also states that when making a decision on whether to keep a probationary employee, agencies can additionally consider performance and conduct; the “needs and interests” of the agency; and whether the employee would advance “organizational goals” or “efficiency.”
The EQUALS Act aligns with efforts from the Trump administration earlier this year to overhaul the rules for the government’s probationary period. In April, President Donald Trump called for the creation of “Civil Service Rule XI,” which similarly required agencies to review and actively sign off on probationary workers’ continued employment before they can be moved out of a probationary period.
Trump’s executive order also expanded the reasons that probationary period employees can be fired. In June, OPM further clarified that probationary employees can be terminated based on broader reasons than the previous limitations set only to performance or conduct.
The House bill also comes after the Trump administration fired tens of thousands of probationary employees earlier this year, stating that the removals were due to “poor performance.” But in September, a federal judge found that OPM unlawfully directed the mass probationary firings. The judge ordered agencies to update employees’ personnel files to reflect that their firings were not due to performance or misconduct.
A separate bill teed up by Republicans would compel agencies to provide much more detail on federal union representatives’ use of official time to both Congress and the public on an annual basis.
The Official Time Reporting Act from Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) would require all agencies to submit reports on how much official time is used in each fiscal year, and justify any potential increases in official time that may occur.
The legislation would then require OPM and the Office of Management and Budget to create and send a joint report to Congress, and make publicly available online, the details of official time governmentwide. Those reports would have to cover how much official time each federal employee used, as well as provide data on official time hours calculated against the total number of bargaining unit employees for an “official time rate.”
Under the GOP-led legislation, those annual reports would additionally have to detail the specific purpose of all official time, the amount of money withheld for union dues, the cost of pay and benefits for all employees while they are on official time, and the office space and resources union representatives use while on official time.
Generally, official time refers to on-the-clock hours that go toward work such as negotiating union contracts, meeting with management, filing complaints or grievances against an agency, or representing employees who are dealing with disciplinary actions or other management disputes. Federal unions are allotted, by law, specific and limited amounts of agency time and resources to conduct activities on official time.
Official time by union representatives has been a major target of the Trump administration this year. Some agencies have either reduced or fully removed official time options, in response to executive orders from Trump calling for the termination of collective bargaining at the majority of executive branch agencies.
The administration’s actions have received major pushback from federal unions such as the American Federation of Government Employees, which said OPM’s characterization of official time as “taxpayer-funded union time” is false and stigmatizing.
During Tuesday’s markup, Oversight committee lawmakers also plan to consider legislation that would require a mandatory training program all managers and supervisors across the federal workforce would have to take.
Under the Federal Supervisor Education Act, which Rep. William Timmons (R-S.C.) introduced in October, agencies would have to work with OPM to create training programs for agency managers, with at least some modules focused on goals like performance management, employee engagement and productivity.
The bill would also require the training programs to cover how supervisors should manage employees who have “unacceptable performance,” as well as how to make use of the probationary period. The bill also mandates that managers and supervisors receive training on how to address reports of harassment, prohibited personnel practices, employee rights, and more.
The legislation emphasizes that agencies should use “instructor-based” training as much as practicable. If enacted, supervisors would have to complete the training within one year of being appointed to a supervisory role, and would have to retake the trainings at least once every three years following that.
The Republican-led effort comes after OPM launched two federal workforce training programs for senior executives in November, incorporating common themes from the Trump administration on “accountability,” performance management and adherence to the president’s priorities.
Although both new programs are optional, OPM still told agencies to “set the expectation” that all career Senior Executive Service members should at least complete training modules on “returning to founding principles” and “implementing administration priorities” within the next year.
In the Oversight committee meeting Tuesday, all three federal workforce bills, along with many others, will be up for consideration and potential advancement in the House.
The post 3 federal workforce bills to watch in House Oversight Committee markup first appeared on Federal News Network.
© Getty Images/bpperry
Interview transcript:
Terry Gerton: You’ve recently laid out a mix of reforms and warnings and priorities for the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, which is still moving through Congress. What’s the overall message before we dig into the specifics that POGO wants to send about this year’s recommendations?
Greg Williams: Sure. I think we all welcome all of the extraordinary work that Congress has done this year to produce two different versions of NDAA bills that work very hard to overhaul military acquisition. Now that said, they place an enormous emphasis on deregulating military acquisition, with the Senate’s version repealing no fewer than 86 distinct statutes that govern military acquisition. Now, Congress has its own research arm to help inform for these decisions, and that’s the Government Accountability Office. Now the Government Accountability Office maintains a database of suggestions. And last I checked, there were 750 recommendations they had for how the Defense Department is run and exactly none of them recommend repealing any statutes having to do with military acquisition. Now I think the unavoidable question is if Congress doesn’t seem to be listening to the GAO, its own investigative body, well, who is it listening to? I think it’s only logical to wonder to what extent these changes are being pushed by the defense industry, perhaps at the expense of the interests of the taxpayer.
Terry Gerton: Are you seeing any specifics in the NDAA that relate back to those 750 GAO suggestions?
Greg Williams: Frustratingly few. Two that I’ll call out that I think are really important are passages in both the House and Senate versions that secure greater right to repair the military’s own equipment. Just imagine you’re far from home, you have a piece of equipment that you rely on, perhaps for your safety or in order to be able to complete your mission, and it breaks. Right now, there are rules, laws, contracts that often get in the way of military personnel fixing those things. This year’s NDAA, whether the Senate or the House versions prevail in this context, will dramatically increase the military’s right to repair its own equipment. And I think it’s really important that those passages survive conference. The other one that I think is particularly important in terms of acquisition law are some reforms to what’s called the Nunn-McCurdy Act, which stipulates that Congress needs to be informed if weapons development or procurement programs breach certain cost thresholds and requires that the Secretary of Defense or Secretary of War recertify those programs and provide updated timetables and budgets for their completion. So the passages that amend that provide Congress more say in the recertification of those programs and they make it easier to call out cost overages, especially in the case of large programs like naval shipbuilding, where if you look at the overall program, you may not have breached overall cost thresholds. But you’ve already built two or three ships and you can tell that they’re way over budget. What this passage allows you to do is to treat them as distinct subprograms and apply those thresholds to them individually.
Terry Gerton: Well, you’re right. There’s certainly a lot of coverage in the NDAA, both versions, around acquisition reform. One of the other pieces that POGO has really called out is the use of military force. First, you recommend that the authorizations for the use of military force from 1991 and 2002 tied to operations in Iraq be repealed. Why is it so important to take those off the books now?
Greg Williams: Well, those AUMFs have been used very pervasively to authorize all kinds of use of violence around the world that seem to have very little to do with the original intentions of those two AUMFs. And one of the ways Congress can clarify the use of its power to decide when and where we go to war is by not leaving things like that lying around to be potentially misinterpreted or reinterpreted by the executive branch.
Terry Gerton: I’m speaking with Greg Williams. He’s the director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight. Greg, let’s follow up on this a little bit because there are conversations happening between the president and his team and Congress right now about operations in Venezuela. So how do those AUMFs relate to those kinds of current conversations?
Greg Williams: Well, I’m going to emphasize that there are operations against Venezuelan nationals and Venezuelan boats, and they’re being treated by the administration as being very distinct from potential operations that might take place in Venezuela. And in fact, the administration is arguing that they don’t need to comply with the War Powers Act in the context of the Venezuelan boats because we’re not deploying troops in harm’s way. As you may know, these boat strikes are believed to be largely conducted by unmanned aerial vehicles and so arguably, American troops are never in any danger as we execute these strikes. Now if we were to invade Venezuela or if we were to fly crewed aircraft over Venezuela or even close to Venezuela and engage in a shooting war with them, that would more clearly trigger the requirements of the War Powers Act, or at least that would not be subject to the exclusion that the Trump administration has called out in the context of those boats.
Terry Gerton: One of the other concerns that you raise about military deployments is border enforcement and the use of military forces in that function. What’s the concern there?
Greg Williams: Well, the overall concern is that what we’re seeing is a steady erosion of what we thought were bright lines, protecting both American citizens and others against being arbitrarily seized or killed. And whether we see those lines blurred outside our borders, as in the context of these boats or inside of our borders, it just makes us all a lot less safe. It’s much harder to count on not being swept up in some raid and potentially deported to a foreign country without any meaningful opportunity to defend our rights.
Terry Gerton: Well, military deployments and acquisition reform are really big topics. I want to pull you down to something a little more wonky and talk cost accounting standards because you’ve got a recommendation in here and there’s been a lot of conversation about moving DoD from cost accounting standards to GAAP, Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Why was that important enough to raise in your memo?
Greg Williams: I think it represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how accounting in general works. And it undermines a very basic control that any customer organization wants to have over vendors that are submitting things like expense reports. So at a high level, I would describe the generally accepted accounting principles as a set of tools that are created by an industry consortium to protect shareholders in private organizations from misrepresentation of the value of the enterprise. Cost accounting standards are like the expense report guidelines that any consultant or anyone who’s ever worked as a customer for a big business has to comply with. And different customers have different standards. Some say you can’t have any alcohol at all with your dinner, some say you can have one drink. Some say if you’ve traveled less than 50 miles, you can’t submit any meal-related expenses. It represents an agreement between the customer and their vendor about what is and is not an acceptable expense. And it’s a very basic structure that any business person should recognize.
Terry Gerton: How does that relate to DoD’s ability to pass an audit?
Greg Williams: I don’t think it is particularly related. As long as you follow whatever rules are articulated for you, you can pass an audit. I think use of cost accounting standards is more about making sure that the government gets a fair deal from its vendors when those vendors submit cost reports for reimbursement.
Terry Gerton: So POGO’s list is pretty specific in terms of things that you would hope Congress would consider. If they were to take up your list, what kinds of impact would you expect to see in terms of military readiness and operations?
Greg Williams: Well, I think it’s really interesting that over the last several weeks we’ve paid a lot of attention to the USS Gerald Ford Carrier Strike Group. There are two readiness issues that bear on it directly that have received some attention, I think, should probably receive more attention. One is that it was called out as a specific example of how service people are affected by the inability to repair their own equipment. And the example that was used was, I think, more than half of the ovens used to prepare meals for sailors embarked on the Ford were out of commission and had to wait an extended period of time for the vendor to repair them. Now that’s one thing when you know you can’t have muffins with your breakfast. But if similar principles apply to systems that allow the aircraft carrier to launch and recover aircraft or move weapons to the flight deck and things like that, just imagine being 6,000 miles away from the contractor who might repair those things and having one of them break and having to wait or redeploy back to the continental United States to have those things fixed. It’s just, I think, a fundamentally unreasonable expectation and puts our troops needlessly in danger.
The post POGO has new recommendations to improve the 2026 NDAA before it’s finalized first appeared on Federal News Network.
© Federal News Network
A new forecast projects that defense spending will keep rising through 2035, while civilian agencies face years of flat or shrinking budgets, continued cuts and growing pressure to scale back.
The Professional Services Council’s latest federal market forecast, compiled with input from more than 400 industry volunteers and subject-matter experts, predicts that in an environment where legislative logjam is likely to persist, defense spending will continue rising at roughly 2% annually after its first $1 trillion budget in fiscal 2026 — a one-time spike driven by reconciliation — while cuts will “continue to fall disproportionately on civil agencies until elections change the balance of power.”
“What this means in practical terms is that the fiscal environment for the next decade will be tight, competitive, highly dependent on supplemental funding, reconciliation and prone to crisis-driven appropriations. Base budgets alone will struggle to drive new initiatives, especially on the non-defense side. In this environment, as one of our interviewees suggested, it’s best to keep your customers close and your congressional supporters and lobbyists closer,” Mike Riley, a volunteer for PSC’s Vision Federal Market Forecast told reporters last week.
In the defense space, PSC volunteers said their discussions with defense stakeholders revealed a shift, or “strategic realignment,” in the Pentagon’s priorities. While the Indo-Pacific Command remains of “elevated importance,” the Northern Command and Southern Command are gaining new emphasis as the department puts greater focus on homeland, border security and expands its presence in Latin America and the Caribbean.
“This year was a bit of an interesting year for us. A lot of defense folks acknowledge the growing importance under this administration, but also a lot of consternation about the directions the administration might be going and just kind of the lack of clarity. There’s some continuing trends — deterring China, integrated deterrence, that pivot to the Pacific — that’s an ongoing thing that didn’t change from the previous administration. Of course, border security, the Department finds itself in an uncomfortable position,” Jason Dombrowski, a volunteer for PSC’s Vision Federal Market Forecast, said.
“They are getting a little bit more heavily involved in domestic politics than they would otherwise prefer to. Certainly, they always reiterated their intent to be responsive to the commander in chief. But historically, of course, the American military has tried to avoid a domestic role,” he added.
The department is also placing greater emphasis on the Golden Dome missile defense system, shipbuilding and munitions under this administration.
“I think everyone’s been paying attention to the news that there has been some very notable plus ups and focuses of this administration, most notably around shipbuilding, but also to include things like nuclear modernization, which in previous years we had highlighted as a potential toss up, but this year definitely moved into the winners category,” Dombrowski said.
The Defense Department also moves to implement Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s sweeping acquisition reforms, which emphasize greater competition, faster delivery and making commercial technology the default option. It’s unclear whether the department has the ability to implement those changes given deep personnel cuts across the contracting workforce.
“The contracting professionals — there seems to be a large reduction. How do we get this done? That fundamental capacity to get things done is really going to make a difference, whether you’re putting out contracts, supply chain, workforce throughput … It’s going to affect how we can actually help out the government. Adaptability is the name of the game,”Jim Kainz, a PSC volunteer, said.
In addition, the department’s new acquisition strategy promises to lower barriers to entry to encourage startups and non-traditional vendors to join the defense industrial base. Dombrowski said that while stakeholders are cautiously optimistic about the reforms, there is also a “healthy cynicism of saying, ‘How is this time any different?’”
“This administration has made a big priority of trying to attract new people, and we looked at the pros and cons of it. It’s probably worth noting that, aside from a few very notable successes that we can all figure out, there hasn’t really been much movement in this regard,” Dombrowski said.
“We’re very excited, certainly [Commercial Solutions Opening] and [Other Transaction Authority] and just a variety of things that should provide a lot of flexibility, but let’s see it,” he added.
Dombrowski and Kainz said several areas emerged as clear “losers” in this year’s defense outlook, including the department’s buying power, which continues to erode as inflation and reshoring efforts drive up costs across programs.
Legacy systems and advisory and assistance services are facing cuts, and U.S. Africa Command and Central Command are being pushed lower on the priority list as resources shift toward European Command.
There is also uncertainty around operations and maintenance funding, which Dombrowski and Kainz said remains a major concern for both think tanks and potential customers. Sustainability initiatives appear to be split — the “green side of sustainability” will most certainly lose ground, while efforts tied to energy resilience may gain momentum.
Contested logistics, once considered a toss-up, is gaining traction as a priority, and scalability — the ability to rapidly increase production in a crisis — is emerging as a clear winner across the department.
Overall, research and development spending is increasing, but only in areas related to advanced weapon systems, technologies, drones and energy.
“However, there’s a belief and a growing expectation that the contracting community will bear more of those responsibilities,” Dombrowski said. “It’s really unclear where that line is going to be drawn between things that are really government exclusive where DoD is willing to pick up all costs associated to it. There are things we can all imagine, like fighter jets. But what about things that are more in the gray areas? Avionics, business process systems, back-office systems, things like that — definitely more of a sense that we are going to have to be developing those on our own.”
If you would like to contact this reporter about recent changes in the federal government, please email anastasia.obis@federalnewsnetwork.com or reach out on Signal at (301) 830-2747.
The post Defense spending will continue to climb as civilian agencies brace for years of cuts, new forecast projects first appeared on Federal News Network.
© Derace Lauderdale/Federal News Network
The Labour government’s Budget demonstrates renewed intent to support AI, but there is an absence of a fully integrated digital strategy.
The post UK Budget 2025: Government Bets on AI and Startups appeared first on TechRepublic.
The Labour government’s Budget demonstrates renewed intent to support AI, but there is an absence of a fully integrated digital strategy.
The post UK Budget 2025: Government Bets on AI and Startups appeared first on TechRepublic.
Interview transcript:
Stephanie Kostro It is the end of the calendar year, beginning of the government fiscal year. And this is the time of year when a lot of companies take a step back and evaluate their business strategy and their planning for the next few years. We see a lot folks having off-sites in December or in January to do some of this strategic planning and I’ll be frank with you, I think a lot people will be happy to see 2025 end. And they will celebrate the new year in all sorts of ways, just because of what they’ve been through this year. If your listeners can harken back to earlier this year, the efficiency initiatives really did a number on a lot of the business plans that had been developed among government contracting companies. Some of them had massive de-scoping of their contracts. Some of them had contract terminations. Some, particularly those who worked for agencies like U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Department of Education, some at Health and Human Services really saw a diminution of their planned objectives for throughout the year. And so as we go into the December and January planning cycle for these companies, what they’re really looking for are signs from the government that there is work coming as they start to think through what calendar ’26 looks like. And they start to do their resource planning for personnel and for bid teams to put together proposals. That’s really what they are looking for. And I will have to say, Terry, earlier this year. PSC, the Professional Services Council, we represent services and solutions providers. And typically every year we put together something called our business forecast, which looks at our scorecard, which looks at all of the web-based procurement forecasts put out by agencies. And we would look at tens of agencies and their forecasts and we would rate them based on 15 key attributes, which we developed in industry, about what is useful for those forecasts. This year in 2025, we made the decision that instead of putting out our seventh annual forecast, we skipped this year. The forecasts just weren’t there, and they’re still not there.
Terry Gerton So how is it that agencies put those forecasts out, and what do they base it on? And I guess the third part of that question is, why aren’t they there?
Stephanie Kostro This was a mandate from, among others, from the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, which is a White House office that said, hey, agencies, to the extent that you can, put out forecasts on your websites. And it was really to help drive new companies to join the federal marketplace and to keep those companies that are part of the GovCon community interested. If you could look at a website and say, okay, there is an opportunity coming up in Q1, Q2, Q3, and let’s build towards that opportunity. What happened earlier this year is a lot of those websites went dark. I think it was because as part of the efficiency initiative, it was no longer a useful tool because things were moving very, very quickly. What I find interesting though, is that those websites are still dark. They’re still not there. And so I’m not entirely sure how our government contracting community can put together a reliable business strategy for 2026 and beyond in the absence of that information.
Terry Gerton Well, some estimates are that the contracting workforce itself has been reduced by over 25%. Are we just missing the people who used to do this?
Stephanie Kostro I think that’s part of it, Terry. We’re missing some of the folks who took that deferred resignation or the “fork in the road” option. Some of them did the voluntary early retirement programs. I would also say in many agencies, and I’ll use the phrase “OSDBU”, but I’ll actually speak out the acronym here, the Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization. Those were usually the offices that had the lead on publishing these websites, and those offices have sort of been dismantled in some agencies. They are certainly de-emphasized in a lot of the agencies. And so it might be … they’re missing the people, that is true, but it’s also they’re also missing the offices that have the lead on putting together these forecasts. And it really is a shame because, you know, the business community uses these forecasts in so many different ways. It helps them do, I mentioned the business planning, but helps them figure out who they want to partner with, who’s going to be their subcontractors or their suppliers, their vendors, etc. This is a real gap in understanding of what the federal marketplace can offer companies. And I do think it will have effects on whether commercial companies want to get involved in government work. They just don’t know what the opportunities are.
Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Stephanie Kostro, president of the Professional Services Council. Stephanie, one more question on this. I mean, GSA has gone through a lot of work to centralize procurement and forecasting. Would you expect that GSA will take this over perhaps and share their forecast?
Stephanie Kostro I love that you asked this question, Terry, because as I mentioned the last time we put out our forecast, it was in 2024 and we had actually at PSC highlighted GSA as a model for putting out these forecasts. We mentioned that GSA has something called their Acquisition Gateway, which sets a high bar for government business forecasting and it encourages the migration to the GSA tool for other departments. So Department of Labor, Department of Justice, they were using the GSA Acquisitions Gateway. So I think this is a fantastic opportunity to go back to that gateway and have GSA take the lead.
Terry Gerton Speaking of forecasts, PSC’s got a big session coming up starting on December 1st. Your vision federal market forecast. Tell us about that.
Stephanie Kostro I love that our entire segment here is devoted to forecasting, because the procurement dork in me is celebrating here. So PSC has this conference and it’s actually run by our foundation, which is our 501c3 nonprofit affiliate dedicated to education. And so it is a year-long process where we have so many teams come together. There are 21 different study teams, they focus on things like Health and Human Services, or Customs and Border Protection as part of the Homeland Security team. And this year of agency discussions, they speak to think tank folks, they speak procurement officials within the government, and it culminates in this conference and it’s happening in person on December 1st. It’s a virtual day for December 2nd and 3rd. It is where these 21 different study teams present their findings. So it’s not just tied to a web-based procurement forecast, but rather these discussions that they’re having with officials. We had over 400 volunteers as part of this process, and I’m just very excited. It is a great opportunity to really hear what’s going on in the procurement world, not just for opportunities, but what the dynamics look like, what impact inflation is having, etc. And to be honest, what impact these efficiency initiatives have had on the federal marketplace. So I highly recommend this conference. Again, it’s December 1st through the 3rd, and December 1 is the only in-person day here in Arlington.
Terry Gerton It sounds like in the absence of the agency forecast that we were talking about at the beginning of our conversation, this may be a great opportunity for contractors, those who are considering government work, to find out from inside sources what’s going on.
Stephanie Kostro It’s a perfect opportunity to get some business intelligence. It’s also a great networking opportunity because we do have government folks come to this conference as well to hear about what other agencies are doing. And so I highly commend it to folks who are listening, but I’m certainly going to be there and soaking up all of the knowledge that I can. I’m particularly looking forward to the Defense Services presentation in light of the Secretary of War Hegseth and his arsenal of freedom speech that he gave about transforming the processes for requirements and acquisition. I’m really looking forward to that. And I always look forward sort of to the top-line and the IT modernization teams as well. So if I were going to recommend three sessions, those are the top three. But they’re all very, very interesting and I’m looking forward to it.
Terry Gerton So how do people who want to attend find out about it and register?
Stephanie Kostro They can go to PSCouncil.org, and you can also search for Vision Federal Market Forecast and the sessions will pop up. There is a fee, obviously, for this, but it is open to the public. It is a widely attended gathering which allows government folks to attend. That is how they can connect with this conference.
The post Federal agency business forecasts have gone dark, and companies are struggling to plan without them first appeared on Federal News Network.
© Federal News Network
Approximately 317,000 federal employees left the government this year, while 68,000 joined, according to a recent blog post from Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor.
The volume of separations is beyond Kupor’s previously shared targets for workforce reduction. In August, Kupor told WTOP News that he expected the government to shed 300,000 employees by the end of 2025 — down to a total of 2.1 million employees.
Kupor’s post didn’t include specific targets for reduction or hiring in 2026.
Along with sharing the workforce levels, Kupor’s blog post provided further implementation details of President Donald Trump’s executive order from Oct. 15, which outlined new federal hiring expectations.
The goals he outlined reflect the current Trump administration’s emphasis on “maximum efficiency” and adherence to administration priorities within the federal workforce.
“We want to make sure the government has the right talent focused on the key priorities of the administration and that we are eliminating wasteful taxpayer expenses in areas that are inefficient, no longer required, or in direct contradiction of administration priorities,” Kupor wrote.
Trump’s executive order last month instructed agencies to create an annual staffing plan for fiscal year 2026 and submit it to OPM and the Office of Management and Budget by Dec. 14.
“In addition to all the things we care about in terms of where are [agencies] investing their resources, there are administration priorities that we’ve asked them to focus on and make sure that they talk to us about, one of which certainly is the merit hiring plan and how they’ll incorporate that in their hiring,” Kupor said Friday in an interview with Federal News Network.
The headcount plans align with the Trump administration’s target that for each person hired into the federal government, four people leave, Kupor wrote. He said the government exceeded that ratio this year with the amounts of new hires and departures.
An OPM spokesperson declined to comment on whether the Trump administration would seek to further reduce headcount in 2026 after already surpassing its goal of 300,000 departures.
Kupor emphasized that OPM will not prescribe headcounts to agencies under the new hiring guidelines. He said the headcount plans will instead give OPM a “pan-government view” of hiring needs, allowing OPM to centralize recruitment efforts and shared certification plans.
In a memo to agencies on Nov. 5, Kupor and OMB Director Russell Vought said the staffing plans should also cover agencies’ current workforce and staffing needs, gaps in skills areas and strategies for recruitment. The plans should also factor in opportunities for reorganization or reductions.
Kupor also acknowledged the lack of early career employees hired into the federal government.
“We do have a challenging demographic problem in government where we’re not replenishing the pipeline of new hires of people starting their career at the same rate as we have people who will be retiring over the next five to 10 years,” Kupor told Federal News Network.
The federal government has faced an imbalance of early career employees for several years, and prioritized early career recruitment and development programs to address it. But earlier this year, the Trump administration cut several of those programs, like the Presidential Management Fellows program and U.S. Digital Corps, and fired tens of thousands of probationary employees, many of whom were young staff members.
After submitting initial hiring plans, agencies must submit updates to OPM and OMB on the progress of their plans each quarter, beginning with the second quarter of fiscal 2026. Agencies can also coordinate with OPM and OMB to update their staffing plans.
Kupor called on agencies in his post to change “default” patterns in hiring plans by basing them off of historical levels or budget allowances.
In creating the annual headcount plans without these “default” behaviors, Kupor wrote that agency leaders should ask themselves, “[W]hat are the functions my agency performs that are in line with presidential priorities or statutory obligations, how many people do I need to provide that service level, and how does that staffing level compare to our current headcount?”
Kupor and Vought directed agency heads to promptly notify OPM of approved new hires.
Other key elements within the new hiring expectations include the establishment of strategic hiring committees, adaptation of the merit hiring plan and reduction of reliance on contractors. Trump’s executive order directed agencies to form the strategic hiring committees — made up of senior agency leadership — by Nov. 17.
The committees must approve the creation and filling of vacancies within agencies, and overall ensure that agency hiring aligns with the merit hiring plan, agencies’ annual headcount plans, and “national interest, agency needs, and administration priorities.”
Kupor wrote that the hiring committees must ask the “right” questions of candidates to “[make] sure that highly skilled people are being hired into the agency and [ensure] that they are thinking about a broad set of solutions with efficiency in mind.”
The ultimate focus in agency hiring, he wrote, should be on delivering to the American people at the lowest cost — not simply reducing headcount levels.
The post OPM says cuts to federal workforce surpassed 2025 goals first appeared on Federal News Network.
© AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein
The Department of Government Efficiency, the driving force behind the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal workforce and executive branch spending, isn’t wrapping up operations sooner than expected, according to several administration officials.
Reuters published a story on Sunday claiming that DOGE no longer exists, about eight months ahead of the deadline set by President Donald Trump. The story drew strong reactions from Trump administration officials, who rejected claims that DOGE is ending before its final day on July 4, 2026.
A DOGE spokesperson told Federal News Network on Tuesday that DOGE and its longer-term, tech-aligned counterpart, the U.S. DOGE Service, both remain — and that the latter organization is moving forward with a full slate of modernization projects.
The spokesperson, in response to written questions, confirmed DOGE still exists as a temporary organization within the U.S. DOGE Service, and that Amy Gleason remains the acting administrator of USDS.
In addition, the spokesperson said the U.S. DOGE Service — a Trump-era rebranding of the U.S. Digital Service — is working on several cross-agency projects. The spokesperson said USDS is actively involved in these projects, but the agencies in charge of these projects oversee staffing and hiring. The list of projects shared with Federal News Network closely resembles the type of work that USDS was involved in before the Trump administration.
“The U.S. DOGE Service remains deeply engaged across government-modernizing critical systems, improving public services, and delivering fast, practical solutions where the country needs them most,” the spokesperson said.
Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor wrote on X that “DOGE may not have centralized leadership under USDS,” but the “principles of DOGE remain alive and well.”
Those principles, he added, include deregulation; eliminating fraud, waste and abuse; and reshaping the federal workforce.
Kupor wrote that DOGE “catalyzed these changes,” and that OPM and the Office of Management and Budget “will institutionalize them.”
It’s not clear that DOGE leadership ever set exact demands for its representatives scattered across multiple federal agencies. Current and former DOGE representatives publicly stated that DOGE leadership played a hands-off role in their day-to-day work, and that they identified primarily as employees of their agencies. Former DOGE employees said they rarely heard from Elon Musk, DOGE’s former de facto leader, once they completed their onboarding to join the Trump administration.
DOGE wrote on X that “President Trump was given a mandate by the American people to modernize the federal government and reduce waste, fraud and abuse,” and that it terminated 78 contracts worth $335 million last week.
The DOGE spokesperson said the U.S. DOGE Service is working on a project to use AI to process over 600,000 pieces of federal correspondence each month, and is working with the General Services Administration to advance “responsible AI governmentwide.”
Current U.S. DOGE Service projects include:
Gleason said in September that agencies don’t have enough tech talent to deliver on the administration’s policy goals, and they would need to boost hiring
“We need to hire and empower great talent in government,” Gleason said on Sept. 4. “There’s not enough tech talent here. We need more of it.”
Under the Trump administration, federal employees have faced mass layoffs and incentives to leave government service. The Partnership for Public Service estimates that, as of October, more than 211,000 employees left the federal workforce this year — either voluntarily or involuntarily.
Gleason, who also serves as a strategic advisor for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said tech hiring is essential to help CMS “build modern services for the American people.” She said the agency, at the beginning of this year, had about 13 engineers managing thousands of contractors.
“If we could hire great talent for tech in the government, I think in five years, we can really transform a lot of these systems to be much more modern and user-friendly, and easy for citizens to engage with what they need,” Gleason said. “But we have to take advantage of hiring.”
The post DOGE and its long-term counterpart remain, with a full slate of modernization projects underway first appeared on Federal News Network.
© AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana
Interview transcript:
Terry Gerton EPA enforcement cases have plummeted, even as noncompliance rates climb. Now, a major staffing cut at the Justice Department’s environmental section and a federal shutdown that paused inspections leave enforcement at a crossroads. Federal News Network’s Eric White spoke with former EPA Deputy Assistant Administrator Stacey Geis about the resource drain crippling environmental enforcement and whether states can fill the widening gap.
Eric White You know, as far as EPA enforcement, environmental enforcement from a federal perspective, things were kind of on a downward trend already and then with a slight bump. And now the first few months of the Trump administration, DOGE came in, the EPA was certainly on the list of agencies that they felt they could take some action against. What is the state of federal environmental enforcement right now? Let’s begin there.
Stacey Geis I think it’s important to understand the context of your question, meaning what is the state of environmental enforcement been, say, for the last 15 years generally and the landscape we are in right now? Back in, I think it was 2019, but there was a report that was done by Cynthia Giles, who was head of the office of enforcement and compliance assurance at EPA back in the Obama administration. And she went off to Harvard and did a report that showed that the level of significant noncompliance in the United States is surprising. And the numbers are that generally most facilities that have permits to pollute are 25% out of compliance, 25% of those companies are out of compliance with existing laws, regs or permits. And that for the facilities that emit the most hazardous air pollutants, the numbers were up to 50%, 75% noncompliance. So I say it because you’re starting from a place where we have more noncompliance than I think we would all expect. And of course, there could be a lot of reasons for that, including it could be laws that are tough to know how to comply with. So there’s a host of reasons. But I say that because it’s important to then put that into context of where we are now. Back during the Bush administration, Bush II, EPA was doing up to 6,000 enforcement cases a year. And then there was a very big decrease starting in the Obama years, and it just kind of kept going down, where they really decreased resources EPA’s enforcement. And now, you know, when the last administration came in and tried to revitalize EPA, hired hundreds of people, including in the enforcement division, and the numbers started going back up. But still, so in 2024, there were about 1,800 cases, civil enforcement cases that were concluded. So now we are in this, in the last 2025. What we’ve seen is two things. One, a reprioritization of this administration when it comes to what type of enforcement they want to do. And so a lot of folks, including the Department of Justice and the Environmental and Natural Resources Division were, on day one, reassigned to do other things, including immigration. And then of course, there was a whole host of terminations, administrative leaves, people who resigned, and then I think thousands who took the “fork in the road.” So we have an incredible resource drain right now at EPA. We also have it at the Department of Justice, which is obviously the partner that does a lot of the enforcement. So I would say where we are right now is that we will see in December, that’s when EPA has to announce, or generally for the last 10 years has announced, its enforcement results, its annual enforcement results. Meaning: how many civil cases were done, how many criminal cases, how many hundreds of millions of pounds of pollution were removed in the United States because of those enforcement actions? Those numbers will come out in December and it will be very interesting to see what those numbers are compared to prior years.
Eric White Let’s talk a little bit about the manpower aspect of this. What does proper environmental enforcement require? Does it need a lot of attorneys, investigators? I imagine that these aren’t easy cases to make, proving causation and whether or not who is to blame for environmental pollution, that can probably be tough given that it can be hard to obtain hard evidence. Can you just expand upon how, you know, just having workforce cuts in general to environmental enforcement, whether it is EPA or DOJ, and the effect that that just has on environmental enforcement in general.
Stacey Geis There’s federal enforcement, EPA does enforcement, DOJ does. There’s also states that do that, and we can talk about that later in terms of how potentially whether we will see the states gap-filling because of what we think will be a lack of federal enforcement. But going to your question, it is a whole team that exists to put together an enforcement case, and it starts with the inspectors. And those are also part of the Office of Enforcement. So you have inspectors who just routinely go out — like with any regulation, whether it’s OSHA, they go and they inspect the facilities for compliance. It starts there. And that’s one thing, for example, that’s paused during the shutdown, inspections are paused. But it’s the inspections that then are one of the key ways that an agency finds out that a facility may not be in compliance. And then that starts — you may have investigators who come in and start investigating further. You have to have scientists. You have to have hydrologists. You have to have people who know air regulations, who can come in and ascertain whether or not this really non-compliance. What level? Is this something that rises to the level of an enforcement action? And if so, what kind of enforcement action? Is it something that it should be a minor fine and they’re going to fix it? Or is it’s something that’s lying, cheating, stealing, and they are being deceptive, bypassing the pollution scrubber, and you could be looking at a criminal case. So you have inspectors, you have investigators, and then you have all the attorneys both at EPA and the Department of Justice. EPA has its own enforcement program where they do kind of those more minor, what we call administrative enforcement actions, where it’s going to be a fine and course-correcting and getting the company back into compliance. And then if it turns out the violations require a more serious enforcement, whether civil or criminal, it’ll be referred to the Department of Justice. And those Department of Justice attorneys then bring the cases to court. So that’s why the incredible drain we’re seeing in resources at DOJ as well — and I can give you numbers on that, but the environmental section is down, I think 50% to 60% of what it was in January — means understandably less resources to develop the case and less resources prosecute.
Eric White We’re speaking with Stacey Geis. She is a senior counsel with Crowell and Moring, also former deputy assistant administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency. You mentioned something in your first answer regarding how compliance could be tied to … it’s really, really hard to be in compliance, right? Especially when you’re operating a facility that is dealing with a lot of different chemicals. I mean, you know, just forming compliance, sometimes the drain comes from the people that you’re trying to enforce the regulations on, just because they need that expertise in order to reach compliance. Are there enough compliance experts to go around and also, how tough are these regulations to be in compliance? Are certain industries just going to always be having to deal with this?
Stacey Geis That is a question that we could have a whole day on that, in terms of how to craft good regulations that both are easy for the company to understand and comply with and easy to enforce. What I will say, though, is one of the challenges with the shutdown — because people are asking, what is the impact of the shutdown? I mean, the industry is facing incredible uncertainty. With the shutdown, what is paused, both at EPA and DOJ, are most enforcement actions. Criminal enforcement actions continue under their various shutdown plans, and it’s always been that way. And there’ll still be enforcement when it comes down to imminent and substantial threats to public harm or the environment. That is a very small subset. One thing that the Office of Enforcement does — it’s called the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, because not only does it enforce the laws, it’s there to provide compliance assistance to the companies, to help them. We want them to comply you, we as a public want companies to comply, right? And we want to have agencies, federal or state, that are assisting them in helping understand those regulations so they can comply. Right now, I don’t know if they called up EPA or one of the regions if they’re going to get the person, because they’re furloughed, to answer those questions. So one thing with this shutdown is not only does it mean that enforcement’s not going forward, but there’s a real uncertainty that the industry is facing right now, too, in terms of their cases aren’t moving forward, they can’t get in touch, they may have compliance questions they cannot get answered. So it actually impacts anyone who is affected by environmental regulations, meaning affected by pollution.
Eric White When you were in your position at EPA, how often were you all paying attention to those numbers? I’m just wondering about, you now, sometimes we can get caught up in, “well, the numbers increase that must mean that everything is on the up and up,” or you know, numbers are down as you had mentioned, when they’re severely down, something is definitely going on. What was the push and pull between quality versus quantity there, as far as the number of enforcement cases that you all were actually pursuing? And how did that factor into your analysis of whether or not you felt you were doing a good enough job or not?
Stacey Geis The question you want to address whenever you’re doing enforcement is going after the most harm, right? And you have limited resources. And then any unlawful violation, but certainly one of like a public and health and safety regulation, which is what pollution regulations really are, is how do you take these limited resources and best use them to enforce laws in a way that will alter behavior going forward, not just that company that may be out of compliance, but the entire industry? And so that is the challenge and always the work you’re doing is, how do you use those resources effectively and efficiently? And so while numbers matter to some extent in terms of showing like exactly what, what cases are being done, how many inspections are being done, there’s certainly a metric by which you want to use it to assess how your programs are going. You also are always looking and doing a harm analysis. Focusing on which of the cases rise to the level of the greatest harm, that maybe a federal response could be needed versus maybe the state could handle it. So that is always the calculus, it’s sort of this balance, right? So it’s never that the numbers mean everything, but that’s why you combine those numbers with, okay, so this is how many cases you prosecuted, this is many civil cases you did … that’s why when they bring the numbers, and that’s why the December numbers will be so important, is they do things like the on the ground metrics. How much pollution was reduced, was cleaned up, because of those enforcement actions? That’s a good metric. And one we’re going to want to look at. Because again, the goal is to abate the harm.
Eric White I don’t want to get you in any trouble, and you can talk as vague as you’d like, but I was wondering if we could maybe get some insight on a particular case. Who was your Al Capone? Who is your white whale that you were able to get one time? Like I said, you don’t have to mention any specifics, but is there anything that you can recall, an insight into what you saw one time and you were to successfully get them either in compliance or successfully prosecute any sort of criminal malfeasance?
Stacey Geis I mean, I can certainly talk about the defeat devices and the sort of “VW-gate” matters — that was where the company was intentionally altering the emissions control to allow the trucks or the vehicles to pollute more than the laws, regulations and permits allowed. And that was a billion-dollar criminal civil case. VW was not the only one. So those cases were still going forward while in the last couple of years. And even in the last year, there was one against Cummins, and this is public, it’s huge, they made all the Ram trucks. I think they paid over $1 billion. And then there was once against Hino, that’s public, that was a criminal-civil matter — they were called the subsidiary of Toyota. But again, those are really big cases where you’re really addressing a systemic issue. And again, bringing those cases, having very high fines, and even some of those cases being criminal is hopefully a deterrent and a message to other companies of, hey, if you’re going to try to unlawfully alter the systems of your software and your cars to pollute beyond what is allowed, that there will be enforcement there. So I think that was almost like a bigger effort that went over years, but that was something that happened in the last couple of years that I think were significant cases.
Eric White And finishing up here, we’ve seen the Trump administration decrease the resources in areas that they feel have too much government oversight in them; CFPB comes to mind. And what I’m feeling is, is that a major Supreme Court case is probably in our future of determining what an executive branch can do and what the threshold is. You know there are environmental laws that say the federal government is responsible for enforcement in this area; at what point do you deplete enough resources where a reasonable person can feel the government is not fulfilling that law? I just was curious about getting your thoughts on that, and if that is in fact in our future of some major case that may set the precedent for that.
Stacey Geis That’s a great question. And you hit on an important point, which is, again, as I noted earlier, a lot our environmental laws that are federal laws have been delegated to the states to implement and enforce. Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, hazardous waste laws. And there’s still a very vital role for the federal enforcement program, and there’s a big reason for that. There’s three things that need to happen. A lot of the question has been, well, if federal environmental enforcement decreases, how, if at all, will the states step in to gap-fill where there’s noncompliance in their states and there’s not an enforcement action? But there’s three issues with that. One, you have a state that has the resources to actually do those cases, including maybe the bigger ones. You need to have a state that prioritizes environmental enforcement. A lot of states are dealing with so many other big issues; it could be housing, it could be healthcare, or it could be a lot of things, right? So you need to have a state that actually is putting resources and prioritizing environmental enforcement in their state. And then, like you said, there’s several threats to the environment and public health that are not enforced by the states, and only EPA can do those, like pesticide registration, most enforcement in Indian country. And then there’s certain Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act and hazardous waste laws that only implemented by EPA and DOJ. Coal ash contamination is a big one, that’s a place where we see a lot of noncompliance. And so as a result in 2024, EPA came out with national enforcement initiatives, which is really to look at what are the biggest serious threats to the country that there’s so much significant noncompliance that it really could use federal assistance, or it’s in an area that only EPA enforces, not the states. Coal ash contamination was one of those. So you’re right, we very well will get to a place — I think these numbers in December will be really helpful to see what’s happening. I think what we all care about is, what’s the on-the-ground impact to the people? We have tens of millions of Americans who can’t drink their tap water. And that was another enforcement initiative, was really focusing on the community water systems throughout the country, thousands of which are often violating at least one health-based standard. And what are the efforts? NEPA had a whole program, to not just enforce but really provide compliance assistance to help those community water systems be able to provide safe drinking water to Americans. That’s where we’ll want to look and see, what are the impacts of this reduction, this serious reduction in workforce, reduction in priorities? And then obviously some of these things the states can’t do because they’re not delegated to do it. And even if they did, do they have the resources and will?
The post When a quarter of polluting facilities ignore the law, who’s left to enforce it? first appeared on Federal News Network.
© The Associated Press
“Scale” is often mistaken for success — a signal that something works. But in practice, growth stresses not just the roadmap, but the architecture, the data layer, the incident response system and the team’s ability to operate under load. SLAs, SLOs and latency budgets that felt “good enough” at early stages begin to collapse under new concurrency and traffic patterns. I’ve seen healthy metrics mask brittle systems — until one feature launch brings everything crashing down.
Over the past decade, I’ve watched promising teams burn out chasing vanity metrics and products buckle from premature scale. In fact, 70% of startups fail because they try to grow before the product and platform are truly ready. The real challenge isn’t how to grow faster — it’s how to grow without collapsing the system. That requires alignment across metrics, product maturity and engineering resilience.
One of the earliest lessons I learned: Metrics aren’t trophies — they’re mirrors. Chasing a single number, like monthly active users, once gave us impressive charts but a weak business. We were scaling vanity, not value. Today, instead of generic KPIs, I focus on 4–6 product-specific indicators — signup conversion rate, CAC, DAU-to-MAU ratio, first key action rate, retention in specific action — that reflect how value actually moves through the system. Metrics should guide awareness, not just validate success. As Goodhart’s Law reminds us: Once a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure.
People start gaming the number or optimizing for it at the expense of true outcomes. A notorious example was Wells Fargo’s sales scandal — management fixated on a metric (number of accounts per customer) and set such aggressive targets that employees began opening millions of fake accounts just to hit the goal. The metric looked great on paper, but it destroyed customer trust and led to billions in fines. The lesson: Don’t let any single metric become a false idol. Define success in a more balanced way that reflects real value creation for your product and users.
Benchmarks are useful — but only when treated as reference points, not commandments. They help spot when something’s off (say, an unusually low conversion rate), but they’re not meant to define what success should look like for your product. Early on, I made the mistake of comparing our “chapter two” to someone else’s “chapter ten.” I’d see another SaaS boasting 50% Day-1 retention and panic that we were underperforming at 30%, without factoring in that we were solving a different problem, at a different stage, with a different user base.
That’s how teams end up racing in a lane that isn’t theirs. Every product exists in its own context — timing, budget, team maturity, market complexity. Benchmarks can inform, but they should never dictate. Treating them as gospel can create a dangerous illusion of objectivity — leading you to ignore your actual constraints or chase metrics that were never yours to begin with.
In practice, I use benchmarks the way I use weather forecasts: They tell me what kind of conditions to expect, but they don’t determine the route. The real job is understanding which metrics actually reflect value for your product — and then tuning the rest of the system around that.
No matter how promising the metrics look, scaling a product without engineering readiness is like building on soft ground. Growth puts operational systems under pressure — deployment pipelines, observability tools, latency budgets and release cadences all get stress-tested in real time. That’s why we treat DORA metrics (like deployment frequency and change failure rate) as early indicators of scaling capacity, not just engineering KPIs.
Before dialing up growth loops, we ask: Are our incident response processes resilient? Do we have error budgets in place, and are they respected? Are performance regressions visible early enough to prevent customer pain?
Scaling isn’t just about acquiring more users — it’s about handling them without breaking trust or stability. Tech debt may not block your next release, but it will compound under pressure. In that sense, infrastructure and platform health are product decisions — because they shape how fast and safely you can move when growth actually arrives.
But metrics don’t just fail at scale because of bad infrastructure — they fail because of how we interpret them.
Before any big “results review” meeting or growth update, my team knows I’ll be declaring a data hygiene day. It’s not glamorous, but it’s essential. We verify that key events are tracked correctly, naming is consistent and funnels reflect actual user flows. This habit formed after we celebrated a spike in onboarding — only to later discover it was caused by a faulty event firing too early. That incident taught me the cost of bad data: It creates fake confidence and misleads decision-making. Bad data creates fake confidence – and fake confidence is the most expensive bug of all.
I now treat metric hygiene as seriously as fixing a critical software bug. This isn’t just my eccentricity; it’s borne out by broader evidence. Surveys indicate that 58% of business leaders claim key decisions are often based on inaccurate or inconsistent data. Imagine that – more than half of companies may be betting on wrong numbers, or at least shaky. In the long run, the cost of poor data quality is substantial: A Gartner study reveals that poor data quality costs organizations an average of $15 million annually. Clean metrics are not just technical hygiene — they’re a form of risk management. Before celebrating progress, make sure your measurement system isn’t lying.
Not every growing number means you’re winning. In fact, some metrics can grow impressively while masking stagnation or decline in actual value. I call these proxy metrics (or sometimes “blind metrics”). They’re the numbers that give an illusion of success while your core value proposition languishes. Classic examples: App downloads can be skyrocketing, but active usage could be flat. Or page views on your site might be high (perhaps due to clickbait marketing) while conversion to paying customers remains low. We often become metric-blind in these cases: We see the graph going up, but don’t question what it really means.
To stay grounded, I organize metrics in a simple hierarchy — a metric pyramid of sorts. At the base are operational metrics (the day-to-day numbers you can directly control or influence: e.g., number of sales calls made, bugs resolved or marketing spend). In the middle are behavioral or product metrics (these show user behavior and engagement: e.g., daily active users, time spent, feature adoption rates — they result from your operations but aren’t solely under your control).
At the top are outcome metrics, which capture the ultimate goals or the “Why” — often things like revenue, customer retention rate or customer satisfaction that reflect delivered value. This pyramid ensures we connect the tactical metrics to strategic outcomes. It’s similar to the North Star framework many teams use, where a single top-level metric is supported by a few key drivers, and beneath those are a plethora of granular metrics. In fact, product management guides suggest using a metrics pyramid for clarity: At the top you have a North Star outcome, in the middle, the metrics tied to actions you’re taking to influence that outcome, and at the bottom, the finer data points that help troubleshoot and inform decisions.
When I see a metric like “monthly sessions” rising, I force myself to ask: Is this an outcome or just an output? More sessions could mean success if it correlates to the outcome (say, higher revenue or better retention), but it could also be a proxy metric — perhaps users are opening the app more frequently because of a UI change, but not actually getting more value. By structuring our thinking in a pyramid, we remind ourselves that an uptick at the bottom doesn’t guarantee movement at the top.
In startup lore, few concepts are more celebrated than product-market fit (PMF) — that magical moment when everything clicks: Users love the product, growth surges and you feel like you’ve “made it.” But I’ve grown skeptical of framing PMF as a one-time epiphany. In reality, fit is a moving target — a continuous process, not a milestone. Early traction doesn’t guarantee long-term alignment. Customer needs shift, competitors respond and what fit yesterday might not work tomorrow. That’s why I treat PMF as ongoing calibration, not a finish line.
So instead of chasing a mythical moment, I pay attention to trends and trajectories. Rather than declaring “we have PMF,” I ask: How well are we still solving a real problem for real people — and are we doing it better than alternatives? Teams that endure don’t just find fit once — they continuously refine it.
In fast-paced product cycles, it’s easy to jump from one project to the next without pausing. But I’ve made it a ritual that after every major release or growth experiment, we hold a reflection session. In that session, we ask three questions:
I’ve noticed that teams who embrace this reflective practice become much more data-savvy over time. The metrics then stop being a scorecard or cudgel, and become a flashlight — something that illuminates the path forward.
If there’s one theme that ties all these lessons together, it’s the importance of consciousness in growth. Frameworks and tactics — North Star metrics, growth loops, viral coefficients, OKRs — all of these are useful tools, but only if wielded with self-awareness and context. I often tell myself and my team: When the numbers say one thing and your context (your intuition, user research, market signals) says another, trust the context.
Growth is an outcome, not a strategy. If I could send advice to my younger self, it would be: Don’t chase the trendline, chase understanding. Ironically, when you truly understand your users and your value, growth tends to follow naturally — and it will be healthier and more sustainable.
This article is published as part of the Foundry Expert Contributor Network.
Want to join?
The post 776 Air Traffic controllers and technicians to get $10,000 shutdown bonuses first appeared on Federal News Network.
© Federal News Network
Join host John Gallant for a deep dive into Foundry’s 2025 AI Priorities research, including statistics on AI spending and budgeting, how best to put tools in the hands of employees, the big obstacles companies are facing with AI deployments as well as how best to expedite internal AI projects. John is joined by guests Max Chan, CIO at Avnet, David Talby, CEO at John Snow Labs, and Greg Kahn, CEO, GK Digital Ventures.
CIO Essential Insights: AI Priorities for IT Leaders
Max Chan, CIO, Avnet
David Talby, CEO, John Snow Labs
Greg Kahn, CEO, GK Digital Ventures
If you would like to be part of a future episode of CIO Essential Insights, please sign up for the Foundry Contributor Network, or contact ellen_fanning@foundryco.com.
Cloud Computing (December 2025)
IT operations (January 2026)
Emerging tech (February 2026)
Data Center (March 2026)
IT Leadership (April 2026)
Software Development (May 2026)
Cloud computing (June 2026)
Artificial Intelligence (July 2026)
IT Leadership (August 2026)
Business Applications (September 2026)
Security (October 2026)
Data management (November 2026)
Careers (December 2026)
Interview transcript:
Sam Helmick The E-Rate Hotspot Lending Program is built on about three decades of the FCC’s E-Rate program, which has enabled libraries and schools to have discounts for broadband connectivity as we continue to develop 21st-century readers, learners and skills. And so traditionally that E-Rate funding could only be used for connections within libraries and school buildings. But then in 2024, the then-FCC chairwoman really launched this beautiful program called Learn Without Limits. And that expanded eligibility for the Wi-Fi hotspot devices that libraries could retain to be circulated much like books, particularly to households without reliable or affordable broadband. And the American Libraries Association deeply supported this. And it was executed in more than 800 libraries across the nation; schools and public have utilized this service. It’s about $34 million dollars’ worth of hotspot funding in the year of 2025 to make meaningful connectivity change for Americans.
Eric White Okay, got it. So the FCC voted to virtually end the program back on September 30th. What happened there? What was their reasoning for giving that and does that truly mean the end of the program, or are there other avenues that the program could take to stay alive?
Sam Helmick You’re absolutely right. On September 30th of this year, the FCC voted 2-1 to rescind the hotspot lending program and the school bus Wi-Fi initiative. The majority argued that the E-rate statute didn’t authorize funding for services used beyond library and school property. But the American Library Association, along with many of our partner organizations, disagree with that interpretation and have really urged the FCC to reconsider and maintain the program. This decision reverses rules adopted in 2024 that have just begun to take effect and we’re already sort of seeing the 2025 E-Rate cycle being denied. And we understand that a reader denied is literacy denied, and connectivity divide is almost like participation in civic and educational life denied.
Eric White Yeah, particularly in those rural areas where you may not have a steady connection. You can still obviously access the internet in the library, but you know, when you’re in a teaching scenario and you don’t want to take up the computer for too long because then you start to feel guilty, right? So what other options do folks have who are out in those rural areas that relied on this program?
Sam Helmick If the federal government isn’t prepared to create a robust infrastructure for broadband for our national security, entrepreneurial and economic development, and pursuit of educational wellness and happiness, then I think that we have to think about those students that are on bus rides for up to like three hours a day, back and forth, trying to accomplish their homework. Or folks who are applying for jobs on Sundays because it’s the only day they have off, but the library isn’t supported or resourced enough to be open to them for their public access computers. Also, folks who are trying to attend telehealth appointments, access government services, or even connect with loved ones. Often I think folks forget that libraries are spaces where during both triumph and trials in a community, this is where folks need to go to access internet to tell the broader world and their loved ones that they’re safe and they’re fine. And so we’re really thinking about the broad spectrum of American life and how the lack of connectivity infrastructurally has been devastating. And this was an effort to mitigate that devastation. Now to lose this really leaves a lot of Americans in the lurch.
Eric White We’re speaking with Sam Helmick, president of the American Libraries Association. Let’s talk about federal support for public libraries in general. I’ve spoken to your organization in the past. There were some concerns about dwindling support and obviously cuts have come across the board for a lot of federal programs and I’m sure that libraries are not immune to that. Do I have that correct? And you know, where do things currently stand?
Sam Helmick Oh, you’re absolutely right. In 2024, the Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded $266.7 million dollars through grant-making research and policy development that particularly supported not only our state libraries across the nation, but then our small and rural that rely on those matching state dollar funds to make sure that our tax dollars are working twice and three times over. So with the executive order seeking to dismantle that institute, as well as the lack of robust or comprehensive release of the congressionally mandated funds that fund that institute that support libraries around the country and therefore communities around the country, libraries are experiencing resource scarcity at the federal and then the state and then at the local level. Because despite the fact that those federal dollars have been paid by the taxpayers, they’re not getting returned back. And then if you have contracts through those state consortiums or state libraries, those contracts didn’t end just because the congressionally mandated dollars were not provided to the states. And so this is creating an undue burden on state taxes and taxpayers, and then that trickles down to hurting rural communities that are the least-resourced, but probably the most in need, when it comes to their community anchor institutions, which are a public or a school or an academic library.
Eric White Yeah, I was going to say I’m in no way living in a rural area, but going to any of the libraries in my vicinity, they’re as crowded as ever. So it seems as if the need for resources is almost at an all-time high at a time when they may not have all the support they need.
Sam Helmick Increasingly you and I understand that having digital connection is going to allow us to not only thrive civically but economically, educationally, and then just socially. And so to bar that access to any American, particularly in a country that is so well-resourced and rich, feels counterintuitive to ensuring that we continue to be a nation that thrives 250 years into our story.
Eric White All right, so the situation is what it is. What steps are organizations like yourselves taking, and are there other options on the table, you know, nonprofits, things of that nature? Or is it really just going to come down to more states and more local governments are going to have to step in if they want to save these libraries?
Sam Helmick I think it’s holding anybody, regardless of where they sit on the aisle, accountable to understanding that more Americans visit libraries than they do baseball games, which is our national pastime. And that 70% of us are not interested in abridging or censoring information for any reason — not for economic reasons, not for ideological reasons. That’s a large spectrum of American life, through third-party surveys, that show us how much we value access to information. So how do we support those values? Well, first we recognize that we’re about to be 250 years old as a nation, and that this unique form of government had an essential mechanism called libraries, which is why a lot of our founders invested in them, because they wanted a robust constituency and society that was educated so that it could progress and have informed decisions when it came to civic life. And if we’re going to continue to value that, that means we need to use our libraries. We need to dust off our library cards and make sure that they’re active. Increasingly and regularly, as folks who want to get into the advocacy piece, it’s visiting ALA.org/advocacy to learn how you can write an email, invite your Congress member to come visit their local libraries in their areas of representation, join a city council, join a library board of trustees, join a school board so that your voice and fingerprints are part of the conversation. It’s writing to your legislators and reminding them that you wanted to robustly support your libraries, and so you’re asking them to write policy and create funding that will make that manifest. And then lastly, you can also visit ILoveLibraries.org, so that if you’re wanting to support the American Library Association and library practitioners that are doing this work, you can donate your store, you can donate funds to support moving this national value 250 years into the future.
Eric White You bring up the 250 years portion and that provides me a nice segue. Your organization is a 150 years old, almost. From a historical standpoint, have the nation’s libraries ever really gone through anything like this before? I’m just curious if you have any historical perspective on if we’ve been here before, you know, through tumultuous times throughout American history.
Sam Helmick Great opportunity to tell a story. I love telling stories, Eric. In 1938, Des Moines Public Library director Forrest Spaulding wrote the Library of Bill of Rights. And I think he did it for a few reasons. We had just gone through a Great Depression and recognized how instrumental our libraries were to supporting their communities during economic strife, but also lifting them up to build entrepreneurial and economic development. But then it was also going through between the world wars and recognizing that we were a melting pot. And sometimes the ideas and values of a very vibrant culture, they blend and harmonize, but sometimes they also brush and create friction. And so creating a set of values where it talks about the right to use reading rooms, the right to find books that both counter and support your own ideology, the right to assemble, the right to speak and to read were essential. And in 1939, the American Library Association adopted that to become an international of free people reading freely. And so when I think about our history, I think libraries have been very good at growing at the pace of their societies, turning inwardly to think about how they can do the work better, and then relying on their communities to do the work best. And so while I would argue that we probably are seeing a difficult time, probably something that even counters McCarthyism in the United States, we have always turned in and relied on our communities and our values to push through. And so using your library, visiting ALA.org/advocacy, using your voice to speak to those that you’ve elected into power — this has always been the recipe. And if we all stay in character, I think we can continue to thrive.
The post When the hotspots go dark, who connects the unconnected? first appeared on Federal News Network.
© The Associated Press
The Office of Management and Budget has released some funding for the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, after an earlier decision to effectively defund CIGIE led to the shuttering of multiple Office of Inspector General websites.
OMB apportioned just under $4.3 million for CIGIE, according to an announcement from Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Susan Collins (R-Maine). The pair of senators had pushed OMB to release funding for CIGIE and the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee.
“We are pleased that following our continued outreach, OMB is releasing the funding that Congress provided for CIGIE to continue its vital work,” Grassley and Collins said. “This action, building on OMB’s earlier decision to release funding for PRAC, ensures that these important oversight entities can remain focused on delivering the accountability American taxpayers deserve. Our oversight of the administration’s actions, and CIGIE’s work, will continue.”
Grassley and Collins added that the funding will last CIGIE through Jan. 30. OMB is also conducting a “programmatic review of CIGIE’s activities,” they said.
OMB did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Washington Post first reported on the funding decision.
In late September, OMB decided not to apportion funding for CIGIE in fiscal 2026, despite funds being available through the shutdown. Tammy Hull, the acting chairwoman of CIGIE, informed lawmakers of OMB’s decision, warning that the shuttering of the council would “result in the loss of shared services and cost-efficiencies” that support 72 offices of inspectors general across government.
On Oct. 1, multiple agency IG websites went offline due to the funding decision. CIGIE provides hotline capability and website services for 28 OIGs through Oversight.gov.
As of Tuesday afternoon, Oversight.gov was back online after being down for nearly seven weeks.
Congress created CIGIE in 2008 to professionalize the IG community. In addition to providing web and hotline services, CIGIE also conducts training, develops quality standards, and serves as an accountability function within the OIG community through its Integrity Committee.
But Trump administration officials have accused IGs of corruption, without offering evidence.
“Inspectors general are meant to be impartial watchdogs identifying waste and corruption on behalf of the American people,” OMB spokesman Armen Tooloee said in September regarding the original decision to defund CIGIE. “Unfortunately, they have become corrupt, partisan, and in some cases, have lied to the public. The American people will no longer be funding this corruption.”
President Donald Trump fired 17 IGs at the outset of his second term, in a move a federal judge later ruled to be illegal because he didn’t provide the required notification to Congress.
CIGIE in the recent past has also drawn the ire of conservative groups that view it as part of the “administrative state.” In a 2023 lawsuit, lawyers for Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari argued that CIGIE’s Integrity Committee was “a threat to the Constitution.” The Integrity Committee was investigating Cuffari’s actions as IG, including his handling of a review into deleted Secret Service texts from the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot.
The post OMB reverses course on defunding CIGIE first appeared on Federal News Network.
© AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
Interview transcript:
Terry Gerton The nation’s waterways may have some more reckless driving on them. Among the Trump administration’s cuts to government spending, the Coast Guard planned to cut funding for boating safety grants to states and nonprofits. To find out what this could mean for the maritime community, and to get a little more insight into how they work, Federal News Network’s Eric White spoke with David Kennedy, government affairs manager for the boat insurance company BoatUS.
Eric White Mr. Kennedy, thanks for joining us.
David Kennedy Thanks, Eric, for having me.
Eric White So how does this Coast Guard recreational boating safety grant work, or how do these grants work? You know, how much are we talking about here and where does the money necessarily go to?
David Kennedy What we’re initially talking about here are the Coast Guard Nonprofit Recreational Boat Grants, which I am happy to report have been renewed for 2025, which was one of the things that was in question, but we have those going forward. And these go out to several different groups, and I’ll say including the BoatUS Foundation for Clean Water and Safe Boating. But it’s used for a variety of issues. One of the groups is the National Association of Boating Law Administrators, and these are the state-level folks who really deal with recreational boats in their states and their safety programs. It trains law enforcement, local law enforcement and the operation of boats, helps coordinate, gives us uniform laws. Another group supported by it is the American Boat and Yacht Council, which is really the standard-setting body for the design of recreational boats, making sure we have safe recreational boats. So overall, this program is supported through the something called the Sport Fish Restoration and Boating Trust Fund. This is a program that takes the taxes paid by boaters through motor fuel tax, tax on fishing equipment, about six different sources of funds, that then goes back out to boating safety and boating access and environmental programs. So it’s a long-standing program that we have a lot of support for. The nonprofit grants are about $6.5 million a year. The overall trust fund is in the neighborhood of $650 million to $700 million dollars per fiscal year.
Eric White Okay. And so from that fund, there is also some federal funding that comes into play here. Those go to fund boating safety programs and the like. Do I have that correctly, or what is the government participation in this?
David Kennedy Sure. So like I said, it’s talking about the Sport Fish Restoration and Boating Trust Fund that takes in boaters’ taxes, and anglers — I should say recreational anglers. So every time you buy a fishing pole, there’s a tax on that. And those funds come into the come into the federal government and they’re then dispersed back out to programs that benefit the end users. So we call it a “user-pay, user-benefit” program. The nonprofit grants are one example. It also funds Coast Guard’s program to the states for their boating safety programs. So you go to Virginia or Maryland, they have their state DNR, or every state does it a little bit differently, that provides a level of their funding as well. And that also is matched by boat registration fees and other fishing licenses, so that it’s a real compounding effect. We call it a cycle of success that really supports the overall system that then our members go out and enjoy.
Eric White We’re speaking with David Kennedy, the manager of government affairs at BoatUS. All right, so then the idea came about, hey, let’s stop all that. Let’s cut that bit of funding out, reallocate resources, whatever they had planned for. What was the controversy at stake?
David Kennedy I think the question was folks not really understanding what the program was and what it did. And so that’s where roles for association like BoatUS come in. And we were able to have a dialog with the administration, with the folks in Congress who support us. We have great support from the House Transportation Committee Chairman Graves and Ranking Member Larsen, from Sen. Cruz and Sen. Cantwell, and just to bring them up to speed on what this program means and how it is able to go out and support and, as I said, we’re able to happily report that it has in fact been funded for 2025. Now, you know, it’s certainly incumbent on us to continue to make sure folks understand why this is important and how it goes back into the programs that the boaters and the anglers all support.
Eric White Not to have you have to rehash old turf, but what was in your pitch in those conversations with the government officials on the effect that these grants have on boating safety and any other restoration efforts?
David Kennedy I think for a number of the nonprofits that get this group, this is a decent part of their funding. And they were going to have to make some hard choices about which you know which programs they were able to support, which they could do going forward. So I think it was helping them to understand what these programs did. And I’ll go back to the example of the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators, where they really provide a link between Coast Guard and the states, and the state on water law enforcement. So I think that was that was a piece of it. Understanding the standard-setting piece of it and how that really makes the whole process of getting safety design updates out there into the system. And at this point, the you know, the U.S. standards are the world standards. You know, everybody looks to the United States and to ABYC for how they’re going to safely design a boat. And we wanted to make sure folks understood that keeping that piece running was important. So those were some of the things we touched on. And then we do things like, we have a life jacket loaner program. So, you know, you’re going to take the grandkids out and you don’t have a child-sized life jacket. Well, you can come to BoatUS and borrow one. So there’s programs like that as well that are just real simple, good safety and make it so people can go out and have fun and be safe on the water.
Eric White Can you give us a snapshot of the effect that programs like this have on boating safety and where we stand as a country when it comes to boating safety? Growing up here in Maryland, I still see that the waterways are as crowded as ever. But as we know, more participation means more potential situations for trouble. Where do things currently stand?
David Kennedy That’s the good news. It’s a very safe activity. And like anything, you have to be cautious and think about the risks. But overall, in 2024, we had the lowest number of fatalities that we’ve had since they started keeping records. In 1971, they passed the [Federal Boat Safety Act]. The estimate is that we’ve prevented over 100,000 deaths since that passed. So I think all of these programs are going to improve boating safety, but we’ve got to continue that work. And that was one of the things that we emphasized when we were discussing this program and continue to do. I mean you speak about Maryland — Maryland was actually the first state that put in a requirement for on-water education, or for boater education, I should say. And since then, that that concept has really spread across the nation. And in fact, BoatUS’s own foundation, we’re the largest provider of free online boating education. So people can come to boatus.org and they can get their boater education certification … and again, that’s how we’re keeping boating safe and trying to improve that. So those are the kinds of things that this all supports.
Eric White On that theme of continuance, you had mentioned that you know, you’re all set for 2025, after having to do a little bit of lobbying on your part. What do things look like going forward? Do you think that you’ll be able to maintain that level of communication with the powers that be, you know, whether or not any different personnel may be involved?
David Kennedy I mean, I believe so, but that’s my job to believe such things. And again, we’ve got a great working relationship with the Coast Guard and with the Department of Homeland Security. I always will point out to folks when people are 18 years old and deciding to go to the Coast Guard Academy for their career, they did it because they wanted to help people. And so that’s why it’s such a great agency to work with. The trust fund is up for reauthorization in the coming year. It’s done about every five years. The legislation has been introduced, it’s bipartisan. This is one of these issues that is supported by everyone out there. They understand how it works, and there’s a really good community of interest groups like ourselves that work with and make sure that folks understand that this works. So I remain optimistic. It really is a system that that feeds itself. I think you get to boaters and anglers, they understand that we’ve got the most interest in protecting the resource and we’ve got to contribute to it. So I feel like we’ll be okay. But we have to continue to tell the story and let folks know why it’s important.
The post What keeps recreational boaters safe, and what happens if the funding dries up? first appeared on Federal News Network.
© The Associated Press
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s acquisition system shakeup is being met with cautious optimism from acquisition experts who say the changes could meaningfully reshape how the Pentagon buys capabilities, manages programs and integrates emerging technologies — if the department can avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.
Stan Soloway, president and CEO of Celero Strategies and federal acquisition expert, said by and large the changes make a lot of sense — they could help to break down entrenched silos across the department’s acquisition enterprise and drive greater coordination and integration. They also expand on initiatives the department has tried before.
“There have been a lot of reform efforts over the years — and this one both incorporates similar themes and/or reflects a natural extension of them — and all faced similar challenges in both implementation and sustainability,” Soloway told Federal News Network.
But the success of Hegseth’s reforms will hinge on whether the department can change its culture and equip the workforce with the skills needed to operate differently. Otherwise, the system can quickly revert to its old ways.
“Change is not something that happens by dictate. As they and scores of case studies have shown, there has to also be an aggressive, intentional, and holistic approach to change management, prominently including how the relevant workforces are developed. Absent re-aligning those processes, real change will remain elusive,” Soloway said.
Hegseth’s new proposed structure, Soloway said, somewhat resembles the Integrated Product Teams the department created in the 1990s as part of a major acquisition reform push. There were early successes, but they eventually faded, mainly because the workforce and culture never fully adapted.
And whether the department has the workforce to support such a sweeping overhaul remains an open question. DoD has already lost 5% to 8% of its civilian workforce since the start of the Trump administration through various means such as the Deferred Resignation Program and the Voluntary Early Retirement Authority.
“I’m excited about what [Hegseth’s] speech will do to attract the interest of high talent — folks who might want to come in and help us do this job. We’re certainly always looking for good people to come in and help. We do have some need for additional personnel, at least in my office, and I suspect across the acquisition workforce,” Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Michael Duffey told reporters Monday.
In addition, while the new structures and consolidations seem promising, there is always a familiar risk that the reforms could end up adding new layers of bureaucracy rather than eliminating old ones.
“It will take particularly strong, forward leaning leadership on both the civilian and military side as well as new levels of collaboration between and among the services and, importantly, [the office of the secretary of defense],” Soloway said.
And then the reforms Hegseth is proposing will require significant funding — but there is very little mention of resources in the strategy the department recently unveiled.
“That’s one place where the rubber hits the road,” Soloway said.
“The next big thing will be the 2027 budget submission, because some of these things require prioritization, and prioritization requires resourcing. Some of the initiatives like a focus on exportability, focus on developing multi-sourcing for parts and components — these things require resourcing. Where are they going to be in the 2027 budget submission? Because that will show how important it is for the administration,” Jerry McGinn, the director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Center for the Industrial Base, told Federal News Network.
Hegseth emphasized that speed will be at the center of this sweeping transformation the department is embarking on.
“The core principles of this transformation are simple: instill the warrior ethos in the acquisition workforce and enterprise, inject a sense of urgency and relentless focus on speed by empowering those directly responsible for delivery to make and own decisions, cut through unnecessary layers to focus the [Warfighting Acquisition System] on speed, accountability and mission outcomes, and prioritize flexible requirements and resource trades to enable timely delivery at the speed of relevance,” he wrote in a memo.
The focus on speed, Solloway said, may be more critical now than ever. But speed alone isn’t the point – the department has spent the past decade chasing speed through tools like other transaction agreements and rapid prototyping, but the real measure is whether capabilities are actually fielded.
The post DoD acquisition reform: What will it take to make it last? first appeared on Federal News Network.
© The Associated Press
A veteran-owned small business in the northwest part of the country is waiting for the government to pay them about $20 million in contract invoices.
The company executive, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, said their line of credit will only last so much longer before the banks and other creditors come asking for payment.
“Once we hit our limit, we are stuck and the only thing we can do is work with vendors to let them know we are good for money once the government reopens,” the executive said in an interview with Federal News Network. “Once you cross a certain threshold, banks want to see certain things because you are using 80% of your line of credit. They want to know why you’re past due on your receivables, so they want to see reports. Some banks do not understand the government resell process and the fact that we do not operate as a traditional business.”
This IT product reseller, which is located in a Historically Underutilized Business Zone (HUBZone), is one of thousands of companies, both large and small, suffering an extra level of pain during the partial government shutdown.
Not only are firms facing stop work orders, reduced contract scopes or terminations of convenience altogether, but many are waiting to get paid from invoices submitted on or before Sept. 30.
“There isn’t anyone working at the pay centers to approve invoices. A lot of what we do is net 30 stuff that goes through the Invoice Processing Platform (IPP) or other payment portals. We usually submit our invoices and the government approves them, but there isn’t anyone there to do that,” the executive said. “We have one instance where we need additional information before submitting our invoice, but no one is there to give us that information, so can’t submit the invoice. In general, we are submitting invoices and seeing what happens. Then our accounting team is doing outreach after 30 days, and that’s when we are getting bounce backs from emails.”
The company executive said agencies made a lot of purchases on Sept. 30, which means not only are the invoices more than 30 days old, but the vendors they bought from are expecting to get paid regardless of whether or not the government pays first.
“That is creating problems for us in terms of having to make changes and manage cash flow,” the executive said. “The majority of the vendors we deal with know the government space, they are aware of shutdown and they are being friendly about the situation. They aren’t hounding us about past due bills, but with others we are floating the money. We have to use our line of credit or make partial payments to keep them happy.”
Adding to the challenge of waiting for payments when the government reopens is that vendors are entitled to interest on late payments under the Prompt Payment Act.
The Treasury Department says the interest rate for calendar year 2025 is 4.625%. This means that the small business which is owed $20 million in outstanding invoices would be owed about $74,000 in interest as of Nov. 10.
This one example is just the tip of the Prompt Payment Interest iceberg that agencies will face when they reopen.
Tim Soltis, a former federal financial management executive who worked at the Office of Management and Budget, Treasury and the Education Department during his 25-year career in federal service, said there usually isn’t money to pay for these interest payments, so agencies will have make to cuts elsewhere.
“They may have to cut overtime or cut hiring to make room for these payments,” he said. “At Education, I ran both the financial and contracting side and budget and contracting work hand-in-hand in many cases. The budget has to be adjusted before an invoice is paid and it must draw from the same appropriation line. With the shutdown happening at the beginning of the fiscal year, agencies probably have money to pay the interest, but they will have less things to spend on during the year.”
Soltis said over the last decade through IPP or other electronic payment processing systems, the government has basically solved the issue of late payments to contractors, which is why Congress passed the Prompt Payment Act in 1982.
He said a lot of agencies may have to figure out how to calculate and pay the interest because it’s been so long since they’ve had to do it.
Eric Crusius, a procurement attorney and partner with Hunton law firm, said he rarely hears from clients about prompt payment issues. But contractors need to be prepared to claim interest when the government reopens.
“If the invoice was submitted before the shutdown, then it’s supposed to be applied automatically,” he said. “I’d recommend first sending an email to the contracting officer about the interest that is due, and then lodge a claim with the contracting officer if they don’t accept it. Unless the contract has some other terms and conditions, usually there is a seven-day invoice acceptance period no matter if the government is open or not. Now, the government could make the argument that there wasn’t anyone there to receive the invoice or product or service. I’d recommend to make a claim and argue it should be automatically accepted.”
The issue of when the government “accepts” a company’s invoice is one of the biggest, and most concerning, questions that vendors need to understand.
Soltis said an agency accepting an invoice is usually dependent on how the contract is set up.
“There are specific terms in the contract for invoice acceptance and that is what would drive it. But in general, the contracting officer technical representative or contracting officer usually is the one that has to accept an invoice. And legally if the government doesn’t respond within seven days, it’s considered constructive receipt,” he said. “But a lot of times it’s later than that, and a lot of contractors don’t want to get a customer upset over when an invoice is officially accepted.”
Soltis said the issues become more complicated with products where there needs to be someone at a receiving dock or in the agency to accept the package, validate it and match it to the invoice.
In fact, Dell Technologies and its partner Carahsoft said in an email to a vendor supplier, which Federal News Network obtained, that the order placed by the supplier would be on hold until they receive confirmation that the agency customer will be on site to accept the delivery.
Solstis said another challenge will be that agencies will face a backlog of invoices when they return to the office.
“Contractors who are holding their invoices could be sabotaging themselves. What people will tell you is to submit it and let the government sit on it. Then you can say you submitted it and the government delayed paying. But if you hold your invoices, then you can’t claim interest,” he said. “When the government reopens, I would have a meeting with all contractors and go through their issues to make sure we are on the same page. It’s a two-step process. First, what invoices need to be paid? Second, how do you get the contractors whole? Which ones need to get paid with interest? That will become a budget issue because you have to figure out where the money comes from, how to move it around and how to prioritize payments.”
The industry executive said they really don’t know when the clock starts for invoices on Sept. 30 or those submitted during the shutdown.
“If no one is there to accept the invoice, does it start when the government comes back?” the executive said. “Our success rate on getting prompt payment penalties is very small. The majority of the time the agency says they accepted invoice on specific date and that is when the clock starts. Sometimes, they will wait until day 28 or 30 and reject the invoice, which starts the clock over again. I feel like DoD takes advantage of rejecting it and forcing us to resubmit it, and then they have more time to accept it and then 30 days to pay it.”
Crusius said this is why it’s imperative for contractors to log their expenses and costs associated with their contracts during the entire shutdown.
“They can file claims when they need to, and with certain contracts there are ongoing expenses even if they have tried to pair them down. A lot of that will be dependent on whether they received a stop work order or had their contract scope reduced or received a termination for convenience,” he said. “Contractors have to be diligent in writing down their costs so they can try to collect them.”
The post Shutdown brings reemergence of prompt payment penalties first appeared on Federal News Network.
© Getty Images/iStockphoto/Morakot Kawinchan
Login