There’s always the risk in journalism of overdoing it — of beating to death a story to the point that you alienate readers. Anyone who watched CNN in the wake of the Malaysian Airlines disappearance knows what I mean.
With that in mind, I mull some statistics: To date, FederalTimes.com has posted more than 30 stories and columns on the massive breach of systems at the Office of Personnel Management. We posted three videos. We pulled together an online multimedia report. This month’s print issue cover story is devoted to the topic, as is, well, this column. (You can see all of our online coverage here.)
Did we overdo it? In my first month on the job, no less? No, and I’ll tell you why.
The OPM hack is the clearest example that I’ve seen in some time of a developing story. The stream of stories has been staggering, generated not just by public statements and releases that we regurgitated for readers, but enterprise reporting. Some came from federal employees themselves, reaching out to us with their frustrations, experiences and concern.
And now here we are. The dust is settling. The immediate fallout of the incident has been pretty well reported, including the resignation of OPM Director Katherine Archuleta, as has the inevitable Monday-morning quarterbacking and finger-pointing. And we’ve drawn some conclusions based upon our reporting. Could OPM have prevented the breach? Probably not, as Federal Times’ Aaron Boyd explains. He also shows that the agency could have done a better job of protecting the data itself and making security protections a priority.
But I still wonder who else might resign. I wonder how OPM might balance response to security lapses with the inevitable backlash from employees put on virtual lockdown from social media, and those delayed in getting background checks for clearances as a result of a temporary shutdown of a related system. I wonder what other agencies are vulnerable.
So then, are we done? I doubt it.
