It’s not every day that John Oliver, an Emmy-award winning comedian and host of “Last Week Tonight,” knows it, too.

On June 16, the British-American TV show host parachuted into federal HR territory and discussed how a second term under former President Donald Trump would upend the U.S. government workforce and rewrite traditional rules about how civil servants are hired and fired.

“A group of conservatives has come up with a plan of action to ensure that [Trump] can hit the ground running, and even if he does meet resistance from Congress or the courts, he will now have ways to go around them,” Oliver said on the satirical news show, which garners millions of views per episode and has nearly 10 million YouTube subscribers.

“I don’t want scientific research about nuclear power being done by people without experience,” he joked. “I don’t want my latte being made by someone without experience.”

Though he’s known for his cynical, often crass ridicule of pop culture, social issues and politics, Oliver has been credited with inciting actual political change. In a 2021 hearing of the House Transportation and Infrastructure on public water quality, witnesses and lawmakers referenced his televised exposé on harmful synthetic chemicals. In 2015, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton of Washington, D.C., said she was planning on showing lawmakers a clip of the show to educate staff and members on the district’s statehood bill.

On his June 16 show, Oliver took apart the plan known as Project 2025, a blueprint for a Republican candidate’s transition to the White House that is led by the Heritage Foundation, 100 conservative organizations and former government executives who claim it’s “not enough for conservatives to win elections.”

Trump and his supporters developed a plan to deal with that, known as Schedule F, which would have converted tens of thousands of civil servants into a specialty employment class that lacks job protections and makes them fireable, and hirable, at will. President Joe Biden swiftly undid Schedule F via executive order in 2021.

Schedule F “should be reinstated, but [senior executive service] responsibility should come first,” the playbook reads.

Part of the group’s 920-page “Mandate for Leadership” identifies certain federal agencies for elimination, privatization or consolidation, including the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, International Trade Administration, the Export–Import Bank, Economic Development Administration, Bureau of Economic Analysis and Census Bureau, Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

It calls the FBI a “bloated, arrogant, increasingly lawless organization, especially at the top,“ and derides the Department of Education as “a convenient one-stop shop for the woke education cartel.” The plan also alleges a “incestuous relationship” between the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control & Preventions and vaccine makers.

The group’s chief concern is that unelected civil servants, of which there are roughly 2 million, are liable to sabotage administrative policies they don’t agree with — acting as a sort of ungovernable, unaccountable influence.

“Byzantine personnel rules provide the bureaucrats with their chief means of self-protection,” the handbook continues. “What’s more, knowledge of such rules is used to thwart the President’s appointees and agenda.”

The system into which they are hired, however, is a meritocracy, meaning there are legal statutes and guardrails surrounding how their appointments are justified, how much they can be paid, and how they must remain nonpartisan. For political appointees, especially, there are rules on ethics and divestitures.

Unlike the legislative branch, the federal workforce is dispersed around the world and tends to retain its members from one election to the next to create a stable resource of knowledge. Some of these positions deal with policy, but many mirror the kind of work done in the private sector, like nursing, engineering or construction.

The current administration has anticipated this desire to reengineer the civil service, so in April, the Office of Personnel Management issued a regulation that guarantees employment protections unless a worker voluntarily waives them and sets up hurdles a future administration would have to clear before changing the rules.

Democrats in Congress have also tried to supplement the regulation with legislation. Those bills have yet to clear both chambers.

Nonetheless, the leaders behind Project 2025 have also created an application system for like-minded candidates to indicate their interest in serving a future Republican administration. The portal markets itself as a “Presidential Personnel Database” and asks questions about applicants’ political philosophy and assesses level of agreement to certain statements, including “the President should be able to advance his/her agenda through the bureaucracy without hindrance from unelected federal officials,” for example.

“Their goal here is clear: to assemble an army of vetted, train staff who can begin dismantling the administrative state from day one,” Oliver said.

Many good government groups, both nonpartisan and nonprofit, and federal unions have advised against Schedule F. A “Public Administration” journal article from last summer sampling empirical research concluded “converting civil servants to at-will status likely decreases government performance and increases corruption.”

Last month, OPM issued a memo to agencies reminding them that during an election year especially, departments must “ensure all personnel actions remain free of political influence or other improprieties and meet all relevant civil service laws, rules, and regulations.”

That includes pre-appointment review of any current politicos who wish to be slotted into a full-time career position.

Putting politics aside, Oliver said that these ideals of limited government are not new, even if they’re being acted on in a way that hasn’t been seen before.

“Project 2025 is born from an impulse almost as old as America,” he said. “It’s an impulse that says one class of Americans is entitled to lead, and the rest of us are lucky to be allowed to serve. These are old, old ideas that have been shouted from podiums … but have now been placed into a new handbook for only willing presidents to use on day one.”

In an interview, its new director said the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, nicknamed America’s gatekeeper, is better known for conducting 95% of background investigations for federal workers and military personnel, but less so for its role protecting the nation’s industrial base.

David Cattler, who took the reins in March, wants to change that.

In an effort to centralize the government’s sprawling personnel security system, Congress sought to move this responsibility to DCSA from the Office of Personnel Management, which was finalized via an executive order in 2019. Now, Cattler said he’s in the midst of a “90-day approach” as the leader of an organization that should be at full performance in five years.

The White House has said small businesses are “the engines of the economy,” and it has told agencies like DCSA to ensure their participation in government contracts. Last year, they spent a record $178 billion on small businesses. DoD alone increased its spend by 8%.

There’s an imperative from government to extend a welcome to small businesses, and DoD has a growing portfolio of commercial technology and services that can diversify the industrial base. There’s also a need to ensure barriers to entry aren’t too high without compromising security. That’s where DCSA comes in.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

You’ve been in this role for a little less than three months. What’s new to you? What’s your vision for the agency?

I’m a big “first 90 days” person. This is one of several organizations I’ve either joined or created or led over the course of my career that is new or beginning or had some big issues that needed to be addressed. And this one’s no exception.

As far as the “first 90 days” approach, I tend to see this as an organization that after five years should be in full performance. In a lot of ways it is because it builds off a pretty strong legacy, whether you were formerly with the Office of Personnel Management or the Defense Department. We’re talking decades of experience and structure and qualification in the workforce.

The first thing that struck me in this 90 days is that we’re not actually fully confident in every way we should be. We’re not fully mature. Some things have to be worked out. If you put it in commercial terms, we’ve gone through a five-year period of strategic merger and acquisition, and that can be tough because you do need to have a mindset of one culture, one team, one brand.

This is a purpose-built security agency that combines a lot of elements from the legacy Office of Personnel Management and its authorities and statutory responsibilities, along with a similar and impressive set of things from DoD. And the expectations for what DCSA will do span across the federal government.

DCSA is not just America’s gatekeeper; DCSA should be the nation’s premier provider of integrated security services. So the first task is not to assert that we are that, but to have other people see us in that way, and relatedly to have them see us as their preferred partner.

How does DCSA interface with the defense-industrial base and its security?

If you’re outside the national security community, especially the security part of the national security community, and if you’re outside of the defense-industrial base, do you know who we are? I don’t think so. And that’s a real shame because taxpayers are paying $2.8 billion for it this fiscal year. I take this very seriously. You’re paying 15,000 people to do the work.

We were created as a result of yet another inflection point: the OPM hack. We’ve accreted some of these additional responsibilities like the insider threat role, in no small part because of the series, conditions and departmental analysis after the Navy Yard active shooter [incident], Fort Hood, and related tragedies and real problems within the security community to anticipate, detect, characterize, intervene and mitigate those sorts of threats.

If you work for a company, if you want to start one or if you want to keep up business at a company that requires a facility clearance, the odds are pretty good you’re going to work with DCSA. If you have a cyber problem, if you have an insider threat problem or if you have a counterintelligence problem, the odds are pretty good you’re going to interact with DCSA. If you want to be certified to be a professional in a space, or if you want to get better as a professional inside and outside government, you’ll likely interact with DCSA.

What is the ideal relationship between the agency and industry?

Security can be viewed by some as an overhead cost. It’s a must-do, but I’m going to go to compliance. Some — many even — may go the extra mile.

I sent a letter to our key partners in government and in the private sector when I first arrived, saying: “Call me directly, anytime. Send me an email I want to meet you all. I really want to hear from you. If I can help you, I will.”

We’re going to expand CEO-level and C-suite engagement. I get that security can be viewed as overhead and as a cost, but we need to practice security by design, which means that security really should be baked in from the very beginning. Security is a required element to one’s approach to tackling a contract — the same as it is for us in government before we embark on anything.

Be reasonable, particularly on the cost of compliance. You need to be efficient and effective. You don’t have to build to the minimum; you can build in some additions so that there’s more resilience and maybe some fallbacks or spillover so that you’ve got overlapping capabilities.

I was a little surprised by how warmly welcomed I was by industry. We are on the same team. And to be clear, it’s not that they think they’re going to have an easier time in a compliance inspection; that’s not what it is. It’s that you don’t start in an adversarial way. We want industry to be proved to be secure. Nobody who works for DCSA is going out trying to have someone lose their security clearance or fail on a facility clearance review.

So the relationship with industry is critically important. It’s very, very close. And it is mutually respectful, hopeful and very supportive.

The federal government is trying to increase business with small companies. How do you ensure the barriers to entry aren’t too high without cutting corners on security?

A lot of this stuff becomes about balance. We want to trust you. We want you, as a small business, to be able to compete. For classified work, we want you to be able to sustain the facility so you can do the work and compete for more work or different work. But that’s also about trust and the right balance.

Now that the internal directives have been approved, we’re moving forward with Section 847 implementation, [a provision from the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act that says DCSA will review Defense Department contracts that exceed $5 million for foreign ownership, control or influence in its supply chain]. The clock will soon start for that to be implemented. Put that human terms: Say I’m the CEO of a company that’s won a DOD contract of $5 million-plus. That’s just about everybody, right? We’re going to have to take a hard look at that coming in. We want 25 calendar days to complete our review.

That’s an inflection point in terms of responsibility, authority and accountability. There’s no one that works at DCSA that wants to be in a position to tell the CEO of a small business: “Sorry, that’s going to take 40 days, 80 days, 120 days.” We’re going to do everything we can to make sure we’re ready when the light turns green, to move forward and be able to satisfy that set of requirements.

That’s why we’ve asked again for more resources and proper authorities. Give us the guiding directives to get the policy framework built so that we know what we’re required to do.

If I put myself in the shoes of somebody in the private sector and ask myself, “Would I just spend money on security?” — maybe, maybe not.

But if the government came to me and explained — and we can and we do — the reason why we have changed this policy that will correspondingly increase cost is X, Y and Z, and we provide the expert that can give you the details, they get it.

Is that baseline trust there, or is DCSA in the rebuilding stage with industry and its stakeholders?

It’s there. The only thing that surprised me was how strongly positive these interactions have been. Industry is telling me: “Wouldn’t it be great if DCSA had more responsibility and authority?”

From a workforce perspective, DCSA conducts 95% of the federal government’s background clearances. How are you tackling the modernization of this system? What advice do you have for someone who’s looking to get cleared for the first time?

One bit of advice I would give to somebody that’s coming in from the outside is: Plan ahead and be realistic.

If you’ve never held a security clearance and you wish to pursue a government job that requires one, it could take some time. Hiring is one thing; onboarding is another.

The second thing I would say is: Be honest. When you open that eApp form and you start typing, fill it out completely and honestly. Don’t overthink it. Not to sound harsh or overly dramatic, but we’re going to find out about things because we’ve got awesome people and great databases, and we’re going to check you six ways to Sunday before we put you in a position of trust. So be honest. A mistake that you made that you’ve picked yourself up from and recovered and moved on from — that’s perfectly understandable. Nobody’s perfect.

The next thing I would stress to people coming in from the outside is: If you’ve had a security clearance and it’s fairly recent, and you are enrolled in [continuous vetting], you can actually be re-onboarded, re-adjudicated and authorized for onboarding very quickly. And that’s another element of Trusted Workforce, [a whole-of-government approach to reforming the personnel security process].

Reciprocity is also a piece of this. If you come into the DOD, I’m proud to say that the DCSA team can get that done for your employer in less than one day. Reciprocity going in other directions can be more of a challenge.

What’s the latest on timelines for security clearances?

When we talk about the timelines that are in Trusted Workforce — and where we are with the inventory and the goals — what we’re tracking right now is the toughest 10% of cases.

So in 90% of the cases, you’re going to move quite quickly through because you probably haven’t had a brush with the law or you haven’t traveled extensively.

Many of the things we’re looking for in terms of potential indicators where — it’s not a bar to your clearance or a bar to your re-clearance, it’s just something that gets flagged for investigation and adjudication, and we have to take a deeper look. That deeper look can take time. And that time can aggregate.

Especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, we continue to do interviews remotely, but we also do a great number of interviews and investigations in person. It can be challenging. People are working from home, sometimes in remote areas. They’re working odd schedules. Your references need to be checked, and they’re working from home, they’re working on schedules, they’re traveling. That all takes time to get through.

The U.S. Department of Transportation will bring teleworking employees back to offices two days per week this winter, according to a top agency official.

The agency workforce would return on site in a phased approach of three days per biweekly pay period come September, bumping up to four days in December, according to the email sent to staff that was obtained by Federal Times.

“We now seek to establish an optimal long-term operating environment at DoT – one that continues leveraging workplace flexibilities for eligible positions while also promoting meaningful in-person work and collaboration,” said Philip McNamara, assistant secretary for administration in the email.

Reuters reported Wednesday that the Federal Aviation Administration, an office within DoT, will have a higher requirement for its employees. The agency confirmed to Federal Times on Friday that as of Oct. 9, the agency will increase in-office presence to at least three days per week.

The Transportation Department joins a growing number of federal agencies that are seeking to increase in-person work and align with the White House’s return-to-work policies. Lawmakers, too, have tried to hasten these efforts by tying in work mandates in 2024 funding bills and pressuring agency heads to report the numbers and locations of remote workers.

In late May, South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace criticized DoT for having a near-empty building even after the national pandemic emergency declaration ended a few weeks earlier.

So far, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Education and Federal Emergency Management Agency have called employees back.

Since the severity of the pandemic lessened, the White House Offices of Management and Budget and Personnel Management have encouraged agencies to maintain flexibility where possibly and review their pandemic-era work arrangements to determine the best way forward.

The agency is “not going back to 2019,” the DoT email said. The department will maintain flexible schedules and leave programs, though employees have said there’s a disconnect between saying that in the same email that announces telework rollbacks.

The agency says the change is consistent with what OMB laid out in its memo directing agencies to increase meaningful in-person work.

DoT employs 55,000 people.

The vote, which came more than a year after Kotagal’s hearing, was 49-47, along party lines. Her pending appointment was initially stalled in the Senate’s labor committee last year. Kotagal replaces Republican Commissioner Janet Dhillon whose term expired last July.

Kotagal’s confirmation fills a vacancy that solidifies a Democratic majority on the commission led by Chair Charlotte Burrows, who was renominated in 2019. Even with Kotagal’s green light, the agency of 2,000 employees is still without a general counsel to help process a 20% uptick in discrimination charges filed last year.

All employers, including federal agencies, are subject to anti-discrimination laws, giving the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission broad jurisdiction and its rulemaking affects millions of workers. The newly complete commission will have plenty to consider.

In January, the EEOC met to discuss threats to employment rights posed by artificial intelligence and automated technology. And last month, the commission began taking up complaints under the newly passed Pregnant Workers Fairness Act while resolving ongoing issues pertaining to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs. That effort faced backlash from Republicans in Congress who opposed Kotagal’s nomination as a furtherance of these policies.

Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina and chair of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, said in a statement the commission has been “marred by mismanagement” under a Democratic majority that has turned the agency into “a partisan attack dog.”

Conservatives, including the president of the right-leaning Heritage Foundation, also brought up concerns that U.S. businesses and employers would be hindered by increasingly stringent regulatory burdens imposed by the commission.

However, by its nature, the agency is supposed to be independent and apolitical, and its commissioners must hold a majority vote on substantive regulations.

Meanwhile, Kotagal got broad support from civil rights groups and legal centers that praised her record of enforcing equal pay laws, protections for pregnant workers and disabled veterans, and settlements over sexual harassment and abuse.

Kotagal has worked as a lawyer for Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, a firm specializing in large-scale class action suits.

“The goal of equal opportunity in the workplace is a lofty one, but an essential one,” she said during a confirmation hearing in May last year. “Workplaces that are free from discrimination benefit more than just their employees; they also benefit those employees’ families and communities and contribute directly to an innovative and dynamic American economy.”

“Unlike the 1970s, when hard-hitting movies addressed controversial subjects, lighthearted fare seemed to reign supreme in the 1980s,” according to History.com.

However, to say that “Volunteers” falls into that category overlooks the fact that it has something sincere to say about the role of government, patriotism and service to the country — even as it pokes fun at these concepts. Taken against the mid-1980s political backdrop that reflected the late stages of the Cold War, “yuppie culture” and growing questions about the U.S. hegemony, “Volunteers” charmingly harkens back to a more innocent era decades earlier, when people believed in America’s ability and, indeed, responsibility to try and make the world a better place.

Take, for example, the opening sequence of visual vignettes of the 1960s, a time of reinvigorated American foreign policy with President John F. Kennedy at the helm. He spurred new humanitarian initiatives, including the Peace Corps — the real star of the film — and boosted foreign aid, which, as the movie makes plain, could sometimes backfire. Still, the film’s characters try to do what’s right, and though they don’t always succeed, they never abandon the mission.

The main character, Lawrence Whatley Bourne III (Hanks) is a perfect example. He’s a stuck-up, lazy Yale graduate who begrudgingly joins the Peace Corps, which at the time would’ve been only a year old, to escape a gambling debt. His wealthy father (played by a perfectly cast George Plimpton) refuses to bail him out, and Lawrence spends much of rest of the film working various scams and trying to seduce the beautiful and naive Beth Wexler (Rita Wilson).

(Fun fact: Hanks and Wilson began dating shortly after making “Volunteers,” and they’ve been married ever since.)

Wexler, of course, wants nothing to do with Bourne or his selfishness. And Bourne makes no effort to hide his disdain when boarding the Thailand-bound plane full of ruddy-faced young adults singing “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore.”

“Really now, I am obviously not of Peace Corps fiber,” he says at one point. “It’s not that I can’t help these people, it’s just that I don’t want to.”

Then, in swoops “America’s son,” Tom Tuttle (Candy), a true believer in America as the Shining City on a Hill who sees this trip as a calling. Tuttle and Bourne foil each other, but they share a hubris. Bourne doesn’t care to mingle with other cultures he finds beneath him, Tuttle volunteers for the sake of asserting a better (read: American) way of life. It’s a terrific role for Candy, who is hilarious and dominates every scene he’s in.

And so this ragtag group of young people with very little understanding of the real world finds itself tasked with building a bridge to help the people of a remote village. While they’re ordering the reluctant locals around, they slowly begin to realize that they’re being manipulated by the CIA, local drug lord Chung Mee (Ernest Harada) and communist guerrillas, all of whom see completion of the project as essential to their plans for regional domination.

That dramatic irony is hilarious and poignant. Bourne, the least likely to befriend the locals, becomes their favorite and starts to care what happens to them. Tuttle, the stalwart patriot, is easily and comically brainwashed by the communists. The greatest irony of all? At the end, the American volunteers realize they must blow up the bridge they just built to save the village — which is probably what the locals wanted all along, had anyone listened to them.

Dueling agencies

This movie is full of dueling messages about whether government helps or hurts, which is why it continues to resonate almost 40 years after its release. Two federal agencies are pitted against each other. The “good” is embodied by the kumbaya-singing Peace Corps volunteers with white-savior complexes, and the “bad” takes the form of a corrupt double agent for the CIA named John Reynolds (Tim Thomerson).

Some elements have not aged well. One character, who is supposed to be humanitarian, makes racist jokes about Asian cultures and language. You could argue that’s satirical or spoofy, but it’s definitely not how civil servants are expected to behave. The film production also encountered some political interference.

Officials told film director Nicholas Meyer to change the script and “don’t mention the CIA in the same breath with the Peace Corps,” according to a New York Times article from 1985.

“Volunteers,” cost about $10 million to make and earned just under $20 million at the box office, making it a modest success. Reviews at the time were mostly positive, though not everyone appreciated its message.

Robert Sargent Shriver, who married into the Kennedy family and who helped start the Peace Corps, said “‘Volunteers’ was like spitting on the American flag.”

Meyer told the Times that officials warmed to his film, eventually, and said that if it any kind of real message, it’s exactly what a teary-eyed Wexler said to the villagers: the Peace Corps wants to help people, not change them.

Today, the Peace Corps still sends thousands of volunteers each year to developing countries around the world. The independent federal agency employs nearly 7,000 federal workers and has an annual budget of some $410 million.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, said he’ll lift degree requirements for executive jobs in the state to “improve hiring processes, expand possibilities and career paths for job seekers and enhance our ability to deliver quality services.”

The move goes into effect July 1, and Virginia is not the only state pursuing this idea. Skills-based hiring, as it’s become known, has been gaining popularity as a way to reduce barriers to employment and evaluate candidates based on their competencies, whether they learned them in a classroom or not.

Ten states have declared similar plans, and even the federal government has floated the idea of de-emphasizing diplomas — when it makes sense to do so. Former President Donald Trump tasked the Office of Personnel Management with developing alternative methods for assessing candidate’s skills. Since then, officials have have said that higher education will remain a prerequisite for health care workers, legal professionals and other highly specialized jobs. For other vocations, including computer programming and cybersecurity, the skills can be taught online, often for free.

The issue is that degree requirements may discourage or outright turn away the prototypical “basement hacker,” who learns valuable tech skills through online videos and forums and in turn, converts them debt-free into a job at any number of public and private sector employers, who are jumping over each other for IT talent.

“America’s private employers have modernized their recruitment practices to better identify and secure talent through skills- and competency-based hiring,” Trump said in his 2020 executive order. “Degree-based hiring is especially likely to exclude qualified candidates for jobs related to emerging technologies and those with weak connections between educational attainment and the skills or competencies required to perform them.”

The White House has said its personnel policy is shifting to target diverse candidates who can’t afford a four-year degree but nonetheless earned proficiency in a skill another way. Today, about 60% of Asian Americans 25 and older have at least a bachelor’s degree compared with 42% of white adults, 28% of Black adults and 21% of Hispanic adults. By contrast, about half of U.S. employees hold some kind of alternative credential, according to the Society for Human Resource Management.

Agencies haven’t gone quite as far as Youngkin, though the Office of Personnel Management is taking incremental steps. This quarter, it created training for agencies to include subject-matter experts in the interview process. These individuals have expertise in the field an agency is hiring for and can ask pointed questions that a human resources manager wouldn’t know.

Skills-based hiring may also give federal agencies a bigger pool of candidates to select from and allow them to make better selections overall, though experts and employees have cautioned that any changes to hiring practices need to stay within the strict guardrails of the merit-based system.

“Removing minimum education requirements may allow for more subjectivity in the assessment of candidates, which could lead to favoritism in the hiring process,” according to the Congressional Research Service.

And if hiring pools become bigger as a result of loosening education requirements, it may fall on hiring managers to absorb workloads. Over the last three decades, their strength has dwindled; on average, there’s now one HR employee for 48 agency employees, up from 41 in 1990.

At the same time, government officials have said employing more subject-matter experts could reduce the burden on HR professionals to screen applicants. Skills assessments and online tests may even self-select among candidates who aren’t willing to take the time to complete them.

According to OPM’s latest guidance from 2022, these tactics can provide “hiring managers with the skilled candidates they need to hire the first time around, avoiding the wasteful need to re-post positions when the initial pool lacked candidates with sufficient skills.”

Though, in a way, it had been done before — just on a much smaller, more gradual scale.

Telework goes back to at least the early 2000s under the George W. Bush administration. In fact, one of the annual appropriations bills required five agencies to certify they increased their telework levels before receiving $5 million.

Then in 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Telework Enhancement Act to require every agency to create an eligibility system for work flexibilities, effectively laying the groundwork upon which telework could be built into the workforce.

Then, the pandemic came, and at one point, 90% of eligible federal employees participated in telework. In years past it was far less.

What happens next? No one really knows. Officials in current and past administrations have indicated telework can help better recruit better against the private sector, create efficiencies for certain teams or improve the work environment. But like so many things in government, vague memos and incremental policies make predicting the future of telework difficult, if not impossible.

Lately, Congressional Republicans have been quick to urge a “return to work,” a phrase which employees have said is dismissive of the fact that their work never stopped. Unions have assured members that any negotiated agreements will remain in place. And meanwhile, remote positions are still being posted on USAJobs.com, leaving some to wonder what will become of those.

All the while, the telework debate has absorbed a number of sub-issues relating to the attractiveness of federal jobs, the environmental footprint of keeping lights on in offices and the economic impact of quieter commuter cities. In the middle of all of that, employees will remind us, are the workers; and not just the 1 million that are telework eligible. The remainder is grappling with whatever deleterious impact telework rollbacks might have on attrition, recruiting and labor relationships.

So, the question becomes: what will that impact be, and do employees feel like they have a real say in the matter? Absent a crystal ball, this is the question Federal Times is asking in our reader survey on the future of federal work.

We want to know how telework decisions affect you and the relationship you have with your public service career.

Federal Times will aim to publish the results in a few weeks.

Editor’s note: This is not a scientific survey. The poll is anonymous, though respondents have the option to share their contact email exclusively with reporters at Federal Times. Personal information will not be published or shared.

*If the survey does not load, click this link.

It did last week, when the White House’s Office of Management issued guidance for agencies to “substantially increase meaningful in-person work at Federal offices, particularly at headquarters and equivalents.”

While federal employees balked and unions cautioned against hardening mandates to return to work, others say it’s “a long-overdue step that will hopefully help restore public transparency, a more efficient functioning of government and the vibrancy of downtown Washington,” according to an editorial by The Washington Post on April 18.

Agencies at this point in the “endemic” have set their own rules for reentry depending on what works for the team or what managers expect. The White House direct agencies to report their current policies for telework and monitor progress.

“Stroll through downtown these days, and the city’s grand avenues and stately facades seem attached to a ghost town, a shell of the lively center the area was before the pandemic,” the Post’s editorial board wrote. “For-lease signs abound; glass towers sit empty. That’s largely because many federal employees are still working from home, and they account for about one-quarter of jobs downtown.”

Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser, too, has urged President Biden to bring federal workers back to downtown or else give the government’s property to other entities who can promise revitalization.

Though federal workers have said won’t have their work-life balance be politicized, the Post said this issue is about more than partisanship.

“Despite the claims of traditional managers who insist on a full return to five days in the office, the truth is that U.S. productivity actually spiked in the second half of 2020 while most offices were shut,” the editorial says. “And it fell sharply in the first quarters of 2022, when most companies began mandating a return to the office. A full return to the office has also been linked to the phenomenon of “quiet quitting,” so federal agencies, like other workplaces, aren’t wrong to try and retain workers as best they can — even if it remains unclear how agencies measure productivity among remote workers.”

The solution is compromise, it continues, through a hybrid mix of work where and when it makes sense.

“It is undeniably critical that agencies take a data driven and balanced approach to telework and flexible work policies,” said Marcus Hill, chair of the Senior Executives Association representing 8,000 career federal executives, in a statement. “The [OMB] memo appropriately prioritizes organizational health and performance and encourages the government to use evidence to guide decision-making in this area.”

The National Association of Assistant U.S. Attorneys advocated for a universal baseline to ensure the policy is being applied evenly.

“While some U.S. Attorney Offices allow significant telework flexibility, others offer little to none,” said Steven Wasserman, president of NAAUSA, in a statement. “The patchwork of telework flexibility policies results in dramatically different and sometimes arbitrary access to an important work life benefit — this is despite overall work duties being comparable across offices and 95% of AUSAs surveyed reporting they were successfully able to do their job remotely during COVID-19.”

Unions that collectively represent the interests of 1.2 million non-postal employees say they’re concerned about this guidance being misinterpreted to justify cutting back flexibilities altogether, though they agree that not every role is suitable for telework.

The largest federal union, the American Federation of Government Employees said “the voices and concerns of the employees directly affected deserve to be heard” as this guidance manifests in agencies.

“Customer service and mission-delivery challenges, real or perceived, are not the result of maximum telework, but are the direct result of staffing shortages and insufficient funding by Congress,” said Randy Erwin, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, in a statement.

Erwin said that employees who have a union and collective bargaining agreement are more likely to keep whatever telework and remote work arrangements they have than those who are not unionized.

With the annual NCAA college basketball tournament known as “March Madness” now underway, newly minted Maryland Gov. Wes Moore challenged Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin to a game of one-on-one basketball. The winner, they said, gets the proposed $3.5 billion building and the 7,500 workers that come with it.

Or that’s the bet, anyway.

In a tweet at Youngkin, Moore, a Democrat, issued the challenge on March 9.

“Let’s go one-on-one, winner gets the new FBI headquarters,” Moore wrote, attaching a video of himself making a two-point shot.

“Game on!” replied Youngkin, a Republican, who shared a video of him possibly shooting a three.

Talk about March Madness.

Both states made their final cases over the last few weeks for the new headquarters of the FBI, which is seeking to move out of the aging building in downtown Washington, D.C.

Three sites have been proposed for Springfield, Virginia, Greenbelt, Maryland and Landover, Maryland.

Virginia says the building would integrate seamlessly with other federal intelligence hubs already there, including the CIA and FBI academy in Quantico. Maryland leaders argue that promoting racial equity should be given greater weight in deciding where to locate, furthering President Biden’s commitment to equity and accessibility in the federal government.

The match up

Youngkin, who is 6 feet 7 inches tall, began playing basketball in high school before continuing the sport in college at Rice University in Texas. He’s 56 years old. The governor favors Virginia Commonwealth University to win the NCAA tournament after No. 13 Furman stunned the University of Virginia, knocking out the No. 4 seed.

Moore, 44, played football for Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He is 6 feet 3 inches tall. He’s pulling for Maryland, which narrowly defeated West Virginia in the tournament’s first round.

The Howard University men’s basketball team, which lost to No. 1 seed Kansas on March 16, offered the university’s Burr Gymnasium as a neutral site for the matchup on Twitter. A date has not been set.

Democrat Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia’s delegation is also known to hoop. He played pick-up basketball games as a pre-Thanksgiving tradition during his time at George Washington University. Warner’s office did not respond to questions about whether he might join in on the challenge in a 2 on 1.

While the bet has been made and accepted on Twitter, the General Services Administration has the final say in the ultimate location of the FBI headquarters. A decision is expected in the coming few months. The office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Federal Times reached out to both governors’ offices to see if the match was still on.

“Oh, we are serious!” said Carter Elliott, Moore’s press secretary.

Youngkin’s press secretary referred Federal Times back to the governor’s “Game on!” tweet.

Federal employees at the GS-15 grade aren’t paid for step increases they have earned. This is becoming an increasing problem in the D.C. area as more and more of our top-performing people are ineligible for an increase, year after year. Though I see the problem mentioned, I have not seen any efforts to either remove that statutory cap, or raise the Exec Schedule, thereby giving capped 15′s some breathing room. With a staff of high-performing 15′s, it is harder and harder to reward them with “the gift that keeps on giving” that is a pay increase. Any news or intel on this front?

Signed, Capped

Dear Capped,

Some background so readers can follow the story: Ordinary federal civil servants are paid according to the General Schedule (GS) salary table. It lists pay grades from lowest (GS-1) to highest (GS-15). Within each pay grade there are 10 steps. A person who stays in the same job with the same GS pay grade can get small salary increases by advancing through the steps based on years of service and performance. In addition, there are locality pay adjustments, so somebody with the same GS grade and step is paid more if she works in a high-cost area such as San Francisco.

The question from Capped is about a law that says no salary for General Schedule employees can be higher than the salary for assistant secretaries on the separate pay scale for presidential appointees. If the government’s formula for what should be paid to a certain GS grade, step and locality comes to more than the assistant secretary salary, then the employee gets the capped amount rather than what the government’s formula says she is entitled to. In the Washington, D.C., area, that works out to the top four steps of GS-15 all being paid the same capped amount.

So back to your question, Capped. People who are paid less than a GS-15 might not shed a tear for those whose raises are blocked by the salary cap. But you are right that the GS-15′s who work for you are bound to be unhappy when they advance to the next step but do not get a raise for it. They might decide to leave the government, or worse, they might stay as disengaged, disgruntled employees. Maybe now that you’ve stated your concern in Federal Times, it will get noticed by the powers that be and the law will change. In the meantime, you can try some actions to make your employees less frustrated by the salary cap.

First, you can help them understand how the salary cap is set. They might feel less insulted by not getting a raise for their step increase if they know their pay is capped at the assistant secretary level.

More important, when you talk with your employees about career development, you can encourage open discussion of why they might choose to stay or move elsewhere. If an employee starts looking for jobs in the private sector or elsewhere in government, she might find that the combination of pay, pension, benefits and job security in her current job is better than anybody else offers her, even with the salary cap. The grass looks greener on the other side, except maybe when you go there and see it up close. If one of your employees does leave for a better offer, that just shows prospective employees that your office is a desirable place to build experience that will let them advance further.

Your employees will never be happy about being denied a raise by the salary cap. But if they see that you support their choice to stay or look for a better offer, then at least they will know you are a good boss.

Dear Bureaucrat provides the federal workforce with the opportunity to submit questions about their careers to David S. Reed, founder of the Center for Public Administrators, a 501(c)(3) civil society organization that builds communities of practice in the public sector. Reed has spent 35 years in and around government. He has worked for large contractors, owned a small contractor, and is currently a government employee. He holds a Master in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School, and is a frequent speaker at public administration conferences.

Send your question to DearBureaucrat@PubAdmin.org.