Participant Written Responses

Apr 29

Departure Dialogues is a nonpartisan initiative launched by POPVOX Foundation, the Niskanen Center, Civil Service Strong, the Partnership for Public Service, and the Foundation for American Innovation to capture the on-the-ground expertise of departing federal employees and contractors at a moment of significant transition in the federal workforce.

Participants were guided through ten focused questions covering program challenges, successes, and inefficiencies with direct relevance to Congressional oversight and policy. Submissions were accepted as video or audio recordings or written responses, with flexible attribution options including full anonymity. All submissions were reviewed for appropriateness before being archived in a publicly accessible database for use by Congressional committees and researchers.

An important note: The responses below are presented as submitted, with only minor edits made for clarity or readability. They reflect the individual views and experiences of interview participants. They are not endorsed by POPVOX Foundation, the Partnership for Public Service, the Niskanen Center, the Foundation for American Innovation, Civil Service Strong, or any other organization involved in the Departure Dialogues project.

Participants

Philip Trevisan

HHS, Contractor, 2 years

Tell me about your role(s) with the Federal government. What agency did you work for, what programs were you working on, and what was the scope of your most recent role(s)?

I was a contractor specializing in communications and change management with the GSA for 1.5 years, and with HHS for 6 months, from mid-2022 to mid-2024.

I worked on a long-term communications contract supporting the GSA’s work on the President’s Management Agenda, a cross-agency performance management and improvement initiative. We worked in close coordination with other contractors and teams at GSA and OMB.

After that, I was on a short (6-month) contract to develop a change management toolkit for the HHS Office of the Secretary. This was a straightforward contract with a defined goal and deliverables.

How frequently did Congressional or legislative intent/language come up in your work, and in what contexts?

In the first contract, frequently. Congress mandated quarterly reporting for both the PMA and its associated Agency Progress Goals (APGs). I knew there was additional congressional oversight into the program’s function at OMB that I did not have good visibility into.

At HHS, not at all. This was a project done entirely under the aegis of the Office of the Secretary. My following responses will focus more on GSA because I don’t have much to say about HHS contract.

Can you describe a situation where conflicting, outdated, or overly-burdensome legislative requirements made your work/your program less efficient or less effective?

At GSA - the quarterly reporting dynamics, while well-intentioned, was at times burdensome. Our framework of ‘quarterly updates’ created awkward situations - some quarters would have a glut of information that made us cut interesting content, while others had very little information of note.

If you could rebuild your program/agency from the ground up, without changing its overall scope and mission, how would it look different when you were done?

At GSA - build the program exclusively in-house, or with minimal contractor support. There were usually 3 - at times 5 - different contracting teams, each from different companies, working together on separate yet connected goals, all while navigating the OMB-GSA relationship. This was not a recipe for success. All of the people I worked with, both contractors and feds from GSA and OMB, were top-notch talent. There were simply too many cooks in the kitchen for the program to be as effective as it could be. We succeeded, but I often wonder how successful the program could have been had it been done in-house or with a single contracting team.

How could Congress do a better job of learning about programs in your area of expertise, with the goal of legislating more effectively?

Not as relevant - I think the PMA and APG format did a good job of distilling down progress for congress in a way that they needed to learn.

If you had 5 minutes to brief a Congressional committee about fixing bureaucratic inefficiency in your area, what specific legislative change would you recommend?

Increasing hiring budget and shortening hiring timelines to attract more qualified fed talent.

If you had 5 minutes to pitch agency leadership about changes they should make within the agency, what specific changes would you recommend?

Two-prong: much more narrowly scope contracts and bring more talent in-house. The whole PMA should have been done by one contractor or an in-house team. There was no good reason for us to be split across multiple contracting teams each with a fed POC. The whole PMA apparatus felt bloated and overly complex for what we were delivering.

My HHS contract was well-scoped in this regard. We had a goal, target, and deadline, and were brought in as experts to execute. This was a good use of contractor time and taxpayer dollars.

Is there anything else we haven’t asked that you would like to share about your career with the Federal government?

No.

What are your plans post government service?

I was part of a reduction in force in April 2025. Since then, I have transitioned to non-government consulting.

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Anonymous

USAID, Foreign Service officer, 25 years

Tell me about your role(s) with the Federal government. What agency did you work for, what programs were you working on, and what was the scope of your most recent role(s)?

I worked for USAID for almost 25 years as a Foreign Service Officer in multiple countries: Ethiopia, Peru, El Salvador, Haiti and Washington DC. I served as a Technical Office Director at various overseas posts covering economic growth, agriculture, biodiversity, and climate change among other sectors. My most recent post was Haiti whereby I worked on economic growth, water security, infrastructure, and agriculture development aiming to move Haitians out of poverty and higher paying jobs and knowhow to advance agriculture through a market systems based approach.

How frequently did Congressional or legislative intent/language come up in your work, and in what contexts?

Our work ALWAYS aligned with congressional and legislative intent and language because 99% of my $65-85 million dollar/year budget was earmarked almost entirely. For example, the Water for the World Act designated Haiti a high priority country and that $15M/year budget was 100 percent earmarked for specific water development activities to create more access and good governance around potable water and improved sanitation services. Our $10M/year budget for Agriculture was specifically designated by Congress for the Feed the Future Program, with specific targets and guidelines in how to program that money. The climate change and environment program was 100% earmarked for the adaptation and mitigation of climate change. Almost all of USAID programming is earmarked for specific purposed by Congress and requires a formal reporting two times per year in a Operational Plan that indicates how the money will be used and later in the year, a Performance Report is submitted to Congress, State, and other stakeholders reporting on results and impacts. Reporting processes are also in real time as USAID leaders frequented Congressional Committees to answer questions and report on progress and programs.

Can you describe a situation where conflicting, outdated, or overly-burdensome legislative requirements made your work/your program less efficient or less effective?

The practical 100 percent of earmarked funding always created challenges for taking a holistic and integrated approach to development. With so. many earmarks driving develpment work, at time the wrong priorities were promoted by Congress, versus what the host country defined as their own development priorities. Of course, most of the development priorites tracked well between USAID congressionally approved programs and host nations, although they adapted to our priorities in some cases. Earmarks definitely limited and hampered aid effectiveness.

If you could rebuild your program/agency from the ground up, without changing its overall scope and mission, how would it look different when you were done?

Country priorities would be the starting point for development programming, not Congressional priorities ALWAYS driving developing nation priorities in part. I would develop long term strategies with these host countries that balanced the US policy priorities with countries that wanted to work together on these same priorities, such as biodiversity conservation, etc. 10-20 year plans and strategies should. be considered to allow for the long term foundations to be built and weather changing political priorities that often disrupt development financing as each administration focuses on other policy priorities.

How could Congress do a better job of learning about programs in your area of expertise, with the goal of legislating more effectively?

Congress drives the funding for development foreign aid. What they could do is work closer with the experts like those that made up USAID and listened and engaged with host countries closer to understand their own development priorites. THEN, see where USG policy priorities coincide with other nations’ policy priorities. Too often, congressional priorities drive the development agenda and are not always allowing for the flexibility that is required to see results over the long term. The yearly “pending funds availability” and limits on making long term committments really is a huge limiting factors in leveraging others funds from other donors and UN agencies and national partnerships that could really combined move the dial on development priorities. The USG funding commitment is too short term and not flexible enough to have a real impact over the longer term.

If you had 5 minutes to brief a Congressional committee about fixing bureaucratic inefficiency in your area, what specific legislative change would you recommend?

First, I would express my huge disappointment at how USAID was treated and the stupidity of throwing 65 years of institutional know how and global leadership into the “wood chipper”. The vilification of government workers, namely USAID Foreign Service Officers and National staff being fired and misrepresented by our highest offices is a disgrace. The shuttering of USAID is inhumane, short sighted, irresponsible, and I can’t even express how horrible the lies and. mis-representation has made employees, beneficiariers, host nation partners, UN and other donor partners feel. A true betrayal by the USG. Decades of partnerships shattered, putting the USG in a untrustworthy category that I’ve never before imagined could happen. Development should be LINKED to policy priorities of the USG and used as a carrot as part of the soft power of the national security strategy. This administration under Trump and Rubio will use it to TIE countries to conditionality and will not be built on trust but will be transactional. There were several reasons why humanitarian assistance remained neutral of politics - this has changed under Trump 2 and now is an American First approach regardless of mutual cooperation and engagement as a goal.

If you had 5 minutes to pitch agency leadership about changes they should make within the agency, what specific changes would you recommend?

Treat the employees with the respect that they deserve. Stop lying to the American People about everything as this Trump Administration has done ad naseau. Think about the long term trust and engagement that you have undermined worldwide and realize that these foundations go well beyond one administration and are harmful to America and the American people. This American First approach is just a political campaign and is clearly a short term financial and political ambition that does not actually make America safer, stronger and more prosperous. It puts America in the cross fires of extremists, makes American’s less safe around the world, breeds distrust, demonstrates a selfish and self serving priority and backslides on international cooperation that has harnessed and leverages millions of dollars from the private sectors, other donors, and other government partners.

Is there anything else we haven’t asked that you would like to share about your career with the Federal government?

I had my dream job at USAID. A job that reflected the ideals of the American dream - possibility, service, generosity, and democracy and equity as central morals and ethics. I sadly ended my career feeling vilified, demoralized, mis-represented and having to witness the USG walk away from 65 years of partnerships through USAID. Partnerships and programs that improved lives in the furthest reaches of the world, won hearts and minds, opened markets to US companies, mitigated migration because we helped countries create jobs and build deeper market opportunities so their populations could thrive in solid democracies. I know USAID did good. Of course, improvements could be made and reforms are welcomed, but throwing the expertise and decades of experience out the door and into the wood chipper was egregiously irresponsible and inhumane to our international partners who had no previous notification or warning that foreign assistance in their countries would cease. This is disrespectful and inhumane. A sinful disgrace that I never imagined would be perpetrated by the USG.

What are your plans post government service?

I will continue to work on international development through faith based and NGOs. I wil continue to make the world a better place. The world’s humanity and love will continue to thrive without the USG because love and compassion do not have borders. Disease has no borders; natural disaster are indiscriminate and when communities come together to help one another, nobody is asking for your political affiliation. The inhumanity of the Trump 2 administration will go down in history as a authoritarian “almost takeover” that motivated the passion of the people to fight back and step up. I look forward to seeing the passion and might of 14,000 former USAID humanitarians, now freed up, to repurpose their enormous talents, humanitarian ethics, and committed voices in defense of those less fortunate around the world. Global security equals national security. Development isn’t charity, it’s investment.

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Anonymous

FDA

Tell me about your role(s) with the Federal government. What agency did you work for, what programs were you working on, and what was the scope of your most recent role(s)?

I had a policy role working on developing rules and guidance at FDA.

How frequently did Congressional or legislative intent/language come up in your work, and in what contexts?

Frequently commented on proposed legislation

Can you describe a situation where conflicting, outdated, or overly-burdensome legislative requirements made your work/your program less efficient or less effective?

Complying with the paperwork reduction act was overly burdensome and delayed projects, making us less effective than we could be.

If you could rebuild your program/agency from the ground up, without changing its overall scope and mission, how would it look different when you were done?

eliminate the paperwork reduction act

How could Congress do a better job of learning about programs in your area of expertise, with the goal of legislating more effectively?

No suggestion

If you had 5 minutes to brief a Congressional committee about fixing bureaucratic inefficiency in your area, what specific legislative change would you recommend?

Eliminate the paperwork reduction act

If you had 5 minutes to pitch agency leadership about changes they should make within the agency, what specific changes would you recommend?

Take the time to meet with staff and understand the agency you are leading.

Is there anything else we haven’t asked that you would like to share about your career with the Federal government?

None

What are your plans post government service?

Undecided

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Anonymous

NIH, Information Security, 33 years

Tell me about your role(s) with the Federal government. What agency did you work for, what programs were you working on, and what was the scope of your most recent role(s)?

I was an IT Specialist (Cybersecurity) working for the National Institutes of Health to ensure that our applications met security and privacy regulations. I worked with multiple teams to ensure that both privacy and security regulations were followed. I was a Contracting Officer’s Representative and gave advice to upper management to ensure that the government followed security and privacy laws for IT contracts. I participated in multiple working groups to improve processes, particularly those using Artificial Intelligence to allow our division to utilize technology to increase technology and free employees to focus on high value work.

How frequently did Congressional or legislative intent/language come up in your work, and in what contexts?

I read about Congressional and Legislative intent and language a minimum of two to three times weekly to ensure I could give accurate advice about new technologies. I was involved with groups across multiple fields and wanted to give pertinent advice and assist with applying the information constructively.

Can you describe a situation where conflicting, outdated, or overly-burdensome legislative requirements made your work/your program less efficient or less effective?

Contracting and implementing new technology were difficult due to both burdensome and conflicting requirements. For example, I completely agree with and believe that Artificial Intelligence (AI) mut be regulated. Ethics, Privacy and Intellectual Rights must be protected. However, there were groups inside and outside the government working on these issues and publishing best practices. Although I participated in every seminar, working group, etc. I I could not get Robotic Process Automation (precursor technology) implemented, much less AI, without management buy in. This was complicated by the outdated contracting language in the FAR, lack of technology knowledge by Contracting Specialists and Officers and lack of time (heavy workload), training, opportunity and authority on my part.

If you could rebuild your program/agency from the ground up, without changing its overall scope and mission, how would it look different when you were done?

The most critical change I would make is to break down communication silos. I had several roles in the federal government and invariably the lack of communication and involvement at all levels and across professions, was a disadvantage. Only the people repairing the boilers know what they need. A contracting specialist cannot understand these factors unless they have input from the repair technicians. Similarly, creating a software system without true user testing. Not from a premade script but actually using the program! Many delays and inefficiencies happened only because of no, little or miscommunications.

How could Congress do a better job of learning about programs in your area of expertise, with the goal of legislating more effectively?

Spending time in our shoes. Congress’s time is valuable, but I would argue that for all people. A small amount of time with one member shadowing a member of a profession would be an effective way to see what we handle and what they could do to help.

If you had 5 minutes to brief a Congressional committee about fixing bureaucratic inefficiency in your area, what specific legislative change would you recommend?

Just as I would not want a committee telling me how to do my job, I would not presume to tell them theirs. I would advise them to weigh the true effect of their legislative changes. That is, look at the effects of similar legislation at different levels of government, look at international law and consider that laws affect humans.

If you had 5 minutes to pitch agency leadership about changes they should make within the agency, what specific changes would you recommend?

Listen to longtime career leaders, employees, and supervisors. They may have complaints, but they are not there to get rich. They are most likely there because they believe in the mission and want it to succeed.

Is there anything else we haven’t asked that you would like to share about your career with the Federal government?

I loved my job and did not want to leave. My workload was heavy, my physical health was showing clinical signs of damage from long-term stress. The workload would have gotten heavier if I had been allowed to stay. I devoted 33 years to NIH and deeply regret that I cannot see if through this time of change. I worry about my colleagues because we were more than a team. We were a family.

What are your plans post government service?

I am still recovering from leavng NIH. My husband and I, my parents, daughter and grandaughter are all affected by changes to the federal government policy. I am currently figuring out how we will weather these changes.

Anonymous

3 years

Tell me about your role(s) with the Federal government. What agency did you work for, what programs were you working on, and what was the scope of your most recent role(s)?

I worked for the Social Security Advisory Board (my SF-50 and W-2 say Social Security Administration, and we were paid through SSA’s Limitation on Administrative Expenses). The Board is a bipartisan entity charged with advising SSA, Congress, and the White House on Social Security matters. My role as Senior Research Attorney was to help the Board decide on the topics it wanted to study, to present them with information, and to help them draft documents and recommendations.

How frequently did Congressional or legislative intent/language come up in your work, and in what contexts?

Congressional language came up both in how SSAB itself operated and functioned, and in terms of the recommendations the Board considered and made.

Can you describe a situation where conflicting, outdated, or overly-burdensome legislative requirements made your work/your program less efficient or less effective?

The general and earned income disregards in the SSI program have not been updated in over 40 years. This makes administering the SSI program less efficient, because SSA staff must adjust SSI benefits when recipients have quite modest amounts of income (as low as $21 per month). If SSA is delayed in processing reports of income, the agency must issue notices and collect the overpaid benefits; this carries administrative costs. Applying a 2-for-1 benefit reduction (essentially a 50% tax) on all earnings over $65 a month is also a work disincentive for SSI recipients, making the program less effective in helping those who would like to try and transition from benefits to employment.

If you could rebuild your program/agency from the ground up, without changing its overall scope and mission, how would it look different when you were done?

I would increase SSA’s administrative funding so it could have higher staffing levels for customer service and IT modernization. I would confirm an Inspector General and also have a Beneficiary Ombudsperson. I would allow the use of dedicated program integrity funding towards addressing both underpayment and overpayment of benefits, as well as underpayment of FICA and SECA. And I would simplify SSI rules so they were easier for SSA to administer, while maintaining or increasing the amount of SSI benefits people receive. There are several provisions in the SSI Restoration Act that have been scored as having neglible costs, so those could be a great place to start. I would also pass the Work Without Worry Act, which has a small cost to the Social Security trust funds (those costs would be at least partially offset by savings in SSI).

How could Congress do a better job of learning about programs in your area of expertise, with the goal of legislating more effectively?

Get information from Congressional constituent service staff. Visit Social Security field offices and talk to the staff there--not just management and union reps but other staff too. Talk to claimants, beneficiaries, and those who represent them (in legal services programs, private practice, family members and others serving as representative payees, etc.). Hold hearings in DC and in the field. But I do think committee staff and many others listen to stakeholders already!

If you had 5 minutes to brief a Congressional committee about fixing bureaucratic inefficiency in your area, what specific legislative change would you recommend?

When someone leaves the disability benefit rolls because they have returned to work, they have a protection called Expedited Reinstatement (EXR) if they stop working or reduce their earnings. While people are waiting for SSA to consider their EXR requests, they can get up to six months of provisional benefits. But sometimes SSA takes longer than six months to process EXR requests--through no fault of the disabled person who tried to work! Congress should change the law on EXRs (§ 223(i)(7)(c)(ii)(II) and § 1631(p)(7)(c)(ii)(II) of the Social Security Act) so people get provisional benefits until SSA makes a decision on their EXR request.

If you had 5 minutes to pitch agency leadership about changes they should make within the agency, what specific changes would you recommend?

SSA has many forms that are not available electronically and/or are processed in a decentralized fashion. Four workloads that could be made electronic and/or centralized are the Benefits Planning Query (where SSA already did a successful demonstration of centralized processing), the W-4V for tax withholding of Social Security benefits, the SSA-7161 and SSA-7162 for beneficiaries living abroad, and the SSA-44 for adjustments of Medicare Income-Related Monthly Adjustment Amounts. I have a short document prepared expounding on these four workloads and I would be glad to share it with SSA! On a separate note, regular-onset Alzheimer’s should be a Compassionate Allowance condition; early-onset Alzheimer’s (younger than age 65) is already on the CAL list, but with the increase in full retirement age to 67, there are people with regular onset Alzheimer’s applying for benefits at age 65 or 66.

Is there anything else we haven’t asked that you would like to share about your career with the Federal government?

I liked being a federal employee and hoped to spend the rest of my career there. I have lots of ideas for Congress and SSA about how they can improve. I asked to be transferred to a “mission-critical” job at an SSA field or hearing office or federal DDS, but was not allowed to do so. I am frustrated that SSA was willing to spend trust fund dollars on DRP or severance if I left, but not to have me stay and serve the public.

What are your plans post government service?

I will be a public benefits attorney at a nonprofit organization.

Melisande Fritz

IRS, 6 years

Tell me about your role(s) with the Federal government. What agency did you work for, what programs were you working on, and what was the scope of your most recent role(s)?

I worked for the IRS. I started as a cash clerk, then moved to Taxpayer Services as a CSR. I was a coach, OJI and training instructor within that role, as well as a SME. I became a team lead and then moved to the Office of Online Services as an Emerging Technology Analyst. This was my final role and I facilitated IRS digital outreach and strategy.

How frequently did Congressional or legislative intent/language come up in your work, and in what contexts?

It came up more in my contact rep role as tax law and IRMs.

Can you describe a situation where conflicting, outdated, or overly-burdensome legislative requirements made your work/your program less efficient or less effective?

IRM updates. There is so much redundancy and cross-functional information that updates were never complete in all locations.

If you could rebuild your program/agency from the ground up, without changing its overall scope and mission, how would it look different when you were done?

Tools would be better. IRS security is paramount, but it hobbles widespread use of efficient tools and the full capabilities of tools.

How could Congress do a better job of learning about programs in your area of expertise, with the goal of legislating more effectively?

Visit. Talk to us in town halls.

If you had 5 minutes to pitch agency leadership about changes they should make within the agency, what specific changes would you recommend?

Listen to the workers because they know what they need to give quality service to taxpayers.

Is there anything else we haven’t asked that you would like to share about your career with the Federal government?

Time in grade requirements prevent talent from being utilized. Time in grade has nothing to do with merit.

What are your plans post government service?

I’m applying to data analyst jobs in the private sector, targeting the healthcare, education and AI development industries. For the purposes of income, I’ve accepted a job as a City Carrier Assistant with USPS.

Anonymous

25 years

Tell me about your role(s) with the Federal government. What agency did you work for, what programs were you working on, and what was the scope of your most recent role(s)?

CIA - I have covered East Asia, Latin America, East Asian counterintelligence, and Indian Subcontinent. Most recently, I have worked on high-profile declassification projects.

How frequently did Congressional or legislative intent/language come up in your work, and in what contexts?

I have been the lead analyst on multiple declassification requests from Congress and the Executive Branch. In short, Congressional requests recently have been integral to my daily work.

Can you describe a situation where conflicting, outdated, or overly-burdensome legislative requirements made your work/your program less efficient or less effective?

N/A

If you could rebuild your program/agency from the ground up, without changing its overall scope and mission, how would it look different when you were done?

First, I would ensure that CIA restores its traditional emphasis on global coverage, rather than concentrating the vast majority of its resources on about five priority issues/countries. By concentrating its resources and collection on so few issues, the likelihood of intelligence failures increases significantly (e.g., Tunisia - Arab Spring, lack of Urdu language speakers when we went into Afghanistan). Second, the Agency needs to return to its nonpartisan, apolitical core tenet of its mission. I’ve never seen this level of politicization in my 25-year career. Accordingly, we probably need to build in more institutional protections as guardrails to prevent the potential abuse of executive authority.

While protections codified on paper do not guarantee that the Executive will abide by them, I believe it’s worth revisiting CIA’s mission, etc., to prevent it from becoming a total instrument of authoritarian-leaning leaders. This is especially true of the Agency’s analytic role, but not exclusively. My fear is that the Agency is slowly becoming what it was during the late 1960s-mid 1970s, then it violated its charter to not surveil US citizens. Finally, a rebuilt Agency should limit the number of officers in middle-management and Talent/HR roles—positions that have increased dramatically in the last two decades. Also, the elimination of units for political reasons that have occurred this year has been a mistake that needs to be remedied. Probably the best example is the dismantling of units that focus on foreign influence and disinformation—a longstanding priority of the Agency’s analytic role.

How could Congress do a better job of learning about programs in your area of expertise, with the goal of legislating more effectively?

Congress’s problems run deeper than a lack of information on any program at any USG agency. Congress doesn’t have an educational problem; it has a performance/execution problem. I believe that we are experiencing the collapse of our political party system and our legislative branch, fueled by gerrymandering and other forces (e.g., special interest/money politics). Until our two political parties are able to channel the interests of most of the electorate and Congress resumes performing its essential functions, such as passing budgets and allocating already-appropriated money, nothing else matters.

If you had 5 minutes to brief a Congressional committee about fixing bureaucratic inefficiency in your area, what specific legislative change would you recommend?

N/A

If you had 5 minutes to pitch agency leadership about changes they should make within the agency, what specific changes would you recommend?

The main problem at CIA is that, for the first time in its history, the director and deputy director are not institutionalists. Regardless of the political party in power, the CIA always had at its helm leaders that defended Agency interests first and the interests of the administration second. What’s happening now internally is new for the Agency. Before I joined the Agency, I was an academic who taught university courses on the intelligence community. In short, it would serve no purpose to brief our 7th floor.

Is there anything else we haven’t asked that you would like to share about your career with the Federal government?

Not really.

What are your plans post government service?

As a former democracy subject matter expert in academia, I intend to work or volunteer for an agency, including nonprofits, to try to slow the democratic backsliding in the US and other Western democracies.

Maureen

14 years

Tell me about your role(s) with the Federal government. What agency did you work for, what programs were you working on, and what was the scope of your most recent role(s)?

I have served as a intelligence officer, Presidential Management Fellow, Program Director, and member of the Senior Executive Service in four different agencies: NGA, Commerce, Treasury, and USDA. At various times, I have overseen economic development grant programs, IT, HR, and real property.

How frequently did Congressional or legislative intent/language come up in your work, and in what contexts?

Rarely. Our focus was generally on the statutory language and applicable regulations, especially 2 CFR 200 (Federal grants regulations) and other statutes that apply to grants (environmental law, Buy American, Fly America, etc).

Can you describe a situation where conflicting, outdated, or overly-burdensome legislative requirements made your work/your program less efficient or less effective?

The biggest obstacles to efficiency generally are not statutory provisions specific to individual programs, but government-wide requirements.

For example, the statute that has resulted in the greatest increase in grant costs—both in terms of recipient budgets for construction projects, as well as agency oversight and compliance—is the Build America, Buy America Act, which was incorporated into the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (“IIJA”), Pub. L. No. 117-58. The Act requires that “none of the funds made available for a Federal financial assistance program for infrastructure, including each deficient program, may be obligated for a project unless all of the iron, steel, manufactured products, and construction materials used in the project are produced in the United States.” Agencies are permitted to waive the application of the BABAA requirements based on public interest, nonavailability of domestically produced products, or when total construction costs with domestically produced products would be more than 25 percent greater than with foreign-sourced products.

Since projects where the cost of using domestically-produced products is less than 25 percent are not even permitted to seek a waiver (unless the recipient can show the product is not available domestically or there is some overriding public interest, such as for a very time-sensitive project or one involving national security), the cost of many construction projects is therefore typically 10-24% higher than they would be without the law. But this underestimates the total cost impact, because there is also the increase in administrative burden for the construction firm carrying out the project (which must collect detailed documentation of every single product used and its origin); the grant recipient and when applicable subrecipient (which must monitor and review contractor compliance, and submit any waiver requests to the federal agency); and the federal agency, which must develop detailed waiver policies and procedures, revamp its IT system to allow for the submission and review of waivers, assign (and in many cases, hire) staff with construction industry experience to review waivers and ensure the company/recipient/subrecipient has done any due diligence (and hasn’t, for example, overlooked any domestic suppliers), post the waiver on for a minimum of 30 days for a public comment period on madeinamerica.gov, adjudicate any comments, adjust the waiver as necessary, submit it to the Office of Management and Budget for Approval, and then—if it is approved—post the final waiver on the madeinamerican.gov website. It must also conduct oversight and site visits of all projects claiming to be compliant with BABAA to ensure the products used are actually compliant. For a single construction project, this will likely require thousands of hours of additional work across the contractor, recipient, subrecipient, and federal agency.

There are myriad other examples, such as the Fly America Act, in which the recipient and federal agency have to go through a waiver process if the recipient wants to fly a non-US flagged carrier, resulting in administrative costs that likely exceed any financial benefit to U.S.-registered airlines.

Perhaps the most burdensome requirements, however, are not programmatic but operational in nature. The Federal government’s byzantine HR and procurement rules stifle innovation and talent development; prevent agencies from reacting quickly, nimbly, and cost-efficiently to emerging threats and sudden crises; and hinder service delivery and mission fulfillment.

Federal HR rules and regulations were designed with a myriad of laudable goals in mind: promote hiring for veterans, reduce bias in hiring and promotion, protect agencies from litigation. One thing they were not designed for? Empowering hiring managers to actually be able to attract, hire, retain, reward, and develop the right people with the right skills and the right mindset to accomplish the mission…in a timely manner. A typical hiring process takes 6 months or more, and HR policies either remove managerial discretion altogether or create so many obstacles that few hiring managers are willing to persevere.

For example, when I sought to completely revamp my program’s human capital strategy—a necessity given our customers’ dissatisfaction and a workload increasing by 30X with staffing only up 2X—I was met with a myriad of obstacles. I was not permitted to post a new job title on USAJOBS without first working with “HR classifiers” to classify a new position description and then having it scored for its appropriate GS level. Even though I was assigned a great classifier, this took 3 weeks. After that, I had to develop a series of questions for the USAJOBS posting and then assign a scoring rubric for how the applicants answered the questions. I was encouraged to use multiple-choice questions that had already been cleared. However, since none of these seemed geared to the job in question, I had to craft my own and then have it approved by HR. I then took it a step further and introduced my agency’s first case study-based job posting, asking applicants to perform an actual task that they would have to perform on the job. Receiving HR approval took another 2-3 weeks. Since I did not want to rely on the usual HR practice of having HR score applicants based on the applicant’s self-assessment of their own abilities (which favors the most egocentric applicants, not the most qualified!), I requested that my subject matter expert staff review each applicant’s answers and determine whether the applicant actually had the experience claimed. This necessitated another few weeks to get HR approval and convene subject matter expert panels. Once I finally posted the announcement with the new correct job description and the revised questions, and once my staff reviewed and rated the applicants’ answers, HR still had to review the list of applicants we wished to interview. All this added at least 2 months to our hiring process, which is why almost no other managers went through this process. But it was worth it: we found that there was almost no correlation between how applicants rated themselves and how they actually performed on our simulated “real world” tasks. And we also subsequently found a strong correlation between how these applicants performed on the tasks, and their subsequent performance on the job.

On another job posting, I was nearly forced to hire an unqualified veteran with poor past performance evaluations and a history of unprofessional behavior. I was instructed by HR that, since a veteran had qualified based on his self-assessment in the job posting questions, I was not able to interview anyone else for the position unless I could prove to the Office of Personnel Management that he was unqualified—which they strongly discouraged me from doing. But I persisted, even though I was required to write a long memorandum and provide all of the interviewers’ notes. However, this meant that our hiring process had to stop for approximately 6 weeks while I went through this lengthy process.

HR policies and performance management system can also make it difficult to hold employees accountable. I have found it typically takes two years to remove an unsatisfactory employee from Federal service—and this is only if the manager is willing to put in hundreds of hours documenting the employee’s failure to complete assigned tasks, placing the employee on a “demonstration opportunity” (which often go through three or more rounds of HR review), dealing with employee’s often (though not always) spurious discrimination and disability claims, participating in (nearly always unsuccessful) mediation with the employee, and then handling the employee’s appeals to the Merit System Protection Board.

(Although, to be clear, I do think that the Merit Systems Protection Board and Office of Special Counsel play a critical role in keeping our civil service nonpartisan and protecting legitimate whistleblowers!) Honoring the process is important, but it should be streamlined a bit to allow for removal in 12 months or less, if warranted.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are very few opportunities to reward and recognize outstanding Federal employees—and therefore to incentivize other Federal employees to follow suit. Some agencies only have two possible employee performance ratings—satisfactory and unsatisfactory, which allows for no distinction between truly great employees and those that are doing the bare minimum. While most agencies have a five-tier rating system, there is strong tendency towards “grade inflation” and some performance standards are so weak as to be impossible to fail. (The performance plans of my employees when I started at an one agency were along the lines of “Answer emails from recipients” without any expectations for the timeliness, accuracy, or helpfulness of the response.)

The best way to rectify the issues with HR recruitment and performance management would be to:

Scrap the current system whereby the default is that hiring managers are only able to interview applicants that make the “HR cert” based on the applicants’ own self-assessment and create a new system that allows hiring managers to (a) view all applications and select the most qualified applicants for interviews and (b) easily integrate case study-based assessments and interviews into the process.
Revamp veterans’ preference to require agencies to interview veterans meeting minimum job requirements, but to remove the requirement that (a) prevents agencies from interviewing other candidates and (b) requires OPM approval to not select veterans;
Require all agencies to adopt a five-tier rating structure;
Require all agencies to cap the number of “outstanding” performance ratings and establish policies to apportion these ratings based on team performance (teams that accomplish extraordinary results should naturally have more employees rated “outstanding”);
Provide extensive technical assistance and training to hiring managers and HR to ensure that performance standards are specific, measurable, and quantitative when necessary, and provide sample standards for different job categories that can be easily adopted for agency use;
Convene a panel of HR experts from within and outside the government, as well as past officials from the OIG, OSC, and MSPB to study and make recommendations regarding reforms to expedite the removal of employees with “unsatisfactory” ratings while still ensuring due process and the protection of whistleblowers; and
Re-think the way the Federal government hires and develops Federal HR staff, bringing in top talent from the private and nonprofit sector as needed, and ensuring HR staff are just as focused on human capital excellence as on compliance and risk avoidance.

Similarly, the rules for Federal procurement—a mash-up of rules to promote both disadvantaged businesses and employment for individuals with disabilities; ensure compliance with Federal IT security standards, Buy American, environmental rules, and many more requirements; and protect the government from liability—has resulted in limiting competition, increasing cost, lengthening procurement timelines, and significantly increasing the paperwork burden on Federal employees and contractors.

That is not to say that these goals are not necessarily worthy—but Congress must decide which of these goals is worth pursuing, and to what extent, at the expense of quality, value, and cost effectiveness.

Here are just a few examples of instances where a contract award was suboptimal from a cost/value standpoint due to the other requirements of the Federal Acquisition Regulation:

When one of my agencies identified a need for a grants management subject matter expert to design a new program authorized by Congress, the agency could not easily contract with a solopreneur who had done similar work for the agency in the past as a Federal employee. This was because the solopreneur was not a registered 8(a) disadvantaged business, the only easy route for an agency to contract with a small business. Instead, the Federal agency contracted with an 8(a) business that had a Blanket Purchase Agreement with the agency, and the 8(a) subcontracted with the employee that the agency wished to hire in the first place. The subcontracted individual performed 100% of the work on the contract, and the 8(a)’s only role was to attend meetings, take meeting notes, submit invoices, and process payments to the subcontractor. The result was that taxpayers paid at least 2X—and probably more like 4-5X—of what the solopreneur would have charged without this overhead.
When one of my agencies identified the need for software meeting particular specifications, there were only two options in the marketplace: one Canadian, and one American. Because of the Buy American requirement, Procurement determined we would need to use the American options, thus eliminating any effective competition and likely driving up the price.
When my team identified two contracts for very similar work which could easily be combined into a single contract for significant cost savings (the employees on one contract had significant downtime during the period the employees on the other contract were typically busy), we were prohibited from doing so because one contract was awarded to an Ability One contractor employing individuals with disabilities.

The incentives for Procurement Offices, therefore, is to focus on compliance and the easiest path to award rather than quality or value—and performance management systems often reflect this. My SES performance plan included an element evaluating me on whether I achieved the agency’s procurement goals for small and disadvantaged businesses—even though I was not in a procurement role—but the SES plans did not include anything about reducing costs, reducing cost overruns, ensuring on-time completion of contractor deliverables, or ensuring deliverables met quality standards and advanced the agency’s mission.

Furthermore, even when Procurement Officers go the extra mile to ensure quality and value (despite being disincentivized to do so), the cumbersome rules and documentation, plus the propensity of losing bidders to mount time-consuming bid protests, means that procurement actions can take 2 years or more for complex IT and national defense systems. In the interim, agencies face contractor shortages. And by the time many contracts are awarded, agency needs have often changed – new statutory requirements have been added, technological breakthroughs have rendered the requirements in the original RFP outdated or obsolete, or agency priorities have changed. But at that point, after thousands of hours of staff time issuing RFIs and RFPs, reviewing submissions, and adjudicating bid protests, neither Procurement nor program staff want to start over with a new RFP.

Beyond the statutory and regulatory impediments to expediting and improving procurement, there are also human capital challenges. Many procurement officials do not have right skills to effectively partner with program staff to design mission-aligned RFPs with clear goals, deliverables, timelines, and quality standards. (Exhibit A: The quality standards for one contract I reviewed and subsequently revamped was “Submit invoices within 3 days.”) And many do not have the skills or fortitude to write airtight contacts that hold contractors accountable for timely, quality delivery and then actually follow through if contractors fail to meet these standards. I once worked with Procurement to withhold 15% of the contract amount from a vendor who delivered an IT system that failed to pass user acceptance testing; the Procurement Official told me that was the only time she could recall successfully withholding payment.

The best way to rectify the issues with procurement would be to:

Increase flexibility to waive most of the requirements not related to quality/value when cost savings exceed a certain threshold or there is another compelling government interest;
Reduce barriers to solopreneurs bidding on contracts less than $100,000;
Reduce pass-through contracts, which add significant costs without adding significant value;
Increase the utility of contractor performance evaluations, which are currently nearly useless because procurement officials discourage program officials from providing honest reviews due to liability concerns;
Convene a panel of retired Federal procurement officials with a track record of excellence, plus economists, academic experts, and private sector procurement officials to determine how to re-focus procurement on maximizing competition, driving down costs, measuring and tracking quality, and holding contractors accountable; and
Revamp the Federal government’s human capital strategy for procurement. This would entail hiring individuals who are more innovative, creative, and customer-focused; more knowledgeable about crafting contract requirements; and more knowledgeable about crafting legally-binding contracts and implementing remedies for noncompliance. It would also require significant investments in training, and a revamping of performance management plans to emphasize cost savings, timeliness, and accomplishment of mission objectives.

If you could rebuild your program/agency from the ground up, without changing its overall scope and mission, how would it look different when you were done?

See my answer to question #3. Most of the changes are systemic, not agency-specific.

However, I would also recommend significantly reducing the number of political appointees. I saw a direct negative correlation between the number of political appointees at an agency and the quality and cost-effectiveness of our work. The most political agency I worked for (USDA) was the least efficient, and the agencies/bureaus with the least political appointees were the most efficient.

How could Congress do a better job of learning about programs in your area of expertise, with the goal of legislating more effectively?

Attend a town hall with grantees or beneficiaries, moderated by the Federal agency, to highlight success stories, as well as the statutory/regulatory/other barriers to accelerating success.
Accompany Federal staff on site visits.
Work in tandem with similar programs across multiple agencies to develop standardized outcome metrics, with a standardized measurement methodology, and fund a qualified third-party to collect and analyze data, ensuring consistency. This is critical to determining which program types and models drive the highest return on investment (ROI) and should be expanded, and which ones should be revamped or curtailed.
Create a mechanism to get feedback and suggestions from rank-and-file civil servants, not just political staff, but in a way that ensures anonymity and confidentiality. Written comments are great, but sometimes a two-way dialogue is the most illuminating. Set up “office hours” for your staffers to host 15-minute confidential conversations with civil servants and ensure there is no retaliation or attribution.

If you had 5 minutes to brief a Congressional committee about fixing bureaucratic inefficiency in your area, what specific legislative change would you recommend?

See above for comments on HR and procurement.

Is there anything else we haven’t asked that you would like to share about your career with the Federal government?

These questions focus on how to make the government more efficient, but we also need to focus on making it more EFFECTIVE. That means both stripping away many extraneous requirements, but also reframing and refocusing on the most important requirements in a way that ensures Feds (and recipients, and beneficiaries) comply with not just the letter of the law, but the spirit of the law.

To get the most “bang for the buck” and deliver a Federal government that is transparent, responsive, citizen-center, and results-oriented, I think we need to focus on four things:

Develop and implement a robust system of outcome measurement and reporting, overseen by a neutral third-party to ensure accuracy and consistency, distilled into a public-facing dashboard. Our current crisis if partly driven by the fact that the public does not know what the Federal government does, and why it is important; when things go right—crops infected with E. coli are identified and diverted from grocery shelves, fraudulent Medicare claims are detected and prosecuted, or workforce dollars train thousands of new nurses—the media does not report on them. Creating a Federal government results dashboard backed up by verified data would not only increase public trust in government, it would also ensure the alignment of Federal resources and strategic plans with these metrics—because “what gets measured gets done.” Such a system would also enable Congress to compare the relative performance of similar programs (i.e., all economic development programs across different agencies), which could drive future funding and investment decisions. It would also allow individual agencies to systematically measure and compare individual grantees’ performance and determine which meet the criteria for future funding.
Ensure a much more robust, transparent, accountable public comment process. Many federal grant programs require some sort of process by which states and cities are supposed to engage the public in determining which grant projects to pursue (or not pursue). However, in practice, this has become a “check the box” exercise that does little to meaningful engage the business community, NGOs, and the general public. Many local governments do the bare minimum, posting the plan on their website (which no one ever checks) or in the classified sections of the local paper (which no one ever reads). The projects that are submitted are therefore more reflective of local power brokers’ pet projects than local residents’ true preferences. Many local governments claim that they received zero public comments and therefore there is no public opposition to any of the projects…only for the Federal agency to be caught flat-footed later by media publicity. Instead, I would recommend that Federal agencies post these plans on Federal websites and manage an automated alert system whereby individuals or organizations can sign up for notifications when their local government posts a plan for public comment.
Ensure adequate competition in the bidding process for Federal contracts. This is the #1 way to reduce costs and increase value; everything else in peripheral.
Ensure audits actually provide actionable intelligence on fraud, waste, and abuse by revamping the conflict of interest-riddled single audit process. My experience in compliance has shown that the issues I uncovered were almost never noted by the auditors. And perhaps that is not a big surprise: the auditors were paid by the grantees (with pass-through Federal funds!) and so if they wanted to be hired the following year, they needed to deliver a clean audit! Single audits should be conducted by audit firms hired and paid by the Federal government, so that they are accountable to the Federal government. The Federal government could then review a small sample of these audits for accuracy and completeness, and bar audit firms from competing for Federal business if they do not meet quality standards.

What are your plans post government service?

To be determined!

Anonymous

VA, 16 years

Tell me about your role(s) with the Federal government. What agency did you work for, what programs were you working on, and what was the scope of your most recent role(s)?

GS14 Assistant Director, VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System (2018-2023) then left for Accenture. My answers will be based on my federal experience.

How frequently did Congressional or legislative intent/language come up in your work, and in what contexts?

Daily and constantly in the forefront of my mind. I was detailed to the VHA Chief Strategy Office and worked on the MISSION Act followed by helping to implement the PACT Act and toxic exposure screens across VISN 4

Can you describe a situation where conflicting, outdated, or overly-burdensome legislative requirements made your work/your program less efficient or less effective?

VBA (Benefits) and VHA (Health) were in two separate silos. An uptick in Veterans seeking enrollment and eligibility (VBA) should inform the VHA to hire accordingly. Instead, VA medical centers would wait to experience a backlog then attempt to hire. Always 9months or more out of sync and behind the 8 ball.

If you could rebuild your program/agency from the ground up, without changing its overall scope and mission, how would it look different when you were done?

Many more public private partnerships. Va is both too prideful and underinformed when it comes to working with partners. Most VA leaders are terrified of engaging with industry. This is a supreme disadvantage for VA pricing, solutioning, and more.

How could Congress do a better job of learning about programs in your area of expertise, with the goal of legislating more effectively?

HOST REVERSE INDUSTRY DAYS

If you had 5 minutes to brief a Congressional committee about fixing bureaucratic inefficiency in your area, what specific legislative change would you recommend?

Create a pot of money ($50M) and make it available to any federal employee or US citizen to submit ideas to make government leaner and more efficient. Instead of DOGE, appeal to the entrepreneurial spirit of everyone. It’s a political win — “we received over 1.2M submissions that could save government nearly $5T…” (etc). Could be thousands of winners by department and region.

If you had 5 minutes to pitch agency leadership about changes they should make within the agency, what specific changes would you recommend?

Hire people with private industry experience.

Is there anything else we haven’t asked that you would like to share about your career with the Federal government?

I hade a wonderful 16 year career with the federal government. I left 2 years ago on good terms in order to learn new lessons from industry. I applied multiple times to re-enter government and didn’t receive an interview invite for positions I was deemed eligible and qualified for. This makes me believe that private industry experience isn’t valued.

What are your plans post government service?

Private industry with possible return to federal government

SGM (Ret.) Michael Anthony Williams

GSA, Director, Supplier Accountability, 40 years

Tell me about your role(s) with the Federal government. What agency did you work for, what programs were you working on, and what was the scope of your most recent role(s)?

US General Services Administration

How frequently did Congressional or legislative intent/language come up in your work, and in what contexts?

Mission was routine and our guidance was the FAR and GSAM.

Can you describe a situation where conflicting, outdated, or overly-burdensome legislative requirements made your work/your program less efficient or less effective?

DOGE and arbitrary personnel policy changes without any thought.

If you could rebuild your program/agency from the ground up, without changing its overall scope and mission, how would it look different when you were done?

Policy Recommendations: What Must Change

Implement Role- and Mission-Based Return Policies – Return-to-office directives should be applied selectively, not uniformly.
Anchor Evaluations in Outcomes, Not Presence – Performance should be measured by results, not office attendance.
Protect Veteran, Senior, and Mission-Critical Employees – Prevent forced attrition among those whose institutional knowledge is invaluable.
Require Agency-Level Cost/Benefit Assessments – Mandate evidence-based evaluations of remote work impacts before policy shifts.
Incentivize Telework-Enabled Roles – Keep remote-eligible positions remote to broaden the applicant pool.
Mandate Stakeholder Engagement – Require consultation with employees and unions in policy development.
Track and Report Attrition – Agencies should transparently report losses attributable to rigid return-to-office mandates.

How could Congress do a better job of learning about programs in your area of expertise, with the goal of legislating more effectively?

Thank you for the opportunity to share my experience and perspective. I submit this testimony not only as my personal story but also as a reflection of a broader problem affecting our federal workforce.

My name is SGM (Ret.) Michael Anthony Williams, and I am a constituent of Oakboro, North Carolina. I proudly served this Nation for more than four decades—30 years in the United States Army, retiring as a Sergeant Major, and over 10 years as a civil servant with the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA).

My Personal Story

I joined the Army at 18 and rose through the ranks to Sergeant Major, one of the most senior enlisted positions. During my career, I earned a master’s degree, led soldiers through both peacetime and war, and endured the sacrifices that come with military service. I missed family milestones, holidays, and years of normal life, but I gave that service willingly. It was the greatest honor of my life.

When I retired from the Army, I was not finished serving. Like many veterans, I carried forward a strong sense of duty. Civil service offered me a way to continue contributing to our Nation. In 2011, I joined the US General Services Administration (GSA) as a remote employee, supporting mission-critical government contracting programs.

From day one, my role was designed for remote work. Over more than a decade, I proved that model worked. My performance was strong, my team thrived, and my contributions were never questioned. I mentored younger staff, managed contracts, and delivered consistent results. Remote work was not a barrier to success—it was a tool that allowed me to give my very best while saving the government money on office space and travel. That all changed with the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM), as a result of DOGE, directive requiring federal employees to return to the office five days per week. For me, this meant reporting to a regional office in Atlanta, hundreds of miles from my home in North Carolina.

Relocation was not feasible. A weekly commute of that distance was impossible. In practical terms, the policy gave me an ultimatum: uproot your life or walk away.

After 40+ years of public service, I was betrayed and forced into a retirement I never wanted.

I cannot overstate how devastating that was for me. I loved my job. I was dedicated to my mission. Most of all, I was committed to my team. Walking away from them was one of the hardest things I have ever done. They were not just coworkers—they were family. I had no plans to leave them. But the system left me no choice.

After decades of sacrifice—including shedding blood for this country—I never imagined my career would end this way. Instead of being valued for my service and experience, I was treated as expendable, a number on a spreadsheet; betrayed.

If you had 5 minutes to brief a Congressional committee about fixing bureaucratic inefficiency in your area, what specific legislative change would you recommend?

Drawing from my experience and the data above, I offer these recommendations to Congress and agency leadership:

Implement Role- and Mission-Based Return Policies: Return-to-office directives should be applied selectively, calibrated by actual mission requirements, not imposed uniformly. Jobs with no operational need for in-person presence must remain eligible for remote or hybrid options.
Anchor Evaluations in Outcomes, Not Presence: Performance metrics should be the basis for accountability—not physical presence. Employees must be judged on results, quality, and mission delivery, not by whether they show their badge.
Protect Veteran, Senior, and Mission-Critical Employees: Policies should specifically guard against forced attrition among long-tenured employees whose experience is not easily replaced. A tiered or phased approach for such individuals can preserve stability.
Require Agency-Level Cost /Benefit Assessments: Agencies should be mandated to analyze remote work’s impact on recruitment, retention, infrastructure costs, and mission outcomes before implementing return policies—similar to GAO’s recommendation. Government Accountability Office+1
Incentivize Telework-Enabled Roles: Encourage that positions which can be remote remain classified for remote work, to broaden the talent pool—especially in rural or underserved regions.
Mandate Stakeholder Engagement in Policy Development: Employees, unions, and front-line supervisors should be part of the conversation. Imposed mandates without consultation breed mistrust, morale loss, and unintended consequences.
Track and Publicly Report Attrition Linked to Return Mandates: Agencies should be required to report how many employees leave (voluntarily or involuntarily) as a result of return-to-office policies, and analyze demographic and mission impacts.

If you had 5 minutes to pitch agency leadership about changes they should make within the agency, what specific changes would you recommend?

I urge you: do not treat public servants as interchangeable parts. Behind every bureaucratic directive is a human being—someone with family, pride, experience, and dedication. We ask not for special treatment, but for dignity, respect, and reasoned policy. The government loses when it discards experienced public servants. The American people lose, too.

Is there anything else we haven’t asked that you would like to share about your career with the Federal government?

My hope is that my experience, combined with empirical data, can help inform policy that preserves both mission effectiveness and the dignity of public servants.

My name is SGM (Ret.) Michael Anthony Williams, resident of Oakboro, North Carolina. My public service spans more than four decades: 30 years in the U.S. Army (rising to Sergeant Major) followed by more than 10 years at the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA). My story is both personal and symbolic—of what is at stake when policies disregard human lives, institutional wisdom, and the complexity of public service roles.

Personal Narrative: A Career Forced to End Prematurely

From the moment I joined the Army, service became my identity. I earned a master’s degree while carrying the burdens of leadership in times of peace and conflict. I carried out my duty even when it cost me family time, health, and comfort, because I believed in a mission greater than self. When I transitioned to federal civil service in 2011, I accepted a remote role. For over a decade, that arrangement functioned effectively. I managed contracts, guided teams, met deliverables, and mentored others—all without needing to be physically present. My leadership and performance were never in question. Remote work allowed me to be productive while contributing cost savings to the government. Then came the OPM directive requiring employees to report to regional offices five days a week. For my role, this meant relocating or daily commuting hundreds of miles—a logistical and personal impossibility. The mandate offered no flexibility nor case-by-case review. It gave me a stark choice: abandon my home, my community, my team—or leave the role I loved. I had no intention of retiring. I believed I still had more to offer. My team relied on me; I counted on them. But the policy made continuation impossible. After more than 40 years of dedicated service, I was forced out—not by failure, not by lack of commitment, but by unyielding policy. The betrayal is still painful. My story is not unique; behind it are hundreds of federal employees pushed to walk away from missions they believe in, for no better reason than inflexibility.

What are your plans post government service?

Following the method in which I was betrayed by the government, the government has no need to know.

Anonymous

DOJ Office of Violence Against Women, Grants Management Specialist, 3 years civil service, 2 contract

Tell me about your role(s) with the Federal government. What agency did you work for, what programs were you working on, and what was the scope of your most recent role(s)?

I was a Grants Management Specialist with the Office on Violence Against Women’s Tribal Affairs Division. I managed multiple grant programs as well as complex cooperative agreements and a large grant portfolio. I also participated in multiple work groups including interagency workgroups like the JustGrants workgroup. I helped launch the flexible financial assistance for victims programs.

How frequently did Congressional or legislative intent/language come up in your work, and in what contexts?

Constantly, as we had to align our grant programs with the statutory language and annual appropriations.

Can you describe a situation where conflicting, outdated, or overly-burdensome legislative requirements made your work/your program less efficient or less effective?

While we are the Office on Violence Against Women, our programs serve everyone. Some of the language specifies women which meant that we were not able to address male victims in some projects. An example that comes to mind is the National Tribal Clearinghouse on Sexual Assault. The appropriation says women so even though there is a huge need to devote resources to male victims of sexual assault, we could not support creation or inclusion of those materials in the clearinghouse. Another example would be VAWA (and appropriation) language failing to address the epidemic of murdered and/or missing Indigenous women. Anything touching on that topic was limited to solely discussing it in the context of the VAWA crimes.

If you could rebuild your program/agency from the ground up, without changing its overall scope and mission, how would it look different when you were done?

We would focus on all aspects of gender-based violence - not just those enumerated in statute. More room for innovation and new programs is needed. We would also take training and technical assistance and completely overhaul the way it is being done. Training and technical assistance as it currently exists is stale and not moving the field forward. Rather than issuing cooperative agreements, we would do it on a contractual basis, allowing for more oversight and accountability. We would also be able to utilize Other Transactions for research/evaluation and pilot projects.

How could Congress do a better job of learning about programs in your area of expertise, with the goal of legislating more effectively?

Really listen to the Office. Instead of meaningless data calls that interrupt our work, set up regular briefings. Have a bipartisan committee that understands the issues surrounding gender-based violence.

If you had 5 minutes to brief a Congressional committee about fixing bureaucratic inefficiency in your area, what specific legislative change would you recommend?

Less restrictions on grant funds. Research shows that flexible financial assistance (FFA) is effective in helping victims gain safety and independence. Unfortunately, grant funds are so constrained that up until 2024, we were not able to even try to make FFA programs a possibility. In 2024 we released a NOFO for two FFA programs, one Tribal-specific and one with broad eligibility. Over 600 applications were submitted and we could only make a handful of awards. Application after application discussed the incredible need for this type of program. Think about a DV victim fleeing her abuser. She’s living in a shelter with her children, trying to find an apartment, and her car breaks down. Grantees cannot use grant funds to help her repair her car. Under FFA programs, they could. That car repair means she keeps her job, she earns enough to rent an apartment, she gets her kids to school, etc. It’s one step closer to her leaving her abuser for good.

If you had 5 minutes to pitch agency leadership about changes they should make within the agency, what specific changes would you recommend?

A victim is a victim. Grantees are terrified they will lose funding for assisting the “wrong kind of victim” under the current administration. This administration’s “out-of-scope” activities are a hindrance to helping victims. A transgender victim or “illegal” victim is still a victim.

Is there anything else we haven’t asked that you would like to share about your career with the Federal government?

Working for the federal government was the honor of a lifetime. The Office on Violence Against Women does critical work that benefits everyone in this country. Watching this administration diminish and disrupt our work has been devastating. Their actions have real life consequences for victims. Shelters and rape crisis centers are shutting down.

What are your plans post government service?

I plan to continue working in the gender-based violence field supporting all victims regardless of race, gender, sex, religion, immigration status, etc. Every victim deserves help.

Anonymous

SAMHSA, 1 year, 9 months

How frequently did Congressional or legislative intent/language come up in your work, and in what contexts?

Very little. The one time I asked my direct supervisor about why we operated a program in a way that seemed quite different from the legislation authorizing them, I was told that interpretation of Congressional/legislative intent was only in the purview of agency leadership, and I should not question how programs operate. I was asked not to raise the issue further. Later, I was told offhand by another staff member that the decision on how to handle this program was made from an Assistant Secretary from a prior administration. I was confused why the decision stuck even though administrations had changed.

Can you describe a situation where conflicting, outdated, or overly-burdensome legislative requirements made your work/your program less efficient or less effective?

My direct supervisor and another leader both told me I was not allowed to send surveys to my colleagues because of the Paperwork Reduction Act (I knew that was wrong, but this is the same direct supervisor who told me not to question leadership’s interpretation of the law). We were working on several internal administrative projects, and it was clear that our colleagues did not like the way it was going. I thought it would be helpful to survey them to get a sense of what they would like to see instead.

I was also told by a supervisor (who was not a COR nor COR trained) that I had “provided direction to the contractor” against contract law because I had asked the contractor what the purpose of the resource they were developing was...the project was going badly, and it seemed apparent no one had stopped to ask what its core purpose was).

My frustrations with these experiences led me to make a general suggestion to higher leadership that we develop a resource on how to navigate the laws and regulations related to our day-to-day work- something in writing to get everyone on same page. They asked why, and I gave the Paperwork Reduction Act example. They said that this should be left to a very small team of people who was chronically overworked and understaffed with very high turnover. I knew it would never happen. That team was so busy.

If you could rebuild your program/agency from the ground up, without changing its overall scope and mission, how would it look different when you were done?

I think there needs to be much more communication between agency staff and the general public. One time, my family was working on health advocacy efforts in their own community, and they mentioned that the city mayor may be interested in speaking with some of our staff to learn more about improving substance use services in their city. I thought this was an incredible opportunity to make a real on-the-ground difference, but my direct supervisor told me it was a conflict of interest. By the time I was able to get things approved by upper leadership, the mayor had lost interest and the window of opportunity was gone.

I was also told many times that the Federal Advisory Committee Act prevented federal staff from speaking with external stakeholders about health policies relevant to the agency. I understood that NACs and JNACs are supposed to serve that purpose, but I came to understand those as the same old voices we always hear from. Oftentimes, the advice they gave was very impractical, and I was shocked that people whose role was to inform the federal government did not seem to know how the federal government works.

I believe it is very important for public health to be community-driven, and if I could build the agency from the ground-up, I would say that external stakeholders need to play a pivotal role in informing that structure (beyond NACs and JNACs, who are a very small sample of people already entrenched in the federal government environment and unlikely to give new ideas).

How could Congress do a better job of learning about programs in your area of expertise, with the goal of legislating more effectively?

Congress should aim not to come across as punitive. There is great fear of GAO involvement, and the process is understood as a punitive one. As a result, the information given to Congress is highly filtered information that gives a distorted picture of reality.

Engagements with Congress can feel contentious, and that is ineffective. Even if members have strong feelings about an issue, they will be much more successful in their efforts if they remain professional and do their due diligence to understand how the agency operates. Wild assumptions and accusations may generate headlines, but that kind of showmanship shuts communication and transparency down very quickly.

If you had 5 minutes to brief a Congressional committee about fixing bureaucratic inefficiency in your area, what specific legislative change would you recommend?

The Paperwork Reduction Act makes data collection incredibly onerous and inefficient. When agencies have to submit their surveys to OMB and receive feedback by OMB staff who clearly don’t have expertise in the subject matter, it is very discouraging, and many longtime federal employees have given up on even trying to collect data because they feel it’s not worth the aggravation.

If Congress wants effective federal programs, it needs better data to verify that effectiveness. It will not get that data with the Paperwork Reduction Act as it currently is.

Also, I think there need to be stronger whistleblower protection laws. There is leeway in letting agencies interpret law, which is very important for ensuring that the laws make sense in the context of how that agency works. But, in practice, this leaves an incredible amount of power to a small number of people in those agencies who may or may not speak for the agency as a whole. I want to make it clear that this is not meant to be interpreted as a personnel complaint but rather highlighting a systemic issue in which the hierarchical nature of federal agencies is easily abused by a small minority of leaders in a way that is detrimental to the agency’s mission. The vast majority of my colleagues at SAMHSA were wonderful, competent people who are passionate about improving behavioral health at a population level, and I am in no way implying that the bad behavior of a few people reflects on the agency as a whole.

I think it would be nice if there was a law that forbids supervisors from requiring their staff to keep silent on any issue within an agency unless there is an explicit legal reason why that information cannot be shared within the agency. I understand most of what we do is seen as not to be shared externally, but I’m referring to internal information-sharing. Though it may not seem to be the case, there are many stories I am not sharing to try to maintain confidentiality for specific staff. The point I am trying to make is that there should be greater protections for junior staff and greater efforts to ensure that transparency can be maintained safely.

If you had 5 minutes to pitch agency leadership about changes they should make within the agency, what specific changes would you recommend?

I would recommend that they expand resources on how to navigate laws and regulations relevant to our day-to-day work (things like contract law, the PRA, etc.). They should be written in plain language and easily applied to our work.

There should also be more opportunities to engage with Congress beyond leadership alone. Perhaps something like polling staff for questions they wish to ask Congress and selecting a few questions that seem helpful and appropriate to ask.

Is there anything else we haven’t asked that you would like to share about your career with the Federal government?

I would stress that objectivity is of utmost importance for organizational effectiveness. We should not be making decisions that impact millions of lives without using quality data. Without quality data, objectivity is virtually impossible. So is effectiveness. Please make data collection more feasible and of better quality in the federal government.

I know I said a lot about a select few leaders, but I want to emphasize that my goal is not to pinpoint them but rather the problem that too many decisions are made based on individual opinions, which are subject to bias. We need more protocols and procedures that ensure that decision-making is objective. My interactions with upper leadership was limited, so I can’t say as much about them. Those I did interact with, however, were very kind and helpful. So, I in no way intend for this to be read as “SAMHSA leadership is corrupt and should be ousted” or other headline-generating content like that. Most leaders were very smart and cared greatly about helping people, even their own staff.

What are your plans post government service?

I plan to attend law school and pursue a career in healthcare management from the legal perspective.

Collin Ford

HHS/HRSA, Supervisor HRIT (HRSA Office of Human Resources), 27 years

Tell me about your role(s) with the Federal government. What agency did you work for, what programs were you working on, and what was the scope of your most recent role(s)?

US Department of Health and Human Services - Health Resources and Services Administration

Supervisory Human Resources Specialist GS-0210-14

2/2016-4/202

Responsible for leading team of as many as eight people, the AskHR Helpdesk, OHR intranet (SharePoint) content and communications, realizing cost avoidance by leveraging workflows in SharePoint instead of procuring expensive tools, providing input/analysis regarding Human Resources Information Technology (HRIT), coordination of HRSA input in the HHS HRIT community, reporting and analysis of HR, T&A, and Pay related data.

Built and maintained cohesive and collaborative team – fostered cohesion, team spirit, and morale through historic pandemic, 100% telework/remote, Return to the Workplace, and a Reduction-in-Force (RIF)
Realized approximately $10M in cost avoidance (procurement, licensing, O&M, upgrades, etc) by working with team and stakeholders to create workflows and systems on our intranet using SharePoint rather than purchasing expensive applications – automated about 50 tasks and work processes
Mentored senior team members to take leadership training to include two team members graduating from the prestigious Partnership for Public Service Emerging HR Leaders Program covering topics such as federal HR, building relationships/partnerships, and innovative problem solving
Coached team to cross-train to ensure functions covered in Continuous Operations (COOP) events and succession planning – groomed team members for increasing responsibility and leadership positions
Improved AskHR Helpdesk average response times from a little over two days in 2014 to 0.18 days in 2025 – resolved almost 50K issues for internal customers, job applicants, stakeholders, and the general public
Represented HRSA on all Department (HHS) HRIT Modernization efforts, HRIT Configuration Control Boards (CCB), OPM modernization efforts, and the HHS HRIT Application Showcase
Coordinated HR input in all OMB Cir A-123 audits (flowcharts, cycle memos, Enterprise Risk Management, etc)
Utilized reporting capabilities and data analysis to improve agency performance in a number of functional areas

US Department of Health and Human Services - Health Resources and Services Administration

Management Analyst GS-0343-13

12/2014-2/2016

Responsible for managing the AskHR Helpdesk, SharePoint content and communications, providing input and/or analysis regarding Human Resources Information Technology (HRIT), coordination of HRSA input in the HHS HRIT Refresh project and other special projects.

Revamped and streamlined Helpdesk procedures to ensure consistency/efficiency
Developed metrics and standardized reporting for AskHR
100% improvement in response time for critical categories
Provided input and created content for OHR intranet site and blog.
Created analyses and graphic representations to show current time card verification statistics and trends in varying granularity for each Bureau/Office as part of a Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) compliance effort
Assisted with the administration and management of OPDIV participation and involvement in H2R
Represented HRSA in several Communities of Practice (Communications, Tracking System, Data Quality Management, etc)
Participated in several requirements gathering sessions
As Chair, 2014 OHR FEVS Workgroup, analyzed the results of the 2014 EVS, and based on this analysis, worked collaboratively to develop recommendations to management for workplace improvement and enhanced employee engagement.
Drove discussions, ensured voices were heard while staying within limits of feasibility, and ensured project stayed on track
Created final report deliverable with recommendations to management
As Divisional Engagement Officer, represented HRSA in Department-wide initiative to promote employee engagement.
Collaborated with Labor and Employee Relations (LER), Office of General Counsel (OGC), Customer Care Services (CCS), Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) and other entities to coordinate resolution of complex issues pertaining to four settlement agreements. Also worked with LER to ensure appropriate language is included in all agreements.

US Department of Health and Human Services - Program Support Center

Supervisory Management Analyst GS-0343-13/14

4/2007-12/2014

Managed Special Initiatives and Metrics Team in Customer Care Services (CCS) – formerly Payroll Services Division (PSD). Responsible for mail and office operations, budget formulation, execution and cost center analysis for four cost centers, metric development, program management analysis and reporting, data calls from leadership, Continuous Operations Planning (COOP), Defense Civilian Pay System (DCPS) security access, DCPS union deduction and organization tables, the travel card garnishment program and Time and Attendance support and coordination for the Office of the Secretary (OS). Application manager and system administrator for Customer Care Service’s HP Openview Service Center incident management application. Served as de facto Deputy Director, and acted for Director in his absence.

Exceptional or Achieved Outstanding Results on all annual performance appraisals.
Managed formulation, execution and analysis of $18M budget spread across four fee- for-service cost centers -- consistently ensured cost recovery.
Remedy incident management application project manager for the Hire-to-Retire (H2R) Implementation Project Team.
Key player in Pay Subproject for H2R Functional Management Team.
Provided valuable input into the H2R pay system due diligence effort.
Participated on, and contributed to the H2R proposal evaluation team.
Led H2R incident management application fit-gap effort.
Assists Director and Account Managers in ensuring all Key Performance Indicators are met.
- 99% or more HHS employees paid accurately and on time.
- 95% of all EFT/Check Returns interfaced to pay provider within three days.
- Average problem resolution time is less than ten business days.
Planned and performed cost analysis project which resulted in approximately $800K savings over FY09 and FY10.
Managed the travel card garnishment program – recovered as much as $600K in past due balances, which has resulted in savings to the Department of over $1M in rebates.

US Department of Health and Human Services - Program Support Center

Program and Management Analyst GS-0343-12/13

11/2002-4/2007

Responsible for mail and office operations, budget formulation and execution, and cost center analysis, metric development, program and management analysis and reporting, Continuous Operations Planning (COOP) Defense Civilian Pay System (DCPS) security access, DCPS union deduction and organization tables and the travel card garnishment program. Application manager and system administrator for Payroll Service Division’s Peregrine/HP Openview Service Center incident management application. Project Officer, Project Manager or Functional Lead on several software enhancement projects.

Achieved Exceptional on all annual performance appraisals.
Published six monthly metric reports that measured PSD workload, error rate and potential root cause, as well as additional ad hoc reports as requested by management and customers.
Application manager and system administrator for Payroll Service Division’s Peregrine/HP Openview Service Center incident management application.
Project Officer, Project Manager or Functional Lead on several software enhancement projects. Developed and managed PSD’s Continuous Operations Planning (COOP).
Developed and implemented six monthly metric reports that measured PSD workload, error rate and potential root cause, as well as additional ad hoc reports as requested by management and customers.- - Designed and developed a myPay/Employee Express comparison slide show used Department-wide to train employees on the DFAS self-service HR/Pay solution.
Implemented EFT Child Support Payments for HHS - enabled states to disburse payments to custodial parents in days instead of weeks. Implementation originally projected to take a year, and it was done in three months.
Assisted in the research, planning, testing, data migration, implementation and evaluation of e-government initiatives in conjunction with the President’s Management Agenda for a Cabinet-level Federal agency.

How frequently did Congressional or legislative intent/language come up in your work, and in what contexts?

I spent my career in HR and Pay. Congressional and regulatory mandates came up quite frequently. Every pay-raise or law required system changes. One example was administrative leave changes several years ago which limited admin leave by a lot, and only under certain circumstances – this had a major impact on how things such as settlement agreements were processed. Additionally, in all the roles above, we had to respond to Congressional inquiries on everything from broad in scope to narrow; such as how much admin leave had been taken by employees of the agency in a specific period of time, to how much did one specific employee earn in a pay period, broken down, versus the previous pay period.

Can you describe a situation where conflicting, outdated, or overly-burdensome legislative requirements made your work/your program less efficient or less effective?

There are many instances of this. Democracy is messy. Any time Congress or someone at a very high level makes a decision, there is a ripple of unforeseen consequences. The example above regarding administrative leave is just one example. If I had to guess, I would say there were at least three instances a year that Congress caused significant work-arounds. Anything that causes mass backpay, such as a delayed pay raise or a shutdown costs millions.

If you could rebuild your program/agency from the ground up, without changing its overall scope and mission, how would it look different when you were done?

Require leaders to lead with empathy. Everyone I met in 27 years in Federal service and the Army was an adult. Most wanted to give their very best, and just needed to be set up for success. For some, their very best looked different than mine did, perhaps, but it did not decrease their value. I think many in executive positions forgot what it was like to be in the weeds. Things look different flying at 40,000 feet than when you’re down in the muck trying to get the work done in a multitasking environment.

How could Congress do a better job of learning about programs in your area of expertise, with the goal of legislating more effectively?

Know the mission and what they want out of it. Make unannounced visits. Go deep into agencies with a mission of learning. Shadow some people in mid-level supervisory positions. Attend some staff meetings and agency all-hands. Remember that there is a two-way relationship – the executive branch must answer to Congress to justify budgets, but we are also constituents, and especially for those in the DMV, we expect representation and transparency.

If you had 5 minutes to brief a Congressional committee about fixing bureaucratic inefficiency in your area, what specific legislative change would you recommend?

Put guardrails around the Civil Service. Efficiency cannot be all government is about. We’re a nation of laws, and that has to come first. After that, government must be inherently fair – as an institution, it has to earn trust back by serving marginalized and underserved populations as well as more fortunate ones. I don’t think “efficiency” should be goal #1. If you get nonpartisan expertise back in place, and get Congress to stop using the civil service as a punching bag for their (and/or whatever Administration’s) failed policies, the efficiency will follow.

If you had 5 minutes to pitch agency leadership about changes they should make within the agency, what specific changes would you recommend?

Other than my suggestions about ensuring leaders lead with empathy, I am afraid I don’t have much. I am fortunate to have worked for HRSA, and while I was there, overall leadership was about as good as it gets.

Is there anything else we haven’t asked that you would like to share about your career with the Federal government?

I think it would do a great deal for Federal employee morale if electeds would stop using them as political pawns. Everyone in the civil service is a public servant who took an oath to the Constitution. If a government employee says no to your illegal order, it’s because they have an obligation not because they don’t like your ideology, or you personally. I am proud to have taken the oath to the Constitution twice (as a US Army soldier and as a Federal employee), and I will always be proud of that service, and happy to have done it when the Oath mattered.

What are your plans post government service?

Right now, the job market is pretty saturated, and I have some medical treatments to deal with for the next several months. Since I did project management work throughout my career, I am going to do the classwork for a PMP, and think about looking for a job sometime in 2026. I am open to offers.

Randy Hart

18F, Acqusition Consultant, 23 years

Tell me about your role(s) with the Federal government. What agency did you work for, what programs were you working on, and what was the scope of your most recent role(s)?

I served as an acquisition strategist with 18F, a small digital services agency housed within General Services Administration. Our mission was to help federal agencies shape procurements in ways that could be competed among modern digital service vendors, with the goal of bringing more ownership of outcomes back in house rather than continuing the fully outsourced delivery models that have contributed to service delivery failures over the last 30 years.

Prior to 18F, I had been a contracting officer with the Department of Commerce and Department of Navy for 15 years, so I’d learned a lot about the status quo. I jumped at the chance to work for 18F when I saw their mission to advance better services through better technology approaches. I learned a ton in my 10 years there.

We were a cross functional team of product managers, engineers, designers, and procurement experts. Many of us came from private industry to bring modern digital service practices into government. After the failed launch of HealthCare.gov, we worked with dozens of agencies to show that user centered design, agile methods, and incremental delivery could make public services more effective and accountable.

A core part of our work was public. We did not just build. We documented and taught. Our “De-Risking Guide” was written to help government practitioners rethink how they buy and oversee technology. Although the original site was later taken down by GSA, the guide has since been preserved and republished by other governments around the world to keep these practices accessible:

UK - Preserved 18F De-Risking Guide - https://preserved.org.uk/guides.18f.gov/derisking-government-tech/index.html
US nonprofit - Digital Government Hub - https://digitalgovernmenthub.org/library/de-risking-guide-budgeting-and-overseeing-tech-projects/
Czech - https://www.profant.eu/2020/prirucka-rizeni-statnich-it-projektu.html

The lessons we learned remain just as relevant today as they were then:

Procurement in the right way, with product management and iterative development, can empower agencies to build services that actually meet public needs.
Cross functional teams, not siloed contracts, create lasting institutional capability.
Transparency and open guidance allow government to learn from itself and others.

18F was swept out of government in February 2025, which cut off important work midstream. That experience underscored a lesson I carry with me. Program resilience depends on institutionalizing better practices, not just good people. When critical knowledge is concentrated in individuals or political appointees, it is too easy to lose momentum when leadership shifts.

I hope future administrations and agency leaders see the value of sustaining these approaches beyond any one team or political moment. Government can deliver better, and we have already shown how.

How frequently did Congressional or legislative intent/language come up in your work, and in what contexts?

Legislative policy was a constant for us, even if it was indirectly tied to the work. We spent a lot of time ensuring that the congressional policies were at the forefront, and made sure we consulted with the policy experts at agencies that we were supporting as a key part of our teams.

Our role was to help agencies deliver services that were mandated or shaped by statute, and those programs were often created with very specific goals written into legislation. By the time those goals reached delivery teams, that intent was usually filtered through multiple layers of interpretation. We often saw a gap between what Congress intended and how the program was actually being implemented.

Many of the programs we supported were designed to provide direct benefits or services to the public. Legislative language would set broad objectives like increasing access, reducing barriers, or improving efficiency. But procurement and implementation processes inside agencies often defaulted to rigid, legacy approaches that made it hard to deliver on those goals. Our work focused on helping agencies rethink how they structured contracts and delivery models so they could get closer to what Congress actually intended.

At the same time, statutory and regulatory requirements like Section 508 accessibility standards, Federal Acquisition Regulation, Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA), and rules governing personally identifiable information were built into how we approached our work from the start. We treated these not as compliance checkboxes at the end of a project but as design and delivery requirements to be addressed up front. By doing that, we could help agencies align their implementation choices with both legislative intent and regulatory obligations in a way that was more consistent and sustainable.

Sometimes legislative language created constraints, like specific timelines or eligibility rules, that shaped technical implementation in very direct ways. In other cases, the intent was clear but the statutory language didn’t translate neatly into operational requirements. In those moments, delivery teams were left to make judgment calls, often without strong feedback loops back to policymakers.

What stood out most to me was how rarely the people responsible for delivery had direct visibility into congressional intent or the policymaking process. That distance often meant agencies delivered something that met the letter of the law but not the spirit. One of the most valuable things we could do was help program teams reconnect their work to the underlying policy goals.

If there had been stronger and more intentional connections between delivery teams and congressional staff, I believe many programs could have achieved their goals more effectively and with fewer unintended consequences.

Can you describe a situation where conflicting, outdated, or overly-burdensome legislative requirements made your work/your program less efficient or less effective?

FITARA is a good example of legislature that had the right intent but was implemented in a way that made delivery harder. By centralizing technology decision-making with CIOs, FITARA pulled authority away from the people closest to the work. That created bottlenecks, slowed down projects, and pushed agencies toward commercial off-the-shelf solutions that often didn’t fit their real needs. What was meant to create oversight ended up creating distance between decisions and delivery.

MITA standards are another example. They were supposed to help states build modular, flexible systems for Medicaid. Instead, MITA has turned into a box-checking exercise. States spend more time writing about their plans than actually building the systems people rely on. The burden isn’t even fully legislated. Much of it comes from how agencies interpret and operationalize guidance, which makes the problem worse.

In both cases, the gap isn’t in the intent. It’s in the execution. When policy is implemented in a way that prioritizes compliance over outcomes, it can actively get in the way of delivering better services to the public.

If you could rebuild your program/agency from the ground up, without changing its overall scope and mission, how would it look different when you were done?

If I could rebuild 18F from the ground up, I wouldn’t change its core mission. The model worked. What we didn’t have was consistency. We had constant turnover in leadership, which meant our message and our theory of change kept shifting. That made it harder to build momentum and tell a clear story about what was working.

The De-Risking Guide gave us a strong foundation. If anything, we should have leaned into that more and shared our success stories louder and more often. The work was good, but we didn’t always do a great job making sure others understood it.

If there’s ever another version of 18F, I’d want it to start with humility. The original team came in after the failure of HealthCare.gov with the belief that government could be “fixed” quickly. But real change in government is a long game. There’s a lot of talent already inside government, and the real work happens when you partner with that talent, not talk past it.

It took a few years to really understand that lasting change comes from both the top down and the bottom up. If we’d built that mindset in from day one, we could have moved even further, faster, and with more allies along the way.

How could Congress do a better job of learning about programs in your area of expertise, with the goal of legislating more effectively?

Congress needs to build and invest in its own digital service capability. It can’t rely entirely on outside vendors to explain technology to them, because vendors will always have their own interests in mind. There’s already the beginning of a digital service function in Congress, but it should be bigger, better resourced, and connected to people who actually understand how modern technology works.

That’s especially true now, with AI and other fast-moving tools. Congress needs people who can help them see both what’s possible and where the risks are. Otherwise, they’ll keep getting sold a bill of goods, either by the status quo vendors who profit from the way things are, or by the new wave of companies trying to capture government data for private gain.

Most importantly, Congress needs to understand that agencies should retain ownership of their missions. Technology should be something agencies control and understand, not something they outsource blindly. Good legislation can make that possible, but only if the people writing the laws actually understand the landscape.

If you had 5 minutes to brief a Congressional committee about fixing bureaucratic inefficiency in your area, what specific legislative change would you recommend?

If I had five minutes to brief Congress on fixing bureaucratic inefficiency in federal technology, I’d start with this: the government is giving away too much control over its own systems. The current emphasis on commercial off-the-shelf products has created massive vendor lock-in. Agencies end up dependent on private companies for critical infrastructure that should be part of the public domain. That makes delivery slower, more expensive, and harder to change when public needs evolve.

Congress can change this by passing legislation that prioritizes open source tools and open APIs in government technology procurements. If taxpayers are paying for a system, the government should own and control it. Open tools create competition, lower long-term costs, and give agencies the flexibility to adapt.

This isn’t about banning vendors. It’s about making sure the government doesn’t get trapped by them. The technology that powers public services should ultimately be owned by the public.

If you had 5 minutes to pitch agency leadership about changes they should make within the agency, what specific changes would you recommend?

If I had five minutes with agency leadership, I’d tell them that stability matters just as much as strategy. One of the biggest challenges we faced in government delivery was the amount of disruption that came with political transitions. When too much leadership is political, the mission gets interrupted every time an administration changes.

Agencies need a stronger layer of non-political leadership that can carry institutional knowledge and delivery momentum through election cycles. That means empowering career leaders who understand the mission, the technology, and the long-term goals of the agency. It also means creating clear roles and structures that make it possible for work to continue even when political leadership shifts.

That kind of stability doesn’t just protect projects. It protects the public who relies on those services. It’s the difference between starting over every four years and actually building lasting capacity inside government.

What are your plans post government service?

I’ve started working with a digital services team and focus on state work.

Cathy Hamilton

USAID, Foreign Service Officer, 17 years

Tell me about your role(s) with the Federal government. What agency did you work for, what programs were you working on, and what was the scope of your most recent role(s)?

USAID. Worked on programs aimed to strengthen democratic processes and good governance, combat human trafficking and promote human rights, build capacity of civil society organizations, strengthen agricultural production and marketing, improve food security and nutrition, build partnerships (government-NGOs-scientists-private sector-native peoples) to bolster conservation of biodiversity and developing sustainable economic growth in the Amazon.

How frequently did Congressional or legislative intent/language come up in your work, and in what contexts?

Our funding issued from legislative authorities, so many of our funding obligation and reporting documents had content sourced from or responsive to legislative acts and frameworks. We did reporting, annuals plans/budgets and Congressional Notification documents at a minimum once a year.

Can you describe a situation where conflicting, outdated, or overly-burdensome legislative requirements made your work/your program less efficient or less effective?

One of the heaviest burdens was related to ensuring the “flavor” of funding was appropriate to each given program, particularly with regard to secondary attributions, because these asks often came well after the programs were launched and underway. So for example, determining, halfway through a 4-year project, how to attribute 50% of it’s budget value was impacting small and medium enterprises. Leahy vetting was a pretty heavy process, though depending what partners we worked with, could be easier provided it was more familiar for them and thus a simpler exercise.

If you could rebuild your program/agency from the ground up, without changing its overall scope and mission, how would it look different when you were done?

I would probably recommend smaller budgets for activities that are not humanitarian assistance or health systems/commodities support such as bednets and ARVs etc. For purely development programs, often the most impactful programming is where the Agency was compelled to be creative to mobilize other resources through partnerships, acting more as a facilitator and catalyst than a large funder. The US brought other value to the table, such as clout, convening power, and expertise from US markets/economy. And I would emphasize trade and business as among the areas our assistance would be often the most potentially transformative, if done right. Also it was so valuable to have tools such as the Development Credit Authority, later rolled into the DFC - being able to compliment Treasury backed guarantees to partnerships had great potential for impact.

How could Congress do a better job of learning about programs in your area of expertise, with the goal of legislating more effectively?

Congress should find ways to understand importance of USAID’s work as it impacts the US’ position globally and how it interacts with or employs American businesses and institutions. Also Congress should identify ways to help American people know what the US does in foreign assistance, since this year most people had never heard of USAID when it was in the headlines.

If you had 5 minutes to brief a Congressional committee about fixing bureaucratic inefficiency in your area, what specific legislative change would you recommend?

I am concerned that foreign assistance has been entirely absorbed into the state department. The reason that USAID has had impacts over decades is largely due to its ability to operate over a longer timeframe and funding authority, allowing the Agency to partner with countries for development outcomes, which are impossible to achieve in 2-year political cycles, given that funding and contracting rules also make it impossible for USAID to issue awards/procurements with much efficiency (often taking 18 months to two years).

If you had 5 minutes to pitch agency leadership about changes they should make within the agency, what specific changes would you recommend?

Same as what I said in the question above about rebuilding the Agency.

Is there anything else we haven’t asked that you would like to share about your career with the Federal government?

I am traumatized by the carelessness and cruelty with which our Agency and its people were kicked to the street, demonized and maligned as though criminals or radicals. All our staff took an oath to defend the US and its constitution, and stood as envoys representing the values of democracy and freedom America historically represented to the world. If you talk to any US Mission where there was a USAID office/Mission, you can ask them what is different now that USAID is gone - in many cases it’s left a huge hole of what the US represented to partner countries, and changed the tone of our bilateral rapport to a more transactional, short-term nature, uninterested in the development and prosperity of others’ nations.

What are your plans post government service?

I am not sure, for now I am volunteering with the immigrant community and with democracy efforts locally.

April Harding

IRS, Director, User Experience Services, 2 years

Tell me about your role(s) with the Federal government. What agency did you work for, what programs were you working on, and what was the scope of your most recent role(s)?

I worked for the IRS, in digital product delivery. My official title was Director, User Experience Services -- leading the agency’s first-ever in-house User Experience (UX) team. With the IRA funding and the mission of digital transformation, we were charged with improving the user experience in all of IRS’ taxpayer-facing digital products (except Direct File, which was a separate team). In reality, you can’t fix UX/CX by inserting a few journey maps and metrics and design ideas into a broken process -- so I spent most of my time trying to understand the root cause issues of the bureaucratic machinery at IRS that has been producing such bad products compared to the private sector, and identifying solutions to those root causes. (In addition to my twenty years of digital product experience I also have a master’s degree in public policy.) Good news: I have answers for how to solve the whole of the problem. Bad news: I didn’t get enough time to act on those answers before I was pushed out of the organization.

How frequently did Congressional or legislative intent/language come up in your work, and in what contexts?

We often ran into issues with in-house bureaucrats choosing ways to interpret PRA and the EGov Act that made it very challenging for us to do the most basic task of recruiting and engaging with real users to get feedback on our designs. Wild overreach in interpretation of FISMA and NIST made it near-impossible for us to get the basic tools we needed to do our jobs (e.g. It took hundreds of people and hundreds of page of paperwork and over a year to get licenses for and access to Figma -- the industry standard software for web design -- for my team whose job was to design websites.) In addition to legislative language barriers, the IRS’s Internal Revenue Manual (IRM) is a big barrier because it codifies internal politics and consolidates internal political influence so that all practical decision-making within the organization currently resides with two long-term career executives.

Can you describe a situation where conflicting, outdated, or overly-burdensome legislative requirements made your work/your program less efficient or less effective?

The Taxpayer First Act caused the creation of a “Taxpayer Experience Office” that had no organizational mandate, no accountability, and no staff who had any experience in researching, documenting, or solving customer experience issues. The constant confusion between my team’s role and that team’s role created a lot of unnecessary churn. Congress must know by now that vaguely stated agency goals in legislation almost always lead to an agency standing up a program office that solves the problem in name only and provides no meaningful outcomes.

If you could rebuild your program/agency from the ground up, without changing its overall scope and mission, how would it look different when you were done?

The document pasted below was sent to Treasury to proactively answer that question on my last day of active duty. It is now public via FOIA. The original PDF version is linked from this news article: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/management/2025/08/amid-irs-personnel-shakeup-agency-stalled-for-months-on-customer-service-strategy/. The tl;dr is that a) the organization would be publicly and transparency held accountable for meaningful, quantitatively measurable outcomes and b) would have a matrixed org chart that aligns people to solutions instead of fiefdoms.

IRS 2029+

IRS 2029+ represents a bold reimagining of what the Internal Revenue Service can and should be: a modern, tech-enabled institution that efficiently collects every tax dollar owed, provides exceptional customer service, and fiercely protects taxpayer privacy. This strategy is not about incremental change—it is about fundamentally transforming the IRS into a high-performing, resilient organization that operates with the efficiency of the private sector while upholding the public trust that defines government service.

Vision

An IRS that efficiently collects every tax dollar owed.
An IRS that provides excellent customer service.
An IRS that fiercely protects taxpayer privacy while providing maximum transparency.

Strategy

The IRS has failed at achieving the above vision for decades, despite changes in administration, ebb and flow of resources, and repeated self-reported “successes.” We will not repeat the same mistakes as previous leadership. By 2029, the IRS will have succeeded because it has employed a bold new strategy that combines proven private sector business models with mature policy implementation practices – under courageous leadership that is willing to make the necessary dramatic changes to the legacy institution.

Collections

Vision: An IRS that efficiently collects every tax dollar owed.

Our collections strategy is focused on finally closing the “Tax Gap.” History shows that the voluntary compliance rate (VCR) remains steadily around 85% regardless of investments, or lack of investments, in taxpayer-facing tools or enforcement activities.1 The data demonstrate that the gap is primarily due to underreporting of assets by small businesses with fewer reporting requirements (e.g. rental or farm income). Therefore, we have selected a strategy that focuses our attention and resources on where the majority of the problem lies.

Collections Strategy FY26-29:

https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF11887 and https://bipartisanpolicy.org/explainer/breaking-down-the-federal-tax-gap/

Increase levels of and improve methods of enforcement for sole proprietor taxpayers, with a particular focus on the less-regulated income streams known to be conducive to the underreporting.

Customer Experience

Vision: An IRS that provides excellent customer service.

Our customer experience strategy is focused on zooming out from the arbitrary feature-level product enhancements that have been the focus of the organization for the past 25 years, and making smart investments that resolve the root causes of known customer pain points. It’s not about metrics like reduced hold time for calls to get refund status info – it’s about getting the refunds in the hands of people faster so they have no need to call in the first place. For the first time in IRS’ customer service history, we intend to cure the disease instead of just treating the symptoms.

Customer Experience Strategy FY26-29: Identify and document the big picture of jobs taxpayers need to do, then thoughtfully design and deliver the end-to-end services, across service channels, that best meet those needs.

Privacy

Vision: An IRS that fiercely protects taxpayer privacy, while providing maximum transparency.

Our privacy strategy is focused on reversing the trend toward immovable mountains of showy process related to privacy and security that, while well-intended, have had a chilling effect on utilizing data to serve taxpayers. To un-freeze our core asset of data while fiercely protecting taxpayer privacy, we must improve our security posture. A more secure environment for the right people, whether relevant IRS employees or taxpayers via self-service, to access the right data will allow us to use and show more data in order to deliver on our mission.

Privacy Strategy FY26-29: Combine and make more usable all existing data, while dramatically increasing our ability to safeguard it both at rest and in transit. Mature our authentication and authorization framework to ensure that only the right people see the right information.

Measures of Success

Unlike for-profit corporations with profit-and-loss bottom lines, federal government’s measures of success are hard to define. The conventional wisdom suggests that IRS’ bottom line must be tax dollars collected, because we are in the business of tax administration. However, we can affect neither the supply nor the demand for tax dollars. Compliance rates are the next obvious choice, though much of voluntary compliance is attributable also to factors outside our control (individual ethics, zeitgeist, ability to pay, etc.). We must continue to measure compliance, but it doesn’t tell the full picture of IRS success.

Beyond our compliance and enforcement activities, we have spent tens of billions of dollars and decades of work attempting to improve customer service and protect privacy because there is widespread agreement that these things also matter. Providing good customer service and protecting privacy are essential to maintaining taxpayer trust – shoring up each individual’s relationship with government and continuously proving that American democracy still works. Our organization’s role in that bigger picture of government matters enough to measure and hold ourselves accountable for it.

In the private sector, recent thinking has trended toward defining corporate responsibility according to a double or triple bottom line that attempts to measure value beyond revenue to paint a broader picture of a corporation’s success. While the particular content of those frameworks, such as ESG, have fallen out of favor, the idea of a more nuanced multiple bottom line has merit.

Going forward, the IRS will hold itself responsible for a triple bottom line: revenue collection, customer experience, and privacy protection.

Return on investment (ROI) will be measured as our ability to increase our success in these three areas divided by the total cost of doing so.

Success in IRS’ three bottom-line priorities is defined as achieving the organization-wide key results.

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)

Objective (Collections): Efficiently collect every tax dollar owed.

Key Results (Collections)

Voluntary Compliance Rate (VCR) is >85%.
Net Tax Gap is <5%.

Objective (Customer Experience): Provide excellent customer service.

Key Results (Customer Experience)*

>95% of taxpayers file quickly, accurately, and easily.
>95% of taxpayers receive all available credits and deductions, on time.
>95% of taxpayers pay the correct amount, on time.
>95% of taxpayers quickly receive a correct resolution to their issue.
>95% of taxpayers are satisfied with their issue-related interaction with the IRS.

Objective (Privacy): Fiercely protect taxpayer privacy while providing maximum transparency.

Key Results (Privacy)

Wrongful taxpayer data disclosures represent <1% of all taxpayer data disclosures.
Malicious external data access attempts are successful <1% of the time.

* The IRS User Experience Services (UES) team has already built a comprehensive CX measurement framework from which these key results are derived. They have also built a multi-tiered measurement framework tying these index-level metrics to individual customer interaction events, and a data platform to measure and report on them. These things are absolutely measurable both technically and conceptually; top-down direction to start measuring this way is the only missing piece.

From Delivering Output to Delivering Outcomes

At the core of this shift is human-centered service design, a methodology that prioritizes the experiences and needs of the people we serve. By understanding taxpayers’ journeys holistically—from filing and payment to issue resolution—we can design seamless, intuitive services, across channels, that meet them where they are, with minimal friction and maximum transparency. To achieve this, we will craft North Star Service Blueprints for each core service area. These blueprints will serve as strategic guides, illustrating the ideal taxpayer experience across every touchpoint.

North Star Blueprints are not static documents; they are living artifacts that drive prioritization and decision-making. They map the end-to-end journey of key services, highlighting pain points, dependencies, and opportunities for improvement. From these blueprints, we will derive user stories—clear, actionable descriptions of taxpayer needs that inform product development. These user stories will be the foundational building blocks for our engineering and service delivery teams, ensuring that every feature built and every process redesigned serves a specific, validated taxpayer need.

This approach guarantees alignment between vision and execution: instead of incrementally tweaking legacy systems, we will build around the actual experiences taxpayers deserve. In doing so, we move from reactive service delivery to proactive experience design—transforming the IRS into an agency that not only processes transactions but actively contributes to taxpayer trust and satisfaction.

As a taxpayer, I want the IRS to fill in information they already have about me into my tax filing software as well as information I provide, so that I can complete my filing more accurately, easily, and quickly.

Acceptance Criteria:
- Online tax form is pre-populated with documents and other information that the IRS has.
- The taxpayer has minimal fields to complete. The taxpayer can edit or change this information if needed.

US2: Dynamic Payment/Refund Estimation

As a taxpayer, I want to be able to see dynamically (any any point in the process) what I currently owe/or will receive back from the IRS (based on my answers and information entered into the online form) so that I can have confidence/trust in the process and am not surprised by the outcome.

Acceptance Criteria:
- System provides dynamic preview (and explaination of tax owed/refund due).
- System offers a live tax report that shows the complete calculation in plain language and whether there’s a refund or money owed This is updated as taxpayer enters and/or confirms information is accurate.

US3: Integration with Third-Party Data

As a taxpayer, I want the IRS system to connect to my bank, lender, employer or other third-party service in which I am associated with, so that I can directly import any relevant data from those services that might be helpful to filing my taxes.

Acceptance Criteria:

Taxpayers can import forms directly from their bank, lender, employer, or any other third-party app (such as Dropbox) if the IRS does not already have that form on file, such as 1099 and 1098s.

System back end offers security to have taxpayer authenticate into their third-party services and import into IRS systems.

Tactical Plan

We will achieve the above strategies, as evidenced by achieving the above measures of success, by employing the following tactics.

Collections

Start (Short-Term): Increase % of examinations of relevant tax filings.

Start (Long-Term): Partner with policymakers to create more meaningful reporting requirements for problematic income streams, and partner with banking industry to create innovative and robust monitoring systems for revenue flow through business bank accounts.

Stop: Pretending that investing in IT modernization or other taxpayer service efforts will meaningfully address the tax gap.

Keep: Maintain current levels and methods of enforcement for individual and large business taxpayers, to ensure voluntary compliance does not decrease.

Customer Experience

Start (Short-Term): Finalize and approve North Star Service Blueprints defining the future state goal for highest priority core services (filing, getting a refund, making a payment, and getting help). Then make those service blueprints true by implementing the necessary product and service changes across IRS.

Start (Long-Term): Dramatically restructure staffing, processes, funding mechanisms and accountability structures for digital product delivery, to allow for faster, better, cheaper product development.

Stop: Building any new features in taxpayer-facing products until OKR-driven product roadmaps have been defined.

Keep: The Jobs-to-be-done framework for planning and measurement of the customer experience, which is the keystone of the IRS’ digital service delivery model. (Resist the temptation to deliver things outside that core strategy.)

Privacy

Start (Short-Term): Document and centralize all existing data (taxpayer, operational, transactional, behavioral, attitudinal, etc.). Finalize a comprehensive authentication and authorization framework.

Start (Long-Term): Build appropriate and secure systems to move data within and outside the organization as required. Build appropriate authentication and authorization mechanisms to create more certainty about a user’s access to information.

Stop: Wasting time on aimless master file optimization efforts. (Cut our losses and build a new master file system.)

Keep: The concept of an enterprise data lake, especially for analytic and transactional data.

Organizational Structure

The IRS organizational structure has changed many times over the course of our history. However, each change has been an incremental adjustment based on the original concepts on which the agency was established – tax expertise, administration, and records management were the primary goal in an analog world. Now it’s 2025, and the world has changed. While we must still be the authority on taxes, sea changes in the technology landscape make effective administration and records management dramatically easier and more efficient. Taxpayer expectations have also changed, as the private sector financial services industry continues to innovate and provide more convenient, even delightful customer experiences.

In this new world, in order for IRS to finally catch up to its private sector peers – or maybe even leapfrog past them – we must reimagine our organization in a way that’s never been done before in federal government. We must:

Align our teams and our resources directly to the services we deliver.
Attract, hire, and retain the right kind of 21st-century technical talent to design and build our own mission-critical products.
Have qualified, experienced, empowered product owners lead product teams.
Insist on a new standard of employee performance that is overseen by specialized leadership who have earned their leadership roles by demonstrating exceptional performance in their relevant disciplines (management is not its own discipline).

A matrixed organizational structure, in which product teams are aligned to service delivery leads and each discipline within the product team also reports to a director of that discipline, will set IRS up to achieve the true digital transformation we need.

Cultural Transformation

It is often assumed that to change a bureaucracy you simply need to replace the “wrong” people with the “right” people. However, the opposite is proven to be true2. The systems of accountability and the constraints of an organization create a culture. The culture determines the behavior of the people. If we put new people into a broken bureaucratic machine, those people will end up producing the same output as the people they replaced – regardless of job title, competence, or political leanings.

Therefore, we intend to address the root causes of IRS’ bureaucratic failures by creating new systems of accountability and different constraints.

Close the Policy Implementation Gap

We will always be financially constrained by Congressional appropriations and regulatory requirements. But going forward we intend to cultivate a better working relationship with policymakers – not to influence policy choices, but to help policymakers understand the impact of their word choices on our organization. A significant portion of bureaucratic overhead is due to unforeseen consequences of well-intended policy wording. As the implementers of the legislative branch’s policy choices, we will help them foresee the impact of their language and provide clarity about how to best achieve policy goals effectively and efficiently.

Repair the Federal Workforce Relationship

The federal workforce has been damaged by the swift and dramatic personnel actions that took place in early 2025. These changes were intended to improve the workforce, but we caused harm to the remaining public servants in the IRS that we did not intend. Going forward, we will provide more transparency to our employees to explain what actions we take that affect them, and why. We also commit to a humane and respectful approach to change management. The work of serving the public is hard, and it is important. While more will be asked of our employees, we believe the workforce will rise to the occasion, and we will provide the support and resources to help them do so.

Radical Transparency About Success

For too long, the IRS has written reams of justifications, press releases, and Congressional updates claiming victory for our great successes. We celebrate larger average tax refund amounts – even though we just process the paperwork and cannot determine the numbers. We celebrate IT modernization – even though we still haven’t produced a backend or frontend technology experience that is at the minimum standard of any private sector business. We celebrate custom service improvements and reduced taxpayer burden – even though the average person on the street still has a negative opinion about the IRS and what it is like to interact with us.

The dissonance between what we claim as success and what truly feels like success to most reasonable people must end.

Measuring the real, meaningful outcomes described above – instead of activity/output – will allow us to first acknowledge our shortcomings in a quantitative way and then allow us to achieve real success as we move toward our key results. Publicly showcasing these numbers, how we calculate them, and what we are doing to improve them will keep us accountable to ourselves and the public.

Change Management

Change management must be prioritized as a strategic capability, not an afterthought. To lead this transformation, the IRS will employ a structured change management approach rooted in transparency, engagement, and adaptability. Leaders will be equipped with the tools and training necessary to guide their teams through periods of disruption, while frontline employees will have opportunities to upskill and reskill to meet new demands. Change champions within the organization will drive momentum, model desired behaviors, and foster a culture that embraces experimentation and iteration. Critical to this effort is the alignment of performance metrics and incentives with the strategic goals outlined in IRS 2029+, ensuring that every employee understands their role in achieving our collective vision.

Conclusion

Achieving this vision will require disciplined execution, courageous leadership, and a commitment to breaking free from legacy constraints. By embracing new business models, modernizing our technology and infrastructure, and relentlessly focusing on data-driven decision-making, the IRS will close the tax gap, improve the taxpayer experience, and set a new standard for transparency and security in federal government operations.

IRS 2029+ is more than a strategy—it is a commitment to the American public that their tax agency can and will meet the challenges of the 21st century with integrity, innovation, and unwavering dedication to service. Now is the time for bold action and collective accountability. Every leader, manager, and employee at the IRS has a role to play in driving this transformation forward. Together, we will build an IRS that not only meets expectations—but redefines them.

How could Congress do a better job of learning about programs in your area of expertise, with the goal of legislating more effectively?

You don’t have to learn about the programs to legislate effectively. You simply have to be more precise with the desired outcome. More oversight and involvement and words and paperwork will only make the problem worse, but setting meaningful Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) in legislation will eliminate space for bad actors to hide and waste taxpayer time/money. See example below. (Also: “Bureaucracy” by James Q. Wilson should be required reading for every legislator in their first term.)

If you had 5 minutes to brief a Congressional committee about fixing bureaucratic inefficiency in your area, what specific legislative change would you recommend?

Define a measurable bottom line for each agency so that ROI can be measured, and then legislate OKRs supporting that bottom line. For example: Going forward, the IRS will hold itself responsible for a triple bottom line: revenue collection, customer experience, and privacy protection. Return on investment (ROI) will be measured as our ability to increase our success in these three areas divided by the total cost of doing so. Success in IRS’ three bottom-line priorities is defined as achieving the organization-wide key results.

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)

Objective (Collections): Efficiently collect every tax dollar owed.

Key Results (Collections)

Voluntary Compliance Rate (VCR) is >85%.
Net Tax Gap is <5%.

Objective (Customer Experience): Provide excellent customer service.

Key Results (Customer Experience)*

>95% of taxpayers file quickly, accurately, and easily.
>95% of taxpayers receive all available credits and deductions, on time.
>95% of taxpayers pay the correct amount, on time.
>95% of taxpayers quickly receive a correct resolution to their issue.
>95% of taxpayers are satisfied with their issue-related interaction with the IRS.

Objective (Privacy): Fiercely protect taxpayer privacy while providing maximum transparency.

Key Results (Privacy)

Wrongful taxpayer data disclosures represent <1% of all taxpayer data disclosures.
Malicious external data access attempts are successful <1% of the time.

If you had 5 minutes to pitch agency leadership about changes they should make within the agency, what specific changes would you recommend?

Read my IRS 2029+ plan and start there: define the bottom line, define the OKRs, replace the old org chart with one aligned to those objectives and staffed with qualified, experienced people who are more than just bureaucratic automatons.

Is there anything else we haven’t asked that you would like to share about your career with the Federal government?

I didn’t want to leave.

What are your plans post government service?

I’d like to find a way to get back to solving the problems I was beginning to solve in Year Two.

Scott Shuchart

ICE, Assistant Director for Regulatory Affairs and Policy, 13 years

Tell me about your role(s) with the Federal government. What agency did you work for, what programs were you working on, and what was the scope of your most recent role(s)?

ICE - political appointee

How frequently did Congressional or legislative intent/language come up in your work, and in what contexts?

Many times a month, both prospectively - figuring out what we were going to ask for and get through appropriations - and in interpreting existing law. In immigration, the authorizing committees have been asleep for decades, so nearly all substantive action happened through appropriations.

Can you describe a situation where conflicting, outdated, or overly-burdensome legislative requirements made your work/your program less efficient or less effective?

Every minute of every day. The immigration enforcement system was, until this summer, beset by a fundamental mismatch between commitments to (a) humanitarian protection and (b) harsh enforcement with (c) wildly inadequate resources to do either, much less both. Since the OBBA, Congress has decided to fully fund (b) and abandon (a). Which is worse.

If you could rebuild your program/agency from the ground up, without changing its overall scope and mission, how would it look different when you were done?

Abolish ICE. Move HSI into DOJ (and reorganize FBI, ATF, DEA, HSI more logically!). Merge ERO into CBP (but move SEVIP to USCIS). Fire everyone hired at ICE since 1/20/25 and start over. Move immigration detention into an entity containing the current BOP and the detention function of the US Marshals, an independent detention trustee who can foreground safe custody of detainees and efficient use of space. Align enforcement functions (USBP and ERO have overlap) under actual legal control and professionalize the removal process. Move immigration prosecutors back to DOJ, and move immigration courts to an independent agency, ideally under Article III.

How could Congress do a better job of learning about programs in your area of expertise, with the goal of legislating more effectively?

Actually understand the whole system, instead of pretending that business immigration and border security are the only issues it can ever deal with.

If you had 5 minutes to brief a Congressional committee about fixing bureaucratic inefficiency in your area, what specific legislative change would you recommend?

Professionalize the immigration courts in part by funding counsel for aliens

If you had 5 minutes to pitch agency leadership about changes they should make within the agency, what specific changes would you recommend?

Abolish ICE, it was idiotic before Trump 2 and is unsalvageable now.

Is there anything else we haven’t asked that you would like to share about your career with the Federal government?

Was it satisfying? No. Did I have any authority? No. Was I listened to? No. Were there channels to escalate concerns? Also no. Does it matter if an agency ever has senate-confirmed leadership? It does matter; 8 years without a single confirmed leader is bad.

What are your plans post government service?

Private practice.

Anonymous

EPA, Physical Scientist

Tell me about your role(s) with the Federal government. What agency did you work for, what programs were you working on, and what was the scope of your most recent role(s)?

US EPA, physical scientist doing stormwater and wastewater research and managing key tools that a type of utility and proprietary software companies rely upon.

How frequently did Congressional or legislative intent/language come up in your work, and in what contexts?

All the work under clean water act

Can you describe a situation where conflicting, outdated, or overly-burdensome legislative requirements made your work/your program less efficient or less effective?

Just the whole funding structure and popularity of programs. Some important things were put aside and more news-worthy items were made priorities. For example- yes pfas is important, but stormwater continues to be an issue. Climate change is real and that not being addressed was also problematic to fundamental programs. How do you design stormwater controls and pipes if you think the 10 year 24 hour storm of today is the same as the 10 year 24 hour storm of yesterday?

If you could rebuild your program/agency from the ground up, without changing its overall scope and mission, how would it look different when you were done?

No top-down management. It is fragile and was actually why everything was dismantled so effectively by this administration or could be dismantled by any bad actor with access to it. Additionally, for some reason only one person’s opinion, [redacted], mattered in distributing funds for projects. Something good was that the research was separate from regulatory branch. So if something needed to be explored to protect the public, researchers could say that they are not the regulatory branch of EPA and the work could inform regulation without getting anyone “in trouble” during research studies.

Created more collaboration and problem-solving type of mentality rather than trying to hide (sometimes even good things) so they could avoid potential regulatory consequences. Currently, the research arm of EPA has been merged into the regulatory arm. This will be less effective in actually identifying new issues and working with communities.

How could Congress do a better job of learning about programs in your area of expertise, with the goal of legislating more effectively?

I think that offering congress quarterly seminars with short-courses on certain topics could help them to better understand why funding is needed for certain programs and how that might be leveraged with other efforts collaboratively. For example, they might get a lesson on stormwater pipe design and at the end of that lesson they would have a socratic discussion about how this intersects with other things like climate change, manufacturing, road planning, etc… or maybe they learn about harmful algal blooms and then discuss how this affects things like tourism, fisheries, etc…

If you had 5 minutes to brief a Congressional committee about fixing bureaucratic inefficiency in your area, what specific legislative change would you recommend?

I think there are many overlapping softwares, tools, and web-applications across EPA, ACE, USGS, NOAA, etc. I think it today’s era, there should be an agency that works collaboratively with all agencies that handles US government-cleared open source software, other tools, and web-applications.

If you had 5 minutes to pitch agency leadership about changes they should make within the agency, what specific changes would you recommend?

Funding was too “clicky” - depended on the whims of a couple people and their personal relationships were strongly weighted. That needs to stop.

Is there anything else we haven’t asked that you would like to share about your career with the Federal government?

Middle managers do nothing to advance the agency. They are useless and their jobs can be automated. They are all mostly just waiting to be promoted and will do whatever their boss says to do, even if it is not legal like what happened to probationary employees or telling people to “use the right” bathroom when their rights were still protected.

They stamp time cards and despite not knowing what you work on or helping to secure funding for important projects, they have the power to promote you or not. They read over some of your technical documents when they lack the technical expertise in your area, which slows down and devalues EPA’s clearance process.

What are your plans post government service?

I got a job in the private sector.

Paula Randler

USDA Forest Service, Supervisory Program Specialist, 17 years

Tell me about your role(s) with the Federal government. What agency did you work for, what programs were you working on, and what was the scope of your most recent role(s)?

USDA Forest Service, Enterprise Program (an internal “consulting group” dedicated to supporting critical projects around the country). Supervisory Program Specialist, overseeing a small and vibrant staff, and assisting National level leaders to manage pilot projects and test new ideas.

How frequently did Congressional or legislative intent/language come up in your work, and in what contexts?

Approximately monthly, but it was indirect: often, a project I was working on had been authorized by Congressional language and we would reach back to review that language to stay on track.

Can you describe a situation where conflicting, outdated, or overly-burdensome legislative requirements made your work/your program less efficient or less effective?

Yes, a lot of FS staff have trouble finding affordable housing close to work (think: near ski resorts, mountain refuges for the wealthy, and most places in CA or CO). Field staff often make less than a living wage for such a place (whether they are full time, part time, or seasonal). We had a lot of Forest Supervisors trying to get creative with how to house staff (Forest Supervisors and District Rangers are the ones who have to hire and train new workers repeatedly; workers quit because they can’t afford to live nearby, and might decide not to live in their vehicles as some do), but there were/ are policies in place that would not allow some of the innovative solutions to be tested. Forest Supervisors have some great ideas - we should ask them how to solve stuff.

If you could rebuild your program/agency from the ground up, without changing its overall scope and mission, how would it look different when you were done?

I’ll leave this to Program Managers - I used to run programs: regionally, the Forest Stewardship Program, Forest Legacy Program, and Urban & Community Forestry Program. If these programs still exist in a few years and they are being rebuilt so they can continue to do good, I would love to be called to facilitate a discussion.

How could Congress do a better job of learning about programs in your area of expertise, with the goal of legislating more effectively?

More elected officials need to be trained in the sciences. I’m not suggesting that they can’t be elected unless they have a background in science, but I am suggesting that they need a base-line level of knowledge and experience. Like a freshman orientation, if they don’t come in with a Bachelors in Science, or at least some AP classes. And regardless of that wishful thinking, they should get out on the ground more with civil servants doing the work. Every time we had a Congressional field trip with electeds and staff, the resulting conversations and policies seemed to come out better for the land and people that depend on the Forests. Showing up on the ground to see a project really makes things better.

If you had 5 minutes to brief a Congressional committee about fixing bureaucratic inefficiency in your area, what specific legislative change would you recommend?

As concerned as I am about forest policy, I’m much more interested in ensuring health care for all. That’s the only thing I would want to talk to a Committee about.

If you had 5 minutes to pitch agency leadership about changes they should make within the agency, what specific changes would you recommend?

Much much more supervisory training and NOT online AgLearn training. I received coach training within the Agency and in 6 years, had dozens of internal clients who only wanted to talk about job satisfaction and relationships with peers and chain of command. We can do better for employees than asking them to do more with less. The future is calling, and civil servants deserve to be fulfilled, healthy, and productive at work. No lunchtime meditation sessions and empty promises. Provide real, robust career support to ensure high quality supervision and a lifetime of fulfillment for government workers.

Is there anything else we haven’t asked that you would like to share about your career with the Federal government?

I didn’t want to leave. My “voluntary” departure was a forced choice. The Administration proved to me that the cruelty was the point and I left for my health, my family, and the good of my career. Others made a different choice, and I fully support them. The Administration’s treatment of civil servants is psychological warfare - it’s not like psych warfare - it IS. And it should be punished like a crime. Feds will be undoing this trauma for years to come.

What are your plans post government service?

I am set up at PaulaRandler.com and eagerly supporting mid-career professionals in exploring their own job satisfaction journey. I hope to come back to government service in the future when it’s safe.

Vikki Stein

USAID, Country Representative/USAID Botswana, 30 years

Tell me about your role(s) with the Federal government. What agency did you work for, what programs were you working on, and what was the scope of your most recent role(s)?

I began my public service with the Peace Corps, which shaped the trajectory of my entire career. Living and working at the community level gave me firsthand insight into how development programs touch people’s daily lives. It also taught me humility and the importance of partnership—listening first, then working alongside local communities to identify solutions. That early experience really grounded my later work in government service.

I went on to serve for nearly 30 years in international development, most of that with USAID as a Foreign Service Officer. My work focused on designing and overseeing programs in fragile and conflict-affected states. For example, I directed health programming in South Sudan, where maternal mortality was among the highest in the world; I led gender initiatives in Afghanistan at a pivotal time for women’s rights; and I worked in Egypt during the Arab Spring, when programs had to be quickly adapted to fast-changing political realities.

During my career with USAID, I was selected to get a master’s degree at the School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth. I focused on strategic planning and on integrating civilian and military approaches to complex security challenges. My work at SAMS built on my decades of experience in fragile and conflict-affected environments, strengthening my ability to bridge development, diplomacy, and defense perspectives. I was able to add an essential interagency element to the classroom setting with our future military leaders.

Most recently, I was the USAID Representative to Botswana. I served as the primary development advisor to the U.S. Embassy and Ambassador in Botswana and represented USAID to the diplomatic and development community. I saw 22 staff, the bilateral health and PEPFAR portfolios, our operating expense and program budgets, and a range of regional activities from USAID/Southern Africa with touchpoints in Botswana. I fostered partnerships with diverse stakeholders to advance economic growth, clean energy, health, human rights, and environmental protection. I represented USAID locally to the Southern African Development Community (SADC), and served as Mission Disaster Relief Officer and the Civilian-Military Coordinator.

How frequently did Congressional or legislative intent/language come up in your work, and in what contexts?

Congressional and legislative intent was a constant and central consideration throughout my career. It informed nearly every aspect of my work, from program design and budgeting to implementation, monitoring, and reporting. Most commonly, this took the form of appropriations language, directives contained in committee reports, sectoral earmarks, and policy priorities articulated through authorizing legislation.

In practice, my teams and I were responsible for interpreting legislative intent and translating it into operational programs that were both compliant and effective. This was particularly complex in fragile and conflict-affected environments, where rigid legislative requirements sometimes conflicted with rapidly changing conditions on the ground. Balancing accountability to Congress with the need for flexibility was a recurring challenge and a core part of my role as a senior officer.

I also worked directly at the interface between Congress and field implementation. I regularly helped organize and support Congressional delegations and staff visits, including designing site visit itineraries that accurately reflected program goals, constraints, and outcomes. During these visits, I ensured that Congress and staff heard directly from project participants. I regularly represented USAID programs to Members of Congress and staff during visits, briefing them on program impacts, explaining how legislative requirements shaped our work, and responding to questions about effectiveness, risk, and oversight. These engagements were critical opportunities to build mutual understanding and to provide Congress with a realistic picture of how policy decisions translated into results on the ground.

Beyond site visits, legislative intent frequently came into play in written and verbal communications with Washington, including responding to Congressional inquiries, preparing briefing materials, and adjusting program approaches in response to evolving Congressional priorities. Overall, Congressional intent was not an abstract concept—it was a daily operational reality that directly shaped how and what we delivered in the field.

Can you describe a situation where conflicting, outdated, or overly-burdensome legislative requirements made your work/your program less efficient or less effective?

One recurring challenge I encountered was the cumulative burden imposed by overlapping and sometimes conflicting legislative and reporting requirements associated with different funding streams. While each requirement was reasonable in itself, together they created inefficiencies that reduced our ability to focus on program effectiveness.

For example, health and gender programs were often funded through multiple Congressional accounts, each with its own reporting timelines, indicators, and compliance requirements. Even when the programs served the same communities and objectives, teams were required to track and report similar information in slightly different formats to meet separate legislative mandates. This led to significant duplication of effort, diverting staff time and resources away from program monitoring, learning, and adaptation.

In conflict environments, these requirements were especially burdensome. Security constraints limited travel, staff turnover was high, and conditions changed rapidly, yet reporting frameworks were often inflexible and assumed stable operating environments. In some cases, outdated legislative requirements constrained our ability to reallocate resources or adjust implementation approaches in response to emerging needs, even when evidence indicated that such changes would improve outcomes.

As a result, programs sometimes became less responsive and less efficient—not because of a lack of accountability, but because administrative compliance took precedence over adaptive management. Streamlining and harmonizing legislative requirements across accounts, while preserving robust oversight, would have significantly improved both efficiency and effectiveness in the field.

Another persistent challenge was the limited availability of flexible funding. Very little assistance was not already tied to a specific earmark or funding stream, which made it difficult to respond to a partner country’s expressed needs in a timely and holistic way. This was especially acute in many African contexts, where the majority of available funding was HIV-related. While HIV programs achieved extraordinary life-saving results, the heavy concentration of resources in a single sector constrained our ability to address related priorities—such as health systems strengthening, maternal health, nutrition, or economic resilience—that partner governments often identified as equally urgent. This misalignment sometimes reduced overall effectiveness by forcing programs to fit funding categories rather than allowing funding to respond to country-driven needs.

If you could rebuild your program/agency from the ground up, without changing its overall scope and mission, how would it look different when you were done?

If I were rebuilding USAID from the ground up today, I would preserve its core mission—advancing development, humanitarian assistance, and U.S. national interests—but redesign the agency to be more flexible, integrated, and field-driven.

First, I would significantly increase funding flexibility. Development challenges do not fit neatly into sectoral silos, particularly in fragile and conflict-affected environments. A rebuilt agency would rely less on rigid earmarks and more on adaptable funding authorities that allow missions to respond to country priorities as they evolve, while still maintaining strong accountability and oversight.

Second, I would break down internal silos. USAID’s current structure often separates health, education, governance, economic growth, and other sectors into distinct funding and management streams, even though these issues are deeply interconnected on the ground. A redesigned agency would promote integrated, cross-sectoral teams and incentives for collaborative planning and budgeting, especially in high-risk or rapidly changing contexts.

Third, I would elevate and institutionalize local partnership. While USAID has made progress in localizing assistance, a ground-up rebuild would place local institutions—government, civil society, and private sector actors—at the center of program design and implementation from the outset. This would reduce over-reliance on large international contractors and improve sustainability and ownership.

Fourth, I would streamline compliance and procurement processes. Current systems are overly complex and risk-averse, consuming disproportionate staff time. Simplified, risk-based approaches—especially for trusted partners and low-dollar awards—would improve efficiency while preserving safeguards against fraud and misuse.

Finally, I would invest more deliberately in people. USAID’s greatest asset is its workforce. A rebuilt agency would prioritize staff development, cross-sector rotations, and well-being, particularly for those serving in hardship and high-threat posts. Retaining institutional knowledge and rewarding innovation would strengthen the agency’s ability to deliver results over the long term.

In short, rebuilding USAID would mean shifting from a system optimized for control and compliance to one optimized for learning, adaptation, and impact—without losing the transparency and accountability that Congress and the American public rightly expect.

How could Congress do a better job of learning about programs in your area of expertise, with the goal of legislating more effectively?

Congress could strengthen its ability to legislate more effectively by creating more consistent, structured opportunities to learn directly from those implementing and affected by programs, both overseas and in the United States. While hearings and formal briefings are important, they often provide only a partial picture of how programs function in complex environments.

Field-based learning is especially valuable. Congressional delegations and staff visits—both in person and virtual—allow Members and staff to see firsthand how legislative requirements shape program design and delivery. These visits are most effective when they include conversations not only with senior leadership, but also with technical officers, local partners, and beneficiaries who can speak to implementation realities, tradeoffs, and constraints.

In addition to overseas engagement, Congress could deepen its understanding by regularly engaging with USAID’s domestic stakeholders in their home states and districts. This includes implementing partner staff, land-grant universities conducting agricultural and health research, farmers and cooperatives supporting food security programs, and small businesses developing products and technologies used in USAID programming. These stakeholders see how legislative decisions affect innovation, procurement, compliance costs, and workforce development, and they can offer valuable insights into how policy choices reverberate through the U.S. economy as well as overseas programs.

Congress could also benefit from deeper, sustained engagement with mid-level technical experts within agencies. These staff often have the most direct knowledge of what works, what does not, and why. Regular, informal briefings—separate from crisis-driven inquiries—would help build institutional understanding and reduce reliance on static reporting products that may not capture rapidly changing conditions, particularly in fragile or conflict-affected settings.

Finally, Congress could create stronger feedback loops by systematically reviewing how legislative requirements perform in practice. Periodic assessments of earmarks, reporting mandates, and compliance rules—based on field experience and stakeholder input—would allow Congress to refine or retire provisions that are outdated or duplicative, while preserving those that genuinely improve accountability and outcomes. Learning from implementation, rather than legislating solely from initial intent, would ultimately lead to more effective and responsive policy.

If you had 5 minutes to brief a Congressional committee about fixing bureaucratic inefficiency in your area, what specific legislative change would you recommend?

If I had five minutes to brief a Congressional committee on reducing bureaucratic inefficiency in international development, I would recommend one specific legislative change: require the harmonization and consolidation of reporting and compliance requirements across funding accounts, paired with greater programmatic flexibility for field missions.

Currently, USAID programs are funded through multiple Congressional accounts, each with its own reporting timelines, indicators, and compliance rules. Even when programs serve the same objectives and communities, staff are often required to produce duplicative reports in slightly different formats. This consumes significant staff time and resources without meaningfully improving oversight or outcomes.

A legislative mandate directing agencies to standardize core reporting requirements—while allowing supplemental reporting only where clearly justified—would preserve transparency and accountability while significantly reducing administrative burden. Importantly, streamlining reporting to Congress would not compromise the quality or rigor of the data available. In practice, USAID routinely collects far more robust data than what is ultimately reported in Congressional submissions. For reporting purposes, we present information in ways that are standardized, quantitative, and easy to digest—often focusing on output numbers—because that is what legislative reporting structures require.

This has sometimes been a source of public criticism, creating the impression that programs are evaluated only through simple metrics. In reality, program teams also track behavior change, service quality, institutional capacity, and sustainability through more sophisticated monitoring, evaluation, and learning systems. These data inform program design and adaptation but are not always reflected in Congressional reports due to format constraints rather than a lack of rigor.

Paired with greater flexibility—particularly in fragile and conflict-affected environments—this approach would allow a defined portion of funds to be reprogrammed based on evidence and evolving country needs, while shifting oversight toward outcome-based reporting rather than prescriptive input tracking.

Together, these changes would enable staff to spend less time on duplicative compliance and more time ensuring that taxpayer dollars deliver meaningful, evidence-based results. The goal is not less oversight, but smarter oversight—one that strengthens both accountability and impact.

If you had 5 minutes to pitch agency leadership about changes they should make within the agency, what specific changes would you recommend?

If I had five minutes to brief agency leadership on changes to improve efficiency, effectiveness, and impact, I would focus on four key areas: staffing and workforce development, promotion and recognition, organizational structure, and operational flexibility.

First, invest in staff well-being and retention. USAID’s greatest asset is its people. USAID Foreign Service Officers regularly serve in developing countries, which have their own stressors. Staff serving in high-risk or hardship posts face extraordinary pressures, and burnout is common. Leadership should prioritize career protections, mentoring, rotation opportunities across sectors, and support systems for hardship assignments. Retaining experienced officers and valuing institutional knowledge would strengthen program quality and continuity.

Second, reform the Foreign Service rating and promotion system. The current system often fails to recognize consistent, high-level performance. Many officers work in positions one or two grades above their official rank, yet the promotion cycle does not systematically reward that sustained contribution. Leadership should implement a fairer, more predictable promotion process that acknowledges officers’ continued effective service, incentivizes high performance, and ensures recognition for long-term contributions.

Third, break down internal silos and improve cross-sector integration. Programs in health, education, gender, governance, and economic growth often operate in parallel, even when their objectives overlap. Leadership could foster cross-sector teams, integrated planning, and shared incentives to encourage collaboration. This would improve program efficiency and effectiveness where development needs are always interconnected.

Fourth, streamline operational processes and increase programmatic flexibility. Procurement, reporting, and compliance systems are often complex, risk-averse, and time-consuming. Leadership should adopt risk-based approaches that allow trusted partners and field teams to respond more quickly and adaptively to local conditions. Flexibility should also extend to reallocating resources in response to evidence and changing circumstances, without compromising accountability.

Taken together, these changes—prioritizing people, fair recognition, cross-sector collaboration, and operational agility—would allow agency staff to spend less time navigating bureaucratic obstacles and more time on high-impact program design, implementation, and evaluation, ultimately empowering the agency to achieve its mission more effectively while maintaining transparency and accountability.

Is there anything else we haven’t asked that you would like to share about your career with the Federal government?

I truly loved my career in the Federal government. Serving with USAID and the Peace Corps allowed me to make a tangible difference in people’s lives around the world. I always considered myself a dedicated public servant, fully committed to the mission, and I believed that the government would support and protect its employees, particularly those serving in challenging and high-risk environments overseas.

The way USAID was let go, however, was the most traumatic experience of my career. Nothing I experienced in the field—including working in war zones and conflict settings—compares to the profound sense of loss, betrayal, and emotional trauma inflicted on staff by the dismantling of the agency and the erosion of institutional support. It has shaken my trust and will take time to heal.

At the same time, my years working overseas in developing countries profoundly shaped me as a citizen. Witnessing the resilience and resourcefulness of people facing extreme challenges made me more appreciative of the opportunities, freedoms, and institutions we have in the United States. It also strengthened my belief in the importance of public service and civic responsibility.

Even so, I remain deeply grateful for the opportunity to serve. My career reinforced the profound impact that committed civil servants can have—both at home and abroad—and that work matters, even when institutions falter. Public service makes a difference, and I remain proud to have been part of it.

What are your plans post government service?

Following my retirement from the Federal government, I plan to focus on a mix of personal, family, and community priorities. I look forward to spending more time with my family, and supporting my husband as he advances his career as a social worker in the U.S.—just as he supported me throughout my own career.

I also plan to engage deeply in community volunteer activities. I have long dreamed of becoming a Master Gardener, and I hope to contribute my skills to local gardening initiatives, food assistance programs, Habitat for Humanity projects, and animal welfare organizations. Giving back to my community has always been important to me, and retirement provides an opportunity to do so in a meaningful, hands-on way.

In addition, I remain committed to public service on a broader scale. I hope to return to the Peace Corps in some capacity, as I believe strongly in its role in shaping U.S. citizens’ commitment to service and fostering global understanding. Post-government service, I see this as a way to continue contributing to development and international engagement, while also mentoring and inspiring others to value civic responsibility and public service.

Retirement, for me, is not stepping away from service—it is an opportunity to engage in new ways, balancing family, community, and meaningful global contributions.

Anonymous

USAID, Director, Localization, Faith-based and Transformative Partnership Hub, 17 years

Tell me about your role(s) with the Federal government. What agency did you work for, what programs were you working on, and what was the scope of your most recent role(s)?

USAID. Foreign Service Officer, Senior Management Group level. Director, Localization, Faith-Based and Transformative Partnership Hub, Bureau for Inclusive Growth, Partnerships and Innovation, 2024-2025, and Deputy Director USAID Guinea & Sierra Leone, 2023-2024. Over this time, I managed 60-80 staff and $100-$155 million annual programming budgets.

How frequently did Congressional or legislative intent/language come up in your work, and in what contexts?

Frequently. In Congressional reporting through CNs, CBJ, Funding Change Notices, and reporting on Congressional Initiatives. And, on occasion I prepared principals for Congressional testimony, prepared and organized congressional site visits, and responded to Committee staff questions.

Can you describe a situation where conflicting, outdated, or overly-burdensome legislative requirements made your work/your program less efficient or less effective?

Annual FY appropriations time allowances for Agency and Mission level commitment, obligation, sub-obligation, canceling and expirations of funds were far too short for reasonable, considered and locally focused Mission level program design and execution in conflict, fragile, low and lower-middle income countries. “No-year” or extended period allowances must be available to Missions to allow for managing the difficult operating conditions in these countries. Moreover, non-specific, no cause-based CN holds were anathema to effective and responsive programming to urgent needs in some Missions, particularly those in poorer and kinetic prone countries.

If you could rebuild your program/agency from the ground up, without changing its overall scope and mission, how would it look different when you were done?

I would re-build USAID to ensure that it had a formal Congressional mandate as its own independent agency in law, not in regulation or Executive Order. I would staff it with adequate and significant levels of qualified and diverse direct hire staff at all levels, especially leadership and in HR. I would mandate all foreign based USDH to be required to present their work in their US home community(ies) at least once a year at local public information forums. USAID would also enlist VIP and celebrity goodwill ambassadors to promote its life-saving and valuable development work abroad and at home, as has the UN and other international organizations. I would also solidify links for serious system reform for all development focused agencies including UN, WB, IMF major faith institutions and other donors, and especially middle powers in the GCC, (Gulf Countries) to lean into coordinated localization and community based and driven programming solutions. Noting the sobering exploding population demographics and alarming health indicators on the African continent and its prolonged intractable lack of AI connectivity and minimal electrical capacity, a singular focus on African development and growth and institutional strengthening must be a top priority. Re-engaging on a values-based, inclusive and human rights focused development system would be prioritized. The US would meet its UN institutions (GAVI, GF, COP) financial obligations and its GNI obligations to development programming and funding.

How could Congress do a better job of learning about programs in your area of expertise, with the goal of legislating more effectively?

Congress needs to self-inform much better. All the former USAID websites were easily accessible and available, and most evaluation, Mission and project level effectiveness questions were answerable with minimal research. Congress was clearly unwilling to do the basic research to understand the effectiveness of the programming it would later condemn. USAID expert staff were literally within 250 yards of their offices and frequented the same restaurants as Congressional staff who failed time after time to seek clarifications about our programs. Further, no CODELS and StaffDels to visit development projects should incorporate any time for tourism for themselves or their spouses. This routinely strips away valuable Embassy resources and, in the past, made clear time after time that Congress was more interested in tourism than serious review of activities. So, do actual research, engage expert staff at home and abroad, subscribe to international development publications to learn how the field of development expertise is evolving, and increase the number development projects visits abroad.

If you had 5 minutes to brief a Congressional committee about fixing bureaucratic inefficiency in your area, what specific legislative change would you recommend?

See above re: 1.) Increase FY obligations/spending timelines, 2.) Decrease CN holds, and prohibit generic, non-substance based holds 3.) Increase meaningful Mission site visits abroad and Congressional staff interaction with USAID staff. And, 1.) reduce the inclination to create earmarks leading to overlapping initiatives and duplicative reporting, 2.) encourage emphasis on localization and African development due to demographic shifts. 3.) Explain the benefits of a diverse USDH workforce abroad and the importance of DEI in the field, especially in non-white countries. 4.) Adequately staff the rump USAID administrative section to process former staff retirements and off boarding. They are several months’’ delayed and overburdened. RIF’d staff are left penniless with no severance or retirement payments in sight.

If you had 5 minutes to pitch agency leadership about changes they should make within the agency, what specific changes would you recommend?

Resist the desire to add on multiple Administration initiatives that overburden DC and overseas based staff. (Most missions were managing 18 various initiatives on top of their regular budgets in 2023-2024). Reform HR offices and staff them appropriately to allow speedy processing of hiring, transfer, and creation of positions and staffing. If re-established, staff the new USAID appropriately (especially HR) and expand its overseas footprint.

Is there anything else we haven’t asked that you would like to share about your career with the Federal government?

Congress should pass a resolution to honor former FSOs and USAID staff’s service, to counteract the on-going defamation of our USAID work and of us as professional staff.,
Congress should now vigorously lobby the Trump Administration to equitably settle the 2100 illegal firing cases filed by USAID civil and foreign service staff with the MSPB.
Congress should convene hearings on the new National Security Strategy specifically related to the three short paragraphs on Africa and review international data on population, health, economic and development futures for the continent, considering it as a security threat to global advancement.

What are your plans post government service?

I am not certain. I am currently unemployed. I am preparing for and seeking admission to the GA State Bar in 2026. Currently I am supporting my spouse’s new small culinary business. I am NOT seeking USG employment with this Administration.

Karen Vogt

FDA, Clinical Reviewer/ Medical Officer, 2 years FDA, 23 years Army

Tell me about your role(s) with the Federal government. What agency did you work for, what programs were you working on, and what was the scope of your most recent role(s)?

I am a physician and retired Army Medical Corps Colonel. I retired from the Army after nearly 24 years of military service and went to work at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for just over 2 years as a Clinical Reviewer in the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER). As a Clinical Reviewer in FDA’s CDER, my duties included but were not limited to: reviewing and evaluating the clinical aspects of drug applications, ensuring new drugs are safe for first use in humans, ensuring clinical trial/study safety, assisting drug sponsors in developing their clinical studies, assessing drug benefit-risk profiles to ensure the safety and efficacy of drugs marketed in the United States, ensuring accurate and appropriate drug labeling, and reviewing and assessing post-marketing safety reports to ensure continued safety of marketed drugs.

How frequently did Congressional or legislative intent/language come up in your work, and in what contexts?

The statutory requirement for substantial evidence of effectiveness of a drug was at the forefront of drug reviews. Requirements for the Pediatric Research Equity Act (PREA) also came up often in the context of drug reviews.

Can you describe a situation where conflicting, outdated, or overly-burdensome legislative requirements made your work/your program less efficient or less effective?

No. In fact, I found the opposite to be true. There were situations in which people were not familiar with the relevant regulations, their intent, or why they were important to the mission. When I had a question about how to do something properly, I looked for the relevant regulation(s), which in nearly all cases, helped me to make the right decision and do the right thing.

If you could rebuild your program/agency from the ground up, without changing its overall scope and mission, how would it look different when you were done?

To rebuild the FDA, I would start with a leader with integrity who values quality, scientific excellence, and collaboration with everyone involved in the mission - and truly lives and implements these values. For the CDER mission of ensuring the safety and efficacy of drugs marketed in the United States, essential perspectives for effective collaboration include those of agency staffers with relevant expertise, patients/family members affected by the disease process the drug proposes to treat, drug companies and sponsors, and relevant outside experts. The public and drug companies/sponsors would be treated as customers.

The agency culture would reflect the values of integrity, quality, scientific excellence, and collaboration. This culture would permeate the agency from the top down and the bottom up. The culture would be reflected in agency actions and the actions of its people. Everyone at the agency would understand the mission, the regulations, and that they are expected to follow the regulations - for the purpose of facilitating achievement of the mission with integrity, quality, and scientific excellence. Everyone at the agency would be held accountable to this standard. Communication across and within the agency, and to its customers (sponsors, the public) would be clear, inclusive, and appropriate for the confidentiality requirements. The expertise of agency staffers would be recognized and staffers’ skills used to their full potential. Collaboration across the agency and with its customers would be standardized. Best practices for agency processes would be standardized. Staffers would be properly trained to optimally perform their duties.

When the FDA (as a whole) truly behaves with integrity, quality, and desire for collaboration, the public and other stakeholders (e.g., drug companies) will perceive the agency as such – a trusted public health institution of integrity, quality, and scientific excellence.

How could Congress do a better job of learning about programs in your area of expertise, with the goal of legislating more effectively?

Ask the front-line workers and subject matter experts what they need from Congress to better achieve the mission (set forth by Congress).

If you had 5 minutes to brief a Congressional committee about fixing bureaucratic inefficiency in your area, what specific legislative change would you recommend?

Hold leaders accountable to the mission and to the American people. Ensure that leaders are empowering the agency to achieve the mission and following the laws set forth by Congress. It is the leader’s job to implement the mission within the statutory requirements set forth by Congress, and to effectively communicate the mission and expectations to the agency.

If you had 5 minutes to pitch agency leadership about changes they should make within the agency, what specific changes would you recommend?

Lead with integrity and compassion. Set clear expectations and hold people accountable to the mission and laws set forth by Congress.

Is there anything else we haven’t asked that you would like to share about your career with the Federal government?

I had a very rewarding career with the federal government, and felt I was helping the public. I left when my agency stopped following the rules. I could no longer, in good conscience, be associated with an agency that didn’t follow the rules.

What are your plans post government service?

I have returned to clinical medicine, where I am helping people directly.

Scott Gagnon

SAMHSA, Regional Director, 1 year 1 month

Tell me about your role(s) with the Federal government. What agency did you work for, what programs were you working on, and what was the scope of your most recent role(s)?

I worked at SAMHSA: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, a division of HHS. I was one of 10 Regional Directors for SAMHSA. I covered Region 1, which included the states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, as well as the 10 federally recognized tribal nations in the region. As a Regional Director, essentially my role was to represent the Assistant Secretary for Mental Health And Addiction Services in my region. The role has many functions and is bi-directional, in the sense that as an RD I brought information, resources, grant opportunities, etc., to the behavioral health leaders and workforces in my Region 1 states, but also communicate to SAMHSA leadership, the successes and challenges faced by my states in implementing behavioral health systems and services. We were the key federal partner to our states in addressing the mental health and addiction crises facing our states.

How frequently did Congressional or legislative intent/language come up in your work, and in what contexts?

Frequently. While we weren’t a policy making component of SAMHSA, we absolutely were instrumental in communication and support around new and changing federal policies and programs that flowed from Congress to SAMHSA. A major function of SAMHSA is grant making and of course those grants stem from legislation passed in Congress, so part of our role is translating the goals of these new and changing policies to our state behavioral health leaders and their workforce.

Can you describe a situation where conflicting, outdated, or overly-burdensome legislative requirements made your work/your program less efficient or less effective?

A major challenge I faced in my role is that there was a strong need identified by my states to offer more programs and services in mental health promotion. To start at an early age and get ahead of the risks and challenges that can turn into mental health challenges. Unfortunately, as it was authorized, the Substance Use and Mental Health Services block grant allows for substance use prevention but not mental health promotion. This is extremely limiting for states. That block grant funding could be more impactful and effective if it also allowed for mental health promotion programs and activities.

If you could rebuild your program/agency from the ground up, without changing its overall scope and mission, how would it look different when you were done?

I would increase staffing at the Regional Offices. Before our offices were closed, staffing had been increased to 4 per region. One Regional Director, two Regional Behavioral Health Advisors (RBHA), and one program support assistant. While our mighty team of 4 in Region 1 did great work, I think we could’ve stood to have two more RBHAs. It’s a lot to cover six states but to also cover the spectrum of mental health and addiction services: Prevention, Treatment, Recovery, and Harm Reduction. Obviously at this point the Regional Offices would need to be re-established and reopened, but I would to that and have increased staffing.

How could Congress do a better job of learning about programs in your area of expertise, with the goal of legislating more effectively?

More interaction and more interaction with staff beyond leadership. As a component of HHS, even our Assistant Secretary had limited opportunities to connect with Congress. That position should be a cabinet-level position given the breadth and depth of impact addiction and mental health has across sectors and across the country.

If you had 5 minutes to brief a Congressional committee about fixing bureaucratic inefficiency in your area, what specific legislative change would you recommend?

I would focus on the issue I brought up in a previous answer, and encourage amending the authorizing language for the SUD/MH Block grant to allow for mental health promotion services. I would also focus on another issue I discussed earlier and have the head of SAMHSA elevated to a cabinet level position.

If you had 5 minutes to pitch agency leadership about changes they should make within the agency, what specific changes would you recommend?

At this point I would be pitching the reopening of the regional offices and reinstatement of Regional Directors and Regional Behavioral Health Advisors. The Regional Offices are critical because staff at the headquarters of agencies, like SAMHSA, have minimal insights as to what is happening on the ground across the country. A grant project officer won’t have the same access to trends and information that an RD will have. Additionally, regional office staff are hired from the regions. We don’t just work in our regions, we live in our regions and have cultural and regional history that we have lived ourselves. It’s the most efficient and effective way to ensure federal programs are responsive to American taxpayers.

Is there anything else we haven’t asked that you would like to share about your career with the Federal government?

n/a

What are your plans post government service?

I have started a consulting company called Dirigo Empowerment Institute. Website: dirigoempowerment.com. I also write a Substack called The Radical Preventionist. Website: scottmgagnon.substack.com.

Julie Ewart

Department of Education, Press Officer (Public Affairs Specialist), 32 years

Tell me about your role(s) with the Federal government. What agency did you work for, what programs were you working on, and what was the scope of your most recent role(s)?

Throughout my federal career of 32 years, I consistently worked in positions classified as “public affairs.” My roles came under 3 different departments - Defense, VA and Education – and they were at local/field, regional and national levels.

Summarizing my career from its start, my specific roles included serving as a writer/editor for community newspapers at two military bases; coordinating community relations with external stakeholders through special events at two regional Army offices; leading communications and outreach efforts,throughout a 6 state region for the U.S. Department of Education (ED); and managing all communication activities and a 10-person staff for the nation’s first fully integrated medical center, jointly funded by VA and DoD.

In my final federal role, I returned to ED as the first Press Officer hired remotely for its national office. In that role, I interacted on a daily basis with journalists from global and national outlets to coordinate responses to their queries, and to release to them official Department press materials.

How frequently did Congressional or legislative intent/language come up in your work, and in what contexts?

Congressional/legislative intent/language played a frequent role, throughout my career. This included:

Covering the first Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process.
Coordinating briefings for Senate and House Armed Services Committees on Army issues in the Pacific.
Coordinating, and participating in events with Congress members to highlight ED programs and grant opportunities.
Being the main Congressional liaison for the Lovell Federal Health Care Center (FHCC) and handling constituent complaints.
Writing press releases/responses outlining legislative policies in my final role as a Press Officer for ED.

Can you describe a situation where conflicting, outdated, or overly-burdensome legislative requirements made your work/your program less efficient or less effective?

Yes, I have several examples:

Under both Republican and Democratic administrations, I was occasionally asked to devote significant time to developing events and/or press releases that highlighted needs that were at the same time the focus of pending legislation. These efforts sometimes generated perceptions that we -- staff of an Executive Branch -- were lobbying. It’s clear that Executive Branch staff need to work with Legislative Branch staff to develop proposals aimed at improving policies and programs. It’s not clearly appropriate for the Department-level staff of an Executive Branch agency to lead the release of public information about pending legislation.

In several of my positions, I coordinated, or helped to coordinate visits of Congressional members and/or staff to federal facilities. While I don’t question the legitimate need for oversight that generated those visits, some of those visits could have been just as effective and far less time-consuming and costly if handled through virtual meetings.

I encountered many unique legislative barriers as the chief of the communications department at Lovell Federal Health Care Center (FHCC). Again, the center was the first of its kind in the nation – coming under integrated VA and DoD leadership, funding and staffing – but it was all but impossible to generate integrated VA-DoD policies to streamline its communications efforts. As just one example, we could not get approval from both VA and DoD (Navy) for a single integrated FHCC webpage from which any of the facility’s patients could link to schedule appointments at VA or DoD clinics, although many of the clinics serviced both VA and DoD patients.

If you could rebuild your program/agency from the ground up, without changing its overall scope and mission, how would it look different when you were done?

I’ve chosen to respond to this question using my career field – public affairs– as “the program” rather than a specific agency. Public affairs positions are embedded in offices throughout the federal government to handle a variety of communications and outreach duties at national, regional and field levels.

Here’s my perfect world of federal public affairs programs

Public Info Rules: Make sure all federal leaders are legally responsible for releasing accurate, transparent, clear, and timely public information using only official government platforms.

Media Access: Leaders (up to the President) shouldn’t be allowed to limit media access based on whether the coverage is favorable.

AI: Make sure there are strong policies and human vetting for any public affairs content created using Generative AI.

Keep it Apolitical: Most public affairs jobs should be designated as apolitical career positions.

Focus on Law: Public affairs should only promote enacted laws/programs, not pending legislation.

Consistency is Key: Create a government-wide Public Affairs Commission for consistent messaging and to avoid duplicating expensive tools (like email platforms).

Better Training: Expand the DoD’s Defense Information School (DINFOS) to train all federal public affairs staff.

HR/OPM Direction:

Update the 1981 job classification policy (GS-1035) to include modern digital skills.

Give field-level positions more competitive grades/salaries, as they often handle the most complex and sensitive crises.

Change performance reviews so “Fully Successful” is the norm, not “Exceptional.”

Work with unions to allow faster position updates/training for new tech, and allow more non-competitive internal promotions for proven employees (like those who successfully “acted” in the role).

How could Congress do a better job of learning about programs in your area of expertise, with the goal of legislating more effectively?

Congress needs to actually learn about how public affairs works in the government. When the government fails to communicate accurately, clearly, and transparently, it causes big problems (like during COVID). Public affairs needs oversight to prevent it from being used as propaganda.

If you had 5 minutes to brief a Congressional committee about fixing bureaucratic inefficiency in your area, what specific legislative change would you recommend?

See my answers above!

If you had 5 minutes to pitch agency leadership about changes they should make within the agency, what specific changes would you recommend?

See ny answers above!

Is there anything else we haven’t asked that you would like to share about your career with the Federal government?

I’m very proud of my federal career and of the role I had as a communicator in connecting eligible individuals and entities with vital federal programs and services. It’s painful for me to hear the insulting caricatures of federal employees that have become especially prevalent in recent times. The vast majority of federal colleagues I’ve known were hard-working and dedicated to achieving their missions in support of the American public.

For this interview, I chose to focus my insights on the public affairs field that encompassed my entire federal career. To that end, I did not incorporate into my responses above information about the drastic changes that have occurred during the current Administration, and instead wrote them as if the federal government of Jan. 19, 2025 was still in place.

However, I will share that during my brief experience with the 2nd Trump Administration (Jan. 20 - March 11, 2025), I was directed to take several actions that were totally counter to the federal public affairs values, policies and practices that I’d worked hard to uphold throughout my career. Before the first week of February, I began to plan to retire far earlier than expected because I was ashamed of the work I was being asked to perform. My position -- along with all other career positions in the Press Officer -- was eliminated on March 11, 2025, so “the writing was on the wall” regardless of my personal decision.

What are your plans post government service?

I was fortunate to be able to retire from the federal government on March 31, 2025, and my freed-up schedule allowed me to focus most of my energy over the past 9 months to helping my spouse clear out my in-laws’ house, and to volunteer. However, my federal retirement was 7-10 years earlier than planned. Beyond the financial implications of an unexpectedly early retirement, the alarming state of our nation makes me want to continue my career – post-government service – in a new role that will allow me to apply my communications expertise towards making a positive difference, likely in the nonprofit or government sector. As the work with my husband is now nearly done, I’ll be focusing more on my job search, and I’ll continue to volunteer.

Yvonne Robertson

GSA, Supervisory Transportation Specialist, 38 years

Tell me about your role(s) with the Federal government. What agency did you work for, what programs were you working on, and what was the scope of your most recent role(s)?

Served as a Supervisory Transportation Specialist within GSA overseeing the performance of pre and post payment transportation audits for all government agencies. The bottom line mission was to avoid excessive charges to the government for transportation services ordered by government agencies and recover monies from transportation vendors who overcharged the government for services provided.

How frequently did Congressional or legislative intent/language come up in your work, and in what contexts?

Policies, regulations and statutes were part of the daily scope and function of my department as it relates to reviewing transportation and travel programs throughout the federal government and auditing transportation vendors’ invoices submitted to these agencies for payment.

Can you describe a situation where conflicting, outdated, or overly-burdensome legislative requirements made your work/your program less efficient or less effective?

Conflict existed where my department was housed under the same agency and portfolio/category manager as the travel and transportation program offices that we were congressionally mandated to audit. We were governed by the same people we were charged to audit for effective and appropriate transportation payment.

If you could rebuild your program/agency from the ground up, without changing its overall scope and mission, how would it look different when you were done?

The agency would be an independent agency separated from any program offices charged with contracting and/or overseeing travel and transportation operations and payments on behalf of the United States.

The agency would answer to OMB or report independent and nonpartisan findings directly to Congress.

How could Congress do a better job of learning about programs in your area of expertise, with the goal of legislating more effectively?

Congress would need to steer clear of any related lobbying activities and have effective internal controls in place to prevent any potential for partisan interference.

If you had 5 minutes to brief a Congressional committee about fixing bureaucratic inefficiency in your area, what specific legislative change would you recommend?

Absolutely no self-governance of any appropriated agency. If an agency cannot pass an independent audit for more than three consecutive years, then that agency’s appropriation authority is suspended until the audit is passed with oversight and mission execution given to a nonpartisan entity.

If you had 5 minutes to pitch agency leadership about changes they should make within the agency, what specific changes would you recommend?

Separation of duties, functions and responsibilities to mitigate conflicts of interests as it relates to auditing, program compliance and cost recovery.

Is there anything else we haven’t asked that you would like to share about your career with the Federal government?

Administration transitions should require a 6-12 month moratorium for complete and thorough review and auditing before effecting any significant program changes or agency disbursements. Any partisan activity should be made illegal

What are your plans post government service?

Small business, Community Service and nonprofit ventures

Christine

HHS/HRSA, Deputy Director Office of Health Equity, 16 years

Tell me about your role(s) with the Federal government. What agency did you work for, what programs were you working on, and what was the scope of your most recent role(s)?

I worked for HHS/Health Resources and Services Administration our office was tasked with developing community partnerships as well as looking at the impacts of HRSA programs on improving health care access to underserved communities.

How frequently did Congressional or legislative intent/language come up in your work, and in what contexts?

My specific office was carved out under the ACA before our offices were shut down by DOGE.

Can you describe a situation where conflicting, outdated, or overly-burdensome legislative requirements made your work/your program less efficient or less effective?

The agency regardless of republican or democratic administration did not always adhere to the language and structure of our office under the ACA.

If you could rebuild your program/agency from the ground up, without changing its overall scope and mission, how would it look different when you were done?

Allow our offices to have designated funding for grant programs and projects.

How could Congress do a better job of learning about programs in your area of expertise, with the goal of legislating more effectively?

More dialogue with staffers on the work of the offices of health equity and minority health.

If you had 5 minutes to brief a Congressional committee about fixing bureaucratic inefficiency in your area, what specific legislative change would you recommend?

Clearer language on funding for programs across all of the HHS offices only some had specific budget lines.

If you had 5 minutes to pitch agency leadership about changes they should make within the agency, what specific changes would you recommend?

Allow more flexibility and encourage collaboration with existing programs to develop opportunities to create specific solutions to address underserved communities.

Is there anything else we haven’t asked that you would like to share about your career with the Federal government?

I enjoyed my time until I was suddenly pushed out and placed on administrative leave with a questionable closure of my former office.

What are your plans post government service?

I am now working outside of the government. It is doubtful I am willing to return especially during the current administration.

Anonymous

Department of Veterans Affairs, Chief Well-being Officer, 11 years

Tell me about your role(s) with the Federal government. What agency did you work for, what programs were you working on, and what was the scope of your most recent role(s)?

Social worker with the Department of Veterans Affairs, where I had an 11 year career serving Veterans in inpatient and outpatient mental health settings, the Healthcare for Homeless Veterans program, harm reduction programs, LGBT healthcare, and more recently, as the healthcare facility’s Chief Well-being Officer focused on driving positive patient outcomes and organizational impact by reducing burnout and optimizing organizational thriving through improved participatory governance, enhanced employee and patient experiences, and supporting professional fulfillment and well-being.

How frequently did Congressional or legislative intent/language come up in your work, and in what contexts?

as frequent as every signed executive order impacting federal agencies that influenced leadership obeying in advance or influenced change in local policy interpretation

Can you describe a situation where conflicting, outdated, or overly-burdensome legislative requirements made your work/your program less efficient or less effective?

VA federal hiring freeze created disruptions in hiring and onboarding new staff including critical clinical roles. Job offers were rescinded, creating confusion and discouragement to potential applicants and the current staff who had been already working outside of normal working hours and in under-resourced clinical settings since the pandemic. Mandatory return to office mandates created non-conducive work environments for employees who had been working remotely for years, created disruptions in patient care when remote clinicians had no access to office space or to networks at the assigned federal office, created trust and privacy issues when clinicians were required to carry out duties in shared offices, and DOGE emails requiring “5 bullet emails” created more administrative burden for staff and unnecessary email inflow for supervisors who were already monitoring workloads.

Requiring clinicians to only use VA AI tools is less efficient and less effective when VA could and should be working to procure existing HIPPA compliant AI tools made for clinicians, by clinicians. Ending contracts impacted patient care and continuity for Veterans receiving contracted care. DOGE Executive Order on “modernizing federal technology and software to maximize government efficiency and productivity” failed to consider how the rollout of the VA’s EHRM program created more burden and inefficiency for clinicians because of the challenges in adapting Oracle to VistA’s functionality. Executive orders on “gender ideology” fail to consider that VHA is healthcare-- and gender affirming care is life saving healthcare and suicide prevention. VHA is now less effective in suicide prevention for LGBT Veterans because of this harmful and ignorant EO. Disbanding special emphasis programs, removing designated restrooms, and canceling trainings that promote “DEI” create less effective workplaces and creates more inefficiency when Veterans and staff no longer have access to specific services or programming, or when clinicians no longer have access to “DEI” related trainings required for clinical licensure requirements and professional development. Overall, demoralizing the federal workforce at VHA has been counterproductive to improving efficiency and being effective at expanding access, innovating, recruitment and talent acquisition, and collaborating with community partners to deliver quality healthcare for Veterans.

If you could rebuild your program/agency from the ground up, without changing its overall scope and mission, how would it look different when you were done?

If I could be a part of rebuilding VHA, or even a single VHA site, it would look like Veteran-centered healthcare system again, operating under clinical healthcare leaders who understand that healthcare is relational, committed to the Hippocratic oath to do no harm, and that VHA healthcare is public service-- not a political pawn to be used as the blueprint for how the US workforce and underserved populations can be harmed, used as the tool and the product for AI data mining, and stress tested for loyalty to policies, ideologies, and systems that do not add value to society.

How could Congress do a better job of learning about programs in your area of expertise, with the goal of legislating more effectively?

Listen with empathy and act compassionately in the best interest of constituents. Visit homeless shelters, talk to Veterans and their caregivers, talk to widows and families who have lost their loved ones to suicide, gun violence, homelessness, and overdose. Talk to social workers, nurses, and caregivers on the front lines. Talk to medical doctors serving rural areas. Talk to nursing home administrators. Talk to Public Housing Authorities and community continua of care (CoCs). Learn more about services and the gaps in affordable housing, senior housing, and Veteran housing. Talk to community leaders and learn about gaps in food security, jobs, and social support.

Social isolation, fear of safety for LGBTQ+ populations and immigrants, and lack of access to healthcare, food, housing, and living-wage jobs are harming people, separating families, and destroying communities.

If you had 5 minutes to brief a Congressional committee about fixing bureaucratic inefficiency in your area, what specific legislative change would you recommend?

Tie VHA leadership performance to clinician well-being metrics. Rather than leadership being vetted and evaluated based on loyalty to the administration, VHA leadership should be evaluated and incentivized to lead positive outcomes in patient care, organizational efficiency, and cost-effectiveness based on clinician retention rates, vacancy rates, administrative burden reduction benchmarks, innovation and improvement in clinical efficiency benchmarks, and healthcare advancements. Burnout and inefficiency are system issues that are impacting healthcare across the nation. We need to start leading and caring for the people who care and heal people and support the health and safety of our communities. This approach is politically viable when this investment leads to efficiency for patients-- more clinician availability, shorter wait times, continuity of care improves when provider-client relationships stay intact. Clinicians are more productive and effective when their dignity is restored, professional autonomy is respected, and they feel more connected to the meaning and purpose of the work. Clinicians also have reduced moral distress and injury caused by bureaucratic overload and waste in the hiring processes or patient data sharing across systems. Taxpayers benefit from lower turnover costs, fewer errors and delays in care, and better use of existing workforce capacity. If Congress wants better access, safer care, and a stable healthcare workforce, we must stop asking clinicians to carry the cost of inefficiency with their health and well-being. Protecting clinical time and caring for our healthcare professionals are not perks -- it’s intentional design and infrastructure for systems of care that are sustainable.

If you had 5 minutes to pitch agency leadership about changes they should make within the agency, what specific changes would you recommend?

Leaders must shift from “productivity” focus to protected clinical capacity. Clinicians need protected time for clinical care, care coordination, and recovery within the workday. Cap panel sizes and visit volume based on actual complexity, not averages. Build schedules that include documentation time, team huddles, and asynchronous care. End the normalization of unpaid after-hours work in the electronic health record. Protecting clinical capacity restores autonomy, quality, and trust while reducing errors and turnover.
Replace “top-down” fixes with frontline co-design. Frontline co-design offers a participatory approach that reduces rework, increases successful adoption, and prevents moral distress and injury caused by being forced to deliver care in ways that clinicians know are ineffective or not in the best interest of the patient. Frontline clinicians are the operational experts, not just the end users. Nothing should be designed and implemented for them without them.
Make leader accountability include human-margin metrics. Stop evaluating leaders solely on access or budget targets. Explicitly hold leaders responsible for the workforce health by tying performance reviews and incentives to clinician well-being metrics.

You cannot “KPI” your way out of burnout or organizational inefficiency. Culture transformation follows when clinicians have protected time clinical time, healthcare professionals are listened to about their ideas for improvement, and leaders are held accountable and incentivized for supporting and investing in the human-margin. When leaders are accountable for sustainability, participatory management approaches are prioritized, frontline staff are valued for their expertise, and systems begin to heal and recover from past harms and organizational trauma.

Is there anything else we haven’t asked that you would like to share about your career with the Federal government?

I left the federal government after 11 years because the direct and indirect messaging from this administration was clear. The federal workforce and the Veteran population would be the testing grounds for the blueprint as to how far this administration will go to disempower the American people through scare tactics, inducing trauma, and shock and awe tactics. We witnessed leaders obeying in advance and act complicit in removing employee rights and protections, taking away work-life flexibilities, disregarding the existence of populations including those who fought for our country, removing access to life saving healthcare, disrupting public health and research advancements, and dismantling federal offices and tech teams that were already addressing fraud/waste/abuse, inefficiencies, developing innovative solutions for the American people, and supporting improved systems integration (e.g., Whistleblower, 18F, USDS, TTS).

What are your plans post government service?

living aligned with my values and contributing to public service in areas where the government continues to fail our communities

POPVOX Foundation