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The Federal Emergency Management Agency has surged 1,200 search and rescue personnel to Florida ahead of Hurricane Milton’s landfall.

FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said more than 1,000 personnel are already in Florida. Many were already in the state helping with the recovery from Hurricane Helene and other previous storms.

“We have sent as many resources as we can into that area to support the efforts that the state has already pre-positioned into the area,” Criswell said.

In a fact sheet released today, the White House said 1,400 search and rescue personnel had been pre-staged to support Milton response efforts. Additionally, the Coast Guard has 1,300 personnel in Florida to assist with operations.

Meanwhile, Florida has mobilized more than 5,000 members of the National Guard to respond to the hurricane. 

Milton is currently a Category 4 storm. The National Hurricane Center projects it will make landfall along the west-central coast of Florida on Wednesday night as an “extremely dangerous major hurricane.”

The storm is bearing down on Florida as federal personnel continue to assist with Helene response and recovery operations across six states.  More than 8,000 federal personnel are deployed across the southeast, including Florida, to help with the Helene recovery and prepare for Milton’s arrival.

A daily operations briefing released by FEMA today shows just 8% of the agency’s incident management workforce is categorized as “available” ahead of Milton’s landfall. FEMA has struggled in recent years to maintain a workforce large enough to respond to a growing number of natural disasters.

But Criswell pointed to the agency’s “layered approach” to staffing disasters. In addition to its dedicated disaster response staff, FEMA will also call on employees from its headquarters and across different regions to “pitch in and help out when we need additional support.”

“We’ve done this before. We are prepared for this,” Criswell said. “We will certainly have challenges along the way as we move people around, but this is what we’re good at. This is what we plan for.”

Criswell said FEMA’s response to Milton will not detract from its Helene efforts.

“Let me be clear: these resource movements are not taking away from the ongoing, complicated response and recovery we are still working in the aftermath of Helene,” she said. “I want the people to hear it from me directly: FEMA is ready.”

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas last month also activated the Surge Capacity Force. It provides FEMA with a roster of volunteer employees from across federal agencies.

FEMA’s daily operations briefing shows more than 7,800 people are rostered on the Surge Capacity Force, with 190 of those currently deployed.

FEMA funding

Criswell said FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund had $11 billion in its coffers as of Tuesday morning. Out of the $20 billion in the fiscal 2025 continuing resolution, Criswell said FEMA has already spent between $7-8 billion on obligations for disaster recovery projects that were previously paused due to a shortage of funding.

The rest has been spent on the ongoing response to Helene and Milton.

Earlier this year, FEMA sent Congress a $9 billion supplemental disaster funding request.  Criswell said that request “still stands,” but added that FEMA is also evaluating whether it will need a bigger supplemental funding boost after Helene and Milton.

“As we have continued to have an increase in the number of events, and these two back-to-back, really catastrophic events that are going to cost a lot of money, we are evaluating right now how much more we are going to have to go back and ask Congress for,” Criswell said.

FEMA is currently supporting 111 major disasters and 17 emergency declarations, according to the daily operations briefing.

Criswell said it’s the most ongoing disaster responses she’s seen while at FEMA.

“We had an incredibly busy tornado season earlier this year,” Criswell said. “We had severe weather that had catastrophic and historic levels of flooding across many states this spring as well. We’ve had wildfires across much of the west. This increase in the number of severe weather events we’re seeing, as well as the complexity of many of these events, because of the amount of damage that they’re doing, is increasing the number of open disasters, because the recovery is more complex and it takes longer to help reimburse these communities as they rebuild from the weather events that they have experienced.”

Copyright © 2024 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

Tom Temin And we’ve enjoyed a lot of interviews over the years on something that people may not realize about the Academy, is that it undertakes reports chartered by Congress to look at really problematic issues. And you’ve overseen some really blockbusters.

Terry Gerton Well, we have. And thank you for raising that, because I think it really is important for people to understand that Congress did charter the Academy. We have a mission in law from them, which is to help government leaders at all levels really tackle the tough problems. And so Congress does direct in legislation sometimes that federal agencies engage with us to tackle some of those.

Tom Temin And what stands out in your mind as some of the really big ones? I think of the Maritime Academy.

Terry Gerton Yeah, that was a really important one. And we continue to see the impacts of that. People may not be familiar with that organization, but it is one of the nation’s service academies. It trains merchant mariners. And it’s had a long running issue with sexual assault, with discrimination. But even broader than that, with just facilities management. It’s a military academy, but it’s in the Department of Transportation. So there’s a lot of conflicts, a lot of spread attention. And so I think we were able to make a real difference. The secretary of Transportation now has a focus group that’s tackling those. They’ve gotten more money, they’ve gotten more people. They still have a long way to go.

Tom Temin But I think the value of those reports is that every government leader manager should read them.

Terry Gerton Well, that’s so true. Another one that really got a lot of headlines was our congressionally chartered report on the Office of Personnel Management back in the Trump administration when they had proposed combining OPM and GSA. Congress asked us to go in and look at OPM. And they asked three really interesting questions. One was, what is OPM doing that it’s not directed to do? What are they not doing that they are directed to do? And how much would it take to get them to be the organization that we want? And we’re just so proud of that report. But more importantly, the way that OPM embraced it and made it part of their strategic plan, made a part of their budgeting process, and continues to make progress in really building out the center of government’s personnel and talent management capacity.

Tom Temin And I think another initiative that you get credit for that was not already there at the Academy was the idea of the 12 grand challenges. And that’s been a really interesting journey too, to read about those.

Terry Gerton It really has. We started that idea in 2018 where we thought, we are the National Academy of Public Administration. We ought to create an agenda for the field. And so we did some crowdsourcing, we did some expert engagement, but we released that list of 12 in 2019. And really just kind of in November, and then in 2020, of course, we had COVID. And we thought, well, goodness, did we get it right? Did we not get it right? And I’m so proud of the brains that went into that, because they really stood the test of time. Who knew that water systems would be such an issue, and going through the pandemic truly was. Who knew that we’d be in a place where we really needed to talk about protecting democracy, and we are. And so it really has begun to be adopted by all levels of government we see, especially at changing how local governments are approaching their strategic plans, their workforce engagement, how they’re thinking about combining their efforts across multiple parts of their organization to really get systemic solutions. So I am really proud of that.

Tom Temin All right. We’re speaking with Terry Gerton. She’s president and CEO of the National Academy of Public Administration. She’ll be stepping down from that role at the end of the year. And the other thing you get credit for from the Academy is increasing the funding for it, increasing the facilities and assets that it has. And you’re not doing something like panda bear protection or rain forest or something sexy that people can get behind. National Academy of Public Administration sounds boring. How do you get people to back that type of effort? What kinds of funding have you been able to bring to it?

Terry Gerton Well, we have started a capital campaign, our first ever to build an endowment for the Academy. Congress chartered it, but doesn’t fund it. We are a nonprofit organization. We have to generate our own funds. So we’ve been very prudent in the resources that we have. But now we’re asking people to contribute to the capacity of the academy because its work is more important than ever, as we experience more political polarization, as people really are questioning the value of their government, what does it give them? The Academy is uniquely positioned to bring expertise to all levels of government, whether it’s your local government, your county government, your state government or the federal government to help government work better for the people it’s supposed to serve. And I think now more than ever, it’s an absolutely essential organization because we’re not invested in creating a profitable relationship that generates funds forever. We really are committed to good government. Kind of nerdy, but it’s really important.

Tom Temin So who invests in it?

Terry Gerton Well, right now it’s largely fellows. We do have some nonprofit partners that help us, especially in things like media relationships and funding and grant funding. And then we engage in contracts with government agencies, whether that’s, as we talked about at the top of the show, directed by Congress or whether government agencies at all levels seek us out to do that kind of work. So it’s an ongoing effort to get the word out, an ongoing effort for us to identify those challenges and bring people to the table that we can work with.

Tom Temin But it’s not something that is going to be corporately sponsored, like a lot of nonprofits.

Terry Gerton There is a space for corporations, especially those who are government adjacent. It matters that government is stable. It matters that government is predictable. And those folks have an interest in our engagement with government, making it work better so that they have a predictable environment to operate in. I’d love to leave my phone number with anybody who wants to contribute to our cause.

Tom Temin Well, we’ll post it when we put this interview online. But just a moment, getting back to those 12 grand challenges. Do you feel like they have become kind of the language, the lingua franca for people talking about public administration?

Terry Gerton I think so. In a couple of categories. Well, kind of actually all of them. One is about IT, making government AI ready. People are on that all the time. One is about climate change and climate adaptation and governance around how do we prepare our communities and our states and our institutions. We’ve just seen environmental disaster with the hurricane over the last week. How do we help government agencies prepare for that? Another group is focused around building resilient communities. That’s everything from having a strong economy where people can find meaningful work, to addressing issues of racial and economic justice. And then the other group really is protecting democracy. And it’s about free and fair elections. It’s about a public workforce that’s strong and nonpartisan and expert. So, yeah, those are really the issues that people at all levels of government are working on today.

Tom Temin You wonder on that economic area and the fact that so many areas of the country are devoid of great jobs. Manufacturing has fled whole sections of the Midwest, the Appalachian region, which was never that rich to begin with. It’s even worse off now in some ways, maybe than it was in the 1930s. And so units like the Economic Development Administration, for example, have the capacity to maybe kick start those areas.

Terry Gerton I think that’s really true. We’ve seen a lot of national investment going back into areas to rebuild manufacturing, to create new industries in certain places. But where public administration comes into that is connecting the economic development to, say, community colleges and the workforce system and recruiters even down as far as elementary school education to build a workforce in those places with the skill sets needed to sustain those industries. So public administration really is workforce development. It’s economic development. It’s community engagement.

Tom Temin We’re speaking with Terry Gerton, president and CEO of the National Academy of Public Administration. She’ll be retiring from that job at the end of the year. And you gave them quite long notice. They’ve hired Christian Blackwood, formerly of the GAO and soon to be formerly of Partnership for Public Service. But it’s kind of nice to be able to have that luxury of the time.

Terry Gerton Well, it is. In my past history in the military and in the civil service, I’ve really never held a job more than four years. And I found myself coming up on eight. And I thought, it’s really time for someone with some new ideas and some new energy to take over the organization and lead it to the future. So I knew early on what my plans were going to be that I was going to step down at the end of the year. But I also really wanted to give the board and the organization the time to do a thorough search to find a replacement, and to have a reasonable amount of transition time. So I’m just delighted with the announcement of James-Christian Blockwood. I think he’s going to be the perfect fit for the Academy for the future. He’s a fellow himself, so he knows the organization and he’s been in the public administration space all his career. And so he really comes to it with great knowledge, great connections, great energy and enthusiasm.

Tom Temin And what kind of standing staff, what are the overhead requirements for the academy? You don’t have squadrons of people that work there.

Terry Gerton We don’t. We’re a pretty small permanent staff. We have about 40 people. And those 40 people do everything from fellow engagement to research to IT. But the power of the academy is our almost a thousand fellows. And these are folks who’ve had long careers in public administration at multiple government levels, or they’re academicians who teach public administration. And we bring them together and their expertise to work directly with our client organizations. Because there’s somebody in that fellowship who’s sat in the chair of the person we’re working with, and can really bring that kind of expertise. And then our team fills in with expert research, with the writing and the documentation and really develops the recommendation. So it’s a powerful, powerful partnership. It’s objective, it’s nonpartisan. And we leave our organizations really with implementation plans, things they can check off and know that they can make improvement if they go that way.

Tom Temin And how do you maintain relations with a place like the GAO or with the inspectors general counsel? Because they do sometimes deep dive studies that are all encompassing of an agency. Usually they’re more detailed.

Terry Gerton The real difference between GAO and the IGs and the Academy is that we are not auditors, first of all. They are auditors and investigators and they’re great documenting the challenges and the problems. We do that as well. But the difference is that we do leave behind that remediation plan. We want organizations to get better. We want to leave them steps that they can take, because a lot of times leaders know they’ve got a problem, but they can’t rise up above the fray long enough to figure out what to do with it, and to develop that strategy for improvement. And I think that’s the real power in an Academy report.

Tom Temin We’re speaking with Terry Gerton, president and CEO of the National Academy of Public Administration, she’ll step down at the end of the year. And you raise a really important question. It’s easy, relatively easy to identify the issues with an agency. Usually the people inside are the most aware of them. And sometimes these external studies simply articulate what everyone kind of knows, but maybe not in entirety. But then there is the issue of changing direction and changing. I hate to use the word culture, but what in your experience, does it take to really repair an organization to be its best self?

Terry Gerton Well, it takes leadership, commitment and stability. It takes buy in of the staff. Oftentimes it takes resources. As an example, we just did a long study of the National Finance Center at the US Department of Agriculture that cuts the biweekly checks for 600,000 federal employees, and who are still working in trailers in New Orleans.

Tom Temin That’s like ten years later, right?

Terry Gerton Yeah. After Hurricane Katrina.

Tom Temin More than ten.

Terry Gerton Yeah. They need money. They need money to resolve their technical debt. They need money to build their facilities. They need money to hire more people. But managing that change across such an important organization where you can’t stop the mission, that’s a real challenge. And so that’s where I think our reports are so helpful to the leaders on the ground. In that case, we made recommendations for a couple of new positions, one specifically to be a change manager on a term basis. But someone who is day-to-day responsible for pulling all of those change threads together. It’s really challenging, but it’s the core of what good leadership can do.

Tom Temin And do you sometimes find it frustrating that the Congress argues tooth and nail over the operational budget of the government about $1.5 trillion now, and there is another 4.5 trillion in entitlements and interest on the debt that never gets debated. But beyond that, we’ve had several years of trillion dollars really since 2008. There’s been 4 or $5 trillion bills that are neither entitlements nor regular appropriations for the operation of the government. And it’s not easy to point at what they have actually bought with all that money except a lot of debt and more interest. And yet, someplace like the Bureau of Prisons can’t get its crumbling ceilings fixed.

Terry Gerton I think that is, again, the power of the Academy’s reports were able to point to specific investments that Congress could approve where it would make a specific difference. You see the change in the IRS with some additional funding, how they’ve been able to put more people on the front lines. They’ve been able to go after more tax audits. They’ve been able to improve their operations. You see what Martin O’Malley is doing with Social Security Administration, where tackling those specific issues with resources to put more people on the ground to deliver better service is having an impact. I think the most important question that Congress can consider as they’re looking at that budget is what do they want the government to do? That same OPM question. What does it take in resources to create an organization that can function the way we say we want it to? Now, at the end of the day, they may or they may not fund that. But I think that’s really the powerful question. It’s where the academies reports can help them, and it’s how our reports can help them exercise their oversight function. Because they can go back to those agencies now and say, well, you had ten steps in the Academy report or 67 steps. How are you coming on those? And it’s a great way to actually help the agencies make the progress that Congress would hope they would make.

Tom Temin And I think it also underscores the importance of congressional relations. And in my experience, there are many members of both parties and in both chambers that understand public administration, that care about it. The organization, the branch of government itself adds up to chaos. But the individual members are sometimes pretty talented and aware of details. Their staffs make them that way. And sometimes I think they’re really interested. And so it must be difficult to navigate from your appropriator who understands what’s going on to the larger picture and actually getting that appropriation.

Terry Gerton Well, I think that’s true. And we’ve seen it in all of the issues that we’ve addressed at Congress’ request. Typically, there’s a member or two either on the House side or the Senate side that really cares about a particular issue. We engage with their staff and their teams in the committee staff to help shape that into a report that we can tackle. As an example, we just did a report in partnership with the Federal Judicial Center on Misconduct in the Federal Judiciary and Employee Relations. That was all at the behest of members of Congress who had noticed a problem and brought us in to help tackle that. It happens in so many of the areas that we’re in. It is hard these days to get a coalition of members, a critical mass around a particular challenge. There’s so many challenges and so many issues. But you’re right, they are in tune. Their staffs are in tune. And we do work very closely with them to advance the agenda.

Tom Temin In one department that’s gotten lots of attention and always gets fairly good bipartisan support is the Veterans Affairs Department. We should point out you work 20 years of active military duty as an Army officer. How is the VA doing from your standpoint?

Terry Gerton Well, the VA has a lot of challenges. And they have three very specific and different administrations from benefits to health care to cemeteries. They have a lot of veterans to serve and a lot of challenges to overcome. And so Congress certainly gives them lots of attention.

Tom Temin But how does the customer service, from your standpoint?

Terry Gerton I worked very closely with the VBA side when I was at Department of Labor, making sure that veterans were able to use their education benefits, their employment benefits. So my husband is a recipient of veteran health care and is very satisfied.

Tom Temin All right. So you will be leaving the academy at the end of December, starting January 1, 2025. But somehow I don’t feel like you’re going to exit the scene.

Terry Gerton Well, I am careful to say that I am stepping down and not retiring, but I do hope to take a little bit of time off and then we’ll see what other opportunities are out there. These grand challenges are topics that I’m really passionate about, and so I’m going to look for a way to continue to be involved. And I’m a fellow of the Academy, so I can continue to be involved there as well. I just don’t have to be in charge of it every day.

If education and workforce training are key to developing the cybersecurity workforce then one group thinks it has the answers. The Advanced Technology Academic Research Center, or ATARC, has published a detailed plan, what it calls a workforce development pipeline and pathway strategy. Joining the Federal Drive with Tom Temin with more, California Sate University Professor Keith Clement.

Interview transcript: 

Tom Temin If education and workforce training are key to developing the cybersecurity workforce, then one group thinks it has some of the answers. The Advanced Technology Academic Research Center, ATARC, has published a detailed plan, what it calls a workforce development pipeline and pathway strategy. Joining me with some of the details, California State University professor Keith Clement. Dr. Clement, good to have you with us.

Keith Clement Good morning, Tom. Thank you for having me today.

Tom Temin And, well, what are the, I mean, we talk about this a lot, the workforce shortage, and there’s not enough cybersecurity people, not enough training going on. What is the real challenge, do you think? Put it in some terms we can come to grips with.

Keith Clement Tom, I think that we could view things as a capability gap, you know, just not having enough employees to fill out our information security teams. We could view it as a matter of those folks. Not having the skill set necessary for 2024 is advanced threat environment. And I think that thirdly, we could really look into the issues of the transition from the preparation process to actual employment process. And I think those are three key issues.

Tom Temin Yeah. So the capabilities is just sheer capacity. You mean and do we have enough bodies potentially even for this challenge globally?

Keith Clement World World Economic Forum estimates there are over 4 million cybersecurity jobs available. And in the United States, we have about 450,000 cyber jobs that are currently open. You could look at larger states that could have easily 50,000 or 60,000 job openings there. You can look at Silicon Valley or specific regions to have 20,000 or 25,000 jobs available. You could really view this in any way that you wanted to. It is a national security issue. It is a national economic security issue. And I think that one of the misnomers out there, Tom, unfortunately, is a lot of folks think that you can just go to a couple of classes over the weekend and by Monday morning, you’re the chief information security officer of a major U.S. Corporation or a federal government agency. And it’s actually a rather detailed process, right?

Tom Temin And cybersecurity jobs cover the gamut from if you are a so-so, you’re probably not sitting in the security operations center looking for alerts personally, but yet sitting in the security operations center and looking for alerts. That is a job. So it really is from the highly technical keyboard pounding to management and planning.

Keith Clement But I Tom, I think he hit the nail on the head right there that we could view cybersecurity as an entry level problem, but it is probably more of an intermediate and advanced role problem. We really have problems with burnout and keeping people in the field for long enough to be senior personnel in these respects. And on a separate but related issue, I think that the state of cybersecurity management, it is also it very much in question. We just do not have the managers nor, you know, nor the executives or the entry level folks. And it’s a problem.

Tom Temin And you mentioned there is the preparation because there are lots of schools that offer comprehensive cybersecurity training. But then the employment, there’s kind of a valley of death there, it seems like.

Keith Clement Worse than a valley of death, at least in the valley of death. Some may end up taking hope. But at the end of the day, in this area, the level of frustration and anxiety of potential candidates getting into the field almost rivals the stress and the pressure and the skeleton crews they likely face when they actually get on the job. I mean, I think that only about two thirds of cybersecurity jobs are filled out. How good does any team do with two-thirds of a squad? Right. I mean, one or two people go out on vacation and the office is in chaos. I mean, somebody gets sick, heaven forbid. I mean, just serious problems. But I think there’s three steps of the preparation process that folks need to think through about getting into the world of cybersecurity. One, as you mentioned, is the education, the four year degrees and the master’s degrees and all that. And so the second is the reliance on industry based professional certifications that are critical in IT and in cyber and growing. And I just to put that out there. And third, I think the valley of death that you refer to is there are so few opportunities for workforce development in this area, like lacking internships, lacking apprenticeships in those opportunities, that that’s really a barrier that a lot of folks have a hard time overcoming. It’s the chicken or the egg, right? I need the job. Well, you have to have the work experience to get the job. And it is a tough cycle right there.

Tom Temin We are speaking with Dr. Keith Clement. He’s a professor of criminology at Cal State, Fresno. And by the way, how does a criminology professor get into the cybersecurity business?

Keith Clement I appreciate, Tom, that question deeply. I get it an awful lot. The first issue, of course, is the relationship between cyber crime and cyber terrorism as it relates to the world of criminology that is fast paced and rapidly changing. I think that there are a lot of malicious actors out there that think that it’s easier to conduct Internet scams and ransomware attacks than it is to put a gun in somebody’s face or on a street corner and face hard time in prison. So, the folks engaging in cyber security is a criminological component. But I think what you’re really suggesting here is something else. That is what is a criminologist doing in a technical and specialized area of cybersecurity. And I would just say that machines do is they’re told that the real problem in all of this response was were 90 to 95% of breaches and all of these other things is the human element of it. And and and not only that aspect of the human development, but it’s critical to think of education and workforce development is bringing many different silos or many different groups of folks that don’t play very well in the sandbox, as they say. And it’s really been a challenge to bring industry higher education K to 12 community based organizations, the public sector. It’s been really hard to bring all of those actors together that have to be present, sure of a career pipeline pathway.

Tom Temin And give us the top line view then of what ATARC has come up with for some solutions to the capabilities, skills and an employment gap.

Keith Clement So speaking to our federal friends and colleagues, I think that there are at least two significant contributions of that HR report that would that that should garner some attention. The first is actually related to a framework to assist K-12 and higher education institutions and technology services offices on a framework by which they can use to assist them in developing additional cyber awareness and preparedness training types of programs. On the education side, I suspect that the long dominance of a cyber or specialized degree program is probably a question mark these days. One of the key aspects of the task report is the development of a traditional or academic pathway into cybersecurity. The one that your your viewers are most familiar with, like the four year degrees and you get a handful of top tier certificates and then you get a one year apprentice somewhere and then then voila, you’re in the job of your dreams, but also a nontraditional pathway that is that, in all fairness, a highly specialized Stem degree program and in anything super technical and specialized is going to rely on calculus and significant. You know, not everybody can get a master’s or a bachelor’s degree from MIT and computer science. Right. Right. The reality of the world. And and if we’re going to rely only on degrees as a pathway into federal employment in this matter, we’re going to just have. So instead, what we need to do, as the report suggests, is the development of a nontraditional pathway that replaces, in essence, the academics with certifications and hands on skills and training and a workforce model to include either internships, paid internships or the a registered apprenticeship model through the U.S. Department of Labor, USTR. Right.

Tom Temin And that’s similar to what the Biden administration has been really pushing right in several areas is skills based hiring where appropriate and not degree based and KSA based or I guess the middle word of KSA is skills.

Keith Clement I think that one of the misnomers out there in the cyber world is the the dynamics of the new tools and knowledge and skills. I mean, if you are a information security trained individual from 15 or 20 years ago, you’d probably wonder what the heck is going on around here because it’s changed dramatically and it’ll change tomorrow. And we could just as easily talk about the impact of artificial intelligence on on these matters, the convergence of A.I. and cybersecurity, and in a broader sense, and then in a very, very narrow sense, the utilization of AI in cybersecurity, right? I mean, red team, blue team activities. So I think there’s a lot going on in this space these days. I’m sure you would agree this is a critical area. I think another area of interest to to your viewers is this idea that these traditional nontraditional models are not exclusive by any means, but in many ways are complementary and kind of intertwine amongst themselves. This is a difficult position. This is a difficult sector to break into. As they say, you know, socialization and professional networks go really far here, too.

Tom Temin All right. Lots of good ideas in that report. Dr. Keith Clement is a professor of criminology at Cal State Fresno and also principal author of the ATARC white paper. Thanks so much for joining me.

Keith Clement Tom, Thank you so much. Pleasure’s all mine. Have a great day.

Tom Temin And we’ll post this interview along with a link to the white paper at federalnewsnetwork.com/federaldrive. Hear the Federal Drive on demand. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Copyright © 2024 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

After making improvements for two months, the Office of Personnel Management retirement backlog saw a decline in claims received and processed claims for the month of September.

OPM received 5,618 claims in September, 1,465 less than the month of August’s claims received. OPM processed 6,302 claims in September, 1,400 less than in August.

Though OPM did not make improvements in retirement claims, the inventory backlog did shrink from 15,178 down to 14,494. This is the lowest it has been since May 2024.

The backlog is still above the steady state goal of 13,000.

OPM said September cases completed in less than 60 days on average took 41 days to process, while cases that took more than 60 days on average took 115 days to fully process.

Copyright © 2024 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

The Biden administration is giving agencies more staffing and capacity to handle the increase in permitting work that comes with a windfall of federally funded infrastructure projects.

To help federal agencies deal with a surge in environmental reviews and other permitting work under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, the Federal Permitting Council is investing $15 million in a new contracting tool.

Permitting Council Executive Director Eric Beightel said Tuesday that the funds will go toward procuring temporary contract resources that can enable more timely and efficient reviews.

“We are developing a contract solution to enable agencies to quickly leverage surge support to enable reviews and other permitting work to be completed effectively and on schedule,” Beightel said at the council’s inaugural Infrastructure Developers Summit, held at the Agriculture Department’s Washington, D.C. headquarters.

“This will be a game-changer, as we work with agencies to make sure they have the right type of support at the right time, to avoid unnecessary delays in delivering our critical infrastructure,” he added.

The council, by tapping into resources from the Inflation Reduction Act, has already invested $40 million in federal IT solutions to modernize agencies’ outdated permitting systems.

“This funding is allowing agencies to leverage artificial intelligence to increase the efficiency of administrative tasks, freeing up subject matter experts to do the analytical thinking,” Beightel said.

Beightel said the council is also funding projects to help agencies roll out web-based permit applications. Funding, he added, is also going to better mapping and data-sharing strategies to “help staff and applicants alike access information necessary to design and build these projects.”

“We can’t afford to rely on outdated systems and inefficient procedures, or siloed thinking with parochial interests for us to achieve our infrastructure goals,” he said.

Improving hiring, collaboration

The council is also working with the Office of Personnel Management to support cross-agency hiring initiatives meant to cut down on administrative burden and fill vacant positions sooner.

“Considering the number of new permitting hires needed to address the surge of projects, we also recognize that there’s work to be done to make the hiring process more efficient,” Beightel said.

The council, so far, has helped 40 projects navigate federal environment review and permitting requirements, and advance those projects to construction and operation.

Beightel said projects supported by the council, on average, make it through the federal permitting process nearly 18 months faster than other projects.

“It is our mission to move projects forward on a predictable timeline with transparency into the steps and sequencing necessary to complete the process, and by holding agencies and sponsors accountable to meeting that timeline,” he said.

Lael Brainerd, director of the National Economic Council, said the council’s $15 million investment will give federal agencies the “surge capacity” needed for better and faster permitting.

“We know we cannot build the best infrastructure in the world, we can’t be the leader in the industries of the future — we can’t have fabs constructed on time to do leading-edge semiconductor production, and we’re not going to be able to build data centers fast enough to retain global preeminence in AI — without having fast and streamlined permitting processes,” Brainerd said.

The White House’s Council on Environmental Quality recommended in July that agencies leverage digital tools to modernize the environmental review process.

“A few weeks ago, the President pulled the Cabinet together, and he had one simple message:  We all need to move faster to facilitate all these incredibly important private sector and public sector investments to get projects up and running,” Brainerd said.

Acting Interior Deputy Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis said the permitting council, by tapping into resources from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, is “upping our game, in terms of the guts of how this work needs to happen inside an agency.”

“That can be anything from IT, to just the bodies and the people to get the permitting done. I think all of those are incredibly important improvements that we’re proud of, and I think they’re lasting improvements,” Daniel-Davis said.

The Interior Department has permitted over 41 projects on federal lands during the Biden administration. The department has exceeded its goal of providing 25 gigawatts of energy by 2025 through solar, wind, geothermal and other clean-energy projects.

The permitting council maintains an online dashboard keeping track of federally funded infrastructure upgrades.

“The dashboard is a visual representation of a lot of work that happens in the agencies at DOI. There are days I feel like every component of DOI is involved in one project or another, and it then becomes really important, what’s behind these milestones, what’s behind the dashboard?” Daniel-Davis said.

Beightel said the council also ensures agencies and industries alike have a seat at the table on permitting decisions.

“This helps everyone understand how a delay on one permit can have a cascading effect on project delivery. By moving construction dates, labor availability, part shipments and countless other factors beyond permitting, they can influence a project’s ultimate success,” he said.

The Biden administration’s infrastructure agenda also plays a significant role in meeting an ambitious goal of making the U.S. energy industry carbon pollution-free by 2035 and achieving a net-zero emissions economy by no later than 2050.

Deputy Energy Secretary David Turk said that the U.S. put twice as much clean energy on the electrical grid in 2024 than in any other year.

Turk said the U.S. is also significantly higher demand for electricity for the first time in about 15 years. To stay on track with the administration’s goals, Turk said permitting agencies need to keep pace with industry.

“For us to build at the scale and the pace that we need to, it’s got to be the private sector. It’s got to be investors. It’s got to be entrepreneurs. It’s got to be developers who are unleashed. That doesn’t mean you get to do anything you want, everywhere you want, but it also doesn’t mean that you get bogged down for years and years and years when there’s good projects to be had,” Turk said.

“We need to have humility to make sure that we are doing our job at the pace and scale of which we all need to be doing, certainly to build out the clean energy future going forward,” he added.

Copyright © 2024 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

Federal workers rarely receive thank you notes. Neglect from the public or politicians is expected; what’s surprising is how rare appreciation can be in their own workplaces. After 15 years in government, I’ve seen firsthand how federal offices often overlook appreciation or boil it down to token gestures. But true appreciation isn’t a luxury, nor is it complicated. It’s a simple way every federal employee can contribute to a resilient and supportive workplace — and maybe even improve their own well-being along the way.

Our biology needs appreciation

Humans are hardwired for connection and belonging because our ancestors’ survival depended on it. Appreciation serves as a key indicator of that sense of belonging, with significant implications for both our home and work lives.

Recognizing this, Gary Chapman, creator of the five love languages concept, extended the idea into the workplace in 2019. “The Five Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace,” co-authored with Paul White, highlights the practical benefits, including the fact that appreciated employees are 59% less likely to quit. The Harvard Business School reinforces this finding, stating that for workplace motivation, “what really matters is helping employees feel appreciated.” As Chapman and White write, “people want to be valued not just for what they do, but for who they are.”

Expressing appreciation doesn’t just help others feel valued — it also boosts our happiness. Decades of research show that cultivating a habit of gratitude can rewire your brain, leading to lasting improvements in mental health.

Our federal bureaucracy needs appreciation

All workplaces need appreciation, but it’s even more important in the federal workforce. First, as Michael Lewis highlights in “The Fifth Risk,” praise from the public or politicians is unreliable, particularly given the long-term, behind-the-scenes and preventative nature of government work. Internal recognition is a vital counterbalance.

Second, public service often involves monumental problems and frequent setbacks. Without appreciation for effort, not just results, it’s easy to become disillusioned. While working on democracy in South Sudan at the State Department, for example, it was heartbreaking to see the country slip back into conflict. Yet, despite the setbacks, my leadership’s appreciation made me feel valued and supported.

Finally, bureaucracy can be dehumanizing. Rigid rules make employees feel like mere numbers. Feeling like just another box on an org chart, rather than a valued individual, can be deeply disheartening. Individual care and gratitude from managers can help counteract this anonymity.

Missing the mark in government

Federal employees do not feel valued. According to the 2023 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, only 46% of federal employees feel meaningfully recognized for their performance. And it’s telling that the only major government-wide appreciation event is hosted by an external nonprofit.

To address this need, however, we need to differentiate recognition from appreciation. Recognition focuses on behavior. It is a top-down tool to reward employees for their work, often in an impersonal and routine manner. Appreciation, on the other hand, is relational and specific. It acknowledges the unique contributions of team members through direct and specific gratitude.

Recognition is a good first step, but if we think it’s enough, we’re missing the mark. Annual ceremonies with framed generic certificates, years-in-service “awards,” or the hopelessly bland “thanks for everything” don’t satisfy. Even cash awards can ring hollow if not accompanied by specific gratitude. A few years ago, I attended an annual recognition ceremony at a sprawling State Department conference center. The formal setting, routine acknowledgments and scripted thank-yous made for an event with the glow of a mandatory meeting.

Appreciation should be part of ceremonies like these, but true appreciation is an everyday practice that we can weave into meetings, events and routine interaction.

Barriers to appreciation

Even though I’ve tried to make it a part of my daily routine, I don’t express gratitude as often as I should. It’s tough to find time for appreciation in packed meeting agendas, and I’ve also fallen into the trap of thinking that if I don’t send a thank you note right away, it’s too late.

In fast-paced government work, showing heartfelt acknowledgment can feel awkward or out of place. I’ve worried that showing appreciation could be seen as a distraction, particularly during formal meetings, or that acknowledging someone too warmly might come across as a sign of weakness or even flattery.

A final barrier is the fact that people — surprise — aren’t perfect. Who among us hasn’t replied late to an email, missed a deadline, or been a tad cranky in a meeting? But this shouldn’t prevent us from appreciating, or being appreciated, for the many positives. In fact, Fast Company argues that “when things go wrong is precisely when employees need to feel valued.”

Doing it differently

That government culture isn’t naturally infused with gratitude is not an excuse — it’s a call to leadership. We desperately need to break through the formality of org charts and performance plans to tell people what they mean to us.

Leaders desperately need to feel appreciated, too. Take my mother, who was in senior management at the State Department for decades. She routinely brought baked goods to team meetings, but she can’t recall ever being thanked for it. And by the way, it’s never too late to say thank you.

Appreciation doesn’t have to be complicated. For example, during weekly team meetings at the State Department, we spent the first five minutes giving out “camel” and “rhino” awards — small stuffed animals that served as tokens of appreciation as they sat at the employee’s desk for the week. Don’t underestimate small gestures. A heartfelt thank-you might reach a coworker on a rough week and help them feel seen when they need it most. I’ll never forget the separate vegan treat a former boss baked for me for an offsite — it was a simple act, but it made me seen and valued.

Meaningful thank you notes can make a real difference — and everyone has time to write them. In 2013, I was a young diplomat trying to find my place as I was supporting the UN General Assembly meetings in New York. I was floored when I received a personalized thank you note from Williams Burns, then deputy secretary of State, now CIA director. I still have that note — not just as a reminder of my worth, but as a key lesson in leadership.

I’ve also experienced the impact of expressing more appreciation. A former State Department colleague and I have been daily gratitude partners since 2021. After over 1,000 emails with one thing we’re grateful for, I’ve noticed a shift in my attention, from the frustrations of people and the bureaucracy to seeing more of the good in others.

Beyond recognition: How you can contribute to culture change

Regardless of your role, everyone can contribute to — and benefit from — making appreciation a daily workplace habit. Here are four places to get started:

1. Make appreciation personal. Thank you is not a complete sentence. Adding in “..for” and “..because” are key to making appreciation meaningful.
2. Be intentional about format: Consider whether a handwritten note, quick email or tailored GIF would be most meaningful. While public and private appreciation both have a place, remember that some people balk at public recognition, while others, perhaps junior employees, rarely get the limelight.
3. Use actions, not just words: “The Five Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace” shares numerous ways you can make others feel valued. Invite a colleague to coffee, help them with a rote task, or show up at their happy hour or presentation.
4. Develop a habit of appreciation: Set a daily reminder to send a note of appreciation to someone, find a work gratitude partner, or keep a gratitude journal.

A call to appreciation in federal work

In the bestselling “7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” Steven Covey writes “Next to physical survival, the greatest need of a human being is psychological survival — to be understood, to be affirmed, to be validated, to be appreciated.” I learned this lesson the hard way. One of the biggest mistakes of my State Department career happened while I was speaking at a major event in Senegal. In imperfect French I lavishly thanked the host government but failed to publicly acknowledge my team lead on the ground. That oversight left her in tears, and our relationship never fully recovered.

In the often anonymous and thankless world of government work, recognition alone can make us feel replaceable — like we are just some body. But genuine appreciation tells us we are somebody.

As hundreds of new tech workers join the federal workforce and we navigate a challenging political transition, appreciation is an essential tool to maintain the health and resilience of our workforce. Thank you notes may not be why people join public service, but in these challenging times, they could very well be the reason they choose to stay.

Alex Snider is a strategy lead in the federal government. Previously he worked as a diplomat in the U.S. Department of State, in the U.S. Senate, and at the World Bank. He is a certified mindful facilitator from UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center and is involved in various efforts to bring mindfulness into government and improve employee wellbeing. You can find him on LinkedIn. He has written on bringing humanity to government, including emotions in the workplace, authenticity, and the need to take breaks.

This op-ed is written in his personal capacity and the views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent the views of his agency or the United States.

Copyright © 2024 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

A Raymond James (NYSE: RJF) report has found that the volume of merger and acquisition-related transactions in the government technology solutions market dropped 12 percent in the third quarter of 2024 compared with the same period last year.

According to the company’s quarterly market update, despite the decline in Q3 2024 M&A deal volume, total transactions in 2024 reflected an 8 percent increase compared to this time the previous year.

The report was issued by Raymond James’ defense and government team, whose managing directors are 2024 Wash100 awardee Sam Maness and Andy McEnroe.

Government Tech Solutions M&A Activity

When it comes to M&A activity breakdown by buyer type, strategic acquirers accounted for eight transactions and private equity firms were associated with 22 transactions in Q3 2024.

M&A deals by private equity investors dropped from 28 in Q3 2023 to 22 transactions this year’s quarter, reflecting a decline of 21 percent.

Some of the M&A deals cited in the report are the proposed acquisition of Enlightenment Capital-backed Aeyon by CGI’s (NYSE: GIB) U.S. federal arm, Cydecor’s purchase of Artel, General Dynamics Information Technology’s acquisition of Iron EagleX, or IEX, and Exiger’s move to buy data science company XSB.

Market Performance of Public Government Tech Companies

The report showed the stock and financial performances of publicly traded companies in government technology and diversified IT markets.

Some of those companies are Booz Allen Hamilton (NYSE: BAH), CACI International (NYSE: CACI), ICF (Nasdaq: ICFI), Leidos (NYSE: LDOS), Parsons (NYSE: PSN), Science Applications International Corp. (Nasdaq: SAIC), Accenture (NYSE: ACN) and IBM (NYSE: IBM).

Public Government Tech Market Index Performance

According to the report, the Government Technology index has witnessed above-average growth over the last year, 58.1 percent, compared with its historical five-year annual average of 31.1 percent.

The index has increased 40.1 percent in the 2024 year-to-date period, driven by international events, robust funding dynamics and sector privatization by government agencies.

Raymond James noted in the report that over the last year, the Diversified IT index has outperformed the S&P 500 index with a return of 36.4 percent.