[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                       THE FUTURE OF FEDERAL WORK

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                 SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS

                                 OF THE

                   COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM

                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                            DECEMBER 1, 2021

                               __________

                           Serial No. 117-55

                               __________

      Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Reform
      
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]      


                       Available at: govinfo.gov,
                         oversight.house.gov or
                             docs.house.gov
                             
                              __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
46-282 PDF                 WASHINGTON : 2022                     
          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------   
                            
                   COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM

                CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York, Chairwoman

Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of   James Comer, Kentucky, Ranking 
    Columbia                             Minority Member
Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts      Jim Jordan, Ohio
Jim Cooper, Tennessee                Virginia Foxx, North Carolina
Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia         Jody B. Hice, Georgia
Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois        Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin
Jamie Raskin, Maryland               Michael Cloud, Texas
Ro Khanna, California                Bob Gibbs, Ohio
Kweisi Mfume, Maryland               Clay Higgins, Louisiana
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York   Ralph Norman, South Carolina
Rashida Tlaib, Michigan              Pete Sessions, Texas
Katie Porter, California             Fred Keller, Pennsylvania
Cori Bush, Missouri                  Andy Biggs, Arizona
Shontel M. Brown, Ohio               Andrew Clyde, Georgia
Danny K. Davis, Illinois             Nancy Mace, South Carolina
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida    Scott Franklin, Florida
Peter Welch, Vermont                 Jake LaTurner, Kansas
Henry C. ``Hank'' Johnson, Jr.,      Pat Fallon, Texas
    Georgia                          Yvette Herrell, New Mexico
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland           Byron Donalds, Florida
Jackie Speier, California            Vacancy
Robin L. Kelly, Illinois
Brenda L. Lawrence, Michigan
Mark DeSaulnier, California
Jimmy Gomez, California
Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts

                     Russell Anello, Staff Director
  Wendy Ginsberg, Subcommittee on Government Operations Staff Director
                    Amy Stratton, Deputy Chief Clerk

                      Contact Number: 202-225-5051

                  Mark Marin, Minority Staff Director
                                 ------                                

                 Subcommittee on Government Operations

                 Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia, Chairman
Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of   Jody B. Hice, Georgia Ranking 
    Columbia                             Minority Member
Danny K. Davis, Illinois             Fred Keller, Pennsylvania
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland           Andrew Clyde, Georgia
Brenda L. Lawrence, Michigan         Andy Biggs, Arizona
Stephen F. Lynch, Massachsetts       Nancy Mace, South Carolina
Jamie Raskin, Maryland               Jake LaTurner, Kansas
Ro Khanna, California                Yvette Herrell, New Mexico
Katie Porter, California
                         
                         C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page
Hearing held on December 1, 2021.................................     1

                               Witnesses

Ms. Mika J. Cross, Federal Workplace Expert
Oral Statement...................................................     8

Mr. Kenneth J. Thomas, National President, National Active and 
  Retired Federal Employees Association
Oral Statement...................................................    10

Ms. Michelle Amante, Vice President, Federal Workforce Programs, 
  Partnership for Public Service
Oral Statement...................................................    12

Mr. Andrew G. Biggs, Ph.D., Senior Fellow, American Enterprise 
  Institute
Oral Statement...................................................    14

Ms. Meredith M. Lozar, Executive Director, Programs and Events, 
  Hiring Our Heroes, U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation
Oral Statement...................................................    15

Written opening statements and statements for the witnesses are 
  available on the U.S. House of Representatives Document 
  Repository at: docs.house.gov.

                           Index of Documents

                              ----------                              


  * Documents regarding Fauci, FDA, et.; submitted by Rep. Biggs.

  * Letters from Chris Crane and Brandon Judd; submitted by Rep. 
  Biggs.

  * Statements from the National Academy of Public 
  Administration, National Federation of Federal Employees and 
  the National Treasury Employees Union; submitted by Chairman 
  Connolly.
  * Reports from the National Academy of Public Administration 
  and the RAND Corporation; submitted by Chairman Connolly.

  * Questions for the Record: to Ms. Cross; submitted by Chairman 
  Connolly.

  * Questions for the Record: to Mr. to Thomas-NARFE; submitted 
  by Chairman Connolly.
  * Questions for the Record: to Ms. Amante-PPS; submitted by 
  Chairman Connolly.

  * Questions for the Record: to Ms. Lozar-USCCF; submitted by 
  Chairman Connolly.

The documents are available at: docs.house.gov.

 
                       THE FUTURE OF FEDERAL WORK

                              ----------                              


                      Wednesday, December 1, 2021

                   House of Representatives
                  Committee on Oversight and Reform
                      Subcommittee on Government Operations
                                                   Washington, D.C.

    The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:27 a.m., in 
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, and via Zoom. Hon. 
Gerald E. Connolly (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
    Present: Representatives Connolly, Norton, Davis, Sarbanes, 
Lawrence, Lynch, Raskin, Khanna, Porter, Hice, Keller, Biggs, 
and LaTurner.
    Mr. Connolly. Good morning everybody, we're a little bit 
late this morning because I was at the National Defense 
University chairing a meeting on NATO, a congressional panel 
that unfortunately ran a little bit long. So thank you for your 
patience. Thank you, Mr. Hice, for your patience.
    I want to welcome everyone to today's hybrid hearing. 
Pursuant to House rules, some members will appear in person, 
and others will appear remotely via Zoom.
    For members appearing remotely, I know we're all familiar 
with Zoom by now, but let me remind you of a few points. First, 
the House rules require that we see you, so please have your 
cameras turned on throughout the hearing.
    Second, members appearing remotely who are not recognized 
should remain muted to minimize background noise and feedback.
    Third, I will recognize members verbally, but members 
retain the right to seek recognition in regular order. Members 
will be recognized in seniority order for questions.
    Last, if you want to be recognized outside of regular 
order, you may identify that request in one of several ways. 
You may use the chat function to send a request--that's a 
preferable way of doing it--you may send an email to the 
majority staff, or you can raise your hand, and we will try to 
make sure that you are recognized.
    Before we begin, I want to let members know that one of our 
witnesses, Ms. Cross, has service-related injuries that may 
require her to stand up and move around, and at those times, if 
necessary, the subcommittee is prepared to accommodate and take 
a break if requested. So we'll begin the hearing, I believe, 
right now.
    The committee will come to order. Without objection, the 
chair is authorized to declare a recess of the committee at any 
time. And I now recognize myself for an opening statement.
    I want to welcome everybody to the hearing which was 
requested specifically by my friend, the ranking member, Mr. 
Hice, earlier this year, as part are our work together on the 
Chai Suthammanont Remembrance Act, H.R. 978, a bill that will 
help ensure that Federal workplaces remain safe amid and 
following the pandemic.
    And while efforts on that bill have currently stalled, I 
hope that the ranking member remains steadfast in his 
commitment to floor consideration of this legislation. In light 
of the new variant, I think it's very much relevant.
    In September 2019, just a few months prior to the onset of 
COVID-19, this subcommittee held a prescient hearing on how to 
build an effective Federal work force in the 21st century. What 
a difference two years makes in how we think about the work, 
the workplace, employment, and employees.
    In December 2019, Congress, led entirely by the majority, 
enacted the Federal Employee Paid Leave Act, H.R. 1534, which 
as of October 2020, provides up to 12 weeks of paid leave to 
new parents in the Federal work force.
    Then in early spring of 2020, the pandemic served as a 
cajole for many Federal agencies to embrace telework, something 
this committee and subcommittee have championed for a long 
time. Government simply had to adapt to ensure the continuity 
of operations and to make sure that quality service is 
continued to be provided to the American people uninterrupted.
    What we learned in these last two years is that Federal 
employees continue to serve the Nation no matter how difficult 
the circumstances.
    And while so much as changed in two years, some things 
remain stalwart. First, the need to educate, attract, and 
onboard the next generation of Federal employees has never been 
greater. Only about 6.9 percent of Federal employees are under 
the age of 30. In the private sector the comparable percentage 
is 23 percent.
    Nearly 30 percent of Federal employees are over the age of 
55, with potentially one-third of the Federal work force 
eligible to retire over the next several years.
    These numbers present us with a staggering challenge. Yet 
the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that 
recruitment of early career individuals is not that difficult 
to achieve in the private sector.
    If you look at the screen, you'll see the discrepancy 
between the two. The red bar show the age distribution of 
employees nationwide.
    Well, if it was up there, you would see it.
    And then we look at the age distribution of the Federal 
work force and the contrast. Young employees make up a much 
smaller fraction of the Federal Government than they do 
nationwide.
    The work force is the lifeblood of our Federal Government, 
but our people committed to public service, taxpayers, 
vulnerable populations, small businesses, and others, will not 
have access and the resources and services they need.
    If we fail to attract and hire the best and the brightest 
in Federal service, the Nation and the people we serve suffer.
    Despite years of effort, strategic human capital management 
of the Federal work force remains on GAO, the Government 
Accountability Office's, high-risk list.
    GAO notes that myriad items on their high-risk list are a 
result of the Federal Government's inability to close skill 
gaps and to hire, train, and staff up particularly critical 
Federal staff.
    Some of those critical skill gaps involve the financial 
management of the Department of Defense's weapon system, for 
example, the acquisition work force, the enforcement of our 
Federal tax laws, ensuring the cybersecurity of our most 
sensitive information, effective vetting of our national 
security work force, purchasing ads, as well as information 
technology, to deliver Federal services to the public and 
providing accessible and quality healthcare to our veterans, 
just to name some.
    At this hearing, we will focus on three areas that, taken 
together, will help government find and onboard early career 
talent, retain high performing employees, and ensure that the 
Federal Government equitably serves all communities.
    These initiatives include more effectively leveraging 
Federal internships as talent pools for early career civil 
servants like we do in the private sector.
    Second, offering greater workplace flexibility and benefits 
to attract top-level talent to Federal service, including 
telework and other flexibilities.
    And third, ensuring that the Federal work force reflects 
the communities in which it serves at all levels.
    Federal Government provides only 4,000 formal paid 
internships at any given time, and even those individuals 
struggle to move into Federal service after the culmination of 
their internship.
    Meanwhile, the Federal Government's private sector 
competitors offer jobs to approximately 96 percent of their 
interns. That's staggering. We're in the single digits. They're 
at 96 percent.
    In a Harris poll published in 2019, the U.S. Government's 
reputation ranked last in comparison to a hundred top 
companies. Last.
    Simply put, individuals graduating from top schools are not 
attracted to Federal service, neither are the interns who 
intern for the Federal Government. We need to change that.
    As a foundational component of our efforts to attract and 
onboard early career individuals into government, today I have 
introduced the Building the Next Generation of Federal 
Employees Act, or the Next Gen Feds Act.
    The bill codifies existing, successful internship programs 
and brings uniformity and basic practices to other Federal 
internships across the government.
    This legislation will, I hope, require agencies to 
incorporate agreed-upon best practices in their internship 
programs, including mentorships and exit interviews.
    It will establish a Federal internship and fellowship 
center within the Office of Personnel Management.
    It will direct the creation of an online Federal Government 
internship platform for use by agencies and those seeking 
internships as a one-stop shop for information and internship 
application.
    It will establish a pilot program to recruit potential 
Federal employees in underserved markets and underrepresented 
demographics.
    It will foster diversity and inclusion by requiring Federal 
agencies to pay their interns, and it will provide--which by 
the way we do now here on the Hill, belatedly but we do--and it 
will provide hiring advantages to interns who successfully 
complete at least one year of Federal internship service.
    The bill is endorsed by the National Active and Retired 
Federal Employees Association, NARFE, it is represented by Mr. 
Thomas, who is a witness, as well as the International 
Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers and the 
National Federation of Federal Employees.
    I want to highlight particularly important provisions in 
the bill. As I noted, the bill seeks to ensure that all Federal 
interns are paid. These provisions ensure that internships are 
not only available to students whose parents can afford to pay 
for them to live and work near or with Federal agencies without 
pay.
    More importantly, paying interns ensures that they have 
protections against discrimination and workplace harassment and 
protections against discrimination on the basis of race, color, 
creed, religion, sex, or national origin.
    Amazingly, unpaid interns have to pay to work and receive 
no workplace protections against such discrimination. This bill 
will vest them with those protections.
    The hearing will also explore the expectations of our 
current and future Federal work force in terms of job 
flexibilities and benefits. Preliminary findings show that the 
move to telework largely increased employee productivity.
    As a March 2021 Department of Defense Inspector General 
survey, for example, of more than 56,000 personnel, found that 
91.1 percent of employees indicated their productivity either 
remained the same or improved while teleworking during the 
pandemic.
    The Office of Personnel Management's Fiscal Year 2019 
report to Congress on the status of telework in the Federal 
Government, shows that teleworkers are more engaged in and 
satisfied with their jobs, by the way, consistent with data 
about telework over the last 20 years.
    Just more than a week ago, the Biden administration 
released telework guidance to assist agencies as they design 
their post pandemic telework plans. The guidance encourages 
agencies not to return to a pre-pandemic telework posture but 
instead to build off the successes we've experienced during the 
pandemic.
    The Federal Government must employ those lessons, 
particularly if we seek to build a generation of public 
servants who reflect the communities from which they come.
    We also eagerly await the administration's pending 2020 
telework report to provide data and evidence that demonstrate 
the increased use of and benefits from telework.
    I plan to soon introduce the Telework Metrics and Cost 
Savings Act, which would, among other things, prohibit agency 
leaders from unilaterally prohibiting telework and require 
agencies to quantify and report on the cost savings incurred 
through increased teleworking.
    If we don't set metrics, it's all anecdotal and 
aspirational, and it may or may not be working. We got to have 
hard metrics, both goals and evaluative metrics so we know 
whether it's efficacious or not, and to tell us where we need 
to improve.
    We also want to ensure that the Federal work force at all 
levels reflects the people it serves. People of color make up 
only 47 percent of the professional Federal work force, 33 
percent of our senior level positions, and 23 percent of our 
Senior Executive Service.
    The figure on the screen again--apparently we're not on the 
screen--oh, there we are, the figure on the screen, they got 
it, all right--shows the percentage of people of color at each 
grade on the Federal pay scale, from entry level to senior 
executive. Not impressive.
    We also have a lack of gender diversity in our senior level 
positions. As the slide shows, women make up 58 percent of all 
full time, entry level employees, but only 36 percent of senior 
executives. We can and must do better.
    Government must reconsider the ways in which it attracts 
and supports individuals from all backgrounds and provide them 
with the appropriate career tools and training to grow to 
leaders within their organizations.
    While 85 percent of the Federal work force lives outside 
the Beltway, increasing telework opportunities could further 
help the government hire outside of urban areas and better 
reflect all congressional districts including more rural 
communities like those served by my ranking member, Mr. Hice, 
and other members of the subcommittee.
    Federal agencies must be clear-eyed about meeting young 
people, government future leaders, where they are. It is 
striking to think that anyone can walk up to the graduating 
student and invite them to a 30-year position with the 
government and the student will accept. I just don't think 
that's a realistic expectation anymore. And that's not how 
things are going to work with the millennial generation in 
particular.
    So I look forward to working with my colleagues to enact 
meaningful internship legislation but also to explore other 
ways we can enhance and improve the Federal workplace and 
create a more vibrant, diverse, Federal employee population as 
we start to replace the generation that is about to retire.
    And with that, I call on--I thank my friend for his 
indulgence and call on Mr. Hice for his opening statement.
    Mr. Hice. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I 
appreciate you calling this hearing on the future of Federal 
work force. I welcome all our witnesses for being here as well. 
Thank you for being a part of this hearing.
    This is an important topic. It's appropriate for this 
subcommittee to take a good look at it from all perspectives. 
And as I said, I'm very pleased to have each of you here as our 
witnesses today, but I also believe that we should be talking 
with OPM directly. I am frankly disappointed in the continued 
lack of administration witnesses that this committee and the 
committee as a whole considers.
    For that matter, we are going to be in a markup with an 
OPM-related bill tomorrow on the National Academy and Public 
Administration report that was released in March. It would seem 
to me that they ought to be here today as well.
    So the bottom line I guess for today's hearing is the fact 
that the Federal Government exists, as we all know, to serve 
the American people, and we must ensure that the Federal work 
force carries out that mission.
    But when we talk about the future of the Federal work force 
these days, it has really become a code for talking about 
expanding telework and remote work arrangements among Federal 
employees, in my opinion, with very little thought in regard to 
how that might impact the American people and other serious 
concerns.
    And while we all know that circumstances surrounding COVID 
made some changes in our arrangements and how we do work 
necessary, the rest of the world has returned to work for the 
most part, while the Federal Government was very slow to do so 
and frankly continues to be slow. And in many instances, it is 
the Federal Government that ought to be taking the lead.
    But in this instance and others, the Federal Government 
certainly did not do that, and now the Biden administration has 
made it clear that it wants expanded telework and remote work 
to become a permanent part of the Federal landscape, and they 
use practices of the private sector and the need to recruit as 
rationales. But that in itself is not adequate.
    I don't think that, by itself, is a safe path for us to run 
down. There are differences between the private sector and 
Federal agencies, and we need to keep these in mind.
    It's important to understand the differences as well as to 
ensure that the American people whom deserve and expect certain 
services, that that aspect of this whole debate is kept as 
priority and focus as we go through these discussions.
    In some instances, for example, the Social Security 
Administration, the lack of in-person service during the 
pandemic created real problems for the American people. The 
recent announcement that the SSA will be opening field offices 
in January strikes me as wholly inadequate after a sharp 
decline in benefit awards in 2020.
    And as we will hear from Mr. Biggs, Social Security 
Administration is one of the easier agencies for which to 
measure employees' impact. What about the others?
    We need to have this discussion, honestly have this 
discussion. How can we be sure agency missions are not going to 
slip while we are in the midst of a drive to provide more and 
more telework and remote working arrangements?
    We have legitimate questions that need to be answered, and 
above and beyond that, during the pandemic, there were also 
real national security problems that emerged.
    The Department of Defense Inspector General, for example, 
found that DOD components that failed to provide sufficient 
work--network capacity. They found problems with communication 
tools. They found equipment lacking to support increased 
telework.
    The IG reported that some teleworking personnel turned to 
unauthorized video conferencing applications and personal 
equipment. As a result, there was increased risk of exposing 
sensitive DOD information that could impact both the mission of 
the DOD as well as our national security.
    It's fair that we have these questions. These are honest 
questions that need to be considered as we go through this. 
Before we just jump into total embrace and acceptance of 
telework and remote work, we need to seriously take a look at 
the impact this may have, both to agencies, as well as the 
American people.
    And I would ask the chairman to work with me to get some of 
these answers. I think they're legitimate questions that need 
authentic answers.
    But turning to legislation, I would like to discuss the 
recently introduced Strengthening OPM Act and the soon to come 
Building the Next Generation of Federal Employees Act.
    When the Trump administration was rolling out its plans to 
shift responsibilities away from OPM to GSA and OMB, I was 
quite vocal and Chairman Connolly was as well, but I was 
expressing my frustration and demanded that the administration 
provide more documents and justification for that kind of move.
    But I was also vocal in saying that we need to take a 
holistic look at the problems facing OPM. The history of OPM is 
one of underachievement. It's one of mismanagement and 
problems. In truth, OPM has struggled to perform its core 
mission.
    In more than just OPM, the entire subject, if you will, of 
human capital strategy, and the Federal Government is one that 
requires a lot of careful attention. So the whole rationale 
behind the select measures included strengthening--the 
Strengthening OPM Act, which we're going to consider tomorrow, 
it's all unclear to me and raises questions that need careful 
consideration and authentic answers.
    I would point out that the bill's attempt to depoliticize 
OPM diminishes the President's ability to choose leaders who 
would carry out his or her vision. That's a deep concern for me 
personally and I believe for many others.
    The American people elect a President so that that 
President can make sure that his or her vision is carried out. 
And if OPM is going to be the Federal agency deciding personnel 
policy issues and strategy, then it needs to reflect the wishes 
and beliefs of the chief executive.
    I think it's very--a dangerous path for us to allow an 
unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy to dictate policy with no 
checks and balances. That's just not the way our system of 
government is supposed to operate.
    So as for Building the Next Generation of Federal Employees 
Act, Mr. Chairman, I will say that it--making it easier to 
identify internships and scholarships across Federal agencies, 
there's a lot of merit to that, it makes a lot of sense, but 
obviously I would like to learn more about the other provisions 
of the bill as we move forward.
    Again, Chairman, I thank you for holding this hearing, I 
thank our witnesses for being here, and I look forward to both 
the testimony and questions that are forthcoming.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you so much, Mr. Hice, and I also look 
forward to working with you on these issues and prospective 
legislation. I would only make a note that Congress exists for 
a reason. The President does not have unbridled power. He or 
she is not a king or a queen, and the Constitution, in fact, 
imbues the Congress with immense potential power in Article I, 
to provide checks and balances to the executive.
    Mr. Hice. And we don't get checks and balances with an 
unelected bureaucracy with no accountability----
    Mr. Connolly. Well----
    Mr. Hice [continuing]. and that's the concern as I speak 
right now----
    Mr. Connolly [continuing]. I would say respectfully that's 
an argument for repealing the Pendleton Act and politicizing 
the entire Civil Service. I mean, most of the Federal employee 
work force is nonpolitical, and, in fact, there's the Hatch Act 
to enforce that.
    Mr. Hice. I would just like debate on this because we have 
obviously----
    Mr. Connolly. Yep, we have a hearing.
    Mr. Hice [continuing]. we have opinion on this for another 
time, but we need to deal with this authentically.
    Mr. Connolly. Right.
    Mr. Hice. Thank you.
    Mr. Connolly. But I just wanted to assert, I would not make 
any apology for Congress asserting its right to limit executive 
politicization of the H.R. agency of the Federal Government, 
namely OPM. But we will debate that later. Thank you, Mr. Hice.
    Let me now introduce our panel. We have with us Mika Cross 
who is a Federal workplace expert.
    We have Kenneth Thomas, remotely, who is the President of 
NARFE of the National Active and Retired Federal Employee 
Association.
    We have Michelle Amante, who is the vice president of the 
Federal Workforce Programs and Partnership for Public Service.
    We have Andrew Biggs, who's a senior fellow at the American 
Enterprise Institute. I think, Andrew, you're also remote. Yep.
    And then Meredith Lozar, executive director of programs and 
events, Hiring Our Heroes, at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce 
Foundation. Welcome all. We have your prepared statements, and 
we will enter them fully into the record, and we invite you 
each to summarize your testimony in five minutes.
    And with that, Mika Cross, why don't you go first.
    Oh, I have to swear you in first. If you would all rise and 
those remotely, raise your right hand, do you solemnly swear to 
tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so 
help you God?
    Let the record show all of our witnesses today have 
answered in the affirmative. Thank you. You may be seated. The 
record will so note.
    Ms. Cross, welcome.

       STATEMENT OF MIKA CROSS, FEDERAL WORKPLACE EXPERT

    Ms. Cross. Thank you and good morning, Chairman Connolly, 
Ranking Member Hice, and distinguished members of this 
committee. Thank you for inviting me to speak about how we can 
build on the culture changes we're experiencing now to achieve 
an optimal Federal workplace of the future.
    I served this Nation for two decades starting as a soldier 
in the Army when I was 18 years old. I created wide-ranging, 
flexible workplace policies and programs in agencies like the 
Defense Intelligence Agency, USDA, and working for OPM and 
Department of Labor, before I transitioned to private industry, 
where I led a remote team at FlexJobs, working with global 
employers who leveraged their remote and flexible jobs to 
attract, hire, recruit, and retain top talent.
    In my prepared testimony today, I'm going to cover how the 
government can meet three critical goals--quickly hire and 
retain diverse talent, increase productivity, performance, and 
work force engagement, and modernize management skills to help 
overcome barriers to change.
    Well before 2020 the government faced labor shortages and 
attrition, especially in critical occupations like cyber, STEM, 
and technology. And both the CIL Council and the National 
Science Board agree that leveraging workplace flexibilities 
like remote and telework and other workplace flexibilities are 
a critical component of their future work strategies.
    But some agencies like the State Department were already 
pairing remote work and part time internships, making public 
service accessible for those who can't accept onsite positions 
due to financial or family constraints.
    Through the Virtual Student Federal Service program, over 
10,000 students from community colleges, Tribal, and minority-
servicing institutions, and other academic programs have worked 
with more than 70 Federal agencies, and last year alone, more 
than 8,000 of them applied to that program. So clearly there's 
a demonstrated high demand.
    Consider how this could work for hiring re-employed 
annuitants or creating returnships to bring former seasoned 
Feds back to government service.
    Agencies combining direct hiring authorities and 
recruitment efforts for remote and flexible internships or 
apprenticeships can quickly fill critical gaps in their talent 
pipeline.
    For workers experiencing geographic or mobility challenges 
like military spouses, veterans, caregivers, older workers, 
people with disabilities, and rural workers, access to flexible 
Federal jobs can be a game-changer.
    Now, throughout the pandemic we saw nearly 60 percent of 
Federal workers teleworking daily, but that can't work for all 
jobs. So agencies adopted a hybrid approach, using a mix of 
onsite, telework, and remote work options.
    Federal workplace policies quickly changed to eliminate 
core hours and offer more choices in work hours, schedules, and 
locations in order to keep Federal workers safe.
    And while millions of parents and caregivers were forced 
out of work because their jobs couldn't adapt, Federal managers 
used maximum flexibility to keep the mission going.
    This proves that the government can overcome the greatest 
barrier to telework--management resistance.
    So what were the impacts? The 2020 Federal employee 
viewpoint scores were their highest in five years in leadership 
practices that contribute to agency performance, overall 
engagement, and global satisfaction.
    Nearly half of Federal workers reported an increase in work 
demand, and 73 percent of them believe their agencies will 
respond effectively to future emergencies.
    In addition to increased engagement, agencies also reported 
improvements in innovation and productivity. Thousands of new 
Federal workers were hired and recruited and onboarded from the 
safety of their homes.
    Some agencies reported significant reductions in time to 
hire, and many used new technologies to onboard more 
efficiently and reduce paperwork and increase the work flow 
efficiencies.
    Now, as we look to the future, employee engagement and 
retention is becoming more important than ever, especially due 
to labor shortages and workers' desires to look for jobs that 
offer more flexibility.
    We can offer them more support to keep the momentum going 
in using flexible workplace policies used during the pandemic 
by supporting managers and supervisors to lead Federal workers 
from any location.
    We can also help promote the services we have in place to 
help managers lead from any location again and enhance 
performance through the Federal Coaching Network, the Employee 
Assistance Program, and agency ombudsman program.
    Mr. Connolly. Ms. Cross, if you can sum up.
    Ms. Cross. So thank you so much. This all will help to 
enhance productivity and prosperity and the future of our great 
country by looking toward the future and the clear path ahead 
for modernizing the Federal work force.
    Thank you.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you so much, and we look forward to 
exploring that further in the Q&A session. Thank you.
    Our next presenter is Kenneth Thomas, president of NARFE. 
Mr. Thomas, you are recognized for your five-minute opening 
statement.

STATEMENT OF KENNETH J. THOMAS, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL ACTIVE AND 
             RETIRED FEDERAL EMPLOYEES ASSOCIATION

    Mr. Thomas. Thank you, Chairman Connolly, Ranking Member 
Hice, and subcommittee members. On behalf of the five million 
Federal workers and annuitants represented by the National 
Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, I appreciate 
the opportunity to express our views regarding the future of 
Federal work.
    NARFE members dedicated their careers to serve our Nation. 
They want Federal service to succeed in its mission. To do so, 
the Federal Government must be able to recruit the next 
generation of Federal workers. NARFE and its members are here 
to pass the torch.
    We live in a world that is becoming more interconnected, 
yet increasingly polarized. We face rapid technological, 
environmental, and economic change. This presents the Federal 
work force with new challenges like responding to a global 
pandemic but also new opportunities to utilize technologies, to 
better serve the American people.
    Unfortunately, Federal Government personnel practices have 
not kept up with the pace of change. The last major reform to 
personnel management laws was 43 years ago, and the executive 
branch has failed to use existing authorities and capabilities 
to the extent it should. There's widespread recognition that 
Federal personnel management needs modernization.
    As it stands today, Federal agencies suffer from mission-
critical skills gaps. According to GAO, these skills gaps 
impede the government from effectively serving the public. In 
fact, skills gaps contribute to 22 of GAO's 35 other areas 
identified as high-risk.
    Agencies face a worsening situation. Nearly 28 percent of 
employees are eligible to retire within the next five years. 
Yet only eight percent of Federal employees are younger than 
30. In the private sector that number is 23 percent.
    It's also worse than it was 10 years ago. Today every 
Federal agency has fewer employees younger than 30 than they 
had in 2010. Unsurprisingly, this coincides with a large 
decline in Federal internships for more than 60,000 in 2010, to 
about 4,000 in 2020.
    It's clear the Federal Government must focus on attracting 
more talented individuals into Federal service. The good news 
is, there's no shortage of good ideas to do so.
    We agree with the President's management agenda, that we 
need an all-of-the-above approach. That approach must start 
with the recognition of a key source of problems.
    Current hiring processes are often too complex. As a 
result, it takes too long to bring somebody on board. Because 
they are too burdensome, agencies often bypass competitive 
hiring. None of this serves merit-based hiring principles well. 
Rather than undermining those principles, process improvements 
would improve fidelity to them.
    We also must improve Federal internship programs. The Next 
Gen Feds Act would help to do so, and I applaud Chairman 
Connolly for his leadership. The creation of a Federal 
fellowship and scholarship center, an online internship 
platform, and a reinvigorated paths program could serve as 
important tools.
    Providing competitive examination credit for qualified 
interns would help convert them into full time employees.
    However, we urge the committee to consider a shorter 
timeframe or even a sliding scale of credit based on the length 
of the internship.
    Finally, ensuring interns are paid opens the door to 
recruiting a more diverse set of individuals into service. 
Government-wide improvements in hiring employees and improving 
internship programs will rely on the revitalized and forward-
thinking OPM. We are very encouraged by Director Ahuja's 
leadership and OPM's initial response to the Napa report.
    We also endorse the Strengthening OPM Act to codify several 
of the recommendations. We urge OPM to press forward on 
implementation.
    We also urge this committee and Congress to provide support 
where needed and continued oversight to ensure progress. 
Efforts to improve Federal hiring must also ensure the Federal 
Government provides competitive pay and benefits.
    While Federal employees are often attracted to the 
government by commitment to its mission, they face the same 
economic realities as other Americans. Even the best hiring 
practices and most compelling missions will not overcome 
substantial differences in compensation.
    We must ensure pay rates do not fall too much further 
behind the private sector, authorize special pay authorities 
when needed, and preserve the value of existing benefits, which 
remains an important tool for recruitment and retention.
    Federal agencies may also be able to take advantage of the 
changing nature of work by expanding telework operations over 
the long term. Such an approach could save taxpayers through 
increased productivity and provide a more attractive work 
environment for many current and prospective employees.
    I want to thank the committee for----
    Mr. Connolly. Mr. Thomas, if you could sum up.
    Mr. Thomas. I want to thank the committee for allowing me 
to present today.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you so much.
    Our next witness is Michelle Amante with the Partnership 
for Public Service. You are recognized.

STATEMENT OF MICHELLE AMANTE, VICE PRESIDENT, FEDERAL WORKFORCE 
            PROGRAMS, PARTNERSHIP FOR PUBLIC SERVICE

    Ms. Amante. Good morning, Chairman Connolly, Ranking Member 
Hice, and members of the Subcommittee on Government Operations. 
Thank you for the opportunity to testify at today's hearing. My 
name is Michelle Amante, and I'm the vice president of Federal 
work force programs at the Partnership for Public Service.
    The partnership is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization 
dedicated to building a better government and a stronger 
democracy.
    There is unprecedented movement in the American work force. 
In September alone, over 4.4 million people voluntarily left 
their jobs. People want flexibility, they want to feel a sense 
of belonging, and they want their work to have meaning.
    The Federal Government has an opportunity to capitalize on 
this moment because our government has purpose-driven work. We 
do not know what is on the horizon, what natural disaster lies 
ahead, what cyber attack is lurking, or what the next pandemic 
may be. So we must invest in developing leaders who are 
resilient and adaptable.
    These attributes are a core part of the public service 
leadership model which sets the new standard for effective 
government leadership.
    We must abandon the notion that leadership development is 
nice to have training, rather, it's essential to fulfill 
complex missions and motivate, empower, and hold employees 
accountable under new workplace realities.
    The Federal Government must institutionalize the positive 
changes that emerged during the pandemic, such as flexible work 
schedules and hybrid work environments. We recognize that there 
are jobs that cannot be performed remotely.
    We advocate for agencies to focus on outcomes and mission 
achievement when determining the best course of action.
    In many cases, it is beneficial to have remote workers. 
Agencies can access untapped talent in new locations and expand 
diversity, not only racial and ethnic diversity, but it 
increases opportunities for young people to join public service 
and welcomes more workers with disabilities.
    We know that artificial intelligence and advanced 
automation are bringing significant changes to how we work. We 
must build the infrastructure to upskill and reskill the 
Federal work force on a continual basis.
    Agencies will not be able to fill gaps for mission critical 
talent through hiring alone. Reskilling will provide agencies a 
path for meeting needs and retaining talent as employees are 
looking for jobs with stronger career trajectories.
    None of this is easy. It will require investment of 
resources and a recognition that this is an iterative process. 
We applaud both the Biden and Trump administrations for making 
the Federal work force a central part of their Presidents' 
management agendas.
    We have several recommendations in our written testimony. 
However, there are three specific calls to action I want to 
highlight.
    First, Congress and the administration must work together 
to improve pathways to join public service through internships, 
fellowships, and talent exchanges.
    We're excited that Chairman Connolly is introducing 
legislation intended to improve and increase the use of 
internships and bring to fruition the ideas the partnership has 
recommended over the years.
    We need to create more options for permeability between 
sectors and opportunities for tours of duty such as the U.S. 
Digital Service. One example is Congress should amend the 
Intergovernmental Personnel Act to allow the private sector to 
participate in short-term talent exchanges.
    Second, a commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and 
accessibility must be a cornerstone in the transformation of 
how government recruits, hires, develops, and retains talent.
    This commitment ultimately leads to higher organizational 
performance by ensuring the door is open for top talent and by 
enabling new and creative ways of thinking.
    Also, a government that better reflects the people will 
improve service delivery and increase public trust in our 
democratic institutions.
    Last, rethinking how we recruit, reskill, and develop our 
talent is only possible with highly skilled and well resourced 
human capital offices.
    Congress should jumpstart efforts to increase the skills 
and professionalism of the Federal H.R. community by requiring 
OPM to provide technical training and fund critical H.R. IT 
needs which would improve the capability to track performance 
metrics and collaborate across agencies.
    We want this thank the chairman for introducing the 
Strengthening the OPM Act which is an important first step.
    We have an opportunity to drive meaningful, systemic, and 
lasting improvement for our Federal work force. Thank you again 
for allowing me to share these ideas today, and we look forward 
to working with you.
    Mr. Connolly. Perfect. Thank you so much.
    Our next witness is Andrew Biggs with the American 
Enterprise Institute.
    Mr. Biggs, you are recognized for five minutes.

 STATEMENT OF ANDREW BIGGS, SENIOR FELLOW, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE 
                           INSTITUTE

    Mr. Biggs. Thank you very much. Chairman Connolly, Ranking 
Member Hice, and members of the committee, thank you for 
inviting me to speak with you today. Lawmakers from both sides 
of the aisle agree that Federal personnel management has fallen 
short of producing a truly 21st century work force. Some 
reports call it a crisis.
    But I submit that you enjoy the benefits of high performing 
Federal employees every day, from Capitol Hill staff who man 
your personal offices and work on this committee.
    Every day congressional staff arrive early and stay late, 
take on new responsibilities on the fly, and produce the goods 
under pressure. Hill staff get the job done whether it takes 
nights or weekends.
    But more important than thanking Hill staff is 
understanding how this unusually high performing segment of the 
Federal work force came to be.
    A big reason is that you, as Members of Congress, can hire 
who you want, you can pay what you want, you can promote who 
you want, and you can fire who you want. Managing the staff of 
a congressional office will be significantly harder and your 
productivity as Members of Congress will be lower if you are 
hamstrung in hiring, firing, promotion, and pay. Yet that is 
how the typical Federal agency operates.
    Today, as Congress considers new tools for the Office of 
Personnel Management, it is worth considering President 
Carter's statement upon passage of the Civil Service Reform Act 
of 1978. By itself, President Carter said, the CSRA will not 
ensure improvement in the system. It provides the tools. The 
will and determination must come from those who manage the 
government.
    Since the CSRA was passed in 1978, Federal employee pay and 
benefits have risen faster than in the private sector. Nearly 
every study finds that Federal employees receive higher pay 
than similarly educated and experienced private sector 
employees.
    What has fallen short, I believe, is what President Carter 
called the will and determination, to insist on excellence and 
thereby attract and retain employees who exhibit excellence.
    For instance, the CSRA created a Senior Executive Service, 
intended as a nimble, flexible, and accountable class of upper 
management with the very best SES employees eligible for cash 
bonuses.
    Today OPM data show there's no correlation between SES 
employees' job performance ratings and their salaries. In some 
agencies, including OPM itself, the correlation between pay and 
performance is actually slightly negative, meaning the lower 
rated employees get paid more than high performers.
    And while SES bonuses for originally intended for just the 
top performers, today 81 percent of all SES employees and 100 
percent of OPM's SES work force receive an annual bonus 
averaging about $13,000 per year. This is happening within OPM 
itself and with a class of employees where accountability and 
reward were a goal from the outset.
    Likewise, as the GAO has noted, Federal managers face 
significant hurdles to dismissing poorly performing employees. 
A private sector employee has a roughly 1 in 16 chance each 
year of being dismissed for poor performance. But a Federal 
employee who makes it through their probationary period has a 
roughly 1 in 1,800 chance of dismissal.
    One explanation is the Federal Government's exceptionally 
good at hiring the best employees and coaxing poor performers 
back to excellence. More plausible explanation, I believe, is 
that lawmakers and Federal managers have lacked the will and 
determination to reward the very best employees and dismiss the 
very worst.
    Federal employees agree, only 4 in 10 Federal employees 
state that steps are taken to address poor performers. Over 
half say the outcome is simply to let the poor performer remain 
and the poor performance to continue.
    I experienced this firsthand during my time in the Social 
Security Administration, where, among a small office of highly 
motivated, high performing, and supremely non-partisan career 
employees, I had one employee who just didn't want to do their 
job.
    Counseling didn't produce results, but there wasn't an 
appetite up the management chain to take things further. I 
ended up transferring that employee so that my high performers 
didn't have to be confronted with. That cost me an FTE and 
probably cost the taxpayers a hundred thousand dollars per year 
in paying benefits.
    But like many Federal managers, I had a choice between 
doing the job I was hired to do and devoting all my time to a 
single problem employee. That shouldn't happen.
    As I said, most Federal employees are very good, but they 
no more wish to be surrounded by poor performers than do the 
employees who jump through hoops to work at places like Google. 
And performance pay doesn't just reward with extra money, it 
rewards in validation of a job well done.
    I see some merit in reforms included in Chairman Connolly's 
legislation as well as some dangers, but I would instead focus 
on getting the fundamentals right. Those fundamentals reward 
excellence and dismiss the worst performers, help to make the 
U.S. private sector one of the most productive in the world. 
And if applied, they can do the same for the U.S. public 
sector.
    Thank you very much.
    Mr. Connolly. Great job. Thank you so much.
    And our last presenter, before we get to members' 
questions, is Meredith Lozar with the Chamber of Commerce 
Foundation.
    Ms. Lozar?

 STATEMENT OF MEREDITH LOZAR, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, PROGRAMS AND 
 EVENTS, HIRING OUR HEROES, U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE FOUNDATION

    Ms. Lozar. Good morning, Chairman Connolly, Ranking Member 
Hice, and members of the subcommittee. My name is Meredith 
Lozar, and I am the executive director of programs and events 
for the Chamber of Commerce Foundation's Hiring Our Heroes. 
Thank you for this opportunity to address the subcommittee.
    Today I am here to specifically discuss how military spouse 
talent can help the Federal Government meet its work force 
modernization needs while reducing a decades long un-and 
underemployment crisis amongst military spouses.
    I am an Active Duty Marine Corps spouse, and while I'm 
sharing statistics with you today, military spouse employment 
challenges are something I have personally navigated for the 
last 16 years, through 11 permanent changes of station, 
multiple deployments, and nine job changes. I have been with 
hiring our heroes as a remote and flexible employee at three 
different duty stations in the past three years.
    Let me begin by sharing some background on military spouse 
unemployment. Military spouses are a young, diverse, 
population, whose unemployment rate hovered around 22 percent 
for more than a decade prior to the pandemic.
    As a result of the pandemic, Hiring Our Heroes' most recent 
data suggests--excuse me--suggests a 34 percent current 
unemployment rate for military spouses, with over 50 percent of 
them actively seeking to rejoin the work force within the next 
six months.
    The average age of military spouses is 31 and a half years, 
placing them squarely in a talent pool that makes up the 
largest share of the U.S. work force, and the work force that 
the Federal Government is struggling to leverage.
    Military spouses are a highly educated, highly skilled, 
pool of talent. Fifty percent of them hold bachelor's degrees 
or higher, compared to tell 37 percent of their millennial, 
civilian peers.
    In short, there's great opportunity to include military 
spouses in government work force modernization efforts. As we 
know, the Federal Government currently faces a mission-critical 
challenge of recruiting and retaining the next generation of 
employees.
    Hiring military spouses is an efficient and strategic way 
to support the government's need to recruit and retain the next 
generation of talent.
    For military spouses, Federal employment is highly 
attractive because it offers access to desirable retirement 
benefits and savings, moving ten times more frequently than 
their civilian counterparts and earning significantly less.
    Retirement vesting times and savings are difficult for 
military spouses to realize. The Federal Government has the 
power to help change this by harnessing the military spouse 
work force and providing them with benefits, as well as 
pandemic-proven remote work roles.
    As the Federal Government considers how to effectively 
modernize its work force, attracting military spouses with 
retirement benefits and continuity of employment through remote 
work is an effective place to start.
    Additionally, implementing flexible employment practices is 
vital to modernizing the Federal work force.
    Prior to the pandemic, military spouses were excelling in 
remote work roles. Now, as the rest of the world realizes 
remote and flexible work is highly effective, military spouses 
have emerged as a premier remote work force.
    The COVID-19 pandemic refuted previous beliefs that remote 
employees were less productive. By demonstrating remote and 
flexible work schedules allow people to remain productive 
outside a traditional brick-and-mortar office setting.
    Now research tells us that 97 percent of employees prefer a 
hybrid telework model. As the committee looks to modernize the 
work force and attract younger talent, providing remote work 
opportunities is a must.
    Ensuring the Federal work force reflects the larger U.S. 
population is also paramount to modernization, and including 
military spouses can help achieve that goal.
    In addition to being young and highly skilled, military 
spouses are a racially and ethnically diverse pool of talent. 
The 2019 Department of Defense Active Duty Spouses Study 
reports that nearly half of military spouses identify as being 
members of minority populations.
    In conclusion, the subcommittee will receive many 
recommendations for ways the Federal Government can modernize 
its work force. This testimony highlights the need to include 
military spouses and remote work opportunities as part of that 
modernization.
    Military spouses represent a highly qualified, diverse 
talent pool that's actively seeking roles within the Federal 
Government. Like their millennial counterparts, they thrive in 
remote, flexible work opportunities.
    Now is the time. As the Federal Government seeks to 
modernize its work force, tapping into military spouse talent 
is a logical solution.
    Thank you.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you so much. Right on time. And I 
appreciate all of the presentations. We're now going to go to 
member questions, and the chair calls on the Congresswoman from 
the District of Columbia, Ms. Norton, for her five-minutes.
    Ms. Norton. I thank my good friend for this hearing. It is 
especially timely now as we note what the Federal Government is 
being--has been doing for the past two years with COVID-19, 
just pulling out whatever flexible work force strategies we've 
had. Some we've had all along like telework. We've certainly 
had to improvise.
    So this hearing comes at a time when we ought to evaluate 
these practices and determine how many of them should be kept 
permanently, for example. Businesses, I should note, are doing 
the very same thing.
    So it's fortunate that as we face this pandemic that we 
already had some strategies. For example, we've used telework 
for a very long time. We've used alternative work schedules. 
Perhaps the oldest is paid and unpaid leave.
    So my first question is for Ms. Cross. Ms. Cross, have you 
looked to see what agencies have been at the vanguard of 
improving work force--workplace flexibilities? Who's in the 
leadership?
    Ms. Cross. There are so many agencies that are forging 
ahead and really paving the way for the rest of the Federal 
Government to emulate, and I can certainly highlight a few of 
those.
    First I'd like to call out the United States Department of 
Agriculture who just yesterday, I believe, promoted that they 
were going to publicly announce their new remote work and 
updated telework policy for a number of really strategic, 
important, Federal human capital reasons.
    The first is because they had to try to reverse the impacts 
to labor shortages and attrition due to previous years' 
announcements of relocation of those positions. That really hit 
the USDA very significantly in terms of personnel shortages. So 
that was one strategy.
    The second was for them to take a look at their employee 
engagement scores, knowing that highly engaged workers also 
affect retention and attrition, and that certainly costs the 
agency and the taxpayer in productivity.
    And then ensuring that they're rolling out flexible choices 
so that they are hearing from employees engaging with labor 
unions very proactively and making certain that managers are 
equipped with the information that they need to be able to 
determine which positions can fit into a telework model, versus 
a remote model, versus a hybrid model, and versus maybe just 
leveraging scheduling flexibilities. So that's one.
    GSA is forging ahead and not only for its own work force 
but also for rolling out their vision of the future of work 
2030, which is offering services in the form of reimagined 
office space, you know, a home office in the box where agencies 
can equip their home workers with more ergonomically correct 
materials.
    And of course, I'd like to call out NASA who have already 
been leveraging remote work opportunities even at the Senior 
Executive Service level for recruitment purposes. In fact, just 
in the last year, they were hiring for a senior-level 
innovation executive remotely.
    So those are just a few examples.
    Ms. Norton. Oh, those are very helpful examples. It tells 
us that it can be done. Ms. Cross, as I mentioned, private 
sector employers face the same challenges as Federal agencies. 
Do you have examples of recent innovative private sector 
practices that could be adapted to the Federal work force?
    Ms. Cross. I do have some examples, and the first example 
I'd like to cite in contrast to how the Federal Government 
operates--and of course there are reasons for doing so, but--is 
that many of the top employers in the private industry who are 
remaining remote or committing to a hybrid model moving forward 
are simply using a process by presuming that if employees were 
working that way during the pandemic successfully, then they 
could continue to do so.
    In addition, they're allowing employees to take their jobs 
wherever they see fit. Many companies are recognizing the 
impacts to the work force and focusing on well-being, empathy, 
avoiding productivity risks, and risks to stress, and so those 
are just a few examples.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you. The gentle lady's time has 
expired. I thank her.
    The chair now recognizes the distinguished ranking member 
from Georgia, Mr. Hice.
    Mr. Hice. Go dogs. Thank you, sir.
    Mr. Biggs, let me begin with you. When it comes to 
increased teleworking remote work in the Federal Government, I 
think one of the first questions at least that we have to ask 
is, how will this affect the mission of the agency.
    In some areas that may be easy to determine. Other places, 
I think it's certainly more difficult. But I would appreciate 
your comments on perhaps what type of metrics you believe 
should be in place to ensure that the American people are 
getting the services that they deserve.
    Mr. Biggs. Well, thank you very much, Congressman.
    I think the core challenge that the government faces in 
general is monitoring the productivity of their employees. In 
the private sector, you can look at, you know, how many 
products or services an employee provides. You can look at the 
profits of either sales or of the unit that he is part of. The 
government is just much harder to do that.
    Telework makes that harder still. I worked in an agency, 
the Social Security Administration, where productivity is 
relatively easy to measure. You had claims representatives were 
handling retirement for disability claims. We can measure how 
many claims they process. We can measure the accuracy of their 
work.
    That is an area where I think really deserves increased 
attention, because it gives you a best-case outcome for 
telework in the Federal Government.
    I have not seen what we would consider to be convincing 
evidence yet or how that has played out. There has been 
anecdotes that teleworkers worked well at Social Security; in 
other cases, it hasn't. In general----
    Mr. Hice. Mr. Biggs, if I can interrupt you, we're still 
having some audio problems with your responses coming through, 
but it is very difficult to understand. If you could submit 
that answer to us, I would appreciate it.
    And also, I would like to followup, and I'm not going to 
ask for a verbal response, but if you could get back to me on 
the post-pandemic era, it may make sense to have some pilot 
programs for expanded telework and remote work. But I think we 
need to work out some of the kinks, and the pilot program would 
do that.
    And I would like your thoughts on, what would that look 
like, a pilot program, to be successful? If you could submit 
that to us in writing, I would appreciate it.
    Let me go on, Ms. Amante, to you.
    The metrics for measuring telework performance is critical. 
We all know that. And you suggest that the Patent and Trademark 
Office is one of the agencies that is being successful with 
their telework program, and precisely because they have metrics 
in place.
    But we also know, probably those metrics are theirs because 
they had problems in the past; in 2016 issues, with, shall we 
say, rampant fraud in the telemarketing. I mean, they had 
something like 8,100 workers, or something in that ballpark, 
reporting 130-something thousand hours of unsupported work 
evidence. So that's probably why they have metrics in place.
    But all of that aside, the basic question is, couldn't the 
Biden administration potentially be running into a risk of new 
fraud--abuse, perhaps, is a better word--in the teleworking and 
remote working system? I guess that's really the question. Are 
we running a risk by moving forward with this without doing 
more research and having metrics in place before we just open 
it up?
    Ms. Amante. Yes. Well, thank you for your question.
    And certainly, depending on the agency's mission and the 
type of work the agency performs, fraud always has to be 
considered. But I don't think we should start with the premise 
that there will absolutely be fraud. I think establishing 
performance metrics is the key, as you said, absolutely for any 
kind of job. And I agree with you that mission always needs to 
be the primary focus when determining whether a job should be 
remote or in person.
    But I think, you know, if we have strong performance 
metrics and we invest in our leadership, they can watch fraud 
metrics. You can track those caseloads to make sure that there 
is not fraud going on, whether it's in person or remotely.
    Mr. Hice. I agree metrics is the key, and I'm not trying to 
imply that there would be fraud and abuse. But there has been 
in the past, and to protect that, I agree metrics is key.
    Just in the last few seconds, Ms. Lozar, the whole issue 
about military spouses, should this be a part--should this be 
included in the Building Next Generation of Federal Employees 
Act, do you think? Because it's missing in there, and I think 
based on your testimony, it may be worth looking at.
    Ms. Lozar. I would agree. Thank you for asking.
    Mr. Hice. OK. And thank you for being brief with that.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Mr. Hice.
    And, by the way, the chair looks forward to working with 
you on metrics. I completely--I mean, metrics are key to 
measuring effectiveness, fraud, you name it. And I assure you, 
you will find a willing collaborator with me in trying to set 
metrics.
    But I also think you have to set metrics goals, so I invite 
you to join me in the next bill on telework which is focused on 
metrics. I couldn't get metrics back in 1909 and 19010 when we 
introduced the Telework Enhancement Act, but I wanted to. And 
maybe that time has now come. So I look forward to working with 
my friend on that.
    The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Maryland, Mr. 
Raskin, for five minutes.
    Mr. Raskin. Mr. Chairman, thank you so much.
    You know, we're living in a time where huge numbers of 
Americans are approving of unions and would like to be able to 
join unions, and it's not just wages and benefits and things 
like that, but it's also a sense of participation and belonging 
in the workplace, and the quality of the work experience.
    Mr. Thomas, why is it important that Federal agencies 
establish and cultivate effective and cooperative relationships 
with Federal employee unions and associations? You know, how do 
good relations between unions and agencies affect both work 
product and the effectiveness of the agency, and, also, the 
quality of work life for the employees?
    Mr. Thomas. Thank you, Mr. Raskin, for the question.
    While NARFE is not a union, we do believe in the practices 
that they can bring to the table. Part of what goes on with any 
group of employees, especially if they're unionized, is that 
there can be productivity issues. There can be confrontational 
issues with the supervisor. There can be all kinds of things 
that are going on.
    So you have union, you might say, capabilities there to use 
them. If you're a manager, you can use them to your advantage.
    So that would be one of the things----
    Mr. Raskin. Well, let me pick up on that point. I 
appreciate that.
    Mr. Thomas. OK.
    Mr. Raskin. Let me come to Ms. Amante.
    You know, while the polls are showing that unions are being 
held in very high esteem, only 10 percent of American workers 
are union members now, and only around six percent for private 
sector unions. It's a bit higher in the public sector. There 
are more than 1 million Federal employees who are represented 
by labor unions right now. That's aside from postal workers.
    And to followup on the point Mr. Thomas was making, do you 
think that the Federal Government can leverage strong union and 
worker association participation in the Federal work force to 
attract and retain talent, to help recruit and bring in new 
workers?
    Ms. Amante. Thank you for the question.
    I think we're--we need to leverage every possible tool in 
the toolbox to be recruiting talent into the Federal 
Government, including our unions. Our unions are important 
stakeholders at the table. They represent the Federal work 
force voice. And I welcome and the partnership welcomes their 
ideas, and this committee should welcome their ideas and 
thoughts on recruiting the next generation.
    Mr. Raskin. Yes. And, Mr. Thomas, do you agree with that, 
that unions can be part of the solution here in terms of making 
Federal employment a really attractive and exciting option for 
young people who are launching their careers?
    Mr. Thomas. Absolutely. I firmly believe that unions can be 
used for that particular purpose, and I think we need to do 
probably more of it. There were members of my family that were 
members of unions in the past, PATCO, for one, many years back.
    But the thing is that unions have their place, not only in 
recruiting but also in retaining employees, so very, very, you 
might say involved with the various organizations or agencies 
within the government.
    Mr. Raskin. I would like to followup with you on a final 
question, Mr. Thomas, since you do represent hundreds of 
thousands of retired Federal employees, and you have had a 
chance to think about all of these issues about the status and 
the public reputation and image of Federal employees.
    What is the effect of politicians who just sort of, with 
wild abandon, attack Federal workers, whether they are people 
who are, you know, working on nuclear safety or OSHA safety or 
they're working to get people their Medicare checks, or they're 
working to make sure that everybody is paying their fair share 
of taxes, whatever it is, what do you think about politicians 
blasting Federal workers? And do you think that creates a 
problem for us in terms of recruitment and the image of Federal 
workers?
    Mr. Thomas. I think the----
    Mr. Connolly. The gentleman's time has expired, but the 
witness may respond.
    Mr. Thomas. Thank you, Chairman.
    I think it's, again, what's new? The thing is that this has 
been going on for a considerable period of time, and every time 
we have to sort of confront that, oh, whether it's a news 
article or whether it's a citizen who comes up and says, I 
didn't get the service that I was entitled to or wanted to get.
    So whether it's a politician or a member of society out 
there making accusations, unfortunately, it's--you can't--how 
do I want to say it? You can't really solve everybody's 
problem. We try to. We try to be the best that we possibly can. 
We try to provide the services to the population. And, 
unfortunately, sometimes we get a bad rap from not only 
politicians, but also from the society in general about that.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you.
    Mr. Thomas. Thank you.
    Mr. Connolly. The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Keller, 
is recognized for his five minutes.
    Mr. Keller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And I think we all know it's no secret that the Federal 
work force is aging, and there's a significant need to promote 
a competitive job market that is attractive to those entering 
the work force and keep sufficient staffing levels.
    Congress needs to be working with agencies to improve 
services and streamline government operations. Unfortunately, 
many of the proposals discussed today would do more for the 
Federal Government rather than the people we serve. That's who 
we work for. It's not about us and the government. It's about 
the people for which we work that are the stakeholders in the 
government.
    We also can't ignore one of the most pressing issues 
affecting the Federal work force, and that's President Biden's 
vaccine mandate on virtually all Federal employees and Federal 
contractors. Many people in Pennsylvania have told me this will 
disrupt their work force and drive them out of business. In 
fact, I have a woman-owned business in Montoursville, 
Pennsylvania, who, due to government--she does government 
contracting work, and she might lose 40 percent of her work 
force if she doesn't have that contract. But, again, it's up to 
her employees.
    So I do have some questions. And I guess, Mr. Biggs, how 
would the administration's vaccine mandate on Federal workers 
and contractors impact businesses that contract with the 
Federal Government and the government's ability to recruit and 
retain high quality employees?
    Mr. Biggs. I hope you can hear me now.
    Mr. Keller. Yes.
    Mr. Biggs. That's fantastic. I apologize for that.
    I'm an example of some of the downsize of remote work. I am 
coming to you from rural Oregon, so perhaps this is a rural 
broadband issue we're having.
    I think the issue, particularly with contractors, is that a 
contractor may serve the Federal Government, but they serve 
many other markets as well, many other customers. So imposing a 
mandate on a contractor where their work force simply doesn't 
want to do it doesn't simply hurt their ability to serve the 
Federal Government, it also hurts their ability to serve the 
rest of the economy.
    So I think that the administration should think carefully 
about this. I'm, in general, pro vaccine. At the same time, 
though, we should vaccinate up to the point at which the cost 
exceeds the benefits. And the vaccination rates with Federal 
employees are already very high. A certain number of them have 
acquired immunity by having gone through COVID.
    So the question I face is how much additional gain do we 
have by having this fight over contractors. And I suspect some 
flexibility would be a better approach on that.
    Mr. Keller. Thank you. I appreciate that.
    Also, Mr. Biggs, how might adding more bureaucratical 
layers to OPM, as some of the legislation being discussed 
today, what effect would that have on the daily operations?
    Mr. Biggs. Well, there are both pros and cons of 
legislation. There are advantages of having continuity in OPM, 
having career employees there over time. But there are also 
disadvantages. And the disadvantages come of locking in place 
the problems with Federal management that have existed for 40 
years. You know, a World Bank report I cite in my testimony 
says to have a highly effective work force, what is really 
needed is political buy-in. You have to have the elected 
officials insisting working with the work force to make this 
happen. Making OPM I think more
    [inaudible]
    So I think we just need to be very careful of the 
advantages and disadvantages of this. There has to be some 
accountability to
    [inaudible]----
    Mr. Keller. Mr. Biggs, we're having difficulties hearing 
you. So maybe if you could just submit that for the record, we 
could get the rest of your answer in writing, and I will just 
sort of sum things up here and then you can respond after I'm 
done.
    Mr. Biggs. Thank you.
    Mr. Keller. One of my colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle, you know, they have spoken at length about the benefits 
of teleworking, but not the risks associated with remote work. 
While there is no doubt that we have entered a new era of 
working styles, that does not evade us of doing so responsibly.
    For instance, I hear regularly from Pennsylvanians unable 
to access in-person services at local Social Security offices. 
And I know we also have the NPRC, the Records Act, for our 
veterans to get the information they need.
    So there is a need for us to make sure that the people that 
are the government, we're not--we work for the people in 
government, but they are the people that we work for.
    So I just want to make sure that we have that in mind when 
we're looking at metrics, when we're looking at however we're--
Federal agencies, that we put the people that we work for at 
the front of everything that we do. And that means 
accountability, because the people we work for have that every 
day in their life.
    In private industry, it was always said to me, when I 
managed a factory, Thank you for yesterday, but what about 
tomorrow? And we need to make sure we drive improvement and not 
just change.
    Thank you. And I yield back.
    Mr. Connolly. I thank the gentleman. And he makes a very 
good point. And a number of us who are strong telework 
advocates, nonetheless, are rode herd on certain Federal 
agencies that weren't entirely functioning during the height of 
the pandemic. One example, for example, was the Passport 
Office. They had kind of totally stopped for a period of time, 
and there was no reason for that. And I agree with you about 
some of the other Federal agencies you have also cited.
    So we would be glad to work with you on that.
    Telework is a huge useful tool, but it's not a substitute 
100 percent for, you know, the work that has to be done at the 
Federal Government level, nor is it ever 100 percent substitute 
in the private sector. So we would not expect any different 
standard in the public sector as well.
    So thank you, good point.
    And I look forward to seeing the written response of Mr. 
Biggs because he was breaking up there. He was talking about 
the OPM, but what I heard him say was that he completely agreed 
with me about the role of OPM. So look forward to, you know, 
seeing that in writing.
    All right. The gentleman from Maryland is recognized for 
his five minutes, Mr. Sarbanes.
    Mr. Sarbanes. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. Thanks for 
the hearing.
    I want to pick up kind of where you were just leaving off 
on telework. I absolutely agree with you that you can strike 
the right balance between telecommuting and telework on the one 
hand, and continuing to provide high quality, accessible in-
person services on the other hand. Private sector has long 
found that balance. I think, even though there's a different 
dimension to the way the public sector has to reach out and 
touch our citizens across the country, that that balance can be 
struck there as well.
    It won't surprise you that my question line, Mr. Chairman, 
is going to be around telework because you and I have been 
obsessed with this as an important resource for the Federal 
work force for many, many years. I want to thank you for your 
partnership in pushing forward very, very important legislation 
in that space.
    You mentioned, in your opening remarks, Mr. Chairman, that 
one of the key issues facing our Federal work force is the lack 
of younger employees. In fact, as of June of this year, I think 
the statistic is only 6.9 percent of Federal employees are 
under the age of 30 compared to 23 percent in the private 
sector. So, I mean, there's a big disparity there when you look 
at the statistics.
    Ms. Amante, how important is telework as a tool for 
recruiting younger workers to the Federal Government? I mean, 
it's kind of a no-brainer question, but maybe you can just 
emphasize the imperative of that. I appreciate it.
    Ms. Amante. Absolutely.
    I think the more we learn about generation Z, the more we 
know, even before the pandemic happened, that they seek 
flexibility. They seek flexibility in schedules. They seek 
flexibility in location. There's a strong commitment to mission 
for this next generation coming up which, once again, is the 
silver lining for the Federal Government, and there's no lack 
of productivity. It's just that they are looking for flexible 
work options. And I think the positive coming out of this 
pandemic is that that might be available now for the Federal 
Government on a permanent basis where it makes sense.
    Mr. Sarbanes. Thanks very much.
    And you sort of alluded to productivity. I think the 
statistics show, Mr. Chairman, that agencies that have embraced 
telework for a number of years now actually demonstrate 
heightened productivity across the entire work force, not just 
those that are teleworking, but those that are not teleworking 
on a frequent basis because it leads to a different set of 
metrics, how you measure performance, and I think the entire 
work force then steps up into an approach that can raise the 
bar on what that agency is delivering.
    Prior to the pandemic, only three percent of the Federal 
work force was teleworking every day. At the peak of the 
pandemic, no surprise here, 59 percent of the Federal work 
force was teleworking every day. And a Federal survey conducted 
at that time found that 79 percent of the Federal employees 
were either very satisfied, or satisfied with their agency's 
telework program, which is a tribute to what agencies have done 
since we put the Telework Improvement Act of 2010 in place, 
because they have really embraced this. I mean, it's not 
completely uniform in terms of where the different agencies 
are. But, obviously, this has become part of the go-to tool kit 
for how these agencies operate in a very productive way.
    But let's speak to continuity here of operations, which is 
what the pandemic was shining a light on.
    Ms. Cross, can you elaborate on how telework allows for 
operations to continue under difficult circumstances?
    Ms. Cross. Absolutely.
    Telework has always been considered a critical tool in 
continuity of government and continuity of operations, but it's 
contingent on eligible workers practicing those skills in order 
to continue the mission to be done.
    And so if you look at the same data points that you are 
referencing, sir, over the years, eligibility determinations 
have actually dipped down. In fact, in the Fiscal Year 
congressional report on telework, it dipped down as low as--in 
eligibility ratings, as low as the levels in 2012.
    So it can't work unless we truly redefine what eligible is, 
and a great place to start is looking at those who have been 
working this way successfully during pandemic eligible. The 
level of participation, of course, has to be based on the 
mission, based on the services they provide to the American 
public, and the efficiencies of how they're working.
    Mr. Sarbanes. Thank you.
    That's an outstanding encapsulation of the challenges and 
how we meet them.
    And with that, Mr. Chairman, I will yield back my time.
    Mr. Connolly. Mr. Sarbanes, thank you. And thank you for 
your leadership on telework. The bill that is law--and I think 
it's the last bill Congress has passed on telework--you were 
the chief author of, and you were gracious enough to allow me 
as a freshman to join you in that endeavor, and I very much 
appreciate that. It has been a passion of mine for a long, long 
time in local government, as well as Federal Government, but I 
know it has also been a passion of yours.
    Thank you for your leadership.
    The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Arizona, Mr. 
Biggs, for his five minutes.
    Rep. Biggs. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I appreciate this hearing, and I appreciate all of the 
witnesses being here today. And I appreciate Mr. Biggs from 
Oregon, who we've run into occasionally on these--in Congress 
and around the Hill.
    We're focusing today on recruiting, innovating, and 
improving Federal work force conditions and the Federal work 
force in and of itself, but I think a more pressing and, in 
fact, an even more important question is whether the fourth 
branch, the bureaucracy, has grown too big. And I think the 
answer is yes.
    If the roots of the tree of government are the 
constitutionally set forth delegated duties to the three 
branches of government, we can conclude that the programs, 
agencies, and departments, which are effectively for our tree 
of government, they are the branches and the leaves of the 
tree, they have overgrown the roots. And, thus, we have 
become--because of this overwhelming spending, quite frankly, 
of both parties an expansion of government into all places and 
all things from the Federal level, we've placed the tree of our 
government actually in danger, quite frankly, of failing, of 
failing.
    The American people deserve a Federal Government that puts 
their needs first and is held accountable for its decisions. 
Unfortunately, the American people are denied this because 
Federal bureaucrats constantly undermine the elected officials, 
the Presidents of both parties, and the bureaucrats are not 
held accountable for circumventing the will of the American 
people because there's no direct accountability to them.
    The American people elect a President to carry out their 
vision. That vision should not be blunt or obstructed by 
unelected bureaucrats who disagree with the will of the 
American people. The Federal bureaucracy should work to advance 
the President's agenda, and if they disagree with the 
President's agenda, they should resign from office.
    Often, however, Federal bureaucrats decide that they know 
better and that they will block the President's agenda. This 
goes back--there is literature on this literally for 30 years.
    The Federal bureaucracy constantly undermined President 
Trump. Federal employees openly defied a constitutionally 
elected President and faced no repercussions. They worked 
against him at every turn and openly bragged about doing so. 
Yet, President Trump was unable to remove them.
    My colleagues across the aisle love to talk about the 
importance of democracy, but if unelected bureaucrats block the 
will of the American people who want that agenda enacted, have 
we undermined democracy?
    At the most basic level, constitutional republics can only 
survive and thrive if those in government are accountable to 
the people they serve. Yet, thousands of government employees 
are not accountable to the American people.
    The highest paid government official is Dr. Fauci. He has 
faced no repercussions for lying to Congress, misleading the 
American people, or undermining the American people's faith in 
science and our republic. He's engaged in partisan attacks 
against senators and showed a total disregard for this body, 
but he has faced no repercussions for this.
    It does not end with Dr. Fauci. The FDA recently announced 
that it will take more than 55 years to process FOIA requests 
regarding vaccine data, 55 years. And many veterans are dying 
because they cannot gain access to their records. They can't 
even get access to their records in a timely fashion for them 
to receive treatment at the VA. This is completely 
unacceptable, and, yet, no Federal worker is going to face any 
repercussions for this.
    Mr. Biggs, how would making all executive branch employees, 
at-will employees who serve at the pleasure of the President, 
allow for more accountability within the Federal bureaucracy?
    Mr. Biggs. Thank you, Congressman.
    If the audio problems I had previously continue, just cut 
me off and I will respond in writing.
    I will say that during my time in a Federal agency, Social 
Security--this is during a period in which I was working on 
Social Security reform, which was extremely controversial at 
the time--the Federal employees at SSA that I worked with were 
extremely professional. I mean, they did everything you asked 
of them. They went above and beyond.
    So I agree with you that, obviously, we don't want Federal 
employees undermining the agenda of elected officials. At the 
same time, though, at least in my experience, I found them to 
be very professional.
    In general, private sector employment is at-will, meaning 
you don't have to give a reason to dismiss somebody. The 
Federal Government is the opposite of that. And partly that 
arose for reasons you don't want a politicized work force, and 
that goes back 100 years. You don't want patronage 
appointments, things like that.
    At the same time, though, you know, an administration 
should have the ability to put in place political leadership 
that will carry out the policies that they were elected to do.
    So I think we need to have some middle ground here. Just 
everybody has to be cognizant of what their role is, and so, 
that's as far as I can really go while staying within my 
expertise.
    Rep. Biggs. Thank you.
    Mr. Chairman, I would like to submit a number of documents 
for the record: ``Washington Bureaucrats are Quietly Working to 
Undermine Trump's Agenda''--that's from Bloomberg; ``FDA Will 
Take 55 Years to Answer FOIA on Vaccine Approval Data''; an 
article entitled ``Fauci Was Untruthful to Congress About Wuhan 
Lab Research New Documents Show''; and two more--sorry, Mr. 
Chairman--``Wait What? FDA Wants 55 Years to Process FOIA 
Requests for Vaccine Data''; and, finally, a series of letters 
from Chris Crane, president of the National Immigration 
Enforcement Council and Brandon Judd, National Border Patrol 
Council.
    Mr. Connolly. Without objection.
    Rep. Biggs. Thank you.
    Mr. Connolly. The chair will note that the issue Mr. Biggs 
mentioned--from Arizona, Mr. Biggs, about the National 
Archives' VA records, that the Build Back Better bill that 
passed this body, on a partisan line vote, contains $60 million 
to address that very issue to try to help.
    The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Illinois, 
Chicago, Illinois, Mr. Davis, for his five minutes.
    Mr. Davis. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for this 
hearing. And I also want to thank all of the witnesses for 
appearing.
    And let me add my commendation to Mr. Sarbanes for his 
leadership in telework. And I have been around long enough to 
sort of see the emergence of teleworking as an integral part of 
government operations, and so I'm a fan.
    For the eleventh consecutive time, dating back to 2001, 
human capital management has appeared on the Government 
Accountability Office's High-Risk List. According to the annual 
Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, eight or nine percent of 
Federal employees believe their work is important, and 95 
percent say they're willing to put in extra effort to get the 
job done. Yet, only 48 percent believe they have the resources 
they need to do their jobs, including staff support, compared 
to 72 percent of employees in the private sector.
    To ensure that it has the talent it needs to respond to a 
wide range of domestic and national security challenges, the 
government must become more strategic in how it hires 
employees.
    Ms. Cross, let me ask you, why is it important for Federal 
agencies to identify and plan for our future hiring needs, 
especially for our mission-critical positions?
    Ms. Cross. Well, planning for and looking ahead in a 
future-focused way, allows the government to strengthen itself 
to be able to continue operations again, because we cannot do 
that without the people. And instead of being in reaction mode 
and hiring only when people leave and turn over, you're able to 
forecast future needs, and also strengthen the way you source 
and to hire the right talent to fill those gaps.
    Mr. Davis. So it is in the best interest of the government 
to actually do this, I'm assuming.
    And let me ask you, Ms. Amante, what tools should agencies 
use to predict future work force needs?
    Ms. Amante. There's some actually really great examples of 
this currently in the Federal work force. For example, two 
years ago, the FBI built an attrition model to help fill staff 
vacancies. As you can imagine, given the long security process, 
it can be a very arduous task to fill those jobs. So when they 
released this model in 2019, they're able to predict vacancies 
across multiple positions, and then start backfilling those 
jobs nine months ahead of schedule.
    So what I would, you know, ask agencies to do is look for 
the bright spots across government and the great examples 
amongst their colleagues because these models do exist, and 
they should be looking toward more strategic work force 
planning so they can fill those critical skills gaps timely.
    Mr. Davis. Thank you very much.
    And, Ms. Lozar, let me ask, do you know anyone in your 
organization who has had to forego a Federal job because it 
simply is too long to get the job offer?
    Ms. Lozar. Thank you for that.
    Yes, there are a multitude of military spouses who have 
been discouraged by the length of time that it takes to obtain 
responses about Federal employment opportunities. Our own 
deputy director for Military Spouse Programs received a Federal 
employment offer seven months after interviewing for the 
position, which forced her to accept another role while waiting 
for the job.
    So streamlining that response time is paramount when you're 
looking at military spouse and veteran populations.
    Mr. Davis. Well, thank you very much. And I thank all of 
you for your answers.
    And let me just conclude, Mr. Chairman, by saying we don't 
ever want a lengthy hiring process to prevent us--or to prevent 
critical mission work and mission activity being carried out. 
So I certainly agree that we need to make sure that we can do 
this in a timely fashion.
    I thank you all for your answers.
    And thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
    Mr. Connolly. I thank the gentleman from Illinois, and I 
agree with him. We have to find more flexibility to expedite 
skilled workers, especially being hired by the Federal 
Government, given the vacuum that's going to be created because 
of retirements. On the other hand, we have to keep in place 
protections against whimsical hiring, nepotism, favoritism, and 
the like. It has got to be a merit-based kind of hiring system.
    So where that fine line is in the 2lst century with new 
technologies, new generations, and a huge retirement gap that's 
going to occur because the baby boomers are retiring is going 
to be our challenge.
    And I think you're quite right, Mr. Davis. Thank you for 
that observation.
    The chair now recognizes the gentlelady, our vice 
chairperson of this subcommittee, Ms. Porter, for her five 
minutes. Welcome.
    Ms. Porter. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
    The pandemic, as we've noted, has upended the way that we 
work and has many of us working from home when we otherwise 
have worked in office buildings.
    The 2020 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey found that 59 
percent of employees teleworked daily at the peak of the 
pandemic, and 79 percent of the Federal civil service was very 
satisfied with their agencies' telework policies during the 
pandemic.
    Mr. Biggs, do you believe that the Federal Government 
should continue to offer more telework opportunities?
    Mr. Biggs. Well, thank you very much, Congresswoman.
    I think they should, but I think there should be a fair 
amount of discretion involved in the sense that telework 
shouldn't be just seen as an employee perk where everybody gets 
it or everybody doesn't get it. In certain circumstances, it 
works well; in others, it doesn't.
    We should also look not just at employee satisfaction with 
telework, but also some measures of employee productivity. I 
think that's a lot harder to get.
    One thing I would simply point out is, you know, everybody 
has been teleworking unavoidably in the past several years. 
Interestingly, some companies, like IBM, like Aetna, Yahoo, 
which for a long time championed telework just prior to COVID 
had reversed their decision.
    So the point I'm making here is that we should not blindly 
embrace it. We should look to the experiences some of these 
companies had, try to measure productivity as best we can, and 
move ahead.
    I do agree, though, that trying to--if we can use telework 
flexibly, it helps you get a more diverse work force, people 
from outside the Washington, DC. area, and I think that would 
be helpful. So I think we just don't want to do an all-or-
nothing approach here.
    Ms. Porter. Mr. Biggs, do you currently telework in your 
role at the American Enterprise Institute?
    Mr. Biggs. As you can see, I do. I have been teleworking 
for the last nine years. I live in rural Oregon. I come to 
Washington, DC. when I need to. What works is that AEI can 
measure my output pretty accurately. They know if I publish an 
op-ed. They know if I write a journal article. They know if I 
testify before you. If they didn't know those things, it gets 
tougher to manage.
    Ms. Porter. But why do you think that we couldn't measure 
Federal employees' work in the same way? They all have required 
job duties. They all have things that they have to do.
    Do you have the same confidence--do you think we should put 
the same confidence and trust in Federal managers that you have 
in your managers and in Federal employees as in you as an 
employee?
    Mr. Biggs. It's not--to me, it's not a measure of trust in 
the managers. It is that--let's say, if I work on an assembly 
line or something like that, it is very easy to know what I'm 
producing, or let's say I'm in a private firm and I'm working--
--
    Ms. Porter. Mr. Biggs, reclaiming my time.
    In fact, you don't work on an assembly line.
    Mr. Biggs. Correct.
    Ms. Porter. You have a higher level--you're a higher-level 
employee at the American Enterprise Institute. You have sort of 
a fair amount of discretion. A lot of your projects are longer 
term. I would say like in contrast to a lot of our Federal 
employees, many of whom have to perform routine tasks over and 
over and over again, answering customer inquiries, writing 
letters, processing paperwork, I mean, if we can do it for you 
for nine years, shouldn't we lean toward at least giving 
Federal employees the benefit of the doubt, and giving Federal 
managers the benefit of the doubt to be able to assess 
productivity?
    Mr. Biggs. I will just say my productivity is much easier 
to measure today working at the American Enterprise Institute 
than it was when I worked at the Social Security 
Administration. You know, how long should it take me to do a 
computer modelling project that--nobody really knows. You know, 
it's--so I'm just trying to point out what I think are commonly 
understood----
    Ms. Porter. Reclaiming my time.
    Mr. Biggs, With all due respect, I think you're a little 
bit of a hypocrite here. I mean, I'm glad that this works for 
you, but trust me when I say that whether you write an op-ed or 
not is not particularly visible to the American people. Whether 
benefits are piling up and people are not getting them is 
something that there are a lot of folks, including everyone in 
Congress, monitoring and paying attention to.
    I mean, I have a hard time reconciling the fact that you 
have teleworked for almost a decade, that you are, obviously, 
very successful at doing it with your skepticism about telework 
for Federal employees.
    Now, I do want to echo what you said. Telework is not an 
employee perk. It is the tool to allow Federal employees to be 
more productive in the same way that you have identified that 
it's allowed you to continue in this position even though 
you're outside Washington. It's allowed you, you know, to be 
able to travel when you need to, but save time commuting when 
you don't need to. It's allowed you to have that balance of 
concentrated work time with an interpersonal teamwork time.
    I just think it's the wrong impulse to be suspicious about 
Federal employees' productivity and Federal managers' 
capacities even as you, yourself, are a successful example of 
telework in the private sector.
    And the last thing I want to say is, you are right, that 
there are a few employee--employers that have returned to more 
in-person office right as the pandemic was beginning. But there 
are also a number of employers who have doubled down and 
continue to expand telework and, in fact, companies who have 
cut back on office space, companies like Prudential, who are 
going to a more hybrid work system, companies like Google. 
We're seeing this in commercial real estate markets all around 
the country decline in the need for office space.
    So I would just say, Mr. Biggs, with all due respect, I 
think you're thinking about this in the right way. It's about 
productivity. It's about employee diversification. It's about 
employee success. But your priority--your sort of fundamental 
assumption that we should treat Federal employees with 
skepticism instead of respect I think is misplaced and 
misguided.
    With that, I yield back.
    Mr. Biggs. I would refer you to my written testimony.
    Mr. Connolly. The gentlelady's time has expired.
    Mr. Biggs, you are recognized to respond.
    Mr. Biggs. Sure. First, I would refer you to my written 
testimony on this. Second, it's--which references the issues of 
measuring productivity in government which exists even before 
you're bringing telework into it.
    Second, I would refer you to large firms like IBM, very 
similar in some respects to Federal Government, and ask why 
they moved away from telework. I'm not saying telework doesn't 
work. In certain cases, like the Social Security 
Administration, productivity is very easy to measure, and I 
think it could work well. So I'm not taking a one-sided 
approach to this.
    But to be honest, I prefer not to be called a hypocrite if 
you haven't read my written testimony.
    Thank you.
    Ms. Porter. Mr. Chairman, may I respond briefly? Just one 
thing, Mr. Chair.
    Mr. Connolly. You have got 30 seconds, Ms. Porter, and then 
I'm going to----
    Ms. Porter. Mr. Biggs, I have, in fact, read your written 
testimony, and I do really appreciate it. And I think I'm, in 
fact, agreeing with you on a number of points that you raised. 
I just think it's the framing of where you're starting that 
doesn't get you to where we ought to be going. So I have, in 
fact, read your written testimony. And I don't appreciate you 
suggesting that I come to a hearing being less than prepared.
    I apologize for calling you a name sincerely, I really do.
    Mr. Biggs. Thank you.
    Ms. Porter. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for your indulgence.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Ms. Porter.
    Mr. Hice.
    Mr. Hice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And I appreciate the attitude that Ms. Porter just showed. 
I appreciate that. But it's my understanding Mr. Biggs does not 
get paid by Federal dollars to start with. So making that 
accusation is not a fair accusation in itself.
    I just want that clarified. Thank you.
    Mr. Connolly. Yes. I think Ms. Porter wasn't implying Mr. 
Biggs was a Federal employee, or should be held to Federal 
employee standards; She was simply pointing out that there was 
the appearance of a double standard as we were talking about 
telework and its viability.
    The chair now recognizes the gentlelady from Michigan, Mrs. 
Lawrence, for five minutes. Welcome.
    Mrs. Lawrence. Thank you so much.
    Today is a very important conversation in setting of our 
priorities for Congress.
    One of the issues that is very important to me, and I 
wanted to bring up is how can the Federal Government increase 
opportunities for work force development among foster youth and 
disadvantaged youths?
    And I have been on a mission and have talked to a number of 
industries, and they find it a no-brainer to make a priority 
for internships, make a priority for introducing the foster 
care work force into their employment opportunities. Well, here 
we are, the Federal Government. These children are a ward of 
the state, and they don't have a parent and the resources that 
our children in America have. We are the Federal Government.
    And so, I want to ask, Ms. Amante, when you think about the 
opportunities that we could, like, saying that foster youth, 
there's an application, check on that, that we will give 
special consideration for empowering this group of children, 
through no fault of their own, that have been stripped of 
resources that others don't have.
    Ms. Amante. Thank you for the question.
    And I love the notion of thinking specifically about that 
population. As Chairman Connolly mentioned earlier when he was 
referring to his bill, there's no shortage of need for more 
internships in Federal Government. We absolutely need to be 
thinking of creative ways of building talent pipelines across 
many different avenues. And I think certainly thinking about 
foster youth in America and inspiring them to serve in our 
government is a wonderful way to do it.
    And this will be another way that we can empower OPM to 
create programming to think more strategically about that 
population.
    Mrs. Lawrence. I want to say thank you, and I would like 
for that conversation--I would love to engage with you in as we 
move forward.
    The other question I want to turn to is diversity and 
inclusion.
    Last month, people of color in the United States made up 47 
percent of all full-time and entry-level jobs, but only 33 
percent of the senior level and 23 percent of senior executives 
make up the pool of executives.
    And I want to ask the question, what is it that we can do? 
Again, why has the Federal Government struggled with people of 
color in leadership? And what can--we have this graph up, and I 
want you to look at that, and to talk to me about the racial 
inclusion.
    Ms. Amante, can you please talk to me about what we can do 
to change this graph?
    Ms. Amante. I think looking at the private sector for 
examples of how we can improve this is one path forward, and 
one example of a tool that many private sector companies use is 
sponsorship programs, where they will actually shepherd young 
people through the company, help them build networks, help them 
really focus on their development so that they can achieve 
higher levels and really have a career path.
    That doesn't really exist in the Federal Government. There 
are mentoring programs. Certainly there are leadership 
development programs, but there isn't a lot of examples of 
specific attention paid to underrepresented populations where 
you really help them shepherd--you know, increase their 
networks, and really shepherd them through different processes.
    Mrs. Lawrence. So give me a hope or optimism that we as a 
Federal Government can get there? What do we need to do now to 
ensure that we are on the right projection to turn this around? 
And any of the other panel can comment as well.
    Ms. Amante. I'm happy to start.
    And I think we're having this conversation, so that is the 
first step. Everyone recognizes that this is an issue, that our 
government needs to better reflect the people it serves at all 
levels of management and leadership. And, so, I think the fact 
that we are talking about this today, that it is a strategic 
priority of the administration is really step one.
    All agencies are required to put together a strategic plan 
really focusing on DEIA at their agencies. So it is now, you 
know, a major topic of conversation at every agency.
    So I think there is optimism and hope that we are going to 
see change.
    Mr. Connolly. The gentlelady's time has expired.
    Mrs. Lawrence. I just wanted to say as a closing, Chairman, 
that we have to move from optimism and conversation to action.
    Thank you so much.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you.
    And I think Ms. Cross wanted to respond to your last 
question, Mrs. Lawrence.
    Ms. Cross.
    Ms. Cross. Thank you so much.
    I wanted to give another example of a way that Federal 
agencies could be doing that and expanding opportunities to 
more diverse candidates, and that's through registered 
apprenticeship programs as well. In fact, many agencies are 
already on the pathway to do that. And so, it reaches 
candidates outside of the traditional academic pathways through 
college and student kinds of programs. In fact, even the Bureau 
of Prisons is looking at registered apprenticeship programs to 
bring in formerly incarcerated talent into the Federal work 
force. So just wanted to offer that as an example.
    And one last one, the OPM's neurodiversity pilot project is 
underway, both in the United States intelligence community, and 
now looking to expand across other Federal agencies in data 
science fields and other occupations, a really interesting way 
to attract new and diverse talent.
    Mrs. Lawrence. Thank you. That's helpful.
    Thank you.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Mrs. Lawrence. And thank you, Ms. 
Cross.
    The chair now recognizes himself for his five minutes, and 
I'm going to try and go quickly.
    Ms. Cross and Ms. Amante, we've been talking about OPM. We 
have a bill we're going to be marking up, I believe, tomorrow. 
And from my point of view, OPM is the H.R. agency, the human 
resource agency of the Federal Government. It should not be 
partisan. It shouldn't be politicized. It ought to be 
professional.
    Does the bill you've looked at that was introduced and that 
we hope to mark up tomorrow, in your view, do just that? And in 
any way, do you believe that that bill deliberately or 
inadvertently circumscribes the ability of the President to 
exercise his or her political mandate?
    Ms. Cross.
    Ms. Cross. Thank you.
    I haven't looked at the bill through that lens necessarily, 
but I'm excited to see Congress pass legislation to strengthen 
OPM to do its job better and more effectively. They have 
already been working so hard to do just that, and so I'm 
excited to see that.
    Mr. Connolly. And I should say, Ms. Amante, the bill we're 
looking at tomorrow is actually predicated on a study from 
outside Congress. Is that correct? Do you know?
    Ms. Amante. The NAPA report?
    Mr. Connolly. That's right.
    Ms. Amante. Yes.
    Mr. Connolly. So we're actually acting on recommendations 
that came to us after some study about OPM. Is that correct?
    Ms. Amante. Absolutely. And I believe that study was 
commissioned out of the NDAA, and the partnership supports the 
recommendations that were produced in the NAPA report and 
certainly supports a stronger OPM.
    For many years, agencies have viewed OPM as a compliance-
focused organization, not as an organization that's actually 
helping them support their missions. So we look forward to 
strengthening OPM and making it more nonpolitical to really 
help agencies strengthen their human capital offices.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you.
    Mr. Thomas, you have endorsed the intern legislation, which 
I certainly appreciate. Some have argued, however, that with 
the best of intentions such a program would circumvent normal 
civil service hiring by giving a special credit if you served 
as an intern.
    How would you address that criticism?
    Mr. Thomas. Mr. Chairman, I think the--I don't think the 
criticism is well-taken for the simple reason that this is 
something that's very diverse from what you normally would be 
seeing. You're looking at creating the pipeline, you might say, 
for encouraging people to apply, not only apply, but also get 
into the Federal work force, or another way of getting into the 
Federal work force.
    So I'm not sure the criticism is deserved at all.
    Mr. Connolly. And if I could just followup on that with 
you, Mr. Thomas, if my numbers are correct, we're looking at 
about 30 percent of the entire Federal work force being 
eligible for retirement in the next several years. That 
translates into around 600,000 people.
    Mr. Thomas. That is correct.
    Mr. Connolly. And the intern--the total Federal intern 
number is about 4,000 currently. Is that correct?
    Mr. Thomas. Correct. Yes, it dropped from 60,000, yes.
    Mr. Connolly. Right. So the idea that somehow this is a 
violation of and circumvents, in some profound way, the Civil 
Service, you know, merit system of hiring is a little bit of a 
stretch, given the fact that we're talking about less than one 
percent of the entire Federal work force being interns, if 
we're lucky? Is that correct?
    Mr. Thomas. Yes. We sort of look at it over at NARFE, we 
look at it as part of our tool belt, something that can be 
useful.
    Mr. Connolly. Exactly.
    Mr. Thomas. And that's the purpose of it.
    Mr. Connolly. Yes. And even professionalizing it, there's a 
thought. The private sector does that and does it very well. We 
do not do that professionally, or well, in the Federal 
Government.
    Mr. Thomas. Correct.
    Mr. Connolly. There's no way to look at it and draw a 
different conclusion. I think we have a lot to learn from the 
private sector. I mean, you look at some companies, I won't 
name them, but if you're lucky enough, through a competitive 
process, I might add, to be hired as an intern, the chances are 
90 percent you will be hired by that company and you will 
accept that job.
    I wish we had something like that in the Federal 
Government, especially when we look at the enormous void we're 
going to have in terms of how do we recruit this massive number 
of people who have to replace people who are about to retire.
    Telework, Ms. Cross, and anyone else, but--Ms. Amante, I 
will put it to you as well, but, Ms. Lozar, you're more than 
welcome to comment. How do we do--how have we done with 
telework as a Federal Government during the pandemic? I mean, 
have things collapsed? Have they become profoundly 
dysfunctional? Is it an experiment that we never want to return 
to? Is it something that has worked well enough that actually 
we would like to build on it and expand?
    What's your sense? What kind of grade would you give the 
Federal Government in deploying telework during the pandemic?
    Ms. Cross. I would say the Federal Government is on par 
with private industry, especially for those employers who 
weren't accustomed to working fully remotely, en masse, like we 
had. In fact, we also used it as just one of the tools in our 
tool kit.
    So by leveraging the full range of flexibilities for--even 
those who couldn't telework or fully remote work, again, by 
stripping those core hour restrictions, allowing more choice in 
when and where you're able to work, all Federal workers were 
kept safe, No. 1.
    No. 2, the data we do have points to much higher 
satisfaction and perceptions of agency performance and 
increased workload.
    Now, increased workload may not be a positive factor in 
this. In fact, we might want to look at modernizing and 
investing more ways to leverage technology to work efficiently 
on behalf of the American public. But overall, I would say 
right on par and, as the Nation's largest employers, we are 
able to pave the way for others.
    Mr. Connolly. Ms. Amante?
    Ms. Amante. Yes. I agree with everything that Mika just 
said.
    And I would just also echo on the employee engagement 
front. The partnership has been studying employee engagement, 
as you all know, since 2003, and our best places to work in the 
Federal Government rankings. We know there's a direct 
correlation between the employee engagement and mission 
accomplishment.
    And what we saw in the past year was, you know, an increase 
of eight points employee engagement across the Federal 
Government, largely due to flexible work schedules, the ability 
to telework, and the acknowledgment from their supervisors that 
flexibility did not affect productivity.
    We will always be able to find anecdotes where it didn't 
work, but that happened before telework too. So I think we need 
to keep focus on the American people and serving them and 
mission accomplishment. And I do believe telework can be a 
successful tool.
    Mr. Connolly. And I would echo with the ranking member 
about metrics, but we have got to make sure that we're 
measuring it, so we are confident that's true. I mean, 
productivity can be both subjective and objective. If I'm 
building widgets, you can measure precisely whether my 
productivity has gone up or down per hour per day. If I'm 
writing op-ed pieces, that's a little more difficult because 
there's thought time that goes into it, there's research that 
goes into it; there are drafts and redrafts and, you know, 
rejected drafts. You know, how do you measure that kind of 
productivity?
    So at the end of the day, though, it's important to try and 
capture it, as Mr. Hice indicated, because the bottom line is 
we're here to serve the American people. And have we improved 
that service or not? And if not, how can we do better, and what 
lessons have we learned from the pandemic?
    So thank you very much for those observations.
    Before we close, I want to call on the ranking member if he 
has anything additional he would like to add before we adjourn 
the hearing.
    Mr. Hice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Nothing to add really 
that hasn't already been said. I want to again thank each of 
you for being here today and for your insight that you have 
brought to the table.
    But we do have issues, questions that need to be answered 
and resolved before we move forward in this, and I would just 
urge us to proceed with caution.
    The American people and the service effectiveness of our 
Federal Government is at stake as are obviously, depending on 
agencies, critical issues like national security, and we cannot 
put any of this at risk or diminish the effectiveness of our 
various agencies. So I would just urge us to proceed with 
caution as we move forward. Thank you.
    Mr. Connolly. I thank the gentleman and hope upon 
reflection and examination he might want to be an original 
cosponsor of the intern bill because I do think it's a tool, as 
Mr. Thomas indicated from NARFE, in a much larger challenge 
that we face, the Federal Government.
    I want to thank our panelists for their very thoughtful 
testimony and their even more thoughtful responses to our 
queries. Thank you.
    And I want to commend my colleagues, we had good 
participation today, which I think shows the level of interest 
in preparing the work force of the future.
    I want to insert into the record without objection, 
statements by the National Academy of Public Administration, 
National Federation of Federal Employees, and the National 
Treasury Employees Union.
    In addition, I'd like to insert into the record, the 
National Academy of Public Administration's report, entitled, 
Elevating Human Capital, Reframing the U.S. Office of Personnel 
Management's Leadership Imperative, along with the RAND 
Corporation's research report, entitled, Recruiting and Hiring 
a Diverse and Talented Public Sector Workforce.
    Without objection, it is so ordered.
    Mr. Connolly. With that, all members have five legislative 
days within which to submit extraneous materials and to submit 
additional written questions for the witnesses to the chair, 
which will be forwarded to the witnesses for their response.
    And I'd ask our witnesses if you can--in as expeditious 
manner as you can, get back to us with those responses, should 
you get queries. With that, we are adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 12:29 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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