hi there I'm Claudia hoski from fed Insider and on behalf of the George Washington University Center for excellence in public leadership and servicenow I'm pleased to welcome you to today's webinar on how to prioritize during a continuing resolution please type your questions and comments into the Q a pod if we don't get to them during today's webinar we'll share them with our speakers so they can follow up with you also take note of the resources tab on the left side of your screen to download today's slides and additional reading on today's topic we offer live captioning for all of our webinars to follow along use the hyperlink under the live captioning or cart tab above the slides and we'll have the full transcripts available in the next day or two and to earn training credit for today's webinar you'll need to answer all polling questions throughout and now let me turn over the reins to our moderator Jonathan album former CIO of USDA and current federal CTO at servicenow to begin today's discussion take it away Jonathan um thanks Claudia hi everybody um as Claudia just shared uh prior to joining servicenow as a federal CTO I worked in the federal government for many years as a Chief Information officer and I was the CIO of the Department of Agriculture um throughout my career I've never started a fiscal year with a finalized budget it was always a continuing resolution according to a GAO report from last August the federal governments had to operate under continuing resolutions in 43 of the past 46 years so obviously for a lot of feds it's sort of just this time of year again and even though the CRS are quote unquote normal agencies are still required to deal with the effects of operating Under A continuing resolution and well CRS can generally continue funding levels set in the previous year's budget it hurts an agency's ability to execute on many activities programs can start new projects agencies may not be hired be able to hire key employees planning for future programs can slow down and administrative workloads generally increase because as agencies receive money during a CR that money is prorated based on the duration of the CR so this continuing resolution adds to the complexity of an already very challenging Federal management landscape and when you add in today's inflationary pressures its impact I think is only exacerbated so agencies really have to be thoughtful and be very strategic in my opinion about how they prioritize their work during this time and that's the that idea is at the Crux of today's webinar fortunately we have three excellent panelists to share their thoughts on this topic our panels today are Elizabeth field director defense capabilities and management team at the government accountability office Dr Skip Bailey who is the Deputy CIO of the U.S census and Tim Carlson who's the assistant CIO at USDA Rural Development and together we're going to talk about the effects of Frozen spending levels on uh different kinds of activities such as customer service hiring and making contract Awards and we'll describe metrics for setting priorities and maintaining specific activities like customer service and customer experience and we'll also strategize on what steps agencies can take this year to prepare to be prepared for the continuing resolution that's likely to come next year so we have a lot to talk about but I want to begin by having our panelists introduce themselves and share a little bit on their background I'd like to begin with Elizabeth welcome and thanks for joining us thank you it's good to be here um so for those of you who are not familiar with the GAO and my guess as many of you are but those for those of you who are not a GAO is the non-partisan investigative and oversight arm of Congress our mission is to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of federal programs through our work which is typically program evaluations performance Audits and investigations and many of our products almost all of which are are public and can be found on our website include recommendations to federal agencies I am as Jonathan mentioned in the defense capabilities and management team at GAO where I oversee a portfolio that includes assessing how the Department of Defense sort of manages its business operations and reforms itself as a management entity which of course includes looking at continuing resolutions this is my second time with GAO I previously worked at the state department and before that with the special and Inspector General for Afghanistan reconstruction and again it's great to be here thanks Elizabeth skip please uh tell us a little bit about yourself okay thanks it is good to be here um currently I'm the deputy CIO for the Census Bureau and has spent about the last 22 years in the federal space most of it's been in federal law enforcement spent a lot of time at the Department of Justice either as a federal employee or as uh I worked for Deloitte at one time supporting the Department of Justice um and I've been the CIO at ATF and I'll spend my time with the U.S Census Bureau I'm sure we get talking you'll maybe learn a few things you didn't know about consensus but one thing I'll plug for him is uh the census's mission is in the Constitution so it's a great place to work your your mission is actually defined in the in the Constitution okay great Point skip I look forward to learning more about uh UNC spear as we continue and uh last but certainly not least uh Tim mccrossen Tim please give us a little bit of your background hey thanks Jonathan uh great to be here and and with you all uh my name is Tim mccrossen I am the assistant uh CIO for role development which is uh one of the big mission areas within USDA uh prior to that I was an associate CIO in within the Ocio organization and basically took uh I took care of all customer I.T uh issues um and that is everything from network software email authentication you name it mobile devices laptops we did it all um but before that I was at um uh DHS uh Sissa and um really focused on uh analytical concepts for um estimating risk cyber risk and prior to that I was with um OMB uh and I was the unit chief for agency oversight um and uh working on you know portfolio set and those types of things so uh and background you know I was also at Housing and Urban Development and spent some time um on the hill uh supporting the uh the Senate um uh Homeland Security government Affairs committee well thanks Tim you're such a uh you know Rich background very varied I think uh you're gonna have a lot to offer during our conversation today um so again thanks for being here um Elizabeth I want to kick things off by um asking you uh a starting question you know you talked about the mission of GAO we know that GA has been a lot of work looking into the impact of continuing resolutions you've written several reports on this topic so can you tell us the kinds of things Geo has found in this research sure so as you might imagine it can be hard to isolate the effect of continuing resolutions on the operations of of federal agencies um but but there are some ways in which we have been able to to suss it out and and to really see it and one of one way that was particularly helpful uh was for FY 2019 when the Department of Defense did not have a continuing resolution and so what that did was it allowed us to compare how the department operated during that year with other years when of course there were continuing resolutions and we found I'm sure not surprisingly there was a lower rate of obligations when a CR was in effect we particularly saw that in the first quarter of the fiscal years when there was a CR in effect there were delays in new starts particularly related to acquisition uh and then of course we have also obtained information not just from DOD but from other agencies from just speaking with officials who who live this life of trying to manage with manage CRS that there are other anecdotal ways in which they see CRS impact their operations from um hiring that can be slowed to administrative burdens to difficulty planning due to funding uncertainty the one key point I want to make before I turn it back to you is that what we have also found through our research across the federal government and for many years now is that because unfortunately continuing resolutions have become essentially the norm uh federal agencies have learned to adapt and and I credit the the Ingenuity and tenacity of public servants who work inside these these agencies for coming up with ways to adapt um but there are a number of different mechanisms that agencies can use to to address the uncertainty that comes with a continuing resolution whether it is starting a one-year contract in the second or even third or fourth quarter of a fiscal year to try to anticipate the impacts of an upcoming CR to postponing non-essential purchases and training to requesting legislative anomalies and I'm sure we'll talk about all of those and more strategies in this discussion today well thanks I think it's a great way to to kick things off and I think that you know you touched on the idea of funding uncertainty having lived through a lot of CRS and I think Skip and Tim would love to hear your perspective on this as we get into it I've been sold by different CFOs that I worked with that you can't you might eventually have the budget to hire that person you're not prevent it from hiring them but what if when Congress passes the budget they don't get as much money as we thought and you know what if um you know there's a recession or what if there's legislation or what if what if what if and that uncertainty uh in a large you know complex organization like the USDA where I work for some of the sub agencies you know can essentially grind things to a hall and it has a you know a real on the ground impact so that funding uncertainty is is really a you know a big one but uh to get I want to I want to jump over to you for a second and you know we know that the Census Bureau is is obviously very well known for the decennial census so you said it's in the Constitution your mission is perfectly stated um you know uh in in the in the Constitution but you know people may not know uh how much work that goes into planning the census but how much work goes into managing the data and disseminating the data after it's collected so we're just coming off of the last decennial census and I think that you know there's my understanding is a lot of activities at the Census Bureau that you know are kicking off now that are continuing now and I'm just curious how you know the work and the the broader Mission might be impacted by a CR AP yeah that's a great question uh essentially um the Census Bureau selects analyzes and disseminates data about the United States and its people and the economy those are the two those are the areas that we do and we people are familiar as you said with the decennial census which happens every 10 years but we do more than 130 surveys and censuses uh some of them on a monthly basis you know all the way up to one the one that occurs every 10 years that everybody hears about and as you said uh we collect the data and we analyze it one of the things that we have to do in the analysis of the data is to make sure that nobody can use that information to get back to individuals that the data was collected from we have a uh we we're all sworn into a title 13 which is a law that governs the use of this data and uh and so we're restricted from making it available so that people can get back to individuals so they can people can only use summary data and as you can imagine with the computers the way they are people algorithms the ability to reach you know retro engineer data from summary data to get back to individual data is a possibility and so we we have a dis disclosure avoidance uh program that builds into the data uh it's kind of a shift in the data that is accurate summary information without allowing us people to go back on the individual so that's kind of Step number one let's make it's not available as you know um after 72 years we do uh the data the raw data available we just released the 1950 census this year and uh and allowed people to get to that once once it's uh been analyzed and then we analyze it for things uh like apportionment which is a big deal as you can imagine uh you know how people get their accounts for Congress and so forth in different populations um but the data is used for just myriads of things uh both within the government and outside of the government and we make that data available once we've protected it we make it available through a variety of sources we have a lot of universities and other partners that use data but through our websites you can get to the data and so on and a lot of the data is already been posted from the 2020 census a lot of that summary stuff and is being used to make decisions and and go forward so it's really those three steps of of acquiring protecting and analyzing and then disseminating that that we're involved in so it's a huge Mission uh the agency has and you know the the work that you described you know is sort of ongoing kinds of things and people are expecting this data to be available at certain times um are you and your team impacted by the CR in ways or how are you impacted and do any of those impacts you know bring risk you know create risk for those activities yes of course uh and as you mentioned the because the CRS so uh reoccurring shall we say or happens every year you do kind of build it in but there are some very critical timings of data for example uh we we handled some of the economic indicators uh which have literally uh only a variability of a few milliseconds and when they can be posted because you can imagine it affects the economy and they have to be post at precisely the right time and uh so um you know so that's a that's an important uh consideration and when you and when you have a continuing resolution you have to recognize what is most important and what it is not comfortable and something like the release of economic indicators would be one that we've got to make sure we have the funding so that we can uh you know have those released at precisely the right time yep yeah there's a lot of effort that goes into that you know at the Department of Agriculture there's similar uh aspects to the mission at the national agriculture statistics service or economic research service and don't know they release statistics at exactly the right time that millisecond tier two makes a difference and those systems have to work and need to be invested and that's a that's something that you have to prioritize so that's I think one of the you know sort of key takeaways thinking about what's most important and making sure that's on the on the list of will operate so um you know go ahead supposed to say I don't want to take everybody's time but it it it's it reminds me a few years ago there was I won't name the state but there's a state having financial trouble so one of the things they did was cut back on funding for prisons and had them release a certain number of prisoners so in their passive aggressive behavior the prisons Department started with felons you know it's kind of like do you release jaywalkers or felons first so we're going to start with sound yeah um and so simply asking people uh what's important whatever they're doing is the most important and and so you really have to dig and understand the mission in order to you know because everybody feels like what they're doing is the most important thing but there are a lot of things that they wait airplanes will not fall out of the sky we will be able to continue and be able to pick it up later and it's knowing the mission is really critical in doing that yeah I'm writing this down know the mission and prioritize good uh So speaking about admission that I know having worked at USDA um I want to turn over to Tim for a second and World development Rd plays around the country and you know it's really a key player in the uh recently passed infrastructure bill so um thinking about infrastructure thinking about Rural America and the the support Rd professional Americans um how are you and your team in the agency impacted by the CR well I so it's it's it's sort of a uh you ask a question that kind of cuts both ways right so uh just as skip said knowing your priorities is the most important thing uh and you know I it clearly understands the priorities of census uh you know priorities at RB rural development uh you know we have the you know broad brand infrastructure program um and you know the reconnect program and and you know getting Broadband uh internet capabilities out to Rural America is is number one and so you know the question then is you know uh you know the the resources for that are are essentially set the then the question is you know will we have the it capabilities to deliver on the program right uh you know this is a program it's it's somewhat uh labor intensive in terms of the application and the review of applications and then eventually getting to the award of uh loans and grants to support this program and so you know there's a lot of I.T that goes into that and especially with the changes and this is the key and I'm really interested to hear from Elizabeth on this issue because there's a number of technical issues in terms of interpretation um because whenever you talk about I.T um and I'll say small D development right so you know it's basically maintenance changes on capabilities that are already in existence and so we have the reconnect application system and you know if we want to you know launch another funding opportunity announcement uh for me I would say we've already done that four times that is not that does not reflect a new type of capability we're not developing something new we're simply extending the existing capabilities to have a new round of funding but you know on this particular issue um intelligent people can disagree and that essentially gets us to the core of the problem because under a continuing resolution you can't start new it systems um unless unless you get you know permission uh from Congress that that that's acceptable and there's there's a process for that and so that then becomes the dilemma and we have to consider you know whether these capabilities that we're intending to create uh constitute new development uh which would be Big D development or if they're essentially maintenance releases or extensions of current capabilities uh and that's really the heart of the problem yeah that that that's well stated Tim you know uh everyone knows you can't start a new project during a CR or no new starts um but what is a new start and um I've seen it cut both ways it's sort of in the eye of the beholder I worked uh with another agency uh last year that had some cyber security challenges at the uh beginning of the last fiscal year and they were about to start a new project and they thought they had the green light until someone in the agency said decided that was a new project they were replacing an existing capability and that to replace the existing capability was considered to be a new project whereas they wanted to say we have this capability we're upgrading it to your point and at another agency a different decision could have been made so so Elizabeth I don't know if this is something GAO is examined in the in the research you were describing but I'd love for you to provide some perspective based on what you you know you've learned about it and you know if there's a place that people can go to become better educated on maybe a technical definition sure um well so absolutely you know this question of of what constitutes a new start and the prohibition on new starts has come up in a lot of our work because it is one of the the many aggravations that agencies experience with with CRS um a resource that I I would Point uh the listeners to here is a report that we issued just recently about continuing resolutions it was focused on three agencies USDA Department of Education and HHS but there's a fantastic figure in the report the report number is gao-22-104701 and it has its figure two on page 10 and it talks about the standard Provisions included in continuing resolutions and what they mean and there is a really helpful definition and discussion there of the no new starts provision um what I will tell you based on our work um is a few things one is uh it all kind of comes down to your to your general counsel right and so um understanding where the attorneys in your agency come come down in these questions and having good partnership and communication with them is clearly important the other two really key players here are of course OMB and Congress and we have seen some examples of some creative ways to get around this issue of the no new starts um Prohibition in ncrs and one example of that would be that back in 2018 the Navy raised a concern that it shipped ashore connector Pro program it didn't have any production planned for fiscal year 2020. it had been doing it in 2018 and was planning for FY 2019 and so the concern became that if fiscal year 21 began under a CR which of course It ultimately did then any planned production for that year would be considered a new start and then there would be disruption in this really important program uh what ultimately ended up happening is that Navy officials were able to work with Congress to get just one single ship to shore connector authorized for fiscal year 20 so that if there were a CR and fiscal year 21 it wouldn't be considered a new start so being able to work through Solutions with Partners in OMB and with Partners on the hill seems to be really critical for agencies that said it is of course time consuming and certainly yeah so so what I take from that example when it sounds that's really sort of a creative way to think about it is you know get the project started in 2020 in your example or you know we're in 2023 now so get the project started in 2023 even if it's in a small way so uh and Define the project so it's very clear that the deprived you know to for Tim's example uh the the project may include up to uh 20 funding opportunities or some some number so you you've set a uh some parameters and a scope that makes it clear you've begun to work that's what I'm taking uh from your example that requires a lot of communication and you know agency's willingness to put something out there for you know for comment either Congress or OMB or someone yeah yeah go ahead there's a little bit of a catch-22 here right so and and you know the the point is that Congress gave uh role development These funds to use in support of the program and so you know it's congress's expectation that the funds will be exhausted in support of of the the parameters that were laid out and you know there's an aspect where you can make the case that the I.T capabilities are necessary to um to deliver on what was the will of Congress right and so you know there's there's apart on this where you know I and I can't I can't agree with Elizabeth Moore on the communication right the communication between especially the staffers in the hill who are are focused on the particular programs and then the OMB the resource management office uh budget examiners who are also focused on that there's got to be the unity of of vision and approach on this particular point but you know the argument that I would make is you know how do we deliver on congress's decision that these funds these resources should be used to make loans and grants to uh non-profit organizations without the it isn't is it inherent that the it capabilities must mature in order to to deliver on that yeah so how do you tell your story go ahead skip I I think you also raised the kind of the parallel issue which is there's also a lot of uncertainty about how long a continuing resolution will last and so you know we have the initial one until December but then you know some years it's March or April before the you finally get out of it and then as as um as you mentioned Tim there's you're supposed to spend all that money and so so has been withheld until it continued so in the back half of the year you've got to accelerate the way in which you can spend that money and you want to do that wisely and sometimes that's difficult especially for I.T systems sometimes really hard to accelerate development they're putting you know years and years ago there was a book written called mythical man months but sometimes just putting more and more people on it doesn't really result in an increase in it in the delivery of something and so that's the corollary problem that exists sometimes you don't see because even when you get the green light can you effectively spend all that money and get the results that you had planned for that year yeah I I love that point skip because you know you're you're also uh I don't know how many procurements you have in your in your office but your typical IAP office has spends a lot of money before you're in a fiscal year and you're inundating your Contracting Office with uh procurement requests and rfps and and the like and uh you know see artists get resolved until April uh March April time frame you're trying to do all that in six months and you know you have um you got a real time progression problem so it's hard to do good spending you know good procurements uh for all of them in a short period of time you need the full year if not longer so if you have any good planning you know you're you're at risk of uh maybe buying something that you don't need or buying too much of something or or running out of time to buy something that's really essential so how do we prioritize back to your point I'll open this up uh you know and then Tim maybe you can jump start on this because you've done a lot of project program management work how do you prioritize to make sure that the most important procurements the most important things are going to get done in that compressed timeline that you know we had last year last year the CR wasn't resolved until uh March 9th or 10th I think this year could be similar or later um Again by the time you get your money you have your approval to move forward on things you're looking at six months or less so what do you do to make sure you know you're taking the risk out all right so I and you know different people approach this problem differently uh you know there are certain fixed costs that you know we know that we have to cover uh staff uh there are certain maintenance contracts for as skip said those uh high impact capabilities uh those must be covered we we don't have an opportunity to shortchange those types of things but then as you also said there are certain um Acquisitions which can be delayed or deferred and uh you know I think Elizabeth's research point you know points this out as well you know when when it comes to I mean we all loathe the fact that we buy laptops late in the year um but it's absolutely one of those acquisitions which can always slide to the right on the calendar um you know I I despise the fact that we do that I I would much rather acquire my laptops and receive them and get them deployed not at the same time as everybody else in the federal government because that gives you know Dells and hp's a better opportunity to fulfill my order in a timely manner um but the way that we the way that we are structuring our our Appropriations just doesn't really help us to get there but skip also does bring up a really really important point that I I think we really need to pay attention to the timing of the continuing resolution and the certainty of whether or not you know for example we know that we're going to go until uh December under our current CR but then the question we have is well come December are we looking at a a full year CR are we looking at the potential that there could be a budget um you know we don't have Clarity in terms of after December and you know I think that we can we could all live with a a full year CR if that gave us the clarity about where we would be at the end of the year it's the degree to which we go and progress through a fiscal year and lack that Clarity that is really the thing that that I think impacts us from a planning perspective you know when we started the year you know the previous fiscal year actually two years before we developed our our plan uh for what we would be acquiring and and when we would you know be spending that money um and then we go into a fiscal A A continuing resolution and then essentially we take that plan and kind of throw it out the window because you know we have to we have to then be reacting instead of being proactive to to work the plan so great great point you can't even work the plan if you if you know you have something um that you wanted to start now and you had the funds to do it you might not even be able to do it because you don't get all of the funds that you should have for the duration of the CR they may come to the agency but they don't come into your your accounts that I had a meeting with a budget officer this morning from another agency and I mentioned that it was going to be on this webinar and he said and he you know bemoaned they only got 75 percent of their allotment for the first uh from you know October 1st to December 16th and that creates a lot of administrative you know burden because you're funding contracts for you know partial periods of time and it's it's just a lot of administrative effort and I suspect things like that are occurring across across agencies and you know Elizabeth I want to put it back to you for a second and you know when you were describing the impacts uh you mentioned additional Administration uh you know increased administrative burden and I wonder if you could expand on that a little bit is it you know this issue I'm describing or someone described to me as a of a partial allotment and the work related to that or you know broader kinds of administrative challenges yeah well I mean I think it can take a lot of different forms including the ones that you mentioned one example that I'd like to highlight because I think it's so um it's it's just so so clear how it impacts people in a real way is Health and Human Services LIHEAP program the low income home energy assistance program and and it just speaks directly to the to the question uh Tim that you were raising about how funding uncertainty can really really be a problem and so what HHS officials told my colleagues in GAO strategic issues group that did this work is that when when grantees don't receive their funds in the spring or summer I'm sorry when they when they receive their funds in the spring or summer but they are grantees that are only offering Heating and heating related assistance they then have to take extra steps that they wouldn't normally have to take to spend the funds and that can mean hiring new staff to resume Outreach to households who needed the support back when it wasn't able to be provided to review household applications and it and it goes the the other way as well when sometimes funding becomes available in the winter and there are grantees is under the Hawaii program that only offers summer cooling assistance and so I I find that just to be a really compelling example of how these uncertainties can have can have real life impacts the other two things I want to note um just to piggyback off of Tim's really helpful comments are one it's absolutely kind of kind of the luck of the draw um when it comes to uh how how resilient your program is going to be to a CR because of you know the color of money that you have or whether you can yeah you have five years to spend it like in the case of DOD military construction spending or you have one year right in the in the case of O M funding which can make it much harder and so that's that's another complicating factor and the last thing I'll say is we have seen DOD and I believe other agencies now coming up with multiple scenario plans so looking at a 30 day CR or 60 day a 90 day um I wouldn't be surprised if they're now doing you know 180 days and so on and so forth but that's one one strategy we've seen agencies take of course again that's another administrative burden to take the time to develop three different scenarios um for spending your fun yeah well those are excellent points yet go ahead I think uh Tim man Tim talks about it Elizabeth sort of uh intimated it but one of the principles of her said what are some takeaway principles one of them is to have something that you can put money on at the end of the year that you can reliably do that and he mentioned laptops we have a Services contract that we can always award Fund in so sometimes if you can't you're not able to do it you can at least use that money and then you know switch the budget next year to to fund the things you wanted to so you know just the at preset strategy that says if I have money and end of the year here's where I can put it right so having creating some some flexibility um with the Contracting vehicles that are available and easy to use uh that that's another great uh a great suggestion I want to I want to Pivot um to some current topics that you know agencies are dealing with and see how um you know these are these are impacting uh if if so and we also do have uh some uh questions coming in from from the audience so uh let's just think about where we are as a you know as a as a government and uh you know Community today coming off the pandemic we know that uh expectations for customer service and customer experience are different uh people have different expectations about how providers you know offer services and a lot of agencies are in transition to doing things either online or in a quotable touchless manner I I'm curious um you know Skip the Census Bureau you you interact with a lot of people a lot of the public um you know are are there new expectations for how you know the the public interacts with the Census Bureau and you know are those can you meet those expectations are you starting do you need to start new projects that are going to be further delayed because you can't start them during the CR AP yeah I I think this could sound to understanding um what those expectations are and how entrenched they are you know people can be very forgiving under some circumstances and and yet be very rigid and and demanding other other circumstances and so I think it's getting to know um I and I I hope this isn't taking a long way but what can you get away with what what can we delay that we won't deliver as we said we would um versus what really has to hit the hit the time and um for us the priority always comes down to the security of the data if we have a security incident then and people lose you know we lose credibility in the eyes of the public we're dead in the water because we're totally dependent on the trust of the American public to in order for us to do our mission and so we recognize that some things are sort of Unforgiven and one of those would be having a security incident so that helps us put things like that at the very top if if we had some data sets that we said to be available in April and we didn't get them until June with an exclamation we could probably keep people from getting to you know too upset and so you know you trade if you have trade those two off you protect the data first and then you know live if we if we deliver a little late on this thing then we can live with that in the public World let us live with it right so back to back to priorities protect the data uh protect people's privacy um you know do do the do the sort of Baseline foundational things that you know Inspire uh you know that maintain the whatever trust we have in government at this moment and then ideally build on those things through um maybe new projects or activities that further create trust is you know could have what is what I'm taking and um you know I think that's that's a really good strategy and uh is it talking about you know trust and building trust it's you know people you know you gain trust um you know in drops but you're losing in buckets you know I've heard that that said before and I think what you you know you can take that from your your comments um Skip and one way to build trust is to you know with the public is do good projects and we have a question that you know sort of ties into this about how this a CR might impact a local government um and I'm going to expand it to local communities and Tim I want to I want to turn to you for a second um because rural development does a lot of projects in communities all over uh the country primarily Rural America but these projects have a real impact on the way communities operate and you mentioned you maybe some challenges getting some funding opportunities out there for infrastructure for the infrastructure bill for for Broadband what other kinds of things is uh does Rd do and how do you you know how do you work with those program offices during this time of the CR and make sure they have those agencies those those program officials have what they need so the agency can do its mission I mean this is um this is a very right topic for us because uh as you know Jonathan uh it was what last December uh the president signed the executive order on customer experience and uh Rd is is one of the key organizations that is is endeavoring um to deliver and and what the the president's Vision was um one of the The Core Business areas for rural development is you know we actually have hold mortgages with uh lots of of people in rural rural America uh direct mortgages and so when the president uh published his executive order on customer experience I I gotta I feel like I I know that a lot of my colleagues here in in Rd feel the same as you know we're one of the agencies that he was targeting most because right now um if if you are a mortgagee in in rural development you want to uh know what your um last payment date was or you want to uh figure out what your payoff amount is for the mortgage that we hold um quite frankly you have to call the 800 number uh there is no you know customer portal that you can go to um just to to see your account your transactions with USDA uh concerning your mortgage and so you know this is you know 2022 about to be 2023 and you know we are an organization that feels very much like we need to catch up with what commercial industry banking is delivering for their customers and so when we think about you know the impacts the effects of a continuing resolution um this is one of the key things for me is because you know this enhancing this customer experience is definitely unequivocally a new start and I feel very strongly that Congress will support us in this and that OMB it would be inclined to support an anomaly in this um but the truth of the matter is with all of this um uh uncertainty around the budget you know we I think we go somewhat slower in this because we're hopeful that there will be more certainty around the the budget resources that will be available for the balance of the of the fiscal year um uh before we start to to make um you know commitments and and addressing this core issue yeah I mean uh helping Rd catch up to where Commercial Banking is you know that that's a that's a tremendous it's a big lift and you know again having been a USDA I know this is not the first uh time someone says we're going to tackle this and I think Tim you have the a great opportunity to be successful here but not if you don't have the ability to get started and you know I think that that is you know maybe such a Elizabeth shared some you know good past exempts this is a great current example of work you want to do and you can't get your hands around it just yet so you know it's uh as as frustrating um as that is I'm wondering if you know there are things we can do to either educate the workforce uh or get out there and talk about these things get ready uh to do some procurements or market research or what have you so you're ready to go on all cylinders when you have a budget are you thinking about and you know baby steps I I don't know whether Elizabeth thought that the uh the report that she cited earlier which I'll say it again just because it's such a significant report and it it helps me in making my case with my colleagues in the finance office and the CFO organization as well as the acquisition office and so that that report was GAO 22-104 701 and it it's um an outstanding report because it gives it helps to lend Clarity in in this very very complex and confusing area and so there are ways that you can do new starts um but you you have to follow the process where I mean we're the federal government for so of course there's a process for it but you can do it you just have to be aware of the process and then execute that process um consistently with with throughout the the overall organization yeah no no very good you know I'm hopeful that we can make those reports that Elizabeth mentioned um available to everyone um on this call so uh to the folks at pet Insider if we could share those out as resources um after this I think that would be great because potential Point there's a lot in there that can um help you in a conversation with the with the CFO with the general counsel with others as you're strategizing and again we don't know how long we're going to be in this period this year uh but we know you know we know it's going to be until these December 16th to possibly be longer and we also can can guess pretty accurately that we're going to be in this next year and maybe the year after that year after that so these are strategies that uh don't just help you right now to help you long term and a lot of these projects and programs that we're talking about these are long-term uh long-term Endeavors so we're going to be dealing with this over over time uh Elizabeth as we uh we sort of uh come into um our wrap-up I wanna I wanna come back to you and uh maybe get uh you know ask one more question about the reports that you shared and about the um uh this ideas educating our Workforce on these topics like Tim was describing um did you find anything in the research Geo find anything in the research about uh benefits for educating um the workforce or how to educate the workforce or topics maybe the workforce uh needs to be up to speed on relative to operating during a CR and if not um any ideas on things that we should be sharing or suggestions of things we should be shared with our teams sure um well first thanks so much for the the kind words about the GAO reports that we're talking about today um I know a lot of a lot of people put a lot of work into them and I would just um list out one other report number here which is gao-21-541 which is the report we did specific to the defense budget and the effects of CRS on dod you know I I think what we have seen when it comes to the workforce are two things one is um because CRS are so routine now um the we see this sort of um institutional knowledge and understanding of how to prepare for CRS in many pockets of these agencies and they tend to to pass that knowledge on to new folks as they come into the workforce and so we haven't necessarily seen as a strategy any stand-alone maybe educational programs for for the workforce just because there is such a constant that that that the institutions have built up that knowledge um through through the really hard-working public servants who are trying to manage CRS every every year um but one thing that that does relate to the workforce that I'd like to highlight that we maybe haven't talked about a lot is the impact of CRS on hiring and we do see for example in the Department of Defense a relative slowdown in hiring of Civilian Personnel in the first quarter of fiscal years when there's a CR in place and and that can have you know real death detrimental effect to the agency's ability to operate and to recruit and retain high quality personnel which is an issue that I think all federal agencies face and so that's something that I think about when I think about Workforce and the impact of CRS yeah very good were you able to discern what caused the hiring slowdown exactly it was it consistent or is it just well so in in part it was just because of the the type of funding that went into civilian Personnel hiring and it was just they just literally couldn't um but you know there were also other other factors that impacted civilian hiring that didn't have anything to do with the CR uh you know for example most most service members and their families will move locations in the summer and so you see a change in in the Slowdown and hiring during that time and then it's been a ramp up but certainly certainly um there are there are effects on civilian hiring uh that there's no Pro there's no prohibition on hiring uh it's just perhaps more complicated or there's less certainty around funding so someone might say slow down uh it was been my experience um right right yeah and I've mentioned before we did have that one fiscal year when there wasn't a CR and we were able to prepare the app firing and so and it was just it was just much higher yeah so uh you know again I think that's that's an important uh you know observation not just for you know in the dod but you'd expect that you'd have similar impacts and uh civilian agencies and you know we know we don't have enough cyber workers we don't know we know that we we struggle to recruit I.T talent and others so um there's unfilled critical positions in agencies that are unfilled for longer and again impact uh to the way agencies uh you know meet their mission so that we have to be uh you know mindful of as uh as people in and around you know the federal government about what the expectations people have to get the work done and what resources Congress is giving us the ability to get that work done doesn't always it doesn't always align as as nicely as as you'd hope but I think the benefit of a discussion like this is we're putting out in we're talking about some things that don't always get talked about and you know part of thinking of strategies is to you know Express uh the frustrations and and ideally the uh the opportunities and I think that you've all done that you know very very well during today's you know conversation and and I'm hoping that you can all share a few final thoughts uh or a lesson learned or you know maybe maybe a hope for the the rest of the fiscal year as um as we continue down this uh first CR through December 16th and uh skip why don't you kick us off well I think we've uh come up with a number of points just in summary that we can uh do you know number one know your priorities know your mission uh make sure that the things that can something might be important but it can be delayed that you know can be delayed we also talked about prepare dance and by preparing an advance you may kick out projects before the end of the fiscal year in order to be able to carry them forward uh then also knowing where to put things at the end of the year so that you can uh capture you know the money and and use it as best you can so I think all those are kind of little tools that you can use to prioritize and make sure that you get the best benefit for the time that and the money that you're going to spend during that year a great great Point skip uh Ken what would you like to add um you know the thing first of all uh thank you everybody for participating in this this is a probably the wonkiest of wonky conversations that that the federal government can have but the the thing that I would uh like to you know parting gift would be consideration that when when we like to think that oh well you can just buy a portion or piecemeal right so we'll give you uh you know 25 of the resources for the fiscal year and you'll go buying 25 of the I.T stuff that you would have bought anyway um the problem with that is that the administrative burden for buying 50 laptops is exactly the same as it is for buying 5 000 laptops and so really what we're talking about from a resource perspective is double the workload we're doubling the workload each time we do this and so you know if if we get years where we get multiple CRS I hope this is not one of them but you know right now we're looking at you know a multiplier of two on you know uh one continuing resolution and then hopefully we get a budget or a full year CR but if it if they kick the can down the road again then and there's another short-term CR then that's a multiplier of three and every time we do that you know we are essentially multiplying that workload by however many CRS we have temporary CRS we have in a in a given year and that that is that is there is an impact on that and and I think that we have to be cognizant of that yeah I think we should estimate it yeah well that's that's great understanding an administrative burden and being able to uh quantify it share that up with uh with our friends in Congress and and and elsewhere I think that's that's just great education uh for people and um Elizabeth I'm gonna I'm gonna let you conclude uh you've shared such great information from those reports and I know we're going to be able to make those available um any final thoughts on those findings or ideas moving forward for for our listeners sure um and let me Echo Tim thanks for the the session today I certainly learned a lot from you all and enjoyed participating um I I think two takeaways one unfortunately CRS are not going away uh and so just taking advantage of all the resources we've talked about today is important um but second to bring it back to something Jonathan that you mentioned at the the outset I am really interested in uh and concerned about the effect of inflation uh in the economy today and what that means for agencies that have really important missions be able to operate under CRS and so that's something that we're going to be looking at at GAO and I know a lot of others are are looking at as well so thank you again well that's that's a that's a that's a great point when you get to talk about that very much but we'll you know I think we'll all be looking for that as we uh think about that as we move into the the rest of the fiscal year right I just want to conclude by thanking you all I I picked up on the points around communication um with your Hill staffers with OMB making sure creating as much clarity as we can around what we are trying to accomplish what funding uh we we need our I thought were were great points but you know this isn't going away um we're gonna have to keep talking about this and you know I I think we've uh started a great conversation today to look forward to continuing uh Elizabeth Skip and Tim thank you for all the work that you do and you all contributed to a wonderful discussion um thank you to the audience for for listening and for the questions that came in and I also want to thank the team that fed Insider and servicenow who made this possible I'm going to turn things back over to Ed's Insider for some uh final thoughts and to wrap things up thank you thanks Jonathan and thanks again to our speakers today and for our audience thank you for your participation training certificates will be emailed after the webinar ends and remember to log back in in the next day or two to download a copy of today's captioning transcript we have many webinars in the works so be sure to visit fedinsider.com to see what's coming up and to register for multiple events at the same time and while you're there you can check out our podcast feds at the edge and with that this is fed Insider signing off foreign