Many of the technical issues relate to access for employees whose passwords or ID badges expired during their more than a month away on furlough Image: Al Serov/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffAs the agencies that were affected by the partial government shutdown get restarted, they are experiencing various technical problems in the short run while bigger issues await in the longer term.
Many of the technical issues relate to access for employees whose passwords or ID badges expired during their more than a month away on furlough. Agencies have sent instructions to employees on how to renew their access, further burdening IT support systems that are working to bring up to speed systems that did not have regular maintenance and updates for more than a month. Those IT changes in turn create new responsibilities for employees who are the end-users.
Other short-term problems range from cleaning up workspaces–in some cases, involving throwing out plants that died for lack of watering and finally taking down holiday decorations–to facing the daunting amount of work that has built up in the meantime.
While there have not been significant reports of employees failing to return claiming they could not afford to do so until they receive back pay, absenteeism among those kept at work had grown as the shutdown dragged on. That has left managers to decide whether to look the other way or to declare those employees AWOL–and if so, to decide whether to take adverse action beyond loss of pay for AWOL time.
Also to be sorted out is whether employees who accepted outside temporary employment–or actively sought full-time employment–may have violated any ethical restrictions against conflicts of interests. Similarly, gift policy violations may have occurred as employees accepted various forms of assistance, including through “fund me” type online solicitations.
Yet to be accounted for is how many employees decided to leave federal employment or to put in for retirement, if eligible, out of frustration. Morale and motivation for those continuing on is another consideration–especially in the face of a potential repeat of the shutdown in less than three weeks if political leaders do not resolve the underlying issues by then–and farther ahead is an assessment of how much the shutdown degraded the prospects of finding good candidates to replace those who are leaving.
