Employees were responsible for independently contacting various and multiple agency offices to ensure their personnel records were changed. Image: IKO-studio/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffFederal employees seeking to have their legal names changed in agency personnel records due to marriage, divorce or other reasons find the process hard to navigate, says a GAO report based on a review of four agencies—SSA, IRS, State and VA.
“GAO asked employees at each of the selected agencies to describe their agency’s guidance or resources for the name change process. Employees in all focus groups and nearly all interviews said they experienced challenges navigating their respective agency’s name change processes due to the lack of guidance or insufficient guidance,” it said.
Those included “challenges navigating human resources, IT, or security steps, including unhelpful interactions with agency staff,” it said, and as a result “employees’ abilities to complete work tasks could be adversely affected.” It cited as an example a VA employee who could not sign in to perform work functions because the agency’s name-change guidance did not provide instructions for updating email addresses.
“We found that none of the selected agencies utilized a process that allowed employees to change their names with a single request. Instead, agency employees were responsible for independently contacting various and multiple agency offices to ensure their personnel records were changed, updating their information throughout the agencies’ various IT systems—such as agency identification credentials, email addresses, and business cards—and notifying those responsible for building security and identification credentials,” it said.
The GAO recommended that the agencies “develop comprehensive documentation that guides employees through all steps of the name change process and create a specific mechanism for collecting employee feedback on the whole process, as applicable.”
The IRS, SSA and State agreed and said they plan to take such actions. The VA disagreed, saying its process sufficiently guides employees and that it does collect feedback; the GAO in turn said it stands by its recommendations.
GAO added that at the time it began the review, federal employees further were able to request a change to their names or gender identities, due to a gender transition. However, under Trump administration executive order, agency forms may include only male or female, by “sex” and not by “gender.”
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