On those rare occasions when I was able to get a status update during one of my many investigations over the years, sometimes they would say, “we’re waiting on a response from another agency.” And I just cringed because I knew that not only was such a request not very high on the list of actions at that other agency, but also I knew that nothing would stimulate a response on the OPM side until something came back. Sort of a variant on “no news is good news.”