Beth Cobert has been active in her time as acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, ushering in a number of important workforce initiatives in a few short months. Unfortunately, many of those policies are in jeopardy of being thrown out, according to the OPM inspector general.
Citing judicial precedent, IG Patrick McFarland said Cobert cannot serve as acting director while her nomination is pending before the Senate, prompting the IG to declare all policies and directives issued since Nov. 10—the date of her official nomination—to be null and void.
Here’s a look at just a few of the major initiatives that will have to be recreated from scratch once Cobert—or another nominee—is confirmed by the Senate.
National Background Investigations Bureau
The NBIB was created in January to restructure the way OPM handles background investigations in the wake of a massive breach last year that exposed sensitive information on millions of current, former and prospective federal employees and their relations.
The new bureau would absorb the Federal Investigative Service and the rest of the civilian government’s investigations but would house the information in data centers managed by the Department of Defense, which will handle the IT security aspect.
With Cobert’s standing to establish new offices up in the air, so is the fate of NBIB.
The clown show at OPM never ceases to amaze me. Just unbelievably ridiculous.
Maybe if they refute the new agency that was just created, they might actually make the right decision and actually put the agency under something other than OPM’s rule of thumb. Many have argued that this national security background work should have never been under the rule of thumb of an HR agency
Nothing has changed with the formation of this new agency except DOD handling the IT security. Just think, the new organization taking over for FIS is still under OPM!!
I’ll just be happy if they rename the silly thing. I heard the reasoning behind the name is literal. “National” meaning nationwide, “background investigations” because they were required to specifically define the scope of the agency in the name and “bureau” (who knows?).
Is this a McFarland parting shot? I wonder why a guy who is retiring is attempting to sink the acting Director unless there is some bad blood or maybe he knows that the whole NBIB will be a joke. I think most of us know that the Administration wasted a great opportunity to revamp the BI system and the NBIB change is just rearranging the deck chairs on a broken system.
Could this be the only way McFarland could bring it to a head with Congress and force another look at the problem by Congress and not just the Administration?
I say they tap the former assistant director of IT for Department of the Interior, which was handling OPM’s IT needs-- he was even referred to in the Congressional hearings regarding the OPM breach:
"The official, Faisal Ahmed, was assistant director of the Interior’s Office of Law Enforcement and Security from 2007 to 2013, heading its Technology division. He claimed to have a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, and a master’s degree in technology management from the University of Central Florida—but he never attended either of those schools. He resigned from his position at Interior when the fraudulent claim was exposed by a representative of the University of Central Florida’s alumni association, who discovered he had never attended the school after Ahmed accepted and then suddenly deleted a connection with her on LinkedIn.
Faisal did not leave government service, however—he took another government job at the Census Bureau, and is apparently still there, according to a report by the National Journal. While his name had been redacted from the official report, Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) of Wyoming mentioned him by name multiple times during the committee hearing."
Btw, Faisal Ahmed was Asst. Director at a U.S. Government agency. Would he not require a security clearance? EDUC records?? It’s sad that his lies were exposed by a LinkedIn page and an inquisitive volunteer alumni director of one of the college he claimed to have attended. With all the defects on the investigation process I thought for sure that at least lying about EDUC credentials would be caught easily.
This is the ultimate end of greater and greater bureaucratization of the investigation process, where a report format and i-notes have exponentially more weight than the actual investigation. Where forgetting to label a slightly discrepant date with a disclaimer in a report will be caught quickly, but actual bogus EDUC credentials of assistant directors of IT security in a federal agency might not be-- and in this case weren’t.