AWOL: cracking down, but on who?

Right from the top, Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-Okla.) wants to clear a couple of things up. First of all, Coburn tells FederalNewsRadio, feds are Absent Without Leave (AWOL). Despite National Treasury Employees Union's President Colleen Kelley telling us "there is no single definition," Coburn contends "AWOL is you're not there and you were supposed to be."

Coburn's recent report, Missing in Action: AWOL in the Federal Government , finds an increase in the number of hours that federal employees are missing from the job. The exact numbers of hours aren't known, says Coburn, but that is only part of the issue.

Coburn says the questions that ought to be asked of federal managers are:

1. If these aren't accurate numbers, why aren't they?

2. If you don't know, why don't you know?

3. And whether it's a small number or a big number, where's the management that says "you should be at work and if you're not, you ought to check in and say why you're not at work"?

"This report," says Coburn, "is about people who don't show, don't call, and aren't held accountable. And the striking thing to me is the State Department doesn't even know. It really fits with the rest of the State Department's management, which is absent."

What's absent, according to Kelley, is credibility.

Since I do not see employees nearly to the numbers in this report being disciplined or accused, from a disciplinary standpoint of AWOL, it just reaffirms that this report is bogus.

The numbers are there, counters Coburn, they're just unknown.

The point is, why in the world should somebody in Congress have to be checking that when the Executive Branch should be doing it? So this is really a criticism of management in the Executive Branch is the fact that they're not doing their job.

The answer, suggests Coburn, is in accountability. So he says that means requiring management to track the numbers.

I'm going to add a rider to every appropriations bill saying you're going to have to publish it. If you have to publish it then we can see. You gotta measure it, and you gotta have a plan, and so I'll try to tack a rider on appropriations bills that says you gotta report it. Once you have to report it, management ought to know it, and if they have to report it, they're going to address the problem.

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On the Web:

Tom Coburn - press release

AWOL Report - Missing in Action: AWOL in the Federal Government (pdf)

FederalNewsRadio - More Feds going AWOL?

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