The headline over this Government Executive article reads:
Patent Office Telework Abuses Raise Fear of Wider Crackdown
One reads on, eager to learn just who has something to fear. And what, exactly, it is they should be afraid of. Could it be an investigation into:
… alleged abuses by some among the agency’s 8,500 patent examiners included submitting time cards overstating hours worked; “end-loading” (holding off on work until the final days of a reporting quarter and thereby harming quality); and “mortgaging,” or submitting time-card claims for work not yet completed.
And an investigation by:
Todd Zinser, the Commerce Department inspector general whose past reports have faulted the Patent agency for other time-and attendance abuses, [whjo] agreed that the internal reports had been altered “significantly” to exclude the results of interviews with disgruntled managers.
The agency and its telework program have their defenders, however, to include Gerry Connolly whose district, unsurprisingly, is in the tenderloin of the Beltway.
They may look like government featherbedders to you. To him, they are constituents.
