Technocrat | February 4, 2019: The Aftermath - BGOV

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The Aftermath

Things appear to be back to normal (for now) since the government has reopened after the month-long partial shutdown. But many federal agencies and their employees are still recovering–and may be for a while.

Industry observer Michael Fischetti notes the shutdown has caused various contractual delays—including new awards, modifications, solicitations, requests for information, and of course, funding. The delivery of products and services also has been affected. “Industry firms and their staff lost a month of income, spent inordinate energy managing cash flow and contingency plans,” Fischetti wrote in the Federal Times.

Cybersecurity was also jeopardized. Moira Bergin, director for the House Homeland Security subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection, listed a number of Homeland Security initiatives that came to a standstill during the shutdown. They include pipeline security, election security, and activities related to the new National Risk Management Center.

At the Jan. 29 State of the Net conference in Washington D.C., Bergin said the shutdown couldn’t have come at a worse time, since Congress just recently passed legislation to create the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

The shutdown forced vital agencies like the National Science Foundation to temporarily close their doors. As a result, the NSF canceled more than 80 review panels that cover everything from molecular biology to cyber infrastructure. And that’s just one of many consequences outlined in a Bloomberg report by Christopher Flavelle and Jennifer Dlouhy.

That said, one conflicting report claims the shutdown actually boosted cybersecurity. New research by Security Scorecard found there was an increase in both endpoint security and patching during that five-week period. Since many computers were turned off and .gov traffic was down, the federal government became an undesirable target for cyberattacks, according to Security Scorecard.

Even before the shutdown, public opinion of government services had dropped 1.1 percent in the American Customer Satisfaction Index. The governmentwide average was 68.9 on a 0-to-100-point scale.

After two consecutive years of improvement, government agencies declined in four major areas: process, information, customer service, and website. In fact, some of the major agencies had the lowest scores of more than 380 organizations. ASCI officials said the prolonged shutdown is likely to contribute to growing citizen dissatisfaction with government services.

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“Now [agencies] will be extra stressed to get back the time that was lost, compress previously identified schedules and clean up whatever messes occurred during the shutdown.”

—Elizabeth Klein, former Interior Department official

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