Federal Oversight and Accountability Platform

FWUCS developed the Federal Oversight and Accountability Platform because sometimes your government gets so messed up it takes a bunch of FWUCS to clean it out with FOAP!


Federal Oversight and Accountability Platform

Last updated May 25, 2026

This policy platform was drafted by federal workers across the Executive Branch and represents a shared vision for partnership between Congress and the federal workforce. Through this partnership, federal workers will help Congress fulfill its oversight responsibilities, protect its Constitutional powers, and ensure the Executive Branch delivers for the public good as Congress intended. Federal workers will provide insight into developments at federal agencies that require Congressional attention, offer technical expertise to inform legislation, and share strategies borne from lessons learned on the ground to help preserve the legislative and budgetary rights and responsibilities established by the Constitution.

This platform is organized into three "programs of tactics" for Congressional partners, as outlined below.

• Program 1: Information and technical expertise. Position federal workers as a steady source of information and technical expertise to help Congress deliver oversight and effective legislation. 

• Program 2: Checks and balances. Strengthen the ability of federal workers to uphold their responsibility to ensure that laws, regulations, and legal policies are followed, to report wrongdoing when they see it, and to impede actions that undermine Constitutional checks and balances. 

• Program 3: Institutional capacity and workforce protections for the public good. Provide broad labor protections and unemployment supports for federal workers to address the loss of institutional knowledge and ensure the long-term strength of the civil service for the benefit of the public.

These programs contain a mix of legislative statutory components, non-legislative statutory components, and non-statutory components. The legislative statutory components can be implemented when majority support in Congress has been attained or when bi-partisan negotiations provide an earlier opportunity. Non-statutory components allow Congress to act without majority support.

Program 1: Position federal workers as a steady source of information and technical expertise to help Congress with oversight and legislation.

Tactics:

1. Create a Centralized Pipeline for Communication between Congress and Federal Workers. Create and publicize a single, trusted front door where federal workers can brief Congress on oversight or legislative issues.

• Establish a well-publicized and confidential process for federal workers across agencies to brief Congress with information pertinent to oversight and legislation, and/or create a Federal Workforce Affairs office staffed by trusted organizations with federal worker constituencies.

• Establish this pipeline as an authoritative source of insight for Members of Congress and publicize its creation broadly so federal workers across states and agencies, as well as Members of Congress and their staff, are aware of its function and how to access it.

• Provide for a variety of convening methods, including in-person and end-to-end encrypted virtual settings.

• Deliver outputs from this pipeline to the Government Accountability Office, House Oversight Committee, Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, and other Committees as appropriate in order to provide oversight and promote accountability, including but not limited to letters of inquiry, hearing questions and other hearing preparation, and letters to Offices of Inspectors General (OIGs) requesting reviews.

• Requires statutory change: No

2. Build a Rapid Oversight and Exposure Framework. Use minority oversight rights to halt unlawful activity through immediate transparency and procedural escalations, including hearings and letters of inquiry and potentially initiating Resolutions of Inquiry in the House.

• Invoke House Rule XI (Minority Day Hearings) or equivalent Senate procedures to demand immediate oversight hearings upon credible reports of executive actions that undermine Congressional powers or otherwise undermine Constitutional checks and balances, such as the Congressional power of the purse and judicial power to stay executive actions temporarily or permanently.

• Partner with federal worker informants to select hearing witnesses, develop lines of questioning, and author letters of inquiry pertaining to executive actions that undermine established checks and balances.

• Request that Inspectors General provide information about what is happening inside of agencies, such as cuts to grants and contracts and to conduct audits and investigations on allegations of wrongdoing and mismanagement. Encourage Inspectors General to use agile oversight tools to provide input early in the establishment of new programs or significant changes to processes, review the implementation of directives that are presumptively invalid—similar to the model used in oversight of pandemic funding—to prevent wrongdoing and mismanagement in real-time. These tools allow for more limited scope engagements, which provide timely information. 

• Request GAO conduct studies to determine governmentwide changes and impacts to the workforce, performance management, alignment of agency actions with written policy and procedure, proliferation of directives given only verbally, and other behaviors reported across agencies that potentially undermine Constitutional checks and balances.

• Request Congressional Research Service to provide reports and analysis that clarify legal boundaries of Executive Orders and other policies and to summarize conflicts of Executive Orders with existing laws, regulations, and policies. 

• Requires statutory change: No

• Require OPM to publicly report out all Schedule P/C and Schedule G positions by each agency -- possibly using OPM's Plum Reporting website -- www.opm.gov/about-us/open-government/plum-reporting/. Codify that such positions cannot be treated as Schedule P/C or G unless publicly reported in such a fashion.

• Requires statutory change: Yes

3. Codify and Expand Protections for Federal Worker Speech. Enact and expand statutory protections for federal workers engaging in protected speech, many of which are only provided by existing case law.

• Codify into statute the Pickering Balancing Test—which protects federal worker speech on matters of public concern—with new language to the effect of: “No federal employee shall suffer adverse employment action for speech made as a private citizen on matters of public concern.” 

• Codify statutory enforcement mechanisms regarding retaliation against protected public worker speech or whistleblowing—by stipulating federal workers' private rights of action, remedies (reinstatement, damages, injunctive relief), and clear standards for what constitutes retaliation, including extended administrative leave.

• Requires statutory change: Yes

Program 2: Strengthen the ability of federal workers to uphold their responsibility to ensure that laws, regulations, and lawful policies are followed, to report wrongdoing when they see it, and to impede actions that undermine Constitutional checks and balances.

Tactics:

4. Identify and Highlight Existing Reliable Legal Guardrails. Ensure federal workers are aware of reliable guardrails institutions, and cases where bad actors have faced consequences under those guardrails. 

• Engage with the CIGIE to receive updates on allegations being investigated by the Integrity Committee and to gain information on which agency Office of Inspector Generals and other guardrail institutions remain active and trustworthy, as well as with non-governmental organizations who monitor OIG activities, IG nominations, and other accountability mechanisms—to include updates on allegations being investigated by the CIGIE Integrity Committee.

• Ask trustworthy guardrail institutions to communicate current rules, laws, policies, and reporting mechanisms to federal workers, frequently and with high visibility.

• Issue public statements clarifying and celebrating components of guardrail institutions that remain active and trustworthy in order to boost morale, recognize the dedication of employees in these institutions, and as an indirect way to inform workers about which ones they can trust.

• Requires statutory change: No

5. Ensure Federal Workers Know Their Rights Regarding Unlawful Orders. Ensure federal workers know the full gamut of options available to them for reporting and refusing unlawful, dangerous, or unethical orders.

• Create a "Know Your Rights" video series and website for broad circulation among federal workers, explaining options for protected conduct in the face of dangerous and/or illegal orders.

• Clarify the range of circumstances under which federal workers may exercise such actions, including outright illegal orders, arbitrary and capricious orders, violations of agency rules or regulations (under the Follow the Rules Act; MSPB Fisher v. DOI, 2023), and other presumptively invalid orders.

  • Include a statement that arbitrary and capricious orders and policies, which are liable to be set aside post-hoc by courts under the Administrative Procedures Act, are presumptively invalid and need not be obeyed by federal workers.

• Establish well-publicized resources to help federal workers identify presumptively unlawful orders (see Program 2, Tactic 4 below).

• Encourage Inspectors General to include in their prevention briefings employee obligations to uphold their oaths of office and the right to disobey illegal orders, and what do to if asked to carry out an illegal order. 

• Issue public statements informing federal workers of their right – without supervisory approval – to seek advice from their Inspector General Whistleblower Protection Coordinator, a statutorily-mandated career position to help potential whistleblowers navigate whistleblower laws, jurisdictions, and available resources.

• Requires statutory change: No

6. Assert de facto “Pause Authority” for Federal Workers. Empower and protect federal workers who halt compliance with potentially unlawful orders under existing ethics and whistleblower laws.

• Create a “Do Not Obey Illegal Orders” video targeted at federal workers, in a similar style to the video circulated online for the armed services in November 2025. Affirm that federal workers need not resign when given illegal orders.

• Issue public statements clarifying that refusal to obey unlawful orders is protected conduct under 5 U.S.C. § 2302(b)(8), 5 U.S.C. § 2302(b)(9)(D), and 5 C.F.R. § 2635.101.

• Issue public statements committing to reinstating, with backpay, any federal worker whom the Trump administration has fired for disobeying an unlawful order.

• Establish direct oversight channels for workers invoking such protections.

• Emphasize federal workers' personal liability for executing unlawful orders.

• Rally collectives of lawmakers to stand behind federal workers who refuse illegal orders—at rallies, on social media, in writing, and via traditional media.

• Requires statutory change: No

7. Establish an Independent Legal Hotline and/or Ombuds Clearinghouse. Provide a rapid, confidential channel for federal workers to obtain legal guidance and trigger oversight before implementing suspect directives.

• Create and publicize a Congressional Oversight Hotline—staffed by volunteer attorneys, including former federal workers—to provide current federal workers with trusted legal opinions on options for responding to suspect or legally unclear directives, on a case-by-case basis. 

  • If resourcing is a concern, partner with trusted NGOs and volunteer attorney networks to build this hotline, and then use Congress' informal authority to establish a widely publicized front door for communications that directs federal workers to authorized third-party attorneys for this purpose.

• Coordinate with relevant groups, such as the Inspectors General, CIGIE, agency staff, GAO, and the Office of Special Counsel on credible allegations, including reports of retaliation against protected whistleblower activity.

• Create a broad, multi-channel caucus communications campaign to ensure all federal employees are aware of the hotline and its protections.

• Requires statutory change: No

8. Activate GAO and Appropriations Enforcement Powers. Use existing appropriations law and GAO authority to prevent or ensure specific expenditures by federal employees.

• File GAO requests whenever an executive action may exceed or misuse appropriations.

• Publicly announce that implementation of any directive without a GAO legality certification could be viewed as a violation of the Antideficiency Act.

• Coordinate with agency financial officers to emphasize personal liability for executing uncertified disbursements.

• Requires statutory change: No

• Add appropriations riders that prohibit the administration from enforcing select directives, including the new Schedule F, i.e. Schedule Policy/Career Rule.

• Requires statutory change: Yes

9. Strengthen Intra-agency Legal Review of Executive Actions and Requirements. Leverage the power of existing legal review mechanisms (agency general counsels, Inspectors General, Office of Legal Counsel) to act as oversight of executive action.

• Use minority letters, shadow or field hearings, and press visibility to establish that directives that have not been legally reviewed are presumptively invalid, such that federal workers need not execute them.

• Encourage and publicly defend career attorneys who refuse to sign off on unlawful directives.

• Coordinate with professional associations that have debarment authority to reaffirm that attorneys must not certify or implement orders contrary to law.

• Coordinate with Inspectors General that have strong suspension and debarment referral functions to explore the use of federal suspension/debarment of officials who engage in, or direct others to engage in, unlawful acts from federal service. 

• Requires statutory change: No

Program 3: Provide broad labor protections and unemployment supports for federal workers to ensure the long-term strength and endurance of the civil service for the benefit of the public.

Tactics:

10. Convert the Merit Systems Protection Board into an Article I Court. Ensure independence of federal civil service adjudication systems through creation of a true judicial tribunal.

• Transform MSPB into an independent Article I court, with judges appointed to fixed terms and removable only for cause, ensuring that adjudication of federal worker appeals and prohibited personnel practices cannot be influenced by the executive branch.

  • Alternatively, transform the MSPB into a limited-jurisdiction Article III court, or enact a private right for federal workers to sue, combined with aggressive fee-shifting provisions.

  • Potential language: "There is established an independent court of record to be known as the United States Civil Service Court, which shall be an adjudicatory body exercising judicial authority over statutory civil service rights created by Congress."

  • Legislative history should reference that statute purpose, in part, is to prevent a President from removing judges without cause notwithstanding the likelihood of a SCOTUS decision scaling back or overruling Humphrey Executor. Statutory language could specify that any "for cause" removals would require a hearing and approval of the Chief Judge, Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. 

• Grant the new Article I civil service court exclusive jurisdiction over whistleblower complaints, retaliation claims, adverse actions, and illegal orders, including authority to issue temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions. This would include all federal sector EEOC and FLRA adjudications. 

• Codify that decisions issued by the Article I civil service courts carry the same force as decisions from the Court of Federal Claims, and are directly appealable to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

• Authorize these courts to impose remedies (reinstatement, compensation, attorney fees, and structural corrective action orders).

• Requires statutory change: Yes

11. Decriminalize Federal Employee Strikes. Remove statutes that allow felony charges for federal employee strike participants.

• Repeal 18 U.S.C. § 1918(3) and 18 U.S.C. § 1918(4), which allow felony charges for federal employees who strike, assert the right to strike, or belong to federal employee organizations who do so.

• Affirm the right to strike as a sacrosanct universal right of American labor, inclusive of federal public workers.

• Enact legislation that bars the federal government from using any appropriations to enforce 5 U.S.C. § 7311(3) and (4), which prohibits individuals from holding federal employment if they participate "in a strike, or asserts the right to strike, against the Government of the United States or the government of the District of Columbia (3) or is a member of an organization of Federal government employees or of District of Columbia employees that asserts the right to strike against the Federal Government or the D.C. Government (4)."

• Couple with measures that make unions stronger (see below). Undo de facto "obey now, grieve later" rules established by MSPB/FLRA case law and the Civil Service Reform Act/Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute.

• Requires statutory change: Yes

12. Codify Enduring Anti-RIF and Federal Labor Protections. Ensure the stability of the federal workforce and agency operations by ending unnecessary reductions-in-force and codifying labor protections for federal workers.

• Demand that broad anti-RIF protections be sustained in any and all Continuing Resolutions.

• Enact statutes allowing federal unions to negotiate over wages and allowing unions to go directly to court to enjoin unilateral changes to employees' working conditions.

• Support other statutes that protect the job stability and union rights of America's civil service, including the TALENTS Act and the Protect America's Workforce Act.

• Delineate core functions of government which are not to be privatized or outsourced but must be delivered by a dedicated federal workforce. Such core functions include services that must be equally available to all U.S. residents in order to sustain a robust democracy, including education, public health, environmental protections, and justice.

• Requires statutory change: Yes

• Broadly monitor and enforce 41 U.S.C. § 1710, which requires public-private competition before conversion to contractor.

• Requires statutory change: No

13. Create Temporary Federal Worker-Specific Unemployment/Re-employment Programs. Provide financial stability for federal workers, many of whom have seen their professional sectors entirely dissolved in 2025.

• Establish a temporary, federally administered unemployment insurance program tailored specifically to displaced federal employees, ensuring income continuity for workers whose positions were eliminated due to unlawful or arbitrary executive actions.

• Authorize expanded eligibility criteria allowing separated or constructively discharged federal workers to access enhanced unemployment benefits, retraining stipends, and transitional health coverage irrespective of the reason(s) recorded by political appointees.

• Create statutory guarantees that participation in the program does not prejudice future civil service reinstatement rights or eligibility for corrective action through civil service tribunals or federal courts.

• Direct the Department of Labor, in coordination with OPM, to certify eligible workers and administer benefits with expedited timelines, insulating displaced employees from financial coercion or retaliatory pressure while legal or administrative remedies proceed.

• Requires statutory change: Yes