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A controversial review of policies on sexual orientation discrimination is just one of several new projects afoot at the Office of Special Counsel.

Under the leadership of recently confirmed Special Counsel Scott Bloch, OSC lawyers are reexamining a number of other significant policies and procedures. The office's new chief also has challenged his staff to eliminate a substantial backlog of whistleblower cases and other complaints in one year.

"These backlogs threaten the very mission of our agency and the safety of our government," Bloch said in a Thursday interview with Government Executive.

OSC has responsibility for protecting federal employees and job applicants from prohibited personnel practices.

The office has yet to address approximately 600 allegations of government waste, fraud and abuse, Bloch said. Some of these whistleblower disclosures could involve "very serious" security issues, he noted. In addition, OSC faces a pile of roughly 500 prohibited personnel practice complaints and about 200 cases involving potential violations of the 1939 Hatch Act, a law that restricts the political activities of federal employees.

To cut down on these backlogs, OSC is hiring about seven staff members, Bloch said. The office lost some 20 employees over the past two years and has not replaced all of them. This has impeded OSC's ability to process a large influx of whistleblower disclosures and other complaints, he noted.

OSC also is looking for ways to handle cases more efficiently. OSC lawyers spend too much time deciding which allegations of fraud, waste and abuse merit investigations, some legal experts say. This is one possibility OSC will consider, Bloch said.

In addition to the review of case-handling procedures, OSC will rethink several areas of legal policy, including, but not limited to, that on sexual orientation discrimination complaints. For instance, questions also have surfaced on whether OSC has the authority to accept complaints from Transportation Security Administration employees, Bloch said. Some contend that TSA must address those complaints internally. OSC has received a substantial number of whistleblower disclosures and complaints from TSA workers, Bloch said.

By comparison, OSC receives few sexual-orientation discrimination complaints from agencies across government, Bloch said. Last year, for example, the agency received three to five such complaints.

But Bloch's review of policy on sexual-orientation discrimination complaints remains a top concern for advocacy groups, federal labor unions and some lawmakers. The groups worry that the reevaluation reflects a change in OSC's commitment to protecting the rights of gay, lesbian and bisexual government workers.

Unions and advocacy groups note that the federal government has a long-standing policy of protecting employees from sexual-orientation discrimination, though that type of discrimination is not explicitly named in statute. Office of Personnel Management policies and previous court decisions support that policy, the groups say.

Bloch contends that the law in this area is not so clear-cut. He has not specified a time line for completion of the review of sexual-orientation discrimination policy, but noted that some of his advisers will not arrive at OSC until April.

"This is not an attempt to retract anybody's rights or to discriminate against any group in any way," Bloch said.

FOIA Faux Pas

An FBI legal technician was sentenced to 12 months in prison for sharing internal agency information with people who were associated with subjects of ongoing drug investigations, the Justice Department said Feb. 26.

Narissa Smalls pled guilty in December to felony charges stemming from unlawfully sharing information from the FBI's Automated Case Support computer system. She resigned from the FBI as part of her plea agreement.

Smalls was assigned to the freedom of information and privacy act unit at FBI headquarters, where her duties included searching ACS for information in response to Freedom of Information Act requests and other administrative purposes.

Smalls admitted that between September 2002 and November 2002, she conducted several searches in ACS for information regarding individuals who were subjects of ongoing drug investigations in the FBI's Washington field office.

In one instance, she printed out information and took it to her residence. Smalls admitted that she then shared the results of her ACS searches with individuals who were associated with the subjects of FBI drug investigations.

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