Indian Affairs regional employees have more work and fewer people to do it, watchdog reports

Regional employees for the Interior Department’s Indian Affairs component have been forced to contend with workforce cuts and increased workloads under the administrations of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, according to a Government Accountability Office report published on Tuesday. 

Agency officials told investigators that they expected 580 separations at the regional level by the end of calendar year 2025. In contrast, there were 280 regional separations in fiscal 2024. 

As a result, three regional offices reported that they were set to shed more than 20% of their staff due to separation incentives that the Trump administration offered. And officials in one region said that, due to a shortage of wildland fire staffers, they needed to rely on volunteers and local firefighters to respond to a recent wildfire. 

Indian Affairs has 12 regional offices, providing support to about 2.5 million Native Americans and Alaska Natives. 

Even before Trump’s federal workforce cuts, however, Indian Affairs regional offices were dealing with staff shortages. Regional workers decreased from 2,675 to 2,540 between fiscal 2022 and 2024. 

As such, Indian Affairs officials told GAO that an infusion of funding that the component received in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act presented problems for the workforce. 

Congress appropriated $385 million to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which is under Indian Affairs, through the IRA for use through the end of fiscal 2031. Investigators reported that, as of December 2025, roughly $186.1 million of that funding had not yet been expended. 

Regional officials shared that IRA implementation impacted workloads, including through reassignments of employees outside of their areas of expertise. 

“Officials we interviewed from one region stated that federal funds like the IRA are similar to an ‘unfunded mandate’ because regional offices need to implement the funding without an increase in staff,” investigators wrote. 

Additionally, GAO reported that the disbursements of more than 65% of Indian Affairs IRA funds were paused due to Trump executive orders that mandated reviews of federal spending, which created confusion for tribes. 

“Officials from six regions and a tribal organization representative told us that some tribes had to push out project timelines from a few weeks to a year or more because of contractor availability and local weather restrictions,” according to the report. “Officials from three of these regions also said that these delays likely would increase project costs for materials and labor.” 

Due to these various pressures, GAO found that regional Indian Affairs employees worked more than 1 million overtime hours between fiscal 2023 and August 2025, which equals more than 480 full-time equivalent employees. 

Instead of focusing on increasing staffing, GAO recommended that Indian Affairs systematically identify opportunities to streamline agency policies and expand the use of self-determination contracts and self-governance compacts. Under such agreements, tribes assume greater responsibility for administering federal programs. 

An Interior Department spokesperson said that Indian Affairs agrees with the recommendations. 

“We continue to modernize internal policies, improve regional operations and expand staff training to increase efficiency, accountability and support for tribal self-determination,” the spokesperson said in a statement to Government Executive. “Following the final report, Indian Affairs will outline specific actions, timelines and responsible parties to implement these improvements.”

Earlier this month, GAO reported that staff cuts at Indian Affairs under the Trump administration have exacerbated longstanding workforce challenges.