Not a Doctor

  • The US government shut down — and blamed Democrats in apparent Hatch Act violation

    It’s against the law for government employees to use their office for partisan political activities. On Wednesday, the U.S. government shut down after Congress was unable to pass a continuing resolution to continue paying federal employees and services. That’s happened before — but this time, the rhetoric is highly unusual. Some agencies reportedly sent emails…

    Melody Schreiber

  • Health websites struggle with outages, plus more weekend emails

    The websites for the NIH and other health agencies are experiencing technical difficulties this weekend. And there’s a new “five things” email — now due every Monday. The website for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the agency responsible for overseeing federal research in the U.S. and one of the premier research organizations in the…

    Melody Schreiber

  • Conflicting advice on “last week” email

    On Saturday afternoon, federal employees received an email asking what they did last week. Then the confusion set in. Some employees refused to open the email, which was from an unusual address through the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), for fear that it was a phishing attempt. Some inboxes sent the email directly to spam.…

    Melody Schreiber

  • What federal employees did last week

    All federal employees received a short email on Saturday afternoon with unusual instructions. The subject line was “What did you do last week?” Here’s the entirety of the message, which was marked high priority: Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager. Please do…

    Melody Schreiber