It's the moment that approximately 2 of you have been waiting for! We at @POGOBlog released our Baker’s Dozen at the end of January – so it’s about time I do a tweet thread about it. pogo.org/report/2019/01…

The Baker’s Dozen is our biennial publication, where we provide a 30 thousand foot view of the issues POGO’s great team of investigators has uncovered and the recommendations that our Policy team has made to address those issues.

We release the Baker’s Dozen at the start of each new Congress to give new and returning members ideas for both oversight and legislative reform. It covers 13 policy areas, from ethics in the executive branch to the administration of public lands. There is something for everyone!

The report is written to be useful for Congressional staffers who may not be a subject matter expert on everything in their portfolio. This means that it is a great read for anyone who cares about having an effective, ethical, and accountable federal government!

PSA for Congressional Staffers, the PDF version of the report (found here s3.amazonaws.com/docs.pogo.org/…) is designed to be particularly easy for you to navigate based on your issue portfolios!

This year’s Bakers Dozen includes two new-to-POGO sections to reflect our new areas of work after @ConPro joined our team at the end of 2017, surveillance authorities and immigration detention oversight.

The other areas addressed by this report are: the revolving door between gov service and the private sector, national security spending, Inspectors General, necessary gov contracting reforms, protecting and incentivizing whistleblowers to come forward,

ensuring access to gov information, making sure gov programs are transparent and accountable, protecting democratic institutions, and last but definitely not lease – reforms that Congress should consider for itself.

But, it doesn’t stop there! As you may know, @POGOblog doesn’t just highlight problems, we also propose common sense solutions to address the problems we uncover. That’s why you’ll find a number of specific recommendations in each section, aimed at helping law makers take action.

For example, based on our analysis of how a 1983 offshore drilling policy change at @interior has led to a 95.7% drop in the going rate for leases to drill offshore we’ve recommended that Congress reexamine the current policy of offering “area-wide” leases.

Another example, we’ve recommended that Congress ask @USGAO to study the federal gov’s use of service contracts (which accounted for over $175 BILLION at DoD in 2018). Right now, it’s hard to say how many individuals that money covers or what performance results they produce.

W/ over 75 specific recommendations in this Baker’s Dozen, I can’t list them all. But if you’re a #whistleblower nerd make sure you check out both our whistleblower section but also our Congressional reforms, where we ask Congress to up its game in working with whistleblowers.

If #NatSec is more your thing, don’t miss our recommendation that Congress do away with mandatory wish lists from DoD components that prioritize contractors, not our national security. (And make sure you're following @StrausReform)

And finally, I doubt you’d make it to the bottom of this thread if you didn’t care a whole lot about #accountability. Don’t miss our section on the Vacancies Act, the law that (among other things) governs who can temporarily fill many senior positions in the federal government.

This has been the Liz Hempowicz tweet thread on POGO's Baker's Dozen for the 116th Congress. Thank you for joining me today!!