#2 EFCOG Webinar on Modernizing Operations (9/24/26)

Thank you.

I think that anything I'm going to say right now is going to be a bit redundant because you summarized it so well.

Fundamentally, we're pretty far into what I think is a successful rollout so far of modernizing operating directives, the initiative formerly known as Project Velocity.

And my general conclusion is it's going well across the enterprise that I'm aware of, that the organizations are taking ownership and a firm hand on looking through how they approach their work to do just what Tim said, that You know, keep the stuff that works, get rid of the stuff that's redundant or unnecessary or just, you know, process-oriented steps that don't necessarily lead to the outcome.

So from an inside practitioner operational perspective, I'm very encouraged.

Outward facing, we're sort of getting the messages from some folks that we anticipated might be the case as we went forward, that it's going to be very, very important to continue to describe that This effort to focus on outcomes rather than process to eliminate low value added bureaucracy and be more streamlined when it comes to inefficiencies is the intent.

But some people might read that as the production over safety or production over security or or that we are lowering our standards.

You all know that is absolutely not the case, but that is an assertion that people are making, and some of those people are pretty powerful.

But we still have to make sure that we are all consolidated in our clear statement that Our expectations for performance are as high as they ever were.

As a matter of fact, once we eliminate inefficiencies and redundancies and low value added work, we have a reasonable expectation that performance goes up.

But that does not come at the cost of fundamental safety, security, business practices that are critical to continuing success.

And And so we have to be sort of working this at both ends of the spectrum at the same time.

We need to continually work with our internal teams to make sure they understand what our intention is and that they lean into figuring out how to own their their individual functions and their activities, and then sort of facing outward, make sure we communicate to folks what this initiative is not, which is not lowering standards or cutting corners.

And, you know, those seem to be the The former we're doing pretty well because we've been working on that for a few weeks.

I might think we're a little behind the eight ball perhaps on the outward stuff because we've got some, you know, many of you have probably read the letter that came from the... from Senator Murray and Congressman Cantor.

And there's some other similar things and other venues where that kind of thing has been raised.

That's how I would sum things up.

I'm not sure who's on from science or any other part of the department, but that's kind of where I think the outer edge of our efforts are right now.

Jim, you know, we've got a major component on communications we're going to talk about later in the agenda today, so any way we can help with that.

We've been doing it internally, as you know, and you've been helping us with the workforce as you go around.

And we're not hearing a lot of negatives, but obviously, if we can help you with our delegations and with a consistent message, we're glad to do it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jim.

didn't see joel is joel on christine or john have you seen joel bradburn i have not seen him all right how about amber amber all right i'm sorry joel's

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