A MissionSquare Research Institute survey has found that 78 percent of state and local government employees said they have felt the strain of additional workload due to the increase in the number of people leaving their agencies voluntarily since the start of the pandemic.

Greenwald Research surveyed 1,100 local and state government workers between November and December 2021 and respondents said they believe employers could help reduce employee stress by providing salary increases, recruiting more personnel or reducing workload and offering emotional support, MissionSquare said in a March 10 news release.

According to the report, respondents reported feeling stressed, fatigued and anxious about the COVID-19 pandemic while at work and 76 percent of public employees said the health crisis has impacted the nature of their jobs.

“The double whammy of COVID-19 and the Great Resignation clearly is putting additional strain on an already beleaguered public sector workforce,” said Rivka Liss-Levinson, senior research manager at MissionSquare Research Institute and the report’s lead author.

“However, employees feel their employers can take concrete actions to help with recruitment and retention – from bumping up salaries and offering bonuses to recognizing employees for the important public services they are delivering. We hope this research helps state and local leaders understand the full scope of employee sentiment to help craft solutions that will address the looming public workforce crisis,” Liss-Levinson added.

The survey also showed that nearly 60 percent of respondents were most likely to report that they value serving their community during the pandemic and 63 percent agreed that policies implemented by their employers during the health crisis have been fair to all staff.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., has proposed a bill to modernize the federal financial management system by standardizing the responsibilities of government chief financial officers to improve strategic decision-making.

The CFO Vision Act of 2022 “will help ensure federal agencies can make well-informed decisions about the financing, management, and evaluation of government programs and services,” Maloney, chairwoman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said in a statement published Friday.

The proposed legislation would provide deputy CFOs with authority to mitigate the effects of CFO turnover and ensure continuity in financial management activities in the event of a vacancy in the CFO position at agencies.

The measure would also update financial management planning by directing agencies to issue agency-level and governmentwide plans every four years to assess progress when it comes to addressing challenges related to financial management.

Other provisions in the bill are strengthening internal controls and establishing a set of performance-based metrics for financial management. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., will introduce a companion bill in the upper chamber.

The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program has laid out requirements for cloud service providers and third-party assessment organizations with regard to completing annual assessments.

FedRAMP said Wednesday it requires CSPs to submit an assessment package that consists of a system security plan, an annual incident response plan test report, an annual contingency plan test report and plan-of-action milestones.

On the other hand, 3PAOs need to submit a security assessment plan and a security assessment report, as well as related artifacts including raw vulnerability scan results.

These requirements are made to guide CSPs as their offerings undergo annual security assessments per security control.