Recently, the US Patent and Trademark Office concluded an internal investigation that it began about two years ago. The investigation resulted in a bruising 32-page report, finding that a significant fraction of the roughly 7,900 patent examiners at the US Patent and Trademark Office routinely lie about their hours worked. About half of those examiners work from home, but even the half in the office have proven hard to supervise.

But that strongly worded report didn't end up on the desk of the inspector general. Instead, Commerce Department Inspector General Todd Zinser was given a 16-page scrubbed-up version of the report with inconclusive findings. The potentially incendiary quotes and cases in the original report were all gone.

Eventually, Zinser got the original report when it was given to him by an unnamed patent office worker. Now The Washington Post has published both versions, along with an article highlighting some of the worst abuses. The original suppressed report paints a portrait of dysfunction at a large government office that's rarely in the spotlight.

Both reports were written by the same person, Chief Administrative Officer Frederick Steckler.

Time fraud

During the course of the investigation, which began two years ago, an eight-person panel interviewed 49 randomly selected Supervisory Patent Examiners, or SPEs. They also interviewed all five associate deputy commissioners (ADCs) and 26 Technology Center (TC) Directors.

The SPEs are immediately responsible for supervising examiners. The report contains several examples of situations in which SPEs suspected examiners of time fraud but couldn't pursue discipline because they couldn't even get the needed records.

In one case, an examiner had claimed 266 hours "for which there was no evidence she was working" along with an associated $12,533.02 in pay for those hours. When a supervisor tried to pull the computer records so that she could be charged with time fraud, an ADC refused to allow it. Unable to pursue the timesheet issue, she was charged instead with not responding to her supervisor in a timely manner. She served a 10-day suspension.

The Post spoke to a patent official with knowledge of that case, who said the woman never paid the government back.

Of the five assistant deputy commissioners, three didn't even know whether teleworkers had to log in to the agency's virtual private network when they started work.

The answer: they don't. Examiners also don't have to respond to phone calls from supervisors the same day they get them. There's no way for bosses to tell whether teleworking employees are at their desks or not.

The report says that allegations of time fraud can't be substantiated. But that's largely because management at the USPTO is making access to the needed records impossible. Asked whether they have the needed tools to address timesheet abuse, 44 percent of SPEs said they don't.

However, the investigators did conclude that there's a "lack of accountability" around this issue. They also found that management was dissuading supervisors from asking employees about time discrepancies.

Flexible workplace

Patent examiners have very flexible hours. They're allowed to work times of their choosing, between 5:30am and 10:00pm, Monday through Saturday. They must work at least four days per week and no more than 12 hours per day. Those requirements apply to both "telework" employees and those in the Patent Office complex in Alexandria, Virginia.

The patent office's flexibility as a workplace has won praise both inside and outside of government, the Post report notes.

But the flexibility, combined with a rigid bureaucracy around discipline, makes workers hard to keep tabs on. A sticking point seems to be that the supervisors charged with overseeing employees can't access critical records—namely, the computer records that reveal remote logon times and the "swipe records" that show when employees enter the main building. In interviews, 36 percent of directors said they requested records and had their requests denied by an assistant deputy commissioner. Another 36 percent said they never made such a request—and that may be because some of them heard it was impossible.

"Tried to get computer/VPN records but couldn’t get those records released," said one director. "The last reason was that we don’t do that anymore."

One director was told that "asking and receiving records may affect the morale of all employees and feel we are big brother."

SPEs also complained that they don't have the tools to catch examiners they suspect of time fraud.

"I don’t waste my time," said one interviewed SPE in the report. "They can go to POPA [the patent examiner union] and win. I am not aware of one person who successfully terminated an examiner for time fraud. The belief is that it cannot be done. No one tries. No one wastes their time.”

One examiner described as a "high producer" had a "mouse mover" program on their computer to make it appear as if they were working.

"SPE saw it and took a picture," said one interviewed supervisor. "Showed it to the director, who talked to the ADC, and then nothing happened."

Outstanding workers

In some cases, patent examiners simply don't work much of the time and then submit a burst of work at the end of a quarter, suddenly doing 500 to 1,000 percent of their production goals. This process is called "end-loading" their work. The report explains:

In the fourth quarter of FY 2012, for example, approximately 20 percent of examiners (roughly 1,600 examiners) completed 50 percent or more of their total annual balanced disposals in the last two pay periods (or four weeks) of the quarter (typically six or seven bi-weeks), and approximately five percent of examiners (roughly 450 examiners) completed 70 percent or more of their total balanced disposals in the last two pay periods of the quarter.

"Our quality standards are low," said one director interviewed about end-loading. "We aren't looking for good work. We're looking for work that meets minimal requirements."

Despite these abuses, most patent examiners get rated as "outstanding" in their performance reviews.

"The burden to show someone is less than 'outstanding' takes too much work, and the SPEs don’t do it," said one SPE. "There is almost an automatic 'outstanding' or 'commendable,'" said another. "An examiner’s quality has to be really bad before it can be brought down from 'outstanding.'"

When contacted by the Post, a Patent Office spokesperson defended the cleaned-up report they submitted. The original report was just a "rough draft for discussion purposes," said Chief Communications Officer Todd Elmer. The cleaned-up final report was "a more accurate, complete reflection" of the investigation.

Inspector General Zinser told the newspaper that he didn't do his own investigation, because he trusted the patent office's own investigators. Now, he says, the discrepancy between the report he was supposed to get and the one he actually got has convinced him to launch his own probe.

"The fact that we received an unfiltered report has been very helpful to us," Zinser said. "It’s not a good message for senior management to send to the workforce: you do the work and we’ll sanitize it before it goes out."