As preparation for the census continues, and the office also contends with its other oversight duties, the office currently has about 150 auditors, investigators, and other employees, with understaffing estimated at roughly 20%, according to sources in the office and in Congress.

Departures have multiplied, including well over two dozen in 2018 and 2019, with various positions still vacant, say insiders. According to data from the Office of Personnel Management cited by Grassley in a letter to Gustafson last August, more than 19% of the office’s workforce left during calendar year 2017, Gustafson’s first year on the job, and interviews with congressional staff indicate employee attrition accelerated, though Gustafson’s office asserted in its statement that will soon change as new hires come aboard.

Two of the whistleblowers in touch with Congress are presidential appointees, Senate sources say, while close to a dozen others are members of the government’s elite Senior Executive Service.

Some whistleblowers have also told Congress and POGO that Gustafson has frequently been absent from her office, and that she has been slow to make decisions across a broad range of issues.

Some of the whistleblowers told congressional investigators of an internal meeting at which Gustafson allegedly asked a top staffer to explore how to minimize, change, or avoid drawing attention to the results of the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, apparently in an effort to obscure her department’s abysmal survey ratings from Congress, the public, and her own staff.

When asked at her January 9, 2020, meeting with Senate investigators whether she had ever attempted to examine how to change or minimize low survey scores, she twice emphatically denied having done so.

Those denials place her squarely at odds with claims by a number of whistleblowers who say they attended meetings where they heard her discuss such matters specifically and instruct one or more subordinates to look for answers, congressional and other sources say.

Two whistleblowers interviewed separately by POGO recalled a meeting in Gustafson’s office with seven or eight people seated around her conference table. Official survey results had recently come out and, once again, scores were low, declining from the previous year.

“She was saying we’re not going to give these numbers much credence, or visibility, or do any analysis,” a whistleblower said. She allegedly discussed the possibility of folding her agency scores in with far higher overall Commerce Department figures covering the same measures, according to the same source. Gustafson then reportedly blamed disgruntled employees for badmouthing her in surveys after she had reorganized their unit.

Gustafson told POGO, “I take very seriously both the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey and any information provided by whistleblowers.”