‘I cried so many times’: Watchdog warns that agency guidance for changing employee names is lacking

Federal employees are struggling to update their names in agency systems due to insufficient guidance, and the Government Accountability Office determined in a report released on Aug. 14 that the sometimes complicated process, in addition to stressing workers out, could hurt public services. 

“The name change process resulted in several weeks of work slowdown and even work stoppage and that is a waste of taxpayer resources,” said one employee who GAO interviewed. 

Thousands of federal employees annually change their names because of marriage, divorce or gender transition. Civil servants, however, are no longer able to request name changes as a result of gender transition because of executive orders that President Donald Trump signed in January to ban “gender ideology” in the government workforce. 

GAO, which conducted the analysis between September 2023 and December 2024, found that the four agencies it looked at — State Department, IRS, Social Security Administration and Veterans Affairs Department — had procedures for processing employee name changes and that they generally followed Office of Personnel Management guidance. 

But investigators still discovered shortfalls. 

For example, IRS never set up a system for employees to formally change their names as a result of gender transition. Likewise, SSA’s guidance did not include all of the steps that employees have to take to complete the name change process, such as updating IT systems and agency credentials. 

Investigators conducted eight focus groups with employees who recently changed their names and interviewed 14 such individuals. In all of the focus groups and nearly all of the interviews, employees reported issues understanding the name change process and blamed it on insufficient agency guidance. 

“I would probably say that the IT portion of the name change process is extremely difficult and not at all streamlined,” said one employee. “To be honest, there was not much support [from agency staff] at all in getting issues resolved. That is the biggest thing. IT [updates] should not be this hard. I cried during this process so many times.” 

Investigators also warned about the detrimental impacts on agency work. 

“Without comprehensive documentation that clearly communicates the process for completing name changes, federal employees’ abilities to complete work tasks could be adversely affected,” according to the report. “As a result, the public’s needs may go unmet as affected federal employees with public-facing responsibilities may be prevented from carrying out certain tasks related to their jobs.” 

GAO also pointed out that the accuracy and consistency of name changes are integral to retirement eligibility, benefits payments and tax return processing.  

An average of 14,331 federal employees submitted requests for name changes annually between fiscal 2019 and 2023. 

State and IRS have since created guidance for employees who need to change their names, and GAO suggested that VA and SSA do the same. The watchdog also recommended that all four agencies develop a way to collect employee feedback about the name change process.

VA disagreed with the recommendations, however, arguing that it already provides such guidance and seeks employee feedback. In the report, GAO responded that VA’s guidance is incomplete and that it doesn’t request feedback specific to the name change process.