As a candidate in 2008, Barack Obama promised to strengthen whistleblower laws for federal workers by speeding up the review process for claims and granting whistleblowers full access to jury trials and due process.
Obama has signed both a 2012 law and an executive order increasing whistleblower protection rights, and the overall conditions for federal employees have improved greatly. But a significant gap remains — protections for whistleblowers in the intelligence community, most famously Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor.
Shanna Devine, legislative director for the Government Accountability Project, a whistleblower advocacy group, gives Obama credit for moving forward on improvements for employees, but she said the administration could have done more to help contractors.
"We sought a Statement of Administration Policy in support of S. 794, legislation to restore whistleblower protections for intelligence community contractors, and the administration failed to deliver," Devine said.
Also, there are concerns about a possible Labor Department administrative ruling that could make it tougher for private sector whistleblowers to prove their case.
The key step was the 2012 passage of the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act.
It strengthened and expanded existing protections for whistleblowers, and for the first time allowed whistleblowers to sue for damages if they had been victims of reprisal. More workers could claim whistleblower status and find support from government offices created to back up their case, if it was legitimate.
Despite getting high marks from government transparency advocates, the law failed to give whistleblowers access to jury trials, and it did nothing for workers in the intelligence community.
Obama filled some of the gaps with Presidential Policy Directive 19. The executive order expanded whistleblower protections to national security and intelligence employees. An executive order is not law and can be reversed by any administration that follows, but still, this was a first.
However, the order aimed to keep revelations out of the press. It encouraged whistleblowers to keep their complaints internal, or, if they must, go to Congress.
Those who chose to go the media found the limits of the policy.
In the seven years of Obama's presidency, the administration launched a record number of cases against those who revealed what the government wanted kept secret. Under Obama, eight whistleblowers have been prosecuted under the World War I-era Espionage Act, more than under all other presidents combined.
And although there's been no legal ruling, contractors such as Snowden seem to have no protections.
One pending issue is making its way through the Washington bureaucracy that would affect private sector whistleblowers and potentially some federal workers as well. At issue is what a worker and employer need to prove in arguing their case. Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers worry that the Labor Department's Administrative Review Board will rule in favor of employers in a pending case.
Overall, Obama's actions on whistleblower laws are mixed. He moved forward with the passage of a new law to make it easier for ordinary federal workers to step forward. On his own, he offered some limited avenues for those in the intelligence sector to report violations. But that didn't apply to contractors, and with a record number of prosecutions, his administration has sent a strong warning to anyone in the intelligence sector to steer clear of the press.
The rating of this promise remains Compromise