The Communications and Government Affairs Playbook for 2025 with Danny Werfel

Hello everybody. Happy Thursday. Welcome to today's webinar discussion with the team here at Clipbook. We're really excited, so we'll go ahead and jump right in. Danny, are you ready?

I'm ready.

All right. So we'll start with some quick introductions. To introduce myself, my name is Adam Joseph, founder and CEO here at Clipbook. I'm super excited for today's conversation, and our topic today is the Communications and Government Affairs Playbook. For 2025 with former IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel. The number of reasons that I'm excited to have Danny here today, I think first is that we're at an interesting moment in a presidential administration, about 101 days in. Actually, I think exactly 101 days as of today. So interesting sort of moment in Washington, D.C. But I think more importantly is that we have an amazing guest joining us in Danny Werfel. And honestly, I think Danny is one of those leaders in government and business that it's like, if you know, you know. Danny has had an amazing, fascinating career both across public and private sectors, spending just over a decade, about 15 years at OMB, then making the jump to the private sector to lead Boston Consulting Group's global practice area, and then back to the IRS. He's the first person in history to have served as the Commissioner of the IRS twice, which I think is really interesting. We'll peel back that onion in a moment here. All to say, I think Danny has the rare blend of deep government experience as well as practical know-how on how to navigate the public affairs and media landscape. So we're really in for a really exciting, engaging discussion. So let's jump right in. For our audience members, thank you for joining us. Really excited to have you. We'll also say, please drop your questions using the Zoom Q&A function. So we see them live as they come in. We'd love to answer them as you have them. So feel free to drop questions as you think about them. So Danny, I think we were debating between a couple of different topics here, communications, government affairs, or Should the attendees on the call file jointly or separately for their taxes? Do they take the standard deduction? We're going to go with the former today, if that sounds good to you. Let's start with, you've had just such a unique career journey across public and private sectors. So maybe we can just start from the top. Take me through the abbreviated life story. What brought you to the IRS? What brought you to BCG? What brought you back to the IRS? And we can go from there.

You know, I like to tell people that I feel like I'm a bit of the Forrest Gump of government. And what I mean by that is is from the point I joined government in the mid-1990s, every significant development, I seem to be lurking somewhere in the room. And early in my career, in the way, way back of the room, taking notes or carrying someone's books. But as my career moved forward, closer and closer to the decision-making table, closer and closer to the Oval Office, so to speak, in terms of being in the room where it happens for decision-making. And through that journey, whether it was getting ready for Y2K, the government's response to 9/11, the government's response to Enron and the creation of Sarbanes-Oxley, Katrina, and then a few years later, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill where the government reset to go back and deal with a crisis in the Gulf region, the financial crisis of '08, and the list goes on and on. And during these various moments, whether my role was small or big, I was taking notes, I was learning, I was observing, I was seeing what the preconditions were for mistakes versus success, different leadership styles, and generating a set of instincts on how to manage these situations as effectively as possible that I didn't have clearly when I joined the government right out of grad school. And I'd be lying if I said that even today, more than a quarter century after I started in government that I have all the right instincts. I'm still learning. And in particular, right now, my phone is ringing off the hook, so to speak, with questions to explain from my perspective, from my deep government expertise, what does this mean? What does this DOJ action mean? What does this Trump administration action mean? What does it mean for this regulated industry? What does it mean for these grantees? And there's so much turbulence right now and so much uncertainty that some of the instincts that I have developed across my career have to be rethought. And I keep telling people, I've had this conversation with you, Adam, previously, a new playbook is needed on a lot of different dimensions of how we operate as an organization, whether in the public or private sector, a new playbook is needed for understanding how to manage uncertainty and the level of uncertainty, how to influence government, how to prepare for government oversight and potential investigation. A new playbook is needed to understand what matters in the media landscape between traditional print media, nightly news versus cable news versus digital media, social media, podcasts. All of that is shifting dramatically. And I think the main message that I always have for people that I'm talking to is don't rely on your old playbook, update that playbook. And all the years of instincts I've had in watching, learning, observing, but then also being involved, going from the dugout onto the field eventually in my career is useful, but it's not in and of itself sufficient. We need to be testing new approaches as we move forward.

Absolutely. And there's so many pieces of what you just said that I want to peel back a bit. How you develop those instincts, the playbook, what does that playbook look like right now, right, in 2025? I would love to maybe start, talk us through the experience at OMB, 15 years there, a lot of interesting experiences. Maybe take us through a little bit of the chronology, what you did. And then also would love to land really on acting commissioner of the IRS the first time around and kind of what that experience was like. Yeah, let's start with, let's start with OMB and that whole world.

Yeah, I jumped around within OMB. I did a tour. I was in the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. I was a budget examiner in the Education Branch. I was on the management side, and that's where I really started to settle in. I tell this, it's depressing for a lot of people, but I tell them it took me about 6 years to figure things out. That was true when I joined the government in the '90s. It wasn't until about year 6. If folks on the webinar have seen The Matrix, there's a moment in The Matrix where all of a sudden for the main character, these green lines start coming down. And so they can see, they understand, and they finally have figured it out. And it took me about 6 years. And people who are just joining are depressed by that. I said, if you can do it quicker, great. Then I go to the private sector for nearly a decade. And again, maybe it's just me, but it took 6 years to figure things out. And when I was in government, Where I started to figure things out was when I was on the management side of OMB, the M in OMB, leading the efforts of CFOs on things. And this is going to sound familiar to people: fraud, error, waste. I was joking recently with someone where I described this situation. The government has announced there's too much waste. They've launched an initiative to deal with it. They've given it a catchy name. They've unleashed a team to go find egregious areas of waste and bring it back so the sheriff can announce an end to sloppy spending in the government. And I, of course, am talking about the campaign to cut waste in 2012 during the Obama administration, where it was led by Sheriff Joe Biden, the vice president. And there's a lot of differences between that effort and today's effort. Beginning with who was chosen to quarterback it. This current effort was the richest man in the world was chosen for the campaign to cut waste in 2012. Yours truly was the one who quarterbacked that one. And so very different approaches, but I developed understanding both in the weeds and more broad around these efforts of government efficiency and what does it mean for the taxpayer to be an effective steward. And so part of the reasons why my phone is ringing off the hook right now is because if President Trump says in response to the question, can you eliminate the USAID without an act of Congress? And he says his answer in real time is yes, if it's fraud. The question then raises, what does that mean? Is fraud subjective? Or objective? What is the evidence base that's needed to prove fraud before you can take that action? Is it true that you can essentially redirect congressionally authorized dollars and congressionally authorized existence of organizations and to prevent fraud or error? And because I spent all those years at OMB, both working with Congress to develop legislation on this topic, seeing it in various iterations, developing all the OMB regulations for government agencies and how they track, measure, define fraud and error. That expertise that I have, and ironically very little to do with the IRS, is very relevant today. And so I think one of the big takeaways I take from my time at OMB is understanding how these institutions are supposed to operate and how to measure the size of what's happening today in terms of how different it is, how unprecedented, what are the various steps that used to happen that are no longer happening, and what does that mean? For example, if you would have asked me the question, Adam, 6 months ago, what would happen if a grant program suddenly the agency involved or the White House announced there's new requirements, new parameters, you now have to do things differently in terms of diversity, equity, inclusion, or climate, I would have said, that's interesting. I would wait for the notice and comment to come out because the way the grant regulations are written is that you're supposed to provide notice of new funding priorities so that grantees can plan, and they may not like it, they may comment on it, but at least with process, they now know if this change goes through as a grantee, I need to plan for a potential new environment. I might resize the workforce that's being funded through the grant and maybe other dollars. I might change how I talk externally to my stakeholders to get their buy-in for what the grant program is going to need to be evolving to potentially. But instead, what you have is an immediate change, an immediate stoppage, which you didn't have time to plan for. And that's what I mean by a new playbook, because now your risk environment as a grantee is shifting. Instead, if I would have said before, 6 months ago, what is the black swan event? And a grantee said, our funds suddenly stopping, then I would have assumed that black swan event would have taken 6, 8, 9 months to unpack because I would have assumed that the government would have given notice and comment. But we're seeing a fundamental shift in government action that has impact on recipients, on the regulated community without that type of notice and comment. New playbook is what's needed in order to manage that risk.

And so, Danny, I think what makes your perspective so interesting is this culmination of experiences in government, how government should operate, and the institutional experiences that you're talking about. I'd love to hear, bring us into the room, circa IRS stint number one, into what was that moment like? You're taking the helm, just walk through the story again for the audience and what the context was. It was obviously a very spicy kind of political moment. I think also a very fascinating communications moment. This was when you had Jon Stewart talking about the IRS and making jokes about it and so on and so forth. So bring us into the room. What was the context? Why were you called to lead? How did it feel? Taking up that role. What was that like?

It's certainly a fascinating full circle when you start to unpack it. First of all, at the time I was the acting deputy director at OMB. It was the Obama administration. And I was doing a lot, uh, supporting people like Jeff Zients and others, really just troubleshooting and solving problems. I was working on things like shutdown drills and sequester. The Wall Street Journal did a profile of me as being like the nerdy accountant at OMB that's responsible for figuring out how to dole out all the pain of this sequester. And I was really just putting out various different fires. And then the IRS quote unquote scandal happened. And what the scandal was, and I know every date, I feel like I know every minute, it was May 14th, 2013. The inspector general report was that there was too much oversight and scrutiny of conservative organizations. There was a scandal around tax-exempt organizations. At the time and the allegation that the Obama administration was overextending the authorities of the IRS to go after Republican or conservative entities. And as a result of that, there was a massive story. It felt like almost Nixonian.

Yeah.

In terms of, oh, here we go again, the IRS being used for political influence. And so the previous leadership of the IRS resigned, and I got called into President Obama and Chief of Staff Denis McDonough's office. And they said, okay, this is another fix-it moment, but this is probably the biggest fix-it moment of your career by far. And we need you to go be the acting commissioner of the IRS and deal with what is a very toxic situation. I think John Boehner at the time announced, after he read the IG report, who's going to jail. There were protests on the street outside of the IRS. There was death threats for IRS employees, camera people hitting up IRS employees as they left the building. When I was announced as acting commissioner, television cameras at my own house. It was a massive story. It's interesting.

This story might have been number one on the agenda for the White House when it was unfolding. It was really, really well. Every news outlet. Yeah. So it says something to you, right? And to who you were and your reputation as a leader that when they were facing one of their biggest issues, they said, hey, Danny's our person before we're going to turn this around and build some trust.

Terrifying, to be honest with you, Adam, because you've been training for this moment, but it was feeling like being called out of the bullpen in the World Series in the 9th inning. I remember sitting in the White House press office. With Jay Carney's team at the time, and they were writing the press release to announce me as the new IRS Commissioner. And I remember asking, how much news is this going to make? And they laughed and said, you're going to see yourself a lot over the next few days. And then the moment it was announced, I was in my office at OMB when it went public, and we had this TV in the outer office that had the four squares: CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and CNBC. And I walked out of my office and my face was on all 4 squares. Literally, it felt like the walls were closing in around me. What's really interesting, Adam, is that you had a previous guest on one of your webinars, Dan Pfeiffer. I've heard Dan make the point— he was in White House, he was the director of White House communications in that moment— that in retrospect, the IRS story took the White House by surprise. In terms of its relentlessness. It's the first story that Dan thought was made viral by Facebook. This was the first time that a story like this generated anger and conspiracy and momentum through that social media channel. I just think that's a really fascinating thing because it took a lot of us by surprise, the intensity of it.

It's funny because the pace of play of these crises have only gotten faster and faster over time. And you look at a 24-hour news cycle of the 20th century where it just took time sometimes to print a newspaper or physical newspaper and send it to the corner store, right? And where you're getting a newspaper to your doorstep, then you have the internet and then you have social media where things can go viral with a share or repost on somebody's feed on Facebook. And now with AI, where you have LLM-generated content and deepfakes and misinformation and chatbots on different platforms that can actually be coordinated quite proactively to really double down on those moments. It's funny that you mentioned the Facebook example because that was, it sounds like one of the big inflection points with the way that these types of stories really get pushed in the information space.

But when you go back to 2013 and you think about this being the biggest story of the moment, You're right. I was personally in Jay Leno's monologue. I was mentioned by Jon Stewart. Howard Stern did a whole segment on me. These things I never thought would have been happening in my life ever. And the story persisted on the front pages for weeks. It wasn't until the Edward Snowden data breach weeks later that we finally— 5 or 6 weeks later— that we finally fell down in the headlines a bit and the attention was off of us temporarily.

Yeah. What did Danny, before you go on, what did Leno say about you? What did they say?

It was the worst joke, something about me being the acting commissioner and the fakeness of acting. I don't know. It was just like a really bad, maybe one of his worst ever, which is, I don't know if that's good.

Your unbiased opinion.

It's really, really bad joke. But juxtapose that, Adam, 10 years later, you mentioned it earlier. I had this unique. Experience of walking out of the IRS office, the commissioner's office, and then almost 10 years to the day, literally walking back in 10 years older and wiser, 10 years smarter for having spent 10 years in the private sector, deeper into my career, and therefore much less risk-averse, and had spent 10 years thinking about all the things I would've done differently during my first stint and everything that I had learned. But I walked into a very different media landscape because that Facebook reality, that was in its infancy. And so I'll just tell a quick story. There was a day more recently in my second stint as the IRS where I woke up to a text from my communications lead saying, just FYI, boss, you're the lead story on foxnews.com right now. And I sighed and I was like, ugh, it's going to be one of those days. But I was really busy. I, I was running around. I had a packed morning. I quickly looked at the story. I saw what it was about. It was about the Hunter Biden issue and the tax charges against him and the allegation that the Justice and the IRS were moving too slowly. But it was my picture and I just didn't have time to read the article. But all morning as I'm going through my meetings, I'm thinking, oh my gosh, I'm gonna have to read that article and gotta deal with that. That's gonna be a headache. But by the time I got to the article later, let's say 1:00 PM, I go on Fox News and I start scrolling and I can't find the article. I literally scroll through the whole first homepage. You can picture me going like this and it's gone deeper into the recesses of the website. That's the difference 10 years later in terms of how quickly things move how analytics, clicks, different algorithms have these websites shifting content around. And going back to that point about the playbook, in 2013, there was really like a multiple news cycle reality to things where your communication strategy on things that were blowing up was more of a simmer than a boil. Because the story was more of a simmer than a boil. In 2023, 2024, more recently, the only thing that simmered was a proactive story that you're trying to tell, which we should get into. What are some of the lessons learned that I saw of trying to shape a message, not to clean up a mess or a messy story, but in cleaning up a messy story, we had to have a whole new calibration or calculus in terms of the legs of the story, and we can make much quicker judgments than we could before in terms of whether the story was moving anywhere. In what circles was it moving? Was it staying in this echo chamber or that echo chamber? And there was just— there was a lot more in 2023 and '24 and recently decentralized media. So the example I often use is that there could be a front page, A1 Washington Post story all about the IRS. And you would think, gosh, that's going to really keep the commissioner and the team busy all day. And on that same day, the day before, Joe Rogan might have made a completely different point about the IRS in his podcast. And it turns out if we would have centered our energy on the Washington Post story, we were not preparing for the right risk that was emerging. Because Congress and others were picking up on the Joe Rogan point, not the Washington Post story. That's where the follow-ups were coming. Again, that is something that is very different than what I experienced 10 years earlier. And it demonstrates an increasingly not just decentralized world in which the typical players that have impact are now joined by others, but the others aren't also newspapers. Or cable news channels. They're in other environments also having impact with the people you care about, like Congress, like your customers and others.

Yeah, 100%. And to that point, it's individuals, influencers without an editorial staff. They can pick up a story and then if they pick up a story that's one of maybe 100 headlines in the top 100 newspapers that day, they put it on their podcast. It might 20x or 100x. Footprint that narrative ends up having on real listeners.

Decades ago, Winston Churchill coined the phrase, "A lie makes its way halfway around the planet while the truth is still putting its pants on." And that was decades ago where media outlets were doing 2 and 3 sources before they publish a story. Today, it's really hard to keep up with the fast-paced misinformation, mistakes. Sometimes it's intentional, sometimes it's unintentional. But for example, I think one of the big challenges from a communications standpoint was there was a narrative developed about the IRS that we were using these new funds not to modernize our computer systems, not to better serve taxpayers, not to make sure there was more fairness so that those that weren't playing by the rules would have to come correct with their taxes. The narrative was that we were hiring an army of 87,000 armed agents to come kick in your door, your grandmother's door, etc. And it was this Winston Churchill moment. There was no truth to that whatsoever, but it was an easy-to-understand narrative. And we had to figure out how to develop a proactive communication strategy to counter that. And I learned a valuable lesson that I want to share because we tried in so many different ways to reshape the narrative in the way we thought made the most sense. So let's get Danny, the commissioner, out on the networks or on podcasts or doing print media interviews. Talking about how we're actually going to use the money, that we're going to use it to modernize technology systems, that we're going to use it to drive more fairness in the tax system. And nobody really wanted that interview. Nobody want— it was a very small take-up rate.

Technology transformation and audit readiness, these are not the sexiest topics for anybody.

But we thought we could jazz it up, put me in media training, do some fun things. It wasn't working. Here's what happened, and this was a huge lesson for me. I was doing a site visit at a smaller mid-sized city IRS facility, and someone on the communications office reached out to the local NBC affiliate there and said, hey, we have the IRS Commissioner in town. Would you like to have him on? And they said, really? What would he talk about? And the communications person said he would talk about the risk of tax scams and what your viewers need to know. And they were like, oh my gosh, that's perfect. We do consumer alert programming every single day, and it would be great to have him on. And it turns out every local affiliate does consumer alert programming. And when we offered me in that way, we couldn't keep up with the demand. And I started traveling around the country going to all these local TV outlets. It was like the Taylor Swift Eras Tour was going on at the same time as that. So we joked, and I did the same thing. And what I did in those sessions where I had an audience and a platform was I humanized the IRS, put a face on it. But I also was there to tell you things that are important for you to here that was helpful to you, how to protect your elderly parents, how to protect the veterans in your neighborhood. What are the latest tricks? How to protect yourself, what not to click on. And so here's the IRS that felt a little bit more friendly neighborhood. And that was the best we had and we needed to lean into it. Now, it wasn't the successful refutation of that lie about the 87,000 armed agents making its halfway around the planet. But it was what I call balancing the atmosphere around the IRS, because I could have just hit my head against the wall and just pray that this lie about the armed agents would go away and try to refute it and not have any impact. Or I could create a more balanced atmosphere about how people— what sentiment they have about the IRS, because the commissioner that they saw on TV was giving useful tips and actually cared enough to come to our local town to talk to us about these scans. And so I think there's a lot of lessons to learn from strategic communications to understand where do you have an audience. And maybe even though the message isn't exactly the way you want it, it is having net positive impact. So it's better to have broader resonance of the imperfect message that's having net positive versus almost zero take-up rate or limited take-up rate on the message you've decided is the absolute essential one.

Yeah, absolutely. Danny, there are a lot of folks on this call across both public and private sectors broadly, and I do want to dig in a little bit to your time at BCG, hear about the story there. You served as acting IRS commissioner, was a big public, very senior, very intense role. That was the end of at least the first act of your time in government. You get a call from Boston Consulting Group at some point and tell us just about the facts of how the story unfolded there. But I'd also love to hear what drove the interest to go to a firm like BCG. What were you hoping to accomplish? What was that like? What was your thinking? Also mention Danny and I actually know each other from our time at BCG together. I like to say that Danny was my boss's boss at BCG. I was on the consulting team in the Washington, D.C. office, and that's how we first met. I had the privilege of working for Danny there, but go ahead, Danny.

I'd like to start by just saying how humbling it is to leave a big position of government. And my first day at BCG, at that moment back in 2014, we only had one federal contract and a lot more now. I was brought on to help build the public sector practice in North America. And this project happened to be at one of the federal agencies downtown. And keep in mind, like a week earlier, I'm the commissioner of the IRS. I have a security detail. I'm being driven around to places. Television cameras are greeting me as I get out of my SUV. And now I show up at this federal agency to work with this project team that's there. And I dial up to the project leader who's like this 25-year-old right out of business school who works at BCG. And I say, I'm here. And she's, ah, there's no one really that can come and get you right now. And I don't want to bother any of the federal employees here to come get you. So why don't you go and work at a coffee shop until lunchtime? And so it was like, literally a week earlier, I didn't even have to go through security. I was like ushered in with fanfare and greeted by the head of the agency. And now I can't even get an escort to take me up 2 floors. In a federal building. It's an adjustment, but an important one, because these are the lessons you learn in terms of who you are and stay true to yourself and have humility. And that humbling moment was a great start, actually. I joke about it, but it was a great start because it made me realize that I needed to get back to, hey, grab a shovel. You're not as highfalutin as you think you are. And that's exactly what I needed because the work that we had to do was a grind. We had to build a practice. What attracted me to BCG was that it was a build. They hadn't hired a lot of Danny Werfel, a lot of government people, like barely any. And so being the first one to show up and having a blank sheet of paper to launch something really almost felt like a dream come true in terms of an opportunity.

You think about BCG at the time as one of the most influential institutions in global business, right? Working with the biggest clients, the biggest firms, biggest companies, but it was at the time a lot of private sector work and BCG now at the time, maybe multi-billion dollar global revenue, speaking to CEOs, speaking to boards globally, but within BCG, the public sector practice was almost like an emergent, especially in North America, it was like a startup, right? It was just like a startup, small scrappy group. So there you are, you have the trust and the backing of a globally renowned institution behind you, but now making its first headroads into how does BCG leverage its private sector expertise to public sector institutional problems and challenges clients. So yeah, it's a really interesting dynamic kind of overall.

And like with any startup or new business line, you have setbacks. It's an everybody grab a shovel environment, but it's such a valuable nearly decade that I spent there. Really, I did get exposure to a lot of private sector work and started to better understand what CEOs of major companies see, how they manage risks, working with government and public affairs offices of major retailers and big box and pharma companies, and just seeing how they think about public relations from their angle. And then globally working around the world, especially with governments around the world. I think about like these various layers of foundation that we all have in our experiences, like sand. You are these layers of experience and it helps you to meet the moments of today. So for me, when I think about my time at OMB, where I was Forrest Gump, being in the room where it happened, whether I was the note-taker or the decision-maker, being at the IRS during a crisis that was on the front page of the newspaper. This is going to date me, but every time at night, if I was flipping channels, I was always on Greta Van Sustran. As an enemy number one, whatever reason. Going through that was like a valuable experience for both emotional resilience, but also like really understanding how the cable news and the media network is polarizing and how they build these narratives on the various sides. Going to the private sector, understanding how to build a business and how businesses around the world think about how they manage crisis, whether they're being investigated by a government entity, or they've messed up in some big way or their sales are down, how do they manage it? I think a lot about British Petroleum and what they did after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill to rebuild their brand. And I think they did incredibly—

Gulf of America, right? If I remember correctly. Yes, exactly.

But that is, for me, watching the way BP rebuilt their brand, I learned a lot because I thought they did a very effective job. And so All of that accumulated to me showing up at the IRS in 2023 with the opportunity to do a major transformation. And that drew on skill sets of the build that I had just done at BCG. And now, even though I'm no longer in government, I still feel like I'm back in crisis mode, trying to help a whole variety of different people, whether it's the media or grantees. Businesses who don't know what to do about their diversity, equity, and inclusion. By the way, I'm doing all this pro bono, so I'm not promoting my brand here. Just the reality of 100 days out and I haven't had time to find my next job yet. I'm realizing that all of that was imperfect for the moment, but building, building knowledge. Adam, let me give you an example of one moment in particular that has been really helpful to me when I'm talking to companies today about the future of their DEI programs. So I had a congressional hearing coming up at the IRS, and one of the issues that we knew was going to come up was that I'd received a bunch of letters from Congress wondering why we hadn't been aggressively investigating the tax-exempt status of organizations that they were alleging were sponsoring antisemitic protests on university campuses. And while we were prepping for the hearing, that moment happened where the 3 university presidents had their disastrous congressional hearing. And watching that, knowing I'm gonna be there soon, maybe facing similar questions, was a really fascinating moment. Essentially, my team who was prepping for that turned around from watching the coverage, looked at me and said, okay, let's practice. How would you answer that question? And even seeing them flounder. I, in the practice, floundered. And I had very smart people supporting me at the IRS. That's the other lesson learned. Make sure that the people that you hire to do the practice questions are just as smart as where the questions are coming from. So a good internal team is helpful. So they were asking me these questions. Was it Elise Stefanik who was asking the questions of those universities?

That sounds right.

And they were asking me questions just as effective as her. And I couldn't. So practicing was helpful, even though ultimately the way I answered the question was exactly how I felt. And the way we answered the question was to make sure that you almost relentlessly start with your values. And before you get into the logistics of, did I do enough to investigate? Did I do enough to protect the student? Like, all of that's coming, but to start your answer If they interrupt you, just keep going with your values. And your values are how abhorrent both Islamophobia and antisemitism is. Your values is how abhorrent and how offensive you find violence and the harm of innocent people. And everything that you're going to do, and in some cases you're going to succeed, and in some cases you're going to fail, is gonna follow this true north of your value. And then you go into the answer and then they can criticize your answer, your step so far as being inefficient, but they can't criticize the value umbrella that you're operating under.

Yeah. It's funny when you look at the university presidents and that moment, I love this as an interesting case study. You can see almost behind the scenes of the university presidents being prepped for those hearings, and it almost felt as if their counsel, their legal team, their risk team was just driving all the preparation. We're sitting with them doing that because as a PR pro, former PR pro myself, and I imagine for many of the folks that are on this call, you watch those and you can almost see the PR voice in the room and the communications voice in the room was either one, not in the room, or it wasn't being listened to in some way, shape, or form. Because if it was, then you do start with exactly what you said, your values, your personal take, you start with something that hits the emotional pain and the emotional moments that the audience, the students, even the members of Congress are really getting at. And then you back into the institutional answer that you need to as president of university. But it's interesting. You think about the construction of the team that's actually advising this.

Here's what's interesting. That construct, which is a communications construct, which is start with your values, which kind of gives you a permission structure and protective environment to then get into the specifics. And if you're getting beat up, come back to your values and come back to your values. It's actually relevant as a strategic way of thinking about the future of your DEI programs, because it's like, I can't win, right? I don't want to disappoint the people in this organization who feel like we should be bravely defending those things. But I also create risk for the ongoing operations, funding, reputational, whatever, if I don't move in some way, shape, or form. And so when I've talked to companies about this, I've said the common denominator is your values, right? And there are a whole set of initiatives that you can construct that if you did the Venn diagram of DEI and this, their values are going to have a lot of overlap. And so what are some adjacent initiatives that don't hit that third rail for whatever reason? I don't know why it's a third rail now. I guess we could have a whole separate webinar about that, but it comes back to grounding in those values. So I do think that communication and the actual substance of your strategy marry up at some points.

Yeah, absolutely. So I do wanna make sure we get some questions from the audience before we go into our lightning round at the end here. So again, for our audience members, the Zoom Q&A function, drop your questions and we'll start to engage with some of those. I have a great question here from Locke, which is basically talking about the experience around regular people's businesses, try to call the IRS, ask questions, are sent through a maze of various press 5 to reach operator number 5, and then you get to one person and you get to the other. I think the question is like, how do we think about the administration changing that and improving the customer support, customer engagement, quote unquote, for the IRS. But I actually do want to maybe broaden the aperture of this question a bit and think through how do big consumer-facing institutions like the IRS or like a business really develop both those strong systems from a tactical perspective or process perspective, but also a parasocial relationship and a trust that when their customer, their constituent calls and engages them, that they're given the benefit of the doubt in some way, shape, or form.

Yeah, there's a couple of different things I want to get out there in response to this question. First, it would probably surprise a lot of people that the IRS trust scores that we get and satisfaction scores that we get from callers, just like in the private sector. Are you willing to take a survey at the end of this call? And for those that do, our scores at the IRS for customer satisfaction, did you trust the person you spoke to, all of that are comparable to any other government agency and most private sector benchmarks, like north of 75% give us the green light. That's because, and this is like not a well-understood part of this, but these IRS customer service reps are trained to be empathetic. They see videos and I got to go through this training myself where it's this is the wrong way. Don't be curt, be patient, understand that they're stressed out. And so 8 out of 10 times or whatever, you're going to run into someone who's going to surprise you. I heard that a lot as I traveled.

When I'm calling the IRS or trying to get in touch with the IRS, I feel like it's never a good thing, right? It's like nobody takes more of my money away than the IRS. I come in with an extreme negative bias.

That goes back to this idea of the brand of the IRS, and it's an almost impossible task to positively brand the tax collector. Going back to my point about why the local TV networks, the goal there is to think that the IRS is working hard to help with this very complicated tax system. And sometimes they get it right and sometimes they get it wrong. But the ambition that they have is to increasingly get it right and increasingly offer help. And that means a more modern phone system so that you're not pressing 1, 2 because private sector benchmarks and best practices say move to large language model and get to a place where you're asking the caller, what can I help you with? Say it. And that has proven to be more effective than press 1, press 2. And it was just when I was leaving the IRS, that we were completing our modernization of the call center to include that language modeling because we had funding to invest, right? There's all these things we put a callback option in. Nothing that's rocket science. It wasn't like we were revolutionizing the world. It's just with money, finally, after years of budget cuts, we were catching up to what a modern phone system looks like. But I, I lost the job before we could finish the work. And what I'm constantly out there urging when I'm doing op-eds or media is for the Trump administration Treasury Department to finish the job because taxpayers by legal right have a legal right to positive, good customer service. But also it makes sense that the tax system of the US should be modern. The country should have nothing less. Than a modern tax system, even if it's unpopular. Joke all you want. 3 IRS agents to change a light bulb, whatever it is that gives— I like to say that's in the brochure as the tax collector, and that's dirt off the shoulder, right? And it's okay. It's fine. What's not fine is then using that and sliding into a space where we're going to be okay with a tax authority that is dysfunctional, because that is not patriotic and not good for America, because it's virtually all the receipts of the entire US government, $5 trillion is collected by the IRS. And we have a complex tax system. It's very stressful. And it turns out that people need the IRS to get closure on things, to put their tax issues to bed so they can go to bed peacefully. And if you pull the IRS's capacity down to zero and don't change the tax laws, you're going to just have stress and burden. I was making this point on one of these local TV clips because I would always pivot at the end and try to get a little plug in. And one of the local anchors said, so you're saying that the IRS stands for I Reduce? And I said, that is very fair. I love how quickly you came up with that. And but that really is part of the goal. Let me say this, Adam, though. I think the phone center is not where we should be going as a tax authority. It's online, right? If you look at what banks have done with online banking, because of how functional your online banking tools are. You virtually never— if you're— you don't even have to be a sophisticated online banker. You can be just a rudimentary online banker. You're probably not going into the bank anymore and you're probably not calling their 1-800 number anymore. You might, but much less than you were 20 years ago. And that means less paper, more automated solutions, which means they're more accurate. And it means that you can go online and see whether you are delinquent or not. You don't have to worry about getting through the IRS. And so what we were trying to do is not only improve the call center, but that wasn't the long-term goal. The long-term goal was to create an online account for every individual and every business that is as functional as the best online bank platforms in the world. Because then we're really fit for purpose for the 21st century. And what happened is by the time I left, think of it as spans of a bridge. In some cases, we made the span all the way across and you can drive over. Great. You can now upload that document. You can now file your taxes online. All these things we did. In some cases, on the day I left on January 20th, the span was halfway across. And the question the current administration has is, are they going to finish the SPAM? And in some places, we were just breaking ground on a new SPAM. But it was work, and it was taking time. And I think I'm open to the criticism that we're too incremental. But don't— but go quicker if you can. But don't abandon the bridge project.

Yeah, that's great. Danny, we're right at 3 o'clock, so I'm going to take us through our final round here, the Derek lightning round. So at Clipbook, we like to tell the story of every communications team, every PR team, public affairs team has some poor 22-year-old intern or associate named Derek. And at Clipbook, and we're an AI research and analysis platform for communications teams, honestly, we worship Derek because he's the poor soul that gets stuck doing the research, the daily monitoring, and Clipbook exists in part to support Derek and to be a force multiplier for Derek. So this next set of questions, we're going to channel the energy of 22-year-old Derek and the intern Derek with some of the lightning round questions that we have. And we're going to go through a bunch of them really quick here to put a bow on things. Danny, are you ready?

Yeah, but I have a suggestion for you, Adam. Hashtag Free Derek. Okay, now go.

Free Derek. Yes, that's right. Hashtag Free Derek. That is great. Next time Jon Stewart talks about Danny Werfel, it'll be in the context of Free Derek or something. All right, Danny, let's do it. So what's the most memorable moment you had working at the IRS? IRS?

Interestingly, it's sappy, but it's truthful. It's two different hugs that I've gotten. One, I was at a travel baseball tournament in upstate New York, and it turns out that the coach of the other team was an IRS employee. I didn't realize, but someone made the connection, and I walked over to him in center field where he was throwing balls to his team to get ready, and I introduced myself and he couldn't believe I was there. And he gave me a very long hug and embrace, in other words, to say thank you for helping us, for defending us, for taking all the punches. And that moment meant a lot. It symbolized a lot for me. And then relatedly, I was in a volunteer tax site that the IRS funds and supports. It was in a church basement in Chattanooga, Tennessee. And an indigenous woman was getting help for the first time. And at the end of the session, she couldn't believe it was free. It was all volunteer. And here was the commissioner doing a tour. And so she got to meet me and she says, I can't believe this exists. Is it okay to hug you? And I was like, it's absolutely okay to hug me. And to me, helping that taxpayer need and helping that employee and having it manifest itself in an emotional moment and connection That's my most memorable moment.

That's very nice. Very wholesome. I like it. So Danny, what's the most intern-y thing that you've done in your career, even when you weren't an intern anymore?

Already, we can do that speed round. I've already shared it. Having to go to a local coffee shop for 4 hours.

4 hours to wait.

Because the manager didn't want to take the time to escort me up to the office.

Yes. Yes. That poor project leader at BCG. For the record, that was not me. So just want to throw that out there. If you could reinvent a mascot for the IRS, what would it be?

We had one. My cat Emmett became a mascot for the IRS. Emmett the cat was all over IRS's social media feed. Emmett the cat was the IRS expert on tax scams. But I'm a huge Parks and Rec fan, and there's a Parks and Rec episode where they create a website and there's like a mascot called Peebo the Panda, and everyone is so excited about it. They don't care about anything. Website can do. So I came in hoping we could do something like that. And I called him Robbie the Refund, but we went with Emmett.

I love that. I love Parks and Rec, by the way. Great show. My fiancée got me into it a couple years ago. It's a life changer. And a whole interesting commentary we could have around this on the nature of government bureaucracy and public service and so on.

I get a third shot at IRS Commissioner, Robbie the Refund will live. That's the goal. That's the—

There you go. So last question, what's the most memorable or unusual question you've ever received from a taxpayer?

It'll be the second time I'm bringing her up, but during a public town hall meeting, someone asked me what my favorite Taylor Swift song was. And fortunately, in the moment, I couldn't think of— I could only think of one, but it ended up being the perfect one, which was Shake It Off. And that was the only one I can name. I might be able to name one or two more now, but that's it. And for me, it's, yeah, going back to it's in the brochure, dirt off our shoulder. We're going to do the job. We don't have to be popular. And again, I think it's a moment where you can show the world that IRS employees are just like you. Moms, dads, baseball coaches, churchgoers, etc. But definitely was not expecting a question about, I guess the IRS tour was a pretty big deal. I guess it was on everyone's mind.

Yeah, this is the second time that we brought up Taylor Swift on this webinar. So I take it you're a Taylor Swift fan.

My daughter is an enormous Taylor Swift fan. So I actually took her to a concert, not the Eras Tour, but one years ago. It was like a 3-hour Super Bowl halftime show. It was incredible. But, but no, the Werfel household is very into Taylor Swift. I'm not the big Taylor Swift fan in the family though.

Okay, got it. Fair enough. Listen, Dani, this has been such a treat. Thank you so much for joining us. To our audience members, thank you for joining us. Happy Thursday. If you were on this call, part of a media team, a public affairs team, a communications team, our team at ClickBook would love to meet you. Reach out anytime. Reach out to me directly on email, adam@clickbook.io. But again, happy Thursday and thanks for joining us.

Thank you, everyone.