b'Conversations with Leadersregular contact with 9/11 Health Watch and the FealGoodreduction of awards and then the passage of the Permanent Foundation, advocacy groups with a strong followingAuthorization Act. But I am confident that the foundation among the 9/11 community.we laid will continue to serve us well as we move forward to provide compensation to those suffering as a result of the We spent considerable time this year shoring up9/11 attacks for many years to come.relationships with some of our long-time partners. We have regular contact with the Fire Department of New York, the New York Police Unions, the Social Security Administration, the Veterans Administration, and the New York Workers Compensation Board to discuss information exchanges and to make sure that the processes we have in place are efficient and generating the needed data. In addition, we established significant new contacts with federal law enforcement agencies, which are underrepresented in the VCF claimant pool, participating with the FBI in numerous events, and reaching out to contacts with the U.S. Marshals Service and theSecret Service to ensure that information is availableto their employees. We also have firmly cemented our collaborative relationship with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which administers the WTC Health Program, by regularly attending monthly WTC Health Program Responder Steering Committee meetings. The relationship with NIOSH and the CCEs continues to be critical to many of the policy issues we have successfully reassessed over the last year, as we were able to refine our guidance by incorporating their feedbackTo learn more about the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund,and gain a better understanding of how our policies werego to vcf.gov.affected by their practices and vice versa. To hear the interviews from The Business of Government Hour, go to On Accomplishments and Whats Nextbusinessofgovernment.org/interviews.The clearest indicator of the VCFs success is the overwhelming vote of confidence the VCF received inTo download the show as a podcast, go to PodcastOne or iTunes and search for The Business of Government Hour.July 2019, when the Congress overwhelmingly and with bipartisan support passed, and the president signedTo view excerpts of the show, go to youtube.com/into law, legislation reauthorizing the VCF essentiallybusinessofgovernment.permanently (until 2092) and providing it with such appropriated funds as may be necessary to pay all eligible claims, an unconstrained amount of statutory funding that is nearly unheard of in a program where awards are insulated by law from judicial review. The permanent authorization of the VCF, with no substantive alteration of its claim review procedures or mechanisms for award calculation, clearly reflects that the program is achieving exactly the results it was created to achieve. This has been an exceptional year, given the sheer volume of activity surrounding my decision early in the year relating to the WINTER 2019 / 2020 IBM Center for The Business of Government 13'