Congrats to Trudy Givens of Portage, Wisconsin. The long-time Bureau of Prisons employee is this year’s SAVE award winner for her suggestion that the government stop printing and mailing daily hard copies of the Federal Register to almost 10,000 federal employees who are probably using the on-line version anyway. Givens won out over three other finalists with almost 20,000 votes, according to a blog post Monday by Acting Office of Management and Budget Director Jeffrey Zients. The runners-up were Agriculture Department employee Marjorie Cook, Pat Behe of the Department of Homeland Security, and Thomas Koenning from the Department of Labor.…
Monthly Archives: November, 2010
The Government Printing Office (GPO) won an award for its recycling programs, recovering nearly 5,000 tons of recyclable materials. The GPO won the “Best Public Office Building Recycling Program award” that recognizes businesses or government agencies that try to make their environmental footprint smaller.
The U.S. Postal Service’s net losses widened to $8.5 billion in fiscal 2010, more than twice the total for the preceding year, according to figures released at Friday’s board of governors meeting. Of that amount, $2.5 billion stemmed from accounting adjustments related to workers compensation liability. The remaining $6 billion is identical to a preliminary figure cited by outgoing Postmaster General John Potter at a news conference last month. For fiscal 2010, operating revenue totaled $67.1 billion, down $1 billion from the preceding year. Overall mail volume fell from 176.7 billion to 170.6 billion pieces. In fiscal 2011, the agency…
Should the federal government change the way it determines the gap between public and private pay? It’s been a hot political topic this year, and the new Republican majority in the House is certain to shine a spotlight on federal salaries. Many critics say the government’s pay gap method doesn’t hold water and needs a complete overhaul. Vote in our poll on our homepage, and then sound off here on what you think should be done.
Here’s today’s fun fact, courtesy of the Government Accountability Office: More than one billion live animals were legally imported into the United States from 2005 through 2008. That’s more than three times the nation’s current human population. But the influx of fauna has a darker side: So-called “zoonotic” diseases—infectious illnesses that can be transmitted between animals and humans—“can emerge anywhere and spread rapidly around the globe,” the GAO noted in a report released Monday. Think severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which killed hundreds of people back in 2003. With four federal agencies sharing responsibility for animal imports, “the statutory…
This is what President Obama wrote when he took office: “Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in government.” Apparently no one at the Office of Personnel Management got that memo. Reporters from several publications are openly venting their frustrations to one another that getting even simple answers from OPM is a nearly impossible task. Several of our inquiries have gone unanswered for months or were declined with dubious — or no — explanations. My favorite? “You ask too many questions,” OPM Communications Director Sedelta Verble told me two months ago when I called to follow up…
Scott Friedlander may be out as the chief executive officer of GTSI Corp., but he’ll keep drawing his $400,000 annual salary for another year, along with a one-time $450,000 severance payment, according to a recent corporate filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. GTSI will also reimburse Friedlander for COBRA health insurance expenses for up to 18 months, provide him with continued participation in the company’s long-term care plan for up to a year, and allow him the maximum time possible to exercise his remaining stock options. Friedlander. who had taken over as GTSI’s president and CEO in February, agreed…
The Tri-City Herald in Washington state this morning reports about a sticky situation emerging at an Energy Department facility. A radioactive rabbit has been caught at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Richland, Wash., and state health workers are now combing nearby grounds for — yes — radioactive rabbit droppings. The scary thing is, this isn’t the first time this has happened. Hanford had another mutant bunny emergency last year, and flew helicopters above the grounds to locate the radioactive poop, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. And in much less cute news, the Seattle Times reported in 2009 that Hanford was…
Open government groups are hailing a new executive order requiring federal agencies to review and justify markings used to designate numerous types of “controlled unclassified information. “ Under the reviews, agency officials must define each “category and subcategory” of CUI and link it to a specific law, regulation or government-wide policy. The National Archives’ Information Security Oversight Office will have to sign off on the results. The order–published Tuesday, Nov. 9 in the Federal Register–labels the current system of markings—such as “For Official Use Only”—an “inefficient, confusing patchwork” that “has resulted in inconsistent marking and safeguarding of documents, led to…
The Merit Systems Protection Board issued a decision Tuesday that appears to put the controversial Federal Career Intern Program on ice. “The MPSB decision precludes OPM from continuing the Federal Career Intern Program until such time that OPM brings the program into compliance with Title 5,” AFGE Assistant General Counsel Andres Grajales said in a statement. More to come. UPDATE 1: MSPB ruled that the federal government has improperly placed FCIP positions in the excepted service, which let agencies avoid the legal requirement to notify the public that competitive service vacancies were available. Job seeker and plaintiff David Dean, a…