The Partnership for Public Service has extended until Friday — Jan. 11 — the deadline for nominations for the 2013 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals (Sammies). The eight medals are awarded to federal employees based on three main criteria: impact of their work on meeting the needs of the nation, on-the-job innovation, and commitment to public service. Medal categories include Call to Service, Career Achievement, Homeland Security and Law Enforcement, Science and Environment, and other categories related to specific government fields. All career civilian federal employees are eligible, and anyone may submit a nomination. Thirty finalists will be…
Yearly Archives: 2013
As early as this week, members of the National Association of Letter Carriers could get the terms of a new contract. Whatever a three-man arbitration panel decides, the outcome is sure to furnish fresh evidence of the painful tradeoffs facing labor as the embattled U.S. Postal Service presses to cut personnel costs. NALC members “understand that difficult things were necessary,” Jim Sauber, the union’s chief of staff, said in an interview today. “But on the other hand, we also want to reward the people who are working harder and have harder jobs.” The NALC, for example, is proposing to create a…
Are you a federal or contractor IT professional who’s concerned about job security and workplace morale during these uncertain budget times? Are you considering work elsewhere, or are you hoping for the best and staying put in your current position? Federal Times would like to hear from you. Contact Nicole Johnson at 703-750-8145 or njohnson@federaltimes.com.
It isn’t just your imagination—Congress really is spending more time on the urgent business of naming post offices. In an online article today, the Courier Express and Postal Observer runs the numbers from 1973 to the present and finds a startling increase both in the number of post office naming laws, and their share of the overall volume of legislation passed in each Congress. Although the totals have fallen the last four years, they remain way above the average for much of the period in question. The Observer attributes the trend largely to the post-9/11 desire to honor those who…
Now that the tax portion of the fiscal cliff mess has been resolved — for now, at least — the next major dispute will likely be over raising the debt ceiling. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said last month that although the federal government reached its debt limit Dec. 31, he could finagle another two months or so by taking so-called “extraordinary measures.” That implied the government could keep running as-is until the end of February. It turns out those measures may not be all that extraordinary. The Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank that studies budgetary matters, just put out…
If you have money invested in the Thrift Savings Plan’s G-Fund, take a bow. Your retirement nest egg is now part of a strategy to stave off worldwide financial calamity. That’s because the Treasury Department intends to intentionally stiff the fund as one of several “extraordinary measures” announced last month to buy time after the government hit its legal $16.4 trillion debt ceiling Dec. 31. Here’s how it works: the fund—technically known as the Government Securities Investment Fund—is continually re-invested in short-term government bonds. Because those bonds count toward the debt ceiling, Treasury suspends re-investments to free up more borrowing “headroom.” The…
North Carolina-based Autonomic Resources last week became the only firm to complete a new security review process for all federal cloud products and services. The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) was launched in June to standardize security reviews of commercial cloud products. The program is housed within the General Services Administration. As part of FedRAMP, a joint board of chief information officers from the Homeland Security and Defense departments and GSA reviewed Autonomic’s cloud offering and whether it met federal security standards. The company had to verify that it met some 300 security requirements, including proof that its…
Gosh, wasn’t the last month of planning for and arguing over the sequestration budget cuts a lot of fun? Guess what — we get to do it all over again! The fiscal cliff deal Congress passed New Year’s Day doesn’t do away with sequestration — it just delays it two months. Federal Times would like to hear your thoughts about the prospect of a delayed sequestration. How does this throw off your plans? What does the uncertainty mean for your projects? Are you angry that this mess has just been kicked down the road once again? Are you worried that…
So another year brings more change for federal employees. In Europe the military draw down will include about 10,000 service members over the next year or so. But the number of Defense Department civilians remain unclear, which leads me to ask. If you are a DoD civilian affected by this draw-down, what are your plans? Are you moving to a new assignment, or retiring if eligible? How are you planning on adapting to this? Feel free to comment below this post, or if you want you can email me at amedici@federaltimes.com.
The House of Representatives voted today to extend the current pay freeze — which has already lasted two years — through the rest of 2013. The American Federation of Government Employees denounced the bill, proposed by Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick, R-Penn., as a “cheap political ploy.” Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., also blasted the bill and said it has no chance of passing the Senate. But Fitzpatrick said approving a raise at a time when the government is teetering on the edge of the “fiscal cliff” is inappropriate. “At a time when American families are tightening their belts and businesses are reducing…