The linguistic origins of the word “golf” are lost to time. But for 21st century feds, the game often just means trouble. The latest evidence: Stephen Calvery, head of the Defense Force Protection Agency, gets an unfavorable write-up by the Defense Department’s inspector general for giving employees administrative leave to participate in the agency’s 2009 and 2010 golf tournaments. Under the rules, such leave is allowable only if it benefits the agency’s mission, furthers a particular DoD function or has “a government-wide recognized and sanctioned purpose,” according to a redacted copy of the report posted today on the IG’s website.…
Browsing: 2010 Budget
Say this for snail mail: it’s never been victimized by a computer hacker. That, in essence, is the point of a new U.S. Postal Service television advertising campaign that seeks to make a virtue of the mail’s retro qualities. “This is how people and business connect,” runs the voiceover in one ad as the video shows a jaunty letter carrier on her rounds. “Feeling safe and secure that important letters and information don’t get lost in thin air or disappear with a click, but are delivered from person to person.” Take that, Internet. The two commercials, aimed at boosting businesses’ use of the…
The electronic government funding saga continues, even if the e-government fund would no longer exist under a spending bill approved today by a House appropriations subcommittee. As tech-conscious readers might remember, Congress whacked the e-gov account from $34 million in 2010 to $8 million in the year-long continuing resolution enacted this April. Under a fiscal 2012 spending bill approved today by the subcommittee, the fund would be folded into the General Services Administration’s Office of Citizen Services, said Daniel Schuman, policy counsel for the Sunlight Foundation, an open government group that has been birddogging the issue. In all, the combined…
The Obama administration has yet another dashboard on the way. Dan Gordon, head of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, told Federal Times in a statement that the administration will launch a dashboard to track agencies’ progress on acquisition reform later this summer. The administration has had its much-ballyhooed IT dashboard up and running for about a year, and is working on another dashboard to track agencies’ progress toward “high priority performance goals.” Dave McClure at GSA is also working on something called a “citizen dashboard” that we probably won’t see until sometime next year. Some agencies, apparently realizing that…
President Barack Obama signed into law a 1.5 percent pay raise and an average 05. percent locality pay increase for federal civilian employees on Dec. 16. The raise takes effect January 1, 2010. The pay raise is included in a fiscal 2010 spending omnibus which funds the following agencies: Commerce, Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, Labor, State, Transportation and Veterans Affairs departments. The only appropriations bill not signed into law is Defense, which the Senate may pass today. The House passed it Dec. 16.
House and Senate negotiators have approved a 1.5 percent nationwide increase in base pay and a 0.5 percent average increase in locality pay for federal civilian employees effective January 2010. A House and Senate conference committee approved the pay raise as part of a spending omnibus late Tuesday night, setting the stage for the House to take up the spending package this week. The conferees adhered to President Barack Obama’s requested 2 percent federal pay raise, breaking a long-standing tradition of pay parity with the military. Members of the military will likely receive a 3.4 percent raise in 2010. The…
The Senate may vote on a continuing resolution late this afternoon, just hours before the end of the fiscal year at midnight. The House passed the CR Sept. 25, which includes additional funding for veterans health care and the Census Bureau. All other federal agencies would operate under fiscal 2009 funding levels until their appropriations bills are passed or the CR expires Oct. 31. We’ll keep you posted on any congressional action on the continuing resolution.
The House will take up a continuing resolution this week to keep agencies operating at fiscal 2009 levels while Congress completes the 12 annual appropriations bills, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announced Sept. 17. The CR will not come up before Wednesday, according to the tentative House floor schedule. A final vote has not been scheduled, so it’s unclear if the CR will be finished this week. The House has passed all 12 of its fiscal 2010 appropriations bills, while the Senate has passed six. The end of the fiscal year is Sept. 30, and agencies have adapted to the…
The House Appropriations Committee approved the Homeland Security and Legislative Branch fiscal year 2010 appropriations draft bills at a markup Friday. The Homeland Security bill provides $42.63 billion for the agency, compared to President Barack Obama’s $42.83 billion request for fiscal year 2010. In 2009, the agency received $39.98 billion. The bill cuts $135 million requested for agency operations due to “staffing vacancies, redundant policy initiatives and poorly justified request to consolidate DHS headquarters for those agencies not moving to St. Elizabeths,” according to a committee news release. The bill includes: $10 billion for Customs and Border Protection, $82 million…
Deadline day around here and things are a bit busy, but I wanted to comment on an FDA appropriations hearing I covered this morning. The agency is getting a huge boost in the president’s 2010 budget proposal — $511 million, or 19 percent. Much of that money will pay for more than 1,200 new hires. That means a 30 percent staffing boost over two years, when you include the 1,500 new employees hired this year. The numbers prompted some back-and-forth with legislators, as you might expect. A few Republicans thought they were too large; Democrats hinted they might be too…