Defense Department civilian employees are appealing directly to the Obama administration to end the furloughs that are taking a 20 percent bite out of the paychecks of many. “We have taken sequestration harder than all the departments,” states the petition created today on the White House’s “We the People” site. “Department of Defense civil servants continue to ‘take one for the team’ and we will continue to do our service to our country, but would like our country to listen.” The petition, which must attract 100,000 signatures in the next 30 days to merit an official response, comes a little…
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As you might have read on Federal Times or elsewhere on the web, DHS secretary Janet Napolitano announced she was resigning, effective in September. And as the day picks up more prominent people are offering their comments on her tenure: Below are some snippets: President Barack Obama: I want to thank Secretary Napolitano for her outstanding work on behalf of the American people over the last four years. At the Department of Homeland Security, Janet’s portfolio has included some of the toughest challenges facing our country. She’s worked around the clock to respond to natural disasters, from the Joplin tornado…
People who need to make a call to the Social Security Administration’s 800 number system (there are several 800 numbers offered to members of the public for SSA services) might have noticed that its been easier to get through to a live person. The average busy signal rate has fallen from 8.1 percent of calls in fiscal 2009 to 2.6 percent of calls in 2011, according to data recently posted to Data.gov by the agency. In all three years the time of the year when you are most likely to get a busy signal includes the months of December and…
The Office of Personnel Management may be little known to the general public, but perhaps no agency matters more to some 2.7 million federal civil service employees and U.S. Postal Service workers. So, they might want to keep an ear out Tuesday, when a Senate panel has scheduled a hearing on the nomination of Katherine Archuleta to become the next OPM director. The job has been vacant since April when John Berry (since selected for the Australia ambassadorship) resigned just before his four-year term was up. Filling in is OPM General Counsel Elaine Kaplan, but she’s been nominated for a…
Nearing the end of a half hour talk on cybersecurity at a conference of contracting professionals in Alexandria, Va., Thursday, Booz Allen Hamilton vice president Mike McConnell had not uttered the name Edward Snowden. And Snowden, after all, is someone who has people talking a lot about cybersecurity these days. The now famous former Booz Allen employee stands charged with espionage and is still on the run from U.S. authorities after leaking details to the media on once secret government surveillance programs. As McConnell, a former director of national intelligence, was wrapping up his presentation, he said he’d take a…
Remember that Office of Personnel Management proposal—buried deep in its fiscal 2014 budget request—to begin charging charities a fee in fiscal 2015 to participate in the Combined Federal Campaign? Well, forget it, at least for now. “It was just an idea that was being considered,” Mark Lambert, OPM associate director for merit system accountability and compliance, said in an interview yesterday following a congressional hearing. Asked whether the proposal is now defunct, Lambert said yes. The proposal, which was intended to cover OPM’s costs for running the campaign, is distinct from the agency’s plan to begin charging charities an application…
By one estimate, it’s one of the best constructed facilities in Afghanistan, but soon the $34 million military center in Hemland province could be torn down because, well, it turns out troops are leaving and the U.S. government might not have really needed the building in the first place. Special Office of Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) John Sopko outlined the scope and history of the expensive problem in a letter this week to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, which you can read about here. But for a virtual tour of the building’s clean, spacious and barren offices and meeting…
The Marine Corps is testing new capabilities it hopes will cut mobile computing costs in half. The service is working with Verizon, Sprint and AT&T on a small beta program to test the feasibility of wireless carriers managing the security of mobile devices, based on Marine Corps policies and standards. The devices will be managed using a dual persona solution, which will allow the carriers to manage government data and applications but not personal use of the phone by military and civilian users. “If the beta goes well and we prove the technical requirements that need to be employed, then…
Ramon Davila is one name in a growing list. He’s among the nearly two dozen federal background check investigators to face criminal charges in recent years for falsifying his work on investigations performed on contractors and employees seeking government clearances. But more than year after charging Davila, the Justice Department only just learned that he had a troubling past that went unnoticed during his own background investigation. It turns out, officials at another federal law enforcement agency decided nearly a decade ago to keep out of his personnel folder serious misconduct findings against Davila stemming from his years as a…
The Labor Department wants to make it easier for consumers to track which businesses are treating their workers fairly. Labor announced an app development contest Tuesday that it hopes will “help empower consumers to make informed choices about where to bring their business,” according to an agency news release. The smartphone app will include Labor’s publicly available enforcement data, data from consumer ratings and geopositioning websites and other data available through state health boards. “The app could also prove a useful tool for job seekers and for companies that are deciding which firms they may want to do business with,”…