Cliff Guffey will be the new president of the American Postal Workers Union after capturing 69 percent of the ballots cast in a three-way race, the union announced in a news release. Guffey, APWU’s vice president since 2001, will succeed retiring President William Burrus. As he moves up to the top job, his immediate challenge will be nailing down a new contract with the U.S. Postal Service, which is seeking to loosen work rules. The existing contract expires Nov. 20; Burrus recently described progress on its successor as “slow.” More broadly, Guffey’s three-year term is likely to be dominated by…
Browsing: Agencies
The NY Daily News reports that the terrorist group Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula is now calling for strikes on federal employees. In the second issue of the organization’s magazine, “Inspire,” AQAP propagandist Yahyim Ibrahim suggests wannabe terrorists open fire at crowded restaurants in Washington during lunchtime to kill feds. “Targeting such employees is paramount and the location would also give the operation additional media attention,” Ibrahim wrote. AQAP is the Yemen-based franchise of al-Qaida and is thought to have provided training and support to the alleged Christmas Day bomber. The Obama administration says American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki is…
Good luck trying to decipher the Defense Department’s color-coded chart of policies it uses to “build, operate and secure” its networks. The two-foot-long IA policy chart outlines 193 documents (including directives, strategies, policies, memos, regulations, strategies, white papers and instructions) that many information assurance professionals “may not be aware of,” Noah Shachtman points out on his Danger Room blog. Designed by the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Identity & Information Assurance, the chart is supposed to help these workers familiarize themselves with the policies that govern how they do their job. I guess the legend may be a good place to start, but even…
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, is keeping pressure on the FBI to reform in the wake of a cheating scandal. Collins sent FBI Director Bob Mueller a letter Oct. 7 that said he should immediately punish those who cheated on an important exam on domestic investigations rules and privacy, and force any cheater who wasn’t fired to retake the exam. Collins also wants the FBI to conduct a department-wide review to find out if there were any other cheaters that weren’t identified by an inspector general investigation. Mueller last month said disciplinary actions are being taken against cheaters and promised to…
HHS, VA, CMS, Blue Button, health records, electronic health record
The White House continues to push renewable energy projects during National Energy Awareness month this October. The latest is from the Interior Department, which has announced what they call the largest solar energy project on public lands. From Ken Salazar, Interior Secretary The Tessera Solar Imperial Valley Solar Project and the Chevron Energy Solutions Lucerne Valley Solar Project will both be built in the California desert. Together, the projects could produce up to 754 megawatts of renewable energy, power 226,000 – 566,000 American homes, and support almost 1,000 new jobs. At the Department of the Interior, we have a special…
Postmaster General John Potter is standing by his agency’s policy of paying the full cost of health insurance premiums for senior executives. According to a recent audit, the U.S. Postal Service could save about $567 million in fiscal 2011 if its employee contribution rate matched that of the federal government. For most employees, the Postal Service contributes 79 percent, compared to 72 percent elsewhere in the government. But postal executives don’t do as well as feds in other ways, Potter suggested at an end-of-the-fiscal-year news conference Friday. “Postal managers do not get locality pay,” he said. “Postal managers only get…
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology has awarded $9.8 million in funding to stand up the last of its regional extension center (REC) programs in California and New Hampshire. CalOptima Foundation received $4.7 million to assist doctors and providers in Orange County adopt electronic health records, and ONC awarded Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative $5.1 million to aid providers in New Hampshire. A total of 62 centers now span across every region in the country. Over the next two years, $677 million will be disbursed incrementally to support the RECs as they help priority primary care providers achieve meaningful use. ONC also announced expanded coverage areas for existing…
A little fuzzy on the distinctions between various types of federal contracts? Don’t feel bad, because some federal contracting officers are, too, according to a Federal Register notice published today. In a jointly filed proposed rule, the Defense Department, NASA and the General Services Administration indicate that they are trying to correct the mistaken impression among contracting officers “governmentwide” that the fixed labor rates in time-and-materials/labor-hour contracts make them “fixed-price type contracts.” In fact, as the Government Accountability Office reported last year, time and materials contracts are considered high-risk because the contractor’s profit hinges on the number of hours worked.
While Congress might be having trouble scheduling, debating and passing numerous pieces of legislation, it seems one of the few bills that has not suffered are the resolutions to rename postal facilities. These resolutions have been on the rise for more than 13 years. In the 105th Congress spanning 1997 to 1998, there were 9 resolutions. In the 108th Congress from 2003 to 2004 there were 117. In the years 2007 to 2008 there were 169. There have been 111 in the current Congress. 1997-1998 9 1999-2000 46 2001-2002 92 2003-2004 117 2005-2006 135 2007-2008 169 2009-2010 111* *So far…