Federal employees have submitted more than 10,000 money-saving tips to the Office of Management and Budget’s SAVE Award contest in the last week, OMB director Peter Orszag announced today. OMB launched the SAVE Award contest on Sept. 23 to gather cost-cutting and performance-improving ideas from the people who know government best: the employees. So far, you have responded with 10,266 entries. And that number is growing as we speak. If you haven’t submitted an idea yet, don’t delay. The contest ends on Oct. 14. You can enter at www.SaveAward.gov. Once submissions close, an OMB panel will review the ideas and…
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As a runner and general fitness nut, I was pleasantly surprised to find a press release in my inbox from the Office of Management and Budget this morning announcing a new mandate for OMB staff: wear a pedometer. OMB Director Peter Orszag launched the “OMB Pedometer Challenge” today to improve employee health by having everyone wear a pedometer to track their physical activity throughout the day. Employees will enter their daily steps on an internal Web site and compare their activity levels to Orszag’s activity levels and their division’s levels. They’ll also be able to enter health statistics like body…
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 passed a temporary Federal Aviation Administration authorization extension Wednesday, giving the Senate until the end of the year to pass the full reauthorization bill. The temporary extension won’t be a surprise to the FAA, which has been operating under them since its authorization expired during the last Congress. The sixth temporary extension expires Sept. 30. The new extension goes until Dec. 31 and allows the FAA to continue to collect and spend revenues. The House passed a multiyear reauthorization bill, HR 915, in May, but the bill has stalled in the Senate, just as it did in the…
Earlier today I previewed reports the Government Accountability Office and the Defense Department Inspector General will release tomorrow highlighting the depth of auditing problems at the Defense Contract Audit Agency. But these watchdogs are not the only ones with concerns about DCAA’s audit management. The Wartime Contracting Commission — a bipartisan, congressionally chartered panel tasked with making recommendations to improve contingency contracting — released this report today calling on DCAA to abandon the all-or-nothing approach it takes when rendering opinions on contractor business systems. In December, DCAA scrapped its opinion that allowed business systems with minor deficiencies to be deemed…
President Barack Obama said in August he wanted to hear from Veterans Benefits Administration employees on how to improve the agency, and employees are responding. In the first week, the survey site for VBA employees was visited 29,000 times by 7,000 employees, who submitted more than 3,000 ideas, said U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra and VA Chief Technology Peter Levin in a blog post on whitehouse.gov Monday. Obama said he wants employees to contribute their ideas to solving its claims backlog and improving agency efficiency, and the survey is yielding results, Chopra and Levin wrote. Employees can also vote…
The federal government may be growing under President Barack Obama, but a just-released report shows the government is actually getting smaller. Confused? It turns out that while federal agencies are hiring more workers, they’re also getting rid of thousands of buildings they no longer need. The number of buildings in the federal inventory declined nearly 9 percent in 2008, or roughly 70 million square feet, according to a report posted today by the General Services Administration. GSA attributes the decrease to a reduction of 36,000 military housing units and 4,000 warehouses by the Air Force and Navy.
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…
Is the IRS funny? Famed director Ron Howard thinks so. Howard and his producing partner, Brian Grazer, are the team behind the critically-acclaimed and ratings-challenged “Arrested Development.” Howard may need to tap that blend of hysterical awkwardness with his new sitcom, which will be centered around an Internal Revenue Service field office. Trade publication The Hollywood Reporter first announced the project. The show has a pilot commitment with Fox, which means the network will pay to develop the first episode of the show, known as a pilot, and will pay a penalty to Howard and Grazer should it not pick…
Reforming the Defense Contract Audit Agency will be the topic at a Sept. 23 Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing. The hearing will examine who is responsible for reforming the DCAA, which lawmakers have discussed relocating to ensure independence from the Defense Department’s comptroller. In a recent report, the Government Accountability Office found that DCAA managers pressured field auditors to change audit results to favor contractors and ignored basic auditing standards to expedite work and meet rigid performance standards. The hearing will be 10 a.m. in Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., and the Federal Times will…