Browsing: Office of Personnel Management

Nearly a decade after he died, the complicated marital turnabouts of a U.S. Forest Service employee named Don King gave rise Friday to a ruling by the  U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. First, some background. Try to follow along, it’s complicated. In 1967, King married a woman named Diana. They divorced in 1980. They remarried in 1981. Then, they divorced again 18 months later. And yet they held themselves out to be married for years afterward, living in the same house, keeping joint accounts and even celebrating their (original) anniversary. But in 2002, Don moved out. He…

President Obama this afternoon bid farewell to departing Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry today in a statement: John Berry has served the American people well as Director of the Office of Personnel Management.  He’s streamlined the way federal employees are hired, modernized the workplace, made the federal workforce more diverse, and increased the number of returning servicemembers hired by the government.  John has been a champion for federal workers – men and women who devote their lives to vital tasks like securing our borders, curing disease, and keeping the American people safe.  This country is better off because…

The Office of Personnel Management is now negotiating with six health care insurance carriers to add them to the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, director of health care and insurance John O’Brien said Thursday. In his keynote speech to the FEHB Carrier Conference, O’Brien said OPM added four new insurance providers last year. O’Brien also touted OPM’s success at keeping premium increases below 4 percent for the last two years. But he also noted that even small premium increases bite at a time when  federal pay scales are frozen. “Our low premium growth translates to roughly an additional $400 that…

Federal Times last December brought you the inside story of how the once-ballyhooed Results-Only Work Environment program fizzled when it was tested at the Office of Personnel Management. In a sad postscript to that story, Best Buy — the home of ROWE, where it was first pioneered in 2005 — has just announced it is also canceling the ROWE program. According to CNN: Best Buy said some of the 4,000 non-store employees who took advantage of its work-from home program still may be able to telecommute or set flexible schedules. But as of Monday they’ll no longer have the freedom to…

The Office of Personnel Management just announced that federal offices in the Washington area will be closed Wednesday due to snow. The storm — dubbed “snowquester” — has now begun, and is expected to hammer Washington. The Washington Post’s Capitol Weather Gang just tweeted that “conditions will deteriorate fast” as the main part of the snowstorm moves in to Washington. OPM says that the closure does not apply to emergency employees and telework-ready employees who are required to work. But for everybody else, enjoy your snow day.

Lest anyone forget, Postmaster General Pat Donahoe remains keenly interested in creating a stand-alone health insurance plan for about 1.1 million U.S. Postal Service employees and retirees. The latest reminder came at last week’s Senate hearing on the USPS’s financial crisis. Although lawmakers’ attention was predictably focused on the agency’s decision to end Saturday mail delivery, Donahoe also stressed the urgency of pulling out of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. “An astonishing 20 cents of every revenue dollar the Postal Service takes in must go toward health care costs,” Donahoe said in prepared testimony.  “By moving away from the…

The Washington area is likely to be hit by a snowstorm tomorrow. It’s unclear how bad it might be — we may see 1 to 3 inches of accumulation, but the National Weather Service thinks it may top 5 inches. The Office of Personnel Management just announced that, as of now, federal offices in the Washington area will still open Thursday. But employees who want to avoid the storm — and the nasty evening rush hour it is likely to bring — can take unscheduled leave or unscheduled telework. Check back in with FedLine for updates on the government’s operating…

The National Academy of Public Administration has announced the panel of five experts who will carry out a congressional required study on the possible effects of putting some federal employees’ personal financial disclosure statements on the Internet. The study is due at the end of March. The panel’s members are: David Chu, president and chief executive officer of the Institute for Defense Analyses; former Office of Personnel Management director Janice Lachance, who is now chief executive officer of the Special Libraries Association; Martha Kumar, a political science professor at Towson State University; Ronald Sanders, former chief human capital officer at…

Veterans Affairs Department employees have had access to one of the government’s best career-development tools since October. Soon, you may see something like it coming to your agency. Last week, top VA officials demonstrated the tool — called MyCareer@VA — at a meeting of administration and union leaders. “When you think about your own career, there are times that you want to figure out how to get ahead, but there are also times that you may feel like you’re stuck and want to do something else,” said VA Deputy Secretary Scott Gould as he presented the website July 18 to…

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