The Office of Personnel Management today refuted the findings of a recent USA Today story that found federal employees earn far more than employees in the private sector — and doubled down on the government’s current pay gap method that finds government employees earn 22 percent less on average than their private-sector counterparts. The points they laid out in this afternoon’s hastily-arranged press conference should be familiar to anyone who’s been following the issue in recent months. USA Today’s findings don’t compare like jobs, OPM pointed out, or people with equivalent skills and levels, in the same geographic areas –…
Browsing: Office of Personnel Management
Listen up, all you Presidential Management Fellows: The Office of Personnel Management wants to find out what you think defines “presidential.” Under OPM’s first video contest, fellows have until the end of August to make and post a one-minute YouTube video describing what it takes to lead the country. The winner gets to have lunch with OPM Director John Berry. It’s kind of a broad assignment. OPM suggests leadership, public service or compassion as themes to explore, but I hope they also get — and post — a few sarcastic entries on what it means to be presidential. (Strategery? Not…
OPM’s centralized hiring registers, which were unveiled earlier this year as one aspect of the overall push to reform the government’s hiring process, are falling flat so far. Their performance is so underwhelming — only 71 hires made so far out of 106,000 candidates — that there apparently has been some discussion in the administration about possibly canceling the program. OPM Director John Berry called me earlier today to say that he’s not giving up on the registers, but acknowledged that they’re not living up to his expectations and need to be improved. But aside from a growing consensus within…
The results of this year’s Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey were largely positive, but one thing jumped out at me: Collaboration and cooperation seems to have taken a significant hit. Positive responses to question 20 in the survey — “The people I work with cooperate to get the job done” — dropped sharply from 2008. That year, 83.9 percent agreed or strongly agreed, but this year, only 74.7 agreed. Question 26 — “employees in my work unit share job knowledge with each other” — also showed a decline, though not nearly as steep. Positive responses to that question dropped from 75.4…
UPDATE: OPM appears to have made a mistake in their press release. I sent them an inquiry this morning asking why their release called the results “record-setting” while growth was apparently flat from 2008 to 2009, and asked for exact numbers. OPM spokesman Marcus Williams just sent me an e-mail saying federal employees pledged $282,620,139 in 2009, and $275,898,745 in 2008. That represents a 2.4 percent increase. OPM’s release has not yet been updated as of Wednesday evening. ORIGINAL POST: Federal employees pledged nearly $276 million to charities during last year’s Combined Federal Campaign, the Office of Personnel Management said…
Today marks the 129th anniversary of President James A. Garfield’s assassination, which set in motion a series of events that did away with the spoils system for federal employment and laid the groundwork for the modern civil service we know today. And it all started with a certifiable whackjob and loser named Charles Guiteau. Guiteau had utterly failed as a student, lawyer, husband, newspaperman, free-love cult member, revival preacher, and extortionist before he decided he would become a Republican Party political kingmaker. But as with all those who suffer from delusions of grandeur, his triumphs were all in his head.…
The Office of Personnel Management earlier this week finalized regulations allowing federal employees — both gay and straight — to take leave to attend to their sick or deceased domestic partners. What do you think about this? Have you needed this benefit to help care for your partner? Or has your manager been willing to look the other way and give you the time you needed for your partner or your partner’s relatives? Federal Times would like to hear from you. E-mail me at slosey@federaltimes.com if you’d like to talk. If you’re more comfortable with speaking anonymously, that’s fine too.
Federal employees will be able to take leave to attend to their sick or deceased domestic partners beginning July 14, under final regulations issued today by the Office of Personnel Management. Feds also will be able to take up to 13 days of sick leave to care for their domestic partners or their partners’ parents, children or grandchildren. And agencies will be able to advance feds up to 13 days of sick leave if they are out of leave. Take note that these changes will apply equally to both unmarried heterosexual and homosexual domestic partnerships. The Obama administration recently extended long…
The Office of Personnel Management tends to look askance at agencies’ requests for direct hire authority to fill critical needs. OPM asks for reams of information and has some quite specific guidelines for agencies that want to sidestep the normal federal hiring process. The Homeland Security Department, looking to hire federal employees to fill jobs currently done by contractors as part of the government “insourcing” initiative, is trying to tweak the system a bit in order to fill critical needs, DHS chief human capital officer Jeffrey Neal said yesterday at a congressional hearing. DHS is asking OPM for something it…
The Office of Personnel Management has posted nearly 70 recipes from its Feds Get Fit Healthy Recipe Challenge online here. I haven’t had a chance to try any of them yet, but there’s a wide variety of dishes that sound pretty tasty. They’ve got some vegan foods, breakfast foods, turkey and veggie chilis, and even some bison dishes. You can also find Social Security Administration employee Melissa Knoll’s award-winning roasted tomato curry coconut soup with shrimp and peas. This challenge was one of OPM Director John Berry’s “wellness” ideas for encouraging federal employees to take a little more care of…