For feds tired of the daily commute in and around Washington (as well as traffic choke points around the country) Telework Week has grown increasingly popular. Run by the Telework Exchange and held annually, feds pledge to telework at least part of the week. Last year there were about 40,000 pledges to telework while this year the number has increased to more than 66,000. Here are some more tips provided by the Telework Exchange. 66,688 Total number of pledges $5,301,811 Total amount saved by teleworking during Telework Week 6,453,604 Number of pounds of pollutants saved during Telework Week 3,226.80 Number…

The Smithsonian broke ground on the National Museum of African American History and Culture Wednesday – capping off a years-long process with a ceremony at the corner of 14th street and Constitution avenue. The 380,000-square-foot museum will sit on a five-acre site near the Washington Monument and will cost about $500 million to build. “With this groundbreaking we move closer toward creating a museum to make manifest the dreams of many generations,” said Lonnie G. Bunch III, founding director of the museum. The museum was created in 2003 by an Act of Congress, establishing it as part of the Smithsonian…

UPDATED: As expected, the bill extending the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance easily passed Congress today. Federal unions, employee groups, and fed-friendly lawmakers are enraged, however, because the bill would drastically hike future feds’ pension contributions from 0.8 percent to 3.1 percent. The bill would also make future lawmakers and their staffs receive the same pension rate as everyday feds. But Rep. Dennis Ross, R-Fla., who has been pushing hard to cut Congress’ more-generous pensions and increase feds’ retirement contributions, voted against the bill. Said Ross: We should stop congressional pension perks because it is the right thing to…

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., this morning took the House floor to denounce a bill steeply hiking the pension contributions for new and rehired federal employees. But he didn’t stop there. Hoyer’s stemwinder of a speech turned into a condemnation of “the most anti-federal worker Congress that I have served in.” Hoyer also says the 0.5 percent pay raise proposed by President Obama is pretty much dead, and that House Republicans have no intention of breaking the pay freeze. So get ready to tighten your belts for a third year.

The General Services Administration provided more details on Tuesday about a new mandatory security assessment program for federal cloud providers. A 47-page concept of operations document about the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) managed by GSA, details how agencies and cloud vendors can initiate the FedRAMP process, how the program will work and what is required of all parties involved in the process. One thing vendors should expect are new service level agreements that hold them legally responsible for meeting and maintaining FedRAMP requirements, according to the document.    But GSA doesn’t clearly define what services will be available…

I had the great pleasure Monday of hosting a public conversation with esteemed federal government expert Dr. Paul Light, NYU professor, former Brookings Institution fellow, author of numerous books, and Washington Post blogger. Our conversation was sponsored by the Coalition for Effective Change and took place at the offices of one of my favorite organizations, the Partnership For Public Service. The discussion was titled “Changes to the Civil Service: Hollow Government or Necessary Reforms?” and it posed the following questions: Is the federal workforce too large? Should Congress cut agency resources across-the-board? Does the civil service need to be reformed? How? Light, author of “The True Size of…

The communications director for Sen. Rand Paul, R-K.Y., said on Twitter that the Senator was detained by TSA while at the airport in Nashville. According to Fox News: Moira Bagley, the senator’s spokeswoman, told Fox News that Paul called her after he went through a “full body screener,” described to her as a body-imaging machine, and was stopped for an anomaly around his leg. The senator lifted his pants leg to show nothing was there and offered to go back through the machine, but the TSA official said no, only a full-body pat down would suffice. Will update as more…

On Jan. 18 the State Department named Kareem Abdul-Jabbar a “global cultural ambassador” to help reach out to young people worldwide. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said to Abdul-Jabbar in a press conference that he would be able to connect to young people in a world where the population keeps getting younger overall. “We from time to time ask distinguished Americans to take on an additional responsibility in their busy lives as a cultural ambassador for our country,” Clinton said. For those of you who didn’t know, Abdul-Jabbar is the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, with 38,387 points. So this brings…

Back by popular demand, it’s a roundup of some of the more exotic items being sold by federal agencies. Whether its the U.S. Marshals seizing property or the General Services Administration trying to get rid of some random miscellany that for some reason wound up in an auction, you know you’re just itching to crack open that paypal account and pony up. Lets begin. #5 PRINTS AND PAINTINGS (Mostly of birds, but there is also a fish and apparently a cheetah?) Current bid: $2,134 Now I know what you are thinking. That seems like an awful lot of money for…

Last Friday morning, President Obama heralded long-awaited plans for a government consolidation involving a half-dozen agencies with some connection to business and trade policy. Late that day, the Office of Management and Budget posted a memo instructing those same six agencies–and a few other bureaus to boot–to inventory all their programs with the ultimate goal of reducing duplication and overlap. Coincidence? Not exactly, according to an OMB spokeswoman. The newly ordered inventory is in fact a pilot project to figure out how to do the government-wide program count required by the Government Performance and Results Modernization Act signed last year, the spokeswoman, Moira Mack,…