Over the last few days the IRS has become the focus of the media after evidence that some employees targeted specific political groups seeking a certain type of non-profit status. Lawmakers have called or hearings or the firing of those employees while outside groups have cried foul over their treatment by the IRS. So what happens now? How bad is it? Is this a major scandal or the standard procedure for IRS enforcement of these tax-exempt groups? For all of you federal employees out there feel free to chime in about how you feel about the unfolding story or comment…
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We had a great response from all of you readers last time we did this so we are opening it up for another round of comments from fellow feds. Federal employees have a lot to deal with. Congress has slashed budgets governmentwide while the sequester has forced agencies to initiate furloughs. Feds are being asked to do more than ever with fewer resources and are being stretched to the limit. But beyond all that, it seems that some federal employees are working in barely functioning facilities. There have been stories of mold, exploding toilets, cracked ceiling tiles and leaky plumbing.…
One morning in August 2011, the vice president of an information technology contractor for the federal government awoke, checked his BlackBerry and noticed something strange. Overnight, as court records would later go on to describe, someone had sent an email from the unnamed executive’s work account to a former employee. An internal investigation soon led to a federal probe by the FBI and the General Service Administration’s Office of Inspector General. Now, nearly two years after that unusual email, the former employee, Robert Edwin Steele, 38, stands convicted by a jury in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., of 14…
Kathleen McGrade was a contract specialist inside the State Department, but prosecutors say she didn’t live like one. Steering tens of millions of dollars in work to a company controlled by her husband, McGrade bought a yacht, penthouse condo and lots of jewelry, according to charges unsealed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Virginia. McGrade, 64, and her husband, Brian C. Collinsworth, 46, both of Fredericksburg, Va., face up to 20 years in prison on charges stemming from what authorities called a “secret scheme” by the couple to steer more than $60 million to a company they controlled. Authorities said…
Every year in May people across the country join together to recognize the work done by federal employees. Public Service Recognition Week – organized by the Public Employees Roundtable – will be held May 5 to 11 and will include a public town hall meeting with Cabinet secretaries and a congressional breakfast to announce the finalists of the Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals. The Federal Times will also be running several pages worth of stories about hard-working federal employees and their contributions to their agencies, missions and to the good of the country. Here is a video of…
The Defense Information Systems Agency is one step closer to standing up cloud broker services for the Defense Department. As DoD’s cloud broker, DISA will manage the use, performance and delivery of cloud services and negotiate contracts between cloud service providers and DoD consumers. DISA announced Tuesday that it has developed a process for gathering and assessing DoD’s cloud computing requirements, evaluating vendors’ cloud offerings against contract requirements and has created a catalog for cloud services. In a June 2012 memo, DoD Chief Information Officer Teri Takai said all DoD components must acquire government or industry-provided cloud services using DISA, or obtain a…
Put all government security clearance holders together and you’d have the second-largest city in the United States, according to the latest annual numbers from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. As of October, the number of federal employees and contractors allowed coveted access to secret information totaled almost 4.92 million, an increase of about 1 percent over the preceding year. Of that total, about 3.5 million were feds, augmented by almost 1.1 million contract employees, the ODNI report said. There were also about 300,000 cleared individuals who fell in the category of “other,” meaning that records didn’t make…
May 5 marks the beginning of Public Service Recognition Week. For this occasion, Federal Times invites you to share your thoughts on the state of federal public service. These are trying and uncertain days for federal employees. Their compensation and contribution to the nation are under scrutiny like never before. Public support for federal employees is low. The nation’s leaders are engaged in an important debate on how to readjust the size and role of government. Meanwhile, federal employees are retiring in large numbers. We invite you to write a short, candid essay — between 300 and 500 words —…
Have you ever considered leaving your job? We know a lot of you have, whether for financial reasons or because you didn’t like the work environment. In the 2012 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey many of you filled out, you were asked: Are you considering leaving your organization within the next year, and if so, why? How many of you said you were considering it? Did you go through with it or did you stay? What are the main reasons you would want to leave? For the people out there who wanted to stay, what is the main reason that keeps…
Federal Times would like to find out how you feel about your managers — from your frontline boss to your agency’s head in Washington. With the sequester hitting, budgets getting slashed, and morale plummeting, are your bosses helping you make the best of a bad situation? Or are they only making things worse? Sound off below, or e-mail amedici@federaltimes.com. If you’d like to remain anonymous, that’s fine.