Browsing: John Berry

Here’s an intriguing nugget from the U.S. Postal Service’s latest quarterly report: Even as the Obama administration agrees that the Postal Service is owed a huge refund on past payments to its pension program, the Office of Personnel Management—headed by Obama appointee John Berry—is requiring it to shell out more for current payments. For the first quarter of fiscal 2011, the Postal Service’s contributions to the Federal Employees Retirement System, or FERS, rose by $24 million—from $1,469 million to $1.493 million—versus the same period in fiscal 2010, even though the USPS workforce continued to shrink, the report says. The reason,…

OPM Director John Berry gave an interesting speech this afternoon to the Human Capital Management Federal conference in Vienna, Va., part of which focused on performance accountability. Berry said he’s starting to look at what “sticking points” are keeping the government from disciplining and firing poor performers. But while Berry made it clear slackers must be held to account, he also said he doesn’t want the government to go overboard: I am not an advocate of the GE model where you’ve got to fire 10 percent of the workforce a year. I wouldn’t want to work in a company like…

OPM Director John Berry earlier today, on the chances for resolving the ongoing brouhaha over federal pay: I’ve been in this business 25 years, and in 1985, the same ideological argument was drawn. I don’t expect any sort of kumbaya moment where suddenly this 25-year battle is drawn to a conclusion. I think we might have a better shot at Secretary [of State Hillary] Clinton succeeding in the Middle East.

The Combined Federal Campaign season begins today, and Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry is hoping to get as many feds participating as possible. Berry yesterday sent a memo to agency leaders asking them to encourage employees to donate to charities through the CFC, and asked them to make a particular effort to educate newly-hired feds. Berry said he’s worried that when older feds — many of whom have probably been donating for years — retire, the CFC will see a drop in donations unless younger feds take the baton. He suggested leaders send e-mails to their employees, including…

I’ve had the nagging feeling lately that this never-ending debate over federal salaries is, deep down, really just a Rorschach test for how someone feels about the government. And the Cato Institute’s latest blog on the subject has some interesting comments that lend credence to my theory. Cato budget analyst Tad DeHaven on Tuesday fired back at OPM Director John Berry’s recent assertions that Cato and other federal critics are playing fast and loose with the facts to support their political viewpoints. DeHaven goes over some familiar points — federal perks and benefits are much more generous than in the…

Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry released a statement last night disagreeing with recent stories that find federal employees are paid vastly more than employees in the private sector. Berry’s arguments largely track with points made by other OPM officials Friday afternoon. Here’s Berry’s full statement: Recent press stories regarding pay for Federal employees compared to private sector workers are unfair and untrue.  Simply put, these stories have compared apples to oranges.  Federal workers are not paid double the private sector.  The Cato Institute and USA Today stories quoting Cato staff (and similar statements from the Heritage Foundation) look…

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 –…

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…

The FEMA for Kids website is an endless source of entertainment for me. There’s no other site that so perfectly encapsulates how clueless the government can be when it attempts to pander to children, as last year’s 9/11 coloring book kerfuffle showed. I just stumbled upon its “Careers for Kids” page, which apparently seeks to get elementary school-age children excited about jobs in disaster response. But most of the photos are of feds sitting at their desks, doing work they describe in stultifying government-ese. Take William Koplitz here, FEMA’s photo desk coordinator. Part of his job is taking photos for…

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…