The five healthiest federal chefs in the Washington area will square off Wednesday afternoon at the Office of Personnel Management’s headquarters. The finalists in OPM’s Feds Get Fit Healthy Recipe Challenge will cook their original, tasty meals for judges, and the winner will be published in a special Feds Get Fit cookbook. Recipes will be judged by OPM Director John Berry, nutritionist and chef Robyn Webb, Top Chef finalist Carla Hall, and former New England Patriot Darryl Haley. Berry has made encouraging federal employee wellness a top priority at OPM. The finalists come from the Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development and…
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I’ve made no secret of my skepticism about the Obama administration’s purported desire to “make government cool again.” But Matt Collier, a senior advisor to Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry, is sticking with it, and at IRMCO this morning threw out a recruitment pitch I honestly had never considered: You know there’s someone in the Inspector General’s office at Homeland Security who has to do penetration tests. How cool is it to try to sneak a gun through airport security?
Traffic’s gonna be ugly next week in Washington — way uglier than usual. President Obama and the leaders of more than 40 other countries will be meeting at the Washington Convention Center Monday and Tuesday for a major nuclear weapons summit, and several nearby streets will be completely closed. So the Office of Personnel Management is advising Washington-area federal employees to telework or use alternative work schedules on Monday and Tuesday. The road closures are likely to snarl traffic throughout downtown Washington, and parking restrictions, detoured buses and the temporary closure of the Mount Vernon Square Metro Station won’t help either. OPM…
As you may have heard by now, many senators are proposing to back off of creating a government-run health care plan to cover uninsured Americans and instead want to task the Office of Personnel Management with running a smorgasbord of private health insurance plans that would serve Americans needing coverage. Senators appear to be modeling the idea after the existing Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), the health insurance program that serves about 8 million federal employees, retirees and their families. Do you think that’s a good idea? Is OPM up to the challenge? Do you think such a plan…
Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry and Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Md., tomorrow morning will announce a new program to forgive the student loans of people who work in the public and nonprofit sectors for 10 years. Sarbanes’ Public Service Loan Forgiveness Option will cover civil servants, as well as teachers, some health professionals and public interest attorneys. And beginning July 1, people enrolled in the program might also be able to lower their monthly student loan payments based on a debt to income ratio. Take a look at this online calculator from the Education Department to find out if you might qualify for…
Federal agencies will start collecting food nationwide under the Feds Feed Families program this week, the Office of Personnel Management said. Canned and other unperishable food items will be picked up the last Friday in June, July and August, but agencies will put out cardboard collection bins a few days earlier, OPM Director John Berry and Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., said at a press conference at a Northern Virginia food pantry. OPM itself already has filled the 10 cardboard bins it has at the entrance to its Washington headquarters three times over, Berry said. The government hopes to collect 1 million pounds of food…
The Office of Personnel Management has a lofty goal for federal workers this summer, challenging them to donate one million pounds of food to the Capitol Area Food Bank. OPM Director John Berry and Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., will announce details of the “Feds Feed Families” national food drive Tuesday afternoon at Food For Others’ Virginia warehouse in Fairfax. They’ll be joined by Lynn Brantley, director of the Capitol Area Food Bank. President Obama has called upon all Americans to give back to their local communities, and the federal workforce has quickly mobilized. This is an unprecedented undertaking by federal…
The Office of Personnel Management has buried the hatchet with Hewitt Associates over a faulty retirement calculator, according to a statement Hewitt released earlier today: The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and Hewitt have settled their dispute related to the implementation of the RetireEZ program. OPM has rescinded its October 16, 2008 termination of the contract for default and the contract has now been terminated by mutual agreement. We’re happy this matter has been resolved and we believe both parties are pleased with the outcome. We look forward to continuing to deliver outsourced retirement solutions for our current and future…
The Washington Post’s Al Kamen reports this morning that John Berry, director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Zoological Park, has accepted an offer by President-elect Barack Obama to become director of the Office of Personnel Management. Berry previously served as executive director of the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation, a congressionally chartered nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of the nation’s wildlife, and before that, as assistant secretary of the Interior Department for management. In the mid-1990s he directed government relations for the Smithsonian and, between 1985 and 1994, served as legislative director for Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md. Among the…
The Office of Personnel Management plans to release the results of the 2008 Federal Human Capital Survey at a Jan. 8 news conference. Check back with Federal Times that afternoon to find out what the federal work force had to say.