Tag Archive: department


Senate Republicans call for two-year pay freeze extension

Filed Under: Insurance News
Feb.02, 2012

Senate Republicans on Thursday introduced a bill that would freeze federal pay for another two years and reduce the size of the government by 5 percent through attrition.

The legislation is designed to stave off cuts to the Defense Department budget if sequestration takes effect in 2013, and is the latest attempt by lawmakers to reduce federal compensation and shrink the government workforce in the name of deficit reduction. The Pentagon already is slashing more than $400 billion from its budget and would have to find another $500 billion in savings during the next decade if across-the-board automatic spending cuts take effect next year as mandated by the 2011 Budget Control Act.

The 2012 Down Payment to Protect National Security Act would extend the federal civilian pay freeze through 2014 and would replace every three federal employees who leave government with two hires until the workforce shrinks by 5 percent. The legislation estimates the extended freeze and workforce reductions through attrition would save the $110 billion in spending cuts that Defense would have to make in 2013 if sequestration takes effect.

GOP Sens. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, John Cornyn of Texas, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Jon Kyl of Arizona, John McCain of Arizona and Marco Rubio of Florida introduced the measure.

A press release from McCain’s office specifically cited a recent report from the nonprofit Congressional Budget Office that concluded federal employees are better compensated on average than their private sector counterparts. “During a time of persistent unemployment, stagnant economic growth, and record deficits, it’s inexcusable that federal employees are being compensated so much more than taxpayers in the private sector who subsidize those federal benefits,” the senators said in a statement.

Federal employee unions questioned that CBO report and have voiced opposition to other measures that would further reduce federal employees’ pay and benefits. The House on Wednesday passed a bill that would extend the federal pay freeze for one year. “CBO is clearly the expert on congressional budget scoring but pay comparisons are not its principal expertise; that is the expertise of the Bureau of Labor Statistics,” said National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley. “BLS data have shown a consistent pay gap of 26 percent in comparable public and private sector jobs in favor of the private sector.” American Federation of Government Employees President John Gage called the CBO study “pointless.”

Government employee advocates were similarly disappointed over the House-passed bill to extend the salary freeze. “Extending the federal pay freeze by an additional year would cost federal workers and their families tens of thousands of dollars over the course of their careers, on top of tens of thousands more in forgone income resulting from the current two-year freeze,” National Federation of Federal Employees National President William Dougan said. “This is a damaging development for the 2 million middle class federal workers struggling to get by in this economy just like anyone else.”

In December, House lawmakers introduced a bill similar to the Senate legislation unveiled Thursday. Also called the Down Payment to Protect National Security Act, that bill would reduce the federal workforce through attrition as well.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
read more

Worker productivity growth slowed in 4th quarter (AP)

Filed Under: Insurance News
Feb.02, 2012

WASHINGTON – Workers were more efficient in the final three months of last year, although their gains in productivity slowed from the previous quarter. Slower productivity growth can be a good sign for hiring if economic growth picks up.

The Labor Department said Thursday that worker productivity rose at a 0.7 percent annual rate in the October-December quarter. That’s below a downwardly revised 1.9 percent in the previous quarter.

Labor costs rose 1.2 percent in the final three months of last year, as wages and salaries grew at a faster pace than productivity. Still, inflation-adjusted wages fell 1.2 percent in all of 2011, the steepest annual drop since 1989.

Productivity is the amount of output per hour of work. A slowdown in productivity is bad for corporate profits. But it can be good for hiring if it signals companies aren’t able to squeeze more work out of their existing staffs. When that happens, it often means they must add more workers if they want to grow.

Productivity jumped after the recession, largely because companies boosted output without hiring much. But productivity slowed in 2011, in part because companies hired more workers and worked their staffs longer.

Total hours worked rose last year for the first time since 2007.

In the first six months of 2011, productivity fell largely because consumers cut back on spending in the face of higher food and gas prices. That slowed overall economic growth.

Growth accelerated in the October-December quarter to a 2.8 percent annual rate. That spurred more hiring. Companies added an average of 137,000 jobs per month in the final three months of last year. That was below the third quarter’s average but much higher than the 97,000 added in the April-June quarter.

The average work week ticked up in the final three months of last year, to 34.4 hours.

On Friday, the government reports on January hiring and unemployment. Economists expect that companies added 155,000 net jobs, while the unemployment rate stayed at 8.5 percent unemployment for a second straight month.

Companies found ways to produce more goods and services with fewer workers during the recession. Greater productivity helped them boost profits. But it also allowed them to hold back on hiring after companies slashed millions of jobs during the downturn.

That can make higher productivity painful for workers in the short run. But productivity is important for raising living standards.

Increases in productivity allow companies to pay workers more without being forced to boost the prices of their products, which can cause inflation

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
read more

Treasury exploring new types of debt securities (AP)

Filed Under: Insurance News
Feb.01, 2012

WASHINGTON – The Treasury Department is exploring the idea of issuing two new types of securities as a way of expanding the government’s means of financing operations.

One of the securities would offer a floating interest rate rather than a fixed rate. The other would allow for securities to be auctioned with negative yields, which essentially allows investors to pay the government for the privilege of buying those securities.

Mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have had success selling floating-rate securities.

Treasury officials said Wednesday that their bond advisory committee has recommended both instruments. They expect to make a decision in May.

Treasury also announced that it would auction $72 billion in Treasury securities next week in its regular quarterly refunding. Those securities will include $32 billion in 3-year notes, $24 billion in 10-year notes and $16 billion in 30-year bonds.

Those auctions will be part of the government’s effort to borrow $444 billion in the current January-March quarter, the fifth highest quarterly borrowing operation in history. Borrowing needs have surged as the government has had to fund record budget deficits.

Tags: , , , ,
read more

Data Dreams

Filed Under: Insurance News
Feb.01, 2012

 

The government launched its massive data set trove Data.gov in 2009 with a clear mission: to put information the government was gathering anyway into the hands of private sector and nonprofit Web and mobile app developers.

Once that data was out, the White House imagined, developers would set about turning it into useful products—optimizing Census Bureau statistics for marketers; Commerce Department data for exporters; and Housing and Urban Development Department information for building contractors, mortgage brokers and insurance adjusters. 

When necessary, the government also would be able to prime the pump with agency-sponsored code-a-thons and app development competitions sponsored through Challenge.gov, a White House initiative that paid out $38 million to prize-winning developers during its first year, which ended in September.

But turning government data into private sector products has proved more complicated in practice. 

Some agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, are posting new data sets regularly and rapidly in machine-readable form, but other agencies have shown little interest in devoting dwindling resources to making data more accessible. Agency data publication schedules also are often too slow for the go-go world of mobile apps.  

“The theory behind Data.gov was, let’s move forward when it comes to sharing data,” says Josh Green, chief executive officer of Panjiva, a company that crunches customs data for U.S. businesses that import some of their raw materials. “I think that’s right in terms of what would be good for entrepreneurship, but realistically I don’t think that has filtered down to the agency level.” While Panjiva relies on some Census data, which it downloads directly from the Census Bureau, the company uses mostly Customs and Border Protection data on CD-ROMs that it pays to have delivered every day by FedEx.

Panjiva analyzes that data to determine which overseas suppliers have the strongest track records with U.S. partners and then sells the results to companies looking for new suppliers.

Green jokes about the incongruity of snail mailing digital customs logs, but notes that Panjiva’s upfront work to capture imports data is a big reason the company was able to corner the market.

Another company, Brighter Planet, uses EPA and Energy Department data to build Web and mobile apps that auto-calculate the environmental impact of various activities. The for-profit
company created a product for corporate
MasterCard users to determine the environmental impact of their transactions, and it won a recent EPA Challenge.gov competition by developing a Web app that compares the carbon footprint of flying, driving or taking a train or bus to different destinations.

Brighter Planet grabs data straight from government agencies rather than from Data.gov, says Andy Rossmeissl, the company’s co-founder and product design director.

Data.gov is laudable, Rossmeissl says, but developers’ biggest hurdle with government data isn’t finding it, but getting it quickly and in a form they can use. “That wasn’t the focus of Data.gov and, in general, it isn’t the focus of agencies producing data,” he says. “That’s not because their intentions aren’t great, but they have a history of producing data in a very specific way that goes back to the Federal Register and quarterly releases.”

In some cases, agencies also publish data in difficult-to-manipulate forms such as PDFs, significantly increasing the upfront work for developers who then have to create and organize spreadsheets. And agencies often release new information in a different place—or in a different file format—from historic information, Rossmeissl says. 

There is a human side to Data.gov that tries to expand the project’s mission to address formatting and publishing frequency. Data.gov director Jeanne Holm lists open data “evangelist” as a job description on her LinkedIn résumé. Holm and her five-member staff spend much of their time working as liaisons for developers seeking government data—figuring out if it exists at all in the federal sector, which agency produced it and if there’s a convenient way to release it. To make the job easier, they’ve begun standing up communities of data, organized into topical categories such as energy, health, law and, most recently, oceans. 

The Data.gov team also meets regularly
with about 400 agency “data stewards” to change the way government data is initially created so that it requires less translation and reformatting on the back end. 

Even for agencies committed to issuing quality data in a timely way, there are procedural delays that can take a month or more, Holm says. Part of that delay comes from ensuring scientific and technical data meet standard quality requirements. In some cases, agencies also have to aggregate data at a higher level so snoopers can’t figure out sensitive information. Departments want to avoid publishing so many details that it’s possible to determine, for instance, which student in a small school district is receiving lunch subsidies or which resident of a small town has a sexually transmitted disease.

Requirements that data be accessible to people with disabilities can slow the publication of data with embedded maps and graphics. And everything posted to Data.gov must go through a National Security Council check to ensure it doesn’t disclose sensitive security information when combined with other data.

NSC has flagged fewer than 25 of the roughly 400,000 data sets submitted to Data.gov, Holm says, but the process still is time-consuming.

While Brighter Planet doesn’t pull data directly from Data.gov, Rossmeissl calls the project important as a symbol of the Obama administration’s commitment to digital transparency—visible in other initiatives such as programs to store more government records bound for the National Archives in electronic form and to manage more Freedom of Information Act requests online.

The government also is partnering with India to release Data.gov-in-a-Box, an open source version of the open data site that other nations, states or cities can adopt. “Across the board, this administration has really made open data a priority,” Rossmeissl says. “When you see the effort they’ve put into Data.gov, you can’t argue with that.”

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
read more

Pension fund made whole after investment suspension

Filed Under: Insurance News
Jan.31, 2012

The Treasury Department and the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board have ended a 15-day suspension of investments into federal employees’ pensions, following Friday’s increase of the debt ceiling by $1.2 trillion, as required by last summer’s Budget Control Act.

Treasury suspended investments into the Thrift Savings Plan’s G Fund twice this year. The G Fund is considered the most stable offering in the TSP’s portfolio and is comprised of interest-bearing government bonds.

The fund was made whole Monday, including the $16,944,892 that accrued during suspension, as required by law, according to Tom Trabucco, director of external affairs for the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board. Federal law (Sections 8348 and 8438 of U.S. Code Title 5) requires the Treasury secretary to refill the coffers of the G Fund and the Civil Service Retirement Fund once the issue of the debt ceiling is resolved, and to make up for any interest lost on those investments during the suspension.

Treasury suspended the investments in May 2011 after the government hit its debt ceiling of $14.3 trillion, until Congress increased the limit in August. The department paid roughly $378 in interest on the G Fund from May 16 through Aug. 2, when President Obama signed the 2011 Budget Control Act into law, raising the debt ceiling to $15.2 trillion. The payments were suspended again earlier this month pending another raise in the debt ceiling. On Friday, Treasury raised the ceiling again to $16.39 trillion. Federal employees were not affected by the move, according to the department.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
read more

Treasury estimates borrowing need of $444 billion (AP)

Filed Under: Insurance News
Jan.31, 2012

WASHINGTON – The Treasury Department is seeking to borrow $444 billion in the current quarter through March.

The latest estimate of borrowing plans for the January-March period would make this quarter the fifth highest in terms of government borrowing. Borrowing needs have surged as the government has had to fund record budget deficits.

The borrowing this quarter is $97 billion lower than the government initially indicated it would need. Treasury said Monday that improved tax receipts and lower expected spending were among the reasons for the reduced figure.

Senate Democrats were able to block a Republican move last week to halt the latest increase in the debt ceiling. The borrowing limit rose by $1.2 trillion to $16.4 trillion.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
read more

Homeland security and economic growth are linked, Napolitano says

Filed Under: Insurance News
Jan.30, 2012

The Homeland Security Department is transforming its approach to security and trade, seeking the “sweet spot” between protecting people and “supporting the economic engine that makes America great,” DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said Monday.

In her second annual State of America’s Homeland Security address — televised from the National Press Club — Napolitano gave a bird’s eye of the agenda of the department she said may have the government’s “most complicated set of missions.”

She outlined progress on improving border protection, issued a social justice-tinged call for immigration reform, described the government’s new priorities to create more passenger-friendly airport security, and promoted disaster response that more rapidly rebuilds American communities.

“Trade with our international partners accounts for roughly one quarter of our gross domestic product,” she said. “In other words, our economy is dependent on our ability to secure and facilitate the flow of people and goods to and from our shores.”

In today’s global economy, a flood in Thailand, for example, can change the price of a computer hard drive, she said, which is why it is so important that “security and economic growth go hand in hand.”

Napolitano also said her 230,000-employee department has “matured, thanks to yeoman work” by her predecessors Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, and now takes advantage of international partnerships in 75 countries, giving it “the third largest international footprint of any federal agency.”

On airline security for both passengers and cargo, Homeland Security has shifted from a one-size-fits-all to a risk-based approach, she said. “If we have to look for a needle in a haystack, it makes sense to use all of the information we have about the pieces of hay to make the haystack smaller.”

She cited the spreading use of “trusted traveler” and “trusted shipping” programs that allow accelerated prescreening procedures that save time and cost. “But we must go slowly and make sure security values are not lost while making it easier for passengers,” she said, stressing the need for balance.

Passenger profiling “is not effective law enforcement, because it is not linked to intelligence and diverts resources,” she said, noting she had consulted on the issue with her offices of privacy and civil liberties. Without divulging sensitive detail, she did say a Transportation Security Administration analyst could “narrow the haystack” by noting that a passenger’s travel routes “might be problematic, without looking at all the people from one country,” and hence could be combined with, say, “a pattern of males age 22 to 50″ and prompt scrutiny.

“The Obama administration has undertaken the most serious and sustained actions to secure our borders in our nation’s history,” she said, noting the number of illegal immigration attempts has dropped by 53 percent, while seizures of drugs and weapons are up.

But enforcing existing law is “no substitute for statutory reform,” she said. “Bottom line: Our current immigration system is sorely out of date and needs revision out of fairness of economic necessity.”

On the disaster front, wildfires, Hurricane Irene, floods on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, and tornadoes in Midwestern towns such as Joplin, Mo., set a record in 2011 with 99 disaster declarations. “But the American people are a resilient people, and our role is to be part of that resilience,” Napolitano said.

She commended the Federal Emergency Management Agency for using new alert technologies such as social media and DHS as a whole for helping communities and businesses rebound faster by “hiring locally and buying locally.” Some 30 percent of FEMA contracts went to small businesses, she said.

Napolitano praised the use of technology to thwart cybercrime, noting, the Secret Service, for example, prevented $5.6 billion in potential losses through financial crime investigations. Immigration and Customs Enforcement “disrupted or dismantled more than 140 transnational criminal organizations capable of laundering more than $1 billion in illegal proceeds and illegally exporting 50,000 pieces of controlled technology.”

The DHS Computer Emergency Readiness Team responded to more than 100,000 incident reports and released more than 5,000 actionable cybersecurity alerts to federal, state, and private sector partners, she said.

Taking questions, the secretary declined to rank threats as though they were “Top 10 basketball teams,” but said, “cyberspace is an increasingly busy area.”

On the current budget austerity, she said, “Well, look, anyone can always get up here and say we can use more resources. The key is will we have what we need to protect the economy.”

She commended department employees for suggesting ideas on finding new efficiencies to “consolidate and better coordinate.” Examples she gave included cutting expensive procurement and information technology and publication subscriptions. “We can get leaner and meaner,” she said.

Asked about her status as a female role model, Napolitano encouraged women to run for office, saying, “despite its ups and downs, it is truly rewarding.”

Having spoken of the “shared responsibility” Americans have for keeping the homeland safe, Napolitano described the objects she keeps in her own emergency preparedness bag, including clothes, water, books and key telephone numbers. “I have the king of ready bags,” she said.

Tags: , , , , ,
read more

Proposal extends medical leave to veterans’ families

Filed Under: Insurance News
Jan.30, 2012

Family members of veterans would be entitled to the same leave afforded to family members of current military service members under an amendment to the Family and Medical Leave Act announced Monday.

Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis, along with first lady Michelle Obama, said the Labor Department is proposing statutory amendments to FMLA that would allow a related caregiver up to five years of leave after the service member leaves the military. The current law, passed in 1993, affords this only to family members of those currently serving in the military.

The proposal also extends “qualifying exigency leave” to employees whose family members serve in the regular armed forces. Currently, this applies only to families of National Guard members and reservists.

“Keeping the basic promise of America alive means ensuring that workers, from our servicemen and servicewomen who keep us safe at home to the flight crews who keep us safe in the skies, have the resources, support and opportunities they need and have rightfully earned,” Solis said. “The proposed revisions announced today are an important step toward keeping that promise.”

Military caregivers, including those of veterans, will be allowed 26 workweeks of leave during a single 12-month period to care for a covered service member with illness or injury if the caregiver is an eligible employee and is the service member’s spouse, son, daughter, parent or next of kin. Under the proposed amendment, the leave allowance can apply to conditions that may not arise until after the veteran’s service.

The proposal also extends the amount of time an employee can take off work to spend with a service member who is on medical leave from five days to 15 days.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
read more

State Department drones still patrolling Iraqi skies

Filed Under: Insurance News
Jan.30, 2012

From The Atlantic Wire:

The lead story in The New York Times Monday concerns U.S. surveillance drones, operated not by the Pentagon or the CIA, but by the State Department, that are patrolling the skies over Iraq even after our combat troops have gone home. In the story, Iraqi officials complain that the drones are an affront to their new nation’s sovereignty.

The State Department drones do not carry weapons, but are used as sky high lookouts over the massive U.S. embassy and other consulates. The fact that they can’t shoot missiles is a distinction that is lost on most Iraqis, given the growing American reputation for striking from the sky without warning.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
read more

Recovery Act spurs risk management lessons at Energy

Filed Under: Insurance News
Jan.27, 2012

The Energy Department’s “intensive ramp-up” to spend Recovery Act dollars holds a teachable moment in management, according to its inspector general, whose recent review included the loan guarantee program that drew controversy when one of its beneficiaries, solar firm Solyndra, went bankrupt.

In a recent report on best practices and lessons learned from the department’s management of more than $35 billion to support science, energy and environmental initiatives since 2009, IG Gregory Friedman said he found “some notable successes and some failures.” But overall, he said, Energy’s “all hands on deck” organizational approach was a “concerted effort to implement and execute programs designed to meet the goals and objectives of the Recovery Act.”

A key positive was taking “various steps to enhance its risk management practices to help ensure that programmatic risks were identified and mitigated to the extent possible.”

In reviewing past IG reports since passage of the Recovery Act, the report addressed areas such as accounting and reporting, human capital management, regulatory compliance, and delivery of public services. Some of the less successful efforts were in the area of risk management in the loan guarantee program, which was increased by some $52 billion under the economic stimulus package.

One of its beneficiaries was the California solar energy panel manufacturer, Solyndra, whose bankruptcy in August 2011 could cost the government a half billion dollars. Though a loan program for alternative energy originated during the George W. Bush administration, Solyndra’s loan came under the Recovery Act and was touted by President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden as part of the push for clean energy.

The report noted, “the department’s massive loan guarantee program has been under significant scrutiny,” with aspects “under review by the Office of Inspector General, the Congress and by a special review group empaneled by the White House. The results of these efforts will likely provide data relevant to the direction and operation of this and related programs.”

Among the lessons learned, the IG’s team wrote, is the importance of ensuring that “programmatic decisions are based on the results of an established due diligence process that considers and follows up on identified risks;” that managers “continuously monitor the risk environment and consider the impacts of changes to the risk profile as they evolve;” and that they “implement control measures such as performance metrics and trend analyses to ensure that programs and projects are on track and meeting intended objectives.”

In a statement to Government Executive, Friedman expressed hope that the management issues he raised will be a teachable moment for more than just Energy staff.

“If, after having spent nearly $800 billion in Recovery Act funding — including the unprecedented expenditures by the Department of Energy,” he said, “the nation has not learned a great deal about public policy formulation, what works and what does not, and the ability of the federal government to deliver services efficiently, effectively and with the intended result, a tremendous opportunity will have been missed.”

The report noted that while Energy has obligated $34.6 billion, or 98 percent of its share of stimulus money, it has spent just $21 billion. The lessons, it added, should be useful for the department “for many years to come.”

Tags: , , , , , ,
read more
Powered by WordPress and Motion by 85ideas.