Tag Archive: federal


Cabinet secretaries jab the media and Congress

Filed Under: Homeowners Insurance
May.08, 2012

Employees at the scandal-tarnished General Services Administration are as “disappointed, angry and frustrated as the American people” by the recent revelations of a lavish training conference held in Las Vegas, the agency’s acting administrator said Tuesday. But the irony in all the attention from Congress and the media, added Dan Tangherlini, is GSA is the cost-savings agency and that $820,000 event “doesn’t represent what we do.”

Speaking on the second day of Public Service Recognition Week on a panel organized by the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, leaders of four key agencies defended the federal workforce against what they see as unfair characterizations by journalists and lawmakers.

“In the avalanche of news about GSA and the Secret Service, what is missed entirely is the positive side of the ledger,” said Max Stier, the Partnership’s president and chief executive officer. “We will not get what we want out of government if we constantly tear it down and fail to recognize its accomplishments.”

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood added, “Ninety-nine percent of federal workers come to work for the American people, getting them their Social Security checks, their veterans checks, and helping a member of Congress solve a problem even though he takes the credit. So many good people will never get the headlines.”

The GSA conference “was a great media story, but what has not been a media story is how agencies are saving money,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano noted. “If you’re running an agency, people do have to get together from time to time, and this gets lost.”

She echoed Tangherlini regarding the Secret Service scandal involving prostitutes that preceded President Obama’s April visit to Colombia. “The people most upset were the other Secret Service agents,” she said.

Though it’s an important time to be a federal employee, “it’s tough when you’re working a bazillion hours and are paid below-market rates and you are told you’re incompetent,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said. “The good stories are buried on page five in the lower-left corner and are gone in a few seconds.” Sebelius said HHS leaders are sent “to get outside of D.C. to shine a light on the regional offices to make sure employees know that we know they’re doing terrific work. The press is cynical inside Washington, always going for the ‘gotcha.’ ”

The agency leaders also bashed lawmakers for complicating budgets and time management. At least one chamber of Congress “has people who came to do nothing — that’s what they’ve done last year and a half,” said LaHood, mentioning the long-stalled highway spending bill now in a House-Senate conference. “They were elected to stop good things from happening.” He noted during the six years he spent in Congress, he helped enact two highway bills with bipartisan support.

“There’s a hearing today on the Transportation Security Administration because a few members of Congress are irritated with it,” LaHood said. “But rather than trashing it, my hope is that it would be about but 10 years of protecting the people. Not one plane has been brought down by terrorists. That’s what we’re celebrating this week.”

Napolitano said the need to deal with 100 congressional committees and subcommittees “makes it difficult to balance working with Congress and trying to defend yourself and your job.” She said her 230,000 employees believe in the mission and the public good, but the hearing structure “is designed to point out flaws instead of what’s been accomplished, or what’s next on the table.” It’s also hard to operate without a budget, she added. “Going right up to the edge of closing down the government is not a morale builder,” she said.

At GSA, Tangherlini has led a series of virtual town hall meetings (saving travel costs), which have “sparked good conversations” with employees and the inspector general about ideas for “continuing the momentum” toward innovations during a time of tight budgets. Examples include reforming travel reservations procedures, unifying vehicle fleet management and “doubling down” on sustainability in use of buildings.

Innovations at HHS, Sebelius added, include the use of cellphones and text messaging to help pregnant women seeking prenatal care and smokers trying to quit, inexpensive communications strategies that can save money in health care.

All the agencies are concerned about attracting young people to federal service in an era of fed-bashing, especially with a wave of retirements looming. Among youth, “I see no diminution of interest in public service, and there’s a desire to get things done,” said Tangherlini. “But we have to balance that” with budget constraints.

Homeland Security has a higher education engagement program, led by the president of the University of Maryland, that helps recruit interns and fellows “so we can move them around the department and show career paths,” Napolitano said. She also is working with the Office of Personnel Management to keep talent active.

Sebelius said HHS has tripled the number of young participants in its National Health Service Corps, part of an effort to “make sure there is a pipeline and trajectory of people who stay a long time to move up ladder and learn new skills.” Proposals for federal retirees to come back part time or as consultants are workable, she added, but should be discussed before retirement because of complications such as rules on working while collecting a pension and possible conflicts of interests with new employers.

Panel moderator and longtime broadcast journalist Cokie Roberts, who called the agency leaders “brave” for taking questions about the recent scandals, asked what agencies were doing to make female career employees “comfortable at work without having to abandon the caretaking roles important to them.”

Tangherlini said GSA is “pushing telework, flexible work and technology to strike the right balance.” LaHood said Transportation is reaching out to college-age women and tasking employees with finding one young employee to mentor. Sebelius noted, “men, too, want to be good parents,” so HHS pays attention to work sharing, flexible schedules and convenient day care. “The government can be ahead of the private sector in these amenities,” she said.

Another focus in recruiting is the wave of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, Napolitano said, adding DHS has hired 50,000 veterans through job fairs and websites. “They are ideally suited, have training and [have] shown dedication to government,” she said.

Asked about new efforts in ethics training, Napolitano said, “Is there anything more boring than an entry video you have to watch?” Both she and Sebelius said they are looking at ways to update such orientations using 21st-century communications to focus on both personal conduct and proper care of taxpayer dollars.

All agreed that one key to effective government is successful partnerships — with state and local governments and with other federal agencies. When Transportation was tasked with spending Recovery Act money to create 65,000 jobs and 15,000 projects, LaHood said, “The only way we could do it is with great partnerships with governors and mayors and people in the states. There were no earmarks, no boondoggles, no sweetheart deals. It was all professional, no politics, just building infrastructure and putting American people to work. “

Such cooperation might not attract the press and Congress, LaHood said: “It won’t get the headlines unless something goes wrong. But a lot of stuff goes right!”

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OMB releases second ‘mythbusting’ memo to improve communication with contractors

Filed Under: Insurance News
May.07, 2012

Asserting that “early, frequent and constructive engagement with industry leads to better acquisition outcomes,” the Office of Management and Budget on Monday released Mythbusting 2, a follow-up to guidance sent out in 2011 to encourage agencies and contractors to shed some of their reluctance to communicate.

“Whereas we focused last year on the misconceptions on the part of federal agencies, we want to continue the discussion by addressing in this memorandum the misconceptions that may be held by some in the vendor community,” wrote Lesley Field, acting administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement, in a May 7 memo to chief acquisition officers, senior procurement officers and chief information officers.

Agency recipients were encouraged to share the document with the contracting community, especially new contractors. Copies also were sent to agency counsels and ethics officers.

An attachment laid out seven “myths” that inhibit precontract communication — which is often self-censored for fear of unintentionally disqualifying vendors from winning contracts — and provided best practices agencies can use to help overcome any hesitancy. Examples of myths include:

  • “Misconception — `The best way to present my company’s capabilities is by marketing directly to contracting officers and/or signing them up for my mailing list.’ ”
  • A second is: “Misconception — `Agencies generally have already determined their requirements and acquisition approach so our impact during the pre-[request for proposals] phase is limited.’”

Field said the document also is designed to encourage incorporating more industry input into agency acquisitions, publicizing events that allow contractors and contracting officers to interact, and providing training and awareness to employees and vendors.

The memo cites two agencies as models for outreach to vendors. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission uses quarterly business seminars to educate vendors about the agency, as well as one-on-one discussions between vendors and project managers and technical counseling sessions for market research on specific requirements.

The Education Department holds webinars, advertised in the presolicitation phase, on FedBizOpps.gov, as a “virtual outreach” to increase competition.

Field announced the new document during a panel at a Monday conference on small business federal contracting hosted by the American Council for Technology-Industry Advisory Council.

Asked how agencies were doing in implementing the principles of mythbusting, she said, “they are more mindful of the pre-RFP phase,” participating in more webinars and industry days, while contractors are getting more specific in how they target agencies. “Sometimes it’s just a simple conference call at the right time,” she said. “I’ve seen it happen with 100 folks participating, and I’m pleased.”

The first mythbusting memo, written by then-OFPP administrator Dan Gordon, came out in February 2011.

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Bill would boost TSP contribution rates

Filed Under: Insurance News
May.01, 2012

Some federal employees could see their Thrift Savings Plan contribution levels increase automatically under draft legislation circulating on Capitol Hill.

Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, has sought input on a bill tying automatic enrollment in the government’s 401(k) style retirement plan to annual increases in the amount of money employees contribute to those retirement accounts.

Currently civilian employees who choose to enroll automatically into the TSP contribute a rate of 3 percent of basic pay to the G Fund, unless they choose to terminate their contributions or change the amount. According to Akaka’s draft bill the individual’s contribution rate would increase by 1 percent annually at least until the full match takes effect (typically two years under the current formula). The agency’s full TSP matching rate is 5 percent.

A source familiar with the draft legislation said Akaka could introduce the bill as early as next week.

Similar to auto-enrollment, Akaka’s so-called auto-escalation bill also would allow employees to opt out of the benefit. As of March, 82,632 feds were automatically enrolled in the TSP, according to the the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, which also reported as of that March 2.8 percent of the workforce either declined TSP participation immediately upon hiring or opted out of automatic enrollment.

The board discussed the draft legislation during its monthly meeting on Tuesday. A forthcoming analysis on the impact of auto-enrollment on TSP contribution rates isn’t ready yet, so the board isn’t weighing in at the moment on Akaka’s draft bill.

The legislation builds on the 2009 TSP Enhancement Act which created automatic enrollment, and aims to entice the relatively small group of employees who do not take full advantage of the TSP match to save more. According to the 2011 TSP satisfaction survey, which included more than 8,000 respondents, feds on average reported saving 11.5 percent of their pay to retirement, compared to the 7.3 percent of pay private-sector employees save. Eighty-six percent of those surveyed said they were satisfied with the TSP’s competitiveness with other private sector plans, its accessibility, safety and security — a 5 percent increase from the previous survey in 2008.

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Trickle Down Economics

Filed Under: Insurance News
May.01, 2012

 

The numbers frighten industrialists, depot managers, governors and lawmakers. From the moment President Obama signed the Budget Control Act in 2011, the days of ever rising money to buy weapons, uniforms, armored vehicles, planes and ships to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were over. 

To some it was a nightmarish rerun of Lockheed Martin Chief Executive Officer Norman Augustine’s Last Supper account of that fateful Pentagon meeting with federal contractors at the start of the Clinton administration. The good news was the Cold War was over. But then-Defense Department Secretary Les Aspin admitted there wasn’t enough work left to keep all their businesses afloat and plants open. 

In 2012, these same contractors likely all want to join in chorus with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who in defending her state’s shipyards said, “At some point quantity has a quality all its own.” Instead, companies should be tracking what is going on in the Army and in their own divisions that are doing business with the service. 

Army weapons buying is down by 65 percent since fiscal 2008, when it spent more than $67 billion. The service’s fiscal 2013 budget request for $24.3 billion in modernization and recapitalization funding is lower than the $26 billion it plans to spend this year. It’s an even bigger drop from the previous year’s request for $29 billion. 

The sharp decline before the Budget Control Act signaled a congressional push to end the free-wheeling days of “trust us” spending when Donald Rumsfeld was Defense Department chief. Who knew where the money was really going? 

Oversight is much easier for lawmakers when they look at the base budget. Take the mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle, for example. The philosophy on the Hill is if you really want to keep the MRAP then find a way to pay for it—from factory to field—and, yep, that means the spare parts as well. As wonderful as the Rapid Fielding Initiative and other programs to develop new equipment might seem, few of them are in the base budget. Now they compete for dollars to replace the aging OH-58A Kiowa Warrior reconnaissance helicopter and to fund the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, the replacement for the Humvee. 

Army leaders like Lt. Gen. Robert Lennox, deputy chief of staff for G-8, dispute the idea that the service has been living high on the hog. 

The Army began the decade with a $56 billion hole in modernization accounts earmarked for acquisition, research and development, and science and technology, Lennox said at a recent Institute of Land Warfare breakfast. As early as 2007, then-Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker predicted it would take the Army 30 years to dig out of such a deep procurement hole. 

Slipping Navy ship construction dates and paring back the Air Force’s F-35 purchase drew big headlines even before the fiscal 2013 budget was released. Such measures have been largely accepted in Congress to achieve $489 billion in defense cuts over the next 10 years. But quietly canceling eight Army programs such as the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles, and restructuring or delaying 89 others, including research for a new Ground Combat Vehicle to replace the Bradley, barely drew any media attention. 

Perhaps the millions of dollars for those two Army programs pale in comparison to the billions the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps are pouring into Virginia-class submarines and the Joint Strike Fighter, for which allies are ready to pony up $112 million per copy. 

In the case of the Ground Combat Vehicle, it could have been simple fatigue—think Future Combat Systems and its 2009 cancellation when billions already had been spent. Soon after, then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ ordered military planners back to square one to develop a successor. Been there, done that.

Modernization consumes Army budget talks on the Hill while Air Force hearings focus on the future of the Air National Guard, and Navy and Marine Corps discussions emphasize the new defense strategy in the Pacific and
Middle East. 

At a recent Army budget hearing, Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, whose district includes Fort Bliss, wondered aloud what will happen when the production lines for Strykers, Abrams tanks and Bradleys start shutting down this year. “How can we be sure that capacity will be able to regenerate itself?” he said.

Time and again, before House and Senate committees, Army Secretary John McHugh has admitted there are no guarantees that foreign military sales, the resetting of equipment from Iraq and Afghanistan, and public-private partnerships at government depots would be enough to keep the trained workforce employed. “We are willing to look at all of them,” he said. But there are only so many dollars for personnel and modernization in a zero-sum game.

For many in state houses and Congress who have followed the Army budget, particularly since 2008, it’s also a jobs bill. Employment at the Lima, Ohio, plant where the M1A1 tank is manufactured has fallen from 1,200 to 1,000 since 2011. The Army estimates it will cost $2.8 billion to keep the line open until 2015.

“We don’t want to be in the position the Army was in in 1939,” Lennox said, referring to the days when funding went to keeping saber and bridle manufacturers in business for the horse cavalry rather than to building tanks. “We’ve tried to focus on things that make a difference. It’s gotten more challenging.” 

John Grady, retired communications director for the Association of the United States Army, writes about defense and

national security for various publications.

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Food Safety On the Line

Filed Under: Insurance News
May.01, 2012

 

Before he became an advocate for food inspection workers and a proponent for consumer food safety, Stan Painter worked in commercial slaughterhouses as a chicken grader and quality control agent. He remembers seeing workers put condemned meat back on the line labeled as “edible product,” and he recalls managers telling rank-and-file employees to keep quiet about contamination. “If the plant tells you to falsify the paperwork, and you don’t falsify the paperwork, they are going to fire you,” he says.

He does not believe all slaughterhouses are bad and accepts it’s a tall order to execute best practices on every bird, every time. But Painter and many of the federal inspectors he represents as chairman of the American Federation of Government Employees National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals believe an Agriculture Department proposal aimed at saving money could make an already imperfect system worse.

USDA officials want to expand a program that allows processing plants to replace some federal poultry inspectors with their own hires. The endeavor began as a pilot at 20 chicken and five turkey slaughterhouses in the Southeast and Southwest in 1998. In January, USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service proposed adding about 200 facilities, mostly in the same regions. 

Opponents argue the program jeopardizes safety in part by hastening the chicken inspection process. Under traditional methods, birds move down the line at a rate of 140 per minute, with two inspectors on each side examining them. Under the pilot, this would increase to 175 birds per minute and federal inspectors would not be involved until later in the process, as a final quality check. The program’s expansion could result in the loss of 800 to 1,000 federal inspector jobs through attrition, though this is not something union and consumer food safety group protesters chose to highlight when they took to bullhorns and donned chicken costumes outside USDA headquarters in March. Instead, they emphasized the food safety concerns.Opponents of the pilot say the remaining federal inspectors would be permitted to take only 80 carcasses off the line for closer inspection per shift, from among hundreds of thousands. But Ali Almanza, Food Safety Inspection Service administrator, says an inspector can stop the line at any time. In fact, a routine sampling requirement actually increases the number of carcasses given a second look under the pilot program, he says. 

Opponents also express concern about the qualifications of their would-be commercial replacements. Federal inspectors receive about three years of training to examine carcasses for fecal matter, disease and other contamination that can lead to food-borne illnesses. Some fear private inspectors would not receive adequate training. But Almanza said under the pilot, federal and private inspectors are “very knowledgeable” and would receive four additional weeks of training.

Still, the new process could weaken critical controls, says Tony Corbo, a legislative representative for the consumer rights group Food and Water Watch. “Whether you’re trained or not, you’re not going to be able to catch stuff,” he says. USDA argues the change would be good for both consumers and taxpayers. According to March congressional testimony by Undersecretary for Food Safety Elisabeth Hagen, expanding the pilot would save taxpayers more than $90 million during the first three years and could lower production costs by $256 million annually.

Officials also say the current poultry inspection system is outdated. Like Painter, Almanza is a former FSIS inspector. In his view, the poultry inspection process hasn’t evolved much since the Eisenhower administration, and should change to reflect the increasing uniformity of slaughtered chickens and decreased risk of contamination. “It’s like having 99 [white] pingpong balls on a table and one black one,” Almanza says. “[Defects] are that easy to pick out because there is so much uniformity.”

The debate is more than a decade old: AFGE and other groups challenged FSIS when the pilot began, arguing it violated federal regulations requiring federal inspectors rather than plant employees to conduct final examinations. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ultimately ruled that a modified version of the original pilot complied with federal regulations. 

Under the compromise, FSIS can require faster line speeds since private employees must sort defective carcasses prior to federal inspection. Regulations stipulate what must be inspected and by whom, but do not clearly lay out “exactly what an inspection is,” documents from the appeals court stated. 

FSIS and watchdog groups like the Government Accountability Project and Food and Water Watch provide contradictory analyses of the pilot. Food and Water Watch’s review, conducted via Freedom of Information Act requests, finds some of the plants in the pilot let many birds with defects through the line; a government-sanctioned analysis points instead to lower rates of fecal contamination at pilot plants versus traditional ones.

The agency is gathering public comment on the expansion. If officials decide to move forward, then the changes will take at least one year to implement and plants will be able to choose whether or not to sign up.

Phyllis McKelvey, a retired USDA poultry inspector who worked on the first pilot project in Guntersville, Ala., said she believes the companies involved did their best to maintain quality control standards. But she is concerned that might not continue if the pilot becomes policy. 

“All they do on the pilot is they sit and watch the birds go flying by,” she says. The program is “going to be a total nightmare” if it is expanded nationwide, she adds.

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Fed pension hike set to advance in House

Filed Under: Insurance News
Apr.26, 2012

Federal workers would have to contribute more to their government pensions under a bill the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee approved by voice vote on Thursday.

The legislation requires current federal employees to pay 5 percent more toward their retirement over the next five years beginning in 2013. Members of Congress would have to contribute an additional 8.5 percent to their defined benefit plan over the same time period.

The committee backed the bill in a voice vote. A recorded vote was requested, and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., postponed the vote so the committee could finish considering other pieces of legislation. The recorded vote was pending at the time of publication and is expected to take place  early Thursday afternoon.

The increase for current workers would be phased in incrementally: Feds would pay an extra 1.5 percent in 2013, 0.5 percent more in 2014, and an additional 1 percent in 2015, 2016 and 2017. Federal employees currently contribute 0.8 percent of each paycheck to their pensions. That figure does not include their contributions to Social Security or to their Thrift Savings Plan accounts. The bill would result in employees under the Federal Employees Retirement System paying 5.8 percent of their salaries by 2017 plus contributions to Social Security and TSP accounts. Government workers enrolled in the Civil Service Retirement System — who currently contribute 7 percent of each paycheck to their defined benefit plan — would contribute 12 percent by 2017 under the legislation.

The bill would require employees hired after 2012 to begin contributing the additional 5 percent immediately.

Issa emphasized that the increase in employee contributions are driven by a need to reduce the deficit. The House-passed budget resolution called on the Oversight and Government Reform committee to come up with $79 billion in savings during the next decade. “Let’s make it perfectly clear, reductions in federal pensions are not intended to reflect in any way on the hardworking men and women in the federal workforce.”

In addition, the bill eliminates a current provision in the law that supplements the retirement benefits of feds not subject to mandatory retirement who are covered under the Federal Employees Retirement System and retire before age 62, or the age at which their Social Security benefits can kick in. It would apply to those employees hired after Dec. 31, 2012.

Unions criticized the latest attempt to reduce federal employees’ pay and benefits. “I can assure you that if Congress continues to cut federal employees’ pay and benefits, this country will be unable to attract or retain talented people in the federal government,” National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley wrote in an April 25 letter to committee members. New federal hires already have to pay 2.3 percent more toward their government pensions under a deal Congress approved in February to extend the payroll tax holiday.

“The majority’s recommendation to drastically increase the amount that employees contribute to their defined benefit will almost certainly require them to reduce their ability to save through the TSP,” wrote Beth Moten, legislative and political director at the American Federation of Government Employees, in an April 25 letter to Issa and committee Ranking Member Elijah Cummings, D-Md.

Lawmakers on Thursday also approved a bipartisan amendment to the legislation that would allow retiring federal and Postal Service employees to deposit lump sums from their unused annual leave into their Thrift Savings Plan accounts to boost their savings. The committee has supported the measure, offered by Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., in previous bills.

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Feds continue to hold a dim view of senior leaders

Filed Under: Insurance News
Apr.25, 2012

Leaders of agencies garnered low ratings from federal employees on an array of job satisfaction issues in the latest “snapshot” of the ongoing Best Places to Work in the Federal Government survey by the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service.

Leadership effectiveness scored only 54 points of a possible 100 in the Federal Leadership Challenge study set for release Thursday and based on data from the Office of Personnel Management’s 2011 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey.

Senior leaders received lower rankings than front-line supervisors on such issues as the “ability to generate worker motivation and commitment; encourage integrity; manage people fairly; and promote professional development, creativity and empowerment,” the study said. Senior leaders are “the heads of agencies, departments and their senior management teams.”

But on the upside, the ratings for leadership effectiveness have been trending upward since the study began in 2003, and tangible efforts to improve employee engagement have shown some success.

Still, only 46.3 percent of federal employees governmentwide said they felt personal empowerment with respect to work processes. And 50.7 percent were satisfied with their involvement in decisions that affect their job. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission ranked No. 1 in leadership, followed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and NASA. The Homeland Security Department came in last among large agencies, according to the study, done with support from Deloitte and Hay Group.

The success story the study highlighted is the U.S. Mint, part of the Treasury Department. After years at the bottom of the rankings in employee satisfaction and commitment, the Mint’s score in 2011 rose to 68.5 of 100, up from 56.5 in 2010 — a 21.2 percent gain. In a ranking of agency subcomponents, the Mint also jumped from 201st of 224 in 2010 to 57th of 240 subcomponents in 2011. “Executives from the Mint said they have been empowering employees and giving them greater flexibility to do their jobs,” the analysts said. “They have held regular town hall meetings, and visited all of the Mint’s facilities outside Washington, D.C., to hear and respond to employee concerns.”

The study also noted that federal workers are less satisfied than their private sector counterparts in the information they receive about goings on in the organization. In the closest comparable survey question, nongovernment employees scored 14 points higher. “In the private sector, employees rate leaders higher on communication, have more positive views of their supervisors, feel more empowered and may feel more motivated by leaders than their counterparts in the federal government,” the study said.

“Federal employees are struggling with feeling empowered in their work and roughly half do not hold favorable views of their agency’s leaders,” the analysts concluded. “The low scores given to senior leaders in government, and at particular agencies, should be a call to action.”

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One Reason to Save Your Vacation Time

Filed Under: Insurance News
Apr.25, 2012

Capitol Hill has been buzzing with debate over proposals that affect federal employees. Amid all the discussions, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee managed to squeeze in a few potential changes to Thrift Savings Plan policies.

The panel last week amended a retirement bill to allow federal and postal employees to deposit unused annual leave into their Thrift Savings Plan accounts upon retirement.

“This option has already been available to private sector employees with 401(k) plans since 2009,” said Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., sponsor of the provision. “This amendment would give federal employees the chance to work on rebuilding their TSP accounts to make up for losses they suffered during the financial crisis.”

The committee unanimously approved the overall bill, which allows federal employees to ease into retirement by working part time.

Retirement Funds as Leverage

The oversight committee also passed a measure that would allow the Internal Revenue Service to enforce federal tax levies on civil servants. The provision was included in the version of the surface transportation measure the Senate passed in March, and was the subject of some confusion.

The IRS claimed it could levy funds in Thrift Savings Plan accounts, but the board overseeing the retirement plan believed it was illegal to use funds credited to TSP beneficiaries for anything that did not help them. The Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board sought clarification on the law.

“There has been a conflict between the IRS and TSP over this issue for many years,” said Kim Weaver, the board’s external affairs director. But a 2010 Justice Department opinion found that TSP accounts are subject to federal tax levies, and the board now has reached an understanding with lawmakers.

“We are appreciative that the committee acted to provide this clarification,” Weaver said.

(B)(1) Bargaining Update

In February, we reported agencies were testing (b)(1) bargaining issues — personnel matters not currently required to be up for negotiation with public sector unions.

A report on the pilot program, which the Office of Personnel Management’s Labor and Management Relations Council commissioned, is slated to land on President Obama’s desk in May. Nine federal agencies conducted 12 pilot projects on the feasibility of bargaining over (b) (1) issues, which include numbers, types and grades of employees; and methods, means and technology used for doing an organization’s work. This type of bargaining was practiced under the Clinton administration but suspended under President George W. Bush.

According to a recent Federal Times report, the pilots have been mostly a bust so far.

Many of the bargaining pilots were incomplete by the deadline, or managers failed to collect hard data showing the bargaining style’s benefits to the government. OPM will recommend the administration continue the testing for two more years in its May report to Obama, Federal Times said.

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GSA scandal lends urgency to data transparency measure

Filed Under: Insurance News
Apr.23, 2012

Six months after a measure that would open up agency spending to greater public scrutiny online came out of committee, House lawmakers and an array of open-government advocates are gearing up for a Wednesday vote.

The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (H.R. 2146) was introduced in June 2011 by Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif. It would impose a universal reporting requirement for recipients of federal grants, loans and contracts, while requiring all agencies to use the same formats to publicly share their internal and external obligations and expenditures.

Incorporating lessons on data centralization from the 2009 Recovery Act, the bill would mandate common data identifiers and electronic reporting and impose a $250,000 fine on recipients of federal funds who fail to provide accurate data to agencies. The effort would be led by a new Federal Accountability and Spending Transparency Board.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., on April 19 announced that the bill would be considered under suspension of the rules on April 25. Because it is being brought to the floor under suspension of the rules, it will require a two-thirds majority to pass. “This is an important step in our continuing effort to make government more accountable, accessible and transparent, especially when it comes to the expenditure of taxpayer dollars,” Cantor said on the House floor.

The timing also has been influenced by the unfolding spending scandal at the General Services Administration, whose governmentwide acquisition procedures would be affected by the bill. “American taxpayers deserve to be able to access information about how their money is being spent,” Issa said. “Regardless of where one falls on the ideological spectrum, there is no question that the infrastructure and reporting standards needed to ‘follow-the-money’ have been lacking. The GSA travel and conference spending scandal is a perfect case study.”

After the vote was scheduled, the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight launched an appeal to supporters and fellow watchdogs of government spending to write to their House member to urge passage. The Sunlight Foundation has assembled 23 like-minded organizations to sign a letter with a similar message.

The bill cleared the oversight panel in October after seven hearings and some changes that were sufficient to attract 14 House co-sponsors, including committee ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., and three other House Democrats: Carolyn Maloney of New York, Collin Peterson of Minnesota and Brad Sherman of California.

But a companion bill in the Senate (S. 1222) introduced by Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., has not attracted any co-sponsors and has been idle in the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

“I’m pleased that the House is planning on bringing the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act to the floor this week for a vote,” Warner said in an email to Government Executive. “This legislation has the potential to create a new era of transparency for the federal government, and I will be pushing for the Senate to consider this legislation soon. In light of the recent conference scandal at the General Services Administration, this legislation is even more important. It will help ensure that Congress has better information regarding federal spending to help prevent future waste, fraud or abuse.”

Also backing the bill is a set of information technology companies called the Data Transparency Coalition. The group’s executive director, Hudson Hollister, until recently a Republican counsel on the House oversight panel, told Government Executive that “prospects are very good for passage in the House, and there is an unprecedented level of support from the transparency community.” But he acknowledged the bill has not moved far in the Senate, and noted meetings between Senate and House staff have revealed “some concerns about costs and the possibility of achieving some standardization without the need for legislation” on technological mandates, which, he added, can be counterproductive.

Another key backer of the bill is Earl Devaney, the longtime inspector general and Recovery Board chairman who recently retired and is now advising Reznick Government. He wrote in his final Chairman’s Corner blog in December that “the reform bill faces an uphill battle, primarily because some in the bureaucracy prefer the status quo — a hodgepodge of data collection and display sites that, frankly, makes no sense at all unless you believe your government should confuse you.”

Daniel Schuman, policy counsel for the nonprofit Sunlight Foundation who coordinated the letter, said, “we haven’t heard any agency resistance” and don’t expect a lot of federal managers to speak out against such new transparency efforts, given the recent revelations about GSA. The centralized spending reports, he added, would be useful for inspectors general as well as for “agency budget officers in keeping track of the spending in the first place.”

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No leeway on contractor campaign gifts

Filed Under: Insurance News
Apr.20, 2012

A district judge’s rejection of a request by three federal contract employees to temporarily relax a long-standing ban on contractor campaign contributions likely prolongs the uncertainty on the issue during the first full election cycle since the Supreme Court’s landmark 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling on corporations and politics.

On April 16, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg denied a request for a preliminary injunction filed by three corporate employees — two under contract with the U.S. Agency for International Development and one who supports the Administrative Conference of the United States, an independent agency that uses research and private sector expertise to improve the government’s rule-making.

As reported by the Associated Press, the three are suing to prevent the Federal Election Commission from enforcing a 70-year-old ban on direct corporate giving to candidates, which they say is a violation of free speech.

A ban specifically aimed at contractors was enacted to prevent the use of donations to enhance chances of winning future contract awards. The Obama administration for more than a year has been mulling an executive order — a draft of which was leaked — that would require greater disclosure of campaign gifts by corporations involved in federal contracting.

The judge’s denial of an injunction was “disappointing, but not surprising,” said Alan Chvotkin, executive vice president and counsel of the Professional Services Council. “It’s an adverse ruling and not a minor one,” but its effect is that the case now continues on the merits, he added. PSC sides with the three contractors because of ambiguity on what the ban on campaign gifts means, even though they represent “a narrow segment” of the contractor community, Chvotkin said.

Trey Hodgkins, senior vice president for national security and procurement policy at TechAmerica, said the ruling “muddies the water” on political activity and the prospects for a possible Obama order on contractor disclosure. “They seem to be in conflict,” he said. “If contractors can’t give campaign donations, why require them to disclose?”

The judge’s decision was welcomed by Scott Amey, general counsel of the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight. “Mixing politics and contracting is bad for taxpayers and a recipe for corruption,” he said in an email. “Not only was the court sound in denying the request to lift the ban on contractor campaign giving, but I would love to see the prohibition expanded to include contractor political action committees and the listing of employers’ names for individual donors, which are alternative ways for contractors to gain access and favor in Congress.”

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