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Return to Article: OPM releases agency-specific results of workforce survey

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  Well, I have just passed the 20 year mark in the government and cant wait to retire! This abortion of an agency called ICE disgusts me! I am a legacy US Customs Special Agent that has gone from working quality investigations to watching agents chase lettuce pickers and perverts!The call us Homeland Security, but what jurisdiction do we have to work terrorism? NONE! Why does Chertoff get in front of the cameras when another event happens? Should be FBI if they have all of the authority am I wrong? How can Homeland Security exists without an agency that actually investigates threats to the US? If you think an alien smuggling investigation is going to stop the Metro system from getting blown up, you may actually be in ICE management!! Abolish this agency and start over.

  Govexec reader Posted July 30, 2007 9:01 AM
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  In 2005, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission estimated the total federal workforce at 2.5 million excluding 1.5 million active duty military personnel.

  OPM's 2006 workforce survey appears to have targeted around 16% of that 2.5 million workforce. Approximately 9% of the workforce population found the OPM survey worthy of a response. How very illuminating - another OPM tour de force. Bravo!

  GovExec.com reader Posted February 2, 2007 1:25 AM
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  Another report putting DHS in the basement. As a taxpayer, I am outraged! As a legacy Customs and now ICE S/A I continue to be disgusted! Anyone who is familiar with these types of situations knows there are certain steps to dealing with problems. These simples steps are:

  1. Admit there is a problem. DHS upper management continues to ignore that any problems exist.

  2. Identify and understand the problem. Several internal and numerous external and media reports have identified significant problems that exist within DHS. No steps have been taken to understand what the root cause of the problem is. We keep treating the symptoms, but not the disease because management does not want to hear from employees about what is causing the disease.

  3. Come up with viable solutions, a realistic timetable for implementation.

  And to get the ball rolling, don't ask senior managers what the problems are and how to correct them. If you want to find out what's going on, ask the field employees without any managers around. We have valid points, valid reasons, and reasonable solutions.

  The one thing I can tell you that's been missing since DHS inception is ANY communication between lower level employees and headquarters management.

  The longer HQ waits to address our systemic problems, the closer we get to total collapse.

  GovExec.com reader Posted February 1, 2007 11:53 PM
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  I guess I will be following the rest of my generation into retirement next year even thought I could have stayed an additional 5 years when I would be mandatory, but all the challenges are gone, all the fun is gone all the respect for the department is gone,(were nothing but cleanup crews for other federal, state and locals) my first, second, and senior managers are gone(legacy INS).

  ICE managers don't care(almost all Legacy Customs) I don't blame them they didn't sign up to be Immigration managers, and they could care less about legacy INS agents what's left of them. I just wished I would have had the time in to have retired back in March of 2003. To all my retired colleagues make room for me, to those few that are left behind will see you soon, and those that must stay the best of luck to you all.

  GovExec.com reader Posted February 1, 2007 8:07 PM
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  Does anyone really think that DHS and, more specifically, ICE management cares or will do anything about the results reflected in this survey. ICE management is more concerned with the issue of the day, immigration, and keeping Mr. Burns happy. ICE management sold out the working agents by putting important financial and narcotics investigations on the back burner in order to make headlines arresting illegal alien workers.

  ICE headquarters "reorganized" in order to give more weight to immigration issues while decimating other former Customs investigative divisions. The SES's will always keep their jobs, but will force the street agents into jobs they did not want or to seek employment elsewhere. And those of you who think that the FBI will pick up the slack; they're more interested in gangs than terrorists financing investigations, which ICE has been banned from working.

  GovExec.com reader Posted February 1, 2007 2:53 PM
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  DHS scored last out of 36 agencies surveyed in job satisfaction, and near the bottom in a number of other categories. DHS management said that the results "deliver a clear and jolting message from managers and line employees alike," and viewed these results, which were not significantly changed from the 2004 survey, "with concern." Well what do you expect when you take workers from numerous agencies, which had little or nothing in common, and force them together? Brainless politicians destroyed agency culture and pride, and just expected workers, many of whom had 20 years or more on the job, to learn entirely new jobs, without considering the workers' previous expertise, training, and experience at all. When employees tried to point out the idiocy of this merger/reorganization, they were either ignored, or told to get on board or else look for another job. The new ICE buzzword is "integration," in which legacy Customs employees are forcibly transferred into legacy INS groups, and vice versa. After a whole career spent doing Customs work, does anyone really expect me to embrace immigration work, which I am not only not trained for, but have absolutely no desire to do at all? If I had wanted to be an immigration agent, I would have taken that job instead of the one I spent virtually my entire adult career on! Imagine a psychiatrist being told one day that he was now a proctologist. Do you think he'd be happy? Yet DHS is perplexed by the low morale. This from an agency with constant turnover in management positions in the less than four years it has been in existence. If DHS management truly wants to know why morale is in the toilet, it need look no further than the employees who were forced into this mess without any say at all, and who have seen their careers and lives changed for the worse!

  GovExec.com reader Posted January 31, 2007 3:26 PM
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  Garbage in - garbage out.

  It is amazing how people think survey results are the gospel truth. The way a question is worded, the order of the questions, and the scope of the survey, even what part of the day someone takes the survey have a huge impact on survey results.

  And why shouldn't tiny agencies with large populations of engineers and attorneys making GS-15 non-supervisory salaries outscore huge agencies every time.

  It is just silly comparing apples to oranges but the auditors and accountants running OPM don't have a clue of the real differences in the federal sector.

  GovExec.com reader Posted January 31, 2007 9:48 AM