AUTHOR ARCHIVES
HHS Unveils Simplified Insurance Form Amid Attacks on Obamacare
April 30, 2013 The Health and Human Services Department team implementing the Affordable Care Act on Tuesday unveiled a shortened and simplified application form to enter state health insurance exchanges established by the law. Republicans critics, meanwhile, continued efforts to repeal the law. At a news conference, officials from HHS’s Centers for Medicare ...
Ruling in TSA Air Marshal Case Hailed by Whistleblower Advocates
April 30, 2013 An appeals court decision in favor of a Transportation Security Administration whistleblower was welcomed by legal advocacy groups as a development that strengthens the federal Whistleblower Protection Act, which was amended last year. In one of the government’s longest-running whistleblower controversies, the U.S. Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit on ...
Did FAA Play Politics in Applying Sequester Law?
April 30, 2013 Last week’s successful push to cancel air traffic controller furloughs has drawn cheers from the flying public, lawmakers, airlines and unions. But with the stage now set for disputes about whether other programs deserve to be spared the blunt blade of sequestration, the Federal Aviation Administration’s handling of its cutbacks ...
Homeland Security Faulted for Program Fragmentation
April 29, 2013 This story has been updated. Ten years after it began the merger of 22 federal agencies, the Homeland Security Department has a ways to go in streamlining management and curbing program overlap, the Government Accountability Office said on Friday. Out of 1,800 recommendations GAO has made over a decade to ...
Reinventing Government -- Two Decades Later
April 26, 2013 The team has long since disbanded, its Washington office on 17th Street Northwest now housing the Combined Federal Campaign, and its papers relegated to a website at North Texas University—complete with an alumni directory. That bygone entity? The Clinton administration’s National Performance Review, which was re-christened during President Clinton’s second ...
Foreign Service Veterans Seek to Dispel the Myths
April 26, 2013 Veteran diplomats who have braved war zones, terrorism, bureaucracy and personal family crises appeared on Capitol Hill Friday to offer personal insight into the nature and value of life in the U.S. Foreign Service. The purpose of the event, said Susan Johnson, the president of the American Foreign Service Association ...
Obama Names FTC Economist as Regulatory Office Chief
April 26, 2013 President Obama on Thursday announced his nomination of Howard Shelanski, an economist and law professor currently heading the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Economics, as administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. That position was vacated last August by Cass Sunstein, who returned to academe, and ...
Clapper’s Near-International Incident
April 26, 2013 Highlights of Thursday’s Presidential Rank Awards banquet at the State Department included recognition of an apparently unprecedented third distinguished executive award bestowed on John H. Thompson of the Veterans Affairs Department, as well as a fabulous performance of doo-wop classics by a quintet of Naval Academy Midshipmen called The Skivs. ...
Presidential Rank Award Winners Announced
April 25, 2013 Star federal executives who together saved the government some $94 billion were honored on Thursday for receiving the Presidential Distinguished Rank Awards for 2012, the smallest number of recipients in recent years. The annual awards are presented by the president to senior federal managers. The Senior Executives Association Professional Development ...
House Republicans Pressure GSA to Sell Washington Warehouse
April 25, 2013 In the latest of a two-year series of field hearings at vacant federal properties, a House Oversight subcommittee on Thursday grilled the General Services Administration over how long it is taking to sell off a vacant warehouse in Southeast Washington near the Navy Yard. “I’m continuing again to try to ...
Furlough 'Consistency and Fairness'
Innovation in Government Dips
TSP Funds Stay Positive in April
5 Agencies with the Most Disconnected Leadership
No Bonuses for VA Benefits Execs
Will You Be Furloughed?
