The Week in Comments: Muffin scandal, attrition and telework
The best in reader reaction to recent articles.
A roundup of some of the comments received this week in the GovExec.com Mailbag. All comments are presented in their original, unedited form.
On Justice watchdog issues corrected report on muffin scandal
Excuse me but there are rules and regulations governing conferences which apparently DOJ event organizers forgot to read or at worst, ignored because management wanted this or that. One would think DOJ could do a better job of policing themselves than any other agency but apparently not.
151 pages to determine the cost of a muffin? Where's the real waste of money?
How much you wanna bet this never makes it to the news reports like the original erroneous report did.
Okay, just how much did the muffins cost?
Must have been bad muffins...they keep coming up.
On Play of the Day -- Letterman: Herman Cain has a 0-0-0 chance of being president
If a republican or a person outside the MSM made these types of remarks about a democrat, they would be lambasted as racist or pushing a negative view.
Agree with the other posters. What's up with this feature? What does it have to do with Gov employment. Who cares what direction the Comedy channel and lame stream media wish to push this country, i.e. solialism. Is this the direction GovExec wishes to push us as well? I am not amused.
These light pokes brighten my day. Leno and Letterman look for the funny in political news and bring it to our front page. Keep them coming and THANKS!
There's a relatively simple solution to your disdain for this feature. Don't click on the link and don't read it. Some of us still have a sense of humor.
On GSA inaugurates updated telework policy
This is wonderful news. And, it's great that GSA is leading the way in showing how telework is a positive option instead of a negative one. However, until organizations are held accountable for NOT having an "active" telework policy in place and running, telework will still be considered a luxury, by some organizations, in which it is not promoted nor encouraged. Thank goodness I work in an organization which promotes a healthy work-life balance including telework.
Telework works for the people who already do their jobs. Telework for the slackers gives them extra opportunity to babysit their children at the Government's expense. Supervisors do not have the stomach or the support from their management to stop those that clearly abuse the telework privilege and cheat the taxpayer. We were asked to provide examples of successful telework and not to mention the examples of when it doesn't work, because they said the administration is only wanting positive feedback.
Do you think you could teach the Corps of Engineers this concept? Supervisors around here are scrambling to see how many positions they can identify as NOT eligible for telework, despite the fact three-quarters of the workforce do exactly what you described--present!
Sitting at home on a 2 hour snow delay along with thousands of employees in the Colorado Springs area. I'll get paid for sitting at home, drinking coffee. If we had a telework policy, I could be productive right now. Instead, I'm catching up on Gov't Executive.
On Redesigned job search website attracts barrage of complaints
The filters don't work right. It totally ignores the filter for the jobs posted in the last day, last 3 days, etc. If you're lucky enough for the filter to somewhat work, then the page count isn't right. I'm an IT specialist and wouldn't think of releasing software without testing it more thoroughly.
How much time and effort was put forth for this a less than friendly version of USAJobs has it taken? And it seems that many Agencies use USAJobs but to apply, you have to go to their website and use their forms. And using Microsoft to partner with is asking for trouble. Our agency moved to Windows 10 because it was more stable. Bah! In the first week, I was on a first name basis with all the "helpdesk" folks. Why do management and agency heads think upgrading a successful product is better? Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
It's too early to tell that there are any improvements. However, at this time I am not impressed. While I knew that I would lose my Saved Searches, I did not realize that they would go away for good. Once the site came back on line, I re-entered my data. Since this time I have yet to get an email messasge showing any new postings. I accessed the site this morning and see jobs that posted today that should have been included in an email to me. Have yet to get that email. Looking to see what jobs were being advertised used to be the highlight of my morning. I miss my email messages. Please bring them back.
By the way, why nobody asks how much cost that redesign of the century? In addition, why OPM is so proud of--that 99.99% of users are unhappy and demand return to the previous version? Isn't it a clear verdict to OPM's efforts? I think that the Congress should arrange public investigation or hearing regarding this OPM's failure.
In 25 years of experience with several agencies, I do not recall one program that has been put out that no matter how abysmal the failure, the agency went forward with it--calling it "a success" and never backing down when by all other accounts it was not a success.
On Obama's war on waste: What's your assessment?
So the President who spent like crazy the first two years of his administration is suddenly worried about waste? For starters, shut down the so-called Department of Education. It cannot justify in real terms the billions it consumes every year. Send the money directly to the states and they will make the money go a lot further and do a lot more good.
60-70% of government workers are a waste; I've spent 20+ years in a variety of offices, variety of job series, and locations and at no time been more than 20-30% occupied. Split the bureaucratic amoeba and create more jobs, just to watch perfectly good employees atrophy in a wasteland.
The organization where I work is made up of whole families. We could do a lot more with a lot less, but I have been told that this org went thru one BRAC and we have been assured it will NEVER happen again. so I guess all the good ole boys will come in and party day in and day out feeling confident they never need to worry about having a job.
Waste control is not just cutting positions and reducing overhead as seems to offen be the case. Cutting waste involves looking at mission financial integrity. Cutting positions that monitor fiscal integrity or reducing what constitutes an appropriate level of fiscal monitoring is not responsible. Neither is not recouping $s lost to fraud, abuse and mismanagement when it is discovered. What is an acceptable ratio of managers and senior managers to staff?
On Super committee hears from previous deficit panel chairs
Alas another committee, another dismal failure. The House and Senate failed to do their jobs and now the "blame" will fall on this so-called super committee who are really nothing more than talking heads for their respective parties. The best thing is for this committee to let the automatic cuts take effect and then maybe the American people will wake up as to just how bad this situation is. To fix this, people are going to get hurt but better to hurt a few than to collapse a nation.
Gridlock. Automatic cuts coming. Congress shifts the blame to 12 hapless clowns.
Everyone with any brains knows that tax revenues must increase, especially from the upper income levels and large corporations. Of course the vast majority of Repubs, paid off and sponsored by these interests, won't budge. They are acting on purely selfish motives, while, as another poster said, Rome burns.
It's a crying shame a little common sense doesn't come into play. Has anyone ever seen the movie "Dave". Simple movie simple plan, just stop the nonsense spending.
On Panel considers bill to shrink federal workforce through attrition
Remember when leaders led by example? Wouldn't this be a perfect time for the likes of Issa, Mulvaney, and Cantor to attrit themselves?
Cantor's youcut website only allows you to vote affirmative for all his fake agenda items. Just politics. He doesn't want any feed back. People would tell him how stupid his suggestions really are. It's just theater with no substantive solutions.
My own opinion would be that they consider cuts to some of the unconstitutional departments that have been established over the years. Any State that believes they should retain services provided by these departments could them bring displaced personnel in under their programs to save jobs. They should also consider the several other money guzzler programs that the Federal Government funds rather that continually try trimming fat off the backs of Federal Employees.
10% reduce it 20% or more. This is more realistic given the fact that most jobs are no longer stubby pencil but computer based efforts. One insider view. Now if anyone has doubt consider how much we are able to do on-line via the internet. Realistic verses politics must begin the base of reforms. The same criminal elected officials who embezzled the trust funds and grew their power bases through pork barrel spending, influencing BRAC outcomes and lobbyists favors etc, are now the same who are going to cover up their thievery by recommending cost cuts. Funny! The justice department should seize congressional and executive records and start exposing the biggest ponzi scheme ever carried out against us citizens.
Better make strategic cuts where there is waste and unnecessary fat in the Federal Government rather than broad brushing it with the "hire one to replace three plan". There are vital programs in the Federal Government that are suffering now with not enough resources and to make it worse with an ill-planned idea would be devastating to some Federal operations.
There are already millions of people out of work, so you want to put more people out of work. How does that help the economy? All you hear from the President on down we have to put people back to work, doesn't sound like anyone is really interested in fixing this mess we are in.
Cut the contractors due to replace Federal workers. Case in point, I am retiring in a few months and have already been replaced by a contractor, who is making twice the amount of what I make. And I've been asked to train the contractor to do the job!!! What's wrong with that picture.
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