The Buzz

Off the Payband Wagon

Seems like everyone in government thinks paybanding is the way to go-it's part of both the Homeland Security and Defense departments' proposed new personnel systems, which are being viewed as prototypes for governmentwide reform.

But lo and behold, one tiny agency bucked the tide and broke its bands after nine years. The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, a small independent agency founded in 1993 to oversee the Federal National Mortgage Association and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, adopted seven broad paybands at its inception. It switched in 2002 to a structure with 18 pay grades to provide employees more opportunities for promotion and to control overcompensation.

"We don't suggest [that paybanding is] not a good thing," the oversight agency's chief human capital officer, Janet Murphy, said at a Sept. 28 lunch sponsored by human resources technology provider Avue Technologies Corp. But in some situations, "broad paybands may be too broad."

As it turned out, employees wanted more opportunities for vertical promotion. Broad paybands offered greater horizontal movement and more opportunities for raises within the same job classification, but employees insisted that they wanted promotions, not just higher salaries. "That one really surprised us," Murphy said. "I thought pay was what it was really all about."

Broad paybands also led to overcompensation. Employees moved quickly within the bands, and were soon earning beyond their market value when compared with similar financial institutions such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Federal Reserve Board, she said.

Flying Too High With Those Guys in the Sky

Looks like it's not just NASA's space missions that are expensive, its air force ain't cheap either. According to the Government Accountability Office, the space agency has been violating government policy by using its fleet of 85 planes for routine business travel instead of strictly for mission-related purposes. Not only that, but it cost NASA $20 million more to fly its own birds to speeches, meetings and executive retreats than the $5 million it would have spent on commercial airline tickets for the same trips. NASA Administrator Michael Griffin accepted GAO's findings and plans to get his planes in line.

Source: GAO analysis of NASA aircraft request forms

Tunes For Troops

"It's called serving your community part time while getting great benefits," says the National Guard in an online promotion targeted at recruits. And the Guard's Web site gets right to the point about exactly what those benefits are: college tuition assistance, $20,000 student loan repayments and enlistment bonuses of up to $10,000. Oh, and this fall, there was one more enticement on the site: "FREE MUSIC NOW!"

That's right. In October, would-be Guard members who agreed to be contacted by a recruiter got to download three free songs from Apple's iTunes service. The songs usually cost 99 cents apiece.

"Just because we are the government doesn't mean we have to act like the government," Lt. Col. Mike Jones, deputy division chief for National Guard recruiting, told the Boston Herald. "[The recruits] learned a little bit about the Guard, and they got their item right away. Instant gratification gets a bad knock."

As of early October, about 700 recruits had begun the enlistment process as a result of the offer.

Oddly, the Web site said the offer is "valid through Oct. 15, 2005, while supplies last," even though, last time we checked, the supply of iTunes was basically unlimited.