Government Executive - Authors - Kellie Lunney

GSA Seeks Proposals for Huge Governmentwide Charge Card Contract

Kellie Lunney — Fri, 03 Feb 2017 15:17:42 -0500

The General Services Administration is seeking proposals for a massive new contract it will award this summer for its governmentwide charge card payment program.

The agency issued a request for proposals on Wednesday for GSA SmartPay 3, the next iteration of a nearly 20-year-old program that provides the government with purchase, travel, fleet, and integrated payment solutions. The contract runs through Nov. 28, 2021, with a potential extension to 2031. The current contract for GSA SmartPay 2 expires on Nov. 29, 2018.

The estimated total value for the SP3 contract is $700 billion, according to the RFP.

GSA SmartPay is the world’s largest commercial payment program, providing services to 560 federal agencies and other organizations and supporting more than 3 million accounts. In fiscal 2016, agencies used the program for purchase, travel and fleet needs “more than 91 million times around the globe for a total of more than $28 billion in transactions,” according to a GSA statement.

All RFPs for SmartPay 3 are due by 4:00 p.m. EDT on March 22.

Citibank, J.P. Morgan Chase, and U.S. Bank are the current contractors for GSA SmartPay 2, which was worth up to $260 billion when it was awarded in 2007. GSA plans to make multiple awards for SmartPay 3, and will have a “kick-off forum” in Washington later this year to introduce the SP3 contractors to agencies.

“GSA’s SmartPay program provides agencies across government with payment solutions to streamline transactions, lower costs, and more effectively deliver services to the American people,” said GSA Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner Tom Sharpe in a statement. “We worked closely with our industry and agency partners in developing the next generation of the SmartPay program to ensure that GSA SmartPay 3 offers federal agencies more value and efficiency in carrying out their missions.”

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Trump VA Nominee Will Push For More Flexibility to Hire and Fire

Kellie Lunney — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 16:24:28 -0500

If confirmed as Veterans Affairs secretary, Dr. David Shulkin said he plans to pursue “far greater accountability” for the department’s workforce at the same time he will seek help from Congress to recruit and retain high performers.

Shulkin said “a basic function of any chief executive” is to have the right mix of people working in the organization, and “those that do stray from the values that we hold” have to leave. “For those employees that really don’t belong in the organization, the secretary needs the ability to remove them,” he said during his Wednesday Senate confirmation hearing. The current VA undersecretary for health said the department currently doesn’t have the ability to hire or fire properly, noting that the Justice Department last summer decided not to defend the expedited firing authority for VA senior executives included in the 2014 Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act because of constitutional concerns.

“So, we are going to need new tools, and I am going to need to come back to you, and we need to figure out a way to make what you want to happen work better and make it constitutional,” Shulkin told lawmakers on the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee. “On the other side, a secretary also needs the ability to retain, reward, and recruit those types of employees that we all want serving veterans,” Shulkin added. “And we have been hampered in our ability to use the tools we once had to be able to retain and recruit the very, very best.” The VA currently has 45,000 vacancies across the department, most of them within the Veterans Health Administration. Of those openings, roughly 37,000 are exempt from President Trump’s hiring freeze, Shulkin said.

The Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee will vote Feb. 7 off the Senate floor on Shulkin’s nomination.

The physician, who has served at VA as an Obama appointee for the last 18 months, said he is proud to work with the “vast majority” of VA employees.

“I’m going to stand behind them as secretary,” he said. Ranking Member Jon Tester, D-Mt., asked Shulkin if he thought “beating the hell out of the entire VA workforce is productive” to which Shulkin replied: “Beating them up? Oh, I think it’s destructive. I think it’s hurt our ability to recruit, it’s demoralized our workforce. It demoralizes those of us who are trying to improve it, and it’s got to stop.”

But the ability to fire quickly poor performers and those engaged in misconduct – and have those decisions stick – continues to elude the department. The process to remove government employees is notoriously difficult. Those who defend the current system say it’s necessary to protect due process for career civil servants, and keep political leaders from getting rid of federal employees simply because they don’t like them. And Congress has yet to agree on a way to enforce accountability at the department while balancing career employees’ long-standing due process protections.

Committee Chairman Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., said he wanted to work with Shulkin to figure out how best to discipline and hold employees accountable, giving him the tools he needs to run a department with 314,000 employees and 6.5 million beneficiaries. “I want to be part of a news-free VA, that’s only making news because of the good things that it’s doing,” said Isakson. The Georgia Republican unsuccessfully shepherded the Veterans First Act during the last Congress, major legislation that would have overhauled hiring and firing at the department, as well as the veterans appeals process. Earlier versions of that bill actually contained some stronger accountability measures for the rank and file that didn’t make it into the final legislation.

Isakson said that he and Tester planned “to tell the good stories of the VA” on the Senate floor over the next year, but also said he expected Shulkin to “quickly tackle” the “bad things,” and do everything in his power to hold people responsible for them.

Dan Caldwell, policy director at Concerned Veterans For America, said the group was encouraged that Shulkin “acknowledged continuing problems within the VA, which previous leadership has tried to minimize.” Caldwell said CVA hopes Shulkin “will work with Congress to pass the VA Accountability First and Appeals Modernization Act, which will help fix the VA’s broken disability claims appeals process in addition to protecting whistleblowers and making it easier to terminate bad VA employees.” CVA’s former chief executive officer Pete Hegseth was on Trump’s short list to be VA secretary, but several veterans’ groups opposed him because of his stance on privatizing the department.

Shulkin, who is well-regarded by many veterans’ groups as well as Republican and Democratic lawmakers, said he opposed privatizing the VA, and that it wouldn’t happen on his watch.

“VA is a unique national resource that is worth saving, and I am committed to doing just that,” he said in his opening statement. “One thing I want to be especially clear on is that VA has many dedicated employees across the country, and our veterans tell us that every day. It is unfortunate that a few employees who deviated from the values we hold so dear have been able to tarnish the reputation of so many who have dedicated their lives to serving those who have served. But, there should be no doubt that if confirmed as secretary, I will seek major reform and a transformation of VA.”

Image via bakdc/Shutterstock.

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VA Nominee Leaves Door Open For More Hiring Freeze Job Exemptions

Kellie Lunney — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 11:54:37 -0500

President Trump’s nominee to lead the Veterans Affairs Department on Wednesday said he would go back to the White House to ask for more job exemptions from the hiring freeze if necessary.

Dr. David Shulkin said if the veterans’ disability and pension claims backlog starts spiking again and it impacts the department’s ability to provide benefits expeditiously, then he will look to exempt jobs within the Veterans Benefits Administration.

“I spoke to the acting undersecretary [Tom Murphy] today, who has assured me he has metrics on what’s happening to these claims, and if we are seeing a big concern with that, I do plan on going back and addressing that,” Shulkin told lawmakers during his Senate confirmation hearing. “The problem is, without access to benefits, you cannot get access to health care. These two are connected.” Shulkin, an Obama appointee, currently leads the Veterans Health Administration, VA’s largest agency.

Democrats on the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee expressed concern over the impact the hiring freeze could have on delivering benefits and health care to vets. Last week, the VA released a list of wide-ranging jobs it intends to exempt from Trump’s governmentwide hiring freeze, from medical and law enforcement personnel to cemetery caretakers. The positions were mostly health-care related and housed within VHA, but there were some jobs within the National Cemetery Administration that also were exempted. VBA was not part of the hiring freeze exemption, so if the department wants to hire more claims processors, or other administrative functions critical to keeping the backlog from jumping while the freeze is in effect, it will have to seek waivers for those positions.

VA struggled for years with a massive claims backlog; it hit a high of more than 600,000 in 2013. The department worked hard to get it under control, and hoped to eliminate it by the end of 2015, which didn’t happen. The backlog currently is 97,119 claims, according to department statistics.

Shulkin said there are 45,300 job vacancies through the VA, most of them within the VHA. Of that number, 37,000 positions are exempt from Trump’s hiring freeze. The Jan. 23 presidential memorandum authorizing the freeze said that agency heads “may exempt from the hiring freeze any positions that it deems necessary to meet national security or public safety responsibilities.” The freeze “applies to all executive departments and agencies regardless of the sources of their operational and programmatic funding, excepting military personnel,” the order stated. The memo also directed the heads of the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management to come up with a plan to reduce the government workforce through attrition within 90 days. The hiring freeze remains in effect until the administration completes a workforce reduction plan.

OMB on Tuesday released more detailed hiring freeze guidance to federal agencies, elaborating on which jobs are critical to national security or public safety and noting that positions at the U.S. Postal Service, CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence also are all exempt. The Defense Department on Thursday plans to release more specific guidance on the hiring freeze.

Shulkin, who received a warm reception from Democrats and Republicans during his hearing, said repeatedly that he was opposed to privatizing the VA and that it would not happen on his watch. He said he favors an “integrated system” where the VA and the private sector work together to deliver the best health care for veterans.

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Defense Could Be Next to Announce Hiring Freeze Exemptions

Kellie Lunney — Mon, 30 Jan 2017 16:35:15 -0500

The Defense Department is finishing up guidance that addresses which civilian jobs it plans to exempt from President Trump’s hiring freeze, according to a spokesman.

The departmentwide guidance “will provide additional information with respect to exemptions related to the department’s national security and public safety responsibilities,” said DoD spokesman Johnny Michael by email.

Trump’s Jan. 23 presidential memorandum authorizing the freeze said that agency heads “may exempt from the hiring freeze any positions that it deems necessary to meet national security or public safety responsibilities.” The freeze “applies to all executive departments and agencies regardless of the sources of their operational and programmatic funding,” the order stated. It does not apply to military personnel.

So far, the Veterans Affairs Department is the only major department to release guidance on which positions it will exempt from the freeze.

Eight senators from states with Navy shipyards sent a Jan. 26 letter to Defense Secretary James Mattis urging him to exempt Navy shipyard civilian jobs from the hiring freeze.

“The public shipyards are currently hiring hundreds of new employees who must complete years of training before they are able to maintain and repair naval vessels,” wrote the group of lawmakers. “A civilian hiring freeze at naval shipyards will severely impact this training pipeline resulting in maintenance delays and higher costs. The presidential memorandum states that the freeze is not intended to impact national security; however, freezing the hiring of civilian employees who will support critical fleet maintenance will directly undermine national security.”

The letter was signed by Republican Susan Collins; Independent Angus King of Maine; and Democrats Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray of Washington, Mazie Hirono and Brian Schatz of Hawaii, and Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire.

The senators noted that exempting naval shipyard civilian employees was “not without precedent,” citing a 2013 memorandum from then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that exempted those workers from sequestration-related furloughs to avoid critical delays in maintenance on nuclear vessels.

Ryan Nickel, a spokesman for Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, said on Monday that the office had not heard yet from Defense on the matter. “There’s no additional guidance that I’m aware of,” Nickel said.

The forthcoming DoD-wide guidance will help the department's HR personnel determine how to handle civilian job vacancies during the length of the hiring freeze. The naval shipyard positions are likely to be exempted, according to one person familiar with the matter.

In addition to national security and public safety exemptions, another limit on executive branch hiring freezes exists, according to the Congressional Research Service. A Jan. 26 CRS analysis on Trump’s hiring freeze said that if “Congress appropriates specific funds for the hiring of civil service members, and those funds have not been disbursed before a hiring freeze, for example, that freeze might contradict the terms of the appropriation. Similarly, the Impoundment Control Act obligates the president to spend appropriated funds absent a bill rescinding those funds. Without the passing of such a bill, it could be argued that a hiring freeze that prevented appropriated funds from being spent could violate the act.”

The Federation of American Scientists published the CRS report.

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VA Exempts Roughly 100 Job Titles From Hiring Freeze, Leaves Door Open For More

Kellie Lunney — Fri, 27 Jan 2017 16:16:53 -0500

The Veterans Affairs Department on Friday released a list of wide-ranging jobs it intends to exempt from President Donald Trump’s governmentwide hiring freeze, from medical and law enforcement personnel to cemetery caretakers.

The VA has carved out approximately 100 or so positions as exempt from the freeze because they are necessary to maintain the massive department’s “public safety responsibilities,” wrote Acting VA Secretary Robert Snyder in a Jan. 27 memorandum to VA’s top leadership. Snyder noted that the memo was “interim guidance” and would be updated once the department receives additional guidance from the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management.

“The authorities outlined in the president’s memo provide VA the ability to continue filling essential positions that provide public safety services to our veterans,” the department said in a statement. “We strongly believe that these exemptions are in line with the president’s intent.”

Trump’s Jan. 23 presidential memorandum authorizing the freeze said that agency heads “may exempt from the hiring freeze any positions that it deems necessary to meet national security or public safety responsibilities.” The freeze “applies to all executive departments and agencies regardless of the sources of their operational and programmatic funding, excepting military personnel,” the order stated.

Acting OMB Director Mark Sandy sent preliminary guidance Jan. 25 to agencies with some clarifications on the broadly-worded freeze, noting that more detailed guidance was “forthcoming.” Many agencies, federal employees and job candidates, however remain confused over how the freeze applies to them. Federal employees have flooded the inboxes of lawmakers’ offices and even Government Executive with questions. Applicants are concerned about the current status of conditional offers or whether they should bother starting the process to enter federal service at all. Current employees have asked what jobs would be exempted and whether potential promotions are now defunct.

VA appeared to be the first major department to release detailed guidance on how it plans to apply the hiring freeze.

Snyder said in his memo to department leadership that in addition to exempting front-line patient caregiver jobs (doctors, nurses, therapists, etc.) from the freeze, he also was exempting positions at major construction projects the VA is in the midst of across the country at several facilities. “To ensure veterans are able to continue accessing state-of-the-art facilities and the quality care they deserve, I am granting exemptions to ensure the minimum staffing required to become or remain operational, and to ensure that the safety and health standards required by law are met. Those positions include: project manager, professional engineer, contracting specialist, and realty specialist.

Snyder also left open the possibility that other positions not listed could be exempted. “Any support positions required to bring those facilities up to operating capabilities will also be exempted to avoid any delays, but VHA [Veterans Health Administration] and the Office of Acquisitions, Logistics, and Construction must request and obtain secretarial approval on a facility-by-facility basis for those exemptions,” he wrote.

Law enforcement positions, including categories for police and security guards also were exempt, as was the position of chaplain.

Snyder also tagged several positions within the VA’s National Cemetery Administration as exempt from the freeze, including laborer, cemetery caretaker/foreman, operations supervisor, and maintenance mechanic, and other jobs “directly involved in the burial of veterans and their eligible family members.”

American Federation of Government Employees President J. David Cox Sr. praised Snyder "for stepping up and attempting to limit the hiring freeze’s impact on veterans," pointing out the more 45,000 job openings for medical health care providers at VA facilities across the country. "By exempting certain positions within the VA, Acting Secretary Snyder has taken a positive step in veterans’ health care, but it’s simply not enough," Cox said in a statement. "Veterans can’t afford a delay in their patient scheduling or benefits. The VA is an integrated system of care, and while medical professionals are the positions most in need, all vacancies must be filled."

Cox said the freeze also hurts vets who aren't seeking care at the VA because the federal government "is the leading employer of veterans." AFGE represents more than 200,000 VA employees.

On Thursday, the Republican congressional committee chairmen overseeing VA sought assurance from the president that certain jobs at the department would be exempt from the federal hiring freeze.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer in his Jan. 24 briefing said the hiring freeze applied to the VA, and in response to a question about the freeze and critical vacancies at the VA said this: “What we need to do, whether it’s the VA or any other agency, is make sure that we’re hiring smartly and effectively and efficiently. And I think the VA in particular, if you look at the problems that have plagued people, hiring more people isn’t the answer, it’s hiring the right people, putting the procedures in place that ensure that our veterans -- whether it’s health care, mortgages or the other services the VA provides to those who have served our nation -- get the services that they’ve earned. And right now, the system’s broken.”

The comments left some confused over whether the VA could claim some exemptions from the hiring freeze. VA did not immediately respond to a question about whether the department consulted first with the White House over the positions listed as exempt in Snyder’s memo.

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Republicans Seek Assurance That Certain VA Health Jobs Are Exempt From Hiring Freeze

Kellie Lunney — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 15:37:57 -0500

The Republican congressional committee chairmen overseeing Veterans Affairs are seeking assurance from the president that certain jobs at the department are exempt from the federal hiring freeze.

Rep. David “Phil” Roe of Tennessee and Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia sent a Jan. 26 letter to President Trump asking that he “provide guidance indicating that exempting VA direct patient care providers is consistent with the [tenets] of and latitude” included in his Jan. 23 memorandum ordering the federal civilian hiring freeze.

“One of our government's highest priorities -- and VA's single most important mission -- is to provide timely, high-quality care to the men and women who have bravely served our nation in uniform,” the lawmakers wrote. “A robust clinical workforce is vital to achieving that goal. As VA direct care providers play a critical public health role, we believe that this action is in line with your intent to exempt positions necessary to meet public safety from the effects of this hiring freeze.”

The hiring freeze memorandum Trump signed said that agency heads "may exempt from the hiring freeze any positions that it deems necessary to meet national security or public safety responsibilities." The freeze "applies to all executive departments and agencies regardless of the sources of their operational and programmatic funding, excepting military personnel," the order stated.

The comments left some confused over whether the VA could claim some exemptions from the hiring freeze.

Acting VA Secretary Robert Snyder issued a statement this week saying that the department “intends to exempt [from the hiring freeze] anyone it deems necessary for public safety, including frontline caregivers.”

Trump’s nominee for VA secretary, Dr. David Shulkin, an Obama appointee who is currently undersecretary for health overseeing the Veterans Health Administration, has emphasized repeatedly the need to recruit and bring onboard more medical personnel to improve health care access and delivery to veterans. In July, he said applications for clinical positions across the board at the department were down 78 percent. A VA spokesman on Thursday would not provide any numbers on job vacancies at the department, but news reports have quoted Shulkin saying as recently as last fall that the department has as many as 45,000 job openings.

Isakson, who last spring introduced the Veterans First Act, which in part aimed to make it easier for VA to recruit and retain senior health care executives, worked closely with former VA Secretary Bob McDonald and Shulkin to provide the department with more hiring and firing flexibilities. The bill failed to gain any traction in the last Congress, though.

“We must ensure that, while we work toward our mutual goal of VA health care reform, VA is not further hampered by an inability to recruit high-quality clinicians to meet the immediate health care needs of our veterans,” Isakson and Roe wrote in the Jan. 26 letter to Trump.

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House Majority Leader Calls ‘Career Bureaucrats’ the Washington Swamp in Op-Ed

Kellie Lunney — Wed, 25 Jan 2017 16:31:02 -0500

The House majority leader on Wednesday put a face on the Washington, D.C., swamp the Trump administration has vowed to drain: the career federal workforce.

“Washington’s many agencies, bureaus and departments propagate rules that weigh down businesses, destroy jobs, and limit American freedoms,” wrote Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., in a Jan. 25 op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal. “Career bureaucrats who never face the voters wield punishing authority with little to no accountability. If there’s a swamp in Washington, this is it.”

McCarthy also said that the “federal bureaucracy” is the entity that “poses the greatest threat to America’s people, economy and Constitution.” The majority leader’s op-ed went on to lambaste what he argued was a proliferation of agency regulations during the Obama administration that have burdened American companies, large and small. McCarthy outlined how the House, in tandem with the Trump administration, plans to overturn many of the Obama-era regulations – particularly those related to energy – in the short- and long-term.

“Faced with a metastasizing bureaucracy, the House is undertaking structural and specific reform to offer the nation a shot at reviving the economy, restoring the Constitution and improving government accountability, all at once,” McCarthy wrote.

But the implication that the career federal workforce is responsible for creating regulations during the Obama administration – or any political administration -- is misleading. Career federal employees do not create policy, or draft their own executive rules and regulations; that is the job of an administration’s political appointees. And those rules are almost always based on laws that Congress passes.

“The premise that career employees are responsible for the proliferation of regulations in the Obama administration is incorrect, because no regulations are developed without the approval of the political leadership,” said Bill Valdez, president of the Senior Executives Association, and a former Energy Department senior executive with decades of public service experience. “So all of these regulations originated from the choices that the Obama administration made in terms of policy. If the new administration wishes to change the direction of regulatory policy, the career civil service will do that,” Valdez said. “But that is not a choice that they [federal employees] make, it is a choice of the political leadership.”

The House majority leader’s office did not respond to questions related to the WSJ op-ed, including one asking whether McCarthy was blaming the career civil service for Obama-era regulations.

“Every rule-making comes from one of two sources -- either it’s congressionally-directed, or it’s directed from the White House,” said Valdez. “That’s just the way the system works.”

Federal employee unions and advocates also took exception to McCarthy’s characterization of the federal workforce. National Treasury Employees Union President Tony Reardon said McCarthy’s “effort to portray hard-working civil servants as unaccountable bureaucrats worthy of being ‘drained from the swamp’ is a tired and cynical attempt to divert attention from who is most likely to benefit from the regulation rollbacks he is planning.”

American Federation of Government Employees President J. David Cox Sr. said that McCarthy's op-ed "shows how truly disconnected he is from America’s working class. To call civil servants – one-third of whom are veterans – a 'threat to America’s people, economy and Constitution' is an insult to the men and women who dedicate their lives to the programs and services that benefit all Americans."

The National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association also took issue with McCarthy's comments in the piece about career employees. NARFE Legislative Director Jessica Klement, who pointed out that roughly 150,000 federal workers live and work in California, home to McCarthy's district, said "blaming career civil servants deflects responsibility from those -- including members of Congress – with the actual power to change federal laws and regulations. If there is a 'swamp,' they [federal employees] are not it; rather, it would be the politicians who make the decisions, but disclaim responsibility for them."

McCarthy wrote that House next week “will begin repealing specific regulations using the Congressional Review Act, which allows a majority in the House and Senate to overturn any rules finalized in the past 60 legislative days.” The chamber also has passed two bills this congressional session that would implement regulatory reform: The REINS Act (Regulations From the Executive in Need of Scrutiny), and the Regulatory Accountability Act.

Jeff Neal, a former senior executive who has worked at the Defense Logistics Agency and the Homeland Security Department, had the same assessment as Valdez. “People like to talk about unelected bureaucrats, but it doesn’t really line up with the way things generally happen in Washington,” said Neal, now a senior vice president at ICF and author of the blog ChiefHRO. “What happens is, an administration says, ‘these are our priorities,’ and they push things in the direction that they want to go, and when they do, the career employees carry that out.”

Click here for “A Guide to the Rulemaking Process,” prepared by the Federal Register, which publishes every rule from the executive branch. “Agencies get their authority to issue regulations from laws (statutes) enacted by Congress,” the guide stated. “In some cases, the president may delegate existing presidential authority to an agency.”

McCarthy’s op-ed echoed a portion of then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter, a blueprint of his first 100 days in office if elected president, and unveiled last fall. Implementing a federal hiring freeze was listed along with five other measures designed to “clean up the corruption and special interest collusion in Washington, D.C.” On Monday, Trump issued a federal hiring freeze.

On Tuesday, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., asked Trump’s nominee to lead the Office of Management and Budget why the administration was “pitching the false view that federal workers are corrupt or beholden to special interests.” Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., the OMB nominee, said he wasn’t familiar with the statement and was not comfortable commenting on it, but later added, “I don’t think there is an assumption that is hard-wired into any system that federal workers are corrupt.”

Approximately 85 percent of the federal workforce works outside of Washington, D.C. “It’s easy to blame bureaucrats, because people hear the word ‘bureaucrat,’ and they think, ‘oh, these are terrible people,’ ” Neal said. Government workers, Cox pointed out, "deliver taxpayers’ Social Security checks, inspect the food we eat and the water we drink. They support our military, and ensure the safety of our skies, borders and seas."

Neal, whose expertise is in federal human resources management, said that comments about the federal workforce, like those in McCarthy’s op-ed, hurt federal recruitment and retention of talented employees, as well as the overall morale of the government workforce. “That type of rhetoric is troubling, because it does have negative effects on people who are good people, who go to work intending to do a good job,” Neal said.

Mulvaney said during his Tuesday morning confirmation hearing that he wants a “high-morale, high-performance” federal workforce, and that he plans to look for ways to better reward top employees and hold poor performers accountable. The new governmentwide hiring freeze tasks the OMB director and the director of the Office of Personnel Management with devising a long-term plan to reduce the size of the federal government through attrition. It’s unclear what size Mulvaney, or Trump, wants the government to be, but the OMB nominee said on Tuesday that more people don’t automatically create efficiency.

The federal government is big because America is big, said Neal. The point though is not so much the exact size of the government, he noted, but its ability to recruit and retain talented employees. “You want a government full of high-performing people,” he said.

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OMB Nominee Wants “High-Morale, High-Performance” Federal Workforce

Kellie Lunney — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 16:39:28 -0500

President Trump’s nominee to lead the Office of Management and Budget said on Tuesday he wants a “high-morale, high-performance” federal workforce, and that he plans to look for ways to better reward top employees and hold poor performers accountable.

“I think the federal government probably could do better in dealing with employees who are exemplary, and better in dealing with employees who fall below our expectations,” said Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., during his confirmation hearing, in response to questions from Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner. “And, all I can say is I look forward to figuring out a way to solve both ends of the problem.” Mulvaney’s testimony came during his first confirmation hearing of the day before the Senate Budget Committee. In the afternoon, he testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

The high-morale, high-performance comment came in response to a direct question from Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. “Do you want a high-morale, high-performance workforce, or a low-morale, low-performance workforce?” Kaine asked. “High-morale, high-performance,” Mulvaney responded.

Kaine and Warner quizzed Mulvaney on his views of the federal workforce, and what effect he thought the new hiring freeze would have on morale and delivering services, including Social Security checks and veterans’ benefits. Mulvaney, who if confirmed as OMB director would have 90 days to help devise a long-term plan to reduce the size of the federal government through attrition, said he was “not familiar” with the details of the hiring freeze. Kaine said he worried a hiring freeze “would make it harder for citizens to get the services they need,” asking the OMB nominee whether he was “wrong” to be concerned.

“I don’t think you are wrong to be concerned about it, senator, [but] I don’t think it automatically follows that hiring more people will create more efficiency,” said Mulvaney.

The freeze, announced on Monday, applies governmentwide across agencies, and to any positions vacant as of Jan. 22. It would bar agencies from creating new positions. Agency heads can exempt positions deemed “necessary to meet national security or public safety responsibilities.”

Mulvaney, a vocal supporter of reining in government spending and cutting the deficit, introduced legislation in 2011 to cut the federal workforce through attrition. He estimated the bill, which called for hiring one federal employee to replace every three workers who retire or leave their job, would save $139 billion over a decade. It’s possible as OMB director he will propose a similar plan.

Warner and Kaine cited federal statistics that showed the federal civilian workforce is actually smaller now than it was under President Reagan, which Mulvaney said he was not aware of. As of December 2016, it was at 2.8 million employees; during the Reagan administration, it was around 3.2 million workers. The percent of federal government workers that make up the overall civilian workforce also is smaller today than it was 70 years ago – roughly 2 percent compared to about 7 percent then.

On Monday, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer discussed the hiring freeze order during his press briefing, and said it “counters [the] dramatic expansion of the federal workforce in recent years.” The federal workforce has ebbed and flowed between approximately 2.7 million and 2.9 million workers since April 2010, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Kaine also brought up Trump’s Contract with the American Voter, a blueprint of Trump’s first 100 days in office that then-GOP presidential nominee unveiled last fall. Implementing a federal hiring freeze was listed along with five other measures designed to “clean up the corruption and special interest collusion in Washington, D.C.” Kaine asked why the administration is “pitching the false view that federal workers are corrupt or beholden to special interests.” Mulvaney said he wasn’t familiar with the statement and was not comfortable commenting on it, but later added, “I don’t think there is an assumption that is hard-wired into any system that federal workers are corrupt.”

Mulvaney faced questions from other lawmakers regarding his views on the debt ceiling, entitlement reform, regulatory reform and reducing improper payments in government. The congressman in 2015 successfully shepherded into law the Federal Improper Payments Coordination Act, designed to use modern data analytics to better deal with improper payments and eliminate waste, fraud and abuse in federal agencies. “OMB can really require these agencies to do a better job,” Mulvaney said, adding that some agencies, like the Social Security Administration, already a good job of preventing and eliminating waste and fraud.

The OMB nominee, whom Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen called a “straight-shooter,” vowed to present the facts to the president, Congress, and the public, if confirmed.

“I recognize that good public service – whether in a state legislature, Congress, or OMB – takes both courage and wisdom,” Mulvaney said in his opening statement. “The courage to lead, and the wisdom to listen. I have learned that I do not have a monopoly on good ideas. Facts – and the cogent arguments of others – matter. I will be loyal to the facts, and to the American people whom I serve.”

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How Will the Hiring Freeze Affect Diversity in Government?

Kellie Lunney — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 16:30:03 -0500

The outgoing Obama administration on Jan. 18 issued a memorandum to agencies encouraging them to figure out why Hispanics remain underrepresented within the federal workforce, particularly at more senior levels.

The Office of Personnel Management and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission called on agencies with at least 1,000 full-time employees to “conduct a more focused barrier analysis on Hispanic employment” based on a recommendation from the Hispanic Council on Federal Employment. The reviews should focus on employees at the General Schedule 12 level through the Senior Executive Service, assessing recruitment of Latinos, hiring levels, promotions, and separations, among other workforce data and trends related to the population. OPM and EEOC are asking agencies for detailed, in-depth analyses.

Agencies’ analyses and improvement plans for increasing the number of Hispanic federal workers are due to EEOC by Jan. 31, 2018. OPM and EEOC urged agencies to conduct the reviews in light of a 2011 Obama executive order designed to promote more diversity and inclusion in the federal workforce as well as in compliance with an EEOC management directive to remove barriers to equal opportunity.

The timing of the memo was unusual. It was issued two days before the Obama administration left, and less than a week later, President Trump issued an executive order freezing federal hiring except for members of the military, and public safety and public health workers. Trump has not announced a nominee to lead OPM yet, and EEOC Chair Jenny Yang’s term expires in July.

But the issue of “persistent low representation” of Hispanics in federal government has been percolating for some time, and OPM and EEOC had planned on issuing a memorandum on it for a while. "We can confirm that the barrier analysis memo has been in the works for more than a year and was released once it was cleared," said an OPM spokeswoman. Still, the new hiring freeze could blunt some of the success the previous administration achieved in increasing diversity in the federal workforce.

"Regarding the hiring freeze memo, we have not received the official memo document as of right now and are referring media inquiries to OMB," said the OPM spokeswoman.

OPM in October released the fiscal 2015 report on Hispanic employment in the federal government, noting that the percentage of Latinos in the permanent workforce increased from 8.4 percent to 8.5 percent between fiscal 2014 and fiscal 2015. Interestingly, OPM was the only agency that saw a decrease in Hispanic employment between fiscal years 2014 and 2015, according to the report. Hispanics made up 6.5 percent of the federal workforce in fiscal 2000.

The SES numbers in particular were not encouraging: Hispanics made up 4.4 percent of the permanent SES in fiscal 2015, the same as in fiscal 2014. Hispanics as a percentage of new SES hires actually decreased from 5.5 percent in fiscal 2014 to 4.1 percent in fiscal 2015, according to the report.

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Trump’s First Budget Could Be A Unique Mix of Severe Cuts and Increased Spending

Kellie Lunney — Fri, 20 Jan 2017 15:52:19 -0500

Now that President Donald J. Trump has been sworn in as the 45^th commander-in-chief, his next major task is unveiling a fiscal 2018 budget proposal for federal agencies that reflects his America First vision for the government.

Crafting a budget proposal for Congress to review and debate is always a top priority for the president, especially a new one. Trump’s inaugural budget will be the first look federal employees, lawmakers, and the rest of us get at the president’s detailed agenda and how he plans to pay for it.

“There is no 2018 template sitting there for the new administration,” said Ed DeSeve, co-chair of the National Academy of Public Administration's Transition 2016 Program. DeSeve is a veteran of presidential transitions and has served at the Housing and Urban Development Department as well as the Office of Management and Budget. Trump, DeSeve said, has a challenge ahead of him, “especially given the fact that he doesn’t have experienced hands.”

Trump’s nominee for Office of Management and Budget Director is Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., who serves on the House Financial Services Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. As a lawmaker, he has been vocal about budget issues, especially cutting spending and balancing the budget.

Mulvaney, said DeSeve, “has legislative branch experience, but it’s different putting a budget together than it is taking a budget apart.” DeSeve said that “the OMB career staff is fabulous at this” and “are very well organized.” But the career employees have “to get direction, and they have to be given a sense of how the budget is going to be assembled,” DeSeve added. “So it’s a big challenge in front of the new OMB director and the president.”

New presidents typically unveil a broad outline of their first budget in mid-to-late February, and then the official, detailed proposal that goes to Congress in the spring. Former President Obama released his broad fiscal 2010 budget proposal on Feb. 26, 2009, and the detailed plan on May 7 of that year. Obama’s first budget laid out his plans to reform health care, provide some tax breaks for the middle class, reduce the deficit, and pursue renewable energy, among other items.

Trump has talked about implementing a hiring freeze across government as well as eliminating waste in agencies, so his budget proposal could reflect those priorities. The Hill this week reported that the Trump administration is backing a budget plan that would eliminate entire agencies and a number of federal programs. But the new president also has promised to invest in other areas, like infrastructure, increasing the size of the military, and expanding border control activities. All of those things will call for more spending, and are likely to make their way into his budget blueprint. The White House web site on Friday reflected the new administration’s priorities; the URL for the OMB site, however, appeared to be broken.

Trump is planning “a point-by point departure, the Uberization of the federal government,” in which every department chief financial officer goes through the agency books to determine spending, said Republican lobbyist David Urban, a Trump transition team member and Pennsylvania political operative, during a Friday Politico event in Washington. Urban said that Trump is involved “at the granular level.” He also acknowledged that “Trumpism will run into some bumps with the $1 trillion infrastructure plan that some Republicans don’t like.”

For federal agencies, however, there is still most of fiscal 2017 to get through. “One of the things that makes this transition a little challenging is that everyone is still operating under the continuing resolutions, so there is limited information about resources that are available,” said NAPA President Terry Gerton. “You are going to have a lot of folks who are trying to figure out and provide input at a time when the spending plans are still temporary. It’s a pretty tricky time from a resource perspective,” Gerton said.

The current CR, which Congress passed in December, keeps the government funded through April 28. That’s right around the time that Trump likely will release his detailed budget plan for fiscal 2018. DeSeve said he would “bet for a full-year CR” after the short-term measure expires, with Congress passing some appropriations for specific departments, like Defense. “If you are HUD or DOT [Transportation], I think you are looking at a CR,” unless Trump opts “to do his infrastructure program starting in ’17, and not waiting until ’18.” If that were the case, the president would have to press for specific legislation related to that. “It would be a new program, and set of accounts,” said DeSeve.

Charles S. Clark contributed to this story.

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Inside How Federal Agencies Will Operate in Trump's First Days

Kellie Lunney and Eric Katz — Thu, 19 Jan 2017 17:12:33 -0500

President-elect Donald Trump is sending more than 500 temporary political appointees to federal agencies across government and retaining more than 50 appointees nominated by President Obama, according to a spokesman, as part of an effort to be “locked and loaded” on day one.

Deploying temporary Schedule C employees to agencies, while rejecting the resignations of some political leaders from the previous administration, is standard procedure during transitions. Incoming White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Thursday the efforts would preserve “continuity of government” and a readiness “to make things happen” immediately.

Very few agencies will actually have Trump’s top leader in place when he is sworn into office, triggering a succession process in which, in most cases, the highest ranking career official will take over as acting secretary or administrator. With certain constraints, Trump can name his own acting secretary. The career employees tasked with temporarily leading their agencies will face certain limitations on what they can do in terms of enacting Trump’s agenda, but will serve to steady the ship during the often rocky transition period.

“In terms of being ready to go and being ready to respond to an incident, we are ready to go at 12:01 tomorrow,” Spicer said. He added, “Make no mistake about it, we are ready to go on Day 1.”

Here Are the Officials Who Will Lead Federal Agencies In Transition

The top priority at the start of any new administration is to ensure the federal government continues to operate during the influx of political leaders, some of whom need Senate confirmation. Getting new appointees in place , even the vast majority who don’t need Senate confirmation, typically can take several months to a year. It’s a tricky time, and it requires a mix of senior career staff and political personnel working closely together from the first day of the administration. The senior career staff's role is to keep the trains running on time; the political personnel are responsible for helping to advance the new administration’s policy priorities in the early days, before its team is fully in place.

Federal agencies, based on their resources and missions, decide which top career employees will step into acting leadership roles while appointees await confirmation. So, it’s not necessarily the same position across the board that is elevated. For instance, at the Office of Personnel Management, current chief management officer Kathy McGettigan will serve as acting OPM director until a permanent one is named and confirmed. But at other agencies, it could be the general counsel who is tapped to lead temporarily.

In each department, there likely will be “a point person who will have political portfolio who will coordinate the activities” across three groups: the career Senior Executive Service and other career staff; political appointees who don’t need to be confirmed; and the appointees who require Senate confirmation, said Ed DeSeve, co-chair of the National Academy of Public Administration's Transition 2016 program. DeSeve is a veteran of presidential transitions and has served at the Housing and Urban Development Department as well as the Office of Management and Budget.

The 2015 Edward “Ted” Kaufman and Michael Leavitt Presidential Transitions Improvements Act required federal agencies to designate a senior career official to oversee the transition and it expanded training for incoming appointees. That law, along with the 2010 Pre-Election Presidential Transition Act, “really made a big difference in how the government approaches transitions,” said Kristine Simmons, vice president of government affairs at the Partnership for Public Service.

Spicer said Trump’s team searched governmentwide to identify the more than 50 Obama officials who will stay on temporarily during the initial days of the new administration. At some agencies, such as the departments of Interior, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Labor and the Small Business Administration, Trump has not asked any political appointees to stay behind past noon on Friday. As is customary, Obama in December asked every political appointee in his administration to offer letters of resignation effective Jan. 20. Trump must proactively ask individuals he wishes to stay to continue at their posts to prevent those resignations from taking effect.

Several of those who are remaining will be at the Pentagon , including Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work -- who will serve as acting head of the department. Others include Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, Drug Enforcement Administration Administrator Chuck Rosenberg, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas Shannon and the Treasury Department’s Assistant Secretary for Management Kody Kinsley.

Those individuals will be joined by 536 temporary appointees the Trump team is calling “beachheads” -- a term taken from the Mitt Romney transition effort -- who will help guide agencies in a direction friendly to the new president’s agenda. The beachhead members will report to the secretary-designees, said Spicer, who called the total number of employees Trump is launching to agencies on his first day “unprecedented.” They can stay at their agencies for up to two 120-day terms under authority known as “Temporary Transition Schedule C” granted earlier this month by the Office of Personnel Management.

Each agency in the Trump administration will retain the authority from when the president-elect is sworn in until one year from the time the new agency heads begin their tenures. Trump’s team can also place individuals awaiting Senate confirmation in Senior Executive Service positions for up to 10 days following the inauguration.

Appointees awaiting confirmation will act as advisers during this time. “They can’t make decisions, but they can advise the senior staff, both political and career,” DeSeve said, who did just that for a few weeks back in the early 1990s before he was officially confirmed as HUD’s chief financial officer. Usually the agency’s general counsel, or the White House general counsel, will give incoming political appointees awaiting confirmation a briefing, explaining precisely what they can and cannot do during this time. “To some extent, it’s idiosyncratic to the department,” said DeSeve. “When I came into OMB in a similar circumstance [the general counsel] told me what I could and could not do at OMB, which was different from what I could and couldn’t do at HUD.”

In the earliest days of the George W. Bush administration, for example, the president sent “watchdogs” to federal agencies, according to PPS’ transition guide. They served to ensure acting leaders did not act against the agenda of the new administration and to prevent the issuance of new regulations.

Using OPM as an example, “there will be a political appointee over there who will bring the policies of the administration to bear for Kathy, so she is not wandering around out in the darkness” in the interim period, DeSeve said. Career staff are responsible for holding down the fort and ensuring “government programs do what they are supposed to do even in these uncertain times,” said NAPA President Terry Gerton. “There are really great SESers who are stepping into acting secretary roles, not only at the big agencies but at the small agency level,” she said. “They know their organizations; they know the work that those organizations do.”

In some cases, Spicer said, the Schedule C beachheaders will stay at their agencies after the expiration of their terms. The agency leaders will make that determination in consultation with those individuals.

Between presidential appointments, longer-term Schedule C employees and several hundred non-career SES workers, Trump’s team must fill more than 4,000 positions. About 1,050 of those will require Senate confirmation; Trump has so far nominated 28. Spicer said the team remains on track, and was waiting for Trump to finish naming his Cabinet -- which he did Thursday when he selected Sonny Perdue to lead the Agriculture Department -- to move to lower levels.

“We are working very, very aggressively at the undersecretary, deputy secretary, assistant secretary and ambassador levels to have individuals ready to go,” Spicer said. “Now that the Cabinet is filled I think you will see a lot more activity at that level. The president-elect wanted to make sure his entire cabinet was locked and loaded before he got the deputy, assistant and under level.”

DeSeve said it was “too early” to tell how the transition as a whole is going. “When you see in about three or four weeks which departments and agencies have a pretty full complement of politicals who don’t need confirmation, as well as politicals who are going to be confirmed -- CFOs, CXOs, deputy secretaries and so on – then you will know a lot better,” he said.

DeSeve offered some advice for career staff involved in the transition. “First, do no harm, he said. “Make sure that any decision that happens that has to be made in a timely basis is made, but also any decision that can be deferred is appropriately deferred for the new administration. He also recommended staying in close contact with Capitol Hill, particularly the majority party on the relevant committees, so they know “you are trying to work as hard as you can to make this work in an orderly way.”

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Federal Jobs, Hiring, Firing and More

Kellie Lunney — Wed, 18 Jan 2017 15:23:28 -0500

Hiring managers and human resources staff should review interim rules issued Wednesday that implement a new law allowing agencies to share information about job applicants to streamline federal hiring.

The interim rules from the Office of Personnel Management on the 2015 Competitive Service Act outline the process through which agencies can to collaborate on competitive service certificates when looking to fill a position in the same occupational series and within a similar grade level. Agencies can share job certificates as long as the vacancy announcement mentions that, and applicants agree to it. An agency that opts to use another agency’s job certificate to consider hires has to give its own employees advance notice of the job, give them 10 days to apply, and review their applications before hiring from the original agency’s certificate.

If, after considering its own employees, an agency wants to make a pick from a shared certification, it must first provide selection authority to external applicants who applied to the original job announcement and are eligible for the Interagency Career Transition Assistance Program. After that, hiring is done in accordance with veterans’ preference.

“When an agency announces a position, examines and rates applicants, and issues a certification of eligibles, it must do so for its own hiring needs in the first instance,” said the interim rules. “An agency may not generate a certificate solely for the purpose of sharing it with another agency. That would be misleading to applicants and contrary to competitive purposes.”

All agencies involved in job certificate sharing have to maintain proper records. Comments on the interim rules are due March 18.

In his last few days as president, Barack Obama is trying to instill greater diversity in federal hiring as part of his legacy. Late last week, Obama directed federal agencies that oversee natural resources to make mandatory “unconscious bias” training for senior leaders and managers as part of a larger effort to promote diversity within the federal workforce. The directive is aimed specifically at the Interior Department; Forest Service; Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works; and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Unconscious bias refers to stereotypes and other biases about groups of people that individuals are not consciously aware of. The bias can relate to race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion or other characteristics.

The memorandum builds on Obama’s 2011 executive order directing the federal government to promote diversity and inclusion in the workforce as part of his effort to make government a model employer.

In other federal hiring news, Eric Katz reported that House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, sent a letter last week to 18 Cabinet-level agencies saying a looming hiring freeze, which President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to implement during his first 100 days in office, did not entitle them to bypass merit systems principles in hiring. Chaffetz has asked the agency heads to provide his panel with a list of all job openings for positions in General Schedule-13 or higher posted since the election, how many individuals applied and the date of hire. The chairman and other Republican lawmakers have expressed concern that agencies will go on a hiring binge before the anticipated freeze takes effect under Trump. Alternatively, outgoing acting OPM Director Beth Cobert recommended that the incoming administration focus on “holistic” civil service reform rather than a hiring freeze.

On the firing front, OPM has issued 22-page guidance reminding federal managers that they have several tools at their disposal to discipline poor performers or employees engaged in misconduct. The guidance walks agencies through the proper steps, including notification and documentation, required for suspending, reassigning, demoting and firing employees and members of the Senior Executive Service. The probationary period is the optimal time to deal with challenging employees and “avoid long-term problems,” OPM said. It’s a mechanism that managers often underutilize. OPM counseled agencies to take preventive actions to avoid performance problems or conduct issues before they happen. Among the best practices: clearly communicating performance standards and expectations to employees; providing regular feedback; and rewarding good performance, informally and formally.

An important reminder for Washington-area feds (at least most of them): You have Friday, Jan. 20 off for the Trump inauguration. For those who weren’t regularly scheduled to work that day, there won’t be any “in lieu of” holiday, according to OPM.

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Obama Wants Senior Leaders at Interior, NOAA to Receive Training to Combat ‘Unconscious Bias’

Kellie Lunney — Tue, 17 Jan 2017 16:06:04 -0500

President Obama is directing federal agencies that oversee natural resources to make mandatory “unconscious bias” training for senior leaders and managers as part of a larger effort to promote diversity within the federal workforce.

In one of his last memoranda as president, Obama said he wanted to “ensure that all Americans have the opportunity to experience and enjoy our public lands and waters, that all segments of the population have the chance to engage in decisions about how our lands and waters are managed, and that our federal workforce -- not just the sites it manages -- is drawn from the rich range of the diversity in our nation.” The directive is aimed specifically at the Interior Department; Forest Service; Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works; and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Employees responsible for outreach, recruitment, hiring, career development, promotion, and law enforcement, also are subject to the mandatory training. “The provision of training may be implemented in a phased approach commensurate with agency resources. Each covered agency shall also make available training on a two-year cycle for bureaus, directorates, or divisions for which inclusion scores, such as those measured by the New IQ index, demonstrate no improvement since the previous training cycle,” the Jan. 12 memo said.

Unconscious bias refers to stereotypes and other biases about groups of people that individuals are not consciously aware of. The bias can relate to race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, or other characteristics.

Agencies affected by the memo are “strongly encouraged to consider implementing performance and advancement requirements that reward and recognize senior leaders’ and supervisors’ success in fostering diverse and inclusive workplace environments and in cultivating talent, such as through participation in mentoring programs or sponsorship initiatives, recruitment events, and other opportunities,” the directive said.

The memorandum builds on Obama’s 2011 executive order directing the federal government to promote diversity and inclusion in the workforce as part of his effort to make government a model employer. As a result of that and other executive orders, for instance, federal agencies have hired more veterans and disabled individuals since the administration prioritized it.

Agencies covered under the directive are supposed to conduct periodic interviews with a cross-section of employees to get input on retention strategies, workplace policies and professional development opportunities; provide optional exit interviews for departing employees; collect information on recruitment and retention strategies; expand professional development opportunities such as detail assignments and fellowship programs; and offer and sponsor employees to participate in a Senior Executive Service Candidate Development program or other training to gain skills necessary for jobs in senior leadership.

Human resources offices and the Office of Personnel Management should continue to monitor agencies’ efforts to promote diversity and inclusion in the workforce, the memo said.

The push for a more diverse workforce at those agencies overseeing national parks, forests and other recreation areas is designed to help make those treasures more accessible, particularly to minority, low-income and disabled communities. Agencies covered under the directive have to update policies, identify challenges and devise strategic plans to ensure that “all Americans can experience federal lands and waters and the benefits they provide, and that diverse populations are able to provide input to inform the management and stewardship of these important resources,” stated the memo. Obama made clear he wanted natural resources agencies to do a better job reaching out to diverse populations.

Presidential memoranda, like executive orders, do not carry the force of law, so it’s possible the Trump administration will simply ignore this one, and not hold agencies accountable for it.

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OPM’s Guidance on Firing Bad Employees Will Remind You That It’s Complicated

Kellie Lunney — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 11:29:53 -0500

The Office of Personnel Management on Wednesday reminded federal managers that they have several tools at their disposal to discipline poor performers or employees engaged in misconduct.

OPM released 22-page guidance -- not intended to be “comprehensive” -- outlining the various disciplinary procedures for Title 5 employees, depending on whether the issue is performance-related, or a result of misconduct. The guidance walks agencies through the proper steps, including notification and documentation, required for suspending, reassigning, demoting and firing employees and members of the Senior Executive Service.

“Maximizing employee performance and addressing misconduct, when appropriate, is a critical responsibility of managers and supervisors,” wrote acting OPM Director Beth Cobert in an accompanying memorandum. “If the available management tools are used appropriately and when needed, managers and supervisors have an opportunity to deter future performance or misconduct challenges, and employees have an opportunity to improve their performance or correct their behavior, all of which will benefit the agency.”

The OPM guidance, as government documents go, is pretty informative and jargon-free. But the guidance, which outlines an extensive process for many disciplinary actions, also is a reminder that the process for removing employees is rigorous and often lengthy. Managers need to know their options, but they also have to precisely follow proper procedure. Here’s a sample from the guidance on dealing with employees on removal options during the probationary period. Even that process has multiple moving parts, as described by OPM:

Employees may be terminated from employment during the probationary period for pre-employment reasons or for unacceptable performance or conduct. When removal is based on pre-employment issues, the employee is given advance notice, an opportunity to provide an explanation of the events related to pre-employment issues and an agency decision. When the basis for termination is unacceptable performance or conduct, advance notice of the intent to terminate is not required. However, the employee must be informed in writing of the reason for the summary termination. In either case, probationary employees have limited appeal rights, and also have Equal Employment Opportunity rights to challenge an action that is believed to have been taken for a discriminatory reason. An employee may also seek corrective action with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel if he or she believes the action was taken because of a prohibited personnel practice.

Still, the probationary period is the optimal time to deal with challenging employees and “avoid long-term problems,” OPM said. It’s a mechanism that managers often underutilize. “OPM agrees automated and timely notifications to supervisors can be a useful tool for agencies regarding probationary periods and should be used to the extent they are appropriate and available,” the guidance stated. The human resources systems used by federal shared service centers have this feature, but it’s up to agencies to use it.

The disciplinary process for performance problems is slightly different from the one used for those accused of misconduct. There also are different rules, steps and appeal rights to the Merit Systems Protection Board depending on an employee’s probationary status, whether she is a member of the Senior Executive Service, or whether she is being disciplined for poor performance or misconduct. OPM outlined the requirements for initiating an adverse action for performance issues or misconduct under Chapter 43 and Chapter 75. While Chapter 75 is generally considered the “more streamlined approach,” it might not be the best approach, depending on the “facts of each case and the nature and strength of your evidence,” OPM noted.

OPM counseled agencies to take preventive actions to avoid performance problems or conduct issues before they happen. Among the best practices: clearly communicating performance standards and expectations to employees; providing regular feedback; and rewarding good performance, informally and formally. The agency also recommended maintaining “effective lines of communication” with their department’s human resources and legal offices.

The guidance on dealing with poor performers or employees involved in misconduct is part of the agency’s “series of instructive materials” to help agencies better manage their workforces, Cobert said.

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OPM: FEHBP Carriers Should Focus on Rising Prescription Drug Use and Costs

Kellie Lunney — Thu, 12 Jan 2017 16:49:27 -0500

All insurance carriers participating in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program in 2018 should continue their efforts to effectively manage prescription drug use among beneficiaries while trying to rein in escalating costs, the Office of Personnel Management advised in its annual call letter to FEHBP carriers.

OPM wants carriers to “reexamine” opportunities to reinforce or add to management techniques that help balance those dual goals, since rising drug prices and more prescription drug use in health care are driving up FEHBP premiums. According the agency, 25.5 percent of the FEHBP health care budget was spent on drugs in 2015. “We are particularly interested in proposals that optimize safe use and evidence-based formulary management of drugs for mental health conditions, substance use disorders, immunosuppression, diabetes, HIV, seizure disorders, and cancer,” stated the Jan. 11 letter, obtained by Government Executive.

FEHBP carriers have to submit their 2018 benefit and rate proposals to OPM by May 31. OPM expects to have benefit and rate negotiations for next year finished by mid-August “to ensure a timely open season.”

The agency also encouraged carriers to continue their efforts to be more transparent about drug prices going forward. “OPM appreciates efforts carriers have made to provide drug cost calculators that display up-to-date information about the formulary tier, member cost-share and utilization management requirements for covered prescription drugs,” the letter said. “Effective drug use calculators should be accurate, intuitive, easy to navigate and understand, and be member-friendly.”

OPM is also focusing on several other areas to improve the federal employees’ health care program in 2018, and directed carriers to devise proposals that reflect those priorities. They include limiting “unexpected out-of-network billing for members through various education and outreach efforts;” expanding telehealth services; providing comprehensive diabetes management for beneficiaries and educating FEHBP enrollees about their coverage options related to that disease; and ensuring mental health and substance use disorders receive adequate coverage under FEHBP plans. In particular, OPM emphasized the importance of carriers continuing to expand their access to medication used to treat mental health and substance use disorder.

“Due to the enormous costs SUD has on society, it is essential that FEHB plans recognize the seriousness of this condition and assure access to effective treatments,” the letter stated.

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Dr. Ben Carson Wants to Pick The Brains of HUD Employees

Kellie Lunney — Thu, 12 Jan 2017 15:47:24 -0500

Dr. Ben Carson on Thursday said he plans to tap the knowledge and experience of seasoned Housing and Urban Development employees to help him lead the agency.

“We have people there who have been there for 10, 20, 30, even 40 years,” President-elect Trump’s HUD secretary nominee said of the department during his Senate confirmation hearing. “And I don’t think a lot of people listen to what they have to say. I suspect that they have garnered a tremendous amount of information, and I want to get that information from them,” the retired pediatric neurosurgeon said. “I want to work with them on a regular basis.”

The Detroit native, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, said he also plans to go on a “listening tour” across the country, if confirmed. “I want to hear from people with boots on the ground who are actually administering programs, who are benefiting from the programs. I want to see what actually works, and what does not work.”

Under current HUD Secretary Julian Castro, agency leadership has tried to regularly engage with employees by providing them with an online forum to make suggestions and give feedback and hold more town halls. Castro, who took over at HUD in 2014, has spent a lot of time traveling to the department’s regional offices in addition to talking with headquarters workers.

Carson, who grew up “desperately poor,” doesn’t have professional experience in housing or urban policy, but he told senators that there is “an intersection” between medicine and HUD. “Good health has a lot to do with a good environment.” He also challenged the assumption that human beings “can only do one thing” and are “incapable” of doing something else. “I find that kind of humorous, particularly knowing what the human brain is capable of,” he said.

Apparently at least one senator agreed with that. “There was some concern that you’re not a housing expert, that you don’t have a background in construction, and so forth,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., during questioning. “And I got to thinking, seems to me that probably running this department is not really brain surgery, and if you can handle that, you most certainly have the capabilities to step in and look at this with fresh eyes.”

Many HUD secretaries have traveled extensively across the country as part of the job because the department’s mission—creating and sustaining affordable, safe and fair housing—is crucial to every community. To succeed, HUD secretaries also must cultivate strong relationships with multiple stakeholders, including affordable housing advocates, the building industry, mayors, public housing authorities, and Native American tribes. “When we think about HUD traditionally, it’s putting roofs over the heads of poor people,” Carson said, “but it has the ability to be so much more than that, particularly if we take a holistic approach, and we think about how we develop our fellow human beings.”

Carson critics have pointed to his dismissive attitude toward public assistance and some of HUD’s fair housing policies as cause for concern. He wrote a 2015 editorial for The Washington Times in which he “describes the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule as ‘social engineering’ and compares it to the school-busing efforts associated with integration,” according to a Nov. 23 story in CityLab. That rule requires more specific reporting from localities and grantees on implementing fair housing, providing them with tools and technology to see where discrimination and segregation still exist in their communities.

During his confirmation hearing, however, Carson said he believes government plays “a very important role” in people’s lives. “I know some have distorted what I’ve said about government, but I believe government is important. And it is there, I believe, to promote life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” He also said he was committed to upholding and enforcing fair housing law as HUD secretary.

Diane Yentel, president and chief executive officer of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said that Carson "has clearly taken the time to understand and come to appreciate the importance of HUD’s programs. Contrary to what he had previously said, I was pleased to hear Dr. Carson state his belief that the federal government has an important role to play in supporting deeply poor households and families."

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who also ran for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, introduced Carson at the hearing, praising his character and intellect. “The most important qualification that I would look for in a HUD secretary is someone understands that HUD isn’t just about providing people a place to live. At its core, HUD is about the American Dream,” said Rubio. The Florida senator said as HUD secretary, Carson “will encounter a department that is broken in many regards,” calling it “a vast, sprawling bureaucracy that reaches all corners of our country.”

The senators on the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, gave Carson a fairly warm reception overall, particularly given the grilling other Trump nominees have received this week. Carson even said the experience had been kind of “fun,” at the end of the two-and-a-half hour hearing.

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Trump Taps Obama Appointee As VA Secretary

Kellie Lunney — Wed, 11 Jan 2017 12:34:15 -0500

This story has been updated.

Dr. David Shulkin, the undersecretary of health at the Veterans Affairs Department, is President-elect Donald’s Trump choice to head the government’s second-largest federal agency.

Trump announced the pick Wednesday during his first press conference as president-elect. The VA job was one of the last Cabinet slots to be announced by the incoming administration.

“We looked long and hard,” Trump said, of the search for a VA secretary. “We interviewed at least 100 people, some good, some not so good.”

Shulkin, who now leads the Veterans Health Administration, will provide some continuity to the department, which has been undergoing a major management reform effort sparked by the 2014 patient wait-times scandal. Before coming to the VA in 2015, Shulkin served in several chief executive roles at various hospitals and medical centers, including Beth Israel in New York City. An internist, Shulkin also served as chief medical officer of the University of Pennsylvania Health System.

The surprise announcement also should allay concerns of some veterans’ groups, which lobbied the incoming administration to keep current VA Secretary Bob McDonald at the helm to maintain some of the progress he and his team have made in improving service to vets and changing the department’s culture. Got Your 6's Executive Director Bill Rausch said his group looked forward to working with Shulkin, while also praising McDonald.

"Sec. McDonald’s transparent and collaborative leadership style helped bring together all of us in the veterans community who are working towards the common goal of reshaping and reforming the VA. Not only is he credited for leading the department out of crisis, he should be celebrated for bringing in the right people, like Dr. Shulkin, who has propelled VA along a transformational path that sets the next administration up for success," Rausch said in a statement. "Although Dr. Shulkin does not have military experience, we have worked with him closely in his current role and have seen first-hand his unwavering commitment to our nation’s veterans."

Shulkin met with Trump earlier this week, but he had not been among the names floated in recent weeks, which included Pete Hegseth, Fox news contributor and former CEO of Concerned Veterans for America.

Trump called Shulkin “fantastic” and predicted that he will “do a truly great job.”

The physician has often testified before Congress, and has made himself accessible to reporters. He has played a key role in McDonald’s management reform efforts, in particular trying to recruit more medical professionals to the department. He supports integrating more private-sector health care into the VA system.

“It is my honor to serve as President-elect Trump’s Secretary of Veterans Affairs,” Shulkin said in statement issued by the transition team on Wednesday. "President-elect Trump's commitment to caring for our veterans is unquestionable, and he is eager to support the best practices for care and provide our Veterans Affairs’ teams with the resources they need to improve health outcomes. We are both eager to begin reforming the areas in our Veterans Affairs system that need critical attention, and do it in a swift, thoughtful and responsible way.”

House Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Phil Roe, R-Tenn., applauded the selection of Shulkin to lead VA.

“I’ve long said I would be happy to work with anyone committed to ensuring our heroes have access to the services they have earned, especially quality health care, and I look forward to working with Dr. Shulkin to bring wholesale reform to the Department,” said Roe, himself a doctor.

“We think this selection will be something that with time will straighten [the VA] out, and straighten it out for good because our veterans have been treated unfairly,” the president-elect said.

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Obama's Track Record on Federal Pay and Benefits

Kellie Lunney — Wed, 11 Jan 2017 11:47:23 -0500

President Obama’s legacy, like that of all presidents, rests somewhat in the eye of the beholder. For many, the 44^th commander-in-chief forever will be linked to his eponymous health care reform law and his epic tussles with Congress. But for most federal employees, the real Obama legacy isn’t about policies, or even management: It’s his track record on federal pay and benefits. And there are some pretty strong views on that, whether you’re talking to a member of the Senior Executive Service, or a GS-10.

“We have not been happy with pay; I’ve always been very open and honest [about that],” said J. David Cox Sr., president of the American Federation of Government Employees, in a December briefing with reporters. Federal employees will never forget the three-year pay freeze from 2011 through 2013 under Obama -- which Congress also was responsible for. Obama actually tried to end the freeze in 2012 through an executive order, which lawmakers overturned through legislation and the president signed.

“I had a chance to talk with both of them, and I reminded President Obama that President Bush did give better pay raises than he did, as they were both trying to tell me how they’d both been really good for federal employees,” Cox recalled of an event he attended about two years ago, where he found himself standing between the two men. “So, I pointed that out.”

Then in 2013, the White House canceled the annual Presidential Rank Awards, which honors the federal government’s top career officials with bonuses between 20 percent and 35 percent of their salaries. It was the first time a president had canceled the awards since the program was created in the late 1970s. The White House cited budget cuts and furloughs caused by congressionally-mandated sequestration, and the subsequent need to belt-tighten across government as the reason for scrapping the awards.

The awards were reinstated in 2014. “At such a challenging time, we need the kind of executives exemplified by the Presidential Rank Awards, and we cannot afford yet another action which chips away at the few remaining attractors for service in the career executive corps,” said then-president of the Senior Executives Association Carol Bonosaro.

Obama, however, has sought to make the federal government more of a model employer where he had more flexibility than in compensation. Cox praised Obama for standing strong against discrimination in the federal workplace, and for being a consistent supporter of collective bargaining rights. And it was during the Obama administration that same-sex spouses of federal employees were granted the same health insurance and retirement benefits as heterosexual spouses. That was a result of a 2013 Supreme Court decision, but still, the administration moved quickly to implement the changes in regulation.

“Those are very, very positive things that we’ve seen in this administration,” Cox said.

So, as the Obama-era draws to a close, here’s a non-comprehensive look at the president’s track record on federal pay and benefits.

Pay: Obama’s last pay raise for federal civilian employees in 2017 was also his most generous. After Congress decided to give service members a 2.1 percent pay bump (Obama had recommended 1.6 percent for troops and civilians in 2017), the president issued a surprise alternative 2.1 percent pay raise for civilian feds in December. Compared to the George W. Bush administration, the annual cost-of-living increases for feds under Obama (which began in 2010 since the 3.9 percent boost in 2009 became official while Bush was still in office) have been pretty small, ranging from a low of zero during the three-year pay freeze to 2.1 percent in 2017. Obama, however, had to deal with an economic recession and sequestration during his tenure, in addition to the 2010 election of several Tea Party lawmakers intent on reining in government spending and often targeting the federal workforce in their deficit-cutting efforts. Still, federal employees and their advocates over the last eight years have been vocal about the lack of robust pay raises. Locality pay, which is a portion of the overall federal raise, was frozen for much of Obama’s time in office, from 2010 to 2015. Federal workers have been eligible for within-grade and quality-step increases and other financial awards over the last eight years, but the tight fiscal environment has made those harder to come by.
Bonuses: In addition to canceling the Presidential Rank Awards for senior executives in 2013, the Obama White House also cracked down some on bonuses. The Office of Management and Budget capped performance awards for senior executives and other agency employees at lower levels for six years, raising them again in fiscal 2017. The administration didn’t cap recruitment, retention and relocation bonuses, but directed agencies to keep them at 2010 levels. Increased congressional scrutiny, particularly of senior executive bonuses, exerted pressure on some agencies, like the Veterans Affairs Department, to reduce the amount of bonuses top leaders received over the past few years. But according to the latest data from the Office of Personnel Management, slightly more senior executives across the federal government received bonuses in fiscal 2015 than in fiscal 2014, and on average individual awards increased by about $200 over that time. While the number of career senior executives receiving bonuses and the amount of those bonuses on average increased between fiscal 2014 and fiscal 2015, the growth rate was smaller than it was between fiscal years 2013 and 2014. It’s hard to make an argument that federal bonuses suffered terribly under the Obama administration, especially since it’s really congressional Republicans who have targeted federal employee compensation since 2010. Most of the actions that the administration took were related to congressional action (e.g., sequestration) or lawmakers’ outrage over a particular agency scandal (e.g., the 2014 patient wait-times controversy at VA).
Family Leave: Obama repeatedly pushed for paid parental leave for federal employees during his second term through executive actions and support for legislation, as part of a larger agenda to strengthen the middle class by giving families more work-life flexibility. In 2015, he directed agencies to advance federal employees up to six weeks of paid sick leave to care for a new child or ill family member, and also supported legislation that would provide six weeks of paid administrative leave to feds. Between that memo and the proposed legislation, Obama advocated for 12 weeks total of paid leave for federal workers from two different leave banks – sick and administrative. Right now, the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act provides up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to most government and private sector workers for the birth or adoption of a child, or to care for seriously ill family members. Federal employees who give birth or adopt can tap their accrued sick and annual leave to avoid three months without a paycheck, but many bristle at having to use hard-earned leave when paid parental leave is becoming more prevalent in the private sector. So far, though, nothing Obama did in this area is permanent because the next administration can reverse his executive actions, and Congress has yet to pass legislation creating paid parental leave for federal employees. President-elect Trump in September unveiled a child-care policy proposal that included ensuring six weeks of paid maternity leave to women who don’t currently receive it from their employer. But it’s not clear that proposal would include federal employees.
Retirement Benefits: Like pay, many federal employees were not happy with Obama’s approach toward federal retirement benefits. In a 2011 deficit reduction proposal and his fiscal 2014 budget recommendation, Obama supported increasing the amount most federal workers contributed to their pensions as a way to reduce the deficit. The fiscal 2014 budget proposal came after Congress approved a pension hike for new federal workers in 2012, so some federal advocates viewed the administration’s recommendation as adding insult to injury. Congressional leaders and the White House, however, rolled out a proposed budget deal in 2015 for fiscal years 2016 and 2017 that didn’t contain any provisions targeting the pay or benefits of the federal workforce. Since then, there haven’t been any major efforts to further reduce federal civilian employees’ retirement benefits, but that could change going forward now that one party controls Washington. On the plus side, the Obama administration in 2014 finally implemented phased retirement in federal agencies two years after Congress passed the law, allowing eligible employees to partially retire while remaining on the job part-time to mentor other workers. Designed to help federal agencies gain the flexibility to better manage their workforce needs, most agencies haven’t really embraced it, either because it’s too complicated to implement, or there isn’t enough interest from employees.
Health Insurance: In 2016, the Office of Personnel Management launched a new option to the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program – the self-plus-one option, in addition to self-only, and self and family. The change, mandated by Congress in the 2013 budget deal, gave feds with one eligible family member, such as a spouse or a dependent up to age 26, a new FEHBP enrollment choice. Many FEHBP enrollees had long complained about the lack of a self-plus-one option, but the reaction to the change has been mixed, because some enrollees have discovered that self-plus-one isn’t necessarily the cheaper option. The administration also pushed FEHBP carriers to steer beneficiaries toward healthier lifestyles to cut long-term health care costs. Health plans participating in FEHBP in 2011 were required to eliminate cost sharing for preventive care, such as immunizations, tobacco cessation and health screenings. For 2012, OPM encouraged insurance providers to include additional benefits, such as concrete incentives for federal workers to participate in wellness initiatives and prevention programs to reduce childhood and adult obesity. FEHBP also served as one of the models for Obama’s 2010 Affordable Care Act.
Sick Leave and Better Pay for Contractors: In several executive orders during his second term, Obama sought to strengthen pay, benefits and other rights for federal contractor employees. He called on federal contractors to provide their employees with paid sick leave in a 2015 executive order, and a separate 2014 executive order prohibited contractors from retaliating against workers for openly discussing compensation as well as provided guidance to agencies on doing business with contractors that violated labor laws. Several of the actions have generated controversy, and so far, a lawsuit. The president in 2014 also amended a Lyndon Johnson executive order, by prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating against LGBT employees.
Benefits for Same-Sex Spouses of Federal Employees: The White House has consistently pushed to provide more federal benefits to same-sex domestic partners and spouses, before and after the 2013 Supreme Court decision. United States v. Windsor meant that same-sex spouses (but not domestic partners) of federal employees became eligible for all the same benefits available to their heterosexual counterparts, including health insurance under FEHBP, retirement benefits, etc. But back in 2010 and 2011, Obama took executive action within the law before the 2013 decision to expand benefits to same-sex partners of federal workers, supporting those extensions as early as 2009. In 2013, OPM decided through an interpretation of the law to allow federal employees in same-sex domestic partnerships to enroll their children in FEHBP (their partners remain ineligible).

Eric Katz contributed to this story.

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VHA Failed To Recoup Nearly $800K in Employee Recruitment and Relocation Debt in Fiscal 2014

Kellie Lunney — Mon, 09 Jan 2017 14:12:41 -0500

The Veterans Health Administration, which relies heavily on financial incentives to recruit and retain critical staff, did not try to recoup outstanding debts of nearly $800,000 in fiscal 2014 from employees who should have reimbursed the government, according to a new report from the Veterans Affairs Department’s watchdog.

The audit, which reviewed the department’s use of recruiting, relocation and retention compensation in fiscal 2014, found that VHA did not enforce repayment for roughly 55 percent of the estimated 238 incentives for which employees did not fulfill their recruitment or relocation obligations. That inaction, according to the IG, “resulted in an employee repayment liability of about $784,000 in FY 2014, or an estimated $3.9 million projected” for fiscal years 2015 through 2019. The inspector general reviewed incentives awarded to members of the Senior Executive Service as well as non-senior executives in VA’s Central Office with a fiscal 2014 start date. The audit, conducted between September 2014 and July 2016, included data from several randomly selected HR offices and medical facilities.

During the timeframe the IG conduced the audit, VA’s personnel system lacked the ability to issue alerts when employees who received one of the 3Rs changed jobs, making HR staff possibly “unaware of unfulfilled incentive service agreements.” The VA finished implementing a new personnel system in July 2016 that alerts HR staff when employees have any outstanding service obligations, including those related to the 3Rs.

The watchdog also found that the department overall didn’t properly oversee how recruiting, relocation and retention incentives were awarded, citing a failure to follow procedure rather than fraud. “VA’s inadequate controls over its 3R incentives represent an estimated $158.7 million in unsupported spending” projected for fiscal years 2015 through 2019.

In some instances, the VA failed to properly authorize the recruitment incentive before it was listed in job vacancy announcements. In other examples, the department offered such compensation for jobs that were not demonstrably hard-to-fill, the watchdog concluded. The VHA, which accounts for the lion’s share of the department’s overall spending on such incentives, “did not properly authorize 33 percent of the estimated 1,546 recruitment incentives and about 64 percent of the estimated 727 relocation incentives that VHA awarded to non-SES employees in FY 2014.”

The VA’s total spending on the 3Rs, however, decreased between fiscal years 2012 and 2015, from $115 million to $67 million.

The watchdog also concluded that the department lacked adequate workforce and succession plans that would foster less dependence on retention incentives. “We most frequently found in our sample that workforce and succession plans did not include details on efforts to reduce or eliminate the need for the incentive,” said the report. VHA employees, who include physicians and nurses, were paid retention incentives on average of almost four years.

The IG made several recommendations, all related to improving oversight by monitoring facilities’ compliance with proper procedures, as well as requiring them to collect any outstanding debts from employees who didn’t fulfill their 3R incentive service agreements. The VA agreed with all the watchdog’s recommendations, and since the review, has made good on several of them, including adding more internal controls and guidance related to the 3Rs, and ensuring the personnel system alerts HR staff when employees are obligated to repay the government and elevates those issues to the attention of upper management.

The watchdog suggested that the VA review whether it makes sense to limit how long certain employees continue to receive retention incentives, but the department pushed back on that. In an August 2016 response to the report, acting Assistant Secretary for Human Resources and Administration Meghan Flanz said that “it is imperative that management officials continue to have the ability to authorize retention incentives with no additional limits” to retain talented employees. “Any attempts to further limit or reduce flexibilities already available in regulation and VA policy may have a negative effect on VA providing high quality healthcare and meeting our Access to Care initiatives.”

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Nominate An Outstanding Federal Employee For An ‘Oscar’

Kellie Lunney — Fri, 06 Jan 2017 16:00:54 -0500

Federal employees have until the end of Jan. 15 to nominate outstanding colleagues for a 2017 Service to America award.

The prestigious annual Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals honor the best of the federal workforce, selecting winners based on the impact of their work, an appreciation for innovation, demonstrated leadership and a commitment to public service. Since 2002, the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service has awarded the “Oscars” of government service, which are named in honor of the philanthropist and businessman who founded the organization in 2001.

All career civil servants are eligible for an award, and anyone familiar with a nominee’s work can submit a nomination. Winners can be individuals or teams of up to three people in eight categories: Federal Employee of the Year; Career Achievement; Call to Service; Citizen Services; Homeland Security and Law Enforcement; Management Excellence; National Security and International Affairs; and Science and Environment. For the past two years, the Partnership also has handed out a People’s Choice Award, which goes to the Sammie finalist whom the public decides has made the greatest contribution to the American people.

In the past, Sammie winners received cash awards ranging from $3,000 to $10,000. For 2017, the Partnership is "considering new ideas for the actual awards the honorees will receive this year, but haven’t finalized what that will be," said spokeswoman Erika Walter by email. "For encouraging nominations, we’ve focused on the message that simply nominating someone is a great opportunity to recognize and appreciate high-performing employees or colleagues, and for leaders to highlight their important achievements over the past few years," she wrote.

In 2016, the selection committee chose the winners among 32 finalists plucked from more than 350 nominations.

Last year’s winners included:

Tate Jarrow, special agent, U.S. Secret Service, who hunts down cyber criminals and helped catch individuals involved in massive hacks into U.S. financial institutions, a news organization and other companies.
Lisa M. Jones of the Treasury Department, who has assisted low-income communities in securing investment capital to finance small businesses, affordable housing, schools and day-care centers.
Kirk Yeager, chief explosives scientist at the FBI, who has applied his experience and expertise to understanding and detecting the bombs terrorists use.

The Partnership will announce 30 finalists for the 2017 awards this spring, honoring them on Capitol Hill during Public Service Recognition Week. Winners will be feted at a black-tie event in Washington in the fall.

Click here to submit a nomination.

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Government Needs Tech-Savvy Leaders to Succeed, Says Outgoing OMB Chief

Kellie Lunney — Thu, 05 Jan 2017 15:27:56 -0500

Federal agencies without tech-savvy senior leadership will not succeed in carrying out their missions, warned outgoing Office of Management and Budget Director Shaun Donovan in his White House exit memo.

If agencies don’t continue to recruit “a critical mass” of top officials with a “high tech IQ” who are intimately involved in policy-setting and execution, their odds of successfully modernizing are “zero,” the OMB director said.

“It has become as essential to have technologists in the room as it is to have legal counsel,” stated the former Housing and Urban Development Department secretary. “It is difficult to think of any major agency responsibility – whether it be responding to Ebola, delivering services to veterans, formulating transportation policy, etc. – that would not benefit a great deal from the application of modern technology expertise,” Donovan wrote, underlying the passage for emphasis.

Deputy secretaries with lots of “TQ” are “optimal,” Donovan recommended, with the next best option being a technology-fluent assistant secretary/undersecretary for management. Chief information officers need to be similarly skilled in IT operations, but they also need to be good managers, working effectively with leaders across the agency to modernize the organization’s approach to technology infrastructure and service delivery, the memo stated. “It is vital that deep tech expertise be no more than one step removed from the agency secretary (or equivalent),” he added.

Donovan, like Acting Office of Personnel Management Director Beth Cobert, is known within the Obama administration for elevating the use of data and other concrete metrics in federal program management. His comments on senior leaders with IT experience and aptitude were included in a 17-page discussion titled “Toward An Ever Better Digital Government,” an attachment to his official White House exit memo.

Federal IT legacy systems have been at the root of several high-profile cases of agency mismanagement over the last decade, from the patient wait-times scandal at the Veterans Affairs Department to numerous cybersecurity breaches across government. Any new management agenda must take into account how the government continues to use technology to better deliver goods and services to the American people.

Donovan’s memo focused heavily on the administration’s efforts to modernize government IT through initiatives such as the U.S. Digital Service and the tech group 18F, as well as strengthening cybersecurity. OMB has “led the administration’s successful efforts to leverage technology and innovation to produce a smarter, savvier, and more effective government for the American people,” Donovan said. He also touted several other Obama management agenda items including cost-saving procurement strategies, reducing the government’s federal “footprint” in real estate, and more meaningful collaboration between the federal government and local communities.

President Obama asked 27 heads of departments, agencies and a handful of high-profile federal offices to outline their accomplishments over the last eight years. The agency “exit memos,” released on Thursday, represent the administration’s last major public relations push on its achievements, but they also provide insights into important issues and challenges the incoming Trump team will face.

Cobert, who arrived at OPM as acting director in 2015 after the agency’s massive cybersecurity breach exploded, discussed OPM’s efforts to elevate “the government’s role as a model employer” through various initiatives, including hiring more disabled workers and veterans; expanding federal telework; extending benefits to the same-sex spouses of federal employees; and improving USAJobs.gov, the federal government’s troubled application and hiring website.

In her exit memo, the former OMB official also called for comprehensive civil service reform, which the administration has supported for some time, “so that the government recruits, hires, compensates, trains, manages, and holds accountable its workforce in a way that is responsive to the evolving profile of the workforce and the changing needs of the American people in the 21^st century.”

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Most Calif. National Guard Soldiers Won't Have to Repay Improper Bonuses

Kellie Lunney — Wed, 04 Jan 2017 15:47:10 -0500

Most of the service members who received improper reenlistment bonuses from the California National Guard probably will not have to pay back the Defense Department, a Pentagon official said on Tuesday.

Approximately 17,500 California National Guard soldiers were overpaid by recruiters between 2004 and 2010, and were on the hook to pay back the department for the mistake. But after extensive media coverage this past fall, Defense Secretary Ash Carter suspended efforts to recoup those improper bonuses so the Pentagon could review its process for collecting erroneous payments without unfairly burdening those caught in the middle of the debacle.

“The vast majority of those 17,000 cases we will be able to screen out, and forgive debts or forego debt collection without the need for more detailed review by the BCMR [Army Board for Correction of Military Records],” acting Undersecretary for Personnel and Readiness Peter Levine told reporters during a Pentagon briefing. Levine said the department would notify affected individuals “on a rolling basis” beginning over the next month.

Per Carter’s direction, senior Defense officials had until Jan. 1 to establish a streamlined, centralized process that ensures fair treatment of service members and quickly resolves all pending cases related to recapturing improper bonuses by July 1. Levine said department officials believe they can complete all the cases “well before the July 1 deadline.”

The Pentagon separated the 17,500 cases into two categories: 1,400 cases that were referred to the Defense Finance and Accounting Service for recoupment, and roughly 16,000 that were flagged for review but haven’t reached the debt collection process yet. About half of the 1,400 cases will be dismissed, and the department will let those soldiers know that they don’t owe the government. In cases where the individual has repaid the bonus, he or she will be reimbursed. Of the 16,000 cases, the screening process will eliminate about 15,000 of them, said Levine, according to a report from DoD News.

Soldiers whose cases are not eliminated will have an opportunity to present their case to the BCMR.

Levine said service members who took the bonus and received an education or training on the military’s dime but did not fulfill military service requirements are expected to pay the money back. “We don’t give someone a free education,” said Levine. “We give them a free education in exchange for a service commitment, and that is part of the bargain.” The acting undersecretary said there was nothing wrong with recoupment in general, when it’s warranted. But many of the cases in California involved government error in determining who was eligible for the bonus, or service members who “may have been misled as to whether they were eligible.” They fulfilled their end of the bargain, and then several years later, the government asked for its money back, which Levine said was “unfair.”

The fiscal 2017 National Defense Authorization Act does not allow the Pentagon to claw back improper enlistment bonuses unless the soldier “knew or reasonably should have known” he or she was ineligible for the benefit. The language would also require the Defense Department to take steps to ensure the snafu has not affected soldiers’ credit ratings, and to refund any repayments already collected unless the soldiers are guilty of fraud.

Levine said the department has also reviewed audits done in other states, and concluded none of them had the “kind of massive problem” California did related to improper reenlistment bonuses. “We believe that the National Guard Bureau and the Army has corrected the lack of internal controls that led to this problem in the first place,” he said.

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2017 Pay Tables for Federal Employees Are Out

Kellie Lunney — Tue, 03 Jan 2017 13:46:07 -0500

Senior executives will earn between $1,231 and $1,900 more in annual salary in 2017, according to the new SES pay table, effective Jan. 1.

For members of the Senior Executive Service under a certified SES performance appraisal system, the maximum annual salary will increase to $187,000 in 2017, up from $185,100 in 2016. Senior executives at the maximum SES pay rate who are not under a certified SES performance appraisal system will see their annual salary grow to $172,100 from the 2016 level of $170,400.

At the lowest end of the SES pay spectrum, the salary will increase from $123,175 (with or without a performance appraisal system) to $124,406 in 2017 (with or without a performance appraisal system).

The Office of Personnel Management has published the 2017 pay tables for the various categories of government employees, including those in the SES, the General Schedule, the Veterans Health Administration, and the Foreign Service. The rates of pay for uniformed service members and federal employees covered under special rates of pay also are available as well as pay adjustments for certain prevailing rate (wage) employees.

The top GS category – GS-15, Step 10 – will increase to an annual base salary of $134,776 this year from $133,444 in 2016. GS employees also will receive a locality pay boost in 2016; the exact amount of the increase for all career civilian employees will depend on their locality. Large urban areas including the Washington, D.C., metropolitan region and cities like San Diego and San Francisco, Calif., received the biggest total pay bumps in 2017. Click here to see the equation that OPM uses to calculate pay raises and to help figure out your 2017 increase (base plus locality) in dollars. You will need the figure from the GS base pay table and the percentage from the locality pay table to plug into the equation.

Members of the SES do not receive locality pay, but are eligible for performance-based awards.

President Obama issued a Dec. 27 executive order officially implementing a 2.1 percent raise for federal employees in 2017. Obama originally recommended a 1.6 percent pay raise for both civilian federal employees and the troops in 2017. But Congress voted to give service members a 2.1 percent salary boost in 2017, so Obama in a surprise move late last year decided to recommend a 2.1 percent match for feds. In 2016, the pay raise for both groups was 1.3 percent.

The new pay tables also include the 2017 rates of pay for the judiciary, those on the Executive Schedule, the vice president and Congress. Congressional salaries – both rank-and-file and leadership pay – have been frozen for the last several years. Congress last received a pay raise in 2009.

The pay rates of certain political appointees and the vice president remain frozen as well, despite the fact that the actual pay tables show an increase, because “the official statutory rates of pay for the vice president and Executive Schedule positions are used in determining the rate ranges and aggregate pay limitations for employees and pay systems unaffected by the pay freeze, such as GS, SL, ST, and SES positions” according to OPM. So, for example, while the pay rate of the vice president’s salary as listed in the 2017 table reflects an increase ($240,100), the actual annual amount ($230,700) will not change because that job’s salary has been frozen since 2013. If Congress lifts the pay freeze on the vice president’s salary in 2017, the new figure would be $240,100. Read this OPM memo for more information.

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Trump’s 100-Day Plan For Federal Employees and Agencies

Kellie Lunney — Fri, 23 Dec 2016 07:00:00 -0500

While it’s an arbitrary timeline, the first 100 days of an American president’s term are viewed as a harbinger of accomplishments and failures to come. But since the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who coined the term, we’ve judged every new commander-in-chief by his successes and setbacks between January 20 (Inauguration Day) and April 29. In that regard, the incoming administration of Donald J. Trump will be no different.

As a candidate and now president-elect, Trump has promised to do a lot of things within his first 100 days to “make America great again,” from withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership to enacting ethics reforms to “drain the swamp” in Washington. Many of his promises would require legislative action, and it remains to be seen what kind of relationship his administration will have with Congress. As with most new presidents, Trump soon will discover the limits of his power over a vast federal government with three distinct branches, two of which are beyond his purview—Congress and the judiciary. He’ll have to contend with 535 overseers, approximately two million federal civilian workers, another roughly two million military service members, countless laws and regulations, and of course, a lot of politics.

Several items on his 100-day action plan would affect the federal workforce and government operations. Here’s a round-up of publicly-stated Trump priorities that federal employees in particular should keep an eye on:

Implementing a government-wide hiring freeze: Trump in October, during his “Gettysburg address,” vowed to freeze agency hiring and reduce government through attrition. He has said he would exempt certain jobs in the military, public health, and public safety. To date, however, there are no details on how exactly this would work. Earlier this month, Trump transition officials said the freeze would number among several policies aimed at slashing the size of government that Trump will announce before he is sworn into office. The Trump team will put the proposals forward “as inauguration comes closer,” the officials said. A non-specific, across-the-board hiring freeze could be problematic and may not even be effective, especially since some agencies already are under a freeze, or are operating with fewer staff and resources. Trump would not be the first president to institute a federal hiring freeze upon assuming office: Ronald Reagan ordered one as well.

Eliminating “wasteful” spending projects: In his acceptance speech as the Republican presidential nominee in July, Trump pledged to “ask every department head in government to provide a list of wasteful spending projects that we can eliminate in my first 100 days. The politicians have talked about it; I’m going to do it.” As Eric Katz reported at the time, Trump promised to overhaul the Veterans Affairs Department, the Transportation Security Administration and the Education Department, whose “bureaucrats” a Trump administration would no longer “protect.” He said his administration would fix TSA at the airports, “which is a disaster.” He also said, “we will completely rebuild our depleted military” and “we will take care of our great veterans like they have never been taken care of before.”

During the campaign, Trump outlined a 10-point plan to reform the VA, which included these two bullet points aimed at VA employees: “Use the powers of the presidency to remove and discipline the federal employees and managers who have violated the public's trust and failed to carry out the duties on behalf of our veterans,” and “Ask that Congress pass legislation that empowers the secretary of the VA to discipline or terminate any employee who has jeopardized the health, safety or well-being of a veteran.” So far, Congress has only passed legislation that makes it easier to fire VA senior executives, but because of constitutional concerns, the department has stopped using that authority granted under the 2014 Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act.

As for the larger war on waste, as Tom Shoop pointed out in July, this is much easier said than done. Eliminating federal programs is up to Congress, and agency heads generally want to keep, not gut, the programs and spending they administer. Trump’s predecessors have all tried to cut waste in government, proving just how hard is is to do.

Slashing regulations: This is another pledge other presidents have made, and have had difficulty accomplishing. Specifically, Trump has vowed “on day one” to require that for every new federal regulation, two existing ones be scrapped. “So important,” Trump has said of the proposal. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. Trump can use executive action to roll back President Obama’s executive orders or make changes that don’t require congressional approval. But those changes could be overturned by Congress, or his Oval Office successor. Without legislative action, these types of changes don’t carry the rule of law, and therefore are at risk. Then there’s the time, energy, and resources it will take to identify which regulations should go. Any large-scale rollback of regulations likely would take years.

Slowing the revolving door: Trump has proposed a five-year ban on White House and congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service. Obama also instituted ethics reforms during his first 100 days to slow the revolving door between the White House and K Street. But just as lobbyists found a work-around through loopholes in the Lobbying Disclosure Act, observers predict the same thing would happen in a Trump administration. The president-elect also has proposed a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government, and a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections.

Proposing a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on members of Congress: There’s one major problem with this idea. Presidents can lobby or advocate for an amendment to the Constitution, but they cannot introduce, ratify or veto one. That’s up to Congress and the states. Constitutional amendments can be officially proposed in Congress through a two-thirds majority vote in both chambers, or via a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the state legislatures. Then to be added to the Constitution, three-fourths of the states (38 out of 50) have to ratify the amendment. That’s very hard to do, which is why we have only 27 amendments. And “none of the 27 amendments to the Constitution have been proposed by constitutional convention,” according to the National Archives website. Some lawmakers have self-imposed term limits. For example, former Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma kept his pledge to serve only two terms in the upper chamber, and actually introduced an unsuccessful constitutional amendment during his tenure to limit congressional terms.

“Restoring National Security Act”: In his Contract with the American Voter, Trump lists this bullet point, which seems to be a potpourri of proposals affecting various agencies and programs lumped under the national security heading: “Rebuilds our military by eliminating the defense sequester and expanding military investment; provides veterans with the ability to receive public VA treatment or attend the private doctor of their choice; protects our vital infrastructure from cyber-attack; establishes new screening procedures for immigration to ensure those who are admitted to our country support our people and our values.” Repealing the sequester for the Defense Department, or any agency, requires congressional approval, while veterans already have the option to choose a VA health facility or the private sector for their health care (and the 2014 Choice Act expanded that flexibility). The government already has plans in place to protect the nation’s infrastructure from cyberattacks, and it’s not clear how Trump would improve or expand that. As for “new screening procedures” for immigrants, again, it’s unclear what specific form that would take, how a new process would differ from existing processes, or what kind of additional resources agencies and federal employees would need to carry out any new policies or programs in this area.

Eric Katz contributed to this story.

Image via JStone/Shutterstock.com.

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Obama to Agencies: Do A Better Job Helping Immigrants in the Military Navigate Government

Kellie Lunney — Thu, 22 Dec 2016 16:21:45 -0500

President Obama on Thursday directed federal agencies to do a better job making sure immigrants who serve in the U.S. military and their families have access to benefits and other assistance for which they are eligible.

Despite the efforts of the departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs to help provide services and opportunities to those service members and military families interacting with the immigration system (including foreign-born residents and naturalized citizens), there are still “barriers” to that aid, said the Dec. 22 memorandum from Obama.

The memo creates a new interagency working group to coordinate records, benefits, immigration and citizenship services for those service members, vets and their families as well as educate them about the naturalization process and available assistance. In addition to Defense, Homeland Security and the VA, the working group will be made up of officials from Justice, Labor and State.

The president directed the group to develop an initial three-year strategic plan within 30 days of the memo to improve access to immigration services and benefits, and to submit a more detailed plan within 120 days.

“New American service members are undoubtedly a critical element of our national security,” Obama said in the memo. “They risk their lives all over the world in the name of the United States, securing shipping lanes, protecting bases and embassies, providing medical assistance and conducting humanitarian missions. Tens of thousands of lawful permanent residents and naturalized U.S. citizens currently serve in our Armed Forces. Many more are veterans who have served previously in the Armed Forces.”

Since 2001, more than 110,000 service members have been naturalized, including through the Naturalization at Basic Training initiative.

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