The U.S. Postal Service, an organization inextricably associated with the delivery of lots and lots of paper, is creating a new enterprise focused on the online sphere, according to a memorandum today from Postmaster General Pat Donahoe. The “digital solutions” group is intended “to better explore growth opportunities in the digital space, and to translate those opportunities into new streams of revenue, [...]

Dan Tangherlini, acting administrator at the General Services Administration, said Tuesday that budget cuts has made the agency more important than ever. “In this time of fiscal austerity and budget uncertainty, the role of the GSA and the expertise of our contracting officers have never been more vital,” Tangherlini said. Tangherlini said in a video [...]

Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, today introduced a bill that would automatically increase the Thrift Savings Plan contributions of some new federal employees. The Save More Tomorrow Act would only apply to automatically-enrolled feds — that is, new employees who make no choice on TSP and are automatically enrolled in the G Fund at 3 percent [...]

The Asbury Park Press, which like Federal Times is owned by Gannett, this morning posted their latest database of federal salary and bonus information. APP obtained 2011 salary data for most federal employees through a Freedom of Information Act request. A user can search by name, agency, job title, and location, and find out many [...]

An initial group of nine organizations has been selected to provide independent security reviews of cloud products and services used in the federal government. As part of the Federal Risk and Authorization program (FedRAMP), expected to launch June 6, vendors must work with an approved third party assessment organization, or 3PAO, to validate if they’ve implemented [...]

The Social Security Administration did not fully assess the impact of a major internal overhaul last June, which eliminated the chief information office and reassigned its functions, according to testimony from a Government Accountability Office official.   At the time, most of the responsibilities for managing information technology and the IT budget were reassigned to SSA’s Office [...]

The House yesterday passed a budget that hikes federal employees’ retirement contributions by 5 percent, which translates to an effective cut in take-home pay. If that becomes law, what would it mean for you? Would it change how much you invest in the Thrift Savings Plan? Or would you go so far as to bail [...]

With agencies facing tight budgets and unprecedented scrutiny of their payroll costs, has your agency reined in its use of retention incentives? Have you recently lost a retention incentive, or are you offering your employees fewer such bonuses to hold on to them? If so, why? E-mail me at slosey@federaltimes.com. I will keep your response [...]

Tom Burger has spent his life dedicated to public service. Burger said it started with  President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address in 1961, when Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” “That stimulated me to look into public service,” Burger said. As a young [...]

U.S. Postal Service leaders gave members of Congress some of what they wanted with today’s announcement that widespread post office closures are off the table. But what about plans to shutter or consolidate almost half of some 460 mail processing plants? Wait until next Thursday for word on that, Postmaster General Pat Donahoe said at [...]

Last week we reported that even though lesbian federal employee Karen Golinski won health coverage for her wife — courtesy of a February court ruling — the Office of Personnel Management is still instructing federal agencies to deny the same coverage to all other gay and lesbian feds’ spouses. Today I asked OPM Director John [...]

In 2007, about 2,000 Government Accountability Office employees decided to unionize with The International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers. It was the first time in the GAO’s 91-year history that its employees were represented by a labor organization. That’s when Eric Adams decided to jump ship from his previous agency and apply for the [...]

The U.S. Postal Service’s inspector general is out with a new overview of employee retirement options. This is a hot topic nowadays, given that USPS leaders have been open about their interest in using early-out incentives as a glide path to a much smaller agency. One finding: More than 189,000 postal employees (that’s well above [...]

Two key themes emerged at this morning’s Town Hall with top Obama administration officials in honor of Public Service Recognition Week: First, the public often doesn’t understand or appreciate all the things federal employees do for them. And second, that’s partly because a hostile or indifferent press corps only appears interested in federal workers when [...]

Cybersecurity funding at the Department of Homeland Security would increase 63 percent from $459 million to $749 million under a proposed 2013 spending bill by the House Appropriations Committee. The increase would fund new initiatives to improve federal network security and defend against foreign espionage, according to a committee press release. The House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee will [...]

As an Army brat, Octavia Hall has always been around public service. She spent most of her life in Germany bouncing around several bases. Hall said it was both her family and her community who encouraged her to serve. “When I went out to the bus stop, I remember the soldiers coming over to talk to us about going to [...]

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will meet tomorrow to vet Joe Jordan, the President’s nominee to lead the Office of Federal Procurement Policy. Jordan joined the Office of Management and Budget in December as a senior adviser on procurement issues – the standard setup for potential nominees. Former OFPP Administrator Dan Gordon left the [...]

Federal supervisors aren’t doing nearly enough to hold poor performers accountable — or keep them from ending up as poor performers in the first place, two chief human capital officers said today. Reginald Wells of the Social Security Administration and Jeri Buchholz of NASA, speaking at Government Executive’s Excellence in Government conference, agreed that managers [...]

For more than a year, cash-strapped agencies across the government have been offering buyouts and early outs to reduce their payrolls. Several of those agencies said it’s better to cut the rolls voluntary to avoid messy, morale-killing layoffs, or reductions-in-force for those who speak government-ese. But at today’s Excellence in Government conference, a common refrain [...]

Building on an effort to improve communications between federal agencies and industry about government contracts, the Office of Federal Procurement Policy released part two of its “Myth-Busting” campaign to address misconceptions from industry. The memo reiterates the importance of ”early, frequent and constructive engagement with industry,” especially for high-risk procurements and large information technology projects, that [...]