Frankenstorm closes DC-area offices Monday
October 28th, 2012 | OPM | Posted by Stephen Losey
With Hurricane Sandy barreling towards the East Coast, the Office of Personnel Management just announced that federal offices in the Washington area will be closed to the public Monday. That means that most employees will be granted an excused absence, unless they’re required to telework, on official travel outside of the DC area, on leave without pay, or on an alternative work schedule day off.
There are a few other categories of employees who won’t get the day off, however. Emergency employees are expected to show up for work tomorrow, unless they’re told otherwise by their bosses. And if you were already scheduled to telework tomorrow, you will still have to telework the whole day, or request leave (or a combination of the two).
Keep watching FedLine for more news as this Frankenstorm develops.
Tags: government closures, OPM
GAO: Agencies rehire few retirees at full pay
September 11th, 2012 | HR Management | Posted by Stephen Losey
About three years ago, Congress granted agencies wide authority to rehire federal retirees and pay them both their full pensions as well as their full salaries. But the Government Accountability Office today released a report that found six federal agencies are barely using the so-called dual compensation waiver authority at all.
GAO looked at how many waivers were granted by the Treasury Department, Office of Personnel Management, U.S. Postal Service, U.S. Agency for International Development, Small Business Administration, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in fiscal 2010 and 2011. Those six agencies granted only 187 waivers in the first year, and 247 in the second year. That amounts to less than one thousandth of a percent of the more than 500,000 full-time employees at those agencies.
Treasury made the most use of the dual-comp waivers — 167 in 2010 and 214 in 2011 — mostly to hire former revenue agents to come back to the IRS and train younger agents. But the other five agencies only used them to rehire a handful of retirees each year, if at all.
Congress loosened the dual compensation requirements in October 2009 when it passed the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act. Previously, agencies had to get OPM’s permission to rehire retirees at their full pay. But the five-year pilot program allows agencies to offer such waivers on their own, as long as the number of rehired retirees don’t exceed 2.5 percent of the agency’s full-time workforce. And if the ranks of rehired retirees at an agency exceeds 1 percent of the workforce, the law also requires that agency to send Congress a report explaining why they need so many.
But of the six agencies GAO surveyed — OPM could not provide reliable information on waiver use throughout the entire government — none even came close to those thresholds.
NRC said in a letter to GAO that even though it used the authority extremely rarely — once in 2011 and not at all in 2010 — it still found it very useful when hiring that key employee. NRC said it hopes the authority will be extended beyond its 2014 expiration date, despite its lack of use.
“NRC appreciates the [dual compensation] flexibility … in order to fulfill functions critical to the mission of the agency,” NRC wrote. “We therefore hope that the authority will be extended.”
Tags: GAO, OPM, rehired retirees
Government employing more people with disabilities
July 27th, 2012 | Staffing | Posted by Stephen Losey
The number of people with disabilities employed by the federal government increased 9 percent in fiscal 2011, according to a recent report from the Office of Personnel Management.
The government employed 187,313 people with disabilities in fiscal 2010, and 204,189 in 2011, the July 25 report said. That means the percentage of the federal workforce with disabilities increased from 10.7 percent to 11 percent.
“This is more people with disabilities in federal service both in real terms and by percentage than at any time in the past 20 years,” OPM Director John Berry said in the report’s foreword. “While we still have work to do, we remain committed to becoming a model for the employment of people with disabilities.”
The increase suggests that President Obama’s effort to increase federal job opportunities for people with disabilities is working. Obama issued an executive order in July 2010 that required agencies to increase their recruitment, hiring and retention of people with disabilities. All agencies have since finished action plans outlining how they are going to accomplish that mission. Also, more than 2,000 employees from at least 56 agencies have been trained on recruitment techniques, the proper hiring authority exceptions, how to accommodate them and how to help employees who become ill or injured on the job return to work.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is the agency with the highest percentage — more than 18 percent — of employees with disabilities. The Defense Department, Veterans Affairs Department, Federal Reserve System and OPM are other leading agencies, the report said.
Tags: disabilities, OPM
OPM declares 11 am delayed opening for DC; freezing rain on the way
January 22nd, 2012 | Office of Personnel Management | Posted by Stephen Losey
The Washington area is expected to get hit by freezing rain this evening, and it’s going to mean a late start for federal employees Monday. The Office of Personnel Management this evening sent out a notice that said the government will open at 11 a.m. tomorrow, and told feds to stay off the roads until 9 a.m. Feds will be granted an excused absence for their delayed arrival tomorrow.
OPM is also giving feds the option to use unscheduled leave or unscheduled telework — but if you choose to telework, you have to start working at your normal time.
Emergency employees will have to show up on time, unless directed otherwise.
UPDATE 8 PM: The National Weather Service forecasts tonight’s freezing rain will result in accumulations of “a trace to less than a tenth of an inch.” NWS expects “light icing on roadways and elevated surfaces will make traveling hazardous,” not to mention slippery sidewalks. So it doesn’t sound like the end of the world, but we all know how these slippery roads can lead to trouble if drivers don’t use caution.
OPM’s Zawodny to replace Zielinski as retirement chief
July 19th, 2011 | Office of Personnel Management | Posted by Stephen Losey
Zielinski
The effort to tame the Office of Personnel Management’s struggling retirement system is about to lose its leader. Associate Director of Retirement Benefits Bill Zielinski will return to the Social Security Administration in September to become its next regional commissioner in San Francisco, Federal News Radio reported yesterday.
That’s not good news for the tens of thousands of recent federal retirees who aren’t getting their complete pension checks, and were looking to Zielinski to fix the perennial problem. OPM Director John Berry made it Zielinski’s top priority last fall, and Zielinski felt the agency was making progress. Zielinski last month said OPM would issue quicker, more accurate interim annuities by using the initial pension estimates retirees’ employing agencies. And OPM is moving to eliminate paper records in favor of electronic records, which he hopes will eventually allow faster, more accurate calculations.
Zawodny
OPM said that Kenneth Zawodny, who is currently deputy associate director of the Center for Operations at the agency’s Federal Investigative Services Division, will take Zielinski’s place. FISD handles background checks for the bulk of the federal government, and Zawodny is in charge of case management and field investigation programs, including international and counterintelligence investigations.
Tags: incomplete annuities, OPM
Last day to post jobs on OPM’s Employer Services site
July 1st, 2011 | Office of Personnel Management | Posted by Stephen Losey
The Office of Personnel Management’s outdated Employer Services website will be shuttered for good Oct. 1, and today is an important milestone toward that effort. July 1 is the last day to post or edit a job on USAJobs.gov using Employer Services.
Some federal agencies use USAJobs’ Employer Services site to post job announcements, review resumes and have limited communications with applicants. But OPM decided last June that Employer Services’ limited functionality couldn’t keep up with Director John Berry’s hiring reform efforts, and on March 4 officially announced they would scrap it. Specifically, OPM said Employer Services couldn’t be used to determine category rating — a major facet of hiring reform — nor could it determine veterans’ preference, produce certificates or maintain electronic case files.
Beginning next week, all agencies must use other Talent Acquisition Systems to post jobs. For most agencies, this won’t be a big deal, OPM says. More than 99 percent of departments and agencies have other, better staffing systems that can take Employer Services’ place. But the less than 1 percent that don’t are going to have to go shopping (if they haven’t already). OPM advises those departments to strike an inter-agency agreement with a larger agency to use their system to post jobs, hire a shared service center, or adopt a staffing tool provided by a contractor. The Interior Department’s National Business Center, General Services Administration, OPM itself, Avue Technologies, Monster Government Solutions, Oracle and Taleo are some of the organizations that offer suitable systems for agencies.
Tags: hiring reform, OPM, USAJobs
Federal Times on the air
November 22nd, 2010 | Office of Personnel Management | Posted by Stephen Losey
Federal Times reporter Stephen Losey will appear on the TV show Capital Insider this evening to talk about the problems the Office of Personnel Management has had getting federal retirees their correct annuities.
If you’re in the Washington area, tune into channel 8 (which now goes by the name TBD) at 8 p.m.
Tags: on the air, OPM, pension
Bike share program for feds on the way
September 27th, 2010 | Office of Personnel Management | Posted by Stephen Losey
This is not how it's done, by the way. You should probably wear a helmet.
Feds, are you itching to go for a bike ride? The government has just what you’re looking for.
The federal government has teamed up with the District of Columbia’s Capital Bikeshare program to provide employees easy access to bicycles in Washington and Arlington, Va. The Office of Personnel Management said the deal will eventually allow feds round-the-clock access to 1,000 bikes at 114 stations.
OPM hasn’t said yet what the government’s corporate partnership is going to mean in terms of group rates, or when the program will start, but we’ll post more details when they’re available. OPM Director John Berry has made wellness initiatives and encouraging federal employees to improve their health a priority, and this bikeshare program fits right in with that part of his agenda.
DC became the first jurisdiction in North America to launch its own bikeshare program in August 2008. It was expanded to Arlington in May. Members receive a key that will let them unlock any of the bikes, which they can ride them for up to 24 hours. (The first half-hour is free; after that riders will incur trip fees.)
In honor of the new arrangement (and the rainstorm that scuttled a photo op for it this morning), enjoy this scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid:
Tags: bike share, OPM, wellness
They always come in threes…
June 23rd, 2010 | OMB | Posted by Stephen Losey
First Peter Orszag. Then Gen. Stanley McChrystal. And CNN just reported that Kal Penn, better known as Kumar, has officially left the White House. It’s hard to tell which will be the most devastating loss to the administration.
Seriously, though, the Washington Post’s Al Kamen has a roundup of potential Orszag replacements here, including current Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry. But whoever ends up replacing Orszag will face the thankless task of reducing the nation’s deficit, as Slate’s Christopher Beam details here.
Tags: John Berry, Kumar, OMB, OPM, Peter Orszag
Labor: FMLA covers same-sex partners’ children
June 23rd, 2010 | Labor | Posted by Stephen Losey
The Labor Department yesterday said it interprets the Family and Medical Leave Act to allow an employee to take leave to care for any child for whom that employee is the primary caregiver, “regardless of the legal or biological relationship.”
This new interpretation of how FMLA defines “son and daughter” means that any employee in the United States will be able to take unpaid time off to care for any child he is serving as parent to. That includes an employee’s nephew or grandchild, if the employee has stepped in to raise the child, or the son or daughter of an employee’s unmarried domestic partner — gay or straight.
The change is similar to regulations the Office of Personnel Management issued last week for federal employees, which allowed federal employees to use paid leave to care for their domestic partners — both same-sex and opposite-sex — and their partners’ children. But since OPM’s changes last week granting paid leave are more generous than unpaid FMLA leave, these Labor Department changes are likely to affect more private-sector workers and other non-federal employees than feds.
Yesterday’s announcement is another step in the Obama administration’s gradual expansion of workplace benefits to gay and lesbian workers. But gay rights activists have criticized the slow pace of reforms from the White House, and the lack of significant progress toward repealing the ban on openly gay people serving in the military.
Tags: FMLA, gay rights, OPM